Good morning and welcome to this joint hearing of the house environment and energy committee and the transportation committee this morning we are going to continue our conversation about climate resilience and we're going to shift gears to perspective and start hearing from Jeff Jensen, the deputy director of Lamoille County Planning Commission. Welcome, Mr. Jensen. Thank you to both committees for this opportunity to speak about the July 2023 and now December 2023 floods in Lamoille County. I am Jeff Jensen. I'm the deputy director of Lamoille County Planning Commission. I've been working with Lamoille County Planning Commission since 2011. I began working there about a month after the major spring 2011 floods and was there during the recovery. So flooding along the main stem and the tributary areas of the Lamoille River has been a major part of my work and the regional commissions were since I began working there. I do want to start by stating though that 2023 feels very different and I'd want to begin by highlighting both the severity and the urgency that we currently face. So two of the four largest floods recorded in the Lamoille main stem in Lamoille County have occurred in the last six months. In addition to the physical damages, these floods have highlighted gaps and inadequacies of many of our existing programs and systems. And as often the case, these gaps have the greatest impact on the people and communities with the fewest resources. What we are watching today is the climate crisis and the housing crisis converging into a crisis of equity. Nearly six months after the floodwaters receded, many people and communities are still living every day with the impacts of the floods. People who have been displaced from their homes and are experiencing or at risk of homelessness. People who are living in homes that are damaged without heat, electricity or water. People who are living in conditions and unable to relocate because of lack of safe and affordable housing outside of the floodplain. Those are individual impacts. We have community impacts of communities that still lack vital services like post offices, a major gap in our region. The loss of the downtown grocery store in Johnson resulting in no full service grocery store on the route 15 corridor anywhere between Jericho and Morristown in an area where we have many older residents, many households, single parents and many households without access to an automobile. And then there are also the psychological impacts and anxiety that many people still live with that we certainly saw exacerbated when just a few weeks ago in December we have our communities were at risk of flooding. Again, this time, not in the summer but in the winter with frigid water. I understand how we ended up here. I'll briefly provide the committee with an in a recap of the impacts of the 2023 flood in Lamoille County, which brought near record flood levels to many communities along the main stem of the Lamoille River. In Johnson, the community that was perhaps most heavily impacted. We saw the Lamoille River or over its banks into neighborhoods on River Road, Railroad Street, Lower Main Street and the mobile home park on Westcombe Road. As was repeated in community after community, many of the areas and neighborhoods most impacted our home to low and moderate income households, older and more more affordable homes and higher concentrations of rental housing. Johnson also saw its village wastewater treatment plant fully inundated and an operable for several days is now back up in operations under what the village manager refers to as a Frankenstein plant. The water is clean, but it's taking a lot to keep the water clean and a lot of that small municipal utility. Johnson also saw its municipal office fire department and post office flood. The municipal office is still closed. The operations are being done currently out of the Johnson State College campus, which I recognize that is an outdated term and dates me. The sterling market which was the grocery store in downtown had seven feet of water at its front door. And somewhat unfathomable to understand what seven feet of water looks like in a downtown, but it is something we all have to fathom now. In Wolcott, a smaller town further north on the main stem in the middle of the night debris began collecting under the Lemoile Valley Rail Trail Bridge over the main stem on school streets, which is in the heart of Wolcott's village. That debris dam held back the river and sent floodwaters into homes as well as the town, garage and fire station areas by the way that are outside of the floodplain according to FEMA's maps. That debris dam broke in the middle of the night and sent a flash flood down school streets that impacted additional homes including homes not mapped as in the flood hazard area and knocking at least one home of its foundation. After the floodwaters receded, people continued to struggle with negatively impacted septic systems because of high groundwater, which also led to threats to wells throughout the village. Wolcott, like many of our smaller villages is entirely on onsite wells and onsite septic. Then in the village of, in the town of Cambridge, in the villages of Jeffersonville, in Cambridge Village, we saw the Jeffersonville senior housing evacuated shortly after dawn on July 11, 2023. I'll talk a little bit more about Jeffersonville and the senior housing in a little bit. In a way, it's a success story when we're talking about evacuations and success stories, though that tells you what a major challenge we have. In Cambridge Village, however, we saw the lamoille inundate much of the village, again, including many homes and businesses that were shown outside of FEMA's map floodplain that included the Cambridge Village Market, which had been purchased by new owners only two weeks earlier, a business that was not shown as being in the floodplain. It included right aid pharmacy. So for a period of time, not only did we not have a supermarket in that gap between Jericho and Morrisville, we did not have a pharmacy, which is a major challenge for older residents, people with children, anyone with need for healthcare access. Thankfully, the right aid has reopened. And then north of the runway bridge, at least 25 people were rescued from the roof of a home after the lamoille had surrounded on all four sides. So that was July. Only six months later, on December 18, the lamoille flooded again. And while the physical impacts were not as significant, because the river mercifully crested below the levels at which some of those same areas would have been flooded, but only six inches below, by the way, we were very, very close again. That demonstrated again that many of the same communities and people remain at risk. Johnson did experience some flooding in downtown, including in the post office again. So that is where we are. The most important question we can ask now is, what do we do. Lamoille County Planning Commission has spent quite a bit of time working with communities along the main stem to understand the flood dynamics better. We've worked with all of the communities that I mentioned to model and understand lamoille river to engage with people on planning for the future. That includes both supporting emergency response through our regional emergency management committee planning for preparation and then mitigation. I'm going to speak more about mitigation because it has been my role. I do want to be sure that both committees understand though that regional planning commissions are involved in that preparedness and response as well. So, because I recognize that talking about the flood, the floods can be challenging. I do want to start with a bit of a success story, which I mentioned earlier in Jeffersonville. Following 2011. More County Planning Commission was able to work very closely with the village of Jeffersonville and the town of Cambridge to plan mitigation strategies for Jeffersonville. That was based on direct partnership with the community. When I say community, I mean, I do include the municipal government, but I also mean broader than that of the people who lived through the flood and that case the 2011 floods and had direct experience. Much of what we learned about the river dynamics that were eventually confirmed by science were based on on the ground observations of people who had experienced and been impacted by the floods. In fact, we were able to map a secondary channel that was turned out to be based on science the source of a lot of the flooding in Jeffersonville. Based on the debris and wood piles of people who had their firewood piles activated in the 2011 storms. Because of that, the communities were able to access resources to do several major flood mitigation projects to retrofit transportation infrastructure as well as restore some of the natural functions of floodplains in the village. And those projects likely present prevented significant damage in the Halloween 2019 storm, as well as the December 2023 storm. And delayed high water in July 2023 long enough to enable a more orderly evacuation at dawn, as opposed to the middle of the night. I think you heard from first responders that mitigation efforts gave people about 45 extra minutes. You hear from emergency responder responders that seconds counts. There's a lot of second 45 minutes. Unfortunately, the river reached a height though where event those those measures were not capable of mitigating the record storm, but they were capable of getting us more time. So an important lesson of that for everyone to keep in mind are two important lessons is the importance of regional and state leadership, in addition to local engagement. And then the fact that the federal resources are structured so they're funneled through local government and that many of our smaller governments and local government support for management technical assistance. And just figuring out how they're going to support the match and maintenance ongoing. Um, yes, have to just make sure that you have coordinated with the other presenters in this block of time because we need to stick to our schedule. So I want to be respectful of their testimony as well. This is great testimony. Yes, but we have a couple other people to hear from in this block. I think that's a good note to turn it over. Yeah, that was great timing. Okay, good. We have one question or comment for all three of you actually my concerns here today are your transportation infrastructure within your region. Because my concern is, is the small towns may have received more damage than their total overall town budget for the entire year. And what, if anything, can we do to help you through the process until FEMA kicks in. And we just we learned just before the July storm that the state actually signed off on the last project from Irene in 2011. So this is a this could be a gap that that concerns me personally that we if if something needs to be done, we'll need to know that. And because it's just your three regional planning commissions and we have all up and down the spine. So we're something that we we'd like I would like to look at to see where we're at. And you know, we have a tight agency budget, but you know, if we can do something to relieve some of that crisis for the for the communities that would be for me, that would be very important. I'll just ask that question once or make that comment once. Yeah, I'm Chris Camp and I'm executive director of the one regional commission. We cover 27 towns in southeast Vermont and when them. Bennington and Windsor counties. I'm also the chair of the Vermont Association of planning and development agencies emergency planning committee. So I'm the primary liaison between the response disaster response recovery agencies in the RPCs also has a lead on issues related to conservation for us ecology that stuff. And so it's been an interesting period. And I'm going to address things kind of at a higher level I'm happy to get to the weeds on what happened in our region. In July, but I'm going to start with municipal road maintenance realities because it's a joint meeting. I was kind of going to talk about the natural resources and transportation nexus. So the frequency and severity of both rain and rain, snow, ice and wind storms has markedly changed maintenance and cost dynamics for towns. Regular maintenance work that would normally occur in summers may not be possible if road crews have to respond to damage done by successive rounds of summer storms or a few major storms. But the state went all that most all the state went through in 2023 in our region when the rest of the state was in drought in 2021. We had massive flooding rivaling in some cases the scale of Irene. And in some cases worse than what we had in 2023, because we had most situations were like six inches of rain in an hour and a half. And it wasn't just the rivers there actually there wasn't a river flood situation this blew out headwater streams the tributaries in a way that most people alive today had never seen before. And this is a new dynamic we're all dealing with. And I'll get into that a bit more later. But that summer, which also in 2021 and in 2023, our road crews were basically in constant response mode, starting in winter, when the ground didn't freeze so they were basically plowing up the road. And then we had four really disastrous snow storms, heavy snows, the worst being in March, which is but for most people living memory with our work in terms of power outages so they were having to cut trees to and clear the path for utilities. And that's not only expensive and heavy work that's really dangerous work. And I know that least one road crew that lost their truck, luckily they weren't in a truck but tree fell and crushed the truck. There's an unplanned expense right, but this is the reality we're dealing with and we're doing this. I've got 27 towns, the smallest had the population of six, some are set. Largest in Brattleboro was about 13,000. And 26 separate highways, 26 separate down garages, at least 26. So we kind of need to revisit, I think, a lot of assumptions we have about how can towns possibly keep up with all this. And so one of the things I would encourage you also to think about in terms of the natural resources and transportation nexus is we need to ensure the mis-road general permit requirements which were put in place to reduce sediment erosion into waters. We need to make sure the requirements are in line with the new road maintenance reality so towns can actually achieve the MRGP goals. This includes compliance timetables, maintenance improvements under the MRGP including maintenance of the riprap and the ditches that may become much more quickly embedded with sediment than anticipated. And the support towns will need for updated road erosion inventory, those are about to come around again. And obviously, as you might guess, you're probably going to expect a lot of dynamics on the town roads have changed. Towns may grumble about the U-shaped ditches and the rip-rapping of ditches and all, but with a road foreman telling us at least one-on-one, maybe not necessarily in their peer group, is they are helping to actually reduce damage to roads because they're accommodating the flows and the intensity of the flows better than the old-fashioned V-shaped ditches so you're having less ensizement along the roads. I'm not sure what to see what the data shows about actual reduction in sediment loading, but it does seem to be making the roads more resilient. We need to your point about what we need. We need to ensure that the programs that support municipal transportation, especially road roads, align with emerging realities and trends. This includes grant programs not only through V-trans, but also remote emergency management and the ages of natural resources. As towns rebuild after disaster, often having the ability to incorporate mitigation measures and repairing or replacing infrastructure, that can then reduce their ability to deal with just other capital improvement needs that have related to transportation if they're in constant response mode, right? It's hard to kind of take the time to then do what you need to do. On the disaster recovery fronts, I'm happy to share after the fact that the committee, I did a one or two page or lessons learned from Irene. I've updated it, it's aged pretty well. But we need to do constant training with towns on maintaining lines of credit, how to do financing, how to deal with bonds, right? Just because you get elected to a select board does not mean suddenly you are equipped with understanding of how to pass a bond issue or how bonds work or what are your different financing options. How do you save for rainy day? How do you invest those rainy day funds? So, to my mind, that's something that RPCs, the bond bank, VLCB and state agencies and state treasure and others can work on. And of course, there's so much turnover at the town levels, this needs to be just a constant training. The reason I was late, I was testifying on the Senate and Riversville. I watched a couple of times. Another minute, of course. So, I was testifying on the Senate and Riversville. I think recognize that watersheds don't stop at town boundaries and at river core planning and project implementation are inherently inter municipal in nature. And we need to objectively assess the most efficacious approach, which may require more leadership coordination and frankly staffing at the state level working with regions and towns. Honestly, from my perspective. Our towns generally don't have the capacity to adopt things like flood river corridor bylaws. Certainly most towns that have adopted flood hazard bylaws in our region, if you don't have a professional zoning administrator, it is really difficult if not impossible for them to administer the flood hazard bylaws. And when you have a disaster, it's more so. Most towns adopt those flood hazard bylaws without really thinking what it takes to administer these things. And that's not only to my mind because I've done this in another jurisdiction actually, you know, been that zoning person. You know, it's not just the permitting and enforcement. It's also the ongoing outreach and education so people want to even understand they have to have permits anyway. So, frankly, the concept of transferring that responsibility to the state and then having towns be either be delegated or to opt in if they've got the same protections and the capacity to implement the rules. We'll much better protect for monitors what we won't have as much of a patchwork quilt and the LCT in towns individually can can can can speak to for themselves on this. But I imagine a lot of them would probably like to not have that on them. They would like for their residents to still have access to flood insurance, but not have that that responsibility. Let's see. I already talked about this, but you know, we had a lot of river flooding. We also had a lot of stream flooding. I would encourage you to take testimony from the state geologists but also I gave I gave a presentation to the American Society of Civil Engineers Pew Tech Institute at North University and the geologist there said basically, we're living in a new geologic epoch that no given alive is nobody's ever experienced. Things are changing so fast. And I would encourage us especially and it's not just rural towns but we really do need to take into really do need to think about what is happening on the smaller streams and tributaries because they are causing a lot of damage. And as you guys know, special natural natural resources side of the equation. This isn't just about a buffer along stream. It is the entire dynamic of how forested how much understory do we have up in the hills because that's going to buffer the flow. It's not going to fix it perfectly. But the more impervious surface we have the more clearing we have. It's going to change that high drop the high drop the dynamics of the hydraulic in those headlines and headwaters and that's going to have further impacts in the lower and flooding in the lower areas. And the thing I'm seeing to is where you were where the where the streams especially come out into the alluvial fans. The amount of sediment that is being accreted as the velocity slows down and start dropping their loads. It's going to cause more probably and frequent flooding you're not going to dig your way out of this. It's really we need to look more like what are these dynamics and how do we plan on a river corridor level. How to how to best mitigate and reduce flood intensity and frequency. And then last but not least Christian plenty of time. We've really got to look at investing in not just the plant not in how to actually achieve compact settlement. That's the flip side right of trying to you know you've got as we try to have safer and more effective compact settlement. You also have to figure out you know how do we conserve lands beyond those compact settlements. But to do that it's not just bylaws and other policy language. We really need to master plan these priority growth areas so you know what best goes where it's actually growing community growing community away from harm's way. And then what infrastructure do you need and I'm not talking just water and sewer. It's also a sidewalk lighting part of the thing that's the way you know it's comprehensively plan what is needed to make this happen. And that will also tell us where howling is possible. What conditions are going to be necessary to have the housing in the numbers of in the thousands that we need just to accommodate the people who are here now. The last but not least because we've got the transportation folk here where state highways go through compact settlements. They have a profound impact on the livability of these places and that must be incorporated into the new design standards that be trans is updating. And we've got to quit this policy. I'm sorry I'm being a little strong about this but I'll stand by it of where towns want to do traffic calming and improving the safety for transit bike and pen and other uses. That is an all or nothing approach where the town has to adopt that that state highway segment as a class one town road. Just entered to a simple agreement that the town will maintain those those facilities not have to be responsible for the fund full repaving and everything else that has to happen. It can't be this all or nothing approach I know that it's not a budget saving measure for the state it's a livability measure for for monitors and that's in the settlement pattern that we say we want. I'll stop there and turn over to Christian. Thank you for your testimony. Did you like if you don't mind. Question. I couldn't first of all it's great to see you thank you so much. I always appreciate your testimony. We need a master plan is what you said. Any thoughts within your role as an RPC working with so many towns from six to 3000. Dynamic between you know town rule and state master plan for Montpelier doesn't really always go so well. How do we have that conversation with individuals via your experience. It's working with the planning commissions but it's recent gets given them the resources they need to be able to do that. I mean in my in my perfect world I would have a landscape architect on staff and we could do that work in house. It's getting hard at hiring a landscape architect or other design group of design professionals to do like that conceptual master planning or physical master planning. It's a fairly lengthy process and it's not cheap. But really even just helping towns even if it's a conceptual plan to like look at how the land lays look at all the different you know. Geology the hydrology the ecosystems get able to start laying that out physically so then everybody. You don't just have the same vision in terms of the policy language on a page like what the words say. Or what's in the zoning by law then everybody actually has that shared vision they can visualize what it is we're trying to achieve. So then when you're talking about okay then we need to make investments in things like water and wastewater. You can see where it's going to go. What you're going to be able to achieve by making those investments. But hopefully ideally it would also inform the state like budgetarily where do we need to put money in to make this happen. I've got a proposal one before the UVM is due for real partnerships to actually map where we do and do not have wastewater capacity.  At a county level that would be step one. It's something we've got to have that that's a long answer to your question but that's that's the way we would do it. I think it's not saying we have to have somebody on staff. I mean but that's what we would it wouldn't be like the state imposing anything regions impose anything to be working with the towns to go through this new process and plan out where. Do you have the the seven patterns? I will say in our region updates the town's want to do it. I hope they will. I'm going to go on work for like five towns on the housing question, which will also inform like the village development question. Because trying to plant housing, especially in rural towns on a town by town by town basis doesn't make a lot of sense. But having them as a cluster talk about it, then you can identify. Okay, that's really where you need to make the investment in the infrastructure. That's really the safest place to have that happen. This is where all these towns benefit from and here are the opportunities for infill, you know, and all five of them. But to get literally the thousands of units that we need that takes a lot of planning. Thanks so much for your testimony. Next we have Christian Meyer, the director of central Vermont regional planning. Can we relocate the witness we can't see the proof and now it's tough. It has to do with where the camera is and the live stream. I think maybe a little bit more of this. Yeah, just don't unplug anything when you slide us over. Yeah, these cameras are different from what we have in committee. Yeah, yeah, still totally blocked. Maybe the folks just my committee, could you move back a little bit so that folks for the line of the setup of the tables is a little bit tricky. Oh, of course. Thank you. Thanks. I thank you very much Christian Meyer from the central Vermont regional planning. We represent 23 towns and in Washington County plus the towns of. Orange Washington. Chris's testimony was excellent. I can cover it on all those big of high level items that we care about as well. Obviously, Seth and it's really good job. It's a very question of how we got here and why we're all how we're adapting. I'm going to play off Chris the things outline the kind of point to some examples of where we're having success in central Vermont and what we've been working on even. Prior to Joe high to help towns get ready for events. Hopefully have suffered. Smaller mitigated impacts as they continue to come. First Chris was talking about the road situation municipal roads. It's fast working with the town of. How the playing field where they had a repeat damage bridge on brook road. Watched out 2011 2015. The problem was the bridge was in really good shape is the road around that they kept washing out so we're traditional asset management plan. It wasn't qualifying for replacement or expansion before they quit. We were able to support the town's initiative to create an application for. Funding. A brick program where the primary consideration was exactly that the resilience and capacity of the. What waters are the water during this year rain events. On the great brook they're successful in their application will ultimately take on the administration role during construction phase to give the town that capacity. But it's a really good example of how towns. Need more sources like that from the break program that to address their infrastructure shortfalls. That are not necessarily based on the traditional asset management plan. Which is obviously extremely important. Another area the ark and seas have been I think. That's official and the data that is looking positive impacts. Further forward is the bridge culvert inventory that's conducted throughout the state on a regular basis. Is the story of all these bowls. Primary assets on the roads. It's an opportunity to see where the right size where we need greater capacity where they're clogged maintenance. Is that when these flash rain events come you don't end up getting a block over that washes out the road. Further after that disaster you have that data from before the event that you can you can look at when you're making your reporting. To ensure that you can just you know it was in the road before it got washed out essentially. One area where we don't have a solution but it is an area of growing concern is gravel. The grounds are really worried about where the gravel is going to come from the town gets are getting low and we're going to have. The washouts like we had. The last 6 months this is a big question for them and I don't have an answer on that strategy that's working but. I'm sure I mentioned. In terms of how we build the roads we mentioned. We can get a general permit. To better fit the realities of the environment that's actually fundamental spending the better roads program. Focus really on up sizing water quality. I think it would be a key step to help us with our making sure our back roads and our. Our gravel roads are better hard and freeze events. We've also talked about river quarters and storm water flow. A couple projects we've been involved with that have been. That it that it stood up to these past storms are some best management practices. Inflammation projects in central Vermont to most recently one in playing field. One is rounding up in more town. I our final site inspection was on July 15th the summer for the playing field project and you can do a project to withstand these storm events cut back on. And. And reduce the amount of sediment flowing into the river. You're right generally speaking a small after in this field we do we do a couple projects every year. There's a lot of other folks out there, but I think what we can do is a RBC is kind of brings brings. Equality of opportunity to the municipalities not just based on the opportunity or a. Energetic planning commission we can be there at institutional knowledge and ensure that all our municipalities. Are getting by these programs. I think similarly, well, I can roll on to the next one. Chris also brought up combat development and look at central Vermont and be pretty hard press to find one village that isn't bifurcated by a state road. If we don't design for at the human scale, I don't know how we get people to move into these places. Our house. They're planning for sidewalks building sidewalks. It's not just the larger municipalities, it's a little, little villages like orange. In process of designing sidewalks right now and trying to figure out how to create a safe place for students to walk and access the elementary school. To file right. So we need to find a balance there. Towns are when they get the chance planning for more dense and compact development. That's part of really looking at how we help the city very maintenance. I was looking on any field study that hopefully can be used to. Energize developers to maybe take advantage of. Existing opportunities that are there. It's a request for their housing committee and city. Jumping and offer them some of this technical assistance on the spot. Take away here is that all the municipalities, at least by respect of all municipalities are taking on these projects in different manners. And these different techniques. One consistency is that regional planning committees and commissions. Can be there to offer that technical assistance and a little wind in their sale. They don't necessarily have a, have a. State state communities or volunteer base at a given time during change over the end of their example. That's all I have for you today. That's great. Thank you for your testimony. Representative Smith has a question for you. I like to ask your question. Will the state. Say that communities between Derby and Newport, I believe it's state road. Will the state design sidewalks or does the communities have to. Put their money forth and find a designer. A state design sidewalks. I, it's almost always the case that is for initiative. Don't fund the design process and the implementation process as well. They're probably granted would be available. Right. Okay. Pedestrian. And the transportation alternatives. Very both on that work. And I have one line now. Thank you for that. That is really expensive money for towns to use. Sure. So if it's, if it's easier for the state to, I mean, for honestly, I think that's part of a conversation needs to have is. Having the town's fully engaged, but where it makes sense. You've already got professionals. Others at the state level. And we do think more efficiently as opposed to, you know, you've heard me say this before, probably the hunger games approach. They're the town's with the most capacity being able to chase. The grants and manage the RPC is often I'll manage the grants, but. That is incredibly expensive. And the delays that we're seeing. Historical review and other things. It's driving up the cost by. Yeah, hundreds of dollars for very simple projects. We've seen in a lot since the Walmart store got built. Seven, eight years ago in Derby, we've seen a lot of. What traffic going from Derby down to the store from Newport up. So we've talked a little bit about sidewalks, but it's an expensive venture. I'm sure. And I'll just say a number of towns won't even consider. These improvements because of that whole class 1 town route. Adoption taking that over from the state. Number of towns that we've talked to once they hear that that's a, that's probably what they're going to have to do to do the things they want me to do. Just stop the conversation right there. Yeah, thank you. Can you be brief representative Pat? We really are running out of time. Yes. Thank you. It's interesting that. My, my district, five pounds of my district are in fact served by two of the regional planning conditions. We've heard from today. My, my, my question has to do where it's also a comment. Maybe it can't all be addressed today. But for instance, I probably two, three years ago in a previous committee, I was on her testimony about some of the mitigation plans in terms of property acquisition for dealing with overflow in LaMoyle County. And, and you mentioned the Brook Road in Plainfield before I moved to Worcester. I was on the select board for six years dealing with the Brook Road and flooding in the in the late 1980s. My question for smaller towns is very, it's clearly critical that the RPCs and other broader entities be involved. But is there, there are going to be some towns that are where the select board and others are jumping right in to do this and others were for whatever reason, capacity, interest or whatever. It's not happening and also the kind of flood mitigation of dealing with, with having capacity to deal with excess flow may occur. The land may be in one town, but what it affects is the next town downstream. So those, those are the kind of questions that I know we don't have time to answer all of that. I'm really concerned about the whether this is primarily going to happen where the people and the local governments really want it to happen and not so much in the next town over. I briefly just address a piece of that. So, every mitigation projects. In the one county since 2011 has had the RPC involved in some ways here in drafting the application with big in partnership with the community. Or once the application is awarded assisting the community with management and permit acquisition and those kinds of things. FEMA has become increasingly challenging related to funding management costs. And if that trend continues the type of work in. And we did in Jeffersonville that we're now trying to do in Wilkton and Johnson. Communities of that skill will not be able to undertake those projects unless there's another resource to backfill the. Just the work that has to happen for a project to go on. Elevation project that started in Jeffersonville took eight years to complete. We just closed out a grant for some of the major Irene projects so. A small town managed by volunteers can't do that without staff support. After Irene FEMA was very good at funding that management cost piece. It's increasingly challenging and that is a gap. Either ensure, you know, get on FEMA to continue funding those or find another source. Because it just the small town simply can't do it without support. So thank you all for your testimony is super helpful and I guess I would say that. You know, a lot of there's a lot of resilience bills that have been introduced and many of them are moving in the same direction and that we are working to coordinate and bring them to the appropriate committees. And I feel like you really teed that up well for us to understand supporting our small towns in addressing the changed environment that we're dealing with. And I just want to say for our committee, I know I this is really helpful from all of you to give us some really concrete things that we can work on. And I look forward to having you back in our committee to kind of drill down on a few of those things. So thank you so much. With that, we are going to take a four minute break and then try and get back on schedules. We'll transition to the next witness. We are we are reconvening our meeting of the House Environment and Energy Committee and the Transportation Committee and we're going to welcome Benjamin Doyle. Thank you so much. I was actually, I think I'm kind of wearing a little bit of two hats here and so I might just talk about my professional work a little bit and then specifically how it relates to work in Montpelier. So I said my name is Ben Doyle. I'm the president of the preservation trust of Vermont nonprofit organization and our mission is to build community through the preservation of historic buildings, villages and downtown. And, you know, that work looks a lot of different ways. It could be helping a community rethink how they use their town hall. It could be preserving a diner in their downtown helping homeowner preserve a historic barn is in 2023 we worked on 264 projects and 152 communities. I like to boil it down to we help people save the places and spaces that they love. And that on a community preservation revitalization project we're often a small town's first and longest friend because some of these projects literally take 1015 years, but we stick with them. And so when the flooding occurred this summer that really impacted our work, obviously, a lot of the communities that we were working in or work have worked with in the past were impacted. You know, I'm singing of things like the old labor ball and Barry, or the library and Johnson, you know, these projects that we've been involved in for years that were like severely impacted and, you know, we're on the phone with them that day they like what's going on. We really took two different tracks and our approach to response to flood we have a fantastic field service team that's out in the field. We're working with communities thinking about how you preserve these historic assets. They immediately kind of just started calling people and visiting different communities or buildings that had been impacted with partners like you know engineers structural engineers. People like Stevens and associates or engineering ventures to be like what was not just what was the impact on this building but what are flood mitigation techniques for the future. And, you know, those are services that we provide year year round, but we really this year we've made a goal to double the number of assessments that we do up to 100 and to wave it's typically a matching grant and we're waiving that for flood infected community. So that work is kind of ongoing and then the second thing that we did is, it's really nice to see particularly set here today was in weeks after the flood the regional planning commissions got together to put together a list. A list of communities that were impacted 18 communities and at Preservation Trust, we often work collaboratively with another number of other community economic development partners. And so we just convened a group and said, we're going to every, you know, a couple of days we're going to get the partner at Montpelier and whoever wants to go. We're going to go visit peace communities in this order and working with people like Seth to identify, you know, okay, where are the communities that we should really be talking to who should we be talking to. So that's groups of people like from USA World Development, where I used to work, Agency of Commerce Community Development Community Foundation, the Arts Council, the Vile League of Cities and Towns, Council on Rural Development. We visited all 18 towns and, you know, we visit various projects or impacted areas in those communities and that was a really eye-opening experience and yet at the same time it confirmed what I think of as the two central truths of community and economic development. At least I know it. And the first central truth is that if you've seen one small town, you have seen one small town. And then the second thing I believe, and this was confirmed by these visits was that transformational change takes visionary collaborative leadership. And that I believe is the difference between rural communities that are successful and those that continue to struggle. And so some of the very specific examples I saw on these kinds of field sites visits, you know, you could go to different communities and just see widely different responses to the flood or widely different findings of what was even happening to their community. So for example, I walked around North and with the various city manager who really only been there for a year. He knew every single person we encountered on the street. He knew all the businesses that were impacted. He knew the geography, topography of that place. If I said, well, how many houses were impacted, he could rattle off the number, but then say, well, you know, this many houses, but this many units, just an incredible understanding of what was happening. There are other communities that I visited where you would sit with a town administrator in a small town and you'd say, you know, how many people were impacted by this. And they'd say, geez, you know, we're really responsible for the roads. I really don't know how many houses or or communities where we knew there were businesses that were impacted during Irene that had been flooded again. And that there's still, you know, it really came down to, and this is not a knock on them.  And, you know, I just pointed out that there's just this enormous difference. And, you know, just speaking about places that other places that were really successful. Even if there are different opinions about what the role of municipal government is, one of the things that we counter particularly in the Northeast Kingdom was every community went to a partner or club or hardware that had been impacted. Well, who was helping who was doing this what you know, and it was Northeast Kingdom organizing we heard that over and over and over again that these mutual aid groups that organically a lot of them like grew up during COVID. But that were a resource for the community members that was extremely important. And when you look I think an example like Hardwick is really great they have the Civic Standard Group, which is a I don't know how to describe it as community building nonprofit organization they do really fun things to build community, but in this moment they were able to pivot to really help their neighbors, but they work so closely with the municipality like opie the town manager they're they're like thickest thieves and they they finish each other's sentences and there's just really an incredible example of collaboration. So, with that, meaning the big idea that I'm trying to say is that really the impact is different in all of these communities and and that the response is really dependent upon the level of collaboration and vision. In these municipalities, I'd like to just kind of shift to Montpelier. I live like 200 yards that way. And on the day of the flood. And this thing I remember most it's just like the smell of a diesel fuel that was just this whole area and in dance with diesel fuel, the noise, all the alarms of the capital complex, like seemingly for days going on. It was just, it was really tough. And I think for a lot of people, it felt like existential, right, that there were people being like well Montpelier is no longer going to be Montpelier, or we're going to move Montpelier up to the hills, or, you know, the world has completely changed and this town is no longer viable. And really, it kind of felt that way. And I think we saw an incredible community response, teenagers mucking out basements, just incredible work. A lot of people just diving, diving right in. But it was really this municipality did I think a remarkable job doing what they did well in terms of continuance of operation or emergency, but when it came to the individual business of what do I do? Who's FEMA? What's an SBA loan? What do I keep? What do I throw away? That really came down to like volunteers and ultimately the downtown organization, Katie Trouse, who's the executive director of Montpelier Alive. That is not in her job description, but she stepped up and did it. And then in terms of like resources available to businesses that were impacted, you know, we had over like 100 business impact in Montpelier. And that's a real incredible response of people who just love, you know, who love this town. I serve on the board of the Montpelier Foundation and in partnership with the Montpelier Foundation and Montpelier Alive. We started the Montpelier Strong Fund, which was just, you know, people wanted to give and support businesses. And, you know, we were able to raise over $2 million this summer to help support small businesses. We did that like one week after the flight, we could provide $1,000 checks to every single business to ask for one. We didn't ask them what they were doing with it. We didn't ask them how they were going to use it. It was just like, here's $1,000, make your payroll, buy your staff lunch, buy cleaning supplies, do whatever you want. And then after that we had basically another round of grant funding that was just flexible and allowed people to do what they needed to do. You know, I would say that Montpelier is a very well resourced community. I don't think that's a surprise to anyone. In fact, we were able to raise $2 million. When you go to a community, you know, like Johnson, there's a stark contrast there. And yet I would also say like the impact for our downtown businesses was in the tens of millions, tens of millions, right? I personally feel like in the week after the flight, I felt like this set us back like a decade. That's what it felt like. So in response to these kind of like really tough moments, but this incredible community energy, Paul Costello, who I think many of you might know as the former director of my council on rural development, just did what Paul does. And he really brought the community together through a series of community forums where we had three different community forums. The first was really frankly an opportunity for people to grieve and express how their emotion and what their experience was. But then it was also an opportunity to identify, okay, well, what are the priorities of this community moving forward? Who do we want to be? How are we going to respond? What's this going, this moment of transformation going to look like? So those series of forums had over a thousand people participate in the on-person or online. I've worked with Paul a lot. I've probably been on 25 ECRD community visits. I've never seen one as well intended or as intense as this one. It was really incredible. And some of the things that were prioritized by the community is a long list of 20 different things. But there were things like making our downtown much more adaptive, recognizing it is definitely going to flood again. How do we deal with that? To recognizing that this is not a Montpelier alone problem. Everybody understands that it's a watershed-wide issue, that this is a watershed issue that we need to be collaborative. We need to improve our response so that if Katie's job is to help the business to survive, she needs to know that before it happens and have the resources to do it. And then the other thing that was identified was that our city council, our city manager, our mayor, it's an overwhelming moment. The budget is a complete disaster. And they don't frankly have a lot of time in this moment in this kind of crisis to be thinking long term what does Montpelier look like in 50 years and what are we? So the community prioritized this idea of an outside commission, folks that have experience in relevant areas, the connections to Montpelier that can really take the time and space to engage Montpelier community and look for opportunities to build resiliency and help the community recover. And so that commission was convened by the Montpelier Library City and the Montpelier Foundation. It consists of about 15 people from, you know, it's a really frankly an incredible group. People applied to serve on it and based upon their skill sets and areas of expertise. So we have folks that are, you know, architects, preservationists. We have state flood playing expert, hazard mitigation folks, peer walk from Efficiency Vermont, Allie Richards from Let's Go Kids, folks that have a lot of community economic development experience and really love this town.  We really view our work as looking for opportunities that to get projects unstuck. You know, Montpelier is a town that loves to plan. And there are 20 years worth of plans about how to make the city more resilient. And what we're really looking forward to is surfacing those opportunities, building the collaborative visionary partnerships that are needed, and then just relentlessly and optimistically bird talking them to see good things happen. And I'm going to give you two specific examples of the kinds of things that we're working on. It has now been 179 days since Montpelier has had a post office. It's just totally unacceptable. You know, the state capital and 179 days we have not had a post office. So we have been trying to engage with postal leadership. We've been working very closely with our congressional organization informing the community, providing opportunities for the community to reach out directly to postal leadership to express their feelings, trying to support the postal workers who are actually doing a fantastic job. It's the, it's the regional leadership on Monday. We're organized a rally with the entire congressional delegation will be 1230 in front of the post office. You're all invited. And we're just going to kind of continue to put pressure. I really, we all believe that community voice matters and that it makes a difference. And so that's one example. Another one that I think is really concrete is relates to the watershed issue. And Montpelier is a small place and there are actually very few floodplain available floodplain opportunities for restoration that could potentially help mitigate future flood, but there are some. And I'm not going to go down this road. I promise, but like there's a property down by Agway called five home farm way. Maybe some of you have seen it. It's an old farmhouse. It's a very long and complicated story, but essentially over a decade ago and nonprofit owned it. They went out of business for whatever reason did not dispose of the asset. The Vermont housing conservation board has a conservation easement on the land, the preservation trust has a historic preservation easement on it. There's a mortgage from the remote community loan fund. Nobody really owns it because the entity was dissolved by the attorney general's office. So it's been in this legal morass for 10 years and nothing has happened. And really, as a result of the relationships formed at this commission, we identified a path forward for that property. And we were able to working collaboratively and putting an application of Vermont emergency management for the flood resilient communities program. And we received funding to resolve the ownership issue, purchase the property, take down the house where there was recently a shooting and begin the pre engineering of restoring 18 acres of floodplain just outside of the city or just inside the city of Montpelier. That is not going to make the difference. That's not going to, you know, bring the water down a foot Montpelier in the next flight, but it's a start. And when you start aggregating projects like that along the watershed, it really does start to make a difference. You know, I think what I would like to just really emphasize is that I think the state of Vermont has an enormous opportunity to meet here, right, that these small towns, whether it were well resourced big towns like Montpelier, we cannot do it alone. We cannot do it alone. We cannot do it alone. You know, we have opportunity and a vision to turn back towards the river, right, that we can do this we can find a way to live with the river. It's hard to do it when 40% of the asphalt in this town is controlled by the state and we have nothing to do it. Right, we had wonderful conversations and general services. We're thrilled by the leadership of Doug Barnum, Pat Moulin, it's we've got these great collaborative partners. What we need is the folks to think creatively, collaboratively, and to give us the tools many of which already exists, like the Brazilian community programs or the tax credit program for flood resiliency. There are tools there, but it's going to take really creativity and, you know, Montpelier really wants to this commission, we're really excited to be a part of that watershed wide conversation to think with habit about, you know, how do we work together to solve this mutual problem. But it needs folks like the regional planning commissions and folks like Doug and statewide entities to help convene that conversation, and we're ready to engage. The last thing I just really need to say is that the commission that I'm serve on is really focused on like infrastructure, visioning, future, you know, big picture 30,000 foot kind of stuff.  And, you know, part of the work of the commission is we're trying to help stand up a long term recovery group that can help on individual assistance in that way. But I think even as well resources a town like Montpelier is, there are folks that are really hurting individuals who need help and to navigate SDA, FEMA, all of it is traumatic. And a lot of them are giving up. And so they really need as much help as we can get. And I would just say the final thing related to that is that this is a transformational moment or Vermont. And it's not just transformation about like how do we deal with water but it's how do we deal with equity, right that how do we make sure that everybody equitably recovers from this crisis and how do we build this. Make a stronger the next time this happens. But I just really thank you for your work in your time and I'm happy to answer any questions if you have. Thank you so much for your testimony. I'm going to ask one question I am curious and I had this same question I think for sets how many people are currently still displaced and struggling from this in Montpelier. About 450 people applied for FEMA assistance in Montpelier. Well, maybe just back up and I will answer that question. You know, I think, and this is just like a full transparency moment like when the flooding happened, we said, let's get together and form this Montpelier strong fund. To be honest, it was like existential our downtime is going to die. We have to save these businesses. You know, and I think the prevailing narrative was that Montpelier's business district was really impacted and Barry's residential area was impacted than the businesses were fine. It's way more complicated than that and it's messier than that. And the truth is, yes, our businesses were devastated. By 400 individuals or families applied for FEMA assistance, I think like 230 or something got approved for FEMA assistance. But the truth is, and I think Sue mentors on your agenda, she'll have great information on this. But the truth is, we really don't know. You know, there were people that didn't apply for FEMA assistance got rejected for FEMA assistance that have given up. You know, how many people are actually displaced? I assume I have a better answer, but I can't say other than that we do definitely know there are people who are really hurting and really don't know how they're going to recover. And if you don't mind, do you have an answer in your area? Well, I'll say that answer is equally easy. You know, we do know that there are people emerging who were not looking for help until it in cold. They were doing the wrong thing of, you know, making do as long as they could. And there have been, there were quite a few applications, public assistance, a lot of those applications were denied or only partially funded. And there's some really big challenges with folks who are renters, folks in both parks where there's kind of a, you know, ownership of the unit, but not ownership of land that makes tracking those numbers really, really hard. So what we do know is that the Memorial County food shelf is running out of food that the Human Service providers are reporting people who, you know, were impacted by the floods showing up more and more every day. I'll say as the Regional Planning Commission, we are assisting people with navigating the buyout process and constantly hearing that the 18 month timeframe, which is the minimum and everything goes well for FEMA buyout to work is too long. And that they do not have the resources to survive those 18 months. In some cases, and I have this pretty interesting to share this the river is three feet away from their foundation and moving closer every day. And 18 months is too long 18 days is if it's you and your family and your child, three feet away from a river that is wildly moving. So I wish I had better numbers and not just anecdotes, but one person one for moderate living in that situation is too many. Can I have one quick. I'll serve on the individual family's recovery task force, which is the entity said that any human services set up to respond to individual assistance after whether federally declare or not. And there's now a separate long term recovery group task force, which, which is composed of these, these localized long term recovery groups are going to do the frankly years worth of work to get people permanently back in the housing. So I would encourage Jason Goslin is the point person with agencies. This is actually an agency of human services. But this is a big conversation. We're going to have more of these disasters if it wasn't for FEMA. It wasn't for this being a federally declared individual assistance disaster. We'd be in a really, really bad shape and it's a really high threshold to meet. We should we need to plan for a lot more of these that are below that threshold where FEMA won't even be in town. But happy to provide further testimony on that in these conversations for years, but the challenge we're going to face is all these renters as you have the buyouts. Yeah, a lot of people aren't going to be able to do buyouts because they can't if there's no other housing to go to. You're going to have landlords who take buyouts and there's still no place for the renters to go to. And then you're going to have the people who bring the buildings back into compliance with National Flood Insurance Program standards. They're going to have to raise the rents. And so we're probably going to lose. This is a guesstimate, but this is just based on experience and other places, other disasters. The state of Vermont is probably going to lose hundreds of remanters because there will be no place for them to live permanently. And it's something that we really need to reckon with. Sue's going to have more intimate insight into this, but it's something that we need to prepare for, not just for this one, but what's going to keep coming. Because in our region, this has happened again and again and again. All right, further questions for Mr. Doyle. Thank you so much for your testimony. Thank you. Banking counties, we worked really hard to get the number up high enough to get FEMA. We didn't get there. And so the people, so we got no relief. All right. Welcome, Sue Minter. Sue Minter is the Executive Director of Capstone Community Action and joining us via Zoom. Hello, can you hear me okay? We can. I'm going to say good morning and thank you so much. Thank you for first allowing me to testify remotely and inviting me to come before your committees on this important topic for the record. I am Sue Minter, Executive Director of Capstone Community Action. We are a community based nonprofit anti poverty organization, which was established in 1965 and we serve Washington County. And orange counties. And Capstone is one of five community action agencies in Vermont that make up what we call the Vermont Community Action Partnership VCAP. And collectively, our mission is really to end poverty by providing services to people in crisis, whether it's food housing or heat through the winter, but also providing tools and opportunities to help lift people out of poverty. And into economic self-sufficiency. I've provided some resources to explain more about what we do in my testimony for you to look at later. I also want to say for the purpose of this testimony that it is relevant that I served as Vermont's Irene Recovery Officer in 2011. I also served as Vermont's Secretary of Transportation starting in 2013 and during my tenure, I had the chance to lead a Vermont recovery team to support the state of Colorado after their historic floods of 2013. I also served on a national White House Task Force, Obama White House Task Force on climate preparedness and resilience. And I think these experiences all strongly influence my understanding of the urgent need for planning for investment and action to address these impacts of today in light of our changing climate. Like Chris, I've been on the Individual and Family Needs Recovery Task Force, the Housing Recovery Task Force, and supporting the long-term recovery so I can speak to those issues soon. I have to assume you've been hearing testimony about the flooding impacts about where the rivers meet the roads and our infrastructure. And from Irene, we know a lasting effect on the transportation and river engineering and planning in Vermont. You know, our overall mission after Irene was to, quote, build back stronger and to try to recover with resilience to those threats that we knew were posed by what we predict to be frequent extreme flooding due to our changing climate. And what we've seen over this decade is really that sort of previous foes became colleagues in this quest to think differently about our future and to fully grasp our need to let nature take its course. So since this time, we've built larger bridges and culverts, smarter roads and ditches, and we've really tried to work to allow rivers to meander and give adequate room to flood. And I think there are many important examples of where our resilient recovery in the infrastructure from Irene has had significant positive impact on protecting roads, businesses, homes, and even communities from extreme damage this summer. But obviously, we have not done nearly enough. And given the devastation and destruction of July's flood, we need to dig deeper to continue to be innovative to expand our investment and commitment to continuing to recover with even greater resilience and greater understanding of resilience. So today, while, you know, my previous experience and focus has been on transportation and ecosystem resilience. Today, I'm going to focus on people and the resilient recovery needed for our communities and our economy. And I think it's appropriate, given my current role that my testimony focused on the most vulnerable. Sue, just a minute. For some reason, your sound just went down. Can you hear me now if I speak better, I think, but I wonder if we can turn it up. Yeah, I think maybe you, maybe you just lean back or something. I don't know what happened, but you got very quiet. Not like me to be quiet. Can you hear me now? I'm putting my volume up, but I think that just means you're loud. Okay. Yeah, that's better. I think we did too. Okay, so, you know, I think that what's important is to realize that Vermonters of low income, those who are elderly or living with disability are really a subset of the larger community, but they're often not seen or overlooked. But we have to realize that it is actually the most vulnerable in Vermont and elsewhere who face disproportionate risk from climate disaster. We've seen in July that these have been the hardest hit in our disaster and who are now facing the greatest barriers to recovery as we were just discussing. And I believe strongly that the needs of the most vulnerable must be front and center in how we recover and plan for a resilient future. Capstone's work on flood recovery, like you've heard, really began the day after the July flood. And it's always refreshing to hear from Ben about community responses across the state. We participated in many in our service area, and we were really one of those many nonprofits on the ground pivoting to respond to the crisis of the moment. Despite of the fact that our berry headquarters was flooded out, our team immediately showed up we went into response mode and provided emergency food prepared meals, water, baby formula volunteers. We had brigades going throughout our communities for weeks. And mucking out homes, you know, providing the kind of support you've heard about, but also throughout our summer, our frontline staff, both helped support the state recovery centers, but help people navigate through the complexity of FEMA or SBA, registering on one and all of the myriad needs of housing and basic supply. We also help step up and lead what was called the main street flood recovery fund another really business relief fund. We, we stood this up right in the week after the disaster raised over $800,000 with a broad group of people across the state, but Capstone helped receive and administer the funds are you hearing me okay. Okay, sorry. And also we were able to provide support for something called vert the Vermont energy recovery team which hopefully you've heard about. We received and administered philanthropic funds to help utilities be on the ground addressing those in most with most acute needs for getting their heat repaired. And we can touch on that later if you would like. But I think what's relevant for our conversation that we were just having as we have also agreed to work with the state to stand up a FEMA program called disaster case management. And this focuses on individual assistance for long term recovery, really doing that intensive one on one case management. We're collaborating with community action partners across the state, partnering with the state, but this is under a fee for FEMA program with specific guidelines. We just this week hired our first five of an eventual team of 15 people that will be spanning out across the state to help individuals. I can also mention the importance of philanthropy because due to an outpouring of philanthropic support following the floods. It's really enabled capstone to continue even now to provide what we call mini grants to low income flood survivors for a myriad of like potential urgent needs and these are things like storage units paying for storage room it's paying for mold assessments and remediation basic plumbing services, electricians, electric bills, poping contractors, generators, septic systems, gift cards, gas cards, and transportation services and since the transportation committee is here, you won't be surprised that I want to highlight this most basic need. How do you get where you need to go in an emergency, or after a disaster, when you do not have a car. And our existing transit system which as you know I'm a strong proponent of is inadequate for this. Thankfully, as I think you may recall we described last year capstone incubated a new, what we call micro transit pilot program called Community Rides Vermont. We actually launched last spring and have been providing on demand transportation in all electric vehicles with paid drivers in Washington County so this service has been a critical resource during and after the disaster and to this day. We, you know we helped people evacuate and get to shelter, we are continuing to help people move their things into storage we take people to work to the doctor we transport children to school and to childcare essential needs. And I hope that the kinds of needs that we are providing helps depict that because it's not always obvious for people with privilege who have resources that generally are available to meet the most urgent and pressing needs in a disaster but for people without resources. They cannot. So, I want to really emphasize that without immediate assistance, many people are quickly slipping from a state of living on the edge of stability and into a state of extreme poverty. And that's where we are today. More and more Vermonters are slipping into a state of an extreme poverty and just to exemplify this fact I'm going to share with you a brief snapshot of one day at our food pantry in Berry City, which is the largest food shelf in Central County and where by the way, the numbers of people who came to our food shelf in November of 2023 had increased 43% since that same time last year. So the day after our December flood, which also affected significantly many parts of Berry City. We asked all of our frontline staff to do what we call a wellness check on our customers, especially focused on those who were already flood survivors from July. I'm just going to read you what I received as an email without any identifying information lost vehicle does not have a car. He did not have insurance on his vehicle so has not had a vehicle since July He breathing due to July flood and mold is bad has respiratory issues now. Staying at the park and ride in Montpelier right now, had an apartment on Main Street in July and flood caused major damage to all their stuff was not on the lease has no place to go. Someone on the lease was relocated, but not him needs camping gear scared of trees falling on him at this time. His last housing was due in July due to the flood needs housing food and clothes. December lost $100 of food was at the Null during the flood no cabin available in winter homeless. Staying at a cousins on North Main Street in barrier was not on the lease never got housing since then, mainly stayed in the woods before then. In the December flood two and a half to three feet of water inside the buildings, the horse barn and the tack building lost my would at least $50 worth from carpentry work that remain to be done to repair damage to July flood. No damage in the in the house from December. Horse had to move out of the garage $1000 worth of shavings loss. Hey is okay. July flood sinkhole on the property that was filled came back after December flood needs to have the evacuator back. I'm not going to keep reading. You get the picture. I hope you will read my testimony, because there were 19 entries in one day at our food shelf. Out of probably 40 people who came in who shared their stories. So, you know, supporting people in poverty isn't new to capstones frontline staff, but supporting the ongoing and acute and sometimes overwhelming, both in its complexity and the cost is like a cascade of needs from a disaster, layered on pre disaster So, I wanted you to know I'm submitting with my testimony some of the information you were asking about its information from FEMA, and it documents the number and the demographics of people who have registered for what's called FEMA individual assistance so I encourage you to peruse the documents to understand the magnitude of this effect and event and its effect on people from what we know from FEMA. And we know that there were 6300 some odd valid registrants, we know many, but we don't know how many were not considered valid yet valid. We know that about 37% of these are in central Vermont that includes LaMoyle and Washington County. About 18% 1114 are either low, very low or extremely low income for monitors. So nearly 20% of these folks are probably surviving under the conditions I've kind of laid out to you. But what we don't know. We don't know what the state of their recovery is, nor do we know about the people who did not register with FEMA, although we know there are many of those. We know that Vermonters are still suffering from extreme conditions. Many are either displaced entirely or living in substandard or even unsafe conditions. They live in mold. They live in cold, and they live without everything they had before this disaster. They live with the ongoing trauma of the flood and a sense of hopelessness and despair. Thankfully, there are dozens and dozens of volunteers across our state who are still value, valiantly working to help with recovery needs. There are 10 so called community based recovery group organizations that FEMA calls long term recovery groups, and they've formed throughout the state. I've provided also in my testimony a map of how that state, how those groups are set up across the state. And capstone is, you know, as we just said, working with our case managers to help support in some way those long term recovery groups. But I recently spent time with volunteers in Barry city. The long term recovery group is called Barry up. And Barry city, I think we can say for certain is the city that has sustained the most significant damage to its housing stock from July. Now this group estimates that the flood impacted 370 structures, which totaled 528 housing units. So that's the total impact and roughly speaking this group estimates that about a third of these sustained relatively minor damage this also includes businesses. But the about a third have sort of recovered a third are in limbo, but a third they think are either totally destroyed or damaged. And the city has recently begun to notify some 85 property owners that their property damage has reached a threshold of quote substantial damage. For which it's complex and I'm sure the regional planners can explain this better but rebuilding has to meet a much higher floodplain management requirements. And these substantial damage make damage claims really have laid yet another layer of confusion and uncertainty. These organizers in Barry up work tirelessly, and they are tired, but they really talk about the emotional toll that this event has created and you've heard about that. They talk about their neighbors being frozen, both without adequate heat and or the ability to make decisions without resources to address their acute needs. I'm broken, they quoted a resident as sharing, you cannot provide me the resources to replace all that has been lost. And it, I have to underscore that this flood disaster has come amidst an already existing mental health crisis and a housing emergency, both of which have exacerbated the impossible situation of safely relocating. There have been folks who have been impacted in the city of Barry and beyond, but just in the city of Barry. Before the floods, there have been 350 unhoused people living in area hotels. 85 in non congregate shelters, and about 60 living outside or in cars. So that was pre flood. You heard over 500 units impacted. And the first more I could share that is discouraging. And I'm going to cut to the chase. I do want to say that the schools are seeing so much I talked to a community resource liaison and Barry, who said that 110 homeless students in the supervisor and 200 students living in homes with some flood damage, truancy levels are up, families are beyond stretched. I do want to say that as brutal as the current challenges faced by very city are the community is also really inspiring in its determination to support a strong recovery. It's inspiring to be a part of how watching people come together, but also how those who have the capacity are still leaning into what is the future. But we have to realize and you heard this from Ben and others I'm sure that these folks these communities our state needs your attention and help because FEMA will not fix the problems. If that preceded the flood, nor will they provide local communities with the kind of capacity and resources they need to do the hard work of community rebuilding. You've probably heard about the north end and Barry, which is where the most extreme impact from this flood has occurred and very much still visible, the sense of dislocation and despair. This is also an area that experienced extreme devastation in May of 2011 preceding Irene, but this is also where the most creative ideas are coming and are needed for resilient rebuild. The old idea has been put forward by the Scott administration for thinking differently about redeveloping this neighborhood. It was presented to the city, and now the city is organizing meetings to hear from the neighbors, because what is needed is a concept that I think we really need to focus on of buying out the properties most at risk. But these people who may appreciate in this moment a buyout need a place to move so that the impossible decision of leaving their home can be complemented with a hopeful future. So what might a resilient recovery look like? I mean, I just want to say the outpouring of volunteers throughout the state for months and the extraordinary organizing efforts still being undertaken by neighbors helps me know that in spite of this darkness, there is light. Vermont is always a leading light. I know we can continue to be so as we rebuild from this disaster and prepare for the next. In the short term, we need to think about how investment decisions that we make today will affect the realities tomorrow. We have to support communities like Barry who have been disproportionately affected by floods and have lived on this razor's edge of economic instability just before this flood. We need to know that all recovery is local. FEMA is not going to solve our problems. You got to think about FEMA as an insurance company. They replace what is lost only if it's eligible, but they do not restore. They do not invest in community building and they do not invest in resilience. Their processes are very complex. And sometimes, as you've heard, take a very long time. The home buyout program is critical example. Buying homeowners out of their current home is a hugely important strategy, both in the short and long term, because it will protect that flood brain, which will then support greater resilience for where people move. But FEMA takes years, sometimes decades. I heard that a town in southern Vermont, I think London Dairy just closed like two weeks ago on their Irene buyout. And of course, home owners need to make their decisions right now. So I recommend that the state expedite this process by using state funds to advance payments for investments that can be recouped by FEMA later. It's much like what is being proposed for paying towns for rebuilding their roads now so that FEMA can repay them through the public assistance program. This could be implemented through the municipal bond bank, perhaps VHFA, VEDA, our credit union, financial institutions, but we need upfront cash because homeowners cannot wait a year or 10 years to find and move out of their homes. Looking ahead to the longer term, we also need to focus on what I call preparedness and particularly for the most at risk folks that I've been talking about. Those who are most economically vulnerable are often also living in high hazard areas. So we need to take stock of the lessons learned of how we've been supporting three people through this disaster and be better prepared for sheltering, feeding and transporting people in a disaster. We now have the ability to forecast the kind of needs people will have and help resource local nonprofits like ours and many other ahead of the next disaster, not expect them to provide essential needs without resources nor the authority to do to act. So we need to be ready to utilize this dislocation as a time of thinking differently about where and how we rebuild. Communities need leadership and they need vision and they need hope that there is a brighter future ahead. One that can be safe from impending climate disasters and one they and their children can believe in. And I want to thank you for providing that hope and thank you for being the light. Thank you very much. Thank you for your testimony and you and your organizations incredible hard work and response and supporting Vermoners. Do members have questions representative dodge. Hi. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam chair. I was curious whether language access was it was a major obstacle for delivering these services. Absolutely in some areas. I mean, we have learned one of the many things we do is run a head start and we have families with multiple languages and we use our cell phones have special language access but completely a problem, especially. That's right in disaster, but FEMA does a decent job of trying to translate some of their materials, but as you may understand, the process of applying for FEMA and working through. For example, if you're denied FEMA assistance and you need to appeal you must go through the SBA. These processes are very complex to navigate and they need more folks who have dual language or multiple language access. So it is an issue that we need to think much more about as we move into the future. Thanks for raising it. Thank you so much Sue for joining us today. I know this is a not an ideal setup. So I don't know if you can see us very well, but thanks so much and for your work. And just a note, I don't think we have your written testimony. So I don't think it's on our web page. So I and I think a lot of us would benefit from that. Sorry, it's on there on the other committees. Okay. Not on the transportation committees, but page two. So maybe, Jeannie, you can do that. But my question is more this I hear you loud and clear. I think transportation is really a key barrier for many people, not just in an emergency, but participating in community life, getting to doctors appointments. You know, you name it. And I'm just really, you know, you're the project that you help launch, you know, community rides, filling that gap. Can you just tell us a little bit more about it? And we're going to be considering this session. Our committee is going to be really looking at public transit and especially in servicing rural communities. But, you know, how are you continuing to fund that work? Because I know the program got launched through an MTI grant. And I think it's those are really meant as kind of pilot projects. But I'm would be interested to hear about ongoing operations and how you're now that it's, you know, launched and, you know, how, how you're serving the community and what some of the successes and challenges are. Thank you, Madam chair for asking this question. Can you hear me still. Yes. So community rides Vermont is a pilot. It's an initiative to sort of, it's a demonstration project of sorts and it really combines how do we address transportation access and equity for the folks who literally can't afford a car. And also, how do we transition to the green economy by using all electric vehicles and by providing decent paying jobs for the drivers we have our service is about to go public as called gopher. If you think of your Uber or Lyft, we aspire to be an app based transportation provider that can provide on demand. We're very much at our first phase we've launched we have four drivers and three cars going to try to buy a fourth car. And funding is very multifaceted. Of course, we're trying to mix private sector philanthropy and publicly subsidized rides. So we're taking advantage of existing public transit dollars for elderly and disabled for Medicaid transportation for transporting children to school for also a very important initiative that you all began called mobility for all. Those are helping us draw down some pop public dollars to leverage philanthropic dollars that we have been grant raising through grants through private donors. We would love to get major national donation for this so we're proving our demonstration. And our goal is to be self sustaining through the various sources that we've talked about. But I think there's a lot to learn and there's a lot to go. We're going to look forward to bringing some of our cars to you and testifying more about where we're at we have a general manager. It is a its own community nonprofit organization capstone which has previously spun off other nonprofits like the food bank down street housing community capital. This is now community rides Vermont has been launched as its own nonprofit its own board and our service is going to be known as go for go for it. That's great. So just the the state dollars that flow into that are really through the subsidized rides like Medicaid rides. Yeah, so just want to be clear on the committee for our committee. Thank you, Sue. I don't think. Thank you so much for your testimony. All right members I think that will be the rap for Friday and and for our joint hearings at this is great and look forward to continuing to communicate with the transportation committee on our overlapping areas of pressing climate resilience.


My fellow Americans, in less than three weeks we'll be celebrating the greatest blow ever struck for the cause of freedom, the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Our founding fathers proclaimed that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. That declaration inspired our nation to reach new heights of human freedom. But its promise wasn't complete until we abolished the shame of slavery from our land, and in the lifetime of many of us wrote the civil rights statutes that outlawed discrimination by race, religion, gender, or national origin. Discrimination is still not yet a thing of the past, unfortunately. And for the last four and a half years, this administration has acted vigorously to defend and extend every American's fundamental right to equal treatment. The Justice Department has worked energetically to end discrimination in employment, voting, housing, in all the areas covered by law. Our record on enforcing minority voting rights is at the top of the list, and we've increased to an all-time high the number of criminal civil rights cases filed. We have a proud record on civil rights. The principle that guides us and the principle embodied in the law is one of non-discrimination. I'm sure you've all seen the statue representing justice that presides in many of our courtrooms, the woman with the blindfold covering her eyes. Her eyes are covered because true justice should never depend on whether you're rich or poor, or black or white, or if you're Hispanic or Asian, or if your ancestors came from Italy, Poland, Latvia, or any other country, including Ireland, where some of my family is from. Equal treatment and equality before the law. These are the foundations on which a just and free society is built. But there are some today who in the name of equality would have us practice discrimination. They've turned our civil rights laws on their head, claiming they mean exactly the opposite of what they say. These people tell us that the government should enforce discrimination in favor of some groups through hiring quotas under which people get or lose particular jobs or promotions solely because of their race or sex. Some bluntly assert that our civil rights laws only apply to special groups and were never intended to protect every American. Well, they couldn't be more wrong. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was being debated in the Congress, Senator Hubert Humphrey, one of its leading advocates, said he'd start eating the pages of the act if it contained any language which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota. Well, I think if Senator Humphrey saw how some people today are interpreting that act, he'd get a severe case of indigestion. The truth is quotas deny jobs to many who would have gotten them otherwise, but who weren't born a specified race or sex. That's discrimination, pure and simple, and is exactly what the civil rights laws were designed to stop. Quotas also cast in shadow the real achievements of minorities, which makes quotas a double tragedy. In 1980 and 1984, I ran for president and told you I was opposed to quotas. In response to your mandate, our administration has worked to return the civil rights laws to their original meaning, to prevent discrimination against any and all Americans. William Bradford Reynolds, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, has played a key role in that effort. Brad Reynolds is not only a tireless fighter against discrimination, he's a brilliant and dedicated lawyer. Recently, I nominated Brad Reynolds to be associate attorney general, the number three job in the Justice Department. He deserves that promotion, but his nomination is being opposed by some who don't agree with us about civil rights, by some who favor the discrimination of quotas. Brad Reynolds' qualifications and character are impeccable. Indeed, everyone knows Brad Reynolds is a man of integrity and strong ideals, that he's firmly committed to the same vision of a just society that I am. I've nominated Brad Reynolds to carry out my policies, the policies for which you elected me, the policies that reflect our best principles as a nation. I'm confident that the Senate will confirm him. Twenty-two years ago, Martin Luther King proclaimed his dream of a society rid of discrimination and prejudice, a society where people would be judged on the content of their character, not by the color of their skin. That's the vision our entire administration is committed to, a society that keeps faith with the promise of our Declaration of Independence, a proud society in which all men and women truly are created free and equal under God. Until next week, thanks for listening and God bless you.