Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Good afternoon. Welcome in to the Senate Committee on Government Operations Committee meeting of Tuesday, 02/03/2026. Two items up for discussions today. The first is H508, an act relating to the approval of amendments to the charter of the city of Burlington. I don't see Representative Cooper here, but Tucker, please join us and walk us through the proposed changes, if you would.

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: All right. Good afternoon. Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel. As the chair stated, you have in front of you 8,508, and I'll be working off the as passed by house version, specifically the unofficial, which is the one that has no markup from the house clerk. It just shows you the words on the page that passed the chamber. So if you are with me, I have very exciting students. We get to see a lot of the papers. And that's because there's an extensive repeal happening within section two of the city of Rome to charter. Under current law, the ward boundaries for the voting wards within the city are articulated in their nays and bounds in the same manner that the legislative districts are in the apportionment statutes. So you have the actual lines for the wards articulated in words on the page. The city is proposing to strike all of that specific language so that there would be no required charter changes when these boundaries change in the future. Oh. And instead, if you are with me on page 10, to replace the needs and bounds with the following language, starting on line 17, The election area boundaries that are established by 2023 Act M7 shall remain in effect until changed by the city council.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I'm on page 13.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. Oh, it's on page 10

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: for me. Oh, you have a different topic.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: The one on our red lining goes through the middle of

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: the paper and off the one without

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: the Okay, red let's look at that one. Yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: And it says Section one Charter Amendment for law.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: It says as passed

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: You thought this was gonna be will give myself little pat on the back that I started my technical by this articulating the exact document that I'd be working from.

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: Which may

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: not be the document, but

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: it's not. On

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: page 23 at the bottom page, is the language that Tucker is referring to.

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: If you go to the last page, neither version, you'll see at least some of the points which I'll believe. Point

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: taken, thank you. Okay.

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: So the current electionary boundaries will remain in effect until they're changed by the city council, and the city council is authorized to make changes from time to time to the boundaries of election areas in order to provide a full division of population among them in accordance with data produced by the US Census Bureau. So there are a few things to note here. First, there's no required timelines for reapportionment. It is periodically at the discretion of the city council in order to provide for proportionate awards based on US census data. Senator Vyhovsky. I have a

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: whole bunch of questions. Oh, okay.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Is this constitutional?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Is my first question. Would look a bad smile, boobah, get buzz. Yes.

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: Okay. It's an appropriate delegation of legislative authority under the Vermont constitution. It, is an appropriate delegation of this sort of apportionment authority. There are a few other examples of political salivations of the state, municipal corporations that have similar authority, where it could get dodgy is if there is unequal disproportionate wards. And one of the things that came up in the house, the city discussed that other data might be used in the event that there isn't decennial census data that is available. If there ever were a challenge, under, equal protection for the portionality of awards, courts will look at US Census data, but under the express terms you have in front of you, that's what the city council is going to use anyway.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Well, and I guess my concern is that there is no like, could go thirty years without them doing this, and then they presumably would not be proportional. I recall in the city of Essex Junction's charter, one of the challenges was that they had no explicit plan for abortion. And I guess my concern is, is this a specific enough plan for abortion that someday the city councilor would have to.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: Or does it need to be

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: every ten years? Or like, is it

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Question. Question. Sorry. Question makes sense.

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: It does. Okay. The trigger here is going to be disproportionate awards that are subject to challenge. Now, if there's a sentence that I haven't gotten to yet that is maybe a little more concerning to what you're looking at, if there were a specific challenge and they had not done a redistricting within their awards or reapportment of their awards, there could be a court compelled reapportionment. That ballot would have to be brought by the voters of the city, and then the courts could compel the city councils to rethought. Obviously, there is another form of redress for the voters of the city of Burlington as well. They could petition their representatives and senators in the general assembly. You retain plenary authority over municipal corporations in the state under section six sixty nine of the Vermont constitution, and if things are going awry and these wards have not been reapportioned, the general assembly could reach right in and undergo a reapportionment process and be added to the city chairman.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I guess I have concern about it being a complaint driven process, that the voters would have to go what count of their neighbors and see You if it's know, we are required, my understanding is that we are required

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: to look at our districts every ten years. Following the taking of the decennial census.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Right. And so to me, it seems a little strange that we would just sort of leave it to the wing and to the voters to be like, actually, I don't think these are proportional districts and not have a set party party.

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: You may wanna hear from representatives from the city to How this would play out. Yeah. And what the city council's plans for a free bushy.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I think that's fair. We did invite representative Wooper down. So again, without asking you a reason why this occurred, that's where our discussion, I think, with them. It is a little bit I guess I've never looked at the chart of Burlington's ward setup before. I mean, it's like the third hydrant after the second building that's painted red. I mean, it goes back a long, long time. So this appears to me to be kind of a cleanup in some ways, but I share Senator Vyhovsky's concern to some degree. My question is, is there some other municipality that does it this way that allows the municipality every five years to change it outside of the census process?

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: I'll answer the general part of that, which is that yes, there are other municipal corporations that have this authority. Okay. It is not exactly the same, and what I can do is send you language from those other charters around the apportionment of sports.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Did this take the House Cub Ops Committee very long to move along, and what was the vote on the committee and on the floor if you know? If you don't, we can ask representative Rutland. I don't have

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: those notes

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I in front of apologize. Senator Clarkson.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: May I follow-up on your question, please? How many other towns have wards in the how many towns or cities in Vermont have wards in?

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Quite a

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: few, annually. Not one, really. Of your cities are large enough that they use a ward based system, and there are quite a few towns as well that use voting wards because of the population. So, if there are many municipalities that use representational models for their legislative bodies, which means they have districts that are directly tied to proportional representation on their legislative bodies. Otherwise, you have an at large representation that you're familiar with, and there are, we use these terms relatively because we are in Vermont, large municipalities within Vermont do have a representational model, is more based voting. All right, to finish this out, the electionary changes shall not be made more frequently than once in five years. That's actually restrictions on the ability to undergo reapportionment. So, the City Council has taken action, this will restrict the City Council's ability to reamortion for a five year period. Changes must be approved by the voters in annual or special meeting, and become effective immediately, unless a later date established by the city meeting vote. That is all that is within the four corners of H-five zero eight as it has passed House. It's worth noting that House separated out some of the proposals that were contained in h five zero eight as introduced. H five zero eight as introduced included provisions related to notice for landlord tenant grants. Mhmm. And those were taken out, and I don't want to characterize it, but it was the chair and the House committee said, because of work that is happening in other legislative committees around the very same subject.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Any other questions for Tucker Duke? Senator White?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: So just to understand, normally this is when you ask what the vote count was within the community. Do we know what that is? Do you know that, or is those the numbers that we

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: would get from That's usually what

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: our call gives us. I can also send them to you, and I did set up a SharePoint at the beginning of the biennium both of the government operations committees where all of the charter packets that are received by the House Clerk Senate Secretary, Secretary of State, and Legislative Council are posted for your perusal. So regrudge that link.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I will. Thank you. So we'll

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: see you, three of us, at 12:30 tomorrow. Oh, you didn't make it happen, sorry? It happened on minus two. Oh, oh, no, sorry. Was thinking about the conference. Oh no, we did do that. You did, great. Okay. Nothing else for Tucker? Great.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Well, we have lots of other things for Tucker, but maybe not on this subject.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Thank you. See you in the morning.

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: We'll have Bob Hooper for sure come in and anyone else that was involved in this. I think I know why they did it, but I wanna make sure that- No, there are lots of questions. Yeah. Then let's move on to our second day of testimony on S-two 55. So that if you remember, we did a walkthrough last week. Tim Devlin did a nice job of that. We had a room full of folks and, potentially have at least half as many in the room today. But I felt strongly that this committee should probably begin work on this and plan on weekly kind of thing, checking in. It'd be great if we could get it to the floor and everybody's understanding what we're trying to do here and get any questions that might have been answered before we get involved. So I don't know. Tim is on the agenda, but I kind of relieved him of that because we've already heard his walk through. Yes. See Sheriff Mark Anderson is with us, and then I see some assistant judges, town managers, etcetera, etcetera. So do you and I don't know whether Senator White former Senator White is gonna join us or not. She's on the agenda list.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: Mr. Chair, I have Katie Johnson Atwood from the New Phoenix Select Board here, Judge Barnett, who's You've the Assistant Judge from Windom heard from me, I'm happy to talk more, but certainly if you wanna hear from them, I can follow-up and answer any questions. Okay. And I can check on the others. I did not hear back from two town managers. Normally, they're not working on Friday, so that's when we try

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: to connect with them. Caroline?

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: Caroline, I believe, is with judge Barnett. I think they're together. Oh, good. I'm sure.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So let me ask judge Lamont Barnett, who's on there. Do you have any time constraints today in terms of being able to stay with us? Because this could turn into an hour, an hour and a half discussion today. If you do, we can go to you right away.

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: No. I'm I'm fine to to wait around if you wanna take other people first. I do have, more court this afternoon, but it's something that I can put off for a while.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. Very well, your honor. Is, former Parkridge with you?

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: She's should be in a different screen. We're not in the same, building, but so I'm not sure if she's able to unmute and and say where she is.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I don't see her on the screen, so I can make sure I don't mind yet. So why don't we hear from Katie Johnson Applin first? And you're welcome to take the chair.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: Thank you.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: You are a select board member from Newfane.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: I am. Yeah, Newfane.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Hello, good afternoon.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: This is my first time coming and speaking. I know. You never You

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: yourself. Can I

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: will? My name is Katie Johnson Aplin. I'm a select holder from the town of New Paine. I've been on the board for five years, and I've been following Sheriff Anderson's work on this project since he first brought it to town officials three years ago approximately. And I'm very eager to see this pilot program happen in our journey. Is New Payne is perhaps maybe you're you may be familiar, you might not be. New Payne is the county seat of Windham County. We have the one courthouse there, and for over one hundred years, the sheriff's department was right in the main village. We are perhaps unique in understanding what it's like to have that presence of the sheriff there, even though we didn't have we didn't always contract with them or have their services. Just by having them present in our community, people were cautious and a little bit better behaved about moving through the community, and now that they have moved into Rattleboro, we see a difference in how people move through our community, and that's kind of a shame. So, much of what Sheriff is proposing is regarding crime and direct impact of being able to facilitate all of those things in a more rapid manner than what we currently receive, presence alone is really important. And I think that needs to be thought about a bit more. And just being able to patrol and rove through the communities more freely than they are currently able to makes a difference. People smarten up a little bit. I think that it's something that we would all benefit from. And while residents will always say things like, you know, traffic control shouldn't be the focus. That's just punishing people. At the same time, whenever we have a rash of break ins or a rash of stolen vehicles, everybody's clamoring for more police presence. So it's balance.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Senator Clarkson?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yes. Thank you for coming all the way up from New Penn. We appreciate those of us in Windsor County. Appreciate. We didn't introduce ourselves, but I'm Alison Clarkson from Windsor County. I appreciate it. My question for you is what do you currently contract with the sheriff? How many hours does Newfane contract with the sheriff for?

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: We have a small budget. I think we're kind of medium on the sheriff's contract list of $25,000, which earns us about seven and a half hours of patrolling per week. And is it to just contract them for patrolling or for all Primarily. All policing? Patrolling and animal control officer. So, two things and that is helpful, but I've slowly been getting that money to increase. So if we're increasing by $10,000 this year, we're trying to get closer, I would like to at least match what we have for rescue eight, which is about 52 k. And it's just a matter of getting the other selectmen to agree with me.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I guess my second question would be, what would you say the citizens of New Faith's expectation is with law enforcement? If there's a domestic violence situation in New Faith, what do you think that the citizens involved in that? Nothing. What would be their expectations about law enforcement response?

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: I think everybody knows that it takes time. And newer folks, even people who've been there for a decade, don't necessarily understand who's going to show up. I was just talking to somebody the other day who had mentioned that to me, and I was like, Oh, alright, maybe we need to talk about this a little bit more somehow so that people do know who might be coming. It's going to take time. I live 10 miles from New Peng Centre and it's a solid hour to the state police barracks at the Northeast corner of the county. And I'm in central, relatively speaking, but it's one of those you can't get there from here scenarios. It just takes time, and that's the year round issue. It doesn't matter if it's absolutely midsummer, dry, beautiful. It still takes time to get there.

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: To get to Westminster. Yeah.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: Yes. And that's something Sheriff Anderson has addressed quite a bit. We've been talking about what works best, and it's linking towns along our state route corridors, which also coincide largely with our watershed and mountain topography. And I look forward to that. I look forward to knowing that if I make a phone call and the sheriff has a deputy in Jamaica or Darmerson that they will get to my house sooner in my moment of crisis. I hope that never happens, but domestic violence, mental health crises, kidnapping, any of the things that need rapid response. Most of us just hope that that never happens to us because we don't know who to call. Holding And out for an hour, if you've ever been in anything remotely tense like that, is a really long time.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Senator Vyhovsky?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Oh, well, you, Mr. Chair, and thank you so much for coming and presenting. I think you've done a really apt job of explaining the situation of Newfane. Big fan of your library. Oh, nice. But don't tell anyone in the Upper Valley, but I think you have one the best libraries on state.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: It's a private library. It's nothing to solve. Then there you go.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: So I think what I've learned from this kind of regional model is it's trying to fit the need of basically communities like Newfang where you're never gonna create a police force and No. It's just not in your budget to do that solo. But you also don't necessarily have the coverage that you want or need from the current structure that we

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: have. Yes.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: So I'm wondering, as you see like, let's say I'm very in favor of this bill. I hope that we pass it. It may be some changes. I would pass it as is. But do you see your select board like, how how much do you actually see them buying into this as a group? Do you see the communities around you coming into it? Does it actually meet the need, I guess, is what I'm trying to ask. Because I see it conceptually being a good step forward, I actually don't know if you would you have higher expectations for service if you became a part of this? Like, kind of, what would the discussion be for you to make a decision to join it if it was something you could opt into?

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: Now, I did share that I was coming here today and we had our select board meeting last night. Oh, great. So, those that were present were all in support moving forward with this. Great. And I think that we would be willing to put in a little bit more, tweak expectations. Certainly we have various ideas of what should be done and how it should be done. Yeah. And the sheriff is contracted for one portion of that. But we certainly have the room and the desire for something more. Right. And at 16, that sixteen fifty people, we will never be able

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: to afford that on

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: our own. So, this gives us an opportunity to feel out how it might be in the future. I hope so. I hope this happens.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: But you haven't had an actual select board voting on it yet? We've written letters of recommendation. Yes. And remind me again if

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: you're working, how many hours do you contract with Sheriff Anderson's crew?

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: Currently, we're missing about seven and a half hours a week. So

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: an hour a day or however they decide

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: However they schedule it usually is a couple days a week, I think.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: And what what does that cost?

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: $25,000 for the year.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Mhmm.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: That's a lot of money.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: And do you have any sort of expectations to, if this were to go through, what you were

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Jeanette, I think you're not muted.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: No. Don't. Oh, I am so I just found out that you were just doing this. I just this minute. Oh, sorry.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Well Okay. We'll join you in a minute.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: No. No. Mark just sent me a note.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Oh, okay.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: Thank

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: you. So, Katie, how much would this cost if it goes through? Any ideas?

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: I don't. I know that by slowly increasing our amount, it will be less of a blow to to voter expectations, what their taxes look So, like we've been doing that a little bit at a time. Okay. And, like I said, I would hope to at least match what we have for rescuing, because that would help us significantly, and that would be, I think, close to half time, twenty hours a week, which in order to change habits in people, presence matters. And at seven and a half hours a week, they're traffic monitors, and

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: that's inefficient. Let me just one more You're gonna have to do a sales job pretty much for the 1,600 people. Not all of them maybe vote every time, but it will be according to the way the provisions were written up to the governing body in that municipality to make the decision. It won't go out to a community wide vote. Right. So, yeah, I'm just trying to understand how this would work. At some point, how many members of the support are there in Newfoundland? We have five. Five. So if it's a four-one or five-zero vote, then it will be up to you to say, Hey folks, let's have a, however you want to do it. I'm not suggesting this is the way to do it, public hearing or at least invite people into a select board meeting to say, This is what we really would like to do. Here's what it's going to cost. Here's what we're going to get for it. Yeah. What do you think kind of thing?

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: Absolutely. Okay. And that's not something that bothers us particularly. We do hold special town meetings as needed that's that's not, not primitive to us at all, and we're happy to do so to facilitate it.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. Senator Clarkson?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So, and this is a bit of a thorny issue, but one representing Woodstock and Bridgewater right next door and Plymouth where there have been many concerns about what the objective was for the patrols. I'm just curious if you make enough in tickets to justify your $25,000 cost. I mean, do have an expectation? Okay. No. It's good. It's good to hear because there's and Brian's smiling at me, but Brian and I know. But we there is there was and we had a bit of a reputation for speeding entrepreneurship before and towns were making money on on their Yes. On their sheriffs and the tickets. So on the speeding tickets. So it's good to know that's not part of your expectation, but I think what we are trying to do is, well, I hope anyway, address people's real expectations about how quickly law enforcement will respond when they need it. I don't think it affects behavior so much. But, I mean, I know the Woodstock police are around all the time. Don't think it affects my behavior, but I do think that it affects people's feeling of security and comfort knowing that law enforcement is, there's a plan for law enforcement to be able to respond faster. And I think that is really so key.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: Yeah, I would say that a lot of the lifelong locals don't call the police unless it's truly a crisis.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: They call them when they need it, yeah.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: But people moving here from other places have expectations of police. That just don't exist. I mean, in terms of convenience, live in a place where getting delivery pizza has never happened, ever. It will never happen. It's too far away. And when you talk about life like that, that's pretty intimidating to a lot of people. So then to not know how quickly your crisis is going to be mitigated becomes even scarier. And we do and I think it's important to say this. We live in on the path and route to multiple scariest. We're seeing tens of thousands of people move through our community every single weekend for the entire winter and and some in the summer as well when they have various things and holiday weekends and people are headed up to their second homes. They sometimes require police presence as well. So I listened into your discussion last week, and you were talking about the model of whether you do resident based formula for figuring out how much it costs each town or a parcel based. And that's an interesting question, and I wish I had better answers for you, but I can tell you that model for Wyndham County works for some things, like rescue, but it might not work for policing. More than 60% of our homes are second homes in New Fay. That's a lot of people who can still have things happen. Sure. So, I'm not really sure how that sits, but it's something to think about for about Absolutely,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: they need to be supporting us. I feel that all people who have a home and go down need to be supporting us.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Sometimes they think, to Senator Clarkson's earlier point, we get caught up with traffic enforcement and not sort of that crime enforcement. We had, well- I'll a story. We had somebody coming from Barrie to a referee seminar in Rutland. Got off the interstate, got on Route 4. Got a speeding ticket at Woodstock.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: Uh-huh.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: And by the time he got to Bridgewater, he got a second speeding ticket. Because he was late, and he didn't think that and this sheriff was very efficient, obviously, because he had let his counterpart down the road know that, Hey, there's a guy coming. So by the time he got to the seminar, he wasn't in any mood to be educated about the He rules of USA was out about $200 and not very happy. But anyway, it's also called learn from mistake and slow down. Okay. Thank you very much, unless other questions here.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: I just want to say thank you for calling out brickwater as the ski traffic.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: No, but

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: he was lucky. I'll tell you what, from what I understood, that was the contract that was put in place by that municipality with the emphasis on cutting speed down. And the guy was very efficient. I had no problem. It was a 25, now it went from 40 to 25 pretty quickly, but it's also called read the science.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Yeah, we can talk about the right thing.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I didn't mean to Anyone from law enforcement?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Thank you so much.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Thank much.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Thank you for your time. So

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: if anyone on the screen has a time constraint, if you put your hand up so we can get to you next, I now see judge Partridge has joined us, former senator White and also, judge Barrett. I don't see anybody's hand going up. So, is anybody in the room that time constraints? Alright. Well, Caroline, since you appeared first, let's, let's turn it over to you. It's good to see you again. We missed you.

[Assistant Judge Carolyn Partridge (Windham County), former Representative]: It's good to see you too, mister chair. I know most of you on the committee, and it's really a pleasure to be here today. I'm really going to turn it over to Judge Barnett. I'll just say a couple of things. We are very fortunate in Wyndham County to have a top notch sheriff who is doing a fabulous job. He is a problem solver. He is forward thinking, and, I really support this language. I think it's a great idea. And I'll tell you another place to slow down is in Chester. Chester.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yes. The Stone Village. He sits right outside the church. I mean, I know where they are. You got it. If you know and you get a ticket, shame on you.

[Assistant Judge Carolyn Partridge (Windham County), former Representative]: I know. Yeah. You really wanna slow down in Chester. Anyway, it's great to see you too, Brian. But I'll turn it over, to, judge Barnett who will talk, more about the ins and outs of this. But I am in complete support of H two fifty five. Thanks.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Thank you, your honor. It's good to see you.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: Good to see

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: you too. Judge Barnett, you're on.

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: Okay. Thank you. I don't know if am I on the screen?

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Your No. Box is. We can hear you, but we can't see you.

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: Okay. I have my video on, but for some reason it's not, populating an image.

[Assistant Judge Carolyn Partridge (Windham County), former Representative]: Monty, I think it might be the little slider thing at the top. Try that.

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: Well, I have a remote camera, but let me me try that.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. Yeah. It is. Yep. As usual, senator, representative Bartridge,

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: Carolyn has been a big asset to Wyndham County since she left the house.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: So Yeah.

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: Loss was our gain.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So let

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: me just start by thanking the committee for this opportunity to testify on Bill S two fifty five. And a little bit of background on myself. I've been an assistant judge for about fifteen years. Before that, I was a member of the Rockingham Bells Falls Select Board for about fifteen years serving as chairman for ten. Concurrently, was also a commissioner with the Vermont Housing Finance Agency for about ten years. So I have significant experience in state, local and county government. I've known Sheriff Anderson for quite some time now. I mean, he served under Sheriff Clark before he became sheriff. We have an excellent working relationship as Carolyn said. Mark is very conscientious about the service that he provides to the County. I think Wyndham County is a bit unique throughout the state and having been an assistant judge for fifteen years, I can tell you firsthand that a number of counties do not necessarily have a great working relationship with their sheriff. I don't know why, but that's never been the case in Wyndham. We've always worked closely. We feel that Sheriff Anderson provides a critical service for the County. And we kind of think of him as, you know, a co member of County government. And well, he is, I mean, sets with us when we're developing the budget, the sheriff's budget. So as Carolyn said, we wholeheartedly support S two fifty five and hope that the committee and ultimately the whole legislature votes to approve this. I mean, are some issues that I think should be talked about. One is, you know, we certainly support it as it's written now. If there are major tweaks and changes to it, that may change our thinking. But certainly as it is now, this really basically ends up being a fiscal pass through for the County. It would not be a significant change in how we prepare tax bills. I envision this much like a municipality that would impose a special taxing district for, you know, road improvement or something. This would be a special tax assessment to the towns that opt into this proposal. I would envision that we would get that information sometime probably around November of any particular year. We set the county budget. We start with public meetings in December and January and we set the budget at the January. In fact, we just set it a couple of days ago. It takes effect on February 1. I mean, there's a little bit of time lapse with between the county and municipalities. Municipalities set their budget usually the March 1. We don't start collecting taxes until June, July from the towns. They don't start collecting taxes until August from usually from their constituents. So there's some issues of revenue coming in that we probably have to tweak and maybe some authority that, if this takes effect this year, we obviously have not budgeted for it this year. So, maybe we would need to send out a special tax bill, supplemental tax bill to the towns that opt in for this proposal. So let me just say that right now, for a lot of people, it's about tax burden, I think. So right now currently, Wyndham County's budget is about a million dollars and that's kind of where we've kept it for many, many, many years. And that provides sheriff's office, two and a half clerical positions, a courthouse and maintenance of a couple other outbuildings that we own. If this proposal takes place, currently, the impact on a person in Wyndham County, let's just say for math purposes, have a $100,000 house, the current budget of a million dollars in Wyndham County would cost you $10 per year for the County budget. You know, so keep that in mind, dollars 10 is what your County tax costs you if you have a $100,000 house. And we all know that most houses are not valued at $100,000 anymore. They're, you know, two to three, but, you know, just extrapolate the math. You know, if you have a $200,000 your county tax would be $20 and $30 thereafter. So under Sheriff Anderson's proposal, I think from what I'm seeing the sheriff's portion of the County budget would go from about 500,000, which is what it is now. We pretty much evenly split the million dollars. In fact, I think this year, our budget ended up being like a thousand dollars difference out of a million. So that's usually how close it is. The new proposal would suggest that the impact on the county grand list for Sheriff Anderson's budget would be, and I don't know, Mark, am I getting this right? It would be like another 700,000 somewhere around there probably.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: Yeah, so

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: we're still talking, you know, less than $20 for a $100,000 house. And, you know, as the select board member from Newfane said, it's really about, you know, what is the fiscal impact that towns can absorb? And I'm not making light of tax impact. I mean, when you add everything up, it's significant. However, there's no question that the county impact is almost insignificant in your overall tax bill. I mean, I come from a municipality where our municipal tax was $3 I mean, the county is 1¢. So the burden, if we go to a regional policing model, I think the burden on the people of Wyndham County would be minimal. And, you know, anytime you can share the burden, the impact is spread out. And speaking of, oh, sorry, just wanna say I'm not trying to make light. I also serve as traffic court judge. So I appreciate all the talk about speeding tickets and stuff because I see those continually all the time. And yes, Bridgewater is an issue, but so just for your confidence, there's really only one town that I know of, one municipality in the State of Vermont that actually perceives speeding tickets as a revenue generating mechanism. Most towns do not, most counties do not.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Which town would that be? You

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: can talk something, right? What

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: town would that be? I guess I'd rather not say.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: It's no longer Plymouth or Bridgewater or Woodstock, just saying.

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: Yeah. So, so a couple years ago, I mean, we we work closely with Sheriff Anderson all the time, most recently on purchasing a new facility for the sheriff's department. We worked out a new fame. And I don't know if everybody was familiar with the new fame Sheriff's Department picture, The Andy Griffith Show. That's pretty much what the Sheriff's Department in New Fame was. And it was just not conducive to a modern law enforcement organization. And so we had been aware of this opportunity in Brattleboro for quite some time. It was a modern building, I think it was built in the 70s, if I'm correct. But very modern, you know, modern HVAC elevators, lots of room. We were able to purchase that really for pennies on the dollar. It just made so much sense. So we ended up moving the Sheriff's Department out of Newfane into Brattleboro. It was more centrally located in a way, I mean, it's in the Southeast corner of the County now, but it's close proximity to the interstate. So, you know, the sheriffs are able to get out through the whole County. We have better access to Route 9, which goes over into Wilmington. So it really made sense on many aspects, but most importantly, it allowed Sheriff Anderson to develop into a really first rate law enforcement agency. And it also gave us the opportunity to have space for tenants where we actually raise revenue that pays for the building. So it was really a win win for the county. This is the type of cooperation that we have with Sheriff Anderson. And we so currently, when you look at the sheriff's budget within the county budget, it really is only for things like the sheriff's office, some clerical help, some equipment, not much. We provide like telephones. We provide some training, some ammunition, but we've never been allowed to provide for policing on the County budget. I believe that's still the Lemoyle that dictates that. And so in my fifteen years on the bench, I frankly have always been amazed of why that is. I mean, you were a municipality and you had a local police force, you would not show up at town meeting and vote a police budget that only provided for the station and to clerical help, and tell police department, okay, you're on your own for everything else. You have to raise your own money through whatever means, a bake sale or whatever, raise your own money for cruisers and uniforms and, you know, ammunition and that kind of stuff. But yet, that's what we tell the sheriff. We look to the sheriff to provide policing for the County, but we don't really have a mechanism in place to provide for that. And as we know, most counties and Wyndham is no different, are populated by small towns that cannot afford their own police department. And there's also the issue that, you know, a lot of small towns really like to be able to call 911 and have somebody to come, but they really don't want to, should I say, pay for that service. And so right now, not just Windham County, but every county, on your county tax bill, you're paying for a building and some clerical help, you are not paying for that cruiser and that deputy to come to your house unless you have a contract with the sheriff, and which most towns throughout the state probably do not. And so to me, that fundamental difference on, you know, between the sheriff's department and a town police department has always been an issue for me and it's never really made sense. And I think it would be so much better and easier for towns to get the police protection that they need. I mean, you know, lot of towns don't think they need it. A lot of people don't think they need it until they do. Until, you know, somebody breaks into their house or they're assaulted by a drunken spouse or something, which is unfortunate. But that's the reality that we are faced with. So there's no question that Wyndham County would be more than happy to serve as a pilot to see if, you know, what we think could be really would happen.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Senator Morley has a question, your honor.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Yep. So I understand that you create the council. The council puts forth a budget and then you're going to set a tax rate to cover that budget. Then the town's going to collect it, and then it somehow gets to the sheriff department. What if there isn't enough money? A lot of times municipalities such as sheriff's departments, water department, whatever, they don't have enough revenues. If he's collecting tax dollars, it's probably going to come in once a year or maybe twice. Is there a can that's going to be in place for you so if you start running large deficits, you have a tax anticipation note, and then you roll that into the budget the next year? I just want to make sure sometimes

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: you don't wanna be cash short, especially to begin with, you're starting this new pilot program.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: And so I don't know if the side judges and the sheriff department have figured out all those steps, it's something they probably have. You guys are really, really smart people. I'm just curious

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: to see how exactly that's gonna work.

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: Well, that's kind of what I said when I first logged on. I think there may be

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: a little bit of

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: a lag in, revenue collection and expenses depending on when everything starts. So we would have to figure out how we can do that. I mean, counties like municipalities can borrow in anticipation of taxes. But, you know, we tend to be pretty, I won't say conservative, but we don't spend more than we take in. So this council needs to define what services they're going to pay for. And the county, and maybe Mark can speak to it on a different level, but the County is only gonna collect the taxes that the council comes up with. And, you know, we collect that money starting usually around June, but then some smaller towns opt to pay us in two installments. So we get another installment sometime in the fall. So again, depending on when this initiative actually starts, we would have to look at, you know, do we have to do some short term borrowing to anticipate what the expenses are going to be. So we don't anticipate. So let me be clear right now. So we oversee the sheriff's budget in regards to the County tax. That $500,000 that we collect on behalf of the sheriff. We actually review invoices and that type of stuff. We would, at least as it's written that I understand, we would not be doing that with this assessment. And the reason we wouldn't be doing that is because we don't do that now. The sheriff has this whole other budget that he gets through contracts that the County plays absolutely no role in. So the only role that I anticipate that we would play now would be one of revenue collection. We would probably make periodic payments to the sheriff to, so he can pay for the things that he needs, you know, whether it be, you know, just sheriff's deputies equipment or whatever that council agrees on that they need.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So the other aspect, and I think there's 23 municipalities Windsor County. So I'm getting a nod from Mark. This is voluntary. So we can't assume all 23 are gonna sign up for it. Some of them already have their own police departments. That's another question we have is what would the difference would be if Brattleboro already is paying and now they get it in another way. And I don't know whether they'd be better off or worse off.

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: But They're not gonna get it. They're not gonna be included.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. So let's say for argument's sake, 15 of the 23 or 24 say yes, that budget then that's created by the council will accurately reflect the cost for those municipalities. Those that aren't part of it, they don't get the added benefit and they don't get the added cost. They can get

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: the They

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: can do that too, Well,

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: they basically will get what they get now, which, you know, when the call comes, somebody probably will show up, but you're not guaranteed when and how, because you're really not, you're not contracted for that service. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Well, VSP is still your backup, right?

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Pardon me? Vermont State Police is by default.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: The Vermont State Police are your default.

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: Yeah, so if This is what I've heard and I, you know, it's really hearsay, guess,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: but, you

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: know, if you live in Whitingham and you call the state police, it's an hour at least.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Assistant Judge Lamont "Monty" Barnett (Windham County)]: Yeah, so whatever has happened to you has happened and gone, surely, by that time. So, you know, is the state police really the model that you would use for, you know, regional policing? I'm not sure. It probably could be if that's the direction the state wanted to go, but it's not where we are now. And if you look at, I think what is the quickest, easiest, most efficient way to provide regional policing, I think it's with the sheriff's model.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. With this plan that we navigate all the challenges that are inherent in this and hopefully come up with a model that we can duplicate around the state.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So are the two judges all set and you're welcome to stay with us and if something else comes up you could certainly chime in again. But I have Sheriff Anderson now seated before us and maybe some of the questions that we came up with he could help us with.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: Welcome in. Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the Senate Committee on Government Operations. For the record, my name is Mark Anderson. I am the sheriff of Woodland County. You will hear me repeat things. Some of those are for emphasis. Some of those are just because the system is goofy and we're trying to make the best thing work, but you'll hear repetition. I'm happy to clarify on things. I'm gonna go below 35,000 feet today Good. Which is where I stuck around last time. But really, I'd like I think I'd like to address some of the questions that were raised. I was just taking some notes quick, if that satisfies things, then I'll dive into testimony. During miss Johnson Applin's testimony, there's questions about it. So, like, yes, those are the numbers. Those are the hours. So a hundred and sixty eight hours a week were contracted for less than 10 a week, and so it's always threading the needle. Did the problem happen at the time that we were there? Statistically speaking, no. So we wanna go by data, just simple statistics. We already know that. We're not there at the times that they need us. A question would be, would town people have or would voters, would the taxpayer, would whoever the royal they is, would they have a higher degree of expectation service? In theory, yes. But it's also the structure of this is dependent on the council voting. It's not me deciding what I think they need. It's up to me. I think that we need to have way more people doing way more things and that comes with a way bigger cost than it comes with a lot of things that a lot of people will tell me, no, this doesn't work, and their support leaves. So what my goal in this entire project was to do was to thread the needle to make people happy. I can talk about what I think is the most appropriate thing, and we can talk about the appropriations that will be necessary from that and how to do those things, how it should be governed. We can talk about all those things all day long. But as this has been examined for seventy years, as it's been studied for fifty years, as it's been worked on for say forty years, we always run into the who was offended by it and what problem did that create. So I'm trying to not offend. So who am I Or there's one person I'm really happy to offend, it's myself, because I actually think we're doing the right thing and this is good governance and good policy building, and we can solve some of the things or we can acknowledge those things and move on. So would it create the higher expectation of service? In theory, yes. But that's really up to the council to determine what the appropriate level is. Who am I offending if we raise taxes? My budget because towns are raising taxes to pay for the service currently. It's about 3 quarters of $1,000,000. What does that translate to? Roughly four full time deputies who provide patrols in the service area. What's it currently provide? Roughly four full time deputies in the service area. So this would be cost agnostic, assuming the participant towns were the same towns they contract with and assuming that those towns were happy with this level of service. Where we started this project was actually with the towns of Putney and Westminster. I would encourage that Karen Astley, the town manager of Putney, be one of the witnesses for this group, and I'm happy to connect. She's one of the people I tried to get here. On the She she is one of the people I just was not able to get back with her in time. So I'm working on that. She has previously indicated she's willing to testify on this. We worked with Putney and Westminster to say, let's share the resources. And instead of me servicing two separate silos of contracts, we'll service this as one geographically contiguous unit to provide the service. So this is my first regional pilot model. It's managed entirely by me as the sheriff. I have contractual responsibility to the town, but really what we're trying to do is consolidate the contractual responsibility so we're not talking about the business elements of how we render the service. We're now talking about the allocation of the resource. The towns have been generally happy. In fact, there was one minor upset where the town of Westminster, cut their entire policing budget in half because they didn't think that that would change any of the services rendered. And then it changed the services rendered, and then they were upset, and then they doubled their budget and then added $20,000 more. And none of those were based on numbers of discussion with anyone, the select board, with the voters at town meeting. It just it was. It was the will of the voters in town meeting, and that's how it happened. The discussion on cutting the budget in half was because of the typical budget process that most people familiar with the town budgeting process are used to. The select board made a recommendation. The town manager who developed the budget said we're gonna cut the budget in half, and we're gonna have a discussion at town meeting. Two weeks before town meeting, he ceased employment with the town. The discussion never happened. I didn't know that I was supposed to be the champion of the meeting, and when they passed the budget article in less than four minutes, I was like, well, this ship has sailed. We can't talk about this with good governing models because of the structure of town meeting. And that's not, in any way, a denigration of town meeting, but it's what happened. And so the town of Westminster was upset when they lost the service. So we started there. We learned some lessons. We learned that communication was incredibly, informed between the town managers and the selectors. Before that happened, we were only talking to the town managers and there was a flaw. So this is where it started. Then you heard Ms. Johnson Adler talk about animal control. The second model of my pilot project was regional animal control, where through a contract model we said, all right, everybody that's coming to me is saying you need animal control. We don't have professionals who know how to do this. We don't know how to testify to it. It's taking a town administrator and town manager's time, and they're the designee because, well, who else does a town have to designate the commonwealth? Constable. Well, some towns designate the constable, and they never answer their phones. So now what? It becomes the town, and they answer the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: job. It is now. That person looks like oversight.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: It becomes an interesting conversation about what the constable does or doesn't do. And sometimes don't even have constable.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Overseeing the constable to ensure the constable is answering their phone and doing their job.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: In the case of an elected constable, the voters in the case of an appointed constable, the select board, but then it also comes back to its instruction. So not all towns use the constable for animal control, but it becomes a problem when, constable x or animal control officer y, whomever that person is, is now the person responsible and under what model, under what training. And a lot of these things have changed under various statutes related to animal welfare, town governance, and and whatnot, and it's a whole conversation. But I kept getting towns like, can you just do it?

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: Yeah.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: You guys used to do it and you stopped doing it. And part of the reason we stopped doing it was the ordinances the towns had were illegal. We said we're not doing this until you update your ordinances. We said we're not doing this until you actually make sense of it because you're asking us to do things that would actually violate the law or the constitution or set us up for civil liability. So towns updated their town ordinance to VLCTs model policy or on animal control. We said, you are sharing this resource. I'm not contracting with any one town just like I came to this table and said, we're gonna enter into contracts to satisfy all of your animal control needs. Each of your town has different needs, but all of your towns have a statutory obligation for what to do. And we did this, and we shared the research, and it worked really well until a town says they're not gonna pay for it. And the problem with the contract is that every town can decide they're not gonna pay for it. And now we've been growing it. It went from four towns initially, and each year it has grown up to 10 towns. And then we have one town who bailed saying, well, we called you and you didn't come. We negotiated a contract for all 10 towns at twenty four hours a week and it was on the weekend. And we said, Yeah, it's part time program, monthly fee is $132 I mean, did you expect someone to be available 20 fourseven? I said, well, that's what we sold to the board and we're not getting the service that we signed a contract for and the contract's not clear. It's like it says it on article two, but this isn't even confounding of the select board who withdrew. They didn't understand the contract. The prior select board had

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: some. Yeah.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: And so what we constantly find is that boards turn over and turn over. The institutional knowledge leaves, the professionals who negotiated documents leave, the non professionals, and again, out of denigration of the people who are satisfying their towns, towns are depending on volunteers to make decisions and they don't understand. They just breached their contract. They gave a no notice of termination of a contract that has termination terms built into it to then say, we're not responsible. We're not paying for the last six months of service we did receive because we didn't get what

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: we wanted on this one time. On this one day.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: So what's my endgame in this? Why do I want this bill? I don't want a less volatile budgeting system. I want something that can be dependent on. What's interesting, you heard about Snow v. Lemoyle. This is a Supreme Court decision from, I think it was 1967, might have been

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: 'seventy six.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: I'm sorry? 1976.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: 'seventy six, thank you. Basically, I'll sum up all the pages of Stovi Lemuel to say the county's not authorized to raise taxes for something that the legislature has not given them the authority to raise taxes for. So I'm asking you to empower me, empower the county to do the thing. In this case, the thing is the law enforcement and related services. But, really, this bill is not about police. This bill is about governance, and then funding it, which then comes into some broader systems. So the expectation of service, I'm really depending on this council to actually start solving some of these questions and problems, because that's actually what those studies will show is that we don't have answers to the secondary and tertiary questions. We always get gummed up on the first stage, the first tier of questions of, well, how do we fund it? How do the taxes work? How do all these other things work? That's why we wanna hold on to an existing model, which we identify as not an ideal model for a couple of reasons. It's not ideal because the League of Cities and Towns has felt frustrations about it. It's not ideal because the county assistant judges have frustrations with some of the between the League of Cities and Towns. These are acknowledged concerns. I don't intend to solve them today. I told that to the partners. We're not trying to upset anyone's authority, jurisdiction, or domain. We are trying to fix some of the secondary and tertiary problems because I think if we can point to the thing that people like, we can actually have confidence and comfort around solving those first scary problems that people are willing to have that fight for because it becomes scary what that change will look like.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah. It's under way.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Yeah. And I really appreciate what you've been describing. I also think that doing this I appreciate how the bill is structured as a pilot because I do think that some of those thornier questions are gonna have to be addressed, and it's a little less risky when those questions are being discussed in that forum. I hope that we're I do I do think if we pass this bill and it's Wyndham County specific, we are going to have other communities wondering and looking at the example that you're creating. So I do think there's a there's a higher amount of, I think, people pressuring you with this pilot than you might expect if you were, like, the second or third to come into place. So I do think that I actually don't know of another county where I could see us piloting this at this time. So I'm really appreciative that it's coming up and I hope we do, yeah, I hope we do this bill. I did have one question, which you had said something that contradicted what I thought I understood in the bill, and it might be a Tim Devlin question. But in the bill, you have it as the town meeting is the way that they do it. But you said it is by the legislative body. Mhmm. So I guess I'm wondering, are you you're asking us to change if I remember correctly, you're asking us to change the legislation to amend it to make it the legislative body so, like, Newfane can just vote as a select board rather than going to town meeting, but it's not currently in the bill. Is that right?

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: As I understand the bill is introduced, it does indicate that it would be a town meeting. Okay. The issue with it is a town meeting is it will not operation, we can't have it at town meeting for at least two years, which then either delays the project or, I mean, I guess, fundamentally delays the project. And so some of this I am noting is time sensitive. Depending on which data source you want to follow, we have a demographic issue in the state. We have a population that's grown older. By 2030, we anticipate that there will be fewer workers than there are today. And the case. Wyndham County is the oldest county in the state.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: Okay.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: So we have a problem. And as we start looking at

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Of course, opportunity. Actually, I'm not sure it's

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: The democrat actually, in fact, I'm here because I think it's an opportunity, and some of this is looking at ways that we reduce duplication, and that is also duplication around governance. I'm not here to change anything with the towns. I wanna be very clear what the next thing I'm about to say is not my goal, but we have 23 layers of colt. What if there was only one wares of colt and the town had the authority to say we want to have a wares of colt? But if we don't have one, well, there's just this want, and now we're appointing the county to layer the colt. If we remove duplication in that way, we're gonna have fewer volunteers. It just It's it's math. It's true. So to that end, I also agree, senator, that I've looked at this in a number of places, and part of the part of the delay for other counties, the communities haven't done the work. That's one of the reasons why I think this is actually gonna be successful is because the communities are really the ones rallying around. I would not have thought three years ago that we were gonna be in this room today talking folks. Yeah. I've never seen more support for the conversation around the thing, which today is police. So that's

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: Yes.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: That's the

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Could I just ask Certainly. What is your hopeful process if we'd like to make a change like that to the

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: bill? Are we gonna have, like,

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: a marked up time with this specifically, or should I just reach out to Tim and say, you know

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: No. I think we should have a committee discussion.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: Oh, okay. The

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: procedure for doing this, I assume, was to streamline the ability of the municipality to begin the process. Yeah. If you wait for town meeting every year, as Mark said, it would take a year or two before you could do it. Yes. What it ultimately will mean, and I think I said that to Katie, they will need to be really good salespeople or find the ultimate solution to bring as many people in and explain why we need to do this in as quick a fashion as we can. And because otherwise, this will be let's be really honest here. We have a patchwork quilt of county government in the state of Vermont, especially law enforcement and the EMS services. If you sat down and tried to construct a more complicated, you'd be hard pressed to make it any worse than it is now. So we need to do something. That's my firm belief. This is presenting a really unique opportunity to get that done in temporal frame. They get to five year deals. If it isn't working after five years, hey, we made a mistake, but nobody died over it. But you know what I mean? And so I think the faster we can get it up and running, the better off we are. But it will mean that each municipality has to bring as many voters in as, because otherwise, if you don't want get their buy in, as soon as they get the bill, what is this now? I don't understand what's going on. So Do

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: so do you think for changes to or amendments to this bill to kind of reflect some of the collective conversation we're have having? What would you like? Because I just reach out to Tim and be like, can we look at that section?

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Sure.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Okay. Then I'm gonna go ahead and do that.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: This will be like the election bill last year. This will be something that every week

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Okay.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: And so by the time we're done and really the five of us are convinced this is what we wanna do, the path will be straight up on the floor and hopefully across.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Yeah, because we need to get this by what, March?

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: March 8, yeah.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Senator Clust.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So, I view today as sort of still pretty high level, why are we doing this, why would we take this up? Then I I assume once we work with Tim, we'll start going through it section by section. I I and I'm sure we're ready to dive too deep at the moment yet. But I think why are we doing it? And what are the opportunities are sort of where we are? And think we're we've been sold on this for a number of years. I think the main reason to have the municipal body to it is that we avoid what I have experienced at three town meetings where the crowd who know much less than the informed municipal body just go rogue and and vote things out of the budget without actually fully having considered them. And I've seen the sheriff department go down two or three times in different towns. The whole line at it because one particularly noisy townsperson was really on a diatribe about them. And so I think it needs to be much more considered. It's an exciting opportunity for towns. And I think that the select boards or municipal bodies need to take the time to consider it. And it sounds like they have already. They've begun to pay it because they're already saying we want to participate. Yes. So step one has already happened, which is exciting.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I see Senator White momentarily made an appearance. Did you want to weigh in here, Jeanette?

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: I do. Okay. But if the sheriff is done.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Oh, may

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: I just follow-up with couple more questions? Because I don't think I got to Senator Morley's question about to do if the taxes aren't enough. These are just I guess, well, to start there. If the taxes are enough, well, I'm used to that problem because, well, we don't have taxes that really pay for except through a contract, which then becomes the conversation of, well, we're only doing six hours a week, and that's what it is. So a lot of this is actually directed by that development of the council. What I'd like to see it work more like a municipal legislative body that says we need to provide these services and we're responsible. Sure. That's one of the authority issues this committee has dealt with saying, hey. Whose responsibility is policing in the state? Today, as it's written right now, Vermont State Police. Why don't we all just turn in our police departments, cash in the the tax coupon, and take it all from the state police? All the state police don't have enough.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: There's not enough for police say.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Even a little sore. Like and so

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: we can start to say this is why towns are in power, but they're not required. Mark's personal philosophic philosophical belief is that emergency services should be closely held to the local level. I do believe Town should have responsibility for providing policing in a way that makes sense. Could that be through police department, through the sheriff, through another council? Sure. But I think town should have that responsibility, which then would solve some of the issues around, well, why isn't the town paying for this when someone moves in and says, our house

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: was broken into? Right. And what are you gonna do about

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: I'll call the state police. So to the point, what happens if there's not enough money? In a way, this is kinda constructed towards there's not gonna be enough money. What happens if the taxes were raised and the services can't be rendered? I don't have the staff. The things happen that that ultimately prevent it from being delivered. The county is limited in current existing statute and how much they can mold in reserve funds. They have to develop a plan that says what they do with those reserve funds if it were to happen, because that is the taxpayers money. So that might defer future taxes in the next budget year, defer to the assistant judges on how to handle that type of situation. But there's already law, which is the reason why I'm trying to scab this project to an existing structure. We know that's a thorny issue. Let's pause, skip that, work on all the other issues so we can come back to the thorny issues with, we trust the thing that follows. Could there be an action anticipation? Sure. And so there are ways to also navigate the, well, we didn't expect three cars to get into crashes and cars for all of the the structural problems have now tripled in costs, and now we have to buy a car that wasn't budgeted. We don't have a capital plan built into running the like, there's a variety of things to talk about with these things, but we're not trying to solve the big picture puzzle. We're trying to solve the next five year worth of issues. And if this passed, it would really be about three to four years of operational issues we're solving, which is a far easier thing to address. So while there may be some risk and exposure, we can talk through those things and there might be issues that we have to say, this is not ideal. Let me report it back to the legislature and say, we did not consider three cars getting wrecked and then getting told this is what it's gonna cost and take twelve months because we can't get cars off the law. But we can talk.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Yeah, Senator Guass. So I really like this bill. So I just don't wanna see people They gotta come out no matter what. I don't care how good a job you do, how much education you do, there's still gonna be people

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: that aren't educated. They're gonna go in

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: there and get actors. Who are you? And so I just want make

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: sure it's as accessible as possible.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: And so that's why I want to make

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: sure you strap on the

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: right foot and that you have some resources available and you guys will figure that all out because if you all of a sudden go in and owe a million dollars, your budget's a million dollars, all right now to $2,000,000 this is a huge flop, I want to make sure you're

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: successful if I can. I just want to

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: make sure you've thought to solve it. Perfect. That's all I can.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Is that Alex, try to play?

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: One last thing. Okay. So assistant judge Barnett talked about the county taxes, $10 per $100,000. So if we can go I mean, a lot of houses in Windham County, the median value is about $202,150,000. We can go buy a Subway sandwich, bag of chips, a soda. Like, that's what we're talking on the annual tax bill. If I contract with the county, if the county were entitled, I'm not trying to propose this, but if I were to contract with the county to provide services to all 23 towns, we can probably do it for about a million dollars, which then costs about a trip to Subway. If I contract with the town of Newfoundland that has relatively similar dynamics, with property values. There's houses valued over 250,000 significantly, their houses that are valued under. It costs about $300 for each resident in the town. And I'm not saying for a 100,000. I'm saying each resident. It's about the cost of a Netflix membership here. So like I tried to to put these things in context. What are we talking about to the taxpayer? Because we are dealing with our money and that's important, especially right now as concerns about appropriations and how taxes are used or done. But the reason why we can't do it that way because we have towns that have services. We have Bravo PD who already has a structure that works, and we're not trying to solve problems in the places that have problem solving. No. They're case tests. But then this is where we come into the discussion of, okay, well, if we lose the brand list of Brownboro, which current county tax is built on, then that will change things. And so this is why we have to depend on the council to answer some of these questions. We don't know what the special tax district looks like, if you will. We don't know how to assess any of these things, but everything's built on the sliding scale. I can tell you the cost. You just need to tell me how much you want to spend and what services you expect. Senator Clutch.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So it's also an opportunity for grants and or conceivably going to the municipal bond bank. I mean, are so many revenue opportunities who so many places, I would think, particularly I would think there would be a number of granting opportunities actually for this. And I would assume the cost for this pilot will not be borne alone on the shoulders of the human family recipes.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: I would absolutely love love a brand better. I would absolutely love to find alternative ways to fund this. However, I will also note that because this is already funded through the municipalities, like, I'm not concerned about the conversation about it. I don't think that there will be a significant spike on a tax bill because we are replacing line item x with line item

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I'm just thinking about the additional opportunities financially for

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: But We also currently receive about $1,500,000 in grant funds from the federal government to do a variety of different things and benefits. These are all built on a similar regional model because I tend to lead to regionalization to spread costs, but also spread benefits. So I will look for every opportunity I can to alleviate any pressure on my taxpayers because they have the same concerns. I mean, Vermonters are struggling. I know you get calls about that as well. And so we want to help them. This is truly a building of service to our people. Okay.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: For now. Senator White, you can join us.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee. Janet White, resident of Wyndham County. I just would like to make a couple comments if I can, listening to your discussion. First of all, I would encourage you to change the from the town meeting approval to the select board approval so that the council can start working on these questions. They can start working as soon as they're authorized to start answering the questions. They don't have to have a budget to start working there. These are volunteer people and they're going to come in and they're going to start working just like a select board comes in and starts working. So I would encourage you to change that so that they can start working on creating their bylaws and listing the questions that they need to ask and that kind of stuff. The second thing I would comment on is that this isn't a new program. This already exists. It just exists. All this is is a governance and funding mechanism. This is not creating anything new. The sheriff already provides services, but it just is a funding mechanism that's different than the unsustainable contracts that he has to use now. And it is so it's more sustainable and it. It has much better input from all the towns that are covered. So I would encourage you to look at that. And just in terms of if there isn't enough money, Senator Morley, I know you're worried about that, but the sheriff currently operates to his current budget. He has a budget every year and he operates to that budget. The assumption is that if he has a budget and the county gives him that money, instead of it coming from individually from the towns, it'll come through the county. It's a pass through as money said that he will operate to that budget just as he does now. And here's the, I think the thorny issue that I'm going to bring up. I know having been in your seats, I know that legislators really, really want to have their own stamp on any legislation. They want to get into details and put make sure that every single point is well discussed and defined and everything. In this case, I would ask you to please not start adding details. If if you start defining what the council can do and can't do, how they can do it, how they can't do it, how will it operate, how they will work with the Vermont State Police and the town towns with their own PDS. If you start doing that, it no longer is a pilot. Now all you're doing is just providing money, but you're not providing a pilot. A pilot is designed to answer questions that maybe haven't even been asked yet, but how to answer those questions. So I would ask you to please refrain from starting to put in details and your own thoughts on this. Let this truly be a pilot in Wyndham County. And again, remember, it's very, very limited. It's limited to Wyndham County. It's limited for five years and it's limited to law enforcement. This is a funding and a governance bill. That's what it is. It's a create a pilot to allow a funding mechanism and a governance model for this new pilot. If if it works, if this pilot or if this council can work somehow, even very loosely with your county study, I don't even know what you're calling it, but the study to look at county government, if they can somehow even work together loosely, you might answer questions that haven't been asked by either of you yet because they're going to come up and it might answer a lot of questions, including accountability. You can do that. So I would ask you to not start putting in your a lot of details in terms of Senator White's question about the markup. Would ask, I would ask you to do two things in this bill, change it to the select board and take out the section that says the towns can withdraw from this anytime they want to. And let that be up to the governance council about how they would allow a town to remove itself or when and at what point in time. That's all I have to say.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Thank you, Senator.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: Mr. May speak to the Sure. So as we've talked about, this is an interesting discussion. We have had examples where there's a solid waste management district in which a town exited and it left several towns with holding the bag. It's a sensitive issue in my county. I'm not gonna name towns. This is not a name and shame game. It's a model where exiting a regional structure was problematic. There's a separate issue where a town decided it wanted to establish its own EMS, which upset a regional ambulance model, then created concerns about what if any emergency medical services would be available. Act 46 was an example. I'm not here to talk pros or cons of Act 46, but Act 46 was an example of where to talk about having people enter and then having people exit. And so this has been a topic that we've been trying to dissect of once you join, how do you get out? And that needs to be a valid discussion. I think it's an opportunity in this council to talk about it because Wyndham County towns have had to navigate it with very personal feelings. But it's also the opportunity of this time bound pilot project is to say, this is what we think. And while this council might be empowered if the legislature allows to provide some of the answers that they opine, it comes back to the legislature ultimately saying, this is what we think is a fair model. We have a lot of great insight that has helped develop this project over three years. I mean, I'm completely humbled and honored by some of the praise spoken about me today. It's a little scary because I don't want to trip walking out of the room. Anyways, but with that, this isn't my work. This is a lot of people, a lot of time, this is teamwork and stakeholders and ultimately a a team, it's a cohort of people who said, let's do science. And that's exciting to be a part of that team. This is I agree with Senator, I'm sorry, retired Senator White on saying, let's remove that from this, but it's a conversation that needs to occur. Saw that cause of shock and it's like, yep, totally agree. I also don't know that I come with the right answer, but I want my team to talk about it. And I don't even know who that team is. It's not a team personally. It's not someone I selected. I am throwing hope to the wind that we get the right people on this council to do the right things. And people like Katie and people like Karen and a number of others who have been part of this, they're thoughtful people saying we want this to be good. And I do frame it as a model of if we can nail this and get it right, we could deliver a model that other counties, if they wanted to, could get enough. I want it to be consensual. I don't want to force anyone into anything. Like this is an opportunity for people to do better and I think that that's a better model for people who are afraid of change. So go

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: ahead, Senator former Senator White.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: I was also going to respond to an issue that Senator White raised about the current Senator White raised about other other counties and why this is limited to Wyndham County. Sheriff Anderson has been working on this for three years talking to everybody in the county. There are probably 17 people in the county that don't even know this is being thought of because he talks to everybody at every chance he can get. You might run into pressure from other places saying, well, why can't we do this? And they can't do it because they're not ready because they haven't done the groundwork. I, so I think you need to be very clear about limiting it to this pilot. Thank you.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So my only I don't know if it's a response to your suggestion that we about letting towns leave. It's five years in the middle. I don't know where the five came from. It was just sort of drafted that way. Maybe that's not the right amount of time. Maybe it's not enough. I don't know what it is. But I do think I don't know if it's five years. If if a town is really, really struggling after the first couple of years, I look at it as sort of a relief valve that something should be able to, I don't know, though, if it's too I don't know what I'm

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: talking about.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Isn't that something that's Yeah. Draw it.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: No. It's in the bill now.

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: Right. It

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: says, I'm

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: sorry. I'm I'm

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: not to don't include in it that like this is the legislative way to remove itself. Rather say the towns need to identify the mechanism for removal because we could talk about some of these experiences of what it looks like and let them come up with what the solution for entry and exit next

[Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel]: month is for, isn't it?

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: Let the council decide that.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: You're willing empower

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: the council to

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: create the pilot and the rules within the pilot and let them go and see what they come up with. Yes.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Go ahead, Katie.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: If I may add just very briefly.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Just reidentify yourself.

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: Katie Johnson Adler, New Face Labman. Our municipal budget is only about 25 percent of our property taxes. The majority of that budget is the school district. Yes. And we we we walk on pins and needles and and very frequently kneecap our own needs because we don't know what the school districts are going to do. So the state, we need to rely back to you to please solve this crisis for us because we we would very much like to do do great things with our budgets and and realistically, $10 if we if we are on the hook for a $100,000, and that's $10 per person or $100,000 a house, we can afford that, but we can't afford that while something else is spiraling endlessly.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Anybody else want to chime in? Either judge?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yes. So, I'm sorry Tanya isn't here for this, but the issue of oversight is one that concerns us all. I would also say that the council would take on the issue of oversight in addition and propose how they would address it. And I I do think though that needs to be added as one of things that that that they need to address. I have

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: I've not floated this discussion with anyone, so you are hearing my thoughts unfiltered. I have no issue. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: You don't.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: So there's There may be others who do, and that's okay. Because what we're trying to do is navigate a lot of different thoughts and emotions, but what we're trying to do is navigate to get good governance. And what good governance is accountability. Exactly. So I have no issue, with that being part of the discussion. I again, I wanna empower the council to do it. Thorny issue is what's the constitutional authority? What's the statutory authority? That's an acknowledged one. That will need to be discussed at some point. And I'm not here to propose we're changing the constitution today because we can. I don't think we're in the windows. No. I don't think we're Tomorrow. We'll talk about that. Thank you, senators. So, anyways, there are gonna be thorny issues that gonna need to be addressed. But if the council could come up with a system of people saying, is thought out. This is structurally sufficient. This is how we address a deputy sheriff who's done something wrong versus the sheriff who's done something wrong. This is how we address misappropriation of funds. Kickbacks.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Like,

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: there are things that have happened in The United States. There are many models that we can look at for governing that we can say this is a functional model that we can support. I can't give you the answers because some might accuse me of being self serving. Others might accuse me of being biased. Others might say, I don't know what I'm talking about. I would like to prefer I just am more of the last category. I just don't know what I'm talking about, and that's okay. That's why I want the team to be a member to do

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: that. Senator, former Senator White.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: So I was going to answer Senator Clarkson's comment about putting that in there. You you could probably put in a list of things that the council should consider, but don't put in things that they can't consider because then you're limiting the pilot and you're saying, well, I mean, and that's what's happened in the past when we've done some studies. Tell we say this is, we did set up a kind of a reform at one point, but said that it had to be budget neutral. Well, that was the dumbest thing we ever did, because that meant that they couldn't really be. They couldn't be creative at all. Maybe they would have come in under budget or over budget, but we said they had to be budget neutral so that so you could add some things that you would like the council to address, but don't limit what they can address and don't tell them how to address it.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Right. I think that's fair.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I would hate for what I consider to be a well thought out bill to get, not derailed, but to have that provision in and then have more attention focused on that one issue.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: To maybe put this in jeopardy. I think they're two separate issues. I just I think I think for

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I I think, in all fairness, we need to have that conversation because it's of interest to both to a number of us.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Perfectly willing to have

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: And and

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I think including it as one of the things that the council addresses isn't gonna derail anything. I think it's a given what's just happened in Windsor County, I think I think oversight is a big issue.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: But to the sheriff's point, you run into other cloudy areas of law with respect to the constitution. If the council says, okay, if they're caught doing X, Y, and Z, they're no longer employable. I I I don't know how you get around that without

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I think oversight on the this project is slightly different than oversight on the sheriff's office. That's exactly my point. I so I don't think they're necessarily the same, and I think the council will figure that out. Other side of the project is I think.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: Yeah, mean we'll have to navigate. I agree Senator Collamore that there are a number of issues around the office of the sheriff, the election of the sheriff, who holds the sheriff versus what I described in my last round of testimony, which is the power of the purse. And so I see the council's having the power of the purse here. If I go rogue, if the next sheriff does something insane, I get I don't like that. I mean, a variety of things could happen. I could get hit by the bus. I wanna think that that's gonna happen, but that's always my continuity of operation.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: All things have that hit bus. County. Be thrill. Right?

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: I'll be in center of transportation soon. But, like, if something happens, like, what's the next thing? We want to protect the taxpayers' money, and we wanna protect the trust in the institution. But at the end of the day, I do think that there's opportunity for discussion around how to do these things, and those can be reported back to the legislature with suggestions. I've certainly been criticized for opposing a number of issues on behalf of the sheriff's association, was president of the sheriff's association. Some of those things, personally, I agree with. Like, they are structural issues. Some of the things, I fully agree with. And we worked with this committee as well as in the house to do a number of reforms with the with current news. Some of these are structures that are just beginning to get going, and the open meeting law requires certain time frames. It's a week old of news. So, like, we're working on those things and things are happening. And so I also have confidence that the work that we have done has also brought in new forms of accountability. We just haven't been able to point to and say, it's happening. We've seen the thing. We are comfortable with this, or maybe those things will have to come back to this committee to be talked about and tweaked in the future. So I'm actually optimistic professionally, to say I think things will happen around sheriff's accountability or law enforcement accountability because it's, just it's not just sheriffs. It's institutional law enforcement when a law enforcement officer does something wrong, or is accused of doing something wrong. But then there's also an opportunity in five years for us to say, we don't have the structure, and we think that this should be a permanent structure in whatever ways the the outcome of this project is, and these are ideas that nobody's thought of. And we sit around and say, just like we did during act 30, and we said, are these are managed these are reason. So there are things that can be done.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah, because the sheriff is a constitutional office, it would take a constitutional amendment to effectively change any provision, and that's

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: a five year process, so. And maybe the council will identify things they actually think in future legislation we might consider constitutional.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Well, that's different than

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Right. We'll see what happens. The world's their oyster, and I think I think let's limit them as little as possible. Let's let them go. Let's let Mark raise money for it too. Let's let's shake rattle them all.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I see judge Barnett had to leave. I was just wondering because I thought at the beginning of his testimony, he mentioned that he there were a couple issues in the bill, but maybe I misunderstood him. And since he's gone, I can't ask him, I guess. But, Carolyn, do you are there any outstanding issues that you're aware of with just the outline of a bill? And I'm not talking about behavior. I'm talking about governance here.

[Assistant Judge Carolyn Partridge (Windham County), former Representative]: I'm not sure. Maybe Mark will remember what Monty said, but I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: appreciate think

[Assistant Judge Carolyn Partridge (Windham County), former Representative]: the suggestion that you make it the legislative body that approves this and not necessarily the entire town. I really agree with all of the comments, including those made by Senator Clarkson, about that. Mark, So, did you notice what Monty said in terms of changes or bottlenecks or something like that?

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: Please represent these as my own words, but I think I'm going to do my best to recount what Judge Barnett has said. There's some operation concerns based on how certain things are written. And so as the bill's written right now, generally, there's confidence, but they're going to if the county is going to be a pass through, then it's around what is the expectation around things like audits? What are the expectations around things? And so I think these are managed issues right now because, again, we have scabbed onto existing processes. The county receives an audit. I receive an audit. Like, there are things that are built here. Two Senator White's retired Senator White's comments regarding like, like if you're considering adjustments, if you're considering these things, understand we're trying to build off of existing systems to avoid all of these governing issues that have been not really solved over a number of years by the legislature on a variety of these things. So audits was one thing. One was about administrative capacity of the county. So if the county is expected to be more of the, not a pass through, but rather like a full financial administrative division, which it is not right now, this would be an expansion of county government. Well, what do they need for that? So there are some operational concerns if the county's responsibility was more than a pass through. And And we're just trying to say the county treasurer is the county treasurer. She does what she currently does and that's fine. And we have infrastructure and resources that will manage them. We'll work with the council. Really, this is going to be more on the the resource, the bandwidth of the sheriff's office staff to be able to manage these things. So that's we're trying to put administrative burden on my office and not on the chair.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: I think that thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that one of the other things that he mentioned was just things like, and I don't remember if he mentioned it today, but he did in the past to me to us anyway. How how it appears on your tax bill with the town, how you do that, how because it needs to be kept as a separate line item somehow. So how does it appear on your tax bill as a town resident when you get it? And how how does he is he going to do a monthly transfer to the sheriff and then the sheriff does all the invoices and stuff or how? But those are administrative issues. Those aren't that he's used to he and she, both of them are very used to dealing with that kind of stuff. So I think those are just issues, logistical administrative issues. Could I

[Assistant Judge Carolyn Partridge (Windham County), former Representative]: just add that I agree? And I think that at this point, we would be able to handle those administrative duties given, you know, the amount of time we spend on county business as it is. And we'd have to work with the treasurer to make sure that this is not adding an onerous load to her to her duties.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: As I understand the way it's set up, all 23 municipalities right now share in the county budget for the building, for the clerical people, all of that.

[Assistant Judge Carolyn Partridge (Windham County), former Representative]: Correct.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Whatever number of a three sign up for this new thing would get the additional tax burden, if you will. But there's gotta be a way to show it on the bill, and I'm not sure how they'll do that. Maybe the council comes up with a really nifty term for that.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: There there's minutiae that needs to be addressed with the council and with the county's current administration. I think that we could solve that in the same way Judge Barnett mentioned the special tax district. Like, there's a way to do this. Anticipate this will be a nominal number of hours each year on the county treasurer's time. A very reasonable

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: There's special assessment districts all over the country, I mean, so that's a pretty common thing to explore, so I have confidence you will explore it and become some brilliant.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: We have really smart assistant judges a really smart treasurer. They'll take care, they'll figure it out.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So this is gonna be a tough question,

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: maybe for you, Mark, maybe it isn't. Do my best.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: If you had a magic wand and you could of give us an idea, let's say 15 of the 23 jump up and say, we're in. If you divided that by two, if they're continuous municipalities, in a perfect world, how many more deputies would that mean like, what's the ideal? Is it two deputies per every couple towns? Or I I because I don't know what the structure is right now.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: So I told you about putting in Westminster. Currently, I'm running a regional model putting in Westminster, Jamaica, and London Dairy, and then I'm running the regional animal control program. And then I have a deputy forty hours a week in the town of Vernon. We'll just be getting discussions between the town of Vernon and Guildford. I'm not optimistic just because of the newness of the the discussion. I'm not optimistic it's gonna change in the next year, but we're having the discussion right now to say, is there a way? So the if I had a magic wand and money was no no, issue, I'd probably say let's staff seven deputies per shift. Okay. That would be one supervisor, six deputies, and that covers the geographic dynamic of the area, and that covers the distance. So the distance from the Southeast Corner, Vernon to Bundenberry, that's about an hour driving time.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. Now we have the quilts here. We can just pour pour into about 10.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: And so that is this

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: Oh, okay.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: Watch to roughly this watch. And so the goal would be It's

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: not a watch.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: I a I am not.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: I have calorie.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: It's a battle. So

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: the goal would be that we reduce response time by by dispersing Significant. But that would also be adding on roughly, say, would be adding on 200 or 300% of current staffing. So I can't just dream those people out. I can't just train them. There would be time but that's also part of the beauty of the discussion with the councils to say, what makes sense? Tomorrow we start like all the things happen. My magic wand just teleports us to pass and everyone's happy, talents are on board. We're probably going with four. What does that look like and what does that mean and how does that impact response times? But again, with my county, you can see the threaded lines, there's Bradborough being the button. We got three major state routes that come out of Bradborough, Judge Barnett talked about. Like in Bradborough, we are less centralized in the county, but we're centralized to the transportation network. And so because of that, that allows us to project to all the places in the county, whereas from Newfane, it was generally inconvenient to everyone. And so that was a beautiful thing in the context. If I could pick my building, my new building up and drop it in Newfoundland, I'd happily do it because it was convenient to inconvenient to everyone. And in Bradborough, it is more than inconvenience to Rutland, but that's where we start talking about can we share space in a town office? Can we use the town garage in the towns? A fire department. The towns are incredibly supportive of this. We're incredibly supportive of trying to make things more accessible to people. The Internet has made things more accessible to people. We no longer have forms that we print out and put in the lobby. That used to be the most common thing people saw, our office board, and now we don't even get them printed. Like, we don't receive the box of forms from the DMV saying, here's how you get your driver's permit. You go online and just figure it out. So there's been a variety of changes that have happened, that have changed access. But at the end of the day, we're trying to work through those things. So that's where the council is also empowered to say, well, we can't reasonably expect there to be eight people tomorrow. Right. We can expect there to be one person tomorrow. So now we're going to have one person, maybe scale up over time to four. At the end, well, what do I do? We scale up magically to this 24 person thing that the council's decided it's wanted and now we don't need Turns out there's a lot of agencies in Vermont that are still hiring, and everyone's not protecting anything because by 2030, we still anticipate the demographics of Vermont are just gonna be less people working. I have two retiring in the next four years. One retiring this July.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Of course, we always raise the age of retirement.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: I'd be happy to talk about that in a separate

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: and all of these are useful,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: the new 70 is, you know? Yes.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Nothing in this bill, though,

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: would prevent

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I think it's a level three that can transport folks from prison to a court or do they all have to be level one?

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: None of this bill affects prisoner transport responsibilities That at is the statutory responsibility of the sheriff funded through appropriations for the state transport deputy program that this committee has certainly heard about. So none of this will change, won't change our civil process service or any of the other statutory responsibilities We're we just talking about law enforcement as it's currently prescribed in Wynton County in this five year period. So I remember Collamore, you also mentioned why five years? We started at three. We had some people who suggested, well, there's gonna be some administrative planning that's needed. Let's do a year. And then it became planning for town meetings and different things. And so then it became five years. And then it was, well, do we wanna make this more than five years? And it became a well, now we're running across a variety of different conversations. And so five years seemed to be so warm and fuzzy spot, but is pretty much the summary of the discussion of the last five years. Yes,

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Janet.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: I think that in your bill, just two things. It clearly says that none of this changes the constitutional or statutory requirements of the sheriff to do things like transport. So that's very clear in there. The other thing is on the five year pilot. If you notice in the bill, it also says that every year there will be a report back to you to say where are we and what are we doing and what things have we run across and what's what's going on. And at the end of five years, you can say, oh, let's extend this for another year because they didn't get going fast enough, or we're going to drop the whole thing because it's not clearly not working at all. Or just what's the word I want to finalize it and say this is something that can happen anywhere. But five years is if you notice on your bill, I think it says 1934 question mark. I think that's still there. The last one I read it did on the draft that I got anyway. On the last page it says it's going to end in nineteen thirty four question mark, I

[Katie Johnson Aplin, Newfane Selectboard Member]: think, doesn't it? You said

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: the 23.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Twenty three four, 2,034,

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: not 1934. And I but but you can't every year you're going to have some kind of a report and you can say at year four, this is going really well, but we need two extra years. That's that's your prerogative. So I wouldn't I wouldn't be so so tied to it being five years because you have the ability to change that one way or the other if you think it's needed.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah, it was more a curious question than anything. Not fighting fault with that. I just didn't know if there was a reason why it was five.

[Former Sen. Jeanette K. White (Windham County)]: It's like somebody said three and somebody said eight and they said compromise.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah. We like to think we can do that in this building still. Okay. Something. Anything else for any of our witnesses?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: No. Thank you. Okay.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: We'll take it up again next week. Thank you.

[Sheriff Mark Anderson (Windham County Sheriff)]: Bye. Appreciate your work on it.

[Assistant Judge Carolyn Partridge (Windham County), former Representative]: Thanks so much.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Carolyn. Always.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Thank you, Carolyn.

[Assistant Judge Carolyn Partridge (Windham County), former Representative]: Yes, you take good care. Yep.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So with that committee, I think we are done for the day. Tomorrow we're going to take a look at the amendments to the town of Essex, Vermont State Youth Council, and the Act 119

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: report. I'm sorry. Did you? That's No. That's exciting. I'm looking. Okay. I just wanna say, Katie, please don't go anywhere. I just want you to see go anywhere. Okay. Because she's heading out. I just wanted to don't head out.