SmartTranscript of HCI-2025-02-04-2:15 PM

[Chair Alice Emmons ]: An institution's committee. It's Tuesday, February fourth. We're continuing our testimony. This afternoon, we shift to gears. We're talking on the capital bill now, and we have before us the commissioner of BTS to go through her portion of the building community grants. So, commissioner, I'm turning it over to you. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: Thank you, madam chair. For the record, Wanda Manoli, commissioner of buildings and general services. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. And it. That's that's right. So, the section that I'm here to talk about is section five in your capital bill. And Section five is what is now known as the Building Communities Grants Program. And, historically, many, many years ago, we used to, this committee and the Senate committee used to have individual communities come in and talk about special projects that they had and how they had community match. Or in kind services, and they just needed a little bit of money, a little bit of money to get them across the finish line. And every year, your communities that you represent, it just kept getting larger and larger. So the institutions committee came up with the building community grants program, which was absolutely. It, it has been, and we're gonna talk about it in just a minute, but I think it started back in. I wanna say, like, twenty twelve or twenty fourteen. You can't quote me on that. And it's been a very successful program. When you first, created it, we had the, recreational grant program and the educational program. So I think there were two grant programs. You now have seven. And it really is and you have everyone who manages this program is gonna come in and talk about it. BGS has oversight of of three of those. But when or excuse me, four. The you know, it is a process that is outlined in statute. Your statute directs us how the boards to make these decisions will be made up of and what the process is. So there's community members, there's legislative members, and then there's administrative members. I'm not gonna go through each one of those. The program's successful, and you continually funded it. And I'm gonna take you through our section. How about that? So on the slide, these are the grants that, in section five, you're gonna see there are three there's the money is appropriated to different entities. It's appropriated to BGS, agency of commerce and community development, agriculture. So you just wanna pay close attention to that. The department of BGS, oversees the recreational facilities grants, human service and educational facilities grants, and the regional economic development grant programs. And the regional economic development grant program is the newest one to all of these. I mean and so each awardee can get no more than twenty five thousand. They have two years to complete their project. The committee members are established in title twenty four, chapter one thirty seven. And there are some other guiding principles that are outlined in that statute, in general. BGS administers these programs for you. So we're the department that collects them. The commissioner is on on the committee, but we organize everything for. The communities to apply to make sure everything comes in that that they get it. And then we manage the monitoring of did they spend the money? When are they asking for it? We issued a check. I, in twenty five, we had a hundred and fourteen applications throughout those grants, and it totaled over one point eight million in grant funds. So, the first grant we're gonna talk about is the recreational facility grant. This is to create recreational opportunities in all Vermont communities. We are asking in FY twenty six for two hundred and fifty thousand and the same amount in f y twenty seven. This there are no grants that, I just wanna say this upfront that are being, proposed to be funded with. These are we haven't identified any of those, so I think that's important. The next sheet, if you wanna turn, I thought it'd be really interesting to just give you a quick snapshot from twenty sixteen to twenty five. You can see the number of grants that we receive, annually with the with the fiscal year, the number of grants we were able to fund, the total amount of money that came in for the recreational grant. So you can see in twenty five, we had four hundred and nine thousand dollars in request, and you we had three hundred thousand to distribute. So you're making headway and this is an ongoing program and communities have learned to apply on all different types of projects. Right? So maybe they started out with a recreational grant program. Now they're doing a regional development. They've become very smart and savvy about all of these grants and how they support their community. And you have you've done some remarkable things, with the money. So some examples in f y twenty five, we you'll see we awarded twelve or the committee awarded twelve thousand five hundred to help with the dog park in the town of Brandon. This is just a snapshot, everyone. But Johnson was six thousand dollars to help with the Lamar Valley, rail trail. So right there, you can see a difference in between a six thousand dollar request and a twelve thousand. Where in Burlington, we did twenty five thousand to create a roller rink at at Leddy Park to support that, down at Bennington to create a large concrete bowl to their skate park. So the requests come from all all different sizes, and all of these communities have their match money, have all of their documents in place. So they have a commitment from either contributors or from their community, and I think that's what's the most important about it. So I'm gonna move right along to the human services and educational facilities. This one is a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for f y twenty six and f y twenty seven. And if you turn to the next page, again, you'll see the summary. This grant is funded at a lesser amount. I think two hundred and two hundred and fifty have been the average. But if you look, again, I think it's just quickly looking at the data. You know, in twenty five, we had fourteen applications, and twelve of those applications received funds. [Member Will Greer ]: Brady, do you have a question? No. I I I figured it out, but I do have a new question. Do you run out of money? Is that the primary reason why it's not all fourteen or [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: You can't make that assumption because someone may apply and think that their project is ready to go to the standards, and maybe the committee doesn't support it because it's missing something, or they applied for the wrong grant. We do try to when we can, if they applied and I'm just you know, you I haven't been there for a while, but if they apply for, you know, a a recreational grant and it's a borrowing grant, we're gonna try to get it to our partners at HP. Or if it's a recreational and it's really regional development because we administer the three at BGS, we will try to ensure that those are forwarded and given consideration. So it's not necessarily money. Sometimes a portion of their projects are eligible and elements of it are not. So they may ask for twenty five thousand, but I'm just using numbers [Member Will Greer ]: Yeah. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: As examples. Fifteen thousand of it really fits to the scope of what your intent is. So the committee will they'll they'll go with that. Thank you. Okay. [Member Will Greer ]: Thank you. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: You're welcome. Again, this is the same as the other, but, you know, it's just I think it's really nice to see, you know, the balance. And to me, this sort of demonstrates at a snapshot that your appropriations are are on spot. You know? They're they're pretty close. I know one would say, well, there's two hundred and forty four thousand, but we gave twelve of them money. So you have to get into the things of the detail. The next one, and my order may be off, but that's okay, is the human services grant program. And I feel like I oh, let me restate my so if you'll see the first we have education and human services combined. So what this is doing so if you look at line five [Member Will Greer ]: item five, [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: I'm I'm just gonna I think this is human services and education. And if you go to item six, that's where you'll see the hundred and fifty and the hundred and fifty. And then the two spreadsheets are the education and the human services and how they split that up. And I this doesn't make sense. [Member Will Greer ]: They're they're split up on my spreadsheet too. It's difficult years education. They're at a hundred [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: I know. But we have two grant we have two grant programs. We have item five, which is human services and education, which is A two hundred and fifty thousand a year and then item six is human. Services and is that a duplicate? I'm can I move Wanda, [Chair Alice Emmons ]: I don't have Yeah? [Member Will Greer ]: I see what you're saying. I don't have to the patient at the end, but services Oh, is it [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: It's two programs, but so if you go to your book, item five is human services and educational facilities grants for human services. And this is competitive grants for municipalities, for nonprofit organizations, for capital costs within their major maintenance. It's two hundred and fifty thousand, but then you go to item number six. This is competitive grants I'm gonna I think we may have I wanna verify. I think we have a duplication. But can we do that at another time? [Member Will Greer ]: Yeah. Sure. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: Because I need to check that out. [Member Will Greer ]: Is it additional slides, Steven? Because this one is Ed Frisco. You're looking for the one with the one with the women services. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: Sorry. Look at Wanda, I don't Yes, madam chair. [Chair Alice Emmons ]: I don't hit the spreadsheets in front of me. But Wanda, these two the human services and education used to be combined. And a few years ago, we separated them because we weren't sure which one was performing, getting more applications than the other. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: Okay. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: And the other [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: So I think you're absolutely right, but the way that it's presented in the book is the, the old way, madam chair. And that's what was I so I that's what was I knew what I had in my brain, but what I was reading, was not aligning. [Member Will Greer ]: Our spreadsheet is correct. There's just a typo on page fourteen of the book. Yeah. Under human services, it should be one fifty and one fifty. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: So phew. And the slide is correct. We're done. But I was trying to multitask with too many books. [Member Connor Casey ]: We're on track now. So let's do it. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: We're on track. The the money is right Yep. [Witness Susan Evans McClure ]: The book on page fourteen [Member Will Greer ]: Your binders. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: The binders, we have a page that we're gonna have to replace. [Member Connor Casey ]: Yep. Oh, [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: yes. Okay. Phew. So I'm not gonna use the binder. [Witness Laura Trieschmann ]: But you may wanna check your numbers in the binder. [Member Will Greer ]: So Item five. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: And so the examples of project funded, just really quickly, in Wyndham County, the neighborhood connections, We did a almost a nine thousand dollar award for kitchen renovation. Windsor County Springfield Hospital, ten thousand to help with their elevator and ADA compliance. Addison County, the food bank, fifteen thousand for the last gap of of that project. And then, seriously, members of the committee, I remember a point in time where at the end of your session, right, where you were wrapping up, Markup, every one of these businesses, the food bank would be in here or the [Witness Laura Trieschmann ]: hospital or the [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: good neighborhood asking for help, and this program really has made a difference. And so I'm gonna move on to the regional economic development grant program. I remember when you all started expanding and talking about this, this is really about seed money to get some economic development and growth going, and it's used for multiple different ways to invest in those communities for businesses. We are requesting two hundred and fifty thousand and six twenty six and two hundred and fifty thousand and twenty seven. Again, the attached spreadsheet will show you the the fiscal years, the number of applications, the number of what we have awarded, and the types and the in the, grant amount request. So you were appropriating about three hundred thousand to these in the past. We are recommending, because of everything in the budget, two hundred and fifty thousand this year. And And [Member Will Greer ]: that's the question. On it. Commissioner? Yes. Just a bigger picture thing. You say we are the ones who are ranting all these. Who is that? Is that you? [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: No. No. So you in each committee in statute, you actually have you'd identified how the committee will be made up. K. So I'm looking at one right in front of me, the human service and educational. So it is, the committee shall include the secretary of human services or their designee, commissioner of buildings, or their designee, two members of the Vermont General Assembly, one appointed by the speaker, one appointed by the senate, and three representatives of a broad based community organization such as the United Way of Vermont, who shall be selected and appointed by the governor. Okay. So each one of these committees now have a specific each one of these grants have committees that align with their mission. Okay. [Member Will Greer ]: Got it. Yeah. Appreciate that. [Chair Alice Emmons ]: So if I can also add, the applications go to department of buildings and general services. And the applications are sent out to municipalities and nonprofits usually sometime during the summer, July, August. And our goal has been that these grant application forms are very, very simple. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: Mhmm. [Chair Alice Emmons ]: Because a lot of these organizations, they are all volunteers, and they don't have professional grant writers. So we make sure the applications are understandable. And then they get submitted to BTS, and then BTS will submit that to each of those individual committees that oversee the three programs. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: That's absolutely correct. My understanding, madam chair, is that this has September has been about the time that the department has been getting out its grant applications or at least having them come back in, but that's been the the month that they've been working from for a few years. And it's working as you can see. You know, this year, we will be reaching out because it is a new biennium to make sure membership stands as everyone who has a you know, there's been changes. So we will definitely reach out to the legislative leader leadership, the governor staff, and then any agency or department that is mentioned to see, if any roles, should change on that and if we have enough members. I think we I do think we've had a couple of people step down. I just don't have the the detail on that in front of me. And that is your grant pro part three of your grants. And I apologize for any confusion. I I think my book. Were there? [Chair Alice Emmons ]: I think also what's really important when you're if you talk to folks back home in a nonprofit of municipalities, this is for construction projects. It is not for operating costs. It's for, actually purchasing either long term equipment or bringing in a boiler heating system or roof or adding on to a recreational area. Could be, like, a skate skate park, a skate or a skateboarding area. It's not for operating. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: And I think, you know, your regional development grant, we may do some money to you know, you we may be participating in a renovation of a space that has to do with an incubation an incubator program. And I'm looking at you, deputy commissioner, because we just did a tour, and we were in Randolph. And I think that was that a regional grant at the the home? Yeah. Or human service. [Speaker 7 ]: Yeah. It was. I think my It was wonderful. Services. It was wonderful. Yeah. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: Yeah. Do you remember the the home? [Speaker 7 ]: I believe it's a a senior living. Assisted living? Yeah. In Randolph and it was wonderful. And they were able to renovate a sun porch which was quite a project and it's being a homework. And it's just a wonderful space for the residents to Yeah. To sit and they're also doing some upgrades with their ADA. And so that was, one of their funding sources was this grant program. [Member Will Greer ]: They have a number [Speaker 7 ]: of others and it was just grant the results of the grant program. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: And having it be a program that's in the heart of a community, and it was a it's been a facility that has served generation after generation after generation of family members, and it's gone through a transition. So to be able to bring that to be a part of that through that grant made a difference. [Member Will Greer ]: Do you have a question, Will? Yes. I do. So you said the grant application itself is fairly simple. Mhmm. Is that available on your website for us to [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: It is. I say that it was. But if you can't find it, let me know, representative. [Witness Laura Trieschmann ]: So can I [Member Connor Casey ]: Can you introduce yourself for the [Member Will Greer ]: record, by the way? [Speaker 7 ]: Emily Cicky, deputy commissioner of BGS for the record. I'm pulling up right now on our website just to confirm. I don't think Yeah. Applications and instructions are available on our website. If you just Google BGS Building Community Grants, you'll find a dedicated landing page that has a lot of information about the program. You can also find, plans of approved or non approved applications so you can see what's been funded in your community and what projects might be in the pipeline if they if they need to come back for another round. [Member Will Greer ]: Thank thank you. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: Anything else? Thank you. [Member Will Greer ]: Thank you. Thank you, commissioner. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: I'm not entirely in this. Yeah. [Member Will Greer ]: It's weird. Okay. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: I need to talk to. Yeah. Or not. [Witness Jamie Duggan ]: Yes. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: Where where we actually did it? [Witness Laura Trieschmann ]: Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Caitlin Quarkins with the Division for Historic Preservation. Laura is gonna be running the PowerPoint for me. I'm gonna talk about two more of the building communities grants. So you already got a wonderful introduction to sort of the overarching program. These are two more of those building community grants that are administered by our division, Division for Historic Preservation. So I'm going to start with the Historic Preservation Grant Program. This program is a fiftyfifty matching grant of up to twenty thousand dollars to assist municipalities and nonprofit organizations, on capital projects that involve historic buildings. So buildings that are either listed or eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Prints. This program was established in nineteen eighty six. It's a very popular well loved program, that has thankfully been supported by this committee, since its inception. And the governor's recommended budget for the next year, two years is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars each for FY twenty six and twenty seven. Lori can go to the next one. So, this is just a snapshot of the funding over the last ten years. Since the inception of the program, we've funded over six seventy projects in, communities around the state, over seven million granted through the program. As you'll see from the chart, demand has remained fairly steady over the last decade, even considering all of the upheavals we've had with the pandemic and summer flooding. I do wanna note that there was, has been a slight dip, you'll see in twenty twenty five and the number of applications we received. I think that is a reflection of some of the upheavals we've had over the last few years, specifically around, people being able to find contractors that are available to do these kinds of projects. You know, there are a lot of people that sort of have retired, aged out, not enough people joining the trades. A lot of the projects we fund are very specialized work, because we are dealing with historic buildings. And so it does take, contractors with a lot of skill and knowledge to take on these projects. Even with that slight dip, we're still, you know, well oversubscribed. As you can see, there's always more demand, for the program than we have funding available. In the next slide. Oh, thank you. The other thing I should note on this is that the grant amount awarded, you'll notice that it's not a nice green, even number. And that is because we do occasionally get recapture from projects that, for whatever reason, don't move forward, or we do have projects that come in under budget, shockingly frequent amount of times. And so we take those little remainders and then add them into the next year's, pool of money. So that's why the that grant amount awarded number is not, you know, the two hundred and fifty thousand that we were allocated for the year. Okay. And then I also wanted to just highlight a few projects. And I believe when we were here last week, there were some sheets floating around that had all of the projects that we funded in our most recent round. So in December, we awarded twenty two projects in nine different counties around the state. So this slide shows a selection of those. We have the Miss Bellows Falls Diner landmark, which we will be getting a new roof. Thanks to this program. We are funding masonry repair masonry repairs at the St. Albans Free Library, stained glass window restoration at St. Peter's Episcopal Church down in Bennington, cupola restoration, of the village school in Manchester, which is now owned and operated by the Manchester Music Festival, and, a window restoration project at the Putney Town Hall. So you can kind of see the types of projects that this program typically funds. These are all community buildings that are landmarks and well loved by folks in their communities. Okay. So I'm gonna keep rolling along, to the barn grant program. Again, this is one that is administered by the Division for Historic Preservation and it supports, grants of up to twenty thousand dollars for, repair and restoration of historic agricultural buildings. So we call it the barn grant program because historic agricultural buildings is a little bit of a mouthful, but it's it's all types of historic agricultural buildings, anything from a chicken coop to a sugar shack, to, you know, a dairy barn, even a silo, anything that's related to a historic agricultural complex. These are again, matching grants, fiftyfifty matching grants. And these do have to be awarded to barns that are either listed or eligible for listing in the state register of historic cases. The governor's budget has recommended funding of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars annually over the next biennium for this. Okay. So we've got the same same chart, layout showing you the last ten years of funding. Since the programs this program started in nineteen ninety two, we funded over five hundred projects totaling over five million in grants awarded. And you'll see sort of a similar trend, over the past ten years, demand has, has definitely remained strong. We're oversubscribed every year. We need to have seen a slight dip in the last couple of years, for the same reasons that I think, related to the historic preservation group program, but even still, there's still well more there there are more barns out there that we wish we could fund, every year. We will be awarding the next round of grants through this program, later this month, actually. So I don't have the most recent grant award list, but I think what you got last week in those handouts was the list from last year. [Member Will Greer ]: Yeah. So mhmm. Okay. Exactly. [Witness Laura Trieschmann ]: And same same notation on in terms of the grants awarded, we have the same sort of recapture that we do so that we can spend every penny that we get from the legislature on on this program. [Speaker 7 ]: Next. So [Witness Laura Trieschmann ]: this is actually, so these are projects that we funded last February because we don't have the ones from this year quite yet. So just a selection again to give you sort of the flavor of what types of things we fund through the program. We have the old Wilbur Place in Calais that was a foundation project. So replacing a failing foundation at the Roland Irish firm in Westford. It was siding and window repair. The east monitor barn in Richmond, who anybody who drives from Burlington to Montpelier will be familiar with the the twin monitor barns in Richmond. This project was to replace the slate roof, on the east monitor barn. We also have kind of fun project down in Brattleboro at the retreat farm, which has a wonderful complex of historic barns, including multiple barns that are actually sheathed in slate siding. And this was to protect against fire being less affordable than the typical wood siding we see. So they're gonna be doing some repairs to the slate siding of multiple barns. And then just a few other to mention that are not actually pictured on the slide here, but we have Four Corners Farm in Bethel, rehabilitating a corn crib, so again not a not a dairy barn, but another certainly an important historic agricultural building to that farm, restoration of a cupola at the Farm Between and Jeffersonville, and then also at the Elijah Martin Homestead in Peachham project that we funded there. So to conclude this portion, I just wanted to highlight another recent project that we funded. This is the West Townsend stone arch bridge in West Townsend, Vermont. So this project was funded through the historic preservation grant program and is a really great success story for us. So the stone arch bridge was construction constructed in nineteen ten by a a self taught mason named James Otis Follett. This bridge was listed in the national register of historic places in nineteen seventy seven, and is in the heart of the West Townshend District. They're very proud of their bridges. They actually have six stone arch bridges in Townshend that were constructed by Follett. This one happens to be the longest of the bridges, and it still carries vehicular traffic today. It's the single lane, but it's still in operation. So in the spring of twenty eighteen, the town commission to study to sort of look at the condition of the bridge, and determine that while it was still adequately structurally sound, it was definitely suffering from drainage issues over its hundred plus year history that was being exacerbated by the the vehicular traffic and the harsh weather that we have in Vermont, of course. So the town recognized the importance of this historic resource, not to mention that it's crucial, for folks living on one side of the bridge to get to, the village in West Townsend. And so the historical society in West Townsend took the lead in applying to, a number of programs to support restoration of the bridge. The town received a really prestigious save America's treasures grant from the National Park Service. This is a really significant federal grant program that recognizes really significant historic resources. And they were able to use our state grant, as a matching source to that, federal grant. The town hired, a master mason, Brian Post of Standing Stone LLC to lead the rehabilitation effort. And he gathered a group of Masons, not just from Vermont, multi state team that came together and spent this last summer restoring the bridge. So you can see in that upper photo, they built this sort of terrain to support the bridge while they took it basically took it apart, labeled all the stones, and then put it all back together. So the work started, in the spring of, twenty twenty four, finished up this fall, and they had a wonderful, ribbon cutting ceremony that we all were able to attend. And again, sort of to echo what you were saying, it was really nice to see the grant in action, see the results of what the program helped to accomplish. So I wanna thank the committee for their ongoing support of the program and happy to take any questions. [Member Will Greer ]: Yeah. So so, Caitlin, the the proposed funding has been decreased fifty thousand dollars in the last several years. So you think it would be fair to say that that's because of it's not that there isn't an identified need that could use three hundred thousand dollars in both the Bard and HP grant programs. Mhmm. But probably the leads that are external to these programs. [Witness Laura Trieschmann ]: I mean, I can't speak for exactly why the governor decided, but that would be my assumption. Yeah. That would be my assumption. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: Right. It's finding a balance with all of the programs that we had to fund. It wasn't it's not that there's not support because there is money Yes. Being appropriated to this and the success of all of these programs. It's just taking what the debt for what we have to work with and try to keep these projects supported along with all [Member Connor Casey ]: of the [Member Will Greer ]: other demands. And, Sean? [Member Connor Casey ]: Just really quick here. [Member Will Greer ]: So the so these when you when you have a figure like St. Albans Free Library for twenty grand, that's what you were able to grant them, but they put more money into it than that twenty grand. [Witness Laura Trieschmann ]: Absolutely. Yes. So at minimum, it's a fifty fifty matching grant. So at minimum, they would have had to match that with twenty thousand. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: Okay. Gotcha. [Witness Laura Trieschmann ]: The reality is a lot of times, they're actually matching more than twenty thousand because the project cost is more than forty thousand capital. [Member Will Greer ]: Right. And because the bridge was like, it's twenty grand, but there's hey. They did that for that. No. Yeah. Right? You know [Member Connor Casey ]: what I'm saying? That's about the library presidents right there. So he could tell you probably what [Member Will Greer ]: No. I'm not. I'm not. [Member Connor Casey ]: Museum. That's it. Museum? [Member Will Greer ]: We got one of these grants a couple of years ago. Oh, yes. We did a slate roof repair, and it was, like, eighty grand. Yep. [Member Connor Casey ]: That's right. So we got a one [Member Will Greer ]: to one match for twenty, but it it helped. Right. Okay. Gotcha. Helped. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: Alright. Thank you. [Member Connor Casey ]: I was thinking it was the museum. It's [Witness Susan Evans McClure ]: a lot of fun match [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: you've laid out the statue. [Member Will Greer ]: Yeah. Yes. So Okay. Alright. Which is important. Thank you so oh, Connor? [Member Joe Luneau ]: Yeah. How often do you see, like, applicants who are rejected reapply? And is there any sort of priority for them? [Witness Laura Trieschmann ]: Fairly fairly frequently. I, as the administrator of the program, I work with anybody who has not received funding. I'm available to help them maybe improve their application. As the commissioner mentioned, sometimes people have applied maybe for the wrong program, so I can help direct them to a grant that's a better fit for their project. So it kind of just depends, but we definitely see people that it takes maybe two or three times before they they get funded. [Member Connor Casey ]: Thanks very much. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: I appreciate it. Sometimes and I think it's important. Sometimes they build already and that they have their match, but maybe not all of their batch is there, but they're really trying to bank and get their money because they wanna get moving. Yep. And that's why there's a criteria that they have to be ready to go. [Member Will Greer ]: Yep. K. Gotcha. She'll do it. [Member Connor Casey ]: Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Yes. Thank you. And we have our next presenter, which is Jamie Duggan. Yeah. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: We're gonna Oh, [Member Connor Casey ]: you're gonna do it differently? [Witness Laura Trieschmann ]: I know how to do it. [Speaker 7 ]: In full, like, a [Witness Susan Evans McClure ]: piece of that. [Member Connor Casey ]: Let's go. It'd be [Witness Susan Evans McClure ]: I hear you all the grants together. I thought it works for everyone. [Member Will Greer ]: That's fine. Just [Witness Susan Evans McClure ]: Hi, everyone. I am not Jamie Duggan for [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: the record. [Witness Susan Evans McClure ]: I'm Susan McClure. I'm the, executive director of the Vermont Arts Council. So the Arts Council is the state's arts agency. We're the, state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Arts. And what we're working to do is really ensure that Vermont has creativity at the heart of all of our communities. And we work primarily as grantmakers. We take state and federal funding, that we receive from the National Endowment for the Arts and our direct state appropriation, as well as facilitating some state programs on behalf of the state as well. So in FY twenty four, just to give you a sense of scope, we awarded around three point two million dollars in funding to every county in the state and a hundred and thirty one individuals and two hundred and thirty five organizations. So we grant from everything for things to support new work, for artists to deepen their practice, community building, programming, and, of course, the cultural facilities grants that I'm gonna talk about today. I'll just go quickly that all of our work is really based on the backbone of the both the social and economic role that the arts and culture play in our states. The arts and culture produce one point two billion dollars of Vermont's GSP, and a little over ten thousand jobs. We also know that when people go to arts and culture events, which do happen in facilities that we're gonna talk about today, they spend money at those events as well. And we have the data to back that up, and I'm sure you've all done it as people that attend live events. So we know that by strengthening Vermont's creative economy, we're also strengthening Vermont's overall economy. But we know that it takes, as all things in our complex economic system, it takes the infrastructure to do that. The cultural facilities grants are really what help Vermont's nonprofits, arts and culture organizations and municipalities to, enhance or enhance, create, and expand the capacity of existing buildings to provide cultural activities to the public. So the way it works is that applicants must own a facility that it's at least ten years old and it must be physically located in Vermont. We broadly define cultural activities, things that enhance creative, artistic, aesthetic, historic, scholarly appreciation. That all fits in our definition. And, of course, it's one of the seven building communities grants. The program's been going since nineteen eighty eight. And as the commissioner Manoli said, it switched over in couple years ago to being funded in this fashion. The grants can be anywhere from a thousand to thirty thousand dollars, and like all of the building communities grants require a one to one match. And these are really funds for what we consider to be the least fundable, but most important projects. So we're talking about facilities projects, rewiring, accessibility. These programs these projects fund a lot of accessibility improvements, especially to some of our historic buildings in which cultural events happen across the state. They're for fixed equipment, environmental controls, hazard mitigation efforts. And actually, over the past three years, we've seen a sixty five percent increase in the amount of grant funds requested, and a forty percent increase in the number of applications. So even though we have had been consistently funded, consistently awarding funded and awarding around three hundred thousand dollars a year for the past few years, the demand for these grants has grown dramatically in over the past three years. We believe that that is because this is one of the few grant programs that fund this type of work for cultural facilities, and it's vitally important capital projects at these organizations. So since the Arts Council took over administration of the project in two thousand and one, we've given out over four point six million dollars to three seventy arts and culture institutions across Vermont. And a statistic that we've been keeping since twenty fourteen, which I think is really important, is tracking where these dollars go. So we're taking the state money. It requires matching funds. And we found that seventy five percent of this funding directly goes to Vermont businesses. And the twenty five percent of funding overall that is sent out of state are on highly specialized projects that we we don't have the skills to do here in Vermont. But that's an important number to us because looking at twenty looking from twenty fourteen, we're talking about nine million dollars overall. So, right, we've granted some funding. There's a one to one match. But as Caitlin mentioned, most of these projects are much bigger than just the, funding that they're getting from us. Many of the improvements funded by the Cultural Facilities Grants, as I mentioned, are ADA compliance issues or address critical safety. Another thing I want to mention is that we're also seeing requests for projects that address emergency preparedness and an increase in energy efficiency projects and climate change mitigation work. So what we're seeing are that these really modest state improvements are having a long term economic impact on our local communities. A story I'll just mention is from the capital city Grangell in Berlin. They received a cultural facilities grant in FY20, which seems like ten thousand years ago, but they received a project grant in FY20 to install, again, the least exciting project, a sump pump in the basement. And after twenty twenty three's historic flooding, they reached out to us to let us know that this was actually the first time their basement had not flooded was during the the big flood, which was really exciting for us. But we know, right, they received a modest grant from us, and that saved them however many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars in flood damage. And we're seeing a big increase in requests for these flood mitigation, climate mitigation projects. And in FY twenty five, actually eight of the seventeen projects that were funded were related to energy efficiency or climate change mitigation. So we've talked about, through all of my partners here about the the increasing demand and the amount of funding that we, have to give out. Right? We always have more requests and more need than we can ever give. We did see that in the governor's budget, it's recommended at two hundred fifty thousand dollars for the year. We understand there are so many demands on a very limited state dollars right now. We did also wanna stress that these are the only kind of grant funding available for these projects for cultural organizations. And, of course, as an we are we act as the state agency, but we're an independent nonprofit, so I can request this in ways that my state counterparts cannot. We, of course, would love to see that level funded at three hundred thousand dollars for this fiscal year because we know that we have the demand for it and that it makes a real difference in our communities. You've all received in my testimony I sent ahead, and I have some printouts for those who like paper copies, just some examples of the kind of projects we're talking about. We have funded all over the state. So if there is a cultural facility in your community, which there is, there is a high likelihood that they have received this funding, over the years as well. I do have my colleague, Michelle Bailey, on Zoom as well who facilitates, runs the program. She's our senior program manager and has run the program at the Arts Council for many years. So I'm happy to bring her in for questions, but I know that I'm standing between you and the Bennington monument. Okay. So I know I can't hold up the I mean, if I could hold up the Bennington monument, your meeting would be shorter. But [Witness Laura Trieschmann ]: sorry. Sorry. You can fix this. It should be [Member Will Greer ]: about people out of the Exactly. So you have to [Witness Susan Evans McClure ]: take questions or Take [Member Will Greer ]: questions, John? No. I'm all set. [Member Connor Casey ]: Anybody have a question? [Member Will Greer ]: No. Cool. Thanks. Thank [Member Connor Casey ]: you so much. Thanks for your help. Is there more people now? You can come on us. [Witness Susan Evans McClure ]: Yep. I'll leave those. Sorry. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: Yeah. I probably could. Here too. Oh, sorry. [Member Connor Casey ]: I learned that it's not necessarily in order, so that's cool. [Member Will Greer ]: Yeah. Okay. Thanks. I'm fine. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: For the record, my name is Jamie Duggan. I'm the director of preservation at the Vermont State Historic Sites. And today, we're gonna talk about the Bennington Battle Monument. Yeah. So the Battle of Bennington was perhaps should have been called the Battle for Bennington. Right? Because the battle itself was right over on the border of New York. But [Witness Jamie Duggan ]: We don't talk about that. [Member Will Greer ]: We got two people from Venice. So Anyway. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: A significant event within the revolutionary war and a significant event in Vermont's history. About fifty years after the battle, about eighteen twenty seven, there started to be interest in memorializing these events. It was eighteen fifty six about that the legislature started the Bennington Battle Monument Association who was charged with making this project come forward. There were several architects who were considered things didn't really go anywhere until eighteen seventy six when the legislature authorized fifteen thousand dollars for the construction of the monument. The Monument Association kicked in five thousand dollars of their own. And then our colleagues in Massachusetts and New Hampshire who had sent troops to this battle were also invited to be part of the process and donated some funds as well. [Witness Jamie Duggan ]: We could only wish it was fifteen thousand. Yeah. Yeah. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: So several architects were considered. J Philip Brin, who was a noted architect from Boston, received the commission. Construction of the monument started in eighteen eighty seven. A big ceremony laying the cornerstone on August sixteenth, Battle Day, in eighteen eighty seven. The capstone was placed two years later in eighteen eighty nine. It weighed two tons. And oh, yeah. On that side. Great. The monument itself was completed in eighteen ninety one, opened in June of that year, and it was dedicated in August nineteenth eighteen ninety one, also celebrating Vermont's, admittance into the union as a state. Some other facts about the monument, the, stairs, were designed by Wren based on a model that he saw at the Farnese knew of at the Farnese Palace by Michelangelo and Vignola. There's four seventeen steps in that staircase to get you to up to the observation level, which is about two hundred feet up. The monument itself is three zero six feet, four inches to the top of the ten pointed drawn star, which is almost exactly the height of the Statue of Liberty, for some context, about two hundred feet shorter than the Washington Monument. It is the we believe, and we haven't found anything to dispute it yet, but we believe it is the second tallest unreinforced masonry construction in the United States, only behind the Washington Monument. It's it was designated for significance both at a local state and national level, nominated to the National Register in sixty nine, entered onto it in nineteen seventy one. There are reports of the monument being wet and damp perpetually starting in nineteen o three. I will note that cracks first started appearing in the stones in the nineteen twenties. So the Bendigo and Battle Monument Association was responsible for the care. They handed the they had a hard time with it, let's just say. And they gave the monument over to the state in nineteen fifty three in a state of disrepair. Important point. Just a year later, a stone the size of a man's hand fell off the top of the monument in nineteen fifty four. That's something we're gonna continue to hear a little bit about. There was, in the fifties, a project to repair the top hundred feet of the monument. It included some repointing, some waterproofing. Bronze pins were driven into the stone to try and ameliorate those those crack the cracking that was happened. And in nineteen fifty five, six electric fan steam heaters and two ventilation louvers were added to reduce the humidity level in the monument. Again, something that had been going on now for quite a few decades. Nineteen fifty five, Otis installed the very first elevator in the state of Vermont in the monument. I think it is the hardest working elevator in the state. It has two stops that are two hundred feet apart, and it is continually in a damp and corrosive condition. Falls continues a stone in the nineteen late nineteen fifties, early sixties. There was some issues, both internal and some external consultants who criticized the past repair work as being inferior. There were disagreements. NPS actually sent two architects up to deal with the situation. They identified moisture removal and repointing as the highest priorities for this building. Nineteen fifty nine, the top thirty feet were again repointed and waterproofed with an inappropriate material. In April of nineteen sixty one, a six and a half pound piece of stone fell off the monument. Nineteen sixty four, the observation level windows were installed. And there was, over the next few years, a number of projects proposed to continue that work, but they're kept getting to be higher priorities that would sort of corrupt that those funds getting there. In the late eighties, there was an issue with the metal stairs. They were croting to a certain point that that we had to do shut the monument temporarily and do some emergency repairs on on that, which, again, took money away from the exterior repointing project that [Member Will Greer ]: had been [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: planned and was ready to go many years earlier. Where was I? Yep. So moving into the two thousands, we had a number of projects ready to go. However, the interest in lighting the monument as it is today was a discussion that started in the early two thousands and continued for about six years. Is that correct? Yeah. It did. And, again, the lights the sorry. The money that perhaps would have been best used for repointing was put towards the lighting of the monument. While this happened, there was no repair work going on. So we see this continual process of deferred maintenance exacerbating things as as we go along. The last repair work on the monument was done in two thousand and five. We went with a low bid on that one and ended up working with a contractor out of Connecticut who took a unique approach to scaffolding the work. They built a sliding scaffold that was lowered from ropes that were placed, hit up at the top. And as they moved down the monument, it sort of slid a little bit bigger as because it tapers as it gets to the top. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a contractor who'd be willing to work that way these days just with a lot of things that have happened. [Witness Jamie Duggan ]: That was scary to watch. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: It's scary to look at the photos. There must have been a lot of liability on that, worker liability on that project. So I was called down to the monument back in two thousand eighteen before I was in this position when I was still working with the project review team by Mary Lou Chacote, who has been our site administrator down at that site for thirty six years? [Speaker 10 ]: Forty five. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: Forty well, she's been with the state for forty five. But Thirty six. Thirty six as a monument. She is the eighth person to hold the key to the monument since its inception. Yes. So these were the conditions back in two thousand and eighteen. The monument is closed in the winter, but we still have this elevator to contend with and making sure everything's running. So in the winter, Mary Lou switches to a schedule where she'll come in once a week and sort of run the elevator up and down and make sure everything's working in the off season. And she was quite frightened to try and climb the stairs to check out a few other things up there. And this is showing that, obviously, there's a lot of water getting through the building all year long, and it's staying in the building. And that is a huge problem. We decided to start studying the monument to figure out what to do. This is not while this is one of our resources, this is not a typical structure that you see part and parcel here in in different projects. It's a unique structure. I reached out to the National Park Service. I spoke with the project manager for the Washington Monument's two recent projects. We started pulling in some information and and went out with an RFP working in partnership with BGS to do an in-depth investigation and analysis of the structural masonry conditions, the structural conditions related to the interior stairwell, and to understand a bit more about the building. What's going on. You could see these these while we're doing all of this, by the way, nothing has really been fixed yet. So, you know, one of the issues is we're having a lot of shutdowns with the elevator. We have taken great strides to work with, our contractor who has been fantastic with us, to do some extra extra, activities, proactively so that we can reduce the potential for the elevator stopping. But that is that that's been problematic. We've had issues where people have been stuck in the elevator. We had some coordination issues between a previous vendor and the fire chief in Bennington. Our previous vendor would not give us a we'll respond to your call within one hour. And, you know, we can't leave people sitting in a in a small box on the in the middle of this column for very long. So fire department came and helped, but actually ended up damaging the elevator a little bit. And so we had to do a little communication between those parties. But we're in a really good place now where we understand what the issues are with that elevator, but we have to continually work towards maintaining it. We had a vigorous response to our RFP. We got ten proposals in. We had a selection committee that was comprised of about I think it was about a dozen people between BGS Design and Construction, our office, and and and some of our managers. And we worked with we went with Stevens Associates out of Grattleboro as the the prime engineer on this project. And, an interesting thing, we one of the groups we're working with is Vertical Access. They are, nationally known industrial rope specialists. I'll tell you a little bit more about the work they did for us. But one of those interesting things was all ten of those proposals carried vertical access as one of their subcontractors. There's really no one else out there kind of doing this type of of work. We, we learned a lot of that we needed to know more than we thought. You know, this has been building over the last few years. And so after our phase one sort of feasibility and and and starting to understand it, we did baseline documentation. We laser scanned the monument completely on the inside and the outside. Previous to this, we really had no accurate measured drawings. We had referential drawings, but we were able to scan the project, the monument to the point where we can now identify every single stone. We've done a number of different, scans using a ground penetrating radar, but terrestrially up on the building to be able to understand the depths of certain stones. Do they tie through to the interior? There's a lot of, different things that were were looked at. What we realized at that point was that we had to really start taking a deeper understanding into the materials and the mechanisms of the deterioration, how they're performing, and what we can understand from that. We initiated a second phase project, which sort of quickly surpassed the first project. Our deliverable was a five hundred page report, which we'll certainly point you towards. But essentially what what through those investigations and using, again, national experts in preservation and material conservation, What we're left with understanding today is that we've got saturated stone. Our moisture monitoring, moisture meters, and some other, data tells us that it's a hundred percent saturated, and it's a hundred percent of the time. We, in fact, we even thought that that was an anomaly in our testing equipment because it was just reading a hundred percent. The consultants got higher quality equipment in and fluctuated just to show us, you know, ninety nine, ninety eight percent. Calculating the amount of water that could potentially be held within the stone, it's about sixty six thousand gallons of water sitting in the monument today, tomorrow, and the next day until something can be done about that. So we know about the saturated stone. Water infiltration is obvious. I have been there on the inside of the monument during a rainstorm, and it literally you have to keep your rain jacket on and your umbrella because it has at times, with wind driven rain and some other issues, it's been that bad. We have vertical cracking and spalling and damage to the stone, high humidity levels. And If you think about it, this is essentially a three hundred foot tall chimney. It is a stone column with a void in the center that goes all the way up. That creates an inverse stack effect, which makes it a lot harder to deal with the ventilation. We have outdated electrical and lightning protection systems. The advanced moisture and continued saturation is now deteriorating. The metal components, in particular, the stairs and some of the, elevator, cross tying. And, we have exacerbated deterioration due to previous campaigns that were both inappropriate and ineffective. [Speaker 10 ]: And incomplete. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: And incomplete. That's that's been another thing. So any questions on any of that at the moment? [Member Will Greer ]: Yeah. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: We're trying to trying to keep [Member Will Greer ]: it focused [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: here. So we have our team has now provided us with a couple of options for moving forward. And we are in the process of trying to understand what some of the next steps are. One of the problems that I mentioned earlier is that, you know, nothing is being done while we're we're thinking about how to how to get some traction and moving forward. And, that is gonna continue to, increase the amount of deterioration as well as increase the costs and the amount of work that has to be come finished later. The number one takeaway that we have from our consultants is before we can do anything else, we have to dry that monument out. What that is likely going to entail is to create a complete one hundred percent waterproof cover or scrim over and around the monument to not allow any more rainwater or humidity to get in. That will need some type of a structure to hang off of. We're being encouraged to think about getting scaffolding up earlier to help with some of the mock ups that need to happen. But, of course, that that is something that we're of the opinion that we need to be ready to go forward to see this project through for it might be a few years, for example, behind we take some of these next steps before construction would start, but we need to start taking these steps. It's unclear how long it's gonna take to dry out the monument, but there's a lot of calculations with different size dehumidifiers and and and fans to move the water, the the air, to eliminate the water. So we know that is that has to be done before we can even do our repairs because if the monument is continuing to stay saturated, none of the repairs are gonna take. And it would be just putting good money after that. Yes. [Member Will Greer ]: That's right. [Witness Jamie Duggan ]: So once you dried it out, if you're at that stage, taking it off, how would you keep it dry and not just with saturated? That covering [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: would be in place until at least the exterior construction was completed and cured fully. [Witness Jamie Duggan ]: And and the exterior would seal everything in if the water couldn't get in? [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: It would seal everything from one direction, from the exterior. But, again, as I was mentioning, because of the the the issues with condensation and the way the air is moving, we do need to fully repoint the interior as well to keep the integrity of those walls as as good as possible. That interior work could come after the exterior work was completed because then the exterior envelope would at least start functioning. Right now, it's just functioning as a sieve to direct water into the building. So there are some, there are there are some issues that we have to work out with sequencing and and process through the project. [Witness Jamie Duggan ]: But I would just wanna try to ensure that once you've done this major piece of the puzzle, then it just wouldn't be temporary. It would be for the lawn or for [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: It would be temporary. Free. [Witness Jamie Duggan ]: So it would get wet again. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you meant this, the the cover. No. [Witness Jamie Duggan ]: The model. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: Well, the building will continue to need maintenance. And and that's one thing that we are, you know, highly recommending and trying to institute is that to not allow a structure to go as long as this without getting that attention. I mentioned earlier we will have to probably be building scaffolds. In order to do that, we still have to do a little geotechnical boring to understand the bedrock subsurface. And we're likely going to have to place some type of probably cement or concrete pads below the ground to found this scaffolding up. It'll be the tallest built structure in Vermont for at least while it's up. [Witness Jamie Duggan ]: And we do what we do at Bay of Bay. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: So the idea, those those those would be left in place, you know, covered over, but that they would be there for a future repointing campaign, which, you know, ideally would happen within the next twenty, thirty years after this big restoration effort. So Will? [Member Will Greer ]: Yeah. Okay. You have [Member Connor Casey ]: I know she has her hand up, but Will's first. Okay. [Member Will Greer ]: Oh, sorry. So it was mentioned last time that there was a system that was originally put in to try to keep it dry, but it didn't work effectively. Is there a system now that will keep it dry once this enclosure's off of it and construction's done? [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: That will be part of the design. Again, we've been focusing on investigation and analysis to move forward. We haven't moved into the design phase yet. But, yes, that [Member Connor Casey ]: That's the plan. Okay. It's Laura? [Speaker 10 ]: Yeah. Laura Trueshren for the state of discrimination officer, we steward the Bennington Battle Monument. The ultimate goal is not to completely seal the monument so that there's no air to breathe. To Jamie's point, it's living, breathing Of course. And we need to keep the water and air moving through it. But the goal is to own the scaffolding so that we can reuse it as needed for maintenance going forward, but also figuring out through this whole design and study process how the building needs to breathe. Past restoration or repair projects have just repaired what they're looking at, not studied that this thing is a chimney and it's living, breathing, like I said, and we need to know what the effects of climate change and even recent earthquakes have affected the building. So we're continuously studying it. But to your point, once it gets restored, it will not be completely sealed. Right. Like, every crack and and and mortar joint won't be completely sealed. We'll figure out ventilation processes and dehumidifying processes and have a regular maintenance process. [Witness Jamie Duggan ]: And that's where I was going. I know it can't be sealed because it's gotta have some ear going through it. Understood. [Speaker 10 ]: And the estimates, you know, if we do this correctly, we're looking at another hundred years of this being a really good solid monument before it might need another checkup at the spot. [Member Connor Casey ]: And then, Sean, [Member Will Greer ]: what what kind of foundation is it sitting on? [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: Our understanding is it is founded on bedrock. What kind of bedrock? [Member Will Greer ]: Because there's different kinds. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: There is. Yeah. I'd have to go back and check the the bedrock. That was one of the last things that came in, but that's something that we're we're we're working on now. The foundation from the ground down is nine feet. A nine foot wall foundation walls are nine feet thick below ground. Nine feet wide? Of stone. Correct. Gotcha. [Member Will Greer ]: And what what's it made? What kind of stone is it? [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: It is a a sandy hill. It's a, dolomitic limestone. So it's And it [Member Will Greer ]: was forest. So it'll dry faster. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: It it it was chosen and there's for its, durability and its ability to deal with, temperature fluctuations. Yeah. There is yes. So, yeah, that's just sort of showing you the construction here. So the walls right about the ground level are about seven feet. We actually did a six foot long bore, a Goodman jack test. We got that out. And then as it rises all the way up to the top, it becomes one stone to the point that I believe those are only about, twelve to sixteen inches at the top, single unit stone by the time it gets up to that part. Yep. And so that sandy hill dolomite, the stuff that came out of the quarry right before Bennington went part of it went to the Brooklyn Bridge. So there's some of that stone in there as well. But, you know, that's one of gonna be one of our considerations is where can we get replacement material to use for today. If you could scroll to the next one, please, Laura. [Member Will Greer ]: Could you get back to that to that, mine, to that quarry? [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: It is no longer I've driven the look for it. It is no longer visible. It's a giant industrial area now Oh, okay. Over in Hudson Falls area. There was a special rail line that went from the quarry right up to the monument. But the all of the the the foundation stone is local stone from two quarries downtown that had another rail line coming up for delivery. So all the base in the foundation is local stone. And then the the majority of the exterior stone on the monument is that Sandy Hill dolomite dolomitic limestone. [Member Connor Casey ]: Madam chair, we're gonna talk about this a lot more. Right? [Chair Alice Emmons ]: Well, there's no request in the capital bill for it. But [Member Will Greer ]: Okay. [Chair Alice Emmons ]: I what I wanna know, you have spent today you what it looked like on one of the slides about nine hundred and eighty eight thousand has been spent to date on [Member Will Greer ]: That's correct. [Chair Alice Emmons ]: Reviews. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: That's correct. [Chair Alice Emmons ]: What is the total cost, do you believe, for restoring the monument? [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: We have been given numbers and an indication that it's probably around forty million dollars, which we know is not gonna come out of out of the capital budget, certainly. But, you know, there we have to keep pushing pushing the stone up the hill here, so to speak, to to make sure that all the work that we've done in the last few years and all the and the money we've invested in understanding the structure does not go to waste. These recommendations have a timeline, and we can't sit around too long figuring out what to do. [Chair Alice Emmons ]: Right. So so, Laura, could you go back to just the previous page here where yeah. Phase a one and then phase a b. So to dry out the monument would cost about a half million? [Speaker 10 ]: That's correct. [Chair Alice Emmons ]: And then you would put a enclosure after it dries out. You would put an enclosure on over it, and that would cost five to ten million? [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: Correct. For context, the Washington Monument, the last project that they erected scaffolding up, it was a total of seven million dollars, I believe, just for the scaffolding. Oh, so [Member Will Greer ]: the step [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: years ago. [Chair Alice Emmons ]: Step four, erection of the monument enclosure, is the scaffolding? [Member Will Greer ]: It's [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: I would yes. It it's it's going to function both as a frame for the waterproof covering, but also will allow for the work to happen fully within it. So [Chair Alice Emmons ]: So so in order for steps one and three, one through three to occur, you need to do step four. You need to get the scaffolding up there first? [Speaker 10 ]: No. We need to do one and three before we do four. [Member Connor Casey ]: But nothing nothing long term can happen until four is done. [Member Will Greer ]: Correct. Correct. [Speaker 7 ]: Correct. [Speaker 10 ]: And these numbers come from that final recommendation number of forty million. [Member Connor Casey ]: Yeah. And Connor has a question too. [Member Joe Luneau ]: Yeah. Sure. Good to see you, Jamie. It's is this gentler than city council probably? We're not really a heavy lift these days. I'm just wondering, has there ever been a campaign with the federal delegation to designate this as a national monument? It seems like it passes the straight face test, and I'm looking at the other national monuments. [Speaker 10 ]: Yes. We have talked to the National Park Service. It is already recognized for its national significance. It is not listed as a national historic landmark, which is a very heavy lift, and they tried to discourage us from doing that. But as we explore fundraising and philanthropy and grants moving forward, that might be something that is totally worthwhile to us. [Member Joe Luneau ]: Yeah. I I just wonder if the statement from the legislature to our federal delegation to explore that might be worthwhile. Yeah. [Speaker 10 ]: Yeah. No. It would go through our office, so it's easily something to do. But because it's already recognized by the National Park Service as a nationally significant Mhmm. Nationally significant monument, it it's kind of additional work that's not totally necessary. But if we need it as a marketing tool, we'll definitely explore that. [Member Connor Casey ]: It needs to get [Member Will Greer ]: some better money as well. [Member Joe Luneau ]: That's what I'm saying. I will. [Member Will Greer ]: And I'm just there's no point to do steps one through three unless step four's gonna be funded, I'm assuming, because there's no point just spending all this that half a million to try it out. Now I'm gonna start doing it. Right? [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: Correct. I you know, steps one through three are necessary for number four in phase one a. But, all of phase one a is required before we can move forward into the the next phase one b. [Member Connor Casey ]: And it's an all tied in. [Member Will Greer ]: Yeah. [Speaker 10 ]: I would add that one through three help us keep the monument safe and healthy and operating. Sorry? [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: Yeah. I I guess I didn't mention that just to we there the the monument is still shedding stone at times. And so one of the steps we have taken to for safety for our staff and the public, we've erected a fence as as clean, simple, and aesthetic as we can find. [Speaker 10 ]: You can't even see it really here. And just to make sure you're not sliding. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: And we [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: went around and spray painted all the, reflective stuff. Yeah. Well, thank you. And and we have a covered walkway that's been installed to protect people between the from the secure perimeter, if you will, to the front door. [Member Will Greer ]: Yep. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: And that, at least, will have to stay in place until we have it's it's it's replaced by building a closure system. We also have vertical access, who I had mentioned, the industrial rope specialists. They came. They were part of they were they've been part of all phases from the beginning. Yeah. They descended the building descended the building, and they've recorded every defect. There's over six thousand cracks. There's everything now with by using these digital tools, having the laser scan, we're able to now start to quantify some of these issues. And the next step, obviously, would be to design those repairs and then a full project costing and and steps like that can be finished. Appreciate it. Thank you [Member Connor Casey ]: so much. And that'll be that. Joe, did you have something for this section or just okay. Your first support. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: K. Thank you [Member Connor Casey ]: so much. [Member Shaun Sweeney ]: Thank you very much for your time. [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: Your next antibiotic at five. [Chair Alice Emmons ]: Hey. Yes. I mentioned this is not in the capital bill, but this is something that we're gonna have have to somehow address because [Witness Wanda Minoli ]: By and down. [Chair Alice Emmons ]: It's a really heavy lift for money, and I know I've got work going on behind me. So we'll talk about this when I get back in the building. Okay? [Member Will Greer ]: Yep. Yes. [Chair Alice Emmons ]: Okay. So I need to sign off here because we've got some things to take care of here. I know we got Joe coming up. You can carry the load if you folks wanna take a quick break because you've been sitting for quite a while. Can do that. I'm gonna see what my schedule is for tomorrow. Why don't why don't we take a quick break and go off of YouTube, and then I can let you know what my schedule's gonna be tomorrow. [Member Will Greer ]: Okay? Okay.

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