Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: I don't have to lie. There it is. So we're back this morning, Wednesday, 02/25/2026 in house transportation. And in the big bill, there's some transfer of monies, mostly FEMA and some adjustments related to the central garage. But that isn't really necessarily our full focus today. We know that that's out there, but we're also very interested in the committee on where the project is at. We all did get to view the District 8 Garage that was built up in Swanton. And there was lessons learned and pieces done. And so we're looking for an update on central garage and timeline and all the wonderful features and pieces. What does $24,000,000 bill you these days? Welcome back to committee and good to see you again.

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Thank you. So for the record, my name is Jayna Morris. I'm the director of administration for the Agency of Transportation. We go. And with me, I have Brett McEvoy, our Facilities Manager. I'm going to turn half of this presentation over to him, and I just wanted to give a quick overview of where we're at with the project right now. And then Brad's going to talk about the design and the renderings for the future location. And then I'll be back to talk about funding and financing and all of the cool stuff that's happening with our planning related to the current Route 302 location, which we will be vacating. So we were successful with advancing with a preferred contractor, and we signed a contract for the community facility, the paint dirt bike project. So we've broken this project, the central garage relocation project, down into two different phases. We have the Paint Turnpike Project, and then we have the Route 302 Mitigation Project. And that's very intentional on our part because of the nature of the funding that we received for the projects. We were awarded and accepted a fixed cost offer from FEMA recently to the tune of about well, I'll get into this a little bit later but to the tune of about $25,000,000 And some of that is PA or public assistance money, and some of it is hazard mitigation money, which comes with some strings attached. So we were successful in separating those two projects so that funding for Paint Turnpike is not contingent upon the work that needs to be done. It's the further mitigation analysis and assessment that would need to be done by the environmental teams for the Route 302 project, the mitigation project. So we are able to advance in a much quicker manner on the main turnpike rebuild, which is incredible because our teams have been navigating working in their current flooded environment and the post flood minor things that we've done to make it habitable for them for several years now. And this new building is going to be just fantastic for them. So we have our contractors in place. We're going to be kicking off work next week. So officially on the second, I believe, March 2 is our kickoff date. And we have a timeline of approximately eleven and a half months for a build. So anything that we do on the Route 302 mitigation side, which we'll talk about after Brad rolls through the theme turnpike, will be contingent upon that timeline to set the stage for what you're about to see. So with that, I'll turn it over to Brad, and then I'll be back momentarily.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: So to my understanding, you're hosting a legislative reception in March. Yeah.

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: I'd love to.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: We'd love

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: to have you come.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: Always looking for food. I

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: can't say that if I know you.

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: Good morning. Thanks for having us. I'm Brad Malcolm Lloyd, facilities manager for AOT. We'll go through some of the slides here for the new garage site on Peyton Turnpike. Roughly 45,000 square foot lower level. There is a 2nd Floor over part of the space. As you can see from the renderings, there's technically 12 bays on each side. They're all drive through bays. So 24 bays total, some of them are specialty days, which I'll show you here in a minute. This is kind of the overall, view of the garage. Two separate wings, like I said, 12 bays per side. The South end, we're gonna start first because that's where the majority of our cuts and films are gonna come out of our car with North. They'll be kind of phasing it in three separate areas, South Bay, Central Air, office Core, parts storage, and then North Bay. We'll go through there. But as you can kind of see on the end, there is a dedicated welding bay, There's a dedicated EV charging, working on EV vehicle dedicated bay. There's a wash bay on the other end. There is a new five ton crane that'll service 40 feet worth of base, so we can service actually six bays on that for engine poles or other items where we're going need a real rugged crane, not servicing the whole building, but they can focus their efforts on on the fleet based on what the need is. Is that is that those dark black lines? Is that the is that your beam that you got going down through there? It's actually on on this side. See, there's a there's a five ton crane right there. It'll service on those bays there and it can slide back and forth. What's the other one? Is that just showing part of the roofline? That's the roofline. Bosch ray on the end. It's not a picture show up there. You could kind of see in the front of the building, which on the paint turnpike side will actually be the back of the building. We have office space. There's a dedicated training room for staff, focus and breakout rooms, dedicated lunchroom, locker rooms, showers, very large open part storage where we can use forklift or the open shelving. We can get up significant level. Everything will be nice wide open storage, parts will be easily laid out.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: So which one? We did District 8 last year, the Okay, so is

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: similar to what we saw in the upper lip syncing? Similar, but the central garage has got a lot more specialty type items like welding and a lot of things that weren't considered on the other day. So- And a much more significant office portion function.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: Okay, so, about two things that I remember from the District 8, one was a brine, a huge brine building, and then like a dedicated, I don't know, I thought I heard you say EV charging station. Does this sound

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: similar? As part of this project, since there'll be no true maintenance activities happening out there, just fleet maintenance. There won't be any blind making facility there. Okay. There will be, like I said, an EV charging bay where they can work on EV vehicles as part of our fleet, and there will be EV charging on-site. There'll be a level three charger, two level twos, and we also have build out for future EVs as well.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: Okay.

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: That's part of our vehicles coming in to get work done.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay. It is kind of a funny thing. The central garage does the maintenance for the entire fleet. Yeah. But they're not maintenance. Maintenance is the top of the roads and that is in the district garages. So then it's funny, we're gonna do all the maintenance in the central garage, but we don't do maintenance in the central

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: garage. Regional garages, but any of the big any of the big upfits, putting on the chassis, all of that work would have.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Speaking of having a different word, we need a word to mean multiple banks in English. Representative Pouech is up next? Any opinion

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: or no opinion here? I don't believe they do any opinion at all.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And can you remind us how many AOT employees are stationed, will be stationed here? Jane, I believe there's around 25 full time out of

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: the garage between dedicated mechanics, office staff, support staff. So go to the next slide. There is, this is kind of the upper level where there is some office space dedicated supervisor and space upstairs, additional restrooms, two separate larger storage rooms for light duty items, some of the lighter weight things that they don't want to access a lot downstairs. And if you can see kind of at the top of the screen, middle of the yellowish color, that's all open mezzanine to down below where they can see down in the parts storage from up above. If the supervisors upstairs, they can serve it a view of everything down below.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: It's got a big open glass view where you can see all the way through.

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: It'll be a corridor, you'll be able to see down through. Protected.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: How about when the office parts do they

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: see all down? Not from the actual offices, but the majority of the parts people will be located downstairs. This building will have similar to Swanton. We we were very happy with our pilot boiler systems up there. There'll be three dedicated pilot boilers here. Swanton, which you saw was an 18 ton silo, the new site, bigger building, more square footage. It's a 28 ton silo. All of the office space and upstairs and downstairs will be all heat pumps and heat recovery units. So no fossil fuels for any of our primary sources at this site other than the backup generator, which will be diesel.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: Is there a conference room area? Downstairs

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: on the front, this room here on the purple, That's a dedicated training space. Yep. That'll be upfit with, you know, Teams devices, conference room set up so they can do trainings.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: Okay.

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: I think other entities, potentially other groups could use that if we're short on meeting space, it's a pretty good sized training space. So they'll be able to do all of those trainings on-site safety trainings and CDL trainings potentially, they'll have classroom space available. Great.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: How does that compare to the old the Burke place that we have now as far as the setup and the layout?

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: This is built way more for efficiency. Right now the Parks Room was kind of was tucked away in the back. They had some stuff stored on the 2nd Floor. It was very disjointed and it was added on to over the years. So this is gonna be a much more efficient flow overall. Everything will kinda be located in the center. Each one can come into the middle. Definitely a lot more efficiencies built into this design.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: For some reason I'd say there was more classroom space than the current setup. It looks like it's just one, am I mistaken?

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: No, there's really not much in any classroom dedicated classroom. They're using some spaces that were dedicated for other purposes for some training space, comp conference space. But just the one dedicated classroom is about three times the size of what they have currently. Oh. So not to mention breakout rooms and other other rooms that they can work from. So this is kind of an elevation view. The top top one, you can see the location of House Silo. They'll be able to drive up close to that for deliveries. Overhead doors, plenty of clearance on all of those. The center door in the back, they'll be able to accept all of their parts deliveries. Plenty of room for forklifts to move around, delivery vehicles, things of that nature. What other highlights do I have for and so you mentioned EV, Lalley, charging there.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: So any new vehicles I would purchase start here and you upfit them here? Correct. Get the parts delivered here and do all of that?

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: This will be the primary spot for any new upfit. They also support DMV enforcement and safe police to some capacity, so everything will be handled here.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: And then when Representative Pouech was asking about painting, when you need these new drugs, how does he do that? I think that's typically

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: done at the operations level, each year's Okay. I'm sure Ernie will be happy to speak on how that occurs. But, yeah, as Jane has stated, the the contractor's on-site, the ready to go, equipment's there. We have all of our permits in place, the army corps permit, town permit, all of our wetland permits, everything is in place. Start work notices have been in place. So I would imagine in a couple months, we'll be getting a report concrete. Yeah. It's sort of not just sort of talking about the process of the central garage. So when you get new truck deliveries, you bring them here, you outfit them, get them all ready, deliver them, and they do most of the maintenance themselves, you know. Some of the smaller maintenance, little changes, greasing, things like that would happen at the different But then if they need something else or there may be standard things that have to happen, they get brought here, they do the maintenance. And they're charged x amount for the vehicle. Do they get charged more if it requires more maintenance or it's like, no. We guarantee you a vehicle and I'm I'm to defer to our our fleet director on that one to maybe elaborate on that, but I do know that there are back charges back out to the districts for that work.

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: There are also the regional central, like their central garage is a structure, but then there's regional maintenance mechanic facilities around the state. So they may not bring the vehicle or the piece of equipment back to this particular structure. It may go like the St. Albans or Swanson, excuse me, facility that we just built. There are bays there for the maintenance mechanics to work in. So they may, depending on

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: what region and the piece of equipment may go to one of

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: those facilities. So they're coming back here.

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: The central garage mechanics won't just be here, they're sort of scattered around too. The Windhamville has a garage, Rutland has a garage, there's four regional garages. This will be the one, any large, like a motor replacement or transmission work, changing out a dump body, any of the bigger work, whether they need the crane or more specialty type equipment that we'll have at this location. Is that, what's the foundation? It gonna be frost walls? It could be a slab or? Frost walls, slab. So is

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: there any foot then? Are they

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: I don't think it's quite eight based on the borings that we had done. It's a pretty pretty solid ground there, but we will have radiant slab throughout all the garage space as well. So What's what's the what's the pitch in the am I seeing a pitch in the foundation there? There's a one foot step between garage windows. So is that for drainage? No, just a way just to kind of save on a lot of removal of material and bring in an extra fill because we're not sure if we'll be able to reuse it. The site up there looks flat. I don't if we've driven by, but there's about seven feet elevation from one end of the building to the other. So that's why we're purposely starting on the cut in. That's what that's what I'm seeing right here is this right here. Is that this this deal right here is looks pitched. I think that's kind of the the pavement edge. This slide here may represent a little better. It's tough to see in detail, from the the upper wing, excuse me, this this northern wing here, there's a one foot step between the other wing. A lot of that was just to save on a lot of site work and excavation and helping to bring in shell. We actually shifted it up to that farther end just to reduce that impact.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Maybe that's not the right time or not, but Brad or So we're in almost March, you're talking twelve months basically to build it. Then how long to pull everything out of or finish transferring and whatnot, and then mitigation on the other site? We're talking that starts after the twelve months or is that still So

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: we're hoping to have the new garage fully upfit, furniture, everything ready to move in as we're wrapping up punch list. Things are going in. There's only a few items from the current site we're gonna repurpose, some compressors, some of their vehicle lifts and a few things, but the plan is to get that up almost as soon as the building is ready to turn over and then we'll start transitioning back to the other site.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: And the other site's gonna involve the building and tear down and all of that piece or not? Is that coming?

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: Good timing. Will pitch it back to Jan to talk about the 03/2002 mitigation and what that funding looks like. Unless there's any other questions for me.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: You know, we build a lot of buildings, but I think we're getting better at it. We I

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: think so. I think so. This will

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: With all of the tough morale issues out there, this one that's

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: But it sounds like the other direction.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Staff has put up with a lot since all

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: the flooding were helping themselves to facilitate the mucking out of all the complex down there to conditions they're working in that are far less than ideal and cramped tight spaces. My discussions with them and discussions with fleet leadership, they're super excited to get on board with us. They've been involved through a lot of the discussion and we're picking out finishes and materials and they've had a kind of a hands on approach of looking at progress plans as we've been going through. So it should be a really good project by something to get done.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: So

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: if there's any facility specific questions, I'll put them back to Mr. McElwife.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: But let's talk about funding.

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: So the funding spread that's on the screen right now is specific to the component related to the Paint Turnpike relocation project. So we received about $25,000,000 total in our fixed cost offer. It's broken down by the Paint Turnpike Project, which totals $21,800,000 That is further broken down by a federal and a state share. So we did reach statewide a 90% federal, 10% state share for this particular event. So our 90% federal share is going to be about $18,300,000 with a state match 10% of 2,100,000.0 or $2,200,000 That state match is coming from a combination of the $1,300,000 that we're receiving back in insurance monies and a portion of monies from what we call the AOA or Agency of Administration FEMA Denial Fund. So we have a commitment from Agency of Administration to support the state match here. There's not going to be any transportation fund monies contributed to this project. Candice has provided this spreadsheet behind me on where exactly these monies and how they're broken out. So we use an excess receipt process where we say, hey, agency of administration, we have these planned expenditures. Here's the form saying this is what we're asking for commitments for. And then we have that dialogue back and forth. Essentially, AOA approves it, then we can charge. Using air quotes here. But we can charge to these fund codes up to the amounts specified. So there's two separate columns on the screen behind me. There's an amount and there's an sorry, I'm right in front of it. Expected spending. Thank you. So the amounts that we requested was requested last year. And the expected amount is what our kind of trued up numbers are now that we have our fixed cost offer and we know how the funding is going to be broken out. So I believe the only number that has changed between the two is that top line. We had requested $8,000,000 and we're looking at $5,800,000 instead. So this is the PA or public assistance portion of the award. The hazard mitigation portion of the award, which we intend to use if we can, we would use that solely on the Route 302 mitigation project. That award has contingencies. So there's a full I'm not going know what this acronym means, but there's a full FEMA EHP review that would be required. So it has to do with environmental and historic preservation. That whole review process would extend our timeline significantly if we were going to try to use some of the EHP money towards looking term contracts. We don't need to because the bid price, so just the base bid price for our contractor, that doesn't include permit fees, our engineering consultant, any other costs for upfit of the facility. The contracted cost for our project, just the build, is $16,900,000 give or take a couple of cents there. And then of course we have the additional upfit. So anything we need to order, the lifts, the equipment that we need to go maybe in the back of the hose reels, anything that we might possibly need that doesn't come with the contract will come out of the remaining bucket. So from that 16.9 to the 21.8, that's where we have some flexibility for the upfit costs. That all has to be part of the scope of the FEMA project. So we've worked really closely with FEMA to ensure that our scoping is broad and wide enough that it can cover the relocation of the central garage team. These monies could also be used for the drill crew relocation. The drill crew functionality was part of the Route 302 Complex. And the VTTC functionality, which also includes Vermont local roads or technical training in Vermont local roads, was part of the Route 302 complex. However, relocation project for them was denied, so it cannot come out of this money. So I'll talk about that a little bit maybe as part of the next slide. So just pursuant for the pain termpike, this slide behind me shows what the funding pathways and the maximum amount is that we would be able to spend without dipping into transportation dollars. And we don't envision that that would happen. We envision that this will all happen within the limits of the $28,800,000

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: So

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: if there's questions about funding, I'll take those. Otherwise, I'll flip the slide to our Route three zero two mitigation and talk a little bit about what our unknowns are on that.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: A

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: Couple questions on this slide. DMF. District maintenance and fleet. Okay. And then the heading for that column department, is that department ID? Department ID. Okay. And you mentioned that

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: a couple

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: million dollars was coming from the Agency of Administration FEMA Denial Fund. Yes. FEMA is providing significant funding for

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: this That's correct. So FEMA provides the 90% and that we're required to come up with a state match. So we're receiving $1,300,000 in insurance monies that are coming back to the state. And then there will be additional monies that will be needed to cover the $2,100,000 and 10% state share. So if we were to draw down the full $18,300,000 of FEMA award for this project, we would need that $2,100,000 in match money. And that's where the AOA FEMA denial fund comes in.

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: And I'm just curious about the name of that fund. I guess I'd

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: be making it up. FEMA. It's federal. I guess, let

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: me rephrase that. It's not for areas that have been I think about the Northeast Kingdom that was just denied FEMA. FEMA just denied their emergency declaration. Correct. So that to me says they need FEMA denial funds because they're being denied.

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: I'm gonna take ownership. The AOA has not called it a FEMA denial I'm fund to simply advertising it as the FEMA denial fund. But this is coming from the set of monies that were appropriated in a prior year specific matches for both Federal Highway and FEMA. So we are receiving some money from there. I don't have the numbers on that. So if anyone would like further information on the FHWA portion or Federal Highway Administration, we are receiving some match money through AOA for our federal aid projects related emergency response projects. So Route 302 mitigation. This, for those that may not be familiar, is what the current facility looks like. On the upper top of the screen, there's a bar that comes almost straight down of red. Those are what we call the red sheds. I'm going call north because it's on my screen in the north direction. There's an open area at the end of the pavement, and there used to be a pole barn there. So that has already been torn down. So when we're looking at Route 302 mitigation, is where we have an opportunity, once our staff is no longer located here, to think about what this could look like. How can we rehabilitate this site? What are some considerations that we need to take? Can the state do some of the work? Should B TRANS be doing some of the work? These are all questions that we're navigating right now. This would be considered a second phase in our recovery efforts to focus on the Route 302 mitigation. There is some work that we're doing in parallel, but we need to make sure that we keep these projects very defined and very separate. Because of the work and the commitments that we've made with FEMA, we would not want to jeopardize that $21,000,000 that we have in hand for the Paine Turnpike Project by going down a path that is not in alignment with the work and the scope that we have. So the way that we've left it with FEMA right now is we need to focus all of our efforts on paid turnpike. We need to make sure that we get that facility built there. We need to relocate our staff out of this temporary property. We only have and this could be easily mitigated, I believe but we only have fire safety permits for occupancy for a period of time under the temporary upfit that we've been able to do at the existing location. So our priority is employee safety and relocation. With that, we can start to do a couple of things on the Route 302 site. So at the bottom of my screen, you'll see Partridge Farm Road runs across the side and then Berry Montpelier Road runs up and down. There's a little parking lot in that area. And that's the first piece of work that we'll be doing for mitigation for the property that we own will be removal of that parking lot in May 2026 this year, May '6. And then at that point, we're almost in limbo. The only other thing that we could potentially do is something with the Vermont Local Roads and Vermont Technical Training Center. So you'll see Google Maps has done a great job of naming some of these buildings for me. The one that says Vermont Local Roads is the only facility there that's not currently in some sort of temporary use. But we need to be careful what we do with and what decisions we make in order to be able to utilize the hazard mitigation funding. Is

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: there a brick building here in here that's shown on screen? That's the one she's discussed right now. That's the one, not the old road. There's a house.

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Beautiful. The front of that you can see from the bare metal. So this is a brick building. The current use so there is staff that are working out of the Green Roof Building on the side, the right hand side. On the Green Roof Building, there are staff working out of there. We have some storage occurring in the current V Tran Central Garage Main building. This is what used to be a storage shed. This has been upfit, so it is actually warm storage, not cold storage. And this is where a lot of our work is occurring right now. And then there is some storage of I wouldn't want to say nonessential, but non critical items that are occurring in the red sheds. So it might be some things that are only used seasonally, like tires, but they are protected and they just don't fit in maybe another space right now.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Burke has got anything, Representative Keys?

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: That's

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: not a hill, right, up there? I mean, what I'm asking is that site is not adaptable for fluoroquinolone. The current location? Yeah. You're saying you're doing mitigation there. I just wondered if, and I know I see it's by The Brook. It is. The Pond Brook runs through

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: it and then the Stevens branch as well. We haven't made a determination on what our next steps are going to be, both because we want to understand what the funding mechanisms are. We need to understand what the timing is. And we know we can't do anything other than that parking lot removal, really, for at least a year because we have to move our people off the site. So we started some preliminary engineering dialogue to say, what are our options? What would the scenario be where we took all of the facilities down and then partnering that with a funding stream. How does that look? What is that going to cost? Will it be state funded? Is there any federal dollars available for that? Is it best for us to do it? Is there another entity that maybe should be involved? I'm not a brownfields expert, and I'm certainly not a hazardous mitigation expert. So as part of the dialogue here, it's the what ifs. Can we take a portion of land? Can we take a little bit more? And how does that affect the flow of the river and the water? Yeah, that's in the water flood plains.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I think that's on a hill, this bed on a hill, that might not be appropriate for There

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: is some elevation change, but I just know that

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: we've had various success in Brattleboro with two floodplains, actually on the West Pembroke, and it's really been a huge improvement providing safety for

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: our KemCam.

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: We're still waiting for the final reports from our engineers, the engineering firm that we've hired, to provide us with some guidance through the decision making process. I don't have information yet on what level of excavation, if any, or redirecting of water or removal of facilities would result in tangible benefits for the downstream or the properties on the other side of Cedar Drive, or that Cedar Drive Road, is where the mobile home park is. So that's certainly part of the considerations, is any effect of the work that we would do on the surrounding businesses or residential areas. Thank you. You're welcome. I will just want to also mention the hazard mitigation program. So this is not the grant program. So when I say HMP, it's not HMGP. Hazard mitigation program through FEMA, the funding is not available for use if no damaged buildings remain that need protection. So if we take all of the facilities off, then our understanding is we are not eligible to use that $4,000,000 and change of FEMA hazard mitigation program money because there's no protection of property occurring. The other thing that is important to note is that the process may take a little while. So where we have options to have some dialogue, We really are not in a place to make decisions right now, and we need more time for that. So we're collecting information. We're seeing what we can do. And then we'll work with the Chief Recovery Office to determine what's in the best interest of the state to proceed forward here with this property.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay. That's the end? That's the one now. So will we get an update on that property next year for those who don't come back. Thank you very If there's

[Jayna Morris, Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: any questions, please reach out to Brad.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: I appreciate you coming in today, Brad. We wish you luck with the construction and the effort over the next year. We'll look forward to our legislative reception there next year. Thank And you, We're excited to get started.

[Brad Malcolm Lloyd, Facilities Manager, AOT]: I'm trying to get some time to come up.

[Rep. Matt Walker (Chair)]: So We are making a slight adjustment on the agenda. We're good. We've we are adjourned till 01:30. You have till 01:30.