Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: You're live.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: This is Senate Transportation, and we are back live, and we are trying to catch up on, how the tip bond structure works and the gas tax works again as a refresher. And we are here with Anderson Logan if you can both introduce yourself and you make sure he doesn't do anything wrong.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: Hand us off as Chief Financial Officer of the agency, that this is really Logan's show.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: I'm

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: sure he's gonna do everything right.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: For the record, Logan moved very well to join the fiscal office. Okay, we'll go over. This is a fairly brief presentation, just a refresher on the gas tax and that we'll talk about the TIP. I think the main thing is sort of the assessments and how those work and how they're calculated and fluctuate, that sort of thing. So brief overview, as you all know, we have a hybrid system. So we have the fixed portion and then we have that variable assessment. Fixed portion is 13.1¢, which if you look on the chart on the right there, the top numbers there are how that fixed portion is broken out. So, you'll see 11.345 goes straight to the transportation fund, then there are some other portions broken out. And then we add the 1% petroleum cleanup fee for that total fixed cost of 13.1¢. And then we have the two assessments. We have a 4% motor fuel tax assessment. That money goes to the T Fund. And then we have a 2% motor fuel transportation infrastructure assessment, and that money goes into the TIF fund. So total, it fluctuates because as we'll see the assessments fluctuate based on price a little bit. The total is right around, normally 32¢, 31, 32¢, somewhere in there for state taxes. Then you have the federal gas tax, which is 18.4¢ and that hasn't changed.

[Speaker 0]: Was going to be my question. My opinion is the last time the feds raised the gas tax was like 93 or 94.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: I think 93, but somewhere around there. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: And then the last time we raised the gas tax other than the creation of the TIP fund, which

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Yeah. So we raised, we added the 4% assessment in 2014, I think. It was 2% in 2013 and then it increased 4% in 2014. We also decreased the fixed portion when we added in the TIP. It was an overall increase of like 6¢ on average, but there was a fixed portion decrease and then the increase of the, or the addition of the 4% assessment in 2014, I think.

[Speaker 0]: So it's been a little over ten years for Vermont making any changes and over thirty years.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So can I ask a question?

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

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So Logan, what's the difference of it being an assessment versus a tax? And why, do you know why those two are assessments?

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: I don't. There might be

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: a technical reason for it. There's a there's a it was an assessment because if it had to create a new revenue source to be able to do a bond fund. And probably the best place to answer that question would be from the treasurer's office if we needed to. And that allowed us, by doing an assessment, to not have the bonded indebtedness that was created by the TID Fund go against the general bonded debt of the state.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Oh, okay. Okay. Thank you.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So it stands alone with its own revenue source, which was a different revenue source.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Oh, okay. So it's like a revenue bond, basically.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It's like that.

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

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: So moving on to talking about the assessments. There's the two assessments, there's the 4% and the 2%, as I mentioned, the 4% goes to the T fund, the 2% goes to the TIP fund. Within these assessments, and we'll start with the 4% that goes to the T fund. There is a minimum amount of money and a maximum amount of money that can be collected.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Amount of money or amount of

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: assessment? Amount of assessment per cents per gallon that can be collected. So essentially within these assessments, we will never collect less than 13.4¢ per gallon and we'll never collect more than 18¢ per gallon. And those sort of what we're collecting fluctuates based on the price of gas. And if you jump down to the sort of bolded bullet point there, we calculate or the DMV, I believe calculates the sort of rates for the next quarter based on the tax adjusted average retail price of gasoline during the prior quarter. So they go out and they survey gas stations and they figure out what the average price was over the quarter. They subtract out the state and federal taxes. And you can see this map if you look at my chart down below, I have column A, is the average retail price.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: That's what we can tax. So that includes all tax.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: That includes everything. That's what you would pay at the pump essentially, average for the quarter.

[Speaker 0]: No Q3 yet.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Yet. Not there.

[Speaker 0]: Do you have an expectation?

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: I do not. Subtract out all the taxes, that's B, C, D, and E, then you get that tax adjusted price in column F there. From that number, you then multiply it by either 4% to get the transportation fund one or 2% to get the TIP version. You can sort of see that assessment there. So you'll see that for the transportation portion, it's going all the back to the minimum, the 13.4¢. That's because if you do the math on it, you'll see that we'll collect the minimum amount if gas is under $3.87 at the pump. $87.87 cents. So it's rough because it fluctuates a bit, but until it gets above that price, we will always just be collecting the minimum or having the minimum tax applied for this portion. And you can see on the column and the left hand side, it hasn't gone above $3.87 and going back to 2024. Pat, can you

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: because when we originally did this, we didn't set floors. Yep. And then I think you added the floor that came into place in 2014. Yeah. Because this was in place before 2014 and there were no upward floor and or bottom floor. There's no ceiling. There's no ceiling. Can you remember why and what, how you came up with that? The ceiling? Yeah, and the floor.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: The ceiling part was where we didn't want to hit the consumer too hard and gas prices were kind of at the time volatile. So we went to, think, five zero nine. Is that what the ceiling is? Five zero eight. Yeah. Five zero eight. That's the reasoning there. And this and the the floor when it was more beneficial was so that we wouldn't take a serious hit when gas prices dipped below So $3.80 which benefited us since then really. Mean a couple times gas got up above that but most of the time it was all three eighty seven so we would have, transportation fund would have suffered dramatically in those days. Was good news. Either senator Bruno or Logan, do we know why we set it on the past average quarter or not just make it to 2%? Why didn't we just say it's two percent? Why did why you calculate on the past quarter average?

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Because you would only know the average from the prior quarter. So we don't know what the average

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: will be. Why calculate on the average and not just the

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: 2% of the price? We have to know the rate that we're applying to to the distributor for the entire company. You it at the pump. Don't we to know what the rate is prior to this quarter that we're certainly in. So we have to use that. Couldn't you

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: just say it's 2% of what they're charging that dealers? You know what I mean?

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Yeah. 2% of the price that they're charging now. I I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And this is complicated. This is not at Right. This isn't the wholesale.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Correct. You could a you could have a few few percent back to the wholesale, could you not?

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Oh. Oh, for sure. I just wanted to Name rang. That that quote of that the Mortgage Association

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: is is confusing in terminology and it's common wholesaler versus rack versus distributor versus dealer. Right. Taxes on the distributor. Right. Yep. That's the person that has a tractor trailer truck and a 9,000 gallon trailer

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: that brings it into Vermont from Quebec, New York, New Hampshire, or Massachusetts.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: That's who pays the tax. On the But

[Speaker 0]: they pass that on to the person they're purchasing it from.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: The the individual retailer. Yeah. And some degree

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: United States. So it's gonna constitute a tax. Yes. Yes. So a a wholesaler or a wholesaler advocate for New Hampshire for Albany doesn't pay that unless they're the distributor, which they might pay. The distributor pays it 700. It was 2%. We wouldn't know what the price was to calculate the percentage. That's what it's Jeff, your partner, Citgo, does not is not a taxpayer. Right. His distributors. And the distributor if we said they have 50% they said like well I want price consumption. Right. But we're buying it from somebody in New Hampshire or New York. So we wouldn't be able to text them.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: But we need to know

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: the because it's 4% of the price We

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: translate the percentage into cents.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Yes. And it's cents per gallon sold. So you you couldn't do it. You you could you could change the whole tax, I guess. But Right. Because of the way it's currently set up, it it sort of has to be done. So we have to know what the consumer is Right. Paying on an average.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So since and I wasn't part of the how did we set the floor in the top in in in in this? Because I've I've always thought of this part of the tax as it floated with inflation because prices go up, so you're you're doing that. And so as we talk about indexing gasoline tax, that would be you would only index at the pump because this is this is already built as a percentage to go up with the price of fuel at the wholesale level.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Yeah. This is like a constrained version of an inflator. Gas just hasn't increased to a level where the percentage has generated any more revenue. But within that 3.87 to $5.8 range, it would change, increase or decrease based on the price of gasoline. Gas has just been below $3.87, so we haven't actually seen any change in revenue.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And there was always a thought in the original piece that you set it with that floater because it's a petroleum product and somewhat on the construction side, the the pavement that we've got is based on, you know, so much of it comes out of the petroleum industry. I

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: know at the time there was we discussed Windexing it Yeah. In great life, and it wasn't politically well received by either governor or the,

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: you know, the body that the body

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But I thought But, you know, because it floats with the price of gas Yeah. Fuel is part of and, you know, basically, you've got paving, which is a petroleum product. They they kind of float in the materials. So I just can't remember exactly why it it was

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: done the way Predecessor.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: But there's no maximum on that tip. There's no maximum on the tip. The tip does fluctuate more because it's just a 2% calculation. So that it sort of we'd collect the max at the $2.48 which as we can see, gas has been above that. So it does fluctuate every quarter, but it is half the size of the assessment going into the T fund. And you can see the TIP assessment there on the column H. We

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: don't know how long test is going to be high, but we will receive some extra tip money in the next weeks.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Potentially. Depending on how long it lasts. Again, it's based on prior quarter and we're in the last month of the quarter. So depending on how much it affects the average for the next quarter and then six months from now, might see some red depending on how long and how significant the change in the gas prices. But couldn't say anything for certain.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Sure. That could help.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: That's why 27 could help to end this out. That's what you're gonna say.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Potentially. Should we remove all the credit in it? It'll just be kinda like new money.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Plus the diesel part of the equation is all it says.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Yeah. But then I have a slide on on diesel. So Yes. Diesel just has again, they call it the assessment for the reason that the chair mentioned, but it's just a assessment three that goes per gallon that goes to the TIF fund. Then at $0.28 per gallon that goes to the TIF fund, we have that same petroleum cleanup fund that gets a cent for a total of $0.32 and then the Fed supply $2.04 $0 And the last slide is just forecast for the next five years.

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

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Sorry, was trying to get back to your slides. The diesel is different?

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: It's not a percentage. It's just a percentage. It's a $6.03 cents per gallon.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: And the other ones are just on road gasoline. Yep.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: How many At aviation. Do we know how many distributors there are? I do not, but someone in the room might. Could you cough it up? Matt Cota, the the Lamoille Transportation Energy Network.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: They're all publicly posted on the DMV website and all of the gallons that they sell. I'm happy to just follow that. But there are nearly a 100 gasoline distributors and over a 100 diesel distributors.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: And these are not retail outlets.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: These are people with large trucks that are bringing into Vermont paying back.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And they are on the DMV website.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: I'll send you a link.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Send me the if you could send the whole committee send it to Megan and then she can send it out. Who would be the best to you know, from a basic high level, it it you know, we probably should organize to have this done here. The use of the funds. It's directly for bridges.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: To the

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: tip fund? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Or the LMU. Are are you able to talk to us about the functionality of

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: I have this statue.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Oh, yes.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Thank you,

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: campus. Okay.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Oh, you're sitting here. Yeah.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: Hello. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Great. So

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: there is a statute on this. So maybe I'll just read. Okay. So transportation infrastructure bond fund provided that resources in the transportation infrastructure bond funds that serve the fund are sufficient in the amount to cover all debt service obligations of transfer transportation infrastructure bonds that are due in the current fiscal year and to meet all other obligations set forth in any trust agreement pertaining to any such bonds. Any remaining balance in this fund may be used to pay for, number one, the rehabilitation, reconstruction, or replacement of state bridges, culverts, roads, railroads, airports, and any necessary buildings that after such work have an estimated minimum remaining useful life of ten years. Two, the rehabilitation reconstruction or replacement of municipal bridges, culverts and highways that after such work have a remaining minimum useful life of ten years. And three, up to a $100,000 per year for operating costs associated with administering the capital expenditures. That's changed.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. I thought it was 20. It was 30. Yeah.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Yeah. One time.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: When we first came out. But it well, you won't can't do any of those other three things if you're have a all bond obligation. Right?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Right. Yeah. So you can participant.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Well, you can, but you have to have your you have to have reserves to cover the bond then. Yep

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: and that's 19 BSA 11 F.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Is it?

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: 19 BSA 11

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

[Speaker 0]: What's the project? So how does the project selection go for that specific funding then? Like once you if you've met all the requirements in your it's only state projects. So it's not like a municipality would have that system.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: No. No. There were municipal section. There was a municipal section, and we do have TID funds in the FY '27 gov rec for town highway bridges.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. So it goes through those programs. Okay. So how many like how do you prioritize those projects within is it the same?

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: We we really use the amounts and the TID fund in conjunction with the transportation fund. So depending on where we are in the transportation fund, I would set targets. And for this year, that was for Jeremy's highway division because he also oversees the town highway bridges. And there was also a million dollars allocated to railroads this year that have the minimum useful life of ten years. Okay. I was Railroad bridges, assume. Yes. Was making those target decisions based on other allocations in the TF. Would we be able to, excuse

[Speaker 0]: me, I almost feel like one of the things we're coming up against is that we might want to create more specific priorities

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: that the

[Speaker 0]: legislature sets for the use of this money as it continues to shrink. Like, it looks like the only one that's actually of the future assessments, only the TIF gasoline assessment is positive. Maybe positive survivor. In the flat?

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Forecasted growth. Is that what

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: you're Yeah.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Is. It's like point 2% rates, and the tid is so small that minor fluctuations are I think if you look at the numbers, could pull up again.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: To respond to you, Sarah, I think the agency in general would be happy to relook at the language for the TIV. But in general, I know that Jeremy has previously testified that there was a point in which the legislature was selecting projects for the prioritization process. So I would just caution against going in that direction. But in general, know, we should have her statue that took the last of it.

[Speaker 0]: Well, think one of the problems that we're experiencing in my district is that we have limited resources. While the project prioritization, all of the science and math and engineering behind it makes a

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: lot of

[Speaker 0]: sense, there's also something real and tangible about what are the actual impacts and who is vocalizing that there are problems. And so I think that's kind of our job is when something might not hit the numbers of a priority for AOT, but it's really having an impact in a community where maybe the factors that would have kept it lower on the list aren't popping it up to the top of the list, that's kind of our job is to wave the flag of, hey, something's not fully being understood about the priority of the project. And while I certainly don't want to go back to the days or like what they do in other states still, where it's one powerful group of a couple of people who are picking the infrastructure projects, because I think that creates cyclical poverty in certain communities and all that stuff. I do think we need to have a conversation about taking a little bit more control as we continue to

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: de- just the funding goes down, I guess. I would say that any of the TID funded projects are in the white book, just like any of the TF funded projects. So we go through the legislative process and if the legislature would like to modify the white book, that would be approach that I would suggest.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, and I've got some I'm going be working with Damian on some specific bridges. But to that point, I think there would be you know, like we vote every year on our TIF funding for infrastructure projects in Hartford. We get super granular about democratic decision making for certain infrastructure projects, and we're doing it with this money. So if you know what to say.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I think all of those questions the policy questions about our fair game, the deck set for this was set up specifically for stuff that is long term. Yeah. And, you know, to do anything around all of that, we would want to have the treasurer here because the point of all of this was to make sure that it didn't go against the bonded indebtedness of the state, so it would affect the capital bill.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: That's where it was little complicated. Yep. And the way we did it did not affect it.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah, and specifically bridges were named. At the time this was done, our bridge construction was really in trouble.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, we've gone opposite in But

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: the key to this is that it doesn't go against the bond the general bond indebtedness of the statement.

[Speaker 0]: And that would affect our rating? Right? If we go the wrong way on that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: If we right. It would affect our rating. So And then our interest could This yeah. If this so this stands separate in a loan. Go ahead.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: On your last forecast, this is millions of dollars.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Right? Yeah. That's a bet. Yeah. It's it's it's

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: it's not about the price or the assessments. Could be you know, it's all the other factors that would go into an assessment of how much revenue we're gonna receive about miles traveled.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Yeah, so I don't know all the things that the economists take into account, a lot of it is like vehicles miles per day and how many gallons they're going be purchased, what the price of gas will be.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: This is from the

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: consensus report.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Yeah, this the one that we do. And the tip gasoline assessment, that's

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: 4% and the 2%?

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Nope. So that's just the 2%. Okay. So you don't have the 6%? The six The 4% is in the gas tax assessment at the very top. That includes the fixed portion and the 4% assessment. And then, yeah, the TIF gap is at 2% and the TIF diesel assessment is at 3¢. Right. It's pretty much slightly decreasing because I'm assuming there's going be less. Less diesel. Diesel purchase. Most likely, yes. Okay.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So I have a couple questions.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Sure.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I was under the impression that we weren't using TIB anymore, but that's not correct.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: We're using Bondi. We're using the Bondi,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: but not Bondi. We're not bonding, we're using the money.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay, that's so, so we paid off the bonds, but we're still getting the TIB revenue. Is that right?

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: It's paid off.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So then, so then the, what we use the TIB revenue for, that we've the statute in discusses or the statute decides what we're using it for, but then it sounds like DOT decides what within those categories we're using it for. Is that right? Is there a list of what we're using TIB funds for?

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: Yeah, I can take this Senator. So the TIB investments are in the White Book and they are associated with projects in highways, town highway bridges, and rail. Sorry, I'm looking at you.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Oh right, and you said that, but so is it a separate area of the white book or are projects using multiple sources of revenue?

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: It's not in a separate area of the white book, but there is a separate TIB column. So you will be able to identify which projects have TID state match rather than TF state match.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay. And so how do you prioritize those?

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: I am not involved in the prioritization process, but I set the target once we talk about targets for TF. Okay. So- There

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: are certain things you can

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: use the TIP money for, you can use that for that and then

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: you- Right,

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: mean, as long as Jeremy and Dan are telling me that what they've invested in has a useful life of at least ten years meeting the statute, TF and TIB are like the same to me right now because we're not using it for bonding.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Like, I open up to our I I actually explained it. We're gonna get into the budget, but, if I open up to interstate bridges, the column with t plan is almost zero in every single instance. And then but if I go to another section, it would be and then it's in tip. It's almost all of it, so put some pep.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: How would I do this is probably not as much for you, Candice. This is more for Logan. How would I do a calculation that said interest rates are here, and my inflation in projects is here, and because interest interest rates may be high, it doesn't make sense to buy. What measurement or how would I think about in a formula way when interest rates get lower and I can do a ten year bond or a bond for the life of something, that construction interest rates are going up here, where do those lines cross for us to begin to think about when we might move into an area where strategically, if in a thoughtful way, we had looked at a policy and said, you know, interest rates are 2%, two and a half if interest rates were two and a half percent and my inflation in projects is going up five or 6%, intuitively I would think that it probably would make sense for us to at least consider doing projects to get ahead of that. Is there anybody done any work or anything to think about that as an umbrella?

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: So not recently. I know we haven't bonded since, I want to say 2013 or 2014. And we could go back and sort of look at how we did the bonds back then. So with that, I think this would need to be a discussion for a future year to get all parties available. Need to identify projects that make sense to do bonding that we talk to the treasurers about bonding. And then as you mentioned, make sure it makes sense to do that now, given the price of construction and all these different things. So this would be a larger endeavor that we could definitely look into. I don't if there's nothing today that we have that

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: can adjust we one way or need get into the discussion from a high policy level that for a legislature to say to the agency if the interest rates are low enough and the construction costs are high enough and over the length of a project it might save us money if we did these projects now and didn't wait. How do we think that this is policy terms to be able to thoughtfully weigh in to give benchmarks to the agency.

[Speaker 0]: Complete. Like is there a way, I love where you're thinking, because I feel like we're really hitting a wall with how do we fill the transportation 33,000,000,000 and then drawdown problem. Is there a way that you can bond for, like, multiple projects under one umbrella? Like, did we say we wanna bond for 50 municipal bridge projects for the year 2030 or something and then potentially reduce that? Is that a way, a direction we can go?

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: I think you would choose the amount of funds you want to bond for as a dollar amount and then allocate those specifically. I'm not an expert on bonding, again, there should probably be people who

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. I I think that's a really that's a good round.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. I I would I I don't know how to get to that answer and what questions you should be asking, but I would think there's at least a point when when the interest on a bond is so low and I've got a project that's older that if I wait longer it just becomes harder to do. How do I know when those lines cross?

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: So, sorry, Laurie, I From could take a policy perspective, I would say the same, even though it's the agency of transportation, it's our TIM bond, it's not a GO bond. The same policy considerations for GO bond would translate to TIM bonding. So what what the CDAC, I think it is considers for the debt limit limitation would be something that the agency of transportation is talking about with the treasurer's office. I

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: did Like creating a different CDAC or just

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: like saying that it tips on

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: No.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: Just like interest rates, when is the right time to bond? These are things that CDAC considers. So we I don't think that the agency of transportation would make the decision to bond without talking to the treasurer's office. That's what I'm saying. I did do research into the last couple of times we bonded for last year for HTC and I'm happy to share that. So to your question, senator, about in the past, specific projects been identified or has it just been like a category? It has varied. So sometimes it has the the specific projects are laid out in the bill. Sometimes there there was one time where it said the agency of transportation can bond for this amount of money and the agency can choose the projects. But I would say that we need to consider the magnitude. If you look at the latest ACFR, our annual comprehensive financial report for the state of Vermont, we actually have an outstanding geo bond right now. We're paying debt service on a million and 40,000 bond that was taken out in 2015 or 2016. And it's specified as the only geobond in transportation funds. And when you compare that million 40,000 to, like, the outstanding 600,000,000 in the general fund, the disparity is huge. And I know that transportation fund is not general fund, but, you know, when you see that figure, it calls to question, should we have bonded for such a low amount? That's one of the policy considerations and that's what we would be talking to the Treasury's Office.

[Speaker 0]: Wait, can you explain that again? I did not understand what that So you're saying there's $600,000,000 of debt in the general fund, and there's only a million and change in the transportation fund. So your argument or your what you're trying to explain is that that doesn't make sense. We should have just paid for that with regular tax dollars because it's such a small amount that we're carrying unnecessary debt.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: I don't have an opinion either way, but I do think that that goes into the decision making process, and that would be something the treasurer's office says, yes, we consider interest rates, we consider magnitude, I'm sure they have a list of other

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: things. So

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: when you being AOT did it, I don't know if you were around that's when you looked into it, guess, did you like hire a bond council council and did the bond of the treasury?

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: No, this is my individual research just because I wanted to know what the situations were in the last couple of times we had bonded.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: And do you know if AOT hired bond counsel to do the bond or they just use work through the treasury?

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: I do not know, but I also don't think we would have bonded without bond counsel. That's that's like best practice.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Well well, yeah. That's like you do it or my question is The bond with the treasurers. Like, one of their or you could have hired your own. Yes. And so if you're hiring your own, I would say you don't want to do it for a million dollars if you had to hire bond counsel and all that.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: But if you if you

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: could be folded into something that the

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: treasurer's already

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: doing there, you have something you have contract.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: So because the million 40 that I was referencing was geo bonds, obviously, like, it it made more financial sense because we just tacked on to a geo bond that

[Speaker 0]: was primarily a general obligation. Okay.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I'm

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: sorry, Andy. Did you have a question?

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: No.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So, Candice, is that 1,000,000 of like the remnant of a larger bond?

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: No, that was the amount that was bonded for, and we are paying debt service on that right now. As a transfer out in the TF operating statement, you'll see an amount of like $300,000 for FY '27.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah. Because that is a very that's a really small amount to to bond. And even with the capital bill, we'll do we'll authorize bonding for a certain amount, but the treasurer won't necessarily go out and and actually really doesn't go out and get bonds for that amount. They wait until they have more collected because that's a more efficient way to do it.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I don't They only have bond sales times a year.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: What? They

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: only have bond sales certain times a year, and they collect stuff together and then go out.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Right. But in the capital bill or in the capital program, sometimes they won't bond for a couple of years. Don't necessarily bond every year.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: To answer your question, Senator, it was part of a larger bond sale of general funds. So the transportation fund component

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: was A piece of the overall fund.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Oh, okay. So that makes more sense. So it wasn't a separate GEO bond just for a million something?

[Speaker 0]: Yes.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay. That makes more sense.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So it might be helpful if the committee is interested to get somebody from the treasurer's office is here to talk about because I am interested in we artificially talk about all of this, but the the real question comes it's like for the general obligation bonds, I look at a building and say, well,

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: I'm

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: not gonna let the roof leak across the board, but if I do let the roof leak, the costs of that, there are costs to that. So I go out and I move on to make sure that you It keep that is somewhat the same thing, and it's bridges and that sort of stuff. So I don't have it in my mind and don't really understand what we should be looking for to say that this makes sense.

[Speaker 0]: And I'll just say, I understand that road maintenance is really never gonna hit the ten year threshold. Like, there's never gonna be a paving project or anything that's gonna hit that. But I do think one of the areas that we've struggled to resolve is the connecting roads that seem to be That is

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: the thing that's

[Speaker 0]: There seem to be larger populations of people traveling on them, but municipalities are having to maintain them rather than the state. So I I don't know. There's a lot of ways. There's I'm trying to think of ways we can get money to those.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: But I will say that I have question. Would be happy for you to open the statue of the vision as well. But

[Speaker 0]: it wouldn't be. There's no project. That would be

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: 10. Maybe a branch. No. So you'd to remove the equal life requirement ten years in order to open

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: up those.

[Speaker 0]: But then we wouldn't get I would

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: just say something to you that senator Chichelin always said. Money's fungible. If I'm doing a bond on bridges and I make that packet, then I can back out my T fund dollars and I can put them into paving.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, mean we could do a bond for a bunch of town bridges, for example, move the bridge grant funding towards road funding. If you if you want it

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: You can do it all.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You supply it in one area, you can back the money into another. Money is fungible.

[Speaker 0]: Well, I feel like our bridge life is so good. Well, like, the what? 6% or something is or we're gonna only have 6% poor bridges over, like, the next ten years versus we look at our roads and it's up to 48, 50 plus percent, whatever it is. But our bridges are kind of staying stable. So it feels like maybe a good time to invest.

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: So I will just make one comment on this is that if even if we do do bonding on certain projects, we then have to make the payments on those bonds. We're currently making a $300,000 payment for a million dollar bond. So it's a question of there might be projects that are worth it, that it would be a question for you all the agency if there's something long enough, big enough that it makes sense to bond. But we are giving up money, TIP money that we are currently using for projects would have to go to paying debt service costs.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But but the the real question, and and I won't beat the dead horse on this, but maybe later in the the real question is that if I'm facing a period of time where I have 40 or 50% inflation in projects, that it might be worth doing something that has interest of two or 3%, and I have interest on that, it might there might be a calculation that you may would make and say, well, this project will be 40% more in five years, and if I pay interest that is two or 3%, it might make sense. I don't, as a good as part of good financial management, I don't understand what a calculation where that tipping point is. So for us as legislators to weigh in, unless we understand that better, it's hard to argue. We just went through a period of time where inflation was terrible for us, and it has that inflation has put us behind the eight ball. I don't think anybody could have judged to figure that out, but it's hard when you don't understand how to put these levers, if that makes sense, to do that. We're at the end of the session, before the last few weeks we're here, when we're not doing, working to get the bill out. If you could think of who in the treasurer's office might be good to talk to so we better understand that. I think that would be good. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: So you see this less as a T bill this year conversation and more of a future conversation?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, think we've got a fair number of issues that we're going to have to deal with.

[Speaker 0]: Well, was thinking this might be a way to help deal with those. Well, if

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: If you see a place where it can fit and I'm happy to dive in there. But I think we've got I certainly think it appropriate that we better understand what these letters are. Sorry, but we're fifteen minutes over.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Is helpful, thank you. Is

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: good. You.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: I'll see you all tomorrow.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank you. Dan. I need is just going to that. Can you Oh,

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: I guess I could read the paper.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Good morning. Good morning. I'm gonna be referring to tab 12 in your book. Oh. Oh, fun. We should use the Restart the next next of you. Now until the end of next week, it's mostly budgets. You want that?

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: You want a coffee or

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It's just that

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: that's what tab 12 is gonna be. That's what I'm gonna be able to do. Already sit with the light? It's light right there. Yep. That's what we're gonna talk about. Okay. So you want just an individual coffee for me.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yay. Good book.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: Put the names on the front.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: I got it. I put it

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: in my house by the foundation. Oh.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: Yes. I got it. I know what

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: I did too. By the police. Oh,

[Speaker 0]: yeah. It was delivered by by Lisa. So 12 books. Yeah.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Oh, really?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Know how he got that. Yeah. Robin just Yeah. Helen had knocked on the

[Speaker 0]: door by the police, I was like,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: hi, honey. No one's yours. It's your dad. It's a binder for you. And Good morning, center Paris. It's weird having her, like, feel

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: like she's looking like behind me.

[Speaker 0]: No.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: I know she can see me either.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I'm in there. I'm in the I'm in the circular black thing.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Yeah.

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And amounts of money. You just

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: wanna meet with them? You don't wanna

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: add them to No. I want them to come up with a budget for me. I'm

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: ready when you are. So good morning. My name is Dan Valabriere. I'm the real bureau director for B TRANS. I'm gonna give you Can

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: you just bring us a whistle when they came into this?

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Oh, really? I have some. Phil Ezwebs aren't here anymore. Right?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Always and and he brought him in courts. And I had a problem. You you don't bring us any toys? I

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: should bring you toys. I don't box them at my office. I'll present, like, a train car up there.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Happened to that? Vincent? There

[Speaker 0]: is a train guard in line.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Oh, we gotta get behind the front. Yeah. Know. We gotta bring that up front. Yep.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: We can't get rid of the truck.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: So I'm just gonna give you a quick overview of the FY twenty seven government recommend proposed budget for rail. It is very similar to last several years' budgets. It's a project based budget with a bunch of projects that are kind of boring. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to kind of give you the highlights. That's perfect, thank you. Sort of last year and where we are and then where we're headed. You know, in the FY20, it works. I'll get to the bottom line at the end, but the number of projects.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Can I just say it would be really helpful, and you got enough space in here if you could possibly do that by '26? Oh, last year. In the future. Like, it's for the whole book.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: It would just be helpful to know kind of what we're doing with some projects, even though we should know if we're here.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: K. I can mention that. I don't do the format there, but I can certainly mention that. But I will tell you okay. I can give you those numbers, though. So we are because I wrote them down myself. Yep. So from last year, our total budget last year was almost it was $61,000,008.87. So and this year, we're 60,000,000. So we're we're one point about $1,600,000 less total. So 2.5% reduction in the total rail budget. If you just wanna talk about state funds. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Can I just stop you, Megan? Yeah. Could you send Michelle that in each of the books behind each cover, the front page where they have 27, 28, 29, 30, that they reproduce a sheet for us for each of the pages that has 26 in front of 27, so we can see what going from one year

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: to

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: the next.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Some of them have like maintenance that goes back to '25.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But they need to make sure they to do it. Some do, some don't. But we really need So it's helpful when you can see that. Yeah, it is. So

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: if you want to talk about state funds, there is a $1,500,000 reduction in state funds. Now, if you're just looking at T Fund, so last year I got no TIP, you guys were talking about bonding. In 'twenty six I had zero TIP funding. In '27, I have $1,000,000 in TIP funding. Was that the bond or was that with TIP? So transportation bond mainly is TIP. Right? So Interesting cash. Yes. So what about you'll have to ask Candice how she's actually if she's actually borrowing that money and spending. When when I put it in the TIB column, she gets it to me in the TIB column.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Yeah. Well, it's TIB slash bond. Yeah. TIB bond, so I'm guessing that's the million he borrowed it for.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: I think it's I think it's I think it's what what you'll have to ask her, but I think it's a future.

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

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: Not it's not past

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: The million the million that gets for the Wallingford Bridge $1.45. Yeah. Rehab Yeah. Is is straight tip money. It's not bonding. Yep. Right. It's JGO. Right. How

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: do you know that?

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Well, you're looking at the book.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: He said that we've got no bonding in here, and so this year's amount Okay. Is just straight pay. So if you look here, right, so if

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: you look and it shows the bond column, you can see which projects have it. And in this particular budget, only bridge one forty five. Only bridge one that. That's the only project I have that has an eight. They're bond in front of So alright. I'm gonna start at the top, and I'm just gonna kinda hit the highlights because a lot of this stuff are just regular bridge and culvert projects. So to to give you the year over year, so this year's budget the FY '27 has 15 bridge projects. Last year, we had 19, so we've got a few less. This year has eight crossing projects, 14 FEMA projects, and one platform project. So that's kind of the breakdown of the types of projects in this, and I'm not gonna go through every individual project. I'm just gonna hit the highlights. Can I ask you about the project? You can ask me about any project you want.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: The the the rail bridge and. Three zero eight. Yeah. That but since we put the non used bids. What do we call it? A truss. There's a name we use with that bridge.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Well, it was a wooden well, it was a three span deck over a bridge. I'm not sure what your question is. It was a wooden trestle, three piers in the river. Yeah. Two piers in the river.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: The one that we wanted to get rid of.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: And it's gone. So we did take it. It's out, but there's There's still money in here. There's money in here for design work on what we do next with it. There's sort of Did you take the piers out

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: of the river?

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Piers are gone. The bridge is gone, the piers are gone. So yeah, I think the design alternative, the preferred alternative is going to be going to two span, so only one pier instead of The Grand Isle across the river

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: isn't getting deliveries by a ramp. Might want to Well, do it in the

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: they're getting them in the yard and they're putting them on a truck and they're trucking them around and unloading them again off the truck so that it's not So they would, the train would go over there. Yeah, they would use

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: it if we had a bridge there. Okay. But they don't. I asked, what's the difference in Amtrak between operations, the subsidy and

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: the first two lines in the budget are identical monies. One is so we have a state fiscal year and we have a federal fiscal year. So we have to do an EA based on federal fiscal year. So you have to combine those two together to get our total state fiscal, the amount. So it's $9,500,000 for both the Ethan Allen and the Vermonter service. So those are identical line items. They're just broken out into federal fiscal, in the state fiscal budget. So our payment to Amtrak is $9,500,000 $9,500,000 and that's an estimate based on forecasting, and I know Martin was in here yesterday, based on ridership revenue minus cost of service. The more riders we get, the less cost we pay. And it's based on actual cost. Right now diesel fuel prices are going through the roof. Our costs are gonna go up.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: 7,600,000.0 is

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: coast from the feds.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Yes. That is CMAT funding. Yes. So comes from the Feds

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: through us and we give it to Amtrak? Yes.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Congestion mitigation funding. So that's the first two. Did wanna talk about those. And The third one down in the impact is an interesting project. We're doing station upgrades to get modern, convenient WiFi, the emergency blue lights, consistent signage on the buildings and in the parking lots and things like that. We're trying to make the customer experience a little more basically the same. You go to McDonald's, they're all the same. You go to Amtrak, want to have a similar experience where people are comfortable. When you walk up to an Amtrak station, you'd feel kind of the same thing. So that's what we're trying

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: to do

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: there. I think we've heard from the way the signs directing people to the Amtrak stations come out of this.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: So that's a different project. Any signage in this project is exclusively at the station, like on the building, the same, every infract you know, on the building sign looks the same, that sort of thing. This is not the way that that Senator Harrison was talking about the signs, like, from starting at the interstate directing you all the way down to the station. That's not what this is. This is actually at the station. So this is a different Can

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I clarify? I was talking about the signs that are just on the interstate. Was I mean, it's good to have way finding signs.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It's kind of hard when you can't find the station. Well, I know, right?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah. But at least with the way, with the, yeah, no. And there are some places that already have way finding, but I think the highest priority should be the ones on the interstate so that people know that there's a station there.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Right. I assume for 1.3 there's no platform

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: raising. No, this is project. This is more about being consistent with how things look as opposed to anything else and adding WiFi. Like one of the biggest, not complaints, but one of the biggest problems I think we have is everything's electronic ticketing. You go to a station, some of these stations, you know, have marginal cell coverage, and then you get there and you wanna book a ticket.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Or you're waiting and you're like, is it late?

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: I can't check. Exactly. So we're adding WiFi to every station.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Oh, that's great, Dan. Will you have all of them?

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: All With all

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: WiFi next year?

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: It should be, yes. Should be, by next year we'll have WiFi at all the stations.

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

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Okay. So I'm gonna try to be quick because I know we're behind schedule. So there's not really anything big on this other first page as far as other than the Amtrak stuff or exciting projects. There's a company that's partnered project, that's a new bridge project, and Burlington Lake Street crossing, that's a new crossing that's added to this year. All the other projects that are

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: in here were in the FY '26 budget, and they're just progressing to construction. So all of this this stage in the next page, If I was gonna categorize what's happening here for someone, I'd say these are just general construction projects across the board, not any big initiatives.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: So I'm gonna get to the initiatives, but on the first page, those are just general projects that were sort of in this in the queue and they're moving forward.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And and one question about the overall number in in the budget being down by a million. Is that because there just aren't projects ready to go, or is that just because is it constrained of money? How would you characterize what looks like reasonably flat budget but down the road?

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Yeah. Alright. Rail funding is different than, say, highway guys or we do not get formula funding from the FRA, Federal Rail Professionals. You don't get a certain amount of funding every single that we budget projects for. All of our grants that we get are discretionary grants that we have to apply for. Historically, the rail budget has gone up and down cyclically, depending on if we apply for a grant and if we get it, because they're all competitive. Our last grant that we applied for was a continuously welded rail grant. It was $60,000,000 between Rutland and Bennington that we did not get. So it's back in this budget as we're gonna apply for it again. It's back in this budget as a I'm sorry.

[Speaker 0]: No, you're good.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Inspecting this budget has a design feature assuming we'll get the grant because the no folks we are hearing from the FRA is coming out any moment, so we anticipate applying for that grant again. We didn't get it in the last round, but We anticipate and we have talked to the FRA about why we didn't get it last time. There's we think we're gonna get it this time. We feel good about it. So but anyway, real budget does this because

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: of And And the real budget is grant driven and given the grants that we're eligible for and have applied for, the up and down is more related to that grant driven portion than it is

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: So some of the state funded only items, we had to look at and reduce those a bit. For instance, rail crossing maintenance, like paving at rail crossings and things, we had to reduce that a bit because our state targets were down. State revenues were down. So it's not significant, and we didn't not do a project. Because of it, we may have delayed it a tiny bit, pushed it out, or changed it, but I don't think there was a significant change in the way the real budget would have been presented this year based on TPOM targets. Now, if we get some of the grants that we anticipate applying for, we're gonna need some state match to go along with those. So that's when we'll have to start really looking at that. Until we get those, we can't And we've only anticipated the one track grant from Rockland to Hoosick in here as money that we have put up state funding match for, even though we don't have the grant yet.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So if I was gonna, from a high level, the state targets are down a small amount. The budget is grant driven. And the budget that we've got in front of us is built on the grants that we know we're going to get. We are applying though for grants, for example, between Ruttman and Bennington that would drive this budget up in future years.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: Correct.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: A nutshell. On

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: a high level, okay. You nailed it.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: And that's the real budget every year. So I would say that's kinda how we operate.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Okay. Just trying to get, if somebody asked the question, what's going on and you're down a million bucks, what is it? We could answer.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: A couple of the sort of future grants that we are looking at are in here. Like on the second page, there's a commentary to Hartford. That's specifically that one. To get a grant and be competitive, you need to have 30% of the design done, and you need to have a very good estimate, not just some at the dart board number, you need a pretty good estimate on how much the funding and the permitting and all that stuff that you need. So we get these projects to 30% design before we actually do the grant application, and that's one of them. So Hartford to Newport, that's a a future grant that we would wanna apply for to get that entire corridor to the £186,000. So that would that would basically allow us to run $2.86 that entire corridor. I like what we did when we were up on the Exactly like we did there. And then there's another one down further. If you look at the Rockingham to Rutland, that's our Green Mountain corridor. Exactly the same thing. There's, I think, 23 bridges that need to be upgraded in some fashion to get us to 286,000 pounds at 40 miles an hour per train.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Does that state the Vermont corridor near the bottom? And I have a question also, so I just got when you have sometimes in in the intro part, you have one line, Vermont corridor. But then you go to the details, and there's two Vermont corridors. So there

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: are two different Vermont okay. So there's two different things going on here. So there's the corridor ID program, and then there's these grant, future grant opportunities, and they look similar in here, but they're different.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: But on here, there's just one. We're Remont Order ID.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Yeah. Okay. So that's the Remont 46. Okay. So what that one is

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: But then when you go here, there's Remont Order ID 24, Vermont Portrait ID

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Oh, oh, in there. Right. Okay. Why are there

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: two here when there's only a document here?

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Which I can't remember anymore, so They're good because in the way the FRA program is, there's phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four. So in the previous years, we were in phase one. In this budget, '27, we're going phase two, so we have a different project. The reason why we have a different project is phase one was 100 federally funded, Phase two is ninetyten. Phase three is 70 eighttwenty. So we're gonna have another one when we get to phase three.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: But so the total would be $1,500,000 if we're getting these two phases.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Yeah. So in the if you're looking at the Vermonter one I guess this is

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: just money for this year.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Yes. It's a different as such. Correct.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: This is over several years. And it would

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: $100, but it's good to know.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Phase two is gonna be over several years because there's a service development plan we have to create. There's some engineering we have to do. And this is all just

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: figuring out what we're gonna do for the per month quarter or the per month or not actually any of the work.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: That's correct. That the actual work is gonna be phase three and phase four. That's correct. And we have that on, we call it the Spring Mountain Corridor, but that is actually, not because that's what the FRA called it. That is actually the Ethan Allen, and it includes the current route plus the route down from Rutland down through to Bennington and over at Lusi as potential additional service or reroute of the existing service. So there's all these different options in that plan.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: So this Vermonter is not the Vermonter?

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: The Vermonter is the Vermonter, but the Green Mountain is the Ethan route. So that's why it's confusing. And when you

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: propose improvements could be to increase speed, but it could also just be

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: maintenance, repair. That's what's nice about this corridor ID program is it can be upgrades to service, it can be additional service, it can be state of the repair, it can be all those things. So the one thing that

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: I know Senator Harrison has mentioned, that there's

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: a there is a second train that comes up to, like,

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Greenfield, Mass. So if that was to extend to Brownell, I think Senator Harrison is talking about, that would be eligible to be studied under these Absolutely. Case to me.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Absolutely, and that's actually, it's in our rail plan as well, so we It's know there. It's right there. As soon as we get to the new stage in Brattleboro, is this year, know, really, I think it really starts making sense to look at that. Okay.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So when I look at this budget, really, you've got three grant tracks that you're following. You're looking at Hoosick to Rutland. You're looking at Coventry to Hartford, and you're looking at Rockingham to Rutland. They are both a year or so behind K. Hoosick to Bennington because they're mostly in the PE phase.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Yeah. The Hoosick to Bennington is

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And who sick to Bennington you applied for or turned down. You're asking us in this budget to approve the money to spend a grant that you haven't got yet. So really, for for sure in this budget, you know, it's about really a $6,054,000,000 dollar budget, but it's got another 6,000,000 or so that in anticipation, in the hope that you got a a federal grant, you're asking for pre authorization that we

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Essentially.

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

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Yep. You're yes. Essentially. Okay.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Is there anything else? No, those are the ones that I wanted

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: to highlight. Those quarter ID programs, the track grant between Rotland and HUSIC, those are our big ones for next year. Everything else is sort of state of the repair or projects that you guys have already seen when we look through these budgets.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Hey, go ahead. You guys are both. This

[Speaker 0]: being second grade all day every day, so I'm practicing. And I apologize. Maybe you already spoke about this. So if I missed it, you know, you repeat it. But so the Amtrak station repairs, kind of the overall grant or the allocation for stations, do you have a list of what stations those are?

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: It's every station has see, the problem here's the problem.

[Speaker 0]: Is this the Chrissy Grant one?

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: No. No. That's a different one. This oh, actually, that small one was I think that might also have a Christie. I was I in my head, was thinking it was a build. It's not. That is a Christie. Yes. It is. And it's a smaller grant. So what happened was we evaluated all our stations, and we're like, how come they're all so different? Like, this one has this and this one doesn't have that and this one looks different. Let's get them all looking the same so that the customer experience is the same.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's great.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: So I would have to look at the list to see which station is getting what they're getting, but they're not all getting the same thing. Okay. And I will tell you that they're all not every I mean, they are literally all different.

[Speaker 0]: Are you able to provide to us what stations are getting what at

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: the breakdown? And if it's

[Speaker 0]: a really hard test, I've I'll be asking if they wanna see

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: I have a spreadsheet.

[Speaker 0]: If, you know, White River Diversion of Windsor are on the list, for example. You know, I wanna see if Miami

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: So White River, we just did a ton of work at White River. Great. We have a brand new there, new lighting, ADA, know, strengthening for and parking. We've done quite a lot there already.

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

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: We are going to be doing this spring renovations

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: so there's a few

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: people on top that that they and that Does that bring us the weather?

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

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: The weather vane is we're not putting the old one back on. It's the it is the one that Bring it on. Yeah. It's the replica, But that's historic.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: Yeah.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: But we have to what we're doing for that is we have to be careful on actually, anything we can change, which is not a lot. We basically have

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: to rebuild Are they getting

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: better Wi Fi? They are getting Wi Fi.

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

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: they are getting the blue light emergency box.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You know? Oh, good.

[Speaker 0]: Good. Well, yeah. I don't know if you would heard, but Chris McKinley, who is our yard master, passed away. And if there's any I guess my fully selfish reason for asking about this question is if there's any upgrades that are happening to the White Retention Station. If there was even a small amount of money to honor him in some way, a plaque or something. I think that would go

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: a Yeah. Long Yeah. Yeah.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Very yeah. It's very involved down there.

[Speaker 0]: Everybody bucks for a plaque. I mean, I would or if you're doing work and you're improving something, if they could name a thing or have some physical token of memory for him in any kind of renovation you're doing,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I think he

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: would be very well received.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: I'll keep that in mind. Yes.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. Good guy. So

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: this line was a general question. I yesterday, we learned from Amtrak the Amtrak cranes are supposed to get priority by federal law, but sometimes they don't. And I don't know if you Heard of that. There anything that state is involved in

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: on that? It's all federal rules. So one of the things that we, in my department, we monitor on time performance on a daily basis and we get their reports. And we can tell if it's freight train interference or not, because that's a code in the Amtrak reporting. Why did that Amtrak train not get there? Was it because there were 30 kids getting on and it took a long while a lot longer or whatever. But there's one code that says freight train interference, so we know when that happens. And I generally talk to these brave railroads a lot. And when this happens, and if it happens consistently, why is this happening? So, yes, it's something we manage and deal with quite a lot. And technically by federal law, Amtrak Amtrak faints have priority. Doesn't always happen that way. She's right.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: There's nothing But other than getting a stern call from Dan, there's no reason to come.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Well, no. There is because our Amtrak contracts over what's called the host railroad, so these freight railroads own

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: them. Right.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: On time performance is one of the performance measures. They get a basically a penalty if they're if they're not on if they're on if Amtrak is not on time a certain number of times. Like, there's a there's a grace period. Right? You get a one or two or whatever, that's just normal business. But if it's consistent, the freight companies actually get a decrease in what they get paid on a monthly basis. Okay. So there is a consequence to that. Okay. Well, that's good to hear. And so there was 70% I think the Vermonter was, like, 70% on time. Remember from the stat she gave yesterday. But I didn't I forgot to ask her, you know, that's five minutes late, fifty minutes late. It's, I think it's within, it's like eighteen minutes or something like that. There's a window. It's like fifteen or eighteen, I was gonna say fifteen, but it might be eighteen. There is a window that that was considered on-site. Does

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: that make great point? I've heard about people taking the training.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: The one time they cook it and then was an hour late. Yeah.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Like, that sticks in their memory. It's like, I don't know if I

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: want to trade anything. We don't know what we can do to increase the on time.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: We agree. On time performance is critical because if you're not on time, that's what they remember exactly what you just said. That's what they remember.

[Speaker 0]: We had a whole situation well, we've had many situations where there's been trees that have fallen and then folks have to actually get out and get on a bus. Yeah. And that is that's the one I also hear complaints about is I hooked a train, not a bus.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: So we hope we have solved that. We literally have in the last, like, three to four years, both the ANSI and on the decline of the model systems, we've actually cleared closer to the right of way limits as opposed to the track. So we've actually Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Actually soft and

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've actually pushed them all back so that if a tree does fall, hopefully, it's far enough away to actually come onto the track and stop. Because it's not only that, it damages the trains. We don't have a lot of trains. Amtrak does not have rolling stock. They are literally running out

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: of rolling stock that is available. Yeah.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: So it's a problem. That's why all of the trains are coming. Hopefully, twenty thirty, hopefully

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. We heard yesterday there's a lot of them.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's the feds take the bill on the actual handsets. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That was we ought to thank our federal delegation. Yeah. Just they put prior to that. Yeah. Would be great.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Any other questions? I know I didn't go through every project. No. It's a big project based on it.

[Speaker 0]: Love the Chester work.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I have a question. So I think Economic Development just voted to bill out s three twenty seven. Did they have you in to testify?

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: I I'm not gonna can you give me what is that about? I'm not I apologize.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It is the it's the community So the answer

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: is no. I didn't go in.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Related to economic development respectfully report they've considered to say blah blah blah. Section 11 of their bill, they do two things, and I suspect we're going to wanna ask for the bill in here. One talks about '22 a and doing and we'll get into that, but the piece that's appropriate to you, they talk about the feasibility of a rail sys system better connecting the two states upon review and latest revision of the Vermont Rail Plan and the Vermont Freight Plan. So they talk about upgrades along this must be upgrades from Burlington to New York State. And so it'd be in the two states. There's a whole bunch in here about Cusick to to Rutland. Did they have is a specific question. If they so they didn't have you in to testify on any of this stuff. That makes

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: introduced. It was maybe

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: It was the number?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: 327. It is 327. K. The Connecticut Committee? Yep. They just voted. Yeah.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: So to fire with the the interstate on the Yeah. Maybe they took you to step into this committee bill.

[Speaker 0]: We're waiting. Why aren't we

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: getting a walk through of it? Are we We aren't. They just voted it out of economic development, and if you're you have you're asking about the feasibility of the rail and connections between New York and Vermont and the Vermont rail system. Whole bunch of this this budget is all about, you know, Hoosick to Rutland is all

[Speaker 0]: Should we ask Senator Clarkson to look at it?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Think what we'll do is we'll have Senator Clarkson come in here then we'll make a decision on whether unless do you have questions, senator Harrison?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Well, I was just first, I was gonna say I'm glad that economic development is looking at trans you know, rail as as part of their area just because we need economic development and funding for this. So, yeah, I think having senator Clarkson in is great. And I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I I was thinking more with Dan and are we have we exhausted our questions for the moment with Dan?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Oh, sorry. No. I'm good. I'm good.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank you. Dan, your So I would just say Thanks. A whole piece of this Section 11 in 3 27 is about 22A and the potential route of a new limited access highway to connect Burlington and Interstate 87 in your and establish costs associated with constructing such a route. Amen. David needs And then a second piece of it is about better rail connections. We may want to look at that. I didn't catch that. Sorry.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Maybe we have Saturday weeks rather than Saturday.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, they voted it out. I I wanna be respectful to the community. We may need to amend. Do

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: they have a revenue source?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: No, it doesn't.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Alright. So that's not as nice as I thought of my

[Logan (VTrans Fiscal/Budget Analyst)]: appropriations in my bill.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Maybe you'll

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: It'll be on appropriations.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Okay, yeah, maybe you'll- Well wait, I think they should still come in here and- Okay, okay. So why don't you go ahead and get us started? Which town are you? I'm right near rail. I don't know exactly the the

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Rail rails?

[Speaker 0]: Public transit.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Are you, are you under, you're not policy. No, no. Oh, transit. Good

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Oh.

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

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Some do something now.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Maintenance does. Another one.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: So you have maintenance. Several of them do, but I'm good.

[Speaker 0]: Which has on it.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You show a lot. So FY '26, what was your budget? FY '26, 3.8%. Oh, or it's '53, pulling up now, 53,000,000 plus some capital considerations that, like Dan, were calculating,

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: but $04,000,000.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's correct. And much of that is the the capital projection as we spend down those low no grants as well as try to anticipate what we could get and spend down from our next competitive crane.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: Can

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: you see that, Megan? We see it. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. It's at the end of the grid. Thank you. You

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: can't see it.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: There we go. Okay. Well, thank you, mister chair. Ross McDonald, public transit program manager. And we have about maybe fifteen minutes of information to provide.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: And to questions. Thank you very much. And that's me, stuff. So there's no Internet. State. That was public.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: Well It's a lot of

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: Why I query these things currently.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: But you're still sharing. I'm still sharing. Trying to just go back to the PowerPoint.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Yeah. My.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: It's still there. Yeah. Okay. Well, then let's do it. Yeah. It's all fine. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. So at the end, we'll have a budget document to show last year, this year. We'll get into some of the specifics, some of the broader categories and milestones and newsworthy events. It just turns it off again.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: Oh, okay. Maybe it in the.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: Well, let's start so far. Eight years of doing this. Yeah. We did. And I'm still losing it. So I'm gonna go ahead and just leave and go through the document so that we can get right to it. You have the slides that we provided yesterday. Thank you for your patience. Okay. So far last year, we reduced the services in the rural service area. I were by Chinook County by $1,600,000. We also supported GMT Urban cuts the $2,000,000 What we're trying to do is get to a post COVID, post inflation number focusing on route performance and not budget constraint system. But concurrent to all of these changes, operation costs continue to increase. Surprising no one, when Caleb was here talking about overall providers spending in aggregate over a million dollars extra for insurance. That was not part of our budget last year. And so we still look at those items. The capital cost of vehicles have gone up continually. But some good news is the microtransit service that was put into place through seven different regions has been popular for the riders, has been way for us to match more demand response needs because of the real time on demand dispatch and service as we serve those essential services in those regions rather than provide a route. We serve a region. But they're expensive, and we'll go over those costs. The Transit app Do you have more

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: on the

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: microtransit Yes. The

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: Transit app that is available statewide and through our inner city services. Still seeing about 13,000 unique users each month. So it's it's a worthwhile investment, something everyone expects. Where's my bus? The fifty three thirty nine bus and bus facilities grant, V Train supplied for $3,300,000 or roughly point 2% of the program, we were not awarded. GMT Urban App application was for $6,850,000 and they were awarded. We did a debrief, and while we were identified as being highly recommended or recommended in five areas, the area where we had a documented local share for the non federal match wasn't robust enough. And that was a surprise to us because we do this every year. It was very consistent with other years. We also had 6 point something billion dollars in applications, and we're looking for most any reason to try to winnow that down, but it's there's no issue with our standing with the FDA. And so we will once again double down on that program to cover our capital cost going forward. Our EV buses continue to move through the pipeline, and that's gonna be capturing our capital projections. Do you have

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: more on EV buses, Larry? I do not. Can I have a question? Yes. So there was something in the news, I didn't see the news, I just saw people referring to

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: the news. Yes. Can you

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: give us an update on what that was the real because I saw some people saying like, well, example why DVD message don't work, and then I

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: saw people like, no, it'd be

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: really the day to day is that it was something else.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: Well, don't have the specifics of that. I have the experience of my spouse running into the bedroom with the news this morning about buses being, you know, that that have caught fire. Mhmm. I've seen this WCAX story. I haven't heard if it's a thermal runaway, which has been attributed to some of these electric vehicle fires. I'm also aware that we've had diesel buses catch fire and all those leaks on the manifold and those types of things. So

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: So we used the fireman. I thought there was something else about not be able to run, not the requirement because of the whole stat. Yeah, well, and

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: the claim fire at GM at GM2 was able to communicate to the transportation committees that they had worked with the provider of the semiconductor and had three of those five vehicles back up and running, and expect to have the other two on on online coming up as we get out of the the the cold months. That's something that'll have to be addressed through a warranty process. Fortunately, by the time the next cold weather snap comes to us next year, they will have the updated facilities so that they can charge vehicles inside with the EVSE infrastructure. So if it was a cold snap, they could service and charge those buses otherwise. And so we're catching up on those accommodations or fit ups so we can keep

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: doing So you're not buying any new ones because you have still several whatever that is, 40 units still coming, you're still bullish on EV buses in general?

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: No, what I would say is that we are continuing to learn the operational impacts of those current investments. 65% or 65 vehicles is about 50% of our fleet. We have a spare ratio of around 20%. That's a comfortable level for us at this time. And BEIC, at the end of this month, will be providing us a report just on this operational impact on the vehicles that have been incorporated into the fleets. We aren't disappointed about the range of the East Printers of a 100 miles when it's cold. But when we receive 90% federal dollars for those vehicles and getting those consistent awards, it's certainly better to have those eight, nine months a year than to have nothing otherwise. And when they are operational, it is a smoother ride that is noticeable, and we're not having any resistance from drivers. And so it's going to be remaining to be part of our fleet, hoping the specs, the cost, all those things come into a a more help a more reasonable mix of of what we need. So you'll see some of the charging costs are a little higher than we had anticipated because the the the requirements charged on peak as they service these vehicles, you know, was something that we hadn't penciled into the to the calculations. But still, they are performing overall well, and there's no reason to to give up on them at this point. Okay. But we certainly were the leaders in the country and hilly chilly areas incorporating these vehicles, and we may have you know, 10% may have been better than 15%. But with carbon the climate action plan global warming solutions that can certainly were were involved in our initial plans. So GMT rural continues to go through the transfer process. RCT has already picked up much of the service in Franklin County, and TBT is on schedule to take Washington County over. We expect to have some operational efficiencies, some lower costs associated with those resulting transfers. We did compare FTA three year review with no major findings and then we're all set for the next few years too. Public transit program now has four staff in addition to me, down from 5.5 where we did not rehire or did not fill a position for a part time person, and then one of our other positions was ripped. But we continue to to have relatively few issues in in getting the work of the day done with some of our our changes in processes. So the next slide is really just the the three big core items of ridership, operating costs, and cost per trip. When we made those cuts throughout last year, we did see a a change in ridership. Most of that ridership decline is due to the urban impacts. Operating costs, as you can see, we're we're bending the cost curve down, but we certainly are not going in the other direction. But this is not surprising to most of us in this whole so that's idea has been to come in with a soft landing of a post COVID, post inflation level of services. If ridership goes down and operating costs go up, of course, the cost per trip has has gone up as well by more than a dollar a trip. So the cost pressures are real, but we've been able to keep pace with maintaining almost all of our successful services. And it's not just a one one issue that's affecting everyone equally. When we look at ridership and operating costs from 24 to 25. Statewide, we have a ridership decrease and operating costs increase. When we look at advanced transit, it's top of the list, a big ridership increase and some decreases in operating costs. And as we work our way down the line, you can see about half of our providers are increasing ridership and some of our providers are reducing their operating costs. And we'll continue to work with these providers to try to identify those outliers that you may have recognized here.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Is that in

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: BRT? What's that?

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: Next Marble Valley. In Rockford. For Rockford County. Correct. And I met with the BT Translines and a premier coach in Colchester and working with them to see what we can do with their service. And for us, if going to maintain our successful routes, we really need to continue to drill down on the underperforming routes to further support the OMG program, as we've discussed in this committee before, as well as to sustain those existing routes. If we look at this list, I did wanna point out that most of these routes have been adjusted or canceled or are being planned to be adjusted. And so it's not that all of these routes are up and running at this point that need to be adjusted, but it is where we look at for finding efficiencies and continuing to identify those changes in commuter services and in town services and those changes that, you know, have revealed themselves post COVID. So I don't understand exactly what you just said.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Okay.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: So if I'm in the tab of underperforming roots Mhmm. What you it says years underperforming.

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

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: Know, of course, I think if it's a ten year rule, it's been which one of these would aren't running now? Right. Williston Essex is being reviewed by the GMT Board of Commissioners now. We do expect changes in FY '27. But it's been running for ten years. That's correct. Is there any because of in what you said, you said I thought I heard you say some of these aren't running. Yes. So as we work down the the the list, mister chair, the GMC and green, that is just this first year. They are looking at reducing some of the service during the morning routes that have very low ridership. That should bring that into performance and acceptable levels. The city commuter, again, it's first year. We'll see what TBT, it's very close. Tri Valley Transit will be taking that over next year. We hope that that will get back into an acceptable level of service. Springfield in town has received more local funds and has moved to a micro transit service. And so that's a dynamic for that route. The Randolph Circulator and Bradford Circulator reduced last year from five to three rooms, and it appears that those are very close, if not already meeting acceptable thresholds, and we'll work with TBT. Still concerned a little bit about Randolph. GMT Rural on the demand response, Again, TBT taking that over, more volunteer drivers, lower costs. We're thankful for TBT taking that service over in a few months. The Valley Floor is a tourism route that is so different than the other tourism routes. Mountain Road and Stowe, Killington, we're looking at more miles and not serving the exact lower density area, but it has been identified as critical for the region. And we do and, again, TBT will be taking that on and looking at those adjustments. The Crown Connection has been canceled, and The US two commuter has reduced its morning runs from two to one, so that should bring that into an acceptable level. SMVT Westover has been canceled. TBT Rutland Connector has been adjusted with the TBT or the Marble Valley Rutland Connector, and now we have one entity running that route rather than two. The 89 or something where for ten years it's been underperforming and for maybe four or five iterations we've made changes serving other schools, trying to bring in other business employment centers. We still have not found a way to justify these investments. This is an expensive one. We're asking TBT to come up with one final plan to try to get it to an acceptable level. This is Randolph down to the White River Junction area as a commuter. It makes sense on paper. It hasn't made sense actually. And so we should leave this That's the 89 or south. The right one south. Yep. And GBT Stafford, we expect that to possibly be removed from service as well. That's a that's a really expensive the Noah Klein line.

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: Name of that So

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: what underperforming, what did you say? Underperforming routes are ones that cost more than 150% than the average.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: Okay. And those yeah. These are averages on that slide before.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: That's correct. And so, you know, we have the root performance report that we can go through all classifications and all the routes and compare them throughout the state. And that's something that's been consistent for years and years. So we really do have a nice apples to to take a look. And and I did include these categories just so you could understand when we talk about rural community or main response, what are the differences? But the next slide is really You remind me before you go on

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: to the in what the AT is? Advanced transit.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: That's a that's the book the the one of the only bi state organizations in the country and it's one of the more successful small entities in the country as well. They don't need demand response, it's only fixed. And then the other providers in our region in Vermont cover the demand response in those areas. And so it's really focused and really efficient.

[Speaker 0]: Advanced Transit. And they have a new executive director. They're me, they're in my area.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: And it goes over to New Hampshire. Yeah. And then also, do

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: we do any support to Grand or BP Transplant? We we do. 50 the fifty three eleven f program is a requirement for inner city investments, which sets states that 15% of our formula funds need to be spent and invested in inner city services. We're about 17% right now. So that would

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: be those the costs the money we spend

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: would

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: be in

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: the books and on it? Yes. The operations. And so we spend about a million dollars on the Route 7 Corridor, two runs a day, and we spend about $270,000 on the Greyhound link that goes from Springfield to White River Junction where you can connect to Montreal in that inner city network. Greyhound also provides us in kind feeder miles. So when we go with Route 7 or when they come into Springfield, any connecting route within an hour of that destination can be applied as with a calculation for in kind non federal match. And so rather than spending 500,000 fed, 500,000 in state funds for the inner city, it's a million fed with no state. And so we're federalizing as best we can through those relationships. Good. Go ahead.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: On the years of underperforming, so you get Willis and Essex 10. Now, these aren't all based on ten years. I'm guessing they're not all ten years old, these rooms.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: No, that's exactly right. This is a long standing route we've done. What we do is we ask for them to make adjustments, mark it, use front porch flooring, talk with businesses, go to the employers. We don't say, well, here, one or two years underperforming, you're closed, but we have to cut it. So there is the negotiations and work with the provider and we try to coordinate and not regulate to the extent possible. But if we do find ourselves based on their applications that come in, if we don't have enough to cover operations, we'll be looking at these investments before we look at shorting any other services as we sustain successful routes. Okay. So my point is, or I'm trying

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: to answer for myself, if we go down one, or let's, yeah, let's just go down one, the Green Road, GMC and it's underperforming for a year. How long has it been in operation?

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: That green ring's been in operation for several years. Okay,

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: would be helpful to know if it's, you know, I would say if it's been in operation for a year and it's already underperforming, something's wrong. With five years, I'm not gonna panic in one year.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: And when we look at the graphs, if you're $2 over, it's different than being $20 or over those types of thresholds. But when I spoke with GMC and they they said, looking at their data, and we have on time data and ridership data for all of these routes, they said, geez, in the morning, these these three routes, we could probably go to one and capture the demand. And so that's the type of level of discussion we have from this report. But overall, these service category costs have increased significantly. The demand response we talked about when I was here last and I was able to follow-up a little bit with some information. Commuter routes, that is almost a 100% increase pre COVID and we'll continue to adjust those downward. And the micro expansion service, again, it's expensive. We hope it's expensive but worth it. But it hasn't, you know, been a silver bullet where, wow, we can serve many more people with just a few extra dollars and bring those per person costs down. So that's been the experience with Micro Transit. So there are no plans outside of the Springfield adjustment that just happened, which serves Department of Corrections and the Recovery Center and the hospital and all of that. We don't have plans to move fixed route services to micro transit in '27.

[Rep. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: And then the ones that we did start, did you say that they're all still running or just I think your lying with the popular ones are still running.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: Well they're all running but for the Bridalboro evening service and so what we try to do is look at all throughout the state new services, changing fixture services, replacing three fixed services, those types of scenarios so that we could try to figure out the right fit for microtransit in Vermont. And what it's revealing is that those in town circulators with one vehicle going around and around may be better served by serving a region like we do in Morristown than hoping folks can get to that circulator.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Can I speak to this?

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: Yes.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay. Good. Thanks. So, regarding the Brattleboro Micro Transit, that was was an unusual service. It only ran for a year, actually less than a year than when when we cancelled it. And it was a function of the economic development authority. They had some funding, and it was to get people to second shift jobs. And in some ways it was a good service. But what happened was when the grant funding went away, the businesses who were benefiting by it didn't want to pay because they didn't think that the other businesses would pay, and many of them or some of them were parts of large corporations, and they believed that they would have to give similar benefits to all of their employees all over the world, which to me that doesn't really make a lot of sense. So, it's it but it was and and I think the technology could have been improved because there were the the way that people could get rides, could be they they could hold a a a spot for for infinity, basically. You know, you you you could sign up for, like, the the five to 05:45 or or 05:15, and nobody out there there wouldn't be a time for other people to use that ever. It wasn't really as flexible as micro transit is supposed to be. So, but it it just gets really complicated in those in those situations. So, I don't want to give up on that type of service because especially in evening service that could coordinate with the train could be really helpful. And I think we talked about this a little bit yesterday that you can have folks buy a ticket when they buy their train ticket so that you've already received the revenue before you even provide the ride, which I think is really good for revenue, obviously. So I just want to point that out.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: Thank you, Senator Harrison. If you remember, this is our latest reminder that when we start service, we need to ensure that we have a funding program in place for extended amount of time for many years. With the one time funds that they had made for the non federal max for that program, we received some assurances that there were plans in place that was likely going to SCBT was likely gonna be able to generate the funds for their non federal MAC. And when those were not when those didn't materialize, we didn't have the state funds to backfill. We saw the the ridership and cut federal losses, but that was one of those scenarios that we were testing, evening more dense areas. And I agree with you. It wasn't afforded the full demonstration period that we generally use, which is three years. Right. Great.

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: Thank

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: you. Yeah, and I did have concerns when they didn't have funding for the following years, and the board had concerns about that.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: So, us, Planets Maintain Services, we are now receiving carbon reduction program funds, the tune of $3,000,000. And light maybe congestion mitigation air quality funds. We can apply those eighty twenty fed fed local or non fed for operations, where most of our FDA formula funds for operations needs to be having a 50% Fed, 50% non Fed split. That's been a real big opportunity for us to sustain services without appreciably increasing our CMEC dollars, and we do use all of our FTA formula funds on operations. Most rural states with FTA formula funds, they will use it for operations, admin, preventive maintenance. We use all of those formula funds for operations and millions of dollars in CMEC and carbon reduction program funds for operations. And we cover admin and PM with FHWA flex dollars, SDVG funds. And we're about the fourth or fifth in the country in terms of percentage flexed to the trains of programming, which allows us to have the level of services we do have. So I'm trying to under you know, I'm trying in the overall to think of with the carbon reduction funds and you say you're using them for operations. Does that mean you're buying equipment or not? No, operations are for driver wages and insurances, trainings, gas, those things for the buses moving around with services. So I'm trying to put this budget in category and think of it from the high level. So I got budget that is up about $4,000,000 from 53,000,000 last year. Mhmm. So the total number here is 57.8. So I've got a budget that's up about 4,000,000. I look at this and go, it looks to me like there's about 20,000,000 here that's in capital. The first in the book. I got 18 per capital for general public. That would mean pretty much to me you're buying buses and buying equipment for settlement. So I got 20,000,000. So that gets me down to about 34. With the CMAG funds and those, those are all trying to, through operations, reduce carbon? Correct. So because the state is in attainment and our air quality has been deemed sufficient, we are able to use CMEC dollars for transit services. States that are out of attainment do have more restrictions on those dollars and do not allow for those Cenac dollars to be used for transit operations. So we're very fortunate in that respect. So what that what does that really mean in the type of service? When I think of reducing this, what kind of service is that? Sure. So CMAC dollars and FTA formula dollars are used for the operations for all of our routes and our demand response program, the older adults and persons with disabilities program. The last slide that we have to review puts a finer point, that's why I included it for this presentation because it's a little bit easier to follow in terms of, you know, what's what are we spending for operations admin PM? What did we spend last year? What is that line item increase? And then you'll see the impacts of of those capital projections. So what we're gonna be getting there in just a just a moment, or we can just flip right to that Yeah. Page. Thanks. You know? Yeah. I'm gonna come back to this because I'm trying to break this out into my simple mind in a simple picture. Go ahead. Sure, thank you. And so we will maintain our reduced capital awards with our regular non competitive budget so we can maintain our admin ops, PM services go Vermont and rely on that federal program to support our fleet. We have about a 3% increase from '26 when we don't include the capital awards and pressures that we're facing as we project what is gonna be that spend down on those loan out funds. What could we get next year for new vehicles? So that's so when we look at the 4,000,000, that's mostly capital related on projections that, you know, are outside of of, you know, our day to day operations. We'll continue to work with GMT to address. I updated this. It's now a $580,000 budget shortfall in FY twenty seven, and we understand that they've got a much larger number pacing than in '28. We'll continue to work with their planners and ensure that we continue to receive the small transit intensive cities or stick factors that amount to $2,200,000 in added federal funds because of those hours and ridership that's associated with those flex funds, allowing them to be one of the top 10 or 13% of all small cities in the country operating this level of services. So we do have some work to do in the future this year. We're hoping to support those adjustments downward to up to $580,000 and ensure that we're not leaving their services in jeopardy to not receive those $2,300,000 in federal incentives. It's a little complicated, but that is the plan and it's something we look at every year. We'll continue adjusting our forming routes and we'll finalize the GMT transfer and we need to consider lower cost service options. Those volunteer efforts that you've invested in mobility management piece that we'll be talking about, Are there other consolidations or combinations of routes and services? This is the time that we are asking our providers for an all hands on deck assessment of what they do and what they could do more efficiently. So the potential adjustments to the programs, we, as I mentioned, have made significant cuts to date. I'm hoping that shows the Veterans Budget Committee, legislature, our administration, that we are trying to be part of the solution as we all face these financial headwinds. We'll continue to use a root performance report to ensure our services are efficient. And if we are offshore, we do have some government programs that we could curtail. The carbon reduction program fund for mobility and transportation innovation, we have about $1,900,000 that were awarded to us through FY twenty five's t bill and we spent those dollars down. But if we're short, we could see a a scenario where we use some of these MTI funds to cover operations rather than to pay for by lending libraries and those types of TDM programs. It's it's not something that claims do, but it's something that is you know, what are those scenarios and what would you do? Because we don't have those applications yet for '27. Those will come in the April. So I'd be remiss if, you know, I weren't working with my staff and the providers on some scenarios to prioritize and ensure that we sustain those successful services.

[Speaker 0]: So how does that work with the authority of AOT kind of move those funds between things? Like because it's a grant program, so you're essentially saying that you'd be taking money from the grant program potentially as an option to go towards the general funding of GMT, essentially.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: Yeah, and so what we have is the one time $3,000,000, and we've been drawing those down $308,100,000 dollars a year, and what we're finding is greenhouse gas calculations or the return on investment in some of those TTM projects pale in comparison to sustaining existing roots. So if we were sure, we could still have the $315,000 of NTI line item, but those $3,000,000 may run out soon, and we would continue to look at $3.50, whether it's through carbon reduction program funds, SDBG funds, or other revenues as well that can support those types of projects where the carbon reduction program funds can support operations where those other funds cannot. So it's really just switching, maintaining the same level of services, but just switching the flavor of funds to ensure that we're maximizing the operations piece.

[Speaker 0]: I think I have a little confusion about how that is something that the agency can just do without legislative authority, but maybe you have to go through a process to do that. I assume that that process would be followed in this instance, but it does always frustrate me when we take from the smaller programs consistently around carbon reduction when we could take from places that are adding to our carbon problems. Again and again, it's like the lending library, like the ebike lending libraries, if you don't fund those next year, that's gonna have a huge impact on my town. You know, like Norwich the towns like Norwich will I'll get lots of calls about it from Norwich. I'll get calls about it from vital communities. So it might feel insignificant, and I understand the value of funding public transportation, but I really do hope that that's not what it comes to. And if it does start to look that way, I would even appreciate a personal email because it's going to have some I'm gonna have to talk to people about it because if it's going to go away, then I think we would want to fund it's that valuable, especially the lending libraries are really valuable. And those small programs keep they've been used to cobble together employment basically for certain people in my area. So if that funding goes away, you could also be taking away the ability for certain nonprofits to fund a position. And then once you lose that position, you lose all of the other peripheral benefits that come with that person in our area. So I just there's a specific person I'm thinking of. So if you do move in that direction, it would be helpful to get as much upfront

[Candice (Chief Financial Officer, VTrans)]: as the patient's possible.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: First mile, last mile on those types of projects. It's not insignificant to us for sure because and we have those personal relations with Upper Valley TMA and Carl and all those folks who are dedicated to help us incorporate bicycles into a new mode. But the $315,000 in the budget, we do expect to meet and plan to meet in years past, in the near future. It's just not a $2,000,000 item right now as we try to read the tea leaves on what will be needed for what.

[Speaker 0]: And I do always worry because I think these programs have been utilized regionally or statewide and GMT only serves one region. So just to call out there.

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: And some of those government reduction program funds can

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: only be used

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: in urban areas and some can be used anywhere. Some have to be used in populations 5,000 or less. So we work with those environmental and and ensure that those funds that we're transferring to our program have the right locations for those right investments.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you, that's a good

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: And so that last slide that you have is really what we instituted several years ago to try to make it a little easier to understand where were we last year, what are we spending for, and those categories down the left hand lane you know, show the admin dollars and maintenance and operations. What what are we doing in in the RCAF training programs? And then we we have our capital down below. When we look on the right hand side, you can see the percent change by line item where CMEC rates went down a little bit on the second line item because we were able to pull in so many additional dollars in carbon reduction program funds, which are interchangeable with CMEC. That's a new budget item and it's not an insignificant one. We received 3,000,026. We'll use 3,000,027 of those dollars. Program admin's going down because we have fewer staff members and that could actually go down a little bit further based on what's happened since this budget was put together in September. Administration is up by PM or maintenance is down a little bit. Those are fairly fungible, and we used to just have an admin PM line item. We separated them to better track those activities, but we just try to square those numbers to actual as best we can each year. And then you can see the operating dollars. FDA formula at 5,700,000.0, those are just about all of the FDA formula funds for operating. So between that, carbon reduction and our CMAT funds, those are all contributing to our operations. And that's a formula that is not increasing in '27. The state match for operations and down below left hand state match for at 9.947 represents a point 6% decrease. That's something that we don't expect to appreciably change our abilities to draw down our federal dollars. And then we get down to those capital dollars, and that's the $3,800,000 that last year we thought we could spend about $8,000,000 in loan out funds, but delays on vehicles, delays on charging infrastructure, slow rolling those things, that 8,000,000 is now more like $11,000,000 that we're hoping to clear off the books that have been awarded, that are not new dollars for that FDA competitive number. And so that's the lion's share over and other than what we're trying to do with GMT Urban. And so when folks are wondering where VTrans is, you know, as we help and and acknowledge the GMT funding challenges, we have moved from 3,000,000 to 4,000,000. The $4,700,000 put pressure on the whole Yeah. Game here, but that's okay. We understand where they are. They have 560,000 shortfall for 27. We'll see how low they can go, and then next year So Yeah. So if I'm looking at this in GMT is their increase, the direct piece, and they're going up 18.8%. How much of that operating and how much of the capital money would be going to GMT? So that's the STBG CMAT FLASS of the 4.75, that is directly coming from FHWA to the fifty three zero seven budget, and that's primarily for operations, CMAT dollars Yep. And preventive maintenance. And they're now getting and they provided some information to the house, I believe, that also incorporates $700,000 in those carbon reduction program funds for those urban investments that So if I was if I get a question or any member of the committee that has the sections of the budget that relate to public transit and, for example, the Chippelin County people get up and say, we know that Green Mountain Transit is in trouble. How do I separate out and say, we've state is ponying up to help them because I get the feeling that's happening, but how do I say it in a concrete We understand their their fiscal cliff that they're facing and continue to work with them to to produce a budget that's more reflective of their annual needs. When there was a next gen study in 2017, 2018, there was a resulting 20% increase in overall services and projected costs without a way to pay for that. We were nervous in 2019 about sustaining those services. COVID hit. They were able to cover those dollars with COVID dollars, 100% funds, and it just was able to defer facing that financial cliff for a few years now. If we maintain those four stick factors, the small trans incentives incentives generating $2,200,000. We are comfortable with them continuing to adjust downward to protect those incentives, but also feeling that's their right sized number and that for us, our plan for the program is to ensure that our investments to GMT do not impact or reduce any of those stick factors. So up to and unless that is under is in jeopardy, we're we're supportive of further downward adjustments starting with the $560,000 in '27, that will still keep them in that 10 to 13% of those similar sized cities of all throughout The US in terms of level of services. So I guess the response is, compared to what? And what is the wrap what is the expectation? Here's my question. Last year, what would I have expected that that we would have they would have

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: got for

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: resources other than ticket sales and that? And and what are they getting in this budget? I I certainly don't think they're getting less in this budget than they got last year. So how do I make a comparison last year to this year in this? And if you don't have the numbers right now, but what's the breakout of that? What do we envision in that capital assistance might go to them? How much of the operating is And I'm trying to create a whole picture of what we helped them with with last year and what we're envisioning helping them with this year. So last year with that $4,000,000 budget as outlined, we actually provided 4,850,000.00 in actual dollars because of the applications, the assessments, the fact that they've made $2,000,000 in changes. And so then we are updating the FY twenty seven budget to reflect this new level of funding. And before, maybe four or five years ago, it was 3,000,000 and I was told not a penny more. We're now at 4.75. This year we expect 4.75, 4.8 again for this year. And the good news is last year when they made those $2,000,000 in cuts, their concern was this could jeopardize our stick factors. Dan Courier, who's my staff member, Sultan Steve Bobble, and their Frank Planner, Chris Damiani, have gamed out our scenario plan to ensure that

[Dan Delabruere (Rail Bureau Director, VTrans)]: at the end

[Ross MacDonald (Public Transit Program Manager, VTrans)]: of the day, those stick factors were actually strengthened in some categories because their load factors mean more average people on the average bus. They still have the ridership. They still have the miles. They still have the hours of service. Even with that $2,000,000 of adjustments, that's a good thing. And how how much further can we go by maintaining those $3,200,000? That remains to be seen, and that is what I'm asking for GMT and my staff to provide to us so that we don't, you know, lose the the ability to federalize to the extent possible. We're gonna hand you on a piece of paper for 2026 and what this envisions. Thank you. And this has been requested by the house transportation committee. I've provided that review, and I'll make sure you have that today. Okay, thank you. That's the budget presentation. We know that we're asking our providers to reduce, to really focus on our priorities and moving forward, based on GMT Urban, based on our other cost centers, we may be looking at different numbers from '28, but from '27, we do not expect appreciable changes to our successful routes based on budget conditions. Thank you. Thank Thank you. It's lunchtime.