 But that's that long term thinking all right. We are now live so welcome back you are in the Vermont house transportation committee and it is Thursday, March, 18th, 11 o'clock and we have some guests in today that I'm looking forward to hearing from and I'm trying to find my list of the names. Quite a few. So we're going to hear probably for the next hour and hour and a half before lunch on AOT equity and inclusion programming. This is a subject that has come up in a variety of ways. How is transportation looking at Equity in the way that we program the way that we look at look at things of mobility and much like we did with complete streets. It starts to create a View of where and how you look at whether it's project or anything that we do. So we've asked for Michelle and others to come in and talk to us about that. So welcome. All that's in here right now. I think we have definitely our members are here. And with that, unless anybody has any questions. Why don't we let them get started and introduce yourself as Thank you very much, Madam chair, Michelle boom power and the director of policy planning and intermodal development for the agency of transportation. We appreciate the introduction and we're very excited to talk to the committee about this topic here with me today. I have Susana Davis who's the executive director of racial equity and the chair of the governor's task force on racial equity and she works with the agency of administration. And you will also be hearing from Laurie Valburn, our chief of civil rights and labor compliance, Christine Hetzel, our organizational development director, one in Manoli, our commissioner of motor vehicles, Wayne Gamal, our finance and administration division director and and Gamal, our highway division director and It's We have a PowerPoint that we're going to share with you and We're going to start with opening remarks from Susanna talking about things at the state level and how the agency will be fitting into that framework as well. So with that, Susana. Thank you, Michelle. One of the F everyone Susana Davis racial equity director I'm gonna I'm going to try to keep it brief because I think the bulk of what you want to hear is going to come from our AOT friends, but I just wanted to talk a little bit about What we're doing at the state level, specifically how we're framing equity in a way that makes sense, not only for this agency, but but statewide. So I'll talk a little bit about how we're incorporating racial equity and really all forms of equity into the strategic planning process, which has Certainly taken us time, but it's worth it. Right. Because when we talk about equity, what we see in in the United States is inequity built into so many of our systems that it seems it feels inextricably linked to every aspect of our daily lives. And so the remedies have to be inextricably linked to all aspects of our daily lives. And so you can cut up, you know, the approach to racial equity in so many different ways, but the way that I have found useful Is to look at it in three main buckets. First is how we are as an employer. So what work environment. Are we creating that makes SOV staff not only feel safe and have proper Opportunities for advancement and protection as employees, but also cultivating a culture in an environment that is equitable. So how we are as an employee to an employer. How are our systems set up and I'll come back to that in a moment. And then third is how we are as a provider of services. So how are we are we and how are we interacting with the public And that middle piece. What are our systems like kind of cuts across the other two because when we think about remedies for inequity. There are different ways you could approach it. You can do sort of adaptive or transformative change that really gets at the core of the issue. Or you can just kind of do technical changes, you know, piecemeal things here and there that don't really get at root causes. And so that third bucket of what are our systems like really forces us to ask ourselves, are we making systems change or just technical change. And I'll give you one example of that. If we notice that we are underrepresented in, let's say, staff of color. One easy thing that a lot of organizations will do is say, well, let's just hire a bunch of brown people. Let's get, I don't know, 22 ground people in next year and sure you could do that. But that's not really getting at what is it about your hiring system and your normal recruitment and retention system that makes the numbers so imbalanced in the first place. So analyzing the way that we traditionally do business rather than just having a one time workaround is really key to making sure that we're building equity into our work. So that's a major part of the approach that was that we're taking as a state and that's something that we're trying to apply as uniformly as possible across agencies while also allowing for the different nuances of each agency. We know that health policy is different than tax policy. And so being able to adapt for the needs of every agency is key. One of the things that's a little bit more unique about AOT is that it has a lot of federal requirements that it has to comply with. And a lot of those federal requirements do have to do with equity. And so we have found that AOT tends to be a little bit further along than other agencies when it comes to certain equity protections, largely because of that need for compliance with federal regulations. So a lot of the work that AOT has done around equity is informed by that. And therefore we're excited to be using that as a model for a lot of our other agencies, things like language access, things like close adherence to the Civil Rights Act, which you're going to hear about, I think, Lori. So it's exciting to see that work. But we also recognize that we're not done. The thing about AOT is that it is really a culmination of a lot of different types of infrastructure. The spatial infrastructure, the social infrastructure, and the service infrastructure. All of that is wrapped up into AOT, perhaps different than some of our other agencies. And so for that reason, where we live plays a big role in this. So you can't talk about transit without also talking about housing. Where is housing concentrated for different ethnic and other social demographics? How far do people have to commute to work? Do you live in an area that is served by public transit? If not, why not? You can't talk about transit without talking about things like broadband, job opportunities, where people live and where people go is often shaped by what schools or jobs they need to go to. And so to a large extent, this work really has to lean on other agencies and departments to set up solid systems so that people can not only get to where they need to go on clear, clean, safe roads, but also have reason to be going where they're going and ensure that those outcomes are all equitable. Are we putting up superhighways in neighborhoods that are disproportionately people of color? Are we putting parks and green spaces in areas that are predominantly affluent or largely white? Are we bulldozing through the ancestral cemeteries of indigenous people just because a neighborhood wants a shortcut to get to the highway? These are all things that we have to take into consideration. These are all some of the equity issues that we face in transit, not just here, but nationally. The last thing that I want to add is some of the other things that we've done at the statewide level is we've created a network of equity liaisons. That is the sort of point person in every agency or department who's going to have eyes and ears on equity issues in their department. This is a cohort of people who are going to come together on a regular basis, share strategies, intel, and just helps us to identify any emerging trends or patterns that are happening across the agency. It's something that we've been intending to do for a while, because I think everyone acknowledges that equity work can't live in one agency or one office or one person. It's got to be actively pursued across the enterprise. And for that reason, having people deployed in every agency who are focused on that is really key. And of course, AOP has an entire civil rights division. And, you know, so again, they're a little further along than some other agencies, but the equity liaison program is one way that we're building that strong net and that network. Another thing that we've done is to mandate the use of EIAs, that's equity impact assessment. And the purpose of the EIA, you may have already heard about it and I understand the legislature is creating some form of that itself. It's essentially a questionnaire that accompanies all budget and policy asks that come from the executive agencies. The purpose of it is to ensure that we're asking ourselves a standard set of questions to determine whether the policy or budget ask that we're proposing is going to create any disparities that are foreseeable or unintended. It ensures that the benefits and the burdens of our proposals are being equitably distributed. It helps us with our planning and helps us to understand what kinds of provisions we need to build in. I'll give you an example. We have a lot of programs where we say to members of the public, hey, you have seven days to apply. You can apply online. And then half the time we say, well, did anybody translate this into Vermont's 10 most commonly spoken languages? And then we say, oh, no, we didn't. And by the time we get it done, the seven days have passed. The application deadline is now passed. And so there's a weird gray area between, are we accepting late applications? It was kind of our fault. So the EIA is one way to foresee and prevent that because it asks specific questions like, have you consulted members of the community on this proposal? If so, do those members of the community include multilingual people? Are you providing public facing materials? If so, have or will those materials be translated into which languages? Why or why not? So some of those things help us to avoid racial disparities. Another example is our tobacco 21 legislation, which was recently passed but does not contain a religious exemption, which has created a racial disparity for Abinac people because now minors in that community are unable to possess something that's considered a sacred plant used in rituals like purification and conveyance of prayers. If we had used an EIA when we passed that bill, we would have probably discovered that disparity and created a religious exemption similar to what we do with communion wine for minors who are Catholic. So in that way, being able to talk to ourselves that set of questions and doing so uniformly across the enterprise ensures that our policymaking going forward really incorporates equity. I'm going to stop there. That's a little bit of what we're doing at the broad enterprise level and I'll turn it over to our AOT folks to speak more specifically about their work. Thank you. Thank you, Suzanne. It's always a pleasure to hear and I take notes as fast as I can because what you say is so true. So something, you know, we just basically, we don't know what we don't know and having somebody that around to help to point it out is extraordinarily important. I'm going to still call you representative boom hour. Michelle, would you like to go? Yeah, so what we're going to do is we have a PowerPoint presentation and I'm going to drive that and Lori is going to kick us off. So I'm going to share my screen. All right. There we go. Thanks very, very much, Michelle. And thank you, Madam Chair, and the rest of the representatives for inviting us in today to talk on this topic. It's near and dear to my heart. My name is Lori Valburn. I had the pleasure of coming in and meeting with you for a presentation a couple of months ago about some of the programming. I serve as the agency of transportation civil rights chief and it's a position I've held for many years actually since 1997. But so much of everything that we've been doing at AOT and we have had the additional incentives that Susanna referred to since part of our funding is tied into ensuring that we are compliant with non-discrimination laws with laws that promote equal employment opportunity, equal economic opportunity. We've tried to really use that not just to check off boxes and and just meet the basics of our federal assurances, but to really breathe some life into it. But it has been a challenge in many instances. We're so grateful to Susanna's leadership and guidance in this area right now is a particularly exciting time. We all have a growing awareness of the impact that the work that we do and the decisions that are made in state government, the impact that it has on communities and the impact that it has on the environment and everything else that we're doing so being able to look at everything through an equity lens while it's not new to us. We are approaching this with great enthusiasm and we're really excited to be able to start using all of these different tools that you'll be hearing about today. I'm going to try to provide some of the historical perspective and the current state of what we're already doing since we have fortunately been at this for a long time. So I wanted to start with our Title VI program because it's something that really forms the umbrella for all of our civil rights and non-discrimination work that we do. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided us with requirements with respect to ensuring that all of the services and benefits that we're providing to state within the state of Vermont, not just within our workforce and not just with our sub-recipients, but to all Vermonters and everybody who visits our state that we're doing so in a way that is non-discriminatory. And so that is something that we are always trying to take a look at and figure out what does this really mean. Every year Secretary Flynn signs off on a revised policy statement for Title VI. We provide assurances to our federal funding partners that we're going to make sure that we're not engaging in any forms of non-discrimination. But that's a lot more complex than it might appear. And so we try to ensure that we're looking at all of the work that we do in all the different parts of our organization through that equity lens. We now have the tool that Susanna referred to, the equity impact assessment tool, which helps guide us through that process. But for many years we have tried to ensure that we are looking at all different parts of our organization. And part of the way that we do that is that we have Title VI liaisons. Right now we have 29 of them. They sprinkled across our organization. They're the ambassadors within their workplace, but also in the interactions with the public. And so last year we were able to provide them with some comprehensive training. We're going to revisit that this year as well. We also have, for many years, developed and disseminated lots of limited English proficiency resources and links for a variety of translation services, whether it's at a public participation meeting, the DMV counter or on our website. Right, so we're already making progress in this regard, and we know that we've got lots of opportunities now to actually take it to the next level that you'll be hearing about in a little while. So next slide please. So I wanted to quickly talk about a few and revisit a few of the different programs that we have been implementing with the support funding and encouragement of our federal funding partners. I spoke about our employment diversity and highway construction program when I visited with you in January and this is an affirmative action program that is a requirement as a condition of our receipt of federal funding from federal highway. The whole goal of this program is to ensure that we're removing barriers for particularly nontraditional folks, but particularly women and people of color to be able to enter an advance in the highway construction industry. And so over the years we've been able to use this funding in order to be able to do a very robust recruitment and placement of women and people of color. In our highway construction workforce, working on projects around the state of Vermont, every single construction season, many of the people who entered the industry through this program have stayed in the industry, they have continued to build careers in advance and some of them are now project superintendents, they're four men and four women, etc. We also use some of the funding in order to provide some other skill based training as well as CDL training. It's a particularly effective program. We take a snapshot of this highway construction workforce every year as part of our reporting responsibilities to federal highway and the US Department of Labor. And we're able to see and measure the progress, not just in terms of numbers of people that are coming in and diversifying the workforce but actually are moving up into skilled and semi skill positions as well as leadership positions within the highway construction workforce. So, next slide please. Another one of the affirmative action programs that's been particularly successful in helping to ensure equal economic opportunity with the hundreds of millions of dollars that we bring into the state each year through our organization is our Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program and it's specifically designed to ensure that firms that are owned and controlled by women and by people of color are going to be able to have a level playing field so that they can be able to participate on the many connecting and procurement opportunities that our agency has as a result of all of the federal funding that we receive. So this is a program that is heavily regulated by US Department of Transportation. It is a certification program and our goal in administering the program is not just to get people to sign up for the program and then expect that they're on their own. We provide a lot of business development resources, networking opportunities, marketing opportunities, training opportunities etc. And we collaborate very closely with other federal and state agencies to try to really promote women and minority owned businesses to be successful particularly in government contracting. Next slide please. In general, I feel very, very grateful that we have tried to infuse an equity perspective inclusion and diversity into all of the work that we're doing at the agency of transportation in many different ways. I had indicated when I last met with you that every single state DOT Department of Transportation is required to have a civil rights section. And that's been a federal law since the 1970s. Some of my counterparts at other state departments of transportation are very, very limited in terms of the scope of the work that they do. It's exclusively focused either on external or highway construction industry, and it's something that they're not given the opportunity to actually work across the enterprise. Here at in Vermont, I've been very, very fortunate to have strong leadership support to make good use of the team of folks that I get to work with so that we're able to use some of those resources in order to really implement a lot of diversity inclusion and equity practices within our own workforce. So for the last 10 or 11 years, my team has actually spearheaded our hiring and recruitment and onboarding process and being able to mainstream civil rights into those processes as well as working closely with our training and employee development activities gives us the opportunity to be able to provide our employees with the tools that they need with the awareness that they need so that we are hopefully being a good role model for the rest of state government. We have had the opportunity as well to provide training, not just within our internal workforce, but also with our contractors and our other sub recipients, including public transits, the towns and municipalities. So next slide please. Some of the different things that we've been doing in order to try to promote an inclusive work environment at our agency and we've seen some wonderful results. Our leadership has supported a very proactive interview and hiring process. For example, members of my team or our human resources staff sit on interview panels. We also have been identifying as mandatory interviews for any eligible candidates for groups that have been historically underrepresented in our workforce. And we also have been given the opportunity to serve on or take the lead on a number of different councils, task forces and teams. That includes the governor's workforce of equity and diversity council, it includes certain task forces. We have tried to share some of the things that we're doing in the best practices, but also trying to create a network so that we have an opportunity to explore where there are opportunities for us to be able to start implementing new ways and approaches of doing things. So, with that, I'm going to turn things over. I believe, unless there's any questions, I wanted to turn things over to Christine Hetzel. Thank you, Lori. I do see a hand up representative white. Thank you Madam Chair. If this is an appropriate time to ask a question about the LEP work that you do. Thank you. I was just wondering, do you have any assessment of the translated materials, you know what percentage we have of translated materials compared to what isn't translated at the moment. It's a great question representative white. So, and I think that Commissioner Manoli is going to also be speaking to some of the, you know, our DMV has taken the lead on translating a lot of their materials, and that's been done in close collaboration with the committee on on immigrants and refugees as well as the Association of Africans living in Vermont. And so there has been a fair amount of research that's been done on that. And I believe that, you know, we continue to use as much data as we can collect either Census Bureau data or otherwise. There's a fair amount of mapping of both limited English proficiency as well as linguistically, linguistically isolated communities. Some of that is in our title six plans. So we're always trying to do the analysis and figure out which languages are most needed to stay current with that because it's a never moving target, but I believe Commissioner Manoli is also going to speak to some of that. Thank you. Sure. Representative representative McCoy. Do you want to hold questions to the end, chair. If it's for Laurie or what she just presented it might be appropriate so that we don't forget later. Okay, so thank you. And one of the slides you had civil rights training to agencies contractors sub recipients, public transit towns and municipalities is that training free for those entities. And the second question is, is there public, like a PR campaign to let the public transit agencies towns and municipalities know that this training is available. So wonderful questions representative McCoy so thank you. So we all of the training that my team provides is completely free of charge. That's true with respect to all of the training that we've been providing over the years to our contractor workforce every winter. We provide contractor training. That's pretty well attended this year was no exception we just had to move it into the virtual space. It actually resulted in even more people attending. So we were glad to be able to offer that as well as recording it for those who couldn't attend. So with respect to the public transits we've been working with our public transit section to identify the greatest needs and to roll out that training and so we started just before the pandemic hit with training up in the northeast kingdom to our CT. And we delivered three different sessions to that public transit as well as all the volunteers that work for that transit. It was really well received you know we take we do evaluations for all of our training because we wanted to get the feedback and continuously through. So we are going to be hopefully developing and delivering that training in a virtual format to the other public transits. I think that it's really well needed and that training focused on everything from unconscious bias training disability and customer service and with a civil rights emphasis on that. So we're really pleased to be able to provide that training and hopefully you know we have a wonderful public transit section led by Ross McDonald and his team. They're really responsive and aware of any feedback that comes in from the community. My team gets involved anytime that there's any form of a concern or complaint that comes that's in any way civil rights related. And so it's been really helpful when we deliver when we develop the training for the public transits we made sure to actually work with the public transit team at our agency. As well as the public transit that we were going to be delivering to their management to really identify what are some of the issues and the needs that we needed to focus on. So that's what we're hoping to be able to develop and deliver for the rest of the rest of the state as well. So as far as towns and municipalities do you use the various district agent departments like I'm in district three. Do you use those individuals to get the information out to the various towns and municipalities that these trainings are available. Do you use Vermont leagues of cities and towns, you know specific to the towns and municipalities if this is a free free of charge program. I'm just wondering how towns and municipalities can comply. If they don't know the program exists. I think that we need to figure out ways to get the word out there. So most of the training that we've helped with delivering for to our towns and municipalities has been through our municipal assistance program used to be the municipal assistance bureau. So it's our recent the recipients of some of the grants that our agency is putting out there. But we also as you'll be hearing from Christine Hetzel. We have a local roads program and so we provide training to the towns and municipalities through that as well. And I think that we've been very mindful, particularly in recent years of a compelling need to include workplace civility and inclusivity in all of that training so I think that the pandemic has given us a growing awareness of both some barriers as well as some opportunities that we have. And even though this type of training is something that for many years I insisted had to be in person training because it's behavioral type of awareness. I have, I think, been one over by the fact that virtual training is something that we're able to deliver to an even larger group of folks, and that there are ways to keep people engaged in the training and also to record it so that it can be made available to even larger numbers of folks so that's the direction that we're going in, and it's a work in progress so we'll definitely be continuing to build on that progress over 2021. Okay, thank you so much appreciate you. Thank you member. Anybody to switch to, we're going to hear from Christine, we have Commissioner Manoli, and is there anyone else I want to make sure we get it in the timeframe. I think that's the manager, everybody that came today has a slide so we'll try and keep it moving along. Okay, all right because it. At least until we'll go probably till noon. Committee, I think we've had some good time off I know that there's a there's an event at launch today that actually has Joseph's a colleague going to that many of us want to make sure we go attend as well. All right, I'm gonna stop talking and let you go. Hello for the record my name is Christine Hetzel and I'm the organizational development director for the agency of transportation. And so in my role I oversee the learning and development technical training, operational health and safety for the agency of transportation as well as oversee municipal training through the Vermont local roads program. And so the VTTC is responsible to create this learning culture of the agency. And Madam chairs you were mentioning this morning, when we talk about diversity inclusivity, we really are all individually as an organization and as a culture learning, and we need to learn more every day, as we evolve in our culture. And it really starts at the top of leadership with the commitment that our leaders have, not only from a federal requirement, but in their belief system of modeling civility and inclusion. We do a lot of manager and supervisor training, there are clear expectations and standards set to create this inclusive environment, and it's really about our entire employee lifecycle. As Laurie had mentioned, starting with the way that we recruit, how we onboard people, every employee line staff supervisor manager in their annual performance evaluation has these expectations of civility and inclusion, as well as exit interview process in which we're assessing how well did we do, did the person feel welcomed and comfortable, so that we can identify any trends and make course corrections. Next slide please. I'm going to go through this quickly. We did testify earlier this year about the, the variety of programs that we offer to employees. One more slide over. So we have, sorry, we're going the other way. It's the second VTTC slide and it's talking about our programming. We have leadership training, emerging leader training. We train people on interviewing and hiring best practices, doing strength-based coaching and development, as well as a lot of individual support in job shadowing, rotation programs, decentralized reallocation. And this is all about making an inclusive environment in which people can be individuals and have individual skill sets and create career pathways. In addition to the variety of training that we have, we also have other supporting programs, such as the way that we contract with vendors to make sure that they understand our culture of inclusivity. The way that we, in partnership with Lori's team, do competency mapping with interview groups, so that we're not just checking a box and we're not just sliding people up the process, but really thinking about how do we embrace diversity, how do we ensure that the right skill set meets the job requirements and maybe take a little bit broader view, not be quite so cookie cutter in the way that we move people through our system. And then finally we have strategic workforce committees that feed from our strategic workforce plan that really give employees a chance to kind of share, how are we doing, what's working, what's not working, so that we can be much more adaptive. That was a very quick overview, but in the interest of time, I'll take any questions you may have. Representative White. Representative White, excuse me. Thanks Madam Chair. So, I know in my workplace we had to pause some of these trainings due to our former President Donald Trump's executive order on these styles of implicit bias trainings, I'm wondering if you could speak to, if that had an impact on these trainings. I'm going to go ahead and answer the question but Lori, I'll ask you also to chime in. From my perspective, this is a part of our culture, and is embedded into every training that we have there is a civil rights theme, and every development and technical and safety training that we have so we did not change. Lori, do you want to correct me at all. Not a correction at all you're absolutely right Christine and in fact Susanna provided guidance to all state agencies and departments, as soon as the original executive order that you're referring to Representative White came out back in September. And Susanna kept us informed of the progress of various litigation concerning that right up until the time that the Biden administration was sworn in, and I believe on the very first day of the administration. They actually repealed the entire thing so the guidance that we got for Susanna we shared with our federal funding partners and the decision was made that as long as we did not charge any of our time or expenses to any of our federal funds that we could continue to deliver the exact same training with the exact same content and that's exactly what we did throughout the fall and into January. So, it was a huge relief though to be able to see that repealed, and, and we're moving forward. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer that. Oh, I bet this is commissioner. I think this is commissioner Manoli are you up. We're not hearing you. I'm having difficulty finding my video and mute button so good morning chair lamb fair and honorable members of the committee. For the record one to Manoli commissioner of the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles. So there's, I will be fairly brief, and, and the reason why I'm saying that is because I've had the opportunity for the past two years to share with this committee as we've developed many of the items that you see on the slide. And just for a moment go back to a point that Susanna talked about when she said we have to focus on and the employee the systems and providers of services. That's our role that state government. And I think I don't think I think Lori and and Christine have really done a great presentation talking about the investment with our employees are hiring process. We're maintaining the culture, the environment that we are trying to create as an agency. And we also talked about systems. You know and I think and Susanna really brought up the, the budget process and, and that policy that we started engaging in and what I'd like to say to the committee is that that's a part of our normal conversation, even though it is not been totally official we look at our processes and our policies. And, you know, even through the introduction of this in the in the past couple of years you start asking yourself different operational questions. And so that is embedded into some of the work that we're doing but her most in the piece that I really want to bring out and you look at the work in the slideshow that's in front of you from DMV. The provider of service. We serve every Vermont are in one way or another at some point in their, in their life. And so, in that, I will, you know, you'll, you'll know the work that we did on our website and the translations and the other tip that we've done with the Vermont US Committee on refugees. We have talked about our exams and the languages and our residency certification. So, and if we could go to the next slide, please. We've, we've shared our successes with you on all of the, the changes that we continue that we've made in our branch offices and that we continue to do our roadside interactions, especially with our commercial vehicle operations. You know, we have found alternative ways of communicating and ensuring that we have interpretive services on the road because that is really very important. You know, our general neutral option available for drivers licenses and the policies that we've changed around that have been significant. And, and also recently, and I look at as a partnership with migrant justice in the last year, we modified our license forms to clarify that applicants for a driver privilege card, which is a specific license and application card that was developed in partnership with the legislature are not required to answer questions about citizenship and just taking and having a conversation and looking at that and looking at the application. The first question was all about your citizenship and the driver privilege questions, where you don't have to prove that, you know, we're sort of in smaller font and down below, and we just, we adjusted the form. And we worked with, you know, Vermonters who use the form to just make that clear. The other point I into if I may Madame chair to representative whites question. So, I'm going to give you some rough numbers. And, and I'd be happy to have a follow up conversation. But in the last in 2020, we had in specific languages. I'm doing the math very very quickly for license applications, approximately 200 that were downloaded. For non driver, excuse me 250 for non driver. We had approximately 50. And so, and please remember even though our book of businesses to issue your driver's license one of our book of businesses, but we are also your state entity that issues identification. We live in a society that you know you have to have a photo ID. And that's really what the non driver ideas. We are the department that that provides that service to all of your constituents. And interestingly, in the last seven days, I'm just quickly going to share with you I won't get into all of the languages, but I will tell you 123456 different languages. Average is five applications downloaded. And for residency documents, which is a part of your new identification. We are looking at about five that are occurring the justice share with you again. And that to me this is a success in the last 12 months we've issued we've had permits. The two common. We had 201 permits in Spanish 18 in French. And then we have Arabic and Nepali are the other common ones. And one more piece of data and then I'll answer questions. The use of interpreters for road test. We are from when we went live in October of 2020. We have had 53. We test scheduled and we had 13 with a non show. And I will tell you right now and or COVID, even with our scheduling system, we have a we still are seeing a high number of no shows, and I'm not sure if that's because of COVID and access our services and other ways, or if they've just made a decision because of COVID not to come in and do business in person. So I talked very fast and I thank you for the opportunity are there questions. Let's get a good view from from you, Commissioner, many times during the year this is, you know, some of the other testimony is now recalling whether it's from our committee or in other places, hearing some of the good, good work I see representative here and is up. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to all the presenters I've, it's, it was the best thing ever. When I heard Susanna and Susanna thank you for all of your incredible work across Vermont but when I heard you say, actually, it's doing pretty well in many ways that that was just super refreshing and it's also really helpful to hear about the three buckets, because I hadn't, I hadn't been thinking about it as comprehensively. I have a few questions which is, and maybe, if there are a lot more presenters I could hold off till later but one question is, I really see. I love seeing the women, the BIPOC, you know, the language access. The other parts to me that are part of the equity conversation in terms of who are we not necessarily thinking about because they aren't at the table all the time are folks who don't have, you know, may not have that much money, and then folks who are able to, and I think that I haven't quite heard as much on the differently abled and on the economic piece through the presentation thus far maybe you'll touch on it later, and I'll hold the rest of my questions until later. Thank you. Representative Burke, do you have something? I know we've got three more if I'm counting right. I don't need to, I was going to ask about the, you know, ADA issues as well, so differently abled. So I don't need to ask. Representative Stevens asked the question. All right. Madam Chair, Michelle here. So, Directors Gamal, Ann and Wayne has a technical issue at their home and so they are not going to be able to stay with us so I'm just going to go through the rest of the slides and then we'll leave a couple minutes for questions I'm hoping will answer some of the questions that just arose. Okay, I did have, I did lose our power in our house yesterday, but luckily not I got was able to get it back before floor. Yes. So, a few slides on what's next and how we're going to continue to advance. You know, I think we really laid the groundwork on all the great things we're doing. And this is honest that there's more that can be done and more that needs to be done. And so, you know, we're bringing our story out into the public venue a bit more communicating with legislative committees. We're expanding our equity impact leadership committee to ensure broad participation within our agency, engaging with our federal partners, both at the US DOT level but also through our transportation DOT transportation networks at the national and New England level related to best practices. AASHTO actually set a framework for equity and inclusion which Susanna actually contributed to substantially and that was adopted this spring by AASHTO this winter I should say. So we'll be continuing to work at that level. And then working at the state and local level we talked about providing training for municipalities, working with other state agencies who are working on the spectrum of implementation. And then, you know, also working with our consulting community, our regional planning commission partners who are helping us to plan for projects within communities. So our engaging the public guidance will be already includes how we go about enhancing our outreach to folks that are typically underrepresented and to talk about Representative Stevan's comment. We have historically where we know that we have folks who might want to participate in our public meetings provided childcare. We try to be very sensitive to when and how we offer our public participation relative to multiple opportunities if a warranted for folks who might be working during the day or in the evening. I think now that we've gone to virtual public participation, we are much more readily able to transmit the information out into the community in ways that are more accessible. And historically we've also gone door to door, and you know, put flyers on doors so that people who may not have access to the internet know that there's a meeting coming up or translated those notices into different ways. So, we're going to continue that we're going to revise our public guidance document our outreach document. We are going to be continuing to adapt our trainings and expanding our use of interpreters as the commissioner pointed out. And then, what do we do about our projects, you know, it was mentioned earlier that our projects impact everybody in their day to day life whether you're driving about and have to get through our construction sites, or a project is impacting our community and so through our project selection and prioritization process, we're going to have a screening tool that will be part of what our regional planning commission partners under the transportation funding initiative will be helping to evaluate our projects at the very earliest conception stage and making sure that we are identifying underrepresented members of our communities who need to be engaged in these projects and making sure we secure their input and then in later stages when the projects are going to be in construction and going to be impacting day to day activities we've mentioned a few here on the screen, we're going to be making sure that the outreach that occurs for those communities is able to be conducted in an inclusive and a way that meets the needs of the folks that are out there. We also will be looking at our future contracts and making sure that our contracting community have been, you know, made aware of requirements for how they communicate with the folks that we're building projects nearby. And then I believe this is my final slide. So, in addition to our leadership committee, we'll have a technical advisory committee who will be reviewing all of our policies procedures, practices trainings to make sure that we have this equity lens included will be undertaken an inventory of current and equity programs and practices and including a gap analysis to understand where and how we need to implement the equity impact assessment tool or similar type framework for all of our efforts. And then we will develop an equity work plan as a result of that gap analysis, and, you know, a dashboard so that we can measure progress, and then, you know, move forward with the implementation of that equity plan. And that's my last slide. I see Ann and Wayne are back so they can assist with questions if there are questions. Thank you. Thank you. It was really important for us to hear this now, especially when, you know, whether it's constituents or we're all considering how to, how do we look at the projects themselves I think the agency has has come light years in the last 10 years around a lot of this into the actual workplace and development of employees and the service perspective of meeting Vermonner. And now we're starting to see that work plan of like how do we, how do we couch our lens of the actual projects that we're doing. And I think this is what we're training at the municipal level and the regional planning and the tax having them see projects or in a way that, you know, maybe we wouldn't have recognized. Yeah, I think a great, a great example is Jen Delabrie and I were working on the Amtrak to Burlington project and where's the train going to be stored and one of the potential locations was out in the north end of Burlington and, you know, there was a public meeting and we hired a couple of different language translators to participate in that meeting with us so that in the event there were questions from those community members that, you know, we could answer them and so it's, you know, becoming part of our regular activities that was about 18 months ago. Excellent Wayne and Anne did you have anything I know that you had some trouble on your end to get through but I just want to apologize to everyone for that I literally watched the bucket truck pull up to the pole next to the house, the guy go up and then the shut off. So I went outside and I said, did you just disconnect us and they said yeah and I said can you get us back on. We're kind of doing something to finish. So he connected us back up but I don't know when it's going to go off again we'll see. And I'm so I'm sorry about that. I just wanted everybody to know I'm sure Michelle covered it for us but we are working with all of our federal partners are. We have a tri state group main in Hampshire main we work very closely with them to share local perspectives to and best practices. I don't know if Michelle you mentioned it but Susanna helped us on a huge. I thought it was a great win for that for the state of Vermont where hash toe was doing a national resolution and and Susanna was able to write a piece of that and that was adopted into the language at one in front of everybody to vote on and then it was nationally voted in so that was awesome. So that was a great win for Susanna and AOT as well the rest of the state. We're just trying to learn as much as we possibly can there's some agencies that have some knowledge and skills that we don't. So we're meeting with them. We have some knowledge and skills that some of them don't we're sharing what we know. And it's just a it's a big partnership where we can learn from each other and expand and grow. Thank you for taking the time similar thing happened to me yesterday to power went off I thought did we not pay the bill what and then three doors tell the street same thing can but but I was able to get reconnected in time for floor. Let's have representative Stevens have a question and then that should end it for lunch. I know that were some of us are wanted we're going to have to jump over. Some of us are going to go to that lunch meeting. That that other agency people are presenting it. Thank you chair and thank you chair and I guess I have a few different questions I mean I think the work you guys are doing is great. The outreach you're doing is great. And maybe I'll just throw all my questions out there and hopefully we can resume this conversation after we've got the T bill passed over the floor. But at some point I'd love to know you know how you're working with RPCs and how you're also working with you you know Vermonters with disabilities you know with with you know sort of the the folks that might already be talking to the folks that we may not have historically always spoken with and then you know measurements measurements measurements. Sorry. I would love to know. You know as we think about next year. And how do we set goals like how do we track how we're doing with this because you guys just presented so much great information. And it'd be great if if we could think about how we're seeing that we're going from like zero to 100. No need to respond because I'll follow up later and I just want to say hopefully also chair. You know a few of us have been working on, you know some language that perhaps we can talk about for the DMV bill with regards to sort of having a bigger conversation about what does equity mean and how do we do that thoughtfully pertaining to as systems comment because I think the systems part is the hardest part. And no need to respond because it's 12 01 but just wanted to throw all that up on the wall. So, thank you thank you and you know what and taking preparing or looking at some of the things on each retranses website is fabulous by the way and if you get time which I've got their mission. And their strategic goals that I know that you're interested which they have five of them posted. And, and I know that you'd be interested in that representative. Thank you. Thank you all for coming in and keeping us informed and, and what's going on out there. And the RPCs are a good connection. I know that are we were talking about that just earlier when we were doing some planning. That we heard from some people like what is, you know their connection with the towns, especially with some of the money that's maybe going to be coming in and, and how can we help them. And we say goodbye and we're going to go to lunch and we're on the floor and I doubt we're going to be able to come back after I think we're going to be pretty much on the floor representative McCoy would that be your take as well. Oh, Kenny. We have we have the three ed bills up today so I don't know how long those are going to take. So that was where I'm thinking that we're probably going to be on the floor for the rest of the afternoon. See you tomorrow.