Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Good morning again here on Thursday, 03/12/2026, House Transportation. Sort of continuing back to a couple different subjects. We're hitting through some areas, different requests from different members on testimony piece. And so Jason Rasman has joined us back. We made a tour of planning commissions across the state earlier. Representative Lalley has asked for some testimony in more depth and some pieces. I don't know if you wanna preview it or not, or you wanna hand it directly over in the direction, but

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: I am happy to hand it over to Chris.

[Jason Rasmussen]: So I am just trying to get this up. Okay. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about this H eight thirty four as I think we was having some conversations with representative Lalley about, but I can also talk more broadly about pedestrian safety and whatever other questions you might So anyway, thanks for having me. My name is Jason Rasmussen, executive director of Mount Sveta and Norwegian Commission. I'm also the chair of VAPTIS Transportation Committee, so happy to be here again. Specific on speed limits, I've kind of long been frustrated with a lack of ability to have lower speed limits outside of the designated downtowns, but I learned an awful lot. I knew there were some changes in state law. I learned a lot from Damian Leonard's testimony two weeks ago. So that sort of changed part of my thinking on this bill. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about that and you a little bit of background and some context. So I hope this is helpful, but we're working there, but more than anything, I hope you can have some just question and answer conversation.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So let's see. Here we go.

[Jason Rasmussen]: So I wanna just start with a few VAPTA type priorities just to kinda set the stage in terms of pedestrian safety, traffic speeds, that sort of thing. So for the past couple of years, VAPT has been really into first these first two bullets here. It basically just try to have good infrastructure that supports the kind of growth that we wanna have, and that includes, we think, pedestrian accommodations, bicycling, public transit, those sorts of things in and around our villages and downtowns. And then another component of it is to have infrastructure improvements that meet state planning goals. The Climate Action Plan, the Comprehensive Energy Plan, Health Equity Plan, and specifically the state planning goals. And then along comes Act 181, twenty twenty four, and that calls out specifically plain growth areas that we now need to include in our regional plan for terrain use maps. This plain growth area is supposed to have active streetscapes served by existing acute streets and infrastructure. So from our point of view, that's sidewalks, it's bike lanes, it's public transit stops, bike parking, etcetera. It's more of a design aspect, but it goes hand in hand with the traffic speeds. So we really need the traffic speeds, we think, in those areas to make those other complete street facilities safer. Part of the conversation, I guess I just want to throw this out there. Our roadways generally are classified by traffic engineers. It's like two primary functions. There's the access to property. So, like, a a dead end residential street, know, access to the property. It's almost solely access to those four houses on that dead end street. And on the other end of the spectrum, it's mobility, getting P2B, like an interstate highway, and all the other roads in between are kind of trying to do both, and it's not an easy balance. And in our I think our village centers, our main streets, it's even harder. I think it's not just a road. It's sort of a public realm. So from the front facade of the one building on one side to the front facade of the building on the other side, we got a lot of different things going on. We got merchants with sales items out there, sidewalk cafe. We got sidewalk itself, bike parking, on street parking, bike lanes, all this stuff's going on, crosswalks. So it's a lot harder to design and have a good functioning main street, I think, than the other depends on spectrum. But that's one of our priorities for Blue Baptist. Specific to setting traffic speed limits, we get asked quite a bit by our towns to help with usually, we're setting we're just doing the speedcaps. So the but we generally are also pointing towns to this guidance. This is older. It's from Vermont local roads, but it's kind of been our bible in terms of how to go about doing that engineering study when you're changing a speed limit. You're supposed to follow certain procedures. This has been sort of a thing we tell towns. Do this. This is how we do it. Oftentimes, regional planning commissions will do the speed count, straight through tubes out on the road, and it'll tell us the 80 percentile speed. So if you're in a 30 mile an hour zone, for example, sometimes we're setting them out, we're seeing the prevailing speeds like 36. And that would suggest that maybe you should increase it to 35. But then you look at other factors like, is there a school nearby? Are there a lot of houses? Is there a density of curb cuts? Those sorts of factors that might make sense to leave it at 30. So that's generally a very generalized version of this. Usually, do most of it. Usually, regional planning commissions give them speed count. That's it. But we point them to this guide frequently. The way we set our speed limits is backwards, in my opinion. We've all inherited the roads that we got. A lot of them are really wide, flat, straight, and that encourages faster speeds. So then you have to set your speed limit. You wanna change the speed limit, you're measuring the prevailing speed on that big, maybe overbuilt.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Just a quick question, which I think you're gonna answer now. And the question is, how did we get to a point where we decide what the speed limit is based on how fast everyone's driving versus what should the speed limit be based on what's there? And I guess I was guessing that some of this comes from the days of when the local sheriff would like sit in front of this town and just collect money from speeders all the time because somebody decided, let's just put a 25 mile an hour speed sign here, because it generates revenue. That's sort of what was in the back of my mind and how we got to a point where we're deciding how fast people can drive based on how fast they drive,

[Jason Rasmussen]: which is what we do in a way. Right. Maybe that's certainly part of it. You can certainly generate some revenues that way, right? I think there's been a historical desire by transportation planners and engineers to have safe roads, and they thought maybe that meant wide shoulders for breakdowns and clear zones and this and that. Or in more recent years, I think we've, wait a minute, the big wide flat road really just speeds traffic up.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So I think there's

[Jason Rasmussen]: a change in sort of that attitude. I think we're left with these big raids. That are already built. They already designed them. They already built them. If I were king, if I were starting from scratch, I would say we should build our main streets to a much, much lower design. No traffic engineer. I'd say 20 mile an hour kind of let's design it as if you're driving 20 miles an hour. That's what I would say. And that might help people drive the right speed. So I think in general, people drive the speed that they're comfortable driving on a given roadway. And so part of the problem is what should the speed limit be, but also how do we retrofit the existing road to get the kind of behaviors we wanna see? So I think setting speed limits is complicated because there's that factor of what's the design of the existing road. Part of it's the speed limit, part of it's maybe a redesign of the road. I was gonna jump into some specific sections of the bill. If it's helpful, these are my 2¢. After Damian Leonard's presentation, I guess I'm thinking to myself, maybe state law already allows those sorts of things. So maybe we just need to clarify for everybody what the existing law is. Maybe I didn't capture everything, but you included simply the designated neighborhoods pursuant to that section of Title 24, that could clarify things quite a lot. In my view, downtown centers, booth centers, plus these neighborhood areas is most of what I was hoping to, most of part of my region, I'd like to see the lower speed limits would be encapsulated in those areas. So maybe you don't need that subsection H. It's talking about this thickly settled areas, but anyway, that's my 2¢. Are there any questions on there is.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And

[Unidentified Committee Member]: so the definition, the different definition that you're applying here rather than 24 VSA Chapter 7.6 is this other one that includes more of the downtown centers and villages? Number one,

[Jason Rasmussen]: I really like the bill in terms of it makes lower speed limits possible, but I'm thinking we might as well reference some of the things that Damian Bennington was talking about. So yeah, the neighborhood language in 24 BSA 5,804 would, in my opinion, add to this conversation and really help flesh out where it's possible to really produce those speeds. And I think if we do that, maybe we don't need this thickly sacked area conversation.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Which

[Jason Rasmussen]: would

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: require kind of an appendix to the MVTCD.

[Jason Rasmussen]: Yeah, I'm not an expert in that.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Yeah, think that's what Legis Council was suggesting. This would be an easier lift using, just clarifying, linking it to existing law. I like the way that it integrates transportation policy with 01/1981 in the ways that we've said we want to do. I

[Jason Rasmussen]: understand there may still be further questions. For example, it says, you know, speed limits less than 25 miles an hour. Does that mean a town can set it at five miles an hour? I suppose, but it's kind of crazy. But maybe we do need a a floor. Maybe that would make sense. Maybe we need to talk a little bit more about whether a town can set a speed limit on the state highway. It's not a class one town highway. So there are some areas where we may want to continue the conversation, but I think if nothing else, it would be helpful, I think, to reference what the state law currently is.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And if I recall myself on our testimony from Damien, there's 181, that neighborhood and whatnot, that created a couple of new scenarios that isn't a little bit un

[Jason Rasmussen]: dried, I guess, this point. Isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, I learned stuff from him. I always thought for the designated downtowns, had to go through the traffic committee. Apparently not. So I learned some stuff. Season's a

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: little bit gray. One of the things that was being suggested is that we put there are other areas with the towns, towns, planning commissions, cancellations of projects, the inventory for the towns, the simplifying grant processes and procedures and trying to find a way to make that smoother. A way to add sort of a direction to saying we would like the agency, the regional planning commissions and the lead cities and towns come back to us with those three subjects with recommendations, agreements, some kind of, there seems to be a pretty clear that we all would like those to be smoother for everyone, clearer to everyone. And perhaps, well, guess in the six scenarios that were outlined in that testimony, from sort of absolute authority of the traffic committee to no input on speed limits are two extremes that don't seem to fit in today's model of where we're trying to get to in planning and living. I don't like at all the idea that a town could change it without any input from the people in charge of our safety, that they have no influence. That really bothers me. At the same time, our planning commissions tell me that they feel like they have no chance to change it in certain circumstances, that there's not an appeal process. I would like to think that we could come to something that is more balanced all the way through all six scenarios. I don't know that we're ready for what that language should look like, but I don't think we want an extreme in either case. That's what I think. That doesn't mean that's what the committee's taking a position on. But I don't want to see the public safety not taken into account. If they don't think like planners, planners don't think like public safety. They both need to be in the room when it comes to deciding those type of things in my book. I don't want one without the other. But I don't want towns to feel like they have no choice, that they're overruled at every time either. So I'm looking at how do we direct, how do you feel about something that says that we all block the three of you in the room and come up with a better answer before we write it into the statue or before we go into this untested world where we don't know what's going happen in these two areas.

[Jason Rasmussen]: I'm I'm in favor of it. You know, Jeremy Reed, Aaron Sisson, and and Dave Pouech here actually came to our last VAPT meeting, and we were talking about the other two subjects and working over the summer together with the LCT on flushing out those two reports that were maybe not as detailed as we'd like them to be. And yeah, and I just talked to him yesterday about talking about traffic, this traffic speed issue as well. So I think, yeah, as far as I'm concerned, we're more than happy to continue working with the agency on that, and we could always come back with some more detail.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I wasn't trying to end the conversation. Was trying to say that I didn't like the extremes on either side. Really I'm not comfortable with From the testimony I heard, towns I don't like the idea that the towns planning commissions don't feel they have the influence they need. I really just echoing the part, I don't like the idea that a town could do something without public safety being involved. And not that they don't concern about public safety, but they do look at

[Jason Rasmussen]: it differently. It does seem odd that a town could reduce the speed limit on a state highway if it's not their height. So I understand where the agency is coming from there, and I think, yeah, I would welcome a further conversation. We could maybe come back with a suggestion that everybody can hopefully agree with. Representative White? Yeah, thank

[Candice White (Member)]: you for this. I just wanna point out that there are a number of downtown centers and villages on state highways. So I do think that that's an important part of the conversation, Certainly in my district, two towns are right on the state highway, and they are both suffering from higher than desired speed limits. My question, does this proposed language incorporate the language in Act 181? From what I remember, like designated growth areas? I believe by reference it is,

[Jason Rasmussen]: but again, maybe we wanna take the summer to make sure we get it right. So I was just gonna talk a little bit about some couple other sections. I think section four in H 834 is good, but I think a lot of it's already covered through this. Damian, why don't I we talked to you about the MUTCD, the manual uniformed traffic control devices. So in there, this is a little snapshot of that MUTCD. So there is already standards in there, about a 30 to 20 foot minimum no parking zone before a crosswalk. So I just wanna share, I don't know if you need to do that, I think it's in this document, just the average person has no clue about the MUTCD, but I think it's in there. Doctor.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Lalley? Yeah, just to circle back to the idea of working on something over the summer, I think to increase the transparency around this so there is a way for communities that want to make changes, whether those are small changes or larger changes, just have some kind of a starting point to get oriented on what is possible. And in my perfect world, there would be endless resources for the RPCs to take communities by the hand and help them with this locomotion and other things. But you don't live in that world sadly. So, so some kind of guidance about like where, how do you get started on this? You know, I think the agency has done a terrific job of some of that in other tropical areas, like how do you have roads that are more resilient and don't generate a ton of runoff? They've made some huge strides in these areas. I just feel like the time is right with the land use changes, with the guidance that is being worked on to start to think about how do we deploy this most effectively as possible. And I would say that one of the reasons that we really, this is important, is productive. When main streets in villages and downtowns can be economically productive, increases the community's grand list and it also increases our state coffers, which we are all keeping in need. So, and yeah, transportation infrastructure and setting speeds that support that kind of platform for growth go hand in hand. I don't think this is anything revolutionary, this is just all logical to me.

[Jason Rasmussen]: I agree. I think because of Act 181, regional plans and town plans really should be, to some extent are, but should do a better job of, I think, fleshing out what does the transportation network need to look like in our plain growth areas specifically. There's a big push, a big conversation with the Agency of Transportation about capital planning. So, my hope is that we're going to be doing a lot more capital planning with our towns in the near future, and that would be part of this conversation, would be a huge part of that. And I think the, in a minute, about the Vermont multimodal roadway guide, but I think part of it, like, that's kind of a menu of options. So I think we're gonna really need the regional plans and the town plans and their capital plans to be more specific so we can understand how to apply the multimodal roadway guidance in each community. And I think that'll get it to what's our downtown, what should it look like, what should our pedestrian accommodations be and that sort of thing. So I'm hoping we can do exactly what you're saying, a lot more specificity. The level of effort involved is big though, so we'll have to chip away at

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: it Yeah. Bit, I

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So what you're saying here that these basic requirements around crosswalks, making it safer by not parking right up to it. The MUTCD already specifies these sort of things. And I think it's reasonable to say that the news, it's not called state standards. I forget. The multimodal roadway guide. Those should incorporate this in there.

[Jason Rasmussen]: Yeah, can't remember if it is. It should, yes. Yeah. Should, and I'm no expert on NBTCD either, but yeah, I think it should be covered in those two documents. We're gonna talk a little bit about sections three and six that talks about sort of the need for a supplement. I think that makes the agency a little nervous, to be honest with you. I'm personally hoping that, so I think the idea of a supplement, that transportation engineers are thinking of bigger states like Texas and Massachusetts, they got huge DOT budgets, they got a lot of They might have capital S supplement. I'm hoping that the Vermont Multimodal Roadway Guide will kind of serve as some form of a supplement or a guidance that's gonna inform setting speed limits and other things. So I just included a little table, this table 3.8 from the draft, and they called it the NRG, new standards. It really helps, I think it should help us to understand what appropriate limits for speed zones are in certain roads, in certain parts of town. So I'm kinda hoping so in July 2026, this multimodal roadway guide will be done. I hope, that's the plan. And I'm hoping that we will find that it will be helpful in sort of providing that level of guidance, and it may not be the supplement maybe we're thinking about, but I'm hoping that it will serve the staff. So that may be something that we can work with the agency on between now and next session. And I just wanna also show that there are other things that may be precedent out there that may be of interest, maybe it's relevant, maybe it's not, but I think NACTO is National Association of City Transportation Officials. They have some guidance. I like some of their guidance. Their guidance is for New York City and Houston, so it may not be Vermont context appropriate, but it might be nice to look at some of these other examples and just see how that might inform what we do. The one aspect about this that I like, like the Multimodal Roadway Guide, is it has different speed levels for different types of streets. So I kinda like the idea. I'm just throwing that out there. That may be something we think about over the next year. And in places like Massachusetts have some interesting laws about saying traffic speeds, but Massachusetts is a bigger place. I believe they have one of these supplements. Their towns are not Dillon's rule, they're home rule, so they have a little more authority to do stuff. So it may not be applicable, but it might be nice to look at broader examples, just to see if there's a better way of doing

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Jason, do you see potentially having some kind of a sort of meeting of the minds group that you were describing earlier as an opportunity to cast a bit of a wider net about how, I think it would make the multimodal guidance more useful on a very more granular level in our communities. And was really what I was trying to get at in this bill was that we just have such a range of scales of settlements. If our intent is to enable them to be eligible for future development opportunities, how the roads change is to meet that new use of these settings is really important. So I think, yeah, to the degree that they're good examples from other places. And I would throw out guides that I've seen from villages in England, which I can share with you offline, that are obviously huge differences, but they're challenged in some of the same ways that we are in our very little places. They have some really interesting opportunities that most importantly don't cost a gazillion dollars to implement. So

[Candice White (Member)]: there may

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: be some kind of real low hanging fruit opportunities to give a touch of safety and walkability for some really small places that then could set them on the path for becoming something more in the future. Sounds

[Jason Rasmussen]: great, yeah. I'm somewhat waiting to see what the final result of this multimodal roadway guide looks like, but I may have seen more of it than many of you. Far it's looking good. But yeah, I think once that's done, there's gonna be an awful lot of conversation about what it's mean, how do you use it, how the towns sort of make sense of it, what do we need to do to help towns plan for its implementation, etcetera, etcetera. So I think, yeah, any other examples are important, and yeah, more than happy to continue that conversation with the agency and others on.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: The things that were particularly interesting in this case were kind of setting the thresholds, so there was kind of a motorist would have a sense of what to, hey, you're coming into a different kind of context, and this is what to expect, and this is how to behave. There's kind of cues. Again, nothing over the top, but just subtle but clear.

[Jason Rasmussen]: That's all I really had, but I'm more than happy to answer questions or talk further about any other aspect of this that you'd like.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Well, not sure about questions or not. I will say that I was unsure about the tour around the state with all of your fellow planning commissions and whatnot when we first started, but I actually found it to be positive to hear voices from multiple locations into a different level of feedback than what we might have heard in the past. I'm not sure who I'll be back next biennium and how it will work, but if I were lucky enough to be in that spot, you could see us doing some versions of wanting to hear from different pieces. A note about the capital projects, there is a, last year's T Bill included a two year effort for the agency to work across sort of an inventory and how would you come up with an inventory with all of the needs and the mapping of the entire state. And in fact, the way that we have the white book for all of the agencies' projects and plans, one of the battles that we have is how do we get more money for town highways, town structures, town activity, more construction, more pieces. But we don't have the inventory to go back in the same way and say, here's where the road conditions are deteriorating, here's how much money it would take to get it up to speed, here's how much money that they have. We don't have that sort of a system on a statewide basis. I'm not sure that we can can have a system that has everything, but I know that looking for a way to quantify all the need that is out there, I understand a couple of towns have really gone through an old inventory process, but not statewide. I don't know if you have any thoughts or comments on any of that activity. We used to do a

[Jason Rasmussen]: lot of that work fifteen so years ago, then along came the storm water regulations that we had. And so we really not had a lot of time, frankly, between the towns and regional planning staff to focus on other things other than the, you know, when we were in inventories. That's really taken up a lot of our efforts over the last almost ten years. I would love to get back to the broader transportation inventory work that we used to do. So we used to do some We used to use the RSMS software, but that's sort of not really around anymore. And there's other methods to do road condition assessments, and we used to do an awful lot of culvert and bridge assessments. I'd love to get back to that. So that'd be great, and we're talking with the agency about our next TPI guidance to do more of that, so that's all good. There's an effort right now. I'm being an Otis on my staff for talking with Andrea White at VTrans and with the Monk Bond Bank about their They have a municipal climate recovery fund, I guess, what it's called, that's focused on transportation. It's intended to be bridge money between, you know, when between a disaster and when FEMA comes to town, but it's not coming to town maybe now. But so we're talking with the bond bank about coming up with using the agency as this transportation resilience tool. So we're looking at that to try and estimate the demand for those funds statewide. So there's gonna be a component that's coming through that effort, I hope, in the next few months. So it'll help to shed light on the need. And then just another thought that one of the things that we're doing in the office is

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: collecting are

[Jason Rasmussen]: transportation needs. We recognize there's no new funding maybe in the capital budget, but we're looking other ways. So, you know, if we understand the town's needs, you know, can we apply for grants and aid money or for better roads money? Are there some water quality funding that we can use to upgrade that culvert? So we are doing that kind of a thing. It doesn't give you the total need. But I think some of us regional planning commissions throughout the state are doing that sort of thing. If we can sort of try to figure out how to package it all together, it might shed light on it, but it won't be the full story.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Anybody else have any pieces or any other subjects you wanted to get into? So you go from running over to having a few extra minutes to back and forth. I don't want to keep you any longer than but if you have anything else that you want.

[Jason Rasmussen]: I don't have anything else, but again, I'm happy to answer any questions or other things that you have in mind.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I guess I would say then, thank you very much for coming back.

[Jason Rasmussen]: Yeah, you.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And we appreciate you and all of your colleagues in terms of all the help they've given the committee this year. I know there were some new witnesses that had never testified or never been exposed to this. That's always

[Jason Rasmussen]: a valuable piece as well. I mentioned the last time we used to do this with the House Transportation Committee like twenty something years ago, and they found it a little boring for a while. So if there's a way that we can do it better and more coordinated, let me know. Happy to try to coordinate it next year if needed, but I'm glad you found it helpful.

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: Just to follow-up on what the chair was talking about wanting to get kind of coordinated feedback or information on how we can simplify grants, reduce cancellations or address that maybe more effectively than we feel like we are now, and then information on setting speeds. Would that be something that we could look forward to receiving testimony on from you guys? Just Or how do we sort of make sure that we're all touching base and hearing what you guys come up with?

[Jason Rasmussen]: Yeah, so I think maybe the expectation would be next session, we would come back and testify as to what

[Kate Lalley (Member)]: we came up with. Okay, that makes sense to me. Does that make sense to you, Mr. Pierre, from that point? We

[Jason Rasmussen]: did get the invitation from Jeremy Reese, I don't wanna speak for him, but I think something like that would make a lot of sense.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. For the committee, we're gonna go through a couple of what's next, at least so everybody understands where we're at. And I know that it's going be very difficult to land your schedule for the next couple of days. I'm hearing that the House floor tomorrow is very full, so I don't know when we'll get to the committee tomorrow. The speaker would like us to put the bill out as quickly as we can. I pretty I want to continue to work through the MyoKrace user fee. I think we have an obligation to to that's expected to be in play on 01/01/2027, and I don't think we're comfortable with where it's at yet. So that needs to be continued on our subject. We I also really want to, as I mentioned to some, want to, and gaming has crafted some language, I want to take a stab at some potential effort to get money from town highways through all of the increased local option tax pieces that are out there. Thank you very much, Chris. And I want to push before the peace ends. I want that file out of the peace in the bill when it goes to the senate. 12 new towns have passed a little for option tax. The pilot fund is fully funded. There are a lot of people out after that piece of money. I want our committee to be in response to try to help Town Highway 8, town structure. It may just be as simply as Town Highway 8, piece we don't want to put it in, but the formula based piece that's already distributed out. I want that conversation, us to be part of that as we move forward. There are people who have other parts of the bill that are in part of the piece through the next week that we have been working on. In that sort of discussion back and forth, the speaker said, well, how about the money part? Can we get the money part settled and then we can get to a preview and work into ways and means and into appropriations? There are a couple of pieces out there that people had asked for money. They may or may not have actually been moved to come into the committee. So when we do markup next, it's your last chance to, I guess, you're looking for a vote on something or you're looking to make that last change. That'll be the last chance to do that. I would like to at least be able to say that we've got the money part of things wrapped up before we leave tomorrow. I think we're gonna hear the transportation alternatives this afternoon. We may I don't if we go back into the markup on a couple of those pieces. And so that's the scoop in terms of we'll work today right up to the floor as our alleged counsel is available and as we do on PT. And then tomorrow, we're going don't know how late. We're gonna have to play it by year to how late the floor goes to coming back into committee. And then from that, I'll make a decision on whether we try to meet before four on Tuesday. I it's been suggested we may have to meet on Monday. I that'll be a real challenge. But I don't wanna have meetings outside of the regular schedule because, you sometimes it comes right down to a vote on some things. But I did not anticipate this change. I didn't realize that we were going to be asked to push it out sooner than what we had expected. So we're going focus on those pieces. For those that are working on some other spots, I think that some of the stuff we discussed about in charging is still potentially available through miscellaneous motor vehicles and or driving testimony. There are other parts related to whether the we speed limits still may or may be. Speed limits are obviously vehicle related. And so I don't think that if there's more to be done in that area, that's a possibility. So anyway, that's my basic scoop is expect your next couple of days have just been thrown into a bit of a disarray if you're going to be able to be here or not. And I don't have a more definitive timeline. We will work right up till four time today. If four were to get out early, we could come back. But I anticipate that's the case today either. I'm looking over the way. People that have more heads up on today, we're not getting time to come back So

[Jason Rasmussen]: that's where we're at. We're just

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: going to keep pushing through it. Yes, we can.

[Candice White (Member)]: About the 2% legal option tax?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We are not going to take up any further on that and the reason being that from my perspective anyway, we're not going to spend more time on it because ways and means has given up on that piece of it and that they're not going to pursue it and that the administration has come out that, at least my understanding is if Stone puts in for a charter change, then he's likely to, the governor is likely to veto it. Having that language is not doesn't seem to be possibly feasible, which is why I'm going to a different route, is to go after another way to get some of that town highway money through the fact that the local option tax on the 70 five-twenty five splits is going to have a lot more money generated from the towns than it otherwise would. So that's my tip pivot is from that not being really a viable option to go and try this option to get that dialogue and get that piece happening. Hope that is that's where that shift came from. It's a good question. Sorry if I didn't communicate that earlier. Haven't communicated it, but that's what

[Candice White (Member)]: happened. Yes? So on the pilot program, is there proposed language that Damian's working on that we may want to, that we will consider inserting into the T Bill?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yes.

[Candice White (Member)]: Yes. Okay.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I am lining up testimony with JFO for Tuesday to sort of bring that back the pilot information we heard in the joint session to refresh and to get some anticipated revenues around what these additional 12 towns might generate and what a fair percentage to ask for might be. I mean, obviously, 100 is the fairest. A 100% of that money should come to the town. I'm sure that everybody would agree with that, right? That's the 100%. A 100%. But suspect that won't be a reasonable number. So I'm looking for that. So we are lining up East Tuesdays, the earliest that can happen.

[Candice White (Member)]: And will we be also looking at the current balance in the pilot, or are you thinking more going forward as more funding is coming into the pilot?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I am suggesting anything we would do would be with an effective date for next year's budgeting. I'm not thinking that we're going to have a shot at any of

[Candice White (Member)]: the current piece of leather. Whatever's language that supports our asking for some of that to go to town, municipalities, existing If we're going make a money change, somebody will have to

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: make a movement, motion the next time we discuss this as markup, and I don't believe that there's enough support to make that happen beyond us. Which is why I think that we should, what we asked for before, with an effective date that doesn't affect the current money, gets a lot further for us on long term incremental exchanges.

[Jason Rasmussen]: I'm not telling them what we can

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: and can't do, I'm not speaking for the whole piece, that's why I'm thinking anything that doesn't change the numbers for this year has a much better opportunity to be planned for within building budgets for next year than the year after, than the year after. Feeling comfortable? Sure. Did I miss anything? Sounds good. I make sure that I can say was there any other piece on there? We are also going to squeeze in testimony on Tuesday on federal rail banking and we'll go from there on that. So