Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Meeting technician/host]: Campaign. You're live. You're live.

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: This is Senate Transportation. We're gonna resume our testimony, and we have the town manager from Colchester. And thank you for catching me with my mouth full. That's Thank you. We were we're very sorry that yesterday our schedule got so tight and that and we're happy to have you here today. Thank you.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: Thank you for having me back, mister Richard Westman, just wanna follow-up yesterday. Ross McDonald from B TRANS was asked about the volunteer driver program and actually met with the OND committee in Chitman County and said you need to get more volunteer drivers. And we talked about some constraints for doing so, and he said, well, unconstrained financials, you need to do better. So starting next Monday, the town of Colchester is going to be advertising in Front Porch Forum, Facebook, Instagram, our town newsletter, the postal newspaper for volunteer drivers. We're gonna have a little forum on how to volunteer and what you can do with him. So he he had been persistent, at least in in our area about the need to add volunteer drivers to make the

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: payment available. We made that a conscious effort in this committee and, pushed through an effort and we put resources towards it. We haven't had a chance to catch up to see how they're doing, but, the number of volunteer drivers dropped during COVID. And we, as of last year, hadn't recovered to the level that it was previously, and certainly with all of the consolidation in healthcare, we're very concerned that we need to make sure that we do the best we can with transportation for people that have dialysis, for example, and make sure that people can get there. So it will be a continuing effort on this committee's part to push that issue along.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: Right. And we're with you.

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: And we thank you for the advertising. All of those efforts together, hopefully, we'll be successful in getting more people. I think there's people out there that would like to do this.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: Absolutely. So and and it's a good way to extend the resources at a time of constraint. So, again, Erin Frank, Manchester Town Manager. I worked in public transit for about twenty years. One of my first jobs in that business was to get human service agencies in Durham, North Carolina to consolidate their trips with a single county run provider, much like VTrans had been already been doing long before that time. But we had to go out to different agencies and offer them, hey. We'll pay for your capital costs for the transit agencies, and we'll pay for some coordinating costs if if you join in together. And, of course, it is more economically efficient to do it in that coordinated manner, and we did have some luck. They didn't get the absolute control they had before. But, again, just kinda emphasizing what the state has been doing for more than thirty years here in the coordinated human service transportation. It really lessens the burden on the Department of Human Service and the human service providers of the cities and towns that choose to take them to older adults and persons with disability program. So a little about this program, I won't overlap Mr. McDonald too much, but again, it's a program for people with disabilities and adults 60 or older. And it's a program that has an eighty twenty federal state operating mix and a local 20% funding. Most states use this for buses only. That's a few of them to use it for mobility management or administrative expenses. And B TRANS has, for decades, required the public transit providers to keep cost allocation plans, or these are almost like a second set of financials that they have to keep to say who's billing to what. Honestly, they're burdensome, but they're able to do a lot more by knowing exactly how much you spend where. And as a result of these programs, they're able to make the O and D program 80% state and federal and 20% local, which makes it much easier to participate in. So there is really a purpose to their programs, and they've sent me through that training for weeks. And it's actually a good financial tool to to know how your business works and what your overhead costs are. So appreciate that we trans role in that regard. Here's a different perspective, but it's similar to what Ross has said. He said, we have the Federal Transit Agency kind of sets a framework for what are these programs that have different areas, generally FHWA that flex dollars into it. There are state taxes in the program in Chitney County to cover the non excuse me, the urbanized area of the program. And maybe for other reasons, it goes to agency transportation, B TRANS, local match from the participating partners in our area goes to Green Mountain Transit and then to get the 80% money and the 20 money goes to SSTA to provide the rides. Just a little flow chart.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Thank you. So just a note and if you want to talk about it now or later, but to me the box that is the most challenging is the local match because we don't have in Vermont effective ways of getting that local match. It's usually just asking other than in the NPO in Chittenden County. So that's something that I just think we ought to talk about as a committee at some point and if you want to talk about it now or if you have suggestions or ideas.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: So one of the ways is that when volunteer drivers are utilized, it's my understanding that they're able to count their labor as local match, so it reduces the cash match. And and you'll hear Ross talk about cash match versus local match, and so that's that's a way to extend the resources. And, honestly, it is a challenge in in many places. Another community in Chitney County was not not able to accept additional federal funds, and they didn't have a local match. So it isn't unique to Chitman County. Colchester is is all show you is a little unique with regard to our population and public transit, and so we're more willing and able to. But it is a challenge, again, the the volunteer drivers is one way that you could leverage it. I think that you can take the value of their time and turn that into a non cash match. It helps, but again, if there's more volunteer drivers, there's more. Excellent question. So how is it funded? Again, Federal Transit Agency gives us base level of $53.10 fund. It's very small. Think we heard Rob say 300,000, yet the program's almost 6,000,000. So the state is flexing in an enormous amount of funds of this program. We're very thankful for that. And again, the partnership is 20% match. There's lots of flexible funds in the US DOT funding framework, it's thankful that the federal government has chosen to create a program where these can use the funds as the legislature and the administration. Some things about Colchester. Here's a map of our community. You can see the big white area. That's the Outer Bay and the Inner Bay. We have the third highest population of any city or town or village in the state of Vermont. People don't always think of Colchester in that regard. We're the thirteenth highest, largest community of land mass, out of two forty seven, and our population is kind of focused in a few areas. There's Malice Bay, there's some in the village, and then the Route 15 area, but you can see the areas. Those are actually roads and little dots of residences. The point here is just to show we're spread out, spread out, much like the rest of the state. Think of The Bay like a mountain. You can't get through it, you can't get around it, you can take a boat in the summertime, but that's not how you get to parks and recreation, police, fire, rescue, public safety. And our geography is a challenge to the town. In fact, this corner up on the left, there used to be some more land. It was on the other side of the Illinois River. We gave it to Winooski because some decades ago, we didn't wanna have land on one side of the river. And they said, okay. Fair enough. But, anyway, there's also a point at the bottom missing that's the city of Windhamskaya, which in 1920 went to the legislature and against the town's witches asked to be removed from the town. And, of course, at the time, they were drastically subsidizing the village was subsidizing the farms and other economic interests in Colchester. So then the the town was kinda left without an economic base and kinda developed and that spread that way. It's partly due to our geography, but we did have an urban core that folks don't always recognize. And especially when we talk about transportation, it's important as as you know, it's easier and more effective to deliver public transit when there's an urban core. So Colchester is not predominantly urban. This darker color shows the urbanized area of Chittenden County. I know there's a belief I've lived in other counties in Vermont, and people think, oh, all of Chittenden County is is urban, but most of Chitney County is not. Most of Colchester is not. And our land density is about 500 people per square mile, and it's mostly due to the concentrated areas. There's areas where you can't put anything either because of wetlands by the two rivers or lakes and other things. But you might think of Colchester being a little bit more like the state as a whole with 70 people per square mile than Winooski, Essex, South Burlington with 1,200 to 5,000 people. So we are we have areas that are urban, and we do have public transit on the Route 15 corridor, there's lots of other areas of town that that are different. So here's another perspective is Colchester is not a member of Green Mountain Transit, but we have an agreement to contribute the exact amounts that a member would contribute on the same basis as membership. In fact, we've been entering into this agreement, paid them back for all past capital investments that would have ever been made had Colchester been a member. And part of the thinking here is we're in the middle, and so the route between Burlington, Widowsky, Colchester, Essex, town, and the city of Essex Junction is never gonna change. So having a board member on that route and being one in the middle, we're not going to get any change to the route and the same thing with the route that goes up to the middle. So it's more of like, hey, we're happy to contribute on the same basis of a member. So what this chart does is it takes the total amount of Rainy Mountain Transit's budget, it's about 22,000,000, 23% of it, you're just talking about local match, is funded by the local municipality, so it's a little bit higher than the O and D program. And then we looked at how much in hours of service is provided in each one of the cities and towns and then divided that by the community population. And so it's not really a function of how much Colchester is willing to pay, it's where public transit would be effective in Colchester. And you will all have no doubt heard this from Ross before is fixed routes are more effective in highly concentrated areas. So you can see here Milton is a little bit more rural than Colchester. It's away from the urban core. They have $13 per community population and service provided by Green Mountain Transit. The town of Essex, that would be the town outside the city, which is now separated at 24, and again, they're lower density. And Colchester is the third lowest in value of Green Mountain Transit service per population. And again, we have a pretty high population, but not a large amount of service. Next, we also kind of want to look at we're the third highest in the state in population, but even amongst the nine communities in Chittenden County that receive fixed route bus service, we're the third lowest in bus hours. And bus hours is a good way to calculate, hey, what's the value of our service? So big contrast between those. And, you can think about, okay, we can all get a lot of fixed route service. That means other programs like O and D are extremely important to us because we do have transportation needs and as the third largest community, a lot of that is met through things other than fixed route. Last, Ross shared this yesterday, but these are the statewide eligibility, and they're broad because the vision of this program from the federal government is that human service agencies can provide any one of these kind of trip types as they seek fit. The state DOTs can then offer a program and then the local, or in some cases state or county human service agencies can say, Okay, we're an agency that specializes vocational rehab or in wellness and something like that. The trip purposes in the state's rules are purposely very broad.

[Representative Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: So

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: vocational, those are trips that employers would appreciate, I would think. Have you had conversations? We have, but it's really tough to have employers contribute when it's not mandated. That the conversation that is happening?

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: So

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: vocational trips can be trips to ongoing employment, they could be trips to job training or trips to interview. We have nine folks that are using the O and D program for ongoing employment, the town provides a local match and the town is happy to provide the the local match for that. So we don't really have a local match challenge with it. We we have been working with with Ross, and we'll be talking to to the vocational rehab folks to see if they have any ways. I'm not certain that they have ongoing operating expenses. They might talk to the employers, but when the folks came to the health center select board meeting, it seemed like people are very happy with the jobs they have. Yeah. And so we don't want to have them change jobs, and they're they're folks that might have some challenges there. And so, like, with anybody, they have a good job that they like and the employer is happy with them. You wanna keep that in place. Oh. And so Totally. But there there is so we're trying to work with this vocational rehab, it's now called hireability, and and we're gonna talk to them. Do you have any ways to to do these things? But if the employer wanted to, they could. So far, they haven't had. But I'd say a bigger challenge is the funding pool allotted to this this program is very limited. And so, you know, it's it's more than just the 20% local match. It's probably the 80% state and federal share. But we're gonna have those conversations. We're gonna see, do they know of anybody who might be able to give a carpool? We're also gonna try to engage other ways for folks to get trips, and and Ross is looking, hey. Is there different funding sources for this? And, you know, we have, again, nine people, and it might be almost half of what's provided for vocational trips in the state, but it works for us. If you think about how much the geography and the population is spread out in Colchester, but thinking about our population and then the lack of mixed root surface, not because we don't want it, because it doesn't make sense.

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: Right.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: It it kind of to me, it makes sense. Why do we have more? But, you know, the folks that have good jobs that they're happy with, we need to figure out a way together. So it may be an option to ask the employers. Some of those riders are paying for a few days a week themselves or or take another transportation because our our rules are currently we'll pay for three round trips a week. And so there's some folks that have exceptions for a reason, but there are also some folks that are paying for a few trips on their own. One person works six days a week. We provide three. And so we're already getting this program leverage. There's also folks that have friends and family take them to and from work. I've actually engaged in what Ross calls mobility management along with other folks I've dragged into this and all tested and and called families to pay. Did you pick up some of these trips that we're able to do that? So we're working hard to kinda create a bigger support network to continue all that we can.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That's great that you know it. You know that your system and you know the folks who are writing so specifically what what they're doing.

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's terrific.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: And we were very concerned about this. There's a 115 writers. We called all 115 and and some received a notice in the mail and some people are visually impaired. Paper notices aren't as easy as electronic notices where there's various readers and whatnot. We made a point to get to know that Pat was at the Slack work meeting last Tuesday and heard from 12 people, about 30 showed up concerning about this. Thank you. Sure. So the OND committee, you heard a little bit about that yesterday in Chitney County. There is 10 agencies, Cathedral Square, Age Well, Age Well, Countywide, Burlington Parks and Recreation, City of Winooski, Milton Family Community Center, which is an not for profit and funded by the town, town of Richmond, town of Williston, UVM Medical Center, Home Health and Hospice, and Care Partners, and then AgeWell Countywide receives money from a number of communities. I'm not sure which ones, but they operate the EMD program, the OND program on multiple communities. And Colchester has been kind of asked, Oh, do you want to give your funding into that? And we felt like at some point it might be okay, but now it's a point where we're kind of happy that the money is going through us directly because we can advocate more directly ourselves kind of thing. But in lots of counties, you'll see three or four human service agencies. Chitten County is bigger, so there's more entities. You can see here, there's a fair number of municipalities that contribute to the program as well. So there's really two purposes of the committee. It does meet up to four times a year, but there's really two things that are important is what trips do they allow and how often do they allow trips and how to split up the money. And I actually ran this committee, trained other people to run the committee, a lot of the things you can kind of work through on consensus and and maybe put out a proposal after talking to two people. So it doesn't have to be four times a year, but they should do those important things like here's what the transit is giving out for funds and then who gets how much and then what purposes do we allow.

[Representative Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Yeah. So, back to the committee. Oh, you're still there. What is the authority making who who has authority making decisions on that committee? Like, who runs the show when you meet?

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: So, honestly, it's it's been a a challenge, and quite some time ago, it was really the the committee that would vote and decide, and somebody else would come and facilitate, like, a a staff to a city or town, but doesn't have authority. The committee has kind of evolved that it's not really clear that those, the folks, the partners who are providing the 20% with LaMention are the committee. And so I wouldn't cast any blame, but they're not clear that they have a responsibility and an authority just like you all do. I'm a guest at your table here, there's the table where everybody sits. And Renee Marshall, the deputy manager, and I have asked, hey, can we create a forum where this committee feels empowered and responsible? And I have talked to Clinton Clark and Charlie Baker, who's the regional planning director, about can we create a situation where they feel like, hey. They're responsible and and they're also authorized, and we're trying to work to create situations where that won't happen. But it hasn't been the case in in recent years. I wouldn't say it's anybody's fault, but it has evolved into something where the committee or the partners don't feel like they have that responsibility. Where does this come from? But the state has a multi, probably, 100 pages or something that OND rules manual kind of outlines this, and they actually provide B TRANS, I think, provides some funding to the regional planning agencies to kind of facilitate this meeting. So that's one of our challenges in Chitney County is getting the members to feel like they are in charge and getting the others to feel like, oh, you come and can provide information, but it's really just this group's decision making.

[Representative Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: So I don't wanna get ahead of anything you might say later, but if this committee, would they make a decision on potential cuts or would they would who who else has a seat at the table? Does GMT or or, you mentioned, Charlie Baker. So do they sit in on these meetings? Are they do they run these meetings? Or

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: So most recently, it really has been Green Mountain Transit has comment presented to the the meeting, and and it's mostly, you know, the the meeting in December when it was announced, what the changes were by Green Mountain Transit, there was not an opportunity for the committee to really weigh in. And then you compare that, you bring together that the committee doesn't feel empowered, and there's not a table of the committee members. And so it is a difficult situation with the committee not being empowered. It's it's been this way for a while. It was not always this way.

[Representative Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: So it's an advisory committee that doesn't advise, apparently.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: And I would say the ability to advise. To my understanding, they have they're not advisory on the two topics of splitting up the state state and federal funding, and then who what kind of trips are allowed. So I I my belief is they're not an advisory committee. They have authority over those two matters. And then they should receive input from B TRANS and from, in our case, the service provider is SSTA, which is different than the transit agency with whom we have agreements. But it's it's been very much recently, oh, we're just providing this information, and and I'll be honest that Colchester deputy manager has been assigned to go to these meetings, but there is not opportunity for input. So she reads the minutes, and she has lots of meetings to go to, and we're hoping to change that, and maybe it'll be worthwhile to come to the the meetings. But if if you were told you didn't have decision making authority here and you had this

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: rather dysfunctional. Yeah. Ask me.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Can I follow-up on it?

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: Yeah. Well, I'm done.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So, I that the committees like that are they have they get that authority from the federal regulations passed down through the state is my understanding. Is that

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: And that's the way I used to run the committees, trained other people to run them, those were the two things the committee had to do every year, and if everything was copacetic, I there might be a couple of agencies where there wasn't enough money, and you kinda said, oh, can you share a little bit with you? We want to split it even even. You wanna have a discussion. And you could send out an email and say, we've reached this consensus. Can half of you respond by email and then we don't need to meet because they're busy? But it's evolved into really no decision making authority of the committee on those two things. You might only need to meet once a year, but right now it's evolved into where that isn't the case. Will say that I discussed this with Clayton and Charlie and both of them support bringing the committee to a position where it has its authority, but it hasn't recently. In fact, last night we talked about this with regional planning. I actually met with Ross and regional planning in early January about doing this, and it's part of the challenge.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yes and when I said the other day that there was a committee I was having trouble finding, that's that committee in my area because I was familiar in another state of that authority because there needs to be some local representation so that you know what's happening on the ground that informs how we do these, how we provide these services.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: Yes.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay. It's because I always think, oh, shouldn't be kind of they must be doing it all, right?

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: And I wouldn't I wanna be clear. It's not any I'm not even sure anybody involved today was responsible for how this change happens. I I do know that Big Trans said we want for CCRPC to start facilitating it, but it just didn't come together. And most other parts of state, there's only two or three partners, and getting them to agree and it's easier.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I understand. And I don't mean to be criticizing. I just want to look forward to a system that meets our

[Representative Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: needs.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: Absolutely. Yes. So here is the trip purpose parameters, and you don't have to read them all, but you can see they're different by agency, and that goes back to the vision of this program from the federal government, how do you get all these human service agencies to agree to cool their rides, cool their capital, cool their human capital at delivering the trips, you give them broad freedoms about what their trips range for. So they're very different by agency based on the needs and goals of of those particular agencies. So this kind of flows up to Ross, those are other than this giant anything human service related, even transportation for people with disabilities, it it'd be considered a human service. And, you know, that's within that that parameter. It says altered by the state. So here are the current Colchester trip purposes that are allowed until February 23 when that change is proposed. We allow all the trip purposes. We have a few restrictions, three round trips in any category other than medical. No restrictions on medical trips. Social personal, up to three trips a week for any of the following, visiting spouse, kids for outside the home, trips to friend or church, and social personal for other trips not permitted. So, you know, it's important for people to get out. You've heard during COVID how kind of tragic it is for people to be stopped. And if a person were to have a disability and difficult for them to get out of the home, hey, providing opportunities to engage and do things outside the home. It's important and it can be even life sustaining and on morale. So this is admittedly, it's generous, but the the town has been willing to fund this. And in fact, when I went to work in the transit business in about 2002, I noticed, oh, they're very generous. And sometimes they'd run over and talk to the town manager or deputy town manager and said, oh, could we have some more local match? Because you run over and and the town has historically been generous and understanding about the need for these scripts. So it's it's been going on for decades that the town of Colchester has had a forward and generous approach to funding of this program. So

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: is there a certain amount that you pay per trip and does it change?

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: So right now we pay 20% of all the trip costs.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So whatever it is. Exactly. So you get a bill every month or

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: We do get a bill every month from Green Mountain Transit and excuse me, from SSTA, and then we pay 20%. And the trip is based on mileage and it's shared mileage. So if you and I were on the the van together, we would then each each half of it would be billed to us. So it's kind of a logical software system and and that kind of thing, but it's based on how far. That is great. Yeah. So next, we have the original f y twenty six budget that was brought to us, and this was given to the partners, and was, 100% money is about $550,000 You can see Colchester was slightly larger than the CBAA, a 12 county wide program. So it is we've probably been first, second, or third in in the largest entity in in the state in funding of this program as a local partner. Again, that's related to our geography and our lack of really having an area that could be served by traditional transit. So recent events in FY twenty six, the regional transit provider received about a million dollars in state provided federal funding. I'll acknowledge this was in the governor's budget, but having been in that business before, I understand you have to act early often and make a really good case to both

[Representative Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: get some kind

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: of money in the government budget, and then you have to engage in meetings with the both houses to see that it sticks. At the same time, there were increasing needs in the Chitney County O and D program, and it turned out in FY '25 that the OND program, I think the budget was about the same, about 550,000, was over budget by about a $170,000. And there was no specific request for OND funds or added OND funds last year, despite a growing need. And then OND funding was reduced statewide by 300,000. You saw how, SpeedTrans was able to kind of travel some money around the move from other places. So I also acknowledge the O and D partners were aware in July that we could have a fudging problem in FY '26. But additionally, O and D costs can be very about variable. People have to go to dialysis and then they don't, ideally because they're then provided a kidney. But those drugs can be very expensive, but they can change drastically over time. And so can cancer treatment. You just have a pocket of people and those that are absolutely life essentials, so you can have spikes. So your budget last year doesn't always trend the same for this year. You have to wait and see how it goes. So another thing that happens is both in each county, money can be moved amongst the different partners via the transit providers. And so that's what you try to do first if you're over budget. And the second thing that you do is you heard Ross admit that he keeps some money back to help out with overage, and I think that's a wise management decision. But he can also move money between and amongst the regions because not just on the local level, but on the regional level, the need can change. And, again, they they kind of run a dynamic program moving the money back and forth. So in December 2025, Green Mountain Transit identified the spend spending trends would be exhausted as early as January. So doubling your budget, that's probably gonna be too much to do anything with other than what how can we reduce? Yeah. So, B TRAN has agreed to provide additional federal funds and state funds into the program, but it's still, even after that, Green Mountain Transit predicted and at current use levels, 161,000 deficit by the end of the fiscal year, so we had to do something. So at this OND partner meeting, we did not have any advanced materials or advanced notice to Green Mountain Brands that showed up into the PowerPoint and explained that they were re restricting the trip types and the number of trips. And then they said they would mail letters to the riders of Could have been where? You said they showed up. They they had this o n d meeting, and and they kind of announced this is what was happening. It was not a vote of the committee, and and the committee wasn't. We could have said something, but when you provided information that drastic, it takes a while to process it and think, how do we do anything about this? So it was definitely more of an announcement. And then they sent us a written communication about ten minutes after the meeting was done. So to me, that it was written already. It wasn't just a follow-up to the the meeting. I do realize they were trying to respond to a physical challenge, but they also mailed letters to the writers on the December 17 about seven days after the meeting. Some writers did not receive the letters by February 2, and probably in your communities as in Colchester, we are sometimes told that mail can take weeks. And so if you combine that with the holidays, I'm I'm not surprised that some people did not receive the letters by Friday the second. But riders contacted the Fultonster Town manager's office and said, we're having our rides canceled for next Monday. Their trips to work, their trips to crucial things. Can you do anything to help us? Can you please help us? They some folks said they called Green Mountain Transit, weren't able to get through. I I called, eventually got an email through and and said, hey. Can you give us another week? This is just too quick. And so I had to advocate some more. Ultimately, that was granted, and I I do appreciate that. So, hey. We got a little pause, we heard from more people that how can we possibly upend our lives, our our jobs, and, even a week, we appreciate that, but it's too much too soon. Can you do anything? So again, we advocated. I called directly some Green Mountain Transit board members. Other communities may have done the same, but then we got the trip the implementation of the change trips pushed out until February 2, so a month's notice. And in the municipal business, if we change planning rules or anything, there's the planning commission has to hold hearings, and that might take forty five days, and then they have to give it to the select board, that might take another forty days. So it's a long time before you could make changes. Yeah. Something similar. I do.

[Representative Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: I'm just looking for the nod. And I just wanna add for the committee that the town manager wasn't the only one getting the phone calls. As soon as this started to happen, my folks started ringing too. So I had to brush up real quick on my O and D knowledge and did it end the meeting on Tuesday, a week ago now I think, and there were 30 people there. It's If you watch the testimony, it was kind of heart wrenching, know, to listen to some of the stories.

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah, I mean, is part of

[Representative Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: vocational rides. We had a couple of people testify that were blind and still working. So, yeah, it wasn't just unique to the town manager. It's a growing issue, Colchester. People are well aware of it at this point. And, again, you know, this meeting is publicly noticed, and

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: and proper notice is is important. So we we did wind up getting the month. That's that's what we've asked for. So we're you know, it's imperfect, but we'll deal with that. So the next is in the statewide, O and D guidance. It says that the regional O and D advisory committee foresees a budgetary shortfall. It will institute measures to determine the greatest need for remaining funds and both reallocate funds as necessary to have the smallest possible negative impact on the OND transportation service. And and that is a part you know, where my belief is that this committee is empowered. It's empowered to do allocate the funds, reallocate the funds, and decide on the trip purposes. Not a lot, but a few really important things in this one.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I'm just gonna suggest that we look at that OND guidance at some point.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: So the GMTA suggestion, and prior to the last couple weeks, this was a requirement, and and we did get this change from a requirement to a suggestion, but here's what it would do to the Colchester parameters. It would say it's a maximum of six round trips for all trip types unless otherwise noted. If riders take six round trips for adult day dialysis or cancer treatment, they're not eligible for other trips like shopping or wellness or or anything or or vocational. So that's pretty restrictive. Critical care non Medicaid. So that is the trip purpose for folks that are on Medicaid, but the trip isn't billable for Medicaid. And then there's non Medicaid medical. These are for folks that aren't on Medicaid, but medical trips. So six trips a month maximum, senior mil, six trips a month maximum, Adult day remains unlimited, but there's no more wellness. One of the folks that testified said they had a two day a week physical therapy. It was a person in their nineties, but then was supposed to go to group exercise two days a week. It might be safer for them to do this as a group, but it also could be social and sustaining in that way, so that group wouldn't be allowed. Shopping in the six trips a month, it doesn't matter whether it's meals or shopping, it's just Right. This is the originally, it was a mandate. Now it's a suggestion. So these are the new rules. But vocational is no longer allowed, and then social personal is is no longer allowed. And, again, we wanna keep those nine folks getting to their jobs. I did contact the Select Work when this first came up, they said, you you and Renee need to do everything you can. We worked on it over the weekends and have been continuing to do so and, you know, taking calls, working on it, just trying to resolve it. But these would be the changes if we adopted the mandate, which is now a suggestion. So again, Colchester does not believe that accepting the mandate, at least on Colchester's part, would establish the state guidance, which is to have the smallest possible negative impact on the ONT transportation services. This differs for all of the human service and cities and towns that are providing trips because they're providing trips for different reasons. Colchester is willing to engage in mobility management, so that's phone calls and trying to get people to carpool and friends. I've jumped back into the transportation stuff and got other staff to do the same thing. We think all the restrictions make sense. Green Mountain Transit granted the request to allow us to do something differently, but they also said for the partners that agreed to follow the suggestion, they'll be held harmless for cost overruns. And I don't know that it's legally wrong, but I don't think it's fair to treat folks differently when we're trying to do something. You know, there's federal and state funds in it primarily, and so we think we could be treated with with parity. And if everyone else is held harmless, if they agree to follow the now suggestion, it doesn't feel right. So we don't think that that's completely fair and it is a difference that we have with With the partners, again, aren't the agencies. They are the agencies.

[Representative Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: They are the agents. Right.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: Honestly, the town of Colchester is better poised with knowledge of we get our own direct federal grants and have our own relationship with with VTrans and others about some of these things that we might be in a better position to, you know, be in the discussion about this. Other partners might benefit from what we're doing. Going around the committee, what you're saying. Well, so we're gonna participate in the committee, but this there's this it's a mandate now suggestion that's it's being explained to us by Green Mountain Transit that, hey. If if you want to be absolved from cost overruns and if you're a city or town who's or a human service agency that doesn't have a lot of extra money, it's a real big benefit to be absolved for cost overruns.

[Representative Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Mhmm.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: And so we'll be having a second step in the committee. They might meet on the twenty ninth, but they probably won't meet again for a quarter, and everything really has to be lined up for things to work with the committee. It's it's not like a city council or sled board who's gonna say, oh, we're gonna meet about this. You kinda have to do the best you can and and move along.

[Representative Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: So Go ahead. Just have a question on that. So if it's not a mandate, it's now a suggestion, and they're going to cover the cost overruns for people who follow the suggestions. And if Colchester doesn't follow these suggestions to a t and they're not gonna cover the cost overruns, then it's a mandate to me. It's not a suggestion anymore if they're not gonna cover our cost overruns. So I'm a little confused by that. And maybe that's not a question for you, but it is a question I have.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: And, you know, is it I don't know. The legalities, it doesn't feel right because with with state and federal funds, they should be administered in a in a similar manner to the partners. We'd like to benefit from the health harmless for cost overruns. Talked to the select board, and we're probably going have an item to ask for significant additional local funds to cover the nine work trips, but we'd like to have overage covered on those, but we'd also like some additional social personal trips. And and the latest conversation that that I had with Green Mountain Transit was they were willing to let us full. I think if we spend if we agree to to give up the 44,000, which is more than double what we budgeted for this program, they cover the nine work trips. They they might consider those within the cost, the health harmless, but not the social person. And I explained, hey. We can't go from three a week. You know, the least we could take is one a week, and we were offered one a month, and that's just not enough. If you think about this as the only and I could go back to the slight word about the town funding portion of that, but, hey, we've agreed to I mean, it's gonna be up to the slight word, but they care about this. They heard what Pat heard. And so we're agreeing to bring additional funds, but the absolption for overage that's available to others, we think it should be available to us as well.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Just thank you so much for being I'm just looking in time. And I don't wanna I mean, I have so many more questions, and I'll just ask you offline just about other ways to do this. I appreciate your knowledge because you were able to kind of unfold the There's a lot of mystery and complications in this field and I'm glad that the community is seeing how complicated it is because it's very hard.

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: Need talk about this too. Yeah,

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: but it's really good. So let's keep going.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: So this is just a point that we run into this as an employer of employees. For every 100 open jobs, there's only 60 people. So we have nine people that have good jobs that they like and they want to continue. Let's figure out how to do that. Absolutely. And so but this is a challenge in our state. So we've got nine good matches. Let's leave it there. But this is a big problem in our state, and here's a tiny piece that we can solve.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah, I just want to make a comment there is just use economic development money. There is economic development money. It's around to help people get to work. It's done in other places. And again it's not rocket science, it's done. So we can just think about that for the future.

[Representative Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: I

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: mean we can, this is a longer conversation But there are economic development funds.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: There are

[Representative Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: economic programs that should fund it, but I don't know where the money is now. But that's we should figure it out.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah. Of course.

[Aaron Frank (Town Manager, Colchester)]: Yeah. And and there used to be a federal program called the job accents and reverse commute program, and it's my understanding from Ross and doing a little reading that that's not the job access recovery program, and it it only gives 10 trips. So and it's more geared towards people than substance use recovery than folks, other folks. So I don't know. Ross might know if that money could be used for this as well, but changed pretty drastically. That program was federal transit scheme. I actually think they said it doesn't need to be a separate program, and they gave the money to urban fifty three zero seven program. So they might have just said, okay. We're taking this pot. We're putting this into regular urban transit money. But Roth would know whether that is a financial source within the transit program that might be available. Great. So just have a few more. So the coal gesture decisions, again, we have a 115 folks that use the program in the five months. From July to October. 89 were going to be affected by these trip changes according to Green Mountain Transit information. Of the 89, nine were for work trips, two were for vaccinations, 57 were for personal reasons, 25 were for social reasons. I've since learned that at least a number of the personal reasons were having the food shelf bring food to your home and that gets booked to personal. It might not be properly categorized, but, hey, that's really life sustaining. And then two were for medical trips, two were for social trips, and one was a trip for substance use disorder. Again, these are the folks whose trips would be affected. So again, we're willing to do a lot of things, coordinate things, you know, look at could we have restrictions on shopping trips to we met with, SSTA yesterday, and they said, you know, maybe if you said to the nearest full service grocery store rather than any grocery store, that save money. And again, we're thinking about mileage, volunteer drivers, and then, you know, maybe even a group or a couple days a week that do their shopping days, but we're gonna continue the home that the shopping is there we can work on. So again, if we go it alone, we're at financial risk for overage and we'd like to get into a position where we're put in the same bucket as everybody, especially considering that we're willing to add additional money. We also learned that Milton declined the additional federal funding and we said, Hey, could we have that funding share? And then we could match it and maybe that would pay for the social personal trips that are now no longer allowed. So again, just a little more context. The blue route is the route between Burlington, Winooski, Culchwasser, Essex, the city of Essex. It's like in top three riderships and productivity in the state. It's about $5 a one way trip, so Colchester funds a local match to that and the ADA service that goes along with it, but that's only within three quarter miles of it. But again, it's the Route 15 corridor. Something else about that corridor, though, is the town receives very little tax revenue even though it's a two lane road with all the utilities you could ever want. It's by the government and not for profits and and the college. So, hey, it's a great place. It certainly has employment, but it doesn't generate bad revenue. So the green is the Franklin County commuter. It goes from Burlington, Winooski, Colchester, Milton, and then up to St. Albans. Colchester and Milton paid for the local match on that route. It's roughly $32 for a one way trip and cheaper than an Uber, but if you look at, hey, what's the cost of doing things? A Prius is about $300 a month, and a Prius would be $66 per one way trip, and people could use it for other things and and 56 miles a gallon. And then an O and D trip is 53 on average in Colchester. And, you know, we're in a time of scarcity, and you all have to decide how to allocate resources. And, you know, there's folks that can't physically drive on their own in the OED program. A lot of the folks in other routes have some poor choices, at least physically. So it's something to leave you with, and then here is some information that Ross presents these every year, but they're the public transit routes. So you can see there's some public transit routes of the commuter routes that are over $70 and over $30 So think of it so okay too. Fixed route commuter trips would fund more than an O and D trip. This is just for you all to think about the rest of your work.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Very well. Thank you.

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank you so much. Brother. We appreciate it. And Yeah. We are done for the day.