Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: You're left.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: This is Senate Transportation, and we are resuming our testimony. And we have Jeremy Reed from the Transportation Agency, and go.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Thank you. Yeah. Jeremy Reed, chief engineer at Agency of Transportation, and here today to discuss project sequencing and prioritization and give a bit of a outlook of where we stand moving forward as far as how many projects are in the program and the current financial capabilities. So, a multilayered process. One is to get a project into the program, and then once it's in the program, as we build the annual budget and the white book, how do we prioritize what projects advance to construction on any given year? So I know you've all heard about VPSP-two, so this will be high level on that front, and then we'll get a little bit deeper into the weeds as far as the sequencing and prioritization piece. BPSP-two is a vision that is a performance based, data driven project selection and prioritization process that maximizes the transportation value of any given project, and through that process, it brings them into the program. The RPCs have a role in this along with other quantifiable criteria that we use.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Can we do questions? Sure. As you go along. So when you say the RPCs, that's the tax, right? Correct. And do all of the RPCs have a tax transportation?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: I believe so. So within the VPSP-two scoring criteria, here's how the various pieces are weighted, and again, it's been a couple years, but as projects get suggested, this is what it's rated, they're given a score, and then those are then brought into the program.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Just another comment, just health access, it's just five points. I just want to know that because we've been working a lot on health access.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: So then, once a project comes into the program, obviously every project has a different development cycle, so that scoring or weighting doesn't carry through because basically the deck gets shuffled as a project goes through its development. So then in September, August, we start building the following year's budget, and we have to prioritize those projects that are ready, and this is the process in which we do this. And it's a multi tiered system where we go through our list and decide what advances and what doesn't. So, Q1, these projects generally all get moved forward, and the criteria to be in tier one is continuation for ongoing or continuation of ongoing construction. Obviously, we're not going to cease funding on a project that's in construction. Likewise, for project awards, if we've already ordered a contract, we're going to continue down that path. Any safety critical needs, so if there's documented crash risk, roadside hazards, imminent failure of a bridge, for example, would would rise to that criteria. And then if we have any funding time limitations, those would move forward. So congressionally directed spending, any grant awards that are about to lapse, we obviously move those to the front of the line so that we don't lose funding. I'm sorry.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Didn't understand. Before when we talked about BPSP, I thought it was for all projects, but then I was told it's only for the additional money, but is the goal of the agency to make it for the whole book? Is the capital program. So

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: an argument could be made it's for all projects, Likewise, an argument could be made that it's only for additional money. And the nuance there is if it's an asset condition driven project with some safety nexus, which is kind of what we decide, you'll see the weighting kind of would put that to the front of the list anyway. So, both can be true. Where the outside influence weighs in is after we've satisfied mobility, connectivity, safety, and asset condition, then it's the other piece of the economic access resiliency and environment. So I wouldn't wanna say it's it's exclusive to extra money because to a large degree, even our project selection considers safety and asset condition.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And community, that's like the RPCs? Is that where that comes in? Yeah. Is there ever something in the book that doesn't get a score?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: There are certainly legacy projects, You but

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: could get into the book. When I say the book, that's the same as what you call the capital program? Correct. So

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: whether or not we give it an actual score, I don't know that every project gets a score because like I said, our condition driven safety projects get into the book without being scored, and we just know that because they've got 40 points right off the start, they would prevail. Yeah. But you don't go through the whole thing for everybody. Right. We don't we don't score every project. If if we see a section of roadway that's very poor that we wanna behave, we don't go through and assign a specific failure, it would just Right.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So the so the RPC, the tax are 10% of the total score. Yeah.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: I mean, I I think you come back with the specific criteria. This was meant just to be a high level, but if

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: we wanted to get right into the Who attributes each of these?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: I think it's conversation. Right? I mean, resiliency, economic access isn't exclusive to our domain. So I think there is a conversation that has

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: to occur. In the old days, the tax cut twenties, and it started with that. I'm I'm I'm just trying to figure out who's the decision maker that attributes this.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: So, to be totally honest, we haven't taken projects in from our PC since I've been chief engineer just due to fiscal constraints, but I'm really happy to come back and you know, dive into exactly how it worked in '20 on this for the community part, or

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: are you asking about all the skills?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, in the total, if my tag comes up with the list, I always thought that that a lot of the list started with the tax and then moved up, but I'm I'm just trying to figure

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: out how it how it works. I believe that I believe it's a bit of an iterative process where right? Because we generally would know the asset condition. We would assign some safety value based on crash histories. That's information we generally exclusively have, not not necessarily the tax, but the tax can also talk to the communities about resiliency, you know, community health access and things like that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So one other piece, since the tax have not been encouraged to present their list because of what if an area decides over time they did it? A project over here is more important to them than a project over here, and and it has changed over time. Yep. You know, sometimes things happen. I can think of in Mooresville. There's on Bridge Street, there's a lot more apartments than there used to be. Mhmm. How is that how would a local community express the change in our community has facilitated that we aren't the same as we were four years ago?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Right. So I think where you would have to start is, as a project develops, there is certain touch points with the agency to a local community. And let's just say you had two basically identical projects moving in sequence, I think at those touch points, the community could express a desire, can we de prioritize this and put an emphasis on this? That's a fairly unusual circumstance just given you need two projects of basically the same size with basically the same program. You can't swap a paving project for a bridge project, for instance, because the funding comes from different places and we're trying to achieve just different objectives. But if you had, I'll just say, two town highway bridges in a community, one started out being prioritized for whatever reason, over time, that became less important to the community. I think the towns could absolutely reach out to us and say, things have changed. We have these two competing bridges. Could you swap this one for that one?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: So just getting back to the original scoring process.

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Because I I remember when that happened, but I wasn't in this position then. Do you know how who who decided that that is the scoring process? Did did the legislature have any say in that?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: I'm confident we testified to that end. This is not in statute. This is something that we've developed. There is arcane language that mimics this by and large, but not exactly. But I'm I'm confident that both this committee and upstairs has has heard testimony on this and passively agreed with it before it was implemented.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Right. And but then the tax haven't had any role really for five years.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Well, I don't think it's been five years. I think it's probably been three or four, but there was two or three years where we were taking all those projects in. So and maybe that's your point. It was active for two or three years, but hasn't for, say, three or four years.

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

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: The techs are still doing the work, are they not? Like, they my understanding, but maybe I'm not.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Still not

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: involved as much, but they they are still kind of working through the process of what their priority projects are.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Can I answer that? No, not necessarily. When I heard this year that the message was to not prioritize, that alarmed me because to me when we're in a negative situation and looking at canceling projects, it's even more important to get community input than do projects. But they were told not to. By

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: By AOT. That's my understanding. But some are still providing their priorities, but that's on their initiative.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: So what we told them is we're not taking in projects through the VPSP-two process. So prioritizing new projects isn't necessarily adding value right now. That being said, I think each CAC operates however they see fit, and I do think some CACs are communicating with their towns, just basically reaffirming existing priorities, seeing if there is any change. But your comments saying that we don't take you're

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: not taking any new projects in through the PPSB two project confirms what I thought was like that it's only about new money. If it if like but that's of

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: way the agency sees it. Well, fair enough. Yeah, I mean, we're involved outside input, correct? Yeah. And

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: then, can I ask one, Marco?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Please. No offense.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And you can stick.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Oh, we got the challenge. I'm phoning a friend here.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And has the agency thought about making BPSB2 part of the matrix that you would use for scoring all projects? And again, I think we do, we

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: just don't actually assign a number to it. Right? So when we go through what our new projects are, right, asset condition and safety are the drivers, and they have an outsized scoring. So it's not that we have some other arbitrary thing. We use this framework whether or not we assign a specific dollar or a point to it or a score to it. We we don't go to that level of formality just because we do have asset condition and and data driven principles that we use to program a paving project or bridge project.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I assume that there is, is it all safety and asset condition, or is there any geographic interest?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: To some extent, the geographic interest comes in sort of in that annual sequencing. As far as bringing in new projects this stage, given the fiscal limitations, it's generally about asset condition and maintaining the network we currently have, and that's more about our statewide performance measures and less about geographic distribution or equity.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay. And just one last comment in that. It seems like maybe you don't do it because of the work involved in running through the whole process to get score every project, but I think it might help the public to know because I think the perception from some pounds or people out there is that there is some arbitrary part. So if it could be shown, no, everything's going through the same rubric and then the safety and asset conditions really are the driver and here's the evidence of that might be helpful. But I don't know if Jeeks is worth the screen fair enough. Well, and and there's a certain level of, right,

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: to actually get a full score would require all that community outreach. And I would just feel hesitant to say, give us your opinion, but the waiting is gonna make it, I won't say irrelevant, but insignificant.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay, fair enough.

[Michelle Boone Power, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Michelle Boone Power, Agency of Transportation. Just want to chime in on a couple of things. The VPSB2 process was a very extensive outreach process with all the regional planning commissions, the MPO, legal cities and towns. There were a variety of stakeholders also, AARP and the usual suspects, local motion, etcetera, provided a lot of input to this because prior to this, we had been using a very similar process. And each year, you know, we'd send out the list of projects and we would ask for, you remember the 20%, we would ask for the community score and we would take that 20% and then use that in combination with all the other agency data to come up with a list of what's going first, second, third, which in a time of some availability of resources was a feasible way to do it. So then we adopted the VPSV2, we kind of got into this period of less resource availability. So everything that had already come to us had already been scored at the regional level and was somewhere in the process of moving in the book. So that anything that's in the book has had some level of, unless it's an emergency project or something, has had some level of community input relative to a scoring process, whether it's this new one or the old one we used to use. Right now, there's only enough money to move things around that are already in the book, not enough to have capacity for adding anything new to the book. If we were able to add anything new, then we would send that stuff out for scoring, but the stuff that's in the book is still going to be in there moving as it moves because of permitting or right away or any number of other factors that we have to look at each August when we build the book to understand sort of the readiness of things to move forward. I think you made a really good point of helping people to understand why their bridge moved from here to there each year.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Right. So it be in the book for ten years, and it seems like the new project's getting ahead of it.

[Michelle Boone Power, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Right, and I would say that any of those new projects that might be getting ahead of it are things that had a deterioration factor that caused it to like become an emergency versus like a new idea.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's a part of the question I got particularly on the patron side. Yes. They they a local community weighed in on four years ago and today could be absolutely different. Mhmm. You know? I'm give you, and you and I talked about it this morning, the shape of the mountain road going up to Smuggs on one zero eight four years ago was completely different condition than it is today, and with as many tourists as you've got going up in the winter when there's 800 employees at the mountain, it it creates a whole different level and amount of weigh in from the the community. With the growth that's happened in Mooresville and with the growth in the industrial parts, there's a line of cars at the roundabout on 15 going into Mooresville now that wasn't there five years ago. And the lack of weigh in from the communities on that is completely different than than four years ago. So I wonder if given the projects that are out there in the place that they are, if opening up and letting some weigh into the community might be a good thing.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Maybe. And I think Michelle was better articulating the point. Getting into the book and how it progresses are two different things. And I think as as I go through and you see how we make an annual selection, there could be an opportunity there, but a lot of it is nondiscretionary. And and, like, I I guess, let's go through that, and then we can reengage that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I would just say to you between 2020 and today, the amount of housing development that has gone into a community like Morristown because of that development. I would say that to you in that I know your previous life when you said on the Act two fifty Commission, the amount of Act two fifty permits that that single community has Sure. Outweighs other communities by a lot. Exactly. So the and the view of the local TAC, I'm not sure is the same as it was in 2020 or 2021.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: And I think as we look at our statewide performance measures, to your point, the housing and traffic volume, we consider even without talking to the TAC. That's part of our performance measures. So, we're not oblivious to those changes, I guess, was

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: the I think sometimes when you include them in the discussion, it leads to an understanding.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Go ahead, Andy. One more question about the the book. Do you Is there a criteria about putting into the book on the timeframe? Like, this goes out five years or three years? Not

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: every project in the book has construction identified period. So, I mean, how far out it goes is I mean, it could be infinite.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: But but but in the book, do you have the criteria about, like, we're not we're only gonna put it in the book. We think we're it's gonna get funded in the next next years now. Why So would you put it in there if you don't think it'll get funded in the next ten years?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Again, there's projects that have been asked to be put in a book that's, you know, basically just E and E projects that okay. We'll do some scoping work on, but there's not what do you mean? From either an RPC, there's an idea that a specific legislator may have. And they're like, hey, explore something. So we'll do a scoping study perhaps, and that project's in the book, but there's absolutely no funding in it. Virginia Bypass, as an example. It's still in the books. We have no

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And you could take it out of the book. You would just have to do one of those reports.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Well, and something I just learned last year, we actually can't cancel a project without legislative approval.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So once it's in the book, it has to cancel. You can't just, it's not one of those 10 gs reports.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Wow, yeah, so if we did cancel it, it would show up on the 10 gs reports, but we can't cancel it without your authorization. So by and large, the projects that you see on the 10 gs that are no longer in the book are completed. So you just took them Completed or canceled? Completed. There's completed 10 gs

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: and there's canceled 10 gs. I thought there was two different criterias of that.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Don't know. I think there is a criteria, but I don't think we can cancel a project.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So you've gone forward and say, we're gonna cancel these, and then next year would be in the report. That's how

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: it would work, and I'm not aware that we've done that. But in theory, that's how it would work. And I don't know the mechanism of how we come to you and say, these are the and honestly, we've a list we're working on. Here are the 25 projects we want to cancel. I don't know the mechanism of how that actually would work, but I do know to cancel a project we need your authorization.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Right, maybe it just gets authorized by accepting the book and it's not in there.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Michelle?

[Michelle Boone Power, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: So, if it were that easy, yeah, that would be great. But no, to take something out of the book, we actually have to bring forward language, we would do it through the T Bill, we would have already worked with the community to make sure that they are on board, because that's the first thing you're all gonna ask is Yeah. Can't does the town know this? And so they would either be asked to testify or supply a letter indicating, yes, we are not moving forward to this project. They agree that it should come out of the book. And then you can then authorize it to be removed through the T Bill. That's how that would work.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Do you think that putting projects in the book gives some communities a false sense that the project's Yeah,

[Michelle Boone Power, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: and I think that's why we have been trying to avoid doing that by only asking for communities to prioritize new projects when we know we will be able to advance things in the book. And I would have to say it's kind of a rare to almost never situation where something gets into the book to be scoped because the legislator thought it was a good idea. Typically, would be coming from attack in a regional planning commission because of some very significant thing that somehow we weren't aware of that was probably emergency based or maybe it was safety based if there was a big development project that created a safety issue and they came to us and said, we know you're not accepting projects, but here's the situation here, and then, you know, that might trigger getting

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's into more the question I would think at this point. I would like to see you ask the text. Has there been changes that should significantly change your point of view in in in this here's here's our list. Here's what we're doing. Stamp it.

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Or, you know, I or in and I might not be using the right terms, but I don't want them to feel like they're out of out of the loop.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Understood. I will say one of the things we're attempting to do is the planning team has come through Highway and is now embedded with our asset management team, and we're really trying to strengthen that conduit, whether it be through some formal process or not, and I'm actually presenting to VAPTA next week, and we're really trying to strengthen those bonds between the RPCs and our asset management team, so that they fully understand the picture. I think to your point, Senator, they're not left in the dark.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Oh, go ahead.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Do you see a time where the tax will have input again? Are we that far behind in our So I'll touch on that at the end. Obviously, federal funding is a significant driver here, and I don't know. I will say

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Our life of borrowing revenues isn't any function. The

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: current funding levels, I will say, do not lend to bringing in additional projects in in the near future. I mean Yeah. I'll finish your sentence.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I'll I'll reach out.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I couldn't I couldn't help myself.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: And, again, we can we can dig deeper because I do have three significant programs and showing where the program stands today at current funding levels. Now the project's in the book, we're building the budget for a given year. Tier one, these are projects that are going to move forward, I've gone through those criteria. Tier two projects, and this is the most likely scenario, asset and cost considerations. So, if a project is managed by a neighboring state, obviously, we've made that commitment, brought about in sales, an example. We're not gonna pull funding for something that's that's going forward. Critical asset condition, again, if a bridge is about to be closed or significantly reduced, we want to try to avoid that at all costs, and then if the cost would increase significantly because of deferred projects. So, if it's a rehabilitation project, if we don't do it now, we've lost that window to do that rehabilitation, and a replacement cost will be significantly higher. Those are the types of considerations for these Tier two projects. Tier three, and this is where generally speaking there's some level of discretion, is dependency projects. So if there is a project that is adjacent to another project, so Berlin Komornovsky right now in the diverging diamond, they can't happen concurrently. So we are in a position where the diverging diamond had to go when the diverging diamond happened so that the Berlin Kowinowski project would not be adversely affected. Things like that are considered. Network wide performance, again, these are the things I've discussed here, either bridge or pavement condition. We try to use those asset management principles to select the right projects so that our state performance and federal performance measures are in line with what we expect, and federal maximization. So this is the eightytwenty versus ninetyten versus 100% piece, and so this is kind of the last piece of the Tetris puzzle of project A has a ninetyten split, project B has an eightytwenty, we have limited state funds, the ninetyten goes type thing. Tier four, this is less of a consideration in today's environment. This is, is the project ready? Obviously, it's kind of intuitive. If you've got two competing projects, one's ready, one's not, the one that's ready goes. Regional prioritization, and this may be the chair's point, if two identical projects are both ready to go, which one does the RPC or the TAC or the MPO want to go? Again, in today's funding world, those don't happen very frequently. And then lastly, balancing out year programming, so capacity limits, obviously trying to have the correct distribution, we don't want to do a ton of paving one year and no bridge work, and then flop that the next year. We try to have some level of consistency, long term strategic goals. These are other, I won't say ancillary, but tangential elements to the transportation network that need to be considered for the long term goals of the agency, and then geographic equity. Again, does Bennington County get the same as Windham County, for instance?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: So, just the long term strategic goals, is that where economic development would be?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Could be, yep.

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

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: And so, Tier four and Tier five are infrequently used in today's funding world. So, to go into the state of the program right now, this is generally, again, with current federal funding where we land, roughly $325,000,000 in projects annually. Dollars 100,000,000 of that goes to paving, dollars 100,000,000 of that goes to bridges. Of that, 55,000,000 on the interstate, 25,000,000 goes to the state, then $20,000,000 on town highway programs. We've $40,000,000 for roadway projects, dollars 40,000,000 for traffic and safety, and then $30,000,000 is held in reserve for emergent needs or preservation type work. Just to provide a little bit more definition, 40,000,000 in roadways, that can be significant roadway projects like Pittsford Brandon, as an example, this year. It also is things like the Fairly Ledge project, any slides, culverts that are not quite bridges, but are deteriorating, so those all fall on the roadway program. Traffic and safety is everything from line striping, signs, signals, and actual full blown intersection projects, so those have a wide breadth there.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And this is total dollar, right? Correct.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: So that's the general distribution we're shooting for now. Now, with those budget targets, here's where we're at with projects that are in the program. And so, see basically a $55,000,000 target. We're essentially full out to 2,035 of projects that are currently in the program. There's not? I mean, 35 is right, and then 37 is a little bit below, certainly full out to 50.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: If you were to hit the target, you could add a project if

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: it was $2,000,000 Right. And again, obviously, as projects develop, the cost changes. These are the snapshot in time, and that's why there is some ups

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: and downs think the value would change over time with inflation or no?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Potentially. But, again, depending where we're at with both federal and state funding. This is in $20.26 dollars, let's say. I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I'm gonna be snarky. Yes. Woah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: It's in

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: front of me. I'm I'm when we're short of local fund of state funds, you're gonna tilt towards this because it's $90.10, and you chase the match.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: That, and we have federal performance targets that we're required to meet first and foremost.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I I understand your federal requirements to we chase dollars.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Yep. And that was tier three, I think, of what is the federal max. You have an eighty twenty project and a ninety ten project.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We're short on eight And if there's any questions, the interstates are gonna win, and Yes. The rest of us all kind of

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: You need an interstate?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. I've got

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: two Well, know, I would say you may need an interstate, but I would I'll use Chitney County as an example. If I'm in Williston and I work in Essex, the interstate goes right through. And if I'm on Route 2, a majority of the people are driving to work. And if they're driving to Global Foundries, the interstate doesn't mean that much. Yeah. I would argue that in most of the state, even those counties that have an interstate that goes through them, the interstate is is more likely than not for the people passing through and not for the locals. Can

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I add to that? Because I've been driving 91 a lot these days and about half of the folks are New Hampshire, which makes sense because that is the interstate for Hampshire and I don't believe we get any subsidy from them, right?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: No.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Especially when we start talking about bridges and how New Hampshire has all the bridges

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah, for won't fix that.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: The interstate, Well, it's on the list. It's getting a little bit higher on the list. But no, we're

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's not a percent plus.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. I I I So that's an issue.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I don't need to, but yet I would and I we I don't wanna not keep up our interstates, but I I certainly think that there's more than just the interstates to the world. And all of the formulas and all of the pressure from the federal government leads us I to chase.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Yeah. And I'll I'll just I don't disagree, and I'll add another layer there is it's interstates and NHS. So there is Yep. A a second here there.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I And I think we have to be mindful of that and watch for that.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: So again, this is a current snapshot within the Intertake Bridge

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: program. I would just say that Rutland's trying to address that.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I saw that. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: They have a bill. Good luck. I'm I'm not real sure I like that bill. Yeah.

[Michelle Boone Power, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Haven't had David Weeks in yet.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: For the roadway program, again, voice mail.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Sorry to say I'm not in a hurry.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Again, roadway program, even dimmer outlook, dollars 40,000,000 target, and we're overpopulated out past 2,043 in the current funding scheme. And then paving, I just picked $100,000,000 based on last year. Again, these projects have a much shorter development period, and they might have a much faster deterioration curve. So it's much more difficult to have a ten or fifteen year prediction on what's the saving gonna do. But even that, you can see out to 2034, the ADAM program is basically full. There will be some movement within that, again, as roads deteriorate, as we do district leveling, and we do various treatments, but again, what you'll see is certainly 2034 to 2043, the three main programs are populated to capacity, if not in excess. Is it

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: just me, or has this winter been unusual with how far the roads

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: are? So certainly Ernie had his challenges on that front. I will say, from my perspective, the most deteriorating thing for the roadway is a freeze all cycle.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: We've had them mostly free, but we've had some. Now,

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: a deep freeze does cause frost heaves, but the worst case scenario is to have that deep freeze, then have a thaw, have the water infusion, then have it refreeze, and that's bad for both pavement and bridges. It seems like there's more heat, but also maybe just because of more snow, it just makes it more difficult. And I think it's been cold, so the frost is probably a little bit deeper this year.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah. It'll be a good of season.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And it's gonna be a good month of season. If you are right with

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: the cameras.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: So that's a little bit of how we prioritize new projects and largely why we're not taking in new projects right now is because we just don't have I won't even say the near future, it's probably for the extent in my career that we're not gonna be able to get to what we even have.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: How long is that gonna be?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: We'll see. How old are

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: you? Seriously, are talking ten years?

[Michelle Boone Power, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: No. He's thinking like

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Yeah. Well, my career is certainly less than ten years probably, but, yeah, I mean, until 2034 for paving, and and the roadway is 2043. But it's a lot

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: of projects. We say we're not thinking of projects. It's not like we don't have hundreds of I mean, the book is still

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Oh, absolutely. But I'm saying that's why I like a if a municipality says, hey. We wanna fix this intersection. Yeah. Here's why. Right?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I would say you're going to when we get to the book and we're going through projects, which should be we're gonna come back a week. We're gonna work on stuff. Right. And we're gonna try to clean up a few things that we wanna that will be our priorities. We're probably about that time to get the T bill will be coming about that week. We're gonna dive in, and every day we're gonna go through section right of the budget, so we're gonna do the budget as quickly as we can. There are going to be questions in here about projects, and why my project isn't And I think now is the time for you to ask your question and tell him what questions you're going to have when he comes.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Do you want me to talk about this specific project?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Again, haven't seen this statistic, but you, I think Yeah. Have serious

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: concerns about a project, one in particular, but now I'm worried that there's others, where the town has been notified, I don't think it's gone to the regional commission. I know it hasn't gone to the regional commission, and the project that I'm most concerned about is a really important project for economic development and its permits are there, meets all the criteria.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And so you'll be hearing from individual members about specific projects that as we go through the book, you're gonna have to answer. And I would encourage anybody here that has those projects, Make sure you email, text, or however, get it on his plate so he has the answers when he comes. Definitely.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Yeah. By by all means, if, you know, if there is a project or concern, we need to talk offline or just give me a little bit of advance warning so I can

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah, let's do have both. And

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I think it would be good to have a list of all of the projects that are being either delayed or canceled?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Well, so no projects are being canceled. We are contemplating that and we're, again, trying to work out the mechanism on how to do that. That probably won't be this session because we haven't even gone to the towns and all the things that Michelle mentioned. I'll just say, and I have a hard time describing this, but projects that are delayed, we need to recognize there's any number of reasons for that. Some of it is certainly financial, some of it is just a permit got delayed, some of it is the design took longer, right away took longer, etcetera. So, absolutely happy to talk about project A was showing in 2029 and now it's showing in 2030, but I don't want it to be implied or explicit that that's a strictly funding thing every project that you

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I think that's why it would be good if you have specifics, if you can get those in ahead of time when we're going through that book, we'll wanna cover and because I'm gonna wanna go through this. Sure. But there are concerns about projects that could pave the way. Understood. And in this environment, there's a lack of money.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yes. So the G report does have a delay or did it report? So, if it was in one year and you moved into another fiscal year, is that in gs?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: I think the ten gs was project delayed because of I'm not going to get the wording right specific to another project. I forget exactly how it's worded, but it's like if we advance project B instead of A, and there's a direct line there, that's where we report that delay. And that's where, again, the Sotomayor, just learned zero based budgeting is kind of what we do, meaning we start from scratch every August. And so, it's very difficult to draw a straight line from one project to the next. Just because any number of things can change, and over the course of the year, project estimates, whether real or estimated, will change tens of millions of dollars.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And are the 10 gs reports in here? Yes. Okay. Yeah, it does say there's one, funded for construction in the prior fiscal year in the program that are no longer funded, so that seems like it would be

[Michelle Boone Power, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: That's not canceled.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Not canceled, just like I said. We're gonna fund an FY27, but we're actually we're gonna fund an FY28. That seems like that would be one that would be in one of the MGP.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Well, actually I think typically that's funded period. So, latter would be your category that's completed, generally speaking, because you no longer have construction funds. Think if I read that correctly, moving it from '27 to '28 is still showing construction funds.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Right. Yeah, it just says that they're no longer funded, so it could be funded for a

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: different reason because they finished it for a different year, so long as we're showing construction funds still, it would not show up on that 10 g report. This is the first

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: time I've any interest in the 10 gs report.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: It'll last.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: They say last year, we were trying to get rid of it.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I know. Well, the house, I know,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: takes great time to get rid it.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: We were kind.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: The house loves the FIA, but the senate is we just let the house figure it out.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: But when you say funded, let's just be clear about that. Isn't that if it's in this step? Isn't doesn't that mean it's funded?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Yes, but the 10 gs report isn't referencing the SDP, it's referencing the white book. And so, a constructive fund showing in the white book is really what the trigger is, not the SDP.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Okay, but this should be in line with it?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: In line, but there's gonna be some differences, right, because we have advanced construction and things like that. So the STIP and the white book won't always match up.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So we'll

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: have It's just saying the project's not quite finished, is it? Or it's saying it has finished, so construction funds no longer Well, no. But if you show construction funds in '48, then you're not quite there yet. That'd be

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: the longest way. Yep. Yeah.

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: But I wanna show up on a 10 g report if construction funds moved from '27 to '28, because that's still showing construction

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Are you done?

[Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: I am done. Wow. Your

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: criticality is five minutes before lunch. I like

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: it