Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Good afternoon, and welcome back for Thursday, 01/08/2026. Today, we have Secretary Flynn in to sort of maybe give us an update on from when we left seven months ago and what all the wonderful works that the agency had been up to. And

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: I don't know, I'm

[Speaker 0]: sure there's not necessarily a preview yet because we'll have you back in a couple of weeks after the T bill and the budget coming up. But we're anxious to hear what you'd like to share with us about what regions you've got to for the last eight months and whatever directions that takes. And hopefully, we'll be time for some questions. So happy New Year to you. It's great to see you and all of your team again. I don't know if you want to introduce them or not. And I'll leave all of that to you if you'd like. But there's certainly a lot of great familiar faces that we look forward to working with again in 2026.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Thank you very much, Chair Wachler. Happy New Year to the committee. For the record, my name is Joe Flynn. I'm the Secretary of the Agency of Transportation. I'm joined here today by our leadership team. Andrew Collier, the commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles Jeremy Reed, the chief engineer and director of the highway division Jana Morris, the director of administration Ernie Platno, the Director of Maintenance Todd Law, the Director of Fleet and Michelle Boomhauer, the Director of Policy Planning and Unarmoral Development and our agency legislative liaison. My goal is to highlight the agency accomplishments for 2025, and to lead off, we have a brief video, which Michelle will queue up here, that highlights the completion of a few of the projects. I-nine, Exit 17, intersection of Vermont Route 2 and Route 7, US Route 2 and US Route 7. In Chimney Corners in Colchester, you'll see not only is it a complicated project from the highway construction bridge portion of it, It replaced an original bridge that was built when 89 was built, but it also added some off ramp configurations, both north and southbound, and it completely reworked the incredibly busy intersection at Route 2 and Route 7. And one of the really interesting things about this project, I travel through it twice a day, every day, so I speak with experience, just in my position, but as a driver, was how the contractor was able to handle the volume of traffic up there and completely rebuild everything. Utilities, light poles, roadway, bridge, in my opinion as a commuter, truly very little interruption. There was a few days, but it's a complicated project. It speaks to the expertise of our team and the quality of the industry partners that we work with. You'll also see, and I don't know if it's playing behind me or not, but you'll also see one of our employees, Paul Libby, who's, I believe, out in the snow talking to you about rail bridges. I don't believe we had sound.

[Michelle Boomhauer, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development; Legislative Liaison (VTrans)]: Well, we're gonna have some

[Ernie Patnell, Director of Maintenance (VTrans)]: Oh, you are. Perfect. Ready. Okay.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: One of the things that Paul's going to discuss, and we will discuss also later in his presentation, is the accomplishments in 2025 in the rail program specific to rail bridges. Last year, the rail division reconstructed 29 bridges. This really, I think, deserves a call out because so much of this work is not seen by the public. It's off out in the pucker brush usually. It's not like a highway bridge which interrupts somebody someplace, and clearly the trains have to schedule around that, but it was a tremendous amount of work. You'll see the numbers, but if my recollection is correct, we have something like 164 of the 171 bridges we have now that are up to the 286,000 standard, where fifteen years ago, we had like 30% that were up to that standard. And yes, that's fifteen years, but you have to remember that our funding for rail, like air, is grant money. It's not formula money like our highway money is. So the accomplishment of the rail program in upgrading these bridges and why is this important? Because in particular along this line, some of our freight rail customers, and in particular, Olbia in Florence, can now more economically fully load its cars, which it wasn't before, because the bridges were the weak link, if you will, as far as people to see the solar when you were there, that hadn't been built yet. So it is other than the backup generators, we're not aware of a wood pellet fired backup generator. So, every single thing could be done was done, including some pretty significant EV infrastructure that was built there as well since you were there for your visit. Why don't we go to that video, and then we'll continue on?

[Speaker 0]: Well, Representative McCoy is not here today from a slide over her way at all. I

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: can do this too. Here we go. Well, that's S. E. 17. I recognize it. Where's the volunteer?

[Michelle Boomhauer, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development; Legislative Liaison (VTrans)]: We were supposed to have sound. I have the IT tech in here. Don't know why. That's good.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: The

[Speaker 0]: upper right hand corner is on mute. I'm not sure.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: While we're waiting for the video, one of the things that you saw a picture of, and hopefully we get the the audio, is this product called glass foam aggregate. And I believe, Jeremy, this was the first time we used this product, to the scale we used it.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: Certainly to this scale, yes.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: And it basically replaces traditional rock gravel. It performs similarly as far as construction, but it reduces the weight of a vertical lift of it, if you will, and it's important for the soils below. They can get into more technical terminology, but it was a new ground for us as well. So there's some new tech on this project. And you're seeing the rail piece. Unfortunately, there's Paul. Paul is one of our lead engineers.

[Speaker 0]: Just playing that line, you want to rewind it. I'll turn the volume off on mine.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Let's start over. You've covered one way or the other, right?

[Speaker 0]: Start over and I'll turn it up on mine.

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I'll do this.

[Speaker 0]: We'll sync

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: it up here.

[Michelle Boomhauer, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development; Legislative Liaison (VTrans)]: Sync up. I don't know. My my show speed might be

[Unknown construction project engineer (Video narrator)]: Next to Interstate 893017. We're also building

[Speaker 0]: Here we go.

[Unknown construction project engineer (Video narrator)]: It's a big one. There's a lot of different structures to do. We are doing lots of different things. We're reconstructing interstate on and off ramps to Interstate 89 here at Exit 17. We're also building a new bridge on US Route 2 that spans over Interstate 89. On this project, we are using a new material new to V Trans, and it's called Foamed Glass Aggregate, FGA for short. And it's lightweight aggregate material that we are using for the backfill of one of the mechanically stabilized earth walls at the bridge abutment, and it's being used because of its lightweight qualities. So using a lighter weight aggregate within the confines of the abutment wall of the bridge is putting less pressure on the soils underground, but are pretty clayey and wet. And so they want to move around a lot. And so by exerting less force, we're sort of helping keep the bridge abutment stable.

[Paul Libby, Rail Engineering Staff (VTrans)]: The capacity just is not the same in the 1800s as it is today. Our trains are heavier, they're faster, but therefore there's a lot more loading and impacts on the structures that we had to react to and rebuild or rehabilitate these structures and in some cases replace to meet those standards. The Vermont Agency of Transportation received a build grant from the Federal Railroad Administration back in 2018, which included the upgrade of 29 bridges from Brella to Bennington and on to Hoosick, New York, which is all a state owned rail line. This allows an opportunity for connecting the other rail routes into this area to meet the national standard for freight capacity. A lot of the work that we did on these bridges included a rehabilitation of the existing structure or like the one behind me was a full replacement

[Unknown video narrator (St. Albans Garage segment)]: of this bridge in Dorset. This garage is responsible for maintaining 120 miles of roadway from the St. Albans area down to the Colchester area and just east of the big, you know. The old facility was really outdated

[Ernie Patnell, Director of Maintenance (VTrans)]: and we had to overgrown it where our trucks barely put in. Being further into

[Unknown video narrator (St. Albans Garage segment)]: the city of St. Albans, it could take us an extreme amount of time to get our trucks from the interstate to be reloaded, especially during the storms or the holidays. And it could take up for an

[Ernie Patnell, Director of Maintenance (VTrans)]: hour to get the truck back home. The

[Unknown video narrator (St. Albans Garage segment)]: facility, garage space is a much bigger, made of all four rooms for our limits trucks, planes, the plows, and This building doesn't use any fossil fuels in any

[Ernie Patnell, Director of Maintenance (VTrans)]: of the buildings on this property.

[Unknown video narrator (St. Albans Garage segment)]: In the main garage we have lapel boilers along with heat pumps and in this building we have heat pumps for heating. Our team really loves the new facility because it's cleaner, it's brighter, larger bays, and we are closer to the highways and the interstate especially to get crews on the road as soon as possible.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Sure. Okay, back

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: to the main show here.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Okay, so we'll start the rest of the presentation with the Highway Division. The highway division is managed by Jeremy Reed and Aaron Sisson. Jeremy is with us today. The intersection picture that you see here is Industrial Avenue and Williston Road in Williston. This is an incredibly busy intersection. I used to work out there forty years ago, and it was a very busy intersection then. This puts multiple lanes turning up into the industrial park, and it was a very complicated project regarding utilities. So, they're partnering with the utility companies to have to move so many different things that were in the ground to expand this project. This was, of course, part of our project, but we have to work in partnership with these utility companies to get that done. So that's what the picture depicts. In the division, three twenty four full time people managing development and delivery of the highway program bridges, rest areas, town highway bridges, as well as ongoing monitoring and planning for the upgrades to the assets that you're responsible for. You'll see the four main sections, which are in the columns. I won't read each of those. I think you're familiar with meeting these leaders throughout your time on the committee, and they will be in a course as we go out through this session for further testimonies. And throughout any of this, happy to take questions in the moment, or we want to keep a lot of time for questions afterwards. Some of our highlights, we talked about Exit 17, which is on the left. The project on the right is Reedsboro, Vermont, down near the Mass border. Not only does this project rebuild or replace, I should say, what will become a three seventy foot span when it's completed, but it's an incredibly long temporary bridge, which took quite a bit of time and engineering to put in place just to be able to start the project. But getting back to Colchester again, it was an example of really some combined objectives, like I said, and that's more unusual. Usually it's an intersection project or a bridge project, but 17 did multiple things at the same time. I guess I'd like to think both as a secretary and a commuter, you go in, you kind of blow the thing up, you create disruption and you get out of there and you get it done instead of doing something and then you come back a few days later and as a commuter, you raise your eyebrows like, how did we get the sequencing here? But there was a lot of forethought put into this project by the agency. The next slide is a couple of other bridge projects we want to highlight. These are both rehabilitation projects, unlike AZ-seventeen, which was totally new construction. And it's an example of what we try to accomplish by doing the right amount of work at the right time at the right place. So, getting to a structure before it needs replacement, of course, that's less costly, and it's obviously better for everyone, including the users, and sometimes it may not look like it's the project, but people might wonder why we're doing this here, when I see something that's, in my mind, different or worse, but this also speaks to the asset management program and project prioritization and the various things that you've heard us speak to. But we'll be extending the life of these bridge structures significantly. I'm sure you recognize the bridge on the right, that's the Queechee Gorge Bridge. It's an extremely old bridge, originally built as a rail bridge, and then converted to highway bridge. Complicated given the heights, the vertical heights. Complicated given the volume of traffic up the interstate into Quechee and into Woodstock and onto Killington, depending upon a person's destination, and a lot of engagement from the agency with the community, A lot of engagement, of course, everywhere we go, we get input. Obviously, there's often concerns and opinions, rightfully so, from the business community, from residents. And this bridge in particular also has a history that we had to take into account as well. And we were very sensitive to that. And I think it's fair to say that much of the final design and much of the cadence in which the project was being rolled out was due to the fact that we rightfully listened with an empathetic ear about some of those other factors aside from just the business aspect of it. Because frankly, those are more important, and we did the right thing there. And again, it's a very good project. Both of these projects, like all of our projects, involve very good partners that we must have in order to accomplish success. The next slide, you're familiar with these, going back to the results based accountability days of a decade and a half ago, but this is the matrix on our bridge deficiency report. The purple down at the bottom is poor ratings, and then you move up to fair and good. I always qualify that condition, and when we say poor, we're not talking safety. If we are of the opinion a bridge is unsafe, something's happened, or we've discovered something, and it's happened probably half a dozen or less than 10 times in my time in this job, I'll be notified by the highway division or maintenance, depending on the moment, and immediately close a bridge. And I have the authority to do that under law, and we do, and we have. So deficiency is not safety. It's the point I'm trying to make. We are in Vermont in very good position regarding the nation and regarding the neighborhood when it comes to the condition of our bridges. Much of the success that we recognized and realized in Vermont is a result of Tropical Storm Irene, quite frankly, because in the time since, we believe it's a 100 or slightly more.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: Well, I'd say 100.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: 100 bridges were completely rebuilt or have been since Tropical Storm Irene that otherwise would have just been in our White Book. They would have been in the program, and they wouldn't have been accomplished in the last fourteen years as they were. Out of every moment that can be adversity, sometimes there's some good that comes from that. In the way of the bridge infrastructure in Vermont, we've recognized that. And of course, we keep after them. As you know, We'll discuss pavement a lot this year, we'll discuss funding. But as you saw on those other slides, doing the right thing at the right time in the right place, we can't let bridges get away from us because they're much too expensive to sort of get back into control and get back into condition. This does speak to the efficacy, if you will, of the program. The next slide again, you're familiar with, and pavement is a little bit of a different subject. Our fair and good numbers remain strong. You'll see that our poor and very poor decrease in the last measured year. We haven't had all the data in from '25, which is why this still shows '24. And this does not assume the end conversation that is yet to come regarding sustainable funding, and what's it going to look like in three years or five years, and we know that. This is, again, a snapshot of accomplishments in where we are in the moment. And the other thing that I always feel compelled to say is when we look at the poor and the very poor, we're flipped at and we talk about our good and our fair condition is growing, we're cognizant of the fact that if a Vermonter lives in a place where there's a poor road or a very poor road by our measurement, and that's sort of the sum total of their driving experience, that's 100% of their experience. We understand that. And so, point that out because we're not resting on the fact that that's a shrinking number at the moment, because frankly, it's a dynamic number, changes every year. And it's fundamentally perhaps probably driven by age and by what the paving budget is, but we are aware of that. So, next we move to fatal crash data. The fatal crash data for '25 is not final, simply because not every fatal crash, especially in the last part of calendar twenty five, has been fully closed as a case. There could be toxicology that's still out, which may or may not rule out impairment. And quite honestly, there could be incidences where there could have been a medical event, and if there's still a medical investigation underway, that hasn't closed yet. So these numbers are subject to slight changes perhaps, but at the end of the day, the number of fatal crashes were up somewhat. The number of fatalities were up somewhat. Some interesting outcomes from the data show that alcohol onboard in a fatal crash is down. Drug use nearly doubled. So, there's encouraging news and very discouraging news. And then you have alcohol and drug use. So, it's very clear to draw a direct connection between the use of drugs and death on the highways, But alcohol use, or alcohol of the person who died is down, which is the right direction. Another trend that continues to be very frustrating is the lack of seat belt use continues to trend well over fifty percent of those who die. While I don't believe it's a data point yet, We may be able to create it, or at least back up the comment I'm gonna make, but much of what I see across my desk and that we all can read, it appears as though there's an awful lot of young males who die, who aren't wearing their seat belts. And I said earlier today that when I was kind of middle age, you heard that a lot about older people because it might've been generational, haven't used one ever, I'm not going to, and that sort of thing. But when you start to see people in their late teens who really haven't been driving along, dying on the roadway, and they weren't even wearing their seatbelt, it just really causes me to wonder, we must have some opportunity in education, I guess. You don't know about their driving role models or anything. But to me, that's just an awful avoidable reality. But I'll leave that there. Far as the trending, 2019, we've testified to this. That was pre pandemic. That was an anomaly, a very welcomed anomaly. But it was an anomaly in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Upstate New York, even Quebec. And I haven't heard a person yet among my colleagues or peers, or even from some of the national organizations we belong to through DMV and VTrans, really wrap a why was that the case? It's certainly a welcomed outcome. We just don't know why that was the case. But anyway. We'll move into district maintenance and fleet right now. It's a staff of five zero six people. They oversee the maintenance of the roadways, keep the fleet on the road, support technical service sections. They have the responsibility for the FHWA emergency relief program. So when our roadways get damaged, among this group goes out and creates the documentation for reimbursement for FHWA. They also go out and help to create the documentation for FEMA. We roll up the numbers in real time from VTrans employees to the EOC in Waterbury, so VEM knows how are we tracking toward whether or not we meet the county threshold or the state threshold for a potential declaration due to damages. When I was at emergency management, that could take days when I was the director. B TRANS has put together the technology where, and I have literally seen this in this job now, where within twenty four hours, I think it was in '23, we were starting to get a sense in real time the numbers were actually changing on the screen. It was pretty interesting to watch. And we knew we were gonna hit the metrics per declaration. And that's important in that it allows then VEM to start the paperwork process. It doesn't mean you have the sum total of all the damages, but quite frankly, that's not the job at the moment. The job is, do we meet the minimum threshold? And if so, then we have all this other work to do. So we start the paperwork and we keep populating it with the continuing incoming information. So, ability to move quickly like that is a real enhancement.

[Speaker 0]: Just a quick question. I believe we're still in litigation with the administration. We were denied some penal monies. Yeah. Clayton, thank

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: you for letting me speak.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. So is is the 454 is what we're litigating or it says it's not eligible. Is that that part? I was just wondering the pot of money that we're trying to

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: go after that. Well, we're actually we're not really litigating, but thanks for bringing that up. Yeah. On the twenty five storm, 07/10/2025, which is a picture of on the next page, if you go to that, this is up in the Northeast Kingdom in the Burke, Newark area. The state put together a declaration request based on the data that it had, and it was denied, as you say, Representative Corcoran. Then there was a period, there was a press about whether, why are we appealing or whatnot? I can say this, EM never has put together something it didn't think has validity, because you don't want that reputation as a state. There were times when I was there that we might not have put something forward because you just don't want them on the other end, whoever the them are, and different administration when I was there, you just don't wanna get that reputation. And so it was denied. And the rest of everything that came with that out of DC was unnecessary, but it is what it is. In the process of then what, we actually learned that there was more damage in some of these small communities that they hadn't provided. So the appeal to the denial, to your point, is based on new information, which increased the number, which we absolutely believe gets us well beyond any doubt or any question. And the rest of it, of course, is the decision of any president, any president, in nine declarations when I was the director, and you literally get a call and said, in fifteen minutes, the White House will alert the allegation. You have fifteen minutes to contact your governor. That's at least the way it went. So it comes from the top. And so that appeal is there. There's no typical timeline that, you know, you might get an answer on that. I can say that in my observations during the Biden administration, the answers were coming fairly quickly. And frankly, they've come fairly quickly in this administration. It seems to me, as I recall, they're coming faster than they might have in my time there, but they may not always be the answer you want. So what's that number? Well, that's a really good question, and I wanna be careful I don't misspeak, but I believe it's about double what the original application was for. But I'd have to get back to you with that answer.

[Speaker 0]: How do you know what the original stuff is?

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Well, if anybody wanted to shoot a text to director of No,

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: it's okay. I'm looking at No, that

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: we can try

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: to find that number out. And again, I'm not trying to testify on behalf of emergency management or director of foreign, but it's a good question that you asked. But an appeal is, I I guess, we think of the word when we think of it in a court case, so therefore that is litigation. I don't think this is considered a court case through the FEMA process. So just a

[Speaker 0]: note I'm just wondering how that's gonna play out. I mean, obviously, budget's

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: a couple weeks away, and Well that flow of money works. I gotta believe that history shows the budget's not built on money we hope to get. And the only other sort of an odd reality of this is that, and this is just the sort of a sidebar, but if that original application hadn't been denied, we gotta get X. And then we found out there was actually all this other damage, like there's an appeal process to try to increase it, but that could be, in other words, if this is not denied, it could be richer to the Vermont towns than the original application was. That's all. So we pretty much covered this. These are just two pictures of some of the damages occurred.

[Speaker 0]: Just

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: to clarify, I just wanna make sure I'm understanding the conversation. We're talking about the $450,000 that was not eligible for Federal Highway. And then after submitting, after getting those numbers together, you then realize that number is about double what it Is that what we're talking about?

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: No, think the four fifty is our system, but it wasn't FHWA eligible. That's not what the FEMA number was, if that answers your question. Yeah, I incorrectly

[Speaker 0]: zeroed that in those in Ukraine.

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: All right, I think we can listen that.

[Speaker 0]: It was related to not being eligible, yeah, definitely.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: So the next the next slide speaks to our central garage. These are pictures from down on Route 302, where we remained since the flooding of well, you could go back eighteen years, but the flooding of 'twenty three, December '3, some flooding in 'twenty four. This is the third winter that our staff and the mechanic staff at Central Garage are still working in a micro space, having lost the buildings we lost use of down there. They're doing really excellent work. Morale's been really, really good. You'll hear more from Director Law, our superintendent Dave Ferber on testimony for Central Garage, but this is that team. Central Garage keeps the entire fleet going. And you know, we have the T plate fleet, which to us is about $75,000,000 worth of equipment. And we have the degree of F plate vehicles, which are the BGS vehicles. So it's a big investment. We own and operate and register the T plate fleet, which are these trucks and a lot of the pickups that you see. And the DMV vehicles are an AOT property. Central Garage maintains those as well. And we have some unique vehicles for rail. They can get on the rail. They're high rail vehicles. We have some unique vehicles for aviation, some large snow removal equipment. It's very diverse operation, which really leads to an exciting talking point, and that's the reconstruction of Central Garage. The legislature agreed to the purchase price and the purchase of land on the Payne Turnpike in Berlin. If you're familiar with where the former Middlesex Barrack was rebuilt and the old library building and is now the Berlin Barrack up by the Comfort Inn and Shaw's and the Park and Ride and the Credit Union and the high school. This is our land up there. It was about 23 acres, I think, we purchased. The building that you see should go under contract, we hope in a week or so. We have a successful bid. We're not at liberty to discuss it. We're still in negotiations with the low bidder, but I can tell you that the low bid came in under the guaranteed money we have from FEMA to build it. And we have the match, which is part of Chief Recovery Officer's Barnum's bucket of post 'twenty three funding. So we intend to issue a contract, and the contractor has indicated to us that things are favorable, they think they can get us in the building in twelve months. So a lot of good news there. What you see in this picture would be the side opposite what you would see from the panned turnpike if you were to drive up there. And we're happy to bring you up there someday, show you what it's gonna look like, especially if, of course, there's construction work underway perhaps towards spring. But the building will look the same with the exception of the center portion of it that you see green and brick. You're gonna have the same number of overhead doors on the other side, so you'll be able to come in from both sides. We're gonna double the amount of space with the same footprint just because of the design difference, A little bit of widening of what we would have gone with compared to what you've seen up in Swan when you saw that building. Very similar as far as the garage portion of it, except a little bit wider so we can accommodate vehicles from both sides. The center part- Just

[Speaker 0]: a quick question. Was there an agreement with FEMA with the original central garage to tear that down and make it non, you know, just won't be able

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: to utilize that, sell it. There's no agreement yet, that's separated though from this, which is to our benefit, because one is not tied to the other. But we're pursuing that with FEMA, but we have said that's what we're doing. I mean, it's there's gonna be some cost to that. But and the governor has said that. So the state the agency of transportation is not going to go back there.

[Speaker 0]: No. No. No. Know that you're now, but I thought it was a stipulation that nobody could go back there.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Right. That is the that is the attention. I mean, as far as an agreement and, you know, this is all still being worked out. You know? Probably one of the ways to assure that is if it's in the town of Berlin, if through any number of funding mechanisms, are being pursued with FEMA and any other opportunities, there's a degree of mitigation that has to occur. Buildings have to be demolished. If the property then I'm just conjecture, but if it were turned over to the town of Berlin, as hazard mitigation goes, any town who is in that position then has to agree, to your question, never to put a building back there, never do anything that would become FEMA eligible for the future. And it's intended to give volume and space to the river. So if that plan continues, we are not changing course on that. But I do believe it was the right maneuver to not tie one to the other, because we would not be at the point where we're at now with replacing the billboard, if we had to tie it to what next for there.

[Speaker 0]: No, no, no, totally agree. I was

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: just wondering as far as,

[Speaker 0]: you know, down the road, if there was any value to that, but it doesn't sound like there's gonna be any value whatsoever.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: We're not planning to use it. And again, there's so many different conversations, with the possible exception of maybe the little brick building that's toward the front, but if this gets turned over to the town, that'll be a different conversation, that'll include lab. The second bullet for the record, just wanna say that that's incorrect, Construction is not starting next week. Was just We were anxiously optimistic, I think, when we put the bullet together, but it is all good news. And the other thing is, we've cemented the FEMA deal. So FEMA made us the offer, we pondered it a bit, we had an option. We could accept the offer given us, or we could hold out. And we accepted the offer because the offer was for more than the bid. Holding out would have not been the delta to any possible up number wouldn't have been worth the risk, especially, in my opinion, in Washington today. You go with a bird in the hand, we had enough money, we can do what we need to do, and it was the right thing to do.

[Unknown committee member]: You started talking about the center. What are you doing with the center?

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Yeah, no, thank you. The center is going to be administrative, it's two floors. It's gonna be administrative, there will be male, female washrooms, shower, locker, a place for employees to eat. There'll be a room to do training in, a few offices, two, three, four offices perhaps, and most of it will be parts. And we're going with a footprint for parts, but we're using two stories as well. So there will be a vertical element to our parts storage. Part of this we saw when we did some touring of facilities. We visited one particular facility that really, it makes a lot of common sense, but they just said, you know, we're paying for a square footage. You can spend less money going up and using that extra space than you can to build your footprint. We also had constraints on this property with wetlands and everything else. So it's probably half and half. I'm looking at Todd as far as parts versus non parts. Pretty close. Yeah.

[Unknown committee member]: Parts for everything, right?

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: That's the intention. That's right. Somebody

[Unknown committee member]: down south needs a part.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: Yes. You guys have it.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Well, it's what we do today, but this is a much, much better way to do it. It'll be more modern so much as if you are working on a truck at the last bay or any of the bays, you don't have to walk back over and pick up 15 quarts of oil in your hand, it's gonna come to you in a hose at the truck. And it's all calibrated to the probably ounce, so our ability to bill ourselves will be, I mean, it'll be tighter and it's all internal, it's not like we do this to bill customers, but our ability to run this as a business that you would see if you went to a modern dealership. And that's not to say it's not for any reason other than the best management practices. And in cases, a lot it's better for the employees as well. There'll be airdrops, but one entire Well, let me just one entire There are a couple of different HVAC systems due to the size. But this building is also built, the center that you see, the green box with the brick center is built, is designed in a way that if the state chose, it could go vertical again, for whatever reason. And then, you know, that was a, not quite an eleventh hour change, but probably a seventh inning stretch in the process. And a builder I know, who I work for, said, there again, to my point about the parts storage, it makes sense to really think about what can we do in the future on this property or this building if we needed Not that we won't be there for garage, but if we wanted to add a third floor or fourth floor. And so the skeleton is designed for that and the HVAC that would have otherwise been in the middle is not there because you wouldn't wanna take all that off. It's just added cost. You can put it anywhere you want when you're building the building new. So there's a lot of thought gone into this building.

[Unknown committee member]: So the foundation's overdone, so you can

[Speaker 0]: Yes.

[Unknown committee member]: It's engineered for now.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: So you can handle going up. The center, yes. We're not anticipating going up with the bays where you see the garages.

[Unknown committee member]: So those are all those frost walls and slabs.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: I'm looking at Todd, he's led this project from August '23 to the point where we're about to sign a contract to construct. Again, we'll share all the details with you when it's final. And I think another good thing about that is we had multiple and competitive bidding. So that's just a good thing as we look to this coming year, I think, for even our projects, our highway projects. We had a handful of contractors and pretty competitive bids. So, it was good. Policy planning and intermodal development. The staff in policy planning, research, mapping, commercial highway access permits, the eleven eleven permits that you know about, long range planning, those of you that are aware of the, you know, the PPL process and the study that was done around for regarding 22A, for example, the work with the regional planning commissions, economic development, all of this is in policy planning and intermodal development along, and you'll see some of the bullet points up there. These just talk about some of the things that were accomplished in 2025. I won't read every one, but I want to point out two thirty eight of all the municipalities in Vermont were engaged with and by us, and we did something for them in the way of a planning document. You know what, I think that those things need to be said, and we'll talk more about our involvement with municipalities under administration. But they don't show up when we put the page together in the budget book that shows what we invest in the towns, which you all rightly are keen on hearing what we had said. But we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in other ways that we don't roll into that page, That's all. And so I think that they work very hard, and we wanted to focus on the fact that these are other things we do at towns as well. And yes, we're paid to do this work, but we do it in support of towns and for towns. And it also speaks to growth, the number of eleven eleven permits, you see four fifty. The Act two fifty permits, we review Act two fifty permits by district. And of course, if they ping a transportation need or an access permit. So if the Act two fifty permit indicates there needs to be an eleven eleven permit, we have to weigh in on that. So there's a lot of a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes mapping Every map for every town is done by AOT, and every road is recertified every year by AOT. Again, it's administrative, it's not new, but it's worth calling out because these are sort of back of the house support we provide to municipalities, which just gets overlooked, understandably, when we look at the big numbers for town highway bridge and class two paving and things like that.

[Speaker 0]: Mr. Secretary, is there any kind of history or trend on the 11 elevens of four fifty ups, downs? My only question from perspective is everybody's talking about building and activity, and is there any veracity there about whether or not we're seeing an additional side develops and additional driveways and additional don't know if that's just something Pull

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: over my shoulder to the director.

[Speaker 0]: That's what we can take on later, are we seeing, is that we see activity that means there's a lot going on up down from where it's been.

[Michelle Boomhauer, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development; Legislative Liaison (VTrans)]: Sure. For the record, Michelle Boomhauer, Agency of Transportation. What we'll have to do is bring that data in. We do have that data and chart it out for you, and we're going be in next week talking about the intersection of land use and transportation as it relates to Act 181, which was passed a couple of years ago, lot of land use reform and Act two fifty reform. So we're gonna be giving you an update on that, so maybe at that time we can also bring this into perspective as well.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: Thank you very much.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: So the next slide is the Environmental Policy and Sustainability Group. It's a lot of bushel, if you will, of a lot of things EV related to include the NEVI funding for electric vehicle chargers. I wanna take a moment to speak about that. Over the summer, there was some press about the pause out of US DOT on the funding. They told us they would get back to us. They did get back to us. They reopened the spigot. We got the money, and the team did an incredible job obligating all the money, which will deliver 19 new sites and upwards of perhaps 60 plug ins. So a site can have multiple heads and one head can have two plugs. These will be like the Bradford site, if you're familiar with it. That was our first. It's important to say that for a whole lot of reasons, but the US DOT, in the end, did what they say they were going to do. So, specific to US DOT, I wanna just be clear, there's so much noise out there, but as the committee of jurisdiction, it's important you know that specific to USDOT, specific to the Office of the Secretary of Transportation, our experience is this is the most responsive office we've dealt with in a long time, and according to Costa, whom many of you know, and I think he comes in to testify, he's our federal legislative point person, he says going back to the time when the Secretary of Transportation was Raila Hood, which I believe it might have been in the George W. Bush administration. So goes in other words, his experience is that the communication back and forth couldn't be really better right now. So please separate a lot of this rhetoric out there, and I'm not taking a position on all the rest of that, but it's important to know that that dialogue is good. They said they were going to pause it, they were gonna release it, that's what they did. And it isn't just that, but so far, the back and the forth has been very good. And Costa could put a lot more texture to that statement, but it's important to say that. Encouraging to us, we'll see what happens, of course, because we all await what reauthorization will look like next year, but that's another discussion which really is more about the budget. So, the NIVY program is moving forward. This also ran the program on Replace My Ride and the incentive programs to buy EVs and e bikes. Those programs have cashed out. And they did what they were designed to do when the legislature put them into law and funded them. And we ran them to the ground, if you will, empty the accounts. The tally for Vermonters, I believe we probably have more on that as far as the detail, but we can come in with all the metrics, but it was a good program.

[Speaker 0]: So that's

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: basically, yes?

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Thank you for that, so I can hear. I assume that levy money can only be used for charging. Correct, Correct. And the other thing I just wanted to point out is there's gonna be a proposal in a bill some of us are putting forward to make it possible to use credit card, you know. Chargers? Chargers, because it's so complicated. You know, this card or that card, know, why can't it just be like a destination? Anyway, so I don't know whether that could be part of the

[Speaker 0]: contract.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, or Patrick Murphy might know more about that process. I know how we would charge with the vehicles I've driven that are AOT vehicles, but we a universal credit card, which fleets have, whether it's for gasoline or diesel fuel or the electric. So we can pull in any brand gas station and use the same card. And the electric facilities that we have, based on who the supplier is, they have a fob we use.

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: You've But got a charge for later EV go, or you've got, you know, they're numerous, depending on where you are.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: I'm assuming it would make sense for the industry to move in that way eventually, but those points of sale are controlled by the contractor, by the vendor, not by the agency. We grant the money to build it, and maybe where you're going with that is, could specifications in the future require the technology when it's available? And it would seem sensible to me, but I don't know what's available right now. Okay, thank you. Sure. The next page speaks about the transit program. Changes have been made on the performance resulted in We've all seen the press, you've heard testimony from the different transit providers regarding service availability and some of the challenges that some have had, some of the successes as well that you see with the ride on demand available across the state. The fixed route services are working their way back from the pandemic lift of ridership. They're clearly not where they were before, but I think perhaps there's a case to be made for, know, things are different than they were pre pandemic too, with perhaps a lot of the client base that used to take public fixed route public transit, whether it's remote work or anything else. So I'm not sure we know exactly where the pinnacle will be of getting back to the highest point. The next page has to do with the rail program. We heard a little bit about that in the video, the 29 bridges. Amtrak ridership, we're very pleased to say, has exceeded our modeling. It is up on both of our trains, doing very well. The funding programs we're seeing so far seem to be secure with grant programs that are still available. Again, we won't really know much. Well, we won't know anything for certain until October 1, but we'll start to get some hints fairly soon about what reauthorization will look like and what will be out there in the way of grant opportunities for air and rail and transit. But right at this point, we're very bullish, if you will, on the continued progress in the rail program, much of what you heard Paul talk about in the video. Aviation is the next slide. The picture that you see is the new terminal that was built this fall, completely finished, open for business, occupied at Coventry at the Northeast Kingdom International Airport. This terminal has been decided to be the template going forward for new terminals that we build on our property, looking ahead perhaps to Middlebury, Springfield when the time comes, any of them when the time comes, but those are a couple that are in the not so distant distant future. And this building is also designed with the idea, similar in a smaller scale to the central garage we talked about, but it's designed with the ability to add on horizontally, not vertically, with sort of thoughtful construction the first time. And here you'll just see some of the accomplishments. I won't read through all of those, but I think you've heard of all of these, We've done a lot of work in Bennington, representative Corcoran and I were down there before Christmas, met with users. We do have what might sound like a setback in Springfield. It's really not, I mean, a setback is a setback is a setback. It's a delay in the money we know we're gonna get from FAA, but it actually allows us to get some of the easements we need to finish the tree clearing in order to do the runway project. So at this point, we're not considering that a delay to the delivering a runway project. We'll just have more ducks in a row. And then obviously, terminal at Northeast Kingdom. And administration division, staff 132, the orange rectangles are all of the different operations within the group. Many of them are fairly self explanatory. Wanna point out a couple, in particular Vermont Local Roads, facilities management in learning and development, And I wanna be sure everybody gets, and even emergency management, we'll talk about that briefly, but everybody gets the proper call out. But between Vermont Local Roads and learning and development, that's where we also invest a lot of money in your talents. We invest this money, obviously, through the local road program. But if you move to the training Well, I don't wanna really jump ahead, but I will. Excuse me, Michelle, if you go to twenty four, just the way I'm describing this, you'll see, especially on the right hand side of that screen that shows training opportunities on the right side of that, those are real dollars, and we have that data because we contract for that work, and these are dollars that we spend helping to train municipal employees from towns across Vermont, many of whom may be represented by you in this room. And so again, sort of like what I was saying earlier, these are dollars we don't capture and roll up when we show you the town investment on our budget page. And it's good business, I'm not suggesting, you know, it's important for us to provide this training, because it keeps that seamless connection with our counterparts and local highway garages, but it's work that we do for local government. So getting back to page 22, sorry, Facilities management, they handle the buildings that we own and operate, as you know, I think from prior years' testimony, the vast majority of our buildings are owned by the agency. They're not managed through BGS. The spaces that we lease are managed through BGS, and we welcome that partnership. Emergency management, we've always, I think, tried to figure out the best way to describe that. It's safety and security, and really an awful lot of it, and there'll be further testimony, I think, this session, but an awful lot of it has to do with homelessness and encampments. Some of you in the room have reached out. You've had some concerns about activity in your areas. And it's a very It's just a very troubling reality. I think for all of us it is as people, and it's constantly happening. I drove home one day this week, and as I crossed Exit 12 northbound, and I looked to the new park and ride just the other day, it looked like an RV park again. And we've worked with people, our staff, they do the right thing. They worked with a couple who lived in their car in that park and ride, and it was an arduous process, but we found them housing. They were from like Missouri, they were living in the car, and we found them housing. There were people living in an RV in Ferrisburg, and they had a wood stove or some other device in the RV, a child and And a one of the first things our staff did is went out and bought smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors and just gave them to them. Before we even started to say, Look, you can't live here, but let's try to figure out what we can do. We work with human services. So many of these people are truly out. But often these people are people that are out of shelter they otherwise had, but for some reason something's gone wrong in their life and they have to take to their vehicles or take to the street. Then you have more of I don't know even the right terms today, I want to be careful. But encampments, there are many people that we've talked to who said, we were told Vermont's a great place to come to, especially in summer. And There was one here in Montpelier. We worked for the city. They were down under the bridges. So, you know, we need to have a consistent approach for these people on our property. We're not trying to solve problems, we can't. But I'm referring to the interactions that we do on our property. And even, I think representative Burke knows, it could be abandoned stuff. It's not always people, but it can be the stuff they leave behind. Guilford was an example. We appreciate your thoughts on that. So I think there'll be two more testimony on that, but it's a growing problem and it's a cost. It's a societal cost and I'm not trying to seem callous to it. It bothers me. It bothers me when I see these folks. I see people, know, they're living in their car and I go home every night. It does bother me. So I'm really grateful we've taken this approach. It really became, think maybe four years ago, we started realizing this and we were not consistent statewide as an agency. And we own the second largest amount of real estate other than ANR in Vermont as a state entity. So we created a policy and it's pretty much mirrored. We worked with BGS, we worked with state police, we worked with human services. And I'm trying to think if there was one other that worked with within state government. But we came up with this policy and we're very proactive. I think we're as sensitive as we can be as is possible. By law, you can't live in a rest area. But we really, really try to work with people. So we've even worked with the state police who It's important, I think, to say this. Much to my surprise at the time, Ernie would probably remember because he was up in District 5, I think, at the time, but the state police had sort of an unofficial flyer on where folks couldn't go live perhaps, that was more out of sight. Because they knew, so instead of just pretending people figured something out, the authorities said, look, you can't live here, but you might wanna look at that. The agency actually helped some people move some of their stuff, but we had to move them out of where they were living because it was in the middle of an on ramp and they were crossing the on ramps. You know, it's dangerous. And so those are some of the scenarios. I just want to share the why are we doing this? And nothing in anything I say, I want to come off like we're heavy handed government here because we're not.

[Unknown committee member]: Obviously we're not.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: No, we're not.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: And we've got some really caring people that take care of these folks. Anyway, enough of that? AOT facilities? Yes?

[Michelle Boomhauer, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development; Legislative Liaison (VTrans)]: Just curious, how

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: much time and resources fall I just have no idea that your agency was also handling the situation, which other agencies are handling as well. So I'm just curious how much time or resources it

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: I'm would gonna look at Jaina and probably Ernie to probably give you a better answer than I.

[Michelle Boomhauer, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development; Legislative Liaison (VTrans)]: For the record, Jaina Morris is director of the division. So I have a team that works very closely with Ernie and other senior districts. Our team has a director of state and emergency services, and our safety techs, as well as the directors work very closely with the ETAs, the district communication administrators, as we learn of the scenario where there might be an encampment in play, to six months to a year that he's been actively involved in this, that he spent about 20% of his time. And then part of that was with program development, into the agencies, one of our new directors, developing and establishing the protocol, the guidance documents with one of our employees that works for him. And then, of course, the interactions and some training opportunities so that we use this as an assessment tool that's constantly under iteration, iterative development, I would say, as we learn something from one scenario, maybe we could change to that process.

[Jaina Morris, Director of Administration Division (VTrans)]: So part of it is making sure that that training occurs and that everyone that goes out to do an assessment is performing the assessment in the same way, following the same workflow and taking the same things into consideration to ensure that we're treating every situation effectively and fairly. And then I can't speak for how much district maintenance is involved, but in addition to the director's time, over the whole, it would be less than an FTE, but maybe about 25% of an FTE has been supported across all of the staff that's been involved in the state and emergency services team. Then of course, Director Matt now has involvement as well.

[Ernie Patnell, Director of Maintenance (VTrans)]: Ernie Patnell, Director of Maintenance for the record. The factual number that I can share with you for dollars is every time you see a camper that needs to be removed, whether it burned it has fallen down or the engine has gone, and then the people have just left it, depending on size, run between 3,500 and $6,000 have Per vehicle? Abandoned vehicle,

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: so that's not even A camper,

[Ernie Patnell, Director of Maintenance (VTrans)]: a car is much different, but a camper, nobody will take them. They have to be stripped down, dismantled, metal, they're built differently at home, and so it's very expensive. We could do a little research to get back to you with some hours. I don't find that off the top of my head, I'm very comfortable sharing that number. But a smaller camper, dollars 3,500. A large camper, 6,000 is what we've recently been paying this summer.

[Paul Libby, Rail Engineering Staff (VTrans)]: I had already had speed done in

[Ernie Patnell, Director of Maintenance (VTrans)]: this summer. Last summer, I would say, $20.12, yeah.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: I think one of the other things we're seeing, which I would say is not directly connected to people who are finding themselves in an unfortunate reality, and that is people who are nowhere near as unfortunate a reality, who have caught on to the services Ernie described and are leaving junk. And I'm not talking what you typically might see around Brain Up Day, because we'll pick up anything you leave. That's what we do. I'm talking year round. The Colchester Park And Ride by Costco. You can't see it from Route 2 And 7. You might not even know it's there, but it is. It's elevated up off the road. And One of my colleagues in this room had her car vandalized there, and these are not the people living there. They don't want to be on the radar. So, I just want to flat out never have anybody think I'm inflating the tube. But I myself have gone through the air because I live in the Northwest, and once in a while, I might take that route to get to Exit 16 instead of jump on at seventeen, and I'll swing up. And I just take an assessment, you see piles of stuff, just junk and metal. And then you see the people that are living there that our people are working with. And God bless them, because a week later, might see the same vehicle, but it'd be in Williston. I mean, it's a whole other issue.

[Unknown committee member]: I would say it's our generous invitation, isn't it? To come to the state. I mean, it's cold up

[Speaker 0]: here.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Why don't you go

[Unknown committee member]: someplace warmer?

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Some people have told us that, but I mean, there are people too, and again, Director and Eric and his team could speak better than this, but I mean, I've heard them tell me stories where they meet a couple and the guy might be in his 60s and he's a vet and they got a dog and they had a house, but they lost the house. Come on in and look in. And I think nobody really wants to have to live in the Harrisburg Train Station parking Lot or the Williston Parking Lot. They just don't. And there's a lot of reasons to your point.

[Unknown committee member]: Well, appreciate you guys' kindness anyways.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: And to your point, Representative Mollie, we do work with all the other agencies of government, but I don't know, is not a criticism of them, but there's so much in the world of homelessness and everything else that there wasn't a lot of effort for those folks that were on our property. So we really needed to do something. We're cognizant though of not trying to replicate services across government in silos, we're not, or at least we're trying not to. We bring them in every time we encounter people, we work with the AHS to see what's available. It was frustrating about the Williston place because we could see the shelter that we opened in the former state police barracks, but they had a dog. And it just took a while, we got there. So we're trying to work across government as effectively as you can, but it is an evolving issue that's real and it comes

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: with cost. It really does. We get a better solution. Okay,

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: facilities, I think we've spoken enough about facilities, but quickly, I wanna touch base on the pictures on the left side of the slide you see, and that is the DMV office in St. Albans, that is a newly renovated space, that was the former space of our District 8 office that we left, and you visited the new site. This came about because the landlord of the site we were in for years, up by the hospital, informed us they were doing something else with the building, we lost the lease, I think, in the fall last year. We looked around, we looked with BGS, the further state office buildings in the area, and the solution, the quickest solution, was to do what we needed to renovate that office building on Lower Newton Street to an acceptable standard, understanding that we don't know what we might do with that site in total in the long term, but it's a nice space for DMV. And then on the right is a picture of a foundation in West Anvil at our garage. It's just a small building we're putting up for some equipment that we use on the rail trail. But this is part of what, in administration the facilities team does. We spoke about the training opportunities on the next page, and then moving into DMV, which wraps up the presentation. The really big story here is the core system. You've heard of it. You trusted us when we asked you to approve money, 50,000,000 for those who may be newer than that action taken. And, you know, it's rightfully anxious when you ask for $50,000,000 to do a government motor vehicle IT upgrade, especially I think motor vehicles always, not in Vermont in particular, but across the country, is sort of the brunt of an awful lot. And I'm very pleased on behalf of the department, the commissioner and his team, and this began under Commissioner Mollie and her team as well. And this project came off on time and on budget, and it's really important to say that publicly, because it's just not always the case. Those are incredibly complicated projects. We owe a lot to ADS. We couldn't have done it without them, the Agency of Digital Services, and to the contractor FAST. FAST had worked with the State of Vermont before at the tax department, which was where we got onto their capability and then put together sort of a needs statement and put it out to bid and they bid on it. So again, we hope that that speaks to some sensibility, but we went through the process, but yet they had worked with us and the state as an enterprise had worked with them. But at the end of the day, this really transforms a system that goes back to the cobalt era. Quite frankly, no matter what you might hear from a constituent about an experience here and there now and then with DMV, to think they were operating on a system from the cobalt era that had absolutely endless manual movements that they did as well as they did. But we've broken through, we're not just into the twenty first century, this is really cutting edge technology. And you'll also see a picture on the left there of a kiosk. We're starting to use more of those. So if a person walks in, even if they had an appointment or if they didn't and they're willing to wait, they see the kiosk, they can go try that, and you can get a lot of your services right at the kiosk. It was mentioned earlier, and it's a great thought. Do we look to maybe try to roll these things out in a town clerk's office, for example? It's a good thought. We have to be mindful of not only the cost of the technology connectivity, but it'd be great to put things like this, like you see so many remote ATMs, but we to be mindful of security, safety, vandalism, but something like a town clerk's office or secure environments would be a great idea, and this is technology that is all new for us as well. So, a lot of really good things that are happening there. Many of our stations at the DMV now too can take your picture while you're standing there instead of having to go with the agent around the corner, behind a wall or something to take your picture. So it streamlines the process, it speeds up the experience. So a lot of good stuff coming from the DMV. And actually, think- Just

[Unknown committee member]: on a lighter note, I went through it last year, update my license. I do everything else online. And I

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: will say they took a really nice picture. I'm like, Yeah. They want to see my picture. It's the best thing to do.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Getting better looking better.

[Michelle Boomhauer, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development; Legislative Liaison (VTrans)]: Took a terrific picture of me with a lot of warnings ahead of time of like, this is gonna

[Ernie Patnell, Director of Maintenance (VTrans)]: be awful.

[Speaker 0]: Very professional.

[Paul Libby, Rail Engineering Staff (VTrans)]: Everybody looks all the better than others.

[Michelle Boomhauer, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development; Legislative Liaison (VTrans)]: I'm not sure what's

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: going Maybe I should end there. Quickly on slide 28, on the enforcement side, you're probably familiar with what you see on the highways, which is the commercial vehicle enforcement team. On a weekly basis, I get reports every week through the commissioner, every single week, and I read them every week, and tonight will be the night. And they're dealing with 800 to 1,200 trucks a week documented, but they also do a lot of extra work. They do work with federal agencies. They work with ATF on a task force. We work with DEA, as do all law enforcement agencies. We also support, when when the police officer was shot in St. Johnsbury on a Friday night, DMV was mobilized. I got notification from the commissioner. We had officers on that scene. We had officers on the scene in Fairfax a week ago, or Fairfield, Fairfax. There was a shooting. We have officers in proximity who, based on where they live, VSP, we roll and support. Have one of our three K9s is trained for gunpowder residue. She was deployed to Burlington after a shooting, was able to find the casings so that the prosecution has more evidence. So, it's much more than what you might just think when you see them go by you in a truck, or you see them at a rest area or a weigh station, which is a lot of work. But I continue to reiterate, it's a fully certified law enforcement agency. They're very well equipped. Every fully certified officer in Vermont can do the same job as any other officer in Vermont. And in fact, in the latest initiative, the governor put together in the city of Burlington, working with the VSP and working with Liquor and Lottery. And obviously under the coordination with Chief Burke and the Burlington Police, DMV worked Burlington as well. And they primarily focused on motor vehicle interdiction and not so much the photos you might've seen from the marketplace, which were wonderful, of the troopers on the marketplace. But we were doing a lot of the blue light stops that just weren't happening in Burlington by its own admission, not a criticism. It's just a fact. Speeders on the beltline in Burlington, if you're familiar with it. Apparently, people just were shocked when they not only get Most of us get nervous when a police officer stops you, but we heard a lot of Bromentonians were just absolutely shocked anybody who's running radar on the beltline after years of it not happening, DUIs, but just traditional motor vehicle interdiction. And so they stepped up and provided a lot of work for that, including Christmas Eve Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day. So they are a fully capable outfit. And then the other side of that same sworn law enforcement house works with all of our certified inspection stations in Vermont. Every car dealer, if you sell a car in Vermont and collect purchase and use tax, or transfer license plates, you have to be certified by the DMV. So there's an awful lot of work involved in there as well. Fraud cases, the fraud attempt to perpetuate fraud at DMV is significant. And that statement is not directed at any ethnicity or any stats, but we treat all fraud the same for the record. So anyway, a lot of really hard work. We have worked with three canines now, which one might ask why DMV, but narcotics and human trafficking occurs through commercial vehicles, probably at a greater extent than any other means of surface transportation. And that's the reason.

[Unknown committee member]: You know, the pay is much either.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: They show up every day. And that really, I think in the essence of time, we get financed within DMV, they handle just hundreds of thousands of dollars through the IFTA and the IRP payments to us and everything that comes in from citizens. And then strategic planning and legislative affairs, a little bit more robust effort leaning into the legislative effort, liaising, if you will. Both VTrans and DMV have always liaised on that front. But the sort of single individual expertise you've come to know through the years for VTrans with Michelle, VTrans slash the agency, that capability is matured within the DMV as well. It's just to be a complimentary effort. So I think I would wrap there. And hopefully that leaves enough time for you to ask

[Speaker 0]: anything we'd like to discuss.

[Unknown committee member]: Back in the beginning you were talking about the lighters. I know you have special areas. You use it because it's got unstable ground underneath it but is it is it a

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: lot more expensive going that route and and is it is it man made? It is man made. And I would to It's man made, and I would add that right now, I think there's two sources we know of, one out of Pennsylvania and one here in Vermont. And it's a foam injection with ground glass, it's like a wafer when you hold it, but I'm going to ask the Chief Engineer to perhaps give you a bit more detail.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer. Yeah, so it's foam glass aggregate, it's very much being made, there's two suppliers in the Northeast, one in Pennsylvania. Yes, it's more expensive unquestionably. In Colchester we did a cost comparison and just the time it would take under conventional construction because what we would have to do is basically surge out of load it, means over load it, and then wait for the underlying soils to stabilize. We thought it would take basically a year less just waiting for the underlying soils to stabilize, so by using the lighter density foam glass aggregate we saved a year. So unit cost is significantly higher, but where you get your benefit is in the long term cost, the project can be made significantly quicker.

[Unknown committee member]: You know, projects somewhere that have been out there for a long time in other states?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: Not a long time, Benning did a project maybe two years ago, they built a new section of road across a fairly marshy, boggy type area, and it's like a three or four lane road, and so that was one of the first really big uses in the Northeast. I can't even remember the yardage they used, but it was the use of it, all that material came, that's pretty useful.

[Unknown committee member]: If you would look at a per yard basis, is it three times more, four times more?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: I'd have to get back to you, mean somewhere probably in that vicinity, four to five times more on a per yard basis, but I'd be happy to pull those units.

[Unknown committee member]: Yes, I was just curious about it, that's all.

[Speaker 0]: We talked about paving. Mr. Segre, thank you very much for all that you put together for us and for bringing us up to speed. I know there are questions. I'm not wrapping it up. Just appreciate all the team being here and I'll say that again at the end. Does a particularly hard and cold and nasty start to the winter, Obviously, it does a lot to what we can do in the spring in terms of all the patch work and things. What does it do to that paving chart on the does that more quickly affect that very poor and poor? Is it good? Is there a direct relationship there?

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Yeah, think there's a direct relationship to weather, to the deterioration of our pavement. I think the offset is probably not gonna be known until after the paving season next year to sort of quantify what's offset by the paving we do do, and do the percentages offset? And I don't know the answer. I mean, if we did no paving, then those numbers are going to increase, and the poor and very poor you'll see will grow. But whether they grow faster than taking into account what we end up paving in this budget year, I don't know the answer to. But it's clearly the longer and the rougher the winter is, it's going to be manifested in the pavement. I mean, we're we're seeing it already. I mean, quite frankly, Windham Street River Bridge southbound, left hand lane, it just came apart in the last month. You could see it day to day and travel it every day.

[Speaker 0]: We have a pretty similar commute now.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: The And district's at great personal danger, and we actually had an employee hit, thank God no injuries, but hit by a motorist, which is just purely accidental, but it was still a strike. But southbound, they were, you know, fortunately, it's a three lane bridge. They were able to move traffic over to the two remaining lanes, center and right, and, you know, the only thing can do this time of year is sort of hot patch that, they were camping it. I saw it daily, no criticism of the effort, but you go through there now in that left lane, and it's almost, I won't say it's as bad, it's better, but the roughness is because they filled the hole so well, you go up a bit when you hit the hole, instead of going down when you hit the hole. But that's probably okay, because that's gonna wear off with the plowing and everything else. Yeah, you know, and I don't know, and I won't pretend to know the reasons why. I think winter had something to do with it, and highway or pavement folks can probably talk more about what was there before and why we might think that's occurring. But, you know, it will. And I think the other thing too is the temperatures and frost, that really moves things. So we'll see what that That kinda comes home to roost in about another six weeks, seven weeks. Well, the crews have already spent

[Speaker 0]: a significant amount of time leased up our way. Since I've walked in the building, I've certainly heard playing about, would it be possible to clarify our safe speeds, safe roads at safe speeds, and clarify for all of our colleagues that have already asked us 10 times about exactly what our snow removal policy in the state is? If you would be willing to use the opportunity just to say what safe roads at safe speeds and speak to it, because there

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: is certainly

[Speaker 0]: a dedicated crew out there working and has already had some major challenges this winter at a very early rate. If you would

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: like to speak to your

[Speaker 0]: maintenance piece, I would appreciate it.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Well, I mean, safe roads and safe speeds, not that you are, but to a cynic who wants to criticize this might sound like an easy out. If something happens, then it's the fault of the motorist and not the state, which, well, we have people say that, so I throw that right out. But I mean, it is exactly what it says. In other words, there is no expectation of a bare road, but there's a clear expectation laid out in our snow and ice control policy about what you should see on the roads that you travel based on what the road is, whether it's an interstate highway, limited access highway, secondary road. We have four categories in our snow and ice policy. I'm looking for a head nod, thank you. Just wanted to be sure. But a driver has to adjust really in the moment. I mean, I travel, I think it's 64 miles from one way, from my house to my office, and the conditions can be vastly different three times. And this year, strangely enough, the islands and from Seventeen, sometimes down to Richmond, are worse than they are from Richmond to Barrie. And it used to be Bolton Flats and Waterbury were another world. And then you get into Barrie and it's like you've woken up in the Arctic because their temperature is 10 degrees colder. And that's just in one half of my day. So I think the safe roads and safe speeds is trying to emphasize that in the wintertime, unless it's been at 45 degrees for a week, and it's dry road covered with salt dust maybe, you really do need to adapt to what you're seeing at the moment. I think it's fair to say, and I've heard this from law enforcement people, that many of the crashes we see are vehicles without even, I'm just gonna say without winter tires. Personally, I don't wanna give a lot of credence to even an all season tire. My wife had to rent a rental car because our car was hit by another car. And she didn't wanna use it because it didn't even have all season tires. Now, I'm not making a pitch for anything here in the rental car industry. Me qualify that. But my point is, also a lot of visitors to Vermont, a lot of Vermonters, tires are expensive and I'm not failing to understand that. But a crash is just a simple pullback if you slide off, which is the best of all things other than just not sliding off. You slide off, you get stuck, you don't hit anything, make a phone call, a case gets punched in and somebody shows up in the flatbed and pulls you back out the way you came in. That's about as lucky as you can be. It's gonna cost what a set of tires will cost. That's just my personal belief. And again, I'm not making a statement. But I do think all of these things roll in together. And then the other thing I will offer, and it's again a personal statement from flat out experience of, well, driving over six twenty five miles a week just to commute to my job, not counting what I do when I get to my job. And that's far too many people are driving, I just think, without any consideration for their own safety, let alone those around. We all talk about that. You don't have to live here long to talk about, what do you see in the ditch? Usually the four wheel drives in the SUVs. But it's true, it's not always the case. And I don't know how you fix that. It's just like, I don't know how you fix somebody not using the seatbelt. And I don't know how you fix somebody I think there's a fair difference between being caught in a moment, all of a sudden realizing you're on black ice. I have had that. I had the ability to call the TMC and say, do you have the trucks out yet? Because I just hit this bridge and almost went well or did get nearly sideways. It's happened to me, even this winter. But you know, that can happen. But when it's snowing like crazy, there's snow in the roadway, you see the plow trucks are out, and somebody comes up on you in the left hand lane going in excess of 65, when everything else is going 45 to 50, and sometimes you might be white knuckle at that, I think that's part of the problem that we have. You can't legislate that, I don't know how to deal with that. But getting back to your original question, safe roads at safe speeds, I do think take some of that behavioral portion of it into account. But we do not have a bare roads policy, unlike what a lot of people say, nor does New York or New Hampshire. Our counterparts in New Hampshire, who just announced to us his retirement yesterday, actually, the chief engineer, Mr. Reed's position, says they hear the same thing about Vermont from New Hampshire drivers. Why aren't New Hampshire roads better? Because Vermont has a clear roads policy. It's So not true. Okay. I've heard that. Yep, it's not true. And it is not feasible. It's not feasible for many reasons. Where do we start? Labor and money. You'd have to at least double the fleet. We'd have to have, if not quite double the employees close to a one to one increase to be able to run your fleet almost around the clock in a storm. We run people sometimes We get a lot of hours out of a person, let's put it that way, in a truck. And our people will do anything we ask, but we would have to put salt on the ground constantly for clear roads. And Bernie can speak more to that than I can, about the actuality of it. Let alone what the cost to the agency to do that would be. So, it's prudent, I think, what we do do. And I think the other thing too, I traveled the route that I travel, and if you are late or the snow is coming down at an inch and a half or two per hour, and you're on Route 114 in Canton, you don't see that many crashes and we don't get a lot of critical calls. But by God, if there's a dusting in Chittenden County I lived there, I was born there, so it's not a criticism of anyone here from Chittenden County. I don't live there now, live in Grand Isle County. But where there's more people, there's a greater expectation, I believe, anecdotally, if nothing else, of conditions to be optimal. And I guess perhaps I'll stop there.

[Speaker 0]: I appreciate your support of all of your team that was out there doing their work.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: I don't know if you

[Speaker 0]: were looking at them or looking at Bo I'm or sure there's other questions or pieces that are out there. I I could get a really specific piece. That Pouechee Gorge Bridge of particular interest has been a long struggle for the community there. And this design that you talked about in terms of viewing and whatnot, it's going to be, I guess, the tourist angle of it and the traffic angle of it. At some point later when we

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: come back, I'd like to be able to

[Speaker 0]: talk about that. I did say something about June '26. June '26 is estimated completion, that would

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: be the end of a very long difficult road in that area. But before Jeremy jumps in, it's the tourism piece, the commerce piece, but it's the safety piece as well. And that's the part I was referring to when I talked about the empathy. Oh,

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: I'm sorry.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: No, and it's really kind of greater than I mean, we're talking the tragedy of suicide.

[Speaker 0]: I understand it's a long, difficult stretch. It has. Interested in how you've solved that view and the piece. And I'm also really hoping that June is the target.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: It's a non engineering term, which I'm not an engineer. I think there was enhanced awareness and effort into the design. There's a high fence. It's high curl. Jeremy can speak more to that. But again, it was just, I know an individual personally, family, but that doesn't mean we did it because of that. I just know stuff. But it was kind of gut wrenching because most of it was about the commerce piece. And these poor folks were like, well, what about us? What about these families that are still dealing with this? No, no, I know you are. I'm talking that I'm proud of our team that the policy, the planning people that they go to a town long before construction even, and often there's a lot of blowback if you're going to slow me down or my business. And frankly, I think that the business community rallied around that other topic once it became more widely known to the credit of the community. Jeremy?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: Yeah, so obviously we do have different safety features there, both the traveling public and public, public, they're distressed, but I want to echo what the Secretary said about the business community today, because it has been a long process. June 26 date isn't good anymore. The nature of rehabs is you don't know necessarily how bad it is until you get it going, and so it's like you lost on a car, you start knocking it off and you have to chase it. So we've had numerous delays in trying to continue to rehab that structure. So the completion date is extended, what I'll do is when the structured program manager comes in, we'll spend a whole life of time talking about that project because it is a very difficult and very unique structure, and I think they'd love to talk

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: about it.

[Unknown committee member]: Yeah, I'd be curious, and you could answer it now if you have an idea, or at some point, is there anything coming out of the future to sort of change the way we do things or something that could disrupt, hey, this is the way we've been doing it for fifty years. And I'm gonna say AI, I'm not a big believer in AI or think that's gonna solve everything, not at all. But there might be something there, or there might be something that's like transformative. It doesn't mean it costs less. Just wondering what might be out there. Either if you know something that you're sort of looking at or as we get testimony, I'd be curious.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: No, that's a pretty exciting topic, actually, and I wish I had more exciting answers for you. A couple of things I think I will share. One of them is we are doing this. I wouldn't call it transformative, but I think it's important. And we're going to be installing two locations, I believe. One of them is up in Exit 16, and I think or 17, and the other maybe down here near Berlin. But that is AI backed devices to alert immediately for wrong way drivers, who enter the interstate going the wrong way on a ramp. It doesn't take into account anything you do once you're on the highway. But if a person, for whatever reason, gets on the off ramp and starts going contrary to traffic, these devices will immediately, it'll sense a vehicle coming in a direction it shouldn't be, and it'll create an in the moment reaction that hopefully might capture the awareness of the driver, and has the ability, and we don't know if we can make it work yet to the dispatch centers, but would have the ability, we think, to immediately inform dispatch, immediately, before the 09:11 calls start coming in. So that like what happened the other night, where the state trooper was hit on the interstate by a vehicle that I believe drove from Exit 16 to Exit 17 or North Of 17 the wrong way, and the trooper ultimately put him or herself right there as a block and took the hit. I don't know the details of whether that vehicle got on or how that occurred, but it is a very troubling reality. And oftentimes it can be impairment. It can also be medical. I mean, I know of an individual who was having a serious diabetic event, and this was a long time ago, twenty odd years ago, it was reported as a possible DUI, daytime, driving the wrong way, up in the same stretch of interstate, interdicted, photographic in the paper was this individual sitting on the shoulder handcuffed, and if anybody saw it, turned out it was a medical, he was in a diabetic crash, which has a lot of similar symptoms to intoxication. He wasn't intoxicated at all, he didn't know where he was. And some of it is elderly. So, in a couple of those scenarios, these devices may provide time or at least awareness to, oops, this isn't right. So there's an example of emerging technology, and we're looking to do everything we can. I think just one other thing, it isn't transformative, but Todd and I were talking to our fleet superintendent yesterday, and he was talking about an engine being put out by Cummins, a massive truck diesel engine for the type of work we do that runs on natural gas, which is incredibly clean, incredibly clean, and theoretically perhaps have some impact on greenhouse gas reductions. And of course, there's the whole conversation about the origin point of natural gas. I'm simply talking about in the world we can control. Now we're not there yet, but we're always looking for these sorts of things. Actually the technology about these wrong way device pieces came to us through the Commissioner of Public Safety, who was in Europe on vacation and saw something, sent me a link. I contacted Jeremy, it so happens we work with the same company on other types of devices, but they hadn't made us aware, we didn't know they had these. I offer that because if you see something and whether it's publications that you read or conversations you have with somebody, I think we find it interesting. It just comes down in how do we make it work in Vermont? Thanks. Thank you, good question.

[Speaker 0]: Represent what?

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Thank you for all that. And I wanted to say that I think AOT does an excellent job on the roads. So in terms of people's expectations, wanting more, I just wanted to say that. I have a couple of questions unrelated to I understand that AOT, a couple of years ago, and this is kind of

[Michelle Boomhauer, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development; Legislative Liaison (VTrans)]: hearsay, got a grant, maybe $150,000

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: to establish some pollinator friendly sites on the highway. Ernie, this might be in your neck of the woods. So just curious about where that's gone. Did those sites get implemented? Any conclusions based on that?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: Sure. So we did get the grant, and it's being administered by our landscape architect Bonnie Donahue, and I think she's on the schedule to come and speak to her directly, and I could tell you yes, it's going forward, but I'll defer to her.

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Great, okay, perfect, thank you. I have another question regarding bicycle safety signage. Again, I think this was some legislation passed before last year, but requiring AOT to come up with some signage, just alerting the public about the four foot law. And I've had a lot of people in my neck of the woods saying, We really need this in our Valley. It's a big biking community. And just saying, we really would like to have some of the signage. Has that been developed? Again, if it's going to be covered in the coming weeks, I can hold on.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: I do want to thank you for the invites, for your ride.

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: We're I sorry we missed you.

[Joe Flynn, Secretary of the Agency of Transportation]: Well, I apologize. We had

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: a couple of representatives from AOT, which we really appreciate.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (VTrans)]: So likewise, we do have our active transportation team coming in at update schedule yet, but it's on our radar. We'll bring them in and provide specifics for

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: that. Great, thank you.

[Speaker 0]: So we are sort of at a spot where I really want to say thank you for you and your team coming in to present. Also mentioning the thank you from a lot of the members on the renewal handled in the DMV and the legislation that was passed last year and the 500 plus people that took advantage of that was important to a lot of people on this committee. That route to an industrial AV job is outstanding for some areas that used to be a difficult area to get through. Particularly love Exit 17 as well as a huge positive spot. And thankfully the messages are back on the boards all over the heard they were meant to go away, they were there and they were fun for Christmas. That's usually important. And the best news is that all of your team and everybody will be back again throughout the rest of the piece. Happy new