Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Excellent. Good afternoon again, Thursday, 02/19/2026 in house transportation. And we're picking up on our sort of one of our second portions of our committee discussion. We did work on our response to appropriations on the budget. But also on our agenda is sort of a response, a brainstorm, a discussion on regional planning commissions. We and I don't wanna miss anybody, but we took a tour around the state of most of the regional planning commissions and seen that most of them had 20 plus communities that they work with, some as high as 55 and some at 20. Regional Planning Commission's, I know we were at Addison and Chittenden and up in the Northwest, we were in Memorial, and we were in the Otakuchi, and we were up in the Northeast Kingdom. And we took a tour in an area that we haven't had a lot of feedback the last few years. Representative Corcoran let us know we used to have an entire sort of regional planning commission's day. The Transportation Advisory councils, their tech committees, tech committees, transportation advisory committees used to have a say. So we spent some time going around hearing what a different view on transportation or at least a different set of people. We normally hear mostly from the agency. Sometimes we have a few road foremen in and a few different from the towns. But this was sort of a different level of interaction. They do a lot of work, I guess you would say, up and down, up into the agency and help and request. And they do a lot of work with the towns directly. I remember hearing a lot about road foreman meetings. I remember hearing a lot about transportation advisory committee meetings. We heard some other common themes. I'm interested, maybe I'll just start with a few of them, maybe you can throw some others. But I thought I heard speed limits come up in more than half. I thought I heard traffic calming, traffic calming measures, and speed limits in it. Maybe somebody could go back and tell me if we did 10 or 12 of them. Whatever we did, let's say we just did 10. We heard it more than six or seven traffic calming, speed limits, two different maybe they go together, but they sometimes are two different things. Sidewalks, recall hearing a lot. And I want know what else that you thought you heard, without necessarily what I heard, but what you guys heard, and then if there's any particular areas that you think we might be able to help or do something about. So Representative Pouech is always ready to go. Yeah, I kind

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: of jotted down some things. First of all, I thought it was a very valuable time we spent talking with them, because they're on the, know, their boots on the ground their way of what's happening, particularly in individual municipalities. So yeah, I mean, certainly they talk about traffic calming in our villages. They specifically mentioned, you know, the downtown funds that those are quick, easy to do. They bring quality of life to these small downtowns. They mentioned bike and pet projects too, which were a little more cumbersome. And even on that, the downtown funds, I would love us to find a little bit more there. It's not a lot in the budget, but those smaller projects can happen quickly. And I think they touch people directly. They talk about their support for municipal roads, foremans and whatnot. So they're really helping to not only provide them information and guidance, sometimes their, the length as there's turnover in municipalities, help sort of bring them together. And so they did describe the need for more municipal transportation funds, whether it be the grant, the infrastructure or whatever. So, you know, it would be great if we I know we did something last year to help maintain that. But over the long term, I think we need to find more funding for municipalities. They talked about, you know, bridge with 35, 40 people and, you know, that doesn't meet the formula for FEMA to fix it, but they're starting to leave infrastructure to fall apart because they can't afford it. It might be a time when that's appropriate, but I'm guessing not necessarily, that's not the best approach we need something because there's, they can't, the municipality can't fund it. Yeah, and they mentioned they support municipal leaders too, sort of long term projects and. So if I came out of that, we're doing thing, it'd be like, piece those downtime funds, they all mentioned that. And they all said, you know, quick and easy and there's plenty of them to do and they directly impact.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: You made me think about thank you, Representative Pouech. One of the things that made me think about is I didn't realize, and I suppose it's not unusual, don't know, did you all feel it They feel like they provide a buffer to the continuous turnover in select boards and town management. Regional planning commissions are perhaps more steady in terms of not as often turnover and they don't have elections, so they're not regularly put. They seem like, I don't know, did you hear that they sort of keep a lot of projects alive that might die as a slip board change turns over and foreman turnover? I did not realize that or heard that. I don't

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: know if anybody else heard that. Yeah, I definitely. Heard it. Got a small municipalities where one or two people are running the show, and if they leave, these things get left behind.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Representative Cohen? You know, like the towns need a plan, their town plan, and it has to be reviewed. It used to be every ten years, I think it's every eight years now. And they provide a huge amount of help for that for termites. I thought they also said they help when right of ways need to be had on projects. They also may help the state in doing them, right of way projects to garner those in order for the project to go through. I think more and more municipalities, there's just so many more regulations that they rely on the RPCs to do a lot of that.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: It's usually their administrative support for all

[Unknown Committee Member]: the grant writing that they do. Because you know just well as I do in a small town, you have part time administrators that are taking care of things, and these type of advanced granting, you need a follow-up and you need expertise and that type of thing. So that's what I heard, that they provide expertise to smaller towns, particularly for transportation infrastructure grants.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: And there was one more thing. They were also providing mapping, and Rutland Regional came in and said they mapped the sidewalks for the entire county, so they're doing that service for tenants as well, providing mapping of certain things. I'm not quite sure if they're actually doing any mapping of the culverts in the tenants, they may do, but I'd like to simply remember the sidewalk mapping. Robert Woodward?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: This is back to what we were talking about, the town programs, and I'm just trying to find out what we really have actual line item for the programs in our bay funding at the same level as last year.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We can probably get Logan to help us in that area if we need to. The downtown program that you mentioned is not one of the breakout on the page. Don't believe it is on

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: the Downtown fund, it's down at the bottom of train. Oh, that's not

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: T Funko. We're sending our money over to HTC B, right? Correct. That's the one there. The the

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: T funds from downtown. Right.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And that was the program that did get a $5,000,000 ARPA one time benefit three, four years ago, and they just finished spending the money this year, is what I recall. I actually pulled the presentation on that one right up front there. Look at that. Somebody had whispered about this one, so I did pull it out. That in effect, is level funded, and they did get $5,000,000 got $5,000,000 in 2021 for designated village centers. And then that money was spent out for this year, or finished spending it this year.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: And then there's, I'm referencing section four in 8.3, but I'm just trying to find out where we're at with the budget that's been presented versus some things that are in August. Money amount.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We have not gotten anywhere near, or we haven't gotten close to saying we're done looking at the budget. That helps. Nobody's checked off or been asked to check off and not yet. We also haven't done that with the language yet, that's what we're doing in the next two to three weeks is doing that. So the proposal idea is okay. I also do want to make sure that there's any more pieces that people heard, yes. So again, go for it, talk about it, and then also make sure that anybody else has comments on what they heard of the two weeks of testimony also. So if you can go a little farther down that, Representative Butters.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Well, for instance, in section four of H863, there are specific amounts including like £200,000 through the Better Connections program then the 522 that's here in the Jennertown Transportation Fund. I had mentioned 70.5 per driver last week for the month, which is what we did last year and we've got to read that to news. What's the specific money for various operating administrative support to Okay,

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I'm going to slow you down and go back to you know where we saw downtown funds, at least identify it on the page.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: That's on the page.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Which program has Better Connections embedded in? Maybe a fully qualified hair? We got two friends today. We had three, sort of like my regular life. I had a few. I can see stands

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: for Sorry, the new departmental. Is that somewhere on this page? IDT is the policy of appropriation.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: It's the policy of planning.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: It's up here in the B906 policy and planning. It's embedded in there. Okay. And the chit show on our sheet that it's being transferred.

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: It's an appropriation of IDT funds rather than a bond transfer.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: And is is that amount of $200,000? And the government's breakfast

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: and budget. I will have to have an act with policy and planning, though, to see if they have anything else apart.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I mean, if it's a general the faith or disease existence or whatever of the drug, I mean, the drug addiction disorder.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Also, what it compares to previous years,

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I think this is a level of funding, this proposal is the level of from last year. That's 200,000 for being the last year. It's not broken out here. We're talking about these small funds that do a lot.

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: I'm thinking about this committee, my apologies, but we get spending authority in IET because we make the expenditures, so it's our program and we receive funds from ACCD. So that

[Candice White (Member)]: 99,000 tons from

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: the That's from coming two That would be in an ACCD budget.

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: Right, so the source funds of general fund is in the JCCB budget. We receive the general funds would be the expenditures.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And so you manage the program for it. And is that

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: coming to you? The 200,000.

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: No, so we're, again, expecting to receive 99,950, and we'll follow-up with Okay,

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Was that cut made in ACCD?

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: Was that made in preparations? It's possible that that 200,000 is over multiple years, I've heard that number before, but it

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: could have been multiple years, so

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: we don't expect to have that to fall on pound in 2017. Okay, Thank you.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So we could just make it up on the transfer of the 1,000,000 so we'll just get

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: them $800,000

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: and then make the solar.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: They're only gonna give us $200,000

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: less, we'll give that to $100,000 less. Problem

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: solved. I

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: was just going to say, in reference to Rep. Burke's comment about these little funds that punch above their weight, The downtown fund, 100%, that's such a great example of that. Private investment in the surrounding properties, It's the equivalent of state dollar being leveraged for 5 federal dollars, in my view. I'm sorry. These are the downtown

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: The downtown funds? I thought you mentioned another thing after that.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: No, the downtown funds.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: That just seems to me

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: that there's an analogy there of how

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I had thought you had mentioned

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: another closing Their on top of

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: connections helps communities get to be a downtown designated. So that's important too, as we implement Act 181, helping the community get the pipeline. At the same time, we can't afford to have them all come online at the same time. So the planning is really, really important so that the investments that we make can be as strategic as possible. So I just wanted to say, if I may, the other things that I heard from the RPCs, in addition to the incredible value of mapping the infrastructure needs. And I think we saw some of the most sophistication in that from the Rutland RPC. And of course, the state, I guess, has

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: sort of poached some of their approaches

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: to they found it so valuable they're using it too. But the other thing is, over and over we heard that NEPA rules are making everything harder, slower, more expensive, more cumbersome to implement in terms of making progress at walking and biking infrastructure. This was new information for me, was that we have adopted in Vermont, we've made everything much more rigorous than even the Feds. So it seems like I just wanted to throw it out there as a policy position for consideration this year that we consider the value of just reverting back to whatever the basic federal regulations are. And we'd need to get testimony on that, obviously, for purposes of expanding walking and biking. There may be some other things that this touches on, too, that could be of interest to people on other committees. I think there is my understanding is there's one NEPA process or one contract, overall contract, and it applies very broad based, touching on a lot of policy areas. So of course, just concerned about how it impacts our area. But I think we heard over and over that it continues to be a problem that is contributing to the problem of things being when it comes down to construction, the bids being so much higher than they had been imagined they would be. So it's one of the factors. Sorry, was a bit long winded, if but you know where I'm headed.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Suspect other members have spent more time than most of you have, so don't worry.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, I have a question that could be for Logan is, where's the Better Connections show up on the budget on the page? I don't see it though. I believe Candice mentioned it's in the policy planning.

[Candice White (Member)]: Number should be blocked. B906.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Okay, so it's not broken out because that's money that comes in and it just goes into the policy and plan. And then they manage the program.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Is that what I'm understanding?

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yes.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay, Representative Burke?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: And the other question I am trying to find these funds. What's the amount, and I guess it's embedded in the public transit budget, so maybe,

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: is there a place where the budget,

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: the public transit budget was broken down? But, anyway, the mobility and transportation innovation program, Where is that? That's where you're trying to find it.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Renew your weight.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Okay. This was from last year, guess it was 345. So that's a quite a lot.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: You're saying better connections dropped from before? Is that what we're saying? No. No. It's only, I don't know, as far as now goes, not Not only only the better connections

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: is coming from ACCD. Right. So, I guess Candice is going to find out is it actually two hundred pounds? Is it?

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: It shows ninety nine thousand nine and fifty.

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: I haven't heard anything about it.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Does anybody else have We're not done with that.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I'm not saying we're done. We still on the

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: planning? Yes, want to make sure we're hearing whatever else people thought they heard from regional planning, what that might be. And we went down this path a little bit because we didn't hear downtown funds, we didn't hear better things.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Sorry, I hijacked the discussion. We

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: got a couple of feedbacks and we went down, one of them that I knew that you wanted to go down. I wasn't that I will say, if you're talking about regional planning, if you have some other pieces, certainly you want to hear that. And I do have something else to add about that.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I didn't say completely, but they said municipalities, they have more need than they're providing. We know we provide a third of what their asks on the grant programs. But I'll just say,

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: for that program.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: That's okay. Can you read me?

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I'll sit down here. So back to the planning, I said it already, they said, Hey, the municipalities need, it's only about a third of the grant asks that they get. So we all agree, I think that it would be nice to help municipalities. And if we look at our budget, because you did put an inflationary factor in it last year, they are going up 2.7%. So even though we would, I think I would love to give them more, but we can't, but at least we, it's not a flat, which it had been. So we are acknowledging that and reducing the pain a little bit. Hopefully it'll confound you. Yeah, well, you wouldn't have.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And it was the only, I don't know, was the only piece that I thought we could do

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: last it makes sense. I mean, that's how you stay up with these ongoing costs. This isn't a one time program. This is missed values that need their roads are not growing necessarily, but they need to maintain them. We did hear some testimony that they were banning some of their infrastructure because they can't maintain. So it was good that this lady put that in.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Well, that'll certainly make a headline. That's the idea of abandoning infrastructure because you're gonna isolate a town because they can't afford fixing a bridge. If FEMA doesn't pay for it, that's part of one of those pieces. You want to get a headline, that'll certainly

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: be We just found that, but they're not competing.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Think Mr. Shabby's concern of the RPCs, particularly in rural areas, is that that is, that's what happened. The president is declaring to the declaration of the Northeast Kingdom. You know.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Caledonia County. Yep, we're being told

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: we gotta do this stuff on our own

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: now.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Right, so we're isolating that community. Further isolating that community,

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: if we

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: can't repair the infrastructure.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And I think we had a couple of RPC's say that too, they're really concerned that FEMA that is sort of supporting us in these disasters. If they don't, or it goes down, there's no other way to fill it in right now.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Being on the committee in the limited amount of time that I have perhaps, I've heard several times, or my interpretation of what I've heard, that if it weren't for some of the disasters, our bridges wouldn't be in nearly the great states that there are. Waiting for a disaster to happen so that we can then repair it at a good level isn't the best long term strategy that I Except

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: you're not gonna get any

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And that will totally make the

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: plan move, won't it? Then we'll really be

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: in trouble. But that seems, it's not a long term. So that would get us back to our letter from this morning. We're doing enough to get by, but there's no ability to get ahead. But that's off the point. Specifically, guess back to RPCs and regional planning, I did hear comments about speed limits a lot. And I also had members ask me about that. So what I did do was meet with the chief engineer, Jeremy Reed, and with Davian, our ledge counsel. Came to the And They're putting together a presentation that you're gonna get next week. There are six, and maybe there's more, but the way that it was reviewed out, there are six scenarios of basically what kind of road you could be on and what the process might be to change a speed limit. And so you can have from a state highway to a state highway in a village designated area, to a state highway in a town, to a class one. There's basically six of these scenarios. They each have a process that you would, which I thought this looks like it should be a presentation with six, and here's the current scenarios, and then here is how the process goes, and then here's who decides, and then here's your appeal option, and then here's where you end up. And does that work for all those scenarios? And is there possibly a policy change that our committee would want to should we intervene? But I don't think we can answer that until we see what all of so I thought I took the liberty of saying, please get us the scenarios outlined. Please explain where we could be. I thought I had heard pretty clearly that people kind of throwing their arms up a little bit saying they just can't seem to get changed what they might want. And that may be the right answer. Maybe saying no is the right, but I don't know that if we haven't had that real kind of testimony. I'm not judging the decisions. I want to outline. So that is happening. I did have them move forward on that. We're going to put an outline of what the hell it is and what it is, and then we will, if anybody sees anything, we can suggest whether there should or shouldn't be a potential policy change, which we would then have to work to potentially get into the deal over this year or queuing something up for next year reminding us of incremental small changes. But the speed limit thing, don't fully understand it, and I don't know exactly the process, and I didn't realize there were six different scenarios to go through. So that was one of the things that I heard that I thought was worth doing some more work on. Based on other people's videos and just my thought of

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: this multiple feedbacks. And I think it would be helpful because I could be the one who would say, we've been struggling in our town to do it, but what are the processes? Why would they turn us down?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And is there anything you can do about it if they Right, right.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So that would be good. There is a Rather than just complain, find out what the process is and see if we can move it forward. It's

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: possible that in the end the appeal goes right back to the same people who made the decision about whether you can or can't do it. If that's the case, maybe we need a different look. I don't know, we're gonna find out. But I believe that the direction I'm hearing about designated downtowns and livability and whatnot, may or may not be something we need to take a look at. We may or may not get it done this year, but we are going to take a at least understand exactly what we're up against or what the situation is today. It's one of my plans. If there's other things, that was one that I did run forward with. I obviously am hearing downtown transportation funds, better connections. I did hear that same trend about small I'll throw it out there. I thought I heard them kind of all of them pretty much say, We get it. There's no money and there's no savior coming to fix our bridges and roads at any rate higher than what you got right now. I kind of thought that they of didn't really push back, they just sort of accepted that's the reality. I didn't hear it right, but they did say, If you can't help us with the bigger ones, can you help us with the smaller ones? That's what I thought I was hearing, but does anybody else feel that way?

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: That's what I noticed.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Turns on White, didn't you?

[Candice White (Member)]: Yeah, I don't think I heard one versus the other. I think I heard the towns, the RPCs want funds for more bike and ped projects. They see a lot of value in the smaller funds that have gone towards those. And they have many more needs than what we are currently funding. To Rep. Lalley's point, the Bennington RPC spoke about asking for bike paths projects to be relieved of historic preservation review, which

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: adds to cost and time.

[Candice White (Member)]: I absolutely agree. I think almost everyone talked about the need for traffic calming, being able to set lower speed zones. I think most all of them talked about not enough money for culvert and bridge replacements, paving up their roads. Sidewalk maintenance. So maintenance is an issue in some areas. Going through staffing, it's not really something we can help with. Just a general, the request exceeds funding.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I got a few messages of the ghosts, the listeners out there, there's some additional information coming in on multiple things that need to be discussed today so we'll probably put those back together. Better connections, info, NTI, advance, downtown transportation funds, those related to the planning conditions. Is there anything else that you want to comment or dig into on that piece? You'd like to share what you got?

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: All right Candice, I'll put this again for the record so better because actually it's not under the

[Candice White (Member)]: IT that I mentioned but

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: it's also funded with HWA state and local So the total amount for FY '27 is gonna be 325,192. And it's all in that policy.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So, and that's made up of, how much of that is federal money? Is that from ACCD? Is that their federal money?

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: No, it's FHWA. Or FHWA.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And the ACCD contribution to it?

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: The Council of Locals contribution and a very small state contribution.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Number for the person?

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Actually, I can give it to you

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: by phone source if we're ready

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: to if we should provide that. Okay.

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: The application number, 93754.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah. Transportation

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: phone number is 420539. The roll call number +1 and that IET I originally thought was the funding source, sorry, is 99 to 950.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: This is a place where Matt, out of the budget, you don't really get a lot of detail.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Alright, well, I'm not sure if we're reaching the end on this particular piece, and I will, yes, all right, you're good. I was just trying to pull it all together.

[Candice White (Member)]: Yeah, I was just trying to remember, there was a piece from the Bennington County Regional Planning Commission that was around barriers in the scoping stage for bike ped projects. So it wasn't related to funding costs, just minimizing some of the challenges or costs associated with scoping and the initial stage of the project. So I just wanted to flag that there's some specifics in the letter that's on the committee page, but that might be worth

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: looking at.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Is that in the same direction of what Representative White was bringing up about historic preservation and then what Representative Lalley was talking about

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: NEPA? Yeah. But also the NEPA

[Candice White (Member)]: Sorry for duplicating.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, it

[Candice White (Member)]: was the same. But in the letter, there were some pretty specific there's some specifics of possible language that could be useful to Okay.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I like that. Some day. Day. Some

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Any of your kids interested in public service? Any grandkids yet? Yeah. It's

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: like the last one. Yeah. We didn't look to see it.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yeah, I know. Okay. We're going to pick up tomorrow on the letter. And I'm I'm not exactly sure what else we're going to throw in for tomorrow to make sure that we're finished. Next week, we'll be back in the Teasville language. There's a request from the Burlington Airport. There's a request, of course, we still have to sign off on the Caledonia Airport. There's a request from GMT, the client Kenny's request that is being drafted up to be put together. We had asked some follow-up on the e bike situations. We're going hear from the Department of Forest Parks and Recs on that. We didn't get the MBUF update this week, so that will be part of next week. There may be some language coming that we'll have to as that program continues to evolve and come together. The speed limit piece you'll hear next week, and we still have tomorrow to get through. Yeah, what do we need to hear your testimony on GMT? Outside of GMT world. Well, that's the same thing on the Burlington thing. I don't even exactly know what the language is. But I said, okay, who would be the countering view of why you want to make the language change? And I'm in the same boat on it's going to be interesting, who would have a reason not to make the

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: change yet.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And it might be a federal regulation.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, it might be. Mean, Ross might be able to explain that

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: to us.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: It makes sense when you read it, like this will allow us to go out and get other funds and not tie it to the municipalities, which they are now. And somebody had a reason for not letting them

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: know they're I don't know. But we have to try to find that out. Exactly. Know you have to add to that.

[Candice White (Member)]: Yeah, Ross would make sense. I guess I just wonder if any municipalities wanting to testify. I don't know if there's a reason.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Burlington is on their board and also part of Burlington.

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: Okay, just can't think about it a bit more.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: What about their RPC in Chittenden?

[Candice White (Member)]: Sure. Yes, CCRPC could be

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: a good I mean, I think they kind of Maybe?

[Candice White (Member)]: They might be able to represent any concerns. Yeah.

[Agency of Transportation staff (Policy & Planning witness)]: Maybe Charlie Baker coming back to us. Yes.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So TBill language and we need to have some more discussions about what some of these ideas that we discussed today are. So we then, unless barring any other comments, we're going to be adjourned until after four tomorrow. Say, fifteen, twenty minutes to morning at ballpark after