Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: So welcome back, and I'm sorry about all the excitement. It was apparently an elevator in the back of the building, and we don't usually have that excitement like that very often. And we'll resume the testimony, and when we finish, I think there might be a couple of questions. I personally have a couple of things I'd like to ask of you. So now you're on. Name and

[Nella Graham (Selectboard Member, Royalton)]: Well, thank you for having me. My name is Nella Graham. I'm from Braille Timberline. I'm on the select board. Believe you've heard my story before, and I hope I don't go on too long, but I want to I just felt like anything that we can do to get our bridge, I'm willing to try. And so that's why I'm here. The the only bridge you should care about. At just about the center of our town of Royalton in the hamlet, Foxville, is a crucial connector and access point, the Foxanne Bridge, or Bridge Number 30. I am here today as a select board member of Royalton to once again remind community members of our ongoing struggles with this very important bridge. The squeaky hinge gets the grease, and I want to make sure we're doing everything possible for the many frustrated members of our community, and for our town in general so that we can move forward from responding to crumbling infrastructure and put our resources, time, and hearts into other projects that will benefit our town. We are stuck in many ways on this project, and we must get unstuck. Fox Sand Bridge is an historical steel through truss single span bridge built in 1928. It was sold a long time ago, and for a decade has been on a sort of watch list. Irene hit the bridge hard and washed away the abutments on one end. Luckily, that work got done. And the bridge continued to work hard, seeing about 300 prosties a day. The bridge was on an ongoing scheduled state inspection, but during COVID, the bridge missed an inspection, and it would have revealed the need for substantial work. In 2022, retrans and claimed that Coxsand Bridge was on their shortlist to be replaced and would be 100% covered by federal funding. In April 24, V Trans hired WSP to scope the project, and the engineers found such significant damage, they immediately called for exposure. And the steel guts at plates were so corroded, officials deemed it unsafe for all traffic, but even local traffic and even pedestrians, it was that unsafe. At that time, the folks who were primarily impacted remained calm and understanding despite the abrupt closing. VTrans told us we would have a temporary bridge by the fall and a new bridge to begin construction '5. The temporary bridge would be free and our town's contribution would be 5%. We all remained calm because, like all reasonable people, understand that problems like bridges take time to solve. We understood we would not have an instant bridge, and a four month wait for a temporary bridge seemed totally reasonable. However, in September 24, we received word that there was no temporary bridge for us, and that the temporary bridge would not be available until the '25, a full year after the closure. We were told the bridge we were to get was still in use because we had such a long span. There was only one in the state that could be used in our situation, and it was still in use, and we would simply have to wait. But we have a White River crossing our town. We have the White River, we have the railroad, we have the highway. At this point, the community members most impacted by this closure were upset. After months of the detour, they were seeing the tool that was taking on their daily lives, and their time, their finances, their vehicles. They saw a winter ahead of them, and no doubt began dreading their daily news. The board at this time felt our hands were tied and really that there were no other options. We did our best to assure the community that the state had us as a top priority. We had been assured that the delay was due to the bridge we needed being in use and that we were to see work for a temporary bridge begin in the 2025. Once again, we were asked to be patient. And once again, for the most part, we were understanding. And we went to work trying to solve what was in our control. We worked on improving our class three detour route. We installed signage and sent our police to patrol the road. We held meetings to provide updates and hear concerns. The fire department and the rescue squad considered their best options for that area of town in case of an emergency, and then we waited. And in June 2025, when we were expecting the installation of a temporary bridge to begin, we received word from the state of Vermont that the construction of a temporary bridge would be delayed until the '26. So furthermore, the total cost of the temporary bridge had been increased from $1,000,000 to $3,000,000 The town would be responsible for 5%. The permanent bridge would then be constructed in 2030, costing $6,000,000 and the TAG would need to contribute $600,000 And then the state give us another option. We could forego the temporary bridge and get a permanent bridge by 2028 for a smaller price tag. And on 08/13/2025, the board voted three to two to proceed directly to the installation of a permanent bridge because of the cost. The board called for a written guarantee from the state for this timeline because we were now so wary of the ongoing changes and the constantly changing numbers. When representative from B TRANS attended our November '5 select board meeting for a scoping report, it was suggested that Fox Stand would be on an aggressive schedule because we were bypassing the temporary bridge. Okay, imagine then our utter dismay to learn that Fox Stand was not on the books, which we learned from Senator White, thank you very much, for the next fiscal year. Because how can you instantly have a bridge in 'twenty eight if you don't have funding for it in 'twenty seven? Which, by the way, the estimated cost of a permanent bridge project is now 11,300,000 and our match now is $565,000 And so I'm outlining this history, and thank you for bearing with me on that, because I wanted to illustrate the continual changes and delays our town can work. And this has made it impossible for us to plan accordingly or provide reliable information to our community. And it is the reason I'm here in front of you now. And our community is at a pinch point with this bridge. The residents directly affected have accrued serious costs of mileage, vehicle upkeep, time. A once very popular and successful farm stand has shuttered its doors. A woman with a home business has lost too many clients due to the poor conditions and added time of the detour. And when so many of us are living right on the edge, those added burdens are not just an inconvenient expense. And they're real factors impacting our community members that could be the make or break realities and that will cause significant shifts in their lives and their well-being. And so just quickly, I have yet to mention the impact on emergency services for residents. An estimated 80 properties, but really like way more, 133 properties are at increased risk of delayed rescue and fire arrival due to the detour. There's not much more to say about that. And as someone with aging parents, I can immediately understand this concern that this has caused our residents. And then there's the nature of the detour. Back River Road is a winding, hilly, class three road along which are poor farms. These farms come with all the trappings of farm life, milk trucks coming and going, tractors spreading manure, wandering cows, slow dogs, fast chickens, people working hard. Hitching Post Farm has been a family operated farm for seventy five years and specializes in training horses. And so you add a few horses into this mix on the back road in spring as people are trying to get to work and are running late because they have a detour. And you can begin to see the very real problems that could arise. The lives of the people living on this detour route have been seriously negatively impacted, not just the commuters who are forced onto the detour. And their little Class III road should not have to bear the burden of a major Class II turnpike. Most importantly, it is this danger of travel on the detour route that concerns me. It is not a matter of if, but when really a fatal accident will occur. And lastly, everyone here before me has done such a good job of illustrating and giving you numbers of all the costs that go into our little towns and all the big costs in a little town. But the cost of the town for this continued closure is mounting. The ongoing additional costs down the road should also be considered. We are currently bearing the cost of mitigating the dangers on that detour road, added work for our road crew, extra sand, more gravel, more signs, more patrol. But we have not addressed what the excess use of the Jefferson Bridge is causing. That's the second bridge down the road from the Foxtown Bridge. So we're putting all that traffic on that bridge now. And the detour is taking a toll and there are significant costs that are accruing for our town. And undoubtedly, the Fox Sand Bridge closure will have cascading and compounding set of problems the longer it goes unresolved. It is of the utmost urgency to our town to have a functional bridge at this location. I very much appreciate your work on the transportation issues facing Vermonters. And I thank you so much for listening to me rant about Botsand Bridge, your favorite break. Thank you. Yes, thank you.

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank you very much. I'm still gonna give you no comfort for this, but there are presently 17 bridges in the state that have temp bridges over and barely bridges over them. There are another 18 that are closed. So there are 35 town bridges across the state that are somewhat linear. And not it. Misery doesn't like comfort very often, but this is a bug growing problem. And it's for any number of reasons. Some of them are flood, of them are conditioned in it, but 35 bridges is a fair number across the state.

[Unidentified AOT official/facilitator]: I'm wondering, should we introduce the members that are here, or do you want to jump into questions directly to individuals or Ed or myself or however you wanna think?

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: What's your pleasure? Questions we have couple for the group or a couple of comments myself, and I'm sure there are probably some other people here who would have some, but what would you like?

[Samantha Shannon]: Maybe we'll field questions and anyone who'd like to be recognized can raise a hand and remember to introduce yourself for the record. So I'd say I'm Samantha Shannon for the record and then I would say my job title because we're still online. Okay.

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: You wanna go around the room?

[Unidentified AOT official/facilitator]: Sure, let's start over here. Let's go this way.

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: Oh, okay. I'm For the record, Casey Tooth. Former legislator, but now town manager. We know who you are.

[Ryan Lockwood]: Ryan Lockwood, the account manager Williamstown.

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: Redmond Busan, select board member at Norwich.

[Carl (Road Commissioner, Plainfield)]: Carl Visits, former select board member of the now the Royal Commissioner in Plainfield. We lost a few members to that fire alarm. Thank you for hearing us out.

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: Are there other questions from committee?

[Nella Graham (Selectboard Member, Royalton)]: Well, I would just say.

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

[Nella Graham (Selectboard Member, Royalton)]: I would say

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I think I have the highest number per capita of the room of constituents. So I just wanted to say thank you to Springfield, Ludlow, Norwich, Bethel and Royalton for being here today. And I wanted to just make one note, which is earlier in the session, the House passed the transportation bill, we passed the transportation bill, the budget, and it's in the Finance Committee, and it's going to go to appropriations. Throughout that process were proposed. By the Agency of Transportation a project list and I did introduce an amendment in committee to prioritize the Box Stand Bridge being fully funded in 2027 and also a garage and reading. Ultimately, withdrew that amendment and it did not move forward. So I wanted to give that update that it's not in the way that we had imagined it being funded in the budget. And I think that's because we have a project prioritization process that we spend a lot of time talking about if it's functioning properly, but we don't want to have individual members introduce their own individual projects to be added, is kind of the lesson I learned through that process. But I did just want to say that it's extremely helpful to have folks be such compelling advocates for their projects, because it's often once something goes wrong that we actually hear about it. So appreciate when you see things in the distance, or when they become problems, bringing them to our attention. Because then we can advocate. He was humble in not saying he's the Secretary of the Transportation of AOT, but it's always helpful when we can advocate to the Secretary and others about those specific projects. I just wanted to say thank you for that. At

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: this point, because I don't see fans around, I'm going to do a pitch from the Senate point of view. A lot of the issues that you brought up, we dealt with in the T Bill, and we put language in about the purchase and use tax coming back. We have put a proposal on local option taxes in. We have a proposal that dealt with vehicle miles, which was meant to deal with the decline in the gas tax. It's not additive, but so many of the issues, and I'd encourage you all to take a look at what we did, thought about that. And I'm gonna hold this up. This is a chart that shows from the state about roads, poor, very poor, fair condition and good condition. And we get these charts and these estimates, and the agency of transportation is really good about speaking about the state system and where we're headed if we don't invest money and where we are. I applied communities like Norristown that did the study to produce the numbers to tell us what's happening with their roads. But I would ask that the league is help us going forward, figure out how we can collect that data for local communities. Because if we can't collect that data for local communities, it's hard for us as your representatives and senators to advocate for you. And the league would seem to me a great place to bring together the ideas on how to collect the information about your communities collectively, so we can say to our colleagues in the legislature, This is what the communities need to keep up. And so that would be my ask of you going forward. This year, we're getting a little late for it, but in another year, that is vital information that we need. And you've got some communities that have done that work, but there's no place it gets collected all in one place.

[Unidentified House Transportation Chair]: I appreciate the chance to add a few pieces. Thank you all for coming and for participating. It's my first session as a chair of transportation, and we made maybe some small steps last year. But probably the biggest thing that we have been able to accomplish is transportation funding is now what wasn't in the top 10 stories in the pre, discussions of the legislature for this biennium wasn't even considered a top 10. Obviously education and healthcare eat up the lion's share of the money and continue to. But transportation has probably made its way into the top five most discussed in the building. Unanimously, the House, I wanted to mention about the T bill, we did put an effort in to try to divert more money or really return local option tax money back to towns in terms of town aid and town structure, and that was stripped. It's also been reintroduced in another version in the Senate, and that has not made it through. But I would say that it is probably frustrating to me, as trying to represent a town that has bridge problems and has all kinds of other thieves, that even though there were those major floods back to back years, and there was a huge talk about climate resiliency, and there was a huge talk about helping the towns with their culverts and upgrading in size, this T bill is the only bill that has made it to the level of trying to actually put money back into town highways and town structures, and it's still not there to the finish line yet. And I would certainly echo the Senator's efforts to continue to advocate that this is the only spot that there has been a large effort to try to put money back there, and we need it to get to the finish line to help our towns on anything that you can do today and the rest of the time, continue to put pressure on the finance committees in the Senate and then in the conference committee that it will happen to keep this provision, to get pilot money back the towns where it came from. I mean, sorry, the local option tax money back into the towns after paying the pilot funds back to them where it came from, and they need that help. And there is no other been no other vehicle that's come forward to help. I heard Plainfield today. They were at the Heinzburg, as we've heard a lot about in our committee, a lot of towns, but there hasn't been any help that's come back. There's been a huge focus on funding the issues facing the T fund, and there's been a lot of great work on that and step by step, and there's more coming, but that doesn't fix any of the relationship and the issues of the towns. That does not, by any means fixing this tire transportation funding does not in any way directly help increase in the towns. There is still only a statutory requirement that we did put an escalator on. That still needs to be addressed, but we need to fix the towns and fix the T funding, which is making step progress. But that does not automatically help what you're for. And I would say that unanimously across the committee, we supported that effort. And I believe that's pretty unanimous on the other side, but we have to convince the rest of the building. And I appreciate your efforts to do that.

[Senator Richard Westman (Chair)]: With that, unless there's I would thank you all for coming, and this has been great.