Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Chair Matt Walker]: Here when the little there it is. The little red box comes up, and we're back in house transportation on Tuesday, 02/17/2026. And the rest of the afternoon is on public transit, particularly the urban area. And we have Clayton Clark and his team from Green Mountain Transit in. And welcome back to committee. We'll say that you so much.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Floor is yours. Thank you so much, Chair Walker. With us today, have Nick Foss, our Finance Director Chris Amy Army, our planning director. I was hoping that our board chair, Amy Brewer, would be able to make it, but she has a work that she was not able to follow this afternoon. I was hoping that you could hear from her about her experience as the volunteer chair of the the board of commissioners. For today, I'm gonna give you a news update. We'll be talking about electric battery buses. I'm sure folks have questions. And then the real meat and potatoes is gonna be looking at fiscal year twenty seven and twenty eight. I could tell you I would be really happy with how things are going at GMT if it wasn't for this pesky money situation. We're doing a lot of good work, and Nick is gonna go over the gloomier aspects of of what our funding projections look like. Chris is going to hopefully, we'll have some time to talk about the fare revenue, getting back to some questions that the committee had in 2024 when we returned to fare service, letting folks know a little bit about how our fare system operates, and then we'll have some suggestions for moving forward. And so one of the things that's gonna be different from my previous testimony here with you all is that I'm only gonna talk about urban, and that's because our Franklin And Grand Isle service has already transferred to rural community transportation. Our service in Washington County is gonna be in Memorial County will be transferred seven one. That includes our seasonal service. This really is the source of a lot of my optimism moving forward for GMT and the rural areas that we are serving and have served. I think RCT and TBT are gonna do a great job serving the folks in our rural counties. I think that that's really gonna give us the capacity to focus on our urban service in a way that's gonna be a lot more innovative and will help us meet the moment. So let's get this out of the way. Let's talk about electric battery buses. And so so we had yep.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: We passed this. Because

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: I I didn't get it. Okay. So

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: My apologies. And so for electric battery buses, in November, we were informed of a recall of just the battery component of our buses. And the manufacturer of these batteries, in fact, recalled their batteries and then pulled out of the North American market, unfortunately. And so what with the battery recall, what happened was that to limit to make them more safe, they limited the batteries to 75% of a charge. And one of the things that they had noticed was that there was a higher risk when you were trying to charge a cold battery. And so they set a limit on having charging when the battery was under 41 degrees. And so one of the things that I wanna make sure everybody knows is that we did not purchase these buses with that limitation. Some of what has been reported in the media made it implied that we knew going in that that would be the the situation. Really happy that New Flyer has been on-site the past two weeks, and we're cautiously optimistic that we're gonna be able to get these things charging even with the new safety considerations and, return in service by the end of the month. And, one of the things I wanna let folks know as a reminder, is that our electric battery buses with New Flyer were part of the grant application that we discussed here a couple years ago, and it's a a three year grant cycle. And so the the five buses that were temporarily derailed or part of the first order, there's three rounds of ordering. We've already made our second order, and so we're not able to cancel that order because it's already been made. They will be with different batteries. And so, our expectation when those, arrive is that they will perform better. But we do have a third year, that we will be ordering under this grant, and we are going to take a look to see whether we wanna continue with battery buses based on how easily we're able to get these back on the road and how they perform in the meantime. There's the possibility that we would look at hybrid buses as an option. One of the things that I want to emphasize before I stop talking at you and answer your questions on these is that since November, we have only had to drop two runs in urban. So not routes for the day, just two runs because of a lack of a bus being available. So, yes, it has been really hard to to do all of our service with five buses not in our these five buses not in our fleet, but it has not led to negative impacts for our riders except for just those two two runs. So what what questions I am sure that you all must have questions about this, and I kinda wanna get this out of the way before we dive into the other components.

[Unidentified Representative]: Why even bother with these electric buses? They don't seem to perform well at their best. Obviously, these five are not performing at all. Mhmm. Why not just go to hybrid?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Well, because we don't have the option to do so with the way the grant is set up. First off, for the second round, we've already ordered. And if we were to cancel that order, there would be a fee that we would have to pay that we wouldn't be able to use federal funds for, which would add probably a few million dollars to our deficit, which we would like to avoid. What I can say is that prior to the recall, the buses were actually fully meeting our expectations. And so so if if this ends up being a temporary situation on a twelve year life cycle, then obviously having them not available four or five months is not great. But on the twelve year life cycle, it you know, that's sort of what we expect is that buses will be going in and out of out of service. But I think that you are right that before we make that third order, we're absolutely gonna wanna be seeing that the battery buses are are something that we can rely on. There are gonna be financial penalties if we switch to hybrid that we would have to pay more for, and so so that will be a factor that we'll also take a look at.

[Unidentified Representative]: Why are those penalties there? Because you've committed to electric buses?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Because the, my understanding, and we have, an expert here with Ross, is that the 90%, federal payback rate for electric buses, it's it's 80% with, with the hybrids, and so that we would have to come up with a higher local match. Thanks. Thank you. Representative

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: McCoy, then represent Pouech. So, Art, do you know of any other electric vehicles that are used in other municipalities, be it New York or anywhere that are better than the ones that we have purchased, that we can purchase those types. Now I'm talking more things because it seems weather is an issue.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Well, think that weather is an issue just because of the 41 degrees, but it's not because of the snowstorm that we have.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: No, I think that's strictly I mean, we're Cold. Yes. In the Northeast. So if they're like Boston.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: And so I know that Boston has them. I know that Springfield, Massachusetts is using some. This particular brand or That's right. Are there other Yes.

[Unidentified Representative]: Fact, anyone that don't have

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: this problem? So what I can tell you is that we are going we have gone with New Flyer as the source. There's another major manufacturer, Gillig, and, you know, I don't want to get into the Ford versus Chevy debate over, you know, which is is better. I think that Gillig may have a slightly better, you know, reputation in some areas. What I can tell you is is that we are the only one of New Flyer's customers that didn't already have indoor charging established, and that's why we've had the biggest impact. And so as part of our fit up for battery, it was already scheduled that we would have our bus barn hardened with additional sprinkler systems so that it would be more fire resilient. And then we will be installing indoor charging. And once that happens, which will be before the next winter, then even if this 41 degree constraint is still existing, we won't have an issue with using them. So the new flyers are being successfully used across the country, and we're the only ones that have only the outdoor charging that's creating the situation. Okay, so it

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: is not the weather. I mean, they could work in, say, 20 degree weather. Absolutely. Just because you can't charge them at 41 degrees Exactly. Very low. Exactly. Okay. Yep.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: So so when we bring the the buses into the bus barn, they'll be able to maintain that, over 41 degree, temperature, and they'll accept the charge. Okay. Thank you. A

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: couple questions. One is just how do the drivers or drivers and passengers, you know, what's their experience with battery electric bus? And then the second one might be for Nick on operational costs of diesel. You gotta buy the fuel, but, you know, battery, you got other things. Just those so those are the two questions.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Excellent. So I'll answer the the first one or the second one first. We actually had somebody do a study to look at the costs of our diesel new flyers that we received at the same time as our battery new flyers. And we found that the cost to keep on the road and maintain at least for that initial six months was actually cheaper for the battery buses than the diesel buses. And so we do expect that we know that there's a risk here. And but if if these work, they should work cheaper than our diesel buses. And on the as far as the driver preference, what I can tell you is is that they haven't been super popular, but I think that that is more because we have gone in the direction of having a barrier between our drivers and the public. And some of the drivers really love having that plastic door, and some of the drivers don't. And so what we see is people are generally avoiding it because they have a preference of wanting the safety door or not. So the newer buses, which happen to be electric,

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: now have the safety door.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Yes. Yeah. All of our newer buses are coming with the safety doors. And that will help with our insurance rating as well as driver safety. It's something that our drivers will over time become accustomed to. This will shock you when I've talked with drivers. What frequently is the criteria that they use for which bus that they're gonna take that day is whether they like the seat or not. And so it's you know, because there's they're in it all day. And so office. And and so exactly. So some folks prefer the older Gildag seats. Some people prefer the newer New Flyer seat. I can tell you when I'm on the buses and I'm on one of the new New Flyers, I frequently have to, like, oh, is this the diesel or the battery? Because I can't really

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: tell.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: So from from the rider perspective, I don't see them noticing a difference at all.

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Is there going to be a more formal, like maybe you can get UZM transportation group to like, once you have these buses for a year or so, just sort of do a natural comparison and be able to say, hey, it does cut down or what percentage it does. Just, is it more cost effective in the long run than that?

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: One thing I'll point out with cost is where we've seen the biggest pressures is actually in commercial insurance. So these buses are typically almost twice the cost, so they're twice as expensive to insure. And then just our build up for inventory, so if you're a type of boss, we have to really add a lot of inventory in terms of parts. So that's kind of a one time hit to cost. For

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: the record, it's Kenneth

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: Foss, Director of Finance.

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So there's, because they cost more, there's more insurance costs associated with it. And buy and buy, they're new buses for you. So you have to stock up new parts.

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: Yes, yes. And that is one thing we're concerned if we move to a higher percentage of our fleet being electric, those would cost that we're

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: gonna have to find a way

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: to pay for. And

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: it's one of the things that may be a deterrent from us wanting to switch that third order to hybrid, because then that would be another parts inventory that we would have to interfere and have it and maintain.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Representative Lalley is on notes. Nine. I don't know. My question got answered. Thank you.

[Unidentified Representative]: What's the difference between the three rigs in cost? Electric cost, diesel cost, hybrid cost?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: So I don't wanna do my memory, but we looked at that as part of our study, and I can get that back to the group. Yeah.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Great. Thanks.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Clayton, you said security of the doors for the drivers. Is that a required or an optional thing on these purchases?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: I'm sorry, I was just seeing that Eamon was able to join us. What was your question again?

[Chair Matt Walker]: Well, hello to Amy. Franklin County, my son. They're involved in a million things, Franklin County. Sorry. Doors, security doors, is that an optional or required on these who purchases?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: So it is optional when we order them, but I think that we're going to make it something that we are making the decision to do. So it's not like FTA says, hey. When you do your new bus orders, they have to have the safety meetings. But we're making that business decision to do so. Why? Because we have we've had four to six assaults on drivers each year since I've been here. We actually have video footage that we show you of somebody attacking a driver while they're driving a bus in city of Burlington, trying to hit the the driver with a skateboard. They were in one of the buses that had the safety door, and the driver was able to pull off to the side with no incident where if they just got clocked in the head while going down, they were going down College Street and super Narrow Street, knows how many vehicles would have been taken out in that instance if if we didn't have that safety door. What was the time period on those attacks? So I've been here for three years. And so since I've been here, we've we've we've averaged multiple ones the entire time of my tenure. The most recent being? We just had somebody who spent two weeks out because of an attack at the transit center. So that wasn't a driver, but that was one of the staff working at the transit center.

[Chair Matt Walker]: The ones on the bus, they occurred during kind of time frame?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: They I mean, are you asking Well,

[Chair Matt Walker]: I guess what I'm asking is the time frame that the testimony we heard before was all the attacks happened when the fares were freed.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Okay.

[Chair Matt Walker]: And is that still the case? Or if you had a tax since Well, you went back to charging fares.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: So we are still having attacks. And what we have note bus station and neither the bus. Are what we have seen a huge decrease is no trespasses. And so that's where somebody is acting in such a way that we have to say that, hey, you can't use the

[Chair Matt Walker]: bus.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: And so we've seen that those are well below half of what we had before we were operating, when we were operating fare free. What we still find is that there are instances where there is conflict that elevates to physical confrontation on a pretty regular basis.

[Chair Matt Walker]: On these buses that have been in the news, the 41 degrees came out entirely because of the recall.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Exactly. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? No, Representative Keyser. So we understood when we bought these buses that they had to be stored inside.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Nope, they didn't require being stored inside because they could be charged at any temperature when we originally got them.

[Representative Chris Keyser (Member)]: So that meant that off, I shouldn't say off, that meant that you had to come up with the money to buy or to get a shelter for these snakes?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Yes. So the loan program paid for both the vehicles and the infrastructure required at our facility.

[Representative Chris Keyser (Member)]: I see.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Yeah, I'm paying that at the 90%.

[Representative Chris Keyser (Member)]: Okay.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: And so this is like an example of one of the things that I find relieving is that I've always been worried about a fire in our bus barn because we could lose 70 buses. And having 90% of the cost paid so that we can have a much higher grade sprinkler system to protect the assets is something that I see is benefiting the whole operation, not just the battery.

[Representative Chris Keyser (Member)]: So then a sprinkler system, I assume that it is a chemical based

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: fire extinguisher? It's water based, and we

[Representative Chris Keyser (Member)]: In lithium?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: And we actually had to increase the work with the city to increase the water flow that is there. And so it is

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: With lithium?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: And and and so I I can get back to you, but I I know that the the upgrades that were required all had to deal with with water.

[Representative Chris Keyser (Member)]: You've had this engineer?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Yes.

[Representative Chris Keyser (Member)]: And you use water with lithium batteries?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Questions for our windows? I guess you're

[Chair Matt Walker]: on to the next stop.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Excellent. But, of course, if you do have other battery buses, I will questions I'll be happy to ask. I believe that you've already heard from Ross about the broad performance report. One of the things that we've been working hard at MGMT Urban is making sure that all of our service is meeting the economic performance indicators. We have all but one of our routes for both local and commuter routes are meeting their performance indicators. And the one that's not, we anticipate ending in fiscal year twenty seven. And key takeaways from the route performance report is that we do 2,200,000 rides a year in our urban area, which is 44% of the state ridership at 21% of the cost. This isn't because we're magical, it's just because urban transit is the most economically efficient based on the number of people that are being moved. Representative McCoy?

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: So which is the move that you're anticipating ending in? Not that representative Tomlinson would

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: know about. So we anticipate the number four, which is currently configured to be a Essex circulator serving the Essex Junction in the town of Essex. Previously, that circulator had also connected to Williston, but we changed that last year in the hopes that that change would improve the economic performance. It is not. And so that's why we will be looking at So are there any other bus routes that supply us route to Essex Junction? So for Essex Junction, the number two bus, which is our second most ridership, will continue to have service there, but it will not carry into the town of Essex. So it will connect to the the Amtrak to GlobalFoundries and but will not go end of town. And so that means that the town of Essex, one of our eight members, will end up with no fixed route service. Just to let folks know of the previous efforts, we've reduced service by 19%. And so representative Lalley, I had told you yesterday that that was 16%. And after our meeting, Chris reminded me that I had not included the changes from the recent modifications to the 11 and the one. And so that's why it's 19 instead of the 16 that I told you yesterday. So we've already reduced 19% of our urban service. We've had a 22% reduction in our driver FTEs through attrition. And we have eliminated four of our non union positions as cost containment efforts to reduce costs other than just through service. I am happy that we're still receiving four of the six federal performance awards. That puts us in the thirteenth percentile for small transit agencies nationwide. Last year with four, we were at 11%, but with having four this year, we're at 13%, still looking great nationally. That brings us in over $2,000,000 a year in additional performance based awards. What I can tell you is that the reductions that we made in fiscal years 'twenty '5 and 'twenty six were primarily on economically inefficient service. And so reducing that service actually increased our competitiveness for these STC awards. But when we start cutting additional service in the future, if that's necessary, we believe that will make us less competitive because our remaining service is highly economically performing. That sentence makes sense.

[Unidentified Representative]: Thank you. Just going back to, so you were saying that all but one route is performing acceptably, and this one route in Essex will probably go away. My question is, how do you measure what is acceptable performance? Is that, it's in the green, in the black, or, because public transit, you're still relying on state subsidies. Just And kind of

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: so what we do is that every year, VTrans puts out the route performance report, which is like the report card for transit agencies. And so what they do is they take a look at all of our urban service, and then they come up with averages. And because we're the only urban service provider, it means that it's an average against ourselves. But basically, if service on a particular route is out of the range of the other routes, then it would be deemed unacceptable. And it's based on the cost per passenger. And so when you look at our overall urban routes, I believe the average is about $7.48 per cost per ride. Our most efficient service is gonna be like about $4 per ride, but that Essex service is about $28 per ride. And so that's where you can see that it's almost four times as costly per passenger as our other routes. And that's just because of the number of folks who are using it.

[Unidentified Representative]: Did you say eight members? I mean, there eight people who are gonna be was I misunderstanding you?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Oh, I'm sorry. Eight members meaning that Green Mountain Transit is a municipality that's made up of eight other municipalities, and so the town of Essex is one

[Unidentified Representative]: of the eight members. Okay. And when you're when you're referencing cutting this route in 2027, any idea how many passengers would be affected by that?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: I can tell you that it's averaging about four riders per run.

[Unidentified Representative]: Four riders per run and a couple runs a day. For

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: the record, Chris Donni, need director planning, and that's about 10 runs a day. So it's three in the morning and seven in the afternoon.

[Unidentified Representative]: Okay, so about 40 people or so 40 maybe 20 people. And we've learned about other types of public transit, like road transit, drove for you working with AOT to Will part of this transition be finding other, more efficient rides for these 20 people?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: So I can tell you it's not something that we've actively worked with VTrans on, but it's something that internally we're doing. One of the things that we did last year is that we created an affiliated nonprofit that will give us additional options for fundraising, but also applying for grants. And what I see when I look at the town of Essex is not that public transit isn't a good fit for it, just that 40 foot city buses is not a good fit for that type of service. And so moving forward, don't there's no scenario where we're gonna have something in place by the time that service is cut, probably early in fiscal year twenty seven. But our hopes would be to work with the community to be able to find alternatives. And I'm gonna speak a little bit about that later on, because we're gonna ask for a statutory change that would give us greater flexibility in raising funds for specific service.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Representative Byrd, can you represent that? Yeah, on

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: that point, I mean, you rent vans for a while? Or are you thinking about purchasing vans? Is that an option?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Well, one of the things that we're lucky in is that the town of Essex already does have a van, and they have used that to help with keeping their ADA costs low. So they already do have something in place that would be able to be leveraged to help with the replacement of that service if there were particular individuals, especially older or otherwise vulnerable folks.

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: So your 10 passengers might be able to have another option?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Yes.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Saying 50 without any

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Yes.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: You're all set? Yes. And let's see. So

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: what really worries me is that the multiyear federal surface transportation bill expires in September. And with about two thirds of our operating and over 80% of our capital coming from the feds, we are dependent on what comes out of Washington. And I can tell you that, not to get political, but there have been suggestions included in project twenty twenty five to zero out public transit funding. My hope is that certainly is not an outcome because that would be cataclysmic for all transit in Vermont, not just GMT. But I've also heard that there are possibilities that we may see things that are positive for GMT in a new surface transportation bill. We heard last year when convening with other small transit agencies and getting briefings from the FTA and from folks that are active in monitoring the congressional activities, that one of the things that's being considered is increasing the performance awards. And so there's folks who are actively looking to perhaps increase those stick factors that we get, that $2,000,000 get and having that increased by 50%. If that would happen, that would be great for us. We're also I have been told that there is a desire to have less federal funding for major metropolitan areas and more federal funding for small urban and rural areas. And so if that were to happen, it would be potentially a bill for GMT. And so one of the things that I think makes it very difficult for all of us as we consider not just fiscal year twenty seven, but fiscal year twenty eight, and I need to get out of the way so that you can hear from Nick on finances, is that it's we don't know whether we are gonna be getting a lot less federal funds, more federal funds. It just makes it very difficult for us to predict what is gonna happen. And I just wanna make sure that folks are aware of that. And so with that, I'm gonna get out of the way, and you're gonna hear from Nick as he talks about how things are looking in '27 and '28.

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: Good afternoon. Again, Nick Foss, director of finance. I'm gonna talk a little bit about our financial outlook, really just looking out over the next couple of years. I think I showed the slide the last time, but I did update it with more recent clippings. I just want to be clear, GMT is not alone in this. Really, public transit across the country is facing enormous challenges. I think a lot of it is, and I'll go over the reasons, but a lot of it was driven by COVID and the inflation that we've experienced since then. And there's a number of other reasons. Even when I first arrived six years ago, facing financial struggles. However, they weren't at the scale that we're going be facing over the next couple of years. So a number of reasons, and I'll kind of target each one a little bit. But I already talked about the inflationary pressures that we're facing, wages, benefits, everything's more expensive. I think all of you know that. And then we've really been able to get by over the last couple of years with great support from B TRANS, but also we received a significant amount of one time funds during the pandemic, so in three batches, really. So, we got COVID relief funds, I think they were called CARES, CRRSA funds, and then ARPA funds. And really, those funds solved the problem temporarily. They were one time in nature. And we're really going to be entering a phase where we're getting back to our full level of funding. But our cost structure is much, much higher. The rural transfer is operationally positive, as Clayton talked about. I think we are going to be able to focus solely on urban transit, which is what we're good at. And so I think that's a great thing. But it's going to be financially challenging, and it's certainly added to our struggles over the next couple of years because we are taking on a lot more costs because of the loss of operating leverage. And then you might not be aware of, but legally, we have to provide ADA transportation in Chittenden County. So the law states that within three quarters of a mile fixture, we have to provide complimentary paratransit. We don't provide that ourselves. We contract that out with SSTA. But as I'm sure you're aware, the demographics in Vermont are skewing older. And so that service, the demand continues to rise. And our contractor that provides that service is not immune to inflationary pressures that we've been experiencing. So just a couple, obviously, this isn't all of our costs, but these are the big ones, salaries, benefits, health care, commercial insurance. You can see, since 2012, they've gone up exponentially. And so we have really struggled and have really only been able to support these higher costs because of those one time funds. And now that those one time funds are drying up, that is why we're looking at down some very difficult years coming up. As I mentioned, we've been able to support these costs because we got significant inflows during the pandemic. So we got about $7,600,000 in FY20. We've got $7,700,000 ARPA funds as well as CRRSA funds. So, a significant amount of money came in at the JMT. And on top of that, we get an annual appropriation from the FTA. And so, for a couple of years, were getting double the amount of money that we were used to. And so that has certainly helped us be able to deal with these higher cost pressures. But unfortunately, the government printed a lot of money, typically makes money worth less. And so inflation is long term. And so we are now having to figure out a way to continue operating our business and paying for it. There's a whole level of funding that is not It's just not sufficient because of the cost that we're facing. And this is just another chart just kind of showing how we spent down these one time funds over the years. So And as you can see, based off of our projections for FY 'twenty six, these are year end balances. We're really planning no COVID relief funds by the end of FY 'twenty six. So that's why starting FY 'twenty seven and really in FY 'twenty eight is where we're facing this fiscal cliff. Talk a little bit about the world transfer. As I mentioned, we're certainly happy with the way that's progressing. It's happened in two distinct phases. So recently, the first phase, the St. Albans division was transferred to RCT starting on January 2. Washington County is planned to transfer on July 1. The problem is, is because we were sharing a lot of overhead costs with the rural side, we are now absorbing that overhead onto the urban side. And unfortunately, we haven't received any additional funds to pay for that. So it's almost like the service reductions we did last year are now kind of almost entirely being offset by these additional overheads that are coming onto the business. As I mentioned, there's some positive things about it. I think we're going to be able to really focus solely on urban service. We're going to be able to shift resources towards improving that service and hopefully have some more management capacity to reimagine what GMT can look like in the future. But as I'm estimating, about 1,200,000 in costs that are going to be hitting the year over year division as a result of

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: that. This

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: just talks a little bit about ADA here. Shows a little bit about the ADA costs. You'll notice they have leveled off, but more than doubled since the pre pandemic. So it's a reset of an expense structure that we're just not in a position to be able to support long term with the current funding that we have available to us. Now talking about 'twenty seven and 'twenty eight. So we passed a budget recently for 'twenty seven. It had an $841,000 deficit. I am happy to say that management has worked to come up with some ideas of how to reduce that deficit. We've been semi successful. So, we really have kind of narrowed it down to $560,000 from the $840 but we have some We need to still find some additional cuts. If we have to find that through service reductions, we're probably looking at about a 7% to 10% reduction in driver pay hours. But we're hoping to continue the conversation to find other ways besides service to close that gap for 'twenty seven. 'twenty eight is when it really gets difficult. Because by 'twenty eight, all of the money, all of the federal funds that we've banked, thanks to the COVID funds, are really gone. We've got some funding that comes to us from B TRANS that's running off in that fiscal year as well. And that is really what is driving that large uptick from the previous year of May. It grows by about 2.7 to $3,300,000 I will say that if I want to be clear, if we find permanent cost reductions in 'twenty seven, we really only have to find 2,700,000.0 of cost reductions in 'twenty eight. However, if we were to solve a one time fund infusion, you can't fund the full 3,250,000 So we really need to figure out a sustainable funding solution so that we're not having to constantly come up here to find additional revenues. As I just mentioned, what we're seeing is about a 10% reduction in '27. If we had to sell '28, that 02/2007 with additional reductions, that's probably about 30% of our service. As well. Is there a

[Chair Matt Walker]: Yes, Representative Burke?

[Representative Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah, thank you for this presentation.

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: So what was happening before the pandemic? Were you in financial trouble then, or

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: Not at the level we're seeing.

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: Is this because of inflation mainly?

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: Yes, primarily. It really is. Because we've had some funding increases. We get a substantial amount of funding from B TRANS. They've been very supportive of us. But the inflation has just really The driver in mechanical wages are up 30% since the pandemic almost. Healthcare is more affordable. Everything's more expensive. And we're just not seeing that in our typical regular funding. Our 5,307 apportions don't grow at 89% a year. They don't mirror one another. And then also, the big other part of it is the rural transfer that added a substantial amount of costs to the European side. So that's the other piece that's making the '27 or '28

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: a lot more difficult.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Guess, can I just 100%?

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: I noticed that we I talk about the

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: rural transfer, but what was the reason for it? I forget.

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: Well, you want to speak

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: to that, please? Sure. So

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Clayton Park, General Manager, and

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: so there's a variety of reasons. There is certainly the operational, improving operational and having GMT Urban focus on what it does well and rural providers focus on what they do well. But there was also a belief that the rural providers would be able to do so more economically than GMT was. And so the hope was that whatever savings, or that by transferring the service to other providers, that there would be cost savings to the whole.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Sorry, Director Bill. Representative McCoy? Do we have ridership where it is in comparison to the state budget? Do

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: want speak to that? Yeah, so Kristen Nannie, director of planning. Ridership is down about 16% from pre service cuts a year ago to what we normally have. Yeah, because our service cuts, we try to implement them at defensive agents, so sort of across the year.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Do you have a sense of why?

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: Yeah, so one of the things that people say, what attracts people to the bus, it's the service itself. And so by reducing that service, by reducing the hours of service 19% in terms of hours of service in the community, We're seeing fewer folks doing it. And we're seeing that for every 10% of service that we've cut in the past year, we're seeing on average 11.5 ridership reduction across all of our urban routes.

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: Just a clarifying question on top of that. So you're saying that decrease was since the service reductions last August?

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: Yeah, so basically at the start of FY twenty five, we started service reductions then. And the last round of service reductions was for the primarily the changes to the number one and the 11 happened in August past year, beginning of FY twenty six.

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: And what were the trends looking like before the service reduction?

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: Yeah, so right at

[Chair Matt Walker]: the

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: end of FY twenty four, that was when we were starting to talk about service reductions. That's also when we implemented our new fare system. And so that's when we started to see that ridership reduction. During the pandemic, after FY21, we were seeing year over year as folks were feeling uncomfortable riding a bus, ridership was increasing. But we saw an increase.

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: It was also fair for me.

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: It was fair

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: for you, yeah.

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: Yes, as we implemented fares and service reductions were starting, that's when we saw the ridership start to improve.

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: Okay, so kind of like pre pandemic ridership was steadily increasing and there's a plunge with COVID and then it was coming back. However, then it started to Right,

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: when you implemented it

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: down with the fares

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: and reductions.

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: Okay. And for every 10% reduction in service, you're seeing a higher reduction in 11%, yeah. Exactly. Because choice riders or folks who can no longer rely as the service becomes

[Chair Matt Walker]: Correct.

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: And primarily, as we cut routes that had larger cuts in service, not surprising, we saw larger cuts in the blackjack on those routes. Thanks. I

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: do just want to add, when we look at this slide and we talk about the fiscal year 'twenty eight deficit of 2,700,000.0, that doesn't mean that we'll need to cut 2,700,000.0 in fiscal year 'twenty eight. We have to cut that before the fiscal year starts in order to get that savings. And that's what makes the timing situation difficult because in order to cut that much service, we're gonna have to be starting this August with the process.

[Chair Matt Walker]: What's the amount of your previous slides? There's the huge green portion that showed the amount of COVID money and ARPA money and pieces that came in there. Service levels were added or activity that occurred when you talk about reduction of service levels or increase in service levels? Compared to what? Do we compare this to pre COVID service levels, the amount of routes you had? Or was there an addition or subtraction of services during this period? What are we comparing when you say services are up or services down or routes are cut?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: What do you compare that to? I'm gonna Chris, if I'm going in the wrong direction, please correct me. So in 2020, just before the pandemic started, there were some service reductions that were made because we were in a similar financially difficult spot, but not nearly as bad as this. And I am not aware, we did not add urban service since 2020. So it's not like when this money came in, we added routes. We just used this money to continue funding what was already existing. So it was a reduction from prior to 2020 service levels that we've been maintaining the last six years or prior to the next route

[Chair Matt Walker]: of service reduction. So no service levels were increased or added as a result of any of the money that was input into the system?

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: Exactly. The last time we had made a major adjustment before the pandemic was in 2019. We had this next gen plan, and so that was a reconfiguration of a lot of our service. I don't remember the exact percentage. That was the last time we've had a slight increase in service.

[Chair Matt Walker]: So in that piece, what's the total overall operating budget for your Mountain Transit system wide, 70 plus buses? And how many total employees do you have? So right now,

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: with both of us, we're at 180 employees, about a $31,000,000 budget, with about 20,000,000 urban and about 11,000,000 rural.

[Chair Matt Walker]: 180 employees and 31,000,000, 70 plus buses. What was it pre COVID? How many employees did you have pre

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: COVID?

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: I would say we weren't that much. We're definitely lower than we were at that point, I think. I would have to go back and look, I don't know the number off the top of my head, but we certainly have a driver fully our driver base is much smaller than it was back then. Administrative staff's probably roughly what we have now. We can get all those numbers. There was some level

[Chair Matt Walker]: of reduction in administration is one of the testimonies that we've had since I've been

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: But we've

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: of rebuilt that. And part of the way we rebuilt that is that the new positions that we've added, about half of them were paid for through a CCRPC program that pays them for 90% level, which is why we added them. What percentage of your budget would you say that you'd spend in business development and marketing? And what I mean by that is, if it's a business organization, somebody

[Chair Matt Walker]: would be going out and going after institutions, the towns, the employers, the routes, the people on the routes, the homeowner associations, the entire piece. What percentage of your budget do you spend on putting riders into those buses?

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: Single digits. Okay.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: I

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: can tell you that upon my arrival able

[Chair Matt Walker]: spend money in that area?

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Yes, are. And it has been sort of one of the things that I've seen as a major, I don't want to say malfunction, but because GMT has relied on its assessment authority to generate local match, we basically have acted in such a way that we don't really have to go out and convince the community to provide more money, because we'll just send a bill to the municipalities. I think that that has really hamstrung us long term. I think that that's why we're gonna be asking for a tweak to the statute so that we can work on things outside of our formula for assessment. I think that this has been one of the reasons why we have been challenged for the past decade, because I think what you're referring to is that there was a 40% reduction in managerial staff from 2012 until my arrival. The people that went out in the communities to express why this was worth investing in were the positions that were frequently not filled. One of the things that I would like to do, and this is, I think, gonna get to your point as a business owner thinking of return on investment, is that we know that we've eliminated four administrative positions, that we are not really gonna be relevant now that we're in urban only. And one of the things that I'm gonna be talking to the board about is that now we have to invest in people that will actually go out, talk to schools, talk to large employers, talk to just the people that you listed, because we're not gonna be able to continue operating just on governmental funds, either from the municipality state or the feds. We need to emulate TBT, RCT. They don't have assessment authority, so they go out in the community. They convince people that it's a good investment, and people make that investment, and we need to follow that model. It's also gonna be extremely difficult for me to add capacity, administrative capacity, at a time when we're contemplating huge service reductions. But I feel that if we don't make this investment in ways for us to get that return, we can't cut ourselves out of this situation.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Well, I certainly would agree with that. You can only go so far, and then you've got what to offer. But I would certainly say that anything that I would want to, can't speak for the whole committee, just speak, Anything to get out of the hole has got to involve that. It's got to involve a plan that says how you're going to help yourselves and how you're going to help the communities in that area. I have a really hard time telling the residents of the entire state to continue to float the budget for Green Mountain Transit that only services a limited number of communities if they're not also helping. I'm all on board and have been and you get a lot of time in these committees at any request. Public transit is important Important to our climate goals, important to people who need it as badly. But you're gonna have to continue. I appreciate your acknowledgement of that area. Any change or any funding has got to involve some plan to address filling and working on that, and getting a contribution from everywhere. It can't just be from the 200 plus other towns in taxpayer's props. Appreciate what you're getting at there, and I appreciate the acknowledgement of that very much.

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: I will say we have been pretty recently successful with some kind of like with CAPA, their contribution has increased. The South African schools districts have increased their contributions. We get about 20% of our budget from local members' accounts. So we're certainly having dialogue with them every year showing the value of GMT.

[Chair Matt Walker]: And there's significantly more of a market up and down every single route that is going, you're passing every single building that has some opportunity that may or may not contribute to that piece. So it's a substantially large market to go after. I'm certainly interested in that. I'm sorry.

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: I would just add that I think you all heard from all the RPCs last week about the intersection between land use planning and transit. So one of the things that we've been doing is working with all of our local municipalities in Chittenden County as they develop these transit demand management policies that GMT is at the table talking with developers so that as they're building housing, as the state is focusing on all these housing policies, we're talking with them of how can that be part of the mix to increase that revenue for GMT.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: What was it about? Should Rick, the loud thing?

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, the question, and just wanna note that there was a statistic that you put up there that sort of said, in the rural areas, here's how much it costs per trip. And in the urban areas, it's about half or so. But it makes sense, but for every state dollar that goes in, you're gonna move more people and there's more people there. What is happening in other small urban areas around the country? You know, it's always something, you know, are they all like right above where we are? Are they doing anything innovative that's catching you by? I mean, can't help but think like, when will we have buses on these general routes that don't have a driver? That just, you know,

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: Just so that we're clear, I do not want Teamsters business needs to think that we are moving in that direction. I will say is it was eye opening to me when I went to a conference, it was my first conference since coming to GMT because they cost money, and talked with other small transit agencies. First off, we got a presentation from the transit agency that wasn't there because they collapsed in the previous year. We had folks that were there who were cutting 50% of their service that year. And so that was something where it's like, wow, I thought our situation was difficult. You know, these these folks have a challenge. Something that is not gonna be helpful in the moment is that most of the places that seem to be weathering the challenges better are those are those places that created a dedicated funding source for public transit, but they did that decades ago. I don't know if we can do that in the current political environment, but especially the states that tied sales tax to public transit, they are able to weather things so much more. When I visited St. Cloud Metro, which is where the conference was, only 24% of their operating costs come from federal government. So if the surface transportation bill goes away, they survive. And that's because of the way they were forward thinking on that.

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Okay. So, yeah, so what you've seen out there that works is one, there's a funding source that's dedicated. We certainly have always stepped up, and that you brought that up. We've had a lot of funding studies.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Yes. Representative Weller?

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: Yeah, I'm wondering about demand response at transit, and if that is something, if we have that trash of three, the third group of these buses that we have not yet ordered, is this an opportunity to rethink some of this? I'm thinking about Route 7 and all the people who are driving because for whatever reason, the idea of taking the bus is inconvenient or just very unappealing for some reason. We've lost those choice riders. We're living in an era where it's the attention economy. Is about attention. So convenience really matters for that choice rider. And this seems like if we could maybe switch a certain part of the fleet to what are they called sometimes, I think, sprinter fans. I think I've heard Ross McDonald refer to them as or something that's a little more nimble that could be used for a different purpose so that to supplement the fixed root thing? I'm just kind of wondering if we're living through an era where kind of what you're offering is a little out of step with what people's needs are and the way they live their lives. And if we need something a little more

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: multifaceted, perhaps. So I will say that even though it's not as sexy as micro transit, fixed route service is the cheapest way to move a lot of people between high density areas. To me, the question for for GMT, and we'll and my hope is that we'll have the capacity to really think about this, is that in between those high capacity areas, there's moderate and lower capacity areas. And that's where I think that we would want to look at how our total business operates. So for example, one of the things that we're studying is that we already talked to you about the ADA service. That means that SSDA has a fleet of vehicles that are operating within our fixed route zone that are helping people that are not using the fixed route. What some agencies are doing, and I'm sorry, Phil, I should have I should have mentioned this with what some other groups are doing to be innovative, is that they're bringing or they're combining their ADA with a micro transit because you already have folks who are those vehicles that are out there. What I will say, though, is that even the most highly successful micro transit is a much higher cost per rider than fixed route. And so I think it's something that we may be able to get the community to value and the community to contribute for. But I think in this moment, it's gonna be hard to think about adding a less cost efficient solution right now. My understanding of that third year order is that we're probably gonna be limited to comparable types of buses. So I don't see us being able to convert that from, say, six electric full size battery buses to maybe, like, 12 e sprinters or or or more. I think that we're gonna need to stick with full size city buses because of the constraints of that grant. But one of the things that I would say, and this is probably I don't know if how B TRANS will feel about this, is that when we saw some very innovative work with Community Rides Vermont, where they purchased their own vehicles, the nice thing is that then we're not asking VTrans for money. We're not asking the FDA for money. And because they didn't get government funding, they're then able to use those vehicles in ways that we can't because of FTA prohibitions. And that's why they're able to provide service to schools. And that's where I really think that we need to look in Chittenden County as well. And that may involve looking at a more private fleet. But that's like I like to fantasize about future positive things, but it seems like a very distant, considering our crisis that we're in right now. I don't want to seem like we're promising too much.

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: Yeah, I'm just, this seems kind of like a service that could be tailor made for more suburban communities, which are going to take a while to transform into something that has more transit oriented development nodes. It's going take years. And I'm thinking how you sell these communities that are not choosing to buy in at the moment. I'm just thinking about my community, Shelburne, something that's a little more nimble might actually be something that there would be they'd give you a hearing probably at the select board, a pitch, to hear the pitch. The other idea was we are redoing our town plan and creating opportunities to help communities see the value of connecting these cul de sac neighborhoods to the Route 7 corridors so they could catch the bus. Making that easy would be super helpful if you guys could come and just speak to the planning commission or something like anything.

[Kristen Nannie, Director of Planning, Green Mountain Transit]: I was going add just one other thing. So I think Pliny talked about the economically efficient service that helps bring in those state factor dollars that are really important to us. And so if we're looking at it with that lens of the traditional, really high rise routes, one of the things that we are doing in March is piloting transit signal priority in the town of South Burlington. So we hope to bring that to hopefully other places like Shelbourne Road. And so we're really trying to make that choice for transit a really easy quick trip by prioritizing the bus along this corridor. So this instance, we're doing it on Dorsetree, which, as you all know, has some traffic congestion. We're hoping that bus can get prioritized through that project.

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: I only have two slides left. Can we go a little bit over?

[Chair Matt Walker]: We already got that. We've done that

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: and we're Perfect. I'll very quick on it. So I just want to point out some important risks to service reductions, if that is the direction that we need to go in over the next couple of years. So the first one is, as Clayton mentioned before, we get about four stick factors. These are performance awards that we can earn each year based on the level of service and the type of service that we do. And you can see that our apportionment that we get from the FTA is about, in 2025, is about 4,450,000.00. Almost half of that, or a little less, is based on stick factors. Now, if we have to cut service, that $3,000,000 deficit that I showed you, if we lost all those stick factors, that could turn into 5,000,000. And quickly, we're looking at not a 30% reduction, we're looking at half of our service possibly being gone and a lot more driver positions. The other thing you have to remember as well is we get over $4,000,000 from our local member towns and cities, and it's going to be hard to sell on giving us the same or more money if we have to cut that much service. So those are just two important items to take into account if we have to go in that direction. And that's I lied. I only had one slide. Yeah.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: So we have a $31,000,000 budget. Roughly. Dollars 20,000,000 is in urban, which would be what we're pretty much talking about. Dollars 11,000,000 is rural. Are you giving it for all rural? Yeah, all rural is So you're $20,000,000

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: I wish I had my budget number.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Okay, yeah. $20,000,000 So you're telling me you get federal funding of 4,400,000.0

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: We get a lot more than that, but some flows through BTRN, which I'm sure Ross will cover.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: That state? It's federal. Through. Federal flows through the numbers. Can get it back to you.

[Kenneth Foss, Director of Finance, Green Mountain Transit]: We're happy if we can send you all of our funds.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: That's what's federal, what's state, but it's local. That'd be great. No problem.

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: The 4,400,000.0 there is what makes that unique among the other transit providers. We receive that directly from the FDA, where everything else flows through the treatments.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Each treatment. Okay, thank you.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Any last for last comments, Clint?

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Well, I do just wanna

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: let folks know that we've already covered these things. We're in a tricky spot where we're in alignment with the administration on the budget. We appreciate that they have added additional funds to us that would be above our normal baseline. Our poll would be deeper without that. So I wanna make sure that you know that I'm not asking for additional funds. But one of the things that concerns me is making major long term financial decisions before that surface transportation bill comes out. One of the things that may make sense is that before we go into another round of major service reductions that we take a look at what the surface transportation bill does. So that may be a potential pathway to delay reductions. I had mentioned a simple statutory request. Right now, when you look at our statute, it talks about raising local funds through our formula of apportionment. We haven't been able to update that since 2006 because it requires three quarters of our members to vote on it and approve it. We tried to update our and three quarters of our members, not the the voters, but just the legislative bodies. We tried to update the assessment methodology last year, and we're not able to come to an agreement that would get us to that 75% threshold. What this will allow us to do is to be able to so let's just say, in the past week, VADA reached out to us and said, hey. We're gonna have multiple campuses. We are thinking about hiring our own shuttle service, but instead of doing that, can we look at GMT? What we would like to be able to do is come up with a contract with them to provide local match that's not part of our formula for assessment so that we can raise revenue there. We're also looking at increasing our fare revenue. We have an internal goal of increasing our overall revenue from fares to 15%. We're hoping to do that primarily through unlimited access agreements. If we had had time for Chris's presentation, one of the things that you would hear is that over 40% of our riders who get on our urban buses have their transit paid for by somebody else. That's because they're part of an unlimited access program through a school or an employer. And getting to your point of beating the bushes for creating more unlimited access agreements, that's exactly the type of thing that we would want to do. And then the rest is information that has to deal with our fare program, which is not super critical for your knowledge to work on the TBell, but I think as the session progresses, if you have time and want to dive into who is using our service, the number of discount riders, whether they're cash phased or electronic based, that's all stuff that we could walk through with you, but that'll be based on your interest. And so sorry to go over time. Sorry to hopefully not bump B TRANS, but thank you so much.

[Representative Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. Just the language you're looking to change, do we

[Unidentified Representative (Shelburne district)]: have a copy of that, or is it

[Clayton Clark, General Manager, Green Mountain Transit]: And so I had only provided that to the chairs this past Friday. And so I was hoping to get kind of their initial thoughts first, I can share that with the group. It's just there's no There's two additions, but no amendment out of those additions. Okay, thank you.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Thank you very much.

[Representative Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Ross, how would

[Chair Matt Walker]: you feel if we took like five minutes? Alright. We're gonna adjourn and come back at 03:32.