Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We are live. Good morning, Thursday, 02/12/2026 here in House Transportation. Today in the State House, we have Vermont Creative Sector Day. One of the things that I really enjoyed working with the previous chair of House Transportation, Jared Coffee, he shared this of a particular interest, how could we do more in the arts in transportation? I know we've seen some of the impressive projects like in Representatives Burke's territory and like at the roundabout with the rail piece. And then we know and heard from some other places about the amount of granite, guess you can say sculptures that are along the interstate. We haven't found a way yet to highlight and pull out of the woods, and you can talk to the curator about those things. Anyway, I will always have time for a committee, we will always have time in committee for this area. Is there any particular who wants to go first? Or do they want to join the chair, or do they want to go from that side? Welcome. Who wants to orchestrate?

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: If you all want to go up at the same time, feel a prayer.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We can have a little line up in front of you.

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: Is the Savior down there?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Down in the beginning. It's a waiting chair. That way you could take up the check.

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: This one?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yeah. We usually make it a different color than ours, and there's usually a spotlight. And don't worry about the heat too. That's a bonus. We turn up the

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: heat and turn on the lights.

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: I'm Katie Troutz, and I'm the executive director of Mont Beliera Live. And we work closely with Vermont Arts Council and a number of other partners to bring vibrancy to the downtown. I don't have to give you a huge overview of Montpelier Alive, but some of our projects are streetscape focused. Some of our projects are centered around marketing. Montpelier, we're really the marketing branch for the city of Montpelier. And some of our projects are around supporting business. So for instance, the flood, trying to bring business and local economy back to normal. We're still working on that. But I'm here to present the bridge illumination project. Are you familiar with the illuminated bridges in Utah? Well, the flood of twenty twenty three, felt Montpelier Live and a few community members who stepped up with some ideas felt like Montpelier really needed something big to put us back on the map, to build community identity and resiliency, and bring vibrancy back after such a devastating event as the flood. So in 2023, we raised some funding to do a pilot of a bridge illumination on Langdon Street Bridge. And I believe some of that funding came from the Public Places branch and various donor sources. And we were able to successfully eliminate Langdon Street. We had such immense positive feedback with this project that we decided we would go big or go home. So we then, the next year, 2024, eliminated seven bridges in the downtown. Now, are 23 bridges in Montpelier. There are 13 bridges in the downtown area. We live amongst the rickers. We worked hard to find So worked hard to find ways rebuild that relationship with the river, noting our place in the scenery, to bring vibrancy back to the downtown and foot traffic, and use this project also as an economic development project, bringing people to visit Montpelier to shop local, notice that Montpelier is still open for business, and really address that foot traffic issue that we've been seeing and that has caused business here to not thrive. We also use this project to build identity and build resilience within our community. We felt like after the flood, had a lot of community positivity and cohesiveness that we really wanted to maintain and retain. And we therefore also moved this into the marketing domain of calling Montpelier and working with a branding team called Montpelier the city of bridges. And this concept grew out of the illuminated bridges and grew into something so much bigger that has really brought people together and created a new cohesive identity for Montpelier people. So, it's worked on multiple layers. Of course, a strong layer that we have addressed is safety, pedestrian safety, car safety and bike safety by bringing a light to the downtown. One of the results of the flood is that much of the downtown infrastructure was damaged and many of the street lights are still damaged on Main Street and some of the side streets in the downtown area. So this was with great effort and great fundraising and effort to help the city with some of those issues. We put outlets in most of the bridges in town and redesigned some of that infrastructure to be able to light it up again and bring light back for the community and for those safety measures. So this project just hit so many boxes. And it's not just decor, it's so much more. Here are some images of the bridges. Again, this is Langdon Street. The colors are dynamic. We change them with different events. You might see a rosy glow during the Valentine's Day time. We use events also to leverage some marketing and light the bridges and use that to show people the images and bring visitation to downtown. So it's been really helpful to have them lit for our events and holidays in different colors. From above, yep.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And you tell me the organization, the structure of the organization, how it might be tied to the city council, or is it a city council put together this organization or is it just grassroots with, how is it organized?

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: Mont Belier Alive. Yeah. So our organization was started in 1999. And the city saw that there were gaps that they couldn't address fully and that they also saw the trend of these downtown organizations starting as nonprofit partners to the city. So the city was a partner in developing Mont Belier Alive and the concept, mostly supporting businesses. So the city doesn't work directly with those small businesses. They don't have the capacity to all the time. Also, nonprofits can be very nimble, finding funding sources and addressing need in a different way than a municipality can. So they recognized that to support small business. And then it really grew into, like I said, the marketing branch. Things are already marketing for Montpelier. The city itself is not going to do that. They don't have the resourcing to do that. So Montpelier Live is able to raise funds on an annual basis from many sources to be able to really effectively market Montpelier and bring people here. And then we grew also into doing some of these streetscape projects. Again, it all comes back to economic vitality of the downtown. And streetscape and beautification projects and safety projects that we can work on all bring people to downtown.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So Montpelier Alive has a leadership group, somebody who of runs One

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: directors and I'm the executive director. And we have one other full time staff member who's marketing and communications. And we now have two part time staff members, events coordinator and development manager. And we've doubled since the flood. We've grown. There used to be one full time and one part time, and now we're two full time and two part time because the need is greater. So, yeah, we've grown a lot over time. We function like a typical nonprofit where we raise money from many different funding streams. Again, we work with partners like the Monarch Council on projects and raising money together for those projects. And Department of Transportation has been a big supporter of this Bridges Project actually, as well in the state.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Do you have funding from the city? It's budget time, right? So like a library or like another nonprofit organization, do you ask the city for funding too along with your other sources?

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: From the start, we do have some funding from When the city helps start our organization, there's a budget line for our organization. It's pretty small. It's still kind of coordinated with our old model of functioning. So, as we've grown as an organization, we've really needed to depend on other funding sources. It makes the city has a downtown improvement district fund where commercial property owners pay a tax. We get that money as well. So the city allocation, the Downtown Improvement District Fund goes to Mont because they know that they need Mont Belier Live to help the downtown. But in addition, we have sponsorships for events, for corporate sponsors. We have an annual appeal we send out for individual donors. And we also work with ACCD, Gary Holloway, who's the downtown manager. Many of our downtowns are designated downtowns, and we receive a little bit

[Candice White (Member)]: of funding from the state annually as well. Yes. Representative Wells?

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Those sites are on three sixty five days a year or only during certain

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: They are permanent for as long as the life of the lights last. What we're working on now is our budgeting to be able to maintain and keep those lights on for an indefinite amount of time. Right now, we're thinking this is pretty good for about ten years, and that we're really going to have to dig in and try to keep them and maybe renew some of these lights. Yes, they're permanent. They're on every evening on timers, and we change the timers for the summer season since it gets dark later.

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Makes sense. How much money does that generate through sponsors and the help of the transportation department, etcetera, to power this operation?

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: Yeah. So our project has landed between 200 and $300,000 to do now 10 bridges. We expanded that this year with help from the Downtown Transportation Fund. 10 bridges of the 13 in Downtown. A couple of those I have to note are that we haven't illuminated are railroad bridges, and we would love to. But working in that direction would be a whole different animal. So we focused on the ones that we can really get our hands on. And the Department of Transportation has funded about, I would say, a third of our funding. And then the Better Places grant, our pilot program funded a significant amount in the beginning. And then a number of foundations and grants feeding into that as well. No city dollars were used, no tax dollars for this project specifically. The city funds our organization to an extent, but for this project, we raised all of that money outside of the tax dollars.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Is the city sort of taking it over? Like now there's some maintenance, you're looking at maybe a ten year life. So is it just Montpelier Alive who owns these and maintains them and pays the electric bill? I don't know if there is an electric bill, but-

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: Montpelier Alive pays for all of that. We have tried not to depend heavily on the city knowing that the city has been very stringent since So our we have a contract with a professional lighting company called New England Holiday Lights, and that includes some of that maintenance. And we can call upon them and pay more for more maintenance. We own a lot of these lights. That doesn't mean they're not going to come down, so we don't have to store them. But we did buy them because we want them to be permanent. And some of these are permanent fixtures. This is Taylor Street Bridge here, this trestle. And these lights are decorative, but they won't come down. We will just plan to maintain them. Now, other lights like the Main Street Bridge, we have evolved those into permanent fixtures and they're more embedded and really attached to the bridge. So we have a variety of styles, but they're all considered perfect. This is our newest bridge, the pedestrian bridge that you should definitely check out. It's very flashy and it's really fun to walk under and it's very dynamic and sometimes sparkles.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Thank you. This is great to see.

[Candice White (Member)]: Illuminate. It is illuminate. So a couple of questions following up on Representative Pouech. Does Valvular have a chamber of commerce and do you interact with them or is

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: this kind of in place of? We have no chamber of commerce locally, but the Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce has been a partner on some projects. And generally, we work together on business. Montpelier Alive was kind of set up to act a little bit as a chamber, but we do so much. The breadth of our work is so much broader than what a chamber would do, but definitely business support. Okay.

[Candice White (Member)]: And are any of these lights solar or LED or are they

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: just traditional or is there opportunity for that? I believe they're LED, so it's very low energy use. Our energy bills will not be very high at the end of the year. However, we explored the solar options. And here in Vermont, it's just not enough sun to make the lighting bright enough or impactful enough or reliable. So, we really wanted to go that direction in the beginning, but it just didn't seem like the professionalism of the project, that it would suit the professional who wants to make the project. A couple more questions. So with 10 bridges lit up, what a great opportunity. Do you have a running race or anything where you are really showcasing the bridges and having an event that sends people through that experience? Well, I'll go back to this first slide. We started an annual lantern parade in November, and it's kind of a marker of the change of seasons because we also do garland and lights on all the lampposts. Mount Holyrole Live pays for and coordinates that, as well as these bridges. And though the bridges don't turn off at any time of the year, we use that event to really bring attention to the bridges. We parade through town. We have community making lanterns for a few weeks leading up. And then we parade through town and explore the bridges as a massive parade. The first time we did this, we expected maybe a couple 100 people and at least a thousand people showed up. This year, at least 500 people showed up. So I think it's something that the community really wants to do again and again. And then in addition, we try to illuminate the bridges in specific colors for specific holidays. So an example would be July 3, and we do have a running race actually downtown on that day. And so we try to tie together our illuminations with specific events that are happening and hopefully creating new events around it. It's a young project. This is the third year of the bridges. So there's a lot of potential. We have St. Patty's Day coming up, so the bridges will turn green. Again, great excuse to market monthly or be like, You've got to come check out these tellers. But the more events, the better. And that was the recommendation of a company we worked with around the marketing of this project. They thought that events would be really the greatest way to amplify. And you have that corporate cuff, but actually that's in May when it's light, so that probably wouldn't showcase the bridges. Not as much. The lantern parade is a really good one because it's at dusk, and you can see those bridges as the sun goes down and it's dark. You said that's

[Candice White (Member)]: in November? November, yeah. One more question, this is not really related to transportation, but just more economic development. I was in a retailer in Mount Joliere on Friday, buying some ski equipment and chatting about the struggles that they are having. I didn't realize that during COVID, a lot of

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: the

[Candice White (Member)]: wholesalers started selling directly to customers, and they haven't changed that practice. For example, Onion River is competing with their suppliers to sell skis and poles and apparel to consumers, they're having experiences where people come in and try on stuff and decide what they want, and then say, I'm just gonna get that online, which is really devastating for businesses. So I didn't know if you have any programs to message to the public the importance of buying local. I think often people don't really think through convenience, buying online is really cutting into local businesses. Absolutely, yeah. That's a

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: big part of our mission. And a big part of what we do year round is shop local campaigns. And different ways that we support businesses, we have a small business development program, and we're actually working this year especially to fill that out with more projects. But we do professional development for business owners, coordinating resources to bring peers for the sake of their adapting and pivoting to new times, really encouraging them to do online marketing and sales. And it's really hard for business owners to play every role. It's like an executive director, playing every role for the organization. So often they need support in that marketing. We do a lot of marketing for businesses. And we even have some grants that go out each year to businesses they can apply for, either technical assistance. Or this year, we did an interesting thing to fill empty storefronts. We did a new entrepreneur's grant program to bring new business downtown. So every year, we offer something a little different. And then during the holiday season, we really push the shop local marketing campaign. So advertising dollars going out for us is really heavy at that time. And we take our cues from the business community. We work with their challenges. Let's do what we can.

[Candice White (Member)]: And one thing I wanted to mention, there has been discussion in this committee, and there is a bill that includes this part, which would be adding a delivery fee on online purchases, which on the one hand, we're thinking about how to increase revenue for the transportation agency because we see less money coming in from the gas tax. As these online businesses are shipping, and we've got more trucks going on roads, and that's wearing the roads more. Thinking about a revenue source to contribute to the agency of transportation. I think the other part of that is maybe giving local businesses, not even an advantage, but maybe a level playing field. I'm just wondering, is that something that appeals, would appeal to your group?

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of the local auctions tech that Montpellier just adopted, and many towns across Vermont are adopting. It feels like one of the only ways that municipalities can gain revenue at this point in time. What if businesses are shipping out on deliveries? There would be a charge there. And so, I I don't know how your program would work, but I know at first businesses were very nervous about the local options tax affecting visitation. And I don't know if that applies for this concept and the state, if that would affect relations or whatever with these companies. But the businesses were worried about that, but eventually decided the community and businesses, they decided it would be okay because we need that revenue to help the downtown. And what we found out is that that tax is also charged on Amazon orders, on online ordering. And so in fact, it has doubled the expected revenue. And I think it's going to be a very good, solid, stable source for the city. Did that just When did you all pass that? Sorry, this is my

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: last question.

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: That was just the last March or last spring, and then it went into effect in July.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you for coming in this morning. I very much appreciate it. Obviously, there's a lot of interest in it, but we're substantially already over. And I'm not sure how much more you have presented. I'd like to make sure you have time for that.

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: I think I've presented and want to just encourage you all to reach out to me directly if you have more questions or want to talk about the Bridges Project or Montpelier Alive. It's directormontpelieralive dot org. Again, my name is

[Candice White (Member)]: Katie. I

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: just want to thank you for, this is really amazing. Think it really shows how partnerships between the creative sector and the economic impact and the economic impact of the arts, which is what I think the Creative Sector Day is meant to highlight. And I just wanna welcome people here from New Smyrna Beach, Wisconsin, it's done so much all over our state, including Michelle Bailey, who's been their sponsor for many, many years, working hard and others from there. So, thank you very much for your work, I love walking around my pillar at night and seeing the bridges.

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: I wanted to mention, we also started a bridges walking tour that can be accessed from a QR code on our website. And that was another way that we really were able to use the Bridges Project to get people more engaged downtown. You walk through the downtown, past the shops, so people have the opportunity to shop or to recognize there are shops there while they're exploring the bridges. So just using this project in so many different ways, so many different levels. But please do explore our website and web page. We have a Bridges web page with that information on it. Mollie or Lague docs.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Do you want to say?

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: No, that's good. Okay,

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: well, thank you all very much.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Good luck with your day.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I hope it goes well, and certainly look to see you again next time. You very much.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: And there's a reception this afternoon. Feel free

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: to announce real loudly on your way

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: out here. Yes. We're done in the program. We would love to see you all. Please stop by.

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: We have really cool coasters from Generator Makerspace, and then reception starting at 03:30. We'd love to see you there.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: At the Cedar Creek Room. Thank you all.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you very much. Waiting online, ready to go is the next regional planning commission. And based on the sort of things we heard yesterday, was a suggestion from our ranking member that perhaps after we get through all of these, we'll talk about some of the themes and the consistency or items that we kind of heard over and over again from the regional planning. We're still trying to get feedback from an area that we haven't heard a lot from in the committee the last couple of years. So Doug, I appreciate you joining. Sorry, we're few minutes over and welcome to the committee and start with you and where you want to start, and I'm sure we'll have plenty of questions thereafter. So good morning. Welcome. Oh, you're mute.

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: Thank you. Yep. Thank you very much. I appreciate the invitation to speak about NVDA and our work in the Northeast Kingdom. And I didn't prepare a lot of formal comments because I did anticipate some back and forth and I look forward to speaking with you about about our work and and the questions you might have. I imagine we you will hear some some consistent themes. One of them is just sort of the work that we do and the offerings that we present to our communities. NVDA represents all of Caledonia, Essex and Orleans Counties. We're a very rural area, but we still have a lot of benefit need with respect to transportation planning and the technical assistance that I'm going to speak about. A big part of our work is sort of interfacing and assisting municipalities, getting through various state and federal processes. And we do that. So that would be either grant writing or permitting and as well as making connections for sort of taking municipal needs to the next level from planning to sort of implementation. And we do that through our Transportation Advisory Committee, and that is, made up primarily of our municipality representatives. And we have for ever since I've been at NVDA, which is going on twenty three years, we have worked with our select boards who are, you know, our member organizations to appoint representatives to the TAC. And that really is to ensure we have that sort of back and forth, that we get their concerns and they get, you know, the benefit of the information and the technical assistance that we're providing through that venue. Similarly, our road foreman meetings are a really important sort of line of communication, and we have, for a number of years now, had strong road foreman network, and we provide technical assistance and bring in other state agencies as well as obviously VTrans technical experts. We collaborate very closely with our VTrans maintenance district project managers to develop those agendas and to bring that technical assistance. And we do everything from, you know, regular sort of classroom type offerings that we collaborate with Vermont Local Roads. And over the last number of years, we've really focused on stormwater mitigation, bringing in folks from the municipal road general permit area, and working on various sort of specific changes that have happened over the first and second cycle of that permit. I don't wanna get too much in the weeds on that, but I'm happy to talk about that in a bit. And and then obviously through, you know, our representation on our board through the municipalities. So so we have a lot of opportunities for back and forth with our municipalities and then to bring that information back to our our main partner in transportation, which is VTrans. And we also offer a lot of data collection services for our towns, and we work collaboratively with the state. So that would be traffic counting, volume, speed counts. We offer technical assistance to municipalities on things like setting speed limits and traffic calming. We offer, you know, planning studies that that we can fund ourselves through our transportation planning initiative funds. And that we, you know, we also assist municipalities in writing grants to fund those themselves, and those would be bicycle and pedestrian grants or transportation alternative grants or other grants as may be appropriate. And we've done, you know, Northern Border Regional Commission grants that have assisted municipalities sort of working to address challenging situations with infrastructure and sort of partnerships, so looking for larger amounts of funds that are offered by sort of the standard V Trans grants. And then obviously, we work collaboratively with the agency on data collection to assist in statewide data sets. So things like improving the understanding about various data elements and interest in in rural intersections, road surface types, all of those things are are done in collaboration with the VTrans models that are out there. And we appreciate the opportunity to sort of build our own skill sets with those and as well as assist the state with their understanding of how the system is working. We represent regionally various modal partners, I'm sorry, representing on their board. So I sit on the board of RCT, and we do now collaboratively with both Lemoyle Lemoy County Regional Planning and Northwest Regional Planning as as RCT is expanding across the northern tier of the state. And I sit on the I'm from AGOG Water Quality Council, and we're in that regard working to sort of bring the transportation perspective to funding stormwater mitigation projects to the clean water service provider. And then we have, over the last several years I I will say I've been working on rail trail issues since 2005, but that would primarily be for the Lemoy Valley Rail Trail. But over the last few years, we've been working closely with the rail trail program and standing up the rail trail councils for both the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail and the BB Spur Rail Trail. And we've been working with our municipalities and the agency to look at building out trailheads, developing ways for local businesses to sort of strategize and utilize those really important regional assets and interregional assets as economic development tools. In Lemoy Valley Rail Trail, we've been sort of at it a little bit longer, and we've seen a lot of improvement in sort of the delivery of services for our visitors as well as our residents. We get a lot of use on that facility. And a lot of business development has been occurring in our region. And, you know, I look forward to answering any questions about that and on the BB as well. We're just sort of seeing the beginnings of that, and we have a great sort of beginnings of the council that is really looking broadly at, you know, beyond the BB, but within sort of the interregional and even internationally to include our partners in Quebec. And and a lot of excitement, I think, about the possibilities for what that trail could be. So throwing a lot out there on the table. We have a lot that we do. We keep pretty busy right now. I'm working sort of over the last couple weeks. We're finishing up our our regional plan, and I've been doing some grant assistance, working on actual a build grant application at the moment for looking to replace a structure in Lyndonville and some sidewalk work and feasibility studies in Greensboro. So pretty broad. But I I I guess I would just finish opening remarks and and, you know, saying that from the regional planning perspective, you know, we have seen a lot of challenges over the last, oh, I don't know, period of time. I mean, I think the economic situation that folks are seeing since the pandemic with inflation and the cost of delivering projects has made satisfying sort of municipal needs more difficult than has historically been the case, and it's pretty much been difficult from the beginning, as near as I can tell. Towns are really having a hard time. And, you know, the ability of towns to satisfy their needs, I think, in developing our regional priority list in this latest round, we it's just it's become very difficult for towns to find the sweet spot, you know, where can they actually make the improvements in it. So I'm thinking particularly about town highway structures in the last, oh, you know, six months, I think we've had a number of structures come up that the towns are really struggling to figure out how they will proceed and are really looking at things as a broad class of sort of strategic disinvestment. It's not something that they want, but it's something that I think at this point, they feel, you know, it may be the most viable alternative in some of these instances. And I'd be happy to talk about that more.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Uh-huh. So

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: I'll just I'll end there and welcome any questions.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you, Doug. I don't know that I officially had you introduce yourself for the record. We're little late for that. Name and title name and title and

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: Doug Morton. I'm a senior transportation planner with the Northeastern Vermont Development Association.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And how many towns, municipalities, entities that participate in or that are members? And then I'd like to comment, not specifically, but in general, how many participate.

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: How many? We have 55 municipalities.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Wow.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: How many do you think are organized and able to participate?

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: So I have sort of

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: a

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: core, say, 10 to 12 that are regular participants. I mean, I think it depends on your definition of participation. I I have very, very strong participation in the way that towns are able to participate. We have a lot of of municipalities that I imagine all of you have towns in your districts that, you know, have the same three or four people that do everything in town. And when those people move on or, you know, unfortunately pass away, you know, there's a void. And so having been at NVDA for over twenty years, I've seen sort of ebbs and flows in the availability of people to show up to these meetings and to participate in these meeting. I would say right now, we're at a we're at a low point in in our region, and that, I think, has a host of of causes. But when I started and and now I'd say we're we're probably at a same level of regular participation, which is, you know, 10 to 12. And and, you know, those are people who are I'd say, they're municipal reps. They're people who have a history of being municipal reps. They may not actively be serving.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you. You. I Thank we have some other questions. Representative Burke? Yeah. Yep. And then representative.

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: Yeah.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Thank you for When your you mentioned just right before stopping strategic disinvestment. Yes. What specific are you thinking about roads? What's what's what would be

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: So depending on

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: on the list for that?

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: I think it it it could be anything within the the infrastructure that is maintained by the town. Ideally, it would be you know, primarily, I think the discussion revolves around bridges, short shorter structures. I have specifically town that I've worked with just in the last couple months. I went to the Select Board and have written a letter for their for their annual report just to sort of lay out sort of options forward. And they have they have three bridges. They're very fortunate that that go into a village. And one of them has now officially closed. And so they have two other bridges that are in much better state of repair. And so the one bridge is going to be over $1,000,000 to get back. And, you know, obviously, the people that live on that end of the village feel very strongly that bridge should be reopened. But at a million dollars in a small town, probably, I want to say less than, you know, 2,000 residents in the town, you know, to come up with the match in the best case scenario when, honestly, they're struggling under all the other costs that they have to meet. It's it's a very large lift for a small community, as I'm sure you're all aware, to find $202,150,000 dollars in a in a small town. And so I know the numbers you're dealing with, they're much larger on the state level. But you know, to bring it back, know, sort of to try and find that match may be insurmountable for some of our smaller towns. And I have a number of towns I can think of that have these structures that they're not all as conducive to this discussion as the structure that I'm bringing up. So some of them would really cause some real pain. And you know, another example that I would give you is smaller stub town highways. May have a structure might not probably used to go to an active dairy or some, you know, some kind of active economic activity that, you know, has has drifted away and now it functionally serves as a driveway. Still class three town highway, has to be, you know, kept up to that standard, subject to the municipal road general permit. And so the town is being, you know, they need to address the physical needs of that infrastructure. And there are grant funds available for them to do it. But again, if it's one of these outlier roads, it may make sense for the for the town to throw that road up and and to give it back to the landowner. We've had circumstances where, you know, a town will essentially upgrade, like do all of the work that is necessary to, you know, make the road functional. Repair or replace or upgrade culverts and then essentially wanna give the road back to the landowner.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: So difficult decisions. Yeah.

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: Very difficult. And I I think the the landowners as well are are you know, that's not necessarily, depending on the circumstance, not what they want. Ending their their plowing and all that kind of thing is a challenge very challenging, especially, you know, in a small town where, you know, you only have a few 100 folks or thousand folks, you know, everybody is sort of knows what's going on.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative. I do. Are you all set?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yes. I'm fine.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Representative Pouech, have a question. I don't. Thanks for coming. And, we're having the regional planning commission doing exactly what you're doing, just sort of telling us how things are going. We certainly are picking up some key themes that go across all of them. And I think your examples really show, highlight very rural areas and the struggles there, which are maybe different from some of the larger areas.

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: I have no doubt.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: But more more population. I got two questions, really. You know, you were talking about the structures. Even if the town came up with the match, you still are getting in line to get a So there are grant programs for municipality, roads and structures. There's transportation alternative grants. Is there any particular one that you think has the bigger impact or if you were able to increase one of those by 50%, you know, would there be one you pick? That's one question. And I'll and I'll let you do that, and then I'm gonna ask about something else.

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: Well, I mean, I think they're all useful sort of avenues of funding, and have their place. I think that the district's ability to assist municipalities with their grant funds is a great tool. And really, it's a I think it's a great bang for your buck having the districts sort of working with the towns in this respect. They they had they bring sort of engineering and construction to the table. They're they're very much you know, so for for sort of more significant size projects working through the district. And then, you know, the Better Roads funding is through VTrans is a great program, and I think really more funding for the various structures grants through the Better Roads program. I hate to say that I would pick one over the other, but I would just mention that those, I think, are really well utilized by my towns. And I think more funding would definitely be well utilized.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, that I think that's a good answer. I mean, agree. It'd be hard to pick. Just sort of you're highlighting how important for these small municipalities a grant and otherwise might not get done. Second question, you know, on your list of goals or things that you focus on, you also talked about charging infrastructure. And we know we're looking across the state where charging infrastructure is available and where it isn't. I assume you're aware of the ACCD charging grant program for municipalities, public spaces, condo or apartments. Have you had any? Are you working on that at all for any of the municipalities or any organizations to try to secure those funds? Because we know in your region, there's money available they're holding back to try to not just give it to certain counties.

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: Right. I would say we, as an organization, yes, our energy planner is is working on that more so than than myself. But, yeah, we're absolutely working to, as an organization, make that infrastructure more available across our region.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Okay. Thanks a lot.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Lalley and then Representative Wells. Yep.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Doug, thank you very much for your presentation and this kind of vivid vision of how infrastructure is forcing towns to kind of contract a bit and make really hard choices. We're thinking of the bridge example and certainly feel for the folks who are going to be impacted by that. I am just wondering how much appetite there might be with the LBRT and given this need to be very thoughtful and intentional about the money that's available for infrastructure investments. And then also the fact that the federal government declined to help you guys out with the flood resiliency after the flooding, the recent flooding. If this is kind of wetting an appetite for smart growth investments, I noticed in your sheet that you provided a huge amount of emphasis on multimobility and walking and biking as the kind of foundation for

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Absolutely.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Yeah, if you could, I hope that wasn't a too winded, too long winded way of putting that, but if you could speak to that, would be very interesting.

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: Absolutely. I would I guess I would start with the just the rail trail infrastructure and sort of the the necessary investments and and sort of continuing investments that are gonna be required. I I do think those are really important. I think our region, our municipalities see those as really important for their economic well-being. I think we have seen and are likely to see continued growth around those facilities. And so for our region, and I would hazard to say for every region where those facilities exist, that's a really wise investment. But I recognize sort of the tension as well when we're also talking about these reduced funding levels and the likelihood of continued challenging environment for infrastructure funding. You But, know, we have we're trying to, I think, make you know, I would just say our view, you know, transportation is the backbone of economic activity, right? Economic activity requires this basic infrastructure. Our buses need it. Our, you know, our bicycles need it. Everybody needs the transportation infrastructure to be working, to be in good repair, and obviously to be safe. And so, you know, I do view, you know, the rail trails similarly is that it is a it is an additional way for people to utilize a safe space to transport themselves. It's not just, you know, a tourist tool. Although it is it is that as well. I you know, I think the we sort of so I'll just set that there. I'm gonna answer any more questions about that. But but the the sort of multimodal and travel demand management and, you know, those are really important safety and quality of life additions. And I think we're we're seeing more and more. I've done a number of of efforts over the years, and and we're always being asked for for that type of of assistance in in, you know, build making our villages more, you know, safe for walking and biking. And, you know, those are really important projects for the residents that live near those roads that are going to benefit from those facilities. You know, I just think that that is is really important and the ability to to have multi multimodal connections through, you know, transit that links to a functioning sidewalk network, which connects to the various attributes of the community. You know, that's essential for for quality of life. Even, you know, in our rural villages, people want to see those improvements. And so, you know, I think that that those things are, you know, they're really attractive and things that we get asked about and that we work on a lot. Sorry, I kind of lost the theme there. If there was another one there, please let me know.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you, Doug. We got a couple more minutes, but we have two more questions. One for

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: representative Bells and representative Lalley.

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Yeah. Do you have any specific projects you're looking at in Orleans County?

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: Well, in Orleans County, I mean, we're working in Newport City and the town of Derby on the BB. And we just completed a study, a project. Are you talking, just to clarify, planning efforts?

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Yeah. Is it anything that's coming down the road that you've been contacted we about in your office?

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Can

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: look forward in the Absolutely.

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: So so there's a number of actually irons in the fire right now around walking and biking in Newport City and Derby. And so we just completed study, just had our final meeting with the city council last week that is essentially looking at just this this type of of work. So it it provided a number of options for connecting Downtown Newport City up to the BB Spur Rail Trail. And so we have a number of efforts that we'll be working on over the next couple of years, I would imagine, with the city and with the town of Derby and with the surrounding towns. So that'll be one example.

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Representative Lalley?

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Yes, just to kind of follow-up on my previous line of questioning, I noticed that St. Johnsbury is considered an opportunity zone, as is Johnson on the other end of the LBOT. And I wanted to see if you could speak to use of the LBRT as a way for people to get to local jobs. We hear a ton of stuff about how it's great for tourism and all of that, but I'm kind of interested in year round access to jobs. We've got fat tire bikes now. People can use a snowmobile. There is potential for a sled around job access. Just wondering if that's happening. You

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: know,

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: it's absolutely. I would say it is not the norm for people to want to ride their bike all winter long. But but it does it does happen. And I know I myself have been contacted about trying to connect the sort of the pieces with that. So in this example, it was actually somebody from Standard who was hopping on the trail just outside of Greensboro Bend and going to work in Morrisville. And I know that there are people that do sort of the Danville into St. Johnsbury commute on the rail trail. And I say that because, know, what a great commute. So it does happen, you know, and we have been approached by folks looking to make connections. We're very fortunate. We do have Route 2 with parallels for that section. And so people that want to make connections to the Route 2 commuter on RCT to go, say, into Montpelier. And so, you know, it is something that people are availing themselves of. And I think we've, at our Rail Trail Council, we've tried to be open to that and, you know, understand the different dynamics of people who are who are using utilizing this this infrastructure. So I think there is there is an opportunity for that.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you. Doug, thank you very much for joining us this morning and thank you for your twenty three years of service and good luck with the next twenty three.

[Doug Morton (Senior Transportation Planner, Northeastern Vermont Development Association)]: Thank you so much.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Thank you.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Have a great day.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Take care. We're going to

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: move right over to the next. So, But we're in the room this time. Chris, you wanna move up towards the witness That would be great. Charlie's already here for the next one. So I won't have to make both speeches, but we are taking a tour of the state from one regional planning commission to the next. What we were told is that prior to a lot of us, there used to be kind of an RPC day and there was a lot of TAC discussion. And we haven't heard in this committee that feedback in a while. And so we wanted to, we started off in Addison earlier yesterday and we've just left the part of the Northeast Kingdom and now we're headed south to Windham County. We welcome you to the committee. We've done this before, So if you want to introduce yourself and talk about Windham and then really tell us about your interaction with the agency and the programs, etcetera. We'll get lots of questions, we want to hear what you have to say. And we're looking to see what works and what isn't working. All right,

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: thank much.

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: You for having me. Chris Keyser, Executive Director of Windham Regional Commission and also among the RPCs within the Vermont Association of Planning and Development Agencies I chair sensibly our emergency planning and disaster recovery committee, then also conservation for that. And so I'm gonna go over what's going on in the region, I'm actually gonna conclude with some disaster recovery outlook concerns that I have. I will share that with you shortly.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I think we have

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: this one.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Don't have this one in our.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We sent that one over to our guest yesterday. She will check it out and make it available and let us know when it Alrighty. We'll play everyone catch up. Okay. Do you want me

[Chris Keyser (Executive Director, Windham Regional Commission)]: to give you a second? No. No. We don't want

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: to cheat your time. We can look you. We'll catch

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: up. Yeah.

[Chris Keyser (Executive Director, Windham Regional Commission)]: Well, I just let's see.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Oh, does she not share?

[Chris Keyser (Executive Director, Windham Regional Commission)]: Screen sharing, but the page has all changed here. Yeah. Let's see. I don't know why this is. I'm gonna stop share for just a second. Bear with me. I think I dropped share again. Here. There we go. Again. Alright. We're looking good. There we go. All right. So I'm not gonna go over the whole TPI. I'm sure you've heard this multiple times now, so I'm just gonna go over what we do with our regions. So our mission, the Windham Regional Commission's mission is to assist towns in Southeast Vermont, provide effective local governance and to work collaboratively with them to address regional issues. We serve 27 towns over nine twenty square miles in Southeast Vermont. It's the 23 towns of Windham County, Reesboro, Searsburg, and Windhall and Bennington County, and Weston in Windsor County. Our largest town is Brattleboro with a population of about 12,000. Our smallest town is Somerset, population of three, that varies sometimes. Then our, because I just think this is important for people to know, Kind of blew my mind when I first took this job. I'm in my sixteenth year. Among our 27 towns, we have 26 town garages, 26 soft sheds and 26 road crews. See three? Yes. Was fixed for the 2020 census, but then I guess that family moved out. So we're back down to three again. Really? It wasn't a massive growing gap. It's unincorporated. So somebody's a sheriff and somebody's a judge? The state appoints an administrator and it's shared with, oh god, right over to that hill. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's all Forest Service land and Great River Hydro.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Right?

[Chris Keyser (Executive Director, Windham Regional Commission)]: What town is that? Somerset.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: It's beautiful resin.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: It

[Chris Keyser (Executive Director, Windham Regional Commission)]: is a very nice quiet place except during deer season. Yeah, it's a little noisier then. That's probably when I've wanted to visit. Yeah, there you go. So we have approximately 1,700 square mile, 1,700 miles of roads. We do have both passenger and freight rail, most of which is under New England central ownership of a short section of Green Mountain Railroad in the town of Rockingham. And in our region, rail development in Western Massachusetts could have significant beneficial impacts. We already frankly benefit from what's called the Valley Flyer, which has increased service to Greenfield, which from Brattleboro is only less than thirty minutes away. And so as they look at rail expansion, connecting Boston to more of a better connecting Boston to Western Mass, and then across Western Mass, can talk about, and I worry sometimes it falls off the page, but we can talk about potentially increasing connections into our region, but just the proximity could have significant beneficial impacts, economic impacts. Franklin Regional Council of Governance, which is immediately to our south, in their regional plan or transportation plan, they have to call for not just passenger rail, but commuter rail. Now commuter rail is a different animal than passenger rail right now, it's all passenger. But a commuter rail, true commuter rail ever was to come into that region. I could definitely see much more kind of I've been in high development environments before, but it could create kind of a different development and redevelopment dynamic, especially in the Southern part of our region. So just wanted to bring that to your attention because I know oftentimes when we're talking about extending rail beyond the state, looking to Montreal, but I just would urge you not to forget about the Southern part of the state or Southeast part in particular. We have no airports. The last one was in the vicinity of Mount Snow and it has closed. I gather that was one of the more dangerous airports in the Eastern Seaboard because of the way that this private airport, the way you had to come in over the mountains, a lot of turbulence is a difficult one to land in. We have significant, our communities are doing what they can to make bike pad investments. Brattleboro has done a fantastic job as have Rockingham and Beloes Falls. But we have a lot of unmet needs and especially in our smaller villages, especially like in the Route 30 Corridor and elsewhere where the sidewalks are either very old. I used to live in Newfane, Vermont in the village of Newfane where between all the paving and just erosion over time some of the sidewalk segments would basically function to the ditches because they were kind of gone below grade. And that's important because we're trying to encourage development and redevelopment in our existing village centers. And part of that is walkability, bikeability. Most of our road miles are unpaved. The black on this map shows the paved sections. Obviously, Brattleboro has the greatest number followed by Rockingham. The kind of blue is unpaved. Road miles don't necessarily align well with brand list value. Staff pulled together this chart showing that's a 2022 municipal brand list in millions of dollars. And you can just kind of follow that blue line and look above it, the proportion of many road miles they have. One of the things I wanna talk to staff about pulling together the similar graphs to the extent maybe we can make it work to look at number of bridges and culverts in these communities too. And ultimately I think this again, I'll talk at the end about my concerns around disaster recovery in an era of reduced federal disaster aid. But this is going through my mind. Low grand list value potential capacity on your own for disaster recovery. This was significant concern to me.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: McCoy has got a question for you.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: So the road mileage, does that include state roads? Just municipal roads. Municipal roads.

[Chris Keyser (Executive Director, Windham Regional Commission)]: This was we're trying to reflect what's on the, because right now that's always the town's biggest big So just quickly WRC work at a glance from 2025, LL8 Transportation Advisory Committee meetings, representative Burke attends frequently as does Senator Harrison. Engaged 26 towns in transportation planning. We don't ignore Somerset, but their needs are generally addressed by the state and they'd certainly reach out to us if they had something. It's been 85% of our budget on municipal technical assistance, coordinated 14 activities among towns and B TRANZ that means kind of facilitating those engagements between the municipalities and B TRANZ. We updated our transportation plan as part of a regional plan update last year. This was pre Act 181 before Act 181 was enacted. We were already about three years into a regional plan update. And so we wanted to go ahead and finish that and this year we'll be finishing the Act one eighty one update. Assisted 14 towns with grant applications. And this is FY 2025 is a state fiscal year. Conducted 70 data collection activities for VTrans. I serve on the South East Vermont Transit Board and RRPC will help support the elders and persons with disabilities transportation program along with Mount Scutland Regional Planning Commission. We assist with a variety of town inventories like road erosion bridge, culvert signs. And when I came here, this was my sixteenth year, was really interesting to me. Among all the things that we do in support of towns, these inventories are among the things that they value the most because it's a lot for road crew to do that. We do this in collaboration with the road crews. And then related to that, one of the things I'm really proud of is we host regular convenings of the region of road foreman. And we provide a lot of direct technical assistance for road foreman like teaching them how to use tablets, how to manage data on those. That's where again, where these inventories and often in to help them better keep track of what they've got to manage. And I'm just going to provide some highlights. Over the last few years, again, like I said, I'm really proud of our road forming meetings. These are examples of what we've done interacting with Green Mountain Power about this is like relating to weather emergencies and power outages, hazard tree issues, full installation and relocation. We had a really catastrophic heavy snow in March a couple of years ago. And out of that, we help facilitate conversations within Green Mountain Power, like how to coordinate, like getting the roads clear, Not only of snow, but all the trees and in some cases how to coordinate with all the power lines and poles that were down. And so being able to kind of serve that role was fantastic. Green Mountain Power, as you may know, they're undergoing a resilience project where they're undergrounding a lot of power lines. So we hosted a meeting of what to expect when underground power lines are installed on your roads. A lot of that work was done by contractors. How to navigate changing municipal truck and truck equipment marketplace, pavement management and preservation strategy, several sessions on grants, what types of grants are out there, how to be most competitive, Road maintenance best management practices to prevent the spread of invasive species. Of course, Missouri's general permit when it first came into play and then it's keeping up with it as the years go on. When do you need a stream alteration permit? Constructing sand and salt sheds. Course, highway department community outreach, they share with one another their experiences on how they interact with their community. And one of the fascinating things, thought this was fast years ago, not too many years ago, but we were working with in Guilford, we'll create a Green River Alliance looking at water quality in the Green River and actually got the road foreman to speak to the general public about their relationship with the river because they're out there right night and day they see the animals and other things going across and just know the river's behavior. And I just thought it fantastic staff could actually get the road for them and to become a public speaker because that's not the role they typically want to play. Paving 101, paving road costs and benefits and then just found experience sharing. Like for instance, Dover had installed pivots on the weather stations. Another town had done a chip seal project. Another town was mapping hazardous trees using an app. And so just opportunity for the road foreman to share their own innovations with one another. In 2425, we supported the development of 34 grant applications across all B TRANS programs and one MTAP project in Searsburg. Searsburg has population, I think it's about 124. One of the really small towns, they were famous when ARPA first came out because they were the only town in the state to reject the federal funding that they want, that they were entitled to. So for them to actually be willing to take on this NTAP project, they have a bridge that they need to replace. It would cost upwards of a million dollars. And so they're wanting studies done to determine whether or not they really need to replace that bridge with some of the other, they serve one property and what some of the other alternatives might be. So that is what we brought in Stone Environmental to work with them through MTAP. Currently And we're serving as municipal project manager for 15 projects ranging from trail scoping studies, flood resiliency scoping studies, build a sidewalk projects, bulk culverts and projects, Federal Lands Access Program in Stratton, this is in the National Forest to improve connection to a grout pond, is a really popular cross country skiing destination in the winter. The issue is when they plow the snow, it can get really narrow and difficult to navigate. Stream bank restoration and bridge replacement are abandonment options. That's the Searsburg project. We're currently working on one salt shed project and I'll get to that in a minute. We have been working with several. And then we've got a slope failure and severe erosion issue on Intech Lane and Rockingham. Two

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: of

[Chris Keyser (Executive Director, Windham Regional Commission)]: the regions, probably highest value and biggest employer Sonnax, which is a vehicle transmission company and Chroma which is a high-tech optical company. They're built on a slope left by the courtesy of Glacier Lake Hitchcock and that is eroding. There's like a 100 foot gully that's gradually creeping toward both facilities. It's right on the edge, it's fair to say of the Sinax Park parking lot. From a they've invested, I forget how many, it's well over a million dollars to save a lot of the slopes there. Ultimately all this type of the storm water management related to this road and then state highway and interstate and other things. So it's a really wide variety of things that we work on. One of the challenges we have is that between the time that towns apply for grants with estimated costs and then like a project actually comes to be, the costs are rising so much that some of the towns are actually having to kind of back off of the grants because they just, they don't have that money. Sure you've heard this story before. Really proud of our account program. We do a lot of traffic counts, pedestrian counts and bicycle counts. Traffic counts, we do it on town and state highways. Typically the data volume on information on number, volume and type and speed. Typically do 15 to 25 counts per year. We've done counts in all 27 of our towns. Somerset's important because we get a lot of winter traffic up there, especially with snowmobilers, cross country skiers, and then also in the summer, of course with the Somerset Reservoir, if you've never been there, it's really beautiful. It's a man made lake, but no motorized boats are allowed on it. So it's very much a wilderness experience as opposed to Harriman Reservoir which is right below it which is a heavily used motor boats and everything else. So within close proximity, very different dynamics there. Speed studies, traffic counts also inform speed studies, highway reclassification, then a traffic. It also helps inform maintenance activities and paving. Our pedestrian camp program is really robust. We do it on sidewalks, multi use pathways, existing and proposed crosswalks. This is used in grant applications and helps inform use patterns which can also help inform things like downtown when people visiting, rains over time. And during the COVID pandemic, we used it. There's some things we can't do with TPI funding but it's like you'd find this to be interesting. So of course we were tracking like what was the foot traffic change, what were the foot traffic changes downtown and elsewhere but we also did do trail counts. Suddenly we saw heavy use of our trails and we could use the counts to actually help advise people like, hey if you're feeling uncomfortable because there are a lot of people on these trails now, here's our trail maps of the region. There are lots of other trails where we're not seeing as much use, they're just as beautiful, so consider using those. And so we actually kind of did some public outreach around that. And then Bisoa County, we're doing a multiuse pathways and state and town highways and again, even helps form grant applications. This year, we're working with, I know you think you're gonna be talking about the Staying Connected initiative tomorrow with the UN Silco. This year in our region, we're working with a faculty member at UMass Amherst Extension Program to apply GIS screening tool to determine where aquatic and terrestrial organism passage is most likely and that's a higher priority when considering culvert and bridge replacements and other road crossing treatments. So whether it was for amphibians, trout swimming upstream, that one photo is of a Canadian lynx up in Searsburg crossing under a bridge. And then also right, get this the high larger mammal deaths that also when you get in bears, that sprits and deer and moose and other things. It's not only damaging to the wildlife, it's also damaging to the drivers. And so what that in the upper right hand corner there, that block that's Doctor. Jackson screening tool. What it does, it takes aggregates existing data and kind of compiles it to show what bridges and culverts are most likely to be priority crops in areas. So that way we're not trying to figure this out for every single culvert. We just know the peak like it's almost like a heat map, right? It's like these are areas that really we should probably give greater look to so that when those culverts or bridges are replaced or frankly when other grants are available sometimes there may be grants that are specifically available to replace bridges or culverts or improve them to improve their connectivity across wildlife corridors, this can be a screening tool that we can use to help inform ourselves and road foreman and conservation organizations where those crossings are most likely to take place. And then I just want to know that sometimes our transportation funds actually come from hazard mitigation and disaster recovery funds.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay, about seven minutes.

[Chris Keyser (Executive Director, Windham Regional Commission)]: Sorry, I will wrap up. We use the flood related community fund. Whitingham has been doing a fantastic job. Route 100 basically become, and during our reign it basically became the North River. And the North River is tiny. It's actually the width, you can see the width of that channel there. But during a flood, it can get actually big. And so they've been doing a lot of work trying to improve the flow, because right now the villagers are the bottleneck and it diverts the river right down the road. And so this is among several projects improving the capacity of the water to move under and around the village as opposed to through the roads. I'm gonna wrap up with this. So Vermont state and local governments are heavily reliant upon federal funding for disaster emergency preparedness and also disaster response and recovery. I sit on the state hazard mitigation grant project review committee, that process has been delayed to get those hazard mitigation grant projects approved. Funding like the building or zoning infrastructure committees by FEMA have canceled. We're currently seeing what's happening in Caledonia and Essex Counties with the denial of the federal disaster declaration and what kind of hook they're gonna be on. And this is an article I wrote back in October that actually builds up of a newsletter I for our region back in March saying towns really need to start thinking about greater self reliance because there may not be money coming. And I guess I would just suggest to y'all, it may be a little premature if things are still kind of in flux, but from my perspective, I don't see a scenario where we go back to just being able to take for granted that when we have a million dollar plus disaster, we're automatically in quotes, gonna get a federal disaster declaration. A lot of the proposed legislation, not just among the Trump administration, but also what's being discussed in Congress now is proposing to increase that threshold by like four times. So imagine what that means for our small towns, Because the assumption has been million dollars plus, you're probably going to get a debt is probably not the future no matter who's in office because they've been going back to the Obama administration, they've been looking for an opportunity to kind of increase that threshold. And it's something I think we really need to think about what does that look like? I would encourage you maybe to bring in Michael Gone from the Vermont Bond Bank. It was a group of us that we've met multiple agencies, RPCs and others about a disaster recovery fund that they have made available. It was intended to serve as a bridge loan between like when a disaster happens and when towns get, when they do the work and when they get, right, it's a reimbursement by FEMA. It's not funny on the front end about what their requirements are gonna be because it may be that we're not looking at bridge loans as much as we are loans. And the other issue that here is that town because of just a contraction of other funds may be having to bond things out. Just because you get elected to a select board doesn't mean that suddenly you're conveyed knowledge about public finance and what your finance options are. A number of our towns don't do capital plan. And it's just we're probably going to need to encourage towns to start looking at the world in a different way. And probably one of the things the bond bank is gonna require are things like capital plans and updated hazard mitigation plans because they need to know what they are getting into when towns are looking for loans for disaster recovery because they've got to know what else they've got on their books. So I would just encourage you to do that. And then maybe next year that becomes clear This may be a whole other line of inquiry. To the extent something keeps me up at night, this is what keeps me up at night. Would look at July's flooding last year as kind of a live drill and we're kind of living it now. And that's all I've got.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: And Burke? Yeah, thank you so much for all your work. And I think you bring up the point that I'm wondering if we need to have some more testimony or something put in our is it all about about this? I don't know. It's something to discuss just as you're bringing this up and thinking, yeah, this is really, really important, and I don't wanna let it my And, line is open. It's just about part of the committee's consideration.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Do we have some questions?

[Candice White (Member)]: Thank you. So just a quick question on your last topic. Do RPCs work in such a way where you are meeting as a group across Vermont and deciding on things that municipalities really need to be educated about, like this, for example, the growing need for capital planning, the potential use of the Vermont Bond Bank to help get them out of potential scenarios that have happened or will come in the future.

[Chris Keyser (Executive Director, Windham Regional Commission)]: We do oftentimes in collaboration with our partners like the Vermont actually Bond came to us to engage us in the conversation about how, what should they be aware of? What should they be thinking about? And the RPC directive we actually meet on a monthly basis. So we meet on a regular basis. The translation plan would get together on a regular basis. So yeah, we do. I don't if this is necessarily as structured as what you're talking about. Do have like our own legislative priorities that we come up with on a regular basis, but some of these things are, we kind of have to talk them through among ourselves. And then with of course with the agencies or other players out there before we would even know what to bring to the legislature. One thing I will note though is that RPC is right now are sidelined in our emergency planning work. We have been since October, FEMA has been sitting on what's called the emergency management performance grant that supports RPC is right. We tend we're 95% grant probably. So a lot of our billable hours are tied to these state. These grants that come through the state sometimes with federal origin and this emerging management performance grant funding comes through VEM that originates with FEMA. And so nationwide this has been on hold since October and is actually affecting VEM's budget. I think they're still chewing down their 2024 funding. So for all these months now we've not been able to continue the outreach usually do with municipalities on emergency planning which is to me very impactful. This keeps going on, it's gonna be problematic. The other issue we're facing is that one of the rules that FEMA is proposing to sub applicants, is what regional planning commissions are, is that we would have to provide bios and resumes for all of our commissioners as a condition of grant acceptance. And I don't see a situation where all of our commissioners are gonna be willing to provide that information to FEMA. But our commissioners have nothing to do with the staff work that we do around the Emergency Management Performance Grant. But this is an issue again nationwide, this isn't just for Vermont. I'm sure there's been a lot of pushback. And right now the state doesn't even have its own grant approved by FEMA. So there's no way to know exactly what finally the sub applicant requirements are gonna be. But just something for you guys to be aware of that there's a whole layer of work that we're doing what we can. But I would argue this is where a lot of our work touches actual life safety concerns. I mean, of course there's other transportation elements that do too, but it's problematic. And we're kind of a core piece of technical assistance generally, but that emergency planning work not only affects, That so many of our disasters are transportation disasters. And so this has impact on that too.

[Candice White (Member)]: And so when you say that funding has been on hold and it's impeding your ability to do some of this work, what does that look like? Does that mean you have an employee who you've had to furlough or just certain programs you're not able to move forward with? Does it affect your labor? Does it affect?

[Chris Keyser (Executive Director, Windham Regional Commission)]: Yeah, it's the things that we would traditionally do like support the regional emergency management committees, support where they work on flood hazard bylaw updates, support their work on their fewer grants to apply for but developing grants related to mitigation, supporting training for flood plain administrators. There's just a broad array of things like that. We're not able to do it. Where I can, we'll leak out what we do just under our general funding for the state that we get through a contract with Department the of Housing Community Development. And so we're further burdening what the state funds us using the property transfer tax to do. And I haven't had to furlough anyone, but I've had to redirect them. I don't know what next year is going to look like yet. So I'm not I've been very transparent with that. So what I'm saying here, don't mean I just don't know what next year is going look like. My biggest concern though is that this also diminishes just like we were regularly working with road form. We have these relationships with them and road commissioners and with select boards and all around transportation. With the months that go by, because it tends to be a lot of turnover, we're losing those relationships with the emergency management directors and among the emergency management directors. And so when bad things happen, we rely on those relationships to help them respond and recover. And it's probably one of the more overlooked things that we do because I think it's one of the things that's just kind of taken for granted until it's not. And I serve on the Vermont rural technical assistance project that's ongoing. I sit on that technical advisory committee. And one thing that I'm hoping that committee will do is continue to look at like as funding is diminished or capacity diminish among the state agencies and RPCs that we look at as you pull that thread where it's gonna affect other than to the right other state agency and assume we're gonna be there. We're supporting this emergency management planning. If we're not, then that pulls on DHCD threats and V trans threats and others.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: You very much. We appreciate the time. We appreciate all that what you're working on. I think we're hearing your message, and I don't want to go too far into the next presenters piece. But I will say this is one of the big challenges as we go from the Southeast corner with incredibly rural towns and issues, and then, of course, the interstate and the trains, have a little bit of everything. But then we're going to go all the way up to the urban issues, which is an entirely different challenge. So thank you very much. I appreciate all you do. Thank you very much. Thank you. Time this morning. And I guess we're transitioning quickly to all the way up the interstate and up 91 and jump on to 89 and come all the way up to Exit 14.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Thank you. Welcome. For the record, Charlie Baker, I'm the executive director of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. And hopefully you can see that okay, is that Sharon? So, yeah, thanks for the time. Really appreciate it. And thanks to the committee for kind of getting a little bit more down into details with what RPCs are doing. So I'll give you a little overview of what's kind of how things work in Chittenden County, which is, as the chair noted, a little different. So special, I've heard, sometimes used. Yeah, it's nice because we're so exposed to Vermont. We are Sorry, one note here. I'm going to focus on our Metropolitan Planning Organization function. So that is a thing in federal law that we're, for urban areas, over 50,000 people urban. We're about 120,000 urban population in Chittenden County. So there's a federal law that says you have to form a board, the governor needs to approve it. This happened after the 1980 census, It's been around for over forty years now. And it's locally controlled. It's the same as the RPCs. The municipalities are on our board. I guess the one difference is that B TRANS is also on our board and has a vote on transportation or MPO business. So that's one little distinction that's a little different. And MPOs got created really after the interstate for late in the interstate era where city mayors in particular were kind of like, hey, the state just drove an interstate through our city and we had no say in it. So this is to give local officials a say in how the state uses federal transportation dollars. And just to note, it's really kind of a negative power. So our board can't force VTrans to use federal dollars in any way, but they could stop. They could say, no, we don't want that project in the program. So it's a negative power. It was flirted with when the SERC was a thing twenty years ago, before my time. I think it was the only time it started to flirt, that I'm aware of, where they started to flirt with actually exercising that power. So otherwise it's a very, and has been a very collegial relationship with VTrans. We work hand in hand with them all the time. And we get a formula grant through VTrans, that's federal funding, which is different than the other RPCs, are part of the TPI program, but I'm sure you've heard enough from VTrans and the other RPCs about it already. And then to note that we were actually two separate organizations, and about fifteen years ago, it was actually some legislation, if anybody's been around since Challenges for Change, kind of said we should look at merging the MPO and RPC, which was we had two bodies with basically the same membership. And so we did do that in 2011, merged and became one board, one staff. So that was a really good thing. And here are some of the key things that we have to do because of the federal funding requirements. So we have a federally mandated Metropolitan Transportation Plan, Transportation Improvement Program, which really that's the the funding document, if you will, that our board has to approve that allows the trains to use federal funds in our region. The Unified Planning Work Program, so we actually kind of document our annual work program and how we're using those federal funds. We now use it as a tool to document all of our work. So it's not just the federal transportation funds, but as you've been, I'm sure, hearing, regional planning funds, emergency management funds, even when municipalities ask us. So we document everything. We go through a process every year of what should we work on next year. And that's all in our work program. These are all links. If you are bored and having trouble sleeping. Welcome to dive in. Public participation plan is also a federally required document. And we're actually in the midst of updating that right now. A big focus on how to do more inclusive engagement. We're also a refugee resettlement community. You probably have heard things like 56 languages spoken in the Winooski High School or things like that. So as we're working on projects, that engagement is a big aspect of our work on this. One thing I should note about the membership, I mentioned the municipalities. One of the things that happened over time, it started as just our urban towns. And back in the 90s, we expanded so that it's a whole county jurisdiction that is under the MPO. So it allows us to use those funds. I look at Phil a little bit in a rural town, like Pinesburg wasn't part of the original NPO. And so I think we've been trying to flex, I would say, over time to try to make as flexible use of these funds as we can, including expanding our boundaries back in the 90s. Happy to take any questions. This is little less. I'll get into kind of budget issues in a minute, but I mentioned our work program. So this is kind of a real quickie summary of the transportation funded work in our work program right now. So we have 10 scoping studies, two corridor area wide studies, seven active transportation plans. So that might be anything from like Milton wants an active transportation plan for their town. Two transportation demand management study projects. I'll talk a little bit more in detail about those two things. We've also been able to flex the transportation funds for, when we talked with Federal Highway, we said this is to create more walkable communities. And so they have allowed us to use our transportation funds to do master plans and zoning bylaw updates in municipalities. An easy one to talk about is South Burlington City Center. We spent money helping the city. We were able to provide them 80% federal funds to work on the zoning there. Same thing with Tax Corner, Form Based Code recently. We spent a couple $100,000 there. So we've been able to flex it for land use, some land use work. Also been able to flex it for water quality, so kind of road related runoff, addressing that. We've also been doing things like sending cameras down storm water pipes to help towns, back to Chris's point about the inventory work. And also some energy work. So like EV charging or things like that, we've been able to use these funds for. We do a lot of technical assistance, 12 significant projects this year. We have three engineers on staff, so we are able to provide some more direct technical analysis without having to ask VTrans. They coordinate with VTrans to make sure we're aligned, we do have some supplemental staff there. That also leads to municipal project management. So these are the actual construction projects, typically like sidewalk projects and things where we can step in and help the town just manage the project for them. And we're doing two or three of these in Jericho right now, maybe one in Shelburne. And then a lot of data collection, as Chris just mentioned. So I won't go through that, but also things like population employment projections we do as part of our planning process every few years. We're about to start that process actually in collaboration with VTrans right now. And then we use a good chunk of funding for partner support. And I'll get into this in a little bit more detail, and apologies for all the acronyms, but GMT, Green Mountain Transit, CAPMA is the Transportation Management Association in Chittenden area. Locomotion does bike ped, car share, and the TRC, the Transportation Research Center at UVM, has all access our funding that we have. And again, I'm gonna repeat a little bit of what Chris said. Sometimes when I talk about our work, we really act like a public sector consulting agency. And so 95% of our funding is performance grants and contracts. Kind of emphasizing that some of that came out of challenges for change back in 2010. And it's really, we're all very conscious of the fact that we're not doing a good job in satisfying what the scope of work was. Agencies or towns don't want to use us again, right? So there is kind of a, we have a lot of incentive to try to do good work for our towns and for state agencies. We collect about a little over a quarter million dollars from our municipality dues, which I know is very different than the rest of the regions. And it's basically based on their grand list. So it's kind of on their ability to pay in a way. And just here's our overall budget. And Chris kind of mentioned the emergency management that used to be a little bit bigger sliver, that is kind of frozen in time right now. So we are hopeful that that will unlock and we can continue doing that preparedness work with the VEM. We got about $850,000 in our budget, natural resources and energy. Most of that is water quality, a good chunk is brownfields. And then land use planning and municipal assistance is almost 3,000,000. That is really there's a big ball going through the snake this year because we have $1,700,000 of broadband grant coming through our budget. So this will be a lot smaller next year. And then the $7,400,000 in transportation planning has been a little consistent. That's not what we get every year. So there's some of last year's money on top of this year's money, as well as a competitive raise grant that we got from the federal US DOT. I'll talk about that in a couple more minutes. Feel free to interrupt me or let you in the chair.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Make sure you get through as much of your stuff as possible so I don't waste some time for some conversation. Otherwise, once we get started on questions, can you

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: That's fair enough. That's fair enough. Thank you for the coaching.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: It varies.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Then just to dig into the transportation funding that we have, because it's a lot of money, right? Partners, like Local Motion, almost $400. This year we're 3 quarters of 1,000,000 to GMT, which just a few years ago, that was 400,000. So we've been trying to do our part to help GMT with their funding issues. We're only planning money, it only goes so far, but we are trying to support them in there. I think they just submitted a request to us for nine hundred thousand for next year. They are actively looking for some more out there. Our staff is about 2.2 of this and most of the money, so kind of two thirds goes through us and for consultant work. So on top of our staff, a lot of our time is spent managing consultants, doing projects for our towns and sometimes for the state. And just digging in, here's some more specific examples of things that we think are kind of significant that we're doing right now. Our board is about to adopt this Regional Safety Action Plan, which does allow our towns and us to apply for safe streets and roads for all the SS4A grant money that was made available under the Biden administration. There's one more year of money that's available, but this is also feeling like a big part of the future focus is safety. And safety has always been a big focus, but it feels like it's getting even more at this point in time. And I think the federal government has been helping with some of these safety focus area in terms of their federal priorities. Yes, sir.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Do you have an example of where that SS4A funding, have we had any

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: We haven't been able to access it yet because you need to have one of these plans in place in order to be able to access it.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So you're hoping to do that.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah. So that's why we're trying to get it adopted as soon as possible for this year we can start accessing for implementation grants. These are for safety improvements. Right. Road to bypass. Yeah, there intersections typically, right? Yep.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I have a lit one up that you

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: can. Noted. Top lane. Thank you. Another thing that's in front of our board right next week is this regional transportation demand management. Some of you may remember a few years ago, were working on looking at I-eighty 9 and the interchanges and what to do. One of the outgrowths of that effort was like, and we also need to spend more effort trying to reduce demand on the transportation system. So we set out some lofty goals and now we're trying to get a lot more specific about how to implement it Between GMT and the other partners, it's over a million dollars that we are contributing or asking them to do. They all have scopes of work and performance tasks also to help move all these strategies forward. And then kind of continuing the safety theme in a way, resilience planning. Know, VITRAN did some good work a few years ago on the transportation planning tool. We're trying to take that and kind of drive deeper down with our talents to actually look at those segments, the culverts, the bridges that are most at risk and kind of feed that and work with our talents to help that inform their priorities as they're working on their capital planning. If we can do asset management, maintain piece of infrastructure and improve its resiliency to flooding and things, those are the win wins I think that we're looking for going forward, knowing that funds are going be extremely limited. The TOD project, this is the RAISE grant. Got over $2,000,000 to do this, and we're actually funding work from Rutland up to St. Albans and out to, I think almost Berlin in Washington County. This was we had an opportunity to use the funds outside of our region and kind of be more inclusive. It's kind of focused on towns that are on rail lines and basically trying to be more transparent. We were really trying to use some transportation funds to help with the housing prices. This is about doing some master planning and up zoning in those towns that could be more transit oriented. That grant expires, the end date is this June, we're just about finishing up all that work. Happy to provide more details if you're interested in that. And then just this is kind of getting a little bit more weedy, but just to kind of emphasize how important it is that we're doing this planning upfront, not everything that we're planning can get funded. Our eyes are wide open. We all know that at any time. However, when we have some big things happen, and this is really about the Burlington Windhamski Bridge, which we've been kind of digging into. That's a municipally owned bridge that Winooski and Burlington share. And I will give VTrans a lot of credit. They really stepped in here and have taken more of a leadership role than they are probably legally required to do. But also it's Route 2 and Route 7 going across that bridge. 40,000 cars a day. I think it's the second heavy stragglers bridge next to the interstate bridge that's next to it. So it's gonna be a big deal when that bridge goes under reconstruction. And we have done some planning on Main Street, which the city have done, I think, before the bridge project starts, but also at the Colchester Riverside intersection down here. And also on East Allen Street, as you get to Exit 15. And so there's really five projects that are going to coordinate a bit as part of this bridge effort, because there's going be detours at times and several impacts on surrounding traffic flow. Anyway, just kind of note, if we hadn't done some of that other planning, it wouldn't work as smoothly or with that push cut through place. It'll be really easy. And also on 01/2016, it was a paving project. I think it's worked really well when VTrans had been able to provide us early drafts of construction plans and asking for comments from us in the towns and being able to get maybe some striping different or get a crosswalk or get a bike lane striped. And so the city of South Burlington and Huntingbrook Road got some significant changes in that plan. Just credit to VTrans when that happens. Not sure it's always consistent that that happens, but it is good when it does. Then just because, sorry, I'm spending a lot of my time talking about Act 181. So I didn't want to leave you guys out because you're the most company, something to that effect. But I did just kind of want to mention there's to us a significant transportation aspect of 01/1981, which is really trying to increase density on our transit routes. I know you well know and probably have heard a lot more than that, even I have, about the challenges in GMT and their revenue and cutting back route service. We don't have the money to fix that ourselves, so we're kind of focused more on the root symptoms or causes. Can we actually bring more riders adjacent to the system and help it get a little stronger organically that way? So in our region, which is, again, I know very different, but we're looking at 90% of our housing growth in the next twenty five years happening in these pink areas. We've been tracking that number since about 2010. We have typically, and I say we, really our towns have been achieving over 85% or sometimes 87%. So we're pretty close to that 90% over the last fifteen years already. So it's really building on infrastructure, supporting the transit, and then it takes pressure off of the rural areas too. So I couldn't leave. Sorry, that was my transition to talk about money. Sherry, you can kind of cut me off if you guys have heard this a thousand times.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: As many different voices as possible. Yeah, and

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: we were in here just two or three years ago, think, one of the things we had funded was a transit funding study, like what revenues could we maybe dedicate to transit? Now we're in a much bigger issue with just not even having enough state funds to match all the federal, is very concerning. And whatever we need to do, think there would be a lot of support for increasing the revenue that helps us pull down our federal funding. If we could find a slice to dedicate to transit or some way for, sorry, look at it Phil, know you spent time on that board, some way for municipalities to be automatically opted in or something. Don't know what the process would be. And then we just spent some time, the older adults and persons with disability, the OMG, sometimes called algorithm, was also taking a cut this year. So spent some time with the partners in that. We're also a little different than the other regions, They had one or two partners. We have like nine or 10 partners doing that. So we are staffing that committee, but spent a good bit of time last couple months trying to sort through how ramp down the expectation with the riders, because the services are getting reduced to some extent. So more money would be great. I don't have a magic wallet that I'm pulling out right now, but there's definitely a need. And thank you. And I think our Transportation Program Director, Elaine E. Churchill, is probably online there with me, but happy to answer any questions.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Thank you very much. And it's interesting that we're going up the transit funding study, we've done a number of them.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: I About

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: just sort of stripping that we haven't even really taken much testing away from options that are even presented as proposals. There is a bill on this wall that includes a proposal for a delivery fee just as a way to explore, not what would that mean. Know, I think there are other options that were presented in the treatment study. It's at a point where we need to figure something out, what would that be, what would be acceptable. Yes. Thank you for bringing that

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: If there's anything we can do to help support that or dig into it further, happy to do that.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Charlie, I think a couple of years ago, you may have worked on sort of a study or report or something in a few years since I looked at it.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: That something on

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: with GMT on funding? Yeah. Is that something that you might resend? I'm not sure. I think it before my time here and I had just heard that.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah, and I may even send you a list of them because I think there are numerous. Think even there was one we did and then I think there was a follow-up one after that.

[Katie Trautz (Executive Director, Montpelier Alive)]: The public

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: transit association did, I think the year after us. There's a couple of very recent ones.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: I think we spend around 50,000,000 a year on public transit, and the only place where it doesn't have to be subsidized is in Chittenden County. Public subsidized. Yes, but we have access to the stick monies and things like that. I think we just have, given that public transit is increasingly used to provide older Vermonters with access to healthcare, in rural Vermont, it matters to the entire state that GMT not be a burden on the system. And that's how I'm kind of coming to think about it in addition to needing it to work in neck of the woods. But there's larger argument, I think, to be made. If I remember looking a couple of years ago at the thing that you sent, the report that you sent there, there were some interesting ideas in that that might, be, as we're trying to figure out what to do next, might be interesting.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah, know the consultants spend some time looking around different models around the country. There's definitely some things to think about there. I don't know if there's a great choice. Nobody likes to raise taxes or fees. But at some point, we're gonna do something or have some significant cuts in service again, still.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And I struggle with the regional and urban needs are so substantially different. And I wonder when we don't have a lot of discussion about our lives, there's some discussion about different levels of government. We're creating new levels of different government, it's a whole other area, but when you have

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: such a substantial different need. Yeah, is. And you see it. I mean, if you look at what the municipal members are paying, you will feel that. Burlington, I think, by themselves contributes over $2,000,000 to the transit service. And I think I can't remember the exact numbers. Phil Pouech, you've known better than I do, but I think the state puts in, I think of state money, you have 3 ish million and the towns put in 4 plus Maybe a month. 45,000,000.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Kinesborough was 150,000 just for the one community group.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Yes. Feel your accounts feel that because they're they're paying big money to have that service.

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Yes. We're gonna

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. This is helpful. You mentioned that one sixteen project. And it looks great. I mean, there's a couple of there's a turning lane here or there that really helps. But I also wonder on the safety aspect, whether now we've just made that road so people can travel faster, it seems. And it allows people to go faster. So then therefore, when they intersect with the village or town, I see that as adding to the challenge of finding ways to get people from one town to the other, but yet within the town, particularly Heinzburg and other towns, how do we make that traffic calm enough to allow walking, walking, and that.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah, and that's where kind of land use and the transportation start to interact in dynamic ways, right? And so, I think we're constantly doing that. I think the multimodal Roadway. Roadway, thank you. Guidance is it, that's coming out. I think not me, but others of our group have participated in detail in that process, I think getting that to be context sensitive, there's a different design that you want to have when you're trying people crossing the street than when you're just traveling down a

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: real road. So you're expecting that this new design standard or multimodal, that's

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: a term, that

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: will help to focus those areas where you're transitioning from just a vehicle transportation to. Right.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: And I think part of the land use mapping, think that we're doing this 181 should help with that like, here's the mapped area where that is being encouraged. Yeah, maybe there's some different design treatments that happen there. And I don't think any of that stuff is not None of us are really too new, but I think having it more focused and it will do it. Also figuring out the class one road model, I'm hoping we get to some different model, a hybrid version of that or something that happened. So anyway, that's a whole other topic. Thank you.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Just one quick question, Charlie. We hear from

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: the RPCs basically the state of the backlog and they're not even taking out new projects to get in

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: like what was spent two or three years. So I

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: see your request with the NPO obviously up a little bit different and you're getting your slice sort of like

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: a pass through. What exactly are you a backup?

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: I mean, are you backed up?

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: You taking on new projects to submit? Are being realistic about the environment we're in. The only money we have control over is the planning money. So yeah, our planning list is much bigger than the B TRAN's capital budget can really handle. And so, does that mean? It means something we're doing more work with towns on town roads,

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: safety

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: projects and looking for small things, until we get to a big thing, which like the Windskey Bridge. And that's something where we kinda are talking to the state a lot of, hey, is this worth moving on? Because that's been getting talked about for fifteen, twenty years. And we got to a point of, you know what, actually that bridge condition, it's a 100 year old bridge, it is going to need to be replaced before too long. Yeah, let's And there's some federal funding we were able to apply for. So getting that extra, know, jeez, I can't remember the toll now, it might be $40,000,000 of extra federal money we are able to support.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: So you are able to do things for your program?

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Yeah, a

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: little bit. We're

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: just, we're kind of working with VTrans. There's a safety project on Route 2 going over to the islands from Ex 17 to the islands, a play point intersection. That's a safety project, but we've been kind of told there's some money for

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: it right

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: now. Colchester would really like to have that intersection improved. That may be one we'll kind of work with them. Maybe that is a grant that we're applying for the feds to supplement funding. Thank you very much.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Appreciate you coming in. It sounds like there's a lot of other conversations to delve into. And we're going to transition to another area of the state to go to Rutland. And I've lived here long enough and back and forth that I used to use the Heinzburg, come down 116 and Heinzburg, Moncton Road and then get South of Middlebury and then go Route 7 the rest of the way to Rutland. But now Route 7 has improved so much in the thirty years and the crowded traffic on Heimburg, Moncton getting through there has gotten to be such a nightmare that I've gone back to Route 7 where I started in the '80s to go to UBM. You would go Route 7. You started riding the Heimburg, Moncton because you could avoid a lot of traffic. Now that's gotten so crowded and so backed up and so slow. Route 7 has been improved in so many areas that to get from Burlington in the NBO to get to Rutland, I'm back on Route 7 here thirty, forty years later, that it's much faster than skipping it and going around.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: That cycle

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: is amazing where you decide to improve projects in Charlotte and North Berthburg, obviously, Shelburne Road was obviously massively improved. Heinzburg is so popular, I don't want to go through there anymore. It used to be a dreaded road getting through Shelburne, and that's easier now than it is to get through Pinesburg to get down to Rutland. So hopefully I gave you time to pull out your laptop and apply your presentation.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: I'm not upset that you're not coming '22, right?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I wouldn't go down to 23. Only parts of 23 are great. All the way to Rutland has changed dramatically.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Changed Hopefully, that. So while he's getting prepared, maybe I'll just introduce us. Good to see you all. I have not had the pleasure of coming back and seeing you yet this year, but I'm sure I will be back. I am Devon Neary. I'm the Executive Director of Rutland Regional Planning Commission. And with me is our transportation program manager, Ethan Pepin. He has been leading the program actually since I took over as director. We sort of swapped positions there. Now he has been at the helm for three years now and been doing really great work in Rutland as emerging leader in that TBI program. As you know, there's a lot of new faces in that program that historically had a lot of very seasoned planners across RPCs. So as VTrain's evolving, our PC staff is as well. So we're really excited to be here and talk about some of the specific projects that have been happening down in our neck of the woods. So yeah, once you're ready, we can get it loaded up. How many RPCs have you heard from so far?

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Oh,

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: You're almost through there. Yeah. All right. A few more to go.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Today will do it. Today will do it.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Okay. So hopefully you're not going to get too many repeats, but I imagine you might. So we're happy to jump into anything specific along the way that you guys want to talk about. Because obviously Rutland has a lot of big projects on the horizon that we can talk about. But Ethan's highlighted some really good things.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Of course, this might be a little bit different, but how many different communities we're talking about that work? Is it just the city and the town or entire region? So how many municipalities?

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah 27 municipalities. It's all of Rutland County minus Pittsfield. They're in the 2 Rivers region. Greater Rutland County by and large.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Due to the roof forward bike path thing, hear a lot of talk about that even though I'm not playing anymore.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: That's actually going to be coming up as well. We did provide the city a lot of technical assistance as they implemented the new roadway design and some great statistics about how that roadway design has actually changed traffic safety in and around Rutland, which has been quite notorious for not good traffic safety. So it's nice to have that data to support that our PCs can provide to support these bigger changes. Because you hear anecdotally businesses and folks on the ground about what their experience is, but that's just a snapshot versus here's a much broader view.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Well, there's one that may or may not be a trend as we've heard through the IRC kind of a question about, and Representative Pouech will help me out here, in terms of a lot of bikeped talk, a lot of sidewalk construction, a lot of smaller, sort of, I don't want to say this the wrong way, but sort of an acceptance of understanding of financial picture on the much bigger projects are hard to come by, but on the actual improvement of people's lives and interaction town, in these transportation alternatives, downtown pieces, bike bed projects make it. In other words, the idea is maybe we put in time we should be looking at lots more smaller funding in our picture as opposed to everybody understanding putting together the big projects is a huge financial challenge. Possibly a trend that we think we've heard in the last day and a half, but I'm curious if have an opinion on that.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah, absolutely. It might actually come up during his presentation, but really quickly beforehand, we have definitely found and even discouraged counts at times for pursuing large scale projects under federal funding because it is so wildly expensive. Our favorite anecdote in the region is five fifty feet of sidewalks using state funding in Poultney cost less than $50,000 five fifty feet of sidewalk using federal money in Pollitt costs $550,000 So that is not insignificant. And understanding how we're leveraging federal resources versus state is important, especially those little projects can become quite big quickly. So having that state small scale BIPET funding that's an eightytwenty match and way less restrictions and federal requirements has been huge for our community. So I don't disagree with you. There's need for both, but maybe the implementation's quite a bit easier on a smaller scale. Why don't you jump right in if

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: you're ready? Yeah, so as you mentioned, I'm Ethan Peppin, transportation program manager. It's my first time here, so probably some of this is a little bit repetitive compared to other RPCs, wanna give you you what we're doing and who we are. So I'll start right back here. This cover photo is a project we actually worked on in Fairhaven that turned their really large asphalt parking lot that didn't really have any access management. It was the longest piano key crosswalk in the state, and we replaced that excess parking space with these green swales. We actually gained the parking spots. Didn't actually lose our parking.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Ended up

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: creating a much more controlled, ADA accessible environment that has significantly improved storm water because the giant It's harder to plow. I'll talk

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: to those guys down there. They're all chewing about plowing. Yep. Yeah.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: They're definitely figuring out how to navigate that new system for sure. Yep.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: For

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: sure. Every project has turned off. So, yeah,

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: a lot of townspeople didn't like that.

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: So I'll give you a quick overview of our team. We have actually about five people that work. I'm the only full time member of the transportation program, but we have a lot of other folks that work part time and bring specific skills such as GIS analysis, Nick Sartre, project management, Stephanie Bird. Sean B is our kind of like town planner, sort of helps fill with other activities. And Benning Bursell is our sort of dedicated field worker, field tech. He's got decades of experience surveying all manner of things from telephone wires to electrical grids. And we also bring on sometimes up to one to two interns every summer to help out just with that data collection work. So I'll give you kind of a brief breakdown of how I would define like a core transportation work, and then I'll take you through some projects that are examples of this work. So transportation planning, as you imagine, planning initiative is sort of the key focus there, but there's a lot of other things that go into transportation planning. Obviously, once you've planned potential infrastructure, it's going to find funding. Often towns are looking at grant funding for these large projects because it's difficult to fund through local budgets. So helping them secure those grants and also helping them with project management for these sometimes potentially large scale projects, which they may not have the in house capacity or expertise to manage and deal with all of these sort of federal requirements around NEPA and historical review and all these other factors. Data collection is huge. Data collection informs a lot of the planning work. You need to have good planning, good data to understand what's going on to be able to make good decisions. Outreach and coordination, of course, you can't plan in a vacuum. It's important to discuss with local communities, see what folks' local visions are, as well as policymakers and other agencies like the Providing Conceive Transportation. Then we have a number of committees and working groups, which are standing bodies, which look at specific areas and some assets like the airport, the DNH Rail Trail, as well as the Transportation Committee for the region. So here's one of the first things I want to highlight. This is around we work quite a lot with the Marble Valley Regional Transit District, which is the largest transit provider outside of Chittenden County and GMT. They had never done a comprehensive analysis of their in city fixed route buses. They had about five. So we worked with them basically to look at where there was potential redundancies and potential for efficiency. We found there were two routes which had a lot of overlap. And so we worked with them to develop a plan to consolidate those two down to one. So they went from five to four, but we still basically maintained 97.5% of

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: the ridership from those two routes.

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: So it was really minimal impact and we're able to remove an entire route and basically generate some substantial cost savings there. As transit is under pressure, obviously funding is a critical component, but I think also looking at the entire system and seeing where are their efficiencies, where are the opportunity to maybe save a little bit of money while impacting the riders that rely on it at least.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah, and one thing to note, even though they are the second biggest transit provider in the state, they don't have any paid professional planning staff. So we really are sort of augment their staff and provide planning services when needed. And we also are members of their governing board as well.

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: So grant support and project management, we're big believers in sort of helping projects go from planning to actual implementation. So a recent project we worked on is the town of Castleton, sort of this lovely historic village center that's connected to Vermont State University Castleton. So there's a substantial amount of pedestrian activity. The rail trail runs right through there. There's also an Amtrak station. There's no ADA accessible path to the Amtrak station. There's really no accessible sidewalks in the village. It's mostly dirt paths. So they identified this as a major issue. So we worked with them to sort of identify the area of focus and then work with them to secure funding for a scoping study to actually look into what are some alternatives and options for how to do this, that resulted in a preferred alternative. You're seeing a part of on the screen. And then we helped secure, a major bicycle pedestrian grant, from the agency to actually start to make this a reality. Then there's sidewalks on Castle.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Not in the historic village, but en route. You're talking about like

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: four corners?

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Where the college is, there's a There's a sidewalk sidewalk that goes down through there.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah, like on South Street. Yep, there's a sidewalk there, but that actually through the village, if you walk there, there are old slate tiles. There's no concrete there. And on the other side, there's not even any concrete. It's just a goat path along that end. It works.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Not

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: if you have a physical disability, it's very challenging. And also, according to the town, because they don't have a solid consistent surface, they can't actually maintain it in the wintertime very well. So there's this huge buildup of snow and ice. So yeah, mean, has, you're not wrong, it has functioned this way in the village now for two hundred years. That being said, given how much activity there is from the college and how the population of Castleman is aging, the town overall was really excited to do this work and finally bring an upgrade to the village. Because yeah, it's been this way for a long time.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Think. There

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: are some sidewalks in front of the diner and the postal, so the post office and across the street, but outside of that.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: I see people using it every day. I don't see anybody stop saying, well, that'll go down through here until it's paved.

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah. We we serve the town, so we let them set priorities. But currently, this project is, in a construction phase, and we're serving as project manager. So here's a data collection activity. It's pretty major. It touches pretty much every aspect or region. Most folks are familiar with the Clean Water Act in 2015 that established the Municipal Roads General Permit Program, created this system basically for cataloging roads into hydrologically connected that need to be bring up to certain standards basically to increase resilience. We did initial baseline inventory over

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: a course of a couple

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: of years in like 2017, 2018, 2019. I believe ANR is requiring reassessment of all these segments. That did work that largely falls to us because local towns just don't have the capacity to go and visit all these road segments and assess erosion levels and look at outfalls and all of this. So during twenty twenty five field season, we had five separate staff members that were trained up. We completed about 11 of these inventories, which involved walking four zero six and a half miles of roadway, mostly back roads, class four roads. One thing that our field tech actually got lost because he was on a class four road, basically went into the woods and right away disappeared entirely. And that was just over half of all of these hydrologically dissected segments in the region. So it was a really, really big effort, but we want to make sure that we're here to help all of our communities comply with what is the state law and ultimately.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Where is that? Where is the estimate?

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: This is in Clarendon. This is Clarendon, actually. Yeah. Near the marsh there.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Okay.

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: That's been a big effort, but really excited about

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So Clarendon is South West Brompton?

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: It is in Clarendon, yes.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: One other kind of great note on this Municipal Road General Mermet, the other sort of like great co benefit to doing this work is how much time we spend directly with road foreman. And we end up we usually help them with their in kind match for these grants by spending time with them and doing training. And the amount of information we learn from these folks by driving around in a truck all day is incredible. We usually gain all this information that helps us with other aspects and projects from paving to bridges all the way through these critical water quality projects. So it's a great touch point for us in those towns.

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Definitely. And this is a place where we offer a lot of support. It's something I've talked about at some of the road formants that the job has really changed from construction foreman to construction foreman and administrator. They're doing paperwork, they're doing grants. Every town is structured a little bit differently, but a lot of times they just put it on the road foreman. And so I was talking with Joel, road foreman, Holy Town. He was literally off the clock, on his iPad, in bed with his wife, like, updating segments and, like, doing this work because it's, you know, it's added to the workload for these guys. So everything we can do to help that out and provide support, we do. So more another data collection activity. We have pretty robust data around resilience and back roads through MRGP. We have pretty good data on culverts. We do inventories of culverts through BT culverts. Roadways are pretty well mapped, but there was no existing database of sidewalks, so we didn't even know where they were in all of our towns. So through a strategic initiative with the agency of transportation, we basically mapped all the sidewalks in the entire relevant region, was gathering some other critical information like condition to allow us to not just show where these things are, but actually help with capital planning in terms of which sidewalks are in the worst condition, where do you want to prioritize it. Something I've even been talking about is summer accounts. Like on your residential streets, you might want to consider removing sidewalks, that you have sidewalks on both sides that are both in terrible condition. And sometimes if you're not able to maintain the whole network, sometimes strategic disinvestment is something that needs to be talked about. Everyone likes to put

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: in new infrastructure, but Well, in some cases, change it too much there, but on Woodstock Avenue, was the you guys have anything to do with the shrinking it down kind of? It went from four lanes the tube. Was that all? I know. Yeah, was that

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: all about? We'll touch on that on a later slide. So happy to discuss that. One

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: just bragging point for Ethan. You know this was an initiative that he really spearheaded and developed this methodology that now VTrans has adopted and now all RPCs are using as a standardized method to assess these sidewalks. And really at the end of the day, we're focused on one thing. Beyond the active transportation network, which is great, how do these towns actually pay for this infrastructure? Because right now, we know there had been no capital planning done around sidewalks and no understanding of like, can we actually afford to keep this network whole? And the answer largely has been no, you cannot. So how can we braid together different funding resources and use analytics to decide how to best prioritize capital investments moving forward, and this is the best thing going. It's very simple and easy to understand. So

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: the color is green is good. Yep. Right, you need help. There is one, but it's

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Exactly. It's like, good luck.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Might do some check for it, son. I'll get through that one. It's easier to get in and out of the hospital than it was thirty years from now. The So

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: here's one product we worked on recently where we kind of put a bunch of things together. This is something I want to highlight, like you're talking about, because this was small, but it was really a nice sort of small win. City of Rowland had talked about improving bike racks downtown for years. It was in their master plan, you know, multiple plans were like, hey, we should do this. You know, it never ended happened, so we touched base with them and said, hey, we can, you know, do a study for you and basically look at what the existing situation is and then make some recommendations. And so we basically inventoried all of the existing racks. We developed a set of standards basically for the Department of Public Works about siting placement to ensure they're not interfering with car doors and parking, and they're out of the way of pedestrians. Some of the racks were like, if you use them, they literally block the sidewalk, so they created ADA access issues. So we looked at everything, said, you know, here's the bike racks you have that are good, meeting modern standards. Here's ones that do, but they're not placed right. Here's a couple ones that are, just not sufficient anymore. So then we put together a plan to try to get roughly equal coverage of the downtown, identify priority placement locations, work with them. They said, hey, we love this. It's a tough budget season though. So is there any funding you can find for us? So we went into actually Blue Cross Blue Shield Community Health Mini Grant. We were able to get 3,000 for them, purchase the racks, then they're going in. So it's a small project, but it's important to show that planning can actually bring results. I think it's important that we both look at these small scale projects like this, or for example, in our more rural towns. How can we improve through signage at some of these high grass intersections? What are the small things we can do to help sort of like build sort of confidence in planning and sort of help potentially translate into longer term big projects? So this was the road diet you mentioned. Some quick background on this project is basically that when VTrans was going to pave class ones in Rowan City, they looked at North Main Street and Woodstock Avenue and said, hey, there's potential to reconfigure this roadway and go from the sort of four lane configuration to one travel lane on each side with a center left turn lane, sort of bike lane stuck shoulders on the side. So they analyzed that, the benefits and drawbacks, they presented that to city leadership and basically said, look, it's a class one road, It's up to you, municipal officials, that the voters have vested power in to make a decision about how to go forward. The city decided that they wanted to pursue that new treatment because the safety benefits, in their eyes, outweighed potential impacts to traffic congestion. So when the city started to make that decision, we basically assisted VTrans and ran the entire public outreach to explain sort of like, here's why the city decided to do this, here's some of the potential benefits, here's where it's happening. And so we were really that first line. I ended up talking to a lot of folks in the media. We put together sort of a one pager to explain that, and that was really something we did to support Be Trans because we felt we really wanted to go above and beyond, and sort of make sure folks understood what was happening and sort of the logic behind it.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: How did that help congestion? Well, as a person that drives through there, just just wanted know how to help. Well, I think

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: the decision the city made is for impact of a little bit of increase in congestion for significant safety improvements. And so as a result then, the city said, well, did it actually work? And they asked us to take a look and do a little data analysis. So we did a crash analysis, and we found since going in, crashes are basically down 72%. A significant crash type that happens on these two lane roadways that have a lot of driveway accesses are left turn crashes. You have a lot of people turning in and out, and you basically have a two lane, more like through traffic, interstate highway focused design that then has a bunch of land use where people are pulling in all the time out of the roadway. So sort of the idea behind the road diet is that you create this center left turn lane where folks can get out of the travel lane to make their left turns. They're not basically stopping dead on a 35 mile an hour road to make a left turn into a driveway to pick up a pizza. And so that was kind of the logic behind it, and then we went once we had a full year of crash data and basically found that crashes had dropped substantially and the left turn crashes basically. I don't think there was, I think there was one across both railways the entire time. So this crash type basically disappears I was gonna say that the left turn crashes are some of the most dangerous because, you know, rear ends and front end, you've got usually the trunk and the engine in the way. But if you get t boned, basically, there's just a small door separating you. So those can be much more dangerous and deadly at the same speeds compared to rear ending. So just two elements because I do travel back quite

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: a bit as well, where the light is at McDonald's. But that's something really with India. It's like people are slamming on the brakes, saying, Oh man, my lane is going. Same with the seven North. Yeah, and then when you get farther towards the next lane, the backup heading west. East, I don't think there is a problem. I mean, I've never had a backup on Woodstock Avenue heading east, but west coming back from here, it can be backed up pretty far, like past Dunkin' Donuts, like going farther, you know, when that's four or 05:00 at night. But the most dangerous, I think, is when you're at the stoplight and there's two lanes and it's not very far. And we've got a lot of outstaters.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: When there's snow on the ground, you can't see the road markings. Yeah.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: That's a concern. Design is a flaw, that part. Yeah.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah. And they have added some signage and tried to improve things. But as Ethan said, there's no doubt there's a trade off here. And to your point, Jim, you know, at the peak times, it has increased travel times. There's no doubt. But averaged out over the system, it's actually pretty nominal and it's limited to just those really peak hours. The other thing is we hear directly from both Rutland City Police and Fire that they are huge fans of this and it makes their job so much easier going to calls, addressing calls and dealing with traffic safety. The average speed on these roomways has dipped lower. So that's good feedback from at least the folks that are directly impacted. But there's no doubt there's some more congestion. And it was never meant to be like the end all be all. Hopefully this is the start of further changes that will address some of those congestion

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Yeah, that's just a concern. Yeah,

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: we are doing a scoping study right now in the city of that terrible intersection of Routes 4 And 7, which is wildly chaotic to see if like we can redesign that in a way that would increase traffic flow and better. Yeah. That has been proposed, but it was not an appropriate design. That's great too.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: But that's also been.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Representatives. Is that bike path thing that you got there? That's why I figured you guys just squeeze a couple of bike paths in, but the it's not very safe, is it? The bike path? Oh, stick them right next to vehicles just doesn't seem safe to me. I'll you could put all the white markings, the little things, the green markings, whatever. And if somebody comes through and they're looking at their cell phone, they can run over somebody. I mean and the sidewalk to the side here looks like it's in rough shape.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: It is.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Yeah. Why why won't they just put bicycles why can't bicycles ride down the sidewalk? Why can't they just move?

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: In Rutland City, actually, bicycles are barred by city ordinance from being on sidewalks on both Route 7 and Woodstock Avenue. So the reason the bike lanes exist is more about there needed to be some use of that shoulder. And I know we're

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: going over. I'm gonna have to ask at some point we'll have to move on. I did rearrange just for that our next presenter has been pushed to another time.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Okay, we will try to Not over, but we'll

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: ten to fifteen minutes, I know you have a lot of stuff. Put a lot of work into it and there's a lot of interest. One thing that we can tell is that it depends on whether we have a member in your area. It's not just

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: in this case. For sure.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Other Casey's defense or whoever we're going with, we have areas that we have previous other relationships. It does take a lot longer. So there's no problem with that. I'm just letting you know we're we're going to go in between quarter of and '10 of and then we're going to get it and we've moved the next presentation to another time.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Thank you for that extra time.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We appreciate that. They were joining by Zoom and they are accommodating us.

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Great.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Perfect. Thank you. I appreciate you being here. I agree. Yeah.

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: I'll just go quick. In terms of coordination, we work a lot with B TRANS, provide sort of local expertise. We serve on a number of sort of committees and groups that help sort of shape some of the documents that guide policy. So I served on the rail plan update and the free plan update as a steering committee member, helped sort of provide feedback, review all those documents, make sure that the state is getting a good product for its money from consultants because sometimes it's important to really hold their feet to the fire on some of those projects. Served on the Bicycle Pedestrian Grant Committee, helping provide expertise about projects, donated our time basically to look into all these projects all across the state, help score them and identify priority. My boss Devin is on the Vermont State Design Standards update, the multimodal growth guidance, so providing sort of an RPC voice in that is critical because there's a lot of different ways of looking about it and thinking about broad ways. Sometimes the folks at AOT have a place sort of one way and us sort of at the local level interacting with towns could have a different perspective. So it's important to make sure that's represented there. We're currently organizing a regional mobility summit on behalf of D Trans basically to bring folks in the OND program, which I'm sure you've been hearing a lot about the financial troubles there. So probably is going to be not so much a celebration, more of what's not working about this and what are opportunities to improve or potentially that source outside of this specific funding program to help with some of these trips. So we have a number of committees and working groups, as I mentioned earlier. The Regional Transportation Advisory Committee helps actually provide feedback on the regional plan and project development. I'll get into that in just a little bit, but also serves as a body to help sort of inform towns about what's going on in the transportation space and provide sort of feedback as well as what we're doing. We have the Delaware And Hudson Rail Trail, and so we've put together sort of a council from some of the towns to help look at improving that, building up those trailheads locally, helping sort of connect to the local businesses and advertise these trail friendly businesses. Doing a lot of work with that, we're also inventorying all the culprits on the DNA Trail Trail on behalf of Etrans. We have the airport committee, because some of you probably know Vermont, Rutland County has the largest state airport and the only one that has passenger service, I believe. We're on Southern Vermont Airport, so we've been working a lot with some of the folks around the area to help better utilize that asset. And we had actually a recommendation that's come out of that work for the regional plan, which I'll get to. And then the Regional Mobility Committee, helps bring a lot of this paratransit, older adults and persons with disabilities recovery and job access sort of funds together with some of the community partners that work with a lot of people that access these programs to sort of better identify areas for improvement. One thing that came out of one of these committee meetings that was really positive is we had a group that was called Veggie Van Gogh, and they had basically gave away CSA fresh produce to folks down on their luck. And they basically did it at this big thing at the edge of town, had everybody line up in their cars. And so somebody was like, hey, this folks don't have cars, why don't we get everybody together on a bus? They can all get off and get their share and it'll be a lot more efficient that way. So we worked with Marble Valley and now they have a single bus which basically takes everybody down to access that fresh produce and makes that process more efficient and creates access for folks that lacked it. So we're currently developing the Rutland Regional Plan. We're pretty much done, but it's good to go through this public hearing process. I will bring some of the projects that count on the transportation chapter, just because while the final plan isn't fully adopted, regional transportation advisory committee has reviewed the entire projects list and ultimately ended up voting to endorse that to the full board. So I'll go over a couple of those projects we've identified. Roadway, highway improvements of modernization, 22A and Route 7 in Pittsford and DeBrandon are sort of big priorities for the region. Those are currently program projects, but they're not always moving fast enough for the folks that use it, as I'm sure some people saw there's just another pretty bad crash on 22A just yesterday. It had on crash. And we have a couple other roadways like Route 4 and Vermont 103, which were also identified due to safety issues. In the case of BT 103, the section has really narrow shoulders. It isn't up to modern safety standards. Airport hangar construction. This is sort of like an easy win potential for us because there's currently more planes being faced at the airport than there are hangars. So you literally have people whose planes are out in the elements getting buffeted. So there's literally already demand there. It's just a question of providing actually hangar support that can supply for that demand. We had a couple of key bridges and culverts we identified due to the advanced deterioration as well as the criticality of them for the network. So a bridge over the railroad in Proctor. We also had a major culvert on 22A, which if it blows out would knock out the 22A Corridor. It was very vulnerable to flooding as well as a bridge in Wallingford, which goes over at the which it was knocked out with a pretty substantial impact to emergency response. We also identified improving the rail crossings, so putting gated rail crossings on a couple of key highway rail crossing borders. Right now, for those of you know, there's a section of Route 4 that runs basically on the West of of Brooklyn County, which is almost like an interstate grade limited access highway, but has an at grade railroad crossing running right through it, there's no gates or anything basically. So you have folks driving 65 miles an hour with a train potentially crossing. And then Ethan Allen Which route was that? I'm sorry. Route 4. Oh. It's in rural. I know what

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: you're talking about. Sorry.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: How many accidents have been there?

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: I haven't pulled up the I don't have that directly. But it's a long term

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: it's something we can look into

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: for sure.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Has there been any that you know of?

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Not that I know of, no. But it only takes one as we know. The one recently that was that derailment in North Carolina that was really devastating.

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah, and this is really responding to on the rail plan V Trans had identified a priority to put gated rail crossings on all these major corridors. We took this opportunity to basically identify locally what we saw as those priorities to sort of help advocate with V Trans.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: On 22A I asked the engineer Jeremy Reed the other day about did I say his name right? Yeah. I asked about 22A and said that me and him will be long gone for 22A. So are you guys have any influence to get 22A going? Is that part of your guys' job?

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: We have tried. So we have even held joint meetings with Addison County and Rutland County because obviously this section of road bridges the two counties about all the traffic safety concerns and trying to advance the roadway upgrade sooner. It seems as though what we've heard is the challenge has been right away acquisition primarily is what's delaying the project at this point, which we have offered support for, but that offer has not been taken up on. We know from firsthand experience when local right of way acquisition is done, like in Brandon, where there were hundreds of right of ways acquired for the downtown project. It was done really quickly and efficiently because there's a level of trust with a local person doing that work and having a conversation with a farmer who's up at 4AM and doesn't have time to have a conversation about 500 linear feet of roadway next to his hayfield. It's just, I think that would be a place where we could support and maybe move the needle. But otherwise, our biggest support has been focusing with the towns and sort of coordinating that way.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: The part where the accident was

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: in front of you?

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: The store. Yeah, that was redone a few years ago. Well, repaved it. It was a deal. As matter of fact, were two or three truck accidents while they were paving. Instead of 12 foot lanes, they moved them down to 11.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: That is the trans standard now, 11 foot lengths for speed. But yeah, that was a very quick emergency overlay project.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: That's what that was all about.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: And just to reduce the wheel rutting that was passing. We had several fatalities in a short stint that one student from Fair Haven High School died going to school in the morning because he hydroplane in the wheel ruts. That was intended to just buy us enough time to get this project done. And I don't think it's going to buy us enough time. So that is concerning. Yeah.

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: And the last thing is the agency had identified potential expansion of Ethanol and rail service through Manchester and Bennington, so that's something that the plan supports.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We got a few more minutes. Yeah, this

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: is the last slide. So I'll just go over some of the regional concerns that have bubbled up through working with towns, road format, through our regional transportation advisory council, Sidewalk maintenance is something that was actually speaking with the West Rowan Highway foreman that the big issue for smaller towns is that they don't have the in house capacity to replace individual slabs. Typically they wait until the entire sidewalk is deficient and replace it, which is less efficient. While they're doing things like patching and crack sealing on highways to extend that pavement maintenance, there's no ability to do that with the sidewalk. So that creates a lot of issues where if you were able to do that in the short term, would save you long term money on maintenance because your sidewalk would last longer, you wouldn't have to replace the entire thing. I'm sure you've heard from a lot of stuff, we have a lot of talent for the grandmas, it's just not keeping up with the infrastructure and maintenance needs. Infrastructure cost is going up. For our smaller towns, it's often the biggest chunk of the budget, and the highway budget just keeps going up. And we've seen that while there was a lot of growth historically in Rutland County in the '80s and the '90s, even early 2000s, that has started to slow, and we're not seeing new developments start to bring in extra tax revenue to pay for the increasing cost of the infrastructure burden.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: That sidewalk there, that's considered rough shape right there? All I see is you need it as a watch your step sign, but I'll tell you what, I would love driving over that in the morning getting here. Should see when I drive over going over Bethel Mountain. That would be heaven compared to

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Definitely. Which speaks to that point of not just having not enough money to keep up with road payments.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: It's huge. We do have that. That's Rutland City.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: That's Rutland City? It's on

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: River Street. Yeah. It's right over the

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: road. Yes.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: If yeah. If you have

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: a vision disability and you're in a mobility scooter, you know, Roeland has an aging population, so we have a lot of folks that, you know, require a higher level of maintenance on the sidewalk for

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: it to be useful. Yep.

[Ethan Pepin (Transportation Program Manager, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: These are folks that can't drive as well, so they're pretty frequent users of this. We're seeing some flood resiliency improvements over sort of the MRGP program, a lot of like stone mine ditching on back roads, controlling flows and getting off roadway. But there still are major concerns about, if we have a really big storm event that does a bunch of damage, are we going to get reimbursed by FEMA? Or is there going be money to pay for it? And if not, that's going to basically put the budget underwater. We're seeing this in other areas of the state, so we haven't really seen it in our region yet, but we're kind of bracing for the other shoe to drop on that. Road crew staff recruiting is a constant challenge for towns. People are being poked. There's just not as many people that are wanting to do this work. So that's another reason costs are increasing because towns are finding they have to increase the cost they're paying to these guys to even just keep them on staff and not have a revolving door of performance. Sometimes they have a lot of trouble keeping staff, and then that creates a lot of burden on us because we're going and helping train these guys on things like MRCP, and then they might walk out the door a couple months later and then we're starting all over again. That creates all kinds of issues. And as I alluded to earlier, there's some pretty major rotary projects program that are proceeding slowly. 22 A has been mentioned, but US seven brand in Pittsford is a really big one for our region. I looked in the agency project list, and all of those US seven segments were programmed before 2006, which basically means they changed over their file database system in 2006, and we don't even know how old the projects are. Well, it's been a long time.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: My dad moved the brand new in 1968, and they were building a major highway and bypass through that area back then. He said he would be gone before it was ever done, and he was right. The right of ways still exist in certain places. Comment? Yeah, the

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: issue of the road foreman and sort of the problem of the revolving door, but there's also succession planning. I know this is something in my town that we are confronting. We have a very accomplished practitioner and growth foreman. Know, we're on borrowed time. It's amazing. We don't know what we're going to do when Paul retires. And I was just thinking this is a problem that is replicated across the state. And it seems like we're transforming education, talking about CTE training. This would be amazing to, particularly even the expanded job description that you described, the administrative issues, the flood resiliency challenges. I mean, is, we're a rural state, this is the foundation of everything is our transportation system. And this seems like right for some kind of a job of the future in Vermont.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: We do run a workforce development program, and we have been trying to move some of the programming to directly link to town opportunities. One program is like water wastewater operators, right? Like that is a position that's hard to fill. Road foreman, I can't tell you how many road foreman have delayed retirements in our region because they weren't willing to just let it go. They're like, I've spent my thirty years here maintaining these roads. If I leave and no one fills my shoes, I can't live but myself. And like, no one should be put in that position, right? But it's a harsh reality.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: The So biggest concern is the poaching issue. Think it's for those of us who live right on the border,

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Granville, offer a lot more salary

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: and benefits than

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: it's really tough.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: So that's a tough one.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: And you guys have some young, really good formats.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So you're lucky. You're lucky. I know.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: Well, thank you for the extra time. We really appreciate it. I appreciate you making all the

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: trip all the way up there and all the work you've done all the various state projects as well as your local. Appreciate that our previous presenters stuck around. I think that a little quick speech, guess, is that having born and raised here with a huge effort to where it went to a car culture and everything was as much cars as through as possible. There's some the ramifications of policy decisions, and there's a pretty big work, and I hear from Representative Burke in particular about how things have changed, the effort to change some things in the focus. And it's certainly come a long ways. But you have urban versus rural problems that we have. We have towns that are practically dying. They can't afford to fix their areas. We have urban areas that are a much bigger issue. Transportation needs and public transportation there versus what we're trying to do in rural peace. How we're going to try to share the roads and complete streets. And there's a population that's still trying to get to work in a different, in the old way. So I find that I wasn't 100% sure the best way to go about hearing from the pieces, but where we have members that also are really familiar with what's going on and have a lot of tough questions, it certainly highlighted some of the big struggles of a state, a small state with limited population and limited resources, and where do you spend them? I appreciate the work that now that I did when I to get it to go. Thank you so much.

[Devon Neary (Executive Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission)]: I'm really interested to hear

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: those common themes. We're going to have, we rescheduled the person that was together, the next couple. We're going to have the next presenter in and then we're going to have some pretty discussion about what did we learn. And I would certainly welcome you to continue to share that feedback. So thank you all very much.