Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: We are live. There we go. Good morning. Friday, 02/13/2026, here in house And we're starting up fifteen minutes after the floor, more or less. And we have a return visitor. Andrea, welcome back to the committee. And wildlife crossings. I remember this was asked to be put on. I don't remember exactly who asked, but members asked. They generally receive. And thank you for coming in this morning. I have a witness that I'm not familiar with. So I don't know who wants to start and introduce themselves. Welcome. Happy Friday morning.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Thanks so much for having us. For the record, my name is Jens Hilke. I'm a conservation planner with Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department.

[Andrea (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yep. For the record, you're very right. Environmental policy manager at

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: the Agency of Transportation. And this morning, we're presenting together to give you a sense of our shared work over many, many years on wildlife road crossings between our two agencies. And what you see on screen is really my worst nightmare and really the starting space for our discussion. A foggy road, a large moose and a vehicle moving very quickly. So we're interested in the safety of our animal populations and the safety of the traveling public. I'm sure you all are very familiar with the Agency of Transportation's mission, so forgive me, I didn't include it in the PowerPoint. But for those of you who are new to the Fish and Wildlife Department, we believe in the conservation of fish, wildlife plants, and their habitats for the people of Vermont. That's a big mission. It takes us in a lot of different directions, and it has been helping us to focus on wildlife at the intersection, forgive the pun, of wildlife under oats. So I just wanted to begin with a little refresher perhaps on why this might be of interest to you all. And as I just said, safety is really a primary concern, both for maintaining our wildlife populations and also for the traveling public. Perhaps you didn't know about the larger economic issues here. Nationally, wildlife vehicle collisions result in $8,000,000,000 in property damage every year. Clevinger et al estimates the cost to society for a single collision with a deer at about $7,000 about $30,000 per collision with moose. That not only includes the damage to the vehicle, the time off work, the compensation for the animal and the potential revenue to the department and so forth. And then lastly, stewardship. We have an estimated 24,000 to 43,000 species in Vermont. It is significantly less expensive to handle those populations when they are common and not let them get rare. Things get much more expensive when we're dealing with crossings for rare species.

[Andrea (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, and I'll just add to the stewardship. It's good for our tourism economy, the general health of our overall ecosystems, all things that we're concerned about. But really, when it comes down to our project levels, common species are not regulated, and that is helpful to our projects, both from a cost and time perspective, getting that through. And just why we care and how we care, we're going go through a lot of examples of the work that we've done together and how that manifests in the projects. But we have codified a shared vision between our two agencies at the leadership level. And then at a project level, we're really building off of a lot of work, many years of work that Fish and Wildlife and the Agency of Natural Resources has done to pull into our projects really early in our project design process and be most effective for deciding when and where these wildlife possums, where we can do this most effectively in our projects.

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: Representative Bennington.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Thanks for showing us this, Andrea. You made a comment there, common species that are not regulated. Is that what you said or something similar to that? Exactly what does that mean? A

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: rare threatened or endangered species would be regulated perhaps by federal law or by state law. And so then there are requirements to the interaction between the Fish and Wildlife Department and the Agency of Transport, who, so the bar gets raised in terms of how that situation is handled, generally more expensive. Do we have any rare species

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: that has required road crossing, additional action? I mean, I know even common ones, we're concerned about it. Not serious. Yes, up to your own There

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: number of rare species that we're concerned about with regards to crossing, even bats, for example, the endangered bats will dip down for the road and get hit by trucks. So there are numerous examples there. Thanks. On a landscape level, I just wanted to make sure we understand that we're not just talking about the road segments themselves to maintain connectivity for wildlife populations, we really need to look at a larger pattern here. And so this is a picture of Route 7 in Brandon. And so we really wanna begin with the largest forest blocks, that's where most species spend most of their time. And so you can think of those as core forests, really the anchors of the network for the wildlife movement system. Then there's a set of forest blocks that are incredibly important because of their location. You can't get from the forest block at left to the one at right without using the one in the middle. And so it's a stepping stone block. And so as we, I deal a lot with Act 171, the forest integrity bill requires talents to identify their forest blocks and connectors. And this would be an example of a connector, a smaller forest block that's integrally important because of its location on the landscape. And then there are microconnectors and these are wildlife road process. So here specifically is where the wildlife movement network overlaps with the human transportation network. And so those pinch points are incredibly important, They're not the extent of the wildlife movement system. And then lastly, there's the entire stream network, and that's incredibly important for wildlife movement, particularly in the valleys where there's less forest, the riparian cover stream side vegetation really connects those forest blocks. And of course, where streams go under roads, we have bridges and culverts. And so there is opportunity for appropriately sizing our gray infrastructure to align with this green infrastructure to allow for this network of wildlife movement. We do have a conservation design in the state. It's been around since 2016. It's a science based vision to sustain the state's valued natural areas, forests, waters, wildlife, and plants for future generations. It's a prioritization. It tells us what the most important places are for ecological function moving forward. And it spells out this network for wildlife movement across the state. It's these same places are also going to be important for a variety of other values, economic values, recreation, the working landscape, community values in terms of access to the woods and so forth. So there's a lot packed into this design beyond simply biological diversity and connectivity, but it's nonetheless integral to the design. The design can be broken up into its component parts, and interior forests are those largest forest blocks, those core forests that I described earlier. The connecting blocks, the connectivity blocks include both those anchors, but also those stepping stones. So here's really where at the landscape scale, you begin to see this network of where these connected forests are across the state, and then we add in the entire surface water network. There are multiple scales to the design and at the species scale, we've identified wildlife road crossings across the state. This is based on the amount of forest cover on both sides of the road. So we're not just looking for where the forest blocks are close, but where there's actual good quality habitat on both sides of the road. And so wildlife road crossings are incredibly important for understanding this larger network, where those pinch points are between the transportation network and the wildlife system. And in some cases, these are important for over the road movement, in other cases of wildlife, in other cases, they include transportation infrastructure where under the road movement might be more appropriate. So while they've moved for a variety of reasons, this is a bobcat, on average male bobcats move about 19 miles per day. It's been quite a number of years since I've moved 19 miles day and got up and done it again the next day. But that's what the male bobcats do every day. They move around a lot to have their daily needs met, food, water, shelter, access to mates. But food isn't evenly distributed across the landscape. So there are going to be different food sources in different places at different times of year. So they have a big home range to make use of these different food sources over the course of a year. And so that inherently means they cross a lot of roads. So species like this are something of the poster child for wildlife movement and the interaction of roads.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: So my assumption with the 27 square miles, they have an area, and I'm staying with a The males did, yes. And if there is a road there, it's not like, you know, a half a mile, we've got an overhead passage that you can use, right? So are they doing it by smell? Like do they smell something that they know that, you we have a bridge a half a mile away that they could use to get over to get to the, you know what

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I They're not necessarily going under the road, no. Most animals move at dawn and dusk where there's less traffic, And so there's a tremendous amount of over the road movement. It very much depends on the species, their comfort level with going over or under. There's some species that are making perfect use of our existing culverts, species like mink, They don't mind going through a dark tunnel, they don't mind getting wet, so they're doing quite well. There are other species like bear and moose who will only go through a very well lit tunnel, and so are much more

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: So that's what I mean, it's like if you build the pool, they come type of

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: thing or use it. Yes, that's my question. Yes, and over time, those species do use, I'll show you an example of deer using one of our underpass while the erosion control netting is still on there. So they they find it. Great. Thank you. Represent well.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: How many bobcats are left in the state? I haven't seen one in about a year.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I can't give you an exact number of the number of bobcats. The population is healthy and doing well. There are many, many bobcats in Vermont. They are thriving in places you might not even expect. Even in Shelburne, for example, there is a healthy vodka population.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Give me one,

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I guess. That's not my place for sure. Animals also do bigger movements. This is a male black bear that moved about 140 kilometers. He was living near Bennington, and in response to a bad mast year, beech nuts and acorns, he up and went to Brattleboro and back. That journey did take him across multiple roads. This particular collared bear didn't cross Route 9. In the same study, we had a variety of animals who did cross Route And so some of the movements we see are much bigger. We often see, we will also see, excuse me, dispersing males. Like we saw Canada lynx in Rutland County, what, two years ago last year, who attracted a lot of attention, showed up on a lot of game cameras. That was a dispersing male looking for love and forgive me, the wrong places. He was heading south. Camera data indicates that he wised up and started heading back north. But those big dispersal events are also part of the wildlife situation. And so that's incredibly important from conservation biology perspective, because that is gene exchange between populations and healthy populations have new gene flow coming in. And so that makes for more robust populations. If we have populations that are completely isolated, they live in islands in a sea of development, they will die out. When we have the next disturbance, they're much more likely to blink out. So that gene flow is incredibly important. My point here is this is on a scale that's altogether different than daily movements or even yearly movements, and yet so critically important for the health of our populations. This is a model from the Nature Conservancy that looks at the path of something like 2,300 species of mammals, birds, and amphibians, and their movement in response to climate change. The Nature Conservancy estimates that entire populations are moving north and south away from the Equator on average 11 miles per decade, about a mile per year. That's the entire populations, not just individual animals and about 36 feet up slope. So please notice how the Northeast is a real pinch point for that movement on a continental scale. And so the connected forests that we enjoy in Vermont aren't just important for our animals to get across the road, but for entire populations to reorganize in response to climate change.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Can I ask, are the different colors, species? Yes, mammals, birds,

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: mammals and pigs. So a whole heck of a lot of amphibians. Yes. Yeah, and we'll talk about those in a few slides.

[Andrea (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So just bringing the transportation aspect into this. This is a typical project for us. We have a culvert there. You can see the old structure. And we have a choice when it needs to be replaced. We can line it. Sometimes we line it, sometimes we replace with another culvert, or we're looking to replace it with a bridge. And we've been learning a lot in the last couple of decades about sizing our structures, especially in terms of climate change and resilience. We want to design towards bank full width. So if you see in the top picture there, you can see the stream normal flow is outside of the culvert boundaries, and that sort of dictates how big we want to go with a structure. And we've been working closely, especially after tropical storm arming with ANR's river scientists and biologists, to size our structures so that they are not just based on hydrology and hydraulics, but also on passing sediment and debris is particularly important for resilience. But when we design to those standards, we're not just designing for resilience, it's an added benefit that we have better aquatic organism passage in our streams and also provide for terrestrial passage underneath structures like that. So this is another project that we have a corridor along Route 12. We had five undersized structures in this area that were in need of replacement due to asset condition. Four of them were identified as being in those high priority areas that Jens talked about. So we have all the information that they have put in over the years. We use that during our resource ID process. It's really early on in the scoping process. And at that point, we can identify that this is a critical area for particular species. We obviously knew it's in our repeat damages that we keep track of for resilience, so we knew that we needed to size up and we knew that there's good habitat around there, there's specific species that we wanted to design certain aspects into our project, and by doing that really early in the project, it helps designers accommodate that early, really can speed along a project and make sure that we're designing for more than just hydraulics, but all the different things that we need to do in that area. So, yeah, don't know if I don't know about this. Oh, I guess I would

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: just say the only other

[Andrea (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: part to mention about that with the whole benefits of resilience and passage for wildlife, this is a culvert that is also on a resilience improvement plan. So we identify it as a place that needs a bunch of these areas, like I said, where the repeat damages, many of the structures that are along this corridor needed to be increased for resilience, but also now allows for passage of all kinds of organisms and threats to animals as well.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: We had a public nukes in Bloomfield that's up and headed to Faeston and then headed back to Bloomfield and was within a few 100 meters of these structures. In that case, went over the road, but we're very optimistic that these structures will allow for under the road. Here's one of those structures, Bridge 84, and for those of you who commute Route 12, the traffic light's gone, and this beautiful structure is built. And so please look at the right, you'll see that there's a wildlife shell, and that's really typical of the type of work we're doing together.

[Rep. Candice White]: Just a question on that last slide along Route 12. So in the replacement of some of these culverts into bridges,

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: did you put one in

[Rep. Candice White]: that was tall enough that a moose could cross the road?

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: Yes.

[Rep. Candice White]: In one or multiple?

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Least,

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: believe three of them would support moose maintenance.

[Rep. Candice White]: Okay, and are there cans or anything where you're

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: We monitored them beforehand, and as soon as the construction is done, we'll begin the post construction monitoring. So we found exactly nothing moving through those galleries before construction. So another example is on Route 9.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Sorry, if I might back up to that last one there. You said a wildlife shelf, that little, what, like six foot? Wide is that there?

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: To be able to walk under it?

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yes. How wide is that, like scale wise? Sure, three feet. Okay.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: And that's really what we're looking for. We're thinking about a goat path, not a road. Most animals can move across the It's really deer and moose, and in some cases, smaller animals or reptiles, amphibians in this case, that we're really particularly interested, worried about for wildlife movement. And so that goat path is really all we need. The wider we build them, the more likely we are to have people hanging out under there, and that will compromise the ability to move wild. Thank you. Another example from Route 9, a bridge constructed in 2004, where our two agencies worked very closely together to really oversize this structure to allow for wildlife movement. We did this really with Black Bear in mind, and we see a tremendous amount of bear movement. In the bottom right, you see a whole family, but we also had a dispersing Canada lynx. This is different than the one two years ago, but we had a Canada lynx making use of the same structure. So really exciting, structures in in Far to South we've ever seen one. And so, these structures are working for a variety of wildlife species. This was our first wildlife shelf under I-eighty 9 and Route 2 at Little River in Waterbury. It added about $20,000 to the cost of what became much more than an $8,000,000 resurfacing project, and it has been tremendously successful. We've seen just about every species of mammal use this shelf, and so as I alluded to earlier, at the bottom right is a deer using the shelf with the erosion control batting still fresh. So they really found it very quickly and are already utilized.

[Andrea (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, and so that example, and just to say, yeah, that was from a paving project that was nearby, and most of our projects have, well, not most have waste, but a lot of projects have waste from projects and they need a waste area to bring them to. So it was really a benefit to have that area right there where we could fill in the rocks and create that passage. So that was sort of a pilot, and now we have created a standard. We have always put what we call rubbings over stone fill, usually on the outside of the bridge where the stone is. The stone is there for scour protection, of course. And then we put rubbings to try to create an area where things will grow and have a riparian habitat. Usually, traditionally, underneath the bridge, we would leave the rock bare. And now that we know that we can have this benefit of filling in those spaces and having wildlife move, we've created a standard where in certain places where there's enough headroom that we will do that as a standard. Previously, we had been concerned that if we filled it in vegetation would grow up and impact the substructure. But because of the way the bridge shaves, we know that that doesn't happen. So really, it just provides a benefit to the wildlife movement without impacting our structures. And so it's a standard where it meets those kind of clearances conditions. And again, this is Route 15 in Wauka, and just that small shelf there is all that's needed to really facilitate that movement.

[Rep. Candice White]: Yes, and just to make sure I'm understanding. This well cut example, you've got water flowing through it, so amphibians and so forth can come through on that. Then you're bringing rocks in from leftover from the project construction and using that to build

[Andrea (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: that shelf? Well, the leftover on the previous slide so this whole area, that green area between the pier and what is the abutment, the bridge project is not the project that we're talking about. There was a paving project next to it. And we identified this area as a need, and they needed to waste material. They were able to just waste that material, we vegetated it, and it provides for the movement. All of our projects that have a substructure near the water will have stone fill to protect that from scour, from the water moving by it. So that's just a material that we bring in. It's not necessarily waste. It's just Okay.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: It could

[Andrea (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: be type four, which is big, big rocks, type three is a little smaller depending on what the source of the stream is. And so we always put rubbing on the outside, so not underneath the structure. We're just finding that we can also do it

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: underneath the structure and have that movement through.

[Rep. Candice White]: And then that clearance, again, there's enough clearance so that a moose, something as tall as a moose, can go under there on that goat path, I guess I'm looking at the wool cut.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Even the wool cut. Thank

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: you.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I was gonna say, so is it typical now where you just had the riffraff there for that, wherever possible, just add some soil

[Andrea (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, think it's, if there's a six foot clearance from the rock to the bottom of the substructure, then we'll

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Flatten it out a little bit. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Yeah.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I do have an eye on the clock. I'll just make the that we're working in a variety of areas, and again, it's not just the transportation infrastructure. We need to work with land trust partners, we need to work with land use planning interests to really secure that larger area so that retrans is not building the bridge to nowhere. We have to protect those investments in our assets by protecting the corridor with the larger corridor. And so additional investments, land use planning, land protection are needed. This is an example of effort in the Winooski River Valley and Boltland Waterbury that we're very interested in, in terms of ensuring that that connected, permanently connected land goes all the way down to the highway, to the infrastructure. So I think we should just end with

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: You do have a few more minutes.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I haven't heard the other person come in yet, so we'll So keep we've been working very closely together for a long time, and the highways and habitats training is a great example, where I believe it's been going on since 2004. It received a Federal Highways Environmental Excellence Award, and it's where we bring VTrans staff and folks from the agency out into the field to learn more, to handle these species, to learn more about the biology, and then in the afternoons to go visit the structures that move those animals. And so it's been tremendously effective. The types of conversations we're having with the agency now, where we have graduates of the program in middle and upper management are fundamentally different than what we experienced twenty, thirty years ago, where we were much more only involved in the regulatory process and not as we're working as well proactively together. So we also do have a road collection system where we are crowdsourcing while there's vehicle collision or while they're crossing information. We recommend that drivers don't do this when they're driving. It is set up so you can pull off to the side of the road and enter the data from a safe location. But this is tremendously important for us to learn more about roadkill. Where there's roadkill isn't the extent of what we're interested in. We're very invested in the approach that I outlined early in terms of structural connectivity, where are there trees? Because where animal crossed last week isn't necessarily going to indicate where that dispersing male will be headed, seeking a new, to meet with a new population. So the roadkill data is helpful, it's not the end all be all, but it's really important. And so we're really looking to maximize the crowdsourcing of this information. But here's really what the punchline that I really wanted to make sure we have time for is that Fish and Wildlife Department and the Agency of Transportation have been working on a wildlife transportation action plan for about a year now. We have identified twelve eighty five structures that are ecologically important. Now let me just qualify that. That is structures of every condition ranking. Some of those structures absolutely fine and we're not going to touch them. Some of those structures are in fair condition. It'll be a few years, maybe decades before we have an opportunity to get to those. 67 of those structures are in poor condition, and that is our immediate opportunity for appropriately sizing not only for flood resilience and other hydrologic issues, but for wildlife movement. So these structures overlap with the highest priority areas shown in the Vermont Conservation Design. These structures have good quality habitat on both sides of the road. So we're really thrilled to be working with the agency in a proactive manner on identifying these structures. If

[Andrea (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: you click it again, it just

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: shows Yes, the those are the 67, thank you. And I'll leave you with this sign from Richmond Elementary School. They got really excited about thinking about roadkill and made a variety of signs for us. Other? No. I'll second. Great. And Ms. Chiara. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much. Thank you very

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: much for this, it's fascinating. You can see this could have impacts to And this is a question sort of outside of this, but is there a similar cooperative cooperative program between wildlife and VTrans on beaver habitat and what could be beaver, issues with roadways and whatnot.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: We certainly talk a lot about that in the Highways and Habitats training. We have staff assigned to beaver baffles. We work closely with the agency on those issues.

[Rep. Candice White]: Last one. Kate, thank you very much for this. So it's great to see the collaboration and the plan for bringing this collaboration into some of these replacements that you're identifying. What is the most significant wildlife crossing project that you see in our future? What would be the most important one to take on to serve the goals of allowing wildlife to cross in these important corridors? Is there one in particular, or?

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: We're in a very difficult financial situation, both at the state and federal level, and a lot of that money does come from the federal government. So I perfectly understand that big expenditures here are tough. My top priority would be the Sharkeyville wildlife crossing under I-eighty 9 at Waterbury. We secured $2,100,000 to design it. The agency of transportation decided not to pursue construction funding. They would have had to pay match on that, and that's a significant cost right now. But when that structure hits a small culvert reaches the end of its service life, I would suggest that's a great opportunity to appropriately size it to allow for wildlife movement.

[Rep. Candice White]: And do we have any information in your presentation on that particular project?

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: The Reconnecting the Greens effort, that includes Sharkeyville, Pineal and Little River. Representative Burton?

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Yeah, I was just gonna say thank you, it's

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: so interesting to think about transportation of the animals, the bears, the intersections, and also the relationship between what you're doing and resilience. It's like being culverts and it's all part of the same. You. It's very interesting. Thank

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: you, Representative Lalley, last ones.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Yeah, just an idea. In this era of very scarce resources across our government and in the interest of building awareness, the charming image at the end from the schoolchildren in Richmond. And as remembering how energized many years ago are, you left our planning commission, Jens, when you came and spoke to us about all the bobcats that we have living in our midst in the middle of our village using our riparian corridors as he described it as bobcat superhighway. How about promoting or making it somehow easy, I'm just thoughtful about this committee, for communities to put up those sort of banners that you can see on utility poles and so forth that could indicate the wildlife that is living in their very midst so that we start to change the culture and awareness around this in the same way that it sounds like the culture at VTrans has been changed over a couple of decades by just getting staff out to look at this and see the benefits. I think we have to get, we're keenly aware of this committee about how we have to prepare for a very different climate that is having many impacts. We are trying to upgrade structures and shore up our infrastructure, and we have limited resources for that. And this could help make things a little more visible so that we can be thoughtful and intentional as a state about prioritizing some of these investments in between the disaster events when everybody is like, oh my gosh, we got to respond to this. But helping people understand that things are changing and we need to be doing more. So I just wanted to put that out there as something for you guys to think about and maybe working with your partners at AOT on how that could be something that could be easy to do in our communities. Thank you so much.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you both very much for coming in.

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: It was a great topic for Friday morning. Yeah. Thank

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: you.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Mollie is here for his bill introduction this morning. We're gonna transition right over. And we're going to have three or four bill introductions. We won't be debating them, but we are to ask clarifying questions and hear from the why and the peace. We'll go from there. Welcome, and happy Friday morning.

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: Yeah. Thanks for having me. For the record, Dan Noyes, represent Wilkett, Hyde Park, Johnson and Belvedere. So, you know, we think about how we're looking at land use planning in Vermont and really thinking about where people live, the population coming from the Human Services Committee. I often think about kind of the human services aspect of some of my work here and looking at an aging population, I'm always thinking about like, how do we have greater development for older Vermonters in our village centers and downtowns? And with that comes the fact that we have a lot of state highways coming through our village centers and downtowns. And I was reached out to by the Johnson Select Board, one of the members there. And she was talking about, hey, look, we're kind of expanding our downtown. We've got a village center designation, but there's still some areas around where we're starting to, we have our schools, we've moved our library. I don't know if anyone caught that on his television. It was pretty cool. They jacked up the library out of the flood zone, moved it over closer to the school. And so we kinda like looking at this village centers and downtowns as more of an expanded area. And their concern was that not only being on 15, but adjacent roads to it, they wanted to think more about traffic calming measures and how they can slow people down. So speaking to member of our regional planning commission, he was talking about the time between if someone's crossing a street, car going 35 miles an hour versus going 25 miles an hour, significantly decreases the amount of time people have to react. And so I think what this bill does is it's pretty basic in terms of be a lot of work to really flesh out more of the kind of how it could work legislatively or in statute, but just thinking about how we can give communities the ability to increase traffic calming measures as they see more development, whether it's age specific housing, or in this case, moving a school. Cause a lot of the communities I represent got Route 15 running right through them. These are major areas where people are trying to get to work. They're trying to get to Morrisville or if they're coming down from Eden or Lowell, they're coming through North Hyde Park, you know, and there's been a lot of community input around how do we increase development in these downtowns and more central areas for our population, whether it's new homeowners or looking at, like I said, age specific house. So I put this bill out, just trying to address the concerns of our select board and the work that they can do and allowing them to have a little more ability to put in some traffic calming measures in their communities. So happy to answer any questions.

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: Representative Keyser. So thank you very much, Representative Noyes. I grew up in the town of Proctor. Okay. And as far as I can remember, it has been 25 miles an hour. Why? I don't understand this because there's been other motions towards trying to make village centers. But I lived in a town for forty years and they

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: had 25 miles an hour.

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: Yeah. I mean, so basically what they're saying is, if you posted at 25 and we don't have constant traffic patrol, are people gonna be going 25? If it was, what does that look like? So addressing their concerns of allowing them some more ability to slow people down was what they're trying to do. And I'm representing my What Johnson Select board

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: I'm trying to understand is there appears to be, and I don't understand it, 35 is the lowest you can go in a town. I don't get that because I grew up with one that was at 25, and you always, well, in Route 3 all the way through from north to south is 25 miles an hour.

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: So anyway. So help me with this. So the lowest they are allowed to do is 35? No, can they go to 25?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: It's actually 20 something.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: It's available to,

[Rep. Chris Keyser]: is what I'm saying.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: It very depends on whether the town has control of the state highway, owns the state highway or not. In Hinesburg, we don't own the state highway, so therefore, 30 is they're not going to allow us to change it.

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: Okay. I mean, I think what this does is just allow communities to have a little more input in addressing speed limits and other traffic calming measures. I mean, I think as we really look to increase development in our village centers, then, you know.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: Yeah, currently this is something that is allowed under statute to set the speed limit sort of at will if you are a designated downtown. And we have testimony this week. There's very few of them. There's maybe like thirty, thirty five.

[Rep. Chloe Tomlinson (Clerk)]: I don't remember off the top

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: of my head. But it's a surprisingly low number.

[Rep. Chloe Tomlinson (Clerk)]: And we're going be getting

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: the good news is we're going to be getting, like, five or six more coming online. Yay. That is so far that is, you know, that is the only thing. And and, you know, it I I don't know historically what are some of the reasons for this. I would love to find that out. But I do know that if you have downtown designation, it is it is you are also at entitled to apply for funding to make the design changes to the context that would reinforce these safety features. So we seem to have a policy where we have tied the ability to have safe, productive, pleasant, convenient conditions to the ability to pay for those. If you just want to have that, you aspire to have that, you think you ought to have that, because it's what most people think is common sense in the context of places where people live, especially older people, we're not yet allowed to do that. So I have a bill that is similar to yours that makes a similar policy proposal argument for the same reasons because of how we are rethinking housing and health care delivery and where seniors are going to live and all ages communities and productive communities too. So we have the opportunity to capture more grand list, which we desperately need.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Doctor. Lundweiss, the communities in their discussions in this area, how much is enforcement involved in the community, and how do

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: you see

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: that in terms of this related to this issue?

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: Yeah, I mean, Yeah, good question. I don't really have a good answer. Happy to connect with the law enforcement, but I believe, obviously, I know that Johnson and Wolcott pay for added sheriff patrol. So yeah, there's definitely discussion with the sheriff on, you know, speeding and what they're getting for their money. But this just might be another tool. Like, obviously there's only so much resources a community can put into paying for traffic control in their village centers and downtowns. If there was other tools available, I know that when we were looking at a village center designation for Wolcott, one of the things that came up was just put a sign up that said entering the village of Wolcott. And actually that would slow people down. You know

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: I know I'll dismiss that traffic calming things actually can work without the presence of enforcement. But I also know that we've taken pretty significant testimony on the lack of interaction between enforcement and

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: fractions. Yeah, fair enough. I'm sure if you go, I mean, even here in Montpelier, we've all walked on the streets and seen people moving right along, getting to where they

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: need to go. We've also heard something, I don't see our next bill presenter here yet, so I don't mind going a little bit We're not quite at that time yet. There's been some places that have tried speed limits at different times of the day. In other words, when you have a heavy commute morning, the speed limit is 35 through the town, and through the rest of the day and the shopping time period that the speed limit may drop. And then at commute time in the afternoon, it may go back up. Ever heard anything like that?

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: I mean, without really visible signage, I think that could be confusing to people in the community. Like, okay, is it twenty five today or is it thirty? What time of day is it? So you'd really need to invest in some signage so that people understand what the current speed limit is. Sometimes, yeah. Like a school speed limit. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Represent Burbank and then Representative Quote.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: You want to ahead? Yeah.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: I think you might get some form in. So I know we pass weekly. There's a school, so you reduce speed from 100 to 107, which is April. They have a flashing light that you know of, okay, I need to step down to twenty five now, because school is in its fucking bit of time before now, or school

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: like Yeah, and

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: we see that at Memorial Union, on Route 15 in Hyde Park, so. Those are 15. Yeah.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Well, I think Representative Burke was next, then over to you.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Yeah, I just want to say, I've, for a long time, have been in favor of giving communities the opportunity to, a field that's below 25, you know, within sort of designated village center or whatever, just, you know, we've so often prioritized the hectoliter movement as the priority and we need to share the road and respect what's there. I think it's a matter of getting people to slow down to respect what's there instead just passing through. At the same time, just keeping the traffic flowing, maybe a little bit of minutes of slowing down is not gonna impact some of these people damage.

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: Yeah, and we often, a couple of my communities don't have sidewalks where their village centers are. Johnson does, but go up to Woolkit, there's no sidewalks, or North Hyde Park, so.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: The car is slowing down, and makes it safer for everybody. The driver too.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Would say what you bring up, it's been discussed a lot in this committee, and there's a lot of support from, you mentioned the Regional Planning Commission, who just had presentations from all the regional planning commissions, a number of them, majority of them, think. And they all said sort of traffic calming, entering villages, in town centers, is what people want and is critical. And even with the speed limit change, I mean, and I could argue each of these coming into town, if it didn't have a flashing sign that told you what your speed was and whether you know, because you see some of those. I think in Bristol where they they own that part, they've put up those signs. And, you know, if you're speeding, it flashes and lets you know that you're speeding. Not that it's gonna stop everybody, but I would say the majority of the people tend to respect that type of construction.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: Represent Casey? So so right now, this what's the speed? What's what's what's the speed? It's a I think it's 35. And so you wanna slow it down. Well, I

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: I think it's more about allowing communities to really look at traffic patterns, you know, and where they're seeing development or, you know, like moving the library, right? So like, I think it's more about making it easier for municipalities to kind of make these decisions, especially, around infrastructure that would have more foot traffic or more people, more parking. So more, I mean, I think that's really where the select board wants to go with this, to just give them a little more ability to make these decisions.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: I guess I just I kinda worry about, you know, commerce a little bit, you know, slowing them up. Those guys got a job

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: to do. No doubt.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: So I just Yeah. You're looking for 10 miles an hour or you're looking for I'm

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: not I'm not looking for any mileage. I'm just saying, you know, what could what could it be? And that would be this committee would, you know, kind of flesh out more of the details I would I would recommend. I'm mainly thinking about representing my community that has reached out to me and saying, Hey, look, we could use a little more ability to look at traffic calming in our village centers and downtowns. And that's all. So does this bill have a limit of how low you go? So if you

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: can go down to five miles an hour, it'd be short.

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: Would No. A community set five miles an hour? Yeah, they I don't necessarily think that that would be don't think that would It's

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: a sound factor, I agree.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: But but the I'm just saying that it sounds like Yeah. It's kind of vague in it than you should have. So I just

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: you know what?

[Rep. Candice White]: Yeah. Representative Noyes, thank you for this. It's just echoing, representative Pouech. What you are looking for has been repeated by many regional planning commissions who have come in in the last couple of days. I think almost all of them have said their talents want this. And I would say that three of the five towns I represent are all looking for the same thing: ability to lower the speed limit and to put in traffic calming measures, whether those are speed bumps or whatever. So I'm in support of this, and I'd love to see our committee look into it further.

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: I definitely would leave it up to you all to work out the details. Five miles an hour is not. I don't think that's helpful on Route 15 in a Wood Center. But it's 25 by a school that's right on the side road. I exactly know how the statute works and what is allowable in the communities. But as I said, this is a community reaching out to me to sit in this chair and make their pitch to this committee that can really think about this work. Just as it was something around human services, it would be down in my committee.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay, anybody else? Representative Lalley, who are waiting on our next one, so we get

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: a few extra minutes on this. Just wanted to

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: follow-up with what Rep White said about the RTCs. They offer a lot of expertise to communities to

[Rep. Candice White]: help put them on

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: a path towards this, including authoring the speed studies, which is one of the first thresholds that has to be crossed with this. But then oftentimes the finding will be, well, the desired speed limit does not match the design conditions of the road. Then what do you do? What are some of the potential opportunities? How achieve do that level of friction on the segment of the roadway that you would like to control the speed, the traffic calming measures that Red Flight was mentioning. So just putting that out there that RPCs, this is bread and butter. They do this all the time. They are very good at it. Thank

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: you very much. Thank you. Have a wonderful weekend. Pardon me? I said have a wonderful weekend, and don't forget tomorrow's Valentine's Day. Yes, good idea.

[Rep. Dan Noyes]: I didn't talk about inspection stickers.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I've made it through. Almost. Almost to the end. Cheers. Thank you all for your work.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Good morning, representative Chittenden. Good morning. We are having a bill introduction of yours.

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: This is the short form one. Right? It should be so speak clear. 51

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: up on our wall there. With a pink dot, which means it came this

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: year, not last year. It definitely came. It came like

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: a week ago or something, probably.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: And this is the intro.

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: Pulling Yeah. It up. It should only take a minute because it's short. So I'll explain what the concept is behind the short form bill. So it's called it has a very long name for a short form bill. Yeah, I know it's loading. It's like taking

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: a hundred years to Oh, you're here.

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: It makes sense. No, it's it's on my phone now. Thank you, though. So it's called an act relating to establishing pilot programs related to highway services for electric vehicles, stabilizing and supporting public transit, and establishing a Vermont rideshare service. What do I mean by this? So what I'm hoping is that when you take up the T bill, because I know that that's how this committee generally works, a lot of your action is through that one bill. That's why it's a short form. So maybe this concept will inform the t bill. That you would consider some kind of pilot program. And I believe there may be other bills out there floating around right now with pieces of these things in them too. So I just wanna acknowledge that. Create a pilot program within the AOT that would provide incentives for existing gas stations to install electric vehicle supply equipment together with the expansion or addition of facilities and services at these stations that promote the social drivers of health for individuals traveling in electric vehicles. I would say traveling in general, because it doesn't have to be just for the electric vehicles, actually. So the idea is that our modern gas especially in a place like Vermont, tend to be more than a gas station. There's still those little gas stations that you just stop at and there's a little booth or something. But generally, you go inside and there's a convenience store and a Dunkin' Donuts or something and a little seating area and bathrooms. In some places, there's truck stops where people can take showers and stuff. And I've noticed in various parts of the state, not just in Chittenden County, but in other areas, that they become hangouts sometimes. Like the elders will hang out at the table eating, drinking their coffee and talking and stuff. And so it's expanding on that concept that our fuels facilities could be incentivized in some way to not just provide petrochemicals, but electricity for electric vehicles. And then if people are going to be waiting, even if it's twenty minutes, for an electric vehicle to charge. I don't know the average charge times for the record. I don't have one. But I don't think it's less than twenty minutes usually, that they could be taking care of themselves and build community so that people could be hanging out at gas stations or whatever we call them, service areas, maybe that's better way to call them. So that really, really is the idea of that, just to incentivize expanding the fuel that's available for sale, but then also encouraging them to think bigger about the services they're providing the community. And these could be things they sell. So I'm not saying that we would be asking business owners to give things away free. It's just more like to offer more options to people to receive services at their service areas. Or maybe the state working with them to provide some stuff at the service areas, kind of how we give out free coffee at the travel stops and stuff.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: What do you mean by services? What are

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: you talking about? What's your definition of services? At the very minimum, it would be petrochemicals. It would be electric charging stations, perhaps food and restroom facilities. But perhaps some people decide to open inns at their gas stations like it used to be when you traveled by stagecoach, so people could stay overnight while their car charges. Or perhaps it could be that they have entertainment, that they have nightclubs or day clubs or a yoga studio or a sauna or, I don't know, I would encourage people to think big. Like, what could you add to your business model to help you bring in additional revenue and diversify your income while providing a positive contribution to the community?

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: In the beginning of your statement there, it sounds like you're describing a convenience store.

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: It's like yeah. It's like the next generation of a convenience store.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: Where have you seen this before?

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: I haven't. I'm proposing pilot programs to experiment and explore. Yeah. I guess I've seen similar open one. I have four other jobs right

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: now. We've

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: got room for

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: one more. If any existing owner wants to work with me as a consultant, I'd be happy. But the idea here is maybe the state creates grants or some way to promote this. At the very least, it's just adding electric charging to where gas is being charged. That's really the minimum I'm asking. The next thing would be a pilot program to stabilize and expand public transit systems. We see that our public transit systems are in peril, at least it seems like that to me. They are underutilized, And so then what happens is they cut services, which make them less appealing, and it's a downward spiral. And it does affect more people than we may hear in this building, because number one, a lot of the people couldn't get here because they're taking public transit to begin with. Number two, they don't have access to a lot of resources to people using public a lot of people, not all, but a lot that use public transit. So they're not able to advocate for what it means to them. But there are some people who their whole life revolves around one bus that they have to take to get somewhere on time, to get to work, to get to their appointments, to get their things done in a day. If they miss the bus, they're homeless for the night. And we saw in Burlington over the summer, in the winter not so much, over the summer, people being homeless overnight because they missed the last bus if something goes wrong. And they have nowhere to they don't have money for a hotel. So they're sleeping outside all night or at the bus station waiting for the morning bus. You know, or when I got back from a trip on a Sunday night, I had no clue service had been cut and all the Ubers were like $100 So I walked halfway home from the airport till I got to the urgent care, at which point the prices plummeted to $7 and then I took an Uber home. So that's a little trick for anyone. Take the Uber from the urgent care, they price them lower. Well, I'm laughing because it's ridiculous. It's good that they priced them lower from medical facilities, but it's sad that on a Sunday night, at a reasonable hour, I couldn't take the bus home from the airport.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: That's $93 for your luggage. Or something

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: like that. Oh, for the luggage? I had a carry on. I got the ticket with the carry on. So that being said, what this section proposes is that we support the creation of incentives for individuals to use the existing lines, to create opportunities to make, including opportunities to win prizes or earn discounts at local businesses. So I'm just trying to think creatively about how do we make it fun to ride public transit in a way that doesn't just support the transit system, but supports businesses along transit corridors. And I'm not asking the business owners to give things away. This might be more like the state says The pilot program is investing a little bit of money in some game you can play by taking the public transit systems. It's just an example of how it might look. And then giving these stores money to buy gift certificates. We're supporting the local businesses along the transit corridor and then encouraging people to use the transit corridor to visit those businesses. This program could also support so this gets a little futuristic, but there are some examples in the world support public transit agencies examination of the use of autonomous vehicles. I was waiting for the ominous music to play in the background to supplement or expand existing services, including by providing more frequent service, extended service hours, or connections between existing routes. So what I'm imagining here is like, imagine if there was, as autonomous vehicles become more feasible, because I know on some roads they're not right now, but on some they are, that maybe our transit agencies, I don't know if that's what you call them, but our public transit agencies, they're given some funding to purchase fleets of autonomous vehicles. A fleet, I don't mean hundreds, maybe it's three in one area and five in another. But imagine if a person could I'm trying to think where I was traveling. It might have been Colorado where it said, if you need a ride, call. And I was like, what? And they had a system where if you're at a bus stop, you can call this number and someone comes and gets you instead of a bus that's running along that route constantly and it saves money. So imagine if you could somehow, I know with Green Mountain or GMT, as Green Mountain Transit, the Chittenden County one, there's an app you use now, which I won't get into because it frustrates me, but the app can be used to pay for the ride. What if the app also had a feature where you're like, I need to get from this line to this line, and it takes two hours to do that with the bus, but you could call some autonomous vehicle to get you there in five minutes? Some kind of way to use autonomous vehicles to fill in the gaps or provide service after hours. Imagine if 20 fourseven in Vermont, you could call an autonomous vehicle through the state. So it's like an AI Uber that's publicly owned or something. So I don't know. It's far fetched right now. But the first step would be giving the transit agencies some funding to explore using autonomous vehicles to fill in the blanks in their service. Then the last piece would be, it's similar to this, creating a pilot project within the AOT to establish a state operated rideshare service that could provide it says would provide on demand transportation to individuals, and the revenues could be used to support the existing public transit agencies. So what I was imagining is imagine if AOT contracted with someone or did it themselves, however they choose, whatever, is more cost effective, to have an Uber system, like a state rideshare service. So Vermonters could sign up to be riders, and in their free time, or it could be their job, they could offer to work for the AOT or whoever the contractor is. And then instead of this big international company paying the driver $3 and taking $17 or whatever they do sometimes, maybe it's not always that bad, but I've talked to some drivers and it's bad. Sometimes they get a very small amount with a fee, like the $50 you pay, they're getting $10 The state could pay the drivers more fairly, and then the profits could go into funding public transportation. So the idea is people who don't want to take public transportation or it's not available could call the public rideshare service, which would employ Vermonters and pay them well, and then put the profits into the state's public transit system. So it's a way to kind of keep the money local, and instead of extracting wealth from the labor of Vermonters, the Vermonters will get their labor compensated at a better rate, and the profits would support the people. That's the concept behind that. I try to not be too wordy, but I think you get the drift.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: I wonder how that would work out in the rural areas. We heard of a community yesterday, Somerset has three people in it. So I'm assuming they have a car.

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: Yeah, I think in an area like that, it would be hard to make it work. But what if someone wants to get to that community from Burlington? How do they get there right now? It's probably really hard without renting a car, but perhaps with a state rideshare service, someone who lives in somewhere between Somerset and Burlington, I don't know where Somerset is. Maybe they see this ride, they're like, You know what? I'm going to get paid $100 or whatever to drive and pick this person up Burlington and bring them there. That's worth it for me. You can order it. It can go up on a board and people could be reviewing this regularly. Mean, I would even consider, if you got paid well enough, giving someone a ride I live in Burlington, out to the country, and then I drive home. So I mean, I could see it helping an area like that, and maybe not for the residents, but for visitors and their family who comes from out of

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: state or whatever. People in Burlington don't have vehicles.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: I come from a rural area. Don't

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: I think I think most have them. This isn't just about Burlington. This about residents and visitors alike. It's just about ways of increasing access to transportation in creative ways that invest in the local economy and not our transportation needs be a source of extraction for these big companies like Uber and Lyft? I see a hand I'm not in charge of.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Yeah, Brad, I really appreciate how he's gonna take these three problems. Thanks. Do you know about Beau Vermont? No. It's a state of ridesharing.

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: It's a what?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: It's a state of, it's a Rutland sort of ridesharing. It's, there are trip planners, there's ride sharing, there's, you, carpool match ups, are a bunch of things like that. So if you wanted to get somewhere, they might tell you, I went on it once to see about getting by train it was gonna take twenty four hours, but you know, because you had to go. But it will give you some, there are some resources and they also will support like van pools for people who are going to the same place of work, have a van for a group of people and set up so that one person was dummy driver. Anyway, just something to explore.

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: Well, it's something good to know about too to refer people to if they're having issues with transportation.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: It's not solving all problems, but it's there, which has been there for a long time.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: We'll be the last one. Thank

[Rep. Candice White]: you, representative Chittenden. So, yeah, I really appreciate your creative ideas. And on the pilot program for highway services for electric vehicles, we had some testimony earlier this week and actually learned about, I believe it was two locations that are currently open in Vermont, one in Richmond, I want to say. I can't remember if it's a Maple Fields or a different brand, but it is a traditional convenience store with traditional gas pumps, and they have just invested in level three chargers for the public. Because I absolutely need more like that, and I think it's a great business model for these gas stations moving into the next century, and also expanding our network. But I like the idea of incentivizing that in some way. Are some state programs that are working on establishing more level two and level three chargers, but I don't think there's anything working directly with the private industry.

[Rep. Chittenden (first name unknown)]: Yeah, really see it as a way to help existing business owners through this transition and energy that we're going be going through for a generation. It's not going to be quick. It's like, instead of putting them out of business, let's help them stay in business. Thank you very much for giving me time.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Have a good weekend. You too.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: Thank you.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Do I understand that Representative Burke is gonna lead?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Yep, and we'll do this really fast.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: But we may, for those who can, we may feed into lunch

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: time frame a little We'll see how we pick

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: it up from there. Let's get started. This is not a short one. Let's eight get

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: 63 is what we've done for a few years, put some proposals that are not likely to show up in the T Bill for consideration to incorporate into the T Bill. So it's putting out a bunch of ideas in different areas that may be able to receive consideration, customer need and acceptance or not. Basically eight sixty three is related to transportation initiatives to improve equity infrastructure, increase resiliency, reduce emissions. So in the introduction to Bill, I don't know whether I should read through it, but it's a lot. It includes a fee on retail deliveries, permit municipalities to adopt the local action tax on sales of gasoline and diesel. We've talked about this, appropriate funds to various transportation programs, amend the primary purposes for which transportation alternatives program grants will be issued, we have talked about that, require electric vehicle supply equipment that is available to the public to use credit cards, required that electric vehicle charging available for public use for real time status information, establish laws to permit property owners to install electric vehicles, I don't know if I should keep going on this, establishing income tax credit for the purpose of certain electric vehicles. We'll talk through these different things. It just gives you the idea that there's a lot of things that are, some random and some not, to put in there. So inspection one, retail delivery fee. So we have had a number of talks, I've said this before in the committee several times, we've had a number of transportation studies for the years and they've been done by other entities too, like Ben CEO, that one, if we are having a revenue shortage, how do we do with it? We've had transportation funding studies that we paid for that have recommended certain ways to And close the I just feel like we just need to talk about them. And so that's why this retail delivery fee, although I'm finding that it's getting me on a very negative bunch of us who signed on to this very negative list that's circulating amongst certain elements of the state. But anyway, that's just what it is. I'm not going to go into detail, it's written out here and I think it's something we should at least consider. And that's in section one and section two is also this one big deposit, you know, probably in use of these, and section three is the local option taxes, which is the exact language for H766 which I sponsored at the request of my select board to see how we could get some money into the town offers. And that is being discussed right now and we're finding that it's not really going to be feasible to tax the gasoline because the distributor doesn't differentiate where the gas is being delivered, but we are discussing the possibility of maybe adding on to local option meals and group meals and room stacks. So I would like to, at some point, get some testimony on that to see whether that's an option, I can sort of bring that to my community. Then we go to section four, and Representative Tomlinson is going to talk about section four, five, page six.

[Rep. Chloe Tomlinson (Clerk)]: It's on page 11. It's section four. Thank you. So if you're following along on the bill is introduced, we're section four of page 11. Sorry, didn't. It's okay. Yeah. So section four relates to appropriations. And generally, the goal of this section is to maintain level funding for various aspects of our public transit program and other active transportation programs. So you'll see it supports level funding for both our rural and urban transit providers. It also proposes effectively level funding for better connections with mobility and transportation innovations, MTI grants, bike ped facilities, the Downtown Transportation Fund. Particularly, I want to highlight the appropriation proposed for Drive Electric Vermont, as I don't think that that's included in the budget currently. And so that's something that we'd like to hear more testimony on and understand better the value that Drive Electric Vermont provides in supporting access to EVs for homeowners who wish to have access to more affordable and clean options for transportation. So that's the section four. Section five, which is on page 13, is related specifically to the Transportation Alternatives Grant Program, also known as TAP. So this is a part of federal funding related to transportation alternatives. We heard already some testimony about this grant program. Previously, I think it had been more of an eightytwenty split. It was mostly it's intended for transportation alternatives. In 2024, a change was made such that it was allocated fiftyfifty to transportation related programs and then environmental mitigation programs related to clean water. At this point, as we all know, our transportation fund is in a difficult position, and that's really challenging many important transportation funding priorities. At the same time, there's alternative pots of funding for environmental mitigation projects. And so this proposes shifting the balance of funding from fiftyfifty to eightytwenty and prioritizing transportation related programs, specifically bikeped infrastructure and Safe Routes to School program, which has been ongoing, though it doesn't have state support right now, but has been only available for Safe Routes to Schools in Chittenden County because CCRPC is funding it. So this would allow more sort of statewide support for those programs in a more resource strapped moment. So that's something we heard a bit about already, we could get more testimony to understand different perspectives on that shifting balance of that grant. That's section five. And I think section six-

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: do section six through 10, which is primarily around electric charging. I'll introduce myself, I'm Phil, I enjoy donuts in the morning. Anyways,

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Fuddler's notes. Yeah, yeah, right.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Bingo card.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: That's true. It's not my bingo card. Clearly, we've had some testimony already. And from my realization, and hope the rest of this committee had seen, that there's a mix of laws and rules and whatnot around electric charging. And I think these next sections will talk about pieces of it, but overall, we really need to understand what is a public charger and what's required if it's a public charging for public use. And then we have chargers put in maybe ACCD

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: in

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: condo associations or homeowner associations, and what are the requirements around there? And then third are the private ones. So part of this is saying, hey, if it's a public charger, you need to, you shouldn't require that you have to have their app, and that's the only way to pay for it. Just like going to a gas station, you need to have opportunities. And we didn't think that it was in our law, but there are some laws deep in our laws that sort of say, doesn't specifically say charge card, but it does say alternative methods, not just one method. It can't become a club and you have to be a member of the club to use the charger. So that's part of the first little section. Then there's a part in there which is called right to charge and I don't want to mess it up by, you know, saying this what we're trying to do here is force landlords to allow chargers, but we need to define how kind of associates put in chargers and what the rules are around them and how a landlord could put in a charger and how they would deal with it with their renters, whether they charge for it or it's part of their rental. So all of that all needs clarification so we can expand the charging infrastructure. Let me just see. And in section 10, as we go on, it's all about HOAs and condos how they go about doing. So I'm saying what we really need to do with these sections, which is trying to define what the rules are around charging infrastructure.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: And I'm taking section 11, appropriations for vehicle incentive programs. Section A allocates $3,000,000 to LiveSmart. That was just sort of put in there as a placeholder. I know that there's not that money, and I don't believe that the Capstone Community Action that administered that program so wonderfully really has the capacity right now to do that, which is really sad because it was providing affordable transportation options for very low income people. So at some point, I just want to keep that idea alive and just wanted to put it in there. In B, dollars 70,000 is appropriated to the purpose of funding the e bike incentive program. We've had that e bike incentive program. It has, I believe, run out of money, probably Andrea knows that, but that was sort of a pet project in mind. We've got funding going and I think that it does give affordable transportation options for people who'd like to get rid of one car and for a family like perhaps to scale down a little bit cut their transportation costs, which is really one of the things we're trying to do. So that's all that's there in section 11 on page 25, that's the extent of it. So I would just say I'm not really advocating for the ceremony for the moment it's hard, but I am advocating for lethal. And now we get to the twelve

[Rep. Candice White]: and thirteen. Mr. Chair, move to the witness chair since I'm not on the camera, if that's okay for our many viewers.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Just let me lean back and you're right there on the corner. You got good news. Go ahead and move. You want

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: me to go to your choice. Time

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: to get up.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: We'll just follow-up. All right, here we go.

[Rep. Candice White]: Candice White, for the record, thank you for having us. Just to make sure, so we're discussing Bill H63, which is on the committee page under Damian Leonard for today, in case anybody was having trouble following. So I have four brief parts to this bill. The first one is regarding electric vehicle tax credits. So we have heard that car purchases for used cars and new cars are down, and we understand that incentives have definitely had an impact on car sales in the state of Vermont. And we know that funding has dried up. And so this proposal includes basically a nonrefundable tax credit for the purchase of new and used electric vehicles. So proposing a $5,000 tax credit for every new electric vehicle sold at retail and a $2,500 tax credit for a used electric vehicle sold. So we're not asking for an appropriation, although it would affect the taxes coming into the state. So probably would have to be looked at by ways and means. But just the real idea is to somehow restart these incentives so that we can continue to make progress on our climate goals. The second part that I wanna share is So basically, we've talked a lot about public transit and that public transit is suffering for revenue. And we know that we are in the midst of education reform and that is being discussed in other committees. And so this is really asking that public transit systems and school districts meet at least once every two years to explore opportunities for efficiencies. And the idea is, I see in my district, we have half empty school buses driving around. We also have half empty public transit buses driving around. Both are very costly. And we actually saw a testimony a couple of weeks ago where public transit is meeting with healthcare facilities and hospitals to look for efficiencies and make sure that public transit is serving those populations. So again, it's not asking for an appropriation. It's just asking for transit systems to sit down with school transit to look for potential efficiencies, for cost savings, for increased user ridership. And we have discussed this a little bit with the agency and there has been some suggestions like maybe to narrow the scope a little bit by looking at just high schools, not all schools. I really think that's the reasonable way to start is with the high school students. They also mentioned perhaps a pilot program versus just asking for this statewide. Although we do know that certain areas of the state are already doing this, Chittenden County and I think down south.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I'm a board member on Tri Valley Transit and they do this now. They look for opportunities to combine with schools. And in fact, there are a couple routes that students get on Tri Valley Transit to get to school rather than run a school bus through there. That while it's not available everywhere for obvious reasons, there are opportunities there and they can strengthen both public transit and reduce the costs to schools.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Exactly, thank you. So I just lost here. So sections 12 through 15 are related to GED tax credit, not around section 16. I'm sorry, okay. And transportation.

[Rep. Candice White]: So we are education transportation section 16. Okay, correct. Yes, okay. And in response to Representative Pouech, TBT is coming into my district and replacing Green Mountain Transit, and that transition should be complete this summer. And so I'm feeling like in our district, we have a great opportunity to get this new entity coming into our area to sit down with our schools. And we also saw, when we had the youth climate lobby in last year, we had some students in committee who expressed a lot of interest in this type of collaboration. So I'd love to see this move. Moving on to section 17, pollinator habitat. This is just asking the Agency of Transportation to create and maintain pollinator habitats within state highway rights of way in locations selected in consultation with the agency of natural resources. And the idea here is we know that labor in the agency of transportation is very costly. So mowing is one of the many things that the maintenance crew in the agency does. And so looking at our highways, also thinking about the beautification of the highways, I think about this as kind of like the marketing of our state. Know visitation is really important to our economy. And so when people are driving on our highways and seeing pollinator shrubs and plants and so forth, that could be beautifying our highways instead of just having green grass that has to be mowed regularly. Pollinator habitat obviously supports pollinators. And we've seen an incredible decline in that habitat in recent years. And we also heard testimony recently from the agency where they were planning for $150,000 grant from the federal government. I think they had eight to 12 pollinator habitat locations chosen, ready to go. The landscape architect was ready, and that money was pulled back. We know that the agency has already put a lot of planning and effort into this. And so it's $150,000 It's not a lot of money, but I feel like it would make significant impact on our natural resources, on the beauty of the state, marketing the state. Good to Yes.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: Shouldn't we move them I already said this before, but shouldn't we move them away from the road a little bit so our grills aren't getting loaded with pollinators.

[Rep. Candice White]: Well, I mean, are flying.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: I'm sure they're getting whacked with vehicles. I'm sure of it. I just find it hard to believe they're not. But I'm just saying, I just hate to waste money for good intention. And they're getting whacked at vehicles. So vehicles are flipping back and forth at 65, 70 miles an hour. I don't think a bug stands much of a chance unless it had little helmets going on or something to eat.

[Rep. Candice White]: You've got the medians, and then you've got

[Andrea (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: the sides of the highways.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: In clarification,

[Rep. Candice White]: I'm not an expert in a good point, I but think we're seeing many, many fewer bugs on our windshields than we were when we were children. And that's indicative of the environmental crisis that we're in. Okay, my last point, section 18 on page 32, municipal salt applicators. So this is asking the agency of transportation to work with the secretary of natural resources and make changes to the Vermont Local Roads curriculum to create training for best management practices for the spreading of salt on roads, parking lots, and sidewalks. And I think we've had some conversation about salt use, and I think the agency is feeling like they've made some good changes in their policy regarding spreading salt. We know how expensive salt is. We know about the shortage of salt. And we also know what's the damage that salt can do when it gets into our waterways. Making sure that we are following best practices and that we are sharing those best practices with municipalities and with private entities so that we are using the least amount of salt we need to while still maintaining safe roads considering the biology in the state. And that's, I like that.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Okay, I'm gonna

[Andrea (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: think we have

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: You all have a little bit more to do, but we're gonna clarify question.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Are you continuing on? Are we still going? No,

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: no, I still have section 14 and then Kate has section 15.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: If you have a question about what's been

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: the same.

[Rep. Candice White]: All right, I'm sorry, so I kind of jumped out of order.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: I'm done putting all their sections in. I

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: just wanted

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: to know what's going on.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: It's been on Section 14, which is on page 27. And this is just to really study electric bicycles, the clarification of them, definitions, what are the laws we have around. We have class one, two, three, but as we know, I won't say it's wild wild west out there, but there are a lot of different bicycles that don't necessarily meet these categories that are coming out there much higher speeds. When is a driver's license or do you have to be 16 to drive these and where can we sell? I think that in the same way that electric chargers have sort of come before there's any regulatory guidelines around them. These electric bikes, we have some, but now they are expanding and we need to understand and, you know, what laws do we have in place, what do municipalities do, What should the state do? What should our policies be?

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: That's Section 14. I think that's

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: skipped over. Have the last one. Yes. So I am covering section 15, which poses a study of vehicle miles traveled with reduction targets. So in our rural state, we drive over 7,000,000,000 miles every year. This is probably not a big surprise. But we are in the process of implementing landmark land use law, the goal of which is to focus most development in our centers, historic villages, downtowns, and long corridors, which we are hoping to redevelop from outmoded single use into something more mixed use that would promote use of transit and allow people to live within access of jobs and opportunities. So as part of the implementation of Act 181, it seems very timely to have more ways to measure our overall state progress towards goals to increase multimodal opportunities and options, use of transit, and in conjunction with density. And that is what this provision of the bill proposes to do, to have a study that would result in a report to our Senate and House committees on that kind of process for doing this. That's it.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Patricia, do they track this it.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: The agency does track the information and I was able to find historic levels. I have not been able to find where the current information is. So the historic level that I found is from the 1920s through 2014. So in between, I don't

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: know where that is. Interesting.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Other question, Representative Casey?

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: I heard a million dollars and I heard $70,000 How much is the rest of it? How much does all the cost?

[Rep. Chloe Tomlinson (Clerk)]: I'll respond to that. You can see all of the appropriations that are proposed outlined in the bill. There's additionally two different revenue generation mechanisms without projections for how much they would generate because more study would need to be done. And there's a number of provisions that don't require any appropriations. So it's not meant to be a full package that's weighed in the total cost, but we would need to spend time taking testimony on each piece. And a number of them will require more information in order to understand exactly how much they might be able to generate or more precisely how much they might cost if there's not a specific appropriation included. But there are a number of

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: specific numbers in the bill.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey]: So I could add all of the examples, though, there?

[Rep. Candice White]: If you would like to

[Rep. Chloe Tomlinson (Clerk)]: do that, you certainly could. Yeah, the bill is public.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Excuse me. Anybody else have questions?

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Amount or clarifying question?

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Excuse me? I'm sorry.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Casey, if you have a clarifying question for any of them, that would be fine. But opinions and debate is not what we're doing here. If have a chance, if you would like to introduce a bill, we'll do the same for yours. Does anybody have any questions related to or clarifying questions on any of the sections of the bill? With that, unless you have anything else you want to sum up on your bill piece?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Thank you, Mr. Connor. I guess I have to continue to move up. I'm so sorry. That's alright. We had twelve and fifteen on something, so just 12 is the fact that twelve and thirteen. And then 14 is the degree declassifications, and 15 is the study of the equipment. Okay. Yes.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: It's true. Do you have a summary, Katie,

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: that you might be able to share with us at

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, think we could do that.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: Yeah, we have one, but I think it should be

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Or just a title of sections or something

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: like It should be updated a little bit.

[Jens Hilke (Conservation Planner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I'm sure you have something to clarify.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke]: You have a summary, but it doesn't have the section numbers on it.

[Rep. Kate Lalley]: So we'll get that to you.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: I was doing a similar thing. I was trying to make a little notes next to each one so that we can have a summary of it. And we are adjourned to have a