Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Good morning again. It's Thursday, 01/08/2026. Thursday. We had a just as a, you know, kind of public service announcement for the committee, we had a cancellation or a postponement from this morning. And so we'll have we'll still go with our 09:30. And then at 10:30, some of Jeremy's colleagues will be down in the house appropriations of presenting on the budget adjustment, the transportation portion of the Budget Adjustment Act. So I'm gonna put that up on the YouTube and you're free to stay to watch it or not. As far as what the transportation related budget adjustment acts issues are, we'll hear what appropriations is hearing. You're welcome to stick with it or not. We're not gonna be online, but I will be online watching their testimony And then we will come back. The most important part of the day is that we'll have the commissioner at the second most important part after this part. The commissioner will be in at 01:00 after lunch and update us on the six to seven months since we've been in session. And we'll also be playing a dialogue time. He'll have some of his team and that will help on questions that prep for when everybody comes back and presents their section of the budget and any additional information you're going to want to know. Anything about any pieces that are there, they may not answer them today, but they'll have it ready for when they come back to committee. And that'll be our and then we'll

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: head to floor. And that'll be

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: our day for today. So this morning, we have Jerry Reed, Chief Engineer, Highway Division, Agency of Transportation. And we had a study in last year that was required. And so I'm sure I mentioned it three times yesterday, I'll try it four times today. It didn't originate in this body, but the senate felt that you needed this work, and we are interested to hear what you had found out. So welcome, and it's all yours.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Thank you, chair and and members. Again, for the record, Jeremy Reed, chief engineer, agency of transportation, here to discuss a study that was mandated actually in 2024 regarding fees and telecom usage in the right of way. Can I share? It doesn't look bad. Yeah.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: I do believe it's a little bit share.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: There it is. Okay. You're the first one in this session to use it. So, it's good for practice. Good for practice.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So again, here to discuss telecom usage in the right of way.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So act one forty Gotta go back to the picture. Oh, is that Any guesses? 89 being built in Richmond back in Yes.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Very good guess. Yeah. So that's the Checkered House Bridge.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yep. This is

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Should have a presentation on the '89 archives. It's a great shot.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I would love it. 6061 probably. Act 145, Section 14 required the Secretary of Transportation to look at telecom usage within the right of way and then to explore what other states across the nation do to perhaps generate some revenue for that usage. And this is, again, really geared towards telecom usage, not other utilities. So, I'm going to jump to the key findings just to provide some context for some of the information I'll be providing later. So, within our data sets, the right of way and the electric utility data is generally very complete and accurate, meaning we know, generally speaking, exactly where a right of way is and we know exactly where the utilities are within that or the electric utilities are within the right of way. However, when we look at the communications infrastructure, it's lacking in both completeness and accuracy. And that presents challenges that I'll get into later. As we look across the nation, there are generally two approaches that are used to basically, I'll say, get some benefit for allowing telecommunications in the right of way. One is bartering for infrastructure improvements, and in that scenario, one of two things happens. Basically, as part of the permit condition, the utility will install assets for our use to expand our ITS system, or they will expand their own coverage beyond what they otherwise would do to help incentivize the build out of broadband and high speed Internet. The second way to do it is through revenue generation, and that's just as you would expect a monetized approach. One of the common themes, though, is unclear with the second approach whether or not the revenue generated actually offsets the costs it takes to administer the program. And that's a national trend, and certainly something we would be facing here in Vermont.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Is it okay to ask questions? I don't mean. Yeah. So on that statement, I mean, understand what it says. Is that true for electric utilities? Or is that just

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: This is for telecom. That was the real intent of the report. And so we didn't look at revenue generation for electric utilities. We looked at revenue generation for telecommunications, both within the state and

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Telecommunications would be overhead lines that are on probably electric poles and underground. Correct. And so that could be true for electric utility well, but we're not asking or answering that. Correct. And do they barter for electric utility right of ways? Do you know?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: That wasn't part of the study, so I don't know. I do think that the approach to recapture the cost for electric utilities is less than telecommunications because it's deemed as sort of like a necessity. So I think nationally, generally speaking, there's less revenue generation and less borrowing related to electric utilities and telecommunications.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you. Jeremy, can you remind me of the definition of the right of way when it comes to highway? What's the what would or does it vary by age?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So it varies. And and what we're talking about here is something we would own. So we have any number of ways in which we have access to land, whether it be maintenance easements, temporary easements for a project, but what we're talking here is the right of way that we own outright, basically.

[Candice White (Member)]: Just one clarification. Knowing that, for example, Highway 89 was built with federal funds, and our understanding is that we can't do anything to generate revenue on a highway that's been funded federally. But we can charge for things like this. Yeah. Because I'm just I'm just like, what what can we charge for or what can we not charge for? We said we can't have a toll. We can't

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Right. Right.

[Candice White (Member)]: Have EV, but we can do this. So just

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So we can do this because it is a nontransportation use of the right of way. We can charge for it, but any revenue we collect would have to go back into what would otherwise be an eligible project. So we could not necessarily take this money and apply it to EdFund, for example. But if we wanted to do something related to transportation that would otherwise be eligible, we can do that. And that I think is the genesis of the support, was to try to on an income stream to help bolster the T5.

[Candice White (Member)]: Okay. So we can earn revenue for projects that are not transportation related, like infrastructure? I just want to make sure I understood what you said.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: We can earn revenue from sources that are not transportation related so long as we point it towards a transportation related project.

[Candice White (Member)]: Okay. And the line is we cannot charge for transportation related projects in the right of way. But we can charge for non transportation related projects. Is

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: line? That

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Essentially. I'm not sure what a transportation related project is that we would charge for. You mentioned NEVI, for example. I think there's more complex issues of why we can't have a NEVI than the right of way and the competition between gas and all that. But generally speaking, I think you've summarized it. Okay, thank you.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Sorry, one last question. Right away, no, would be going longitudinally or even across a highway

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: or a

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: state road.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Correct, And I think that's a good point. So we're talking any sort of occupancy, and we're also talking interstates or state. It isn't exclusive to limited access highways, which again, will come up later. Thank you. So, one of the first objectives was to understand how people are using the right of way now. And so the consultant looked at the various data sources that we have. The first two categories are the right of way. How do we know where the right of way is? And I will just say the relative completeness and relative accuracy are very subjective, just broken into three very broad categories. So like I said, we do know where the right of way is, and we do have relative confidence that it's accurate. On the communication side, as I mentioned, accuracy and completeness go down pretty drastically. There's three, principal sources that we have data for. Broadband status twenty twenty four, data fiber status 2024, and cable routes 2024. Now those are reported by the utility to public service for 2024. Now you'll notice that the accuracy is different for fiber routes and cable routes versus the broadband, and the difference there is that the broadband was reported based on an address to a house, whereas the fiber and the cable was reported based on a ping on the center line of the road. So basically, we have a very defined address, but the center line of the road, that house that's connected for fiber or cable could be very different from where that center line point is. And so that's the difference there. Communication tower sites, obviously we know where those are. Those are fixed. They're a very discreet location. Again, any Act two fifty permits for towers and antenna, basically know and any other telecommunication facilities, have some level of confidence over it as far as completeness. Obviously, the accuracy is a little less for there. So that was really the objective of how we use the right of way. Now, the second and I think the more critical piece of this is how do other states address this issue? So, there's two relevant NCHRP reports. One's a little bit older than the other, but the first one managing longitudinal utility installations on controlled access highways, and so that was the limited access that I was referencing, and that's a twenty fourteen report. Then there was a 2023 report, Evaluation and Compensation Approaches for Utility Accommodations, and both these reports are accessible

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: online. Can

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: we assume that it's the responsibility of whoever is going on the right of way or on the right of way to report that rather than for you guys to say, hey. What's this doing here?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Absolutely. So in theory, if they are operating in our right of way, they need an eleven eleven permit to do so. Now I think the challenge is that eleven eleven permit is intentionally easy to get, and so we don't necessarily say, Okay, that pole has to be specifically this spatial coordinate. It's largely of drafted two dimensional type data. Okay, thanks. The other thing I just want to pause here for a second. As everyone knows, let's just take overhead utilities for a second. The lines go from pole to pole in a very straight line. Our roads very much do not travel in a straight line. And so when we talk about monetizing this, you need to have a fairly accurate measurement of how much of that line is actually in the right of way. So as a line or as our road weaves like this and the line goes straight, the accuracy of this is very important because a foot or two matters by potentially a lot. This is less difficult on the interstate for obvious reasons, but certainly on a lot of our state routes that are in the bottom of the valleys that are twisty, dirty, this creates a problem. So, when the consultant read the two reports, they then picked 10 states to dive deeper into California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin. So, I can see fairly different states wide distribution of five, everything. And they actually reached out and conducted interviews with none of these states. So, not only was it just a document search, but we actually talked to none of these states. With that, we looked at what the strategic goals were of those states. And you see some commonality here, and I didn't copy all of them, but very much a lot of it was trying to broaden the use of broadband, trying to essentially encourage the use of this. What you never see is revenue generation for the purposes of the T Fund. And again, this goes back to the key finding. It's not even clear whether the administrative costs to manage this program offsets the revenue that that brings in. I believe it was Iowa actually had an environmental mission where the money charged went to basically pollinators and greenscaping of the right of way. So, here's another important slide. So, of the states in which we monetized the right of way and weren't strictly bartering, you'll see that only Utah does that at state highways. Everyone else does it on interstates and freeways. Interstates are what we know to be the interstate, right, 89, 91, 93 freeways or any other limited access roadway. So, Super seven, one hundred eighty nine, things like that. So, again, nationally, folks recognize that the administrative burden of interstates and freeways is significantly less than state highways. So, this is where those funds go. And again, I mentioned Iowa, Living Road Rights Trust Fund, so that's a sort of environmental purpose. I believe that Iowa said, oh, wait, it does not cover it. So, they didn't even they wasn't ambiguous to them. They knew that the costs of the program, especially when you look at the other entities, so this isn't just an AOT thing or a transportation thing. You need public service, you need the cost of the utilities because they have to report a lot of this, they have to track a lot of it. So definitively said it did not cost or did not recover the cost. The other states were less sure, but they also were no one was definitive saying yes, it did cover. So the challenge yes.

[Candice White (Member)]: Sorry to

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: ask I about was counting on that. Does Vermont V Trans have a statement like that, that says here's what our policy is? Did I miss it in the beginning?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: No. So as of now, we are not trying to monetize telecommunications in the right of way. There's a bit of opposing missions within statute. One says thou shalt, but then another piece of legislation says you will not do anything that would inhibit the expansion of broadband. And so going back even to Schumann administration, the policy choice was not to charge for telecommunications in the right

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: of way. And so it's not written down anywhere, but you're saying in statutes, you can dig up a place that says, hey, you should recover some funds, and another place that says, hey, it's for public good and it's not a moneymaker. Is that what you're saying? Well, so

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: the first part, yes. The second part, there's a separate piece of legislation that basically says the state should not do anything to inhibit the expansion of broadband. It's not specific to transportation, but obviously if we were trying to monetize broadband, it would be counter to that objective.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Does the administration or anybody have the sort of written policies that here's how we're going about doing it. Here's the statute, but here's our policy.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I don't know if yeah.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: When it comes to bartering, how do you know that, hey, we got what we want or we're not trying to get anything because this is what policy says.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I don't know if it's an actual written policy. My sense of it is not, it was just a policy decision. Again, it goes back multiple administrations. And at this point, we're not even barbaric. So we're not saying, hey, we'll let you use it right away if you go this extra two miles and hook up this other community. That's not part of the paradigm either.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Okay, thanks.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So, challenges. And this really gets to the crux of the argument. If we were to try to monetize telecommunications in the right of way, the sense is there's limited interest from the telecom providers now to jump in both feet to try to do this. We don't have the staff to do this because the data doesn't exist. And not only does it require AOT resources potentially or transportation resources, but necessity to have very accurate data would require some sort of spatial software. This has to be a GIS governed thing. It can't just be two dimensional record plans. There's always going to be a tough time delay between when we start this effort and when we actually start getting the revenue, because there's going to be a significant effort to start locating all stuff. And to some extent, some of it underground, for example, we're not going to dig it up just to locate it. So whatever that delay is to retrofit, etc. Certainly, there's going be the perception that this is a regressive tax because obviously rural communities have a much higher per foot in the right of way per connection. And so the communication providers will be hesitant to hook up those communities and or they would need to charge more per hookup to do so. Again, that leads to the it will slow the development of broadband in underserved areas. Certainly, revenue generation because we don't know exactly how much telecommunications assets are in the right of way now, and we don't really know what the administrative costs would be. And then, the constant theme of there's uncertainty whether or not the revenue generator would even cover the cost to stand up the program and administer I'll just add to that, that then also makes it a very inefficient revenue generation source. If you spend $0.60 on the dollar in administration, then obviously, it's just an inefficient way to raise revenue. So, in conclusion, and this was taken right out of the report, a successful right of way monetization program in Vermont requires precise data management, significant development of workflow and process, strategic legislative support, collaborative industry engagement, and transparent fee structure frameworks. Currently, the agency, while highly capable, is followed by the aforementioned challenges and would have to allocate significant resources against an uncertain outcome. That was another point I didn't have a slide for, but I do want to mention, you've got to have some rationale for how you're charged here. And that was one of the key takeaways where some states were struggling. This can't be an arbitrary charge. There are a couple of different approaches to monetize this. One is an actual lease, typically in the twenty to thirty year time frame, and one would be a permanent fee based on footage or mileage. But both of those, you need to be able to justify that because, again, as we pointed out, we didn't buy the right of way ourselves. And so there has to be some justification of how we're monetizing it. We can't just arbitrarily say, you want to enter the right of way, got give us a million dollars. There has to be some basis for that, and there has to be some market equilibrium there, because if they move five feet over and move on private property, what would that cost?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So we heard yesterday on the rail side of things, and someone might have way, issues, they have a prescribed fee that is x amount of dollars per foot, as you cross the rail line, it is published and on their website you're going to pay x amount if you're crossing, x amount if you're going this way, x amount of fee for an application, etc. In the railroad side. That's what we heard yesterday, that's already published. On the highway side of things, the highway right of way does not exist or has not been a structured issue. Railroad structure is mostly borne out of a much more federally involved program that defines a lot less rail lines and a lot less scenario. So I understand that we're looking at we have this right of way all over the city and there's electric lines and telephone lines and cable lines running all over it it may or may not be in or out of our property or our right of way, it may or may not be on someone else's the private land that is adjunct as it moves around. And that's when we don't know for sure on the ones we can see, let alone if it's in the ground, and we don't know where exactly the path of it, we just know that it exists there. And to charge for it we would have to map this at a highly accurate rate as well as come up with some kind of fee schedule scheme, scheme's got a negative connotation, that's not my intent, but if you then apply to something that already exists versus anything that's new, which might be something different, and it would be a significant burden to run through this program to then still also not know what we would or wouldn't be able to charge. On top of that, we all know that would drive up the cost of electric and or the telephone or the cable in the house.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I will just add two little nuggets that are somewhat unrelated to this report. Generally, it's our practice when we allow folks in the right of way, especially on state highways, to push them to the edge of the right of way, that when we come back with another project, it limits the amount of conflict that may or may not be there. So, to Chair Walker's point, when we talk about the weaving of the road versus the straight line of the utility, we're already on the margins to begin with. So, you could be bouncing back and forth over that line thousands of times per mile because we've already pushed them to the edge of the right advice. As far as the monetization point, a lot of this came from a bill that was in house raised amines two years ago. And there was a JFO note on that, and they basically came to the same conclusion that the revenue generation was indeterminate because nobody knows.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, thanks for this, and I'm not kind of thinking we go forward, but this is good information. I assume when you do major projects on State Road, there's time spent finding out exactly where it is or not.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Overhead is easier because we go out there and look at it. Underground is much more difficult. As I said, the eleven eleven permit process is meant to be generally easy, but at the end of the day, when the crews are out there installing, let's just say, a fiber optic underground cable, they may hit something and they're like, okay, we'll do around it. And we don't know that. A great example was when we did Route 2 Richmond. I think how far south it was. Or westbound, I guess it was. We hit that fiber optic lock. We didn't think it was where it was supposed to be. DigSafe didn't think that's where it was. But we drove a lot of guardrail posts to it just because it wasn't where it was supposed to be. So that's just sort of the Diagmatic reality of construction is that the crew out there may not necessarily be right where you think it is. In this case, two or three feet is a big deal. Certainly in the sense it's driving guardrail posts, two or three feet is

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: a big deal.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Are the fees the same for a public utility versus I have a private business and I've got to run my sewer line underneath the road or there are times when it's not a public utility. I'm assuming the fees are pretty much the same.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, I think so. I don't think we necessarily distinguish between the two, although there's probably not a lot of truly private uses of the right of way in the sense of a private sewer or private water. Obviously, there's connections, but generally speaking, the most prominent public or private use where Joe Citizen or a business, it would be like a driveway permit, things like that. Other than that, we're talking about either utilities or fire districts, water districts, things like that. I will say we do have to sell antennas at the Williston Rest Area, which we do charge for. And I think those are the only two towers in the state.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative White, and then Representative Lalley.

[Candice White (Member)]: Thank you for these timing. So, I assume we're talking about AT and T, Comcast, that group of private companies?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Generally, and that's again some of the difficulty of this. So it says telecommunications, so yes, that is your traditional, but most electric utilities have paired communication lines for smart metering and just to help their assets in the sense of understanding where the outages may be and things like that. So again, however narrow a potential bill was drafted would help define that.

[Candice White (Member)]: So, I guess my question is, wouldn't these companies have mapped out where their lives are?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yes, but again, pragmatism of construction feet matter, and in theory, every town knows where their water lines are. We know that not to be true though, right?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: That's for sure.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Best practices, yes. In reality, they've got an idea, but they may not know within a foot or two.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Doctor.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Did, yeah. I just was looking ahead to the CHIP bill and if there, how you guys are envisioning how that's going to work. You mentioned driveways and you know, I know my town is looking at using it for some sewer connection upgrades for sites along Route 7. So is that the kind of thing that, obviously we need eleven eleven permit for that, for starters, But is that the kind of thing where there would be a fee involved to the agency? Or do guys have a sense for that yet?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I'm not really prepared to answer that. I would say, generally speaking, there's going to be an 11:11 fee.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: And that might capture all the coordination of picture. Okay, got it. I'd have to dig a little bit deeper into To predetermined territories.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So moving on from this, we found a lot of improvements that could be made in data collection and things like that. Is the department working on integrating some of those recommendations in data collection and accuracy and such? The deficits that you've identified.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So on the right of way front, are. Beyond that, I a lot of the telecommunication reporting is from the provider. At this point, and that's actually through public service, not AOT, that's who they report that information to.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: The Europe sector?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Correct. So if we go back to the data sources, other than the eleven eleven permits, are just or the consultant in this case actually mined that data from other agencies. That being said, because it's self reported, I don't know that there's any way to really mandate and or administer or enforce an accuracy standard at this point. For the right of way lines, obviously, as we do a project or whatever, we're making sure that that's accurate and bounded, meaning it closes. It's not just a two dimensional line on the plan somewhere, but it actually ties into everything else.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Gotcha. Thanks.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Are there any other recommendations or next steps out

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: of this exercise? No, at this point, the report wasn't asked to make any recommendations, just kind of an assessment of current practice. And I think we could safely say that to go down this road of trying to put a lot of effort into an uncertain future is probably not a priority. And there isn't a model from a revenue generation to augment the typical transportation funding sources nationally that would prove to be something we could follow.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Anybody else have anything else?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: You had a $10.15, right? $10.45, I think.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We can hit on any other subjects that we may or may not want to hit if you want to give us a 2¢ update on the big diversion diamond or any

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: of those other examples. Well, is a $10.50, but I do have a couple. Oh, you got

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: a sense of Well, then

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: you can I didn't see the report on the page? It's there. There?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: It's not a long report. I think it's 27, 28 pages, and there's a couple small appendices.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And pictures?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: There are no pictures, I don't think. I just can't read this. Yeah. There's a map. Yeah.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I thought the one picture was great.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Well that was mine. I can't give the consultant credit. That was mine. Any other questions? We've a couple minutes.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I did have a question on the diversion diamond. That something we is there still some work going on at this time? And is it Yes. Or Yeah. So some trouble blasting all that lift out? Or

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I don't know if there's any trouble. I mean, it's construction. But, yeah, we're we're progressing. And, yeah, certainly, once once season starts, we'll be very active out there, and, you know, so far so good.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: What about, the public survey on Exit 7, the Milton big project, Big Islands exit. You guys went out and did a survey of some sort on users or something like that.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Uh-huh. That's not ringing a bell. I'm not I don't I don't know.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Posting of some sort. Yeah. I mean, we

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: at the project level, they may have done a like, the public outreach ops may have done a satisfaction survey. I'm just not familiar with it.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Is that totally finished? Or do you have more work to do?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I think there's probably going to be some cleanup work and some vegetation. The other exciting thing on that project is long way driving obviously is an issue, and so we're installing some active deterrence technology at that location where if there's detection of a vehicle getting on and off ramp, there's various things that we're going to be employing there, which I don't believe is installed yet. It took a little bit of a procurement time, but that was an add on to the project. So that'll be the first install in the state for that technology.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So that exists in other states. That's not something we came up with.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: No, Connecticut's invested a lot of time and money into that. It is expensive and it takes resources, but they have used that technology very widespread.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Anybody else have anything else? Just an open thing. Are there any coming out of the last session with projects moving forward and or federal money grants, is there anything that like last time we came, the nebbe had been shut off. Is there anything like that that's happened, you know, that's worth noting?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Not at all. And I won't get political here, but I will say our current relationship with the administration, the Trump administration, is phenomenal. Cost of Apaches can speak more. And he'll

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: be in on Tuesday. Right.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: But I'll say everything's going great.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: No surprises.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: No. Our grants are getting executed. We're in communication with the Secretary's office, Federal Highway Administrator has heard our objectives and is actively helping us. So we've got a great relationship with this administration for transportation related issues.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Yes. Thank you. I just want as a sort of final note, this is just really interesting to kinda learn about the potential in this area, to take a bit of a deeper dive and find out what we can do and what we can't do. But I think for me, the takeaway is I would like to see us, and I would encourage the agency we've got this revenue disaster. Our public rights of ways, especially our state owned rights of ways, are publicly owned assets. And I think we need to be figuring out how to leverage every penny of value out of them. And right now, we're prioritizing movement of people and goods by vehicle. And I think there are opportunities to manage storm water better. We can do this very strategically. Now we have the designation program that are creating more economic value, business development, housing. Of course, we know all about that. But getting more taxpayers to pay the bills is, I think, the big takeaway that everybody is on the same page about. So I just would really encourage more of this exploration, and I hope my colleagues will be supportive of that too. Thank you.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I guess we'll get an update on Central Garage or on the new project at all at another time.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I think Todd would be more than happy to come in, and I think the secretary will mention that a little bit later today too as far as part of his his opener presentation.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And of course, the I-eighty nine welcome center is skyrocketing up the list of

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: projects. I won't get too deep into it, but it is in the white book.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Oh, that's a step. That's a big step. Thank you very will be

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: in the white book, excuse me.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: It will be in the white book. Look at that, we've got a preview. Uh-oh, you are in trouble. You got ahead of the

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: got out You over my skis. You got

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: out over you have given us a preview of something that is in the budget and in the busy bill for this year. So thank you very much for coming in. Appreciate the time.