Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member, Essex–Orleans District)]: Okay, great. Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Okay, great. Thank you. Welcome. We are live and this is Senate institutions on Thursday, 01/29/2026. And we have four sections of the capital build that we will be discussing. The first one is section 12 and that will include the environmental laboratory situation and the big E. So we have several folks here. We'll introduce ourselves. I'm Wendy Harrison, Senator from the Windham District.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair, Bennington District)]: And Robert Plunkett, Bennington.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Joe Major Windsor. Russ Ingalls, Essex Orleans. John Benson, Orange.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Senator Benson is our newest member and very familiar with the Oh no, I'm sorry, John, just in the morning. So, how would you like to start off? Who would like to go first?

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: So, we're gonna do bail first or do the egression. Okay.

[Cheryl Achilles (Director, Vermont Agriculture & Environmental Lab)]: Do bail, I guess.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Good. Okay. Thank you for being here.

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Thanks for having me.

[Jessica (Project Manager/Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: And

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: so for reference, let's see where we are on this spreadsheet.

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: So I just send you notes to check.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Okay. Alright. There's only two items on section 12, and both of them are gonna be talked about today.

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: For the record, Joe Major, Director of Design and Construction with Village and General Services. They were here for the Vermont Agriculture and Environmental Lab, known as Vail, the heat plate. And so the lab was completed in 2019 and it uses heat, it gets its heat from steam heat from the central heat plant for Vermont State University to Randolph, to what was known as VTC back in the day. When we put that out to bid, we had a design that had two options. One was to connect to the college's heat plant or build their own heat plant. At the time it was decided that it would be less expensive to connect to the college's heat plant and get steam from there. What we didn't really know at the time was two issues. One was the autoclaves. The autoclave, the big autoclave that the lab has, needs 50 pounds of steam pressure. The collage does not run at 50 pounds of steam. They've overcome that, they cannot constantly maintain that, so that is one the issues. The other bigger issue is they shut down during the summer. So the summer was no steam going to the autoclaves, it was completely shut down to the autoclaves to the building or to either find coolant. They turned what we did is they turned their boilers on they had one for their large boilers they had three operating. Problem is because there was not a large call for steam, the boiler would start up and shut down, constantly cycling, and that shortens the life of the boiler. They also had times where trying to maintain just any steam to the So lab was we came back in 'twenty three, FY 'twenty three, to put the heat plant in that we had originally designed. Once we were, of course, had our, almost had a contract executed with a contractor, designed a contractor, the administration suggested they'll be looking to doing something with the colleges with boilers and possibly summer boilers. So that's where we are now headed in, is summer boilers. So the one to three summer boilers installed inside of the college's heat plant. The reason for one for three is one for very low loads that you need and also the peak loads. That way if you're not at peak, two could run. It will leave, but we're still in design, we could end up with two. Just about 50 five-sixty percent of the load so if one were to go down we'd still be able to maintain a lot of that pressure during the summer so the cloud could still operate. We will also use the steam heat from the college in the winter. So how to deal with the 50 pound steam pressure? We're looking at installing local steam generators at the autoclaves to overcome that. That way we can lower the steam pressure coming off the boilers for the rest of the college campus. And the building itself can run at low steam pressure. So we reduce it, it's only there for the yellow clip. Along those items, boilers that we were looking to plan to install are oil fired boilers. The existing heat plant is running off at number two. Sorry. Number four. The new boilers would be number two for a while. So we're going to use this money for our hostilities to get the college who sort of added another tank or two for the summer boilers would be to convert their existing boilers to number two boilers and replace the twenty year old fuel tanks that are out there. The tanks may be in okay condition, in good condition, we're not sure until we got in and actually cleaned it out. But, depends on the size of the tank or the contractor, it can take almost a year to get a new tank. So at the time of finding it out, that would not be a good idea. So we're planning on replacing them while we're there. The plan is to have everything done basically by Christmas of this year. First job will be getting at least one summer boiler operating so that the college can shut off their boilers, plus we also got some work to do in their boilers, so that'll allow that early fall. We're requiring that one of the large boilers be operational, And then by the end of the year, have everything operational. The in my appropriations and extended, I made an error in f y twenty twenty seven bond funds. There's not 1,500,000 requests in there. There's no request from FY '27.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Okay, so just to be clear, so on our sheet it shows no request. So it's the slide.

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: It's a slide that's minor.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Okay so now you're saving 1,500,000

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Okay that's all right right off the top.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: So can you so this to me this feels like the third try.

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yes, but it's still a good way to go. We were looking to do chips down there, and also propane boilers for backup. This way, the campus wins and we win. We're still, know, they're using their heat plant during the winter months. We benefit off of that. It keeps all three of their boilers up load. And then the summer boilers, when they shut down, we'll still be able

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member, Essex–Orleans District)]: to operate and be just fine.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: And the funding is the same? Correct. So this is basically an update on your operations and how you're doing something different, but Correct. You're managing the projects in a different way? Yes.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member, Essex–Orleans District)]: Yes. Am curious,

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: two was more expensive than number four, so was the efficiency in the boilers make up for the differential in cost? I don't know exactly to say yes or no to that, but there's less sulfur going in there, we can remember too, and we're going to the separate boilers, so the turn down ratio of that should be less in the long run, exactly when that break even when it's a donor.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member, Essex–Orleans District)]: And we had some testimony on this in our other committee with two other gentlemen across from me, and the amount of work that gets done in that lab, thought I had and I tried to pull it up, but it is unbelievable how much work is done in that lab. From what we have heard before in the past, the inconsistency of that steam that is not going there, they just get these tests right where they need to be and then a lot of most of them are temperature sensitive and once the temperature's gone, everything that they've done gets thrown away because it's you can't keep it at a consistent temperature. But I thought I had the number. I do some place. I just can't pull it up. Had a very busy lab and very, very neat place to go. If anybody has it bad, you should go there.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Field trips are good. And that's the main agricultural laboratory, right, in the state? Is.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member, Essex–Orleans District)]: Along with weights and measures and on and on the list goes. Yeah.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Pretty cool.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: So you have all the certification that you're required to have, I'm I'm sure. Just curious, but.

[Cheryl Achilles (Director, Vermont Agriculture & Environmental Lab)]: Yes, yes, I'm sorry. Hi, I'm Cheryl Achilles, the Vail Lab Director. Guess, pitch hitting with Joe. Yes, so I think, Senator, the number you're looking for is roughly 35,000 tests annually that we do. Tests that are

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: It would

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member, Essex–Orleans District)]: have easier to ask you.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Yeah, no, no.

[Cheryl Achilles (Director, Vermont Agriculture & Environmental Lab)]: Biggest pinch points for us is in organic chemistry. We have a room that has very highly sensitive instruments that cost about 2 and $50,000 to $350,000 a piece. So there's over a million dollars worth of equipment in this one room that needs to be really temperature controlled. The second place is in Weights and Measures, which is down on our Bottom Floor. And they do all the hydrometers for maple syrup testing right now. That's a big deal. But they also do weights that people draw to get calibrated and things like that. When things are not controlled, so if it's too humid in the labs, the weights get heavier. So the measurements are off. And vice versa, if it's not human enough, weights lose weight, so to speak. So those are the two areas. And the third one I'd argue is our phosphorus testing lab. So we use one of those autoclaves to perform digestion, step one, to get the available phosphorus out of the sample. And so when we don't have steam pressure, we can't put the autoclave to do that first step. So that's one of our higher volume tests for the analytical lab.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: That's very interesting. I thought a lot of water treatment plants have their own labs, but do you do water treatment, wastewater treatment samples? I would think you wouldn't do that, but

[Cheryl Achilles (Director, Vermont Agriculture & Environmental Lab)]: Well, looking to the future, we're trying to partner with DEC, so the wastewater folks are looking to do PFAS testing So out of we have method five thirty three, which is the drinking water. We're working on the other method that's popular, which is sixteen thirty three. So those two, would be a high volume test coming into the lab as well. And then state colleges there looking to partner with us to do a study on how PFAS travels to the environment. They haven't received that funding yet through the National Science Foundation, but if that comes through, that would be another high volume test for us. That's great.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Yeah, because PFAS is really hard to say.

[Cheryl Achilles (Director, Vermont Agriculture & Environmental Lab)]: Yes, yeah, and that seems to be the new shiny thing that people are concerned about. So, we will be ready in the spring to do those. Thank you. You're welcome.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member, Essex–Orleans District)]: I had to work on the permits for that facility, so. Oh,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: And so this upgrade will be complete this year?

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yes.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: That would be great. Okay. All right. Well, this sounds good. Are there any more questions? So thank you very much for being here. Appreciate it. We're going fine.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member, Essex–Orleans District)]: Probably Europe.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Think I'm waiting in the Zoom waiting room. So yeah, for the record, I'm Trevor Goel, I'm the Assistant Director of the Development Division at the Agency of Agriculture. And talk a little bit about the biggie. So thanks for having us here today. I just want to start with some gratitude towards the agency team that manages building this event and the great partnership that we have with BGS. Also Department of Tourism, Department of Labor, lot of state partners that touch the Vermont Building and are part of big E fair, and it's, you know, it's a point of pride for us, kind of the strength of that partnership. You're not sharing if you're deadlocked. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. This looks better.

[Jessica (Project Manager/Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Good eye. Yeah,

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: think it's just loading. I can keep going. So the Vermont Building is located in Springfield, Mass on the fairgrounds of Eastern States Exposition. It is part of the Avenue Of The States, which is kind of event within an event. So the building is primarily and almost exclusively used for Okay. To support this event, so we use it as a public market space, and okay. Yeah, so quick history. Fair started actually in 1916. John Benson had this idea to try to bring the National Dairy Convention back from Wisconsin back to the Northeast. That kind of evolved into him engaging all the various New England states and inviting them to set up their own building on the ground. So Vermont, I think, was the third New England state that opted in. All New England states now have a building on the fairgrounds. Each New England state owns that little lot of land in that building, so it's quite a unique asset in the state portfolio, because I think it's the only state building that actually exists outside of the state boundaries, but it is fully owned by the state. We'll talk a little bit about how that affects things like code compliance, we're aligning with Vermont Code or Massachusetts Code. The building was built in 1929, so we're just a few years away from the one hundred year anniversary of it, so we've been really targeting that date as a date to try to get this building up into a really impressive state. The beginning is a massive event. It fluctuates every year as far as the population, how many folks attend, but it's seventeen days, starts September, typically runs to the October. They get the fourth or fifth largest fair on any given year in the nation, so I think the peak attendance was 1,700,000 people in 2023, 2022, and it's not uncommon to see more than 100,000, 150,000 people a day come through the gate at the fairgrounds. It's also a major hub for a lot of youth ag and equestrian events, so all of our future farmers of America, our four H kids, folks that are showing horses, showing cattle, a lot of that happens during the fair, but it's also happening year round down there, so it's a big hub and we support all the activities that are going on with that during the fair as well. This gives you a sense of kind of where it's located geographically. Again, we're in Springfield, Massachusetts, so we are, you know, decent, easy driving distance from a lot of major metro areas. We did a demographics marketing study a few years ago to kind of look at who's coming to the fair, where are they coming from, and what we know from that is that the majority of folks are coming from Mass and Connecticut, with a much smaller portion coming from Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island. I mentioned this partly just to kind of demonstrate, again, this is attracting people from markets that are very appealing to a lot of businesses that we support through this fair, so we really think it utilizes building as a platform to give businesses exposure to new markets, to get their brand out in front of a lot of different people, and take advantage of all that foot traffic. So, as I mentioned, the Avenue states, every New England state has one of these buildings. They're all lined up along the kind of eastern side of the fairgrounds. It's really unique in that it's the only event that is not run by the organization that runs the fair, so we are close partners with them, and we do a lot to make sure that everything from public safety to compliance and regulations, tickets, parking, all that, we work really hand in glove with them, but we are our own operation, and AG is in charge of the programming, of the contracts, managing the building, and then again, partnership with VGS around maintenance and unkeep. So we'll see in this place, this is the inside of the building here on a pretty typical weekend day, and it shows you one. That's a little funky. But this is not atypical at all. I mean, is kind of what it's like in the building probably sixty-seventy percent of the time, shoulder to shoulder, ag folks. We did that same marketing study I mentioned. We looked at how many people who come through the gates of the fairground also visit the Avenue Of The States, and what they found is about 94%. So you can more or less assume that if you've got 170,000 people coming through the fair that day, you probably got 165 coming through the Province as well. This slide just shows our twenty twenty five vendors. We had 29 different businesses come and been with us in the building. Most of these folks are here for the full seventeen days. Some we do half day or half day contracts where we'll do a turnover kind of in fare. It's a big undertaking. So what found is that to sign up kind of for your first year and come in and try to do all seventeen days has been a loss. We're trying to create some different on ramp opportunities for these businesses. But we push hard with our outreach, and then we have a competitive application that's open right now every year, so people apply to Ben. We have a review committee where we look through, we score those applications, and they look through what openings we have, and we think I might be a good fit, and we really strive to balance out our vendors across a number of metrics, so the different types of products they have, the different areas that they're located in, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member, Essex–Orleans District)]: If I can, if you can

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: go back. Please go. One, the review process, what does that entail? And two, is what's the length of time that the a vendor is committed to to go to the fair? Yeah. So it's a competitive application. We have a grants management system called WebGrants that we use for all the grants within development divisions. So people apply online through WebGrants. We ask a series of questions about their business that relate to the goals that we're trying to accomplish. So how does this event align with your sales and marketing and your growth? What kind of business are you? Where are you located? How many folks do you employ? And then we look at the openings that we do have, and we try to figure out, you know, we don't want 15 maple syrup Mhmm. Producers in the building. We want to balance there. We also, again, want to balance out the geographic representation. So we get a lot of more interest from Southern Vermont, which makes sense. It's a much easier commute. It's easier to pull staff down to a bed like that if you're in Bennington than if you're in Grand Isle. But that being said, you know, we've done a really nice job of kind of getting the word out and of pull folks from all over the state. And then there's a review committee. So we have a scoring rubric where each application is reviewed by three different folks. Those scores get aggregated, and then there's a discussion meeting where the reviewers all come, look at the scores, and then kind of have that discussion around like, okay, these guys scored really high, but, you know, it's another egg reserve producer, we've already got that represented. So, you know, maybe you wanna look at something else. And length of commitment? We do one, two, and three year contracts. We typically start people with a one year contract. I like to make sure that, you know, it's a good fit for them, it's a good fit for us. It's pretty unique, you know, a lot of businesses who come down, they get excited, and then they're like, holy cow, this is like nothing I've experienced. So, we do our best to support them, but there's really nothing that can replace actually going out and doing events. At the end of the year, or the two or the three year, you have to reapply, or? Yeah, once your contract is up, you have to reapply.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member, Essex–Orleans District)]: I guess I'm surprised that Cabot isn't on there, has Cabot not been on there for a while?

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: We have a vendor, so he's a private individual who works with Cabot, and he sells, he's wholesale served cheese, or he retails it, but he gets, he has a wholesale relationship with Cabot. He does a couple other products, he's tried with primarily Cabot cheese, and then May is a special cheese for him that he labels that kind of markets as a Biggie special. So we've talked to them a little bit, but I think this works pretty well for them. They get their product down there, they get the exposure, but they don't have to deal with the logistics and the staffing and all this. This vendor who does it has been doing it for a very long time. He took over from his parents who have been doing it, so I think he'd probably been in that booth space about twenty years from years. Senator Benson? Have you got any way of measuring how much business actually is generated by the individuals who present at the fair? So the way that we capture revenue is through commission, so we charge a 15% commission I meant for

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: them, so they're there selling their wares to a million plus people who come through, I was just curious whether you've been able to determine how much business they are then able to generate from people who have come and tested their products at the fair. Sure,

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: yeah, I mean, so we know the sales numbers which we track daily, and then we do a follow-up survey with all of our vendors. We're asking questions around like, did you develop new wholesale accounts? Did you see any increase in online sales after the fair? So we're trying to capture those metrics after the fact, but it's some of them are, you know, somewhat intangible because we just the causal relationship between being down there and how much your online sales increased over those months up to Christmas, you know, we like to take credit for some of that, but we know that it's a variety of factors that feed into it. I know a couple

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member, Essex–Orleans District)]: of the vendors that have been there, you know, just to protect them and business models and all that, and I'm pretty big about that. It says that this fare is a difference of whether they're profitable for the year or not. When

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: you go to the can you go to the next slide? Because I just wanted to make comments. I gotta go. But the front is to the right. Is that right?

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Or Yes. Yeah. So over here on the right side. So that's the front facade of the building. Actually, most people come into the building through that top right entrance there, which we call the Connecticut side. And for whatever reason, there's just this established traffic. Yeah. It's kind of the

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: way that fairy horse come

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: through. Exactly. They do a big horseshoe. What's not represented well is this back patio, so that's kind of white void on the left there. There's a concrete slab. We have food trucks and another vendor that was inside of a shed. So people come in, kind of go down the line going back, circle up and come back out and then exit

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member, Essex–Orleans District)]: the middle of the building.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Yeah, just want to comment on something because the Green Mountain Concessions, the line was, it would be off the screen, but I really wanted it, think it was time candy. So I thought it's going take forever. They get people through really, really well. And the crowds are immense, but people love Vermont and you do a great job.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So this is this was our vendor layout for this year. BMSMA, that's the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association, that's been in the late '70s, I think. This is their biggest fundraiser of the year by far. And then pretty much everybody else is a private business. We've had a lot of talks with folks like the Chewy's Council, Brews Association about, you know, potential opportunities in the future to be down there. That's a really nice model for us where we get to support a producer association and then the, you know, the revenue thing made then goes out to support all of the members and that whole industry.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Oh, yeah. We

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: also at the front there, you see Vermont Tourism, so they're kind of our front and house, which is a really nice aspect to have them capturing people that come in the front door, and that side entrance, they encounter them first, they're signing folks up for the Foleyage Report, they're getting information, they're helping them plan their vacations, answering questions about relocating to the state. So this slide is just showing our five big goals of what we're trying to accomplish with the building. Some of them are pretty straightforward, make it safe, make it enjoyable experience for fairgoers, offering that diversity of products that really speak to what Vermont is about, speaks to our culture, our heritage, values, supporting Vermont businesses with that market access, that brand awareness, promoting Vermont as a destination, again, those partnerships with DOL, partnerships with tourism, really getting people excited about the state, leveraging this platform that we have, and then this fifth one being the commission revenue. So, over the year the commissions have supported both staff that takes to run the event, and then also has put a lot towards maintenance of the building. The years and years of deferred maintenance have resulted in a lot of kind of emergent needs and for maintenance issues that we are often using that revenue source to back them for. This gives you a sense of that back patio, so you can see there's two food trucks here, and then in this awning here, that's actually a shed in our building where there's another vendor. This has been somewhat recent, it used to be pretty much all seating back there, just that shed, it was pretty sleepy and not a lot of activity. A couple of years ago we brought in the food trucks, we started kind of building that out, and now it's been very successful to have these folks. Bar on the left there with us a couple years ago, they've actually kind of graduated out of the fairgrounds, so that's another nice story. They started with us, they got a sense of the fair, and now they're doing their own thing out of the fair. We've been able to bring a new business in to support that person. Successfully.

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yeah.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I didn't think drop league was going do the thing, but people were.

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: You're a very unfair movie.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah, I was surprised. That shed I mentioned, so this is Alex Schumann, she owns Vermont Marksmallow Company. She started with us a couple years ago and kind of begrudgingly took that shed vendor spot. It was never a very appealing spot for a lot of folks because the traffic flow was a little bit out of the way, but she took it and ran with it. She makes from scratch marshmallows, they are really incredible, so far afield from like your Jiffy version, Campfire version, and she got some attention, some media attention that first year where Mass Live wrote her up as the best new food with the Big E, and immediately after that, the next day, were just lined up, and since then, she has become an institution at the fair. People are coming, seeking her business out, they're like, I gotta go get my marshmallow, and you can see here it's really been a huge boom to her business and allowed her to really expand, to increase wages and hiring, and achieve a lot of the goals of her business growth that she had. Just to give you kind of a sense of our building sales over the years, so 2020 was the first time since World War II that the fair didn't happen, they canceled it because of COVID, and then in 'twenty one, was kind of a build back year, we had a lot of vendors that still weren't comfortable being in a big public environment, so we had a partially full building, but then we really started to kind of pick up steam in 'twenty two and 'twenty three, and have been really successful. Some of this is playing with the space, adding more, kind of squeezing more juice out of it, being able to fit more businesses in and support them. A lot of it was the addition of those food trucks, but a lot of it is also working with the vendors to help them with their strategy. So we brought in consultants who do a lot with trade show and marketing events and helping them set up their booth and maximizing their sales strategy, and just finding that right balance of understanding what the customers want while also trying to, again, balance those needs and goals around the diversity of products. This just gives you a sense, used our sales use to pretty much track right along with attendance at the Big E, and then in 2022, when we started doing more with the back patio and the food trucks, kind of implementing some of the strategies that we had, we really saw the sales start to divorce a little bit from that attendance line. So it's still driven very much by that. You see that dip from '24 to 25. You know, that's probably because there were just fewer people in the favor. And so, just some of the programmatic challenges, and Jessica will get into this a little bit in more detail, but from an operations standpoint, this building's nearing 100 years old, it's been years and years of deferred maintenance, and a lot of the efforts to keep going and keep the lights on have been somewhat band aid efforts, right? The roof is leaking, we've to fix it a little bit here, a little bit there, so one of our big major issues right now, we have 300 amps serviced to the building, we're operating right on the threshold of maxing that out pretty much every day of the fair, so we work really closely with our vendors, we monitor every appliance they bring in for their booth, we calculate all the wattage and voltage, and try to make sure that we're not going to go over that. Years ago, we had panels catching fire, real issues with that, so it's a major limiting factor for us as far as what we can bring in and support, the type of businesses, food and beverage business, food businesses definitely are limited by this, so that's a huge challenge. We've had lots of leaks over the years, plumbing issues, toilets that have leaked down into vendor booths, you know, some really unfortunate stuff. We're really making a lot of good progress on that, we've got a new slate roof on the front part of the building, and it's, you know, it's again starting to get excited about seeing some of these changes manifest, but that remains to be an issue. The ADA accessibility, there are two vendor staff restrooms in the building, they're not open to the public, but we are required to have them for our vendors and our staff. They are at the top of a double staircase, and so we have some older vendors who we are now having to take them in a golf cart to some other, they need to use a restroom, they've to flag staff down, we've got to go down to the floor, help them get into a golf cart, take them to a different building so they can use the restroom. So we would love to be able to have modern facilities that are compliant with ADA. The visible decline, the discordant aesthetics, again, this 1.6, 1,700,000 people who are coming into this building and really like seeing it as a little slice of Vermont, a little slice of the Great Mountain State, so really presenting that in the best possible light is a big goal of ours, and, you know, it's a very biased, it's a beautiful building, it's a little bit funky. You walk through, and what's happened is like vendors have modified booths over the years, we've done a little bit here, a little bit there, but there hasn't been a real strategic wholesale approach to kind of setting up the floor to maximize traffic flow, maximize booth utility for vendors, so, you know, we're kind of patching it together a lot of times and limited. They have a vendor we're really excited about, but we don't have a booth that supports their needs because of a lot of these limitations. And then just some pictures of that, you can see this is one of the restrooms, there's another one on the other side of this mezzanine area, you can see the stairwell there that people have to come up to get in that. These are windows on the front of the building, you keep walking in and seeing, this is some of what the aesthetics are kind of showing the folks. This is a dry storage area, which has leaked, a staircase goes up to a roof access skylight, which leaked down into this dry storage area. Some of the trim and the rod issues that are pretty common around the building that are, you know, again, starting to get cleaned up, it's really nice to see it come in. So this will be my last slide. I'm going to hand it off to Jessica in a second here, but just to kind of give you a sense of what's upcoming with the funds that we do have and the projects that are underway. Again, some of those challenges and what we're trying to do. You know, one point I've made before, I'll make again, looked a couple years ago at the visitor numbers for all of the state's visitor centers. The Guilford Center is by far the busiest. The Vermont Building gets three times as many visitors in seventeen days as the Guilford Center gets in a year. Wow. So if the Vermont Building was a visitor center, it would make up 60% of the foot traffic of every single visitor center in New York. So you know, again, it's this concentrated seventeen days, but it really does have a huge impact, and it really is selling Vermont to a lot of different people in a lot of different ways. So the business support, but again, having tourism there, having DOL there, having a lot of different nonprofits and partners that are all kind of celebrating Vermont, getting all the word out about it. So I'm happy to take questions or get out of the way and make space for Jessica as a picture.

[Jessica (Project Manager/Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Do we have a question?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: No, it's true. You guys do a great job.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Thanks.

[Jessica (Project Manager/Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: I'm just trying, I'm a building center general services project manager, architect. I've been working with the Agency of Agriculture on this building since probably 2018. In that time, we've done a lot of planning because this this renovation was started with with a long list of deferred maintenance when I came on and this recognition that the fair has changed over time. The vendors there, the vendor turnover and the vendors come into the fair and the needs have changed as with the rest of the world. So, when we're doing planning, we're thinking about the visitors and the vendors and the experience that they have, as well as overall maintenance and the systems and functionality. In your kitchen, kitchen needs to function and that has changed over time. You can see that the request to date with this biennium included is 6,000,000, and we have spent 3,000,000 on phase one. And the balance remaining is 2,900,000.0. And I didn't mention our hundred year celebration, but that was something that one of the other buildings on this avenue celebrated three years two years ago. Massachusetts had their big celebration. They got a lot of more crests, and this building too will be celebrated. And our goal is to complete before then. Phase one, some of these improvements were visible this year at the fair, but the remainder will be complete and the exterior completely restored with a few outliers by the, by this year.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: That's

[Jessica (Project Manager/Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: great. It's already looking much better. That included the full replacement of the slate roof and the ongoing repairs consist of the cupola, the masonry, siding, painting, and ornate wood woodwork. We're 75% complete. We will, the only things remaining for the exterior restoration will be rear window openings and door openings and a flat roof that's in good condition. So phase two, we're going to be moving to the functionality and the operations of the building. It's a mechanical and electrical renovation And most of the work is electrical, starting with the service, which is undersized right now. And getting into all the panels in the building, are overloaded, end of life, and often situated such that you can't access them. So, it includes that, we will be changing the floor plan on the 1st Floor to include an ADA restroom and working on the overhead doors at the back of the building, are also in midlife. This includes plumbing code requirements that were cited many years ago. That's part of this building being a Vermont building in the state of Massachusetts. We were cited with a lot of code issues when they decided that we must follow their code after years and years of established practice of following Vermont Code. Some of the plumbing has to be replaced, and that includes flooring. So phase three is continued work on on the interior rehabilitation, including bringing an ADA kitchen to the 1st Floor as well. That that's for vendors only. Restrooms and kitchen are just for vendors. We'll be continuing with the building systems, which is the remaining electrical finishes that have been deferred maintenance, food service improvements, doors, and of course, where we can improving the visitor and vendor experience and key opportunities to increase utilization on the site.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Challenging. Yeah. Yeah. People on other people's shoulders.

[Jessica (Project Manager/Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: There's there's a side patio. The sides have a lot of opportunity. Yeah. And a lot of great ideas.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: People are on the front lawn too. I mean,

[Jessica (Project Manager/Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: it's Yeah.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah. There are two days. Eastern States doesn't allow us to have vendors on the front lawn, but for these two special days, Vermont Day and Harvest New England Day. But on those days, I'm gonna talk about the 29 businesses that you support throughout the fair. That doesn't include the ones that come for those one off days, which are really nice opportunities if you want interest in the event, but it's a little bit too bit of a too big of an app. It'll take a bite out of you can come for that single day and just kinda do that pop up.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Yeah. And that that's when I was there. Yeah. Seems like there's

[Jessica (Project Manager/Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: exponential opportunity. Right? You guys opened up the back, used it more, got more revenue.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah, side patio is a great example of an area that we keep thinking, you know, there's more opportunity here, more ways to support more businesses.

[Jessica (Project Manager/Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yep, so with the remaining funds that we have and the FY27 request, We are planning to get through design and construction of phase two. Phase three was mentioned, but we will only be started into design, and we hope to present where we are with that next year. Because of this, the schedule, we're hoping to hire the construction manager for both phases through completion because fiscal year 2027 is not the final request. We'll be asking for one at July 28. The final schedule show is on on the far right, you can see an orange bar that's the centennial, that's our end date. And the green bars are construction. Blue bars are designed. So we're completing our design on phase one in June, while we're doing design of phase two, then we move to phase three, which there's a lot of time just in contracting. But that continues because it includes major electrical equipment. That equipment will be a year out when we start So that that contract goes much longer than the one that we're actually spending and work that we're doing in the building. That's really a four month period. And then I'm just pointing to where we'll be when we come speak with you next year. If we're

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: You're Oh, Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jessica (Project Manager/Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: So and having your involvement in the design of phase three and setting that budget is going to be relative to us performing this before the Centennial. Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: So it looks like everything has been generally on budget and on schedule. Is that accurate?

[Jessica (Project Manager/Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: It's on budget, on schedule. This first phase was slowed down. The we found in construction, it's not surprising with the age of the building, but there was additional structural work at these side balconies, right at the entrance and exit where everyone walks through. It's great. Supported by thin paint.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: That was great. What more did you ask for?

[Jessica (Project Manager/Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: And so there were areas that needed structural improvements as we went along the way and the design team can.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Terrific. It's a challenge.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah, I'll just add, if anyone's interested in coming down, we're happy to facilitate either during the fair, we're also down there in the summer, we have our vendors down for a couple days for construction days, they can get in the booth and work, but we're happy to facilitate for that for you guys. I think it's, you know, really does help to get eyes on it and get a sense of what's happening because it's it's something else. What would you suggest the best time if you were gonna If you wanna see, like, the full dog and phony, like, come on Vermont day, you'll get a sense of, like, how many people we're talking about and what that experience really is. I will say it's overwhelming if Yeah. You're some anything, you know, any part of you is a little bit of an introvert. It's a scary time to be a you're just filled with the children when people hold that.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: And the highway is nuts too. Yeah. So if you do them, it's over early.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: No. Yeah. But if you come on a Monday or a Tuesday, it's typically much more reasonable, and you probably have a little bit more time to talk

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member, Essex–Orleans District)]: It's a Tuesday.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: You wanna go over Monday. You wanna do it

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: on Monday? That's what I thought.

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: You know?

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: And then take a trip to the Basketball Hall Of Fame. That's right. We won't won't have time because you'll be at the I will. You might. I won't. Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: And so the year after next will be the centennial. Yeah.

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: I'm just curious. Is the fairground? Do they have any other major events over the course of the year that you might be able to capitalize on?

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: We've talked a lot about this over the years. One of the main challenges is it's not heated or cool, so during the summer there may be some opportunities. The fairground certainly does. They just started doing a couple years ago this Hooplandie event, so they're kind of this big three on three basketball tournament that they do. They have a lot of ag events interspersed in between there, they do trade shows, they have a big trade show building that they kind of try to make use of. So, I think there is certainly opportunity, and I think we'd like to explore that. But it's a little, you know, like, it's a little hard without the, you know, the public is coming there for, you know, a gun show or something. I think, would we do something in the Vermont Building to complement that? Or are there other ways that we can kind of take advantage of that? I mean, the real opportunity has been just the throngs of people who are there for the fair. But I think it's a great question and something that's definitely in our conversations a lot of like what else could be done to try to maximize this building.

[Cheryl Achilles (Director, Vermont Agriculture & Environmental Lab)]: Great.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Okay. So, thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We'll see you next year.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: We'll see you at the fair.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: Yeah. Yeah. Here you go. You can spot us. So, Joe, you're staying for the next item also.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: That's That

[Joseph Major (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: is correct.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Windham District)]: So do you want to find it, Grace? We're taking a five minute, adjourned.

[Trevor Goel (Assistant Director, Development Division, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: It's