Some people say you should never meet your heroes. To these people I say, get better heroes, because I spoke with Christian Whitehead on the phone for 45 minutes and he is absolutely delightful. There are some names that jump out larger than others in the indie gaming sphere, and Christian Whitehead is one of them. Starting as an indie developer working on Sonic the Hedgehog fan games before being hired by Sega to do the real thing and making Sonic Mania. He and several of the other developers that worked on Sonic Mania then formed Evening Star and have created their own debut title, Penny's Big Breakaway. In videos I often like to portray Christian Whitehead as kind of the rock star of the Sonic fan game community. And having spoken with him, I absolutely stand by that assertion. How else do you define somebody who, when asked what the moral of his own life story is, responds with the David Bowie quote. Speaking with Christian Whitehead feels like something of a holy grail for me. I have long wanted to interview him, obviously couldn't get anywhere near him while he was working with Sega, and his social media presence is fairly sparse, so there's not an awful lot to latch on to there. Indie gaming though is a completely different ballgame. As soon as Penny's Big Breakaway Shadow dropped, I emailed Private Division and asked if I could have an interview, and for some reason they said yes. I imagine that the PR team probably regretted this fairly early into the interview. According to my contact at the company, quote, It was clear you were passionate, which we all know is code for you were an absolute fanboy. I couldn't help myself though, Christian was just so interesting and cool. He had so many fun things to say, and even when I threw him a question that was only half baked or half developed, he gave such a spectacular interesting answer. Before the interview I did put up a post on our channel's community tab asking you guys for questions, and I did ask him some of your questions, so if you're interested in knowing why penguins and what kind of yo-yo tricks Christian Whitehead can do, then keep watching. The one mine and niggle with this otherwise delightful experience is the fact that I've been asked not to use the actual audio from our phone call in this video. And that's disappointing because it's just right there on my hard drive, but I can't share it with you. Instead, in order to give you the full interview as best I can, I've taken selections from it, and I will be reading them myself, which is not ideal. It is absolutely not the way that I would like to present this, but it is the best I can do with what I have available. To that end, the rest of this video will be Christian Whitehead's own words coming out of my mouth. He will touch on topics such as his own experience of growing and learning as a developer and a programmer, on the process of building a Sonic the Hedgehog game and of building Penny's Big Breakaway, and where he sees the future of momentum-based games are going forward. This then is the story of Christian Whitehead, Sonic Mania, and Penny's Big Breakaway. 1. The Story of Christian Whitehead When I was a young kid, I literally thought video games were magical. I didn't understand how they worked, just this idea of mythos behind games. You'd always hear rumors about cheats you could do from your mates, and it kind of felt like anything was possible if you knew the secret chance to make something happen. There'd be classic rumors about how to get a secret, like Goro's brother in Mortal Kombat, and you'd try doing all these different codes and stuff. They wouldn't work, but you think, one day I'll figure it out. So I think early on I just had this desire. I wanted to make my own game. I want to know how to do this magic behind the scenes. Sonic was really interesting because it had this debug mode cheat that let you break the game in really interesting ways. I still wasn't super computer literate with programming, but I got hints like, oh, this object behaves this way if you don't set it up with this other thing. And so I kind of built up the idea of logic and how one thing makes another thing happen. One day I was in a store, and I saw click-and-play for computer, advertised like, make your own terrific games in just 30 minutes or something. Initially I was a little bit disappointed because I was imagining being able to make a 3D PlayStation game, and all you could really do is a single-screen retro style arcade game. I think the first game I ever made was this game called Space Cows, and it was basically just space invaders, but cows. The Sonic fan game scene kicked off soon after that. I got into that, and there's a lot of information on that online, but moving on to Xbox 360 and stuff, I was really at a stage in my life where I thought, I'm probably not going to be doing games because that's for big companies, and I'm just a small person, small creative. And so at that point in my life I was playing music in bands, and I wanted to do music videos and short film, and so I studied film and photography at university. I had a job as a freelancer doing video production and editing motion graphics, which was all still heavily computer adjacent, but then I had this hobbyist side of me that was always poking around at making games. Then, when mobile games became a big thing, then it was suddenly like the doors were open again to small people to experiment and make games. I definitely had this desire to make my own original game on mobile initially, but then it just happened to be the perfect time to try and do a Sonic thing because Sega was interested in my pitch to do Sonic CD, and then that really kicked off all the Sonic stuff. I went from being a passionate fan to someone who had the privilege of actually making stuff for Sonic, but I think for me, I always want to challenge myself to try something new and always be working on the skills, because especially with games development, I'm basically completely self-taught. I just had a real passion for the craft. I really admire how games have evolved over the last 30 years. My dream is to one day create something that's innovative in that kind of technological space, but I'm also just content to make something that people have fun with and enjoy ultimately. 2. The Process of Innovation With Sonic Mania, basically Sega just wanted us to revisit the original levels, but just change a couple of things to make it have a few unexpected moments. We really dialed that up as far as we could go. We wanted to have different bosses, different mechanics, and do things that take people's expectations, but then deliver them something that they weren't expecting. I think for me, it was really tricky after Sonic Mania because there's a lot of fans emulating that style, and on the one hand, that's really gratifying and cool to see them be supportive of what we did and want more of the same. But then, on the other hand, how do I do something that they haven't seen? So I think there was a lot of pressure to just fit a certain mould with that. Having an original game and a 3D game as well, it's something that I don't think a lot of our audience even really thought that we would be capable of doing. So I was really psyched to show that we could do that. Definitely, there's a lot of challenges in doing that, but I'm pretty proud of what we did put out with Penny. I lived through the generational change from 2D to 3D as a kid, but then being able to kind of live that experience as a developer was interesting because at the time, there was no information on how you build a 3D engine or how a character should move in 3D or what the calculations are to do 3D collision. In a lot of ways, we took the hard path because we came from this background where we made our own engine for Sonic Mania and then with Penny, it's a new iteration of that kind of engine lineage but with design for 3D games. So we had to really think, what's the process for designing a level in 3D? And how do we do it in a way that our designers enjoy working with? So there were a lot of technical hurdles to work out, but then also on the creative side, I don't want to just make something that's a traditional collectathon like Banjo-Kazooie even though that's a fantastic game. I think it wouldn't be us if we just tried to emulate one particular game style. I think it was more a combination of living through that time period and then just wanting to experience it ourselves as developers. 3. The design of Penny's big breakaway. Penny wasn't really designed with a specific generational spec in mind but a lot of the feedback we've got has been, this game either will remind someone of a Longlock Saturn game or a GameCube game. It's sort of this hazy feeling depending on when you grew up. There's definitely different resonance points for people and I think that just came from us. Again, because we had to make our own engine and it was our first 3D game. We were pretty clever and conservative with how we did the art just because it's very easy for a budget to explode if you're changing and chasing after fidelity so we just felt like we wanted an art style that was crisp and clean and colourful. We drew broad inspirations from the Bauhaus art aesthetic which prides itself on geometric cleanliness and simplicity, clean, bold lines and style. It almost at points has a bit of an early CG look where they had a lot of polygons but then not a lot of complicated texturing. It was a very crisp, clean rendering of glossy shapes. So I think for us it was a good starting point because having gone from a pixel art workflow and that was a workflow that we understood really well and were able to create really high fidelity 32-bit style sprite animations but then in 3D we're like, okay, we're not going to be at arc system works level of artisanship on our first game. So let's just focus on something that looks fluid and clean and I think organically we just arrived at this sort of GameCube aesthetic. 4. Penny vs Sonic. It's challenging because at face value there's definitely some elements that you could look at and be like, yeah, this is similar to Sonic. The clean geometric kind of design of the stages and the fact that you can use terrain to pick up speed. But I'd say the way Penny moves is quite different to Sonic. Sonic is just an intrinsically fast character. He doesn't need any gadgets, he is his own kind of engine, he can just rev up and go. Whereas Penny is just an ordinary denizen of Macaroon and it's really her partnership with Yo-Yo that allows her to move in interesting ways. So I think as a player you have to work a lot more if your goal is to clear the stage as fast as possible. You have to work a lot harder than you would in Sonic to do that because it's all about changing and chaining all the moves together and maintaining a flow. So I think the fact that we have a combo system in the game there's almost a little bit of Tony Hawk DNA in terms of if we're talking about what 3D games influence the game. 5. Penguins. So penguins, there's multiple layers to it. Initially when we came up with the gameplay concept one thing we wanted, a key way we wanted to differentiate ourselves from other 3D platformers is not require the player to actually jump on enemies because that's quite often a bit difficult to perform. So instead it became this idea of a swarm of a crowd of people. One person is relatively harmless but then if you get a whole mob of people around you then that becomes very difficult to avoid. You can get swallowed up. We didn't really want an angry crowd of people that would be a bit intimidating. And so then we had Emperor Eddie and then it's like Emperor Penguin. There's that layer to it. But then I see them as squeaky bowling pins. You can knock them about and they'll take punishment but they don't get hurt. They just kind of bounce off everything and recover. The other purpose they serve is to provide pressure points in the stage so that you're encouraged to keep moving. They help amp up the challenge in certain areas where maybe you have to use yo-yo to pull a wall down. And that action on its own is pretty straightforward and you can take it at your own pace but suddenly when you have a crowd of penguins coming up behind you you suddenly have to pull off that action a lot quicker. It's this psychological factor of oh no I'm going to get captured if I don't move quickly. It's interesting. I think some people find the penguins adorable. Some people get totally stressed out and they're like oh I wish the penguins would go away I need to relax. But we just wanted something a bit goofy and fun. But then also just as they build up it builds the tension. Six, can you do yo-yo tricks and did you have a yo-yo consultant for the game? I think I can only do a sleep and a walk the dog. I used to be able to do the trapeze triangle trick when I was in school. But we kind of went in deep on the yo-yo tricks. The thing that was tricky, the way they move the yo-yos in competitions is tight and close to the body and they're always flicking it around. We concepted a whole bunch of moves and most of them did make it into the game. There was a few that didn't make it into the game just because it was tricky to translate it into meaningful gameplay. For instance like detaching the yo-yo temporarily from the screen which is a move people can do. We had this idea of making a tightrope and then using it to cross gaps. That was thrown out early on because the move that we discovered that was really fun in the game was just when you slept the yo-yo in space. You'd always need to have it gripping onto a pole before you could do a swing. But then when we were testing the initial prototype we thought what if we just let the player sleep the yo-yo anywhere in space and then just use that as an anchor point? And that really changed the game early on where once we had that you can go anywhere. You can move much more acrobatically. It's not really realistic moves at all but I think it retains the spirit of the way they swing the yo-yo around. It's just really satisfying to see it whip around so we just wanted to capture that part of real-life yo-yoing. 7. The Biggest Challenge Personally the biggest challenge was basically building the engine. I think with Sonic Mania we did the fifth iteration of the engine for that but that only took me about two months to make because a lot of it was just building on what I'd done previously. And so it was very easy to move on and focus on the game itself. But with Penny we'd already spent a couple of years building the groundwork of the engine and so we had the necessary base to develop the game but then there was always a never-ending supply of interesting problems to solve. The design team needs specific tools to make the shapes in a more efficient way. We came up with this procedural generation system where basically the art team created a single set of assets and then the designers blocked out the shapes for the level. Typically with 3D games when we researched it you do what's called a gray box pass and you map out how the stage plays and then you give that to the artist and then they make a nice decorated version of the stage and then that sort of locked in place and you can't change it. But our experience on Sonic was we were doing a lot of tweaks to the terrain shapes all throughout testing because we wanted to try and get the best sense of momentum through the stage. We wanted the ability to continually tweak the angle of terrain on the design side but then we didn't want to have to continually be like hey Tom, can you redecorate this part of the level for us? So our technical artist Brandon basically created this entire sweep of Maya scripts that take the art assets that our artists make and then conform them to the shape of all the level geometry and then it creates the pretty version of that. I had to do a lot of rendering programming on my end where I programmed all the rendering backends like Switch, PS5, Xbox and PC and then did the light mapping system and so there was just a lot of technical things that I had to make. I think going forward for me the great thing is we can leverage a lot of this stuff in the future and then go even further on the gameplay side of things and use the prior experience on our first 3D game to kind of go even further, hopefully. Again, I'm completely proud of what we achieved with this but as a developer there's always the next level. How can I improve my workflow and do better than I did before? So yeah, I'm excited with the possibilities having had this learning experience the first time. Particularly on the 3D side of things how to work together as a team to make that type of game there's a lot of things you have to figure out and a lot of things that can slow you down if you don't have strategies in place to manage it. Another thing that was particularly challenging was the amount of art assets we had to manage for this game compared to Sonic Mania. There's just so many more assets to keep track of and it's a classic thing where there's this meme where artists name everything New Document 1 or New Document 10. If you don't have a bookkeeping system in place for what your rig is called, how you name all your textures and how you name sound effects and everything there's just so much stuff that it's easy for people to lose track. So we figured a lot of that stuff out on this game and on future games we'll be able to leverage that which will be great. 8. Working on Freedom Planet 2 That was actually before Sonic Mania. That game was a real labour of love for Sabrina and the team. I was on very early on because Sabrina came to me and initially was interested in getting Freedom Planet on consoles. Thankfully there was an easier way of doing it than having to reprogram that game. And so instead she was basically like can you help me set up the gameplay from Freedom Planet 1 in Unity for the sequel and the graphics are going to be slightly larger, the sizes were different. At that time Unity didn't have a lot of systems in place for 2D momentum. At the point where you could play as Lilac with her core move set from the original game I can't remember if any of the other characters were in when I worked on it but I just got it to the point where I was like cool we can see the game working in Unity. And from there I think I moved on to Mania soon after that and then I was just sort of keeping an eye on that in the background. It was really satisfying to see that come out because I heard the initial outlay of the story and what was going to happen in the game but I didn't see any of the content until it came out years later. And so it was just a real cool surprise and then almost surreal at the end where it's like, oh yeah, I worked on that. 9. The Future of Momentum Based Games I've definitely seen how there was the indie scene before Mania and then the indie scene after. The thing that's really interesting for me is seeing how multiple genres are being blended together like with Pizza Tower where on the one hand there's the Wario influence but then there's also the Sonic influence and how moving those together creates something that's a different thing. Even with Freedom Planet as well there's a lot of action influences from titles like Mega Man Zero. There's a bit of a combat focus in that game and the bosses are way more aggressive than what you could do in Sonic because of the evolution in the mechanics in that game. I think for me, despite knowing the mechanics of Sonic so well I didn't want to make a game that was close to Sonic because having worked on it there's just such a passionate love for the characters themselves that if you don't have the characters it's hard to make people care about the game. If they're like, oh I wish Sonic was here, why isn't he here? We were almost rebelling. Anything that felt too Sonic-like we were like, okay we can't do that. We could have done it and it would have been good but we have to challenge ourselves not to do that, not to lean on that crutch. I think the challenge is how can you take the core idea of momentum but then use it with totally different constraints and goals for the actual stages that you play through because there's a lot of different ways you can approach a platforming game. 10. Christian Whitehead, The Rockstar In terms of live instruments I play drums. I can do a bit of keyboards as well. Initially when I was really young I learned to play a piano that I kind of stopped. My dad's a guitarist and I tried to learn guitar but then I found drums were my instrument that really resonated with me. T-Lopes and I go way back and we're really good mates. The work he's done on Penny's soundtrack is phenomenal. And also Sean Viallo who's our new composer pick on this project but I also basically co-wrote five of the songs on the soundtrack. T is obviously a man who's always in demand. There were a few moments in the project where we needed to get moving on a track and he was busy on something else.  11. If you could go back ten years and tell your younger self something to better your game development skills what would it be? There were a lot of silly programming things that I could have progressed a lot faster if I'd known. With my early fan game work I didn't know anything about virtual functions and a lot of more advanced programming topics. If I had the ability now I'd be like, here's the cheat sheet of all the things you need to know and it will boost you, get you five years ahead of where you are now as a programmer. And then you'll be able to finish your fan game in twice the speed that you could have done it. That's the one sad thing about the fan game story is that as soon as I moved on to official Sonic stuff, the fan game, Retro Sonic it meant we could never finish that game. It would have been cool to finish that fan game before I moved on to professional stuff. That's probably how I'd tell my younger self to cheat. Having the tool set that I had to make mania back when I was a teenager, that would have been awesome. But at the same time I suppose you have to earn those things to really understand them properly. 12. What is the moral of the Christian Whitehead story? David Bowie in one of his interviews he said, Never play to the gallery. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in.  You do have to put yourself in slightly uncomfortable situations. It would be very tempting to just stay comfortable. Just continue doing the same thing every time. But I think people would get bored of that. And I realise that at the same time as an artist, not everything is going to hit in the same way. And especially the more out on a limb you get, some people may not like that. But I think at the same time being able to look back on your body of work and being like, Oh man, I tried so many different things. I'm in awe of how many times Bowie as an artist transformed himself and his aesthetic, his style, his musical direction and sensibilities. I'm not saying I'm David Bowie in any way, but just having that aspiration really intrigues me.


Hey, this is Brett, and this is Stockmer 12306 ZA. This is a 2017 GMC Sierra 1500 Crew Cab Short Box SLT with the all-terrain package on it. Onyx Black is the color We're in the middle of detailing this one right now Right now my guy Jose is buffing it and he's about three quarters of the weight done with it. He did the driver's side today and the tailgate and then the passenger side box. You can see that the truck's in really nice condition overall rear bumper no dents or dings tailgates in nice shape and comes with a spring and bed liner like I said we haven't fully detailed it yet so a little bit of dirt in that bed there um box side looks nice kind of give you an idea of what we're fixing on it right now what Jose is doing is You can see these like scratches and it's kind of just kind of hazy the paint is um, we're making it look like that so you can kind of see what it was to what it is now so these doors will look all like that um the other thing to note is no really major dents or dings or damage on there The front bumper is in excellent shape grill is in nice shape We do have to buff the hood yet too so Kind of started here and worked his way around and got to the passenger side doors today So that's where we're at on the outside overall really nice condition. It has a nice bds suspension lift Comes with xd series rims and it has cooper discover stt pro tires. These tires got a lot of tread left Probably 70 80 percent of the tread Framing underbodies in pretty nice shape and that is a bds suspension lift on there This truck has been fully safety to and inspected has a fresh oil and filter change Um, all the fluids have been checked and topped off trucks mechanically 100 percent ready to go Like I said, we just have to finish the detail yet So gotta clean the floor mats and wipe everything down But for the most part, you know rips or tears on the seats Um power windows power locks power mirrors power folding mirrors You can see those are working nicely Get the Bose sound system Can hop inside here we'll turn the ignition on Hopefully you can see the miles and everything On here. There we go info 81,959 miles This one has the eight speed automatic transmission the heated steering wheel cruise controls Bluetooth and information center controls Steering wheels in pretty nice shape It does come with the gmc and telelink radio am fm and serious xm radio capabilities on here it does have a cd player This is also where your backup camera shows up heated seat buttons Power pedals dual climate control stability control. That's for your cargo lamps Two usb's two 12 volt power points and then 110 volt 150 watt plug in um Turn my light on here showing the passenger side seat normal rips Or tears on there pretty nice shape Does have the power sunroof um home link buttons on star capabilities But pretty nice shape on the inside like I said, we still got a detailed so Please take this video with a grain of salt It's just a little dusty latch child safety system power slide and window Headliners in pretty nice shape for the most part and uh You get All weather floor mats back here as well Side curtain airbags and uh, yeah See that rims in nice shape And just do one more final walk around here And hopefully this is helpful to um Our customers that are on this particular truck This rim is in nice shape as well I'll finish walking down this side then I'll start it up Really a good-looking truck Can't wait to see it all finished As the LED running lights See it starts right out. No check engine lights or anything like that so runs nice and smooth and uh Has the hid head lamps as well And it'll be all set to go It's just got a couple more hours and She's all set. Thanks for checking out the video and remember to like subscribe and share


This is Senate government operations. It is Tuesday, March 23rd. And excuse me for my, I'm not sure what's going on here, but anyway, so we're going to today, we're going to look at a couple of different things. Under the proposal to create the Agency of Public Safety from a department, the reorganization, is one of the issues is putting the academy under, in the department. And so we've had, we would like to have some discussion on how to maintain the independence of the council. So we've asked a couple of different people to come and talk to us about that, Bill Surrell, Bill Sheetz, Pete Lynch as the, hi Pete is the head of the fire academy. And Michael DeRosius is somewhat responsible for the fire academy. I'm not exactly sure your role. And Chris Corbin, I'm not sure your role. Do you want to just tell me what your role is? Yes, I'm the chairman of the Vermont Fire Service Training Council. Great, okay, great, great. Because I know that that has had independence for some time and we want to hear how that works and how it might work with the council also, the criminal justice council. So with that, what I'd like to do is, I think first hear a little update from Mr. Surrell about where the council is right now, just a brief overview and then we'll get to the independence portion of it. Does that work? Well, you are muted though. And I know people have been trying to do that to you for years, but. Success. And I think tomorrow we are presenting on issues of the work of the different, some of the S-124 directives to the council to carry out. Right, tomorrow we're gonna hear the report on the use of military equipment, body cams and the issue of what kinds of things are we looking for when we're hiring law enforcement people and then what additional kinds of things are we looking for when we're looking for supervisory roles? So we'll hear those reports tomorrow, but this is just kind of an update and mainly to talk about the independence. Okay, well, let me deal with the independence first. I think I, in prior testimony, expressed some of my personal opinions on the fact that under S-124, the council is essentially in charge of the training of law enforcement officers and consequently with the expansion of the old training council to the now the 24 person criminal justice council in the addition of so many different voices that have not traditionally been involved on issues of police training. I expressed my view that my personal view that the council should be independent of an agency or some other wing and state government and that in a related way that the executive director of the council implementing the council's directives on training of law enforcement that the council should have the authority to appoint the executive director. So very briefly, the council has been very busy and I'm pleased to report that we will hear from Bill Sheetz today and again, tomorrow I won't be able to be here tomorrow because I have a conflict with my second COVID vaccination. It's time tomorrow afternoon. That's exciting. But we have just recently successfully completed the hunt for a permanent executive director and I think it's April 12th will be the official day for Heather Simons who's in the hierarchy of the department of corrections and was the clear choice of the council and outside folks whom Commissioner Sherling brought into the process to give feedback on who should be the new executive director, governor's approval and the council has hired Heather Simons and we're gonna miss Bill Sheetz. She is doing and has done great public service serving us in an interim capacity but we're looking forward to come April, Heather being on board. So at the February monthly meeting of the council under S-124, the council was to consult with others and take a position, a council position on whether it should be independent of an agency of public safety or some other entity in state government. And so we put that to the council at our February meeting and in the invitation to testify today, there was a question as to whether some other council members other than just hearing from me could be arranged. And I thought the most expeditious way to do that was to just very briefly read from the area, the section of the approved minutes of that February meeting on this issue of the independence of the council and the hiring of the executive director and Chief Brackell who's the representative of the chief's association Chris Brackell from Brandon. Once the question was put to the council for discussion he said that the council should be autonomous. Sheriff Mark Anderson representing the sheriffs said that the council should be memorialized in statute and retain authority. Trevor Whipple who represents under S-124 the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and happens to have been the former police chief of South Burlington. He when he remark said that the philosophy of the League of Cities and Towns and his own personal opinion is that the council should be working on training models up to and including the hiring of the executive director who will implement those policies as designed. Council member Karen Tronsgard Scott from she's the executive director of the network against domestic and sexual violence. She said that she believes that independence of the council is necessary. Just a couple more.  Very active member of the council contributing member and he said, quote, it is really refreshing to hear the overwhelming support in diversity and voices. The bigger picture is the community needs to know that it's not just law enforcement but others have a voice in the picture. Brian Searles, another gubernatorial appointee, interestingly another former South Burlington police chief among other jobs in state government and out of state government. He said the person in the executive director chair is representative of all law enforcement in the state. It's important when speaking to the legislature to be viewed as independent and not controlled by any one department or agency. And finally Chief Brackell said that the council being autonomous and appointing the executive director is a healthier choice and model. And it's noted in our minutes which we have filed with the committee for this morning so that you have them in your records of this hearing. No member of the council voiced sentiments in favor of a reduced independence of the council. So I've quoted from those who spoke to the issue but no one when given an opportunity to speak otherwise from law enforcement or from outside law enforcement thought that the council should be other than independent and no one thought that the council shouldn't retain the authority to appoint the executive director and the other chief positions at the council or excuse me at the academy. And interestingly I mentioned that Heather Simons will be the new executive, permanent executive director come April but the council since it got up and running at the end of December has filled the director position for administrative services, all sort of the logistical stuff at the council, a woman named Lindsay Tevierge. And so I said at the council meeting last week, our March meeting, I am quite confident that there is no police academy in this country that has its three top position all female and not just female. We are fortunate and I think we've got three very, very competent officials. The hierarchy of the police academy is in good hands and I'm delighted that the council has accomplished the things that it's accomplished so far and you'll hear more about what the council's doing, the real work of the council is in the subcommittees and the so-called working groups, many of which we've created just in the last two and a half months and you'll hear more on that tomorrow. So I hope, Madam Chair, that I've articulated the feelings of the council on the independence issue as it relates to an agency of public safety or any other potential entity in state government that the council might be legislatively put under answer to. So the, I think that committee do, does anybody have any questions first right now? Okay, so the, as I see it here, the conundrum is that the academy is slated to be put under the, under DPS or APS where whatever you want to call it but that the council will remain independent and that's where we need to make sure that we, did you wanna say something, Bill? Yeah, yes, Senator, I think in earlier testimony both Bill Sheetz and I talked about putting the academy, not the curriculum and the training but sort of the nuts and bolts of the academy under either an agency of public safety or some other like entity under state government for budgeting purposes, contracting purposes, applying for and managing grants. I think that has merit. I, it's a bit of a fine line because the council is gonna be the boss of all of the training but we've got such a small staff that those kinds of IT issues and the like being in an agency structure that has its own IT division or unit or whatever, those kinds of things are of value and just another important thing on the issue of the council and it really has been playing out in this legislative session is that even though Commissioner Sherling has stated publicly that he's of the view that the finance and the funding of the academy was severely underfunded and I don't wanna, my recollection is he said upwards of a million and a half dollars underfunded but don't call me to that. I'm pretty sure that's what he said but it's very significant underfunding and unfortunately in the governor's recommend we had a minor, we were in for a minor increase that was more cost of living issues and we that is the council have appeared before the house gov ops, house appropriations multiple times and we have not yet testified before Senate appropriations but we're very pleased and relieved that as Executive Director Sheetz will talk about more either today or tomorrow that there's a recommendation for two very critical new positions for the operations of the council particularly the area of professional regulation of law enforcement allegedly guilty or having committed unprofessional acts and it's for an investigative position an independent investigator and legal council and so we haven't had the opportunity to appear before Senator Kitchell's committee but we look forward to that and we have not been afraid to be respectfully critical of the administration's recommendation of the budgeting for the functioning of the academy and I think going forward whatever you do on whether you put the academy under the agency of public safety or some other entity the fact that the council should be allowed to be an independent voice for the financial needs of the operation of the training of police would be very important and we hope that if your committee is in agreement that whether it's in a formal way or in cafeteria talk that if you think these positions and maybe some one-time money for some staffing needs that Bill Sheetz is prepared to talk about are important to really be able to start to really do the kinds of things you have instructed the council to do under S-124 we hope that you will speak supportively to Senator Kitchell's committee giving due regard to the council's needs and we'd appreciate your help in that respect. Thank you, I think that this is a big priority for us so we probably will speak favorably. We'd much appreciate it Senator. So Senator Clarkson. Yes, your Senate Government Operations Committee are strong advocates for this bill. We lost that whole thing. Our chair had. Excuse me, Senator Collomer. Yeah, we lost your whole statement there Madam Chair you kind of froze up for about a minute. Oh, thank you. All I said was that we're strong proponents of the academy and of the council and we'll probably speak favorably to the Appropriations Committee. Sorry about that. Senator Collomer I just saw you freeze after you. So it might be you. I guess we're all freezing. I know on this warm sunny spring day. So Senator Clarkson what were you saying? I was just wanted to finish by saying that not only are we strong advocates of this bill and of the changes with the council and I have to say our chair has an incredible record in approves. So I think that you do want the Senate Government Operations Committee to be your advocates for these, for anything you wanna ask or in approves. Well, it's a little bit weirder to do it this way but at least when you go into the Appropriations Committee now you're not sitting in these little chairs like a supplement, right? Supplement. So what I'd like to do is right now take advantage of the three people from the fire academy who are here who have joined us and talk a little bit about the fire academy is under DPS right now as I understand but that the council has autonomy and is independent. Am I right about that? And I guess how do you wanna approach this? The three of you, how do you? So yes, Mike. Yeah, Madam Chair, thank you for extending the invitation to be here today and thank you to the committee. I think what I will do is give kind of a, just a little bit of a landscape here that may help frame some conversation. The fire service training council is housed in fires in the Department of Public Safety now under 20 VSA Chapter 179. So it is not by virtue an independent council such as the Vermont Criminal Justice Council. Framework-wise, there is a lot of distinct difference between the powers and duties of the fire service training council and that of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council. So there are two distinct councils with responsibilities but the fire service training council is housed in fire safety. The fire academy is housed in the Department of Public Safety under the Division of Fire Safety. So that's kind of the landscape. There really is no, that they're housed there now and to speak to a little bit of what Bill Sorrell was alluding to that there are some advantages that we see on the fire service side of it being housed in public safety and to speak to IT support budgeting the Division of Fire Safety pays for promulgating the rules and going through the rulemaking process. And we're also 100% embedded with the fire service. And Pete and Chris Corbin, they can speak to the details of the council's responsibilities as they go, but I will just add that this council has been extremely effective. The relationship that the Division of Fire Safety and Public Safety has with the fire service training council is probably the best that it's been in years. So we are speaking from my position very happy with where the fire service training council sits, we're very pleased with the work of the council. The council is responsible for the training aspects. We don't discipline firefighters. So there is a lot of difference between the councils that I just wanted to emphasize to you. The fire training council is made up of 12 members, basically all the fire service groups are represented. We have the commissioner of labor, commissioner of health, commissioner of public safety, myself. And anyways, under 20 BSA, we have a 12 member group. So that's kind of a quick rundown and also to touch base a little bit, I also chair the governance committee down there at the facility. So we have a legislative governance committee that oversees some areas access and use contracts, capital construction bills. So there's a great relationship that exists down there right now between all the users of that training facility. So I just want to emphasize that. So in testimony at future times, if you are engaged in conversations regarding the governance committee that you know, that we have a single voice coming out of that training facility regarding those specific areas of responsibility. We do not engage in training. So the councils that stay independent there on the training of their respective professions where this governance committee is there on those specific areas of access, use contracts and capital construction. So that's kind of the landscape with the councils in fire safety now. Thank you. Thanks. Any questions for Mike? Pete, do you want to, and I, in full disclosure, I'll say that Pete was on the Brattleboro fire department. And I have seen him. I'm sure you're happy now, not having to deal with bed bugs every other day. It's kind of sad that that's my reputation, right? Well, you have a better reputation than that. Everybody in Brattleboro loved you. Thank you, Madam chair. And it's great to be with you. So I think I'd like to talk about day to day operations within the fire academy and allow the chair of the fire training council, Chris Corbin to talk about the council on its and the specificity it has.  But I'd just like to take a quick minute to talk about how we fit into the department of public safety and the division of fire safety. So thank you to director DeRosha. The division of fire safety is, and I think it's important to note that the department of public safety and the department of public safety are the folks that are in charge of the fire academy. I specifically answered directly to director DeRosha as chief of training for the fire academy. And the council doesn't have much to do with our day to day operations. The chair will talk about that and certification and professional qualification board fire service. And we have a lot of other operations. We employ seven full time. People who manage training, development and. And place classes around the state. As you may be aware, the fire service in Vermont, which is about 5,500 people. Is 90 more than 95% volunteer. And it's a little different from the folks at the police academy is the bulk of our programs are outreach. And, and not on campus. And so. It is important that we are out in the field in the 230 communities that have fire departments to assist them with training. And because they are mostly volunteer. And so, our training happens a lot of the time on nights and weekends. Some of our classes are as long as 200 hours long. They start the 1st of September. And they complete with a certification exam in June. And so it requires us to have about 100. Part time or temporary employees in order to manage that training. And so, our employees are certified to be instructors for the academy. Some at some at levels for. Entry level firefighters. Some to instruct officer level training. And others in special rescue. And that could be, that could be hazmat as well. We employ a great number of people temporarily. We manage a budget with a special fund of about $1.2 million. And a general fund budget. Our special fund budget is insurance money. And the general fund budget is a little bit over 400,000. And so we take great advantage. Of the budget. Of the department of public safety. Both with human resources and with the accounting department. To help manage our employees and manage our budget. And that's a, that's a huge advantage for us to have. To have a network that we can reach out to. To aid us in, in managing these, these great groups. I said earlier, some of our classes are as long as 200 hours. We offer 13 programs, which are certification level on a national standard. And those programs are very long in length. And therefore both beginner and then officer level folks. And then we offer about an additional 50 courses, which are shorter, typically under 40 hours. And most of those we can do out in the field. Although for specifics, like our live fire training. We have to bring people to the academy in Pittsburgh. On the campus that we share with, with. With those sheets and his group. That's kind of an overview of the fire academy and our day to day operations. Before the chair speaks, I will tell you that over the last five years, we've put together about 70 standard operating guidelines to help. Maneuver our way through. Through our working relationships with the fire service. And about half of those are approved by the council, the training council. As, as the chair speaks, keep in mind that while we, we have a lot of input from the division of fire safety. There is a process that we go to that involves the council and those 12 members of the council all represent parties that have great interest in how the fire service in Vermont is educated. So thank you again, Madam chair, and I'm happy to answer questions. Thanks. Before I ask if anybody has questions, I will say that when you were talking about the live training really needs to be at the academy. And I've been working at a place in Brattleboro where we actually destroyed tour down. I think it's 11 or 15 buildings now. And it's really hard to get that kind of training because there isn't an opportunity a lot of times, but they were, it was great to see them out there poking through the roofs of the building. They didn't do fires, but they did a lot of that. And it's really, it's hard to get that kind of training because there isn't an opportunity a lot of times, but it's hard to get them out there poking through the roofs of the buildings. For years and years, we learned through experience. And through the great work of fire safety in Vermont, our fires have reduced tremendously. And so those men and women coming through the door now don't have the opportunity to gain the experience quickly by going to fire. And that's what makes the training so critical, critical to the safety of the people that we represent throughout the state, critical to the, the safety of the firefighters that are doing their jobs. And also from a monetary perspective, the more knowledgeable and capable we are, the more we minimize the fire loss in the state. And that's huge in terms of recovery for businesses and home owners. Yeah. Thanks. Any questions for Pete? And then we'll jump to Chris. Okay. Chris, thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you all for the invitation. As, as the director said, the council is made up of 12 individuals, six of which are appointed by the governor. Just for clarification, I am the chair. I represent the professional firefighters of Vermont. And I'm a career fire captain in the city of South Burlington. And I guess I'll just cover both of what the director and the, and the chief of training said a little bit more detail. Our purview of the council is certification of firefighters and fire officers and fire instructors. However, we do not actually do the certification. The fire Academy. Conducts the testing. And then handles all the certification process. We simply. Ensure two things. One that the certification meets the national fire protection association standards. And that the testing certification meet pro board requirements. And the pro board is a nationally recognized organization. In which the state of Vermont has chosen to certify their firefighters at all levels through per board. So if the fire Academy go back to the, what the chief said, day to day operations, if the fire Academy is choosing how they're going to test students, how they're going to evaluate students. If they're going to change curriculum. That is based on a program that is a certification program. That all gets run through the council. Anyone who challenges a certification. If they don't, if they don't, if they don't, if they don't, if their certification expired or they're trying to challenge the process from an outside agency. And they don't. For lack of our term, they want to grieve the situation that they feel to meet. They meet the requirements and the chief of training says they don't. Then those cases would come before the council for us to deal with. And determine per the rules. And policies of the council, whether they should be certified, or not. We do, we have a zero. We have zero. Formal. Contact with the day to day operations. However, chief Lynch has been excellent through his designing of the SOGs and moving the organization forward. As he said about half those SOGs that they operate under are approved by us. They're not approved by the chief of the council because they affect certification and coursework. The other half, I'd say of that. Half of those are. Still brought to our attention and asked to be endorsed. Where they may not actually fall under our purview, but they impact the, all the constituents that the council represents. So he asked, he brings those forward for our endorsement and our support. And then we have another quarter of those that just completely do not involve us whatsoever. And then he provides those to us for information only. We have no financial backing. We have no financial pot of money. So as the director said, last year in February, we finally put forth. And had new rules and policies updated. And so that's been the, that's been the, that's been the cost of that. And frankly, the, the man hours of. Putting the process through the different aspects of state government, the division of fire supported us on. And helped me move that process along. So. We certainly, as far as that's concerned, we would be in our current state lost if we didn't have the division with us. So I'm just going to go back to the question. Just looking at my notes here, just. I think another thing just to, and I kind of hit, hit on this, but to recognize is the little bit, I do know about the criminal justice training council. They have a much larger scope. Of work. They have a much larger workload. Then we do as the fire service training council. And I think a lot of that has to do with. The fire Academy is. You know, with thelength of. The crew.  We, uh, per statute we're supposed to meet twice a year. We usually meet three to four times a year. Uh, and just to give you a quick overview. The professional fire, whereas Vermont have a seat, the table, the Vermont career chiefs. The VSFA, which is the association that represents the Vermont or the volunteer fire service, a member of the public. And whom I'm missing. Oh, and the insurance representative from the insurance companies. They hold the seat of the table. And as the chief had mentioned earlier, that's pretty, that's a pretty big deal because we get a lot of our budget from the insurance companies for the training for the academy. And so they have a seat at the table as well with the with the training council. I'm happy to answer any questions. Like I said, I think that we are definitely a much simpler organization. We certainly do as the director said we do fall under public safety and the statutes, but we definitely work hand in hand with the division and with the fire academy. And I don't see, no matter where we're put in the system, the way we would operate and unless statute changed as to what our governance was, we would still fill the same gap, provide the same mission and work with the same partners either way. Thank you. I think that I don't think that we have any intention of changing any statutes around the fire academy or the council but who just wanted to get a sense of how they, how it compared with the, the criminal justice council and the academy center Thank you madam chair and thank you to all of you for showing up today and giving us your testimony for sure. Chris you mentioned something about grieving certification and I'm just, it just struck me as, huh, okay. So, somebody gets into the fire academy to get trained. At some point, are they on a path for a professional job and that's why they need certification. Can you just explain what, what the certification process looks like and how somebody can grieve it if they've gone through the academy got trained. I'm not clear on that. So, if we take two paths, whether we look at the volunteer service of the career fire service. So in state statute, a full time firefighter divine defined as working more than 32 hours a week or more than 25 weeks a year has to maintain a minimum certification standard. The volunteer fire service, it's departmental, it's a department organization's decision as to what certifications they are are not going to make their members achieve and maintain. So, the academy certifies and recertifies the that that firefighter career or volunteer through a process. I can give you two examples of situations we normally deal with one on the career side would be someone either coming in from another state. The academy has pretty strict and obvious and strict and obvious path as to how you're going to come from outside of Vermont and maintain or establish a certification here on a side note I interestingly enough. Vermont is probably one of the most strict states in the entire country for achieving and maintaining firefighters certifications. A lot of times what happens is we see people from other areas of the country come here want to maintain their certification and they don't meet the requirements laid out. So they would put in their paperwork for reciprocity, it would be denied by the academy, they would put they would put a formal letter into the chief of training saying, Hey, I want to grieve this here all the reasons. Specifically because it's certification the chief of training just automatically passes that onto the council. And there it happens very infrequently the few times it has happened on that aspect. It's usually pretty cut and dry as to whether it falls within the rules that we've approved or not, and it, it ends at that level. Basically it's someone's end course or end stop in the process to try to gain a certification that they're they're saying for their own personal reasons, they deserve even though it doesn't meet the state rules from the volunteer side. It's the struggles of volunteers holding careers second jobs third jobs families, all that, and occasionally will deal with a volunteer member who has just, you know, because of the course of life, the, or whatever the case may be, hasn't been able to maintain their certifications. And they'll, they'll come to the academy again and say, Hey, you know this happened in my life and I was unable to maintain my certification. I want an extension. Again, the, the academy follows their course of action and the rules that we've laid out and says no I'm sorry, you don't meet the requirements you can grieve it to the council if you so choose. And then I would say the majority of the time that's where it ends. But we have seen on rare occasion that that volunteer member will come before the council and say here's my heart, here's my heartache. Here's what happened in my life and why I wasn't able to recertify in time. And here's my proposal as to why I think and how I should get an extension. Great explanation. Thank you very much Chris. Any other questions. Right now. Senator Polina. Thanks, I'm just trying to get a handle on the relationship you say you're under DPS DPS right. And I'm just wondering like, could you give me an example or two of like times when you might say, Well, we have to make this kind of decision but we have to go to DPS to see if it's okay. I don't want to come up because we're talking about a level of independence and that's a question for any of you I just wonder if there's an example of something where you would have to go to DPS to get permission for lack of a better way of putting it to do something or not. I'll say I'll start out from the council level. No, the one thing that I will say, I'll just go back to the example used earlier where when we had to. We had to produce new rules and policies of the council and put that through the I car process and the legislative process. Obviously there's a financial aspect to that there's also just a labor intensive procedure process to that. The division of fire, you know, director de Roja provided the funding out of his budget to go through the process and also provided at the time, the deputy director as I'll call my, my wing person. He did a lot of the legwork a lot of the groundwork a lot of the day to day policies and procedures that he knew because he worked in state government day in and day out and did it with multiple other rules and policies throughout state government. So that's, that's really the only aspect I would speak to from the council level that we, we need DPS for you know the division of fire. I'll say that there's a very good working relationship where I think the fire service, not just the council but you know the council is representative of the entire fire service in the state and the council, or the fire service through the council benefits greatly from that connection with the division of fire, aka DPS. I saw that before we go to Senator Clarkson I saw that Pete you had your hand up also I think to respond to that question. Thank you, Senator was your was your question specific to the council or was it the fire Academy in general. In general, well the council and most importantly, but in general. So from a fire Academy standpoint. In terms of answering to director de Roja and the division of fire safety on budgetary issues. We answered to him on personnel issues. We answered to him, anything contractual. We answered directly to the division of fire safety within the Department of Public Safety. He's a tough boss right. He's tremendously supportive of us and the council and well nobody has said it to this point. He does attend all the training council meetings and he is. He is through statute, one of the 12 members of that council so he is. He remains fully aware of what's going on throughout our, our section of the fun of the division. Thanks. Thanks, Senator Clarkson did you have a question. Well, and I just would add, and at this time of year he's fully aware of where everything we're doing to. Like it are intimately involved on another bill. I would like to just ask two questions. First of all, I just like to note that I think the fire. Thank you very much. I think the staff at army and council. Oh, really are a unique in many ways and state government because they are one of the few places we see. Volunteers and professionals, working side by side, doing the same job in a way doing the same job and, and it's very unusual blending of those two and training them to same standards. And some are professional and some are not. Really, as we oversee these things, you're really unique in that regard. I suppose EMT has some of that, but you even more than others. Anyway, my questions are twofold, would you be kind of, I have a son who's a volunteer firefighter here in Woodstock, and I'm just curious what the balance is between volunteers and professionals, how many of each? And then my second question is, what do we do about bad apples in the fire service? Are departments responsible for getting rid of them? Or is there, I mean, just to go to build on Brian's point about grievance, is there a disciplinary function that is a state version of a disciplinary function or is it just department to department? Yes, Pete. Thank you, Senator. So your question about volunteerism, there are 5,500 firefighters throughout the state of Vermont, and over 95% of those are volunteer. Now, in some cases, those men and women are paid in different ways. Some are paid by the calls they get on, that they respond to, some are paid a small stipend yearly, but by and large, the group is volunteer. We're starting to see in the fire service more and more chief positions on fire departments being made career instead of volunteer because of the enormous amount of time that it takes to lead a department. So that those numbers are increasing, but the career service is not, I don't think it's growing exponentially. I don't think over the next five years, we're gonna see 50% change or anything like that. And in terms of who is responsible for disciplining the firefighters around the state, that's specifically to a department or to a municipality. We do now have the right to deny somebody certification based on their criminal record or some sort of wrongdoing. At any time during a training process, if we feel as though a student is not, does not meet the requirements of the state of Vermont in terms of their legal being, if they've broken the law, or if in the class they do something that is inappropriate and most of the time, because the people that are signing up for our programs that are 200 hours long are very dedicated, we do not run into situations where people are not fully vested in the system and are doing something that's inappropriate. But in those occasions, we have the right to remove them from class.  And those relationships typically are very good in the way that the chief understands our perspective and generally supports it. But those are very, very few as a result of, if somebody's gonna take the time from their family and their part-time job or their full-time job to spend 200 hours becoming a firefighter one or a firefighter two or an officer, their commitment is typically good with great intent of doing good for their community. And we don't, as a rule, don't run into many of those situations anymore. Thank you. Thanks, any more questions? So this was very helpful to us. We were hoping that you would have some magic statutory language that would assure the independence of the Criminal Justice Council. But given that you didn't come in with magic language, we still are very happy that you gave us this lesson on the Academy and the Council in the fire safety division. Any other questions or comments, committee? Senator Polina? I just really gotta say how much I appreciate firefighters in general. I mean, buildings on fire, everybody's running out and the firefighters are running in. I mean, it's just amazing to me that people are willing to do that quite honestly. I really, really appreciate it. You know, it is interesting that we're responsible to train those individuals that wanna run to this versus running away. So it, you know, it challenges us from a training perspective to, you know, just the audience that we're training. And to touch just one brief second on the volunteer and career partnership, we also have a fire service coalition with representation from every fire service entity group. That coalition is very efficient and effective. The group gets along real good, works really nice. The other part is in fire safety, we have urban search and rescue and we also have the state hazmat response team. Both those teams comprise of both career firefighters and volunteers. They all get paid the same when they're out on call. So the hats off at the door has been extremely successful and it just builds a lot of great partnerships between those two entities out there on our special team. So I would just add that. Yeah, that's good, thank you. Senator Clarkson. Yeah, sorry, one further thought.  And so I'm just curious, who's responsible for sort of marketing that and is there a campaign designed to do that? And the reason I ask is, I'm also curious about who, you know, is that a division? Because we have all this ARPA money coming and I'm just curious if there's a way that that can be used to both educate the public further about fires and or recruit more. And the educating about fires I've been made well aware of sadly with a death of a student in Portland, Oregon. And the Portland fire department created a terrific video educating particularly university and college students who are in housing, not always perfect and about fires, you know, who hadn't necessarily grown up there. And I'm just curious, you know, if you do the same kind of thing and how is that something that's on your radar screen for ARPA money? The best answer I'm gonna give you is that it's on our radar, how it's been for a number of years. And I think you'll see the same struggle in law enforcement regarding our recruitment and retention. And, you know, there's fewer people to select from today to there's fewer students that are coming out of high school. There's a lot of things that are against us when it comes to seeking volunteers to give up time with no pay to devote all these hours.  You know, there's a lot more operational involvement that the fire service engages in now compared to 15, 20 years ago. Car accidents are different. EMS strategies are a lot different. Structure fires are a lot different. They burn a lot hotter, a lot faster. The challenges that are out there are really stacked up against the recruitment. We have had a number of meetings with the Washington delegation. Haley Perrell from Senator Sanders office has been a big supporter and ally with us. She's attended a number of meetings with us and offered some social media resources to help come out with a video on recruitment and retention. But, you know, it's across all disciplines. Nursing, it's law enforcement, fire.  Yeah, no big question. Mike, I'll send you this video that was sent to me. So you can see what Portland did. So I think that, as Mike pointed out, it's across all professions. And one of the issues that, in addition to not being enough people, not enough trained people, I think one of the issues is that we're seeing an increase in the number of people who wanna have regular nine to five jobs. They don't wanna be called out in the middle of the night. And we're seeing that with our road plowers. We're seeing it with law enforcement. We're seeing it with professional medical people. A friend of mine was an OB-GYN and they couldn't recruit somebody to their office because she wanted a regular job and not to be called out in the middle of the night if somebody was giving birth. So I think that there's, I don't know how we changed that mindset, but that is a huge issue in terms of recruiting people who need to be able to respond when there is the emergency or the event. So any other questions or comments or concerns right now? So what I'm gonna suggest, thank you very much, Pete and Chris and Mike, very helpful, thank you. What I'm going to suggest to Bill is that, or Bill and Bill, as I know that Mark said that it needed to be enshrined in statute, the how to maintain that independence of the council. And I would suggest that before our next meeting on this that if you can work with, I don't know if it would be Tucker or Ameren to come up with some kind of language around what kind of language do we need to put into statute to assure the independence of the council? Is that a challenge that you'll accept? Absolutely, we appreciate the opportunity. We have interacted with Ameren some, I think we've shared some language but we'll get on that again. Yeah, I think that and I'd like to take this up again next week, so if you can, toward the end of the week. So if you could have some kind of language and I don't know who else it would be run by but just to see if we can really strengthen the statutes around the independence. We'll do, thank you. Any other questions from committee members or comments? Does that make sense to do that? Yes. Okay, and Senator Clarkson, I believe you are leaving. Oh, happily it got changed. Oh, all right, okay, okay, sorry. Sorry, okay. Thank you again to the firefighters. I'd echo Anthony's comment.  Senator Rom, did you have a question? Well, when our bills come back with more language on the independence of the criminal justice council, I was wondering as a new senator, if there's language somewhere about greater oversight and professional regulation investigation into misconduct that's embedded in your current framework in the CJC or if it lives in statute, I don't have that information and I would like to see how you plan to do that and how you plan to make sure that it's a mix of former law enforcement and civilian oversight in that process. Okay. Yes. Does that language exist somewhere and I've just missed it? I believe that, well, I'm not sure if I'm answering it right here, but I think there was a lot of language in 124 that directed the disciplinary procedures and then I think the council itself has additional language. That's correct, Senator. Specific reference to the ability of the council to create subcommittees, but specific mention about the professional regulation subcommittee, we felt that that was particularly important to have in statute because there are due process issues at play and felt would feel better if that was clarified in statute. We have the authority, but creating the subcommittee to handle it, which is our busiest subcommittee as you'll hear tomorrow from Bill Sheetz. So we'll get to that language. I think you might have it, but we'll make sure you have it again. Thank you. And just so the rest of the committee knows the transparent, I asked Bill Sheetz in an email to help us better understand the demographic makeup of the criminal justice council currently. So instead of guessing, he's going to ask the rest of the committee members how they identify on various demographic indicators to better understand the diversity of the criminal justice council currently. Okay, any other questions, comments? Thank you so much. And we will, I'm hoping maybe next Thursday, but I am still trying to figure out next week's schedule. So we'll go there. And again, I think the fire safety members who are here to speak to us, that was very helpful. Thank you. And thank you for your service. We do appreciate it. Thank you all very much. All right, thanks. Bye.


Out with the old and in with the new, the 6-Hour M18 pistol is replacing the Beretta M9 pistol across the Navy. After nearly a month of training to certify all the security personnel on base, the FOSCA is one of the first Navy installations outside of the U.S. to put the new pistol into service. Compared to the M9, the M18 has a lighter weight, has easily replaceable components, and a larger magazine capacity. Over the past several years, the Marines, Air Force, and Army have also begun to phase out their older handguns for the SIG pistols. Looking at data, security personnel at Ucoska sport about 10% higher on the range with the M18 than they did on the M9. Reporting from Ucoska, Japan, this is MC2, Kaitlyn Eves.


On November 3rd of 2015, the first Paragon teaser featuring Twin Blast was released. Backed by multi-million dollar gaming company Epic, Paragon would fulfill Steve Superville's vision of MOBA whose gameplay matched its cinematic trailers. It was going to combine the adrenaline-pumping immersive gameplay found in Gears of War's third-person perspective with the slower, more strategic gameplay of MOBA. It would be beautiful, it would be exciting, but it would not be free, not at first. Epic first unveiled Paragon's closed beta in March of 2016. Players were given access to all of the heroes, but they had to buy a Founders Pack. You had to pay for the opportunity to test the game. Even with the backing of a well-established company, investors needed to know that enough players would be willing to spend money on the game before Epic would fully commit to its development. It was only for a few months that access could be gained via money. Open beta brought free to play for all and was released in August that very same year. However, Paragon was not the financial success Epic or its investors had hoped for. Changes in leadership, game mechanics, and monetization were made. Changes that brought in new players were maybe a week or two while alienating the hardcore fans that were actually spending money on the game. Nothing worked. Paragon was making some money, but not enough to meet the expectations of the investors. Eventually, the call was made to cancel the game. A decision made all the easier with the booming success of Fortnite. While it's easy to place the blame of Paragon's downfall in Fortnite, it was simply the nail in the coffin and possibly what allowed Epic to save face by refunding any money spent on Paragon and releasing millions of dollars of assets for free. It's those assets that have allowed several indie developers the opportunity to resurrect this beautiful third-person MOBA and hopefully learn from Epic's mistakes to create a game that is financially successful enough to sustain development. Interestingly, these three different companies have also gone three very different routes when it comes to funding production. Crowdfunding, investor backing, and publisher backing. This gives us a unique opportunity to explore both the advantages and disadvantages of each route. That's what we're going to be doing today. Before we go further, I would like to remind you that I track and create content for all three of these games, including a weekly podcast covering any news about the project, so please subscribe if you wish to stay up to date. Amida has been developing predecessors since 2018, but their small four-person team started under the shadow of the Paragon remake Colossus that was core. At the time, Amida Buff was a marketing-driven juggernaut that had the attention of a vast majority of the community. However, Amida Studios were already proving that you didn't have to have a big team to produce solid results. While most of the community ignored predecessor, I'm proud to say that a few other content creators and I could see even then that Sargent Smokey was leading his team in producing concrete results in the face of Core's hype. All this time, the only money being collected by Amida were donations to developer streams that would go towards funding servers for an eventual alpha test. It was this connection to the community alongside demonstrating significant progress that started to win more and more of the community over. Amida Studios brought on popular Paragon content creator RGS Ace to assist with the game. While Ace does work on game development, his biggest contribution has been his efforts to procure funding by lobbying investors. Amida was able to attain over $2 million in their initial round of funding. To cap that off, they also applied for and received a $10,000 grant via Epic's Mega Grant program. They've put this money to good use as well, hiring more people to assist with development and solving problems discovered in testing. Their first server stress test didn't go so well due to back-end issues, but since they have the money to do so, they hired a third party called Accelbite to provide them with a host of solutions that made their next test a resounding success. However, it seemed that the more money Amida received, the less we've seen of the original team. Updates from Amida slowed to a crawl, and Devstream seemed to be a thing of the past. The heart of Amida Studios that gave early fans of the project hope has sadly been hidden behind a suit and tie. They have addressed this issue, though, by bringing in another very popular Paragon creator Nabori to act as their marketing manager. He has since been doing a great job of updating and reconnecting with the community. While RGS Ace has assured us that the investors he secured have given them the freedom to make the game fun before trying to make it lucrative, I still worry that our reliance on investors may result in the same problems we saw with Paragon. How long can somebody reasonably sink money into something without seeing returns on that investment? And how long can Amida continue to develop predecessor if that money runs dry? Hopefully, we'll never have to know the answer to those questions. It's very possible that predecessor will be a financial success that carries on long enough to achieve what Paragon could not. If you count the early work of Rocket Mania, you can say that Team Soulieve has been developing Overprime longer than any of the other Paragon's successor projects. He was able to use the assets to create a playable, yet somewhat janky solo project called Overthrow Paragon that was made playable for free via peer-to-peer network long before we ever saw so much as an alpha from anyone else. Team Soulieve, Son's Rocket, were also working on a project with the assets, however what they were doing was more of a battle-warrior style game than a MOBA. Eventually Rocket joined Soulieve's ranks and Overprime was born. Overprime came out at a blistering pace from the start. They had both a legacy and monolith style map and included a majority of the Paragon heroes. While access to the game was free, you could only play via peer-to-peer network, something most players just weren't willing to do. Even after adding servers that allowed you to queue into matches normally, servers that they must have paid for out of pocket since I never saw them ask for money, people just weren't playing Overprime. The download process was daunting and to be perfectly honest, the game itself felt more like bad Paragon fan fiction than a true successor. However, what they had created had gained the attention of Netmarble, the largest mobile gaming company in Korea. Gaining a publisher not only gave Team Soulieve access to funding, but also to the experience and infrastructure of an established company. They closed down the servers, went quiet for a few months, and put their newfound resources to good use. While the game isn't as expansive as it once was and the roster has been cut down to a third of what they originally had, it's now far more polished and has gained an identity as the fast Paragon. With Netmarble's backing, they've been able to mount a comprehensive and somewhat unique marketing campaign, insanely fast production of new skins that they'll be able to monetize, brand new heroes for the roster, and most importantly, actual verifiable progress towards console release. If you can't tell, I've been very impressed by how much Overprime is turned around. I suspect that it's mainly due to the influence of an experienced company at their back. I do have concerns though, much like with predecessor, Overprime's future is in the hands of people that don't care about the old Paragon community. Also, with Netmarble's main focus on mobile gaming, I'm extremely wary of microtransactions that will render the game pay to win. The developers have assured us that this will not be the case, and I'm sure they believe that Netmarble won't impose pay to win microtransactions, but I personally do not trust the mobile gaming company. I do have faith in Team Soulieve themselves though, and the skins they've created have already had me reaching for my credit card, so hopefully they can sustain development solely via cosmetic sales. During a time when Core had dropped off the map, Ameida had gone back to the drawing board, and Overprime simply did not yet exist, Strange Matter burst out of nowhere with a fully playable Paragon successor. The studio quickly gained the attention of the masses and were soon having free closed alpha tests that included more and more players each time. They also began crowdfunding via Indiegogo with various reward tiers, one of which included promised early access to the game once they were ready for beta phase development. It was announced that early access would be paid with three founder packed tiers, much like Epic had done with Paragon. They would also offer a season pass that would give you exclusive access to their own created skins, as well as a week of priority access to heroes when they were released. This didn't sit well with many members of the community. I personally don't mind the paid early access, I've bought into a variety of early access games and I'm used to paying for the privilege of testing while the game is still under development. The season pass right off the bat however, that took me back a little. It just struck me as a bit greedy and I kind of wondered why they didn't just raise the prices of the access tiers if they needed more money for development. So with the community already starting to question their motives, Strange Matter released the game as a fully playable early access title with multiple 24 hour servers. Unfortunately, the same day they released Fault, a completely separate company called Cloudflare that manages a variety of major servers experienced a malfunction that caused half the internet to fail. Many players who had pre-ordered the game were unable to play it. To make matters worse, Discord servers were also managed by Cloudflare and Strange Matter's main form of communication with the community was cut off. Even after the servers were repaired, they continued to experience problems with Indiegogo players not getting their promised keys, Steam screwing up how much the game cost, and the actual game itself was in worse condition than in their previous free alpha tests. Although Strange Matter has worked hard to fix all the issues they had with the initial launch of the game, the damage to their reputation as a company had already been done. This is also where we run into a uniquely Paragon problem. While it's not uncommon for an early access game to be buggy and incomplete, this was a remake of a game that a majority of the interested community had already experienced in its complete state and most of those players started when Paragon was free to play. Many people immediately refunded the game via Steam, and Strange Matter's reputation has caused new players to shy away from the title, leaving false development a bit underfunded. They simply don't have the same amount of money as the other two companies. What they do have though is nearly two years of experience with managing a live game and that has led them to produce something that is leagues ahead of what their initial launch was. So my worries with Strange Matter are that they don't have the necessary funds to correct problems as they occur, and their reputation as a cash grab has put them in a position where they're unable to continue development and fund the servers if they go free to play. They've taken recent steps, however, to reinvent themselves as the community-friendly indie company that they actually are, and hopefully that will bring more players to a game that is pretty well done at this point. They've also proven that they can not only sustain their game for years with their current income, but they can also make steady improvements. Strange Matter's long-term success is dependent upon the community and not investors or another company. I think it's important for all of us to remember that whether they sell the game to investors, a publisher, or directly to the community, these games need to make money in order to sustain their games. Hindsight is 2020, and we can clearly see from the closure of Paragon what happens when a game isn't financially successful. We can all enjoy playing the game, but the people behind the production not only have bills incurred during development, but they also deserve compensation for the work they've done. It could be years before we discover which one of these funding strategies proves to be successful in the long run, but I for one am looking forward to not only playing all of these games, but also tracking how three companies can grow and compete in such a unique environment. Please like the video if you enjoyed it, but for now, this is the man goose signing off, you guys have a good one.


Felly yw'r cyfnod i'r cefnod yn cyfwyr yma, mae'n ddegwyr i chi'n gwirio i'r ddim yn ei wneud o'r pryd gelfau o'r cyfnod cyfnod yn ymgyrch. Felly'n ddegwyr i'n ddegwyr, yn fwy o'r gweithio. Felly'n ddegwyr i'r cyfnod yn y cyfnod yn gyfnod yn y cyfnod yn y cyfnod. Felly'n gwybod o'r prolyg yng nghymru, i chi'n gwybod o'r prolyg ymryd, i chi'n gwybod o'r prolyg ymryd. Ond ydych yn fawr yn nodi gael. Gwydden nhw'n gwneud o'r holl o fath o'r prynu ar gwn i fynd i'r holl i gwybod, mae'n olygu'r holl o'r holl i fynd i'ch gwybod, ond yn fawr yn mynd i'r holl, mae'r holl i gwybod yn yw'r holl i gyfnod. Felly, ond os ydych yn gwybod i gwych o'r hyffordi, dyma mae yna ddod. Yn nhw'n gwneud i gweld o'r holl i gwybod i fynd i gwybod i gwybod, a'r holl i gwybod i gwybod i gwybod i gwybod, yna'n gweld ei ddweud o'r oedd. Ac mae'n mynd i'n gwybod, mae'n gweld i'n Cleifend. Rwy'n dda, dda, dda! Mae'n dda, dda'n dda, dda, dda! Dwi'n dda, ac mae'n dda, dwi dda. Rwy'n dda, mae'n dda'n ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud ac mae'n ddweud o'r gwyffredig. Mae'r ddweud o'r gwyffredig eithaf, mae'n ddweud o'r fwy o'r oed o'r Cleifend, Eilow, Eilow, rhan o'r rhan i bethau ei dweud yn gwybod. O beth o'r rhan o'r ddweud yma ernyn nhw ar y porod a'r rhan o'r rhan i bethau ei dweud eich rhan o'r rhan o'i bethau i gweld i'r range. Rhaeddaf i'n mael i chi arbennig. Yna'r Llench, Ekshel y Haleo, a plant yw hynofe, ac rydw i'n rhan o'n ddylu at ychydig os dim yn oed am bufydau â cyddiadau a mor hwnnw i bachion cyfu. Ond mae'n rhan o'n mynd i bachio eich rheol iaith. First of all let me clarify exactly what I mean does one thing better. The interesting thing for me was when I was playing the shorter ions in the halo XL range, I was more than happy with them. When I got down that longer end of the bag I started to think there was perhaps a little bit more help in a standard hybrid since effectively that's what we were sticking in the bag a bag of hybids but then I learned that there was a larger XL hybrid range and when you get down to the four, the five ion, even the six ion and I think these are an even easier option again. Now we're obviously going to talk about price because the price point of these things is well ridiculously low by comparison to others in the marketplace so that's a real appeal in the first instance but always say on this channel I will never pay a lower price point if I think I'm really getting an inferior product and noticeably inferior is the first thing in terms of build quality and that's not what happens with anything from Cleveland to be fair but this hybrid has been put together incredibly well and I love the way it looks at a dress. They've got this matte finish, there's a little bit of decal on the heel and toe of the back end of it and then you turn the product underneath and you'll see again there's some raised soles that we've seen very much in the kind of the cobra product before and then the weighting system you can see the weight has been pushed right to that back end and we all know that that's going to help us in terms of launch so it's an even bigger bulk and mass than that of those halo hybrid irons I'm going to call them but done in a very tidy fashion and I think like I said there's some help and assistance down that long end of the bag that these things can provide. So if you can help me out with some feedback first of all is that I went into the studio this morning near Fogolf and seen the full bag of the Cleveland irons, hybrid irons, whatever you call them, drivers and whatever else and if I'm being perfectly honest when I visit a pro shop prior to doing this job then I wouldn't have probably took a second glance at their product from a whether that's a golf snobbery perspective I don't know but there was no great reputation if you like that they were producing these kind of clubs other than their wedges has been of the highest quality so what I want to know first of all is how many of you have shared that kind of attitude that I had or am I just being like I said a unique golfing snob sound out of these is really good you know and as you can see where I'm looking the ball flight is exceptional the comment the word rather that I use continually when I did last week's review was how easy these things are to use that was that hybrid iron but this halo hybrid is just the same word I would use to describe easy we've got a 182 standard average carry on this and the loft on it is 21 degrees but the ball flight is incredible and you see that 110 peak height is ridiculous but there's also one other factor in there that's probably just working against me slightly at the minute which set up I've got and that spin being so high and obviously we could make some amendments to decrease that but what I also like at the same time is if we could bring that down to that sort of in and around that 4000 revs we've almost got the perfect four iron in hand here so 4000 revs of spin a peak height of over 100 feet you've seen that descent angle and a 182 carry that makes that the perfect club support in the bag so why wouldn't you only answer to that question is quite simple it's golf snobbery I'm guilty of that and I think many of you are as well and we ignore these kinds of product and the key thing about this is the performance out of it in terms of data is incredibly good it would go head to head with any will you find criticism in it you'd struggle to do so and there was a set of numbers they're very very good indeed it looks really good as well so that's another thing that ticks a box and then you've got that price point which makes it extremely appealing in terms of the pocket but for whatever reason the battle they still face is how the Cleveland get their clubs and when I see their clubs their irons their hybrids their fairway woods and their drivers into more golfers bags even how do they get them to actually try them in the first place and not just simply dismiss them because of brand snobbery that's the biggest problem you've got I'm afraid Cleveland and but if you manage to achieve that and get people trying these clubs then I've no doubt that people are going to be impressed enough to stick them in the bag so another product from Cleveland that would get a massive thumbs up from me and I've got to say super impressed and I recommend that you give them a go right that's me done as with that last video we did on Cleveland please more you get involved if I've either got these in the bag tried them whatever give me your feedback and let your fellow golfers know just how good these are and how they're missing out or maybe you just want to keep the secrets to yourselves