Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Chair Matt Walker]: And we are. Okay. Good morning, Wednesday, January 28, here in house committee on transportation. We are continuing our review of the FY '27 budget. And today we're in a whole bunch of different areas, municipal programs, grants, parks and rides. And Joel is a returning witness of several times and supported, I guess, Jennifer's been in multiple days in a row. But welcome back to committee, Joel. And did you have any luck getting

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: on on No.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yes. Okay. The last thing, though, forgot I had to join the meeting virtually as well, right? So to share

[Chair Matt Walker]: the Yeah. So for the day, for the committee, we're continuing to go through budget presentations. And then we'll have a little bit of discussion about the budget after earlier today and then go from there. So when you're ready Okay. It is all you. And I'm not sure. Is there a presentation that's posted under your It is.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yeah. Okay. There. Good to go. It's all yours. All right. For the record, my name is Joel Paragot. I am the B TRANS Municipal Assistance Program Manager. I am here to share with you budget information for municipal assistance programs, grant programs that go through our group. This is on the screen is an intersection of the new Champlain Parkway showing some of the major pedestrian accommodations that were part of that project. The first, I've organized these by the tabs in your book. The first program that you'd see is tab 5s, is the Park and Ride program. The park and ride program is relatively Sorry to interrupt. Sorry.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I think there was a question yesterday about the Champlain Parkway, whether there were any more things holding it up.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Nothing holding it up. No, actually it's scheduled to be completed this year and opened up. It's full capacity this coming summer.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And I think the city of Burlington still has more things they're doing sort of downstream into the next year. Correct. Like connecting bike paths and fixing some of

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: the roads.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: They may, yeah, they have other joining projects, including the rail yard enterprise project that they're working on as a grant with us as well. Thanks. So back to the Packer Mide program, the proposed budget is $1,976,000

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: and

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: change. Last year, we completed the expansion of both the Manchester and Sharon lots. The picture you see here is actually the Sharon lot and you can see that we were able to preserve the ever so precious horseshoe pits in the background. So the majority of the funding that you see in the $1,900,000 is the Colchester Exit 17 Paragon ride, which is scheduled to go to construction later this year. That'll add 73 spaces to the network. Oh, and just backing up just a little bit. With the with the expansion of Manchester and Sherham, we're currently at two two thousand fifty spaces under the state owned park and rides. Just a couple of line items in the budget. Dollars 25,000 for engineering if a new project were to come up in the year. Dollars 325,000 for preventative maintenance, which is to pay the minimum looking at data from last summer on the payment condition in the existing lots to determine which lot will undertake with that. Then there's $150,000 municipal park and ride grant program. That's something that we've been continuing to support for the last few years. We did stop it in 'twenty two for a while because it was not as much interest. We funded two projects last year that add 55 spaces and that program has brought a total of fifteen seventy four spaces. Those would all be municipally owned spaces in addition to the state funded or the state owned lots.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: In the grant program, so Hinesburg has its own municipal lot actually behind the town hall. I don't know how many spaces there are, maybe eight or 10, that's where the bus comes too. Would the grant program provide funds if we want us to add lighting?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: We do that quite often actually. I think actually one of the projects that we're doing this year is adding lighting to an existing law. So sometimes they'll start with a gravel law and choose to pay it later on, expand it, whatever. They're all eligible projects. Okay, thanks. The next program is the Bike and Ped program, and this year's budget is showing at $24,560,000 and change. So that's an annual grant program that we do typically announce in the spring, make awards in the late summer, early fall, 80% federal, 20% local. And there is a state fund component in there that we call the small scale program, which is at a fiftyfifty split. This current budget would support 59 ongoing projects, 43 different communities, 34 under construction in state, 57. There's also some line items in that budget for our bike head coordinator salaries time, the local motion bike ferry, and then identification of new projects as we get towards the end of the summer. Representative Burke?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Yeah. How much of that budget is for the small scale building? I

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: think it's identified in the budget as $600,000 total, but it's fiftyfifty. So I think it's $300,000 state, 300,000 local. So that number, that $24,000,000 actually includes Match as well

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: to those programs. We're try to look at where the funding was from last year, what the funding was in the last budget were.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: The total budget number from last year?

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: I don't have that handy right now, but I can look it up for you afterwards.

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: But it was piece of paper somewhere.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yes, it would have been same number in last year's book. I can tell you it was less, if that's true.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: It was last last year.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yes, was last last year. I can look that up for you.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Representative Keyser, you have a Thanks. When you say it's a budget of 24,000,006 and you got an $80.20, is that including federal money?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yes. And remember, this is expenditures. So we're making awards for projects this year that are likely not to be constructed for multiple years development, but these are actual expenditures for this particular year.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Okay, so 20% of that number is what your state budget is? More or less. I see what you're saying. With a fiftyfifty.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yeah, so it's a combination of those two programs. The smallest scale program is pretty small in comparison to the federal funded So portion of

[Chair Matt Walker]: anyway, just to understand how much money we're talking about state money. Okay, so I'm gonna go back a little bit. And when you expand lots, if you will, what's the impact of the three acre rule?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: The best area lots? Yes. I mean, sorry, the parking lot lots?

[Chair Matt Walker]: Yeah, yes.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: I'm not a permitting expert. I may have to look that up for you. You're talking about the three acre development?

[Chair Matt Walker]: Well, if you get more than three acres under impermeable surfaces, you have to do mediation of that storm water. So I was wondering what the impact on that would be on your budget, and how much gets diverted to those type of mitigations rather than building the infrastructure.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: That's certainly something I would have to dig into a little bit.

[Chair Matt Walker]: That would be very interesting.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: I can get that back to you.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. Thank you.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Just try to answer from president Burke's question. Least the sheets are well, should have before the end of this

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: week with all of the

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: pieces. The

[Chair Matt Walker]: initial one that I got from Logan that's not finalized is bike and pedestrian facilities as passed in 'twenty six, budget was 21.9, and now it's 24.6 for a $2,700,000 increase or 12% increase in the Viking Pet area of the budget.

[Rep. Candice White]: Can I just follow-up?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Please.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Yes, I'm just trying to understand. So the 24,000,000 includes the 80% federal?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Correct.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Okay, so it was sort of your question, is what is the state's involvement in this? Yeah. Okay.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yeah. Great. Yeah, I believe in your book, there's like a breakdown sheet of the totals. That's a good place to look and you could see what component, out of the 24 or 500,000, what of that is fed, what is local, what is For purposes of the bike pad, the state, as far as transportation funds go, is very small. It's only in that fifty-fifty small scale grant program.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Thank you.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: So this is just last year's awards that we made. It would have been late last summer under the program. Think it is on your screen. Two sort of new, what we call large scale or design and construction projects. Several projects that we call additional funding, which are just projects that were in our program to begin with, that came back for some additional funding for different scoping projects. And then at the bottom is where you'll see the small scale funded projects.

[Chair Matt Walker]: These are all individual Python pet projects that are not part of a bigger construction project? Correct. You just lump those in when you're doing a bigger These

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: are these are individual projects. Projects. Got it.

[Chair Matt Walker]: They all almost all of them have or no. A high percentage of have a local match in addition

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: to a federal match. The state? Yeah. I mean, majority of them are federal state I'm sorry, federal and local.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Eightytwenty split, yes. And some have a team fund match, actually those are separate projects, guess. Okay. Gotcha. All right. Thank you. Yes, representative.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Sorry. So municipalities and support for these, or the small scale, but also can organizations apply for the grants?

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So eligible applicants are RPCs are eligible applicants as well. The grants are just distributed based on merit, based on if you had a grant before, all sorts

[Rep. Candice White]: of things.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yeah, there's a scoring matrix that goes along with it. It's based on community need. We look at equity. We look at carbon reduction. How well the project is, if you've scoped it already, that's good. What is the budget schedule? Representative

[Rep. Candice White]: White? Good Good So I was listening to you. Sorry, I came in a little bit late. Was listening to you on my headphones. So this VikingPED program, these grants, could

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: you just give a little

[Rep. Candice White]: bit more background? Is there an application process annually? When is it open? When is it closed? And you may have covered this before, but what is that total pot of money that's going out

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: for Yeah. So it's historically been an annual program that's announced in April, And we give municipalities six to eight weeks typically during the application period, making the applications due, I think, towards the June. And then we make those awards typically in August, after we evaluate the applications. The split is There's two different programs baked into one. Largely, the federal component is eightytwenty. And then there's a state funding component, which is a fiftyfifty split. Those projects, we call them small scale. They're intended to be like low gap projects. The second part of your question was?

[Rep. Candice White]: The total pot of money.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: So the total pot is generally based on a target provided by our CFO. It's sort of hovered around the 4,000,000 to $5,000,000 in the last couple of years. But on top of that, the last two fiscal years, we've actually taken some of the carbon reduction funding. We made a commitment back two years ago to add an additional $4,000,000 on top of that. So the awards you can see here was $5,700,000 in this federal portion last year and $300,000 in small scale. I don't have the previous years in front of me, so they've been up around closer to $6,000,000 in the last two fiscal years.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Is there a name for that particular grant program?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: We just call it the

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: bike grant program.

[Rep. Candice White]: That makes sense.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yep, I'm sure if you googled Bikehead, that's what it's thought.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Thank you.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: Representative Lown?

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Yeah, one of the things that we have learned in this committee is that the agency needs to know that there's an intent to the community to put some supplies for a pedestrian facility before something like so that bridge is replaced to ensure that it has side lockers within that. And I understand that the RPCs are supposed to be working with communities on accumulating that sort of information about where they would like to have a facility and so these things could get mapped, you guys know to plan for it. And I was just wondering if you have any sense for how well that's working and if that helps with this program and making things run a little more smoothly.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: My awareness is somewhat limited, but I do understand that within our planning group, have a pilot program, pilot project right now that I think they're probably three quarters of the way through or so. Our planning group would speak better to this. But looking at that sort of thing, and I believe that the focus area was the Chittenden County area to start with because it obviously has the most need, but looking at it on a regionalized basis rather than just by town to the next town or town. In the meantime, we continue to support all of the scoping projects. So if a town says, we want a sidewalk on the north side of town or on the east side of town, but they don't know exactly where they want it to be or whatever, we do support those in a scoping effort. Like if a town puts an application in, those get funded 100% of the time. I know that maybe doesn't directly answer your question. And I can look into it further as far

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: as where

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: the planning side of things are.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Helpful to know, because we hear about capacity as a real challenge, particularly in our small and rural areas, which we've now folded into the designation program. And if you don't have safety, you don't have anything. So to help them start to be able to think about this and plan for their future, would be wonderful.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Originally, we're proud of things. Just pockets of the town.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Well, actually, I'm thinking more and more pockets of the town. Just help people get to daily destinations. Like how do you get from the town offices maybe to the post office or

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: to the

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: school or something like that. Just starting to build that very remedial, but essential type of infrastructure within like a village setting, example, particularly with our aging population and the fact that most seniors are living in rural contexts. So how do we help towns help

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: themselves? I'll put some in together for you, some assistance from our folks in planning that.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: That would be wonderful just to know how we can help them do better. You. Just

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: to elaborate, the records, my name is Jennifer Finch, I work with the Vermont Agency of Transportation. We do have a mapping tool that is in our planning section. And so basically what happens is both through evidence that we have around biking and walking, well as to your point, information coming in from the RPCs and towns and communities. We have a map that we update around both desired, Like in pet as well as where like in petal already exists in the network. So we do have awareness at the level of input on that mapping tool. We do use it as something we consider as part of that scoping phase, or at least we want to have awareness that there

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: is a desire for a bike lane or for a sidewalk. Right, because it's directly tied in some instances to being able to get that if you have like, a bridge is being replaced, for example, to ensure that it has either a sidewalk or a walking tree or something. So, okay, it just, and I understand that we're working on the design standards and things are kind of converging in the right direction, it would just be helpful to know as we're in the sort of in between phase, how this works and the opportunities that are available for this time. I think a lot of my colleagues would be interested to know that.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Representative Pouech? Can you help me understand the numbers just a little bit? So last year was around 21. Yes. Majority of it federal would be $80.20. So say 15,000,000. But here it shows awards of only 5.7. So where's the other federal money?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: So this is awards. Right. These are awards that we're making in that we made last summer. Yep. And these projects will sort of add to the group that we have of existing projects. And that $25,000,000 is actually expenditures in a particular year. And I will say that $25,000,000 is somewhat inflated by the fact that South Burlington has their East West pedestrian bridge over the interstate in they will have it under construction, and there's a large chunk of that 25 that's in there for that.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So it's 12,000,000, I think, for that.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yeah. I'm not sure of the exact number.

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: But just

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: being pulled until it's ready for construction, Or are they spending 12,000,000 this this year?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: They and so there was a there was a chunk of it identified in fiscal year twenty six. They actually bid the project once. They rejected the bids because they came in high. They've gone back and done some redesign. They're about to re advertise that project, I think, in the next month or so to go back out to to bid.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So will that 12,000,000 be spent

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: this year? So there's some that was identified in '26 up through the July 1, and then there's some in 'twenty seven identified for construction as well. And those are just construction dollars, if that's what you're asking.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And there are other projects like that that you don't actually being awarded, but

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: they're out there being worked on. Correct, right, right. So these are just new projects at this point. But there should be a breakdown on every single project in there that's existing. And that's where going back up to my previous slide here, I'd mentioned there was 59 ongoing projects in the program. This list is just a short subset of those.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: One more question. It's my understanding that a project that accepts federal funds, which is gonna be most of the projects that are coming through this, would need to go through NEPA scoping before, does that happen before the scoping can happen that is indicated here, the NEPA report, stark preservation review?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: So scoping doesn't get to the level of NEPA. Typically scoping does resource identification. So it goes out during that phase of looking at what resources might be impacted, natural and cultural resources might be impacted by the particular project. They're identified, not really evaluated other than the fact that they're looking at different alternatives and which of those alternatives will have more significant impacts versus less significant impacts on those resources. NEPA comes in after we actually enter into a conceptual design stage. So when you see, like in your book, we're talking about preliminary engineering, you're actually into that phase at that point. You enter into the conceptual design stage, and then you get into the NEPA project.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: What percentage of projects does the NEPA end up costing? How much does it take away from the cost of this, of what we have to work with in our communities? Is there a ballpark percentage? I know in my town, was a $60,000 report for a very small area within our own right of way, which was frustrating.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: It's a good question. And I would have to probably do a little digging. But generally speaking, I don't know if there's definitely cost involved. I would say $60,000 sounds like a normal average number. There is a lot of time involved with the process.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Right. And in our instance, the delay pushed our project into COVID times, which nobody could have foreseen. And then that escalated the costs tremendously. So we potentially have one of the most expensive bits of sidewalk the state has ever built as a result. So the timeliness is important.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yeah. I will say the delay strikes me a little bit just because it's not so much, mean, are very transparent with that. When we meet the towns, when we award the towns that we provide them a sort of a template or a schedule that very clearly shows that that process is going to take, you know, whatever it is, eight months, nine months, and that they need to account for that in their schedule. Because that's a process, is sort of B TRAN's own process. They provide us the information and then goes through our flow. So it is definitely a long time, but it is something that we're very transparent about.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Is

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: there way to do some of this stuff without doing all these studies? I mean you put in sidewalks, put in paths, it all seems kind of expensive there. Is that scope and study there, the 176,000 that covers all that whole page right there? That's four different scoping studies. That little block right there. Yeah, the 176,000 is the four scoping studies, Jamaica, Lunenburg, Morristown, and Palo Alto.

[Chair Matt Walker]: I mean, we're And you got another study afterwards?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: A NEPA study or something? The NEPA process is looking at a project in its entirety and its impacts for permitting natural and cultural resources, it's actually looking and diving in at that point. Whereas, scoping is just a very high level identification of those resources. And so then there's a permitting process afterwards also? It's sort of those hand in hand with data. I just wonder why there's no

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: President Pouech. One more question on this page, for sure. So on your award, grant awards, it shows Tynesburg, this Charlotte intersection, which has been a problem. I don't see any construction happening now. And it's not in the white book as a project. So should it be in the white book, that

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: particular project?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: It should be in the white book.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: There are a couple of other sidewalk things we have going on, but I don't see it in the white book. So

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: I'll to

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Oh, yeah. Let's

[Rep. Candice White]: take a look.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Okay. I thought maybe I was missing something.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: So that particular one you're looking at right there is additional funding that was to an existing project that should be in the white book.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: At Okay. Least I don't see it there. Okay. And I was gonna ask this question before, but it seems obvious. It seems like Heinzburg's gotten over the last fifteen to twenty years, a few of these, and almost inevitably, the reward is there, then we go out to bid, and it actually ends up costing more. And then, so it delays in a couple more years. That's probably typical.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely not unusual a- circumstance by any means that happens with towns, but there's plenty of other projects that are successful in their initial bids. And we're actually starting to see those bids sort of come back down and more normal. I think some

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: of that might have been

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: coming out of the COVID era.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: All right. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what exactly is happening in Heinzburg, because I know in our budget we're putting money aside for the matching, but I know of two projects that were happening, smaller ones. Well,

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: other thing, could be listed in the transportation alternatives piece of it. It may have been funded under transportation alternatives and then it was additionally funded under BICTED. That does have

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: be And

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: so they're getting money from both sides.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Right, that could it. I'm happy to take a look at it with you afterwards.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: All right, thank you.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Joe, how many project managers work on BikePad? There seems to be a lot of different names in the book. Are those project managers that only work on BikePed or do they work on other highway projects and they

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: have BikePed in their portfolio? A little bit of both, but generally speaking, mostly BikePed. There's 15 in my group total, including myself. So 14 others, and out

[Chair Matt Walker]: of those

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: 14, but we're down a person, so down to 13. About 10 of those are primarily focused on bike ped, transportation alternatives, municipal mitigation type projects. But, you know, our group is administering a venture guess of 400 active grants at any given time. 400 or so projects that we're managing at any given Across the entire group, correct. All federally funded. Those are all of our state grants, our federal grants.

[Chair Matt Walker]: If you take the $12,000,000 that is in there right now for South Burlington, the money that's coming down, it's a much bigger number than that for the whole project. Can you speak for just a second about what the history and the trend would look like? Right now, it looks like a big jump up, because that's a big number in there. If you pull that sort of large project out, does it change the trend of our investment level? Are we making an investment level in this more and more each year, less? And how do you really look at that when you have these big spike projects? Because there's also big spike projects in the whole resort. It's the Sequoia Valley Rail Trail, whatnot, was one huge, long, expensive project with lots of little ones. There's got to be some balance there. But I'm looking more for the comment on, if you pull the big one out, what's our trends look like?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Mean, I'm going to just say, if you go back to our annual awards, they have stayed pretty consistent around the 4,000,000 to $5,000,000 And then those accumulate and they make these big expenditures. And then we have these inserts like Blue Moy Valley Rail Trail and South Gronington type projects. I am just going to say that I am going to guess that you are going to see a pretty consistent, slight ups and downs in the program if you took those projects away. But honestly, up until just a couple of years ago, the LBRT was still, we were still doing we still have projects in the program for the LBRT. There's still a significant project in there right now for bridges. That might be why it's representatives aren't here this morning. Just It's somewhat difficult to to answer that.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Some of the internal committee jokes. I think that I would say that overall, the majority of the

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: committee is pretty committed as the

[Chair Matt Walker]: committee to this particular area, but I'm not sure that we have

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: That's something I've pull together pretty easily, you'd like.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Idea of whether support is or isn't flat, or has or has not. And then I guess that if you're able to do that easily, the demand how much more demand is out there that what we're not able to, what your group's not able to answer to? And is it more an issue of the amount of funding available, is it this sort of projects are slow and COVID chewed off and the amount of money's out there? There's kind of this seems like it's a slow process to get.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: So we do keep track of the demand versus what we award on an annual basis, and that's something I can easily provide. I can also pull together some year to year comparisons and sort of pull out or at least identify those and what the number would be without those. I appreciate that.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Just a follow-up on that. I think it was last year and year before we doubled this program grants, think it was 8,000,000. We had that money fund. I don't if was a climate fund. How did that play out? The carbon reduction funding? Yeah, because we doubled it, I think, one or two years, but that money beat the demand.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: So that is baked into this larger number here, the 5.7. And so it was two years ago that we made that payment to add 4,000,000, which brought it up to the 8. But in that first year, we weren't actually able to find projects that met their criteria for carbon reduction. We only awarded slightly over 2,000,000. And so in this last round, last summer, we added the additional, whatever it was, 1.8. So it's in this 5.7, the 1.8.

[Chair Matt Walker]: To get to the four.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yeah, to get to the total of four.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. You're off the hook. It isn't the transportation. So it looks like some funds from that and then some additional funds were needed. I think this gives us a flashing beacon at the elementary school so kids can get across 116, so a critical project. I'm curious, I know years ago, Heisenberg did a scoping study for a sidewalk up to what we call North Road, which is the densest area, but it's a long way to town. And so that was gonna be like a $3,000,000 project. And nothing's been done because the match is so big for the town and just so overwhelming. So in my mind, it's almost a waste to do that scoping study. And so you provide funds for the studies to start off with, and then I know some from RPC too, money from that. Is there a case where, know, towns move, you know, wanna do something, they get some money, they start looking at it, and then they start saying, Oh, this match, there's no way we can do it. So they just sort of try on the vine.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: That does happen. And that was gonna be my response as to why even a scoping study that doesn't result in a project might be a good thing. At least it's identified. There's no requirement to pay those funds back. Whereas we start getting into design right away construction, there is the potential of having to pay back those funds. So it's a challenge, I think, for

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: the accounts that wanna do stuff, then that match sometimes can be the code. Okay,

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: thanks. Representative Lalley?

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Yeah, was wondering with scoping, what that, is that something that you guys coordinate typically through the RPCs? How does the scoping work?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: So these projects, they're municipally sponsored projects. So these are projects that are coming to us. The applications are coming from the municipality. That's not to say that RPCs may not be involved in conversations and helping them put those applications together. Our only coordination would be typically if sharing those with the RPCs when they're under development. Other than that, no, they're directly controlled by the Mixed College itself.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Okay, so MusePal is hiring the engineer and that sort thing.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yes.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Because what I'm wondering is, I know that in my town in Shelburne, we had a project that ended up getting people's backs up because the facilities that were going to have to be built were depicted and they were seen as just very out of context and inappropriate for the area. So we ended up triggering a lot of hostility towards this, unfortunately. And one of the things that I realized through that was that this was a presentation that was assuming entirely state funds, which are federal funds, would be used. And so we were going to have to follow those larger, considered to be more overbuilt standards in this context. If the town had just built it on their own dime, we could have had a lot more flexibility. Unfortunately, that nuance never got out there and people saw this as like, you can have this huge thing or you can have nothing. And so they picked nothing. And seventeen years later, we're still in that situation and the traffic has increased. It was a mess. So I was just kind of wondering how this information gets out there. And state funds can be used during the scoping timeframe to identify all potential options that could be used in a situation, which includes maybe not pursuing state funds, which should be better for our budget in that sense. But is there flexibility about this? Or does the community that does these scoping studies have awareness of this?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Just Or The different funding sources and requirements. Yeah, I mean, are definitely things that are looked at as part of the scoping phase. There's also a public input phase required as I'm part of

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: just trying to figure out how do we do more with less in a time when there's all this demand that we can't meet? I guess is what I'm trying to figure out here. I'm not saying that this is the agency's job. I'm just wondering how the ecosystem of how these projects gets done works. Mean, you have assistance for the road foreman on how to do their jobs better and the tack things and all And that I'm just kind of wondering if there's some sort of equivalent for the BikePed stuff.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Well, believe VLCT has some resources. The RPCs have resources. VAPTA, which is the overarching group for the transportation planners. And I believe, again, going back to our planning section, that there is funding provided through the agency the RPCs for that type of thing as well, systems with the towns, looking at that.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Okay. All right. Thank you.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: When you're doing a scope and study, who's doing the engineers? Correct. Is it our own? It is it is their private consultants that are hired by these families. Don't we have our own engineers? We have we have a b trans. Do we have our own engineers we can use to do these studies instead of hiring somebody else? We have engineers in b trans that are doing other projects. Yes. Like bridges and roads and those sorts of things. Right? Yeah. So we know that they can't do any. They're so backed up that they can't do a sidewalk. Could could we? Yeah.

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Jennifer, thank you. Sorry. Is that okay? Yes. Sorry

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: about that. No problem. I

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: actually lived in the scoping role for many years. So to address some of the questions I heard today, any time federal funds are involved, we have to follow federal requirements on the project. It just is what it is. I would say if you use state fund only on a scoping project, the downside of that in my mind would be that we may not be looking at what would be required as we go through the rest of design and construction. So I think the scoping phase to me is the most important phase for project because that's when you learn, am I going to have impacts to environmental and utilities with those kinds of things. In the case you talked about, the $3,000,000 projects, one of the ways that is another alternative to that would be to build in segments. So I'm only gonna, I don't know how long expecting that. Are you expecting to chunk it up? And can I kind of bite it off over time in small chunks? So I think scoping is the most important phase because you really get awareness and without scoping,

[Rep. Candice White]: you wouldn't know that it would have

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: been that big dollar number. And so

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: I think that's really helpful as the town moves forward and determines whether or not they want to continue to invest in that. In terms of municipal assistance, their job is to help towns, but really these are town led projects. And so our engineers, as Joel indicated, in the agency that design projects are those in the structures program, the roadway program, payment program. Anything that comes through municipal assistance, they provide some guidance in general, but they're not actually designing these projects on behalf of the town. So again, it's sort of what is the role and responsibility of each of the programs inside the trans and they provide municipal assistance, but we don't actually design on behalf of the towns.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Moving to

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: just mentioned too. I mean, he said 400 projects and he only has a staff of fourteen thirteen at the moment. So, even trying to provide any kind of design assistance through his group wouldn't be, possible based on the number of projects that they're supporting through the process.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: I'm just looking at things. How can we do things cheaper?

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: We do too. We absolutely do the same thing.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Moving to the next program is on tab five H, which is the transportation alternatives program. The proposed budget for this year is 4.514. This particular budget supports 51 ongoing projects in 34 communities, 22 under construction, fiscal year '27. This is another federally funded annual grant program. Again, percent federal, 20% local. Statutorily, we are limited to a $600,000 grant cap and we are required to make those awards in the first quarter of the calendar year. So we're actually evaluating applications as we speak. The other piece of it is that statute requires us to take the first 50% of that. So just backing up a little bit, Transition alternatives is a set aside to our service transportation block grant funding, which is just our flex funding in the agency. The annual allocation to that is around, I think I got it at the bottom, it's around 4,300,000.0 ish. Out of that 4,300,000.0, statute requires us to take the first 50 of that and award it to environmental mitigation type projects. And then the remaining 50% to all other eligible projects under the TA program with a preferential weighting to bike and ped type projects. And I would say at those 50%, at that second 50%, probably 95% them end up being bikeped type projects.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: The statutory fiftyfifty split of those funds, that's state law? State law, correct.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: That was a law that started back in the clean water days. There was a few years where we had to take all of this money and provide it to those in that environmental litigation category. And then it was a fiftyfifty. I can't remember exactly, but in '22, it it says fiftyfifty in perpetuity, essentially.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And it seems like most of the water quality projects are salt chats? A lot of them.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Although there are some, we've done rain gardens and we've done stormwater treatment projects with, I think actually there's a picture later on of a rain garden fair agent. We've done stormwater treatment projects in South Burlington, Rutland, and Hinesburg. So we may have some heads in there as well.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Thank you.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Representative Casey and then Representative Burke.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Where is that project right there and how much did that cost? That project is in Representative Corcoran's district. That's part of the Ninja path.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: Oh yeah.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: That bridge.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Project isn't. You should. The

[Chair Matt Walker]: total project cost? I'm just

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: wondering what that right there. Oh, that's looking at.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: would have to look that up. I I mean, I would venture a guess of that bridge itself would be would be probably pushing a million dollars.

[Chair Matt Walker]: You're saying all in from the very beginning to the

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: From the very beginning, yeah. I mean, that's a rough guess as we're sitting here. But that project, the Ninja Path was broken up into, like Jennifer was saying earlier, multiple segments with logical determinants on each other and built in phases. How long was that trail? Hopefully, I might know better than I.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Yeah, just probably a couple miles. Mean it feeds into some other trails that we already have, rail banks and then there's like an Indian trail. But I think that's behind Hanford, believe. It's coming along sort of like in different sections. Right.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: That goes on to another set of trails? Correct. Yeah. Representative Burke?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: We're always balancing priorities here, and at a certain point when the Windwater, they sort of put a lot of money towards Windwater, made that provision to give a lot of that money to this new water fund. What I'm interested in is the transportation alternatives used to include safe routes to schools, or it was a separate program, I can't remember, but anyway, you know, that money has really diminished and the program was really great program, Safe Routes to Schools program. So, I'd be interested in discussing the possibility of sort of cutting back on the percentage of money in the transportation alternatives as opposed to clean water fund. I guess we'd like to have testimony in that to see where that fund is, but, you know, to maybe divert some money to the sequestration or whatever. So I'm just wanting to raise that issue now while we're talking about it.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Your question, where is Safe Routes to School money handled in the budget?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: So right now, the only Safe Routes to School money that you would see in the budget is in the bike ped program. And it's legacy money from the Safe Race to School program that we had years ago. So there was an actual program within the federal. It doesn't exist any longer. But it is eligible under It was a federal program, not a state program. Correct. But it is eligible under the Transportation Alternatives Program. Represent what? Oh, thought that was the hand, I'm sorry.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: It used to provide like a coordinator, local coordinator for sacreds to schools, she organised a lot of things in our town around there, you know, getting kids to go on flights, they'd have, what are they called, like a bike train or whatever, and one parent would go with the kids to make sure that they all got to school safely, to walk them, and they did, they installed a better crosswalk by the school, and she was actually, I think, a very part time paid person in that program, and then they just collapsed that program and lumped it into the transportation and services. Certainly I think the funding has gotten diminished from that.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: And this is just a This is the awards from last year, if you can see it. This is also available on our website, but these were the awards that were made last, they would have been last March time frame under the Changed Traditional Terms Program. You'll also see a reference to missile mitigation and that sort of coming up later in the presentation, but the solicitation for those two programs is done as one, the TA and the So it's one application period for those two programs. Next is the rest area budget is on tab six. Not a whole lot going on with rest areas. The only thing that you'll see in there statewide paving line item. Again, looking at data collected this last summer to determine which of the lots will be paved in the upcoming year.

[Chair Matt Walker]: That is enough money. There's not a closure expected in the rest areas across the state?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: That's enough. This is federal funding, remember. So BGS may be carrying state funding in their budget for those. Okay.

[Chair Matt Walker]: You don't make decisions regarding the operations. That's all we do.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Right. We're responsible for the pavement, sidewalks, all sorts of things.

[Chair Matt Walker]: For a billion dollars, I can't keep track of all of our goals. I

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: just want to say that the two rest areas that I use regularly, the veterans one, which is just beautiful, coming north, and the heart frizzles just pretty much every pilot job. And they're really important resources and to be able to get off the highway for a few minutes. If you've never been to the veterans, it's just amazing. You know, with all the names and photos and, you know, Vietnam veterans and gorgeous views outside and wastewater recycling and all this. And then the Hartford one is also really, I think, very well used. We don't see cars there, but they're important to keep us safe on the highway from going to the cup of tea or something. Appreciate the parents' involvement.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: The next one, under Yeah, if I just wanted

[Rep. Candice White]: to ask one more question on the rest areas. So I understand that rest areas were built with mostly federal money, so Vermont can't charge anything at rest areas, like for coffee or anything like that. And I continue to think about what a wonderful place this would be to have a level three charger. Knowing that we have these federal limitations, is there any possibility at any of our rest areas to look at purchasing a small piece of land, contiguous or adjacent to any of these rest areas to put level three charging in. We've got bathrooms, we've got parking, we've got vending machines. It seems like a great place for electric vehicles. And I know that's a separate program, and we've got locations, that's kind of going. But it just seems like the most sensible place to put high level chargers.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Do want handle this one?

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: I

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: don't really have any strong input to put into this.

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Yeah, so I mean, you're correct. Everything that you said is correct in terms of we cannot charge people pay 10 at the rest areas. And so that is a challenge. I think our agency is always open to looking at different ideas. So certainly we could take that back and see what might be feasible. I mean, we'd have to, based on what I understand, and again, my knowledge area is limited, from what I understand, we have to use seed money to do all of that so that we don't bump into the federal challenge. Then, and I'll just say to your point, and I've heard you loud and clear, things are expensive, unfortunately. Although I just also wanna let you know, are seeing bid prices come down a little bit. So hopefully that is welcome news. So it's all how do we spend the limited dollars that we have, but we certainly can bring that back and see what might be possible. Yeah, mean, other thought is like

[Rep. Candice White]: a public private partnership, that somebody might wanna put a level three charger in, and they can make some money on that. But I think it would be working with the state to figure out, is there land available next to that? There'd have to be some kind of coordination. But yes, I agree, we don't have any extra money, so we don't wanna be going down these, creating these big expensive projects.

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: But at the same time we want to support EVs, right? Yes. In the most,

[Rep. Candice White]: there's been a lot of thought put into where these rest areas are along the highway. We know they're utilized, we invest in keeping them up, they're beautiful, so how do we just make them even better?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: That's a

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: great question. There's another we have.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Was gonna say

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Patrick Murphy will be in this afternoon, so he would be one to help with more information on that.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yes, believe he would. The next tab is tab 20, which is the Town Highway Federal Disasters. This is generally speaking a placeholder. So any project that resulted in a permanent project from the storms we saw a couple of years ago is identified in your book elsewhere. It's not within this line item. There's actual projects. You'll see the ERPs in your book. They'll fall under various programs, town highway bridge, roadway, so forth. So this was intended if a new event were to occur the portions of emergency relief, the actual response, on town highways only. And those are ER eligible town highways. So they have to be within the federal aid system, which are major collectors and above, I think, with definition. So think of it, a lot of your class two roads in your towns would fall under the federal system, but not all of them. We currently have 39 ongoing projects within municipal systems from the last two storm events. 30 of those are emergency relief projects. So that's just us still going through the documentation phase with the towns to get them reimbursed for those costs. So that's built into this 4,000,000 as well. And we're still have nine permanent restoration projects that are identified within, sprinkled around in the book within other programs.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Person in peace?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Is that a thing to divert debris? Correct. Yeah. That is in the town of Charlotte. Does it work? As far as I know so far.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Keeps the canoers out. That's

[Chair Matt Walker]: fairly new.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And swimmers do.

[Chair Matt Walker]: So it keeps the canoers out. I can't tell you, we'll do that too.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: That's on Spear Street in Sherlock?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: I think that is

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: a huge washout area.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Yeah, was washed out completely.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: It was gone, completely gone. And unfortunately, the town jumped ahead a little bit on us in that one and purchased those pipes in advance of meeting with us. And so they desperately wanted to use them, and so this is what they ended up with.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: How would you guys have done it?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: We wouldn't have had that diversion in the middle, and we would have ended up with one larger structure.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Yeah, because it's cluttered, I guess.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: The town, they responded quickly. They purchased the pipes because they knew they were going have a hard time getting them. I think they just upsized what was there before. Did they save money doing it? Did they save money? Like owning a bull by the horns themselves? Hard to say, but I'm going to venture a guess that no.

[Chair Matt Walker]: I would suspect

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: that the

[Chair Matt Walker]: answer would be works

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: like we're hunting.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Then we would really like blocks up or

[Chair Matt Walker]: it doesn't. How do guys what do you think?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: What they have there now is much more substantial than what was there pre storm. Yeah. It was literally two ten foot pipes that had in the, you know, sort of buried structures. There was no head walls. I don't think there was any. Suppose there was any guardrail. I suppose they didn't just put in a bridge. That's what they would have ended up with had they two tubes higher than that. The one is the town highway aid and the supplemental, which is on tab twenty one and twenty two. So these are just line items. On highway aid are the quarterly payments that go out to municipalities support their class one, two and three town highways. Most of this is written directly into statute. That budget represents the minimum increase. Believe you already heard from Candice on that. 26 is down below, 27 is up here at the top. Supplemental is just for towns that cities that have multiple lane class one. So it gets added to this six option sample right here. The next one is on tab 24. Again, it shows in the book as a line item of 6,143,000. But within that program, there's three separate grant programs. One is the Better Roads program, which is budgeted for $1,400,000 $1,000,000 of that comes from the Clean Water Fund, 440,000 comes from the Transportation Fund. Intended purpose of these projects are to support municipalities in their compliance with the Municipal Roads General Permit. The next program is oh, and the Roads program, just for people's awareness, is that's a competitive grant program. Grants and Aid program is the next one that is solely funded by the Clean Water Fund with a $3,000,000 budget. Again, these are projects that support the municipality's compliance with the Missile Roads General Permit. That program is a formula based annual grant program. Town sends in a letter of intent to be part of the program. And then based on the response, we take that all the responses and recalculate how much money we have and send out a final offer in fiscal year twenty six, two thirty seven of the two sixty municipalities received grant funding to this program.

[Chair Matt Walker]: President White,

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: you can go to the panel.

[Rep. Candice White]: Yeah. Thank you. I just wanna make sure I understand these two programs. Both of these programs, totaling a little bit over $6,000,000, are to help towns fund road improvements on their public roads that are somehow connected with the waterway? Correct.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Just one clarification. The 6,000,000 is actually there's another slide to this that has some other programs as well. It's not just these.

[Rep. Candice White]: Okay. Got you. So there's a little bit more in the next But they're connected with a waterway.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Correct.

[Rep. Candice White]: And they're all public roads, no private roads. Correct. And they're not being accounted for in the previous Town Highway eight program or Town Highway Class one, something like

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Separate. Correct. Thank

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: you.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Joe, the funding by formula, what's the formula based on?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: This is always a tricky one to explain. It's based on mileage, miles of hydrologically connected roadways. And that's defined in the Municipal Roads General Permit. And so we just, we work with ANR to find out a list of all the towns and how many miles they have. And it's just a, it's a, they get their share, if you will, of the funding based on that.

[Chair Matt Walker]: President Chittenden, does each one

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: of them programs have its own staff and everything? They all work together to do three programs or is there? So that's all within my group. And there's some staff that are dedicated to these programs, but it's sort of, it's definitely some McDonald's. All three of them. Correct. Okay. Yes. And then, there's definitely a lot of coordination going on with our partners at A and R, with the missile roast general permit folks in that group over there. I was just concerned there was a big bureaucracy with each program. That's all. Didn't sound like it's too bad. No. These are state funds, eightytwenty split on the two programs. But I would say that probably 90% of these projects are completed by their public works or their forces. And the project that you see in the picture is sort of your example project. It's your sort of quintessential Vermont class three road, gravel road with stone mine ditching and cross culverts, stone check dams. It's getting the water off the road and into the ditches and then away from the road. That's the last three? More than likely. That would be like, yeah. This is the next slide that goes along with that. The other component in that 6.143 is the federal funding component of 1.428. This is the municipal mitigation program that I mentioned earlier. We put it out as part of the TA because the eligibility is defined by our environmental mitigation category under TA. So this is where a lot of the salt sheds projects are funded and the stormwater treatment type projects. And then the last piece of that 6,143,000.000 is $275,000 budgeted for the stormwater utility fees that B TRANSPays to the MS 4 communities.

[Chair Matt Walker]: This particular line shows a three or six about 3 quarters of million dollar drop, 750,000 drop in municipal mitigation from last year to this year. Can you just speak to that?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Yes. So part of the requirements under the municipal roads general permit is that towns have to undergo a road erosion inventory. In the two subsequent years, we had funding that came through the Clean Water Fund to V Trans to grant out to municipalities for purposes of funding those road erosion inventories, but we're coming to the end. So I think if you look back two years ago, there would have been a million dollars for that purpose. Last year, it was 750,000. And now we've awarded all of those dollars and all the towns are done. Then, okay,

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: just wanted to ask, does that mean that they've all had their, we're caught up on our erosion inventories or we just, and we are now acting on that information or are there still towns that need this?

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: So I'd have to go look, but as far as the funding goes, we funded all of the projects that we intend to fund with the road erosion inventories. Coordinated with like Chittenden County RPC was funding their own. We didn't do any of those through the MPO, they did all theirs. And so we worked with the other RPCs to fund any of the towns that had a need for the funding. So that's not to say that towns are 100% in compliance. Don't know why.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: But again, you're using the RPCs to get you Correct. That Okay, thanks. That's good.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: And then we're into the 10 gs reports. These are the bike pad projects that were added new in fiscal year twenty seven. And then just additional projects under the bikeped program, added new. These are the transportation alternative projects that show up for the first time in fiscal year twenty seven, and park and rides and rest areas that are new in the book, the '27. And then this is the 10 g report that for any project that has increased by either $5,000,000 or more, why more than 75% of the estimated fiscal year twenty six. And so for purposes of our projects, because they're grant funded, it usually means that they just received a separate, a new grant because we only represent the portion that we're funding. So there could be a project out there, dollars 10,000,000 that we're only funding 2,000,000, that's all you're gonna see in the book.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: These

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: are projects that are no longer in the book. So, they were completed or cancelled for bike ped transportation alternatives and carotenoids that are no longer in the book. And then this is projects that have increased by more than $10,000,000 for the preliminary estimate or by 100% from the preliminary estimate. And again, with the exception of Guilford, those are just projects that were represented one way. They came in and they got additional funding and so that's why they've increased. The Guilford project was a replacement of the walkway pavers, very specialized work. The estimate was much lower. And then when the bids came in, they came in much higher than expected, but we did fund the project in a couple of year. And I believe that is it. Other question?

[Chair Matt Walker]: First six slides took an hour. The next 14 took fifteen minutes. Represent what?

[Rep. Candice White]: Yeah, so I'm seeing the covered bridge restoration in Warren on your list. So just bringing up a bigger topic of covered bridges around the area, or in the state, and we've had in our area our covered bridge impacted multiple times by trucks that are too big going through the bridge. I think there's a bill going around to put barriers in front of covered bridges. So what is the Agency of Transportation's opinion on covered bridges? Do you have an opinion on whether we should be installing these metal structures in front of covered bridges to protect them from unknowing trucks going through and destroying them, or causing major repairs. It seems like it's an issue that continues to occur in Vermont, and I'm not sure whether this restoration of the covered bridge in the Warren is just normal restoration or whether it was created by another incident.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: That is just sort of normal restoration work going on there. I'm not a bridge guy, I'm more of the funding type of guy here. I will just say, know that Linden has had success with the installation that they have of the metal arch in front of their bridge. But as far as the overall bridges, don't know, Jennifer, do you have any?

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: I don't have an answer for that, but we certainly can provide one.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Representative Burke?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: I just want to say in Brattleboro we had a covered bridge at traffic, eventually emergency vehicles could not get to earth. It was a main connected road, and so we built a new bridge, and the covered bridge is just a pedestrian walkway. People get married in there, musicians come and play, still preserves actually even better the looking at the bridge with the wild flowers around it and everything. It's a good solution. Of course, it's so cheap to build on the bridge, but has protected it.

[Chair Matt Walker]: I guess I would add in there, am with Bill's. There has been a comment from the agency and some of the communication that I've had about the covered bridges. It's a tough spot because they're generally on town roads. They're not on state highways. They're historic preservation. There's an economic driver to it. There's a transportation related piece to it. And amazingly enough, in a state full of incredible amount of beautiful and wonderful structures, we don't have a particular program to protect them and or preserve them in one clear spot that we could find or grant money for. So perhaps as a committee, that's something we can figure out how to move forward on since there's significant interest. But they fall in kind of an odd They're not on state highway, so it's not as easy to take them in this environment, but perhaps in commerce or in historic Perhaps some combination there would be good. So I appreciate the sentiment, and I'm interested in that

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: as well. Just one quick clarification. Sorry. You'll see that I think that was labeled as a Warren EH-twelve. That's a very long legacy, long standing project. Transportation alternatives is the new enhancements. And that's where any other funding that comes through our programs covered bridge, that's what makes it out, if it's historic preservation piece of TA.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Joel, Jennifer, thank you very much. We're to move to our next budget piece. I think David is here already and just about ready to go. We'll give you a minute to transition. And if we have to, we'll push through our break a little bit. There's a change to the schedule for the committee piece. Our break will adjust as this next presentation goes. The committee discussion has been shrunk because Logan is ready with his budget spreadsheets. So he's going to come in and give them out and walk us through the budget spreadsheets, which I've been waiting for, which is part of the reason that was held as a committee discussion spot. So you have plenty of time, even though it looks like you're shrunk a little bit, whatever it takes for your particular area. Then it will be break, and then it'll be Logan and the spreadsheets, and then whatever remaining time we'll have for committee discussion. And on Wednesdays, I do try to break before noon as soon as possible. I know we all do a lot things on Wednesdays. So there is a slight change to the schedule, but that doesn't change your time and availability. Thank you Joel, thank you Jonathan.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Thank you.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: Good morning. Thank you for having me. David Pouech Policy and Credit Bureau at the Agency of Transportation to go over that budget and give an explanation of what's included in it and what the numbers look like. They may be able to get us back on schedule as I only have five slides, I think, and they're pretty general. Let's jump right into it, if that's alright. So, a general overview of the budget in terms of funding in and funding out. The policy planning and research budget is majority funded by federal funds. We are required by federal law to take a very small percentage out of or put aside for planning purposes, a very small percentage of the funds that the state is allotted through the Surface Transportation Act. So it's one or 2%, I believe, on a relatively large amount of money. This is the majority of our funding comes from in this federal pot of funding. So on the left, you see the funding profile of money coming in. Federal is the large proportion of it. The state is the 2.3 and used really to draw down and match most of that federal funding. This federal ends up coming out at about 80%, and we'll get into a little bit more detail in a subsequent slide. And then there's a small part of interdepartmental transfer, that 99,000. That is some funding from ACCD and Natural Resources to go toward the Better Connections grant program that our regional planning staff facilitate or administer in partnership with those agencies. And then as far as expenditures go, way the money is spent out, the large portion of it you'll see there, the 10.2 are through grants and pass through. One component of that, roughly half of that, is pass through funding to the MPO in Chittenden County. I think 5.5 or so million is funding that FHWA is sending to the MPO, but it goes through the state on its way to the MPO, but it's actually apportioned to the MPO directly by the Federal Highway Administration. We just pass it through. The other component of that 10.2 large portion of grants and pass through is a majority of RPC funding for transportation planning. May have heard of the Transportation Planning Initiative. It's our annual grant agreement with the regional planning commissions to assist us and do also regionally and locally significant transportation planning in each of your regions. We can talk a little bit more about that in a moment. And then personal services, I guess that's personnel service, personal services of personnel. The 3.3 is majority funding for the staffing at the Agency of Transportation to facilitate all of this work, I'll get into the components of that in just a few minutes. And then the operating component data small piece. Michelle. Sorry. This is the one number that I'm not exactly certain of in the budget. If the chair wouldn't mind me reaching out to Michelle Windham, well educated, yeah, phone a friend. I'm sorry. Which which number? It's the $2,299,000. It's a small component. I assume it's a sort of office and administrative sort of expenses.

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Yes, that would be like travel, any functional pieces that are needed for the day to day operations that's not included in the overhead.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: Thank you.

[Jennifer Finch, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: We can get more detail on that if the committee would like.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: Okay, moving right along. I've already alluded to some of the major components of the expenditures here, but to get into just a little bit more detail. The MPO pass through, it's been self explanatory and noted in there pretty clearly. The RPC TPI grants also 2.1. And then working our way around the wheel here, our research program at the agency is set aside of that portion of planning and research funds that are allocated or I guess required to be used by the agency for planning and research. So I think it's 25% or so, but a portion of the state planning and research funds that we take down from the other huge pots of funding must be used for research. And so this component is managed by Emily Parkini and staff, and you may have heard presentations on her program in the past or perhaps you will in the future, but it's a really robust transportation research program at the agency with many partners. There's an annual symposium that is put on with dozens of presentations on research on everything from pavement composition to smart growth principles to you name it, electric vehicle uptake and so on and so forth. So it's a pretty interesting and exciting component of the work that we do. Working up the wheel here, we have a small amount of funding for Act two fifty and Section eleven eleven implementation. We have a strong staff of one very well informed civil engineer staff in group and policy and planning that does the Act two fifty review, takes a look at Act two fifty permit applications, considers how they might affect the transportation network and takes part in the process as necessary and if it sees fit. And then our Section eleven eleven program is a small group of folks that intake and process and counsel applicants on eleven eleven access permits for developers or individuals that are doing work or need to need actually need access to the state right of way. The mapping component is a very important part of our program. We have a small mapping staff that really underpins so much of the work that we do in keeping track of mileage for municipalities, doing all of the accounting for and reporting to the federal agencies in terms of highway mileage. It relates to the highway funding apportionments that are sent out to towns. It relates to the statewide and regional planning work that we do both in house and with the regional planning commissions, and generally supports most of the work throughout the agency in one way, shape or form. You probably have maps in here that are that are produced by that that group. So we all rely heavily on on that group throughout the agency. We have a and then the public outreach component is really is a one person band at the moment, but Amy Tackle does a fabulous job managing communications for the agency, working with the rest of us on some of the behind the scenes work that goes into making sure that that messaging is prompt and accurate among other projects.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: The town has been contacted like, hey, we're doing this intersection, we're gonna have a meeting or we want input, is that part of that outreach?

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: Sort of tangentially, oftentimes a particular project manager, say in your example, propagating the highway division in one of the subset of programs reaches out and will communicate directly with the municipality in that case. They might get support from our public outreach folks in terms of developing the materials for those meetings or messaging around it. Then there's outreach of like, this is happening this week, we're closing this lane, those things. Yes, those weekly reports, the weekly highway reports that you get, those sorts of things are generated right out of that office. Representative White? I have

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: two quick questions. First, is there a tab in the

[Rep. Candice White]: white book that this corresponds to?

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: There is, it is one page, it says Policy and Planning, I believe, and I don't know which page it is, I apologize, but it is in there.

[Rep. Candice White]: Okay, I think it's seven.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Amy, let's see if

[Rep. Candice White]: there's sustainability permitting in that big.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: Apologize, I don't have it open right now, we've got.

[Rep. Candice White]: Seven is policy employment. It's Amy Battle, bureau director.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: Yes, that's it. And

[Rep. Candice White]: the second question, you had mentioned in the research portion that there's a big conference or something. I feel like I saw something at UVM in the fall that I wasn't aware of, is that what we're talking about? When does that happen?

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: It happens in the fall, I think it's in September, historically, and the past few years have been at the Barry Auditorium.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Okay.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: It happens that we're in communications with other folks because the odd is taken that weekend for some or those dates for another event. So Emily's working with other folks to see where that might be able to take place.

[Rep. Candice White]: And is that something that the public is able to attend?

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: Yeah, absolutely.

[Rep. Candice White]: Would just love to, maybe the committee would like to know when that is occurring, if we are around.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: Yeah, absolutely. We can make sure to bring that message back.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Thank you.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: Surely. The last component, the slice of the pie here that I just want to speak for a moment about is the policy and planning component. And that's where I have resided for, I guess, the past decade or so. There are two major components to the policy and planning slide five there within the agency for staffing, and there's the systems planning group, which I've managed, which does the statewide planning and related activities. So the state rail plan, we've been in here before to talk about the freight plan for the state, the long range, transportation plan for the state. So the sort of statewide, policy and planning, efforts is handled by that small group. The adjacent group that we work very closely to or with is the regional planning group, which is led by Matthew Oroncio. Think you may already have heard from him or maybe you will during the session on other topics. And that small group of AOT staff is really the liaisons with the regional planning commissions to make sure that we're working with the RPCs to provide the support, to help facilitate that funding that we send out, make sure that we can make best use of that and to answer questions about other things going on at the agency. It provides the regional planning commissions sort of a direct phone line into the agency that we can then go out and get information for the regional agencies by which or through. And then, let's see here. Yeah, so that's the gist of the composition of how the funding is spent. And this is just a slightly more detailed version of the components of that pie with a line on the far right there of just reflecting change from last year, fiscal year twenty six to this year fiscal twenty seven post budget, and you'll see it's it's relatively unchanged. There are a couple of, I think the first couple of lines that change just reflects salary adjustments and whatnot. The mapping component has a little bit of an increase in there for a couple of important pieces of work in the purchase of a new plotter for being able to print the large scale maps. Act two fifteen Section eleven eleven permits. The decrease in funding there is primarily through because of I guess, the abandonment of a project that had

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: been going on for a

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: couple of years to try to put together an online automated eleven eleven permit application system that ran into ran into some difficulties. It seems that software projects like that often face once once the details are dug into research and TPI grants and MPI pass through are pretty stable there as well.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: How many people are employed for that? 2,000,000 some odd dollars.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: There are roughly 21 employees in that taking on that range of work. Then there's a portion of three other folks that are partially fund there. There's a port three other folks that are partially funded in that part of funding. Do do you plan on hiring any more this year? No.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: We don't. Yeah. Can you do the same job of less?

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: We seem to do that every every year. Okay.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: I'm asking. Everybody's we're we're on funds here.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: So I'm Yeah. It's a matter of prioritization. I will point out, I think it's in this last slide that I have for you that our overall budget, in particular state funds, is significantly less this year, just reflecting actually the elimination of a few positions from this budget. One being associated with Michelle's retirement, the other being associated with Amy Bell's retirement, who you saw in the budget book coming up in the coming months, and then a couple other shifts. So we're doing more with less right now, I guess is the short answer to that.

[Joel Paragot, VTrans Municipal Assistance Program Manager]: Represent Burke?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: How can you get by without Michelle?

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: That's the questions piece. Question that I ask myself every day,

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: but we'll find what I I've heard that line every year, think.

[David Pouech, VTrans Policy and Planning]: It'll be different and we'll muddle along somehow.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Anymore? No, that's the thing.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Okay, anybody else? I guess you are all set.