Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, good morning. This is Senate of Natural Resources and Energy, and it is Thursday, February 5, and we are starting with a new draft of S-one 138 about commercial properties as clean energy. Feel like I should tee this up a little bit. Been in touch with groups like a partial face alliance and

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: see other folks who have a good, well, know PACE, and

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: so we've been working together with that, which is great. So I'm feeling like I have a much better understanding of how the program is supposed to work. And I want

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to acknowledge that again, this

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: is not a final draft. However, I think it is much closer. And one of the keys here is that envisioned in this draft is a program administrator that would be statewide. And there's, I think, a couple of agencies that might be good candidates for that. I have a meeting with one I hope will potentially take us on later in the day. But you'll see in here that there's, I just listed an agency that's not specified as a placeholder for who would be the statewide program administrator. And another one of the things that was on my radar to change was about the role of municipalities in this. And so this, believe, makes it clear that it is not the municipalities who are the ones who are on the hook for any of this money. They are not the ones that are lending. They are basically to work with a third party credit institution and I forget what we call them. Are called something. So there's I think that is it for now. Do you want us there's some yellow here, but really it's the whole draft that is new. Is that No? Okay. Alright, maybe I had to bump it up.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. Oh, okay. I know this, we're kind comparing to the original, but there

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: we go.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. I only took out the opposite the legislative council. From here on S-one Hundred 38, today you have a new draft. It is draft 3.1. There was no 2.1. So the new draft is 3.1. The changes from the prior draft, which you all had in 1.2, they are highlighted in yellow. The rest of the bill is the same. The exception being the program administrator language, I didn't highlight the entire section, but that is new. So I can walk you through it. So start going through just the yellow, which is new. On page one, session one, the first change here is down at the bottom of the page. It's changing from the prior draft that the municipality may incur indebtedness, and now it is the municipality that should Oh, sorry, one more thing. This is an unedited draft that I did last night,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So there are, I already caught

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a couple of typos in here, but that will be fixed. So this is at line 21, now it says the municipality may allow for the imposition of a special assessment to secure private financing for, on page two property owners for these projects. So that's the first change as Senator Washington said, that the municipality may impose a special assessment as opposed to incurring that evidence.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Question? Yeah, maybe this has been another part. Mel, let me just keep mulling. Sorry. I can walk through the whole document if

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that would be easier. I just wanted to check out your time because,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: yeah. Yeah, I am getting a nod for the whole document. Yeah.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: All right, so by our page one, so to remind you, section one is establishing a new subchapter. This is making it a subchapter specific to the commercial PACE program. The existing PACE program is in subchapter two, and that is just for residential properties. And so this first section, 3,275, is very similar to the section that exists for residential programs, but some tweaks have been made to it. So on Line 11, this in the substandard district means a property assessed clean energy district. The legislative body of a town, city, or incorporated village may submit to the voters of the municipality, the question of whether to designate the municipality as a property assessed clean energy district. I wanted to flag here, don't know what your intent is here. This process already exists currently for residential programs, so I was wondering if a town had already voted to have a residential program, do you want them to go through a separate bill process specific to a commercial district? So, that's a flag here because this is vague.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That is a good question. I guess I would also, we haven't gotten to the next paragraph yet, but I am wondering if we're not putting the full credit of the town on the line, then do we need to have a vote of the populace? Can it just be a vote of the legislative body?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I don't, I don't think so, but I don't

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: know. Okay. And this actually gets to another

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: like big issue in this, which is the mechanism that has existed for this previously was a special assessment run by the town under the statutory language for towns in chapter 87. And so if you're taking them out to that much extent, is it still a special assessment?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Or do we call it something else? Yes. I'm open to calling it something else. Well, if it is something else, it shouldn't even go on

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: this part of statute.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That is very interesting.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, I'm slightly still unclear the amount of interface the municipality actually has in this. Or if this is fully just a private mechanism.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That is the intent, but it passes through the municipality. Okay, so, but why does it have to pass through that municipality? Because it's collected at the same time as their taxes. Essentially we're just still having the town be the debt collector? Yes. And it does, the intent is it creates a lien that would show up in property records. If someone was to try to buy a property or if, you know, if they don't pay their debt, then at the time, look, this is getting a little further into the weeds, but just as an example, so if someone doesn't pay and there's something due, then all of that becomes due at the time of closing for the transfer in future, debts are not a part of that, but, Kind of like that tax almost. And if the person sells, then the lien stays with the land, or the loan stays with the lien and not with the person. So there's a land records aspect

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to it.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So one of my questions was whether this would pertain to or could pertain to property that's owned by nonprofit organizations. Because if they are paying property taxes because they're nonprofit, they might have buildings that they want to use this for, whatever, but I don't know how that would work. Don't know. I think it would Because it applies to There's later a definition that and it applies to any building that is not residential. But if, so they could, but if they're not paying taxes, there's, they're paying property tax, or they, nonprofits pay, sometimes don't pay

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: property taxes.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, and it depends on It depends. If they're gonna pay property taxes, then it would apply. So just to go back and forth to your question, it does sound like

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it is still going to

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: be a special assessment because the municipality will be billing essentially. Right.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I think regardless of whether they already have a tax, they are consenting to be signed the special assessment. So that bill will come to them. Okay. But we're deep in the weeds of things that aren't spelled out here.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. It does seem like if we wanted to apply to nonprofits, then we should say that because I'm just thinking, Fork is an example of a nonprofit in my district that just did a whole bunch of clean energy things. Yeah. And they could have potentially used this, but it's an elderly services organization That's a good point. About the return. No, I just wasn't sure if they could, if they're not paying property taxes. We should ask more about that, but I wonder if they could, as you're suggesting, even if they're not paying property taxes, if they could still get a bill for this special assessment. Yeah, but I think it says in here industrial or commercial, and so we would have to change that because they're not considered commercial. I don't know.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, they, non coverage should be because the only distinction in that, doctor, is non residential.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, okay. I thought there was, of course, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm getting ahead of you, Alan. I'm sorry. So,

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: do have one other question here? Just, Gerald, I've been looking at this bill and I've been talking to people about it. Yeah. Does somebody put into one sentence or a paragraph with purpose of this plan? There's some demons.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, so the purpose of this bill is to allow someone to make energy improvements or resiliency improvements to a building that maybe they need a little extra financing to make it pencil out And, or maybe they don't know if they're going to own the building long enough

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to see the payback from an improvement,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: but they still think it's worth doing. And so they can make the improvement and the loan that they took out to do it stays with the land and not with the person. So they can sell it and then they're not on the hook for the remainder of it. Whoever buys the land is on the hook for the remainder of Perfect.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, good. Oh, good. That was helpful.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: It also helped make it make sense to do it because it would enhance the value of the property and you would make up your investment out of the sale and the first one. Yes, exactly. Yeah,

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: no problem.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I'm glad you asked the question. Nobody's worried about it. That's not gonna be more than what was saying.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, onward.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: All right, so on page one, line 15. In a district, only those property owners who have entered into written agreements with the municipality be subject to the special assessment. So even though the whole town votes on whether to establish a district, only those people who have signed into an agreement eligible for this program. So it's involuntary. Upon vote of approval by a majority of the qualified voters in the municipality voting on an annual or special meeting, it will be awarded for that purpose, the municipality may allow for the imposition of special assessment onto page two to secure private financing for property owners for projects relating to renewable energy or eligible projects related to energy efficiency undertaken by owners of commercial or industrial buildings within the boundary of a municipality. And as we talked about before, we're just talking about commercial or industrial building means any building other than a residential building. So I just came up with that definition because I was unclear what specific buildings you wanted here. I think the original chapter is specific to residential dwellings.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And we did talk, we had a little issues about andapertinences, because that's first of all fun word, but also.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I hear you that's sad.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: But I, as long as the appurtenances are a part of the residential dwelling, then it doesn't matter. Because it's, I mean, because it's any building other than a residential building. So in my mind, I was like, gosh, so that means you could get pace for your shed. And I don't think that's the point, but that is a part of the rest. Joining is joining, so I think we're covered. Thank you. Yeah. So on

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: page two subsection D, a municipality that has adopted a special assessment under this section, they charge a fee for providing this service to a third party lender?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, this is to sweeten it. You know, like why would a municipality do this? They charge. We have not specified how much that is here, but they're effectively providing the service to the third party lender. They should be able to get a cut. Okay.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: All right. Section three thousand two seventy six, the written agreement, lender consent, so it's kind of added as part of the title. So upon an affirmative vote of this section and the performance of an energy savings analysis pursuant to the next section, an owner of a commercial or industrial building within the boundaries of a district may enter into a written agreement with the municipality that shall constitute the owner's consent to be subject to special assessment. Entry into such an agreement may occur only after 01/01/2027. So this is still the proposed date, so it should start next year. You can pick a different date. And then I also wanted to point out that in the original version, the next sentence after 01/01/2027 was about the Department of Energy Regulation adopting underwriting criteria, and that has been taken out.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Can you say, OTFR providing underwriting? Right. No.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Prior to entering into a written agreement, a property owner shall have the analyses performed to quantify the project's costs and energy savings, and on page three, estimated carbon impacts of the proposed energy or resiliency improvements, including the following analyses. Some slight tweaks have been made to this language from the prior version.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: You requested resiliency improvements. Yes, well, I'm wondering on page three, that's just line one, if, because it's the adding more resiliency there is really modifying estimated carbon impacts the quantified profit costs, energy savings, estimated carbon impacts of the proposed Oh, I guess that's the I'm wrong. Thank you.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Then

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the four that are then listed on page three, these are not included in the existing residential PACE program. Have been proposed to be specific for the commercial case. I'm sorry, but

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: could resilient, this pretty broad, the resiliency? Could it be lifting a building up? Yes. Two feet?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes. Okay. So, and actually, I know I said I was wrong, I actually, because the analysis is intended to sort of capture what the benefits are or the costs and benefits. And so I actually wonder if we want to say, resiliency improvement should be like separate, right? Because it's costs, energy savings, carbon impacts, or resiliency- In the face of? Benefits. Yeah. Like as a separate

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: It's interesting, it adds another level of importance to doing this because I had a sitting here thinking, you know, somebody needs solar panels, just gonna hold on for now. Yeah. But here, this is something that actually benefits the entire community, just like it gets to sit with a commercial area. And yet the owner may never see a return without doing this, it would take the gamble not to do it. That would never happen until the economy gets torn down because of flooding, as opposed to making the investment so good.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And just to add on to that, in the conversations that I have, and we can have more testimony about this, but in the conversations I had, the thought was it's, especially for resiliency projects, the intent is not necessarily to see a return. It's there there's other reasons.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: It's it's return. It's an incorrect return.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Right. It's an exactly. It's it's a there's a broader return. Yep. Yes.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: So that's what I'm trying to understand.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So if you have the special assessment district, the property owner opts in,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I don't remember what the thirty two seventy six,

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: they get assessed some amount of money.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: They never get that money back?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So the special assessment would allow them to enter into a C PACE agreement to get lending from a third party that's paid back through their taxes. So it's a loan to the property owner to do some work and then they're paying back that loan.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: So the return

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: is the interest.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, so the, I mean, right, like one possibility is this for something like weatherization or to look at, which does have a return

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a return to

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But but it's a loan, not a donation. Right. In the loan. Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: And and it it's almost like bank is making a loan to the property.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. It's a loan to the property. Property. Yes.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Is is there any limit on the size of the of the project that is solar?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That would be subject to any limits that are otherwise more solar.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: So if it was if it was in excess of it would on, would act two forty, section two forty eight?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, so you'd have to go through the normal, it's portable solar, then you'd have to go through the normal CPG process. Yep, all of that still stands.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And there isn't a specific size limit on the type of project, but there is a cap, or I think it functions as a cap, it says it cannot be more than 90% of the assessed value of the property, is the cap amount of the loan.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes. So

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: we were talking about having somebody from another state that's done that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes. Yep. Yep. We still do that? Yep. That is the plan. Okay. I've got a name,

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think for next week. We'll see if we got Oh, no, it's okay. It's the New Hampshire and Wow, we covered it.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, had

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a big party. Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And he passed the big house. I'll just leave. You guys can figure it all out.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We're getting there. So we're on page three, so I'm going flag, based on that conversation that you just had actually, I'm going to add the word resiliency to page two, where it describes the kind

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: of the ability that can

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: be used, this money can be used for. Amazing. So on page three though, are the analysis needs to be done before you kind of get into it, as you're entering the contract based on the type of project. So, something, one, if it's an energy or water usage improvement, you to have an energy analysis by a licensed engineering firm or engineer or other qualified professional listed in the program guidebook. Stating that the proposed qualified improvements will either result in more efficient use or conservation of energy or water, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, or the addition of renewable sources of energy or water. And so two is for renewable energy, and then three talks about resilience improvements. So for whichever kind of project you're choosing, there is a requirement that you have an engineering study done to have them state that the improvement will result in some kind of energy or

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: conservation measure, efficiency. Can I flag a couple of things? One is on line five, it references a guidebook, and I think that gets referenced later about the creation or adoption of a guidebook, and there are guidebooks that exist out in the world, so they wouldn't be creating it from scratch. They can, you know, look at, well, in fact, I think there might be one. Well, have one, which I think I, it might be on. And then, were you going to note anything about Line 17?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sure, I didn't get there. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm getting too So, there was, There's a change on Line 17. The rest of this was in the prior draft. So in Subdivision 4 for new construction, you need to have certification by a licensed professional engineer or engineering firm stating that the proposed improvements will enable the project to exceed the energy efficiency or water efficiency or renewable energy or water usage requirements in the current building code. It also previously listed resiliency requirements,

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: but

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you asked to take that out? No.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: We can put it.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, because I, we were having a discussion about whether the things in

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: the building currently are identified as resiliency improvements. And I don't know

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the answer to that. I don't think they are because we have an energy, a building energy code that is separate from our, the rest of our building code. This is a small distinction, but I don't think it has a huge impact.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, and we're recalling that now because do we have resiliency standards in our building code? I didn't think we did. I don't know that

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: they're identified as resiliency. I mean, are some standards relating to flooding, but I don't know if they're identified as resiliency standards.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: There are some things around the flag, you know, designed here.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And I'm happy to put it back in. I just didn't want it to be unclear. We can make a note of that, come back to it.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Good. Did you have another question on that or no, no, that

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: was it. I do have a question on this page. You were mentioning the program guidebook, but is that defined anywhere? It's called the program guidebook. Don't, so I don't think

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it is defined, but I think in the section on seven, we haven't gotten there yet, but there is direction that the if you should adopt this language and have a program administrator, they have to create educational materials for this program. Okay. And so you can be

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: more specific, you can be as specific as you want. Say, you have to create a program.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, we don't even, I just thought we put the notes.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. I, if it's not in there, we should, we get it and just put it in there. That whoever the program administrator is needs to adopt. Okay.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: All right, so page three and page four. So a written agreement shall provide that the length of time allowed for the property owner to repay the assessment shall not exceed the life expectancy of the project. In instances where a mobile project have been installed, the length of time shall not exceed the average lifetime of all the projects, weighted by cost. And so previously, the language here directed the efficiency utilities to calculate the lifetimes of such improvements, like what is the lifespan of

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: a weatherization project or a

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: panel, you know, solar panel, that has been removed because efficiency robot is not really gonna get involved in this. But potentially, well, you may want to consider it, so program administrator will need to decide that. I apologize. So it's

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: is this effectively trying to say that the boom shall see the lifetime the useful lifetime of whatever it is, and then you've gone.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Yes. Which

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Which is also in its own way of even solar panels. Sort of half the cost of solar panels is more is the installation. It's the frame and the line running and and the rewiring. So actually changing that to panels is no big deal. Even though panels have a, like, limited lifetime, changing them is, like, not a big deal. Right? It's a you've made a permanent investment with the framework. Actually, the panels aren't used to Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. Anyway, I should have brought that up. I wanted to get on the ladder for a while.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I apologize. I'm pitching up. Where are we? Where are we?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, we're up to the top of page four. Okay, top of page one, I'm thinking. How would you like to proceed?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, okay. So, the way that we'd like

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to proceed, because we are not even close to being done

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: with this, We, and we're going to transition to Mr. O'Grady, and we've checked out your schedule.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Great. So, I'm free to Have a rest of the week. Amazing. So, when we'd like to invite you back

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: for later this morning. Okay. To continue this walkthrough. It's a great discussion, so really appreciating that.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And it's starting

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to like, Okay, that's great.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: But we do have Mr. Rutland with us to walk through S-three 13. So thank you. Hello. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome. We are so grateful for you to be here with a new draft of two thirteen.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I do have a couple of paper copies too. I'm sure it's. Should I begin?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, please.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This is Mike McGrady. What you have in the public council, what you have in front of you is a draft committee amendments to SB 13 inactivating smart meters by public water systems. This amendment does four things. First, it replaces the term smart meter with the term advanced metering infrastructure device, which apparently is the proper term and was used in the previous definition of smart meter because there was I talked to Maria this morning. At the time when they did it, they thought people wouldn't know what an advanced meter and infrastructure device was, so they thought smart meter was more intuitive, but now I think the proper term is

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: perfect. Okay.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The second thing it does is amends the cybersecurity requirements for public water systems. You may remember in the bills introduced there was a requirement that as part of their permit, they demonstrate compliance with cybersecurity measures issued by the agency of natural resources. I believe you heard some testimony that for security reasons, for prevent attacks, etcetera, that it's not wise to have your security measures public or part of your permit. And

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: you

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: will see a change on that, and then I have a couple of questions for you in that provision as well. The third thing it does is commence the metering requirements for electric companies. First it changes the term smart meter to advanced metering infrastructure technology or device, and it then gives them the charge for a alternative to a advanced metering device wireless speaker device. And then fourth, it changes the title of the bill because it no longer is about smart meters, and it's not just about smart meters for public water system. So it's gonna be an an act relating to the use of advanced metering infrastructure devices. But those are generally the four things I have done. The

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'm

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: in through the specific changes on page two in the definitions for public water systems. The term page two, line 17, the term smart meter was replaced with advanced metering infrastructure device, and wired smart meter and wireless smart meter were replaced with wired advanced metering infrastructure device or wireless advanced metering infrastructure device. Similarly, on page three, lines one and four turn wired smart meter and wireless smart meter were replaced with advanced metering infrastructure device. And there was a conforming changes on lines one, two, five, and six. And then previously said, it means a device using the VEXifier. We only use device in the term and then then again with that mission. So device was changed to been in the actual definition. Page three, line 15, you're moving into the permitting requirements for public water systems. This is the language that says that the public water system requires a user to install a meter to measure usage. They may install a wireless advanced metering infrastructure device, provided that they have to give a written and prior written notice to the users indicating that the wireless device will use radio or other wireless schemes, and that they the four line or allow a user to choose not to have that wireless device installed, provided that the water system may charge the user for the cost of the alternative device and any additional service charge required for public water systems operate. So that additional charge is not changing for public water systems. It will change under the electric companies and what they can do. Page four, line nine to 11, this is just changing the term smart meter from wireless smart meter to wireless advanced major infrastructure device. And then page four, line 12 through 17, these are the cybersecurity measures. Remember, the bill was introduced. Part of the permit was set to the public water system, had to demonstrate to ANR their compliance with cybersecurity measures, and those cybersecurity measures were part of the permit. Permits are public, and so conditions of a permit are also public. So I believe you heard concern about making that type of information public. Instead, the secretary, after consultation with the secretary of digital services, issues guidance to public water systems regarding the implementation of administration of industry appropriate security measures. And then in the in the language that senator Hardy sent me last night, and so there was kind of this not quite a requirement, but it's sort of a directive that the public water system consult with ANR about the guidance, and well well, guidance is guidance. If you require them to do it, it's not really guidance anymore. And so I would weed that out and that's why that night is gray. So I think having ANR after consultation with ADS issue a standard for guidance, that becomes the standard for the public water systems. If they're implementing that standard and there's a breach or some other failure of technology, etc, they've met the standard, they're not negligent. They're not viable. They've done what they could. And if the public water system doesn't implement the standard, well, then they're on the hook, right? If they're not complying with cybersecurity measures, if they're not doing what they need to do to prevent breaches or other issues, then that will be on them. Then that's something they already know because they deal with liability every day, right? If they mess up, if they put too much of one chemical in the system or not enough, they can harm you. And so that's something that they manage every day.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And then, that was a mistake. So, you know, I've been communicating with Secretary Denise Riley Hughes at ADS about this and how much we should or shouldn't say. So I told her I would send her this language just to make sure that they felt comfortable with it. Is that Yeah, that's great. Well,

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: do have another question on this language. Do you want to make it confidential after the public record decision?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I would say yes. With the guidelines.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes. And so does, do we need to, I guess we would say that explicitly, that this is exempt, that the guidance that is issued is exempt from employees.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Guidance issues, public water assistance by the agency shall be exempt from inspection and copy of the public records.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Right now, I'm wondering if any other guidance that ADS is providing for people, if that is exempt as well.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There's a provision in WSA three seventeen C that gives an ADS, I I can't remember the exact term of the excuse, but, basically, they have a a public record science exemption. You could say it's exempt under that, or you could say that it this is specifically exempt. I can work with our current insurance, our public earnings doctor officer to get the proper

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: The other thing that I would add, and we're going to hear from Neil Kamen later today, we can ask him to comment on this. Then, I'm wondering if it's, because right now it's the secretary in consultation with ADS, I wonder if that would be flipped, but I don't have strong opinions about that. Oh, it's tomorrow. Thank you.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Point on that is that is ANR's permitting program and they provide a lot of information to these systems to operate updates, training, etcetera. So that's why it's ANR providing the guidance because of the more regulated contacts.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yep. And you have a question here?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: I had an acronym or ADS. I'm not sure.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, Agency of Digital Services. Oh, okay.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: Yeah. Sorry. Okay.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: So

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, whatever. We want

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: parallel provision for the electric situation. Well, there isn't that directive for them to issues well, oh, are you asking should there be a directive for guidance? Well, it's not the same thing as.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I actually don't know what it's putting here about that, but what we heard yesterday is that the electric companies and utilities are heavily regulated by both the federal entities and the POC, so that's kind of They're covered, I think.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So moving on here, moving into section three, page four, line 18, this is moving into the electric company provisions. First thing, it changes the title of that section from smart meter to advanced metering and constructed devices, changes the terminology and definitions as well, and we'll walk through all of those, it's the same changes what you just saw in the public water system. The big change is page five, nine, twenty, twenty one going on to page six, This allows then or allows the customer to achieve not to have that wireless advanced metering infrastructure in place, and it strikes that provision that said at no additional cost, provided that you'd like the company be charged to the customer that costs at all of the alternative ways that it is in addition to service, Terry, the property that the company operate built in. But I talked to Maria Royal, who's our utility, electric utility expert, whether or not she would become part of the the formula that are great. She doesn't think it will necessarily become part of the electric rate, but it was totally something that

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: the

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: PUC will likely approve the amounts probably.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, that's what they were saying yesterday that each electric company would probably have been charged and relevant to their filing to the PUC approval.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But not necessarily as part of everyone's rate on on the bill in direct to the service. Right.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It would just be for people who are opting out. Yeah.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And then there are additional changes in this section. There were two reports that were due over ten years ago, and that have been supplied. They've been kept in the statutes because of the fact that they questions about them arise. We're we're gonna strike them. We're gonna repeal them from statute, but we're gonna put them in the statutory notes that are in the Gurney books. Generally, anytime a report is more than five years old, we get rid of it under the 50¢ to keep it. Now these are over ten years old, and we can still keep the reference to them in the notes so that anybody that can insist see that. Then the last change is on page seven, my seventeenth grade scheme changing the title of the bill. So it's no longer an accurate Spartan meters used by the public water systems, and it's now accurate to use advanced metering infrastructure tools. Okay. And this needs to be edited. I didn't have time for that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It was okay. Well, thank you. This is great. I think the only thing that we have yet to I mean, I'm comfortable with all of this, with a pin in what we do about the cybersecurity. Yeah, I'll send the draft to the secretary and have her take a look at it. I'll consult

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: with Tucker about how best to make that information confidential.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Amazing. Otherwise, think this is, close to a date. So thank you so much.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You want me to hang out for two four?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Let's see. Yeah. Will leave it up to you. Okay. And then no, no, no pressure to stick around.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I've had another fire burning in the house.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh dear, okay. Good luck. Thanks.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Good luck with all the things.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so I actually would love to take a quick break if that's okay. All right, and we're back.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, great. This is still Southern Natural Resources Energy. We're back from a break and we're taking up S224, broadly speaking about lakes and we're joined by Mr. Covey from the, oh gosh, I'm getting it wrong, the Vermont Physicians Coach. Welcome.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: Thank you and happy Vermont Outdoor Recreation. Yes, I think

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: it's very fitting that I sit

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: here to oppose sections of this bill on Outdoor Recreation Day.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: Regarding sections one and eight of this bill, they're both nonstarters for us. This issue closely mirrors the sessions we had surrounding Berlin Mogadh began in 2012. At that time access rights were affirmed, courts upheld the validity of that access and the reason this body is revisiting an issue that has already been settled is clear, but it's not particularly appropriate. The city of Barrie doesn't own all the land surrounding the reservoir. Access exists from the public right of way to the public water where the mean high water level intersects the road right of way. Assertions to the contrary would be incorrect. So the bill's flawed in its assumptions and won't satisfy a single complainant that it's been draftably mollified. There were certainly more constructive ways for this conversation to be initiated than the approach that was taken. It's unclear whether any of those alternative pathways were explored prior to provoking current dispute. Regardless, the fundamental fact remains unchanged as a public water body to which the public is entitled access. Generally a bad idea is to create legislation for the edification of a single individual and this is no different. There are always gaps that don't satisfy the person screaming loudest and there are always unintended consequences. Several facts demonstrate the impracticality of municipality pulling the training inputs to the just fixed reservoir, which we all know is the deepest for the spill, it's been pretty clear. Roadways to the north and east borders of the reservoir render anything short of constant monitoring and effective in managing genuine threats to the water. The stream connecting the upper and lower reservoirs runs approximately one and a half miles from dam to intake and passes through private property that appears from aerial imagery to include agricultural fields. There are five separate ends that feed the reservoir all of which traverse private land. Approximately 5,600 acres drained into this water body and only about 500 of those are under municipal control. The reservoir is a popular layover for migrating waterfowl which are natural vectors for aquatic invasive species and contribute significant biological loading through fecal deposition. Aquatic mammals also including otters and may move freely throughout and between watersheds and are capable of transporting biological material. And again the intersection of the public right of way and a mean water level provides lawful access irrespective of the city's state position. Concerns have been expressed for the superior zebra mussels which while understandable are not supported by the available evidence. Zebra mussels were first documented in Lei Chien Plain in 1993 and in Lake Baumazine in '99. They're planktonic larval stage villagers, the mechanism by which they spread. So villagers have been detected in Lake Kearney and similar detections have occurred in Lake Dunmore and Lake Bortonia but they didn't result in infestations as the muscles can only persist and survive in the correct conditions. In 2011, 10 samples taken from Lake Harmony detected no so this was a year after they were detected. In 2012, four additional samples again showed none. In 2016, 26 lakes gained high risk for infestation of sample no villagers were detected. So in light of these facts, a continued emphasis on zebra mussels as a justification for denying access is for practical purposes unfounded. Potassium, might get this wrong, permanganate is a widely used chemical in water treatment. It's a strong oxidizer that removes iron, manganese and hydrogen sulfide and it improves taste and appearance. It's also effective against certain bacteria and algae and it's legal to zebra mussels.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: So this is how the city

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: of Burlington deters them from being around their intakes. They inject it directly at the intake rather than further downstream the process and it alleviates the problem. Again, the zebra mussels aren't a really practical concern here, but if they became a concern, I'm willing to bet that that chemical is being used for the city of Barrie as well. Milfoil has also been raised as a concern. Berlin Bong contain milfoil prior to public access and as we heard from Senator Williams, Rutland's reservoir which is a man made system with all of the inputs completely controlled by the city has a milk oil problem that they're currently dealing with. It's very safe to say that humans weren't the vector there. Public access to Verona Pond has existed for nearly fourteen years at some level without native powwows, so there's no reason to expect a different result at the Dix Reservoir or any other water only for that matter. As always ongoing education not prohibition is the correct answer. Going to the extreme of granting municipality authority that's currently exercised by DC and setting this dangerous precedent is

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: not a proper approach.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: From a practical standpoint, the bill has written would theoretically impact 11 water bodies statewide to my understanding. This raises the question of which municipality would be next to seek authority over their water groups and it's reasonable to expect that Montpelier, which owns virtually all the shoreline around Berlin Pond, would show up next. Extending this logic further, nothing would prevent other groups such as private landowners who collectively owned all the land around a water boggy from requesting a similar privatization of access to the water. There's really no reason for this and again it attempts to override laws that protect public access to public waters and for that reason alone if it continues to contain these two sections it should not advance. The constitutional guarantee of the rights of hunt, fish and fowl doesn't fall under the legislative authority to change and in fact legislature is explicitly prohibited from changing it by that same document. Although I recently heard legislative council indicate that he can help circumvent the law, I think we should all take a pause and think about that for a moment. His body is charged with keeping and developing the law for the good of the people and should certainly not be seeking risks circumvent it. It's demonstrably counter to the public good to begin reducing access to fishing game. We have a great display going on right now up in the parade room where they're talking about food security and access to fish and wildlife as an excellent means of enhancing food security to save lives. The constitutional guarantee of the rights of hunt, fish and fowl again is critical. Allowing municipalities to propagate surface water rules represents a significant overreach and sets a dangerous precedent. The Department of Environmental Conservation is already charged with this responsibility and they've implemented surface water rules for this reservoir including the prohibition on gas engines. Additional regulations are necessary and it relies on a false narrative of the remedy risk. Both the city and the legislature should refrain from further action on this and allow the permit as well as general access to proceed. Communities are better served by municipalities that act as good neighbors than by bureaucratic efforts to restrict legal protected access with no scientific justification. The use of law enforcement to discourage or ticket individuals who will likely be accessing these public waters mirrors tactics employed by the Berlin Pond dispute more than a year ago. Our approach was inappropriate then and remains so now. Law enforcement resources are better directed towards genuine public safety concerns not disputes over lawful access. Vermont's home to approximately 120,000 anglers and the consequences of this proposal that extends statewide. Claims that participants would need to parachute in to be lawful or inaccurate as I've noted several times already and directing law enforcement to trespass individuals who legally access the slaughter way risks violation of citizens rights and exposes the municipality and potential legal liabilities. A water supply must be capable of handling the range of internal and external inputs they encounter. Anything less is irresponsible. Recreational water access and drinking water supply coexist throughout Vermont and across the nation. Lake Champlain's condition is well known as is the fact that water drawn from it is delivered safely to households across most of our Western border. Concerns expressed regarding the adequacy of the city's water treatment process should be addressed directly by taking care of them rather than projecting them onto the broader public. This water body already receives runoff, biological waste, heavy metals and organic matter from areas beyond municipal control. The water travels approximately one and a half miles from the reservoir that we're talking about to the actual intake a significant portion of this again runs through land that's not controlled by the city. Furthermore, there's no evidence that fishing access is caused harm elsewhere and there's no reasonable expectation of the legal to do so there. While some members may desire to act on this and proposal is untenable and warrants no further consideration unless these two factions are removed. Finally, the session requiring permission to cross private land for the purpose of participating in a derby is inconsistent with Vermont's constitutional provisions. Unposted land is open to unadditioned by constitutional right and imposing a requirement to seek permission for a single day will create confusion, burden lawmakers, burden landowners, and increase conflict rather than reducing it. There are long standing access routes used seasonally on many water bodies that would be disrupted without justification. There's one pond in particular, they have a one day fishing jerk. That pond has probably 10 or 12 trails across land, private lands that access the pond from around the perimeter of it. And to say that they that could be used on Friday, it could be used on Saturday without permission and then it could be used again on Sunday, doesn't make a lot of sense. They're going to have landowners who never had any issue with it getting flooded by phone calls over something that's constitutionally questionable. In closing, these provisions disregard the constitution, public trust doctrine and the Sportsman's Bill of Rights, all of which protect access to public waters and non enclosed lands. Community of second class citizens has no place in this building. A municipal treatment plan can address modern water quality threats. It can accommodate the negligible impact if recreational access is currently permitted. If it cannot, then its existing deficiency should be addressed independently of public access as a matter of public safety and public good. Grandstanding about a nebulous spread of recreational access does none of that now any more than they did in 2012. So I urge this committee to either remove these two sections or barring that, thin this bill back to the wall and move on to something meaningful.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I have so much to say about that. Oh my goodness. Okay. Where to start? Guess I'll start with, did anybody else have questions, comments, thoughts?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: We don't have that question.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, it's just something to see if Okay.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Good. Yes.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: If you want? Well, I was still Molly, but if you want to go, I can go. Yeah. Well, so I have two main places I want to start. So one is you have made some assertions about the law and I'm wondering if those are coming either, like if you are a lawyer or if that's coming from your life, like if you have some kind of counsel that could speak to that.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: It's coming from over a decade of dealing with this issue. Berlin model is my inaugural issue. Okay, but

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: you're otherwise not a lawyer on that. Okay, so

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that's good to know.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Then the second question I have, so I'm trying to find the, like, is the common ground here? If I didn't reach out to you ahead of time, I apologize. No offense is missed by not reaching out. You mentioned alternative pathways and that apparently none were sought. What alternative pathways could you envision?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I don't know. I know that

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: this came about because an individual decided they'd run to access the bond, right, and then they applied for I don't know if they had conversations with the city manager or anything like that beforehand. I'm not sure what those

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: what

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: that was. Our testimony was that the city manager was only made aware of the situation after the tournament permit was approved.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: Right. So my point is that while that could have been done differently, it wasn't. And that access remains the shift regardless of whether or not it entered the city manager. You know, it's disappointing that it wasn't done a bit more thoughtfully, but that doesn't change the legitimacy of it.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So do you see the conflict there though with concerns about the safety of drinking water? I don't. As I stated in my testimony, they are concerned that they

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: have insufficiencies in their system, they should be addressing those insufficiencies, not prohibiting access.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, and the testimony was that it would be millions of dollars to upgrade. And so just flagging that. And then another, something else I was going to ask you about. You mentioned the zebra mussels. I'll just say that was my question to City Manager. That was not his main objection. So understood. Don't know if they, did you call it sodium permanganate?

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: I believe that's what it's called.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, so you know we can follow-up to see if they already use sodium permanganate. Would be interesting to know that.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: My understanding is that it's very common because it improves the flavor and I believe the clarity of water.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: There's, I'll just also flag, there was a whole lot in there that I disagreed with. However, I would also say like if there are alternatives to where we can both protect drinking water and allow people access to fishing, I'm game for that Venn diagram. Would love to hear potential solutions at some point from you if you have them.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: Well, I think we can all agree that there are very real threats to drinking water, right? I don't think we can agree that the fishing assets is one of them. And I hear the concern that it might take millions to upgrade their plant. But if it takes millions to upgrade their plant to a space where they can protect against whatever threats may come, which this is negligible at best if it's even a threat, that's their responsibility to their citizens, correct? Would you agree?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think they're managing to the risk that they are ready to accept. And this was beyond the risks that they were willing to accept. But I think there's Do you have another question? Yes. Yeah. Thank you for your testimony. I would say, first of all, in the future, please don't bring our legislative council attorney into your testimony in the way

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that you did. I don't

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: think that's fair. He is a nonpartisan employee that does what we ask him to do, and we are the ones that make the laws. And if we ask him to try to help us make the laws, he's doing his job. So just in the future, please keep Michael out of it. Thank you. I'm specifically interested in, I don't know these bodies of water because they're not in the part of the state that I'm familiar with. So it's hard for me to kind of visualize. And I heard the description of the pond. What is it called? The one in question. Oh, DICK'S Reservoir. DICK'S Reservoir. And you said that there's not Gas powered boats are not allowed on it, Yeah,

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: you received that testimony from DC or Fish and Wildlife. Okay,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Do you know, I mean, know these are not your fishing tournaments, but do you know the two in question? I think there's one maybe like next week, a face fishing tournament and then one in the summer. Do you know how big they are?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Like how many people Okay. They

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: No No connections to those.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Because I'm just thinking about, I understand your concerns about precedent that section one might set, but I'm interested in section eight and whether or not we can come to some kind of language that would be okay. Mainly because it seems to me that when there's a fishing tournament, it's not just, you know, a few people going out on their boat and fishing. It's a lot of people. Mean, life that's a tournament, right? It's a lot of people. Or it could be a lot of It could be a lot of people. And if it is, you know, the testimony that we received was that the city wasn't aware of the fishing tournament till after it was approved, which seems kind of uncool to me because it could be hundreds of people. I mean, it's only 10, you know, 12 year olds out there, ice fishing, that's not a big deal, but if it's hundreds of people coming in with trucks and in the summer boats or in the winter snowmobiles or whatever it is, then that's a bigger issue. So it does seem like some kind of communication mechanism is at least the right thing to do for everybody. And I'm not saying that it would lead to denials, but it would lead to better communication so that there's not conflict. And I also feel for the parking, because everybody drives to these things and then there's a ton of cars and trucks parked around the town's drinking water. That is at the very least problematic from a public safety perspective, if they're not parked in places that are legit. So it seems to me that on this section, we should be able to find a way that we can improve the communication that the municipality or the landowner doesn't come The municipality in this case is the landowner, but that landowners don't come out of, after fishing tournaments, a lot of cost, a lot

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of headache,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: and having surprised, suddenly 500 people show up or 100 people show up to the mission out there. Yeah. So that's what I'm trying to figure out is a better way to communicate. And whether it's notification, permission, compensation for costs, there's gotta be something that we can do so this doesn't keep happening. You yourself have admitted this is the second time in your term, your time doing this, that this kind of thing has come up. So how can we prevent it in the future? It seems to me that better communication is the way to deal with it.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: I think the best preventative would be to acknowledge the fact that fishing is not disruptive to public waters. It's not problematic. The new section, section eight that allows town managers to charge for costs, what does that entail? I mean, in and of itself is a good way to ensure that this should hurt as soon as we can.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Yeah, I

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: mean, I think this was big, but I mean, I'm trying to figure out like, how can we, and this is not about this one section or this one pound or one incident, because in your testimony, you talked about how this has happened in the past. So how can we make sure that there's enough communication and there's enough back and forth so people are not surprised?

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: I think that being surprised is an intriguing way to look at this. So, and the reason for that is we have fishing birds all across the state, right? So what makes these water bottles special? Nothing particularly.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, they're drinking water. That, I mean, that's So does Berlin Pond,

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: I believe Waterbury Reservoirs. Waterbury Reservoir has water. I mean, I don't see a need to, I don't see it reasonable to say that the town has authority they don't have or needs notice they don't need because it's not done so anywhere else.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I mean,

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: if we're going to do it for DICK'S Reservoir, we might not do it for casting. Why not for Lakeland? There's no logistical difference.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, I mean, I would agree. So that's why I'm saying maybe notification just in general, like, hey, we're going have a fishing tournament. You live near here, maybe you should know. And people, it doesn't say you can't do it, but just that there's notification and that people are aware that it's happening and measures can be taken to make sure that damage isn't done. And I mean, I know, and the vast majority of these are, nothing happens bad and everything is good and people have a lot of fun and they're a great thing. Believe me, I'm just suggesting that there are instances where you can avoid conflict by having better communication. I mean, that's just in general in life, I think that's right.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: So I agree

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: that the

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: evictive communication should have been better. I'm not disagreeing with that, but I just have real concerns over the concept of requiring permission to access public demands and waters. They're public, we have constitution and states who access them, where we're in a space as a society where we're trying to ensure the most equitable access possible. And when we start putting barriers in front of that,

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: we immediately start making some.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. I think access to public lands and waters is incredibly important. That's like fundamental and it's frankly disturbing to me that we are seeing more and more people say, No, you can't come on my property, even purchase walking across it. I mean, if you go to other countries, there are public trails across gorgeous fields that everybody uses in their private land. So I agree, you should have more access to the land that we all love. I'm just saying that in these instances where there is potentially lots of people accessing a body of water that is important and fragile, that having better communication and notice so preparations can be made and adjustments can be discussed is important.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: I don't have an answer and I don't think you have time for me to develop one right now, but

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't about it, come on.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: I don't know, but

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I'm pretty firmly entrenched in

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: the idea that the constitutional rights and public access to public lands and waters is very direct, specific and important. And it's best to require no measure.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It doesn't require communication. This is

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: legislative council, but

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: don't don't they already required to notify the Department of Fish and Nurses? Yes. So maybe it's just a, you know, complimentary cursory. Hey, Paul. By the way, this is going on in your town. Schedule for this week because I know I've tried to get permission to stay for fishing in my town. It takes sometimes it takes a couple weeks to get it. You know, if you add another layer on top of it to notify the municipality, maybe we're already notified in the state. Can we let's have the have the state or the promoter of the derby notified the town that they're having.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: Does it become a notification or a request for permission? Just as a dissension.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Go ahead. Just maybe I'm just trying

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to learn for example here, but I just, I've never been to Pittsburgh's Reservoir,

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: I just pulled it up on the board, I'm looking at it.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Don't any docks, I don't see any boats, I don't see a boat launch, so this is just a From shore.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: Okay. And the city does control most of

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the land around I do see

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: a Roughly around it. Yeah. So But where they don't control is, you know, so there are multiple inputs. I think three of the inputs are under roads and then the stream that runs between the water body where people want to fish and the actual intake runs again under the road on its way to the There's not much space between where the road passes over the water and the actual intake. Yeah, right there, I mean, Yeah, so.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So I just wanted to put a pin in that, that they don't control it, that they don't control all the land. That is a question that I think our legislative council, if he actually has weighed in on. So I just I just wanna flag that as a as a term. But I

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: just wanna know this thing too is that do we have to they may probably for legislative council, do we have to notify the Fish and Wildlife Department to get authority to have a fish and dirty, then there's

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: a constitutional question about that. There's, I'm not sure. You should probably talk to DEC and Fish and Wildlife about this. I'm not sure exactly what the mechanism is there because I've never done it. I don't know if Fish and Wildlife consults with DEC before providing a fishing derby opportunity for providing permit. I'm not certain how that works. That would be there the only way.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: One further question about the potential for a charge. I'm thinking about examples where like you host a marathon and you need extra police protection for the marathon runners, then that tournament ends up paying for the tournament. Marathon ends up paying a little bit extra to the police department for that extra incurred cost. Can you comment on why, because I'm assuming that you're opposed to any charge that the municipality could have for a fishing tournament, but I'm wondering why that might be any different than say Marathon.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: Well, for one, I think that the promise of sending officers there and then complaining about the cost of it, I feel it's unnecessary. That's the decision the town's making and that's on them. I feel it's a municipality flexing against the citizens of the state in a manner that's inappropriate. I think it takes law enforcement away from meaningful duty and puts them into a conflict that is unnecessary. But furthermore, with the comment or the new language in there says that the manager can charge for the expense of mitigating the costs. Well, man, there was a kayak on my lake and then I need a home with Mars. That's that's the logical, you know, that and that's absurd, right? But it could go to that point. There's no paragraphs. And I think I think it's not particularly meaningful. But I do think it's

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: incredibly restrictive.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, any further questions? Well, I think your example is a good example of like anytime you have any kind of public event with lots of people there, you know, often having, you know, some kind of security or law enforcement is helpful. And those kinds of events do cover the cost of that because they're beyond the sort of normal grouping of people. I think calling up examples of like one kayak at your pond, need a water system, that's just exaggerating. So like I don't think that's a fair retort, but I do think that being able to cover the cost of what the event incurs is helpful. The question is, what does that mean? What's the definition? I agree that we need to get clear on that, but

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: Well, don't see law enforcement presences directed at any other fishing vehicles. No, this is a municipality making a decision to flex against other veterans, And there's not really any getting ready.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Any further questions? Thank you very much. Hey, we are going to transition to Mr. Plunnem. Welcome. This is the same This is the same bill, but I believe maybe you're speaking to a different section. There's of a things. Thank you. That's numerous. Yeah. Amazing. Thank you for being here. The rest of this. So, Thank you. Welcome.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: Thank you for having me. Yes. Appreciate it. Yeah. Goodness. My name is Robby. I live on Lake Iroquois. My Santa's primary home. We moved there in 2015. My wife, my daughter, my son, I've lost his son's now both. So we're a family of three now. Wanted to, I guess, my I'm sorry.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's been pretty good. It's all good.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: No worries. So the whole end rule part of this, believe, one of my primary feedback on. So the backstory, so we bought our boat. We've been boating our whole life.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: My wife and I got married

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: at Burlington Boathouse. We used to boat in Lake Champlain. We'd spend ten days all summer. That was our

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: went to our wedding by boat, left by boat. True.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: I've driven lots of different boats in my in my life. We love both. Keeps the family together. There's no Wi Fi. There's we love. So we moved here to both be on the lake and enjoy the lake, whether it's in all kinds of uses. So the homeland lake rule, I'm not opposed to as a boat owner. There was a lot of Eurasian milk oil in Iroquois. So I don't like invasive species. I'm all about keeping the water clean as best as possible. I'm all for that. My doesn't leave my front yard. I see my trailer twice a year. My boat goes from, it's on a lift, so I've actually, it's not even in the water. It's so 90% of the time it's elevated above the waterline. I get it serviced at the dealer in Saranacua New York. So every September, October 1, it goes to New York, it gets winterized and it goes into a barn and then it comes to our lake and that's poppy paste for ten years. So the one thing I also, there's a ripple effect of some rules that are in the mix here. And if I can kind of reference this, out of the last rule change, I got sold out, And this is a chart of Lake Iroquois. And this is as the rules say, you can pass it around if it doesn't time out. But basically that's I keep it on my dash right in front of me and sort of is tapping in my boat. It shows me exactly where I am. So I know where I am. Oh, that's my daughter. She started surfing at night.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: But just so Anne knows what you're doing and showing

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: Oh, yeah. Like

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: what you can do

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: as well.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: The dark blue is where I'm allowed to be. Okay. So why I'm always aware of why I'm on the lake and I stay within that boundary. There's a proposed change that wants to go from 50 to 100 acres and then also have a 3,000 foot straight line. To detail, if I use the scale of the chart, this is a 4,000 foot path. And to kind of shift it back for a moment, Lake Iroquois has lots of users from there's a water seacoast at the top of the lake, and obviously those guys love the house, like, what we call the House Of Glass. They wanna see first thing in the morning, late, and there's no wind. Yeah. So when there are other users out, we we stay away. We if there's guys water skiing at the top of the lake, we stay at the bottom. So this area, I can I mean, it's my where I'm able to be, most of the time, I'm only using half of that space? Because there's other users, and I'm respecting other voters or piers or fishermen or such. And so we adapt from a There's another number out there that have all boats and say, there's only roughly 300 or like one and a half percent that fit this category. I geeked out and asked chat GBT, if you, what's the amount of daylight hours from May 30 to October 1, it was like thirteen fifty daylight hours. I only put twenty five hours on my boat. And after that time, you're kind of taking a little putter around the lake or you're getting to where you're going. So the amount of time that breaks down maybe an hour a week. So I think it's, there's been, we're super respectful. And if I'm only out there an hour a week, I'm not keeping other people from using Blade. I think we're very respectful to keep our distance and move and shift as best we can. Lake Iroquois, of all the users, we've had a text chain. If we see an open water swim around the lake, the text go out. And sometimes there's a You feel like if you see somebody out doing that, you feel like I can't leave until they're off the lake because you've actually gone out and pulled people in. It's the give and take and the compromise and the share, but back to the homeland rule, I'm not opposed to it. But I'm also, because I'm kind of not affected by it other than if this all were to change, I don't have time in my life. I've got a

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: career, my wife's got a career, we're

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: I don't have time to go to the moon. So this isn't gonna be forced me to do one, either use my vote in a non serving fashion, or non ballast tanked engaged session, just uses a regular vote or so. But if this goes into So I don't have the ability in my life to trailer some place else for girls. It's gonna

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: force me to take

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: a loss on an investment and find something else that can sell.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Go ahead. Did you hear me?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: I'm sorry.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: No, no, you're fine. You're doing great. Thank you for taking time. I'm a little confused because I, the, if you don't go to another lake with your boat, I don't think it would affect you because

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: Right.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's only if you take your boat to another lake that you would need to get it decontaminated. Right. But if you only stay on Lake Iroquois and then put it in storage in the winter Mhmm. I think you're good. Like, Yeah. What

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: I'm not, again, so it's, it doesn't affect me any sense. But the ripple effect of it is, is it does affect me if the second rule or this modification of the rule gets Is

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: that in the bill? Know. I understand it. Forgive me. I don't wanna, you know. Oh, like that. What hearing from you is just there's so separate from this bill, there's a rule making process underway that's gonna change which lakes are eligible for wake boats. The restrictions on the border, I'm losing the right words, but like the

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: The distance from the shore

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: changing and maybe the air the acreage or something like

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: The middle of acreage is the base.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes. And so what I'm hearing is that you it's like Iroquois, either this the amount of area available is becoming smaller for refills or it's becoming ineligible?

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: It'll be ineligible. Okay.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: It would if I wanted to do it, I would have to go seek my solicits.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: So then it would affect.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. That's I didn't understand. Don't think it's in the bill. It's in the rule that's being proposed by the department. I see. Okay. Yeah. I see.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: So it's a you could say it's

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: a non issue now, but it could be a big issue. No. It could be a significant issue for me, like, your take Yeah. Your

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So what I don't wanna jump in. I am assuming what you're asking is to look at which lakes to culture or

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: Well, there's also, I guess there's, it's a broad swath that's going across the whole state versus, and I understand like each lake is unique, has its own usage and, you know, we're not a busy lake, we're pretty quiet.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Don't talk to And

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: it's, so yeah, we're, it's not, it doesn't affect me.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Right.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: But next year it would affect me hundreds.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, no, it definitely would. I was confused because not on the bill that we're looking at. It's different. It's

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: makes sense.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: And it kinda ripple on the There's my neighbor has a regular, like Sea Ray is a very popular brand

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: of both. Yeah. He has

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: a 22 foot bow rider. So that

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: was copy paste easy as you can, know, very common. So I had a 23 foot sea dumpling. These two boats dry weight are almost within a couple 100 pounds of each other. So every boat that goes on the market has a yellow badge next to where the captain's helm is that says, how many people do put on your boat?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Mhmm.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: So a couple times a year, my neighbor has a family reunion and they put, you know, 10 plus people on the boat and do a 10 mile an hour slow, you know, sightseeing moving around the lake at just off the 200 foot line. Well, that's putting up a wave that's comparable to me and I'm five hundred plus. You don't necessarily have to have the activity to have the outcome. So I feel not going out tangent, but I'm 1% and of that 1%, I'm a half a percent of that 1% being used as of actually engaging sport. So we're changing, I'm being singled out in the sense of something that's, it could be an everyday occurrence. So there's layers to the onion. And I think the biggest thing is compromise. And at voter education, my daughter took an eight hour course to get her safety course. So for eight hours you have to sit in a room and listen and learn the rules of photo. And not to be But if you go to decks and buy a kayak or stand up paddleboard, you don't necessarily know the rules of leg. And as much as the signage, we had some kayaker, we were, the engine was off, we were coasting, we were just standstill, we were kind of switching riders and swimming for a moment, and a couple went by and I, it's fallen on us to educate people on the leg as far as the new role. So I said, hey, just so you know, this is a space that we're only allowed to be in. And they said, well, how do we know that? And I said, well, there's a sign of the axis. And whether they see it or they don't see it, it's arbitrary, you know. So it's I've had times where we've gone out on the lake and there's both anchored in the middle of where we are. And so we putter up and say, excuse me, hi, and sunny day everywhere, and I don't want to ruin your afternoon. Would you mind shifting over, so we can enjoy that space as well? And the couple is, they're like, yeah, have fun, fun, fun. And so it's just fun. It's back to the community. Boating culture. Yeah. And it's Yeah. And we see if the lake's busy and our lake is small enough that if there's literally more than three boats moving around, we don't go out. It's just kind of pick your time. And I mean,

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: obviously we live there because we have the

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: ability to kind of do that. But boats trailer in and they might swing around, but then they park and swim and hang out in the sun for a while. So it's kind of an ebb and flow of some sharing and time of us.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Just a technical question, for a weight boat. Yeah.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Does it have a different hole than just a regular, does your ski to take

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: a different hole because you have bowel sphinx and a ski not feet without wings?

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: It's my generation boat, so back to 2014 Yeah. Had the same hull as a prior Okay. Non surf boat.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Was kind of like that.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: They have hybrid boats now that are so if you're in sea mode, it's gonna make a flat wave, hopefully, you know, not as pure as a turn of boat, but, you know, it's so it could be it's been modified at times, I guess, best to say. So, but the biggest thing is, it's bow stakes and then there's a, like MasterCraft uses what looks like a trim tab, Malibu use what they call a gate that moves vertically. Nautique actually has a like a two inch tab that kind of just creates resistance and it doesn't change the size of the wave. What it does is it shifts the boat slightly a couple degrees so it smooths out the side that the rider's on and then puts the bomb on the other side so it cleans the wave up, but it doesn't make it bigger or smaller. So and just because the boat has power on it doesn't make it surgical. And so from If you look across the lake and you see a boat going metal in, there's no way to necessarily discern whether it's a surf boat or not, just because it has a tower. Or so there's a lot of, unless you actually see somebody serving, not that I could talk

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to, it's a speaker.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: When you, you have to register your vote and get a license for Yeah. It, And do you, as a boat captain, and you said your daughter took a boat safety course, but is that required by owners?

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: If were born after '19 it's 70 required that you have a boarding license.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Okay. And you have to be certain of each move.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: Yeah, I think 10 to 12, you have to take it in person. And over, you can take it online. Okay. But there's a captain on the boat, powerboat, you have to have a license.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, that's good. Otherwise I was gonna say, let's put that in here. But when you register your vote, it's with the agency of transportation. Yeah?

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: Indeed.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Do you have to say what kind of vote you've had?

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: I think it's just length. I mean, when you register the vote, you fill out like you're registering a car. I think it asked for length, weight, maybe horsepower, but it doesn't know, whether it's fiberglass or metal or such, but it doesn't they don't ask that question. Because

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think one of the problems is in addition to better communication, is better data. Sure. Like we just don't know what We

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: don't know how many kinds of boats there are in

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: the state. There's example, Yeah. A friend of mine, the largest boat dealership up in Bolshevik. And I've asked them for years, how many boats do you sell? They said, it's roughly you sell about 180 boats a year. I said, well, how many of those are cert boats? They said, one or two. Yeah. And so, yes, nationally, it's a very big part of, you know, the latest and greatest in probably the movement, but in Vermont we have a three month window and there's, they're not cheap. Yeah. So the ripple effect is there's not a lot of them here. We have on our lake when we moved there in twenty fifteen, one of my neighbors, his boat was 2010. So they had been surfing for five years before we got there. There were one or There was three boats, I think, that fit the category at the time. And eleven years later, there's three boats that fit

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the category.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: One sells, one go, family's back home and go.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, so would you be okay with a requirement that we ask for more data so we just know? Sure.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: I checked the box. Is it a fishing boat? Is it a surf? Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That's That's fine. Fine. Me know how big the problem is or isn't.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: Yeah. No.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. Well, I don't know if you weren't done, should give you more space.

[Robby [last name unknown] (Lake Iroquois resident and boat owner)]: No, I had the in that video.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'm excited. I there's don't know any other questions. Okay, super. Well, you so much. Yeah,

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: appreciate you coming to TestCathence. Thank you.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, and so we're gonna stay on topic,

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: or at least see Bill, I

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: should say. We're gonna move to Mr. Who is with us remotely.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Welcome.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Hello.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Hello.

[Barry Cahoon (Joe’s Pond Association)]: Yeah. Good morning. My name is Barry Caledonia. I'm here today representing the Joe's Pond Association as its water quality director and Eurasian Watermill Foil Management Coordinator. Joe's Pond is a 400 acre lake straddling the town lines between Danville and Caledonia County and Cabot in Washington County. Jones Bond is named after an Abnacki man who aligned with and guided the Vermont militias in the revolutionary war. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to present to the committee the experience of the Joe's Bond Association related to its efforts to collaborate with the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources to establish a boat inspection station at the state owned fishing access area. Our purpose and goal is to prevent introduction of aquatic invasive species into Joe's Pond and to avoid the export of invasives to non invested Vermont water bodies. In addition, my testimony will include suggested amendments to s two twenty four as introduced that will, if enacted, established aquatic invasive species spread prevention as an authorized use of state owned fishing access areas at a priority level reflective of its vital importance to preserving the ecological health of Vermont Lakes. I sent an email this past Monday to each committee member with attachments providing the text of this testimony today, as well as supplementary supporting information. Please do not consider my testimony here today is only about Joe's Pond. The Joe's Pond Association's experience is representative of many other lake associations, interactions with the Department of Fish and Wildlife relating to this issue of aquatic invasive spread prevention facilities at fishing access areas. The recommendations I offer here today are intended to address and resolve conflicting priorities in support of long term ecological well-being of all Vermont lakes, something that seemingly would be a shared goal of both Vermont Lake associations and the Agency of Natural Resources. The association has operated a greeter program at the Fish And Wildlife Fishing Access Area for over a quarter century, absent a boat wash facility. Unfortunately, despite robust staffing levels and training, the invasive aquatic vegetation known as Eurasian watermilfoil was discovered in August 2024. The association immediately mobilized to contain the proliferation of this insidious, aggressive, and persistent invasive, which has now invest infested over 100 Vermont water bodies. Yet despite tremendous financial expenditures and efforts by the association membership, contracted harvesting, education, establishment of a snuba, supported dive team that expended hundreds of person hours, hand harvesting, and much, much more. Eurasian watermill foil at the 2025 was more widespread around the lake than it was at the 2024. The invasive milfoil infestation dramatically elevated the awareness of the Joe's Pond Association as to the critical need to prevent the introduction of additional aquatic invasives into the lake. As well, the association believes it is our responsibility to prevent the export of invasives, particularly export of invasives from Joe's Ponds to other water bodies. A fully equipped boat inspection station is absolutely essential to achieve these purposes. The association believed naively as it turns out, that the Department of Fish and Wildlife would share and embrace the critical need to avoid introduction of invasives into an export from Vermont Lakes by collaborating with the association to facilitate the establishment of a boat inspection facility at the fishing access. Without getting into all the details of the association proposal, I have provided to the committee members via email, attachments documenting the communication exchange between the Fish and Wildlife Department and the association, including a comprehensive rationale for why it makes little, if any sense, to prioritize parking spaces over aquatic invasive spread prevention facility. A site plan and preliminary project design was also included. In coordination with the Federation of Vermont Lakes and Ponds, the association offers these specific revisions to the provisions of s two two twenty four. On page 11 following line 12, the following provisions should be added. Four, the Fish and Wildlife Department shall work collaboratively and to resolve any conflict with any entity as defined under section fourteen fifty three of this title, proposing establishment and operation of a boat inspection station for the purpose of aquatic nuisance spread prevention so that the lake protection facility and other authorized uses can reasonably be accommodated. This provision, if enacted, would complement and support existing statutory provisions in section fourteen fifty one, quote, that says, it is the policy of the state of Vermont to prevent the infestation and proliferation of invasive species, unquote. And fourteen fifty three, requiring that ANR work with among other entities, local interest organizations, such as lake associations to develop aquatic invasive species controls. Secondly, because of the essential priority of preventing introduction of aquatic invasives into Vermont lakes is of paramount importance in long term protection of fish and wildlife aquatic resources and associated wetlands habitat, an aquatic nuisance inspection facility listed in rule as the lowest priority authorized use of state controlled fishing access areas does nothing to resolve the refusal of the Fish and Wildlife Department to recognize this absolute necessity. By not collaboratively collaboratively achieving aquatic invasive spread prevention, the day will come when very few, if any parking spaces will be required at a fishing access area because of profoundly diminished and degraded aquatic habitats, native species populations, and natural resources. When this occurs, the short sighted nature of disallowing a boat inspection station in order to preserve a few parking spaces may finally become crystal clear.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Therefore,

[Barry Cahoon (Joe’s Pond Association)]: s two twenty four as introduced should be amended to delete lines one through three on page 14 and be replaced on page 13 at line eight as follows. 4.1, approved aquatic nuisance inspection stations for inspection of vessels entering or exiting lakes pursuant to 10 VSA section fourteen fifty four. With this change, boat inspection stations will become the highest priority authorized use and will substantively contribute to the lake protection operations that are most vital to preserving the social, economic, and ecological values of Vermont Lakes. We live in a far from perfect world, navigating through life and achieving our purpose frequently results in conflicts and requires resolution through compromise. That the inability to accommodate 100% of desired parking, 100% of the time is deemed and drawn as a red line represents a rejection of the opportunity for compromise and collaboration through which achievement of a higher purpose and a mutually beneficial outcome becomes possible. You know, the most profoundly distressing aspect of the current situation is that the Department of Fish and Wildlife's resistance to working affirmatively with lake associations to facilitate and enhance aquatic invasive spread prevention is that it not only represents an abdication of their responsibilities under 10 g s a section fourteen fifty three, but then leaves all the staggering costs, efforts, sweat, and tears associated with aquatic invasives containment and management to the lake associations in perpetuity, sacrificing a few parking spaces. And in the Joe's Pond case, just two seems to be not a lot to ask nor a lot to give. And finally, the Joe's Pond Association developed a preliminary design for the boat inspection station that included an approximately 3,000 square foot encroachment into a wetland buffer area in order to minimize loss of parking space. However, the Fish and Wildlife Department contended that the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, quote, wetlands program would not permit, unquote, the prospective encroachment. The association has performed a brief and partial search of the DEC database of recent wetlands encroachment permit decisions that has found half a dozen regulatory actions wherein permanent wetland and wetland buffer encroachments ranging from 6,000 to 20,000 square feet have been approved. These projects are all of substantially greater magnitude than the perspective encroachment associated with the association proposal. In addition, these projects provide little or no identifiable associated ecological benefit, particularly in comparison to that which would be achieved by the association proposal. If the Joe Spawn Association proposal for 3,000 square feet of wetland buffer encroachment were to be denied, such action would be entirely and egregiously inconsistent with prior DEC wetland regulatory decisions. The association offered to amend our preliminary project design to increase the wetland buffer encroachment subject to regulatory review in order to further minimize loss of parking, but this mitigating approach was also rejected by Fish and Wildlife. The same reasoning about short sighted decision making applies here to minor wetland encroachments, which represent little or no measurable diminishment of wetlands functions and values, yet can provide immense benefit through long term protection of wetlands habitats all around the lake from degradation by introduced aquatic invasives. The ANR wetlands permitting data upon which this proceeding testimony is based has been provided by email to all committee members. Vermont Lake associations are the primary stewards of our invaluable lakes and ponds. Lake associations and their members suffered disproportionately and must shoulder the burdens associated with the social, financial, and ecological costs of aquatic invasives proliferation and management. As the Joe's Pawn Association works to discharge its responsibilities to our membership to Joe's Pawn and other vulnerable water bodies to implement a complete aquatic invasives spread prevention and containment program, we can much more effectively accomplish our purpose when the ANR is acting as a collaborative and supportive partner. The Joe's Pond Association appreciates the value of public access to Joe's Pond in all public waters and recognizes the constraints of limited space. But the current situation begs an honest assessment of our collective shared purposes and priorities. We hope through enactment of these recommended amendments to S-two 24 that a functional and mutually beneficial relationship between the Department of Fish and Wildlife and Lake Association can be formed to minimize the likelihood of aquatic invasive species proliferation and its associated ecological losses. Thank you again. The Joe Spawn Association urges you to pass S-two 24 with the above suggested amendments. And if I've got any time left, I'd be pleased to answer any questions.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great, thank you so much. Really appreciate you taking the time to share that with us. Any thoughts or questions? Yes, go ahead.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: More thought. And thank you, you actually articulated something I had been rolling around my head, which is that this is an emergency. And we're not fitting it like an emergency. And that we actually shouldn't take your suggestions, to my view, and make clear statute that controlling or hopefully even eliminating make that the target square of the basis pieces is a top priority for the sake of not we're not we're

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: not doing that explicitly and

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: we should do it. And I also actually happen to agree on who we don't care about a golf parking spaces compared to people trying to keep the legs for the base because in my area, the latest that I use in the park now in the the bases and I don't like it. It's it's it's made up and having that happen to another lake because another lake in the month is anything we can do about that, can do. And I think we haven't made it quite a lot of mistakes. Thank

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: you. And just in the order of hands

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that I saw, it was done

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: in the Well, I have

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a question. I don't know

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: if it's for Mr. Caledonia or for Senator Bongartz or whomever, but are the boat inspection stations, the nuisance, the quad nuisance inspection stations is what he's suggesting. But those are different than the decontamination things that we've talked about. They're not like huge water things that was okay. They're just people looking to make sure you don't have milk oil on your boat before you put it in.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: We have a real sweet spot.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, but I just wondered what they So it's not Doesn't take up a ton of space.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: To And

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: just to if I can piggyback on it, to clarify, Mr. Cocoon, what the what you're talking about would have just taken up two parking spaces.

[Barry Cahoon (Joe’s Pond Association)]: That's correct. There is a distinction between what we're terming a boat inspection station or facility and a decontamination station, which is a term used to apply to wake boats. What we've had boat inspection, a greeter program, but it has no boat wash facility. That's what's critically important. That's what takes up the space is a is a pad, a plate, and, you know, a trailer or a building, you know, with a pump and a water heater and, you know, a water supply and all that so that you can actually use a high pressure hose car washer to to hose the trailer, the boat off, and make sure that nothing's attached to it and stays attached to it. So, you're not having invasives coming in and you don't and you aren't sending invasives out to another lake.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. I'll go to the center back.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Yeah. That that was kinda where I was very stuck back here is to make sure that when you say about inspection station, you're really maybe this is covered through definition, but that includes a washing

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: station. Okay.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Not the on, but

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it does include washing. Okay. That's why I wanna make sure.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Mr. Do we

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: get a copy of your testimony?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's on the website. It's on the website. Need to refresh here. I

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: gotta return it. Yeah,

[Barry Cahoon (Joe’s Pond Association)]: my written the text of my testimony as well as, I think, attachments, including the preliminary design of the facility, the communication exchange between the association and fish and wildlife, and the third thing was, she said, escapes me right now.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I don't know I can

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: see. Yeah.

[Barry Cahoon (Joe’s Pond Association)]: You you have it anyway.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: I agree. Screw that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, and I have a couple other questions. One of the things that we were discussing the other day is with boat wash stations,

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we have questions about the runoff

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: from that. So does the runoff from a boat wash, like where you have it, is it just going right back into the lake? I suppose if it's a boat that's just coming out, it doesn't matter. But if it's a boat coming in, that may matter more. But I guess if if you could comment at all about the runoff.

[Barry Cahoon (Joe’s Pond Association)]: Right. The the facility will have to include containment elements so that the water you're using to to wash the boat off is either contained or filtered so that there is no direct discharge back to waters of the state.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Well, that's good to know. And then I wanna recognize that this is you may not have this and that is perfectly fine, but something that came up in testimony the other day as we were talking about the primary uses of the access points,

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: or the prioritized uses.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: There's a question of, like, did Joe's Pond recently get a grant from the federal government? Is this ringing any bells?

[Barry Cahoon (Joe’s Pond Association)]: No, we haven't. Okay.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If there's something about that,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'll I'll follow-up offline. But if there is nothing to follow-up about, then that's okay too. There was a question about the interaction between federal law and state law. We can follow-up on that another time, but any other questions? Okay. Well, you so much. Really appreciate your suggestions and the work that

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you do

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: for Joe's Pond and helping to protect waters around the state. So thank you.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Great, thank you.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, and we are running a little bit behind at this moment. We're anticipating that we may have Attorney Zona coming in at eleven. And so,

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: I can certainly come back as an attorney, one just learned to never keep a judge waiting. But my testimony is actually fairly, it's more about a pot and basis and a weight boost than the pitching access issues. So it actually dovetails Mr. Cohen's question. But really, your discretion

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, so is it relatively short? Or could you make your comment? If Shoney comes in, we can transition. Sure, it can be relatively Absolutely. Short. Thank you.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You know,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: do want you to be able to say all the things that you wanna say.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Oh, I don't know.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: So let me see.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: So for the record, I'm Jared Carpenter with Lake Champlain Committee. It's nice to be with the committee and not talking about Saltville. But thank you so much for your past support to Saltville. So I'm here

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: to talk about S-two 24 and

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: the capacity of, well, a little bit on weightboats, more on the aquatic nuisance language that is within the bill and also the rule. Have posted, I've asked, excuse me, June to post draft, use of public laws rule under my name on under today's date. Okay. Wanna find it. But I do have some references. It's in my experience in doing this a while, it's been an interesting that there is a draft rule going through right now where the public comments are due next week, and a bill that's going through at the same time. Some sections are complementary and some sections are in conflict. So at any rate, this is the important basis identification that the LHC Champlain Committee puts together. Just very quickly, it identifies, let me tell you, we have what's called our CHAMPS program, which is people who take this information and are around Lake Champlain looking for, not only current aquatic invasive, whoops, there we go, the little triangle with the exclamation point in it, and it is species of concern that have not arrived

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: at the lake yet.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Things like round goby and such, and I need to work, this is a big document. So I'll work on getting it to you, but in the interest of time, I won't do the whole thing. Won't get a pause for you.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you, I apologize, because we do have, before you really get into it, you know, because there's a lot to be said. I can fart and come back. Amazing,

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: okay? Would be perfectly fine.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you, thank you for

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: your flexibility, really appreciate your No, of course. Okay, so we are joined virtually by Judge Zonay. Welcome, so.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: Good morning, thank you. Yeah,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: for sure.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: I under Tom Zornay, Chief Superior Judge. And I understand the question the committee had was on section one of s two twenty four.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Section four. Section? Section

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: four. Yes. Oh, no, no, section four.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'm sorry. Sorry. Okay. My apologies. It's actually section, if you would, if you want to come back at the time, if you're not ready to come in at section four, then that's okay. Sorry about the miscommunication. I thought it was section three. It's So,

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the bottom of page six.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, and seven. So I suppose it would be section three and or about the judicial bureau having

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: authority Yes.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: I was all excited thinking, wow, this is as easy one, section one, I can handle that one.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So So however you

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: can handle it is fine. You want to come back or if you're prepared to talk about three and four, that's great too.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: I would want to seek input from someone in the judicial bureau before I opined on that section if that was okay. I'd want to do a little background on it. If I could come back on that, that would be appreciated.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That's perfectly fine. No worries. And my apologies. We'll get you back another time.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: Can I tell you something about section one that I noticed?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Sure. Yes. Absolutely. Would love to hear it.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: So section one talks about appeals going to the environmental division. And it says on page four, appeals from a final act municipality under a bylaw or ordinance approved shall be to the environmental division. I can give you the long version with the nuances or I can give you the short version. I'll start with short, but I'm happy to go long.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Wait, judge, think, are you looking at s two twenty four?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: Yes.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. So on page four, which

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: lines? Lines one through three.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: You want are you version 2.1? No. What version?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: I have the introduced version. I am sorry.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. We're good to know.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Introduced. Page four.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, okay. There we go. Appeals. Alright. With you.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: The short version is this. Jurisdiction in the environmental division is conferred under Title IV, Section 34 of Vermont statutes. They talk, when you look at title 10 appeals, section one of title of section 34 says jurisdiction of matters arising under 10 VSA chapters two zero one and two twenty. It does not say chapter 49. And there's a difference between bylaws and ordinances because ordinances usually go to the judicial bureau. And so in order to make it very clear and avoid any questions, my suggestion to the committee would be that you add chapter 49 to four VSA 34 in subsection one to make it clear that these appeals, that there is jurisdiction for these appeals. And you don't have right now in the bill in 02/24, there's no provision for changing the jurisdiction. But to me that's the cleanest way that you can assure that no one could argue. They don't have the ability to take care of these appeals on these when they come up from ordinances. I could make a circular argument and say, well, here's how it really fits in. But the reality is, if you can make it direct, we might as well do that in the statute to remove any ambiguity and any potential challenges.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. It's for VSA 34,

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: chapter 39,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: is that what you said?

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: Chapter 49, because change to section fourteen twenty four of Title 10, that falls within Chapter 49 of Title 10.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Got it. That

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: would just straighten out that. And please let me know when you'd like me to come back, and I will get some background on sections three and four. I'll be ready to go.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, wonderful. Thank you. My apologies for

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: your

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: flexibility. So we'll circle back

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to it. Nonetheless, this is helpful. So really appreciate your testimony.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: Thank you, have a great day.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, you too. Cheers.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You'd like a quick break?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, sorry, sorry, this is Natural Resources and Energy. We're coming back from a break. I'm joined by Mr. Carpenter. Hello again. Hello

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: again. So no more presentations, I just wanted to briefly show you.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: But your pictures were good.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: I know.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: What I'm gonna try to

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: get, and we do have little cards of them, they're identification cards that you can flip through, and I wasn't able to bring any down now, which is probably a good thing because I would hand them out and spend all your time looking at them and not listening to me. But I will try and bring them down. Because we have the chance program, which is funded through basin, election fund basin program, which has volunteers that go around and look for aquatic invasives, particularly these species that have not emerged yet. I mean, there are, the open plant was discovered, which is a very small open plant was discovered a few weeks ago, months ago now, round goby is a concern, but getting to the conversation that you had with Mr. Cajon, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, and Senator Zee mentioned, aquatic abases are a huge concern for Lake Champlain.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Now obviously a lot of

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: other waters, and really we agree that more and more efforts need to be made to stop the spread into all of our waters. Yes, they can be transmitted through ducks and things like that, but we really need to do what we can to spread it aquatic invasives, stop the spread of aquatic invasives. So I am gonna be talking largely to the current draft, 2.1, the draft rule, which is posted, as I said, there's some overlap and some conflict. But I'm not gonna talk about the delegation and fishing tournaments and things of that nature, so I will sort of jump in. Wade votes, Lake Champlain Committee has not engaged in the Wade vote issue in the past couple of years, but is now doing so on a limited basis. We have discussed it internally with the board and of course the executive director where Lake Champlain Committee has always been supportive of those inland lakes that want to restrict or ban the use of wave boats, but they should be too big. So it's not something we've gotten into. There's always been this concern that if you ban waveboats on every other lake, they're all going to wind up on Lake Shinkeep, or Lake FitzRamagon, or Lake Wallace, or the Connecticut Lakes, those are pretty much the plates that have not been included in this rule because they are either interstate and or international plates. So they just are generally not included in those restrictions and rates going up. I'll be back to that in a moment, but we do have concerns about the spread of a public invasives on all boats, not just wave boats. And if you go to page six, I'll walk myself through this. It's already actually been removed. We're fans of the designation of a home lake. It makes sense to try to determine like you were saying Senator Caledonia the best we can. The decal that seemed to be, that was in the first version, seemed to be something that would be difficult for DDC's lace and ponds to implement. So we don't think that is necessary, but there needs to be some sort of certification of decontamination or some way of identifying that decontamination has occurred. My understanding is lace Stephan's department program has been thinking about this internally. I think that is key to know, especially with out of state as well. We need to know some way that these boats are coming in, they've been decontaminated from their own waters. They're not bringing anything into our own lakes, know, ballast waters or otherwise. Something else that's worth exploring is, I mean, you've talked about it a little bit when you register your boat, there's a

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: line down at the bottom

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: that says, Is this a wait boat? Yes or no. And you check the box you list your home water, and then it says, And the DMV is required to then submit information along to the Agency of Natural Resources, and they compile a database of how many there are registered in the

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: state where the home waters.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: My understanding is most lake boats,

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: as the gentleman was saying,

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: don't leave their home waters. They're big, they're expensive, they involve moorings, and it's not like your Boston Whaler, you're taking all over the place. So I think once it be to identify home waters and decontamination, that will help really contain the spread, contain the ballast water issues. So it might be worthwhile asking the agency of transportation. Again, my understanding is lakes and ponds, and I

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: think they talked about it

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: a little bit here, has talked to DMV a little bit about it. DMV was not thrilled with the idea. This body can compel them to be, well, maybe not thrilled. With a reconsider.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And just so you know, I've reached out to try to find out who the right person is to talk to at the DOT, well, with the AMT. Okay.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Yeah. No, because I think that seems like it would not be a very, well,

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: I might not be, but it seems like

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: it might be a better solution. Pages ten and eleven are regards to the big contamination

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: stations. Oh, yes.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: So the draft rule also has very specific new rules on bottling bases and checking your boats and training for people who man those stations. I think it complements, I might be missing something, it complements this language pretty well. We believe that there's a section here

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: on page 10, line 14 about,

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: oh, I'm looking at my bills message,

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: but any rate, there's a section about signage, the posting signs and access stations for public education, public education, this issue, I think it's

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: gonna be really important. Page nine, Google page. Thank you, page nine. Okay, that's right.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Page nine of the leak is that's

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: No, page nine. I'm sorry, did update my page. In

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: terms of the fishing access areas themselves, I know Department of Fish and Wildlife has concerns with having them from decontamination. Yes, I understand that there's concerns with federal funding, the hunting and fishing access. The hunting and fishing needs to be made priority. That's not to say that a body of nuisance can't be the exact priority right behind them until you get to other priorities for those areas. I think it's something that needs to be considered a little bit more thoroughly by fish and wildlife, obviously with some caveats in the language that maybe fish and wildlife does have final veto. My thought would be, and I can consider some language and talk to Mr. Caledonia as well, sort of the same area, that the Lakes and Ponds Program, the Fish and Wildlife Department would get together, put some guidance together on exactly what standards need to be for these specific areas, and how many parking spaces they need to have, and basic some standards that seems to be a little bit all over the place on when it can be used and when it can't be used, and very subjective. But I think if you put in some more guidance and some new structure on when these stations can be used for decontamination as well as if they can't, for whatever reason, then a reasonable effort be made to find an alternative site close by that could be an issue, it's not just so we can be disregarded because there's not enough parking spots. It's gonna be hard to base, in my mind, I get it. There's only so much parking in certain areas, but some days you're gonna have five people show up and some days you're gonna have 50 people show up. I don't think you can have a limit on parking. There's gonna have to

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: be other factors that are involved in order

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: for their broaden basis or address. And I don't know, this needs to be talked about, I think in terms

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: of maybe a memorandum of

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: understanding or some sort of guidance between the two groups on, it can't just be in my mind, relation to Bennington's mind, be, we have to keep X amount of parking slots available for people who may or may not show up. It's a little subjective and it's a little arbitrary in my mind, I was just determined. Yes, go ahead.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: No, you're fine, thank you. I feel like I should have asked this question a while ago, but it's coming to my mind now, so I'm going to ask you, Jared,

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: you But

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: the programs where people inspect boats or wash boats, setting aside the decontamination of wake boats, but the inspection and washing of regular boats, Is there evidence that that is helpful, that it's working, that it does prevent, or is there any data on that?

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: That's actually a good question.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: Let me look into that. I don't know,

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: I would think that it's, you know, from a basis perspective

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: of rinsing down the boats,

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: making sure there's nothing clinging to it is

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's logical, but it makes sense, I'm just wondering if anybody's tracked it.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: And done in such

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: a manner as you all suggested that it's so not close enough to the water. It's gonna

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: be done

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: in a location where the water doesn't go back into the water body. Let me see, I can reach out to the Lacey Barnes program and see if they have some information.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: My folks. Seems like somebody would have written a paper about it or something. I mean, it's logical that it is helpful, but I'm just wondering about It's a good question.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Then another question? Just to review that issue, I know that place in the Catharines Association keeps data.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, do they owe that? I mean

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Well, and that's the thing. It's like, you know, when everybody's looking at it, nobody in particular is. So some some place we gotta have somebody designated to be responsible for that data.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Would seem like the lakes and consents

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: of the department for whatever that's in office.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: The federation of Vermont Lakes and Consent. Yeah. So

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: the language, if you go

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: to I'm looking at the

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: right graph now. If you look at page 10, line seven, and then go down to Lines thirteen and fourteen. The way it's written down, I think is fine. It's fishing access areas may be used. I mean there is flexibility and if the F5 nuisance inspection station conflicts with the use of a higher priority, then you modify the activity until the conflict is remediated. This does give the Department of Fish and Wildlife the detailed authority and the flexibility that they need, I think that's important. But I also think that there needs to be greater consideration given to addressing the aquatic nuisances. And I think with some tinkering of this language and maybe some requests for some guidance or an MOU, you can find a spot that addresses fish and wildlife concerns, but also brings in the inequality these decisions as well. So that's sort of my thinking about all of this. And although Ellen hasn't shown up yet, don't know.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: We do have another question here. No. Your own

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: state is the fish and wildlife fisheries by all biologists are not. If I don't because that's what we're talking about.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: By all means, I mean, I think it's something that if it's it needs to be discussed, I think, a

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: little bit more broadly than

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: the man than putting other people together.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: I don't think we need to put together a cyst. But maybe something along the lines along

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: the lines of harmonizing for some

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: sort of memorandum of understanding or some

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: sort of guidance that they could then

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: come back to the committee in December and discuss, here's where we hopefully hit the sweet spot. Engaging stakeholders will be great. I'll look at Mr. Cahome's language as well. It sounds like he's thought about this for a while. Waitboats. For Lake Champlain Committee, we're not asking that We don't think waitboats should be addressed in statute in terms of this distance of feet and things of that nature in acreage. That seems to be something that should be a rule and be more flexible than would be in statute because the science may develop that 500 feet isn't enough and it should be a different distance or maybe a different depth or things of that nature. But if you into, if you get a chance to look at the rule, it is on pages sixteen, seventeen, and 24.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Of the rule.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Of the rule.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Which we don't have yet, but we're gonna get it.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: It's under my name.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, it

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: is amazing. Okay.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: You need

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: the proposal.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: The proposal.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: The proposal. Proposal. The due next week. It defines waste for zones and says, you can't use them within 500 feet of loom nesting, 500 feet of an individual or another vessel, 500 feet from shoreline. And then it defines what a weight zone would be, and I think it's a 200 feet wide, 3,000 feet long, and that establishes the gate, which is the gentleman was talking about before.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: So that's all in the rule.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: It's 115 pages, the draft proposed rule, but it's only the first 25 pages of the rule. The rest of it is these specific restrictions, late by late by late, of what can be used and what can't be used, which is interesting in its own way. Now we're not proposing a wait zone in Lake Champlain, it's too big, but in rule, and we are talking about this with the Lacey Box program, there should be distance and depth requirements under the Champlain, Lake Informaga,

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Lake Wallace and Kinetic Lakes

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: for the same reasons. The distance rules you have not only for public safety between swimmers and other boaters, kayakers, From shore, it's because of shore erosions. And for lakeshoe planes, the depth, the depth is 20 feet, but you shouldn't use it in areas, have to use it 20 feet or deeper. Studies are starting to show, and I won't quote from it, but it's a field study of recreational powerboat hydrodynamics and their impacts of the water column in Lake Bend, July 2025 from the University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, is finding that and wake boats in general stir up

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: the sediment in the bottom.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: What's stored in the sediment ablation plane we're spending in the course of $45,000,000 a year to prevent phosphorus. So you can start using this in a shallow base, the concern is it's gonna start stirring

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: up the sediment,

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: it's gonna start stirring up the phosphorus, and we're gonna have, it's gonna be treated to our cyanobacteria issues. A not great example is Lake Carmi. If you recall, they had the aerators that didn't work, and they've now gone to play album treatment. It's my understanding from one of the former staff scientists at LCC is that the aerator actually contributed to the algebra bullying as being worse because you had it on the bottom and it was stirring up the sediment and it was stirring up the phosphorus that's buried in the sediment. Brilliant. So this is a concern. Now Lake Champlain has different depths in all over, so it's gonna be hard to enforce in some areas, but Mallet's Bay is under 20 feet, and it's the entire bay. Some areas will be easier to enforce than others, but again, we're gonna submit the comments on this. We're gonna continue, LCC's gonna continue discussions with lakes and ponds about hopefully getting some rules involved in lakes and complaining as well. And so those are the two areas that I wanted to hit on. I can continue conversations about the aquatic invasives and potential language on potential guidance or something like that, if that's okay, Madam Chair, get something to the committee and

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: suggestions welcome. Thank you. So thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Any questions? No, thanks. Yes. Thank you.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Any specific suggestions? Yeah.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: All right.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: Thank you all so much. And I will.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. All right, Super. We're gonna Ledge Council. End the day where we began. Circling back.

[Hon. Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: Take us home.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's gonna take me a second to transition here. Thank you for going back.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Allen Schakowsky, after the legislative council. So we were looking at draft 3.1 of S138, C PACE, Mercy PACE program. And I believe you left off on page two.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: All

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: right, so remind me the new language in the paragraph is highlighted in yellow or the yellow reflects that something has changed, some language has been removed, some language has been added. Then we're on page four, Nothing oh, I think where we left off was at the top of the page. So the weighted cost is highlighted because the language that was taken out here was that the efficiency utilities, I think specifically Efficiency Vermont, would do the calculation for lifetime of the project.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So that has been removed,

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: seeing so they probably aren't going to be involved. Not seeing any other provision of law at the time of the transfer of property ownership, including foreclosure, oh, sorry. Why is it?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Because admissions Vermont's not likely to be involved in And this at there's going to be a performance analysis performed by licensed engineers already.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And it's possible, depending on how you establish the authority, the program administrator would largely set some of the needs baseline. Baseline. So at the time of transfer of property including foreclosure, the past due balances of any special assessment under the subchapter shall be due for payment, but future payments shall continue as a lien on the property. In the event of a foreclosure, the past due balances shall include all payments on the assessment under the subchapter that are due and unpaid as of the date of the action is filed, and all payments on the assessment that become due after that date and that accrue up to and including the date title to the property is transferred to the mortgage holder, the lienholder, or a third party involved in the foreclosure action. So, a person that are entitled the property in the foreclosure action, be responsible for obtaining the assessment that it would be due after the date of such acquisition. A participating municipality shall disclose to participating property owners each of the following: the risks associated with participating in the program, including risks related to failure of participating property owner to make payments and risk of foreclosure.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Can I pause for a second? Yeah. Just wanting to note that as a part of the package of documents that the program administrator would adopt, that would include the standard set of, one of the things that

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it would include is this, the disclosure, standard disclosure. Yeah, and this, I believe all this language exists currently in residential case, and so it may make sense here to change that to say, you can think about it, if you want to change it from

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: the municipality, just a program administrator, on how

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: this is structured, but the property owner will probably have some contact with the municipality.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, I suppose it doesn't matter who provides it as long as someone provides it. Yeah. Yeah. All

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: right, on to page five. There are no changes, and so the municipality will also provide the provisions of subsection, each of the sections that pertain to the prepayment of the assessment. A written agreement or notice of an agreement and the analysis performed pursuant to subsection B shall be filed with the clerk of the applicable municipality for reporting in the land records and shall be disclosed to potential buyers prior to transferring property ownership. Personal finance information provided to the municipality by participating property owner or potential property owner shall not be subject to disclosure under the Public Records Act. If notice of an agreement is filed instead of a full written agreement, the notice shall attach the analysis performed pursuant to subsection B and shall include at least each of the following, name of the property owner as grantor, name of the municipality as grantee, the date of the agreement, the legal description of the real property against which the assessment is made pursuant to the agreement, the amount of the assessment, and the period during which the assessment shall be made on the property, a statement that the assessment shall remain a lien on the property until paid in the bill or released, and on to page six, the location at which the original agreement may be examined. So here, it said the original or a true legible copy can be examined. We just struck true legible because everybody no one's probably reading this

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: by hand. Well, no. So

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: We're gonna

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: make a loophole, would

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Either way, it could be the original. So if it was, that

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: original is the only thing.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I I think this is actually cutting off the the potential of a a Xerox machine or a one of the mimeograph.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Where you're

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: copying a handwritten. What are they called? Oh gosh.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: That's one handed a piece of paper that had all the ink.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: The ink that smelled just so if you went into the teacher's lounge or lunch, you could smell the dinner. That was a childish experience. Okay. All right, on page

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: six, there is some new language to this draft. The subsection E, Prior to entering into the written assessment contract, the property owner shall obtain and furnish to the local government a written statement executed by each holder of a mortgage or deed of trust on the property, securing indebtedness in their sole and absolute discretion that consents to the assessment and indicates that the assessment does not constitute an amend of default under the mortgage or deed of trust.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Do you, shall I just Do you

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: want it? Sure, context. This is a suggestion. Yes. It replaces the language that was there previously, which was that the property owner shall provide the holders of any existing mortgages notice of intent to enter into the assessment. And so this is a slight, this is a variation of that. Yes.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So the key here is that the mortgage holder, aka like the bank, is providing consent that they're doing this, and this is one of, I believe, and we will hear testimony on this, but what we hear from like, Chris Delia about this, he may be interested in that statement, and I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I believe it's important.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, we'll go from there. Subsection F on page six, the combined amount of the assessment plus any outstanding mortgage obligations for the property shall not exceed 90% of the assessed value of that property. With respect to an agreement under this section, assessments to be repaid under the agreement when calculated as if they were the repayment of the loan, shall not violate 9ESA Sections 41A, 43, 44, and 46 through 50. Those laws relate to interest on loans. Sweet. What? Didn't you say? May agree. They're related to how interest is established for loans. And the maximum length of time for the property owners to repay the assessment shall not exceed thirty years. That whole section is in residential PACE, it's the same language. Oh, the thirty years? That whole subsection G is also what is used currently for residential PACE. Subsection H for projects under Subchapter two of this chapter, which is residential case. There shall be no penalty or premium for prepayment of the outstanding balance of an assessment under this subchapter. If the balance is prepaid in full, projects under this subchapter three are not subject to these provisions, but shall be determined by the private agreement for financing of improvements. This was the slide which I was suggesting. The first sentence is what is currently in subchapter two for residential PACE.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Either we can rewrite that to be

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: more clear or we could just not include it, but I think the important part is that the proposal for C PACE is that there could be a penalty for prepayment.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, that is the if. We do not want prepayment penalties for residential allowing that before. On

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: page seven, subsection I, I don't know why the highlighting is there on Subsection I, it may have been carried over from the last one, because I don't think this has changed at all.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Don't think

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But then on page seven, section three thousand two and seventy seven is the new language. In the prior draft, there was a rulemaking provision for DFR to adopt the underwriting criteria for C PACE. DFR, under this draft, is not involved at all. In its place is language relating to a program administrator. This language probably needs some work. I drafted it based on Maine's law and their program administrator. And so, there may be things you want to add or adjust, but I was looking for another example. So, and just so you know, Maine, I've only done a bit of research, but they have their efficiency main trust, that's their efficiency utility. They are the program administrator

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: there. So,

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think this is the first, and so one of the small things that we need to fix is that they wrap C PACE over and over, and so we actually could use that acronym in here if you like, if it's helpful. That's how they reference it throughout. C PACE program administration. The entity that administers the CPACE program under this subchapter shall be referred to as the program administrator. A municipality that has adopted a CPACE ordinance may enter into a contract with the agency for it to serve as the program administrator and to administer the functions of the CPASE program for the municipality. So in Maine, they have an agency, I should say Maine, they, TAOCs have the option to ask them to be the program administrator and enter into a contract, or the municipality itself and subdivision serves as the program administrator itself. Currently, as agency, I do not know which agency would be best for this role. Hoping to come back with some recommendations

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: on that.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Seth B. It should be the town itself. It could be the administrator to administer the functions of CPASE, including entering into the agreements with commercial property owners in this jurisdiction and collecting the assessments. So this is actually why I asked earlier about the level to which municipality under this program you're envisioning exists, because I think, but I don't know, that to some extent in other states, the municipality has little to no involvement because they have program administrators. So I just want to

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: make sure you hear about those options. Yeah. Okay. I just remain confused about where's the money coming from that is being used to pay for the program, to pay for the improvements?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: When? So my basic understanding of this is the homeowner

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Who's the talking?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, okay. You're right.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Because I'm kind of

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This doesn't exist yet, sorry. Okay. The property owner who is eligible for this program seeks third party financing. If they're going to be under this program, they have to be in a district that the municipality has approved. There's a contractual relationship with the property owner, the third party funder, financer, and the municipality. The funder pays for the work done on the property. The municipality assesses the payback amount as part of the property tax. I do not know exactly how they calculate the property assessed amount that is due every year, but it is collected in the same way the tax would be collected.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, so some lending institution is giving the person a month to put on solar panels or key pumps or whatever. And then the town is collecting the payments back and then paying them to the lender. Yes. And the reason the town has to be involved is why? Why isn't the lender just collect? I don't understand how I seriously do not understand what the town's role is in this and why we were asking them to be involved, unless it has to do with the lien. Does the municipality have to be involved in order for a lien to be placed on the property? I do not know. Okay. I just don't understand how the money part works at all, and so that's why it's confusing us to me why the municipality, how does this differ than just a regular commercial loan? Well, you said it earlier that it's effectively a loan to the land, and so there's some, right, there's the lien, there's the term Oh, it travels with the property. It travels with the property.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Let's see. It doesn't have. Oh, yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. So whoever owns the property has to pay it back. Right. Okay. Okay. And then there was a lien put on the property so the loan is paid off, there's a property lien. Yep, okay. Just Right, and you're right that the money would be coming from this, a capital provider, which is actually referenced later. Yeah, yeah. Okay. It just seems like if the town has to be involved to do the administration of collecting the money and then paying the money to the lender, and then there's got to be some state agency that's involved, I'm wondering if the juice is worth the squeeze here, because the towns that are gonna do this are gonna be only our most sophisticated towns, would think. And then there's gonna be some kind of constituency. So the way that it's structured here, as I understand it, is that municipality does have to. They could be the administrator and then they get to charge a fee for that service, but I think it could also, it should be available as long as the municipality has approved that this can happen in their town, that it could be handled by the statewide program administrator. So it shouldn't theoretically be just available, this program shouldn't just be available to the largest towns. It's whether or not they, the municipality wants to take it on as the program administrator themselves. They could. And no, maybe it's possible that no one may want to. Yeah.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We can take more tests from beyond that.

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: Yes,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: New Hampshire, we probably heard from Maine,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: because we're That's the kind of thinking, so the same thing.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, trying to figure out the system. Fair enough.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, the bottom on page seven, model documents, educational materials. The agency shall develop and provide municipalities, model CK's ordinances, model CK's agreements, and other model forms and documents and educational materials for use by municipalities on page eight, property owners and capital providers in the implementation of PACE programs. The agency may enter into a contract with the C PACE municipality where the agency shall serve as the program administrator of the municipality, collect fees necessary to administer the CPACE program, and subcontract with one or more third parties to perform part or all of the duties of a program administrator on behalf of the agency. Other than the fulfillment of its obligations specified in the C PACE agreement, neither the agency nor municipality has any liability to commercial property owner for or related to energy savings or resilience improvements financed under a C PACE program.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I hate to speak just to make sure I get my hands exploding this another time here. So there's another level of the administrator beyond town doing this. So what does that mean?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So we can take some testimony on that, but there needs to be somebody statewide who has the ability to generate or adopt a sort of package of standard documents, and

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: But it's not like it was somebody else who didn't get further than the Adam.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So there could, think, as I understand it, and we, again, we can take more testimony, that it could be, like the billing could be run through the state agency, but it could also be run through the town. But we should hear more

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: about that. Yeah, so currently as it exists in the state PACE, the municipality administers the full program and they may or may not get some input from DFR. Other states that have adopted commercial PACE have started to move towards this model of having a program administrator instead of the municipality or in conjunction with the municipality. And so do think that's one of the major changes under this CPACE program that you are hearing a proposal about. I didn't know what the duties of your administrator would be. And so I copied what another state has done and you can adjust this, but I think that is sort of the proposal from some of the advocates, is that instead of having the municipality do things as Senator Hardy was just discussing that may be administratively burdensome

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: to them or out of their interests.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They don't maybe want to do that. You could have a state agency designated as the point agency for this instead of or in conjunction with the GNSC.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Mr. Keller, you'd still have to bear out the belief because it's part of the person who knew. Yes.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, I guess to my earlier point from the last time you were here, we should, we're gonna add, make a list of things they should do. We should reference the program guidebook, just so that if we're gonna do this, but my question, it seems here, I mean, page eight, they're line seven and eight, is you can, the state, so there's the municipality, then there's the state agency, and then there's language here about the state agency contracting with a third party to perform all or part of the duties of the program administrator. So essentially that becomes a private individual or company administering these loans. So why would we do all this and not just have regular commercial loans?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And is there a way,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I mean, maybe this is question for Cecilia or some other banker. Isn't there a way to have the same kind of thing that happens in a commercial loan without setting up this whole

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: complicated thing. Yeah, it's state buy down of rates to subsidize that decision.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, I don't think it's a state buy down of rates. It's just a matter of like, is there a way to have the loan stay with the property? Because that's why municipalities have to be involved. Is there a way to have a lien? You can put a lien on the property without municipality being involved. They can't. Exactly. A bank can do it, so why can't a bank do all of this? That's what I don't understand. There's probably an answer to it, but I don't understand it. Well, it's a good question. Let's flag it as a question to ask.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I keep thinking for some reason, the Olympics are doing this. Right, exactly.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Access to capital, but why? I mean Yeah. What's the barrier?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I'm sorry. So,

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the rest of this language in the next few pages is all language that currently exists for residential PACE, but adding reference that it also applies to C PACE. So on page eight, section two, section three thousand two and sixty three, cost of operation of district, the owners of real property who have entered into written agreements with the municipality under resident base or seat base shall be obligated to cover the costs of operating the district. The municipality may use other available funds to operate the district. Section three thirty two sixty four writes of property owner. A property owner who has entered into a written agreement with the municipality for a residential space or a C PACE may enter into a climate agreement for the installation project related to renewable energy or energy efficiency. I was wondering if you wanted to add resiliency here. Yeah. Section four, liability of municipality. A municipality that incurs indebtedness for or otherwise finances projects under this subchapter shall not be liable for failure of performance of a project. A municipality that incurs indebtedness for bonding under the subchapter shall pledge the full faith and credit of the municipality. So new language here on line 13, a municipality that enters into a written agreement with property owner under subchapter three, which is C PACE, shall not incur any indebtedness or otherwise financed projects under this chapter, nor shall be liable to the failure of performance of a project, nor pledge the full faith and credit of the municipality.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So is paragraph C basically saying for C PACE A and B don't Yeah. Okay. Perhaps that could be written better.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section five, three thousand two hundred and sixty eight, release of the lien. The municipality shall release the property owner of the lien against which the assessment of residential pays or CPAS is made upon full payment of the value of the assessment. On to page 10, notice of a release of a lien for an assessment under residential PACE or C PACE shall be filed with the clerk for the applicable municipality reporting in the land records. And then section six, three thousand two hundred and fifty five collection of assessments liens. Special assessments under this chapter shall constitute a lien on the property against which the assessment is made in the same manner and to the same extent as taxes assessed on the grand list of the municipality and all procedures and remedies for the collection of taxes shall apply in special assessments. Notwithstanding subsection A, a lien for an assessment under subchapter two, so residential fees, shall be subordinate to all liens on the property in existence at the time the lien for the assessment is filed in the land records. Shall be subordinate to a first mortgage on the property recorded after such filing, and shall be superior to any other lien on the property reported after such filing. In no way shall this subsection affect the status or priority of any municipal lien other than a lien for a

[Sportsmen’s advocate (name not stated)]: special assessment.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: A lien for an assessment under subchapter three, so CFACE, shall be exempt from the provisions of this section and upon receipt of consent, so up to page 11, from lenders pursuant to subsection E shall not be subordinate to all other means of the property in existence at the time of the lien or the assessment is filed on the land record.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So that explains why the residential base has to go through the town because, but if we're just sort of negating all of this, which I understand why we are, Again, I'm not sure why the town is involved.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm not entirely sure if this language makes clear the level of support innovation. Okay. I mean, yes. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Like we might need to make it clearer.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, because I understand in the lineup of liens, first residential case, first mortgage is the most important and then the pace, and then everything else. So, but it says that CPASE is exempt from this, so where does that put it? Usually it's person's kind, I think is default, so would that make it last?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think the, well, we should get testimony on this. I think the intent, well, I, let's get a testimony on it. But where it should fall and how clear it is.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so the last section, section seven hasn't changed, but this is that it's exempting C PACE from this existing law that says you can't have prepayment penalties.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes. Okay. Thank you. So we're coming back. We've finished.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We're only like a minute

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: over. Yeah. Questions to keep asking about this, which is great. And we'll go from here.