Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: There's a little Heads. Red square above your head. So good morning, Friday, 02/06/2026. Back in house transportation in thank God it's Friday. Expensive court Friday. Bill introduction Friday for us. And first, we have representative from Pittsburgh that the seat of a well known and fully established member of this committee for several years. So welcome. And we're here to hear your bill or your introduction of your bill. And glad to get a nod to your former Yes. Wrestler That's true. I'm sure he's watching. Well,

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: you. For the record, representative Alicia Mollie from Pittsburgh, Rutland eight, Pittsburgh and Proctor. Yeah, so my predecessor, former member in this committee, who's also my mentor, had started some work on covered bridge protection. We have four covered bridges in Pittsburgh. There was once, seven, one of which was destroyed due to arson. Another one was kind of a victim of expansion of Route 7 work and modernization. But I did get I reached out to you. Do you see there's quite a few people that co sponsored? I was able to get a lot of signatures from people. I had a list of the people with the most covered bridges in their towns. And so everybody that I approached was really excited that there was going to be even more expansions on covered bridge protections. So this bill essentially is in two sections, which is providing assistance to municipalities so that they know what their legal rights are as far as weight limits and height limits and things like that. I know it was brought up to me from the president of the Covered Bridge Society that even some of the towns where their bridges were being hit quite often were hesitant to put up specific signage or because they weren't sure if it came up against state and federal road regulations. So this kind of contains the education component so that towns will know what they can and can't do, as well as educating them on grants that would be available for whether putting up cameras, because a lot of time there's a lot of hit and runs. And then you're just working on your municipal insurance instead of being able to go after the driver of what are often box trucks. And then the second piece is enhanced penalties for destruction of the bridges, intentional harms, and including arson. So it doubles the current penalties. So whatever current penalty for any bridge, this would double it for a covered bridge because of the historical nature of the bridges, because we used to have, I think,

[Speaker 0]: 150

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: plus covered bridges in Vermont. We now have just under 100. And once they're gone, they're gone. And they're big economic drivers in our state as well, as well as just being beautiful. But they bring a lot of people to the area. You get to see old buses of people pulled over, taking pictures at the covered bridges, and then they go and spend money in those towns. So that's about it there. I would have liked to have gone further. I know I was kind of cautioned against adding any money ask in the bill, which is why this provides technical assistance only for municipalities to then go find their own funding. I'll send this around your committee system. Help me get a clean copy. I was having a hard time finding a clean copy on both sites. It didn't have all these pop up ads. But Lindenville paired up with their local school and the welding students actually created this beautiful barrier, which has actually been hit twice, but saved the bridge. So in an ideal world, would love for every town that had a covered bridge to have access to funding so that they could have those constructed. But again, that's in here just as providing that assistance from V Trans. I know the Covered Bridge Society has stepped forward and would really love to be kind of a conduit. They're helping to let towns know what they can and can't do as far as road signage and then helping them find applicable grants to build these barriers to protect the bridges. Representative Wells, do have your question?

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Yeah. That one in Billers Run Bridge in Lyndonville, that's kind of a model.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: Yes. Exactly.

[Speaker 0]: Even though

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: it got walloped.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yep. It

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: put the head.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: Right. It did what it was supposed to do.

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: I'm disappointed you brought that picture in because I took the time to put an artist on the bridge here. But your picture's better.

[Speaker 0]: Certainly missed your front. But really I know. Really? Yeah.

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Second grade art class. And they did a

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: heck of a job. It looks great.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: You can't

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: a long ways away. I can't imagine they're still ahead of you, it'll take

[Speaker 0]: the wallop. And so the

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: bridge is fine. I always take that to get the LOI off Interstate 91.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: So that is the model. Because some bridges have done the headache bars, which are right behind the fascia or fascia boards. They work so that the truck doesn't go all the way through the bridge, but it's obviously still every time you're hitting a bridge or you're affecting the structural integrity of the bridge. So this is a much better-

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Nice local schools in their district. If you got one in Rutland or Pittsburgh or wherever that they couldn't do, they didn't have their kids build it as a project.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: That's why this is extra awesome, I think, because they did. They were able to pair up. I mean, it was such a great thing for those welding students to be able to work on.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Salute.

[Speaker 0]: Represent White and then represent Casey and then represent Patrick.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Yeah. Thank you, This is, yeah, I think a great step to protecting our bridges. So I guess a couple of questions. Assistance from municipalities to protect their bridges. Are you thinking about maybe best practices for protecting historic bridges.

[Candice White (Member)]: Because I think that example that you shared, so happy you brought that, because I've heard other members mention that. My district has many covered bridges as well, and we have had much damage, and we don't have anything like that. I think that's a really great solution. So I like the idea of what would be best practices for historic bridges. And I don't know whether VLCT should be part of that conversation. Yeah, we have Don't we have that?

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: I think that's actually Yeah, is. Vermont Leagues of Cities So and yeah, VTrans, Secretary of Commerce and Community Development, Vermont Leagues of Cities and Towns, and then other stakeholders at the discretion of

[Candice White (Member)]: And you mentioned that's done by some welding students. So are they at the CTV? Because I get a That's a great

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: Yeah, the Linden Institute.

[Candice White (Member)]: And lastly, so historic preservation, does that come in

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: at all? I think only on state owned covered bridges, which most are not. But that's probably something that I should find out. Yeah. Make sure

[Candice White (Member)]: that that's true. Great. Thank you. But I'm excited about this bill.

[Speaker 0]: Is there any information like what the average cost of installing one on barriers in this? Anybody know?

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: This one, do you not

[Speaker 0]: know they're not looking,

[Chris Keyser (Member)]: but I was just curious

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: about the

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: No. I think this one, say, get the number wrong. I should have had that. I feel like this one was, like, $70,000. Does that maybe? Yeah.

[Chris Keyser (Member)]: Yes. Kids do it.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: Well, mean, that's what yeah. But I think it's just maybe the materials. I think that's the thing.

[Speaker 0]: Like a foundation.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: See it very quickly if this is has that in there.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I'll have to look and

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: get back to you. Don't see it. It's not jumping out in this article. There's a lot of articles on this, though, in general. But I'll I'll look

[Speaker 0]: at the yeah. The opportunities you you think the opportunities exist to to get some of

[Chris Keyser (Member)]: these up without public funds? Well

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: So there is grant money out there. So I think that we would have to So the Covered Bridge Society, which really should have been in this as one of those other stakeholders, know, they would know exactly what grants were out there specifically for this sort of thing. And Vermont Leagues of Cities and Towns should also have great guidance on that because they're the ones paying out whenever a bridge is hit. So they will know. So, yeah, there is some more specific information to get.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Representative Pouech. Yeah, thanks for doing this. Two questions. One is, these just fall under municipal bridges. So like any structure that would be in mind that isn't a covered bridge. We have some here, you know. So there are the structured grants that, know, there isn't enough money in there cover all the structures that need it, but over time they do. I'm assuming these would qualify for it, but I don't know if the additional barrier would qualify. Do you know?

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: You mean the V TRAN structures grants? Yes. Okay.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I wonder if anybody's tried to get something through that.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: That's a good question.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Whether I'm qualified. Right, because And continuing on that it's just a municipal structure. I'm assuming VTrans does the inspection of them like they do other structures. That would be good to know. I'm assuming they do. They're supposedly inspect everyone. Here. Right.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Required to inspect every we just

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: heard that testimony recently. And I wonder if they have special criteria

[Speaker 0]: on a

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: covered bridge. And then question one's gonna be.

[Speaker 0]: We'll come back to it. Yeah, I'll come back to it. Problem. Yeah. Representative Lalley?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah, of I love this bill. Love it, love

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: it, love it. And I just wanted to suggest that the insurance angle may be a productive way to go. The reason I say that is we just heard a presentation yesterday on infrastructure writ large and how mitigation is going to be going forward a very valuable thing because private insurers are, as the climate is changing and we have more unpredictable weather patterns that are creating, wreaking havoc on our infrastructure, private insurance is going to be the way that most of that gets paid. So there's just not enough money, public funds from any source to copy that. Translating the value of mitigation into a lower premium is sort of an emerging issue for states to figure out how to help municipalities do. About assets. Did I say that right?

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I think

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Phil is there. Yeah,

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: when municipalities, for example, take mitigation efforts for fire prevention, it really helps if it translates into lower insurance rates. And it's working in some spots, but the idea is to like, wait a minute here, not all neighborhoods are the same for fire protection. A particular neighborhood has done a whole bunch of work ahead of time, then you would expect their insurance rate is less. In the same way, if your home is located close to a fire plug or the fire station, the closer you are, the less your insurance is. So it's that same content.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Translating this into value that then results in a lower insurance premium, fingers crossed.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I did remember my other question, if I can. You mentioned VLCT insures the bridges. Is that true for all structures and municipal structures?

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: So I only know for Pittsburgh. And so one of our covered bridges, the state does own. But our VLCT, the insurance covers the other three. The one the state owns is actually only foot traffic,

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: it's foot traffic only. Okay,

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: yeah. So I guess that's a question. The committee knew, if you have a structure, the municipality has structure, I didn't think there was any insurance on it. So if something happens, go to a VLCT to get reimbursement. I don't know. Maybe it's just a structure on top, like a barn or a house. It's a structure owned by the municipality. So maybe that's it, but not actually the bridge, but the building

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: on top. Oh, I see

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: what you're saying. Okay. That might be why there's insurance, but okay. Be interesting. I think all these questions would be good.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Before

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: you get questions on the floor.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: No, absolutely, this is a lot of great feedback.

[Speaker 0]: So, anything else? I'm happy to take more. I have had some conversations with the agency. As you very much point out, there's very, very few state owned and state managed covered bridges. Most of them are on municipal roads. So the agency doesn't necessarily speak for them other than based on some of the conversations they've heard, doesn't necessarily see that as their role to spearhead this project. Although they certainly view that they support it. I have had some other conversations based on this that suggest that the CTE angle, the Economic Community Development, the Commerce Committee, and assistance from the Agency of Transportation would be a model they would suggest.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: What

[Speaker 0]: I'm feeling like is that we should explore some of these more answers and probably some more information and make sure we understand it and start perhaps bringing an approach to that committee. I've even further had some conversations that when you start talking about CTEs and tourism and historic preservation, that the attention in that committee is pretty high. With our interest and support potentially, the next big question, as you mentioned, is funds and the idea of a grant program and work on this type of thing gets far more receptive when you tie in the CTE angle than the tourism angle. I've had, obviously we've talked about it, I've been doing some poking around and trying to find a place for this to potentially work, and there are interests in other, A lot of people want to be supportive, and what we're looking for is somebody that we want to be a point. I am not familiar with the covered bridge society, and I don't know how many members or where they're headquartered at and who represents them, and if they ever come anywhere in this direction, it might be somebody we wanna hear from.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: Yep. I'll reach out to the they're actually from representative Casey's area. That's where they're located.

[Speaker 0]: You had quite a few sponsors on the bill as well. So I'm not sure how many of it was, but it was quite a few. Can count them up. But if you know how many there were.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: I didn't count either. Like I said, I went after everybody who's got a lot of covered bridges. Had a list from the president of the covered bridge site. He gave me the list of all the reps who had the most team of the towns with all the most covered bridges. And so I was able to find the reps. Districts. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: In full disclosure, I grew up in Brandon not more than a mile down the bottom of my street.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: Sanderson, Sanderson So we've had a lot

[Speaker 0]: of ups and downs. It's amazing the impact when one of them goes down, it has on the community. So I'm glad to be in the spot to try to find a helpful way of looking at it, particularly like that CTE angle and seeing those kids under there and having, they'll be able to tell that story of being involved in the same ad bridge for the rest of their days, they actually have a useful skill in doing it. So, Representative White, had a question A or a comment question.

[Candice White (Member)]: If you're looking for case studies of sewer bridges that have been repeatedly hit by box trucks and to get at the insurance story, the Wainesfield Covered Bridge, which I believe is the original, the first covered bridge in the state, has had numerous incidents over the last year, maybe ten years, of being damaged, repaired, damaged, repaired. So they might, if you're looking for additional testimony, I'm sure we could find someone there to make. Thank

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: you. Represent, thank you for this. Is $1,000 all we can catch them for? I mean, is there some reason why statutorily we can only charge them $1,000?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I don't think so. Maybe we could make it in

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: the I more you would suggest it to be onerous.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: Yeah. I wasn't sure how to come up with a number. We essentially just doubled what's for any other bridge.

[Speaker 0]: I think the judiciary have a lot of experience and peace on what's reasonable and what's not. There's a whole issue of constitutionality that they deal with in that, that we don't. But they have input on that piece. So were you all set? Yeah, do you have more? Representative Weilman?

[Candice White (Member)]: Following on R. Keyser's point, I think there are many intangibles to cost to the loss of one of these. That could be

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: a starting point. What would

[Candice White (Member)]: that be? Maybe that would help with many backup for a more robust fee penalty, whatever that would be. I mean, it's a starting point.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you, Mr. Clark. Representative Keyser? I just want to speak to a world tradition,

[Chris Keyser (Member)]: and it's kind of lighthearted.

[Speaker 0]: Whenever me and my wife go across the bridge, she makes me stop halfway and give her a peck on the cheap. Traffic's different.

[Chris Keyser (Member)]: Should go like that. This one we're getting on the bridge.

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: And the amount of people that beep when they go through, it's just like everybody's got their little They do it covered bridges, and they're just special.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: So that's an example of the tremendous intangibles. Yes, exactly.

[Speaker 0]: Excellent. Sounds like we have a lot of interest and a lot of questions. Yeah. Thank you very much. Anybody have any other last words? I would say thank you very much for bringing forward and back to talk again. Great, thank Thank

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: you, appreciate your time and I'll get some answers to all these great questions. It was a lot of good feedback, so I appreciate it.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a wonderful weekend. Thanks.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: And

[Speaker 0]: we will move on to our next agenda item, and Representative Burke is going to switch seats.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: There might be some

[Speaker 0]: Or do you have some other

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: There might be somebody else

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: coming in.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, can Do you want

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: to leave it first?

[Speaker 0]: If you'd like to, we can keep any implications there. Is that a problem with representing Burke? Are you comfortable with that? You want to wait? Do you want us to wait till eleven? We can do that. We can turn to eleven and we can have a chat, or we can put representative Lalley up and then switch back. I'm pretty flexible on Friday morning here.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: It's up to you, mister chair.

[Speaker 0]: You might as well just push ahead then. Alright.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Okay.

[Speaker 0]: Representative Lalley is going to present each 08:34. Okay. Alright. An act relating to traffic calming measures for village centers and pedestrian and bicycle safety.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Right. Good morning, everybody, from my different position here. So the bill is H834, and I wanted to begin by telling you what inspired me to introduce this bill. I want Vermont to have more prosperous communities, prosperous communities all have one thing in common, safe streets. Safe streets are slow streets, places where people shop, run into friends and neighbors, meet up for coffee and meals. By providing the physical framework for the social and economic life of a community's inhabitants, safe streets, great well-being, belonging and agency. This bill proposes a toolbox of ideas to make it easier, faster, less costly for all state designated communities to have these advantages. So now into the bill. It does four things. None of them cost any money. So just wanted to start with that. So the first thing it does is it establishes a process so that even little villages can have the right to set a speed limit of 25 miles per hour. More local control of vehicle speeds helps with livability, safety, and physical productivity. At present, our law only affords this for the larger places, which have more capacity to pursue and adopt downtown designation, which is called Step three under the new land use designations. And for example, my town of Shelburne doesn't qualify for this. So it kind of gives you a sense for the really narrow range of places that get to have sidewalks and bicycle paths and things like that more easily than other places do.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah,

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Hinesburg Village is under the new Act two fifty, will have that downtown.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Your going for downtown designation? Yes.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So based on that, would that allow the town to request 25 miles an hour? Sure, yes, it would. Once that goes

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: through. So this would make it so that you didn't have to do that. Yeah. Because we took testimony yesterday that it's a very narrow universe of places that can have this, and there are only five or six more that under this universally large, this huge land use transformation that we're doing are going to be included in that. So it's really not. If you think about all the places and settings in Vermont, that five or six more is not a lot. So we keep hearing that they can't meet the demand, the need is far greater. So this is a starting point to have a little bit more of a level playing field. So my goal would bring it all the way down to what's called step one communities, which is the littlest places that fall under the designation program. So giving them a bite of that apple, basically. And today, I don't think it's even possible for our town to request anything less than the 30, which it is now. It's true. Now this would not, just to clarify, this would not say that, Okay, now you get access to resources to put sidewalks and that sort of thing. That's a separate problem that we have to solve somehow. But this would at least say we get to set a 25 mile per hour speed limit. And in a lot of rural places, that is the most important thing that they want. Safety is the starting point for everything. So it would give them that ability. And I think that will start to, in the places that I serve, in my day job as a regional planner, this would help to create a more sense of agency about what more they could do as opposed to just kind of giving up. It's just making it a little less, reducing a little of that friction that's there right now.

[Speaker 0]: What's the speed limit in Shelburne now?

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: It is now 35 on Route 7 going through the village, which is too fast. And like Rep Pouech said, we are also pursuing downtown designation. It But only became something that the community saw the advantages of doing with the recent land use changes. We have not been able to politically get the town to pursue downtown designation until now. So the land use changes have made it easier to do that. So we're very grateful for that. But I think if we want to have people living in our towns and villages in Vermont, we have hundreds of them and we have success in too few places in the state, and jobs and opportunities are concentrated in a very few limited places, then we've got to start looking at the connection, I think, between transportation and land use policy and how we can create the conditions for somebody wanting to invest in these rural places.

[Speaker 0]: Bus more wants to do

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: the same thing, they want to go to 25.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah, yeah.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Representative Keyser? So, thank you. Doctor has 25 miles an hour. Why? I'm hearing that you can't do that.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: I'm not sure. It may be on a town road.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: In the village, the whole village is 25 miles an hour.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: That's great. They may have a designation status. I'm not sure how they're doing. That would be interesting to know more about that.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Because that's not the case in most places.

[Speaker 0]: You're coming out from one of our people. I know. I

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: just want to clarify, and I know representative Talch is already asking about this, but okay. So currently, if you are a designated downtown, you can go down to 25 miles per hour. But this is allowing those towns that do not have that designation, to go down to 25 miles per hour. If your town is on a town highway, or state highway, like rural Honduras, would that allow? Yes. It would allow that. It would also allow the town to determine the location where it wanted to have 25 miles per hour. And this could be a combination of state highway, town highway. In other words, they get to look at their setting and decide what's best for them, what meets their needs, rather than this sort of mother may I thing that we have right now, where the answer is often no. And is

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: this connected to

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: the mapping, the tier 1A, 1B designated growth areas? It's connected to the map designated area. So this would apply to So it's confusing. Right now we have village centers and then designated downtowns and network changing this to step one, step two and step three communities. It's all linked to the tiers. And all of this is being implemented, sort of proved and implemented as we speak. So we have one foot in the old world and one foot in the new world, and it's a little complicated. But this would say that all the places that are recognized under the designation program, which in my understanding of the law, are places where we intend to have housing, productivity, new businesses, jobs, bike paths, all that stuff, they would have the opportunity to set that speed limit to 25 miles per hour. And there's a lot more to this, the mechanisms. Damien came up with some very interesting approaches that if there's interest in the committee, we could take a deeper dive into how this would actually work practice. And I would just say that two of the five Charles I represent are desperate for something like this. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you. Yeah. Is it okay for me to go on to the other things that the bill does? Okay. Alright. The next thing it does is it clarifies the current law in two instances. No parking 20 feet of a mid block crosswalk. So loading, bike parking would be okay if there was a local ordinance that said, yeah, we're fine with that. So it's not saying you can't have anything there. But again, the town would get some say in how this worked. And the point of this is to create more visibility at mid block crosswalks. In a lot of our villages and downtowns, you have very linear conditions that not every place is built around a green or something like that. So the mid block crosswalk is like the only way you're going get across Main Street, because we don't have system of blocks and things and intersections. So making those as safe as they can be is really important. So these were two recommendations from local motion, which has done a lot of studying of this. And so I included them into my bill. And then the other thing is that it would prevent use of the center lane when you have a three lane road for passing. And we learned again from local motion that that is not something that is illegal currently in Vermont. So that's number two of the things that the bill does. And then the third thing that it would do is it would establish a working group to look holistically at the range of barriers to increasing the ability to have bicycle and pedestrian facilities in our towns and villages. So we've heard that the way that NEFA is applied has been a barrier. They're working on some of that. There are other things too. And so the recommendation from the RPCs was to work with the LCT and the agency on just understand the universe of barriers, not just to try and see if there could be a bunch of things that could be changed that are problems now going forward or recommendations on changes. Why is this important? This will make very scarce public dollars go further and help us lower emissions and have walkable productive places. And then the fourth thing that the bill would do is explore opportunities to make class one highway status more appealing and more compelling so more communities will consider adopting this. This is a provision that was inspired by a very fascinating recent study that was commissioned by AARP, and they had Smart Growth work with the agency on class one. Everybody wants class one to become something that is kind of a more normal thing to have in Vermont. It reduces costs for the agency, but it only makes sense for municipalities to do it if, honestly, the juice is worth the squeeze, right? So like we saw how the Chairs community decided to go ahead and pursue that because of the fabulous Lakeside location and the opportunities to probably have pretty significant grand list development in that location would probably far exceed the cost of taking on the maintenance of that stretch of highway. I'm guessing this, that's just my thought as when we went on our field trip and saw the situation. So that's it. That's what it would do.

[Chris Keyser (Member)]: Does it cost anything?

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: None of this stuff costs anything.

[Chris Keyser (Member)]: Switching the signs will, right? Is that gonna

[Speaker 0]: be the talent span for that? Switching the signs for

[Chris Keyser (Member)]: 35 to 25.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Oh, if we're able to do that, if it's part of a class one, the state would do that, and then the towns would be responsible for their portion of it. So I think that would be not a huge expense.

[Speaker 0]: Regine Wood?

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Switching to Class I Highway, so that basically allows a town to take over that section of highway. Yes. And from what I remember, when we discussed this last year regarding the Chairs area, St. Almonds, right? St. Almonds, that was adopting a mile or so back from the state. But I believe there was some language that the state was still going to plow, which I think is a bit of a barrier. I think about our town on sections of Route 100, which the state is plowing right now. If that could be kind of a common consideration that the state would continue to plow through the class one highway designation and not just stop there because it's Well, that's actually, as my understanding is, that's one of the challenges right now, is that it's a sort of all or nothing proposition. And a lot of places are not in a position to be able to take on that amount of maintenance. So what could be done about this? This is what is the point of the study with you to look at it. Is there a middle path? Is there something where you can be class one furious and maybe start down that pathway and then adopt it eventually? Is there some kind of like a ramp, an onward to to use our sector's prongs, to get there in the future. Because there's some really clever ideas. I remember hearing a number of years ago in Ferry, when they put the changes to their state highway, which I think are Class I through that section of their downtown. I'm not sure about it, I think they are. But anyway, they have mid law crosswalks and parking. Guys have probably been there, it's really nice. And how are they going to keep that plowed? So they actually came up with a standard where they designed the curb radius around the mid block crosswalk based on their snowplows. So there are some very clever ways to do this kind of stuff. And VTrans is constantly upgrading their equipment, and the plows come with these telescoping, changeable front end plow things. So I think with a little bit of thought in this, there are a lot of places in this country that deal with snow in the winters, and they have thriving downtowns. And with parking and crosswalks, and all the sort of clutter of a very successful pedestrian environment that's full of shops and businesses and things like this. And I think there are ways around this. Do I know what those are? Can I speak to what those are now? I cannot. So that's the point of just getting everybody together and working on this and see what we can come up with that works in our rural state with all of our many challenges, capacity and everything else.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah,

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: just to come, but to build on it, I mean, and I may have mentioned this, I've mentioned this a couple of times where, again, a town like Heinzburg would love the state to come and say, Hey, here are some options for you to consider to slow traffic, make it safer, whatnot. And those conversations just aren't happening unless unless we took the whole thing over. And we had a study, RPC did a scoping study of here's what we could do with 116 in the village if we were to take it over, but the cost of taking it over and street lighting and all that, those costs just were flat. But the ideas of what we could do, some new bump outs and different things to sort of slow traffic, We're not that expensive. And even if the town, the state said, hey, it's continuing to be a state road, but here are some things you could do, and it's a fiftyfifty split, or even that I think the town would take that on. This conversation, having this, I think, is really important.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Well, think it's gonna be key to the financing of a lot of these opportunities. And we have the CHIP program, there's a lot of there's the treasurer's is it 10% for Vermont program, which is a sort of chip for little teeny weeny rural places. There's a lot of thought going into the financing of this, so it just seemed timely to introduce the transportation side of it into the argument and see if this could be a win win, because this is something the agency is really wanting to make work. And I know they've been frustrated that we're going in the opposite direction, I believe.

[Speaker 0]: Other questions? I can't help but go down the history of things that sort of this idea that we're going to now, we have to do budget wise and money wise and mindset wise, find a way for the commerce that needs to get through this town to deliver in the next town. That has been the focus for a long, long time. It was about how do you move the traffic as quickly as possible through to get where they're going, to a major history that was bypasses which were to be built, land was secured, right of ways all the way up and down Route 7 from the North to the South, sort of like the effort to get people on the interstate in the East that they did. There is still right of way that you can identify an entire length of Route 7 that was all secured back in the '60s and the '70s to bypass from all the way back at Pittsburgh and Brandon. Lattenden is the only one that really got built. There were the bypass around Middlebury. There's the land you can still identify if you go on Google Earth and follow the patterns if you know where it is. It's all was carved out. And now we are abandoning any major, almost any build or any rebuild in our network, and we're trying to find ways to coexist that effort to move that commerce and come through the small town and make it more livable. But at one time, it was all about getting around the towns and coming from Middlebury up through. Like I said, Virgin's the only one that really got built. All the rest of them still exist on a map somewhere. But anyway, I appreciate your time. Anybody else got any other questions or comments on it? Mollie and Mr. Burke, you is this a good you were part of our So now we're in another bill presentation moving back to the one that was on the list, age seven sixty six, back relating to local option tax on gasoline and diesel sales. Representative Burke moving chairs just like Representative Lalley's.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: My seat may be here.

[Speaker 0]: It's all yours.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Representative Mollie Burke at Brattleboro. Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee for listening to this. I brought H seven sixty six here because my town, usually before we come back to the legislature, the town select board wants to meet with local representatives to sort of give their opinion about things that would be helpful to introduce more to search for towns. And we're very happy to hear that, their list. And one of the things on their list was this, local option gas tax, because our town, like many, is suffering deeply from tax increases and from lack of funding. And trying to, you know, there was a consideration even recently to get rid of trash collection and help people do it themselves, just to save money. So, I said I would be happy to bring this forward, it seems like a reasonable idea, and I have. So basically, sort of tapping on to the local option on page two of the bill, talks about the ability, existing statute to the legislative body of the municipality by majority vote can recommend the voters that they implement a 1% sales tax, 1% meals and alcohol beverages tax, 1% service tax. And additionally, so those are three possibilities. And additionally, a 1¢, not present, tax upon each gallon gallon of gasoline, the owner of fuels sold or delivered by a distributor within the town. And a 1¢ tax on each gallon of diesel. This was really to capture they have about 10 gas stations in Brattleboro, a lot of tourist traffic going through and seemed like a way to sort of get some more money for town services. Now I'm finding that the way that it's set up is probably not that it's problematic the way the legislation is written to have collected by the DMV and according to our stellar fiscal helper, fiscal professional, Chris Rutland, we, it would be akin to sort of setting up a whole new tech system. So the issue is, how can we make this happen, receive the benefit of these, especially tourist traffic going through the town, and get some more money for the town without having to spend a whole lot of money setting up some new taxes. So could we and so I think that is the issue that I would like to be able to see if we could get some testimony on. And I think this is something that other communities I know other communities are interested in this option as well.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Representative Tomlinson?

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: I'm curious if Can I ask questions of the person?

[Speaker 0]: They would have the option of whether they chose to answer for those of you who are newer on the committee, who we're pointing at was the Logan before Logan, before he moved on

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: to I moved down to fear.

[Speaker 0]: Career pastures. I'm okay with it if Mr. Rutland is okay with it.

[Chris Rutland (Fiscal Analyst)]: I

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: was curious if there are any initial review, if there are or what alternatives there might be to the way it's structured that would not require such a

[Chris Rutland (Fiscal Analyst)]: First of I think the representative Burke I think excellently summed up my sort of concern when I initially read this was that right now DMV collects the fuel taxes, the tax department does everything else related to local option taxes, and right now the way DMV collects the fuel taxes, they don't do it at the retail point of sale, they do it upstream at the distributor level. You should hear from DMV on what kind of operational issues there may be by and as well as the fuel distributors for them now having to track what municipality they're delivering gallons to to assess this because right now the fuel taxes, you you pay the tax based on gallons that are going into Vermont. It's not being tracked based on the municipality that you're making that delivery to. So we have no way of knowing like how many gallons of fuel were delivered within the town of Brattleboro. It makes it even more complicated when you just deal with local option taxes writ large because our zip codes and our municipal boundaries do not correspond with each other. So it's actually a pretty significant administrative lift for techs to run the local option tax system. Getting to your question directly, representative, right now the local option tax system is based on sales, rooms, or meals and alcohol. Those are the three different things you can do, and the way the tax department collects it is there's essentially an additional line on the forms for those existing tax types. So the easiest thing to do from an administrative perspective, and again I'm not speaking for DMV or text, you should hear from them, is to not create an all new text type or an all new filing requirement on people if you can maybe piggyback off of an existing filing system. One of the examples that comes to mind is Jet Fuel is taxed totally separate from this. It's subject to the sales tax. And the way tax collects that is the handful of people who pay that, they file a sales tax return and they also file a one pager that goes with it that is just specific to jet fuel and natural gas that they sold. And those are got lined to be like, since it's a percentage base, just add an extra percentage for the local option tax. So if you can do a way to sort of piggyback on existing tax scheme, I hate using that word scheme, an existing tax system it's easier to administer and there can be some pretty sizable upfront costs for starting an all new tax rate. And as a cent per gallon, statewide as a cent on gas is about $2,800,000 on diesel it's around $600,000 so do the math of what that might translate to at any given town, it just may not amount to that much value in

[Speaker 0]: the country.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: But the 1 cent is proposing this bill, but it could be different than that.

[Chris Rutland (Fiscal Analyst)]: Right, I can only comment on the terms.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: It could be a percentage.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Right, I'm just trying to confirm that there's nothing in statute related to the option taxes that limits the percentage or amount. Others are set at 1%. This would be one set for GAAP.

[Chris Rutland (Fiscal Analyst)]: So 1¢, not 1%. This would be changing that statute.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Right, right, okay. And that proposal to piggyback off the other filing system, I'm just trying to understand, would that be able to align with Oh, because that's also a local options tax or with the municipal level for jet fuel.

[Chris Rutland (Fiscal Analyst)]: Yeah. There's only two municipalities that can see it applies to South Burlington and Mount Vernon. Just an example of how

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I guess question for Mr. Rutland. Could you remind us what the overhead is presently for the gas tax, gas and diesel tax?

[Chris Rutland (Fiscal Analyst)]: Oh, I don't have an exact number for you, but it is very low. The gas and diesel tax is very administratively efficient to collect.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I thought we were told it's about 3% to go It's out 97%, roughly. It's up in the high-

[Chris Rutland (Fiscal Analyst)]: That sounds very reasonable.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So potentially, if you wanted to provide more funding for municipalities, you could up the gas tax and diesel tax up a penny, 2 pennies, whatever it would be, and earmark those directly to municipalities. That wouldn't really cost, that wouldn't have this problem that we're talking about here of trying to set up a brand new system of collecting.

[Chris Rutland (Fiscal Analyst)]: It wouldn't really change the way business is done in terms of permitting taxes and collecting them.

[Speaker 0]: You

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: mean just raise it for the municipalities that go on with it?

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Raise it. Or in general

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: You're talking about raising the gas tax?

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Have a whole new system, you know, all the money being raised could then potentially be used for municipality road services, know, better grants, formula funding in those areas that go directly to municipalities, which is state dollars, primarily.

[Speaker 0]: Representative Casey and then Representative Keyser. I don't know if

[Chris Keyser (Member)]: guys sell down Brattleboro, but I can't imagine it's not very much. Not just raise rooms and meals or something like that?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Well, you know, every tax proposal has pluses and minuses.

[Speaker 0]: Well, gonna get your proposal on

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: your Yeah. Well

[Speaker 0]: That has pluses and minuses.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I don't I'm not sure. Is there a limit on the amount of local option tax that you can raise? Do you normally do? 1%?

[Chris Rutland (Fiscal Analyst)]: So I'm not an attorney, I would defer that to Tucker Anderson, but right now everything is at 1%, and my understanding is the only way to go higher than that is through the Charter amendment process.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah. So that's the issue. We have to do a Charter, which is an option. Thanks for raising the idea. Representative Feinser.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: You. So this is for, you're thinking of gas stations and places like that, where you would do it. So there are also bulk deliveries that go into large tanks that companies have and that type of thing. Are you envisioning this also to be for bulk deliveries into large tanks?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Just specifically for the gas stations, I think. Within the municipality. We don't have any bulk tanks. You do. Brattle there, do we?

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Oh, gotcha. You don't know how many, but I don't mean

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: to be dismissive. That's an interesting point. Mean, that's not something anyone's What heard

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: will happen, I believe, is most diesel fuel is sold through bulk deliveries into customer owned tanks. So you will be missing any of the volume, or much of the volume that goes into diesel fuel. Just a

[Speaker 0]: second. Well,

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: it seems like there are lots lots of complications with this proposal, which seemed like a very simple solution. But that's exactly why we legislate.

[Speaker 0]: Good. So just a point. Yeah, thank you. Representative White?

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Yeah, Representative Burke, I like this idea, but I do have concerns just hearing about maybe the complications of making a local option tax. And I was also kind of thinking along the lines of what representative Pouech was saying is, we could look at raising the gas tax and just say that additional raise is going directly back to all municipalities, which I think would just be working into the existing system. So it would make it much less onerous to take on.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Tracing the gas tax raises a whole lot of other red flags, right?

[Speaker 0]: Were you asking me?

[Unidentified visiting representative (Rutland-8: Pittsford & Proctor)]: Looking for confirmation, your Mr. Chair.

[Speaker 0]: I would certainly echo that if you want to talk about gas taxes, you'll get a lot of attention.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: We have more people in this room.

[Speaker 0]: The governor said he would veto a gas tax. Yeah, that's fair. That's a question by all means, if that's the question. Think that for me, there's a committee next door spends an awful lot of time understanding what is a good tax and bad tax. They put on a presentation last session that talks about whether it's a certain number of, I see the nodding head, there was a lot of criteria to try to look down in terms of who was impacted and what it'll be used for, how is it collected, what's the industry, how the equity of it. Can't remember exactly, but they spent a lot of time on that in terms of all the different pieces of what makes a good tax and a bad tax. Certainly this community couldn't possibly answer all of that. It would likely spend a lot of time in there. There were two parts of it to me that I am interested in a conversation of at least versus being mechanics of how you're collecting. But it's, does a municipality have, whether it be through a perhaps climate mindset that wants to help reduce the amount of fossil fuel reliance and would want to continue to make gas more expensive perhaps since it would reduce our emissions and perhaps they would find other alternative methods. Can a municipality pursue some level of a climate action effort through taxation? That's an interesting question within that. Then also whether or not a community can, could we have a patchwork of one community versus another, actually actually, do they have the ability to it, and then whether or not it could or couldn't happen. So I'm not sure I fully even say that we're not going to solve all that, but I am interested in the question of whether or not municipalities should have this ability or not, and then whether or not could even work, And what other options have municipalities had that they may or may not want to pursue new tax? What does it do to the state's ability to handle the gas tax increase? So those are some of the pieces that I think are conversation pieces. The bigger picture, can one municipality do it versus what I think Representative Pouech, Representative White, are talking about. Like, we did it statewide and helped the town highway funds and structures. That's different than what we're trying to do here is where the municipal itself wants to

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: But we do have the opportunity, I mean municipalities do have already the opportunity to local option taxes, which is sort of a patchwork. Not all municipalities do that. Anyway, I appreciate the conversation and this was really a conversation starter and hopefully we can get some testimony if the chair is willing to sort of flush out some of these questions and problems and see whether there's any possibility.

[Speaker 0]: You hear a lot of reasons why we can't do it, but we're kind of curious about some of the reasons whether should or shouldn't, not whether we can't, but whether we should. So thank you for bringing it. Does anybody else have some comments on this or other questions? I

[Chris Keyser (Member)]: would think buying a penny is not much, but it does to a small degree put it at the gas stations at a disadvantage. Mean, technically, I mean, only a cent is probably not helping.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: You mean because people would be saying, I'm paying more if I drive over the

[Chris Keyser (Member)]: long Some people will drive 10 miles to save, step over a dollar to save a dime.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: People currently drive across the river to New Hampshire.

[Speaker 0]: My experience is if go across the street it could

[Chris Rutland (Fiscal Analyst)]: be 10¢ different than

[Speaker 0]: paying their rent. It's just the simplicity of being able to pull in there, there is tight rods out there that would not go into that. And when I was having my senior moment, and I forgot the second part of what I was saying, is highlighting the issue that municipalities have very limited options when it comes to supporting their infrastructure. We saw testimony this week that we only as a state are able to fund less than a third of town highway requests and 28% of town structures. That might have been vice versa. I don't know if that's called 100%. We're, as a state, only able to fund less than a third of what's being asked for. And if a municipality needs to fix something, they've got property taxes and a local option tax on sales, alcohol, rooms,

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: and

[Speaker 0]: meals. What else can they do? And if you're not a town that has less than that sales activity, what else is the option? Property taxes or delay the project? Or bond. Bond. Bond. Of what the testimony would do is continue to highlight the issues that the town, from what I'm gathering, is desperate to address their infrastructure problems, and property taxes is one of their few options. What else do they have? Is this a what I think our representative presented earlier, is there a tool in the toolbox that we don't have that we might consider making available to towns, because they are under limited options? And this committee has always been very concerned about our towns, and trying to give them whatever advantage

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: we can do for them.

[Speaker 0]: And we are involved in a huge conversation about how we're going to fund state T funds, but in a subsection of that conversation is whether we are or are not finding a way to help the towns in that. So if we even get the bigger picture, and I've gone off here quite a bit, so let's say that the governor's recommended plan were to happen and then the step down and that money would have come here, what have we done to help this issue of towns and municipalities who are getting less than a third of what they need? And I haven't heard anybody talk about resiliency planning what I used to, what my grandfather would call, good maintenance and preparation. There isn't even any talk about the upgrade to larger structures, to larger culverts, and where that money would come from. All we've talked about is money to just get the T fund to even current existing maintenance to keep it. What do we say, every day the secretary says it's decaying out there every day? But the money we're talking about only gets us to maintaining that. There has no discussion about helping them and dealing with the next big flood. So that's my soapbox to end this conversation for today, but you're welcome to, since you're in that spot, to comment again.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: And I think I mentioned to you yesterday in the presentation that we had from the Pew Research Center on infrastructure funding, and I'd like to see if we could get them to do a presentation for this number of us who were there in the room. And that's the thoughts about how with limited dollars we could collaborate more with other departments, etc. Just to mention that.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you very much. Anybody else? Alright, so we're I have a couple of items for community discussion on the next piece. I think we'll just go transition to that instead of few minutes. Next week, you're going to see on the agenda Caledonia Airport. Actually, I should pull out all of the pieces. But interestingly enough, two years ago, the committee put in the T bill and we passed the legislature of the T bill to authorize transportation to enter into agreement to pursue agreements to sell the Caledonia State Airport. And we put a two year time limit on his to, the Secretary's effort to sell it, and it has not gone through and it expires May 1. So next week, we will hear from the agency on their request to add language students and go. I would extend it. To extend, there's a request, there's going to be a request, and this is your heads up to that, there's going to be a request to extend that timeframe and we'll take a look at whether we think that is or is not the right way to go. There was a lot of discussion about that asset and where it's at, but I want to give you a heads up to that piece. We also are still looking for a couple of spots to come in on T phone language. And we are gonna spend there used to be in this committee apparently, back to those ghosts that listen and those that are still here. Say that we used to have a regional planning commission days and we used to highlight the work done by regional planning commissions and hear what their concerns were related to roads and to infrastructure and their transportation advisory committees. And we are going to have a parade of regional planning commissions telling us what's going on throughout the entire state in their area, what their needs are, what their struggles are, what their successes are. And I think that it's an area we haven't heard from in a couple of years, at least. Yeah, that's been a little bit Usually, I don't know

[Chris Rutland (Fiscal Analyst)]: if you want to do a joint area, but it was all just

[Speaker 0]: Well, we're breaking them down into a lot of different Oh, okay. We're gonna have a lot of what we were about presentations, but we're gonna hear from quite a few of the regional planning commissions on their feedback on what's going on in their world and the transportation world, anybody in transportation advisory committees. And my concern and the direction I'm sort of exploring in that particular testimony is what else are we not doing? We're trying to fund to the bare minimum, and what are we losing? The downtown projects and watching the pieces that impact on the tourism and the park, we've funded it to $5,000,000 and you see some unbelievable projects that happen for not a significant amount But per now that project's $500,000 and we added six or seven new designees that you might as well not even have a project to divide it up amongst 30 places. It's sort of like the towns, they just got to go on the queue and wait their turn. That's not a lot to get those done. So anyway, that's part of that and also what's going on. What else are we not able to do because of the constraints of where we're at? That's sort of what we're looking to talk about for next week. But Representative Keyser,

[Chris Keyser (Member)]: that's an example of the lack of funding for the little towns. This is further zip right there.

[Speaker 0]: I appreciate that. When I also look at it and there is a certain level of we heard about the 91 Bridge and the extra little bit of work that was done on the art side of it, when it's done for tourism and interest in that piece, There's like at the Rotary and Waterbury, those of who've seen that backlit train piece. Our budget doesn't allow us to do a whole lot of extra, but we're gonna do major projects like the one that you currently use in Bridge. I'm pretty sure we all want to agree that it should really have some level of flair to it when you're looking at Downtown Winiscus activity, commercial hub, and you're looking, how do we do that when we're in this situation? Topping that all off with an update from the agency on sort of their ten year view and how do they view it on what they can and can't do given the current funding structure. Next week is sort of all about what else do we wish we could do and what aren't we doing and what are we skipping and what else do we want to hear and opening up to a level that we haven't heard from in a couple of years. So that's what I wanted to at least announce. If there's comments or questions, I'm happy to take them. I know there's some requests coming in that I would like to see you take them. It doesn't have to be a huge formal email, but just put it in there who you want and what you want to talk about. I know you've mentioned it, but I'm not. Would make it easier. Put it in there, and I will forward it along and help make that happen. But there we go, that's what the next week's plan is, that's where we're at. There's not a lot of TBill this year, so it does open up some extra time on, and this is the first thing that I'm going do to come open to the next piece of the art. And then we're going to get started on some of the data we need to look at what's going on with miscellaneous motor vehicles and vehicle inspections, we will go get a jump start on that if we don't have requests for other pieces. Do guys love the trails? I asked the League of Cities and Towns to come in on the trails, they said the appeal is happening, and they think the appeal ruling is any day. If you remember, we got involved in people trails at the end, especially during the video conference. Representative Burke was in that, Rachel Parker myself, and there was a lot of discussion about legal trails and took testimony when I was out. Case resolved in the direction that a lot of people favored, not everybody. But then it was appealed, and I was told the appeal is potentially being ruled on. So I have asked for that MA's stance to put it off, so we could get somebody else. I was just curious where that stance goes. Represent part.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Oh, in that discussion, I forgot what I was going to say.

[Speaker 0]: Perfect. I'm sorry. Going help. Okay. Anybody else? All right. Then we're gonna adjourn for