 So let's get the meeting started. And before we start, I don't know if folks heard or not, but we had some tragic news from the other day, as Marty Illek from Sherlock passed away in a boating accident. And Marty was a member of the Regional Planning Commission for quite a while, I think. And Jim, you probably know better. But at this point, if we could take a moment of silence and remember Marty, I'd appreciate it. Thank you, everyone. I don't know if anyone who knew Marty would want to say any words or not. But as I said, I know she was on the Regional Planning Commission. I believe she was on the MPO, at least as an alternate for a while. But Jim, maybe you know more. Yeah, Marty's going to be missed. She was on the Regional Planning Commission for a long time. And when we merged, she became the alternate to the Regional Planning Commission and has been the alternate for Sherlock since the merger. And been on some of the other committees. The town's having a hard time dealing with this. She was very integral to the town. It was very sad. Yeah. Thanks, Jim. Catherine? Yeah, I first met Marty when I became the Jericho representative to the Substantial Regional Impact Committee way back before I was a DRB member, rather than I was chair of the DRB, rather than on the select board. And she was so passionate then about water quality and always remained so and was the lifeblood of the Lewis Creek Association for forever. Really interesting person, just dynamic. Darren White. Sorry, John. It's OK. Go ahead. I just wanted to say that I will certainly miss Marty. You actually can blame her for my being a part of the Regional Planning Commission. She was head of the committee that made the initial research into admitting Buell's Gore to the RPC. And I always felt a close bond with her, both for what she worked on and also in the rural community area and also just she was a really neat lady. And I'm going to miss her both professionally and personally and just had to say something. Sure. John? Yeah, my wife is involved with the Lewis Creek Association and Marty was often in my house. Marty was a force of nature. There was never an interaction with Marty that was not one of the most pleasant things you could possibly imagine, as well as one of the most enlightening things, because what she thought, what she did, and her perspective on things and her never-ending quest for knowledge so that she could help her community and the environment just a little bit more will is almost unsurpassed by anybody I've ever met. She clearly missed. I'd like to add one more thing. Janine McCrum, if anybody know her, passed around a note in the VPA that I thought was fairly appropriate. She was saying that Marty is one of those community members who, in one minute, you wish would go away and give you time to do some work. And then the next minute, you wish you had a million just like her because she was at times so forceful that you'd get frustrated with her. But you wouldn't get angry because she was coming from the right place and you always agreed with everything she was trying to do. So that's one more thought about her. OK. Yeah, Charlie. And I'll just, John, I was thinking of the same phrase, the force of nature, for mother nature, right? She's so committed and passionate about her work and carried it to our table and our work as well. And I know we really relied on her as just a key partner in all our water quality work. And she was probably just about the first person I would call about any water quality question. And she had the answer and good perspective. So we will desperately miss her in all the work that she was doing. And just what a friend she was to the RPC and all the staff. So my condolences to her family and friends. It really sat in tragic. OK, thanks, everyone. Yeah, we will, I think from the board, Charlie will send something on behalf of the board to her family, expressing our condolences and our sorrow over missing her because she certainly was a force of nature, involved in a lot of things. I know I bumped into her. She was part of the Shalala Land Trust as well. So she'll be missed. Yeah, thanks, Mike. Yeah, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that. Yeah, we will definitely do a card and probably some sort of flowers or we'll see what the family wants. But we will definitely send something. OK. So let's move back to the agenda. Any changes to the agenda for tonight? Hearing none, we'll move on to public comment period. This is an opportunity for anyone from the public to comment on anything not on tonight's agenda. Charlie, do we have any public out there? Not that I have seen. OK. If you're out there, please make yourself known. I don't think so. OK. Consent agenda. You're looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda? I'll move we approve the consent agenda, Jim. Do you get who this second was, Amy? Who was the second? Can you raise your hand? Oh, Elaine. OK. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Anyone wish to abstain? OK. Thank you. Moving on, we have minutes of the March 17, 2021 meeting. Move to approve. This is Andy. I'll second. Jim. I had one change that I noticed that I should have sent in. I think on page 7, line 22, the references to Jeff made reference to a Jeff Dunn. I think it should be math Dunn. It's line 22, page 7. I see Jeff shaking his head. Easy mistake. Garrett. Also on page 7, the line, let me find the line, says gas revenue. It should be gas tax revenue. And I very carefully hid the page. Line 37 on page 7, electric vehicles and gas, please insert the word tax revenue. Because towns and municipalities and the like don't make anything off the gas just off the taxes. Any other changes? Catherine. On page 7, line 39, instead of members of the officer development committee, it's the board development committee. Jeff. Even though I'm the alternate tonight, on page 5, line 39, Amy, we need to add to my question, my first statement, in developing the final project ratings. If you don't put that in, then the whole issue of my comment, it gets lost. Of course, he didn't answer the question. He said that we use CCRPC expertise in a whole lot of areas. But my question was specifically with respect to the final project ratings. OK. Anyone else? Thank you, everyone, for those comments. So all in favor of the motion to accept the minutes with the corrections. Please say or signify with a hand raised aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Anyone wish to abstain? OK, thank you. Next, we have reviewed draft FY22 UPWP and budget. Yes. So this was an attachment to your packet. You got the draft budget. This is going to be an action item next month. So wanted to get you the draft in advance. There may be some minor edits as we just kind of try to comb through it in the next couple of weeks. But wanted to see if you had any questions. In terms of the process, the UPWP committee, which a few of you are on, met three times end of January, February, and March. And we had kind of the pleasant surprise of finding out that we had more federal MPO funds available than we expected. So that made the committee's work a little easier. A couple of comments I'll make about that, though, is, well, actually, before I move on to that, Catherine, anything else you want to say about the UPWP committee process? You're muted. Tried to be either muted or I freeze one or the other. But no, I thought the process went very smoothly. I mean, the staff did a great job of making the committee's work easier. That's for sure. Thank you. And the committee is always very helpful and thoughtful in their work. The one thing Chris Jolly made a point, letting us know that there are some unexpended MPO funds, which is a nice problem to have. And we really have two ways that we expend those that are either regional projects that we use, the town dues that we collect from you to match, or their municipal projects where the town comes up with a local match. And one of the constraints we were hitting up against this year was that we kind of maxed out our utilization of dues to do more regional projects. So I think that's a long way of me saying, just keep, in some party of your mind, that there probably is the opportunity for some more municipal projects to happen with MPO funds if you can come up with a local match. And so certainly that is something the committee talked about, making sure that we communicate to all the towns in the fall when we talk about FY23. But also, if there is something that comes up in your town over the next few months that we could incorporate in the mid-year, even if we started a little bit earlier, let us know if you have a project where you have local match available and that you want to pick up. So and Amy, anything, was that, I hope that makes sense? OK, and Mike, is there anything you wanted to add to that? No, I'm sorry, I was taking some notes on some other stuff. But did you talk about, you talked about this extra money and having municipalities, if anyone, any municipality has a project that's not on this UPWP that we'd look at it if we have staff resources and the monies? Right, thank you for bringing up the staff resources. That was a piece I missed. Or Elaine, you would have killed me. That's why I brought it up. You know, given that this is, if I understand it, it's not a common event or an annual event. So it might be worse sending something out to the towns, saying and what the scope is and what the match rate is to sort of churn the waters a bit, if you will, at the risk of over-subscribing our capacity. Yeah, yeah, we will do that. Any other questions about the budget or UPWP? You notice the budget is a little bit negative. We are slowly reducing the swings in our indirect rate. So we're in a negative indirect rate year. You may remember, if you've been on the board for a few years, going back, sometimes we'd have a budget at this time of year that was minus $100,000. I think this year we're minus 20-ish, which is usually in the margin of error. We're usually able to correct that amount through the course of the fiscal year. So although it looks a little negative right now, I expect it will end up a little bit more closer to breaking even. Any questions on budget or UPWP? If not, expect this to be on your agenda next month. And I thank you to Catherine and the members of the UPWP Committee for once again doing a wonderful job and getting this out there for us. OK, let's move on to the next item, which is electric vehicles. I see Dave has come back to see us. Hi, Dave. Good to see you. Hey, good evening, everybody. I don't see Dan from V-Trans. Is he not going to make it? Or more solo? Oh, there he is. OK. Sorry, Daniel. Didn't see you over there. Hard to find everyone in the Hollywood squares, but I'm here. And I tell you, it is. I was looking for Paul Lynn, but I didn't see him. I guess most people are too young to remember to know what that reference was. I got that one, Mike. Oh, please. OK, gentlemen. All right, well, we'll take it away. So thanks, Mike. And good to join you all this evening. For those who don't know me, I'm Dave Roberts. I used to work at the RPC. I left back in 2012 to go work at VIC. We're a nonprofit. We coordinate the Efficiency Vermont program statewide, except for Burlington Energy Efficiency Utility. And my work at VIC has been focused on electric vehicles and right now, coordinating the Drive Electric Vermont program. And I'm joined by Dan Dutcher, who's the senior environmental policy manager for V-Trans. And we're going to tag team a little bit. So I'm going to start with a presentation that just runs through the basics of electric vehicles and some of the issues that I know came up of interest to the board and recent discussions related to plans for charging infrastructure in the state and road user fees in lieu of gas taxes. I know that came up in the minutes discussion just earlier this evening. And Dan will also provide an update on some of the EV provisions that are included in the current state transportation bill. So with that, I'm going to, unless anybody has any questions before I get started, I will go ahead and start the presentation here. So when I share my screen, I lose seeing folks. So somebody could just verbally tell me that you're seeing my screen. That'd be great. We got it. All right. Thanks, Charlie. So just a little more about Drive Electric Vermont. It's a public-private partnership that was established in 2012 between the EIC and the state. And we're basically working on a variety of fronts to increase transportation electrification. We have quarterly stakeholder meetings. So if anybody is really excited on this topic, feel free to reach out to me. And I can get you on the mailing list for those quarterly meetings, doing policy work, consumer education outreach, and infrastructure development. And we've got a website that's linked here. And I'll provide a few sort of snapshots of what's on that website in terms of resources, a lot of information that we've put together over the years. And some of those resources have been funded with support from CCRPC. So we greatly appreciate that support. And just quickly, I don't know how many folks have had a chance to get behind the wheel of a plug-in electric vehicle yet, but if you haven't, hopefully maybe your next vehicle, or certainly the one after that, might be electric. A few sort of top reasons why people are making the switch. Obviously, reducing emissions, even when you factor in the production of the vehicle and the upstream emissions associated with electric generation. They greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful tailpipe emissions. They have really great performance. This is one of those things, if you haven't had a chance to try one, I really encourage you to get behind the wheel. Tesla, of course, is known for really high-performing vehicles, but even some of the more affordable options all have great performance. It's sort of fundamental to the electric motors that the vehicles use to have really great torque, even at low speed. Super quiet and comfortable. All of the sort of latest technology is usually included in the vehicles. Most people can charge them at home, so it's actually more convenient than you think. It's sort of like plugging in a cell phone when you get home from work. You can plug in the vehicle and be ready to go the next morning. And when you factor in some of the potential savings, even though the upfront costs can be higher, the ongoing fuel and maintenance costs are significantly lower. So the total lifecycle costs can be quite a bit lower than a gasoline vehicle. And if you're eligible for some of the incentive programs that I'll talk about, even those upfront costs can be lower than a comparable gasoline vehicle. So here are some of the more popular models that we see in Vermont today. On the left are all electric models. So these are powered solely by the battery, and when they run low on charge, you have to find a place to plug in. And on the right are some of the plug-in hybrid vehicles that have a, typically it's a smaller battery, so they have a little bit less range on electricity anywhere from 10 to 50 miles typically, but then they can run on gas as long as you need. So if it's a one car household, or you're worried about where you're gonna be able to charge, a lot of times the plug-in hybrids are a little better option for people today. These prices that are shown here are before any incentives are applied. So these are sort of retail prices. And so you can see with the Nissan Leaf, the price ranges from about 30,000 to 37,000. And the reason for that big jump up to 37,000 is that their Nissan makes two versions of the Leaf, and the more expensive one has a significantly larger battery. So that gets you up from the 150 mile range to 225 mile range. Some of these have all-wheel drive. So the Tesla Model 3 is available with all-wheel drive. The Mitsubishi Outlander and Subaru come standard with all-wheel drive. We know Vermonters are most interested in sort of crossover and all-wheel drive vehicles these days. That's about 80% of the new vehicle market. So as time goes on, it's been great to see the automakers stepping up and coming out with more models that fit those requirements for people. And these are some of the most recent arrivals that we're seeing, most of which have all-wheel drive, but not all. So you can see vehicles are getting a little bit larger, a little more spacious, more sort of family-sized, higher range, and just sort of more in keeping with those consumer preferences that we're seeing in the market today. We've got a tool on the Drive Electric website, and I'm gonna try to just pull that up quickly. So this is the website. You can, on our homepage, go to the Electric Vehicle Explorer. And if you said you wanted to find all the vehicles that have all-wheel drive standard, you can click this filter. I'll show you the vehicles that are currently available in Vermont. And if you wanted to further filter that for some of the different price or range, or whether there's a state incentive available, you can do that to kind of drill down and get a little better look at what might fit your needs. We are working on additional electric options. So there are two electric buses on the road in Burlington now that Green Mountain Transit's been running. And more on the way in Chittenden County, Champlain Valley Union is part of a state pilot program that will have two electric buses as part of their school bus fleet. And we are seeing growing announcements and availability of commercial vehicles. So could expect to see UPS and other delivery services gradually making a shift to electric over time. Carshare of Vermont in Burlington has a Nissan Leaf that's shown here. It's got electric lawn care equipment even. A lot of the utilities are offering incentives for electric mowers and other devices. Electric bicycles are really popular, a lot of fun to ride. Utilities are offering incentives for those as well. So a lot of different options beyond just your standard passenger vehicles. Important thing to keep in mind is that cold weather does impact the battery range. We typically say worst case scenarios, you get about half of the official manufacturer's estimate, but it can vary depending on the vehicle and how you operate it. We do have a resource on the Drive Electric from our website that drills down to a lot more detail on what you might see with particular model or different conditions. But if you're thinking about an electric vehicle, it's just important to keep in mind that you will see significantly less range than the official manufacturer estimate in our winter conditions. And thinking about some of the incentives that are out there, we've got a tool on the Drive Electric from our website that I'll show in a minute, but this kind of steps through what's out there today. So this example is using a new Nissan Leaf compared to a Nissan Sentra. And there's sort of two incentive levels that are shown. One is the kind of standard incentives that most people in the state might be eligible for. And then another column here for people with less than $50,000 annual gross income, a just a gross income. There are some higher incentives for lower income for monitors both from the state and electric utilities. So as we step down through here, the Nissan Leaf is eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit. Got this grayed out a little bit because if you're lower income, you may not have enough tax liability to fully offset that amount. But if you lease, then the leasing company can get that credit and pass it through. So even if you don't have that tax liability, you might wanna look at leasing as an option there. For the state incentive, the standard amount for an all electric vehicle is $2,500. And if you're lower income, it goes up to $4,000. There are some automaker discounts available for the Leaf. Nissan has currently a special deal that's $7,500 off the sticker price right now. So that's pretty attractive, doubling up on the federal tax credit, essentially. And then you've got utility incentives. And these vary depending on your utility, but this amount is what Green Mountain Power offers and they serve the majority of the state. And so they would provide a $1,500 incentive sort of as their standard package or 2,500 for lower income. So when you combine and sort of stack up all of these incentives, you can get down to just over $10,000 if you're lower income, compared to say like a Nissan Sentra, which would be close to a little over $19,000. So once you've layered in all these incentives, it can actually bring the price down significantly. And as I mentioned, there's a tool on the Drive Electric from our website that will kind of, so if you're not a GMP, if you're in Vermont Electric Co-op, you're looking at a new electric vehicle from Nissan. It'll ask your tax filing status because this is how the state eligibility is determined. And so this will give you a rundown of the different utility state and federal incentives that you might be looking at for that purchase. A little bit about charging. So there's three types of charging. There's level one that just plugs into a standard household outlet. You get about five miles of range per hour of charging. So can take overnight typically for a charge on level one. And if you have an EV with a longer range and it's depleted, the battery is pretty depleted. So you have a Chevrolet Bolt with 250 miles of range. You can do some math and figure out that it might take you a couple of days to charge on level one if you're fully depleted. So a lot of people who are looking at all electric vehicles with longer range will go with what's called a level two charger, which is 240 volt like an electric clothes dryer. That'll get you depending on the vehicle and the equipment, maybe about 20 miles of range per hour of charging. This is an example on the right here in the middle of a Clipper Creek charger that can plug into a 240 volt receptacles. So sometimes people might have this in a garage or near where they park their vehicle. This is a type of plug that a lot of RVs use. So if you have that, it's really simple to just plug in the equipment and you're good to go. If you don't have that, it's typically maybe three to $500 for an electrician to do the installation can be higher if your house is constrained as far as your electric service goes. On the left here is more like what you would see in a public charging situation. This can charge two EVs at once, it's got two plugs on it. And this works, you get a little card that's connected to your credit card or you can use a smartphone app to activate it. So whoever owns this charging equipment can charge a fee for use and cover their electric costs. On the right is DC fast charging, which is what you would typically see in sort of public along higher travel corridors, depending on the equipment at the low end, you're talking about maybe 150 miles of range per hour of charging. And there are some new higher powered fast chargers that go up to 350 kilowatts, which will provide about 1,000 miles of range per hour of charging. And really what that just means is that you're not gonna be stopped very long, maybe 15 to 20 minutes if your vehicle can handle that level of charging. So it's sort of increasing speed and level of convenience as you go from left to right here. Most people for home charging, they're looking at level one or two. And then the fast charging sort of on occasion, if they're on a longer trip then just need to make a quick stop. Important issue to think about in the context of some of the work the RPC and other partners are doing is multi-family housing and EV charging. It's a significant share for Mont's housing stock about 20, just over 20% is multi-family. And depending on the multi-family housing, there may be issues with if it's an apartment complex that has renters, they may not really want to invest in installing charging equipment if they're not gonna be there very long. Some cases they may not have assigned parking spaces or the ones that they have may not be close to access to power. And so there can be issues with how do you sort of fairly assess usage and put in equipment that's not very expensive. So there's issues to be worked out. We're currently doing some work with the RPC and Champlain Housing Trust Ever North and VHFA to further dig into these issues. Shown on this report, on this slide as a report we worked on last year with the RPC that kind of digs into more detail on these issues. And we're essentially continuing that work now with those partners I mentioned. And there is funding in the T-bill that Dan can speak to a little bit more as we go through that would offer a million dollar pilot that's really focused on affordable housing and EV charging moving forward. This is a map just showing where charging is at today. The orange are fast charging locations. So pretty good coverage across a lot of the state. There are still some gaps in the Northeast Kingdom that are being worked on. One thing to keep in mind is a lot of those fast chargers that are out there today are, there's only one charging port per location. So if somebody's using it or if the charging equipment is down because of a maintenance issue there's not really much redundancy available. So that's been something the state is really thinking a lot about as they start investing or have been investing state funds and building out charging infrastructure. And one thing that I neglected to mention on this slide is that there are for level one and two basically everybody except for Tesla uses the same plug type and Tesla has an adapter that they can use this equipment for fast charging. Nissan uses one type of plug and basically everybody else uses another type of plug but most of the fast charging that's out there been installed recently has both plugs like what you're seeing on this slide. Tesla again has their own plug but they have an adapter that they can use the Nissan plug. So hopefully in the next few years the manufacturers will just settle on one plug and eventually this issue will go away. But for now folks are kind of dealing with it the best they can. And so on this map some of these orange dots are Tesla only fast charging locations and Tesla has invested their own money in building out an international network of fast charging. And that when they put in a fast charging location they typically do put in maybe 12 stalls. So folks might have seen like a healthy living in South Burlington or coming soon in Williston or at the Berlin travel center. There are Tesla fast chargers with these multiple stalls available. And so if somebody wants to go electric and they're doing a lot of long distance travel oftentimes Tesla is a much more convenient option because of that. Mentioned that the state is investing in sort of robust network of fast charging. So I'm gonna hand this off to Dan here in just a moment but I'll start the red circles here are locations that have the sort of universal both plugs as I was discussing on the slide already existing and then the blue flags are locations that are being funded with private dollars. So for example, in Colchester and Chittenden County there is Electrify America is planning to put in a charging station at the Shaw's off exit 16 and Electrify America is an entity that was formed as a subsidiary of Volkswagen as part of their diesel settlement pennants if you will. So we're looking forward to seeing that come in but there are still a lot of areas of the state that aren't getting that sort of private investment. And so VTrans and other partners have really been thoughtful about selecting locations to make sure that no one will be more than 30 miles from a fast charger anywhere they go in the state. And with that Dan, if you can unmute and you wanna share any additional thoughts on the state funded locations and then I can step through the additional slides. Sure, Dave, did you want me to just go through some of the other things too? I think there was some interest in future plans for increasing charging stations. So I can cover that and there was a question I believe about the implications for Vermont national transportation funding from the conversion to electrification. I'd be happy to touch on that. And then finally some of what's going on in the transportation bill which just passed out of the Senate this morning. So once again, I'm Dan Butcher I'm the environmental policy manager at the Vermont Agency of Transportation. The earth is kind of shifting beneath our feet and the transportation world so much is happening so fast. It's really just incredible and I'm sure you're tuned into that if you're following the news and all announcements for example by General Motors that they're gonna stop selling combustion passenger vehicles at least by 2035 and Washington state recently set a goal of 2030 to disallow the sales of combustion passenger vehicles. I'm not quite sure how they're gonna do that but all this is actually now within the realm of reality and even maybe a few years ago it wasn't. As far as plans go for increasing charging stations some of those plans are reflected on the map. The state has what we call an interagency EVSE grant program. Probably everyone on this in this meeting is familiar with the term EVSE it's electric vehicle supply equipment it's just sort of jargon as I suppose but it refers to charging stations and we have a multi-agency participation in that it started out by spending down Volkswagen settlement money. Now we're harnessing state funds and it's possible that significant federal funds will be coming down the pike. ARPA the American Rescue Plan Act right now based on plans that our elected officials are making there could be $25 million for EVSE from ARPA in Vermont that could cover both fast charging and level two stations. So that's quite a significant slug of money. In addition, the infrastructure bill the American Jobs Act right now hasn't gone through Congress yet but there's $174 billion in there for electric vehicle incentives and also for charging stations. So I'm not quite sure what that may translate into for Vermont but a lot more money to move electric vehicles. So this is really a lot and one of the things we're gonna have to deal with is to think about what the end game is. We obviously don't want to pay out incentives forever. So I think the idea is to try to give industry a boost and eventually the policymakers can kind of withdraw from the situation and with any luck we'll have a sort of freestanding electric vehicle industry and electric vehicle charging industry sometime within the next 10 years. As far as what we've done so far we've had several grant rounds in our interagency EVSE grant program. We did, we have a contract now with Ugo which was swallowed by Blink to construct and operate for seven years, 11 fast charging stations around the state. We've been trying to fill in gaps. You gotta be strategic because if you just require bidders to go out to rural areas where the gaps are most likely to be you can end up failing because there's just no money in it. So we've been trying to pair some of these rural sites with some sites that have a little better utilization. And we've just issued an RFP for an applicant to build and operate six additional fast charging stations around the state to try to fill in some of those gaps. And we just had a mandatory bidders meeting this morning that was very well attended. Round five, which will be coming up after the transportation bill is enacted will deal with a million dollars that's probably gonna be in that bill for multi-unit dwellings as Dave Roberts mentioned. Right now to try to organize some of this V-Trans is thinking of retaining a consultant to make a kind of updated plan for what we would like our charging infrastructure build out to look like. But it's a little hard to do that right now because we don't know exactly what the federal component is going to be. And one of the things to keep in mind is that there is, it's not a bad problem to have but we don't wanna super saturate the fast charging market in particular because the sort of business model is a little shaky right now with a low number of electric vehicles on the road. So you want it to go kind of at a pace with electric vehicle supply. So pairing EV purchase and lease incentives with fast charging build out, seems like it's gonna be a good strategy. And there's a lot of opportunity also for level two charging publicly available level two in places like overnight lodging along streets and downtown areas. Workplace level two is very beneficial because it draws down solar energy in the daytime. And it's also been shown to increase electric vehicle uptake because it's another way people can keep their cars charged. So quite a bit going on, moving on to implications of vehicle electrification for transportation funding. This is something that must be addressed. I think I mentioned a couple of minutes ago that Washington state is looking to eliminate sales of combustion passenger vehicles by 2030. Their policy proposal is paired with the idea that to do that, they have to institute what's known as a roadway user charge or mileage based user fee so that they can have a fair and equitable system for essentially taxing electric vehicles. Vermont is through VTRANS is retaining a consultant or in that process now to set up a roadway user charge system for Vermont to design it. And we'll take a look at that and the next, when it's done in the next several months and probably pitch that to the legislature. And in Vermont, what we're thinking is that the roadway user charge also needs to be combined with a per kilowatt hour fee on public charging stations about 25% of our motor fuel taxes are paid by drivers whose vehicles are registered out of state. So we'd like to be able to capture the out of state electric vehicles that way. It does have some downsides, because it will make public charging more expensive for everyone who lives in the state as well. And, but that just sort of reinforces the importance of getting as many people as possible, the option to charge at home, even if they're living in these multi-unit dwellings. And then finally, just moving along to the transportation bill, there's quite a lot in there, more than I can go through now, but to just take another minute or two, there are EVSE goals in there. It establishes the goal of having a fast charger within five miles of every interstate exit and within 50 miles of the next fast charger on the state highway system. And VTrans is tasked with the annually filing a map to update progress on those goals. There is a public transit electrification plan that's required. VTrans would like to and is working toward electrifying all public transit buses eventually. Right now, even if you look at lifecycle costs, it doesn't quite pencil out economically, but we expect that to change in the coming years. And we have hired a consultant who's already working on this plan who can give us a realistic timeline. They've covered a million dollars too for charging at multi-unit dwellings. There's a $250,000 to go to drive electric for a month. We've long identified education and outreach is critical. And this will give us an opportunity to do more of the work that we've long wanted to do but haven't been able to budget. $750,000 of additional money is going to mileage smart, which provides incentives to low income populations for used fuel efficient vehicles. They don't necessarily have to be electric but the mileage smart program is doing a really good job of introducing that demographic to vehicle electrification. And if we're gonna succeed in this, we need kind of a cultural revolution along with the technological revolution and reaching all demographics is part of that. There's a new replace your ride program funded with one and a half million dollars. It's kind of a cash for clunkers. If your car's over 10 years old and you're in a lower income category, you can get an extra, I think it's $3,000 to stack onto existing incentive programs. So that'll really give you a boost would modify Dave's chart that he showed earlier about how it can be cheaper to go electric. And in addition, eventually we have to set this up still but the idea is that you could use that $3,000 not only to buy an electric vehicle but instead you could use it for different transportation options. So for a ride share or public transit or various other things that you could use you could use the money to sort of draw down you have an account. There's an e-bike incentive program worth $50,000, which would provide a $200 incentives to 250 individuals. And finally, there's a PEV rate design and the transportation bill plug-in electric vehicle rate design which would require the utilities to file plans I think by January for price differentiated rates to encourage people to charge when the loads aren't at their peak and that kind of thing. And that would make it cheaper to charge and also potentially even create downward rate pressure because the utilities will be having increasing revenues without having to build out additional infrastructure. So that's a very rapid summary of some of what's going on. It's a lot. I think pretty much all analysts would say that it's inevitable that the entire fleet will eventually electrify but in order to meet our climate and energy goals we're gonna need it to electrify a little faster than it would on its own. And that's the reason for all these programs. And as I said in the beginning the idea is to give the industry a boost and then we should be able to back away eventually and move on to the next challenge. All right, thanks Dan. So that's all we have but definitely want to respond to any questions or discussion that folks have. See a hand up barred. Yeah, so a quick question. I am thoroughly convinced that the average consumer has no idea that all of these incentives exist. So if we were trying to influence consumer behavior or purchase behavior, say, hey, you should go here and learn what your, what incentives exist for you. What would we say? Well, we would, and we're working on this. As Dan mentioned, we haven't had a lot of resources for consumer outreach and education. We've certainly done some and it's been targeted to online channels and using keywords for people who are shopping for a new car and things like that. So directing them to the drive electric Vermont website where we have the calculator and other resources and efficiency Vermont through a law that was passed last session has, I don't wanna go off on too much of a tangent but basically efficiency Vermont has the ability to invest rate payer funds in a variety of efficiency programs and through a new law that was passed last session they were, it's now been opened up to allow them to do some work on transportation electrification which previously they were not allowed to do. So that proposal, they now have a proposal pending before the Vermont Public Utility Commission which oversees their work which would involve investing about $500,000 in a campaign to raise awareness of EVs including the incentive programs that are available. So folks may be aware of other campaigns that efficiency Vermont has done around like button up weatherization programs and things like that. So this would be a similar sort of mass market statewide program with significant resources behind it. So the hope is that that will be approved in about a month or so and that campaign will be rolling out later this year. Dan, Karen. Yes, thank you. Excellent presentation. I don't know if maybe I missed it but during the presentation as far as electric vehicles compared to gas powered or combustion vehicles, traveling long distances. Say like my mother goes to Florida every winter and one of my bros and I swapped every year driving her down her vehicle. Say she, right now she has a combustion vehicle. We travel all the way to Florida along the way. Obviously we have to get gas but it takes two or three minutes to fill up a tank on gas and go another 500 miles or more. And with the vehicles I saw that you were showing and see anything that's gonna go that far and then when you do find a place to power up it's not gonna be what I can see. It's gonna take quite a while. Can you explain the time it will take to fuel up on electricity and when you do get there the availability, you know how long it takes to get a long ways on electricity. It seems like we're not there yet. It's what I'm coming to say. It requires some advanced planning for sure. I think as I mentioned in passing if you can get a Tesla, Tesla has invested in a nationwide network of fast charging and that is the most convenient way to do it today. Their fast charging is up around 200 kilowatts which means about 600 miles of range per hour of charging. There are Teslas with three to 400 miles of range depending on temperature and how fast you're driving and things like that. So you're basically looking at stopping every couple of hours for maybe 20 to 30 minutes with the Tesla. No other automaker has dialed it in as well as they have at this point but with the federal programs that we've mentioned hopefully coming to pass as part of the infrastructure bill and some of the other efforts that are ongoing as part of the Volkswagen diesel settlement the charging infrastructure is getting better for non-Tesla vehicles but it is I mean it's doable but for someone doing a trip like you're describing it's it requires advanced planning and some compromises. So what I will often tell folks if they're not interested on Tesla or don't wanna go there that maybe a plug-in hybrid is a good option you can do most of your round town travel and 40 miles of range planning for most people's daily needs and then if you're on that long trip then you don't need to worry about stopping and charging infrastructure and all those issues if you're not ready to deal with that. I would just add too that obviously the Biden administration is well aware of this problem as our policy makers in the States and that as Dave said is one of the reasons why this major investment of federal funds is being discussed. And as Dave said, the next generation fast chargers some of which are already going in are 350 kilowatts and that could get you 400 miles of range in 20 minutes. So if you're on the next generation of electric vehicles some of which are already out there are gonna have 400 mile type ranges. So if you have a vehicle like that and you when we eventually get a network of 350 kilowatt hour kilowatt chargers, it's not gonna be two or three minutes but 15 minutes or whatever you could get back to get back to full power which is pretty convenient. Well, speaking to that whole thing though when you say 15 minute charge even 15, 20 minute charges go that distance when you start talking about the stack up I remember the days back during the energy crisis pulling up the gas stations having 20 cars backed up and waiting to get gas. Well, I foresee with the millions of people with vehicles out there and if we, I mean, obviously it's early and we're in the early infant stages this whole thing but people backing up for a 20 minute fill up on whatever even the best hybrid vehicle, whatever you have right now it takes a while. So- The supply and demand will work itself out but keep in mind too that right now everybody except for a small number of people who have their own sort of keep their own gasoline around you've got to go to a public gasoline station to fill up. And with vehicle electrification most people most of the time are going to be charging overnight at home or their apartment or along the street and that kind of thing or they'll charge in the daytime at work. So the fast chargers are going to be for people who are going on long trips or just driving a lot of miles. So, we'll see there are challenges for sure. One other thing with your, say the statement that you said Chevy is going to go exclusively without a combustion passenger vehicles starting in 2035. I think you said, do you mean just exclusively combustion vehicles? So that doesn't exclude hybrid vehicles. You're saying so hybrid would still be produced in 2035, correct? I think they're going all electric Dave, you know different automakers have different ways that they're defining electric. But I think in Chevy GM's case it's zero mission that they're shooting for some other automakers. It's electric, which could include hybrids but Chevy and GM have been shifting away from the hybrids and going more toward all electric. I think the Japanese automakers have put a lot of money. They were sort of early in the hybrid concept and they've sort of perfected that. So they're a little reluctant to give it up but some of the other automakers I think are moving right into pure battery electric vehicles. And it is a goal. So, you know, if it's possible there could be regulations that enforce that but at this point that could change over time as they get more experience. So I see a few more hands. Anthony. Hi. One question I had is I hear about all these and we're talking about adding tens of thousands of vehicles just in the state drawing hundreds of kilowatt hours. Has anyone looked at what impact this is going to have on the power grid? Is there any concerns of it overloading or anything like that? What are we doing to handle that possible side effect if you will? Sure. Just like the MPO has a long range plan fortunately the electric companies and the state's transmission operator also do long range planning. So Velco is the statewide transmission operator and they just updated their plan in the past year and looked at a few different scenarios for electric vehicle adoption and how that can layer in with some of the other things that are happening in terms of like cold climate heat pumps that are also shifting energy used to electric. And generally what they're finding is that it's really not a problem as long as the charging is managed. And so this gets to the point of off peak charging. Green Mountain Power already has a program where they will provide a free home level two charger to somebody buying an electric vehicle and then as long as it's connected to wifi they can control and make sure the charging isn't happening during peak periods because that's really the main issue that they're facing at least in the near term. In the longer term there may actually be some issues in certain parts of the state or certain neighborhoods with older equipment that there may need to be some more attention to how that charging is managed or potentially infrastructure upgrades but we're many years from that point as I understand it. But good thing to be thinking about. Thank you. And Garrett, there Garrett you're muted here. Sorry mouse wouldn't click. It's time for some new batteries, my apologies. Two things, one is the federal gas tax which is paying for so much of our highway maintenance and the like and others may know the exact date but as far as I know that hasn't been adjusted since the nineties. I know it's a very contentious thing in Congress every time it's brought up. So I would have to believe that some work will have to be done on gasoline taxes to balance things out. I mean, if you're charging a per mile tax for electric vehicles, I say tax but a fee or whatever why shouldn't gas engines switch to the same way? You know, of course with the gas tax if you're driving an eight mile per gallon SUV you're paying a lot more than our Prius or something. So I'm hoping that the state is pushing on the feds to work on that and also looking at it from the state point of view. The other thing I was wondering about is is I realized we're talking about electric vehicles here but Toyota is working on hydrogen. Others may very well as well. Obviously hydrogen has its issues with storage and the like but is the state doing anything with hydrogen vehicles at the moment? Maybe I can talk about hydrogen and then Dan I'll pass to you for the federal issues. So hydrogen for light duty vehicles in Vermont is really even in the Northeast there's almost no fueling availability. Burlington actually had a pilot hydrogen station many years ago that got torn out that they actually instead of using a hydrogen fuel cell was just combusting hydrogen in an internal combustion engine. The infrastructure to fuel is very expensive much more expensive than EV infrastructure. Most of the hydrogen that's out there today is being made from natural gas. So from a climate perspective there's not a huge benefit. And from an energy perspective it takes a lot of energy to create the hydrogen transport it and use it. So for light duty vehicles electric just going straight electric seems to have a lot of benefits. That said there is work going on with heavier duty vehicles. So trucks essentially and hydrogen and there may yet be a place where hydrogen makes sense in the Northeast. But that's to be determined I would say at this point given the rapid advancements of electric and what's going on with hydrogen there may be a place for that but at this point the state hasn't been funding hydrogen infrastructure given the limited availability of vehicles. There's really just a handful and primarily focused on California market at this point. I would just clarify too that a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is an electric vehicle. It's just that the right energy is stored in the hydrogen instead of in the battery but the motors the same and all that. So and I think Garrett you raised some excellent points on what to do about the federal gas tax I don't know how that's going to work out. I think some of the thinking is that the roadway user charge would apply to all vehicles but then should the gas tax be maintained if that happens to be determined. Don't worry Garrett the state's done a good job of sopping up some of that available capacity as you no doubt remember and on top of that we've now got a price component in the state gas tax subject to a floor. So gas taxes hasn't stayed the same overall since the last time the fence raised them because we've been not been shy about taking up some of that unused capacity for the state. True but we still all use interstate. But thank you all. All right Dave. Dave. Yes. In terms of what we're doing at the MPL have you folks done any projections as to impacts on traffic? So in other words, do you foresee with electric vehicles? I guess my assumption would be that we will continue with kind of traffic volumes that we're seeing maybe even increasing. I don't know but I wonder if you've looked at that at all. We've thought about it certainly and there's some along with electric vehicles there's oftentimes a lot of people think about autonomous vehicles because some of the EVs that are out there are self-driving or will be theoretically at some point in the future I should say. And that I think that is an area where there's more implications for sort of traffic and the sort of broader network issues that the MPO is you know does analysis on and things of that sort. As far as so leaving aside autonomous for the moment and just thinking about the switch to EVs you know maybe it's possible that there could be some additional miles traveled because the cost is lower the cost of travel will be lower. Driving an EV is about the equivalent of a dollar 50 gallon gasoline and could be as low as I think 80 cents per gallon equivalent in Burlington if you get on their off-peak rate. So you know that can influence some additional travel but it's not something that at least we're seeing evidence of at this point in the state. And so I think that's a good thing to be keeping in mind but it's really more the autonomous side where there are implications and that is I think the RPC has done a little bit of work on that front and thinking about some different approaches where that could come into play but maybe Charlie or others on the RPC staff could speak better to that. I could just add as well that well greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector are an important consideration they're not the only consideration. So all the other work we do on planning and transportation demand management to try to reduce congestion make our cities more livable and so forth all that work still needs to be done. It's just, as you know, it's kind of slow going but the idea isn't to just replace combustion vehicles walk away. There's a lot of other work that needs to be done. Okay. Anyone else? A few other hands up but I don't know how much longer you guys want to spend on this but John and Jim have had their hands up if there's time. Sure. Jim or John? Jim, you're muted. There you go. I guess the question I had was on the roadway user charges you said you're a hiring consultant to do that. I'm assuming that plan will involve public involvement, RPC involvement to see how that fits around the entire state because there's all sorts of implications on how that is rolled out and how it might affect users. Absolutely, I mean something like this would be a big deal. The consultants just sort of the first pass. What could it look like? And if this is gonna happen it's obviously gonna have to go through the legislature. So there would most definitely be plenty of opportunity for input. I think V-Trans is thinking about an advisory committee and I see the list includes RPC representation. So I'm not sure who from the RPC across the state might be serving on that but there is an intention to include RPC reps on that. Thank you. John. Yeah, my question is really socioeconomic and it wasn't anything that you guys touched on here with this. What you didn't mention with the mileage that these things get, most of them that you put up on the screen were 150 to 250 miles on a full charge but these batteries by at least by what I've read degrade to some degree around 5% a year. You throw on top of that the fact that in the cold climates it can be as much as a 50% reduction and you've quickly got a four or five year old vehicle and I've actually seen this in real life that is lucky if it gets 70 miles to a full charge. This is an enormous socioeconomic problem for our communities of color, our poor communities, people who live in rural areas that have to travel way more than the 40 miles that you said are easy to tool around on and in town. I honestly, until there's a huge breakthrough in battery technology, I think we're setting up policy-wise such an enormous problem for people with limited means because they're the ones that are only gonna be able to buy the used vehicles. People with means like myself are gonna lease one every three years, get the best out of it, then you dump it and people who need a car that's 10, 12 years old. I mean, Dan was talking about going to Florida, you're gonna have to stop and charge up three or four times just to get to Boston and most of that drive is through amazingly rural countryside that probably isn't even gonna have any place that especially if you're traveling at night you can charge. Is this even being talked about? I mean, socioeconomically, I just see with 20, 35 years. So I can say a few things. So the batteries are holding up, it depends on the model. So the Nissan Leafs, the older Leafs have had significant degradation. They have an air-cooled battery which is particularly the earliest model years hasn't held up very well. So you're talking about a vehicle that had 85 miles of range when new could be looking at 40 or 50 miles of range after six, seven years. That's an exception though. The Teslas, the other longer range EVs have better battery management systems. They're holding up much better, time will tell but that 5% loss per year is not what we're seeing with those vehicles. So Teslas with two, 300,000 miles and maybe 10% degradation on the batteries what we're seeing more typically and as time goes on the manufacturing is improving battery technology is improving. So we do expect to see longer life. Tesla claims to have a million mile battery sort of design worked out. So the batteries essentially should last the life of the vehicle at some point but where we are today that may not be the case depending on the model and that's just something that's really important to keep in mind when we're advising people on what vehicles might work for them. The plug-in hybrids, the batteries don't use as much of the full range of the battery. Typically plug-in hybrids use less of the full range. So if an electric vehicle is maybe using 10 to 90% of the battery and leaving that bottom 10 and top 10% for battery management purposes the plug-in hybrid is more conservative because it's got that gasoline engine to fall back on. So the plug-in hybrid batteries have been lasting much better than the earlier all electrics. And so thinking about some of the programs that are geared toward lower income so the state incentive program for new EVs has higher incentives for lower income. There is a mileage smart program that capstone community action is running which includes eligibility for hybrids that get 40 miles per gallon or better that don't plug-in plug-in hybrids and all electric vehicles. So depending on the individual and their travel needs they have sort of counseling set up so they can make sure that people are making good decisions about which vehicles might work for them. So it's certainly an important issue. And then further the whole issue of charging at home and multifamily and renters is really important to be thinking about as well. The state building code does have requirements for new multifamily developments to include EV charging readiness but that doesn't cover all of the existing structures that are out there. So there's certainly work to be done but I would say that people are thinking about it and I don't Dan if you would wanna add anything that I might have missed. I don't think you missed anything Dave. Just to throw on that I mean incentives you're talking about new vehicles vast majority of people with limited means are buying used cars. So all of those incentives you're talking about are just not even worth talking about in terms of low income people. So I really, really, really wanna stress that this is an enormous problem with these deadlines that we're having. And what wasn't mentioned today is you've got 12 governors just today pressuring the Biden administration to have a hundred percent compliance rate of all electric vehicles now by 2035. I mean the policy issues here are enormous and I really hope other than just buying new ones which I know is part of the focus and you gotta start somewhere or really dealing with the socioeconomic issues because this is a looming huge problem. So the mileage bar program is specifically for used vehicles so that there is an incentive for used vehicles and the utilities are offering used EV incentives as well that can stack on to that. So it is something that's being talked about the federal tax credit which is currently only for new vehicles. One of the proposals is that that would include eligibility for use. So and the 2035 is for new vehicle sales to be zero emission. So certainly there's going to continue to be used internal combustion engine vehicles for many years to come. But I'm pretty sure you can use or replace your ride for used vehicles also. Okay. Well, thank you Dave and Dan. We appreciate it. Very good presentation. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks so much. All right. Okay. We'll move on to the next agenda item which is VPSP2 initial review of potential FY23 transportation projects. I hope I got that right, Charlie. So I'll do a little introduction and then Christine can review more specifics of the projects. And just to remind you, this is going to be an action item next month on your agenda and that this is a new process with VTrans that we're piloting with them and they're really opening up the process. And this is kind of you're really kind of seeing the internal workings of us kind of working through with VTrans. How do we submit good projects for them to consider adding on to the Capital Program? So this is really, in prior years, we were always prioritizing things that they were proposing for the PAC Capital Program. This is really allowing us to take a different role and proposing projects into the Capital Program. And at this stage, they had a handful of projects that they had on their list that they gave to us. And then we kind of went through our NTP list which we had reviewed with the towns a few years ago and reviewed with ATT&CK to look at there was some priority in the NTP, you may not remember but we had short, medium and long-term projects that we had talked to the towns about which were essentially, that's a prioritization, right? The things that they wanted to get shorter term. So the list that you see that Christine's gonna review with you is kind of the short and medium term list of projects from our NTP that we reviewed with ATT&CK to try to see which things we'd like VTrans to score. And then this will come back to you once we have the scoring back, but we'll look at the ranking and have some more conversation about that. But Christine, you wanna give a little bit more detail about what projects are on this list? Sure, do you wanna share the list or do we just figure that everybody has it? Yeah, I guess I'll take that. Do you want me to screen share the memo or do people all have access to it? Why don't you share it, Charlie, just in case? So thank you, Charlie. Yeah, so we identified, so we went through the list of projects that we had, that were part of, as Charlie said, the last Metropolitan Transportation Plan that were short and medium term and some other projects that we had identified that we had done scoping on recently and it came up with a list of 29 projects that then, and Charlie's coming up with the list. I think there's a couple more down below. So these are the list of projects that were recommended by the TAC to be scored. In the packet, there was a full list with the scoring criteria. This gets complicated really quickly and we're gonna talk about this in more detail next month so I don't wanna bog us down too much. We used a screening tool to screen the 29 projects and all the details are in the package if you wanna go through it and see it, but we reviewed those projects with the TAC and it came up with a kind of a hybrid recommendation where we took a combination of top scoring projects and then also we had an idea of projects of each town not having more than one project and we ended up with a few towns having more than one project as you can see on the list and we ended up also including the remaining Circle Alternative Phase Three projects that are candidates that are not in the front of the book or the DNA list. So what I can say about this list of projects and how the scoring really works is things that we talked last month, Kevin Marchie talked about the eight criteria that projects will be scored with and projects that take more of those criteria are gonna score higher. So when you look at this, this and it is in rank order, the top projects have bike, pet improvements, transit improvements, intersection improvements. So kind of complete street treatments really brought them to the top of the list. And so the process of this, so just say what happens from here is that these projects will be submitted to VTrans because ultimately what has to happen is they have to be scored with this VPSB2 workbook. And so we've asked VTrans to score these projects using the workbook, they will come back to us and we'll review those scores and comment on those scores. They score five of the criteria, we score three of the criteria and you will see all of this again next month. I guess I'd also point out that this doesn't include projects that are currently in the capital program. So things may be missing that you think should be there and they may already be in the capital program. I have a list of those projects and I can share them. And what other questions do we have? We're ultimately not asking you to do anything tonight other than look at this list and tell us what you think of it. And yeah, that's what we're asking. Christine? Yes. Jim, now that I understand this a bit better after your explanation, possible to get back with you later after I look at these things and then talk with the town? Sure. Okay. Yeah, and I think it's important to keep the communication with your TAC member. They're the folks that are gonna be reviewing these and making a recommendation to you at their main meeting and they may make forth. So heads up. Yeah, I think we're really just trying to make sure you see as much of the process as we can. And I would also add that these are in the categories of roadway and traffic and safety. So they're not all types of projects. They're just a subset of projects, right? And they don't that are currently in the program. And Christine, am I right? The conversation would be trans has been that we'll look at like these are like the roadway projects. We'll look at them every two years. In between we'll look at bridge projects and maybe another category, I don't know. But then there are certainly a lot of projects that might be in the capital program that might be grant funded. So like if you had a bike path that you're trying to do that's grant funded, that's not something that's getting prioritized here because it's getting prioritized through that grant funding program. All right. But I do want to just kind of give some credit to be transfer really how they're opening the process up and it's interesting. And we'll all learn something and we'll make some improvements to the process as we go through this. Okay. Is there not any other questions? And feel free to reach out to me if something, if you think of something as you look at this. Thanks, Christine. We'll move on next to tip amendment policy update. Okay. Are you again, Christine? That's me again and let me, yeah. So our tip amendment policy was approved in 2011. We haven't made any changes to it and it's been really effective for us. But I think these changes kind of came to my mind in a conversation that I was having with Matthew. So we're Matthew Langham from VTrans. So we're proposing three pretty minor changes to the tip amendment policy. The first one is to remove the reference to MPO slash assistant director because that position doesn't exist anymore. So the second one, I've tried to make the wording not confusing but I'm afraid it's a little bit confusing. So we approve the tip in July. The tip is part of the state's transportation improvement program. And so the tip is incorporated in the STIP and the STIP is submitted to federal highway and federal highway approves it. And it takes effect no earlier than October 1st. So there's always a lag time between when the tip is approved and when the STIP is approved. And in this conversation that I had with Matthew, we were talking about bringing some tip amendments when the new tip is not approved, the old tip remains in effect. So essentially, if you've approved the new trip, you've already approved the new changes. So this merely says we make it an administrative change if we make the old tip look like the new tip. You've already approved it, it's already been a subject of public hearing. So that's the second one. Is that clear? I feel like it's not clear and I'm apologize for that. And the third item is just really regarding a bid price. When we do, when a project goes to bid, the tip must reflect the entire bid estimate. But then when it's bid, the construction, the actual bid prices come in and they might be slightly different. So what we're thinking is if the difference is small is not more than 10%, this could also be an administrative change. So those are the three changes that we're proposing. Okay, any questions about those changes? This is an action item for MPO vote. And I would add that the administrative procedure is approved and signature by the executive director. So there is a process and if Charlie feels that it needs greater review, then we would be able to do that. Okay. Hearing no questions, I'd be looking for a motion to approve this. I'll recommend that the board approve it. I'll second that then. I think I heard Barbara and Chris second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say or signify aye. Anyone opposed? Anyone wish to abstain? Okay, motion passes. Thank you, Christine. Next item, equity leadership team. So at the executive committee meeting two weeks ago, I guess it was, I officially appointed members to the equity leadership team, which would be Jackie Murphy, Justin Rabadou, Elaine Haney, myself, Brian and Emma from staff. And we have a meeting next Wednesday, the 28th from nine to 11, and anyone is welcome to join us in that virtual meeting. And if you want information, we can get the link to you. I don't know, anything else, Charlie, you wanna add or anyone on the committee want to add? I'll just add that I don't think we have this committee yet up on our website, so that is something we'll work on over the next week or so, and try to get it up on our website so that if you are interested in it, you can go to that webpage and see what's happening at that committee. Okay, any questions? This is far just a comment. I know out of the state equity and inclusion group, there are, I think it's like 38 recommendations and one of the recommendations is we contemplate board's commissions, contemplate ways to include more people of color or more BIPOC folks on the commissions themselves. So that's just something I'd raise for us. I'm scanning our group and... That was hard to beat up. It's hard from, you know, I have a long history of a white family in my own history. So I just point that out that that is one of the things that we should contemplate is how we engage more people, BIPOC folks, actually on the commission itself. And if I could add to that, are just, I think with this equity leadership team, there's some intention to work on our relationships in the community with more BIPOC residents. And so that, in particular, this committee, of course, we don't have control over who the municipalities appoint, but I think that's a point well taken. But certainly this committee, there is an expectation that this committee will broaden and become more diverse for sure. Okay. So move on. Next item is Board Development Committee Recommendation for FY22 nominations. Can I throw it over to Catherine? It should be Andy. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Good thing I've only got another meeting to run. Two more, two more. Two more. Well, the second one, I'm gonna hand it off to Catherine. If she doesn't take it, take it, rest it out of my dying hands. All right. So the Board Development Committee met on April 7th. It was Catherine, myself and Jeff Carr and Charlie provided a lot of assistance for that. And we developed a slate of recommended officers for our next year, our next fiscal year. And that includes Catherine as chair, Chris Shaw as vice chair, John Zaccone as secretary treasurer and Jackie Murphy as our at-large representative for large towns. Bard Hill for the at-large representative for small towns. And Mike O'Brien who'd be stepping down as chair to take on the role of the immediate past chair. Andy, that's not something you wanna do perpetually. I would love to, but you know, I'm happy to have you take it on. So I'm sure you will enjoy that role. Thank you. Any questions or comments? I'll just add that obviously that'll be a business item or an action item for your June meeting, the annual meeting to elect officers. So. Okay. Thank you. Next item. Next item is executive director report, Charlie. Yeah. So I was hoping we were gonna end by 730, but I can't wind the clock backwards. So we'll shoot for 740. Just in a few minutes, I hope you all got the email from Emma with the Ecos annual report. Welcome any constructive feedback, how to make those better. It was a very different one this time, more up to date. Typically we've been kind of having almost a year lag in some of our reporting, but welcome any feedback. This one may have a little unique flavor. And I don't know how much of that will continue into the future, but did you all, is anybody who didn't get it, I guess, or Sharon? Oh, I just wanted to say, I found it really great. I thought they did a wonderful job. A lot of interesting new information in it that I think will help us all in terms of our discussions. Yeah, lots of kudos to Melanie, who did most of the data work and Emma and Regina in particular. So other staff contributed also, but those three did a lot of the work. So thank you to those, to them. 89 study, Chris, I don't know if you were able to plug into your city council meeting on Monday night, but it was an interesting city council meeting at South Burlington. No, I missed it, I'm sorry. Oh, that's, or maybe you're just smarter than those of us. Well, I was trying to work through the director planning and zoning, but rather than have to listen to the comments. So we did ask, I think we've mentioned in the past, we've done a lot of engagement in South Burlington, particularly around the idea of interchanges, 12B, 13 and 14 are all in South Burlington. And we were trying to get a position out of the city council. They asked all of their committees to review it, which meant that they got multiple opinions from different committees, right? The Economic Development Committee had a different opinion than the Natural Resources Committee, had a different opinion than the Affordable Housing Committee. So at the end of that though, and this is, I just want to let you know what is happening. The city council voted three, two in support of having 12B continue into the next phase. There were a lot of committees that also, or who supported 13 instead of 12B very explicitly. And the criteria, the analysis that we had gone through did have 13 as kind of a scoring higher in the criteria that we had. And so I think we were kind of left with a split city council, you know, three, two, or two, three, whichever way you look at it. And knowing that, I think we're trying to work on how to maybe keep both 13 and 12B in the mix for the next stage of analysis. We were hoping to really cut it down. We're still thinking about three scenarios. Just one each would have the 12 year, 13. So anyway, that's the update. There's a public meeting for broader public input next Thursday evening. If you're interested in more information, go to the Envision89.com website or contact me or Elaine or Jason. We're happy to share the latest information with you. So it's been a lot, a lot of engagement over the last couple of months and it's still challenging. I had great hopes six months ago that it was gonna be really clear which thing to go with. We didn't end up in that place. We ended up in still a challenging decision. To be fair, you know, I had more input. I think we did three weeks ago, the public meeting. That was the one I attended to hear from the public comments, which was important and I'll weigh in on the one Thursday coming up because, you know, to sit through two hours of council arguing and then have a three to two vote, I can read about that in the papers the next day. Honestly. And that vote was after 10 PM too. So yeah. No doubt about that. Any quick questions on the 89 study? And just, you know, we're down in the weeds as staff. So we've been looking at the interchanges for a while. We're trying to get to more holistic bundles by which we mean, you know, bike, head, transit, park and ride, you know, all kinds of investments to help the situation on 95, which may include these interchanges. So we're trying to get to bundles and that we worked on this fall or this summer and fall, but we'll be going public in the fall with those. So stay tuned, we'll be coming back to you. And well, I guess I'll leave it at that, but any other comments or questions? Yeah, Jeff. If we can, then you've heard me say this before, but I'm going to say it on the record. We need to avoid having this become a rerun of a movie I've seen before, where we've had lack of support for the preferred alternative from the host community. We have to figure out a way how to navigate that. Yeah. And I hope we don't end up with a conflict between what's good for the region and what the individual host community wants. That can be extremely expensive. Yeah, and what you hear me saying, I'm using a lot of words to basically say, we're in a little bit of that pickle right now, Jeff, and trying to- I'm seeing the same movie we saw on the same exits about 12 or 13 years ago. And at that time, I swore, I would never allow this to happen again, and it's starting to happen again. We are working- But I'm not the chair of the MPO anymore. I was the chair of the MPO in that half. Jim, did you have a comment or question? Yeah. Yes, thank you. I wanted to thank you for pretty trying to put the extra presentations together. And I'm sorry, I was not able to make it for that night. Do you have that recorded? And is it possible to take a look at that? It's like providing more background information that you had for a few of the members. There are definitely some of the presentations are probably on the Envision 89 website, or if they're not there, they'll be there very shortly. If you want to see the city council discussion, I'd suggest going to the city council. No, no, I'm sorry. I was talking about the special one that you put together. For the reading criteria. For the board. Oh, for the board. Yes, for the board. We didn't record that. You did not record that. We did not record that. We have some notes out of that though, right away. Not many notes. We had great discussions, but it was a great meeting. I'm sorry you missed the gym, but I don't think we can. Okay. I can look for notes. I'm happy to talk to you about it. So give me a call. Okay. That was on that night that I couldn't make it. Yeah. I apologize. I'm happy to give you my perspective too, because that was something that I really wanted to do. And I think it's important for all the board members to understand that 89 is our chief, one of our chief transportation assets, and it behooves all of our board members to understand what that's going on with that, because this has implications for 30, 40, 50 years going forward, unless we all get out of our cars and start levitating. Right. Okay. Eleni, I'll probably talk to you further. Thank you. Okay. All right. Yeah. And I apologize again. I know you did ask for a recording of that and then it didn't happen. So I apologize. Then just real quick, I'm past my 740 deadline legislative update. I don't know if there's, it's been, I think I would say this every month, it's been hard to follow the mini TIF bill. I'm less optimistic about that right now. I think they're hoping that things, positive things happen with ARPA funds that maybe they don't need to have TIFs that they can supplement with ARPA funds. There, some Act 250 conversation has started up in house natural resources, but I think that bill is likely to go into next year. I don't think that's gonna get acted on this year. There is a, I think they're calling it a bylaw modernization bill, where they're trying to create some incentives for towns to update their bylaws who encourage more housing and affordable housing. That does seem to have traction. Last year was kind of more of a mandatory or last session was more of a mandatory type bill. This year it's much more voluntary trying to encourage. So that I think is moving forward. Clean water funding has been something that has become a topic recently. I think the house has suggested stopping the dedicated funding source through rooms and meal stacks, which if you remember a couple of years ago, there was a lot of pressure from EPA about having a dedicated funding source for clean water. They ended up on a 6% I think of rooms and meal stacks. So that is going to get debated over the next few weeks. I, the administration is pushing back pretty hard. I expect, well, shouldn't expect. I'm going to lean that that 6% rooms and meal stacks is going to stay in statute and not get removed. Just because I think it's going to create a lot of downstream if I can use that analogy, bad implications if it gets taken out. And also actually again, and Dave touched on some of the things in the transportation bill. So there is quite a few bit of investment in the transportation bill for electrification and also for other modes of transportation, biking, walking, transit. So I don't know any other things. There's certainly a lot of other things going on that I didn't touch upon, but yeah, Jim. Sorry to make the meeting go longer, but did you, did Regional Planning Commission get any response back on our rail, draft rail plan comments? Because I know the town, one did get a response and one did not get a response. So I'm wondering if Regional Planning got a response. That was so many weeks ago, Jim. I think we got a, we definitely got a thank you from VTrans. I don't know if Amy, if you were following that at all, I do think that they, you know, took the comments and they made, I haven't tracked if they made updates or finalized that plan yet. Okay, I don't think they finalized a plan, but we got a very detailed response to every comment from one of the comments, but not the other one. So that's what I'm wondering. It seems like they randomly did that, but they didn't do it consistently. I don't think we got detailed response back. Okay. I did not get detailed response back, Jim, but we did not. Yes. I would hope that we keep tracking that. Ironically, the very last correspondence I had from Marty was Sunday night saying we really need to stay on the rail plan and get Regional Planning to make sure we stick with these things. Yeah, we'll follow up and we can have further discussions. Yeah. Great. Thank you. I'll end my report there, Mr. Chair. Okay. Hi, Charlie. The Texas Committee Liaison Activities and Reports, those are in your packet or links to them are. If there's any questions or anyone on those committees wants to make a comment. Do so now. Hearing none, future agenda topics. If that was a cue. I already made you suffer through mine, so I won't do that again right now. Yeah. So we do have things that we talked about tonight, UPWP and budget, and then the transportation project priorities next month. So I don't know, I feel like there was one other thing that the transportation conversation, project conversation may take some time. And does somebody, I feel like somebody else mentioned one other thing for next month. Well, on the on the list is telemark, telework trends. Yeah, we'll take a look and see if we have time. So we'll talk about that at the Executive Committee. Okay. Great. Next is members item, other business. Anyone have anything? I think everyone wants to get home. Let's get home. Everyone is home. Get out of it. Get out of a meeting. Go have dessert or whatever it might be. So thank you everyone. And is there a motion to adjourn, Jeff? Oh, okay. Garrett beat you to it. And Jim second. I'm the alternate tonight, but I don't see Elaine anymore, so I couldn't second it. It's too late now. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I didn't want to pose. Okay. Thanks everyone. See you next month. Thank you. So long. Right.