Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You're live. Is Thursday, February 5, and this is the Senate Transportation Committee. And we are starting with agency of transportation updates and the energy reporting. And if you could both give your name and give us what your position is, and we'll go into the report.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Great, thanks. I'm Andrea Wright, I'm the Environmental Policy Manager at the agency.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: And Brad McElroy, Facilities Manager for AMT.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, so we're here to share the report. It's a short report, short presentation on our biannual thermal energy reporting required pursuant to chapter 45 of 19 PSA. So I'll just go through a quick reminder for you all of what that is. Basically, it came out of this committee, I believe, two years ago, and through the T Bill, section, I'm not sure which section, but section three of the T Bill in 2024 required us to, in concert or towards the goals of the Comprehensive Energy Plan, to provide a report biannually to BGS. It's not a legislative report, it's just to BGS, by October 1 that provides some specifics on our heating systems. Let's see, what are those specifics? Speaks to the need for the agency to use more renewable fuels with heat heat its buildings with increase of electricity generated from renewable sources, and it also states that when we're building new facilities or replacing heating systems, that we're looking at prioritizing a switch to high efficiency advanced heating systems. When we're looking at that, we'll start with an overview of the AFP facility space. Obviously, Brad is the program manager, can probably speak to this much better than I can, but that group serves to help service all of the agency's building assets, primarily by making repairs and renovations to existing buildings, and then overseeing the new builds that we do. You've heard a lot. Are all the siege?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Like the way it's the case?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Not all

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: of the square feet are needed, but go ahead, Timothy.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I think a little further down, there's a total of four thirty buildings. There's about 1,400,000 overall square feet, about 900,000 that is heated. Oh, yeah. Salt sheds, storage sheds, things of that nature would not be heated. Weigh stations, we do have some of the weigh stations, they do have heat. Two or three of them, I believe, have heat in it.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, we do own some buildings that are leased out, especially to rail and aviation, in our aviation group. Those are included in the square feet, but then we also leased the buildings, BCP, Bill, and probably others, I'm not sure.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: There's a couple others, think there's five leases total that we have out there.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: And some are not included in this

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: square footage. Some of heating and electricity, everything's built in the lease, some of are not, but we pay separately.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: That's sort of our starting point. A little bit on our data collection background and the process that we have. It's a really labor intensive and time consuming process. It's carried out by 40 plus bill payers. They are entering information, because we have so many different facilities, they're entering information into some of our financial systems for payment. So we're collecting data from a really large system of facilities by a lot of different people, a manual process. So it definitely introduces opportunity for some level of inaccuracy, some inconsistencies potentially, and some human error. We have some challenges in that, besides that fact, but also that we have different reporting systems for different consumptions. So, we have an internal tracking for things like electricity and different consumptions, but then we, well, I'm not even exactly sure. There's human systems. We were entering into Energy Star Portfolio Manager to report to BGS, so that we were all kind of on the same system, but that's only for facilities energy consumptions. So, just kind of like a lot of different moving parts. It's difficult to separate out our fuel usage for thermal systems compared to what we're using for vehicles. Same thing with electric, It's difficult to parse out what's being used for heating our buildings versus lighting for parking lots and

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: EV charging. EV charging. Have.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Andy has a question.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So I understand why the electricity would be hard to separate, because you're paying it probably just the August mill on a meter, but wouldn't you be paying your fuel, drive

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: on the road fuel very different from your spacing fuel? We do get the bills for those for our fuels. All of our fuel contracts go out through BGS. They're a commodity, so each site specific has a specified fuel vendor. So we do get all of those invoices. We had skid tanks for our trucks, that's some of those skid tanks for diesel and things are also used for our generators. There's other uses that we may see those for. We don't heat any of our garages or diesel. The electric, I think, is definitely more difficult to parse out.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: No, it's just because of the tax, because you don't pay that, so maybe you can just buy this diesel and I guess you're not using it for heating, but you could use it for other stuff.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, but like we have.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Generator.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Within the last couple of years we'll get installed level two chargers at all nine of our

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah, no, the electric stuff I understand.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: And we don't have separate meters for

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: a lot of so this

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: is very difficult to track.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, so, definitely some challenges. For well over a decade, we've been providing information to BGS, and then they take it and put it into their systems, we incorporate it into the state agency energy plan and the progress on that. Of course, there's you saw that auditor's report probably last

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: either do that or they don't do that.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Maybe they're slipping a little bit on that. So this whole tracking and well, we've been tracking it. We've been providing it. The sort of the analytical side of it is new for us, and so we're definitely learning as we go here, and you'll see a little bit of that. But we are also trying to make improvements to our internal process, really breaking down that process and seeing if we can get some consistencies. Again, with the different billing processes and all that, it's it's a definite challenge. And then working with BGS over the last few years just to kind of make sure that we're providing the information in a way that they want to, and they're trying to also come up with a new system that's more efficient and results in less potential errors.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Do you report the fuel that's used for vehicles and trucks somewhere else? We have that data.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I believe that's reported out through the central garage. Dave Thurber or Mike Carey, who's now the fleet manager, report that out separately.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So are we looking at trends in that also?

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: We are not looking at trends in that right now. We have the data and we've looked into it a little bit. We have not reported it out in any way.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I think that would be helpful because one one thing you could do is just do total energy, which you know that would be accurate. Right? And then when you parse it out, it's as accurate as you can make it. But it would be interesting to know that total energy consumption would be I do believe that is the information that goes

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: to BGS also, because we are looking at our facilities, we're looking at our vehicles also, our total energy consumption.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Okay, good.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: The vehicle fuel is much easier to track, so they're all using the Lex cards, they can run reports on that pretty regularly to get the true consumption year over year or month over month. I don't think our fleet that's on the road has changed much. I think we're probably staying pretty steady every year other than the cost of what the diesel is at this point.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So, I guess case in point here, we have, this is our thermal energy usage summary in the table, and we do have diesel on there, and Brad and I were just talking this morning, and we were kind of like, wait, why is diesel on there? So we're really like I said,

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: we're not using it as heating fuel.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: We're

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: not. We're not. So this is sort of just a result of my group coming in and digging into the data and trying to figure out exactly what's being used for thermal and other areas, and we're kind of new in the analytical side of this.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: What is the uncut? Is that not dyes? What's uncut?

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, I think it's the summer blend. We're in the winter blend now, so that's probably unblended for some years.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: you're just providing a summary here, like we're required to do in Section 45, where it's to look at the previous two state fiscal years. Really, this table is giving you a sense of the different types of fuels that we're using and and how much of each and then correlating that to BTUs. So we have those three bullets there are specifics that were asked for in section 45. We have a little bit of trouble parsing some of this out for non fossil fuel percentage by fuel source. Right now, we we have that is wood. We do have wood pellets also, and I think the third bullet, like, each amount of wood of fuel used. We have wood pellets also being used, but that's very new to us. So we're not track we well, we're tracking that. We just aren't ready to report that yet.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So what are the two? I don't understand that wood purchase. And that's

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: another thing of the way the data is collected. We were going from a lot of the receipts for the cost, and that's why there's a line item there for purchased. We have not purchased wood. All the wood that we're using, cord wood, that we're using is from projects on sites. So,

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: kind of the right way. Yeah. We typically try to get a year ahead of it because the new outdoor wood boilers we're using are gas fires, we're getting used dry seasoned hardwood, so definitely needs at least a year to be put up.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: You can sell it.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: It sure makes a job.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: We're using a lot of it this year. Is

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: it better, so it's 22 projects or 22, not 22 MMBTUs. What Cord. You understand that? 22 ports. Okay.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Oh, sorry. The MB no. Sorry. Board is

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: says MMBT per unit. Per unit. Yeah. Not 22 quarters. It's not 22 per

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. It's it's like

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Like, it's a bigger number than a.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: It is. Hopefully. Per coin?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah. I've maybe I mean, maybe not. Maybe I'm getting my

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I am. I'm not sure exactly where the source

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: is.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. There are 400,000 BTU. Classic. Yeah. Maybe just titanium jacket. And maybe the gasifier. Million BTUs. Yeah. Okay.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: I just wanna make sure that wasn't

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: No. That's too big

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: to check on.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Right. And you don't really you're saying purchase, but you're not purchasing it.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Pellets, pellets we're purchasing. So that'll become a, that'll become a long night. I'm in here. Okay. Probably starting next year. We're just finishing our first year of Swan Village. That's strictly what pellet the primary.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: I want you to solve this, the route on the airport is right across the street from the pellet now. And so they could just, like, walk over the pellets. But whenever you're needed to replace that heating system, I will be considered this.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Actually, that system just was replaced in the last year and it was during winter months, where we had a breakdown, unfortunately. All of our few projects where we have a little time, we know we have a replacement coming, we're definitely taking those steps to go renewable as much as possible. I'll you some examples of that in a later slide.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, you get it right now.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So here are just some systems to add for our garage facilities out of four thirty buildings. Just the number, we've got 14 solar arrays at our garages, 10 of those are owned, four of those are leased. We have types of heat pumps, the bottom right hand photo there was a Tunbridge garage, that one was an oil fired boiler, we converted that entire garage to heat pumps. The solar area above that is also at that site. So other than the diesel generator, we're also feel free at that site.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: You have a couple of those, like also in Ridegate or Grattan? Not

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: in that area, no. Maybe a town garage, but not a state garage. The upper left is a typical outdoor wood boiler, like I said, re the BTU, 400,000 BTU that are regulated in Vermont and approved by The U. A. So they re very clean, efficient. When you've got a good fire going, they're gasifiers. You really can't even see any smoke coming from these. We're completing one right now in North Montclair. That's replacing a propane system that will become a primary heat source starting next year. Believe that will put us up to 24 sites. Will be strictly burning wood in the winter. We had a few sites that had the indoor. A lot of the garages had the old indoor wood stoves. Those have all been red tagged. Can't use those anymore.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So what company? Is this Furious?

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Excuse me? What company? It's Central Boiler. Central Boiler? Central Boiler, eClassic is the model. We've gone to the latest, is a titanium jacket. We're getting the original steel jackets, we will get six to seven mirrors out of them. These newer ones are the titanium jackets, we should get any longer. And we can replace those fairly inexpensively because they're pretty much plug and play at that Couple of the sites we have even converted, we had a site in Enosburgh where our slab was getting very rough shape. So we actually saw cut out the entire slab, put in radiant tubing, tied that to the outdoor boiler so we are heating our slab with wood heat. That's been a very successful project.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So about how much of this would you do just because it's a good thing to do, a financially good thing and operationally good? How much would you do this on your own?

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: We try to do two to three heating system replacements a year with the amount of buildings we have and the funding level that we have. We're trying to get a little more proactive. We've got a lot of our data in BAMIS now, we're doing condition assessments to go through and kind of highlight the sites we know are getting in bad shape so we can start planning ahead as money comes in. Typically we're doing two to three replacements a year on heating systems. We've got about 90% of our garages have all been converted to LED lights for the high bay lights. We should be wrapping up those over the next two years for those full conversions.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Let me follow-up. So, the state didn't require you to do things that are energy efficient because of our climate goals, How much of this would you do just because it saves money over the long term and it's better, you know, the health, like wood stoves in it.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I think the wood boilers are an easy grab because they got to be out there all summer, they're getting free wood. We even had a couple years ago, when I went to their prison farm close, we got about 75 to 80 quarter wood from them. We distributed our own steak, pretty much heated all of our garages for free. When that happened, maybe it was more than a couple years ago, but

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: No, I'm just thinking there was, I have heard this story before. This the big garage behind on the other side that they took it from. Yeah, they still have all the equipment out there too. But no one's there, we should build housing.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: All of our own trucks in the summer, it came and pretty much did a big loop, we distributed statewide, so that was

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: a big help What's from the average size of the Goboy boilers?

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Under 400,000 BTU. Yeah. And if you go to the next slide, the next slide is Swan Garage, which is our most recent, which will kind of be our new design for larger garages. That was the pellet boiler, that was our first site that did pellet boilers at LVGS. Has a few, Hartford Southbound rest area, a few others use pellets. These are main energy systems, boilers, very efficient. That site has an 18 ton pellet silo. We're kind of getting through our first year of data to see how much we're actually going to go through for that year. As you can see, have a level three charging at that site, also level two charging, but this is kind of going to be our new standard, the new central garage project, it's kind of modeled after this. That's a 28 ton silo with three pellet boilers. The garage. The central garage, yeah. The office areas in the Swan site for the garage as well as a separate district office, our own heat pump. We do have a couple of pretty large solar arrays within the Swanton garage. So we're pretty much net zero on as far as power goes on that site.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That could be a good field trip, just roll it, of course. We

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: love that and we took Mousetrans up last year, think they really enjoyed that. Don't need to go back into that, I'm comparing what I have to what you put in. So are your outdoor wood furnaces gasification systems? They are.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: They are. Yep. I think it's the nine forty HDX model.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: K. Yep. I have the Heat Master 10,000, which, goes about 14,000 square feet. And but the estimates are that, I'm I'm cleaner than propane.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, like I said, once they get really going, get a good combustion, and we can fill them in the morning, and at the end of the day when they come back, there's still plenty of wood in there. So they're pretty efficient. Andrew and I were talking this morning, I think there's one area where we're showing that we actually have a decrease in wood use, but it's really just from the fact that we've gone from our indoor hardwood stores where we could pretty much feed anything in there to an outdoor system that's far more efficient, much cleaner. So what we're replacing any of our systems with that.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That's all

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: we had.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Good. Awesome.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah, thank you. Probably the best report, Amrit. I think one of the reasons we kept for a while there, we were adding requirements because frankly, don't think the agency was taking it very seriously.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: We're kind of doing it on our own. Actually just, Monday we had a, one of my field staff was down at the Escutton garage, been having problems with the oil boiler. It's a smaller tumbered size garage. I said, we're not going to keep limping it along. Let's get a price to replace this with your pump. So that's kind of the directive I'm taking on, just to try to meet these goals with a little more efficiency and speed.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Our implementation is a little ahead of our traffic, I would say, now. Just our own analysis and and, you know, working with EGF. It looks like they have a road map for improvement themselves, and we'll definitely be

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: part of it. If there's any way that we could tweak the language to make it easier, which I don't really want to do, you know, especially if we see you facing you seriously. One immediately goes, we won't feel like we need to force the details of

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: this. Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Do we get I'm gonna call myself. Do we get some kind of report on a do we request every other year? Is this a recurring report? We're only hearing this once. Because I guess what would be helpful is I don't really know information before this point in time, and I don't really understand how it relate like, the one piece that that's missing for me is we do have goals to meet, and I don't know where this information fits within those goals. Mhmm. Yeah. So I don't know if we could get that in the future.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. Sort of a little two different things like senator Perchlik was saying. This sort of came about to to get us to report on something. We we haven't been providing reports specifically. We've been providing that information to BGS to report and and track progress for the comprehensive energy plan. Okay.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: And the state there's a state state energy by energy for states. A combination of this data they're giving to DBS and DGS. Okay.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So we could just can we get that for us as well? I guess, is that, like because you get you must get that report, but it doesn't come to us and the BGS.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: We're we're in a little bit of a transition period right now if you read the auditor's report. Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you for that.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, okay. Well, there's research on my own.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: And I will just add, it's also difficult to, granted AOT's building portfolio and BGS's are vastly different. We get a garage, we get five overhead doors all open at once. We're losing a lot of heat. Our buildings typically aren't going to be as efficient as the EGS buildings, although we're making gains in that aspect, but very different energy usages.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: And I think the state state buildings energy report about that does call out transportation separately. They have some data tables and stuff. It does. Yes. Okay.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And then

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: then then BGS sends that to the state energy office for this statewide MP plan. So it's pulled within to that.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, and those are the result of different statutes over the years since 2011, really.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: And you see that where? Like, it's not in the EAM, it's a separate thing?

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: See agency interview plan is chapter nine of the comprehensive energy plan now, PFC does an annual report on that. But

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So, okay. Because I a big, thick, printed out copy of the most updated climate action plan, but is that that would include that information.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: That's a little different. There's the climate action plan, which is books about greenhouse gas production, and then there's this state energy plan, which is just immediate energy needs, thermal and electric.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Separate from greenhouse gases. But they the two

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Should they work together. Yeah.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: There's definitely overlap. There's definitely things that are separate through each, and then

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I'm gonna find the state energy plant from twenty five five then.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: There's an annual energy report, and then there's the comprehensive energy plan that

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: we renew every six years. 2022 is the last one.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: If you want the big Can plan

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: you come present this in the solutions packet? Because now I'm behind. I thought I was the most up to date on this information, and now I'm realizing I'm fine.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Should look at the auditor's report about EGS.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So it's the auditor's report. And then, you know, when the first initial climate action plan came out at the 2021, the comprehensive energy plan was due for renewal 2022, so that was in January 2022. So that was the time when they're kind of both coming out. So both agencies, the Climate Action Office and I'm not sure which office, but TJ Poor. They definitely did some presentations of what's separate in each one, and then where they overlap. You know, that Venn diagram of these two open plans. Okay, great, thank you. I got thirty seconds left.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Need to come. I don't know if we found anybody in this division. Did we find anybody from the house that Dan tried to give us either?

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: No. Dan was gonna come at 11:25. I just added it. You need to come to clinic.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Right. They they got messed up. Well, that's why it's hard to get

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: This is pretty big. Caucus meeting.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: But it's great to know that it was good for you.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for mentioning that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: It was definitely better. Good. See?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Your persistence has paid off.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It only took, like, four years. This

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: morning. Commissioner, you're on. Good morning. Andrew Collard, commissioner

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: of DMV. And here to touch base, I know we discussed in the previous testimony about deploying heatrant, so happy to touch base on some of the data points we've sent or mentioned. Does everybody have? So I know it came up in earlier testimony, Senator White, and then yourself, Chair, DMV being, I guess, bottom third of the same employee engagement. As I discussed then, we are showing, I think, great strides I'm very proud of from the 24 results versus 25. This is listen. I I'm someone that wants to win. So being a bummer is not where I want want our department to be. So but that being said, we are doing some great work to make sure we are pulling these numbers up. I think the biggest action I wanna take when we come about or the agent comes out in April is really making sure employees have the time to do the survey. Think we're showing 110 to 25 take it. It's important just to get the engagement and get those numbers up. So really making it clear to the leadership team, which we did the first time around, really reinforcing that employees, if they want them, have that time, take fifteen, twenty minutes or so to just work on the survey.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That's great. Ahead.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Thank you, Chair Westman. And yeah, actually that's a great point. I think I just wanna start by saying this morning I spent thirty minutes talking to my mother about her DMV experience in White River Junction because she was trying to get a title. And she had a lovely time and met many people and made friends at the DMV. Did not complete the transaction, unfortunately, due to a mismatch in the desired paperwork, but she had a really pleasant experience. And I think that's the first time my mom has interacted with the government in months other than me. So I do think how your employees feel and how they interact with the community face to face, have a high that people need to be Mhmm. Feeling good about the work that they're doing, confident in the work that they're doing, and also, like, I think approachable and friendly because you're getting everybody, essentially, at those front end jobs.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yep. Absolutely.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So I I wanted to ask because I was and I brought it up because I do think there is some concern I have around some of the questions that would relate to morale. So I did want to ask how you feel about increasing morale there. It seems like the main problems, like in some of the questions that you ranked low on, seems to be the amount of work that people are expected to perform. So they're feeling overburdened, sounds like. Like they're being asked to do too much, and that a lot higher percentage of them are actively looking for a new job. Like 27% are actively looking for a new job, which is about 10% higher than the rest of the state workforce. So that makes me concerned because turnover in those positions can lead I just have a lot of thoughts about that. I'd love kinda get your

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: perspective I on those would just say last year was an extremely difficult year. You're at the final end of a very long transition with the IT system, and that was a big ask. We had people that were removed from normal operations, so more work was put on, those doing their normal daily operations, and then just change. It's change in the system, change in policies, change in you know, there was up until December, there was the employees were operating in one the old system and then also operating in the new system. It's not great. I'll be the first one to say that. It's not a great environment to work in. Now that's behind us. The team's doing great, and what we're seeing is and this we stole this from our the agency side, and I gotta thank the the deputy for finding it. We just as you put in the notes on the bottom, we just put in the anonymous portal so employees can submit concerns, comments, ways process improvements. Beautiful. Kinda everything under the sun. And that has been a great thing. We're already making changes and planning on making changes based on this feedback. Another area that was big was bubbled up early when I first started was training, and it was difficult for management supervisors to have training with their frontline employees.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, and you did the thing on Wednesdays.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Yes, so we were able to find historically the lowest foot traffic, if you will, into locations and call volume, which is that third Wednesday of every month. And so we opened up an hour later now, and that allows managers, supervisors to have, as a group, cohesively, these trainings and and sit downs and kinda make sure everyone's operating the same sheet of music.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: That is I actually thank you for outlining those two things. I think those are really great improvements that can stress, like, exactly the things that I mentioned. Mentioned. I really appreciate that.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Absolutely.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I did just wanna say to that point you made about the anonymous box. There was one question that in specific you folks ranked lower around, I am encouraged to share ideas on improving either service delivery or business process efficiency, and DMV was about 10 points lower than the state average for that. So I think that that's a really, you just described is a really good way to address that because it sounds like perhaps there's a slight mismatch in folks' ability to influence the processes around them. Yep. Even though they're noticing like this is I think the K truck is a great example. You know, like there are probably a whole bunch of DMV staff who knew a year ago that this was gonna bubble up as an issue, but didn't maybe have a pathway to share that. So I hope that you expand on that anonymous box, but also encouraging folks to give more feedback to their direct you get what So I'm thank you, I appreciate that.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: And I would say, right, I mean, this survey came out, we were four or five months into both of us being in new leadership roles over there. People are filling this out. I I I've made it very clear to the team, you know, we are open to all ideas. Right. If I think the the worst words I hear are this is the way you've always done it, which I always follow-up with why. And can we do this differently or better? Or maybe it's the way we have to do it. That's fine. But the this is the way we've always done it, and it's a trigger point. And I made that clear with all all the leadership team, all the management team that if they hear that, we need to dig in. And because there's probably a different way of doing it. It might not be the way we need should be doing it, but let's explore it. Because we have an opportunity to make changes and try to find some improvements both for employees, for customers, and just efficiency of of of the work.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So I wanna say there's a improvement, I totally appreciate in in all of this. And it's headed in the right direction. But here's what I would say, and totally appreciate the improvement. I received the training I need to do my job effectively, and it has gone up from 43% to 55%, but that means 45%. Does that mean 45% of the respondents to this felt like they don't have the training to do their job? Correct.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: And that's where we're trying our best to get that

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: moved up.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Because that is

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And what steps have you taken to address points like that?

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: So that goes right back to what we were hearing, which is training couldn't happen. Or training was happening in decentralized manner. So a supervisor was pulling one or two employees away from the counter, having a sit down or training over work, and then pulling another two. We're not having that cross pollination of questions being asked between what staff are asking, and it's messy. So that's why we started this initially right now, one hour a month and that seeing how that pans out, if we have to increase that, we will. But I think that was the single biggest thing we were hearing was the ability for managers and supervisors to be able to pull staff away and have time to discuss training or have training and just have face to face feedback as a group with their sections.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, I would follow that up because I have a clear understanding of how to advance in my career, which I would think that most people that relates to you doing your job, that's the one area here where there's slippage. Yep. So I'm that that's that's worrisome in this. And and because I think if you can't figure out how to do your job, they Yep. You have questions about your job and and there's slippage in that area, it it doesn't feel right to me.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: No. Absolutely. It it Nor should it. And that's not what we're gonna rest on and that's what we're trying to improve. And there's a global discussion, which we sit on these meetings as well, that the employees in the state government don't necessarily have a clear direction on how movement can happen in their careers. And that's something that we are actively trying to improve just internally at DMV and then be part of this larger conversation with Long State government. Because you're absolutely correct where I think you look across our department and if you have someone who starts out their career at a window helping customers do their transactions, how do we best explain a career progression for that person? How do we show growth in other opportunities within the department? That's something that we are striving to do better at and display better for employees to show your growth path. There are opportunities outside of of what you're doing right now within DMV. DMV touches a lot of different areas, and there's a lot of different directions people can go in. So we wanna make sure we're we do better at explaining that and showing that to employees.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Okay. Go ahead. There's there's two documents on our website that I think are the same. Is there something different? They're titled different, but they look different. I'm like, am I missing something about what they are?

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: No. It's just because I don't use it.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Okay. Just under different. Okay. That's fine. So a lot of these other than the application survey, it's just like a one year. It's just data about accomplishments of how many of the things you said, It would be great if these were more like performance measure for what we saw over time. Like, what's the average wait time over the last five years? What's your target wait time? Where are we? That would be interesting. Transactions completed, it's interesting to see how it spreads out at the office, but I don't know if you have other performance measures. I think wait time would be ones, and I think to Senator White's point, if the employers or employees are happier, they're going to probably work Absolutely. But I don't know if you have any other performance measures for the office other than wait time, because I assume just number of visits data, but it isn't a performance measure you're But if there's any other performance things you're tracking, that would be interesting to see over time.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And then

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: if you ever do a customer survey, which I know you wouldn't want to do all the time. It'd difficult where you get the contract it out or something, if that was ever done or number of complaints, I don't know if there's a way other than an easy way for people to point other than the website or I don't think it's still a suggestion box. I've been the opposite because I'm very used to it. You still have those. Okay. I don't know

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: if you track those.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Like how many complaints you get per year would be interesting. I think it'd be helpful for the department to track as a performance measure.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Did you want to say? I want to to that question. Yeah, no, I think that's a great idea. And I thought you could I think customer surveys, they don't need to be complicated and I think they're really important.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And what else do we track in beer? Do you track if you have a case that comes in and you're working with a case, do you track how long it takes to close them and take care of their problem? Transaction

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: No. That was a different definition for the record. We don't track how long it takes. I know that if somebody emails an issue in

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: What are the points that you do track? For customer complaints? No. Yeah. For customers that come in with problems, complaints. What do you track besides wait times?

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Within the system it's able to track a lot of things. Don't know, I can get you a list of things that we track.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That would be helpful.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Complaints, we track as far as if there was an error, the employee is notified just for corrective actions for future reference. But correcting itself is done immediately. As soon as we get a call or an email, or email our admin is able to take care of her right away. All of our admins are able to take care of her right away, it's within a day.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah. Actually, one. Some of these, like the ones by me, are not open every day and you call them the mobile sites which I think I wish you called it something else because to me that means a site that moves around but to you it means that your people move around. But for the customer, some people don't even know Dummerton is still open and they really appreciate it when they go there and I'm seeing the walk ins are actually more than the appointments. It would be helpful just to have a sign in front of the building just saying the days that it's open. Seriously, people illegally think it's closed permanently. And we should know which ones are, I would call them part time or some

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Salad office or satellite.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah, or just not open all the time. I mean, basically think of it, you know, open and only on certain, like, are the days that it's

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: As a follow-up to that, how do we reach out to people to tell them that we encourage you to make an appointment and not walk in? Because I think across the board, single site has that. I gotta tell you in South Burlington, one hundred and four minute wait, if I got there, I'd want to make an appointment to go back to my office and go to work. I would not want to wait one hundred and four days, and that is, other than Montpelier, the only other place over 3,000 appoint you know, 3,000 appointments. And and Watkins is almost 5,000. So by you know, it's Yeah, it's How do we reach out to the public and say, the best way to not have a wait time that is make an appointment. So what are we doing? One of the things

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: that we identified last year, and again, unfortunately, with everything with IT, takes a while to make a change, verbiage, but on our renewal letters or, like, registrations or licenses, we spend a lot of time fixing the verbiage. Because a lot of people with the license renewals were walking in it. Because the the verbiage said you had come in for a picture, but you might not you might not have needed to. So we were able to to fix the verbiage on what was getting mailed to customers, and we kinda reiterate on those. Please make an appointment. We'll get you right in. We follow it up regularly with social media. We make sure it's clear on our website. We need to honestly, we've been I been wracking my head on how we can do better on that because when you make an appointment, no joke, you are in and out. And sacralntan, I've had a lot of discussions on sacralntan. Saprolten seems to be this different People, when we approach people in line and say, Hey, can we get you an appointment or something? They say, No, we just wanna wait. There's a whine out the door on most mornings when people show up. We've been trying to think of ideas to do some things to be a little different from rest of the obsolescence on how we can try to approach getting people on appointments and not wait. There seems to be a

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: It's UVM, I'll just say. It's a college kid, I'm sorry. It's someone who got their license renewed in South Burlington. The difference is it's all the college kids Do don't make appointments. No offense, South Burlington.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Oh, yeah. It could be.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: But then Maybe it's UVM. Maybe it's connecting with UVM and being like, you don't need you know? Is that yes. Maybe that's actually how to do it. It's connecting with some of the institutions because your group that seems to be in Self Burlington is Mike's kids, you lose your license. It's yeah. I don't know. That was my experience there. So maybe it's working with the institutions rather than a blanket marketing campaign. Just saying, like, could you share with UVM or your because they have list of all of their kids.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Don't know.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah. Think that's a good idea. Yeah. Because of the they have a higher immigration population.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Mhmm. Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Which you're probably that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, we get it's we have a resource center at VSAC, and they come in, and the first thing we do is, do you have an appointment? If you don't, here's here's how you make an appointment. And we encourage them as they get to the door to make an appointment and come back. Yeah. And, you know, it it would just seem that there's gotta be some way to reach out because almost every site, some sites it's more balanced than that, but almost every site there's more walk ins and that and it's really inefficient for not only the people coming in, but the employees themselves.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Yep.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah, just a fair amount of people just don't have a lot of time to make an appointment. It can be hard and they can be struggling. Actually people coming out of incarceration. So I don't want to just make sure that the appointments are working well. I want us to have, for people to know when the local office is open, right? And to have friendly people there when they're open and I think we're working on that and generally they are. But it's also like, you could just also let the towns know because town meeting is coming up and there's a lot of information that goes out in town meeting. So you could let the towns know because seriously people in my area don't even know that it's open or when it's open. And then they end up going to Bennington which is a really big deal because it's very far, you know, going on the mountains especially in the winter and you can see the amount of walk ins. Bennington and Dunders.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: know. That's what I'm thinking. We have to be careful not to violate any of those. But some sort of just physical notification would be really helpful.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: And something that, like I was down in Springfield in Dumberson, and while I was out there I noticed the wine, and so I was inquiring, you know, in Springfield. Springfield? In Springfield.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah, which is very different than, I mean, that's two whole counties that don't have a place. So, I mean, Bennington and Windham County don't have service every day like the other counties. Oh, we don't have service every day.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Bennyton's Bennyton is open every day. It's all kind of site.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Is it? But it was So that actually, we have to have that on this list too, please.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Yeah, we'll update that. What we're finding is, in the line, a lot of the people in line were actually dealerships, out of state dealers with transactions.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Okay.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: So we also made a change back around November where dealers we have a dealer unit, which was started right before I came on, and those transactions flow through that dealer unit. Okay, We're hoping that will alleviate some of the wait times as well, because they would show up with five transactions, they'd hold their transactions and show up at the DMV office

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: five actually did transactions. That with the buses when we transitioned the bus systems.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Yep. So we're moving that to what the unit is made forward to the dealer unit, and we're hoping that will also alleviate these wait times as well and allow more opportunities for customers and the public to

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: How much of the service now is done with walk ins and then how much of the service is done online?

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Oh, that's

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: a lot how is how much is done with people that call with me. Yep. And that's and I asked it's my Sunday night. I'm in Jericho, a restaurant in Jericho, and there's only one, so probably

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: one. Yes.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: And I'm

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: sitting at the counter having my dinner and trying to mind my own business, and somebody comes up and goes, I just called in this past week. I called in at 02:30 in the afternoon. The office closed at four, and they hung up on me. Then I was told then I figured out the next day I called in earlier and I got at 01:00 and I asked for the callback and they called me back at 03:45. We got resolved and I don't get a sense here of, you know, there's gotta be a little more information going forward, not right now, but going forward, so we get a better feel of what the total picture is of the tax.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Absolutely, and I know Matt's got

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: some bad points on calls too.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Right now we average roughly 2,300 calls a day, I'm sorry, a week, and an average of roughly twenty minutes of a wait time. Yep. We do have a callback service. So the callback means, hey, I'm not I don't need to

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: wait on the line. Yep.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: Take your time. It's more of a, hey, we'll call you when you're next in line. The average rate now for a callback is

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: 4%. Do you have any I deal with this all every day. You know, with my other job and that we have national standards that we compare to for the amount of time that people wait and the wait times. Is there among DMVs across the country, national wait times so we could measure against the goals on what you Mike, that's a good question.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: I don't know, but that's that one You

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: must look at. You must have an association Mhmm.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: For call centers? No. No. For DMV. Oh, DMV. Absolutely. Yes. We And and

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: and do do they have, like, a standard? You know, could that They

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: just came out they they just formed a new, committee, I believe, recently based on investment service. So that I think it's new and for me, it's a mess miss it for me.

[Brad McElroy (Facilities Manager, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah.

[Andrew Collard (Commissioner, Vermont DMV)]: I also wanna be cautious about the one offs where there might have been a a situation where there was a a callback issue because in the grand scheme of things in the big picture, we're getting a lot of positive feedback.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yep. I've I've not I've not doing it. But, yes, I agree. Because I deal with this all the time in my my job. And people are calling in about the college savings plan I work for and trying to move money and all the stuff. We have national standards and we compare that and I get a quarterly report and every quarter I do that. But, you know, I don't want a quarterly report here. But I once a year, you know, particularly in your budget presentation and that it would be nice to be able to see here's how we're doing, here's how we fit. I would think the National Association for DMVs must have, they must collect some of this information someplace. So it would be nice to see where we fit versus other devices.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Agreed. I agree. Alright.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank you. And I am glad that it looks like with the employees, there's an improvement. You know, they're still concerned, but it, you know, for the most part, it looked like it was headed in a better direction and we'll ask you about it next year. Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We're gonna take a ten minute break in some is it in Cedar Creek? Where is the the Yeah. With the with the food bank?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That's where all of them. Okay.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Can pull up We'll be back in by a quarter after. Yeah.