Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Good morning. Thursday, 02/05/2026. And we are here in house transportation. And is here as a repeat testifying from last year and an update, I think, on where our electric vehicle funds from electric registration, cars, etcetera. An update from where you were last year to where you were up to this year and whoever else knows where you wanna take us. But good morning. Welcome back to committee, and it's all yours.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Thanks. For the record, my name is Brondwin Cook. I'm the community planning and policy manager in the Agency of Commerce and Community I have a lot to share. I also have been watching some other testimony. I know you guys have a lot of questions. So I'm happy to share what I have. But I also know that you guys have tons of questions. I can do my best to answer them as we go along. I've got 30 slides or so, and I'm going to be covering some updates across all of ACCD's investments from 2014 to today in our current program. But feel free to stop and ask questions as we go along. I'll try and keep us on time and make sure we get to all of the big key points for all of the programs. Just as a quick reminder of where I sit, I'm in a team called Community Planning and Revitalization. We're a pretty interdisciplinary team, which is why we show up all over the place. We're a little bit in transportation. We show up in housing. We show up in land use. We're all across the board. But we landed doing EVSE work, again, back in twenty fourteen ish, because our team viewed it as, yes, an environmental program, switching from fossil fuels to electric, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, all that. But for us, really, it was more about economic development, making sure equipment was sited in places that were going to bring people downtown and provide some businesses with perhaps some more foot traffic. So that's really the perspective that we came to it from. From there, it's grown. It's also part of our housing strategy. Home access to charging is really important, but it's really challenging in some types of housing. So we've also done some PBSE housing programs as well. Just a quick overview of the testimony I'm providing today. So I have a few slides that is really just table setting. And I know that this is a little bit repetitive with some testimony that you've heard from B TRANS, but it doesn't hurt to just set that table really quickly one more time. And then I'm going to move into some large buckets of our programs and funding that we've been working with and give each one of those a little bit of an update. So this really quick table setting. I know you've seen this before, but just to reiterate, the EVSE charging. This is a network in order for this charging thing to work really well and to be reliable and affordable and to not tax the grid, etcetera. We really need to have charging in many different types of locations, and we need many different types of charging. ACCD's work has mostly been in those lower three tiers. So public charging, again, in our downtowns and our public attraction areas, things that really bring foot traffic into our downtown and villages. We've also been doing some workplace charging. And we've been working in the multiunit residential space as well. So that network is kind of the easy part, relatively speaking, just knowing that we need a variety of locations, a variety of charging heights. The trickier part is, well, how much and when and specifically where. We do use a DOE tool to try and give us a little bit of a loose framework for how much charging infrastructure should we be aiming for, and where does it really need to go. So again, we've worked in the public DC fast charging space. But one of the trickier places to work is in this shared private ports. This isn't exact science. It's a rough estimate. The other thing that's really interesting that is worth highlighting is that when something says, We need public DC fast charging, that doesn't necessarily mean the public dollars have to fund it. And vice versa, when we see something shared private charging points that ports, that doesn't necessarily mean the private market is going to step in and invest in those areas. So we learned multiunit is a particularly tough space to work in because there's a split incentive. The property owner is not necessarily the one that's using the equipment. And so that space needs a little bit of extra boost. In addition to that, the technologies and the services available to multi units are just not as well developed as the public commercial sector and, say, single family homes. Just DRP. Department of Energy. So it's a federal program that provides this tool.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: Sorry.

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: In what way? DOE? Tool. What's the tool? How do you figure out

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: your need? Right. So you put in some parameters, some assumptions. So the assumption that we've been working with is that we are aiming to have 126,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2030. So you plug that number into the tool. And then you make some other assumptions about, people have access to pump charging? How many of those vehicles are plug in hybrid? And then the tool runs some

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: Okay. Yep. Thank you.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: I'm represent Casey and then represent.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: You want 126,000 cars electric by 2030. Where are we at now?

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Roughly 20,000. I

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: think that's

[Unidentified committee member (possibly Vice Chair Timothy R. Corcoran II)]: You gotta do your part, Jim. Your part, Is

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: that a reasonable goal,

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: you think,

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: at this point? The goal is set through for the climate action plan. So it's the goal that we would need to reach to meet our emissions targets. There's other policies and programs in place to try and help build that market along. I think one of the things and maybe we'll see this. Or we can see this from the network is that it's hard to expect people to buy the cars if they don't see the networked for charging out there and available. So it's definitely a chicken and egg kind of a problem.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: I see a lot of electric chargers out there. I see quite a few, but I don't see any in the super duper rural areas,

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: We're which I happy to talk more about some of the challenges in the rural areas, especially in that public charging space, which a lot of public charging tends to be. Level three is the thing that folks really want to see in the public realm, but especially in rural areas, there's a lot of challenges to that. If we can just put a pin in that, I can come back to it. I want to talk a little bit about our DC fast charge investments across all of our funding, but especially when we get to Charge Vermont. In the last year or so, we're really seeing some specific challenges for rural communities. Demand charges are a real challenge in citing rural communities, in addition

[Unidentified committee member (possibly Vice Chair Timothy R. Corcoran II)]: to a few other things. Yeah.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: I'm not hearing much about it. Nobody calls me up and says, hey, we need more electric charges. That's not really that kind of an area. But I can see it in an urban area, for sure.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: So Yeah. Representative

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: Keyser? If

[Unidentified committee member]: I could build a little bit off of Representative Keyser's concepts, we're in a world right now of reduced resources. If your modeling is on numbers that goals, but not reality. Don't you think you've overstepped what you're thinking about?

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: I mean, my personal opinion is no. I think that we're going look at some data, and it essentially shows that if you build it, EV drivers show up. Can't expect If we want to make this transition, we have to put the infrastructure in place. Otherwise, it's just not going to happen.

[Unidentified committee member]: I agree with you completely. It's a question of scale. And if you were in an environment of less resources, it would seem to me that you need to prioritize. And instead of putting a big tranche out there that seems overwhelming, frankly, given the resources, it would be more reasonable to, in my opinion, I don't know if you would agree, to come and model it as you would think you'd need to build it out. And prioritizing is one thing. 126,000, you know you're not gonna reach the number. So your modeling is not going to be an act. And I'm really a data person, which would prefer to see a more reasonable, given a different type of approach.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: I think that's maybe a matter of policy. That's debate, I think. I think there's a minimum amount of network that needs to be out there to support people continuing to adopt them.

[Unidentified committee member]: I don't disagree with you. It's a question at scale.

[Unidentified committee member (possibly Vice Chair Timothy R. Corcoran II)]: President Pouech is next, but I want to jump in here for

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: a second. The 126,000

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: comes from Climate Action Plan, and that's the estimated goal that they'll need to meet the transportation emissions issue. So I assume that's where it comes from. But this slide, EAVSC, statewide network, this would be goals for we don't have 75,000 single family home charging ports right now.

[Unidentified committee member (possibly Vice Chair Timothy R. Corcoran II)]: Absolutely.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Right. It doesn't say anywhere on here other than estimating charging infrastructure. But it doesn't say, in effect, these are the this is the need. This is you in my understanding, it's glitch slide. This is to meet to handle that, this would be what we would need.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: And some of this may need some public boost. A lot of this

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: To accommodate 126,000 EVs, you would need this many chargers. So now you're trying to build a network to match 126,000.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: It's a guidepost for how do we know how much is enough.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Do we have any idea if I asked you what the four columns of what we have today, what we actually have right now, and for only four years to get to those? So those would be the goals on the left. But if you're saying this is a network we should have and block to meet our goals or where we're headed to a charge, what do we have today? Where are we at? There's a single family charging ports. If there's 20,000 vehicles, can I assume that maybe threefour of those people have a charging point at home? Is there only 15,000 single family home charging ports? Do you think there's 20? Do you think there's 10? Do we have any idea?

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Single family, I don't. There's probably some good estimates through some of the utility programs that are offering special EV home rates. We probably pull that kind of information. Not something that I know off top of my head. I think in terms of all the public equipment, we also use the DOE's alternative fuels alternative fuel station locator, to get a sense of how much public equipment is out there. We're gonna talk about data a little bit more in a second, so I'm just gonna throw out there that the data is really, really tough and challenging to get a full, complete picture. People can put stations online, and it will show up on the alternative data fuels website. But if it comes offline, that isn't always necessarily known. So it's just a really tough number to hone in on.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Any of the four lines that you have, do we have an idea of any of the four, how much exists in Vermont today? Each of those are The breakdown on the right in the red is how the 3,368 would ideally be broken down of what we want to get to. We don't have any numbers of what we are actually at today.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: In the multiunit dwelling and the private workplace? No, we don't.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Okay. So we don't know where we're at, we do know where we want to get to.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Correct. I would wager a guess that we're pretty far from it.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: I was gathering that from the previous questions, but what I'm saying is we know where we want to go, but we have no idea where we're starting

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Right. And we're Okay.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: But That's fine. I don't know how much it will take to get there if we don't know where we are right now, but I just wanna make sure I understood it. These are what the idea that this tool tells us this is what BD infrastructure should look like if we have 126,000

[Unidentified committee member (possibly Vice Chair Timothy R. Corcoran II)]: EV vehicles.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Roughly, yes. Thank you. Representative Pouech?

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: Maybe, just sort of. So is the goal of your program to build all of these? No. Can you describe what? Describe what Yes.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: I didn't realize this was a hot topic. But it is a fair question. And I bring it up because I know in past years, there has been questions about, Okay, we're building this infrastructure, but how do we know what's enough? And I guess the point is it's very difficult to tell what's enough. This gives us a sense of generally what we need to see. I don't think we see this out there, pretty sure. So we're kind of far from this, Mark, is our point. The other point is our goal of our money is sort of twofold. One is to get out into those pockets that are going to be a little tougher for the market to come in. In Vermont, again, I'm probably pulling on some other testimony that I've heard, but in Vermont, it's challenging. Third party service providers that are doing this level three charging, Vermont's not a hot spot for them because the density is just not there to make the business model work out. So the public charging needs a little boost from us to get it going. The other sector that, as I mentioned, is really difficult is multiunit charging. So we have a lot of investment in the federal dollars in the past have been going into the EV and EVSE market. And if you are a renter in a multi unit property or if you're a condo owner in a multi unit property, your access to some

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: of these benefits is limited by the fact

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: that you don't have access to home charging. If you don't have access to home charging, it is very difficult to make this work and make it affordable. So we've really been focusing our funds on the places where the market needs a little boost to get it going and making sure that it's a little bit more equitable. And it's not just large luxury multi unit properties that are getting EV chargers. It's not just dense urban areas that are getting public charging, that access to these benefits is built across the state of Vermont and across different housing types, across different income types. So that's generally, I would say, the goal of how we've been investing the dollars that we have. Okay, so more about our programs. I've broken them up into three general buckets that represent eras of funding. So our very earliest grants started in 2014. In total, it was roughly $4,000,000 came from MOUs with the DEC. That was for VW settlement funds that we had coming into the state, and then also with V Trans with some general funds. So all in, these programs that we administered in house was roughly $4,000,000 also included our multiunit pilot that we ran. These funds are largely spent down, and so we're now in this phase of monitoring and evaluating. And so I have a couple of slides on what we're doing in that space to monitor and evaluate those investments. This will be the fastest part, at least for me, of the entire testimony. Have one slide on a program that we have with BGS. BGS runs it. If you would like to hear more about it, I would encourage you to bring in their program staff to talk about that program. But essentially, for us, it's a pass through. There was legislation in Act 185 to run a program called public charging at state workplaces. EGS is in charge of state workplaces, so that's essentially pass through funding that we just passed on to them through an MOU. And they are managing that program. The Casey, last

[Unidentified committee member (possibly Vice Chair Timothy R. Corcoran II)]: is there a question

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: for me? Yeah. How much money have we spent since 2014 to today? And on how many charges?

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: I can tell you We'll go into more about that. The easy answer is that $4,000,000 is spent. The $500,000 to BGS is not spent yet. I'll give some explanation for why that has slowed. The 9,100,000.0 is a program that we are operating right now. And I have slides at

[Unidentified committee member (possibly Vice Chair Timothy R. Corcoran II)]: the end that go into more detail about how much we've spent over how much time. So you numbers that tells us how much you spent from the start to today? Yeah, these are them.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Okay, so the update that I wanted to provide, this is that $4,000,000 amount of funding that we administered in grant funds between 2014 and 2022. Again, largely spent in projects that are in the ground and up and operating. And our focus has shifted more towards monitoring. So last year, I came in and shared a bunch of case studies that we had done on some of those projects that had been installed. I have some hard copies of those case studies if anybody is interested. They're available on our website. And we're always doing more case studies. We have another case study that's about to come out for some charging that was installed in Hartford.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: Very over here. Think they posted on our website too, but not

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: too much about it. Just don't judge me, because two of those have a small copy. So there's four case studies posted on our website. There's copies for you. This year, what I want to focus on is some other work that we've been doing to tighten up some of our grant reporting requirements and analyze some of that data that's been coming in from the use of the stations. So of our earlier grants, a lot of those grants required that the grantees provide to us annual reports of the use of the station. Not all of them did, but a lot of them did. Prior to 2023, we weren't getting a lot of those reports in from our grantees. And part of that was on us and our fault. A lot of our grantees were small municipalities, small property owners. This is not their business model. They're new to this. They're trying to figure out how to manage an operating station, never mind report annual data to us. Some other challenges in that, our original grants required that they provide us the data in annual summary metrics. So there's a lot of math involved, a lot of adding things up. Not consistent. Each grantee, each property owner might add that up slightly differently. They might do it differently year to year. So the quality of the data that would be coming into us when it did come in was not great. We couldn't do much with it. So we spent some time restructuring what our reporting ask was, and we made it easier on the grantees. So essentially, any grantee that has networked equipment, which is the large majority of our grantees, If you have networked equipment, there's this snazzy software that they have that can present or create these session by session, raw data use reports. It's beautiful. So we've offered to these grantees, look, instead of doing the math on your end and trying to sum these things up and come up with these metrics, just send us the raw data. It's all anonymized. We don't have any personal information in there from the station users. And that will meet your reporting requirement. So we put that system in place. You'll see some numbers in terms of what the compliance has been. And then the sorry, before I move on to what we're doing with the data. So with that new system in place, making it more streamlined and easy for the grantees to report this information, roughly 71% of the courts that had a reporting requirement are now sending in their data to us. The ones that are not, there's usually a pretty good reason why. It's not networked, which means it doesn't have access to this kind of data. In some cases, there have been some equipment changes and shifts. So for example, Wake Robin was one of our multiunit grantees, and their vendor essentially shut down operations in The US not even a year into their stations being in operation. So instead of asking them to focus on how to report data to us, we are giving them a pass and say, look, focus on how to get your stations back up and running, and we'll get back to the data reporting once you have a solid system in place. So just to say that, yes, there are some stations that are not reporting, but we're in communication with, I'd say, nearly all of them. And there's usually a pretty reasonable reason why they're not able to get the annual data to us.

[Unidentified committee member (possibly Vice Chair Timothy R. Corcoran II)]: Representative McCoy?

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: So you said one company that offered charging ports went out of business. How many businesses actually are in business in the state? Do you have a sense of, maybe, are actually providing? I don't know what the utilities as well,

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: for you. That is a great question. So this was a network service provider. So there's equipment providers. They manufacture the hardware. And sometimes they also offer a network service, sometimes not. So it's a real kind of mix. I think in terms of the network service providers, it's a lot. I'm imagining

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: it's not just like three?

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: No, there's like 50 at this point. There's quite a few. Some are more popular than others. But yeah, there's a lot of networks out there. Thank you.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Just on that network on the network question, are you all doing any are you recommending any networks? Like, as you said, there are a lot. There are some much more reliable ones than others, and you're just allowing for any of them, or have you all identified some kind

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: of best in practice vendors? We have not. I think in order to do that, we would have to put out a formal request for qualifications or something of that sort. So we have not done that, but there are some best practices around what a network provider So one of the things that we require is that a network provider be part of the OCPP, which means that it's following an international standard for how the system operates and being able to connect with other equipment, connect with other network providers, etcetera. So that's the minimum that we require in terms of if you're going to have a network, it has to be OCPP. OCPP. Yeah. Something else apparent. I will actually get back to you. Flies off the tongue when it's in an acronym, but not

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: I would just suggest

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: that there are a couple that are much more reliable, like ChargePoint and Electrify America. Ones that are easy app, easy to use, universally not confusing. It

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: is a big market right now. What is the best? Point protocol. There we go. Thank you, Chris. Open to How

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: many vehicles or let me reword this. Is there a lot of vehicles that run out of electricity because they didn't have access to a charge point and the Vermont roads?

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: I do not know the answer to that question. Sorry.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: I've never seen anybody I don't know. I think you've got enough chargers out there is guess what I'm getting at for the amount of vehicles we've got on our roads.

[Unidentified committee member (possibly Vice Chair Timothy R. Corcoran II)]: That's one damn point. I

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: know we don't have enough charges on 22 bags. Don't think we have

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: 22. Two. Don't

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: think there's enough enough chargers, especially And in rural I think in urban areas, I think of how many people stay in a hotel, and they offer two chargers or three chargers, and you have upwards of, I don't know how many people staying in the old chair, don't know what it is called now, but I think we lack chargers. But the goal, I don't know how many we need, because you don't know how many we have. That's the issue, I think, that what's the point at which we can agree that, okay, you have a huge goal up there, do we need to reach that goal? Or can we reach a goal that's more reasonable for our state to get to? And what is that? I definitely need no, we don't have enough chargers, because I see electric. I mean, look at Stuart. I mean, tried to look at Stuart's when I came to That's really the one big charging station in Rutland that we have. I think there might be a or 12 charging stations there. There were five cars there. They were probably coming back, going back home, plugging it in right there from the mountain to head back to New Jersey or Connecticut or wherever they were found.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: There is a there is a charge there is a bank of chargers at Fairhaven. And so I run on my side. I run back and forth with the Fiddler's Elbow back and forth to my camp, which is over. So I'm running up 22 a. I've just never seen an electric car dead. It's like

[Unidentified committee member (possibly Vice Chair Timothy R. Corcoran II)]: Oh, okay. That's all I got

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: to base it on. Right.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Well, we've got a lot of slides to get through and a lot of the presentation. And we will try to confine our questions to clarifying until we get closer to the end. But, Representative Burke, do have

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: your I just want to say,

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: though, before you I think you don't see people going by the side of the road, because if you're an EV driver, you make sure

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: you've got enough and you

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: look up

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: your app or you figure out or you've now experienced where the chargers are and how flat or you drive like 50 miles an hour so you

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: don't use so much electricity. I agree, Pouech.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Let my own rules get broken and it's not directed specifically to you, Representative Burke. There's plenty of it that's going there. If we have questions for the witness, we'll have that. If we want to have committee discussion time at a future time, we'll do that. Let's get through the piece. And if you have questions, make sure they're clarifying. If you have policy and bigger questions, we will try to save some of those till we get a little further along in the data. If they've got a lot of work to put the presentation together, let's hear it and move on. And Representative Pouech, if that's

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: a was just good say, fit with you could remind us again what the goal is of the program.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Getting some EV charging into those pockets that are a little tougher to reach. So we'll have a map later on. I know VTrans provided some information about where there are some gaps in EV charging access. There's big chunks of the NEK in those places that are further from our travel corridors that really don't have any DC fast charging. And so, yeah, maybe you don't see people stranded up there because maybe they don't own EVs yet, and maybe it's because there's not infrastructure there yet. Again, this chicken and egg kind of thing. These are good questions. I'm not dismissing them. But what comes first? How much can you invest? But I think we're a long way from providing the network that supports EV ownership equitably across the state. So back to some of the data. I'm going to blow through this because I'm getting a sense that you guys are gonna wanna ask lots of questions about this data that I do not have the ability to answer today. It is really great. I'm glad we're getting some of this use data. It is somewhat insightful. But so really quick, we collected all of the data from our grantees. Not all stations in the state, just our grantees that we have the ability to ask this of. We have the data. I do not have the time or capacity to analyze it, so we rely heavily on some of our partners. We work with Drive Electric Vermont through their contract with VTrans. Drive Electric Vermont cleaned and analyzed over 70,000 session records of data. I'm gonna go over There's a lot of interesting stuff in there, but I'm gonna go over the big, This is the big trend that punches me in the face when I look at this data. It's not everything. There's a lot of great questions that we could ask of this, but I'm just going to temper us to say there's just a couple of big trends that I think are worth talking about. The rest of it, we'll have to table. Maybe ask DB to come in and talk more about some of this data. Before we look at the data, I just want to remind folks again that there's different types of charging. And when we look at some data like total kilowatt hours used, we just have to constantly remind ourselves that what is possible from a DC fast charge is different than what's possible from a level two. And it doesn't mean that one is more or less valuable than the other. They're both important. They're both valuable. They can just do very different things. So we can't really compare metrics between level two and DC fast charge very much because it's apples and oranges. So this is just a quick snapshot of the data. This is our dataset. Again, this is not all EVSE in the state of Vermont. This is just our dataset, what we are looking at when we're looking at some of these trends. We don't have a lot of DC fast charge in our dataset just yet. That is because most of our DC fast charge investments are just now starting to report their use to us. For those stations, just because it might be of interest, we are requiring them to report use in the same format that the NEBI stations require so that we'll have consistent data across those different investments, we'll be able to glean more information from them. Sorry. One other thing worth noting is that the multiunit, the multifamily equipment is younger. It's newer. So some of these trends are expected in the sense that they just haven't been out there quite as long, and they also have a different use case. Just a quick snapshot of where these ports have been invested. I will say that Chittenden County looks heavy. 18 of those in that Chittenden County investment line are from our multiunit pilot. So that kind of makes sense. Chittenden County does have a lot of our larger, affordable multiunit housing providers. And so that number is high because of that multiunit pilot program. So really quick, what kind of slaps me in the face when I look at this data is the average annual kilowatt hour use at these ports is going up. Pretty solid trend one. That's good to me. They're being used, and the annual use per port keeps going up. The same is true for level two equipment. I did split this out between our public ports and our multiunit. Again, the use case is a little bit different. So the total average annual kilowatt hours in those level two ports, again, pretty consistently going up. That dip in 2023 is because we had 32 multiunit ports come on board that year. And again, they were newer. They have a different use case. So having a little bit of a dip in that annual average would be expected. Looking at the utilization. So I know this is I think about this all the time. What is enough? Are they being used as much as they could be? The one metric that you can compare across DC and level two is, well, how much time out of their availability are they being used? So this is just looking at, out of the entire year of 2024, how much time was a car plugged into the equipment on average? So again, we would expect DC fast charge maybe to be a little bit Have more time of use I'm not going use time of use because that's an electricity term. It would have been used for more time because they've been in the ground longer and because they have a more ubiquitous use case. Same with level two public. They're open to anybody. Multi unit charging, we wouldn't expect them to have a very high utilization yet because they're younger and because they have a much narrower set of folks who could use them, intentionally so.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: Could you go back two slides? There was that chart, average annual kilowatt. We just wanna make sure at first I looked at this and said, well, it's kind of flattened off, but that's just the number of ports. And that purple line is the amount of kilowatt hours used. So you can see, even though the ports haven't changed, the amount it's being used is going up dramatically. Correct. Okay, thanks.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Okay. The last thing I wanted to look at that I saw in the dataset that I thought was interesting. So some of the sessions will Most of the sessions have a unique user ID. Again, we can't identify it to any individual person, but it's just a number that helps us know how many different people are using the equipment. And again, that number has steadily increased year over year. So again, sort of a positive trend. Just

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: as

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: a note, the way that we are able to tell whether it's an out of state or an in state user is that there's also the billing code that is connected to the credit card that was used to charge the station. So just some fun information. I will say, that while the total number of unique users on an annual basis, the Vermont portion is smaller, The Vermonters count for a higher kilowatt hour use. Last more to explore there. I'm a data nerd. I'll try to leave it at that. Again, if you're more interested in some of the data stuff, it might be worth having Drive Electric come in and really dig into some of these metrics. Big picture for me is that, great, the stations are being used. Kilowatt hours are going up. The number of unique users is going up. These are all, I think, pretty good signs. Fairhaven. We do have an investment in Fairhaven. I just wanted to throw this up there to say, I think maybe we were all hoping that the use data would tell us something about how many stations are enough and where should they go. I don't think it's that. I think, again, we're at such an early stage. I think the use data tells us if you put it in the ground, people start using it. You will start to see the use, and it's going to continue to increase.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: I just want to On this one right here, on the slide there, says Rutland only has Is this Rutland County or is it the whole town? Or just Rutland?

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Rutland County. And again, it's only the investments that were part of that 4,000,000. There's a lot more infrastructure in Rutland. It's just not part of our dataset for use.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: Yeah. Yeah. Was gonna say there's more it's probably just getting there. There's more. There's quite a few more I

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: could think about. These are the ones that more.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Are the ones that we invested in and required use to report it. So it's a very narrow set, but it just kind of gives us a trend of, if you put it in, you start to see yeast How

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: far do we want to go between chargers? I know there's an ideal number. Guess it's 25 miles or something like that, or is it more? There's state goals.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Michelle, there's state goals. I wanna say it's no more than 25 miles. Yes. Thank you. To to the next charger.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: And from so is there is there chargers in Virgins?

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Yes. I would have to look at our data to see if there's any that were funded from our programs.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: Yes. Is there any charges south of that at all? Is that

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: Fair Haven.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: From between Fair Haven and Virginia's, that's which is 35 miles between those two two spots. I just didn't know if there was something somewhere else. Station. Sure.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: Be great. But not in

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: this world. Funded by this

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: program. That's a Lavali. I don't know why they don't have them, but there is a spot for them.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Through this particular program, that's a no.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: No. So again, would say if you're wondering about just any, is there a public charger regardless of who funded it? I would say the alternative fuels data station locator, it's a public map that has all EVC investment, regardless of who funded it. And then PlugShare is also a good source to find any EV charging station that might be available, again, regardless of who funded it. And that would give you a good sense of, if you just look at the map and toodle around, you'll see, yeah, there's still some gaps. Places that are further outside of a downtown or a village area. Places that are further away from a major travel border because of some of the investments that we have made in the travel, you can start to see the gaps of where there's charging and see where there isn't. It's a lot. Mean, it's a lot, and yet still there's gaps in the network.

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: You mentioned alternative fuel station locator in another one. What was the other one?

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Flug share. Flug share. Thank you. Okay, so that was just a quick That was what we were working on with our 4,000,000 investments that went in the ground. They're out there. They're operating. We're starting to collect some information and doing some monitoring to see how these investments are going. This is very much a case This is my boss' favorite term. This is very much a case where we are building the plane as we are flying it, because we were putting those grants into place. We were putting those stations into the ground. And meanwhile, we are doing other rounds of grant funding in the multiunit space. And now with our next program that I will give you an overview in a second, but really quick, just remind you where BGS is at before I get there. We have an MOU with BGS for $500,000 to do EV charging in state workplaces that are available in the general public. That program has really been held up. At first, it was due to some state contracting. They were trying to get a selection of vendors to choose from when doing these projects. State contracting, it took a while. Once they got that settled, the return to work threw that whole program up into the air. So their original eight locations that they were going be working in was partially informed by a survey employee about employee needs, where people are driving to work and do they need EV charging. With the return to work, that's really shifted state employees' driving patterns. And so they're now planning to go back to that and do another survey before deciding where to invest EVSE into state workplaces. And if you would like to know more about that, I encourage bringing in Brian Sewell from BGS to talk more about that.

[Unidentified committee member]: So,

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: know, along the road here, where we're a legislator's park, and then there's some a building just off of street there, State Street, which looks like it's BGS public charging because there's workplace. Was that part of this program or that was done beforehand? And how many have been done under this program or what's the status again?

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Nothing has been done under this MOU. So all of the stations that BGS owns and operates were done prior to this program.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: So the expectation would be similar to what we see out there. There it's for workers. The signage says it's for workers, but it's also for public. It's a shared resource. Yeah. Okay.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Exactly. All right. We've fifteen minutes left, and I feel like this is where the most interest might be. So if I have to come back, just let me know. We'll try and get through some of this. So Charge Vermont, this is now a $9,120,000 program that we partnered with Green Mountain Power on. The big 30,000 foot view of this program is that So of this roughly 9,000,000, it does include 10% admin. So not all of that 9,000,000 is available for incentives, but roughly 8,000,000 is available for incentives. The Charge Vermont program launched two and a half years ago, so it's been in operation for that long. In this table, it gives you kind of a snapshot of the program total. So in the entire program, we've processed roughly six ten applications. We have moved 136 of those into an actual project. So when we use the terms contracted and pipeline, when we say contracted, that means the station is done. It's in the ground or it's in construction. If it is in the pipeline, that means that we have determined the project is eligible. We have determined that we actually have the funding to support it. And we are just waiting on the applicant to give us a more refined design, essentially engineering design and estimate for the project.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: We noticed on our copies, the numbers are a little less. So this is an updated thing both.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Yes. So yeah, two things. My apologies. I was updating this last night and I was realizing that my math wasn't nothing. Two things. The date change. We did a soft launch technically in July. It wasn't very soft. As you'll see, the applications came rolling in very quickly. There was nothing soft about it. Technically, we launched with our official branding and the website all done up in August. So I often think of August as being our official launch date. But really, the program, for the purposes of all the applicants coming in, started in July, because there was just this mess of rush. So my apologies for that. It's been in operation. We've been accepting applications for thirty months. The other thing that I did not do was, you'll see later, we have two paths in the program. One is rolling incentives for level one, level two. And the other is a competitive grant program for DC Fast Charge. So in this total, when I drafted the slide up to try and pull it all together, I just forgot to add our DC Fast Charging applications that we processed and our DC Fast Charging projects that were in the pipeline. So my fault. Will update that slide and send it all to you, because this is the big 30,000 view snapshot. So we've processed six ten applications. 136 of them have moved into some phase of moving forward. Roughly 200 of those are right now in limbo. They're on hold. We've notified those applicants that they're on hold, because we don't have the funding available to meet what they're asking for. And then there's another, I'd say roughly 200 as well, where we've determined they're not really eligible. They're applying for workplace charging for employees. But they've explained to us that they're not intending to make it available to employees. They really want it to be for customers of theirs. Our program doesn't support that, so they wouldn't be eligible for the program. So another 200 or so have been processed and are not active because they're not eligible. Or they've gotten in touch with us to say, You know what? We're not interested anymore, or We're waiting for some other opportune time to do this. So that's the big snapshot. I think at this point, we're two and a half years in. I'm cautious to say that this is an average annual, because a year of that was really ramping up. A year of that has been seeing how things fall and getting into more routine. But I'd say on average, for an annual year, this is what the program is processing in terms of total applications, getting projects into that pipeline, and

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: then the total incentives. Just to clarify, this is the $9,000,000 program, and you you've got enough in the pipeline to fully spend that $9,000,000 and you've got 200 that want to participate, but you will have expended the funds?

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: No, because the funds that we have available do not necessarily match with the type of applicants we have. I'll get into some of the more hairy details of that in a few slides. These Okay. Are all Green Mountain Power installed? Is he also managing them to make sure they are available? No. Green Mountain Power is an administrative partner in this. They do not own and operate the equipment. They are not installing them only in GMP territory. GMP is our largest utility. They've got the bench of staffs that understand this space to do some of the technical support process, incentive applications, etcetera. So they're our administrative partner doing this on behalf of the entire state, all utilities, all types of applicants and customers. Thank you. Okay, so quick timeline for where this program has been and where we are now. So again, March '3, we selected Green Mountain Power through a competitive process to be an administrative partner on this. The program started at $7,000,000 And that was split into some categories. Some of that was stipulated by legislation, so roughly $5,000,000 for rolling level one and level two incentives, and then $1,500,000 roughly for competitive DC fast charging incentives. And again, these were two different streams and pathways. We'll

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: see in

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: a second how it rolled out on the ground. So after a period of time of working with JMP to design the program, what are the right incentives? What are the different breakdowns of categories? How are we going to of They were doing background work to get their customer service management system set up, all of that. We launched in July 2023. Soft launch. It wasn't really soft. Of that $5,000,000 there was some further breakdown into how it could be spent. The legislation required that at least 30% of it be spent on multiunit. So we put $2,700,000 in a bucket that was just for multiunit. 1,800,000.0 just for workplace, so charging for employees, and then a very small amount, 360,000 for level two public attractions. There were a lot of parameters to keep the funding equitable and dispersed. The big ones, I would say, was that no one county could receive more than 10% of the funds. And then the utility caps were based on service territory. As I mentioned, July '23, in that first month, Chittenden County was fully subscribed. They were capped at $426,000 I think we had something like $3,000,000 worth of interest and out there. By August '3, that very small amount for public attractions was also fully subscribed. We saw a lot of interest for public attractions. And then by June '4, about a year later, the workplace funding is fully subscribed. And then at various times, between February '4 through May '5, some of the other counties started hitting that funding cap of 10%. So Washington, Windham, Windsor Counties were meeting that cap. You'll see in some later slides, it shifts and it changes. I think the only county that is no longer at its cap, meaning it doesn't have projects nor do we have applications on hold that meet the funding we have available, of these three is Windham. And I'll get into more of that in a second, but let me just quickly go through our So in our DC Fast Charge in July '4, we awarded competitive DC Fast Charge. The purpose of this grant was to, again, get into those parts of Vermont that do not have access to DC fast charging yet. So the eligibility criteria was you had to be more than 10 miles from an existing DC fast charge. So really trying to get out into those more underserved areas. We had, I want to say, 40 applications. We screened them for eligibility. And again, we screened them just to make sure, are you actually more than 10 miles? And then we invited folks to submit full applications. We awarded all of the funds to nine locations across Vermont in those underserved areas. And to date, two of them have been completed. I think we're getting ready to send out a press release about it today or tomorrow. But Bridgewater, Millennials, and Vermont Country Store are completed projects. More DC fast charge out there in those more underserved areas. This is where stuff starts to get fun and a little tricky. So in August '5, because of some additional funding legislative of Act 148, we were able to switch the program around and essentially create a funding floor for every county. So instead of capping and not every county necessarily being able to get the same amount, Having this additional funding, a total of 1.9, allowed us to create that funding floor. It was nice because we know some of those counties have less resources, less capacity to pick up these projects. And we think there's interest there, but they need a little bit more time than Chittenden County to drum up the applications. So creating that floor was nice, because it set this certainty of, yes, it's worth going through this effort, because we will have funding for you. The other thing that I did that was really nice is that, as I mentioned, if you remember, the workplace funding category was obligated. So the only thing that was available in our funding for those counties that hadn't met their cap was multiunit. And it wasn't necessarily a great match for what the majority of their needs might be. It was a lot of interest in workplace, a lot of interest in public attraction, but we didn't have those funds to spend in those counties. So the additional money that came in was not tied to one or

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: the other. It was multiunit or workplace, which meant that we could open up workplace again in those counties. Can you, again, probably say that, you know, as the program went on, these categories were set, fast charge, multiunit, workplace. Was that legislated? So it said, all right, this amount and these things, And now, you saw some that exploded, filled with the first day kind of thing.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: And now you have additional funding, you've been able to adjust those categories? A little bit. So the legislation required spending in those four categories: multiunit, workplace, public attraction, and state workplaces. The only dollar amount that was stipulated was that at least 30% of the funds had to be in multiunit. The rest of it was we were coming up with that on our own. So at this point, because of this new funding, we have a good amount of multiunit. We have a good amount of money that can be either multiunit or workplace. What we don't have is funding that can support a lot of public, much more public attraction. We have a little bit of funding that we, I think, could support public attractions with. But there's a lot of slicing and dicing of the funds in a way that makes it There's some other things in there as well. So we have to spend a majority of the funds on smaller businesses and smaller multiunit. And that hasn't been an issue. We're in small states, so there's a lot of those. But there is just a lot of different categories in slicing and dicing that makes it a little bit more challenging to just fund good projects when they come in, because we have to make sure that they're in line. They're not getting funded before someone else put their application in. And they're fitting the right bucket. GMP, I'm sure, could speak more to some of that. I don't have

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: to do that, thank goodness.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: I just know that it's one of the challenges. Okay. So with this funding floor, I'll just say that our plan for this, knowing that some of those counties might take a little bit longer to take up these funds, estimate was that with this funding floor, we would be able to move along 30 projects per year for three years. And that was what we were running with. That was our estimate. We'll see in some slides that uptake hasn't been quite what we had hoped for. Although it's only been in place for seven months, but still, we haven't quite seen the pace. This is a year end snapshot of the program. Really quick, I will note that this doesn't have that new total amount, somewhat on purpose because that new amount has only been in play, again, by the time of this annual report. The new money had only been in play for five months, and I didn't want to put it up next to these other metrics that have been two years in the making. It just seemed, again, apples and oranges. But year end snapshot, this is what we have, both in contracted projects in the pipeline. Again, multiunit, we are not maxed out on those funds yet. Public attraction. Again, this is showing the projects that are contracted in pipeline. We still have applications that we are rolling. So while right now, the total incentive amount is not showing that total amount of $3.60, we still consider it fully subscribed because we have applications, I'm told, that we're still working through. We don't need more applications in public charging just yet. Same is true for workplace. The total there does not show the maxed out amount, but that's mostly due to Actually, so one other point I wanted to make that was a positive thing. We are finding that the contracts, when they are closing out, the total incentive amount is less than, on average, than what they're eligible for. I think we need to do a little bit more digging to understand that. Our incentive amounts allow for up to $20,000 in make ready. So panel upgrades, trenching, getting electricity out to a parking spot, etcetera, those tend to be the bigger barrier costs to doing EVSE at some properties. We're seeing a lot of our applications not using that full 20. And I don't think that it's because it's not needed in other places. I think it's because we're getting the low hanging fruit. We're getting projects where they already have a panel upgrade. They don't need to do that work. So they're really just going after maybe the trenching and the hardware itself. So I think that's one of the things that we'll look at as we move forward in the program is what are the right incentive amounts? I do think what it has meant for us is that we actually do have some more funding available to put out there because the total contract projects are coming in a little bit under what we had estimated. Just not a bad thing. So when we look at this at the county level, so again, I haven't added that floor funding in here because it's only been available for five months at this point. But what I will say is that after five months of seeing new applications roll in in these counties that still have funding available for multiunit and for workplace, we're not seeing the pace that would I don't think we're going to be making 30 projects per year in these counties. So since this new funding floor money became available, we've processed in these counties an additional 14 applications. And half of them, roughly seven, have moved forward. So if you extrapolate that out to a full year, we're looking at maybe 30 applicants a year and maybe 15 moving forward. There is still interest. We are still getting applications, but it's not necessarily it hasn't been as quick of an uptake as we would like. So I think for us, what that means in terms of what are we going to do in 2026, We have some thoughts on the table that we'll be discussing. I think the biggest one is releasing some of the funds from the floor into other counties that are ready to pick up projects and get some more rolling in Chittenden, Windham, Windsor, Washington with the funds. I also think we're gonna have to think about restructuring the incentive amount, seeing if a different incentive amount helps manage and control. I think if we open this up to Chittenden again, we'll end up with another $4,000,000 And we do not have $4,000,000 to spend in Chittenden. So I think one of the ways to self manage that is through the incentive amount and really getting that incentive amount just right. I think it would also be nice to consider We would like to consider additional public attraction funds in the counties that haven't met their cap, whether that is DC Fast Charge Competitive or whether it's Public Level two. The challenge with DC fast charge competitive in those more underserved areas is demand charges. We're seeing this come up a lot with some of our more recent projects, where if there's not a favorable demand charge, a property owner or a service provider, they just can't make a pencil out in the first couple of years. And so those areas are just going to be really tough to reach with DC fast charging until that demand charge issue has a better resolution. I think in the absence of DC fast charge, public level two might be a good option, especially if we tweak the criteria to really make sure those level two stations would be in downtown areas that can serve multiple businesses multiple attractions?

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: I'm gonna guess you're not going to give us a full explanation of how demand charges work, but suffice to say, there are some electric companies with that have demand charges that cause trouble trying to put a fast charger in those under those territories because the costs just goes through the roof when the demand is not really a big giant load. But anyways, might be, so you're not gonna try to explain that completely.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: I mean, could give you my layman's explanation of it if you were interested, but yeah, it would be There's folks who probably can explain a lot more about demand charges. My quick explanation of it is that demand charges typically are put in place to incentivize large load users to spread it out if they can, spread it out over the course of a day. They put that dollar fee in place to encourage them to do that. And if they can't, they'll spread that cost over whatever it is that they're producing and selling. If you're a manufacturer, you're gonna spread it over what you're manufacturing. Those demand charges apply to EVSE, and EVSE is just very different. You can't throttle your DC fast charge. If you have 150 kilowatt charger and you throttle it down to 30 to stay below, well, then it's not providing what the customer expects. The whole point of DC fast charge is high load in a certain time frame. With EVSE, you can get to that same model of spreading that cost over the thing that you're selling. You're selling a kilowatt hour. The more kilowatt hours you have being used, you can spread that cost. But in the early days of a DC fast charge, you don't have enough use to spread that cost, so you're just eating it. As a service provider or as a property owner, you're eating that cost of electricity, that really high cost electricity. So it's in getting that business model going.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: And so there's pockets in the state where it's hard to get these DC fast chargers in because they're in a territory with the demand charges. Correct.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Okay, just wanna make sure I understand this. So are we talking about, for example, Green Mountain Power is delivering power to a particular level three charger, and they might curtail that at certain points, curtail the electricity because of demand? No.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: No. Green Power does not do that. What Green Mountain Power does have, and you can sort of see it in some of our data, this average kilowatt hour cost So these two DC fast charge stations are in Green Mountain Power territory. Green Mountain Power territory does have a I wish Candice was still here. Green Mountain Power territory does have a specific rate for EVSE charges right now that essentially does not put that demand charge on them. So in Green Mountain Power territory, DC fast charging is working out because the service provider or the property owner is not having to pay those exorbitant fees. In other territories, that is not the case. They do have demand.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: It's nonremountain power territory. Some of these other electric companies have to

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: curtail or modify the energy being delivered to the charger? No, typically they would not curtail. I was using that as an example of demand charges were intended for an entity that could curtail. So just as an example, one of our projects that we have going on in Hardwick, our contractor that we're working with is looking at these demand charges and saying, We can't cover this. We can do is we can curtail our delivery. We have a what is the charger there? It was supposed to be a 60. 60. So it's a 60 kilowatt charger. Not the craziest of charging speeds, but still pretty good. But it will be in that demand charge category. So that service provider has said to us, We're not going to be able to float these demand charges. The expense is too high. What we can do is we can take our 60 kilowatt charger and we can curtail it. But what's the point? You just put in this piece of infrastructure, it's not letting it do what it's supposed to So we're running into that more and more with service providers trying to work in territories to get DC fast charging out there into these pockets, but the demand charges, if they exist, are becoming a challenge.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: I understand. Thank you for that. One other question. This program even sold two level two fast chargers in this program, and everything else is level one, level two.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Charge Vermont, correct. There's two that have been installed, seven more that are on the way right now, either in contract or in construction. Ramu, I'm wondering,

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: completely understand that we have to kind of start to normalize this and get this moving in small ways. What is the opportunity looking ahead if

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: we live in

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: a future where there is more uptake of EVs and more interest in having the convenience of charging, of upgrading the facilities that we've installed? I realize that some of this has to do with the availability of phase two or phase three power, but can you just sort of speak to that about, is that opportunity exist? I imagine it does to go from a one to a two, but what are the challenges with going from a two to a three? Is that really hard to do?

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: All very site specific. If there's not three phase power, then yes, because you're talking about big infrastructure investments to go from two to three. Yeah, it's very site specific. I will say that in terms of going from, let's say, one level two to multiple level two, our programming does encourage people to sort of future proof. If you're gonna be digging up the pavement Sorry, I'll make a mess. If you're gonna be digging up the pavement, put in enough conduit for future charters. Don't put the charters in right now. That's fine. But at least put the conduit in, because those are the most expensive costs. The infrastructure upgrades, the trenching, that's what really makes these things

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: expensive. Right. I just wanted to say, ACT 181 provides a fantastic opportunity to look ahead to places where that investment may be warranted in the future, maybe not ready for prime time yet, but we would get there. So I'm sure you guys are thinking all that through. That's great. Thank you very much.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: In that end piece of recommended, any legislative changes needed for the recommended changes, you're able to make all these program spots and changes yourself, the ones on the program adjustments in the last page, or you're going to need any regulatory piece change to change any of attractions, funding goals? Or are you asking for any legislative change?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: I

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: think we can move forward with some public attraction with the money we have that's allocated. But I think maybe by next year, if we're not spending down that multiunit and workplace, and we really want to get more charging out into those counties where the demand for public attraction and the readiness for public attraction seems higher, we may want to come back and say, let's open up these funding and not be so strict about which category it needs to fall in. Let's open some of these funding up for public attraction again.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: I'm asking for any change right now.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: Well, would you require

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: Sure, so last question. Do you have a slide or can you tell us now that, well, guess it's fair to say the program, without you necessarily need to make any changes, is pretty well established. The process of application and going and evaluating and all that, pretty well established. Can you say what your spend rate is now that we're in this sort of phase and knowing, I think, in our budget shows all the fees, the infrastructure fees for plug ins, the added fees are to go to this program, and our budget shows 1,000,000 going in from the capture of those fees this year. So what's the sort of burn rate that you expect for this year?

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: So this is our burn rate for the past two. Because of these limitations that we've put in place, the county caps, the multiunit, it has been a little bit slower in the last five months, again, I would say. But the year average based on the last two and a half years is what you see here, roughly 1,600,000.0 a year.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Representative Burke? Yeah, I mean, you just said probably you might not want to adjust the categories until next year, but I'm wondering would it be better to do it now? That'll give you more flexibility. It would.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: So if the funding were to say that it could be used for either multiunit workplace or public attraction, then we would be able to better match the funding to the projects that are ready to go in the places that need them.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Seems like maybe that's something we can discuss.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: Okay, Thank

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: you very much.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Thank you so much.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Obviously, there's a lot of interest in here, Gary. 25% more than the Tomlodder. We're gonna transition to your colleagues. And there is a presentation in your piece about downtown transportation program and fun. Thank you,

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: Do we have a number of handouts? Would anyone like

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Are you all set?

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: I'm all set.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: We're still live. Getting ready to go? Representative Pouech is gonna introduce.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: Yeah. So just to sort of set the page and make sure the committee understands, we're getting these presentations from ACCD. These are two, you could call them transportation programs, but they're managed by ACCD. In that way, they're somewhat unique.

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: So I will be giving an overview of the Downtown Transportation Fund today, some updates, some success stories and

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: You introduced yourself. Great, thank you.

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: Nice to be here today. Natalie Elvage, I'm a planning coordinator with the Department of Housing and Community Development. And I'm joined by my colleague. Yeah.

[Unidentified committee member (possibly Vice Chair Timothy R. Corcoran II)]: Hi, Gary Hallaway, Downtown Program Manager with Natalie and Department of Housing and Development.

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: So again, I'll be giving a quick overview today of the funding, what it's used for, who eligible applicants are, some updates, as well as success stories as well. So just to refresh you all, the Downtown Transportation Fund assists municipalities in paying for transportation related capital improvements within early serving designated downtowns. These investments are infrastructure investments in public spaces, which can stimulate private investment and help create a sense of community, place, pride in our downtowns and village centers. The program began in 1999, along with the creation of the Downtown Ford and the downtown program. Since then, again, since 1999, over 17,000,000 have been invested in Vermont's downtowns and at points in villages as well. So there are 25 designated downtowns across the state. The most recent addition was Morristown in 2025. But these are all communities that have met standards to become designated downtowns. And the state recognizes the efforts that they've played in revitalizing the communities and making them economically vibrant and livable. So this is a map of all of the communities across the state and in this cycle of funding eligible for funding. So when we talk about designated downtowns and its relation to the Downtown Transportation Fund, projects need to happen within or serve the eligible designated center of the Downtown District. So these are two examples, different sizes and scales, Bristol and Burlington. But to be eligible for funding, a project would need to either be happening within those boundaries or serving the designated downtown. We sometimes see that with sidewalks or way finding signage leading people to downtown. So an overview of the funding, we receive an annual appropriation of about $523,966 The grant maximum is $125,000 with a 20% match. This has changed at different points, but in this cycle, it will be 125,000. The applications are due in February with a roll that's made in April. And typically the timeline is that a grantee has twenty four months to start the project and thirty six months to complete it. And the source of funding is transportation funds. Just a

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: quick question. Do you happen to know on the top of your head or maybe in the slide coming up what the average grant amount is? So that's the maximum, both.

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: That's the maximum. And again, it's changed at times. So last year, the funding maximum was $200,000 we saw communities applying for more than that. When the funding has been less, average amounts have been less. Gary, you've managed the program a while. It's probably anywhere between $60,000 and $200,000 Yeah,

[Gary Holloway, Downtown Program Manager, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: it a $100,000 cap for decades, for a long time, and then when we had one time funding we were able to increase it to $200,000 that average would have gone up for a few years there while we had that one time funding and we imagined this cycle obviously go back down now that it's capped at 125.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: Right, but so know, are there good examples of grants that are $12,000

[Gary Holloway, Downtown Program Manager, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: Yes.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: So yeah, but I'm just trying to get what the scale is.

[Gary Holloway, Downtown Program Manager, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: There's certain communities for gens I'll think about that will often come in at smaller amounts because they have to have match. The size of their project sometimes is dictated by how much match they have. I think for gens is a good example over time that has come in for a lot of small projects, maybe building off each other through a few years to continue the work that they're trying to get done.

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: And the scope of the project definitely dictates the amount as well. A wayfinding signage project would greatly differ than a streetscaping, sidewalk, crosswalks type of project.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Representative White, please.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Just a question on eligibility. Do you have a What determines whether a town is eligible?

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: No population requirement, simply that they are a designated downtown. So one of those 25 communities.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: And how do you become one?

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: Do you want to give a?

[Gary Holloway, Downtown Program Manager, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: Yeah, the world just changed and I put it in one. So how do become a center now is a little bit different. So maybe I'll speak now in current terms. All the regions are going through remapping which I think they'll work with. So as each as the wearer approves the region there'll be centers they're going to either come in if they were already designated as a downtown they're going to be designated as a step three center which is what we're calling it now, downtown step three center. If they meet that eligibility then they can become a designated downtown. If they haven't, if they were a designated village center for example, that wants to become a designated downtown, they just have to meet the eligibility requirements of the program. We don't have time to get into today and then they apply to get that designated if they meet that criteria.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: And those new criteria are in 01/1981

[Rep. Patricia A. McCoy]: from last year?

[Gary Holloway, Downtown Program Manager, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: Yeah, and then the new step three designated downtown applications and the step two village center applications are available now on the ACC's website. Okay, thank you.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: Representative Pouech. And just on that, do you have an estimate of how many additional downtown areas there'll be? So now there's 25?

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: There's 25 now, and we anticipate about five to six additional new downtowns in the next couple of years.

[Gary Holloway, Downtown Program Manager, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: It's been pretty stable for a long time in that 24, 25 number, but now that there's more ability to access it, we're going

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: to see some, we've had three or four just in this past year in choir and starting to move towards. Just to make sure I think it's correct, there are other benefits to being designated a downtown than just qualifying for these grants.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Well, that covers the next two or three slides.

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: I think I hit on the source of funds. The source of funds is the transportation fund, which allows communities a flexible funding pot. Typically, we see projects being completed quicker than if they had federal funding. So some updates, I think we hit on a lot of them, but in 2021, there had been a $5,000,000 one time allocation to extend eligibility to designated villages. Designated villages a different process than downtown to become eligible, but it also included an application process that was reviewed by the state. And communities that fully designated village centers that had completed a comprehensive planning process were also eligible for this funding. So since 2021, we had also seen investments in some villages. So that $5,000,000 has now been exhausted. And we will now in this active cycle be just using the annual appropriation, that 5 and $20,000 to award funding to only designated downtowns since villages are no longer eligible. So an update on the twenty twenty six competition is that it is active and open. We have applications due the end of next week on February 14. So I think last year it was times that we could give you updates on the applications that had come in, but it's still live at the moment. And as Gary mentioned, as of the 2025, the Community Investment Board, which had been the downtown board, is no longer the entity that's responsible for mapping and regulating the boundaries of the designated downtowns and villages. This changed with the implementation of Act 181, which modified the designation program to have mapping occur at the regional level. As we mentioned, we anticipate five to six new downtowns, which would put additional pressures on these funds. So just to do a quick look back at the last couple of years, since 2022, we've seen anywhere between 1 to $2,000,000 in the Downtown Transportation Fund being awarded. And this is at times between eight and fifteen communities that received funding. So at times this was a mix of downtowns and villages. In 2025, so the last completed cycle of grantees, we had 14 applications with over $2,000,000 in requests, and we funded eight grantees at just over $1,400,000 including these eight communities. We did send out just a snapshot of all of the grantees with a little synopsis of what types of projects they had. So that should be available in the handouts. Common project examples. So we typically see a lot of requests for bicycle and pedestrian enhancements. So think sidewalks and crosswalks, sidewalk improvements. We see a lot of requests for ADA modifications and streetscaping improvements. And also common are wayfinding, signage and lighting and safety improvements. This is a snippet from the 2025 annual report, which is a look back between 2021 and 2025. You can see that we avoided 6,900,000 in downtown transportation funds, which leveraged $7,500,000 This was funding that went out to 28 communities via 48 grantees. And this is an image of a before and after the Gens. You can see with downtown transportation funding and other funding that was leveraged, they modified and completely changed the streetscape so that all the businesses now have ADA compliant accessibility all on one level. And it's just made a beautification of the downtown. So in 2025, we wanted to focus on some project highlights. We sampled two communities that have successfully utilized the Better Connections planning process and then Downtown Transportation Funds. These are also handouts if you're interested. But one community was Fairly, and this was a community that completed a Better Connections plan. And they identified gaps in the community when it came to walkability and accessibility, connecting people between key points in the community, between the village, schools, residences and recreation. So they had completed their better connections plan, identified these gaps and then used downtown transportation funds in 2022 and 2023. 2023 is actually active, but used these funds to invest in some of these projects. So they invested in new sidewalks, crosswalks, and signage upgrades. So at the top of the image, can see Pardon to say on this slide, but they installed a new walkway in the Village Green. So safe place for people to walk. And the newly installed crosswalk and signage, just one of the crosswalks at the bottom. Another project that we wanted to highlight was in Springfield. This was the Kontu Falls project. They also completed a better connections plan and then identified a number of projects that they could implement using downtown transportation funds. One of the projects they had identified was that they had a neglected building along the water that could become a new community space. So downtown transportation funds helped to demolish the building and revitalize the site. And it's now a community park, which is accessible. You can see in the image down below that there's steps, but there's also an ADA compliant ramp, platforms, benches, picnic tables. And they've been using this space quite extensively for concerts, community events, rallies, and picnics in the park. This is never before the photo, so you can see what the site was. And also of note in the back is this green building. Springfield also mentioned in the case study how downtown transportation funds became a catalyst for the investment in the community. They've seen a significant increase in interest in revitalizing buildings throughout the community. And in the case study, you can actually see that this building on the left is getting a facelift, which is nice to see. And this is another image of the after. So you can see the pavements, the lighting, the landscaping, all that was completed with downtown transportation funds and other leveraged funds. We also wanted to highlight some other communities that have significantly utilized downtown transportation funds. St. Albans is a community that has been accessing these funds since 2007. They've had a number of downtown transportation fund grants from sidewalk improvements, lighting improvements, complete streets enhancements, and continue to seek this funding. Next up is Bristol. They had significant investment in the Village Green, including these lighting enhancements and sidewalk enhancements. Rattleboro has been utilizing downtown transportation funds since 1999, so the inception of this funding. They've had a number of projects as well, including lighting and parking expansion. And then also one of the most recently completed project is this bottom photo in which they did a downtown beautification and removed all of the meters and installed a pay by plate system. So that's one of the most recent projects that's completed. That was 2024 funding. Poultney is another community. They've been receiving funding intermittently since 2004. They've had a number of streetscaping projects, and this is the Slate Quarry Park, which became a new community space with downtown transportation funds. Rutland has also been receiving funds. This is an example of wayfinding signage that was installed in That was a 2020 grant. And then lastly is a village funding. This is another newly completed project. This was a community that had completed a wayfinding plan and then were able to use downtown transportation funds to implement and install the signage. So now they have signage all throughout the community, directing people to the village, to recreation, to Stone Village, different recreation assets as well. I

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: apologize if you're gonna get to this. So overall, this program has been around for a long time. It was an influx of additional money where you expand it to villages too. That money is being spent. We're down to a little over 500,000 of annual funding at this point. Do you and you're getting ready to award. Can you tell us the number of what the demand is for grants? Then you'll be awarding this amount.

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: Yeah, exactly. I think that was an excellent synopsis. I don't know the demand yet because the applications haven't come in. But consistently, we've seen demand that outpaces what we can award. So in 2025, for example, I think we had this slide. I think we had about $2,500,000 in demand and only had 1.42 awards. So I'd say that that's pretty typical that we see a handful plus of applicants that get a notification that they weren't selected in the competition. And yes, this cycle with just over $500,000 and a maximum of 125,000 at most, we'll be able to fund five projects if they come in.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: It'd be interesting just to know, because now they're all in, I assume maybe somewhere

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: next Friday.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: Good to get that number just to sort of say, we had whatever number for this amount. You may not know, but it's gonna be four or five or six projects that they've awarded. Just to understand that.

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: Okay, good

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: luck to you, looking ahead in terms of how you present this information to our committee, I would really love to see some heat maps that show before and after grand list values in the places, the locations that have had benefited from this investment. We are, as you guys are well aware, in an era of very tight funds. And I think those who want to succeed need to sharpen their elbows. And I think this would make a case for the benefits that this program delivers and how it really maximizes state investment in this incredible multiplier way. Not just making a more pleasant place, but encouraging businesses, encouraging new housing, attracting all kinds of investment that leverages our state dollars. So I think this could really help. I was thinking about when you discussed the Springfield example of how this could really make some of that value come more alive and be more understandable at a glance. Of course, this will also create a stampede, but that would be a nice problem to have. Mean, I think I personally share some frustration with our timid implementation of Act 181. And I think we need to be doing more.

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: Yeah, I think that's something that we could hone in on and can say as well, even just those two conversations with communities fairly and Springfield, a lot of what we did discuss with the community was that additional investment that they've seen. And I know Springfield and Fairleigh is quite different, but both have seen investments in housing. And it was definitely top of mind in fairly that they've been significantly investing in housing, which is impacting schools, impacting kids getting to schools, and impacting just people moving about the community. So I think It that's makes a lot

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: of very expensive public services easier and less expensive to provide if we can leverage density and maybe make maybe charging pencil out in more places, too, as you heard earlier.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: You mentioned the bus tour. They can advise you,

[Gary Holloway, Downtown Program Manager, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: redo it. Yeah, I can mention that. Last year the Community Investment Board, which used to be the downtown board, we got them on the road, we went to Orange and Windsor County, we put together an agenda that kind of focused on transportation investments, housing investments, public space investments through our programs, and we stopped in Fairley, we were at one of the junction, we were in Springfield, we went to Biddington, we went to a variety of different communities and had a chance to really speak to the folks who were involved with those projects and really to your point really see how that's been a catalyst for people wanting to buy you know you fix up your building someone wants to buy the building next to it maybe fix it up or you know feel more inclined to want to invest in the community if they see transportation investments or building investments. And so we're going do it again this year. We're not sure which county we're going to go to yet, but we're in discussions right now about bringing the bus to work. Representative Troy Matt.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Yeah, I just want to wholeheartedly concur with Representative Lalley's suggestion. I think any evidence in a study to show grand list values increasing, sales tax increasing, businesses thriving, visitors growing, would be excellent data to have, particularly when we are in such a strapped economic situation. I am really happy to see not a whole lot of money going to some really great projects. Thank you.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: And just as a reminder, because it's not federal funds, we don't have to meet the more stringent federal funding requirements, which tends to strike. I know in our town that we had one big sidewalk project and it took several years and many, many headaches to meet those federal requirements. Yeah, I

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: think communities feel that this is a flexible source of funding, even with the match they use in kind. So I think it becomes something that's really interesting to downtown

[Gary Holloway, Downtown Program Manager, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: communities. Yeah,

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: just want to thank you for the projects you've done in Red Cross. It really makes a difference, especially with the very tight budget right now and a lot of other of socials often, so it'd be a good patient.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: Again, oh, sorry. And another piece, and maybe you know how fast, So they're gonna give their awards in another week, I guess, or you'll be getting them out. I mean, what's the turnover? How fast do these projects typically happen?

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: Yeah, so projects have, they have two years to begin the project and three to complete it. Most are completing it within that timeline. On occasion, we'll have extensions, maybe a six month to nine month extension. But generally, they are completing on time or ahead of schedule. I'd say usually within that timeframe. I don't think it's too much faster than I think the example of Brad Opelho, that being a 2024 grant and having it be completed is a little unusual. That's a little fast. Would you agree with that?

[Gary Holloway, Downtown Program Manager, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: Yeah, I mean, most of the projects that come in for downtown transportation funds are quicker build projects that are less complicated to get complete. But they are running up against some barriers with responses to RFEs and getting contractors. So the delays we're seeing are often related to that price increases beyond what they anticipated availability of contractors to complete within the same time. Thank you.

[Rep. Phil Pouech, Ranking Member]: So we

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: think the Downtown Transportation Fund is a great tool to support vibrant, safe, walkable, livable communities. We have time for questions.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: Well, maybe we don't.

[Natalie Elvage, Planning Coordinator, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: But just wanted to thank you for the time today and the opportunity to come speak about this funding. Thank you.

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: Thank you. Thank you very much. I think that know actually during the next two phases,

[Gary Holloway, Downtown Program Manager, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: I don't know if you need a full hour for the next one or not after this one, but maybe we'll not sure where you're at with your time too.

[Brondwin Cook, Community Planning & Policy Manager, Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD)]: I think

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: can break if we

[Gary Holloway, Downtown Program Manager, Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD)]: when I start up and want that antenna? That means we do an hour and ten for both? Yes. We're going to adjourn and

[Rep. Matt Walker, Chair]: take a seven minute break.