Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Committee staff (unidentified)]: We're live. So if you could close the door, thank you. We

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: are slightly off course this morning. We were on the floor longer than we were supposed to. This is Senate Transportation. It's Tuesday, February 17. And we have moved the agency off for their ten year program outlook and Jeremy is still here. We will get you in later. I wanna thank the two of you for coming and there's a few people. I'm gonna update the committee just a little. A few weeks ago, the town of Morristown had kind of a pre town meeting meeting. They call it pie for breakfast. It's, you know, we all run on our stomach and they got us all in the room. It was really clear to me many of the things that this committee has been struggling with, they're struggling with at the local level. We have struggled in here to find out what the need is for community. It's hit or miss across the state on what information is then collected about the cost increases for municipal projects. It's hit or miss on knowing what's going on with local roads in their community. We have not really had a good action plan to help communities and what to do about communities. Where the money might come from. We've been talking about in this committee, we've had some talk about local option taxes and what's happening. The town of Morristown is talking about local option taxes. How does that feed into what's happening across the state and regionally with what's going on with town roads? We've been having that discussions. We haven't got a lot of good answers. We might hear some ideas in this. I would say to members of the committee, between now and March and April when we put together the T Bill, if there are other examples that are like Morristown, I think we'd like to get them in. With that, I'm at this point gonna open this up. You tell us what you've done, and I know you have a presentation. It was striking to me as I sat through the pretown meeting how much what you're talking about is tracking with exactly the things we're struggling with. So, well, you need to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your yourself, and then we'll probably interrupt you with questions. We're good at that.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Yeah. Name is Jordan Sanange, and I'm the highway superintendent and road commissioner for the town of Morristown.

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: Brent Raymond, town manager of Morristown.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Thank you all for taking the time to meet with us today. This presentation will provide some information on the struggles at Morristown, and I'm sure many other communities have been facing with the maintenance costs of our aging infrastructure. So as I work through this information, please feel free to stop me for instructions and discussions. The three main categories we'll talk about today are town highways, sidewalks, and bridges. And we'll focus on the town highways, both paved and gravel. In Morristown, we have 92.13 miles of town highway, and that's the highest road mileage in Lamoille County. It's the second highest when you compare it to Franklin County and the fourth highest when compared to Chittenden County. Sidewalks, have nine miles and bridges, we have 17 town maintained bridges. Town Mill and Midtown maintained. So for Morristown, we have 36.8 miles of paved town highways, and that represents our biggest maintenance cost, and that would be the paving. So 2025, we paid just under four miles, and we funded that with a 2¢ on the dollar special article and the depletion of our bridge and infrastructure fund. We're in a situation with that fund now where we're kinda struggling to come up with the town or the town match for grants, and that's kind of where we're at in that situation now. So 42.4% of our penny paved town highways are still in poor to very poor condition, even after all our paving last year. So this is based off of a payment condition assessment that we had done at the town level by GPI, and it costs around $15,000. It's very similar.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Tell us what GPI is. The agreement, Patterson Incorporated, believe it's incorporated. Give us a little background about who did the assessment.

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: So they're an engineering firm. The person that we worked with worked with V Trans for fifteen plus years, known as an expert in roads. When I came on board I've been with Morristown for about twenty months. When I came on board, I could tell that our roads were in very poor condition and our budget, the paving, wasn't a drop in the bucket. So I hired GPI to do a road assessment, and they did what they called a windshield inspection. They drove all of our our town roads. There is better technology out there, which, you know, measures bumps and and scaling, etcetera, on roads, but this was a solution that we could use in a relatively quick fashion to be able to contract with them so that I could give this information to my select board and educate the residents. So they drove all of our town roads and did what's called a windshield assessment. Wanna get into some detail about what they looked for?

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Yeah. They were looking at the shape of

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: the road, potholes, surface cracking, deterioration, yield routing, you know, indicators of sub base failure, things like that, that would give an idea of the condition of the road. Are you aware what the state does? Because the state drives all the roads on a periodic basis and does a report for us. How close is that this to that? Jeremy?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer (BPES), Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Yeah, Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer for BPES. So it's quite a bit different. The window assessment is just a visual observation based on what of where I'm just talking to to Jordan earlier today. Ours is much more quantified in the actual roughness of of the road. So we have a a special band that goes out there and actually measures distortion of the road, both longitudinally and transverse, whereas I think what GTI performed for Morristown is a visual observation of road condition.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Just to follow-up on that, compare did the results of the VTrans assessment versus the consultant's assessment? Mean they may have come to very similar results.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Well, the VTrans on state roads.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Our assessment was on the town highway.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Oh, so there's no overlap. Too bad. Okay.

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: When we originally sorry. When we originally approached the senator, we we approached him with you know, this this data will be two years old come this summer. So we were looking for a resource that on an annual basis we could continue the assessment so that we could project for capital planning more accurately. And we approached the senator about we we we did know that the B TRANS has a department or a couple of people that do this, but they don't do it for towns. And if they don't have the resources to do it, potentially, the state could act as a you know, on behalf of all the the municipalities and negotiate a contract so that all municipalities would have a discounted rate with one of the firms that does the more detailed assessments. We we're approaching it because there's so much cost just for the repair, but it's just as important to have as much data about what needs to be repaired first, and how can we keep the roads maintained so it doesn't cost the taxpayers more money.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Andy, you have a question? I have

[Sen. Andrew “Andy” Perchlik (Member)]: a question about your 2¢ on the dollar. What do you mean by

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: It was an article, a separate article where the residents voted for an additional 2¢ tax. Just 2¢.

[Sen. Andrew “Andy” Perchlik (Member)]: Just gonna know what mean on the dollar.

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: That's a term that we use.

[Sen. Andrew “Andy” Perchlik (Member)]: Okay.

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: The municipal government like that. Okay. And it raised over $200,000 that we could put towards this past year in addition to funds that we already had.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Alright. So we have somewhat of a five year plan here, and that is if we pay roughly four miles a year, we can address all of our poor and very poor roads in four more years. That will take roughly $800,000 a year in paving to do. So that equates to a 9.3% increase to the total town budget. And despite careful management of inflationary pressures, we're facing a six point inch 6.8% increase to our town budget this year even without paving. So if we were to, you know, absorb that as well as continue on with this paving, you'd be looking at a 16.1% increase to the town budget. In total, have a $3,200,000 backlog of paving. And this does not

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And when you say paving and and roads, you're just talking about paving. You're not talking about bridges, culverts That's right. Sidewalks, anything else. That's right. We're talking just paving. And not only that, we're talking just paving core to very poor condition. This this does not account for the continued deterioration of roads that are good or fair, and really the most cost effective way to pave is to to pave the roads when they're fair before they get poor and very poor. So this is

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: this is really $3.9 backlog is to just catch up. That's not even doing the regular maintenance.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So here's the

[Sen. Andrew “Andy” Perchlik (Member)]: How many miles do you have paid for all do you have in town?

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: 36.8 up top.

[Sen. Andrew “Andy” Perchlik (Member)]: Oh, yeah. There it is. Okay. Just looking at the 15. So half of them, a little under half are very poor.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Yeah. So we have 92.13 total of town highways and 36.8 is paved. And the the the remainder is gravel.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Oh, that works. Thank you. So we we aren't even talking about the gravel approach.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah. Oh, it's a good day. The gravel is Well, that's

[Committee staff (unidentified)]: work too.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Yeah. I have some slides on that as well. That was really the the the focus of this

[Sen. Andrew “Andy” Perchlik (Member)]: is on paves.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: K. So our only funding source outside of property taxes for paved roads is a class two roadways grant program. So I thought we'd talk about that a little bit. So the maximum grand award for that is 200,000 with a 30% town match or 20% if you adopt the town road bridge standards and have an MRGP map, which we do. So we're fortunate to have a 20% match there. That $200,000 is 25% of our current annual paving needs, and this is if we were awarded it on a yearly basis and plan to apply for it every year. And I haven't seen anything in the grant documents saying it, but I hear you're not likely to get that grant multiple years in a row. You're more on, like, a every three year basis that you that you'll be selected for that grant. So less than half of our paid bureaus, 41.85% are actually class two, which means that 58% of our roads are not even eligible for this grant program, and they rely solely on property tax increases for paving. The average amount of class two highways per town in Vermont, and this was according to the B TRANS general statistics, is 10.3% or 10.3 miles rather. And of the nearly 12,000 miles of town highways in Vermont, only 24.4% are class two and would be eligible for this grant. So looking into this, it got me to thinking, you know, the big question is what percent of Vermont's paved town highways are eligible for the class two program? What percent are class three? What are class two? So I started looking around. I found that there is very, very limited data on paved town highway mileage or conditions statewide. So pavement condition assessment for town highways would provide invaluable data for capital planning and allocating funds. We did work with Lamoille County Planning Commission on some estimates, and we found that it would cost an estimated $71,000 for a payment condition assessment and three years of database use for the entirety of Lamoille County if that were to be, like, a pilot program. And there's you know, we we know that VTrans does this in house. We've used GPI in the past. There are several other contractors and and firms that do this type of work, and we found some that they basically drive the road with a three sixty camera, and they give you a database and you can pull up and a program on your computer that's just like Google Maps. And you can look at all your roads. You can index them by the pavement condition index that measures the roads so you can build into it your different paving formulas, and it could actually calculate and estimate the cost to pave certain roads. You can use it as a very valuable capital planning tool. Try not to get too into the weeds here, but I wanna talk more about paving itself. And obviously the cost of paving is based on tonnage requirements, which is a pretty simple formula. The ideal, most cost effective pavement treatment is a three quarter pavership overlay, but that's only for roads that are good to fair condition. Before starting the town in Morristown, I worked for Pike Industries, and my main job there was superintendent, and I would manage the New Hampshire DOT district one resurfacing contract on a yearly basis. And that was paving basically Franconia Notch North, about 80,000 ton project. And the vast majority of the work that we did was three quarter and paversham overlays. And then speaking with the contract administrators and the engineers that I worked with, they said that generally speaking on an eight year cycle, that's what they would do with the road skim at three quarter paversham overlay. So if you let the condition fall even more from good to fair or good to fair and they they fall into poor condition, now you're in a situation where you need to shim the road and then overlay it to get your shape back. That obviously takes more mix, and that's 266% more expensive than a paver shim overland. And, again, if you don't address it when it's poor and you let it become very poor, then you end up in a situation where you would need to reclaim the road or do some significant milling and and surface profiling, And now you're talking here six times more expensive than if you had just fixed it when it was in good to fair condition and 227% more expensive than a shimmer on overlay.

[Sen. Andrew “Andy” Perchlik (Member)]: So it kinda Definitely. I assume you can't just keep doing the three quarter overlay of over time. You would just

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: build up. You you can build up, then you do get to a point where you would have to mill some off. That is more prominent, like, you're going through a downtown location, you got curb reveals or catch basins. But for a lot of our roads that are, you know, out through the woods, if you will, and and residential, there's no curbing, nothing like that. You just you pave it, you shoulder gravel it, and you can go a long ways doing that before you you have to start taking it down. When you're talking in downtown areas, you certainly can't do it as many times. This is the graph from the GPI presentation that we had or part of our assessment, and their numbers are a little bit different, but the the theory here is the same. And it's the the worse the road gets, the more expensive it is to fix. They have a a quote here talking about the strategy of fixing very poor condition roads instead of preserving good roads. And at the end here, they say the common analogy is changing the oil in your car is more effective than waiting for

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: the engine to cease and replacing the engine. That's really what we're talking about when we're talking about trying to get ahead of this, which is obviously the roof on my house. If I let it leak and the sheet rock goes, I'm I've cost myself a lot more money. Exactly.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Is there anything else you wanna talk about on paves before we move on to gravel?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I mean, you keep telling your story. There'll be questions. So gravel highways,

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: we have around 70 miles of gravel highways. Our main costs are ditching, culvert replacements, grading, and deburring. For ditching, we either stone line it or hydro seeded afterwards, and these are the material costs here. Last year, we replaced 16 culverts to the tune of about $20,000. Grading is a big cost for us, but fortunately, we have a a good sized highway department. We have two graders, so that's not something where we really have to go out and buy anything. So we didn't include any cost there, and the same goes with deburming. So all these costs are based on materials only with no labor or equipment included. And there are some great funding sources for our gravel roads. The grants in aid program, which is used for ditching hydrologically connected segments, anything that our road storm water dumps into a grove, wetland, anything of the sort. And you can see here in fiscal year twenty five, we got 25,000 for that. And in fiscal year twenty six, we're looking at 42,000. So this is money that we get every year, and the amount is increasing. So that's obviously been a credibly valuable program for us. There's also the Oh

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: no, finish your sentence. I'm sorry.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: I was just always gonna move on to better roads so we can certainly

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So I think a lot of that funding is A and R, which is good, you know, because it's it's protecting the environment. So if you it's cool that you have two graders, but do you have a sense of what the total amount would be if

[Committee staff (unidentified)]: you include

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: the graders of the cost to maintain the gravel roads? Or or or could you get that at some point?

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: We we could I'm sure we could get it at some point. It's equipment that, you know, a grader is $400,000 piece of equipment. We have two of them that are, I believe, both paid off, and we do it within personnel. So we're not going out and buying anything other than fuel.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Right. But they're ten year.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. We can do it

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: ten can certainly yeah. We have formulas for, you know, our equipment cost and our labor cost per hour. I could certainly work on something on how much time we spend grading.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: It it's relative to stormwater utilities, which I won't get into now, but I will with you sometime.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: You're giving up a chance to talk about snowboarding.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: No. Know. I'm holding back. Snowmwater's a big thing.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I know.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Especially when you talk about in town, that's something that I'm not gonna touch about here. It's not really transportation related, but And

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: it's a really good revenue source, but we'll talk about that later in a different place. But the stone lying ditches, I've heard different things about those because when you put them in, they're great, but the maintenance is challenging. Have you can you talk about that a little bit?

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: I believe according to the state standards, if you have stone in that ditch, even if it gets covered, it's still a stone lined ditch, and it's still very beneficial. And it stops the the road from scouring. It starts to, I believe, lose its ability to kinda make the white water and pull the sediment out before it gets into the brooks and streams. But in terms of maintaining the integrity of the road, even if they're covered, they're still good as long as they're deep enough. Okay. We could dig them down pretty deep and put them in. It's great for our roads.

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: They were Residents will complain because there's they can be very deep.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So it's a matter go off. It's not very fun.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: We call refer to it as a traffic calming mission. It slows the pipes down.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Wait. I hope we don't call it that by

[Committee staff (unidentified)]: me, but the reason

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That is

[Sen. Andrew “Andy” Perchlik (Member)]: On the culverts, those $1,200 per culvert, that those must be driveway culverts. Right? Or

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: We've been using a new those are road culverts, and that would be two twenty foot sticks of I believe I have priced out here as the 24 inch culvert. We've been experimenting with some new manufacturers that I see it's relatively cheap. It is. It is compared to the, you know, we could talk about culverts back. Yeah. They're the gray culvert that you see that's the latest and greatest. That's some really expensive stuff. We found an alternative that I believe it's still a watertight connection. It it's a very sturdy product, and been able to save some costs there with their culvert purchases. You remind me of deburming. Yeah. So as we go by a grade or you go through a new plow, you end up with a little

[Sen. Andrew “Andy” Perchlik (Member)]: Little edge.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: A little edge, and and that can catch water and create a secondary ditch. So the way that we've been doing it this past year is go by with a grater, pull all that in the middle of the road, trap with the loader, put it in a truck, and and get it out and get so the water can shut off the road.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Go ahead.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Better roads grant, category b, c, and d. This is more grant funding that's available for, less than 36 inch culverts, stream bank and slope stabilization, and box culverts and culverts over 36. They have the the maximum more than the grant amounts listed here. So we have some good funding sources available for ditching and some good funding sources available for replacing culverts. And, again, the grants and aid is great because we we know we're gonna get it. Whereas, you know, these grants, it's they're competitive. They're very competitive. So we apply for them every year, but you have to cross your fingers at some point there.

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: And, you know, as a as municipal managers, we're always looking to plan ahead to forecast what we need for for budget. And, you know, in Long Memorial County, we're getting hit regularly with with storms. And so this past year, we didn't have any FEMA level recognized storms. But in May, we had heavy localized rain, and it put our highway department six weeks behind schedule with repair of roads. And I know it's not on your presentation, but if you could share a little bit of information about I I think this really correlates with wanting more data because even with data and state standards for maintaining roads, it's one storm that's not even considered FEMA level can wipe out our roads. And if you could just share a little bit with

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Yeah. We we had all these great big plans for our summer maintenance, and we had our roads in really good condition. We're getting ready to start applying some chloride and getting them stiffened up. And over the weekend, we had a massive rainstorm that washed out some culvert. I I don't remember the exact dollars or miles that were affected, but it completely rewrote the book on our plan for the summer. So we ended up spending about close to six weeks doing repairs from that storm as opposed to, you know, culverts and pitching that we had planned. So mother nature certainly helps us with our priorities often for proud roads, and and it's it makes it makes it difficult to plan. Moving on to sidewalks. If there's no more gravel road questions. We have 47,000 feet or nine miles of sidewalk. In 2025, we replaced 1,100 feet of sidewalk, but 600 is still in poor or in very poor condition. And we didn't have any sort of GPI assessment done on this. This is just our in house guys driving around and and looking at the position. LCPC helped out as well. That's correct. Thank you. They helped out mapping it. So our plan here is to replace 1,500 feet per year, and that'll again get us caught up

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: in four more years.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: And that's roughly a $150,000 a year in sidewalk repairs or 1.7% increase to the town budget. Again, facing a 6.8% increase without any

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: of this stuff. And if

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: we were to do paving and sidewalks, full blown catch up four year plan, you'd be looking at a 17.8% increase to the municipal taxes, to property taxes. There's a $600 backlog of sidewalk work that needs to be done, and this did not account for the continued deterioration.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: K.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Do you maintain them in the winter?

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: We do. We we were in a position where some of them were so rough, we couldn't physically pile them in the winter. This past year with this 11,000 feet, we focused on that and got it to where all of our sidewalks could be maintained year round.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That's terrific. And just a comment, so then that is a mode of transportation. It's not just something nice to have. Thank you.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Yeah. They're definitely they get used a lot too. It's a a great transportation system. It's a big job of living in the village is being able to walk. So it's nice to have them all all functioning year round again. Our funding source here outside of property taxes is a small scale, like, pet grant, and that is a $150,000 project match with a 50% town match. So the max award here is 75,000. There is we did recently receive downtown designation, and so we are also working on some grand opportunities through there. But this is this is the one where we have been successful, and we do have a project plan this coming year this coming summer that's gonna be utilizing this grant and preparing some sidewalks and ADA accessibility and connectivity. We would touch on bridges. So Morristown has 17 townhome bridges, and most all of these are noted on the trans bridge reports of needing repairs, including several that need significant work, including repair to the bridge deck itself or the abutments. We recently held a competitive bid process to paint one of our bridges, and the low bid there was $286,000 to paint it. So you can imagine once you start getting into stripping the deck off or excavating around the abutments, it's bridges are just, as I'm sure you're all aware, very, very costly to to work on and maintain. So our funding source here is the town highway structures program, which is a 200 per $200,000 max award, 20% match, or in our instance a 10% match, which as you can see doesn't cover the cost to paint one of our bridges. So in summary, with our eight town highways, current funding levels fall short of our needs, and only 25% of our current annual costs are available. And that is, again, if aborted, then it sounds like we're not gonna be able to get that grant every year. The current class two roadway program guidelines exclude the majority of Morristown's paved highways from this this funding, and more data on paved town highways statewide is certainly needed.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But the gravel You should be reminded.

[Sen. Andrew “Andy” Perchlik (Member)]: I know you've covered this in your earlier slide, but I already forgot. But why is that not all of the class two roadways are developing?

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: All class two highways are. All paved town highways are not. So we in our instance, we have majority of our paved roads are actually class three town highways. So they're not eligible. To do a different program, a different grant program. I'm not aware of any grant programs available for payment class three. Yeah. That is different.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I think it highlights for me that we if we could ever get to a place where we weren't behind the eight volt on overall transportation, if we ever were, that some review of all of the programs that go to town is is really needed to take a look at what we do to help communities and what's applicable across the board.

[Sen. Andrew “Andy” Perchlik (Member)]: Just clarification, maybe something from AMT or maybe you don't, class two paving doesn't allow for a class three year old. How about just playing town Highway 8? Is there is there a lot of money in that that would allow? Or they

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: could just They get they get a a straight check from the state.

[Sen. Andrew “Andy” Perchlik (Member)]: But they could use you could use that for town for a class three. Yeah.

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Sure. Could use it for you could use it for class three. Right now, we apply it. We have a $3,200,000 operating budget just for maintenance, So we apply

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: it for that. So How much your 3,200,000.0 budget is on Highway 8? Around 200,000. Little over 200,000. So of $3,200,000, the state helps you to 200,000. 6%. Yep.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So those numbers are in CARES court?

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: I don't have the state aid in town,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I already sit here, no. Go ahead.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Well, thank you both so much for coming and presenting to us. I think this is, it feels a little deja vu for me because I've had multiple communities essentially express the same with slightly different numbers to what you've described your experience. And I think the one thing I just want to reflect on and that I'm disappointed by is while I appreciate both of you being here and the expressed interest of many of our communities, we don't have a solution that will address any of your concerns at all. In fact, your concerns are only going to deepen exponentially because the agency of transportation has not sought outside revenue sources for a long time. So we are being faced with a $33,000,000 shortfall for upcoming. And then when we look at the state money, we're seeing it decline to the point of where we are going to have 48% very poor road quality by, I think it was 2036 was what we saw. And that's for state roads. And you're receiving far less financial support than state roads. So I appreciate this, but I just feel a lot of tension with us having you be paraded out here to tell us your problem, but we have no solution and I feel that that is a painful reality that we're experiencing and something that I'm hearing from my community. So I wanted to ask, are you feeling that it is time that we've raised revenue as a state? I mean, you're making the hard decision to raise revenue on the local level. What would you want the agency of transportation to do in terms of

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: revenue? So, I'll ask,

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: may I add?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, I think you should jump in and start to explain what you are. Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: They're raising a 2¢ on their local, but what would they want us

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: to do? They're they're finished, and they're they're gonna start talking about where they're headed as a as a community.

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: So the town of Morristown, since before I arrived as town manager, select board was looking at local option tasks, and we had EPR, DEFCARS firm do a study, and conservatively, the town could raise $1,200,000 a year if all three classifications of LOT were approved by voters. So that'll be on the ballot in March. There's been a lot of pushback. People are very concerned. They they feel overtaxed, you know, education tax, town tax. You know, this past year, we were able to keep our expenses at just above 50 bps, you know, half a percent, approximately 56 bps. And despite keeping those expenses that low, the town is looking at a 6.8% year over year increase. So what we've seen is our revenues are dropping, whether it be the pilot program and other programs in the state, they're dropping. So we're needing to look at, as a municipality, a solution, an LOT is the obvious one, but we're very concerned that the residents don't understand that. So first of all, I want to thank you all very much for inviting us here so that we can discuss it and there can hopefully be more information provided to Vermonters statewide. Morristown is fortunate if the residents vote for it that we can be bringing in approximately $1,200,000 conservatively in the first fiscal year, and 75% of that minimum can go towards offsetting our our roads infrastructure. We also have other infrastructure needs. We have a police department. We have EMS. We have a fire department. Our fire department is costing taxpayers additional money because the bays are too short, you know, when it was built in, I don't know what year, the sixties. Our our police department, the the conditions are inadequate there. So we have lots of other capital projects that need to be addressed, but just our our paved roads alone could consume 75% or more if the LOT is passed for the next four to five years. And then once we're able to get our roads up into more fair condition, you know, who knows what the annual cost will be after that. But I outside of my to to answer your question outside of about my role as town manager, I would suggest that any federal money we're leaving on the table as a state is, as a taxpayer, difficult to to understand. But I I understand what's what's going on probably more than a lot of state residents, but that would, in my opinion, be the first step at the state level of how to address these issues is to capture as many federal dollars as possible.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Well said. Yeah. No. You I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: totally totally appreciate I totally appreciate your question. Can I

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: ask one other, Brandon?

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Go ahead. Okay, so my only other, just in your, you had kind of talked about before, I didn't want to interrupt. Something that's happening in our communities is that folks are giving up roads. They're just no longer maintaining them. Town said we are stopping. But it looked like to me that your gravel costs are greater than your paved road costs. Am I understanding that correctly?

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Paved road costs are definitely higher.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, okay. Maybe I missed that. I'll go back and look at your slide. So are you making that transition then? You letting roads basically go unmaintained? Where was the do have one?

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: We have 19 roads in Morristown that we've identified as potentially discontinuing.

[Committee staff (unidentified)]: But

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: the statutes for discontinuing roads there's a process, and so the select board has not made any decisions. We're starting with three roads. One of those is a class four and the other two are class three. And how we chose those first three was one one resident on the class four wanted us to to discontinue it, and, the other two are class three, but they have, you know, just a couple of lots on it. Because the costs for discontinuance are pretty pretty expensive. You need to engage an attorney. They need to do title searches. And, so it's a long process, and it can be a costly process.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Do you think that that's a strategy since what we're hearing pretty obviously is there's less money, we're going to continue to have less money, and there's not political will to raise revenue other than at the local side. Do you see that as a compelling strategy that we could make easier? Because we're going to have to either lower Vermonters expectations or choose strategically what roads to move away from. It's kind of the same conversation we are having with education too. I think we need to be very upfront and say, you are going to have worse road quality, you're going to have fewer paved roads, or you're going to have less maintained peripheral roads. And I think the easiest solution to that is the less maintained peripheral routes, which you're describing in your process. And maybe at some point we could have a conversation about how to ease the ability to release roads for communities so that you are able to actually prioritize. It it's a really nasty conversation. I don't wanna have that conversation, but I just I'm just not seeing us meeting their needs. So I'd like to have a way that they're not having to pay an attorney to just try not to lose. Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So there you go, thank you. That was

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: my No, totally, totally appreciate it. And I totally appreciate Morrison's comments and the question about local option taxes and that you have a choice. Has anybody ever done any estimate of how many people come to Morseville to work in a day?

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: So that was part of Jeff Carr's analysis, you know, was sales within the community and looking at anchor stores because we are an anchor for the county. You know, we're not stoked. We don't have those tourist dollars coming in, but we don't have the the the bed base of hotels and bed rec bed and breakfast, etcetera. But we do have some some stores where people from the county come to shop. So I can share that with you senators and and point out where they they get into that. I'm not sure how detailed it is. We also are very fortunate in Morristown to have, you know, companies. We have a multinational company that, you know, manufactures stoves. We have Concept2. So we we have an industry in Morristown that, you know, a lot of lot of communities in in the state would feel very fortunate to have, you know, good paying jobs. And that's how we can argue that LOT will

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: be beneficial to our residents because it offsets those costs with people that are coming into town for shopping and for for work from other communities. Well, to get at the point that the from Windsor just made, many of those people in those smaller communities don't have this option. And so as you you know, my worry is at some degree, and I totally think it's absolutely logical what you're doing, absolutely the appropriate thing for Moorestown to consider. But if I'm in Eden, I look at it and go, what would they do? And at some level, I think it it brings up the question that senator White just brought up. The balance is really, you know, tough here. So are you guys close to I do have I do have a next question. Okay. The question of I then you brushed up against it and we do have that head of the planning commission. You know, after some conversations that we've all had, there's a severe lack statewide of information about what's going on with TALFs and and a huge lack of information around what there is for health out there, the programs that you outlined, you know. I totally appreciate Town Highway appreciate that there's a formula and this year there's a 2% increase in it, but a 2% increase when you hit 200,000 on a $3,200,000 budget and it doesn't feel as I think it all speaks to itself. Information is key for us to be able to move ahead. And batting around ideas about as a region, what we would do. I think you've had some conversation with our planning commission. So if you could kick that off and we might let Tasha say a few words about where they are and what the tax is doing right now.

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: Sure. So, also, just to to expand on what you just said, senator, information also is a cost saver for taxpayers. Because when you can assess conditions before they become poor or very poor and prioritize those roads, it it creates a cost savings. So we we approached Tasha and her team at LCPC, and basically with the same request we had we had of you is, you know, if if the state can't negotiate on behalf of all the municipalities of the state for for some sort of reduced cost for for this data for capital planning, Let's talk with our local regional planning commission. Natasha was very open. I'll I'll give up my seat, Natasha, if you wanna come over here and

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: stay. There's another chair there. She could

[Committee staff (unidentified)]: Whatever works.

[Brent Raymond, Town Manager, Morristown]: I'll help.

[Patrick Wallace, Executive Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Okay. For the record, I'm Patrick Wallace, the executive director of the Lonelle County Planning Commission. It's nice to be here today. So just a little background, I think you all know in the absence of County government that we work closely with communities on transportation projects, mostly through our transportation planning work with the agency of transportation and other grant sources, but as these guys were speaking, like with the gravel roads, do road erosion inventories for the communities, we do culvert inventories, we do sidewalk inventories, we work through the municipal roads general permit, and a lot of different elements, but we haven't had the capacity to provide data on the paving. I do know just from our transportation planner that the town of Cambridge is very interested in this issue and they have less staff than Moorestown. Eric, the town administrator, also does the roads. The town of Waterville, is 300 and some odd people, is trying to figure out how to get data on their paved roads, and they don't have town staff, you know. And likewise, Hyde Park is interested in the issue. And as as Brent said that it's so important to have the data for these small towns who have to prioritize that prioritize their spending and they have limited funds and they just don't have the staff to go out and assess the road. Know, you have a nice professional crew, so you're ahead of the game and you still want help. And these smaller communities really need this data. And it really feels like having the data can really drive good decisions at the town level and at the state level in terms of the allocation of resources. So I think data would be great on on a county basis or however it's gathered. Also, I'd love to see one of those cool vans with the cameras and like a little Google car kind of zipping down the roads. And I'm happy to answer any questions about it.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I think most of the people around the table are, but talk a little bit about the TAC and what the TAC does and where you are with the TAC right now.

[Patrick Wallace, Executive Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: Okay, great. And so as part of our role, we have a Transportation Advisory Committee which includes appointees from all the municipalities. Over time, they've had several roles. They play an important role in prioritization of local projects. Back when there was money, we actually had a great success in that even had a double culvert that failed. And all the towns worked together and agreed this was a priority for the region and that project was funded. There's less engagement with the prioritization process right now just because there isn't the money to further projects. So new projects aren't entering the system. But the Transportation Advisory Committee also works closely with our planner and the road foreman. I think you can agree with this. If you really want to know what's happening with the roads in a community or in a county is get the road foreman together and they just have so much insight on what's missing and what they need. But the Transportation Advisory Committee, I think it's played such an important role in getting us information. We share that with the agency of transportation, but really trying to identify what's needed and the needs are huge out there certainly in the region.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: you Mr. Chair. So yes I have heard in my area, in my district, TAP has been told that prioritization isn't going to happen this year. And I heard it was like five years that that's been the case. I don't know what the history is, but-

[Patrick Wallace, Executive Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: They're looking at Michelle for a number. Yeah, they'll talk about it But

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: can you, to me, it's even more important if we don't have money that the towns prioritize because what you said maybe five years ago, you would say something else now. The towns would look at the existing condition and things may have changed especially with all the storms that have happened. So can you just talk about the value of updated prioritization at the town level and how that is just an important thing to do, Sure, at least in my

[Patrick Wallace, Executive Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: and it's Lamoille County, and the water comes and the road might not be there tomorrow. So I super appreciate that perspective. So the prioritization is really important. I think that just has been a little stuck because for when they were continuing to do it and there wasn't money, it was all very hypothetical to say, hey, we can identify these great projects and we'll get them on the list and they're number two zero seven. Have a nice day. Right. But we would love to see a lot more activity there and we appreciate partnership with the grants because the truth is that having any of these projects done is super important. And it sees local officials and local appointees who really have the information. But they're missing a lot of information. I love that we've started talking about data to help drive this decision making that's especially with growth, it's like, you know it's not all theoretical stuff it's what you see in front of you and you know what's happening.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: You and so something that towns in my area not just my district but other districts are going to prioritize on their own anyway and just send the information to be trans in the hopes that it would be helpful. Is that something that would be a benefit to?

[Patrick Wallace, Executive Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: I think it's really good to have those discussions. I think too that the exchange of information between the communities is really so important. We've started holding twice a year meetings of the select boards from the county and that's been great. I've seen Brent corner a number of different town managers or administrators to talk about common issues, and because I think we really need to identify those areas where we can cooperate and make it easier.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yes, thank you very much. Paul, I agree.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So we're coming within ten minutes or so of the end of the time. I do see Dawn on there. Did Leah leave?

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: Leah's on there, just no Yes,

[Leah Hollenberger, Member, Morristown Select Board]: I'm here.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You're both, on the select board. Introduce yourselves and just if you have anything you'd like to add, we've got about four or five minutes.

[Dom McDowell, Chair, Morristown Select Board]: Thank you. Thank you, senator. Yeah. This is Dom McDowell. I'm chair of the Morristown Select Board. So, obviously, very interested in this conversation. Thank you for, thank you for putting, putting Morristown in the spotlight. We do have some, obviously, significant needs, and I'm really glad that you guys are are focusing on this. It is frustrating, of course, for all of us that there's not more funding available, for the infrastructure needs that we have in Morristown, and, you know, this is true of so many towns around the state. And the other thing, I'm just glad that, LOT has come to the forefront. Brent spoke about this, and the local options tax is gonna be really important to Morristown, and, hopefully, the voters will push it across the finish line here in a couple of weeks. And we can take it take advantage of that funding and, use that towards, many of our infrastructure needs, not just paving and sidewalks and bridges and culverts, but but others that that Brent alluded to. So, anyways, thank you very much. I'm not gonna reiterate what Brent and Jordan have already talked about quite a bit, but I appreciate the time you're putting putting forward on this.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you. Leah, do you wanna add anything?

[Leah Hollenberger, Member, Morristown Select Board]: Yes. I'm I'm Leah Hollenberger, and I was appointed to the select board back in October. I wanna thank the committee for letting Morristown share our story, and I want to reiterate how important the data has been for helping us to explain to our residents why the local CHAX is so important. Having that data really quantifies our need. It lets us attach real dollars to it and explain the situation we're in as tough as it is with our residents. So we really have a lot of hopes for that local option tax.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank you both. And I would, before we, we're gonna take a five minute break, but before we take a break, I would like to say, and I think the highlights are for you, but I look at my small county and I represent 10 towns. Two of them, my hometown and Morristown have really an option with or have some option with local option taxes to be able to at least address a piece of their needs of 10 other towns that don't. And this the lack of information hinders us to have a real discussion about the needs in communities that are out there. But would you you wanna add anything at the end? Or

[Jordan Sanange, Highway Superintendent/Road Commissioner, Town of Morristown]: No. I think you touched on it. I think the the data really is would be would be hugely helpful because on a yearly basis because our our assessment that we had done is it's already almost two years old. It's already becoming old news. They're these these roads are their condition is changing constantly every spring. So we appreciate the time, and it's awesome that the conversation is going. And I think and the more that we can get some data out of it, it'd be a really great start.

[Committee staff (unidentified)]: And I'll just add in terms of data on a totally different note. At the county planning commission, we've actually developed a watershed wide model of the Lemoyle River. And the data gathered from that modeling has changed how select fords view the river, how what projects they've been willing to accept for mitigation, and it's all because they'll, you know, we can say, they'll say, well, what if we did this? And say, okay, we'll model it and we'll tell show you whether that would work or not. And so really the data that drives decision making and it's so important in these instances.

[Patrick Wallace, Executive Director, Lamoille County Planning Commission (LCPC)]: That's very cool, but we don't have time to talk about it now. We

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: aren't the house. We can't spend all day on everything. You know, we do do morning and afternoon committees. It's okay. But thank you all for coming, and it's really important to do that. And I would say to the other members of the committee, I think as we get closer to the time to put together the T Bill, we need to hear from more towns like this. So if you have towns in your area, please bring them forward. Thank you. Why don't we take a five minute break?