Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Sometimes we aren't. Okay, great.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Thank you. Okay, we are back. This is Senate institutions. It is still 02/04/2026. And we have the historic preservation staff with us and we're going to talk about sections four and sections five of the capital bill and to start us off it was Laura Tranchman who's the state historic preservation officer which is also announced SHIFO. And so if you would be able, if you don't mind explaining that just a little bit in your at the beginning of your presentation.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Yes. Thank you. For the record, I'm Laura Trishman. Am the State Historic Preservation Officer. It's a position required by the federal government through our historic preservation funding that supports 60% of what we do at the state historic preservation office. And the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation is under the CHPO's jurisdiction. Each state, Virgin Islands, several islands, there's 56 state historic preservation officers. There's also tribal historic preservation officers known as THPOs. So we make sure that the National Historic Preservation Act is followed, that federal agencies are following the section one zero six, which is at any time there's federal money, federal involvement, federal permitting, that it gets reviewed for impacts to historic resources, buildings, landscapes, archaeological sites.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right. And that includes transportation. And that's a major impact is so it's all of the road, big roads, big bridges, they all need to have historic preservation studies and you are the one who manages those. Yes. Great, thank you.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Absolutely. So we'll start off with,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh, gee. It's a very nice slide. It's a real Three

[Speaker 0]: minutes. That's State

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Technology Reservation Officer.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: So while I'm banging on the screen, I'll start with underwater preserves. So, the mission of the underwater reserves is to preserve, protect, manage, interpret, and share the cultural and natural heritage of Lake Champlain. There are over 300 wrecks on the bottom of Lake Champlain, and those are under the jurisdiction of the state historic preservation officer. I did not know that originally, but we monitor a 100 of those in partnership with the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, and we have 11 of them open to the public for diving. The most visited are the General Butler, the Phoenix, and the two newest sites, the Providence Island Canal Sloop and the Potash Point Canal Boat.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: you. Thank you. Arrow down.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That seemed weird.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: So, the funding actually goes to pay for part of the annual maintenance, the mooring systems, the site oversight and regular inspections. Lake Champlain Maritime Museum dives several times during the season to test the lines, the signs, the buoys, the safety. These are all wooden structures. And as you can see here on the OJ Walker, there's mussels that are getting on them and that is deteriorating the wood. Wood and water don't mix anyway. So we just want to make sure these are safe because on several of the sites, you can actually fill inside the racks. We also have a database that we're expanding. So as of this year, all of the underwater preserved canals that are in the lake have been entered into a database with Vermont Archaeology inventory numbers. We also do great deal of public education and engagement. Close to 5,000 students, adults, teachers have educational programs and the website gets over 2,000 visits regularly. There are images on their website that you can click and move all around the vessels to see them, what they originally looked like and their current condition as well. And then we have the liaisons with the dive community, which is really very important to us because they're the ones who are regularly seeing these resources and letting us know if there's an issue. Something as simple as the Water Witch signage at the top is in good condition, it's not that old, you can easily read it, but the horse ferry down below is heavily encrusted with muscles and you can't read it. So, that will need to be replaced this year. The funding, the $46,000 pays for the mooring maintenance, the equipment replacement, repairs, installation and removal of things. This includes the buoys, the tie lines, the signage. There's also signage down there that says these are protected resources. It is against the law to be removing any parts of them. So, part of what the dive community does is let us know if something has fallen off or is away from the wreck itself, or if another part of it has been discovered

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: elsewhere. So, you, So, Madam

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: the signs is strictly for the diving community, because I would suspect you don't normally get tourists that go

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: to Yeah. The sign

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: On purpose.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Down below next to the rest.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Okay.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: So, they're for those that are diving, telling them where they can dive, what is safe and unsafe, and also reinforcing the rules, the laws. How

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: often do we get divers that go down there? Do you know?

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Yes, yes. This year we had 120 people register, but we know that not all divers register.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: We have 250 actual divers who visited these sites. We know that from the dive shops that we work with. And there, in total, were 700 dives this past summer.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: And I just because I'm I'm ignorant as far as the maintenance of it, you you cannot have a diver go down and repair or scrape the muscles off of the current sign. You have to replace the entire sign.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Yes. Okay. The signs end up being more damaged and they don't love water to begin with, so they do have a lifeguise, just like the buoys and the rope lines as well.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Okay, thank you.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah, and they're really a great resource because the boats, the tourist boats mentioned the dive sites because there are quite a few. Yes, Yeah. So just a couple questions. Do you have, folks who donate to you? For the Garden Historic Preservation?

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Yes. Or for others, for this? Not for the underwater preserves.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: We've not had any donations. I mean, that's something maybe to consider in the future. Yeah. And then, I may have mentioned this last year, but in the Connecticut River area, there are petroglyphs, which seemed to me something special that should be noted and preserved.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Yes, and we're starting petroglyph national register nominations, that's being done in Dallas Falls. Good. So, we're documenting those. That'll be our first underrepresented communities nomination in Vermont. We're also doing a nomination for the Providence Island Canal Sloop. So that'll be list most of these historic underwater preserves are listed on the national register. Wonderful. And we would like to open up more. We just need to keep adding to our inventory knowing that they're safe. They can't just be picked, oh, let's do this one. We've got to make sure they're safe. Eventually some of them will come offline because they will not be safe. They will just have deteriorated too far. But things do show up. It was the constitution. No. The congress. It was the phoenix, I apologize, that they found it caught on fire, and that's how it sank. So the wheels to it, it was a steamboat, and the wheels fell off miles away from where the actual Mhmm.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Mhmm.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Boat itself went down, and we thought that they had just burned. But in September 2020, a diver actually found them. They're too deep to safely dive, but we're documenting and and working with the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum to get those recorded fully. Interesting. And it

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: was good to be named the Phoenix.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Right?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Begraced? Yeah.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Oh, I never thought of that.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Thanks a lot.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: That's great. That's really great to hear. Yeah, so for years this was at $25,000 which was just not enough to cover the permitting and the mooring maintenance, so we weren't able to keep after it. When the two additional sites were added, it went up to 46,000, which is a very safe, good number for us to be maintaining these sites and keep them open. Because of GPS and GPR, all the different acronyms, people can find all of the underwater preserves. And that's why we really need to market and make sure these are safe for people to go. Because these are the ones we want them to go to. We don't want them diving on the unsafe ones. Perfect. Thank you. That's great.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And I'm sure law enforcement knows this. Yes. Yes. The postcard is very closely working with us. Great. Thank you. I appreciate you being able to make the current budget work. Roadside markers.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Roadside historic site markers started in 1947. The legislature started it. It was to be a short lived program of 75 markers just for tourism. Some of those original markers still exist. Rovi and Fairsburg has one of the very large signs that gives the time of days it's opened, which are not correct for today.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So, we're

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: working to replace them. But it was so popular that you have been graciously funding it ever since. So, we are looking at three sixty five markers that we have, and I've looked the one in Virginia. We do have people following every single one of them. I get regular calls of how many of you added, where are they, have they been put installed yet. We already have a number of dedications on the calendar for this year. So, a number of the markers we put in this year, last year, they take a couple years to process. The Burlington Country Club and the Wabanaki Golf Club in Burlington, they actually requested two separate markers, but the story kinda starts with the Wabanaki Golf Club, where the Shaws is now on, what is that, Shellburn Road? Yes. And in South Burlington, and then moves over to the Burlington Country Club. So we put one on one side and one on the other. So it continues the story. The Vermont Country Store came to us and requested a marker. Ever since we did a marker for Burton Boards, some of our more prominent commercial businesses, like Bag Balm and Vermont Country Store, have come to us. And we do have set criteria, so not just everybody gets a marker, they have to meet the criteria. Some of the more exciting ones, it's unfortunate that he just because stepped out of the we had a dedication this summer for the Ralph Waldo Ellison Marker. He wrote Invisible Man, the beginnings of it down in Bayston. He was a guest of people who lived in Vermont. They invited him up. It's a summer day. He went and stayed in their barn and just started writing this story as a black man who's invisible to the world. And he was the first to receive all sorts of national book awards for fiction. And just it's a really great story. And the family that invited him up there still lives right there in the house and archers across the street. And we had a wonderful dedication. The senator actually was in attendance.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh yes, go ahead.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Going back, what you just said is very powerful. On some of these businesses that are looking for a marker, none of them have offered any assistance to have the markers at least to help organize?

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Yes, yes they do. The Vermont Country store covered the fee for theirs

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I believe. Okay. Yes. Thank you.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: An exciting one that we're gonna be putting up is the Van Trapp Family Lodge and Resort. They just celebrated their seventy fifth year in Vermont. And those that have the r next to them, that's not registered, computer changed it, those are replacement markers. So, like, Missikoi Village marker in Swanton needed to come down. It was in a position where it kept being hit by trucks going by. We found a new location. We rewrote it because it talked about white settlement being the first settlement, and we needed to recognize that it had a Native American history. And then we tried to get Abenaki text on the backside, but we, nobody could agree on exactly what that was for a full marker text. So, we then put it in French on the opposite side since it's one.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh, that's great. And I appreciate just the dedication you have to making things right and inclusion. Saw that in Bellish Falls.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Yes. Oh yeah, we take markers down and fix them when we need to. We make sure they're right. Jamie, who has this heart, is usually out there taking off a letter or something or a number of them trying to fix them.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: And I had some chat payments last night, and I did use Bag Bal on there.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Yeah. Exactly. So wait. Bag Bomb, it's where the original

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Yep.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Building was.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: I know right where it is. They have the most beautiful sign that's, like, protruding out of the building Yes. And right in Lindenville.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Yeah. And Newton Academy is no longer existing, but the Shoreham High School is right next door, and they had a class reunion, and there were, like, 50 people there who hadn't seen each other in fifty years. So it really something special. Very cool.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: I've seen that Invisible Man.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Yeah. You in a room.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: You just got a whole couple of act plates.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: So, what I wanted to point out is the two fiftieth anniversary commemorative markers that we have been undertaking has put a bit of a strain on our budget, because there is no two hundred and fiftieth funding that is affording all these markers, but the interest in the semi quincentennial is sparking a lot of interest in our history. People like Seth Warner, I actually was stunned that we did not have a marker for him already. So there's some some easy ones to do. Then there's we wanna make sure that we're not doing just the the Seth Warner or the Remember Green Mountain Boys, Ethan Allen. I don't know if everybody knows this, I just recently learned that Seth Warner, Remember Baker, were part of the Green Mountain Boys and they were cousins to Ira, Allen and Ethan Allen. So they were all one family. Green Mountain boys.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Did you know that?

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Oh, okay.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Not off the top of my head. As it was being said, I didn't remember. Yes.

[Speaker 0]: I'll print it out.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: From Connecticut, came up here and changed, established our history really. But we were trying to expand it so that we're including civil war history, We're looking at women's history, like Anne Story and Shelburne, who was very instrumental in supporting the Green Mountain Boys, hiding things, listening to the British, and then reporting to them. The governor Hunt House did not have a marker, and they did dendrochronology to see how old the building was. Typically, when dendrochronology is done, you find out that a building's not as old as you thought it was, but in their case, it was 30 years 30 years older So, than they thought it the town had put a marker there, but they're removing that, and then they're gonna get a nice big green and gold marker. And again, we're doing replacement markers for Calvin Coolidge Stage Historic Site, which on the opposite side is gonna talk about tourism, because once he became president, the whole village changed and has since changed with a number of visitors that come there. And Royalton Raid had two markers that we just recently took down in the winter that talked a little harshly about the raids and the kidnapping and ransoming of children and all of that. So we're not gonna change history, we're not gonna hide history, but we're going to see if we can update those.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That's great. Now, is gag rule, is that an actual person?

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: No, that is an actual rule in congress. That he was not allowed to speak on the floor. Interesting. And he kept bringing the same things up all the time, and they were like, okay. We're gonna pass a rule, and you can't speak anymore.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So he's how it came to be. Interesting. Yep. Well, that's something to be

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: proud of.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: So, with roadside markers, the new markers cost about $3,000 for a double sided that has different tabs on either side. And this includes the pole. We have a great vendor for the poles. They're breakaway poles in case they get hit by cars and trucks, which does periodically happen. The pole will just, is supposed to just crumble and marker flies in the opposite direction. Right now, we have an order, on order eight markers at the foundry. So we've got 20 markers that are either on order, about to be ordered, have been installed this past year, or are at the warehouse just waiting to be installed. We can't install during this time of year because the ground is too hard. Although, I believe we did put one hole in for up in Swanson for an April dedication. We have nine replacement markers that we did last year, and three of those are still at the foundry. Our maintenance takes up a good portion of the funding as well, so we're regularly repainting them, or if they break, or we find out they've got incorrect information, or we need to tell the story better, we send those back. So that could be anywhere from 1,000 to 2,400. So, I know you may not look at it this way, but we have, the governor has put in the reallocation of old unmarked burial money that we have that dates from fiscal year twenty one. And the unmarked burial fund is for just that, when unmarked burials are found. This this image shows in September '20, a very wonderful gentleman was putting an addition on the back of his building, and they discovered 17 graves from the War of eighteen twelve hospital that was in Burlington. So, all work had to stop and we had to excavate. We know there are more burials in his yard. We just excavated and removed the remains from the footprint of his building. And then we went on to reenter them in Lakeview Cemetery along with 20 others that had been dug up when North Avenue was rehabbed some twenty years ago. We do still have two allocations to the unmarked burial fund, so that gives us $50,000 should something be found. But the idea was we would re reallocating $31,000 and 20 of that would go to cover the overages we've had in the roadside historic site markers. So this would be a one time $45,000

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, and so the burials aren't here because that's money that has already been collected? Yes. And there's no new allocation.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: It's no till we need it. I'm not sure. It's not my business, but whether it belongs in the capital bill or not, I have those conversations regularly.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, so even though this shows as an increase, it's technically not an increase. I mean, we don't need new money. Exactly. Okay, and that makes sense to me. Anybody have questions or comments on this one?

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Thank you. So, have 28 active applications. I have 11 on hold that I either do not have an active applicant or the town has asked to wait or we're still doing some research waiting for various approvals. Some of them can take years unfortunately, we get You're everybody doing what, where? Okay. You're mentioning

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: what?

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Yeah, exactly.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: But it's good that you take your time.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: It's really important. We do and we now require that the applicants go to the select board or town managers to get their awareness approvals so that somebody is not just driving down the street and was like, where did that come from? Instead, it's like, I've driven past that and wow, I never knew. Yeah. So now I'm gonna turn it over to Jamie Duggan, who is our director of preservation, to talk about the major maintenance.

[Speaker 0]: Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you for your time.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Thanks for being here.

[Speaker 0]: For the record, I'm Jamie Duggan, Director of Preservation at the State Historic Sites, and I'm here today to talk about some updates with the Historic Sites Maintenance Fund. Where we're at right now, we've been allocated $550,000 for each year of this biennium, and that's consistent with where we've been the last few years. We did have some additional funds in fiscal year 'twenty four that were added in, but this is where we're at now. So, unfortunately, we had a number of expenses and repairs, primarily with HVAC equipment and other infrastructure systems, totaling about $125,000 which takes away funding for other projects where we had plans for it. We had, these were important systems to update. They're part of our operations. Some of these sites are site staff housing, and some of these sites also are leases that we have, for example, the Chiefs Factory in Plymouth. The steam boiler there is a major component of their operations that we provide there. So that has put some stress on our budget, but we have a number of projects that we are working actively on, or just about to. One of the most important ones is the work at the present Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site. We're doing some site renovations on the homestead, which include foundation repairs and adding some drainage. We're going to be removing some of the barriers to accessibility for the pathway through the building. There's, the design dates to the 1950s, and it was sort of leading edge at that time. There's some ramping through some of the rooms, but then there's three steps right in the middle of the path that makes it challenging for folks with other accessibility needs that have to enter the building currently from the backside to get into the center of the building. So we've been looking to do this for a while. Started talking about this project in December 2020. In the five or so years since then, we have put this project out to bid three separate times, and in all of those instances, we've extended the bid windows to try and garner more attention. We had a very hard time finding qualified contractors that were available. Certainly, that period coming out of COVID as well, there was a lot of work happening elsewhere. Where we're at now, though, we have signed contracts. That work is actually going to be starting next week, which we're really excited about. It's been a long time coming. And we have the ability to fund just about all of this tapping into our fiscal year 'twenty five and 'twenty six budgets. We are gonna have a little bit of a shortfall, and I will talk about that in a moment, we'll get to that. I guess first, any questions on that project? We're also, forgot to mention we're improving the, what are gravel walkways across the site right now, and we're gonna be hardening them a bit with a stone impregnated asphalt compound that will, one, make them easier to travel across. The gravel pathways can be challenging for some folks, and we've had a lot of watch outs and issues with rain runoff and storm water. So this will be bringing that site up to a lot better universal accessibility and helping with storm water issues.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That's great, and it's good timing that you're getting this done now because you're gonna have a lot of people.

[Speaker 0]: It is, yeah, and as I said, it's been a long time coming, and this project is currently scheduled to, as I said, start next week, and they're looking to be finished in July. Great. Really? That's Yeah. We're we've got it's a tight schedule, but we're we think that we've got it set up in a way that is not gonna impact the village larger. This building will be off limits during the construction, but we're gonna be doing the pathways before we open the site for the season, there'll be less disruption and Good. Things along that nature. Great. Thank you. Sure. Next project I'd like to tell you about is, at the center of Justin Morrill State Historic Site. This is another project we have been working many years on. It started out with a comprehensive engineering study landscape and the existing conditions there. We have a National Park Service Save America's Treasures federal grant available to us that we are matching partially. That is primarily going to deal with the drainage, subsurface drainage, and a trench wall diversion techniques to keep the water from coming down the hill. We have about two twenty eight acres of water shed above this building, and, we're trying to divert that water away. There was also some damage in the flooding of twenty three that happened there from roof runoff and saturated soil, so we do have a little FEMA public assistance money, with that as well. And we have the ability with the funding that we hold now to be able to complete the grant funded portion of that project. We will have a shortfall for some of the other components which are part of this project, but not within the grant funded portion. Some of the architectural items, we're putting gutters on, restoring gutters to the building that were originally there, that has some heat trace and other things in there to keep things melding and not freezing up on us. And we will have to, we'll have to attack that in later years as money becomes available for that. But we're gonna be sure to be making sure that the pipes that need to be there, for example, the gutters, the gutters won't go on till later, but while we're doing the site work and disrupting things, we'll put those pipes in to be ready to receive gutters later on that will bring that water to dry walls. This is a very significant site, certainly, and it is one that needs a lot of caring and attention to detail. So we're feeling really good about our team there. We're in the midst of the we're at the end of our negotiating with the contracts. I'm waiting for our vendor's best and final offer, hopefully within the next day or so. The plans for that are for the work to commence in the spring, and we'll have the grant funded portion completed by September because that's the deadline for our federal grant. And then again, some of those items under the architectural realm will come year following and years after that. Any questions on that one?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: You're gonna tell us where the, how you're gonna handle the funding that you don't have here. Yes. Yes. Thank you. That is a really important site. I've been there, it's beautiful.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, it's one of my favorites for sure. The setting is unlike a lot of places even as beautiful around Strapper. But the next project we're moving forward is the Old Constitution House. Here we have another federal grant. We have a National Park Service quincentennial grant, and that is going towards improving the energy efficiency and interior climate conditioning that we have there. That building was mothballed during COVID. It was one of the sites we really couldn't support at that time. And unfortunately, when we went to get back in there, we had mold develop in a number of areas. There is not there's antiquated furnace and very little to no ventilation throughout the building. So this project will, be designing a new HVAC system that will allow us to control the climate in there a little bit easier and care for the furnishings and the artifacts that are in that building. We, that building also received damage in the flooding of 'twenty three, and with FEMA's involvement and this, because the corner of this building is within the floodway, the threat is lake running meat behind it and not necessarily coming from a river resource or whatever, we've been there on-site with the flood hazard area and river corridor team, and we are all feeling confident that if we were to pursue the historic exemption that's allowed for that, they agree we do not have to elevate the structure. We are looking at three schemes with our engineer, however, to decide what the best path forward is for the building. We're looking at no elevation, at an elevation to meet the specifications under the FAR rule, which would require us elevating at two and a half to three feet above its current grade now, which would pose significant aesthetic issues and accessibility issues. So we're looking to perhaps go someplace in the middle, in a way that we'll be filling in the foundation and elevating, but we don't want the framing to be sitting right on top of that foundation. We don't want the wood framing, for example, to rot out, so we're looking to design some sort of interstitial space that would likely also have flood vents to allow for some additional flood proofing inside of the building to prevent water from getting in. We are negotiating at the moment with our building science expert and the team that they have pulled together, And we're hoping to have a contract ready to send to the Park Service. These projects that have federal grants, we have to, we have to go to the Park Service and get their approval of, the scopes of work and the contracts before, as part of our grant agreement. So we'll be waiting for that. And that work will be starting later on, I believe, in this summer and continuing on through next year.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: There will be a soft opening in 2027 to commemorate the Vermont constitution in July. And we're redoing all the exhibits and deaccessioning things that this became a catch all for anyone's old stuff. Yeah. So we're trying to figure out what really belongs there, what story this should be telling.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Do we know the length of time the soft opening is going to be open?

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: It depends on the condition of the building at the time, but likely we're gonna be restricted down to just a few weeks in July.

[Speaker 0]: Okay.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: And so this reenactment and things like that.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. And the hopes would be to turn the building back open fully to the public in 2028. Okay. Or as soon as possible. No, no, no,

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: Probably room by room.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Has there been any, satin, I know you're constricted a little bit, any thought of keeping it open longer than a few weeks? We

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: haven't really talked about it, But we definitely can. It it does depend on what kind of work is happening. If we can get the one room to the right of the door in better condition than or even the left of the

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: door. Sure.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: One of those front are the rooms. Mhmm. Then then we could keep it open longer. Yeah.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Just, I'm giving you any substituents.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: No. Totally understand. And we're gonna be having public meetings and educating people on what we're finding. We're doing Denver technology and we're doing, we just recently tested to make sure that the materials in there were not asbestos contaminated, things like that. So we're learning about this site as we touch everything.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: And let me also say that I appreciate exponentially the work that you're doing on this. Obviously the community has been very involved in getting this open because of the historic nature of it and the two hundred and fiftieth kind of feverish shift. So I appreciate it. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the work that you've been doing.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Thank you. And we're also going to be doing tree work. You can see some of the trees in the top image are scary big.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Very big.

[Speaker 0]: Well, but very straight eastern white pine as well, and so we will not cut this tree down and chip it up. We will likely try to saw some building material out of it to keep as back supplied for any repairs you need across the sites. We did that a few years ago when we took some trees down at the Morrill Homestead, and I still have barn boards and dimensional lumber stickered up in one of our barns, is a great savings for us because this is not the kind of material you can find at your typical building center.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Right. Those trees dated to the same of the house.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: 1858, yeah.

[Speaker 0]: So, they were there as part of Senator Memorial's time on-site. That's great. And those trees are certainly been there for a while as well.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: I also wanted to add that the pride tree that was planted in the front yard a couple years ago, maybe two years ago, caught a disease and died, so that is going to be replaced with a different type of tree.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So let me ask a question I had, but a different way. Do any of these sites have, like, friends that where you have donations that can be some of them have

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: friends groups and they'll support small projects or give a little bit of funding to our larger efforts. Same background. Yes, and traditionally back in the day, they used to be the conduit for getting grants because we couldn't as a state. That happened at Morrill and at Calvin Coolidge.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right, but so we rely less on that now? Yes.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Able to get a lot of these grants ourselves now through the National Park Service and congressionally directed spending. And some of these organizations are really very, very small and don't have the capacity. The friends at the Morrill Homestead are probably our most active and they are the ones that do the events at those sites right now. Okay, so

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: that you're not opposed to having them. It's just you don't manage them or you coordinate with them.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: We coordinate, we have agreement documents with them, because we wanna make sure that what's being done at the sites or how they're assisting is consistent and okay with risk management and insurance and safety all of that.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And just telling the story the right way too. Yes, yeah, so I was just, I wasn't sure if there was a reason to not have those grooves. There is not. Okay, alright, that's good to know. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Sure. Any other questions on the constitution items? Okay. So, I had mentioned some of those shortfalls and the way we're looking to address that currently is anticipation of using almost all of our fiscal year twenty seven monies coming in July. With that, though, we feel very confident we can fully complete the Coolidge Homestead project.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: We will

[Speaker 0]: be able to complete the Old Constitution House project, and we will be definitely able to complete the grant funded portion of the Morrill project. There are some items that are not in the grant funded scope that will have to happen as part of this first phase, but we we have a deadline of September for that grant, and so the goal is to get that grant funded work done by September. Then, as I've mentioned, the additional money is needed for the architectural work, which certainly came in higher than we were projecting even just a few

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: years

[Speaker 0]: ago, we'll be able to address that in future years' budgets. This does make things very tight for us, in that there's not a whole lot of wiggle room. And as I started, we had $124,000 of unexpected costs, so there is some concern with that, but we feel like we're at a good place now to get a lot of these major projects that have been sort of walking towards. It's a start for a very long time, and so that is really exciting for us. Well, madam chair, I'll be honest with you.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: They have taken care of all of the funding in my district, I you know, I'm I'm good.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Well, thank you for representing your district. We don't have all the district's representatives, so grateful for your work throughout the state.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you. Another big project you're all aware of is the Bennington Battle Monument, and where we're at with that, after doing our comprehensive investigation and analysis over the last few years, we are at a point now where we're gathering energy again to move the next phase forward. That involves a number of things, monitoring the building. We are swapping out for better equipment with greater precision and accuracy, and allow our engineer to host the readings as opposed to in the last contract that we were working on, a big contract that was subbed out to a different vendor. We have seismic studies going on. The crew was down there just a week or a couple of weeks ago to do some exploration and investigation to make sure that some of the recent nearby seismic events within the Greater New England area haven't had any impact. We will have the high ropes team come back, the industrial ropes team that rappelled down the building. We're doing that annually at the beginning of each season. They will be there to continue to do survey, to document changes over time, as well as any removals of loose material. That's been really successful for us. The first time that Vertical Access, which they're a nationally known firm, the first time they came, they removed approximately five to six five gallon buckets of material off the monument in their visit, which was pretty substantial in some of some of there were some pieces that are of of larger size. When they came last year, they had just about five little cardboard boxes of material, so it really, to me, it shows that money is well spent removing any potential hazards for the public and being able to have that really close view a couple 100 feet up in the air where I can't really see has been really great to see how the deterioration is tracking. The elevator has caused a tremendous challenge for us in the past year. The elevator was down for a very good portion of the season. We spent over $54,000 to deal with some of those aspects. And unfortunately, we still don't have an elevator that we fully can trust and we're trying to continue to do some work to make that a dependable tool. You can see with just the visitation and revenue, this is just at Bennington last year, and that had a significant impact on the revenues which go into our special fund, is what pays our seasonal employees and keeps people there to keep the public safe. So, this is something that we're going to have to continue to manage over time until that restoration is fully done. We have an elevator that is inside the monument that's really working in outdoor conditions, and that has continually been a problem for us. And a drop in visitation. That's the elevator.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Definitely the elevator, yes.

[Speaker 0]: We didn't charge admission or charged a dollar.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: We charged $2 and then we went to a dollar and then we went to nothing Yeah. To speak to get in the base of the monument to see the exhibit. It's just unsafe. You know, sometimes we can get it working and then it stops. It's better just to not run it until we can get the engineers and the elevator company there. And there's a point where it's gonna cost us more to just keep repairing it while it's still unsafe, and we're just gonna have to stop. Like, it's not money we wanna keep using, wasting. Right. Do

[Speaker 0]: have an elevator specialist that we're waiting a while for this contract to be finalized, but we'll be bringing them in to do an audit of the elevator to basically assess its current conditions, and then I'd ask them to provide recommendations for how we could make it more resilient, a little more durable in this day.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: I've heard several numbers of toll restoration for the monument. What would that be?

[Speaker 0]: The last number that was bandied about was about 40,000,000. Okay. But I will preface that, that that is, I would say, conservative engineer's math. And we really, there's a lot more work that needs to be done to really get those numbers a bit more accurate. But it will be a large, tremendously large project regardless. The

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: monitoring and the archaeology and some other work that's gonna be happening this summer is being paid by congressionally directed spending from Senator Sanders of half $1,000,000.

[Speaker 0]: That's great. And we also have some of the monies that was originally allocated for the fencing, we're using to help with, we have the fence and the covered walkway up, those will stay up until there's a larger construction project happening, and those continue to be inspected and checked periodically. We'll be doing archaeology this summer on the lawn around the monument. Whatever ends up becoming an enclosure system or a means to help drive the monument out is going to have to be founded on the lawn there. And so we're gonna have to do some geotechnical we've already done some drilling, to understand the bedrock, but that is another design process, and that'll be part of this next phase.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: We also wanna do the archaeology to find the storehouse, which was the reason for the Battle of Bennington. Oh, right. And my hope is that we can outline that in brick. Part of it might be under the road.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That'd be great.

[Speaker 0]: What's really interesting is the monument was built right in the middle of Monument Road, so the road used to continue from where it is now and you turn to the right or the left when you're coming up Monument Avenue, it used to continue straight through the monument and down the back hill. So there's actually a number of old foundations that are adjacent in that neighborhood, and so that's another thing that we just, we have to make sure we know where they are, whether they're going be in the way of a footing pier or something, and just to understand what's there a little bit better. And so, with those two funds that we have available, we are able to move forward with this next phase of recommendations from the engineering study, where we're essentially going to try and figure out, design a monument enclosure system that'll help start to dry it out. In order to do that, we have to do some of the work in phase B, kind of concurrent with some of this phase one stuff because they inform each other. We need to know how we're going to dry it out, what the system will be, design that, so then we know how long it'll take to dry, and then what some of the constraints are. So, the good news is we can start moving on that again, and start building our team, our design team for this next We also have plans to do some community informational meetings and get some feedback from other talent and other interests, other folks' interests. Good. And one last project to tell you about, which is actually a great case for us because we have a lot of money available that came from elsewhere. Laura has done a fantastic job applying for and garnering these federal grants. We received a very large Emergency Stabilization Historic Preservation Fund grant from the National Park Service, over $800,000 We also have a private donor who has committed a half million dollars to this particular site, was adamant that the money needs to be spent here, which is really great because this is a site that has not been fully open to the public ever. It has a number of condition and access issues. However, it is a very intact home from 1785. They're early in the development of Vermont, certainly in this area. And, we're not looking to restore the building. We are looking to stabilize it, certainly on the exterior envelope, make those improvements, and waterproof it to some extent in air sealing. But we're going to leave the rest of the house as it is, so it can be used as a study house. There are intact materials and finishes in there from the eighteenth century, early nineteenth century that are significant, and because it was a farmhouse for so long, it has never really been updated. So there's a remarkable amount of integrity in the structure, and this is a really great opportunity for us, again, because we have a lot of money there to be able to do a lot of good things, and so we're in, there aren't as many hard deadlines for this particular project, so we are, it'll probably, again, come towards the end of some of those other ones that have deadlines, but we are ready to start making a difference at this place as well.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That's great. That's very cool.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: And so, would kids be able to, I

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: mean, older kids. Yeah. Just to see something real. Yes. I think some

[Speaker 0]: of this big stabilization work is work that's gonna have to be done by contractors. Yeah. But the idea is that other work, for example, the window restoration, those are things that we can do on-site and that we can have training opportunities for young folks, for craftspeople. I think the model of how we will try to achieve a lot of this is to provide educational opportunities and advocate for preservation as much as we can. So there's a lot of potential here and it's one of my favorite spots.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And the state owns it, right? Correct. And I'm so glad you got a donor because I just want to keep pushing that.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Do we know who the donor is or can they, were they anonymous?

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: We know who she is. Yes.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: So that's anonymous. Yes.

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: Donor wishes to remain anonymous. Okay.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: I would just like to thank you, possibly.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Well, you can send our thanks now, and then we can send Yeah. Like, know, anything

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: along the too, Carla. And we are gonna be doing a press release for the disaster supplemental funding, and I am trying to set up a meeting with her and I'm gonna ask her like, can can we include you and I mention appreciate it. Because this is a big deal.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Yes.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Very much so. And so the donor, sometimes things get dicey with donors because they want to do Absolutely. Things in a certain way, But this sounds like a really, Our sounds like it's a good

[Speaker 0]: mandate was that the money needs to be used at this site. And that's great. For stabilization and, Which is our greatest need there, so Good.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Good. Well, that's fantastic. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: I think that's all I have for me today. I will

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: You can hit. Okay. Oh, you hit two last We met. That's fine.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I'll pass it over to Laura. There we go, that's what I wanna say,

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: thank you.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Yes, so following along, what you've been mentioning the whole time is, we have requested, and the governor was very anxious in support of this, that we be allowed to solicit, actually do fundraising, which is not presently in our statute. We can accept grants and gifts, donations, and everything else, but we cannot actively solicit for funding. So, the proposal is to may accept and solicit, and also specify what the fundraising project is going to be, which I think is a really great thing to get people excited and create the partnerships. I've seen some fundraising efforts, you know, you you buy a a shingle and your name goes underneath it. We could do something in the monument, like, you know, you get a stone and

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Member)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I mean, not of the monument.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: No. Not not

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: not Yeah. Like, a brick in the strap.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Pockets of all of the stone. Yeah. No. Just it's free. Yeah. Yes. And Mary Lou, our site administrator,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: has an

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: idea of, you know, writing children's names on a on one that would be a model of it. Right. Yeah. So this would really help us a lot. And it would be for the state historic sites and the archaeology heritage center.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: We I'm sorry. Say that again.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: The archaeology heritage center. Okay. Everything that is an artifact that is recovered from an excavation is if it's federal or state, gets turned over to our archaeology heritage center where we are maintaining an archive of those item for study, for examination, for learning more about Vermonters. And so that we could also have projects that do that. The Heritage Center is located over in Barrie.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Is it near where the start?

[Speaker 0]: It's in

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: the same building. Perfect.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That makes sense. Because we're taking care of that building.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Yes. We

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: can't But not flood anymore. It's very

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: cold right now. In the of the roof work. So we're fully in favor of the way this was proposed and and and written.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That's great. I'm really, really glad. It would

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: make a difference because I was starting. I'm like, okay, we need to fundraise. And our legal counsel was like, you can't. Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah. That's good.

[Speaker 0]: This makes a lot of much scarier when I saw this.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right. Yeah. And because there are a lot of residents and visitors who want to to help. People want to help. Yes. And if

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: we do an actively well, with the monument, our plan is to contract someone who would be our fundraising manager, who would organize and tell us exactly how to do this, make sure that we're including people in the correct way. And Jamie mentioned the community meetings, are hiring a facilitator who can, who's worked with the park service, National Park Service, who's gonna be working with us, so that we'll have

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: a

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: very organized way. We're gonna explain what we've learned in the studies. We're going to engage people like, what do you want to see happen here? This is your monument. And then we'll have two of those and more if needed, and then in the end, we will, in the fall, present to them, this is what we've heard and this is where we're going.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That's true.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: We it's in our DNA to restore it, but we need to make sure that that fits with what everybody else wants, and then fundraising would fit into that. Right. Perfect. It's great.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Before we go off of this, one question regarding the I suppose as is now accepting grants, gifts, donations, etcetera, and it's for maintaining establishing maintaining displays and exhibits at historic sites. Does that include historic commemoration events? And I'm specifically talking about the two hundred

[Speaker 0]: and fiftieth. So would this fit into that as well?

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: It could. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Absolutely. So that we could have a ball or something. Everywhere. Just Taking our notes. You

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: very Yes.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: So that's all of section four. I will then turn it over to Caitlin Portkins, who is our tax credit and grants coordinator, or we call her our carrot, because she's giving out money, or she may be spending She will be there this

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: time. She's okay.

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: Sorry, we can't

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: have parents from the state.

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: Thank you, Wilbert. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. Great to be with you. For the record, I'm Caitlin Morgans, and I'm with the Division for Historic Preservation. This section five of the capital budget, these are two of the different building communities grants programs that are in the capital budget. So, I'm going to just give you a brief update and overview of both of these programs. The first is the Historic Preservation Grant Program, which was established in 1986. This program offers fiftyfifty matching grants to nonprofit organizations and municipalities to support capital projects to make repairs and restoration of public buildings. This program was funded with $300,000 in the current fiscal year, and the recommendation is to level fund it with $300,000 in this second year biennium. So, I know these numbers are probably pretty small up there on the screen, but this is just a chart showing the funding for the last ten years of the program. So number of applications we received, number of grants awarded, amounts requested awarded, and then the total project costs. Since the inception of the program, we have given out grants to over six seventy preservation projects and over $7,000,000 in total grant funding. So, despite some upheavals with pandemics and floods, we have continued to see steady interest in the program, and it has remained quite competitive. We always get more in requests than we have available to grant out. Unfortunately, this means that the Advisory Council for Historic Preservation who makes the funding decisions, they have to turn away projects that we would love to support. I did want to just give you a highlight of a few projects that we funded in our most recent round. Can we just go back to that just for a little bit?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Sure. Because, it looks like in more recent years we're finding a higher proportion of the folks who are applying and we're still getting a good amount of applications. I guess we are like we had 56 in 2016.

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: Yeah, we did have a bump up in the amount of funding that we had. It was at 225,000, and then it got bumped up to 300,000, which has allowed us to fund more projects. Projects.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And we actually tried to have we tried to increase that amount last year because it is for a state that has so many wonderful historic buildings, 300,000 is minimal, but I'm so happy with how you manage it and just the, I was a customer for one of these and just the way that you come out and you help people work on the application, it's really, really wonderful. It's a great, great program.

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: Thank you.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: And these are productive buildings. These are town These are meeting houses. These are churches. Yeah,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: the economic development impact on this is immense. We don't really even look at that, this is an economic development Certainly.

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: Yes. Absolutely. And these are buildings that the communities have a whole lot of pride in. So it's really wonderful to see. I you know, one of the best parts of the job is when I get to see the completed projects, which is not all of them sadly, but, you know, to just get to talk to folks at the end of the project and see their joy and pride in their accomplishments. So this would be wonderful. We did award our most recent round of grants back in December. That's always fun because it's right around Christmas time, I get to send out Merry Christmas, here's your grand. So this is just a selection of the projects that we funded most recently. Up in Brownington, the Old Stonehouse Museum, this is for a window restoration project. In addition to fixing the windows, they will be putting protective store windows on the building, both to protect the historic windows, but also to protect the collections within the buildings. They'll have a special sort of UV protection for the important collections that are housed within the building. And then in Middlebury at the Illsley Library, I don't know if folks are familiar with their big project, but they have embarked on a really large project to put an addition on the historic library. They've worked very closely with our office to ensure that that new addition is compatible and sensitive to the historic building. Once they started the construction of that project, they discovered that the roof of the original library, which was its original slate roof, was in a lot worse condition than they thought. Initially, they thought they had allocated a little bit of money for some repair work on that slate roof, but discovered that it really was past the end of its life, and so are doing a full replacement of the slate roof. And that's the portion of the project that we'll be funding with the grant. So that's great. And then finally, the Union Meeting Hall in Ferrisburg was originally built as a church, went through several different ownerships in its lifetime. It's now owned by the town and leased to a nonprofit, Friends of the Union Meeting House Group, that has been doing an amazing job. They've raised a ton of money to support restoration of the building and reactivate it, get people using it again, and the $20,000 grant that we gave to them will support masonry restoration of the exterior of the building. So that's the Historic Preservation Grant Program. Any other questions on that one?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Just accolades.

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: Okay, so, shifting gears to the farm grant program. Very similar, it was established in 1992, again, we offer fiftyfifty matching grants of up to $20,000 to support repair and restoration of historic agricultural buildings. These can go to anybody who owns historic agricultural building. We call it the barn grant, but it really could be any agricultural building. So it could be a chicken coop or a sugar shack, even a silo, any historic agricultural building. The barn does not need to be an active agricultural use to qualify for the program, although those that are being used for active agricultural use are more competitive in the scoring criteria for our drinks. We do really love to support those farms that are still being used for agriculture. And similar to the Historic Preservation Grant Program, we have $300,000 to award in the recommended fiscal year budget. And that's level funding from this year. So, again, we have the chart of the last ten years of funding. We'll actually be awarding our upcoming fiscal year of funding in February. So, I didn't include those later this month. It is February. So, I didn't include those numbers on the chart just yet, but this is the ten previous years. Since the program started, we've provided over $5,000,000 in grants through the program to support over 500 projects. Again, this program has always been competitive and popular. I will say there's been a slight dip in the number of applications over the last three years or so. I attribute this mostly to the fact that folks have been having a real struggle finding contractors to give them estimates for their projects. One of the requirements of the application is that they provide at least one estimate so we ensure that they have a realistic budget for their project. And a lot of these projects require pretty specialized contractors, people with expertise on timber framing, for example, and there just aren't enough of those wonderful We have some wonderful timber framers in Vermont, but not enough of them, I would say. And so that has proven to be a barrier for people. Sadly, it's not a problem that I know how to fix. But, despite this slight dip, you'll see from the numbers that we're still oversubscribed. And again, this is the 300,000 we have available is an increase from the two and twenty five thousand that it was at a few years, I think as in FY 2022 was when that changeover happened.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right, so you probably put these numbers in whatever materials you have when you go to events, right? Just leveraging, I mean this is a really good use of state funds, right? Yeah. So, it'll be good for the public to know as much as possible about that. And then just one other thought I have is, if you haven't already done this, you know, have the GIS If you can have historic sites that state has helped pay for basically, have those on that map. Do you have, are they already on the We

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: currently do have a map on our website that shows, I think for I think it's probably for the last ten years now, because it's been basically since I ran the program. It's, you know so you can click on the dot and there's a little picture and a blurb about the project, and it's different colors for each year, you can kind of see over the years what we have funded. Integrating that with a larger historic preservation mapping effort is something that we'd love to do.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So is your map part of the

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: GIS, the state's GIS? It is a GIS map, but it's not part of the planning atlas.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right, so I was thinking of planning, but the actual GIS, you know the group that does the GIS?

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: Yeah. Work with BCG.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. So that people can access it. Yep. Because that's not hard to access.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: No, no, not at all. We definitely can expand it so it'll show up in more places to see what And it also helps for economic purposes. This is not the only funding that goes to these projects. So they get a whole bucket of money and it'd be really great for economic development to know, you know, all the different things that we're doing. And Caitlin has oversight for five years after a project is completed.

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: Right. So if there's a future project, just ensuring that the preservation standards are still being met so that we've, you know, we're using our state funding wisely. Right.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And it's only five years, which is actually pretty minimal for So that's, that's a good deal, but it's probably enough time to get them used to the new system.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Yeah, and sometimes people come back, sometimes they go to the other community grants. Caitlin works really closely with the Arts Council and BGS because you can only get one of those grants in a year. So we need to make sure we're not awarding to the same Yeah,

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: so sometimes people will get multiple grants and in terms of continued interaction with us, we always are available to provide technical assistance. So I have people that come back and they're not necessarily wanting to apply for another grant, but they just have a question about this thing has, issue has cropped up in our building, like what should we do about it? And I can help direct them maybe to other grant sources and give them advice on how to pursue the project and that kind of thing. That is great. So here again, have just a few sample of some projects that we funded in our last round of funding. So this is the Allen Farm in Jamaica, which is an active farm. And the grant went to a number of different elements. There's some drainage and foundation work, as well as a little bit of structural repair to the framing of the barn, and then some exterior siding repairreplacement in kind. Valley Ridge Farm in Orwell, the grant is going to support work on the cupola, which you can kind of see behind the tree there, The leaves on the tree. This is an amazing property that has several, I think at least seven agricultural including a curved sheep barn, which is the only one I've ever seen before. And then finally, the Remington Williamson Farm in Huntington, the grant is going to support work on the slate roof and the cupola of that barn. So I wanted to just end with a recent success story of a project that was completed. This is the Braintree Hill Meeting House in Braintree. It was built in 1845 and replaced an earlier meeting house on the same site. It was used as a combination meeting house church for many years, as with many Vermont churches, especially in our rural areas, the congregation dwindled over the years, and eventually the ownership of the building went back to the town. And then in 1970, they passed it on to the Braintree Historical Society, who still continues to own and maintain the building. So they have their museum in the lower level of the building that houses their artifacts, and they also do a lot of public programming to bring people to the site. I thought this was great, their list of things that they do. They have a bluegrass concert series in the summertime between June and August. They have history themed bike rides, cemetery tours, an annual community cider pressing party, and then of course open houses and an annual open home day old home day, excuse me, which marked its one hundredth anniversary in 2024. Wow. So really great public programming to again bring people to the site. As a historical society in a pretty small community, they've done an amazing job maintaining this building over the years, but they did recently discover that the slate roof on the building was at the end of its life. The slates were installed over a wood shake roof, which is actually a pretty common thing that we see on a lot of older buildings in Vermont. Unfortunately, as those wood shingles deteriorate, the fasteners that are holding the slates on the building fail, and while you can continue to make repairs, it becomes sort of a losing proposition. You're spending an awful lot of money to constantly be replacing slates. So they determined they had come to a point where repair was not a financially very wise decision anymore and they were going to have to do the whole replacement of the roof. They partnered with This is one, to Laura's point, that they sought grants high and low because this was going to be a really major project for them. They did get support through the town. The voters approved a local appropriation for this project. So, you know, the community was bought in. They also received a major federal grant through the National Park Service, the Paul Bruin Historic Revitalization Grant, which provided a big chunk of funding for this. And then our state grant of $20,000 built in that last piece they needed to get this project done. They were working, as you can see in the middle picture there, they were working on this in the wintertime, but they did complete the roof this past spring. So the building will have a nice roof for the next one hundred and fifty years. Did

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: they remove the wood shingles?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: They did.

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: They did. And put another layer of sheathing before they put the new slates on so they have a really good solid surface to be nailed into this time.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So that should last a hundred here? Should last at least a hundred. Yes. No, it's not a joke. It's the slave does that.

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: That's all I had to say. Happy to answer questions as well.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Thank you so much. This is really, it's always nice to have you on. You've been doing such good work and you do it at very low cost in my opinion. Any other comments? Okay. All right. Thank you so much.

[Laura V. Trieschmann, State Historic Preservation Officer]: Thank you.

[Caitlin Corkins, Grants Coordinator (Division for Historic Preservation)]: Thank you Yes. For sharing

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: All right. Does anybody have anything else for today? We are adjourned.