SmartTranscript of House Appropriations - 2025-04-15 - 9:00AM

[Chair Robin Scheu]: Okay. Good morning. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Tuesday, April fifteenth twenty twenty five. It's tax day. Hope you all put your taxes in. Mhmm. We're filing extensions. [Member Thomas Stevens]: Yes. Former [Chair Robin Scheu]: deputy commissioner is here, and I was in ways means that he was the former deputy commissioner or the deputy commissioner, not former then. So we're delighted to have, Doug Farnham with us as the chief recovery officer. We've been talking about federal funding, and we've seen some things about FEMA. And it's probably a good time anyway to get an update on what's happening in that world. So delighted to have you. Thanks for joining us, Doug. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Thank you for having me, Madam Chair. So would you just like me to just dive right in? [Chair Robin Scheu]: Absolutely. Introduce yourself and dive in. [Witness Doug Farnham]: For the record, Douglas Farm, chief recovery officer for the state of Vermont. Before going to the slides, I would just and give a brief overlay. We have a number of active disasters right now dating back over the last several years. Of course, the one that sticks in everyone's mind is July twenty twenty three. That was a major disaster. The estimated damages being more than double what was experienced in Irene. A big contributing element of that financial damage actually was in the capital complex, of course, and the central garage down on route three zero two, and then three wastewater facilities, Hardwick, Ludlow and Johnson that were significantly impacted. And especially Johnson has experienced repetitive damage. And if you just go to that site, you can tell this is a very dangerous water treatment facility to be. Ludlow being in a similar boat, Hardwick, I think, has a little bit less vulnerable position, but still looking at, trying to reduce their risks. So that disaster from twenty twenty three has most of the financial value, estimated at around six hundred million dollars worth of damage. Then of course we had December storm in twenty twenty three. We had several July storms in twenty twenty four. And one of the interesting things about the July storms in twenty twenty four is that the amount of municipal road and billeting damage, if you take out the wastewater facilities and you, we didn't experience any significant state damage in twenty twenty four, fortunately. If you take out that portion, the municipal damages in the early July storm were nearly equal to what was experienced in July of twenty twenty three. And I think most people think of twenty twenty three as a much bigger storm, but the main difference was, twenty twenty four July was more localized and impacted Linden, Kirby, Plainfield. It impacted the Northeast kingdom much more significantly than twenty twenty three did. So and and we're now getting those estimates in that they're still rolling in. They're still being refined. But we do have over over eighty million dollars currently estimated with FEMA, and our estimates show over a hundred million. And one reason I didn't include slides that show, like, where every project is with FEMA is that that fluctuates on a daily basis. And and there are many numbers that we don't agree with yet. And so if I pull data from their portal, it it is not, in my opinion, accurate. So, converting that to our estimates is is a bit tricky, and that's one reason I didn't wanna [Chair Robin Scheu]: Yeah. [Witness Doug Farnham]: I didn't wanna provide misleading data. But and then the end of July storm of twenty twenty four was significant enough to clear individual assistance thresholds and other things, but it was still smaller. We're we're earlier in refining those estimates, but ten to twenty million dollars that that more of that range. The early July storm is sorry if I'm jumping back and forth a little bit, manager. [Member Thomas Stevens]: It's all the same. It's really all the same. [Chair Robin Scheu]: I'd forgotten there was end of July as well as early July. Right. Yes. [Witness Doug Farnham]: We did have a little bit of good weather in between the two. I'm like, July of twenty thirty three where it just rained for an entire month. But the early July storm I forgot the point I was gonna make with that one. Sorry. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Oh, July storm. Okay. [Witness Doug Farnham]: The end of July storm was smaller. Right? But still close enough to kind of flow together in people's minds because some people that were flooded in the beginning of July were again flooded in the end of July, and it did hit some of the same locations. So it tended to actually hit a lot of people for the third or even fourth time if they were hit in the December of twenty twenty three storm. So and I know this is appropriations, but I will say the mental aggregation of all those events on some portions of our state has been very significant, especially for a flood survivor to be hit multiple times, in such a short amount of time. It's been very difficult for people. So we do have case management efforts. We do have mental health grants and efforts where we're trying to compensate for that. But I will say we're we're only compensating as much as we can and to the best of our ability. And Vermonters, I say this lovingly being from the Northeast Kingdom, we can be stubborn. We don't always like to ask for help. And sometimes we wait until it's a crisis, right, to ask for help. So we've definitely seen that tendency in our communities. But the July twenty twenty three storm, the one I said was around a hundred million. Our sorry. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. The July twenty twenty four storm is coming in estimates just over a hundred million. And financially, that is actually in the worst possible place for Vermont. And I say that because when we hit around a hundred and and the formula is now about a hundred and fifteen million dollars worth of damages from one declared event, then FEMA considers whether or not to go from seventy five to ninety. If it's if it's below that threshold, they don't even they never make a recommendation to the president to increase the cost share. So we stay at that twenty five percent cost share, and then the state picks up between seventy and thirty percent of the non federal share for the localities. So it actually could be more expensive of a disaster from a from a cost share perspective than the July of twenty twenty three event, unfortunately. [Chair Robin Scheu]: So you said it's about a hundred and fifteen million is where they decide? Yes. And we are close to that number. [Witness Doug Farnham]: We could theoretically squeak across it in a couple of years because it would rely on us getting to final agreement with FEMA on our bigger bigger damage amounts. And because there were no major facilities involved in the July of twenty twenty four event, we will likely get final numbers sooner than we do for the July of twenty twenty three event. Because those complex facilities are taking us more time to negotiate what the actual repair costs will be with FEMA, And roads and simple municipal buildings now, not all municipal buildings are simple, but most of the ones impacted in July of twenty twenty four were not your big complicated office buildings. Salt sheds, garages, things that, can estimate fairly quickly what the repair costs would be. So it's possible. I think it's still unlikely we'll clear that threshold. And I'm not intending to be alarmist in any way, but the elevation from seventy five percent cost share to ninety percent cost share is not automatic. It is a recommendation FEMA makes to the president, and the president has to sign and approve that. Oh. So take that as you will. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Yes. I do. Thank you. And then yes. Go ahead, Tom. [Member Thomas Stevens]: And just full disclosure, my wife is the chair or cochair of the local long term recovery group and has communicated with that a lot. So if this sounds like it's my wife is sending me with questions. [Member Thomas Stevens]: She is. She is. [Member Thomas Stevens]: But I just wanna well, not so much that. It's it's the seventy five to ninety percent is new to me just in the understanding as we discuss this over coffee every morning. But the idea of so that's more expensive to the localities, to the to the local municipalities, [Witness Doug Farnham]: to [Member Thomas Stevens]: the state as well. Is it impacting the rate of funds being brought into the state? Because for the long term recovery group in Waterbury, there's been some funding that was supposed to be filed through the state that is delayed, frozen. I'm not sure what the right phrase is, and I'm sure that's affecting not just Waterbury and the other towns in our vicinity, but towns like in the northeast kingdom that we're never expecting to get hit, like, the way they did. Is that coming from the federal stuff? I mean, FEMA is notoriously slow, but how is it affecting your work in terms of getting some of these funds that applications are coming in really clean? It's really clear, for that which has been, noted. And how is this interplaying with the seventy five to ninety? How is this interplaying with what's actually coming from the government in order to disperse? [Witness Doug Farnham]: So the seventy five to ninety for the twenty twenty four storms, honestly, before looking at the estimates recently, I never considered that we would hit that threshold. I thought it was very, very unlikely. I've kind of downgraded that to unlikely. And then if we cross the threshold, it will be by very little. And it would be easy for a president to say, well, yeah, you cross the threshold, but by, like, twenty dollars. So I'm not gonna approve a cost share increase. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Yeah. So so the cost I'm just doing quick math here. If if it was well, it's a I'm still looking at it with a hundred million dollars of damage. Right? It would cost us twenty five million dollars, the state. And Yes. And if it was at ninety percent, it would be ten million. So there's a fifteen million dollar cost to the state Right. Or to the municipalities or to whoever, somebody that's not the federal government. And if it's a hundred and fifteen million, it's just slightly higher than that. But we're talking fifteen to twenty million dollars more Right. Cost. Right? [Speaker 4 ]: Let me make a change. Assuming it's seventy five twenty five percent, the money we put in the budget [Speaker 5 ]: to help those communities, what does [Chair Robin Scheu]: that bring it up to? [Member Thomas Stevens]: So It was payment to a handful [Speaker 4 ]: of communities that were impacted. [Witness Doug Farnham]: So there were two different lanes that were in in the BA. One was and that will be getting rolled into the budget. Right? One is the a top up of eight million dollars. I believe it was eight million approximately for ERAF. So for our cost share portion. And that will cover three quarters or so of the projected cost share need from twenty twenty four. So we will need to ask for additional funds later as the numbers crystallize. As they get better, we'll probably need to ask for a little bit more cost share money. There was other money that was, I think, one point eight million. That was, that money, the administration doesn't necessarily support because it was it wasn't linked to any projects. It wasn't linked to repairing your communities, and it was, kind of all purpose money. And [Chair Robin Scheu]: Not FEMA. Wasn't that [Witness Doug Farnham]: It was the non on FEMA money. [Chair Robin Scheu]: For Yes. Fees who got hit, And some some communities didn't qualify for FEMA, [Member Thomas Stevens]: but still had the problem. So [Witness Doug Farnham]: Right. And there was a kind of an attempt to correct, the Addison County issue from from twenty twenty three. Right. I would say, one thing's from rep Stevens question earlier. The money that is flowing to long term recovery groups, the groups that help individual flood survivors, that hasn't been impacted by FEMA at all because for better or worse, FEMA does not really support long term recovery groups in any way. They provide advice and sometimes that can be very helpful. They'll provide, staff that come in and advise the long term recovery groups, but they don't provide any financial support. The agency of administration was providing small grants to long term recovery groups to help them basically provide, just maintain their basic administrative structure. And that money has been primarily delayed just by my staff being overworked. And I just haven't been able to get the grant agreement signed and get the money up the door for long term recovery groups. FEMA did institute on the PA side, on the public assistance side, they did institute a manual review process earlier in the year, but under uniform guidance was allowed and added thirty days of potential review to any, draw requests or project requests. So we saw kind of a, when that manual review process was put in place, we did see a low. We saw kind of thirty days where nothing moved as FEMA figured out how to do that manual review. But that thirty day window did expire, and we have started to see draws, and we have started to see obligations start to move again. So we did have that kind of short lockout period that was administratively allowed under, you know, from federal guidance. And now we are seeing those projects move again. So, just within the last couple weeks, we've seen millions of dollars obligated through projects, and we've seen our draws satisfied, which is good, to see that progress again. [Chair Robin Scheu]: John, it's a question. So so, you [Speaker 4 ]: know, as you're trying to, like, estimate what gonna cost here over time here, you know, all the immediate stuff that had to happen, short term kinds of things we can but now you're kind of in this little bit of a long term stuff you're looking at down the road here. I'm just thinking about, you know, bridge replacement So we put a lot of temporary bridges on it. Yep. Secretary from noted a lot of that and noted them. And those things aren't gonna be immediately taken out and put back in at a point in time they will be. Is that part of your estimate, or is that part of, like, the perhaps in long term work that we think grab some additional federal lines for? Is that part of your estimate? It's kinda hard to Yeah. Try to get things back to a practical functional state here as best we can right now. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Yeah. Excellent question. And that's actually provides me a really good segue to start walking through the slide. There we go. Because starting from the left hand side of this chart, the top bar, the biggest chunk, six out of the damages, the estimated damages for disasters occurring in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four. So if you take all of those different disaster declarations from the very, very large historic one down to the smallest one, We had an estimated six hundred and forty two million dollars worth of damage for things that the work has not been completed yet. So this is where we're this is where bridges will fit in This the repair of the capital complex, the central garage, those projects that we haven't it's damages from the storm, but we haven't spent the money and we're not waiting on reimbursement. So and when I say we, in that case, it would be either the state or the municipality. A hundred and seventy three million of that damage. So eight hundred and fifteen million debt dollars total between state and municipalities. And that, by the way, does not include federal highways. So if you rolled the federal highways damage in, we've had over a billion dollars worth of damage. But this is just FEMA. A A hundred and seventy three million where the work has been completed, the money has been spent. And so this is what is primarily causing hardship with a lot of our municipalities right now. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Because they had them reimbursed. [Witness Doug Farnham]: This is the sticky wicked. Yeah. So as this flows down out of that one hundred and seventy three, one hundred and forty nine is the federal share. And then twenty four million is the non federal share, a portion of which will be covered by the state in July twenty twenty three storm, that storm in particular, we are covering seventy eight percent of the nonfederal share, which is above the maximum that Iraq usually allows. And all the other ones, it depends on what mitigation measures they have in place. So out of that hundred and forty nine where it's the federal dollars, the federal government has obligated a hundred and four million out of that hundred and forty nine, and forty five million has yet to be obligated. And what that really means is the feds haven't agreed on what the exact project cost should be and written it into a grant agreement. So one hundred and four out of the forty five is pretty good when you consider that number includes the twenty twenty four damages. And they're writing agreements for that pretty quickly, but most of the work complete for twenty twenty three, that is in agreement in in an agreement somewhere. The a very large portion of it. So there it took a while. It took a couple years, but, we are getting there as far as, you know, having the agreements in place on all of the smaller stuff. This to rewind up briefly, the six forty two capital complex is a roughly two hundred million dollars project. There's roughly a hundred million dollars worth of wastewater facilities. Central garage could be another twenty to twenty five million. So there are some really big ticket items. [Chair Robin Scheu]: How much is the total state? I didn't add it up fast enough. Sorry. I mean, you said those three. So of this state buildings is how much of the six hundred and forty two? [Witness Doug Farnham]: The state buildings And garages or would be between two hundred and two hundred and fifty million, I believe, is the state portion of that six forty two. Okay. And then a hundred million dollars of wastewater treatment facilities roughly. It takes another big portion of that. Sure. And then Montpelier has some fairly large complex projects that they're negotiating with FEMA as well. And then you've got a lot of bridge projects. The temporary bridge and the expense for that will be a different cost with FEMA. And then bridge repair, [Chair Robin Scheu]: if you [Witness Doug Farnham]: haven't been done yet, will be part of that six forty two. So a lot of bridge work, and that's what fits into that work yet to be completed. [Chair Robin Scheu]: And not agreed to yet? [Witness Doug Farnham]: Yes. That's correct. Even as recently as last week, FEMA Region one came up and visited, and we had great all day meeting with them, talking through the capital complex, and then we had another meeting the next day on the central barrage project. So the FEMA region one, they cover, you know, basically, New England. Those staff extremely helpful, productive, trying to work through getting that project amount negotiated with us. One of the reasons we're not there yet is FEMA's process requires every light bulb, every ceiling tile to be part of a line item. And so one thirty three State Street damages are over twelve hundred line items that our staff had to go through and make sure were accurate in order to validate, because we had cost estimates for repair last August. We had initial estimates from our contractors, but we have to keep rewinding and documenting every last element of damage with FEMA to get them to move forward. [Chair Robin Scheu]: And for those that were doing the draft here, he did that tour and we saw, as part of me says, only twelve hundred. But it wasn't all the upper stories. It was mostly the basement and subbasement. Right. [Witness Doug Farnham]: And then we have to align. Every line item has to have the relevant section of code that forces us to take the course of action we're taking. And so we've made a lot of progress over the last six months working with FEMA on that. We've actually gotten some of our foundational cost documents signed and agreed on with them. So we are making really good progress. It's just a very laborious process. [Chair Robin Scheu]: So you mentioned that there had been sort of a pause, and now things are happening again. Are you noticing any other changes in terms of the state's relationship with FEMA, your ability to get information from them, their responsiveness, willingness to work with Vermont, things like that? [Witness Doug Farnham]: Honestly, working with so they are shutting down the joint field office in Williston. That is decommissioning and will be gone by June thirtieth. That's not that outside of the realm of expectation, honestly. I do think FEMA writ large because we had the place the joint field office opened after the twenty twenty three floods. Mhmm. They didn't fully restart the clock for us after the twenty twenty four floods. So they're like, well, we've been here for two years. It's like, yes, but we had a major event last year. But that event actually is going really well. You know, we had to iron out a lot of kinks after twenty twenty three, and then we went into a new disaster fresh, and we used the lessons we learned to move faster with them and the teams we had in place. So twenty twenty four is moving faster. I I do think we'll continue to see towns get their money faster. Our connections with FEMA, other than that, additional manual review that kinda slowed things down for that thirty day window, been, productive and and positive, honestly. There was a recent example where AOT has a federal preemption on railroad property, and FEMA could have used that to say, oh, well, you didn't get permits for any of your work, so we're not gonna approve any of your projects. Technically, they could have taken that position. They could have even taken a more aggressive position to say, well, you clearly don't apply your regulations in a uniform way since you're letting AOT manage the rail properties, so we don't have to honor your flood hazard area river corridor. They didn't take that approach and they negotiated with us. Okay. Here's what we need to see in order to reimburse for rail properties in Vermont. Since AOT didn't follow a standard process, they're legally allowed to do that. Let's work out how to get to yes. So they did work with us productively and didn't just try to slam the door on us. So I think they're still working with us pretty well. [Speaker 5 ]: So so this is rail trails, the rail trail properties of the what about the active railroads? The two different things? [Witness Doug Farnham]: Mostly active rail is where they have the exemption. I think the rail trail properties, the I don't think AOT has the same level of preemption and exemption. Active rail has its own, you know, legal treatment that's pretty locked in. Yeah. You need I need it. So they I think we have been working very productively with the region staff, and that's who we'll primarily work with when the joint field office closes down. We'll primarily work with the region office [Chair Robin Scheu]: Where? [Witness Doug Farnham]: Getting a lot. I think it's down in New Hampshire, Manchester or something. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Oh, okay. [Witness Doug Farnham]: My oh, no. I think it might be Boston. Yeah. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Okay. But So [Witness Doug Farnham]: with the hundred and four million that they've obligated, so we have or that they have set up the agreement for us. We have drawn down forty nine million of that. A big portion of that has been for towns, And we have not yet drawn down fifty five million. And a lot of that is waiting on closeout documents, paperwork. This data is from March fourteenth. And right around that time frame, I worked out a way to accelerate our draws with Vermont Emergency Management to try to get more draws because they were taking an extremely best practice approach to where you make sure all the paperwork lines up before you draw the cash down. So I had them dial that back a little bit so that we could more proactively get some of the cash drawn down. Because under the Stafford Act, if you have drawn down funds, FEMA has to take certain steps legally. This is not this is not something the executive could change. It's a Stafford Act position. They have to demonstrate certain things before they can recapture those funds from you. So having the having the funds drawn down with FEMA in particular doesn't work with all federal programs this way, but with FEMA, if you have the money, then you actually the burden of proof is on FEMA to prove that you shouldn't have that money anymore. Yeah. So I'm hoping that that forty nine million increases dramatically also to help with the municipal cash flow issues because there's a huge amount of if you look at as of this snapshot, there was one hundred and seventy three million of work completed by either the state or municipalities. And I could improve the slides by separating those categories. [Chair Robin Scheu]: John had a question. [Witness Doug Farnham]: And then only forty nine million of that is cash at hand. So there's Okay. There's over a hundred million of outstanding debt. Right. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Okay. John, go ahead. [Speaker 4 ]: Just real quick. Because I know a couple of times I've I've interacted here. It works been completed that we're waiting to get that cash against and pay your bills here. What's the what's been the size of that gap? Is that getting better? It sounds like things are getting better because we're maybe I hate to say this more used to having to, you know, go through this. [Witness Doug Farnham]: We're we are getting a little bit faster at it. But just at a quick rough cut between I understand. There's gonna be a gap. Between state and municipality, this shows a gap of a hundred and twenty four million still existing. I think a big portion of that, maybe a hundred million of it is actually, municipal. So we did a couple of programs in the state. Last year, the treasurer worked with the bond bank to lend out fifty million dollars to municipalities. Then, the, emergency board approved AOA to lend out five million dollars from the ERAP fund, basically using our cash balance to lend and then anticipating we get it back in before we needed it for match. And then the treasurer and the bond bank have recently done another round of thirteen million dollars of lending. So there's been about thirty three million dollars of lending activity over the last two years that is is new and different, and I've never really done it that way before. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Is anybody paying any of that back yet? [Witness Doug Farnham]: So this this round of thirteen million [Chair Robin Scheu]: Not a new one, but the Yeah. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Yeah. Is mostly is mostly recycled. So the fifteen million dollars a lot of that was reimbursed from FEMA, and that freed it up to be issued as thirteen million dollars of new loans. [Chair Robin Scheu]: For a little revolving loan fund. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Yes. Yes. So the treasurer through the two and a half percent working with the bond bank is trying to revolve some of those municipal loans. But in giving out around thirteen million, the bond bank told me they were still received approximately thirty million in applications. So they're and and that's actually a similar number to what we had in the twenty. After the two thousand twenty three event, we had we're lending out fifteen. I think we got about thirty five million in applications. So there is still a pretty high unmet need out there for municipal, cash. Any questions on FEMA public assistance before I move over to and I may have burned all my time, madam chair. [Chair Robin Scheu]: No. We're much on my house. Baby. Since we're not on the floor till ten, as I was reminded, this isn't Tuesday, that's Friday. You're you can keep going. Got it. Thank you. [Witness Doug Farnham]: So if there's no questions on FEMA public assistance [Chair Robin Scheu]: That looks good. Okay. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Moving over to hazard mitigation. So this, of course, is our main opportunity to make things better. Right? Our hazard mitigation is generally based off of fifteen percent of the estimated damages through the pub FEMA public assistance program. So on that last slide where we had eight hundred and fifteen million estimated, eventually, that makes its way through a fifteen percent calculation. If our estimates are correct and FEMA accepts them, and they probably will whittle us down some, that could result in approximately a hundred and twenty million of hazard mitigation months, which would be great. Right now we have a little over seventy million locked in with FEMA. And that's what we've been using to primarily run the state hazard mitigation program right now. So this slide is all about buyouts. And the reason it is all about buyouts is because we've received over, two seventy buyout applications, and that essentially consumes the existing amount of our hazard mitigation award. So if all of the and we've had five withdrawn, and I I anticipate some additional buyouts will fall out. [Chair Robin Scheu]: How did they fall out? [Speaker 4 ]: Or A [Witness Doug Farnham]: A number of reasons. Usually, people don't engage in the process unless they're, you know, serious. Like, I know in Waterbury, we had a number of properties that we really wanted to take a buyout, like, that did not, like commercial apartments and things like that. But usually if it's a homeowner and they approach the buyout, the only reason that it might fall out is, honestly, sometimes they just they run out of patience and time and they sell the property and they move away. And sometimes they sell at a loss, but they just can't make things fit together any longer. Because unfortunately, three years is generally the fastest buyout I've seen going through records. It's a very slow process. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Okay. [Witness Doug Farnham]: We're hoping to accelerate it, but we are already, of course we're almost two years out from the disaster, but we're you know, less than a year and a half out from when we got the actual grand award to start moving. [Member Thomas Stevens]: And just quickly, the other piece that we've seen in Waterbury is sometimes or in the area, not specifically in Waterbury, the select board may not approve of a local buyout. So and then we dealt with that in the BAA or or the budgeting process where there's gonna be money to change the the tax purposes. But, you know, the select boards are very anxious about the loss of not only the loss of tax revenue, but what does it mean if your neighborhood all of a sudden has holes in it? Yeah. [Speaker 4 ]: So just [Member Thomas Stevens]: it's not all FEMA's Right. It's not it's not it it it's just another facet. [Chair Robin Scheu]: So Yeah. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Right. Overall, some communities had as high as a fifty percent refusal rate through buyouts. And, yes, legally, we can't the state cannot move forward with a buyout without the municipality approving it. It has it has to be approved by the municipality. And, yes, that that grainless stabilization program was intended to help compensate for that, help mitigate for that and take some of the short term finances at least out of the picture. I don't think it completely solves the problem. Right? Because there are some communities that when they're looking at it from a community planning perspective, they really don't think that piece of land is appropriate for a buyout. They don't want that particular piece of land to be permanently conserved. And I think everybody who looks at a flood plain looks at it just a little bit differently. I'm gonna look at a flood plain and say, okay, I think we should try to support developing along the very edge and make sure we have public safety access to the back of the property. But if you go deeper in the flood plain, those people are stranded in the event of a major flood. I don't want that situation. I don't think the state should support that situation. But other communities are gonna say, well, we only have so much land. We need to develop a little bit deeper in the flood plain, and those people will be safe even if stranded. And so it I mean, the transit center in Montpelier is a good example of that. The building was perfectly safe. It was still perfectly functional, but they couldn't leave. And if anyone had had a health issue, anything like that, it would have been very difficult to now our swift water teams are great, so I'm confident they would have voted over to the building, gotten the person, and gotten them out, but the additional time could have complicated their health issues. So I think every community is slightly different in that way. But, yes, I think thank you, representative. That granular stabilization program is intended to try to help with If they're not approving a buyout because they can't make this year's budget work, that's an unfortunate decision. If they're not approving a buyout because they're like, no, we really need this to be redeveloped and it's close enough to the edge of the flood plain. It can be safe still, and everyone has a slightly different definition of safe. [Speaker 4 ]: So, we have one just one property left in our area. It's in Lindenville, actually, and they have a long history of having it happens in flooding in the spring. It happens not in three days in the last, you know, two plus years here of things. And I don't know where they stand in terms of buying out that particular property, but other business around them have took it upon themselves to pay a a better height of land to build a lot. I've been getting that. So if a town was looking and this this is a this is a business that's been there for a long time here for sure, more than forty plus years, but they just kinda gave up on it. They just can't deal with it anymore here. [Member Thomas Stevens]: So if [Speaker 4 ]: if if I don't know what the situation is currently, but just as a theoretical question, if municipality area of land like that, you know, relatively small here. For redevelopment purposes, is there something that the municipality could apply for to maybe do that very thin to keep that piece of property here for a business purpose and not lose that taxable, you know, piece of process. [Witness Doug Farnham]: So the hazard mitigation program is almost entirely consumed by buyouts right now, but it can be used. [Member Thomas Stevens]: That is wrong. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Yes. It can be used for elevations. However, if you're in the flood plain, you need enough land to be able to balance the impact. Almost every town in Vermont has a no negative impact on the flood plain kind of provision because of national flood insurance policy, where if you elevate a certain portion to protect your building more, you have to take Phil from somewhere else. And especially in commercial or industrial areas, you have brownfields issues where you're not necessarily allowed to disturb that ground because you could be, you know, you have to test it. It's expensive. FEMA won't pay for brownfields remediation or environmental testing. They require that the site be clean. And under ARPA, there were some brownfields appropriations that were created. They were very, very helpful in redeveloping some pieces of land. And there are still some federal programs that do help with brownfields remediation. But one reason they were created under ARPA was because they're not sufficient to meet the need, and they're difficult to use. And so I don't think they're overall, they're not usually a great option. They're they're they're challenging. [Speaker 4 ]: Thank you. [Witness Doug Farnham]: So usually, you're gonna run into a lot of situations where the parcel doesn't the math doesn't work on the parcel, and they're not able to raise the building enough because they don't have enough available land to trim. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Okay. So let's continue on your buyout. [Witness Doug Farnham]: So we've got the map on the right that shows kind of the hot spots of how many buyouts are are ongoing, right, where those are located around the state, which matches the damage pattern fairly well. Central and Northeastern Vermont was, you know, the most impacted in twenty twenty three, and then the only part impacted in twenty twenty four. Southern Vermont didn't really get hit in the twenty twenty four storms to a massive degree. We did see buyout interests spike heavily after the twenty twenty four forms floods. So these are all just buyouts. They're not necessarily anchored to one event or the other. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Okay. Yeah. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Everything kind of when it's when it starts the buyout process, it all kinds of flows together. So we've got if you start from the top left, we've got three kicked off, forty seven that are getting appraised. I apologize. DOB and VTA. I forget what that means. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Not date of birth. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Not date of birth. I think that means they're in the, like, the assessment phase. Yeah. They it's obviously before the legal and the closing phase. Yeah. And then and that all happens before they move to demolition. On the bottom side is, like, our award status. Right? So we have a hundred and four where the award is signed. FEMA has obligated those funds to us. Funds that are promised under an award can be pulled back from the federal government, but it is unusual and unlikely. It has occurred in some cases, but the current administration has generally pulled back funds on, programs that really hit the executive orders that they published around DEI. And they said anything you haven't spent yet. Right? So is your stop spending order? So we if any of these awards were in danger, which I don't think they will be, honestly, I think they're very low risk for cancellation, we would get a stop work kind of notification on these awards. [Chair Robin Scheu]: So what's the so there's a hundred and four Is that double counting? Is the fifty six a different fifty six, a different hundred four, and a hundred and fifteen is a different hundred and fifteen? [Member Thomas Stevens]: Right. [Chair Robin Scheu]: So what we're talking about is, like, two hundred and seventy that are in some sort of process there. Is that [Witness Doug Farnham]: Yes, madam chair. That's correct. A hundred and fifteen are with FEMA getting reviewed by them, and that number did elevate a little bit during the thirty day manual review process. I think it might even already be have started to move. [Chair Robin Scheu]: And when we say in development, what does that mean the select board hasn't approved it yet? Or what is that? [Witness Doug Farnham]: It's in one of those early phases where it still hasn't been submitted by the state to FEMA. So it's somewhere in that select board has to approve or the state has to review the award and approve. It's in those earlier stages. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Okay. And Tom, that it's [Witness Doug Farnham]: I mean, this is well more than way far more buyouts than we've done in the last, fifteen years. [Chair Robin Scheu]: I'm sure. Yeah. [Member Thomas Stevens]: I don't see what VTA stands for, but DOB is duplication of benefits. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Yes. Thank you. Yes. I should have remembered that one. Duplication of benefits review, Especially if they received a FEMA individual assistance award, we need to make sure that they used it and have receipts. If you don't keep your receipts on the individual assistance award, it reduces amount, you're getting a [Speaker 5 ]: buyout. Okay. [Member Thomas Stevens]: With other funds on the locals in in our LTRG. We're seeing that it [Member Thomas Stevens]: Well, I haven't been given receipts. [Member Thomas Stevens]: Or haven't been given receipt. I mean, there's just a lot a lot a lot of, you know, again, facets to this where the rules are clear, but stubbornness or personal, you know, the things that are happening where a landlord may not be giving a temporary tenant receipts for their rent. They can't get reimbursed without that. So there's just Okay. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Yeah. I think the VTA drafting is so the technical agreement, like, the all the agreements actually take the property out. So this is, like, the the middle kind of getting the paperwork finalized phase [Chair Robin Scheu]: Right. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Before moving into closing. [Chair Robin Scheu]: So only one has actually been or maybe it's not even finished yet. [Witness Doug Farnham]: One property is in the closing stage but has not been finished yet. So we haven't we haven't actually demolished and finished any any of the files in twenty twenty three yet. But we are it took us a good six to nine months to build the program and to set up all the processes. And so now that everything is set up, we do anticipate we'll start to see that flowing through. We'll start to see more progress. We did have to go out and RFP legal services, RFP demolition services. We had to set up contracts for all of those things. So all of that structure is now in place. [Chair Robin Scheu]: That's good. Yeah. Yeah. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Which should help us. And then so this is the and this is HMGP hazard mitigation grant program and the swift current grant, which was basically a more narrow, repetitive damage focused version of hazard mitigation and only for buyouts. So I wanted all of all the buyouts to be on one page. Page. And then with any capacity that remains in our hazard mitigation grant awards after the buyouts, because buyouts have been treated as top priority, Then we have flood plain restoration projects that we're really looking to do, but we need the numbers to be locked in before we know how much money we'd actually have to do those projects. And then as you know, earlier, in December, we AOA being the we in this case, reverted ARPA funds and created, twenty six million for the hazard mitigation program. A big portion of that, of course, will be used for match. And the thing none of us could have predicted was the twenty twenty four storms. Those actually will come with a fifteen million dollars so hazard mitigation award, which would have five million dollars of match that goes along with it. So we'll be able to get we'll be able to stretch that money farther by using it as match. Yeah. But every dollar we use for match, we can't use for state funded projects. What's not on this screen, we don't have as good of visibility into it because we're running it as block grants, is the three million dollars of elevation funding that was sent out last year to communities like Barry and Johnson and Montpelier. That will help with, hopefully, at least, you know, ten to a dozen elevations alongside these efforts. So that's that's not shown on this page. [Chair Robin Scheu]: And are those homes and businesses? Or [Witness Doug Farnham]: I think that was entirely residential. [Member Thomas Stevens]: Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. But [Chair Robin Scheu]: I I remember this was the response in Florida to hurricanes, you know, going down and seeing more things up on stilts. And it works for a little while. And then [Speaker 4 ]: And and then it starts again. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Yeah. Yeah. Tom. [Member Thomas Stevens]: I don't know if I'm cutting you off or or on the first slide, does it include the municipalities and the roads and infrastructure like that that was damaged? Is that in that first slide? Yes. Other public assistance? [Witness Doug Farnham]: Yes. Municipal road incident infrastructure is roughly two hundred million out of that eight hundred and fifty. Right? And the hundred and seventy three that was spent would primarily be on mostly on temporary repairs to either roads or bridges, and then some permanent repairs, the work the money's already been spent. But, in a lot of those projects, I think this is the first I think this is the first serious construction season where a lot of permanent work is gonna be done unless the temporary work was done in a way that it counts as permanent. [Speaker 4 ]: So did you have to get [Member Thomas Stevens]: a waiver or renegotiate the notion of FEMA replaces things to where they were. And I know during Irene, there was a huge delay because the negotiations had to go to, well, no. We want a large culvert. Are those on this this Sorry. Any any do they remember that negotiations? [Witness Doug Farnham]: I'm I'm I'm laughing not out of disrespect, representative, but because the timing is funny. So FEMA has, at a high level, said they will honor our codes and standards, which is saying in the event this culvert is so, you know, you need to replace it based on hydrologic, based on the data. Right? And but we've gone around the tree with them probably two dozen times over the last year and a half on that. Partly because the FEMA, especially when they have so many disasters, they don't have enough permanent staff to keep those staff on-site. They also have IRS regulations that make it extremely difficult to keep someone on-site for more than fifty weeks. There's a fifty week rule that they have to rotate people on or their per diem becomes taxable and all these things. And it's just really, really silly, but bad. So I laughed, not out of disrespect to the committee, but because even as last week, I was reviewing the work of the covert group that was still negotiating, going through line by line with FEMA and locking in this covert replacement was in line with this code and standard. This covert and and it's not the first time we've done that. So we get the money eventually, but it does require [Chair Robin Scheu]: oysters. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Yes. And that's not anything to do with the new administration. That's [Chair Robin Scheu]: It's the way the rules have been written, and they need to be. [Witness Doug Farnham]: And speaking a little bit off the cuff, my observations about FEMA is that it's not the people. The people in FEMA are great. They're public servants. They're really trying to do everything they can, but there are dozens of layers of FEMA. So there's distributed responsibility and the person you work with at FEMA can't look at your culvert and say, yes, I approved that work. That was good work. And then you can honor that and know, hey. FEMA approved it. I can count on that. Anytime it goes up a level and it goes up through dozens of levels, it can always be reversed. And the person at the higher level doesn't usually have all the information that the person at the lower level did. So they look at it. They're like, oh, that doesn't make sense. And they deny it. And so it goes through all these cycles over and over and over again until the highest levels of FEMA understand. Now some of those smaller work doesn't just get doesn't get the scrutiny. Right? But especially bigger ticket items or things that don't fit the mold. And our codes and standards are more protective and and progressive than most other states. They're intended to set us up more properly for the future, and they're more expensive. So a lot of other states don't don't take as productive as an approach as us. So FEMA doesn't understand it often when they come from another state. [Chair Robin Scheu]: They don't. Yeah. Because the point is the bigger culverts and or we're doing this again and again. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Yeah. The ironic part for me that, again, makes me laugh, is [Chair Robin Scheu]: there [Witness Doug Farnham]: are multiple occasions where FEMA held Vermont up as an example of a state that was doing things right. And that wanted to protect themselves going forward. And then their project manager comes in and says, well, you didn't need to put in a bigger culvert here. It's like, well, yes, we did. And here's the code and here's standard, and here's the h and h study that shows we did. And, again, they the people are all good, but, again, it's like the it's all the layers Yeah. [Speaker 4 ]: That On that fifty week goals, [Member Thomas Stevens]: I mean, during Irene, That first initial flush of female representatives came in. They were very positive about what we were doing and how we reacted as a community, etcetera, etcetera. And then they rotated, and that second group of people came in and went review. And it delayed but it delayed the state complex by a year. Yeah. At the very least, have not been. So [Witness Doug Farnham]: Because of the concurrent disasters, some towns have had eight, nine, ten EDMGs, project development managers that they worked with at FEMA, and they have to restart almost every time. [Speaker 4 ]: Running into that with some of the really smaller towns that we're trying to do best to get paperwork together, sometimes they like this, even contact us for the town, first name, last name, but first name, middle initial, last name, of course, things for Oh. Yeah. After the win, it's just a [Member Thomas Stevens]: little, you know [Chair Robin Scheu]: I'm still I'm still getting my head around the fact that the July twenty twenty three floods were two times more expensive than Irene. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Two hundred and seventeen million dollars for Irene. That was, of course, in, you know, that year's dollars. So inflated, it'd be closer to three hundred million. But the capital complex, when water got into that building, that was a huge a huge problem. [Speaker 5 ]: So so some of the same areas where as we hit during Irene and, of course, we're putting better things back after each one. So did you have any documentation with, you know, how those improvements saved saved us money, saved us losses? [Witness Doug Farnham]: We haven't done a formal study of it, but VM, the towns, AOT have all observed quite frequently that very few of the assets that we replaced after Irene were actually damaged in twenty three or twenty four. So a very low rate, like less than one in ten of of the things that we upgraded and changed after Irene were damaged this time around. So it saved us I'm convinced it would have been a two billion dollar disaster if not for Irene. [Speaker 5 ]: Nice to have a record some sort of a record so that we don't have the loss of that institutional memory as people were absolute. [Member Thomas Stevens]: Sure. I I just wanna share what happened with Brattleboro. With Irene, we had extensive damage. We had extensive damage of a a brook that turned into a river, damaged the downtown, damaged housing, which essentially was put in a a weapon. They removed that house. They built different systems of affordable housing. They built it built it somewhere else, returned that to wetlands like the home. Subsequently, we haven't seen the damage. Mhmm. The wetland acted as it should, and prevented flooding downstream. A little bit of proactive work there that saved us that long term. [Chair Robin Scheu]: And I think there are a lot of stories like that. At East Middlebury, we did something with the East Middlebury River, and it that it flooded during Irene when the July floods happened that affected Ripon and Madison County. It held. So, mean, the proof is in the pudding, right, that those mitigation things are Wetlands work. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Melrose Terrace in Bradborough works from the dog river park in in Northfield Falls. Extremely successful. The Brandon Culver was just amazing to see the videos of that. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Building going across the street. Oh my god. [Witness Doug Farnham]: Cabot upsized their culverts, but it still wasn't enough due to debris. Like, that was where the chaos of flooding comes in. They had great culverts, more than enough for the water, but then a lot of trees came down the mountain. [Chair Robin Scheu]: And Right. [Witness Doug Farnham]: They had a municipal employee out there with backhoe trying to pull the trees out of the river during the event. Mhmm. Just couldn't keep up with it and also was extremely dangerous and probably shouldn't have been doing that. [Member Thomas Stevens]: Yeah. We'll see some stuff. We can point out some stuff with Waterbury too that was plus and minus [Chair Robin Scheu]: Yeah. [Member Thomas Stevens]: On that too. [Chair Robin Scheu]: We're gonna Right. We're gonna be taking a look tomorrow. So [Witness Doug Farnham]: Yeah. The pictures of the complex where it only suffered, like, two hundred dollars of damage to clean up the parking lot, that was extremely productive. I know the cornfield street. [Member Thomas Stevens]: Street. Right. I mean, it we'll talk about it tomorrow. [Speaker 5 ]: Yeah. Yeah. [Chair Robin Scheu]: That's great. Well, really appreciate you coming in and talking about this. We've been concerned with what's happening with FEMA and how it's impacting. It sounds like these are growing as one would want them to be going, albeit slower, but that sort of situation normal. Okay. Doug, I'd love to get you back in and talk about Arpad sometime to get an update on that. Do you have another report that's due at some point that we could just piggyback off of? Or what's [Witness Doug Farnham]: Yes. So we are submitting our data to FEMA on April thirtieth. Because of, just our funding kind of dwindling, we don't have I'd have support for our work any longer. So it might take us a couple extra days to package that, but I can give a good report out on current numbers in May. [Chair Robin Scheu]: Alright. Well, we will get you back in May and hear that update because that's the other piece of what you do that's important to hear us here as well. So [Witness Doug Farnham]: one quick thought before I go. The treasury notification that had some people concerned about we're gonna recapture any funds that weren't obligated, etcetera, etcetera. Honestly, that was that was anticipated, and Vermont is well protected from that. [Member Thomas Stevens]: Okay. Alright. [Chair Robin Scheu]: That's good news to be late now. Yeah. And then we'll get the update. But that's that's what we wanna hear through right now. Thank you very much for coming in, Katie. Pleasure. Thank you. [Speaker 4 ]: Thank you. Bye. [Chair Robin Scheu]: And so, committee, we are back at one o'clock. We didn't get to meet with the secretary of state and the attorney general on Friday because we were on the floor, and so now they are coming in starting at one. So we'll have those two folks joining us, and that's what we have for the afternoon. [Member Thomas Stevens]: On the list, Doug, for the it's future FEMA. Future FEMA? Future FEMA. Like, not just what's been happening, but what may happen, what's been threatened. [Chair Robin Scheu]: We we may get enough when he comes in for ARPA, maybe we'll have [Member Thomas Stevens]: one more. There's another Yeah. [Chair Robin Scheu]: No. No. That's fine. Okay. That's it for now.

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