Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: Thank you very much. Alright.

[Robert Plunkett, Vice Chair]: And here

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: we are at

[Robert Plunkett, Vice Chair]: Senate Institutions, Thursday, March 12. We are going to be hearing today about capital budget adjustments, specifically hearing from the Vermont Housing Conservation Board regarding Section 10 and an update from next year.

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: It away. It's forward to yours. Okay. For the record, I'm Gus Seelig. I'm the Executive Director of the Vermont Housing Conservation Board. With me are Liz Leeson, Director of our Forest Liability Program, who manages a water quality grant program for farmers. And Stacy Stabilia, who is our Associate Director of Conservation and that's the capital of the funds in conservation that have water quality benefits. We're here to discuss our role in water quality. We want to talk at the moment about why we're the capitals at all and who we are as an organization that tries to achieve multiple public levels. As we move through the presentation, we're an organization very much focused on community development, actual community development. Our enabling statute tells us not just to conserve land or build housing, but to do it in a way that promotes the economy and promotes quality of life in the state. And in carrying out the issue, we think that we do enhance the economy and we do protect vulnerable. Another priority of this administration has been to focus on the needs of making the state a welcoming place in a place that young people want to be in. And we're going to switch the order of presentation of order because at 03:00, we was asked to depart for another meeting. So our slides are gonna be a little bit out of the order. And I'll apologize to those of you who've seen some of these slides before that the chair wanted me to talk about housing. We've been with several of you in the ag committee. So you're gonna have the benefit of having some reruns here, but two members of the committee have not heard from us before. So this opening picture, I think speaks to multiple conservation benefits and caring about the next generation. Have had an AmeriCorps program for about thirty years and group of AmeriCorps graduates decided that the state needed a mentoring program for young people. They founded the Dream Program, established their own nonprofit DreamWorks at affordable housing sites for Wolfie State. And about fifteen years ago, they came to us and said, these kids that we mentored really need a summer camp experience. So we helped them with conservation dollars, buy some land along the lake to establish that summer camp. Last year, we helped them buy an island in that lake. So very much focused on, we use the America program often as one that attracts young people, often first jobs in their career or second jobs. Liz is one of our AmeriCorps alums and now is a member of our management team, but she worked in AmeriCorps, was it eighteen years ago? Something like that. Working with kids through the Panama Trail Association.

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: I was seven when she was there.

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: Don't think she wants more than 25 today. Yes, I think seven today. Here's our mission. And again, we invest in conservation and rural community development and housing affordability. And this picture again speaks to multiple goals being met at the same time. This is a 150 acre property in Morristown. And what we're going to do here is conserve about 150 acres that protects the Memorial River and water quality benefits there. But there are also eight vacation rentals on the property. We're gonna turn, this is the only time in my career we're turning vacation homes, it's permanent year round residences that would be permanently affordable. So we think that's an unusual thing, but a really good thing at this time that so many properties in the state have become vacation homes, have become Airbnb to turn her back into houses for, you know, honors. Here's we get funded in two ways. One is through the property transfer tax. I'm sorry, August. I mean, the

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major, Member]: the what you just talked about, I mean, it's a actually, I've never heard of that. Is is that happening quite a bit or is this kind of a new phenomenon?

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: This is a rare thing, but we we always look for opportunities where we can combine housing and conservation. So long ago, Senator, in your district, there was a farm we can serve in Norwich and the Upper Valley Land Trust carved off 10 acres and 13 or 14 permanently affordable homes were built at Star Lake Village. Three or four of them were built by Habitat for Humanity. We're always looking for opportunities to have both our housing and conservation missions happen. It's rare, but this was one of the great things about this was this is a big priority for an organization called Stowe Land Trust. They brought a lot of philanthropic and fundraising capacity from the Stowe community. And that because they had raised so much money for the conservation that made it possible for a housing partner to buy the eight homes at a reasonable price and resell them at a reasonable price with our assistance. So this is not something that happens every day but it just try to be creative, we try to respond. In real estate, it's always about opportunity. Sure. And sometimes you have a special opportunity and you try to take advantage of it.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major, Member]: Thank you.

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: We're in two sec, we get funded in two ways, the property transfer tax and then we're in the capital bill this year just in the clean water section. One of the rationales for why we're in the capital bill is that the things we invest in in terms of real estate will still benefit from owners when the bonds are paid off. So when we're conserving land, there'll be a benefit twenty years from now. When we're investing in housing that has to stay affordable in perpetuity, public will still have benefit after the bonds are paid off. To speak to the housing mission, it happens in a number of different ways. Left to right in this picture is a new shelter being built by The Haven and Hartford. This is recovery residence in Bennington, one of two recovery residences in Bennington and among four we've underground the city. Downtown project in Windsor, next to the where the old diner was, a difficult dilapidated and deluded site of being picked up. And then the last picture is Bay Ridge, which is a, I think it's a 94 unit neighborhood in Shelburne that an old motel used to sit on that was used for about twelve years by the state of Vermont for people in the GA program. There was a five acre site and during the pandemic, we moved that program across the road to a different motel and built 94 homes, including 26 home ownership opportunities that I think speak to our workforce housing mission in a big way. Although the housing and home ownership, the rental and home ownership part of this, 90% of the folks who live there are in the workforce. But among the buyers was a state trooper, two people who work at Lake Robin, a chef at Shelburne Farms, a teacher, a nurse. So the full range of the workforce and a childcare worker, single mom working with childcare bought up over there. This is what we've done with the resources you've provided us writ large over the course of the last five years through the pandemic when there was a ton of funding. And what I would ask you to take away from this slide is we have a large focus on home ownership and on homeowners and manufactured home communities. We work on rental housing, but we also work with people who are really struggling. Some of you probably met the parents group that has been working around this building on resources for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We've now done, you've funded three feasibility for three pilot projects a few years ago. We've now funded six projects across the state with this group to house this very vulnerable population that a generation ago lived in the Brandon Training School. At either end of the state, we are involved often in what are white elephant structures. Senator Ingalls is very familiar with Sacred Heart in Newport. He tells me he's, as a realtor, brought a lot of people through who could never make the members work. Ben High and Bennington, San Bacon for thirty years and is now being redeveloped as housing, as well as other community uses, think of a childcare facility among other things. And this is who we serve and this just tries to take the lingo we talk in about area median income and translate it into what does that mean in terms of incomes we serve and occupations that can be served by our programs. And when you look at our rental portfolio, what you'll find is we house a lot of disabled and retired people, but we are also housing what I think of as the essential workforce, people, cafeteria workers, working in restaurants, all the essential jobs that you can't do your work remotely, but that we all depend upon. Just to tell you things are happening all over the state on June 3 in Waterbury, we will open 26 homes and a fellow who's interested in radio in the committee, this site is where Rusty Parker lived all his life and then could walk over to WDEV. Stone Rock Meadows is a 200 plus unit development in Middlebury that we were the anchor of. And what we try to do often is to be the catalyst that helps a larger project happen. In Putney, after two years in the courts, we're building 25 new homes. And this is again, the dual goals that you asked me about. One acre will be left as a community garden, and this is where the farmer's market happens in the summer as well there. And then post apartments is the old VFW building that will open, is getting leased up right now in Burlington. Across our conservation mission, the thing that I'm most proud of, I think this year was our support for Vermont Adaptive, which works at no cost with veterans who've been disabled. Their services are free. When I speak to rural community development, the East Catalyst General stores among a half a dozen kinds of projects like this we've done around the state where the community raised a ton of money and we help them through the historic preservation part of our mission and the housing part of our mission because there's three apartments here that got revitalized along with the community reopening the storm. The Whitestone Brook speaks to the part of the capital budget we're in, in Brattleboro. This was the home of Sersasimo Lumberg and a lot of burn was removed, a lot of fill was removed, it's 12 acres. It'll now function as a park, but it's also gonna give Whitestone Brook a place to go when it rains too hard. And then Mighty Food Farm in Shadsturry is a young woman, maybe she's not quite as young as I remember when I met her, but she'd been farming on leased land in a neighboring panel for about a decade before she was able to use Farmland Access Program to buy this one. So with that, I'm gonna stop, turn it over to Liz, and we'll flip ahead to the- Okay. Your part of this presentation. That's good. Thanks, Gus.

[Liz Gleason, Director, VHCB Farm & Forest Viability Program]: My phone just to keep me on track with time. Alright. For the record, I'm Liz Lisa. I run our farm and forest viability program and rural economic development initiative at BHCB. It's time to be getting here. Great. There

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: you go. Okay.

[Liz Gleason, Director, VHCB Farm & Forest Viability Program]: I'm gonna tell you about our work generally in this program, and then there's a slide specifically on the capital funding and water quality grants that we make. But our program is broader than just the water quality grants. Farm and Forest Liability Program was established almost twenty four years ago after we had been doing farmland conservation for quite a while, and there was a big group of people that got together and realized there was more support that we wanted to offer to ensure that not only would we have land and agriculture in perpetuity, but that the businesses operating on that land were able to navigate really intense market pressures, and have buyer businesses growing food for their communities. And then we added forest about twelve years ago in an effort to work with the whole spectrum of folks in the working landscape. We also work with food businesses that are processing a lot of local food. So farm food and forest. But we couldn't add food to the title because that would be too long. You can see on this slide, this is Reebot Farm down in Brattleboro. We worked with Reebok Farm a couple of years after they got started. They are a small dairy. They also have a farm store. They grow a small amount of veggies, and they really needed to figure out how to take this business to the scale that was right for them, that would be profitable, allow them to pay themselves, allow them to sell food in their community. So they did business planning with us and really helped to figure out what that profitable stage or size was for them. And we also run a small grant program that when folks finish a business plan, they can apply for a small amount of capital to implement key projects. So we help them buy a walk in freezer for their new farm store that brings people from Downtown Battleboro and the surrounding area out to their really incredibly beautiful farm. You can see a few examples down at the bottom there on the kind of impact that we track. These are all very financial. We also track impacts around quality of life and definitely find that there's a lot of benefit to working with a business coach that's more around quality of life. Figuring out how to take a day off, figuring out how to be able to go see your kids play a soccer game, whatever it is, that makes your business more sort of holistically viable in the long term. Because we really want these businesses to be able to succeed over the long term. And in the short term, what we see in the year after completing our program is that last year, 71% of businesses we worked with grew. A lot of people do come to us in growth stage, and some people actually come to us to shrink, to get to a more effective size for where they're at. 80% added new jobs. And on average, the folks who worked with increased their sales by over $50,000 This doesn't have any data about profitability, but we see really strong profitability increases too. People accessed over almost $5,500,000 in grants and loans. We do a lot of support to people who are accessing capital, how do you prepare a really good loan package, how do you get people the sort of business and financial management skills that make them a really good candidate for loans and grants and other capital? This is a slide that just sort of shows our structure as a program. The Farm and Forest Liability Program is housed at the HCV, but we use a collaborative network structure to deliver the shared program model. So these five organizations in the middle here, we've been working with quite some time, for quite some time, and they all have staff, they all have folks on staff who say every year, we want to deliver the Farm and Forest Liability Program at NOFA, or the InterVale, or UBM, or CAE, or Land for Good. And they work together too. We do really robust professional development to make sure that they're growing their skills, that they can adequately refer people back and forth. A lot of times, we do a lot of cancer planning where we're working with multiple generations at once, and we might even bring in two business planners, one to work with the accident and the other drink. And then we know there's people who aren't ready for this program, might even be like too big for this program, they need a different kind of coach. We also fund other organizations. So those are those other partners providing really wide range of technical assistance to businesses at all scales and of all types in the working landscape. And we work with usually between one hundred and fifty and two hundred businesses a year. This is getting to the capital dollars, water quality grants. In 2017, when we were sort of turning as a state to figure out how to respond to phosphorus in Lake Champlain, and what we were going to do about it collectively, as part of the clean water budget, we were we are basically part of many, many people that I'm sure you hear a lot about who are helping to implement the clean water planning around Lake Champlain and lots of other waterways. And we were tasked to develop a farmer water quality grant program that could both help augment existing funding sources for this kind of thing, like NRCS and the Agency of Ag's best management practices, or work with folks who had really important water quality projects on that farm that might not be a great fit for NRCS for Agency of Ag for one reason there, Claire. So we've been doing that since 2017. We've awarded about 5 and a half million dollars directly to farmers during that time for their projects.

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: You

[Liz Gleason, Director, VHCB Farm & Forest Viability Program]: can see down here that this leverages a lot of money. This is just last year, not overall. So last year, we put out just over $600,000 water quality grants to farmers, and those projects that they were doing were much, much bigger. And they were working with USDA NRCS, they were working with the agency, they were getting loans, they were using farm cash, so it leveraged over $3,500,000 of additional on farm investment. And this is Severy Farm over at One Wall. They were doing a project with the Agency of Ag to really improve their barnyard area, make sure there was no runoff, and to improve their overall manure management in cow housing. So they were adding a covered barngard that would do composted manure to help keep manure more solid, which is helpful for management in some cases. It really made some significant improvements to the faringard, and we were able to help fund the pieces of that that the agency of Ag doesn't fund. We can come in and help get those projects across the finish line. So we work really closely with NRCS, agency of Ag, and farmers, and conservation districts are

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: also putting as well investment in the work. A

[Liz Gleason, Director, VHCB Farm & Forest Viability Program]: couple more examples, grass cattle company is in a grass fed beef business. I actually worked with Steve Schubert when we both were picking berries on Adams Berry Farm together when it was down at the Intervale, and now he runs this really great grass fed beef company. This was another bedded pack that dealt with some issues in the barnyard where they were experiencing, like, concentration of manure, and that's not something you really want. You wanna really manage where that manure is going. Bedded packs can help do that in the right circumstance. Pig assist meats, they do chickens and pigs. I love this picture of them. And we help with some covered winter housing, the pigs could get fresh air in the winter, but were contained in a specific spot, and they could really manage that manure there at the island. So just being really careful about where the manure is going. And then bread and butter farm up in Shelburne got a water quality grant a couple years ago now to help establish grazing, keeping cows out of wet areas, putting cows where they can really contribute to great soil health, which helps with water retention and decreases runoff. So that's kind of an example. We also found a lot of manure pits to make them work better, and other kinds of equipment that helps with water quality. We've got some time. So the Rural Economic Development Initiative is another program that was created in this building to address the need of small towns being able to access big federal dollars for their projects. There are a bunch of people, including Ted Brady and Senator Star, who are realizing that there were certain funding sources at a federal level that Vermont could tap into more than we were doing. Some examples included the USDA Value Added Producer Grant, which is for farms and other working lands businesses, and a bunch of more municipally oriented awards. So we set up this grant writing program, worked primarily around to help small towns and working lands businesses put together successful grant applications with a focus on federal dollars, but we also will help people go after state and philanthropic in some cases. And since 2017, we've spent about

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: I stupidly locked my keys in my car at that time.

[Liz Gleason, Director, VHCB Farm & Forest Viability Program]: I've heard they're very friendly and community oriented, and they would love to help you if that ever happened.

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: They did call and have somebody come over.

[Liz Gleason, Director, VHCB Farm & Forest Viability Program]: Yeah. So Miss Ellis Falls Diner, it's this really interesting historic streetcar diner, and a bunch of community members have come together to say, we we don't want this to go away. We want this community gathering space to keep existing in the future. So they wrote a grant to help renovate this space. They're still kind of doing the work and renovation and local fundraising, and it is gonna be a really exciting project. I can't wait to go get pancakes there. So the 1,200,000.0 we've spent, this includes through the HCV state allocation as well as we brought in some additional money from USDA's Community Facilities Program and also the Agency of Ag's Municipal Technical Assistance Program. That money has gone out the door to grant writers who have helped communities then access $35,500,000 for their community development projects, which is really exciting. We really focus on sort of downtown revitalization. We often work in collaboration with historic preservation. We also work with all kinds of working lands, businesses, and outdoor recreation projects. And I think that's my last slide, and I have a couple more minutes if anyone has a question for me before I take off.

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: I would like tearing apart about leveraging federal dollars. As you're aware, in our ag committee, we have one project that we were really desperately saving hard more dollars for. And we'll all be a willing partner, with another partnership who understands that landscape better than us. And so we will, we will always, at any time that you need somebody to partner with to give thought to, then please let us know. I I think, especially in the USDA. I just think there's millions and millions of untapped dollars available to our state that are either the process is too hard. The the task is too big. Our farms aren't big enough. So I just think there's a whole lot of wasted dollars right there that can go during the state. And as we know, a million dollars in Vermont goes a lot farther than it does in Minnesota. And so yeah, we would be always willing to listen to any of that.

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: Senator, in a different context, we'd love to talk to you about our enabling legislation for this program, which you'd like to broaden just a little bit. One of the limitations on us is we're supposed to be on the town's 5,000 or less and we actually do have some farms that are in towns larger than that. We're looking for a couple of tweaks

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: that help us broaden some of that. Absolutely. I'll follow-up with you separately on that matter. Please, we have prided ourselves and we've worked really, really hard. We have a great committee that's sick of me saying that, but we do. And we, we have worked really hard, whether somebody's growing, making 12 rolls of breads or, or a number of 5,000 pounds. We, we're we're we're between that. And, we understand, and I think a lot of what you folks do. I mean, you guys do incredible work on properties that are, as Gus had mentioned, are really out of reach of of other markets. But we understand as a committee that we're going to keep agriculture viable in the state of Vermont over the cost of what things are, that sometimes you have to start out small and grow into something bigger. So, yeah, absolutely. You need just to listen to that. Yep.

[Liz Gleason, Director, VHCB Farm & Forest Viability Program]: Alright. I'll switch back to your slides, Stacy. Alright. And take your charging cord with you. Oh, that they can have enough juice to leave a presentation. Great. Thank you, Liz.

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: Hello all, thanks for having For the record, my name is Stacy Zabiula, and I'm the Associate Conservation Director at BHCV. So I'm going talk to you about our conservation program. Maybe you've already heard from Liz on the viability side, but I want to give an overview of how that program works and how it intersects with the clean water funding and just how critical that funding source is in making so many of these products happen. So what you can see on the screen now is a picture of the Men for Pay Outloading Classroom up in Newport, and that's a really cool hands on learning program that is running there by a nonprofit, and we were able to give funding to that organization to help them buy equipment for their boat and some other educational curriculum. And they take kids from both Vermont and Quebec out on the water to do a science based hands on learning, really cool programs. Yeah. So that was funded through our Clean Water Service Provider Program up in the Memphremagua. So we were designated with that position a couple of years ago in response to, which I'm sure you're aware, focusing on phosphorus reduction. And so we've been managing that program and that really the impetus or the focus of that work is to give out grants for non regulatory water resource protection and cleanup, which we think is a really important sector of that work that is working with folks who are, you know, through voluntary measures, whether it's a municipality that wants to make some infrastructure changes like put in bigger culverts or nonprofit groups that want to do some tree plantings to help mitigate water pollution. So it's a great way to get money into those communities, and in many cases match other federal and state funding as well. My

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: wife and I actually support that vote.

[Liz Gleason, Director, VHCB Farm & Forest Viability Program]: Oh, yeah.

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: In other ways, because it is, an amazing, vessel, a top of water up there.

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: Have you been out on it?

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: Oh yeah. Yeah. And I look right at it. I live on And yeah, so we, you know, we do that and we actually support financially, through other means and by business life, to make sure that that stays viable and plus their classroom, they're hard, they're a little busy in, but they have as well.

[Liz Gleason, Director, VHCB Farm & Forest Viability Program]: Yeah, that's cool. I hope

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: to someday check it out. It sounds like a really

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: fascinating Amazing trip in the boat. Yeah. I hope we went to hope we've had some fun times.

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: Cool. So, yeah, so the the list on the side of the screen there is just is just all the different programming that we have related to conservation, and I'm gonna focus mostly on our natural areas programming as well as farmland conservation where we do a lot of this water quality related work.

[Liz Gleason, Director, VHCB Farm & Forest Viability Program]: So we love giving giving real life examples, so I think it's the best

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: way to tell the story. So this is the Wolcott Community Forest, which I think is a great example of so many of the projects that we're doing now, which layer a variety of different conservation values. And in this case, actually, this project, as Gus pointed out, another project that had both a conservation element to it and a portable housing, this one does as well. So this helped the town of Wolcott get a community forest. It's it's huge. It's over 700 acres. They worked with the Trust for Public Land as well as the Northern Rivers Land Trust. It's permanently conserved. It has amazing water resources, over a 100 acres of wetlands, five miles of streams. As you could see, kids in the community get on the get out on the land. It's actually really strategically located right next to elementary school, kids can go out and do programming during the day. And addition to all of that, it also has had two acres along the road that the conservation partners decided, hey, like, actually that two acres on road would be great for an affordable housing unit. So they partnered with Illinois Habitat for Humanity Group, and I believe the housing is being constructed up there right now. So definitely an all around win, and this project was supported by the capital bill because it had such great water resources on it. Okay. So why are we doing this work? And maybe this is obvious, maybe not. But as I mentioned, you know, as I think you're all aware, there's a huge push in the state to reduce phosphorus pollution in both Lake Champlain and Lake Memphremagog, and so so much of that work that we're doing is is coming from that that process, and we're proud to be a part of that as our partners. We we understand that the science shows that protecting riparian buffers, forested areas, along streams and rivers, that's helping improve water quality. And so a lot of our projects on conservation land, especially in on farms, are putting in a minimum 50 foot buffers, which is exceeding what the state requires for farms, which is much lower threshold. And so a lot of our projects are advancing these goals of increasing water quality. We also know that we want to be preserving big areas of wetlands, like what we saw here in Mount Peelier with the flooding in 2023 and 2024. There was a lot of talk about actually protecting all that land up along the North Branch, where the North Branch Nature Center is, if you're familiar with that. Like that 200 acre parcel so close to town probably saved a ton of water being in downtown where we already had way too much water. So really focusing on more areas where we can be keeping floodwaters and retaining floodwaters and and preventing preventing runoff and keeping our our water quality getting our water quality cleaner, which we we know we have to do. And this project in Athens I've heard people say Athens, but I think it's Athens. The Lily Pond Highlands is a project that we funded with for the Windmill Hill Pinnacle Association, which is a land conservation organization down there. And they do a lot with trails. They have, like, a 14 mile ridgeline trail in that area. And this particular project had a a 600 acre wetland complex that the funding of the capital bill helped support. Okay. So switching gears a little to talk about how we work on conserved farms, and I think I'll start with the the graphs on the right because I just like what this data shows about, kind of the overall scope of what's happening in Vermont, conserve farmland. We're really proud of this and proud of the work that our partners like VLT and Vermont Land Trust are doing to work with farmers on these issues, and the farmers are are great as well-being wonderful cooperators wanting to to make these changes to improve water quality. So, I mean, we know in Vermont, we are obviously an agriculture heavy state, still, you know, lots of dairy farms, etcetera, although we're losing many as well. We also know that every farm in the state practically has forest land associated with it or wetlands or other wildlife habitat resources. And so, so many of these farms are really contributing to natural resources and to supporting and enhancing biodiversity. They're not just simply a cornfield or a piece of hay ground. It's supporting a much bigger network of a natural, set of natural resources. So, what the graph on the left is showing is that of all the conserved farmland in the state, 14%, only 14% is annual crops, 10% is actually wetland acreage, 33% is forested, and then another 43% is pasture or hay ground, again, many pastures and hay grounds can support birds and and other wildlife. And then in terms of the water impacts on these farms, since 2019, over 80 miles of buffers have been established on these farms, again, going above and beyond what the required agro agricultural practices are, and about 1,400 acres of wetlands protected. And a lot of this lot of these projects were supported with the with the capital bills as well. And this farm, actually, it's mostly a sugar bush, but they also have some beef animals in Williamstown, the Graham Project, benefited from from this source of funding. It's a multi generational farm. The farm actually was able to transfer hands from this this the elder generation to the son and nephew as part of this process. That's another cool part of farmland conservation. It's the sale of the developer. It's often fuses money into the into the property or into the business, and it makes it more affordable for the next generation to get on the land, and that happened here. And again, this had a number of great water resources, streams, headwater streams that are really critical to protecting water down down river and a handful of, furrow pools, and it's also right next to Ainsworth State Park. Okay. So moving on to a a different kind of program. This is more of, I guess, I'd call, like, a niche aspect or niche area of our farmland work, farm retirements. The bulk of the farmland conservation work we do is supporting, keeping farms economically viable, like Liz talked about, but in some cases it doesn't necessarily make sense for certain farms, given their location, to continue to be in that site. You know, with all the increased flooding around here, the farm that was set up two hundred years ago when we weren't having floods like that all the time, perhaps made more sense, and I think there's just a lot greater awareness about like, hey. We need to have manure not right next to the water and, you know, all of that. And so there are there is funding available through the capital bill where we're able to provide grants to organizations who actually end up buying buying out farmland and we're storing it to its natural habitat. So this is an example of that. The Tangway Farm up in Brunswick in the NEK, former dairy farm up on the Connecticut River. Just a gorgeous, as you can see, gorgeous site with these wonderful oxbows, which are kind of rare now because so many rivers have been straightened and they don't get to meander like that. And with the Nature Conservancy, it's who we awarded the funding to. They're going through a process of restoring along the along the the flow of the river into forest flood plain forest habitat, which is a rare habitat type. So much of it's been turned into to either development or or ag fields. And this was a farm that was getting flooded pretty frequently, and he actually ended up he's retained a portion of a piece of the property, so he was able to adapt and has other land that he was able to farm, so it isn't as though he completely closed up Shaw. It was just a retrofit of what he was doing and ended up making more economic sense for him to sell the bottom bottom land. But yeah. So we're excited about have this as a tool in the toolbox as well. And yeah. So this is really a summary, and I I encourage you to to look more closely at this in your packet. I won't read every number here, but this is just the overview of what what we've accomplished in the last year. And, you know, I guess something I would point out to senator Ingalls point, the leverage and federal leverage leverage is really crucial here. Specifically, our farmland program, as you could see, leveraged almost almost $5,000,000 in federal funds through NRCS, Natural Resources Conservation Service. So that is just an integral part of our funding. And and to your point, Senator Ingalls, it's it's not very easy for landowners to navigate this, but we have great staff at the land trusts who who are good at it and are able to sort of do some some coaching and mentorship with landowners to help get them in the system. And I and I think we in Vermont, I'm very proud of the draw drawdown that we have of these funds. We're considered

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: I can find more when we'd be willing partners to do whatever we can do. Yeah. We would we would love to partner with you. Yeah. At any level that we can.

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: That's great.

[Liz Gleason, Director, VHCB Farm & Forest Viability Program]: Well, we appreciate that.

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: We will keep that in mind. And then likewise with our natural areas program, also get money from, like, Forest Legacy and other

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: other national programs well. Any cattle that there was to to Is

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: that right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major, Member]: I I have done that.

[Liz Gleason, Director, VHCB Farm & Forest Viability Program]: Yeah.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major, Member]: For the first time.

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: Is that right?

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major, Member]: In the last year.

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: Was that a farm in your district?

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major, Member]: Well, I was at, like, every fair that I went to.

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: Oh, yeah.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major, Member]: And yes. And at the building buildings. Oh, yeah. In Woodstock.

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: Oh, that's a that's a lovely place. Yeah.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major, Member]: Yeah. It was interesting.

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: I've only yeah. Even though I I'm just around our ag program, I

[Liz Gleason, Director, VHCB Farm & Forest Viability Program]: I have to say I've only

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: melted a couple of times and it's it's hard. It's harder than it looks. Mhmm. You get kicked. Yeah.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major, Member]: I I didn't I didn't get kicked. I was just lucky. Yeah. I did some stuff.

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: Yeah. It's not. So

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: Yeah.

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: Well, that's fun.

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: Alright. So let's see. I think that's it. Yeah. We've kinda cruised through that. So Gus and I are happy to answer questions

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: or Yeah.

[Stacy Stabilia, Associate Director of Conservation, VHCB]: I know you have feedback.

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: I know you have a question that may go to the whole, our whole role in the water quality and support of Conservation District. So, yeah.

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: Did you wanna wait for Wendy on that and get him back? Do we wanna start a conversation?

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: It is Wendy on? No. She must be

[Robert Plunkett, Vice Chair]: watching for us. Yeah. Well, I mean, we could start the conversation now because it's brief. For me, it's just just really questions, and it's kind

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: of funny how how our committee in the morning or perhaps where this is all weird because I don't remember where the conversation started. Well, I think it started in both. It probably started with the conservation districts coming into us and then bringing it forward. And so

[Robert Plunkett, Vice Chair]: Yeah. But but the bottom line with that is there's the conservation description barns by a a house, the

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: only thing that has service to our office.

[Robert Plunkett, Vice Chair]: Question is, you know, just how how how can we help do that? Is is the HCV

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: a work that could do it? Thank you.

[Robert Plunkett, Vice Chair]: I think you know a little

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: bit about this. So I know a little bit about it. I don't know the bill, but maybe

[Robert Plunkett, Vice Chair]: I don't know if somebody clarify it.

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: I know a little bit about it. I don't mean to step on you, but just to bring some clarification, it's a building that the fairgrounds owns. It's at the start of the fairgrounds. The fairgrounds, it's too much building for them. And, but they also like to be able to still use the building. Conservation districts in that area are without a home. They've actually, out of the grace of the Goulen Grain, have been given a spa and office to operate out of for the time being. And they are all looking to buy this building, I think, for rough numbers of they're looking for 275,000, but I think the purchase of the building is probably 200,000 and then up this and all of that to bring it into compliance with what they would use would be 275,000 between the heating system and whatever else that they would have. I have seen all the breakdown of it. The fairground would retain use of the building as well, but the Conservation District would use it as their office ended it that way. So they had come to the Ag Committee and then I think they'd come to this committee as well for capital investment. So that's how it would come

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: to this. So let me say a few things. It's the will of the committee to make this happen and you're asking us to help, then I think my board is willing to do that. We have a couple of different relationships with this committee. We are administering some of the clean water budget. We are also the clean water service provider for Lake Mendon because the local regional planning commission didn't want to do it in that part of the state. So we have a staff person who works on water quality enhancements and works often with the district. The other overlap to our mission, and I'm not sure if this building counts as historic, but as you saw in the presentation, we funded East Dallas Community, the old store there. We funded a building down in Senator Harrison's Way, former Grange builder, I think, that's being used as a community center up in Morrisville. The old Grange building there has been the Center for the Arts. So my understanding is that they want to use this both as offices, but also for the Northeast Kingdom Collaborative and other communities. It would be a little bit of a stretch for us. It's not directly on point to our mission, but if you put in some language in the statute that asks us to do this, and you as the administration and the other body all agree it's a good expenditure public funds that we can play that role and would be happy to do so. So we have some relationship to it, and I can work with your staff or chair or vice chair on the appropriate language, whether to go on the clean water section or go in some other section.

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: And just to be fair, that dollars would be not an additional dollars, taken from dollars that have already been committed. Correct? I mean, it would be dollars that we would be you're not gonna run a check for that. We're gonna have to, find the dollars within what our bill

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: Within the right. We we cannot. I mean, I don't think the the administration would be supportive of the water the funding that we get in this budget for clean water being used instead to buy an office building. Mhmm. So I you'd have to figure out that you had room in the budget to do it. So I'm not here to advocate for it, I'm just to say we can be an administrative entity that can help deliver it if the will of this committee and the will of the legislature It's good

[Robert Plunkett, Vice Chair]: that that's important. With chair Harrison and chief.

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: Mhmm. Yeah. There will be some more out there. We'll ask just clarifying questions.

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: Yeah. Yeah. And and we should I was talking with some people from the Conservation District earlier today, so usually what we do, and you may not want it to work this way and it's fine, but again, if you want to do it a different way, when we give a group funding, we usually make it as a deferred loan or a grant with a mortgage so that if they ever want to convert it for some other use or they no longer want it anymore, they're going to come back to the state. I was told earlier today that right now conservation districts are not allowed to have mortgages And that may get changed if the

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: I think they're looking for some language with that. They've asked to see if you're in the house.

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: But if you're asking, can we just make a grant without a mortgage? That's possible. I'm just advising our normal practice would be to have a way to recapture funds if they use, if they no longer want.

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: And I think we can make that language change.

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: But anyway, we're happy to, we haven't had a detailed discussion about terms with them because we didn't know if this would happen. We're happy to work with you and them on the details if they wanted to just to be a grapple with no strings attached. But I'll leave that to you to let me know how you want to work on that.

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: I need to put the chairs back, we'll answer more questions. We'll start to the description. Yep. Alright, okay. Any other questions further? I think no, because again, Gus and I have been doing this for it seems like a lot a lot of what I've been here with, but I've always appreciated the relationship. You know, for those that, you know, know Gus, his information is always accurate and solid and we've been appreciative what you've done. As I've said, I've said it to you so many times, as many times as I said to my admin, I appreciate them. What I like about your group is you just move, You get things done. And it's, even when nobody else is, you guys just seem to be a con, and I've been appreciative of that. Well And I have

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major, Member]: to bugging up the purple crust even before I got to the center so I, you know, I can concur.

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: Well, thank you all, and I look forward to getting to know you and working with people across your district as well.

[Senator John Benson, Member]: So we weren't actually formally introduced, but I'm John Benson. I represent the Orange District. Yeah. Well, I can tell you this. Knowing Gus and how he does his homework, he knew that. He knew he knew, when you were born, what town you were in. Were your bank accounts out?

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: Pretty sure I'm in the.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major, Member]: I have inspected that you had already worked together. But I

[Senator John Benson, Member]: Well, we've gotten a bunch of work over the years, but I didn't personally do a lot of that.

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: I look forward to getting to know you when we do have a footprint in Orange County, but Matthew can talk to you at a different time. I know.

[Senator John Benson, Member]: I worked for New Boys and King for years and a lot more, had worked for the years. Okay. Alright.

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: Thanks. Alright. Well, thank you for your time and attention, and for those of you who heard the same thing twice It's always good. It's always good. Yeah.

[Senator Russ Ingalls, Member]: Always good. Always good for

[Gus Seelig, Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB)]: us.