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Saturday, February 24th, 2007
This was a very busy week for our committee. We were told that the capital bill had to be voted out by Friday February 23, 2007. The total amount we were authorized to spend was $49.2 million and we had department requests that totaled $156.3 million. We spent many hours going through the spreadsheet and written portion of the bill reallocating money and fine tuning language.
This was a very busy week for our committee. We were told that the capital bill had to be voted out by Friday February 23, 2007. The total amount we were authorized to spend was $49.2 million and we had department requests that totaled $156.3 million. We spent many hours going through the spreadsheet and written portion of the bill reallocating money and fine tuning language. Most parts of the bill were not controversial and we breezed through these sections with little discussion. The main areas of concern were: the health and forensics lab project in Essex, education construction, re-location of the state emergency operations center from Waterbury to Essex, classroom facilities at the Woodside facility in Essex and the Statehouse improvement project.
The Health and Forensics lab project is not a controversial project but it is very expensive. The total cost of this project is estimated at $20 million and the Governor had requested $7.7 million from this capital budget. This was one of the largest pieces of the proposed capital budget and we were tempted to move some of this money to other parts of the budget. However, in the end everyone realized how important this project is to the state and allocated $7.5 million to this project.
The Department of Education was requesting $33.4 million for school construction projects already approved by the department. The Governor recommended an appropriation of $9 million. This was by far the area that we spent the most time debating how to address these needs now and in the future. The bill proposes a moratorium on new requests for funding until which time a new plan for funding can be developed. This will allow us to clean up the backlog of commitments that the state has made to our communities. I understand that there are other committees working on this issue as well. We ended up funding $9.6 million. I believe that these are positives improvements to the current system.
The relocation of the state Emergency Operations Center from Waterbury to Essex became a very controversial issue during the week. New information became known about a proposal to move the EOC to Berlin in conjunction with and on AOT land. It appears that a lot of time and energy was expended studying and planning this project in 2004 but was abruptly abandoned in mid 2005.
The Woodside Juvenile Detention Center in Essex was in dire need of separate classroom space. We had a request to construct temporary space in the modular form from the Human Services committee to accommodate this need in a timely manner. We determined that it would be a better investment for the state to fund a previously proposed interior renovation project to fulfill this need rather than install temporary structures. We appropriated $300,000 for this project.
The last issue we struggled with was the statehouse improvement project. We discussed the many concerns members had with this project. Most people agree that the statehouse needs improvement, but that these needs should not take precedent over all of the rest of the state’s needs. It was decided that we would appropriate $100,000 to the friends of the statehouse organization to assist them with private fundraising activities for this project.
Joint House and Senate meetings continued this week on education funding. This continues to give me hope that property tax reform will not been forgotten. I am very hopeful that property tax reform, health care costs and affordable housing continue to build momentum throughout the session.
I will spending most of Town Meeting Day at the polls and would be happy to discuss any concern or issue you may have. If you would like to set up a time to meet in person please feel free to contact me in advance.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, comments or concerns.
I can be reached here at the Statehouse by calling 1-800-322-5616 or by my cell 373-5960; My website address is Don Turner Jr.com or e-mail me at dturner@leg.state.vt.us. Thank you and have a great week.