Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And there it is. Back again on Tuesday, February 17. Continuing our afternoon conversation on public transit. We have Ross McDonald back from the agency who runs public transit. We have substantially cut your time frame for this afternoon. So we're gonna put you in task forward and I'm gonna have to well, we'll see where we're at just before four. So welcome back to committee and put you

[Ross MacDonald (VTrans Public Transit Program Manager)]: on the clock. Mr. Chair, Ross MacDonald, Public Change Program Manager. And when we first looked at the schedule, we said, we won't need forty five minutes to talk about GMT's response. And so there's a few items in the slides that Gabby's gonna be sharing with you, the driver compensation information that representative Wells was seeking our MTI plan of attack to right size that program in the future. We won't worry about that. But it was really nice to see the presentation and be able to have an opportunity to speak while it's fresh in everybody's mind. Because when we hear about the rural transition being recognized as a benefit to all parties, That's exactly what we were hoping when we were working with the legislature and for legislative report, the boards, to get to that transfer plan. And so that is really good to see. I know that RCT is already up and running. TBT is on schedule. The updates on the EDOS is far better than what I was able to provide in just a few weeks ago. And I'm very thankful that GMT is keeping their feet to the fire, new flyers feet to the fire, and see where that goes. We did talk a little bit or hear a little bit about driver salts. That is a nationally recognized issue around The US. Driver salts are way up. If our FDA office has asked us to review our safety plans and ensuring that that is somehow being tracked and is now part of our annual national transit database information we provide. It's to that point. So good to see that there's further protections in place with the door. And the other pieces on the Root Performance Report, it's absolutely important to notice that those fifty three zero seven or urban services are quite different than the fifty three eleven rural services. Representative Pouech spoke to that. And if we see something successful, that is 60% or less than the average cost of that type of trip. So if you're at 66¢ on the dollar for one route, that's a real successful route. And then you have the acceptable range. If you are 1.5 or 150% more expensive than that average, That's where you really are, that unsuccessful underperforming routes. And that's where we try to drill down on. But for us as well, I've been around for a lot of years. And when the NextGen study was presented, twenty eighteen-nineteen, I think, we were concerned that those service changes were going to potentially increase costs up to 20%. And when we see like after COVID paying for those services and a reduction back to sixteen, eighteen, 20% reduction, we really are looking at what we would look at is pre COVID, pre next gen changes. All of that to say, it's really important to recognize that thirteenth percentile. 87% of similar sized cities have fewer services in place than Burlington. So that is to be recognized as our formula funding, our abilities to provide those FHWA flex dollars. That's how we're able to achieve those stick factors, the hours, the miles, those types of things. Because we take about $4,800,000 nowadays, right from our FHWA system and inject that into the urban budget. And that allows for more services and that allows for those stick factors to come to fruition. So we recognize the change is hard. We also recognize the change is hardest on the riders. Tough to manage, very tough to be at those meetings and listen to those folks who are negatively impacted and try to move this thing. So percentage of funds, what we try to do is keep a snapshot of what we call core budget items. This is operations, admin, preventive maintenance, and the O and D program. Those are the real measurements that are serving the people. And we try to take a look at percentage of population, percentage of budget, percentage of needs based on car ownership and percentage of kids on welfare, those types of things that contribute to the demand for these types of services. So empty urban in 2022, receiving 16.9% of those dollars. Fast forward to twenty six, twenty two point two. And that's the total operating budget and includes state funds. When we drill down to just look at more state funds, there we go, it's a larger percentage of our state funds because we're trying to support larger system with GMT Urban. And if we looked at the COVID years, even though we were not providing state funds to most of our providers in a real way, we still try to maintain some level of support to the urban systems and then snapping back in 'twenty four, 'twenty five, 'twenty six. And we'll see a little bit about those differences. And so we're holding steady. We're trying to ensure that we're not robbing peer to pay poll entirely so that one region in our state is being negatively impacted. Real quick, this is a lot slide on GMT, and we'll just talk a little bit after this. State funds, this is a top line item in their grants for non fed match. So we say, here's state funds, use them as you need to, to match federal. This year was 2.207 in FY '26. Last year, we provided $2,000,000 but there were one time funds the T bill from the legislature that added $640,000 We also saw an $850,000 increase in 2024 and a $1,200,000 increase in state funds from the legislative process in 'twenty three. Before that, we were right around $2,000,000 for years and years and years. When we look at state funds, these are additional state funds to match the capital. So yes, we take those flex funds, 4,800,000.0, bring them over to the program. But we also look at our capital awards, competitive awards, and GMT Urban is part of those considerations. And so we say, okay, well, if we look all the way to the right, here's $9,700,000 in federal funds for capital projects. Usually we try to split or we negotiate the non federal match between the locals and the state funds. And we added in '26, 1,149,000.000. And those funds go up and down based on those competitive awards. The big category here is that third category, the second one from left, which is the flex. The flex is why a lot of cities don't hit stick factors. It's why many of these cities rely on other funds other than federal percentages, because of the percentage of dollars that we flex from FHWA to all of our transit services. Dollars 23,000,000. That's fourth and fifth highest in the country as a percentage of our FHWA budget. And so you can imagine as we talk about the needs at our provider levels, the engineers and the folks who are doing our bridge and road maintenance are like, well, is 23 enough? Because 2426, it really is affecting their own work plans. But we say yes, and we say it's expensive and it's worth it because of all the things we've talked about today and heard about the value of these services. So this year, we have broken another record and provided the $4,850,000 But as we're seeing, it's still not enough. There's some caveats here, though. A couple of years ago when we said, We're just not going to be able to make these dollars work, dollars 2,000,000 of service cuts resulted in a more efficient service from GMT Urban. That was good news. We understand that that doesn't last forever, but it was an assurance that there is some room to move downward in some services while maintaining those federal dollars. We always talk about in the agency to federalize to the extent possible. If we're leaving federal dollars on the table, we need to know why and how to avoid that. We don't leave federal dollars on the table, and at this time, we don't plan to. So Chris Damiani and his good working partner with Dan Currier, who's been here several times, and Steve Fobble, who's also been here. And the three of them are trying to game out how low can we go without impacting those tick factors. And we wanted to see that so that we are aware of our levels of investments, making sure that we're keeping the other levels of investments around the state similar. And now we are at a $560,000 projected shortfall in 'twenty seven. What does that look like? Is that, you know, when we look at admin costs, and we can talk a little bit about that too, we look at hours and adjustments, what can we do and how does that affect the stick factors? And then the next one is really, would that 2.7 shortfall look like? Of course, we saw the $1,100,000 that is moving to urban after the rural transfer to just maintain the urban systems, that was kind of our inclination when we saw the numbers and when our FTI friends were coming in here and doing three year audits. That's pretty notable. We don't have a lot of 5,307, five thousand three and eleven combined services. How do you as a state ensure that we're not using rural funds to prop up the urban? Well, now we've totally bifurcated those systems. So we can answer that question. We can hopefully listen to TBT and RCT, bless you, and see what this new normal looks like. The 1,100,000, certainly hoping that some other savings can be realized. But we know that there's been that big change of admin needs and covering those gaps and relying on those admin costs to generate some of these savings. And so all that to be said, when we hear from GMT, it's not the first time, those slides, we go to the finance committee meetings, or at the board meetings, talking with GMT all the time. We're aware where we are for '27. We're hopeful we can make this work without impacting the stick factors. And we're very aware of it for '28. And we have up till about August, and it's unfortunate to hear about the timing of when these cuts would have to be made, because as you know, we won't see the budget from the governor until January. I will be through the budget process till about September, October internally with our committees to understand. But when I approach the budget committee next year, we will be talking about everything we just talked about. Maintaining stick factors, federalizing, We put this off for a little bit in '28 based on what Chris and our consultant and Dan come up with. This is what our ask will be. We're not stating that the 4.85 is the last dollar that we can program for GMT. The forced and cuts that have been performed already have not resulted in this death spiral that we hear about. And absolutely, that is our biggest concern, is to stay away from that death spiral. So that's the GMT response. And it really is just more commiseration than a response to any information. But we see it and their issues are our issues. So I can stop there for the GMT piece and see if there's questions before we move on to the other items of day. Representative White?

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Yeah, thank you, Ross. I was just looking at your chart here, and pardon me if you cover this, but under the capital federal funds, what explains the 9,000,000 in 'twenty six versus '6 and 'twenty five versus '12 and 'twenty four? Are we seeing ARPA funds in there, did you say?

[Ross MacDonald (VTrans Public Transit Program Manager)]: You're seeing low no funds in there. Low no. And so we say, hey, here's 22 buses, 22,000,000 and your facility fit up, and the charging infrastructure, those types of things. And then we say, how much of this do we think we can spend out of our $22,000,000 in 'twenty four, in addition to all the other buses we buy and all the other facility improvements that we support GMT with? So those fluctuations are largely reflecting of capital awards that we're projecting are going to be drawn down during that fiscal year. So this is based on what's in their grant that we're saying, okay, we have 22,000,000 here's 9,700,000.0 that we think you're gonna spend this year. And so that's how we get to those big fluctuations. And it's not unusual in just two or three years' time, we're gonna see a TBT facility for like $12,000,000 and they usually get a million dollars So in you'll see those huge fluctuations based on need. So that's where we are. And when we talk about the unionization some of our shops and the disparate range of salaries and healthcare plans. Representative Wells asked, what is the cost between union and non union shops? And so we just sent out the questionnaires to our providers and received this information. And you can see the hourly wage is really driven by region. And if they were unable to find drivers at a lower cost, this is how they arrive at these regional costs. And we can see it's $50,000 to $70,000 a year to drive a bus. Those driver contributions to healthcare plans, you'll notice a few of our union shops, GMT and TVT, pay 100%. You don't see that very often. And you see a number as high as 25% at GMCN, which is a new union shop. And so these costs are not so much driven by region or union, it's negotiations with the drivers and what our providers can feel comfortable with providing those services and the nuance that I received with this information. We offer a health savings account in addition to the family plan. Individual members get this benefit. So it was really a challenge to put it into a concise reflection. So we just kind of kept it a broad brush here. And so that's where we are, and you'll have this in the slides offhand. And that's the driver compensation response to the information request. So that's that piece. And then we talked about mobility and transportation innovation program, grant program. And this is something I just wanted to make sure everybody was aware of our plans, because we received funds a few years ago for this program. And what we've been doing. And so we can see that this brand is to support land use and the creation of telework policies since coming out of COVID, TDM program, transportation command management programs, resources, first mile, last mile, those types of things, bike share. And it's been several years in addition to what we had been doing for fifteen years before that with our Go Vermont partner experience with Car Share Vermont, Chittenden Area Transportation Management Association, partners like that. The annual awards have fluctuated quite a bit from 2023, 894,000 to this year just over a million dollars. This includes one time funds that you have made available for the transit system, 500,000 for our micro transit support. So we use this service to this grant program to get applications, put everybody in the same timeline and be able to track those specific one time funds separately than our other funds, which is required when we look at T Bill line items like this. And so, larger project activities include the car share support, e bike access, e vehicles we've purchased for some of our partners. Volunteer recruitment is that $600,000 that was made to us this year from last T Bill. And so, there's a lot of benefits to this program. We get to engage with several organizations throughout the state, big thinkers, folks who are looking at outside the box type of activities. It does allow us to test the effectiveness of multiple projects and approaches. It shares the new and eligible ideas to fund, to access federal and state dollars. And again, that one time funds from the T funds or T bill, really has been an effective way to track and watch the spend down on those. Some of the less beneficial impacts are nine to 13 small grants with folks who may or may not have auditors in place, or may not be able to follow federal and state guidelines. There is a lot of admin and oversight and invoicing, communications. So there is that consideration. Also, we're really not able to identify significant returns on investments with greenhouse gas reductions or increase in ridership to the transit system. Of course, if we could, we would be looking at projects that would significantly reduce greenhouse gases or really bump up transit use on a route by 50%. We haven't seen those projects. And so when we look at the awards from '23 to '26, 4,200,000.0. You can imagine as a program manager, I'm looking at those funds, of wishing I had them for operations and for other purposes. Should we be looking at the MTI program as a nice to have, but we need to prioritize transit services over TDM projects? Well, as a program, we think so, but we serve our directors and our legislators, and we're willing to proceed any way you'd like. But here's the recommendations. As we maintain the grant program, nobody wants to get rid of the MTI, but we want to return to that $300,000 or $350,000 annual funding level in addition to any one time costs, any one time grants that come to us for specific purposes through the legislative process. We want to maintain the grant process to allocate these one time funds. We want to sustain the partnerships with proven organizations. Car Share Vermont, we know that they've been around for many years and that our funding really allows for them to stay as an ongoing concern. TMAs who work with businesses, those types of partners, we want to continue to work with these folks and support our programs. But we also at the same time want to reduce our bike and pedestrian awards and refer those types of organizations to our own V Trains, Bicycle and Pedestrian program. Maybe there's other federal programs, maybe there's other departments, human services that could consider these types of projects and just not best for the MTI program. And then as we reduce the awards to TMAs and focus on our TDM services, that really is people we saw representative here last week saying we need a statewide program to share rides. Well, it's Go Vermont. We haven't done a good enough job. And thank you, Burke. To amplify and to show that we have an incentive program where if you live your trips, you get coupons and discounts to local businesses. So I've got to meet with Representative Tina. And also it was my last clarion call that we need to do a better job promoting government. And that's all I have for the committee today.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Ross, thank you very much for coming back in, and thank you to Fremont Transit for the afternoon piece. I suspect this is not anywhere near, I'll ask you to discuss all of the things that are going on. Tomorrow morning, we are in Senate Transportation at 915, Room 10, I believe is where our joint session is.