Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You're live.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Alright, good morning. Wait your turn.

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: March 17. This is Senate Transportation, and we have the maintenance budget, and we have the Director of Maintenance, Ernie Patnell here. And if you would introduce yourself and who did you bring with you?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Good morning. Ernie Patnell, director of maintenance. I brought Ashley Atkins, deputy director of maintenance. I have Candace Elquist, our chief financial officer sitting in with us. It's always nice to have Candace, and appreciate you having us in.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It's always a pleasure. And thank you for so much. Thank you. So

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: we're here to brag a little bit about what we do then shamelessly, of course. Mhmm. And tell you a little bit about what we do and then present the budget. So the first thing we wanted to chat about, I'm sure you saw the news, that neighbors helping neighbors. We headed down to Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and we moved some snow. We started off on deploying 32 employees, 12 dump trucks, 12 trailers, 12 bucket loaders, seven pickups with plows, two mechanics, and some pickup trucks with plows as well down to Massachusetts. The next just a little over a day later, Rhode Island reached out. We sent 12 more employees, four dump trucks, four pickups, a mechanic vehicle, four loaders, four twenty five ton trailers. And one local news station down in Rhode Island said we used fifth we moved 15,000,000 pounds of snow in five days. I'm not sure how they calculated it, but that's what they reported. And our teams did an amazing job and received phrase, We trans for the first time ever had a 1,000,000 hit post on social media. Went over a million, both of them.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: My cousin's selling trucks, so.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: It was pretty impressive.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Wonderful. Yeah. Had a constituent who's done work for FD and went with part of the crew, and they said they were really psyched about it. Like, they felt really proud and, like, that Vermont was helping out, and they think they got a great reception. Yeah.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Did. And that is the one thing, and it's not a shameless plug. The men and women of veterans, when people start to queue queue up and our neighbors need help, when when I'm asked, can we identify volunteers, say 20? Right. We don't need to Right. Could we could have a 100 more. Mhmm. That's just what they do because they put service above self every day. Like I've said before, Christmas, birthdays, doesn't matter. These folks are there to help everybody in Vermonters, but in this case, they had it south, and they loved it, and they worked hard. Little side note, down there, I I think there's some some stronger work, you know, unions and stuff. And, you know, our people are getting work, like, eight to ten hours, and our people actually call back home. So is there anything you can do? You know, we want sixteen hour days while we're here. We we don't want to stay in a hotel room.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Right. Yeah.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: We wanna work sixteen and be in a hotel room for eight. So there's some photos, and then we have a short little video that was pretty darn awesome. It was an impromptu video, but this was the first fleet, and they were headed out. There they go. Could describe it all day long, but a really short video. Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And what day did Julie?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yeah. And that puts it into perspective. Those are mechanic vans there and then the pickups with the plows and the bucket loaders on the big trucks, and, you know, they got it down and down. Officer come and grab one of our and the smell was, like, two and a half feet deep and put it in there, a bucket order just they were right with the bucket order. And it and it got in there. They got messed up. So pretty wild. Pretty amazing.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank you very much. Rhode Island got pounded.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Rhode Island got pounded as well.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: How many days were gonna be in these places?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: So I don't know how the heck it got. We're on. The early early meeting actually knows. That's Tuesday Tuesday to Tuesday for Mass.

[Ashley Atkins (Deputy Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Right. And I wanna say it was Thursday to Tuesday for Rhode Island.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yes. So considerable amount of time. And the sense of pride that Vermont should have for our folks calling home and saying, look, we need to work. We're here to work. We don't want to stay home with that. We're here to move. That was pretty darn awesome.

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

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: So thank you for letting us share that. It was nice of a moment. So we're the district maintenance division. There's nine districts. I think we focus on a lot of this. We're what you'd see every day beside the road with the orange trucks.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We got the district map.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: We do. It's over

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Is it John that's unusual?

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: I think you We

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: do have the one from last year, but I don't know if that's

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: I think we've sent over a new one that I think it looks like it might be right to care.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Oh, great. And this has other things other than I would love to have those.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Go by the way.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Yeah. Only our chairs.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I mean, we moved there. This is what is that?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Well, maybe we can put it up there. You know? We'll get it. Used

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: to be. This has a lot of things.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: There

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: is. Yeah. Because it has, railroads, important things.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: It's in the district.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Well, we'll have those conversations, yeah.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: We have some, the science of the orange drops that we always talk about, we have some technical services, prevention, compliance, We have a GIS, some GIS folks, emergency recovery programs. We support the towns with our technical project manager and technicians. So, we do a lot. We cut to every Vermonter in one way or another, whether it's an infant to an elderly and everybody in between. That road system has to be maintained and they need to use it, so we're there for them. The next slide is just the lane mileage in each district that kinda goes with that map, and there is a smaller map on that slide that shows our districts. Just a really quick overview. Most

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: of

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: you folks are veterans about what we do. Like I said, whatever you see those orange trucks doing beside the road, we could be cutting trees, patching potholes, fixing guardrail, picking up litter, fixing signs. The list just goes on and on and on and on and on. We respond to emergencies. We respond to floods. We can move mountains and rivers if we need to, and we have. You know, whether it be culverts or it just, the list goes on and on, but we listed 20 or so here. At point 25 accomplishments, we've lost 61 bridges. Did

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: you watch point three seven five of a bridge?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Well, and so it's a computer program, and how it came over that law of average, I did notice that, and it's the same as the litter, right? It goes right down to a point. Correct.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Not the litter can, but I don't have a portion of a bridge. Maybe only wash a third

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: of it. So the bridge is our alarmist asset on our roadway network, and we try to wash our bridges 50% every year. And these last few years, we've made a huge effort to do that. And we don't just wash the top, right? We wash the bottom, right? The freight catches some of the top, but it's underneath the bearings and the piers and the caps. Oh, they extend the life. Absolutely. Right. They're they're our most expensive thing, and they need to last a long time. We also sweep, those St. Bridges. I always hit on this every year. We we pick 440 tons of litter, unfortunately, that number goes up every year and all down. Mhmm. And it's it's just very, very, very sad. Quite frankly, it's I I wish people could just understand. I was a little kid in the seventies, and I just remember what would have happened to me if I would have thrown the draft out my parents' car's window. I'll skip part of it, but I do remember I do know not remember, but I do know I'd probably pick up 10 miles worth of everybody else's trash back then as well. It's a herculean effort. It takes every single maintenance employee that we have six weeks to walk every inch of road and pick up the litter.

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: So on this point, I have kind of two thoughts. The first is that it does disappoint me that you have to do this amount of litter clean out. That's just frustrating from a societal perspective. And I'm wondering if you have any perspectives on the bottle bill and how what I've heard from states that don't have a bottle bill, which is the redemption, that they see more litter than we see. So I wanted to understand a little bit if you had a perspective on the bottle bill, seeing that that's a bill we've hunted on for years now,

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: it

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: will expand and has been shown to very effectively reduce people chucking stuff out their window. And then my second question on that would be, do you redeem bottles? Like if you guys get bottles, what do you do with them? How do you recycle them?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: So a lot of times they do separate them out and they do recycle them.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Do they redeem them or recycle them?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: They just recycle them.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So hey, we're getting the sheets from for the Clean Water Fund,

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: And so the as far as the bottle bill, I wouldn't I wouldn't know. I wouldn't be able to really judge on that. But what I can tell you from experience, and I kinda forget to mention, this spring will be twenty nine years I've worked for this agency, all in the same department, all started, out on the road, whether it be mechanic ing or picking litter. And the the problem that I see with vials is, you find most of them around science still because what a great target.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, that would be good.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yeah. So but yes. And so that's around 200 full sized dump truck loads of garbage because we have to pick it up when it's dry because paper doesn't pick up good when it's wet. So this trash doesn't tonnage in the truck doesn't add up, volume does.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Can I also ask, we've discussed an extended producer responsibility bill related to tires, like discarded tires? How many tires do you think you collect and what? Yep.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yeah. So I would like to get back to this committee. I can actually give you an accurate number of we actually measure it in tons, not tires, because that's how many we pick up.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: That would be really helpful information.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: I can do that. I actually could get that. Thank you Yeah. Very

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And can I just follow-up on that? Can can you give us the trends and if if it's increasing or decreasing maybe, but probably increasing, and, where you're seeing them and if if they're because a lot of times, it it could be someone who has a whole lot of tires versus someone who doesn't, who has a little bit of tires, and it's a different response depending on who's, what type of, individual or company is dropping them off.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: I think what I could offer is the way I'm just thinking about our tracking system. Our tracking system is going to measure those tons by district. It's going to be hard. I'll try, but it would be hard for us to narrow down to town, I believe. But we can catch it by district.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Whatever you can, and if you do ever find the folks who because sometimes they'll leave mail or something inadvertently and you can find out who they are.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: It's certainly

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That's a problem, I mean that causes a lot environmentally.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yes, we used to measure picking up tires by the tire and now we measure it by picking up by the

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

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: So do you have any there? Yes.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Well, you. Yes. Good question.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Back in the day, right, you'd see a tire here and a tire there. Now you see four perfectly matched tires.

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

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: They used to be part of that, they used to be free to get it. Right.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Have them paid it. Oh, sorry.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It's expensive to get rid

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: of tires.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: It is very expensive.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Right, so what some places do is you pay when you buy the tire and then it's free. And

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: then they're like, why don't you make sure that it's free.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: We fabricated 6,244 signs. Do that in house, we make most of our signs in house. We mowed 14,164 acres. This is kinda interesting. We spent, forty one thousand six hundred and forty nine hours responding to emergencies. So that's almost 20 full time employees for the whole year, if you will, by the hour that responded to emergencies that is not snow. This is everything else that we respond to. It could be water. It could be an accident. It could be trees. It could be almost anything. But in FY '25, a little over forty thousand hours, we were responding to some type of an emergency. So,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: question about that. So, sometimes an agency is able to charge their time. Do you do that?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: We do.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Good. Okay, great.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: And the state police and the local police are outstanding partners on capturing information. If we have an asset that is damaged, they do an outstanding job. And just recently, we're starting that money comes back into the T Fund. Okay. So that's pretty exciting. And so anytime we go about it, we do ask for reimbursements. So SelectGuardrail is a good one.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm seeing a lot of those next year.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: There's a lot of guardrail. Of it.

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

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: We cut 23,000 trees. That's always a large number. A tree in our trapping system is anything bigger than three inches, and we ditched a 173,000 feet. And I knew that we would discuss salt a little bit, because I did talk about salt a little bit earlier in the year. A fun fact that I always like to share, we have plowed so far today as of this morning because I always like to run out in the morning, that we're gonna come here. We plowed 1,900,000 miles and that's on a GPS. That is not a fabricated number that I just come in here with. Now if you put that into perspective, if you lined up trucks 30 football fields wide, that's from the capital's address to Los Angeles, 30 football fields wide. So when people say, where is the plow truck you don't ever plow? Well, 1,900,000.0 this year so far, and I'm pretty sure we're headed to break 2,000,000 this year.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: How does that compare to other years?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: I would say this one's a little bit higher than last year.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I think last year at this

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: time, I think when I talked to you folks, I could look back, and I thought it was around 1,500,000.0. Does your

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: dashboard have, like, a multiyear I don't think I our guess you have it for SALT.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yeah. We have it for SALT. And we can slide right into salt. So far, as of this morning, we've used around a 116,000 tons of salt for the whole winter season. We figured winter on a twenty five week cycle or in week 20 of of this cycle. And last year on this date, we've used, we used a 112. So last year was the first winter that I considered a real winter in a long, long time, or a snowing winter. Back a little bit, a few months ago, we were like 25,000 ton ahead, and it always kinda sort of averages out. So right now, we are extremely close, just a 4,000 ton of what we used last year. Another interesting little fun fact about this year, there was a lot of media about a perceived salt shortage.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Perceived? Oh.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: So, well, it was weird. It was spotty here, spotty there, and a lot of people would come to me and say, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? It's like, we have salt. I I I don't I didn't really know what you know? It was it was difficult. And the reason is we have a very large team, our BGS partners. We have three people on our team. We plan way ahead. We're already planning right now for next year. Every winter

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, finish it, and I'll Okay.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: So every winter, we traditionally, right now, are worried about filling these sheds up. Right? So come fall, we're not looking for salt. Come fall, we already have our salt. And that's how it's always been done here at VTrans, and this year was a perfect example of why it should always be done that way. Our shed should always be full in the spring. We can hold a 125,000 tons if all the sheds have fallen. So mathematically, you can almost make it you have to internally move. Currently, we've gone all winter and through planning and due process, we have 90,000 tons in stock right now. So all through the winter, there was no shuffle of we're almost out of salt because of good planning, shed storage, covered sheds. We got we had, and next year, we'll go into the fall with a 125,000 ton, maybe a little more. We're gonna start looking for some other opportunities for storage. And and on paper, it looks like, you know, we'll have enough salt for the foreseeable future. So

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: some communities did express, and the agency made an offer to communities to sell salt to towns if they were sure. Can you yeah. But it was a little confusing about what it. Can you tell what we did?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: I'd love to. So what we did is we had we had salt in the pipeline that was that was coming to VTrans, if you will. Right? We had ordered it way in advance, contracted it in advance. And so what we did is we took 10,000 tons and told our supplier, We're good. We diverted it, is what we did. Instead of you bringing that 10,000 tons to us, we're gonna make it. So you sell to your pounds. I think he told me directly they helped about 40 pounds with that 10,000 ton.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And was that at our price? And do we get a volume? So

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: that salt was billed out all on their end. Right? We didn't get involved in the money. Okay. So how however that shouldered off, right, is between because us selling salt could get it would contractually, it would get messy. And they did indeed deliver all 10,000 of that tons to needy towns that were in dire need. And then the other thing we did, I can use a gazillion examples of a small town that maybe just needs one load to get through the rest of the year. I know know we helped it waste, I would say, 20 more towns by saying, hey. Bring your truck over. We'll fill you out, you know, a load. We couldn't spare 20 loads, but we could spare a load or two, and we could get that small town through until springtime, and they'll pay us back. Mhmm. So that was a loan, if you will, on paper.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: This is another question. Sure.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, kind of on this because I think there's been a lot of different conversations about this and it does it piques my curiosity that that the the state was so well prepared and able to not experience a shortage while all of the municipalities in my area seem to have either extremely low or no salt, and only larger towns seem to be able to have properly managed for it. So it seems like there's a scale issue, and what I thought we had heard before, and this is different information than what you provided, we had heard before that none of the towns had taken the state up on their offer for salt. So that, if I'm understanding correctly, was incorrect.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: It

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: sounds like your distributor provided due to you declining more salt, the ability to sell that to towns who needed it.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yes.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: So for you said about 20 towns, and then 20 more towns got a load of salt that they will be paying back at

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: AMT. Yes.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. That is different than what I think

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: we heard even like, well,

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: two weeks ago. I'm not I don't remember who it was from, but maybe a yeah. I believe

[Ashley Atkins (Deputy Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: there was a period of time when they had first said that we were going to divert salt, but then there was no towns that had contacted that vendor for Oh, yeah. For a very short period of time, and that might be what you're referencing. But then after, say four days, then that vendor was contacted from the towns to then fulfill that need of salt that we diverted. But there was that short period where we hadn't the vendor hadn't heard of any of

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: any need. Okay. Great. Well, that's really helpful to update because I was so surprised by that. So it makes a lot more sense that this is how it happened, that no one taking you up on the SALT offer. And I think to the chair's question, what I had assumed had happened when I thought no tenants had taken you up on the offer was that the price was just out of reach. So did you what pricing wise with the loans, how would we see that information? Where would we get the information about the SALT loans?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Well, you would have to talk to every single town because I bet every town bargains a different price.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: No. To you. To you. So

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: you just said So

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: the 20 towns that you gave. Loads to.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: We won't get any money. We're just gonna get another load of salt back.

[Ashley Atkins (Deputy Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: The quantity. Oh, okay.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Quantity thing.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, okay. So you're anticipating that they will be purchasing salt this season

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: For

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: the for next season and compensating you for okay. That makes more sense.

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: I was like, where is

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: the money gonna be handed off here?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: No. No money. Yep. That would be very, very messy.

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

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Very, very messy.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Appreciate that explanation. It

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Possibly against the law,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: actually. Yeah. It is cash. It's a question.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I was under the impression a couple years ago contract that towns could use so that the town could get the same price per unit for salt.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: This is where it gets very messy, very messy. So the state indeed put salt out to bid, and a lot of people, think that there's just this magic salt pile, and you call somebody and then they just spray a bunch of salt and then that's it. But it's, we have six salt suppliers that are currently supplying nutrients, and that salt comes from all over the world. It comes from right next door in New York. It comes from, Quebec, and then and then we start talking outside of that as it comes across the ocean and into all of our seaports around us. So Portsmouth, Rhode Island, the Port Of Albany, the Port Of Montreal, and that salt traditionally comes from Chile and Egypt on boats, 60,000 ton at a ton. And so the impact when you start to lay out rail, boats, trucks, and how all that in how that salt moves around New England is is incredible. And so when we put our salt out to bid, we offer the vendor to extend their pricing to towns, but that's all it is. And they they can say yes or they can say no. And if they say yes, all it is is a price. But in my experience, and I have no numbers, most towns opt to try to get their own price for their self.

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: All right, so there is a structure

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: if they say yes. Yes. So then towns just need to know to contact VTrans to find out if they're

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: a business vendor?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Through Vermont, Legis, and Cities, and Towns. Okay. And then they have to enter into their own contract. So say the price is $86.92 Yeah. They would need to enter into their own binding legal contract with that salt vendor.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Alright. But that's that's better than not having that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yes. So there is a alright. So that's helpful. And hat hat

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: No.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Actually, that was my question. How many vendors? And if we're we're going out to bid and you Yeah. Answered it all. Yeah.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: It's it's pretty amazing when you start thinking that the salt is coming. Right? It's easy just to think that there was a salt pile somewhere, and it all just comes from one person. Well, it comes from six six vendors that all have their own set of how they get it trucked and then on top of that rail. And then, like I said, a lot of that salt comes from Chile and Egypt on a boat.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: That way, though. Which is

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: pretty impressive. Yeah. Does it come through the

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: big port Portsmouth Harbor? Yeah. Mean, Matthew, so Yeah. Out there.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yeah. When you go on 95, you look to the right if you're headed north, that that some of that's always coming from there.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So do we have to pay tariffs for that?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: So it's a bid price, so, unfortunately, I don't know the answers to

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: how that would all work. To get a lot of salt from New York State because there's they mine in under Lake Erie. Yes. They do. Wow. And it's huge. The wortening, cargou

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: It is you're close. It's cargou and American rock salt. Is it Lansing? It's Jordan. I can't remember the other town's name, but they're pretty close together. And interesting fact, the vein of salt that they all mine starts in Pennsylvania, and it's 16 feet thick in Pennsylvania and dirty. And the further north you go, so by the time you make it into Canada, the salt vein is 60 feet thick and clear, just as white as paper. It is so interesting how that vein is there and they're all on the same vein of salt, right? It's just how it changes up through.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It's It was always interesting to me that you mined in under Lake Erie. Yes. It sprang up in a week and they don't have to fix it.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Salt has been it's a very interesting topic. Like I said, B TRAINs, our intent will always be even well after ongoing and before our king is those sheds need to be full in spring because we cannot risk all of a sudden in October or November or December, somebody saying, well, there's no salt on the East Coast. Because that did happen this year. Apparently, that there was one vendor problem and a lot of people had put their eggs in one basket and they called in December to get And the answer was that current vendor didn't have salt. So if we were in that same boat, we would have been in trouble, if you will. But we had, you know, six vendors all coming from all over the place. Canada, New York, two places in New York, and then the ports. So it's pretty neat. And then if the ports freeze over, so like the Port Of Albany, I had no idea until I started researching this. It's like a 160 miles from the ocean to get into Albany. So once that freezes over in a hard freeze, they can't get barges up through there. Same as the Port Of Montreal when the Hudson freezes. You know, it's gonna be, I think they were saying, April

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: does that sound right? Sixteenth, that

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: they thought the next ship could come down the harbor?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: It's been a while, but it's

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: pretty neat. Yeah, it is. Pretty neat stuff.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So just one more salt question. This is at the end of the process, but you all have those really nice trucks that calibrate the right amount. Yes. And don't put too much. Yes. So can you just talk about that a little bit and, because a lot of towns, most towns can't afford those trucks. Yep. But some, maybe 10 or so, 20, have those trucks. Can you just talk about those a little bit?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yep. So I actually lived host when I first came here, we were switching to computerized trucks. And back then, they were pretty crude. But the biggest thing was back in the day, if you will, they had a round knob too, and then they had a lever on, off. So so say you wanted you know, you looked in your mirror and said, I need a lot of salt. So that's you had no idea how much is coming out. Yeah. But you just keep turning that dial. And then the other thing was the on and off lever. So you turn it on, the salt came out at the same rate. You pull up to a stop sign and you forget that that lever was on. Right? The salt just keeps coming out. And then if you're doing 10 Yeah. Versus 20 or maybe 22 or 25, it's still that same amount. So these new computers, what they do is they're very, very accurate, and we calibrate them every year. So as the truck goes faster, the salt comes out faster. As the truck goes slower, the truck goes out. The salt comes out slower. When you pull up to a stop sign and the thermometer is reading zero, no salt comes out. And in fact, if you have an intersection, you have to override with a button, and it will only allow you to do that, I think for 10. And it is a science. So if it's 31 degrees and the snow is packing, need a quarter of the salt. If it was negative 10, and pack. And so, you know, our supervisors are are well trained and and they try to get all of their employees to follow their lead with, okay, today on this roof, I think we need x. And just the fact of not having a manual on off switch is just a huge savings in itself. And a lot of times you can see this, say, you've come to a town road intersection that meets the state Road and we're out doing our thing and maybe our road doesn't look quite as good, but maybe that other road took four times as halt to make it look that good. So we strive to do our best to do both fiscally and environmentally responsible with our salt, because it is one of our hugest drawdowns on our budget and it affects our environment. So it's twofold thing. Our solar and ice control policy has been around the land, has been around for since the eighties, and it seems to work. Some people love it. Some people don't love it. But I think it strikes a really good balance between financially responsible and for the environment.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Thank you. And then how much, what's the cost of that kind of mechanism or that truck versus

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: I'm the truck that isn't as easy as going to do something fun and switch to Dave Thurber, director of our fleet division, and maybe he knows roughly what a computerized system ends up costing us.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Just thinking, I believe we do not get an itemized list of the costs from our vendor.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Maybe you can just let us know generally. Just not the truck. The differential of,

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: you know,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: a regular truck versus one

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: of the We'll get it. Yeah. Ashley, you got it. Thank you very much.

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: Get you a pretty accurate number.

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: for that.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Do you still have the dash, the maintenance dash support? I didn't find it.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Okay. We'll, we'll get it. Actually, writing everything down, she's really good at following up with this stuff. The other thing that we do, if you don't mind me just adding one thing, is if our trucks are moving and the system is working, we spray liquid salt on that salt at the spinner, because just the fact of that salt being wet, it saves bounce and scatters. We're spreading the whole load of marbles, if you will. Right? They're all little tiny marbles in the back. And say the truck's going down later, say, at 30, that material's moving at 30 hits the road. And just just that in itself bounces scatter by using liquid salt and trying to get that salt wet, saves about, the industry standard takes 30% of it.

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

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Another tool in the toolbox would be both fiscally and environmentally responsible. I don't we're past

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I canceled one of the branches. Which one? You got to we're gonna move Jackie. Because we got started later. So we're just hearing from. Yep.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Alright. So we'll go to that that's our our budgets over the last few years. And then, actually, if you can go to the pie. So this one shows, just really quick, like the split on how much our personnel salary and benefits cost, and then how much is left over for maintenance out of, our budget.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So what happened between '25 and '26?

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

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: so that's why we, Candace, I know a lot of it, but Candace is certainly an expert.

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: Hannah Thomas, team CFO, that difference between '25 actuals and the '26 budget is really attributed to the July flood costs. Okay.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Thank you. So the first slide is just a general thing to show this is what our personnel cost, and this is, and then the next slide breaks it down just a little bit further. So we have, we break out I'll go right from the top. District district operating expenses in the blue, 24,000,000. This pays for everything that you see us doing outside the road. This pays for heats, lights, water, sewer, trees, culverts, mowing, emergencies, patching, guardrail. At the end of the presentation, we have about 130 maintenance activity codes that I provide with you folks every year. So that's that portion of it. 15,000,000, goes to the central garage. This is how we pay for our orange fleet, if you will. We we pay to and Dave will testify on that next. And so that's that's what we pay for our the whole fleet. That's what we pay. And then the BGS fleet cost, these are for our smaller vehicles that you see, say, a light duty SUV or a light duty pickup truck. Those go through BGS. Major maintenance and facilities, this is what it cost, and this is what we incorporate, to keep all of our buildings running. The whether it be electrical furnaces, the heat, doors, windows, that's what we put into that, basically, every year to keep all of our buildings going. The the the purple is the, headquarters environmental programs, bridge maintenance projects. These are bigger bigger projects that we, work with our partners to do, like, say, and he say we try to use a rule of thumb. Our bridge crews, if it takes a couple days, they do it at the local level. And then if we need a contractor, that's gonna take more than a couple days, that's the money we use for that. Salt is the gray, and then federal aid projects is a tiny little piece, and this goes a lot with the environmental services section that I was discussing earlier. And then, like I said, at the end, I can dive down into those 130 codes that equals that 24,000,000. It'll equal on the sheet, it shows you FY '25 checkbook, if you will. So a lot of times when I come in, it's it's difficult when they say when I am asked, how much are you gonna spend in FY '26 doing x? Because, okay. Well, I plan on doing this, but we're front on the front of our budget, we get our budgets allocations in July. We need to be pretty responsible in the summer because this winter is gonna be another great example of if we are unresponsible last summer, we could be in trouble this winter. So our funding mechanism shifts due to the seasons. I I could testify that if we were going to patch a million dollars worth of roadways this spring, but say two weeks from now, it freestaws, freestaws, freestaws, rains every day for seven days, our patching budget will be $5,000,000. And it's it's really hard. We have a lot of averages, but it's hard for me to, basically, when I walk out of here, it's like, okay, hope it doesn't rain for two weeks next month. The next slide is some of the stuff that we started to dive into a little bit earlier in the season. We did have a reduction in force, and we're gonna this is how that all sugars off, and we're gonna have some personnel savings of about 2,380,000.00. This summer, we're gonna have some small reduction in supplying our stockpiles. And what that means is maybe instead of every garage having a huge pile of culvert at its beck and call, maybe the district is going to have a pile of culvert at the beck and call. More planning, more partnering up, more transparency about who has what in the backyard. We're gonna be very careful on our salt and we are going to try to save 400,000 on our salt. Same with the overtime, we're gonna follow our snow and ice control plan. And then we did add some money this year for additional tree cutting, And we're gonna try to focus on a few areas on the interseed. So in a nutshell, that's kind of the difference from last year to this year.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Do you, we don't get any match for that, do we? We don't get tree cutting in any way on the interstate or anything? No. And in relation to the cuts from last fall where we cut back some tree cutting, where did we cut that and how much because in a rescission process, I know we cut back some on cutting.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: We did. And so as far as identified areas, I don't have so we probably have 50 identified areas and I'd have to go back and do some research.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Do you remember how much we did cut? Because I forget.

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: I can pull up the rescission plan, chair, but we didn't we didn't necessarily bring any of the cuts from the rescission plan forward into the twenty seventh. I'm trying

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: to figure out how much it will what that cut this might affect. Is this catching up? Know?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: One one thing about the tree cutting is it it is sort of an unfortunate situation is when the interstate was built, 90% at least 90% of the interstate was cleared fence to fence. I mean, when you look down through there, you saw the fence on one side and the fence on the other. There is a few places that that's not true. North on 89 up in, like, High Peaks, Mountain Area, there's some very mature trees, some very mature oak trees that have been there for a long time. And then and then, like, when you get south towards Randolph, Williamstown area, there's a lot of large maple that it looks like must be it didn't get cut because that stuff is more than 50 years old. But for the rest of it, you know, it's all very birch, popl, sumac, white birch, pine, you know, all all weak species that are quick growing and have reclaimed that area. So it took us sixty years to get into this mess and probably take us a few to get out for sure.

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: Courtney, I have a rescission plan if you would check. So for the rescission plan, maintenance items were $575,000 reduction in demand driven equipment servicing we're purchasing in Central Garage, 450,000 reduction in tree cutting that we're talking about. 300,000 reduction of preventative culvert maintenance projects. 200,000 reduction of contracted mowing services. 150,000 return or repurpose of devices purchased for VANAS, the Vermont Asset Information System, and then maintenance was also part of the travel and conference participation suspension savings and the position management savings in their decision plans.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So this is a couple 100,000 up it's tree cutting.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: So we did forward along our activity based textbook, if you will. And so these are these codes that I was talking about. And in lieu of transparency, every year we would come in and there was something very similar to this, but this one is actually a little bit different. It looks the same. We used to bring in our mats report, which is our maintenance activity tracking system. And the one thing about that system, and we we still use it, is outstanding for keeping track of what we do. It is outstanding. And that's how I can pull up those figures so quickly about how many miles we've plowed. What it's not very good at is a budgetary aspect. It has fringe in on both the equipment and the employees. So it's hard to give actual numbers. So what you have before you today are actuals. This is what hit a check, quote, unquote, checkbook, if you will. These are the monies that were spent from those activities, and it is a lot of lines. But it also is full transparency of where all the money went in f y twenty five. And f y twenty six will look very similar. I went down through and took the liberty to hit the ones that were around a million dollars because some of them are $3,000, and some of them are a million, some of them are 11. So

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: if

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: you would like, I'll go down and pick the bigger ones, or I can just field questions on the spreadsheet itself.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: What? Well, can you explain the difference between the the math and the non math activity again?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yep. So mats is what the folks enter in the garages, if you will. So the people doing the actual work with orange trucks. Mhmm. And then non mats activities, this would be the people in the office that are writing a check to pay a bill or, say, a light bill.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: That's So subcontracting fall under that? What's that? Subcontractor fall under that too, so far?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Under nonmaths? Yeah. It would it would fall in normally, when we use a contractor, say, for mowing, it would fall into the mowing. The mats.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Yeah. But

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: it would be in here in mowing, but the the money is there. And so it's been a tough balancing act. This isn't it's a same look, different feel, and it was in lieu of trying to be more transparent that a mass number has fringe on both the equipment and the person, if you will. Whereas this, this is what we spent. This is what we spent that was built to that code with no fringe.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So for example, in the second page, we got it at $45.10. It's two point, almost 2.5. Would the 600,000 that we have in here be on top of that for next year coming? So we'd be about 3,000,000 in three cut?

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: That's what we're hoping to do. Okay. Just okay. And that

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: was these are actuals, not those are net of the rescissions.

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: Correct. And Candace Lamoille, so the 600,000 item in the '27 budget assumed an average of the past two years worth of actuals. So we were assuming that the base would be 2,000,000 and then 600,000 on top of that chair. When we start mixing actuals and budget, it gets a little wonky.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Could you spend a few minutes giving us what you think are the highlights in here?

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: I have a question before I do that maybe. So just the fuel line and the non max 4,700. It's I don't know what CG stands for, but

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: is this all the fuel for the

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: whole maintenance? So so this is this is our rent for fuel. This is the fuel and the rent for everything orange that you see and yellow construction equipment as well. The rent? Yeah.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: What are you renting?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: We rent, if you if you will, rent from Central Peralta. Oh, right. That's Central Perot.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: So this is the rent and the fuel Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: $19. It's like fee for space. Right.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: It is exactly the same. Yeah.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: And then I saw the a track line collecting tracks with only $5.99, but that's if there's another line over on the mats. There's a mats number for that.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Which one were you you were on

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: the wrong line? 90. 4590.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: There's a picking litter.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: 45, 60. Isn't that?

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Maybe that's a

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

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: 45, Yeah. So that's the 1 and a half million dollars is the personnel cost, but maybe also to get rid of the litter?

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

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: would be everything that hit a check. So whether we had to pay for the litter, for a person.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: The equipment. Yep. So this collecting trash is some other drain. What code is the collecting traffic in? 40 596Dollars. Was just saying. So

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

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: I don't need to know because it's only $6, but when when we were talking about how much trash it is, I didn't see the picking of this one.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yeah. So that's that's kind of the difference is non mats is somebody paid a trash bill for $6 at an office somewhere.

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

[Ashley Atkins (Deputy Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: code associated with payment of the invoice. Some of them are related to our MAT activity codes, some of them are related to are our administrative team

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: They couldn't have much character. I never get

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: out of Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Station is but with $5.99, it's always $20 or 75.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: So what you what you see the orange fleet doing, if you will, most of the time, these big numbers are gonna be in the mass activities. And then the non mass, you pick up on a couple of them, CTs. And then right underneath it is utility charges, pay about $1,300,000. I cannot even tell you how many electric bills we get. It's in the hundreds. Because every time you see a lighted crosswalk, a stoplight, a streetlight that's on our system, we got a bill. We get a bill for

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: that. Is

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: there a contractor for that or do we get a discount? Those are utilities.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: I'd be quite frank with I don't don't believe that we do, but I could look into that. No. That's okay. I'm sure the average it would be the same as anybody hooking up power or So a

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: what in here is anything big changes or up or down in here? And what are the things we should be most concerned about?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Well, to be quickly looking down through in that question, that is the thing about maintenance, is we have to shift. I was joking before you folks came in the room. We have to shift immediately and quickly. So I started to talk about patching. Right? I wanna spend a million, but I could spend 5. I wanna spend as little as I can on salt, but I could spend 12. So the things to me are our core missions, and we have Is the patching up? You know, this is where in the old days we call it shimco in that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: If we are falling behind in our general paving budget in that area, it becomes important that we're able to react. And where is that in here? What do those numbers look like?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: So traditionally maintenance does not do a lot of shank coating. And I will refer to Ashley to see if there was anything in particular that we set up, but I don't believe that

[Ashley Atkins (Deputy Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Not in the last couple years.

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

[Ashley Atkins (Deputy Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Not with not with state funds. And

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: this goes on the ability to shift. So let's just say it didn't snow at all this winter. Didn't snow at all. We would immediately go into spring mode. We would start talking just like we are right now with our BSS support services, our business support analysts, and say, okay. You spent $2,000,000 less on water maintenance, let's say. So then we pick the worst of the worst, and we'd immediately shift asphalt. Right? Because a ton of salt is very, very close to a ton of asphalt in price, in place. So in the last two years, unfortunately, we haven't had that problem. Right? We've used all the money and all the salt. We we haven't had that luxury. It's luxury. Yes. Sorry. I had that backwards. And this year, I I do not foresee a large influx of salt cash, if you will, leftover cash from this winter to shift into into district level. Okay.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: As far as the payments, that's getting your your.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Pick the. Yes. Yep. That is exactly what our currently is.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: You only do that on state land. You don't you do you call in for

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: a campus on municipal property? Nope. Only state land because we're the land owner, and it is getting increasingly expensive to clean some of these sites up.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Yeah. And you're more of And there are more

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: of them. And the influx that has happened this year, worse than any other year, is people can go down south and buy a massive RV for, like, $500. And it runs just good enough.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: To get to the parking garage.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: To get to a parking garage, and then they stay in it until they leave. And then getting rid of those things. The salvage yard doesn't want them.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Yeah. We have the tellers in here to complain about. Yeah.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: And it is expensive. So or they catch on fire, and then they're left beside the road. So, yes, it's getting increasingly more difficult and time consuming. And I would happily come back if there's I mean, there's a lot of information and a lot of numbers. I'm always available for a follow-up.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Spend money protecting bags. Yes. Well

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I was like, I think that's fine.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So was your patching held above? This versus versus this year's?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Patching 1,300,000.0. Yeah. It would be very, very similar. So again, putting a number to patching is really difficult for me to come up with. Right. Patching season's coming. We've been patching a little bit, but patching season's gonna take about two weeks.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: We have a negative for drilling. You've got a number. Don't even

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: know if

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: that's drilling. So we used to do core samples. We had recently stopped doing that. We had a drilling, vehicle, and so when they want to know what the soil is 20 feet down, 30 feet down, 100 feet down, we had our own crew that that did that.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: So this is like return to the equipment or something like that? Yeah,

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: go ahead. But I know where you're headed, but go ahead.

[Ashley Atkins (Deputy Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: With this fiscal year '25, a lot of those costs are from the twenty three-twenty four plus. And so, where you might see a reimbursement or where you might see negative is most likely from a reimbursement from the federal declaration from those. Just catching up. Yeah, so it's just catching up. And so, with these being true actuals, the cost of these activities, the money that was originally spent might actually be higher than what it shows up here because of

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: the reimbursements that that have to draw down. Okay.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Thank you, mister Chair. Well, since we're running out of time, I

[Ashley Atkins (Deputy Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: just have kind of one

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: broader question, not even like the nitty gritty of your budget. So typically, in my experience, I've seen that we go to maintenance when we don't have money. We take for maintenance because you're typically not federally matched, so it's like a clean state dollar. I don't know the right terminology, but you know exactly what I'm talking about. You do. That is a strategy I have loved to implore as a state lawmaker, but disliked when it comes to my actual impact of

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: the driver, of someone who uses the

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: roads and bridges. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. And do you are you see is that happening on the house side with the t bill now? With the large $33,000,000 deficit or whatever word you wanna use for it, have you Do you feel that we will be coming to What is your sense of the conversation in relation to the deficit and our consistent use of maintenance as a stopgap?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: So I have a start to that and then I'm going to certainly jump in and ask Candice to jump in. We certainly appreciate it when you don't taste the money

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

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: you do take we we pride ourselves on staying within budget. So when you take money, we're gonna strive very, very hard To keep it. To to keep it where you have passed us to keep it. As far as the general, consensus of what's going on here, I'm gonna refer to Kansas because I I that would definitely be a Kansas question.

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: Sure. I'm senator. So I'm not currently aware of changes to appropriations in the T bill, but not over till it's over on Friday. And and I'd say if the committee is looking to make any change, I know what you're talking about, about how maintenance has almost a 100% transportation fund. So it is very seemingly lucrative to go there as a fund source, but it's a division just like any other division of AOT. So I'd say if you're thinking about making any changes to maintenance, maybe give Ernie the opportunity to come back in and go line by line like he's tried to do here to justify the number because he, like everyone else, wants to justify their figures. Totally. No, and

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I really appreciate that. That seems to be what we did in the past when we had problems and I did see it occur, at least obviously to me, in the governor's recommend. But I do think that that is a spot for us to go, which right, wrong or different is just

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: the truth of the matter.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Then the last question I had kind of brought you, we talked a little bit about the layoffs that occurred due to the rescission or reversion plan. You are included in that. You lost some staff members. What is the impact going to be because of those?

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Absolutely. So we're we're striving through efficiencies to right size our agency, you know, at the right time, and now seems to be the right time. And our strategy is going to be searching for those efficiencies through things like, do 10 people need to do widget ads, or would it be better for one person to be in charge of widget ads and try to control all of that instead of nine or 10 different ways throughout the state? We plan on utilizing a lot more say, there's technology out there. A lot more technology that we can do. Yeah. Things like Teams meetings. Right? And it seems like here, it's like Teams, we do that every day or Zoom. Well, maybe that doesn't flow down into the maintenance world this much. And so we're looking for those efficiencies. We toiled hard on what was the right size for the agency. And, you know, the the first round of rescissions, maintenance was not hit with anything. And then in the second round, we we did we did have to come up with a plan, and we toiled long and hard, and we feel that the way we have structured it now, Vermonters, hopefully, will see and should see the same amount of services they've always seen.

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

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Just in more efficient ways.

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: Okay. Thank you.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So just remind me across the agency, because I don't total number of employees, and this may be

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: Around 1,200, so that I can get an accurate number.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And a maintenance has how many of the

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: So it's a floating number. It's between fifty six and four fifty six because of vacancies. Right? So if I run a report when it says 04:25, the next day it's 04:51 or whatever, but right right around there. So

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: and the other divisions to make up the 1,200, do you know that?

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: Yeah, yeah. Our other divisions are administration, byways. Number of

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: employees, please. Oh, okay. I'm gonna get that. I'll follow-up with that.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yeah, if

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: you could. Because maintenance is biggest.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: DMV's pretty big, but we'll give you an actual number. Yeah, that'd be great.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank you. I think at this point we're gonna give you the boot.

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank you for your work. Thank you for was great. Thank you.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Thank you very much. Appreciate it. We're lucky to have the minimum of B trans. I can't say it enough. The average person has no idea how how dedicated these folks are.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: No. They don't. They don't have any idea. You have. And the roads were pretty well done this year. Even on the roof well. Although it's a little bumpy.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Go ahead.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Do you have any plans to put out a you get a little video there, but on your your trips down to Rhode Island and Massachusetts to let the public you know, the public out there doesn't know what you did. Mean, I they might have seen it

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: on TV for a minute.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: It was all over social media. I don't know what that was.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We did that. Said.

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

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: But

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: The

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: old people.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: The older people. I I do social media, and I I just know, do you plan on, like, bragging a little bit on

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: publicly about the good work you did down there in Strauss? So we indeed posted a law on social media, and I don't even know how to do that. Have a person that does do that, and Okay. I I was because they

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: should know when they start crapping on us and, you know, the roads aren't there, the roads aren't bad and say, listen. Here's what we A big

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: somehow they track how these posts go places. I don't know how this works. A big post for us would be around 50,000 hits. We got a million. Okay. Twice. Once for mass, once for That part of it's working. That part worked.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Yeah. Could've been could've been people in Massachusetts.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yeah. I'm not Yep. Yeah. So it was because the comp right. The comments were there.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And It was a lot of people, you know, Massachusetts would try to have it in.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: But, you know, it is not your area. I know in maintenance, when you do a you know, the commercial that come on and

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yep. Move over for the Yes.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: This and that to squeeze something about your work down there in the next commercial round that you do for transportation would be

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: a good idea. I on my way home last night, I had some ratchet strap on some stuff behind my pickup, and I noticed when I'm looking, I had to pull over on the interstate, I put my four way flashers on. And I was so presently surprised of how many people moved over just for average to be able have four way flashers on because I was dreading again. I mean, again, people just have no idea when they sneak through a work zone at 65 miles an hour what that feels like.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That's actually what I wanted to that was as we were concluding, that's what I was thinking about is safety for your for your boats, and we've made a priority of safety, and we tried to get work zones. We try to address that, in the past and I hope that we'll continue talking about that because that's critical. So, do you, I mean we probably won't talk about that now because we're finishing up, but, we do care about that as a-

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Thank you.

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: As a committee.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So if you ever want to talk about that-

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Sure.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Come on. I can be so bold. At this point, we're gonna need to switch today.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Thank you

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: very much. Thanks. It's

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: always a pleasure.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Thanks for having me.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I will tell you, my cousin is the principal at the largest elementary school in Rhode Island. She had good experiences. Very good. That's good to hear. She sent pictures. Thank you.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Thank you. Good luck, Keith.

[Ashley Atkins (Deputy Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: You're good.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You. You're impressed as always. No. Have some of those people. Thanks.

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: we have about twenty minutes. Twenty minutes.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I'm sorry. It's nice to

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: see you. Thank you. Nice to see you. And get this all set long before I set it. It doesn't appear that it was successful.

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: Good morning and thank you very much for having me. My name is Dave Thurber. I am the director of the Central Garage Fleet. Here today to present to you our FY '27 budget. Our first page here shows that FY '26 has passed and our current governor has recommended the increase between the two, they're tough here, an increase is certainly appreciated. But this largely comes, I believe, in our personal services, a lot of things. Some of the bills that we have to pay that come from ADS and other areas like that. They can never tell us what the number is or I can check. So for fiscal year twenty seven, the equipment fund is $8,900,000 Personal services is 6.3, but we do have a few vacancies.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Does your own savings? Is it or is it OT and savings, or is it OT and vacancy savings? You know what

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: I mean? Our so it includes both.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Is the overtime of savings or is the overtime of cost?

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: Right now it's a cost. Our vacancies, we have, fortunately was three at the moment. And that's a, I think that was in the 150 to $200,000 range.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: And these are like mechanics?

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: Like, what's the best We part of your have a total of 52 staff, 35 mechanics. And currently, we are short two mechanics in Chisholm County and one part specialist. We have someone on late duty who's doing the part specialist job but we have made an offer to get somebody in there full time. The operating cost is everything that's not personal services or equipment. So our lights, sewer, rent, because we do rent a couple of facilities. Parts for tools. Mechanics have a lot of their own tools but we've always sort of bought some of the more specialized stuff. They scan tools and things like that so they don't have to So we don't have everyone with a scan tool. Generally we get by with, it works to have one or two scan tools in the shop. Then our equipment, which is made up of a transfer from the T Fund, a supplemental transfer, our depreciation, and our sales from auction. All that goes back to buying the equipment. Total budget for '27 is $26,070,502

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Thank you so depreciation that's normally like a lot of governments don't do depreciation do you know where that money goes?

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: So that is we do a straight line depreciation monthly for all the employment. Does go, I'm not sure exactly which accounts it goes into, but it comes back to us and it is allocated or we're obligated to spend it on new equipment.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay, so it does come back.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: It's kind of like a capital.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Right, it's just an interesting

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: way to Candace, to tell you

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

[Hannah Thomas (Chief Financial Officer, AOT team)]: if you don't mind Senator. So because Dave manages an internal service fund, it's on the accrual based accounting other than modified accrual based accounting. So most of the like everything in transportation fund and then most of what's other being discussed in senate appropriations is is a governmental type fund, which is modified approval. But you'll see enterprise funds, internal service funds that we budget to are on

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah. And enterprise funds are used to having

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: depreciation. The depreciation just really you're just a way to put away money to buy the trucks later. Yes. Great. Thank you. Like the towns like town budgets waste land labs, it's like what we would call depreciation, we just call them. We it's like a depreciation schedule, but we call them, like, our capital reinvestment fund.

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yes.

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: Actually if I made this a permanent before I forget, I'll back up to what Ernie had mentioned earlier to your question. When Centralog does a contract, we do try to make sure that the vendors part of our sort of boilerplate language from the Office of Purchasing and Contracting. There is a question if the vendor will extend state pricing to towns or municipalities and colleges. So most of the time I've seen our vendors will say yes. So a state or state style dump truck could be available to a town, assuming a similar or the same price. Right. Not sure how often it gets used, but it is there. And I've I've had a few conversations with some temp folks over the years. Thanks. But and I will get you the price. I can figure out how much that electronic ice control system cost. Okay. The equipment purchase value to the time that I had made this presentation was about $56,000,000 and then about $24,000,000 to upfit all of that equipment. The dump trucks go to a vendor like in today's that just installs the bodies and the plow equipment. A lot of our small pickups we actually do right in house. We'll take a body off the flatbed out or install the sanders. The center will install the snow plows and pickups and things like that. So if we had to go out and replace it all at one time, would be $79,600,000 and our current appreciating value is $30,400,000

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: My

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: title on this slide is incorrect, I do believe this is for a tandem axle truck. But our trucks costs have gone up considerably in the last few years. So the chassis itself would, in just a couple of years, $126,000 to 151,000 That's just the bare chassis. Our upfit costs have gone up a little bit. That vendor has been pretty decent and sticky to their contract price. Truck vendors on the other hand respecting them but those prices have gone up in the guidance of the contract price.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Still use all international or do

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: you mix them on? Majority is still international but we have a number of liners. We probably have in the neighborhood of 30 freight liners in the fleet by the time they're all up there in service. And it makes sense to try to make a good comparison, see total cost of ownership between the two. I think our internationals have always done very well, but we don't know. It must be a little bit to check checklist. So Yes. You can into this, here's what worries me about what you've shown us so far, and I really need to understand the performance measures like that. If I have a 9.4% increase over the last two years and I split that down, I'm in the high 4% range to nearly 5% a year increase, and your budget's up from 1.6. So it's important to understand the performance measures in the dose. So currently, we're kind of hit with a perfect storm since COVID. Yep. We had that, availability was down. It took longer to get trucks. Still have some chassis that are a year and a half or two years old that are still being upfitted. And then since then the cost of materials and the tariffs and a lot of things have worked to raise the cost of not just the trucks and the upfitting, but the cost of parts that we buy afterwards. Separate pot of money, but basically everything has gone up, unfortunately. So what I've had to do is adjust the number of trucks and some of the things that we buy on a year basis. Still hoping it is be between eight and ten years on the plow trucks. Know, plow trucks are between eight and ten years, What are our goals and our performance for each of those and where are we? There's at least two of us on this committee that have been here when we fell in a hole. Yes. And it was not critical. It is not. In 2009, you might remember, that was when we the committee. I was chair of the committee in the house. We purchased only three dump trucks that year. I don't remember about the pickups. Probably not that you can speak of at that point because I found out I believe the whole equipment and equipment was needed for other things. And it took probably six to eight years to kind of catch up from that. Right now, unfortunately, I have about 40 chassis that are waiting to be upfit. So we're kind of adjusting what we buy and how much how many trucks we buy based on that to try to get rid of the ones that are in the eight to ten year range now. So we have fallen behind but are working to get back to some sense of normalcy. Dump truck chassis have a better availability now but it's not like it used to be. The upfitter, unfortunately, is almost the only vendor in Vermont now. We have another option in New Hampshire, but they did not bid last time. So there's some delay on that and getting the trucks to be put together to get them in the fleet. I would you know, to to sort of stay on eight years, we'd need thirty, thirty two trucks a year. It was two fifty. What was that? So 30 to So let's say eight years. Thirty two would be '30 would be $2.40, so it'd be just a few trucks shy of that. And I see that and what you put for performance measure, and should I ask you to come back with something because I'm not I can I can cut back with something a little more clear than Yep? Let me see if you could come with something that's a little clearer so we understand and get what the whole you know? Yeah. As Yeah. Yeah. Pat and I were both in the house transportation community at that point. Yes. We were we were in trouble. We were behind in lots of areas, but we particularly were behind because when the recession hit

[Ernie Patnell (Director of Maintenance, VTrans)]: Yeah.

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: All of our revenues, particularly purchasing use and the fuel taxes dropped dramatically. So it it was a perfect storm. We were behind in in a number of areas, but it's important for us to know, get a picture of based upon our performance measures of the eight years or so, where are we in what's happening by category? I can put something together, and so let's focus more on that and sort of the overview.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: What are the sixteen, seventeen? Forty seven. Those are just the those those VFLs?

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: Yeah. So Okay. Like, that legend up there. So the sixteens are tandem macro. Okay.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: It's nothing to do with the number.

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: No. I see. This is And your goal

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: is to get them replaced within ten years or eight years?

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: Hopefully, ideally eight years is we found over time and looking at other information, eight years is a good time. The trucks are out in the worst of the worst. Lot of snow is not easy on them. They have varying levels of operator maintenance. By eight years they're not without value. Somebody will come and buy them. For our purposes, it's time for them to feel that they're fully depreciated, time for them to lease all of them, get new ones. What we're doing I mean, this shows a little bit of an answer to your question, to your Westman. Yep. But I can probably certainly Yeah. I would be hopeful if I focus more on that.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Does the fact that you have, I think you said 40 crop grinding me up and it contribute to the Yes. The big in the 60, say let's take some in this single axle dump trucks, that would shrink up if you could get those up in itself, those aren't counted in those numbers. They are not.

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: It's in this actual active units in our fleet. They would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 31 of the trucks that are waiting at the 17 category civil axle truck. So of the 37 that we should be replacing in that tandem axle, how many are we replacing this year? Have around a dozen. So you have 12 doing 12 of them. Excellent. And will that drop the 37 number of the next year? Or next year, what would the estimate be, that 37? Would that be higher? It could be higher. I mean, yes. Initially, it'll change this number in a downward direction, but next year, there'll be another group of trucks aging out. Yeah. I I get it. You know what those numbers are, and I so are are we digging a bigger hole than on a single axle dump dump trucks? In each of those categories, would be helpful to know are if we losing ground? Okay. I can show that. I can come up with a little bit better depiction of that. And I understand some of it might be because I think it's better now than it was three or four years ago in buying stuff in availability, but it would be helpful if by category we knew where we are and versus the benchmarks and if we're we're gaining or losing ground. I will open up there's I'll pull up page sheets together. That would be great. Show you the dump trucks and our pickups and some other more expensive equipment. And might have you back for, like, ten minutes to run through that. And is there anything in the rest of your presentation? Well, there's I had a couple of graphs here that show they are to show with the truck into service. Yep. When you put it in, there's a spike in the cost. And then, you it's up and down depending on how it goes. Then toward the end of its life, you can see that it starts to head up again. Yep. So now this this is a this is a tandem axle. Do A little bit more because it was a little bit longer to take care of for maintenance. Even this single axle has been pretty decent over the years, but you can see the last couple of years, they started to increase in cost.

[Sen. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Member)]: Why does it why the big spike in the beginning? You're still upfitting it?

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: Yes. So typically, buy the chassis one year and we pay for the upfitting out of the next year. And when we do that, we put our upfit costs on a work order, on a capital improvement work order so that can be depreciated. And that's these graphs are based on our work orders. It's a

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And that's for the average of all of that type of vehicle?

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: No, this is just for one.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That is just one, is it a sample?

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: Kind of pick them at random. I don't want it to kind of show all the worst or all the best. Right. I just got to pick them

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: at random. Okay, that's a representative one because you know.

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: Have not yet tried to make a graph of 113 simplexylprops that are

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: No, no, that's okay.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That's okay. It's interesting Yeah. To

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: Yes. And if if you can see this covers our labor parts and commercial charges, which is stuff that when we do set something out, when we have parts and labor from a vendor, Fuel costs. And then this is just kind of my plan for fiscal year twenty seventeen, the money I have available and items I'm looking to purchase.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So you're kind of close to the 30.

[Dave Thurber (Director, Central Garage Fleet)]: Actually it would be buying only 15 chassis. Okay, so that's The 30 and the 27 are the trucks from this fiscal year. We're This calendar year. Getting half of what you want. Yeah. It's of that. What we need. Some of that is because we have all the other trucks that are waiting. And while I have an opportunity maybe to buy a few other things, try to get a few other things, mean, I'm looking forward to your chart to tell me where we are in this cycle. I understand somewhere, you know, we might have bought more and there's bulges and you have to figure out what you can get and what you can't. But it would I think it's important for us to know by category or we fall involved in it. I'll do that. Just for your awareness, I will put together something that shows what we're purchasing, where we're at there, and what is going to be coming due. Yep. I'll sort of make that comparison. Yep. What we're getting at. That would be great. It's always helpful to say here's what our goal is. We alright, thank you. Thank you very much And for having let us know when you can get that together and Megan will forward out of you. I will see if I can have something by the end of this week. That'd be great. I do have an obligation on Thursday. We'll figure it out. We're trying to work our way through the budget, but This is we're not up against it. We don't have the T bill from the house yet. Okay. At this point, can you take us offline and we're done