Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: It'll up. It'll come up for Wednesday, 02/11/2026. We're back in house transportation. We're taking a tour around the state from regional planning commission to regional planning commission. We were in Addison County and then we headed up into, goodness, where do we go? We went to Washington County, went up to Franklin County. Now we're coming back to Lemoyle County. And welcome this afternoon. I could go back through the whole speech of why you're here, you've heard a couple of the presentations. And we're interested in learning what you're up to and what the committee might need to do to help out. And it could go in a lot of different directions. We've been in four or five presentations in four or five different directions. So we appreciate you coming in. It's a little bit different for us, and I gathered it's a little different for you. So we're happy

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: to have you in whichever way you want to go first and take it away. So I'm Seth Jensen. I'm deputy director of the Memorial County Planning Commission. We serve the 10 towns and five villages in Memorial County. Our regional planning commission countries also follow the county line. You're mostly going to be hearing from Alex Jones.

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Is there a presentation that's going up or not? I sent it to Gabriela.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, Gabriela. She pulled it off if we can.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: I don't know if we can. We're just checking on it. Let's see.

[Raul (Committee AV/Tech Staff)]: Sorry, one second.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: That was Raul.

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Where's your office open in Newmont? We are on Portland Street in Morrisville, above if you know Morrisville, above where it used to be Kaplan's, or do the Vermont thing of identifying it by what

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: it was, where it uses But to

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: we're right in the heart of the downtown.

[Raul (Committee AV/Tech Staff)]: Jackson, sorry. Representative?

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yes, AV Club. Remember when microfiche was going save everything?

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Yeah, thank you. I am Alex Jones, I'm the Transportation Planner at the Mollielle County Planning Commission. I'm just going to start with some background on Mollielle County. As Seth mentioned, we cover 10 towns, five villages, and we follow the county lines. We have just over 900 total road miles in Wyoming. 15% of those are state highway, only another 15% of those are paved town roads, and the remaining 70% are all gravel test roads. And it's worth noting that nearly all of our roads are impacted by steep slope and or floodplain. We don't have any interstate highways, and the majority of our towns have very small road crews. Some don't have any full time road crew staff, and most towns have very limited capacity for town staff. I agree.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: You were a little nervous and it was new. You know, if I made a quiz, would you be able to name all ten and five?

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Go for it.

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: I'm doing Eden, Belvedere, Waterville, Cambridge, Johnston, Hyde Park, Snow, Morristown, Elmore, Wolcott. That's all 10. Unless I missed Eden. And then the villages are Jeffersonville Village, Cambridge Village, Hyde Park Village, Morristown Village, Wolcott, I don't know, no, Wolcott and the Kettlehead Village. I don't know if that was five or not, but

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: So is there a village in there?

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Do they have their own They've merged. They have an electric department that replaced the village about ten years ago.

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: They have many other villages that don't have actual municipalities. Yes.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: So I can tell you that nobody else in here would have been able to name them all, so be confident you know what you're talking about.

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: They belong less than some of the other RBCs. Perfect.

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Yeah, so I'm just going to start with our regional priorities. One of the biggest is that most of our villages are right on state highways, and that comes with a lot of complications with speed reduction or bike type implementation. So that is what we're working through with many of our villages right now. Another big issue in our region is the congestion in Stowe Village and on VT108. And then we do a lot of coordination with the public transit providers. We work with both RCT and GMT, although GMT is transferring their Stowe service to RCT currently, so we will soon only have RCT in our region. We do a lot of the same stuff that you've heard from past RPCs with the data collection, the erosion inventories, the traffic studies, the culvert inventories, all to help drive capital planning efforts in the county. One thing we're doing more and more often now is providing modeling, planning and implementation of flood resiliency projects, especially after the twenty twenty three and twenty four floods. Another newer one, we're working with state partners to link transportation design standards to the Act 181 mapping that we're all going through right now. And then probably the thing I do most in my day to day is working individually with each town and road foreman and town staff to both manage projects, apply for grants, and all the reporting and everything that goes to bat.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Do you have a road foreman sort of meeting across the group like have you heard from a few other places?

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: We do. It's been a little more sporadic than we'd like. The flooding really impacted the schedules of a lot of the road foreman. As I mentioned, a lot of our road crews are only a few guys, so it's hard to nail down a time to do that. We try to get two a year. It's been more like one a year for the past couple of years. Then diving a little bit deeper into our day to day work, like I mentioned, collecting data for capital planning. We're also doing their own erosion inventories. We do sidewalk inventories and traffic studies. Something we've done a little newer is inventorying all the bus stop locations for the public transit providers in the county. We host regional committees and working groups like the Transportation Advisory Committee and like you mentioned, the Road Foreman Network. We do a lot of coordination with the state, both on the LVRT and other projects either on the state highway or near the state highway. Coordinating with the B TRANS districts, we do have two district offices in our region. So we work with District six and District eight. So we work with them primarily on grant applications is what we get from them and we get assistance with. And then a big part that Seth will talk about in a little bit is coordination with the Smuggler College Partners, which is obviously the 108 corridor. So that has a state element as well as a social and emotional element. Then as I mentioned, we work directly with the road foreman very constantly. We do site visits for grant applications. We help them prioritize projects and pick projects for annual grants and projects like that.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: You had inventory, bus stops, or at least 10 towns that you talked of?

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Yeah, so the bus stops only are in the region where we have public transit, which is mostly was mostly Stowe, Morristown, and then I think occasionally to Cambridge and Johnson, but I think that route's been trimmed. So the majority, like I said, is on 108 inches toe. But yeah, we looked at what they had, whether it's just a sign or a shelter and the condition of all those things. Okay, thank you.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, I'll ask the same question to you. Do you feel like you have involvement in the state grants, municipal grants, structure grants, have involvement when VTrans is looking them over and, you know, they ask you which ones do you think have priority or do you fill out the application, give it to them and then outcomes which municipalities might get grants?

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Yeah, we don't have any say in the selection of projects. I'll say we definitely go to bat for our towns writing the applications and whether it's the planning team that we work with at B TRANS that we keep them filled in on the projects we're applying for. But no, ultimately we have no say in that of grants.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Does it feel like, obviously there's no good money, does it feel like the grants that do come through seem to be the right projects?

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Yeah, I'd say for the most part, I'd say it is difficult. There's

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: a couple

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: of grants that if you've gotten one in the past two or three years, they just kind of brush you away, which makes things difficult, and a lot of times get discouraged putting work in to choose a project to submit just to be told no because you had one a few years ago. So I'd say that's a big difficulty in our region.

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

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: Yeah,

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: we can go to the next slide. Yeah, so for public transit, like I mentioned, we work with both RCT and GMT on public transit planning. We were involved in the RCT's, I guess it's just their transit plan that they updated a couple of years ago or last year. We participate in both board of directors meetings for those two entities. We're helping coordinate the transfer of the rural service from GMT to RCT for the Stowe Mountain Road. We co host the OND committee with MBDA. As I mentioned, we inventory the bus stops for both RCT and GMT. I'd imagine we'll have to do both again soon, but with the transfer, but

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: something we've done in the past. So another area that we are very involved in in the region is flood resiliency planning as it relates to the transportation network. So for some background,

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: three of

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: the five largest floods on record in the Moyle County have occurred in 2023 and 2024. Prior to that, we also had major floods with the Halloween storm flooding in 2014, as well as three floods, tropical storm ivory and two flooding in 2011. So those, as you've heard from Christian, in Washington County, had significant impact on our transportation network as well. Work we are doing to assist communities, continue to assist communities in securing grants for stormwater practices along the town roadways. Those kinds of practices help to make the roadway more resilient and more likely to hold up in a major event. We also, because of the geography of the region where we have steep valley walls with rivers in between, many road segments are in the floodplain and vulnerable to flooding. Since the 2011 flooding, the Moyne County Planning Commission has been working with our communities to build out a hydraulic model of the Memorial Mainstem and key tributaries, and recently worked with funding from the USDA to extend that into the headwaters in Hardwick and down into Fairfax and Georgia up to the confluence with Lake Arrowhead. And with that, it is now the longest publicly available hydraulic model East Of The Mississippi, at least that we are aware of. You see behind me is a picture of Route 15 in Jeffersonville during the July 2023 flood. What we've been able to do with that tool is work with our towns and B TRANs to explore options both to protect the highway network and also in areas where there may be an undersized bridge or an element of the transportation network, like a berm, that is creating backflow issues to plan out and implement projects that reduce flooding in our communities. So in Jeffersonville, following the twenty eleven floods, we were able to work on two major mitigation projects that, in total, reduced flood levels in the village by about a foot and a half. With that modeling, have potential follow-up work that would further reduce flooding to where in a storm similar to the July, the senior housing that was evacuated would be protected. We also, in other villages like Johnson, have a slew of alternatives that have the potential to reduce flooding by about three feet.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: Representative Birx, a question for us?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Do you have the opportunity to develop any floodplains?

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Yes, that's a really good question. Those projects in Johnson, particularly the modeling identified a host of floodplain restoration projects Because of Johnson's location at the confluence in the backwater, that's a big part of issue. We're actually just finishing up ARPA funded floodplain restoration project at what's called the Holmes Meadow that's at the bend of the river near 15 and will help with ice jamming and also restore some of the natural functions. So we're really looking forward to continuing to work with B TRANS and the towns on projects like that. I live in

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Brownborough, and we had two floodplains in the Melt, and the most recent one was just wonderful, it's particular place that they were able to remove a berm that created the problems during tropical storm and rain, and it's now all finished, and it's like a bark, it's really a wonderful addition, and then one that happened up the street, the Redstone, was senior housing there. Yeah. We've down the road of the Palms Way anyway.

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Yeah, it's very exciting, some of these where a form of vulnerability is now becoming a public space that adds value to the community in 90% of the time when the river isn't flooded. So there's some great opportunity.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah, I'm sure that's some of the floodplains. Yeah.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Do you work with any sort of local nonprofit organizations that do wetland restoration and all that? I mean, I'm thinking in our area, that Lewis Creek Association, well, no. And they've gone through and, you know, do small projects, look to conserve land that needs to be restored as a wetland. And this they've gone all off with subject support from municipality here or there or landowners and stuff. Do you have an organization like that?

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Yes, work really closely with the Memorial County Conservation District. Sometimes we even do projects kind of in partnership with each other where LCPC might help the town secure FEMA funding or other large grant funding to do some of the earthwork and site creation, and then the conservation district that has resources to bring in volunteers and resources to do revegetations in Manhattan. And we actually have had opportunities to work with the Department of Fish and Wildlife as well.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: You did the same in Heinzburg, yeah.

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: So there've been some really successful projects in Wolfpack, the partnership with both Fish and Wildlife and the Conservation District. And there's another one potentially going out to bid for the upcoming building season in Jefferson. So those partnerships are really, really critical. So that's some of our work down in the valleys. We also do work up in the mountains. Memorial County is home to Smuggler's Notch, Route 108 through Smuggler's Notch. And LCPC got involved with project planning back in the '90s. There was a highway project that was proposed to straighten the knot, remove some of the boulders that are between the notch, and add interstate style guardrail and other signage and such. And there was a great amount of public outcry about those plans in the towns of Cambridge and Stowe. So VTrans, at that time, brought in LCPC to organize a public process that led to a Corcoran management plan and has continued to this day with monthly meetings for partners that include the Agency of Transportation, Vermont Forest Parks and Recreation. The corridor has become part of a state park. The Green Mountain Club manages the long trail through the area, as well as the shoe resorts on either end of the mountain. So this summer, the very last piece of the corridor management plan that was drafted, I think, in 1999 was implemented, which included addressing some of the bootleg parking along the road and replacing it with new parking areas with proper modern stormwater drainage, better access management, and also critically replanting the areas that have been impacted over the years with vegetation. And that was specifically selected for the alpine environment. We actually worked with the B TRANS ecology team, as well as the state parks, vegetation people, and some folks from a private engineering team to come up with a specialized planting mix specifically for mountain environments that was used there. That was largely a success except for the incident of someone stealing some of those plants in the middle of the night. There were large truck tracks and shovel holes, but those have all been replanted, but that's always the surprises that come. You all are also probably familiar with the above picture of the annual issue of trucks trying to navigate the notch and becoming stuck. We now have a word for that, a stuckage, that I hope gets into Webster's someday. And LCPC has been working with VTrans on pilot project to test chicanes on either end of the notch that we have the second year of that pilot project and now investigating what options might be for that in the long term. And finally, major piece of implementing the quarter management plan has been trying to shift visitor activity from kind of randomly occurring to keynotes in the Notch to increase safety. And one of those key areas is the Burns Camp Visitor Center, which is a historic lodge at the base of the notch. They also worked with Forest and Parks to implement accessible boardwalk, which at the time was the first accessible segment of the long trail, and to also enhance pedestrian safety in that element of the corridor with a marked crosswalk and signalized pedestrian signage. So we will continue to work on those, and very happy that the plan that started in 1999 was finally completed in 2025, just in time to update it and start again.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: All those parking lots along there, they probably go to parking. Do you think it's going to cut it down? I know there's quite a lot of work up there.

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Yeah, so that's a really good question. So when we entered this effort, the feasibility study for the parking project was completed in 2014, which doesn't feel as long ago as it was. But the goal is there was a recognition that on the peak days, there's just more people who want to be in the notch than can be accommodated with formal parking areas. So the goal of the project was to the greatest degree possible reduce the illicit parking on the normal use with the recognition that long term other measures are going to be needed to really manage parking. This is not a near term option, but all of the lots were designed so they could accommodate, for example, a small short bus or shuttle, if that was ever explored by state parks. It has reduced some of the illicit parking. One of the lots particularly seems to be have low utilization because the trail still needs to be rerouted, held by the trail. If you're not experienced tigers, don't go up Hellbrook Trail. It has that name for a reason. But it also, if you want a picnic in the Notch, it's busy. There are some great boulders that haven't been fully explored that give a view of the Notch, and where we are trying to shift activity away from the most sensitive and challenging areas of the notch to be back.

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Then sticking in still. Oh, you're

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: absolutely brilliant.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I just wanted to ask about the notch. Did we have one stoppage this summer, was it?

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: There was a stoppage. So the chicanes have largely been successful, but there is the challenge of human behavior that people have figured out that the way to avoid them is by going into the other travel lane or through the Bryan's Camp parking lot. And so if that moves forward to a more permanent installation, figuring out how to discharge that further is going to be important, especially the going into the Barnes Camp parking lot, because that's where you have people unloading and loading to go to the visitor center in the boardwalk and trying to create an accessible facility that serves sensitive populations and then having the introduction of trucks trying to avoid the traffic safety measures kind of an issue we're gonna have

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: to look at. Is there some mail that we're increasing the fines or something?

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: One of the recommendations has been to increase the fines, yep.

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: So another piece of STOW is the STOW congestion study that they just completed their draft this past year. LCPC wasn't directly involved in this study, but given the major economic and job center that Stowe is for the region, it's of interest of us and all the surrounding towns. And so basically, Stowe consulted with a firm to have the study done to provide alternatives for traffic, trying to fix the traffic congestion villages and on 108. The picture on the screen is from that study showing all the alternate routes that people will take from north up to the mountain resort, given the congestion. And some of them are a lot longer than they should be. So basically, this study provided many long term and short term intersection improvements, parking management solutions, and even offering options of alternate routes to and from the Stowe Resort. A common phrase in Stowe is that in the winter, there's a small city at the end of a dead end state highway, and so that poses many emergency issues and congestion issues if culverts blow out or there's other issues on 108.

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: So we also wanted to

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I'm not sure how long the bus has been operating in the winter. I guess maybe even more, but have your studies shown that the traffic has, you know, vehicle traffic has gone down because of the bus or, I don't know.

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Yeah, so the resort also did a paid parking program, I think in the last two years, and I think the results have shown that that's impacted it positively. The issue becomes that the bus route only goes through Main Street and Stowe, and the availability of parking even on Main Street and where you can walk to and stow is very limited. So it's helping, but there's only so much at can

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: help you to get on the bus and

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: yeah, finding parking down in the village to get on the bus. We're cutting into the next group's time,

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: so we'll have to be close here. So we did want to just highlight a project in the region, and this is to highlight the project, because I know you often hear from people when there are problems, we wanted to highlight a success, and a success of VTrans working with the towns and the regional planning commissions to address several ongoing issues. So the Wilkut School Street Bridge is a bridge located in the middle of Wilkoot's Village Center. It connects School Street to Route 15, which is functionally Wilkoot's Main Street. And because of the geography and topography, it's also one of only two ways for the highway department and fire department to access the portions of the town located north of the Memorial River. The bridge was closed, and there's been a temporary bridge in place for the last seven years. So VTrans has been working through the design process with groundbreaking this fall. As part of that, VTrans worked and reviewed the modeling data that we shared about earlier and actually adjusted the bridge span to reduce flooding on School School Street was one of the areas of Woolca that was really severely impacted by the twenty twenty three floods. It's where there've been a lot of buyouts. And our follow-up modeling has shown the new span will have measurable reductions in the flood risk to the remaining homes on that. So that was a really good cooperative effort to address the flooding issues. Woolkut has also been working on developing a wastewater system for the village, pending some remaining permitting. That system should be going out for construction this year, and B TRAN has worked with the town to coordinate the design of the bridge with the design of the wastewater system to accommodate the crossing of the force mains. That also involved coordinating the different permitting and funding rules for federal highway, which is funding the bridge and the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, funding the wastewater system and finding ways to make those different pools of federal money play together in a functional way. And then finally, the bridge is being designed with a widened shoulder to accommodate pedestrian connectivity between School Street and Wilcox Main Street. That's been a significant ongoing concern from residents of Wolcott. So we wanted to highlight this because it is just a good success story about planning at all of the levels working together to get a good outcome for Vermonters.

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Peter, can you put this last one? Okay.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: And some of your neighbors down to that end

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: have heard all they want to hear about the OBRT.

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: So very similar to what you guys heard from Northwestern, we do a lot of the same work for the LVRT hosting committees, reporting with VTrans on mapping and coalberg inventories. And I'll just, I think the biggest thing to take away for our work on the LBRT is really working with our towns to get grant funding and implement trailhead projects. I think we've done few in the last ten years that have been really successful. So taking connections to the LBRT that were lost and unknown and making them a place where people recognize where they are and what's around them.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you very much. We had quite a few questions in as we went. So maybe we'll be in the communication on the other part. I want to know what people's opinions are about how hard it is to change speed limits in your areas and when you work for municipalities there. There's been discussions about whether or not there was the grant program for municipal water program. And they become easier to get. There was reports on that last time. So those are other pieces that perhaps this will start the dialogue on some of the other parts of the agency policy that we deal with. So I really appreciate you coming in. I hope it wasn't as nervous or as bad as you thought it might be. And I appreciate the chance to give you that opportunity. So is there anything you want to close with? Just

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: on that question about the speed limits, I'll just share that when we were doing the future land use map updates, more communities asked about whether the village center areas would have greater ability to reduce speed limits than asked about the Act two fifty exemptions. So the degree to which the speed limit, informed by science, could also give some communities more ability to do that would help our rural towns.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So you're saying that in your activity associated with the Act two fifty, Act seventy

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: three? One hundred eighty one, yeah.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: That's the education that

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: is. Careful. As

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: you brought me into the communities and whatnot, and working through this process, you said you got a lot of people just saying, hey, will this allow us to reduce expenses? Yes, interesting. And you said no. Well, we said

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: we hoped that it might lead to error. We're working on that.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: It's like a universal request. If I may, Mr. Chair, I think it's interesting that that was the more important criteria than even some of the other concerns about how the tiers would apply and what that would import for land use opportunities.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you very much. You. You. Now let's take to reach out. Jason, don't know you've been here before. Actually, you know what, I'm not sure that Otis is familiar with me as well, but please come on up. Don't want to shortchange you out of much time. We appreciate you guys We'll being be brief. Thank you so much. We are, I don't know if you heard earlier, we're trying to, it used to be an RPC day, I guess, free my time and we get the majority of our feedback perhaps from the agency, and we're looking for feedback of what's going on around the state. And Ben, from while you're getting set up, and I don't know if you have a presentation to put up or not, or we're

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: just We have a few

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: slides, yeah. We'll get that while we're going. Don't hesitate. Keep working on that. Trying to get other views on people that are working in transportation on a regular basis and trying to get feedback and trying to make perhaps some people feel more comfortable to reach out to their transportation committee members and establish a few relationships, as well as see what themes have come through and whatnot. So we're happy to have you taken a lot of different directions. I originally thought we'd talk a lot about back meetings and whatnot, but of course we're not accepting agents, not really looking for any new feedback on projects. But there seems to take us in a number of other directions that are pretty consistent, whether you were in Addison or Franklin or We didn't get Chittenden in the week,

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: but we had little oil and

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: we had Washington and a little bit of Orange. And now we've been to Bennington. Now we're on the other side, on the East Side, and now it's gotten even. So I'm sure if I've installed enough time for you to get to your presentation. But if you want to start with comments on how hard it is to change speed limits, whether it's a workable process or should be different, if you want to comment on we've heard about last year on cancellations of projects. That was an issue last year that still maybe didn't get settled yet. Issues of relying to simplifying the grant process for towns. It was part of the GPO request last year. So you can pick a wide range of topics wherever you

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: want to start. Anything. We're going to

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: stall for Otis. And welcome to committee, introduce yourselves, take it whenever you're ready.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: So I'm Jason Rasmussen. I'm executive director at Mount and Sikentney Regional Commission. I also serve as the chair of VAPTA's Transportation Committee. So I think some of you have seen me before in that role. Happy to be here in the best committee around, apparently, according to the chalkboard behind your head. That's right. Otis, do want to introduce yourself?

[Otis R. Munroe, Transportation Planner, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: I'm Otis Owens Monroe. I'm the transportation planner at the Mount Sveton Regional Commission.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: So I've been doing this for a long time, twenty six or so years plus. And I remember way back when at the beginning of my career, all of us would come to the House Transportation Committee, to talk about our transportation programs, and it got really boring. So I don't wanna get into like, you've heard all this stuff before. So we may blow through a few things real quick, hit some highlights, but I'd love more than anything to just have some questions and answers, that sort of thing.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yeah. Do you have a committee member from them in your area? Don't believe.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: No. Who would be waiting to? Senate Transportation Committee does, but don't know.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Burke has to go past your area to get

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: to her area. We're close. I'll So, just start and then we can, we're a well oiled machine Sorry here, to interrupt you.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: If members need to leave to go to the floor or want to just go ahead, I'd stick around to hear everything that you kind of say. But you guys obviously gotta go if you gotta go, so. We took it in the chain. Thanks

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: for having us here. Again, I'm really more interested in answering some questions and answers, and we can hit on some of those topics that you talked about. We're a pretty small region. We serve 10 towns in Southern Windsor County. And I'm not so sure about what you've been hearing from others, but our transportation program is broader than just the transportation planning initiative. So we're going try to talk a little bit about some of those details, how it plays into some of our other programs, talk about some of what we're doing and what we're trying to do. But I think fundamentally the transportation program in Vermont changed substantially in the early 90s when there was federal ICE T was the transportation bill at that time. And at that point, the transportation program in the state really grew to more or less where it is today. And it's really great. It's probably my favorite relationship with a state agency through this program. Really have a really good, generally good working relationship with the agency, and it's great. And our focus is really like local technical assistance. So the TPI program and our transportation program in general just really helps us help our towns. And we've certainly heard an awful lot about municipal capacity or lack thereof, and we certainly find ourselves too much helping them out. They really rely on us for a lot of

[Alex Jones, Transportation Planner, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: good stuff.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: This program really allows us to do that. Maybe you've seen this before, we're one of 11 regional planning commissions, we're down in the Southeastern part of the state. Again, we have a small region, we have 10 towns. I think as a result of that, we work probably a lot more closely with our towns than if you have 27 or 47 or River towns. We really kind of get into the weeds with them, I think, which is as far as I'm concerned, it's great. Some of these numbers are statewide numbers. There's 11 RPCs, we have roughly 135 employees throughout all of, if you had us all up. We're updating our Act 181, or for Act 181, we're updating our regional plans. And I think there's a really, Seth was talking about that a little bit. I think there's a very interesting opportunity with our regional plans to dovetail with what's going to be the new Vermont multimodal advisory guidance. And I think we have a really strong opportunity to illuminate what we want our roads to be in which parts of town. I think one of the things that one was envisioning was complete streets in our village centers. And I think we'll have the multimodal roadway guidance. It's more of a menu of options, but we're able, I think through our town plans and our regional plan, I think we're gonna try to give it some meat. So this is a lot. Hopefully those two will work together. Obviously the guidance is still work in progress, but that's what I'm hoping for. And I guess the point on the screen was that through the regional planning process, we're doing a lot of outreach. There's been more than seven fifty different events and more and counting. And we're really trying to work very closely with our communities to make sure that piece is right and all the other pieces in our regional plans are right. Another point I'd just highlight is that we're through our transportation program collectively, of the RPCs have really brought in a lot of money, 30,000,000,000 this year when federal funds were brought into the states. Again, these contracts that we have with the agency, in this case transportation, are really helpful us to leverage federal funds. Do the next one. Do you wanna talk about any time? You wanna know why, I'll take this one, you can. Sounds good. So again, these are statewide numbers. Over the last year, we worked collectively with two fifteen tenants. And again, that's the primary focus of our efforts. We're really there to help our towns do this stuff. It's anything from traffic counts to road erosion inventories to capital with their mileage certificates, anything in between. Get a lot of different calls, different towns want help with different things, but mostly we're helping them soup to nuts. Okay, so I guess the bottom highlight, so we do other things other than what is in our TPI program. We go out and seek additional funds from other places.

[Otis R. Munroe, Transportation Planner, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: Two years ago, three years ago. Two, yeah, close to three, maybe three

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: years ago now. Otis left us briefly, came back. Before he left, he got a federal grant that allowed us to do the Safe Streets and Roads for All program, allowed us to create this comprehensive highway safety plan for the region. The whole impetus for the project was to help towns create the plan that would make them eligible for federal implementation. Think first, the next slide is some I'm not gonna talk about that, but that's just sort of a part of that plan was really when it is a data driven plan. At the end of the day, we have a bunch of safety projects that we wanna do. There's not a lot of money in the state. So we're trying to diversify and make ourselves eligible for federal funds. That's bottom line. And that was a great project for that purpose.

[Otis R. Munroe, Transportation Planner, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: Do you want to add anything? All I'd add is the plan basically identifies corridors both on state and power highways within the region where safety improvements would make progress towards our goal at least of Vision Zero goal of zero deaths and serious injuries. And so yeah, to highlight, identifies locations and countermeasures, things like center line, rubble strip, star to rail, signage, fear zone clearing kind of thing. Hoping then to move into this plan was just adopted by our board a month or two ago, and it's either November or December, and so looking forward to the next step of bridging some of that funding that opens up to implement some more projects.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: I may watch over this a little bit. Think you generally

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: haven't heard that anywhere else. Don't believe directly to federal funds as opposed to the agencies. That's interesting. One

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: of the things where we see money's not grown on trees, it's hard to fund new projects. So we're trying to be creative, basically. So I don't wanna go into too much detail here, but this transportation planning initiative is sort of our core funding for our transportation programs. It's really, we are here to help V trains to coordinate with our towns and get public participation in the state transportation planning process. That's sort of the main crux of it. And we have these five main objectives, and we kind of gloss over them, but if you have questions, we can go into that in a little more detail. Just at the bottom of the screen are some highlights last year, these are some of our statistics, in terms of what we're able to do. And we're pretty small regions, so the numbers might not look large, but we work with all of our towns and we really try to do the best we can to support. That's really the bottom.

[Otis R. Munroe, Transportation Planner, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: Straightforward here, just to reintroduce our region a little bit, the transportation network there. As anywhere else in the state especially, or essentially, especially the more rural parts such as ours, the road network is really the primary transportation network in the region. We have Interstate 91 as a major North South corridor, and then several important state highways that connect us to West as well. So just a quick, critical orientation geographically, transportation network for the region. There anything you want to say on

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: this one? Yeah, and I think we failed to include pictures of our flooding issues, but Seth was talking about that earlier. And we certainly have our share. They've had a tough time up there. Certainly Ludlow and Cavendish, Chester and our neck of the woods have as well, unfortunately. And so a large part of what we're doing outside of, mostly outside of TPI, is we're trying to deal with that. No emergency planning right now. And we're trying to be creative to still address those concerns of our towns. Have a Cavendish and Ludlow wanted to work together with us on the Black River Flood Resilience study. And we just made it happen, got a little NTAP money, we got little money from each town, we chipped in some of our money. And so coming out of that is, it's not transportation specific, but a lot of the projects that are coming out of that are transportation projects. And so we're basically doing project development to tee up these things for future grant application. We spend a lot of our time with our towns doing grant applications, project management, that sort of thing. We're really trying to be pushing flood resilience.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I was just gonna ask,

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: a couple of years ago, we did a really quick study on Route 5 and as a bike corridor, and we got a lot of input, I think positive input. I'm not sure if you participated in couple of meetings, I guess, Sir, any anything come from that? Like when you're talking with plans on Room 5, does it come up at all that, hey, this is sort of a stretch goal, long term goal, and planning the intersections and things like that? Yes. I'd say generally speaking, Not as much as I would like it to be. I think the, I mean,

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: the outreach along the entire Route 5 corridor was very positive. Yes, it sounds great, but then we're not how we're gonna pay essentially was the result, right? And in our region, we've been looking at it in a little more detail. There are some concepts about a possible path on Northern section in Windsor, for example, that would get you off of some of the more dangerous curves and whatever. And we've been talking, but for the most part, we just need wider chambers is really what we came to the conclusion. That most of

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: the roads would be pretty safe with wider shoulders. Right, we would love a bike path, but it

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: just doesn't seem very feasible. Right. So there may be a short section where maybe we could do that, and so, you know, we're really just trying to lay the groundwork when there's a future paving project, can we sneak out a little bit extra? There's actually a roadway project. There's concrete slabs and there's other things under there that make it a challenge, do what we can do to make it as safe as we can make it. There really were not many alternative routes that make this. So we're going look at a lot of sugars.

[Otis R. Munroe, Transportation Planner, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: The highlight here, obviously, we want to touch on the various other modes that are present in the region. Real point here is we're fortunate to have two of the state's micro transit pilots in our region. Both of those could hear very positive feedback. The one in Windsor has been running for a few years now, and then the one in Springfield just started in November, but we're already hearing very positive results from both of those and both already popular services in those communities. So definitely worth mentioning there.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: I just add on the Springfield one, our friends at the Springfield Regional Development Corporation, the transit company, worked together to get a Northern glitter screen to make that happen. So again, be a little more creative to make that happen. Jennifer?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Do you have funding to continue? Because you had a project in Droidelberg that had to stop because

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: of the funding.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: Serve on the transit board and that was a big concern of mine in Ottawa, that was unfortunate. We have money for three years and this really is replacing what used to be their in town roof. That's what

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I was wondering too, is it?

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: So we hope that it's sustainable. Yeah,

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: the one in Brattleboro is really a mixture.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: Yeah, that was really unfortunate.

[Otis R. Munroe, Transportation Planner, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: Jason touched on this already quite a bit. I'm sure it's something you've heard a lot so far. Seth talking a little bit about this in his presentation before us, but a lot of what we do through the transportation program and across the board is assisting towns, our towns with both grant applications and then project management once they proceed to those funds. Especially again in a sort of smaller region or smaller towns, they really rely on us and our experience managing especially state and federal funds and their requirements there. And so

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: just a

[Otis R. Munroe, Transportation Planner, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: couple of quick examples here, but a number of projects bringing in federal and state. This is often applying state programs that are then pushing federal funds down to the towns, but allowing our towns to take advantage of a lot of opportunities and complete projects. A lot of culvert and bridge replacements and bicycle and pedestrian improvements are very popular projects that otherwise would a challenge for our towns to take on their own. So it's very rewarding work and something we're very fortunate to be able to do.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: Sort of a segue, but the picture of the stone lying ditches, we do a lot of work right now on road erosion, ventrileries, helping the towns with cranes in aid and so forth. And it's great and it's effective and it is helping some of our storm water issues. It's holding up better in the storm. So like in general, this is all good. But one of the things I noticed is that we were doing a lot of capital planning with our towns before the R. G. P. Came around, and now it's almost taken up all the air in the room. And again, it's an important thing, but I really want to get back to doing more transportation capital planning with our towns. I think it's really important with the Act 181 piece, because we're not, we don't have as robust of a sidewalk network as we really need to grow the housing that we need and so forth. So that's an area where, how we do it, because we're kind of like maxed out to deal with all the erosion control type work, we need to get to that point.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: It's clearly a theme we've heard from all

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: the planning commissions. Okay, yep, you've heard that one before, all right, good. And then, I think the image on the bottom is an example of two things. We love the Better Connections grant, it's a fantastic program. We have like five projects in our little region. We think it's great. It really helps to tie in the land use and the transportation stuff together. And that kind of informs the ACCO-one hundred one work to some extent, and then it's formed a lot of our grant writing and our project management work over the last few years. So that's an example of one of those in Downtown Springfield. Representative Lalley.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: Thank you. One of the questions I have about the Feder Connections is it seems like it's another example of we can't quite meet the demand, and I don't know if there for this. And my understanding is that they decided to go to sort of do like a deeper dive in each community, which sounds very beneficial. But it also means that it's something that one or two communities get this a year versus a few more. And I was wondering if the RPC, with the multimodal, with the AC-one 181, if we're getting clear about this, if you see the potential for kind of moving this along a little bit, streamlining it, making it a little less bespoke, but also maintaining that quality so that more communities get a bite of the apple and get in line for funding that we don't have. But maybe if we build housing in different places, we'll have more taxpayers.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: It's not you. The floor starts at 03:30, so it's not Yeah, worth

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: you know, the staff for that program are pretty new, I think they're looking at reevaluating and things, so I think I'm also on that review committee. So if we can do things differently next year, we'll get into that. The funding that we get as a small region is kind of small. Like, don't have a lot of extra money to Some throw at something like of my colleagues do, and I think the more we can do that's better connections light or something, think would be great. And I'm definitely open to that conversation.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: Great, and even maybe just saying this would be to take the temperature in your community for this, and then, okay, you have to get in line for another opportunity, but at least start. Yeah,

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: and maybe you don't need the full blown thing, but you just have some facilitation and some nice graphics that illustrate options and that's our preferred option. Maybe that goes a long way.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: It's more targeted and strategic, and then yeah. Work from there. Thank you, that's really helpful to

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: understand. There was seven applications this year, and maybe only two got funded, if I'm remembering right. So there's a lot of demand. Yeah. Think I'm getting close to the end.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: You want

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: to take this one?

[Otis R. Munroe, Transportation Planner, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: I'll be quick here. I'm sure this is something you've heard before as well. All the NPCs really have a large hand in is the regional coordination and transportation issues, whether that's road foreman meetings and gathering all the road foreman together twice a year and have so many shared issues and concerns that really benefit from talking about together. And then it's the point in listing all the various regional boards and committees that are transportation related that either we sit on or have an active role in organizing. Is

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: I just

[Otis R. Munroe, Transportation Planner, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: wanted to highlight that as a large part of what we do as well. I don't if there's anything in particular you wanted to make that work there.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: One thing I'd highlight is that I'm the transportation chair, myself and Devin, who's Baptist chair, are on the multimodal roadway guidance advisory committee. And that's been really great to be in the room. We're the only non agency person that the last few months that's been involved. It's fantastic. I think they're doing a good job. And I'm really looking forward to the next phase where there's going to be more eyeballs on it. I think we need more eyeballs on it.

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

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: think they're doing a nice job.

[Seth Jensen, Deputy Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Can I

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: ask you, is that real promotion involved or AR involved?

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: We had a pretty robust steering committee first phase, where they were sort of developing a very detailed outline and that was great. Local motion was there. Were some truck folks and all kinds of great input, but it kind of trailed off the last few months. And again, we're thrilled to be at the table. And I do think they're doing a nice job. I just do, I would like to see more, a broad, diverse group reviewing it. And I think that is the plan, but I just want to highlight that I think it would be great to get more eyes on this draft.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: I want to move you up to the teaser we're talking about the other day.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: Yeah. We talked a little bit about special projects. We're almost done here. But again, we do some other things where we carve out a little money here and there to do something like this. So a number, six or so years ago, we developed a bike map and guidance. And the whole idea was to encourage people to come. We've got a bunch of great gravel roads to ride on. Come on down to Southern Windsor County, ride your bike. And where do I go? And so, we had this process, the first phase of it, we printed these nice big maps, but for now we've sort of segued into a digital only format for good or bad, but they're on Strava and some of these other portals where you can download the stuff. We had great feedback, so who knows what kind of impact we're making, but it's good. A fun So little we more like a display from bike shops and whatever, so people can click on the URL and go check it out. And so we try to do things like that. Talked about the Black River resilience thing. I think one of the bigger things is flood resilience in our land use, future land use stuff. I think those are some biggies for us.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: So again, act 181 and the multimodal and sort of right place, approach, stormwater seems a huge opportunity. Obviously, you'll need to put the box culverts and then stuff out in a lot of places that But are within our communities, there's the green streets manual that was done a couple of years ago by the forestry folks. Danielle Fitzgow, I think was in charge of that. And is that something that with this multimodal guidance, do you think that that could get wrapped in? Because it seems like we can have cleaner air with street trees, storm water, know, there's a lot of potential opportunities to kind of create the desirable friction that would slow the cars down, but also help with mitigation and assuming that people will be living in these communities, which is at least my goal.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: You know, I hope so. I'm reviewing the draft, is 300 some odd pages thick, and I just haven't gotten that far into it yet, but I hope so. My hope is that, yeah, it's gonna, street trees, they look nice, but they also help with He Island effect. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: traffic, and there's a variety of benefits, and there was initially, I would say some resistance, but I think at the end there's a lot of acceptance with that as an option. So yeah, I think so, but let's wait and see what the guidance, yeah.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: Yeah, that be great. And thanks for that. I think that would be very helpful. And also just, we're always talking about our state brand and our appeal and that the blockable historic fixed up economically productive main streets are part of that. Mean, that's why they came and shot Beetlejuice again here. But they had to put up a false facade because the store that they were using had deteriorated so much. Why is that? Because our policies that make that investment not easy to do, so anyway, I'm so glad that the two of you are on the advisory committee.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: And I think on that point though, the multimodal roadway guidance is gonna do everything. So I think at the end of the day, town plans, regional plans, we need to be more specific. We probably don't need to say, okay, village starts here, gateway treatment, state trees or whatever. I think we need to do more of that better connections type work and incorporate that better into our town regional plans to inform the state.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: To create value that we've, tax value that we need and want.

[Jason Rasmussen, Executive Director, Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC)]: So that's all we had prepared. Happy to answer any other questions or any other issues that you want to ask about.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Well, I'm sorry for the timing of it against the floor. I appreciate your coming in and your presentation and your exchange. We will what is today? Wednesday?