Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Are you out there? Good afternoon.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Senate Committee on Government Operations meeting on Friday, April 3. We have one item up for consideration, and we're joined by members of the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development and Council on Rural Development. And we have Gary Holloway and Jessica Savage. So if you wanna come up together, Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: You wanna move over? Yeah.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: One way or the other? Yeah, move this one. This one. So welcome and Well, thank you. Let me just get on here and I'll share my screen and Great. Yeah. Introduce myself. Great. Well, thanks for having us on a Friday afternoon. Welcome.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Name's Gary Holloway. I'm the Downtown Program Manager with Department of Housing and Community Development. And today I'm presenting with Do you want to introduce yourself?

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Sure. I'm Jess Savage. I'm the Director of Programs and Strategic Initiatives at the Vermont Council on Rural Development.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Okay, so today I'm here to speak on the GMOA evaluation of rural technical assistance. And I do have a few handouts, if you don't mind. I think we're able to take one of those. One is, the first one is a short sheet of a list of some of the recommendations that came out of the study. The other one is a 17 page kind of condensed report. I sit here on the steering committee and from the HCD that really condensed down the longer report. It's like 100 and some odd pages that we collaborated on with UVM and the Center for Oral Studies. I did send a link if you wanna digest the larger report or have access to this report. I'm give one that I sent, that I sent you all. So with a lot of evaluations, a little technical assistance is what I'm here to talk about today. And, Oh, yeah, I should ask that before I get started. How's our time? How tight do we need to Half hour. Okay. Forty minutes? Yeah, that's fine. You're it.

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Okay, great.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: And we'll just, yeah, we can go through this and we'll have plenty of time for questions then. That sounds great. So for those who may not be aware, the Blot Evaluation and Global Technical Assistance was in Act 181, so we were charged with really evaluating how we're serving municipalities, in particular how the system can be strengthened and built on what we already have, particularly if we look at housing and infrastructure, climate resiliency, economic development, so through that lens is kind of where we started. The purpose was to, once again, assess the system, identify the challenges, barriers, and gaps, and then come up with practical solutions to strengthen what's already existing or to create new ways of communicating or providing resources, particularly to municipalities was the focus. May I just clarify? Yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Another question? Tactical assistance included everything from advice and counsel to sharing equipment to

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Correct. I mean, it was a whole broad range. Absolutely, absolutely. Figuring out ways that municipalities may be able to work collaboratively together in times of disaster or in times of need and sharing equipment, having I'll go through it. I'll go through some of Yeah, but absolutely. So last year, this was all over the course of 2025, we formed a steering committee that you can see here made up of the usual suspects that you can see here. There are others as well that participated in different ways, either through surveys or through focus groups. And this group met monthly to kind of making sure that we stayed focused on what the FAST was. So as we know, the challenge at hand is that there's municipalities, particularly our smaller rural communities, don't have a lot of staff. There are limited volunteer hours at Rutland Planning Commission. There's select floors, and there's always kind of a constant rotation of volunteers into those positions and retrain it. What the findings of the report recognized that complexity of the system itself and the challenge just sometimes accessing the resources, knowing where to go to get the grant that they need. Sometimes we get to call a Department of Housing and Human Development because they know us. Sometimes it's relational based, but that person goes away, and then who do I call to get that assistance? So there's a gap there that was identified through the study. The approach to the study was really ensuring that Vermonters had an opportunity to kind of weigh in and provide their opinions and their thoughts from their experience. So there was listening sessions that were set up regionally around the state with the support of the regional planning commissions to ensure that different representatives from towns were there and we could hear their voices. There was some in person, there was some virtual listening sessions. There were surveys that were sent out and collected over 195 responses. Through the center of rural studies, they had some students who really did a deep dive look analysis at a number of different states and how their systems are structured from a state level to partners about the whole set of phones. We interviewed several states over the phone. We talked about visiting, but due to the tight, compact schedule that we had, we needed virtual calls with Massachusetts and Maine and Michigan and some other states, Alabama, to try to understand better how they're addressing these complex issues in rural states. And then we had a really successful statewide summit. You did.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Was rockin'. And it was

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: a fun, you know, Rebecca Sanborn Stowe from the community workshop has done the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: A constituent for Bethel. Such a star. Mean, she's

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: really She's She really helped the steering committee stay focused as a neutral party. And she helped us organize this event, and we actually had a game show. And we were participants in the game show at the event, and we broke off into different groups that really were able to kind of focus on specific areas of the high level recommendations that we found in the board, and we're able to come up with some really creative ideas on how we might be able to address some the challenges and barriers. That information too, and some of the photos from those poster boards that we did, is available in the larger report. So I encourage you to take a look at that for other ideas on how we might be able to, low action medium to higher priority. The findings were consistent across the regions, that technical assistance is fragmented. It's hard for small towns to navigate where to go, as I mentioned, and oftentimes they're short term and project specific, so we have a particular grant, say, if a community gets, and there's assistance during that period of time when they're getting the funding, but then that goes away, and then how do they have that continued level of support that they may need, or build that support internally and locally to be more sustainable? So they need people. We all do at different levels, need additional resources, people to kinda actually move the dial on some of these. So with a summary of the research findings, capacity was, time and time again, as the binding constraint. Administrative burden blocks, unintentionally. Sometimes at state level, we design programs thinking that this is the best way to do it, and sometimes we need to step back and ask ourselves, Is this the best way? We recently looked at, I've overseen downtown transportation grant, for example, and we've looked at that program as staff saying, What are the statutory requirements? What's the information you actually need to collect to make an accurate decision to fund projects or not? And let's remove some of the things that maybe we don't need to have in our application processes. So things like that. Coordination, office agency, or office partners, sometimes that's fragmented. And the program design is important. And then obviously the evidence that we saw from other states points to coordinated solutions, and that's not a surprise, but it takes a lot of work to coordinate amongst partners. There has to be a willingness different agencies to cooperate or for different partners to cooperate. So at a very high level, we identified four actionable priority areas, and I'm gonna touch on each of these. Increasing state agency participation in solving local challenges, municipal and regional shared service tools, local engagement and leadership development, and increasing local capacity needs to deploy service resources. On that one pager that I gave you, you'll see sub ideas that came out under each one of those. I didn't build my slide deck to touch on each of those, but what I'm gonna do is touch on each grouping talk a little bit about some ideas that came out of that. So increasing state agency participation, solving local challenges. Some of the ideas that we looked at were, what do we already have in place that's working well? We know we have Vermont Council and Rural Development that has community visits where they do facilitate conversations with communities to help them identify their priorities. And then there's a wraparound service with that, right, trying to follow through to make sure that those local volunteer groups have what they need to succeed where they've identified. It was identified that perhaps maybe a centralized hub of information would be helpful, whether that be the resources and funding itself or just someone to answer the phone, right, quite frankly, to say, you know, how can we help you? What are your challenges? We'll get you to the place that you need to go. You know, question wise, you know, where does that lie? Does that lie at state government? Does that lie in regional structure? Does it lie embedded temporarily in communities through fellows or through some kind of a way like that, or a combination of all of that? So may may I ask one?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. So, Eric, I'm just noticing kind of for the first time that Vermont Emergency Management was as part of their core group.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: We had we had we did have And I know

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: there were reps to Vermont Emergency Management from this group of people. But did Eric not participate in this? We had invited them to

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: the table and I think Pat Walton sat on the committee and she kind of is a crossover between emergency, not really emergency management, response to kind of the flooding and those kind of responses we have in the state. We're certainly not being exclusive of having representation on emergency management. And I think there's probably other, we could have probably had education on there. We could have had human services. So we could have widened it, to your point, on the steering committee, but I think that's kind of where we landed It from our is what it is, yeah, but point taking. Priority two, municipal and regional shared service tools. We know that communities oftentimes are trying to do things on their own, thinking they need to reinvent the wheel. Are there ways and structures that communities could approach things by borrowing ideas from either other states or other communities nearby? Maybe there's a way that they can come up with legal agreements to share equipment with each other where each municipality maybe doesn't have to have the same equipment across town lines and be able to share that. Maybe they can have contractors on retainer for different things. We learned that out of the flooding. It would've been nice for engineers to be on retainage, right, to kind of just quickly start to act on what needs to get done to rebuild the bridges, right? Remodel Ego City of Towns has great resources and tools and templates, but we were hearing that there was perhaps some additional things that could be, that are needed or maybe strengthened upon. So can we work at shared service tools to help, you know, to help so people aren't reinventing things each time you have another set of volunteers. They know where to go. There's a hub of that information. Priority trainings, local engagement, and leadership development. So, as a small state, we rely heavily on our volunteers and we know that there's volunteer burnout and turnover. So how can we, A, recognize that but also put some systems in place to help kind of better strengthen that leadership development pipeline? And I think, once again, organizations like Vermont Council of Rural Development, through their leadership efforts to try to build a pipeline of younger, more involved citizens, that's a great way to kind of start to replace volunteers that maybe are retiring or moving on. So once again, at systems that we already have, not creating new things, but strengthening the areas that we can improve and providing that education, the training. We do this already, but it's like try to really listen to the communities and understand what their needs are and if we can have additional opportunities for them to learn. And then the other big priority area was increasing local capacity and flexible resources. Once again, there's that word capacity. We feel it at every level, from the state to our nonprofit organizations to our municipal leaders. So how can we better increase that capacity or listen to each other in terms of understanding what the challenges are? We had a funders collaborative that met for about ten years that really was designed to kind of bring funders, philanthropic, private and federal partners together. Instead of ribbon cuttings, we're doing it proactively. They kind of talk about challenges that are being faced. Maybe it's the closure of a college in that community. Maybe it's a community that's trying to build a wastewater system. We can have these efforts to come together and have conversations about how to address challenge in the community without even having the community maybe even in the room, and then inviting them once we've been able to strategize a little bit, how to direct and have a bigger impact with our funding. That's just one example of how we might be able to support local capacity by helping them think a little bit through problems. And then once again, existing programs like REDI, the Rural Economic Development Initiative, if know right. Sometimes my acronyms face me, but helping write grants and get access to additional funding. Do we need to put additional resources there? The NTAP program, the Technical Assistance Program, does that need to be kind of thought out and reimagined and implemented in a way that can be helpful to support community? So once again, I think we've evolved this work over the years, and it's not all new, but we need to kind of look at what has worked well and how we can best move the dial on some of these areas. So I have just a couple more slides, and then I'll pass it over to Jess who can pick up and continue the conversation there. But the recommendation, coordinate together and improve among state government and the partners. I think we need to better communicate with each other and understanding where our strengths are and where our weaknesses are. We want to reduce administrative burdens on municipalities. We want to expand capacity where we can, and and quite frankly, promote equitable access, so folks don't even know where where to begin. Like, we need to make it even easier for folks to access what they need, and then better align public private with nonprofit investments. So so there's a lot of it. Yep.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: I really like both too, you're saying.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Because prior hearings moved? Venus Project? Renews administration burden on municipalities. Mhmm.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: I'm not seeing that occur. I'm seeing more and more and more lump onto the looking spatula, especially if you have water, wastewater, street department, fire department, How do you plan on doing that?

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: You know, we don't these are recommendations, and this is kind

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: of what Recommendations.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Lies ahead.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: For us to work on them.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: For us to work on them together. We keep adding more. Right? Well, we need these are problems we need to solve. We gotta have a good job. So I was just curious, when you

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: go around talking to these municipalities, that's obviously, in my opinion, something you're hearing. Yeah. And so I don't know, maybe asking them.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Well, can partially respond to that. I think there's, we do have a level of duplication of services from town to town to town, and I'm not suggesting

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Why we'd look at regional and say plural. Yeah, I was

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: gonna say, I'm not suggesting we can look at how the best accomplish that, but I think there are some examples of other states that are certain things that can be done. Can the bookkeeping be done by one person for three towns and not have a bookkeeper, a bookkeeper, a bookkeeper? Is there a way that we can just maximize who we have better Anyway, I don't know if I'm articulating it very well, but it would reduce maybe how much resources and funding they're putting into a particular thing. There might be some savings by trying to kind of share some of those services amongst different towns, for example.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Okay, I envision that meaning something different. Gotcha.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Maybe what you're saying is that, are you saying that there's more like state requirements to put on the municipality and that's a level of federal requirements put on top of that? Yeah, and that's to my point earlier, and I think it's our role coming out of these recommendations as agencies is to kind of really take a look at program to program, like where do we have unnecessary requirements? What's required by federal law? What's required by state statute? What's the information we need just so we can make good sound judgment? Then what is the other area that maybe it's fluff that we could not have as a requirement and lower the burden?

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: So as an example,

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Senator Clarkson,

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: you know how we look at all of our reports and say, All right, we no longer need to do this because it's really not functional or no one's really looking at it and doing it. I wish that you would offer, someone would offer to the municipalities because I'm not sure all the information that we provide and everything that we do is being looked at by the agencies of state government.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. If we're not looking at them, they're not.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Just saying, the people have a lot of information Also, because

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: we have reduced capacity. We've reduced capacity in the state government too, which is what we found.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: This is I'm sorry. We're way off topic.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Oh, which is Okay.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Part of the big problem with the floods of two thousand twenty three is we didn't have it. We had cut since 2011 in tropical storm. I mean, we cut staff at. Big cut, and we didn't have the response ready for many of our municipalities. We were really behind April.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Because there's less money in the state government, they require more and more on the municipality. So there's a cost shift going to it.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: There is a huge cost shift going down towards as we do it across the border.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Yes, I agree with you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: You know, we unhoused a bunch of people and who's picking up the cost for The municipality. It's like there's huge costumes. Oh, okay. Because the need doesn't go away. We just

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: It is the law.

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Ask someone else to pay

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: for it. Yeah. Same people are paying for it.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Just It

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: had to be right. This is you.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: We're a bit off track. Sorry.

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

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: the ANR has more employees now than they've ever had.

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Oh. So I I would think that the secretary would disagree with you. Okay. I did just want to mention to your point, it's not off topic. There are two big buckets of recommendations, which have two things I think that are relevant to this. They are some bigger long term challenges, as we're noting, this is a challenge, right? One is around asking state agencies to work together on things like what would a shared grant application look like? What would it look like for the state to bring together all of its grant administrators to ask that question at kind of the big level. What's required? What is, like, unnecessary? What could we do to trim those requirements? And then the other one, something we heard loud and clear, especially at the summit, was around planning requirements. So, again, these aren't like quick fixes or low hanging fruit challenges, but they are ones that we there are some ideas in the report around.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Which, you know, we could have one we could have one brand application for anything in state government. You could easily adapt it for what the need what they're applying for. One of the biggest challenges, as you know, is applying for grants. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: It's so cute. And so another topic, like, for our electric utilities, we're starting to team up with, like, borrowing Orleans Electric, Fire and Electric, Linden Electric, and asking the state of Le Mans whether or not we can offer to the state, one integrated resource plan, which is a requirement every three years instead of three separate ones, which is tying up the Department of Public Service, is tying up the local utilities, tying up that's what is tying up everybody.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: And so I'm just trying to

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: think of things like that where Sure. A good start.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: And I I think that's what Chris is getting at, that the whole point is let's align things to make it simpler for municipalities to actually access things. Let's let's actually let figure out a way to improve communication so municipalities, our towns know what's actually there, what resources are there for them, and how to access.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: An example could be, I'll just go to like in New York, the state government actually has an office set up. They're not running programs. We're all running programs. We're all running different things, but there's an office that basically beats you that hub that you go to one place for information for, you know, to know and they

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: can I direct direct you you

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: to, it's kind of like lines and direct you to the other machine? Having that, I'm oversimplifying it, but basically having a place, that's the job, that's the role, that's obviously a much larger undertaking to come up with that kind of structure, but that's an example of how you might be able to approach that, having a centralized place for information and resources and assistance. I'll finish off by saying the steering committee, when their charge has ended with the report in terms of its requirements for Act 21, but there's a real interest for the steering committee to continue meeting and try to really figure out how can we move the dial with some of these actions. Is there low hanging fruit that we can work on over the next six to twelve months? Are there some larger goals that we're going to really take some thinking and some strategizing to come back next year and figure out how we can better accomplish these longer term or systems change approach? We wanted to try to keep that momentum. We need to build a bench. This is a team sport, and we're certainly looking just at the names on that steering committee. That's not who's gonna get it all done. We need to build the bench out and work collaboratively with you all, the legislature, the administration, and with various partners and folks from the municipal, quite frankly, at the local local level be involved with some of those conversations so that we're making these changes in reality.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. So this articulates the needs. I think what you've done here is you've done a great job of pulling together what the needs are. Yeah. And now we need to go forward and figure out how we're gonna meet those needs. Who could it do the inventory of town equipment that could be shared? Remember, Becca when we went and saw that great The Vactor? Yeah. Yes. What's it called? Vactor. The Vactor. So how many so Barry has a Vactor. Well, no one else around Barry has a Vactor. How can we that's When Barry isn't using their Vactor, can it be we Let me know that. One of the things I would add here is an inventory of

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: The inventory has been done.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Of choice.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: By Department of Public Safety, I believe.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Oh, of all equipment? Right. So who knew? Well, then also, like,

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: to take that, you know, to take that example of, like, having an inventory of equipment, you know, when we had the floods of twenty twenty three, it didn't flood every town. No? Yeah. And we had so we had equipment. So knowing where those resources are to, like, to have agreements already in place so that towns in Addison County maybe even weren't affected or or, you know, it's gonna help a town in front of county that was affected. You know? So it it can have a you know, that kind of effect. Right? Yeah. So that's

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: kind of already in place too, kind of under mutual aid and things of that nature. Well, yes and no, but

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: not outside your beach. I mean, you know, if you're having a problem Yeah. But then it goes

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: to the Lovers. Health safety,

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: and then they know where those resources are, and then they start

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Maybe not. I don't know. I heard BEM last year. It felt like

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: we were hearing a lot of

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Really?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Or at least maybe in the moment some not connecting of the correct people with the right peoples. But I we VEM came in. What was that lovely the gentleman who we see quite a bit here? Nicholas. Yes. He comes in quite a bit, and he's has explained to

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: us some Nicholas is the mayor of Barrie. Was Oh, oh. Oh, mayor of Barrie. The manager.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: He's the city manager.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. Joe was the mayor.

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: I was thinking about that.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: You were thinking Eric Feran.

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Eric Feran was coming. Oh,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: he's the head of

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: the emergency management. Okay. I was like, that is where

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: possible. Sounds great too. But Yeah.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: You're right.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Yeah. We have heard so is there where do where have you gone as a municipality to?

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: I've had to go and fill out through grants, through FEMA, through, I believe, the Department of Public Safety before, and they come through and ask for all the resources Oh. For what do you have for dump trucks, what do you have for equipment, what do you have for so you give this whole list, and then they provide it to you with every single pound and the equipment.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: We had never, this is the first I have never heard

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: that existed. Wow. Did you know that existed?

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: No. See, this is part of

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: the challenge, right? Law enforcement was even included in the- Well,

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: maybe the NDKs was more of that.

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: I mean, it's not in my belly wick to say, I would be me. I would The people that need to know that know the bad experience. No.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Yeah. Well, it makes sense that it does. It's not very

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

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: yeah, that was actually my last slide. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So you want money to bench for. We're all making recommendations. I'm gonna hand

[Gary Holloway (Downtown Program Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: it Jess to discuss that with Rose Walcott.

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Yes. Yeah. Well, you so much for taking time on a Friday afternoon after the mini trucks, which were many times They're still going on. So I'm Jessica Savage, as I said. I work at VCRD. So for those of you who don't know us, and I think most of you do, we're an independent, non partisan, nonprofit. We provide community led facilitation, convening leadership skill development, technical assistance, and on demand support to Vermont rural communities. We convene statewide policy discussions on issues impacting rural Vermont and Vermonters. So I'm here to compliment the testimony from Gary as one of the BRDA steering committee members. I just want to say that we've been both deeply involved with this because this is what we do and have done for thirty years, but also just want to really appreciate that this was not just a cursory report. As somebody who worked in state government for fifteen years, you know, sometimes a report is just that. This was a serious undertaking and project, and I really wanna thank VHCD and the Ladies Center for World Partnerships for doing way more than, like, just what was in the act one eighty one charge. Everything Gary was talking about was really deep listening, effective engagement, making that summit fun. Those are all, like, fantastic ways to do good community engagement. And I say this as somebody who do does or strives to do good community engagement every day. So I just wanna really say thank you for doing that. And these recommendations really underscore how the state and its partners can address the needs of rural communities. The findings resonate with our experience working with rural towns. Towns need coordinated, simplified access to not just information, but navigation, flexible education funding, and support for all the phases of project development. They need us, Vermont's technical assistance provider network, to work well together, to talk to each other, and to have the time, staff, financial resources, and expertise to support them in their locally defined projects. So, we're here to ask you, the legislature, this committee to consider offering $500,000 in the f y twenty seven budget to make good on what rural towns have told us they need. Our proposal is simple and allows for implementation of some of the most impactful recommendations in the report. So our ask would provide backbone and administrative support to design and implement a TA and funding program that directly benefits, especially our underserved rural towns and villages. It would provide technical assistance resources, the staff consultant time to provide these custom resource teams for each community selected for the program. And the majority of the funding is direct support to towns. So what we heard loud and clear was that funding should be accessible and flexible. So it would be distributed through a grant application process where towns will work with its resource team to use grant funding to pay for services that will help them make meaningful progress on community driven economic development goals. Projects could include housing, infrastructure, childcare facilities, climate resilience, and more. And while this sounds ambitious for a one year proposal, this is based on work we're already doing. We're already working together around the table and have been familiar with MTAP, the Municipal Technical Assistance Program. It was an excellent pilot program. I was the person who administered that grant for us at VCRB, and it's been a fantastic resource. We always answer the phone. We're the forever friend of rural Vermont. But I was able to not just answer the phone, but show up with staff and money when communities have a need above and beyond our regular, say, community visit program, which right now has a two year wish list. It expedited our services, and we were one of many organizations that were able to provide that level of really responsive technical assistance. And so, this funding, has just ended for most of the technical assistance providers in December, and this proposal would allow us to build on that foundation while incorporating recommendations for the verdict report and the partners who are already on the table. So as we've even noticed today in your comments and questions, rural towns are being asked to do so much with decreasing federal funding and increasing complexity of the problems they face. Despite that, we know every day we get to see that there are dedicated local leaders who are ready and willing to show up for the towns they love, especially when given thoughtful support to make their local dreams come true.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Is the 500 in the Governor's recommended budget?

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: It was not this year. It was last year's budget. They included $3,000,000 for a two year ask to continue the MTAP program, but it didn't make it into the budget last year. This year, we are in the House budget for $250,000

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So, you're in the House budget? We are. Yes.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Any other questions for?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: No, we just

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Sorry for my late arrival, but I think Gary knows, I hope you know, I really support VCRD, I support your work, and I'm grateful for all that you've provided to small municipalities in particular. And VCRD, I mean, I even think it was a program for efficiency Vermont and VCRD is how I met Senator Morley going up and working on efficiency projects in association with local government. So you're a really phenomenal connector as an organization. Even if it's not work you're doing, it seems like you're always involved in making those connections and the same can be said for ACCD. Just really grateful for your work and I would be very supportive of including in our letter to, at the very least, have the House recommended budget proposed budget two fifty that you've asked for be continued. I would even go so far as say I'd be supportive of the full 500,000, but I don't know if kind of where this committee stands on.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: We'll

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: talk. Okay. Thank you.

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

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I'm hearing two things. One is you need to finish this work, and you need to figure out how we're going to create this point of entry really for because the reason is the VLCT is sort of point of entry for most tasks for almost anything. So creating something through VLCT as an info center would be great. So you wanna finish your work and you wanna be able to have enough money to give out in grants and technical assistance. Is that right? Is that what I'm hearing?

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Yes. Yes. And I think I think of this funding as really being the most responsive answer directly to what community said they needed. This wouldn't do everything in the report. Like I said, some of these ideas are really complex state agency, interagency work that needs to happen. But this funding would give towns exactly what they said they needed, which was a well coordinated TA system, a team that is customized to what they're asking for, and flexible funding that they could use to make the next phase of their project happen. And the other thing I just want to say is that I think of this program as one that can be a cohort model as well. Something we've seen is that peer learning is really important between communities. Some of the work we did with MTAP was peer cohorts of village wastewater projects. Rebecca Sanborn Stone did some great work with that. We're doing that right now with our village trust initiative, and we see that while each town is different, there are some core things that they're asking for. And, again, we wanna design the the the grant program with our partners, but I feel confident that we can do this because we've already been doing it for a long time.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Thank you both. Well, thanks for having us. Yeah, our pleasure.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: It's such

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: a What would happen if the sun came off?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So the money that we put into the property transfer tax that we we I've gone ahead and put save piece of it for technical assistance to keep the MTAP work going. Is that not money that we have available ourselves? I'll find out. Remember that. Yeah. I thought we dedicated a piece of that property transfer tax to this to detect physical assistance, but I need to remind myself. Sure.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: It's like a a dedicated revenue source?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. Thought that would be good.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: It goes like three different places. Right?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. It does. But I thought we added increased Also, headphones. Oh, but yeah. It But added some for technical assistance after we did the '23 because we this would be yeah. This is an ongoing need. This is not the support of the towns. It's an ongoing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for sure.

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Yeah. And I think of this program as a way to kind of bridge and allow the Virta Steering Committee to continue working on the longer term bigger questions while being really responsive to what communities told us. And if the if by some happy miracle, you got what had come over

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: to us from the house and we and we were what how would you raise the additional 250,000 feet?

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: That's a good question. I think there's two options. One would be that we could reduce the number and size and potential geographic spread of the awards around the states. So we could see what would it look like to have a $250,000 budget Or, you know, VCRD is always fundraising for our work. That's what we do. We offer our services free of charge to the community. So that would be a good question for all of the partners around the table to answer. How we find additional funds or would we look at a reduced scale budget?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: And and my last question is, of the 252 towns that we have, can remember remember it now that Essex Junction, I can further Rebecca 51. But how many what percent of them would you say are the most challenged and the least how many of them would you say really are the most challenged?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Not you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: He's a

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: manager to that town. So there about two thirds of our towns are less than 2,500 people. It's a pretty good It's not the number. Yes. It is. Yeah. So that's so let's talk about just that, maybe two thirds. Of that, I would say an additional two thirds have pretty mid to low capacity. One third are very low capacity. The state did a really good job with an index for STAP, where they kind of preapproved some of these eligible communities based on a bunch of different factors. For us, it's is there a three person select board in a part time town clerk regardless of population, although there does

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: That takes three times a week

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: or something. Yeah. Yeah. Is there if there's a five person select board, wow. And a full time and a town administrator and a town clerk. So those are the kind of, like, breaking points we see. Yeah. That's Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So how many? Right. So you would say a a third of the 200 of the 2,300.

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: This is my this is my estimate. I could definitely look at the index from on top of No.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I have tell you that. Number. I like that.

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: A significant number. Yeah. I mean, we've worked in about a 100 towns around the state over thirty years, and a lot of them, many of them are very low capacity. And that's why they're asking for community visit because it brings energy. It brings it cultivates new leadership and new ideas. And it brings, frankly, the spotlight of the state onto a small town where we bring a team from across the state to really pay attention to those needs. You match that with that local oomph of leadership big things happen, for sure.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Then most of us who've had you need you to come back and get us back on track. Yeah. Back on

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: wanted to thank you again.

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Thank you. I

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: know we're we're between you and your weekend. Thank thank you. Okay. Have a good weekend. Thank Enjoy.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Happy Passover, happy Easter, happy Oh,

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Senator Brian D. Alpha Coleman

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: and the Golden Easter Egg. It's a nice

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: holiday Easter Egg. Senator Collamore, we're going to be working in Brandon next for Oh, wonderful. Let you know.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Nice. Let me know when you're there.

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: Yes. April 30 is our Okay.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Your number. Keep an eye out for Alyssa Johnson or Lauren Brady to reach out to you. I'm I'm Lauren Brady, and we'll reach out to you with the details for April 30.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. Yeah. We'll probably still be here unless it's a weekend.

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: What? I know what you're selling, Tony.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: It's Monday for the thirtieth.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: It's Thursday evening.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. You're gonna work with your child. And people are the same answer.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: We still probably have a resolution.

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

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: option we could do, but Great.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Thank you for scheduling us.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Oh, It was. We're just gonna keep you informed.

[Jess Savage (Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives, Vermont Council on Rural Development)]: It should be interesting. I mean, it's too much.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: You asked for David Weeks, how

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I Okay. But you know us.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Oh. Is there anything else to come before for me?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Email them. You tried it.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. If not, we will adjourn for the week, and see you all.