 and it is six o'clock. That's pretty exciting. So we can call this meeting to order. Are there any, we have our attendance. I assume Amy has them all. And then are there any changes to, oh no. Now we're going to start freezing. Are there any changes to the agenda? I apologize. Also, I'm going to note that maybe Amy hasn't logged back on yet. I'm not finding her. Oh, there she is. Never mind. Yeah, I know this is just crazy. My machine is not working anymore. I can't even get off the video that's stuck. Oh, well, I wish I could at least get rid of the picture. Well, it is what it is. OK, what next on the agenda is we need to open the public hearing for the FY24 UPWP and budget. I will move that we open the public hearing for the fiscal year 24 UPWP and budget. Second. Second, Andy, thank you. Now, do we have any members of the public here who wish to speak? Can someone speak so I could test my headphones? Well, I'm trying. And can we vote to open that meeting? Yeah, we need to open. Nothing's working. Oh, no. That's terrible. Yes, we should. Charlie, talk again. Charlie, can you can you speak again? We can hear you, Jackie. Well, we can't. I just I just said her a little no, letting her know that speaking, I'm going to mute Jackie. Yeah, right. Hi, nice to see you. All right. All those in favor of opening the public hearing for the FY24 UPWP and budget. Raise your hand or whatever works. It looks like that motion passes. So now the the opportunity, this is the opportunity for any member of the public who is here to speak about the budget or the UPWP work program. Do we have anybody right now with a hand raised or anything? I don't see anything in my computer. Well, unable to start the video, it's interesting. So we're not going to be. I'm not going to be on the picture tonight. It says I'm sorry, Catherine, I shut off your video so we wouldn't lose yet. That was good because it's yeah, I think that's very good because it's been whether it's the whether we don't know. It's so, Madam Chair, I think we're going to leave the public hearing open for the UPWP to later. And I'm going to make a motion then to open the public hearing for the 2023 Metropolitan Transportation Plan. Well, you're just right on top of it. While we get the rest of it, we're playing with, you know, trying to organize this is home. Do we have a second for that? I'll second it. All right. Were you able so. With Amy or who's able to get that for the motion? So we're going to leave it open, but we we're going to vote on it. So raise your hands since we have a motion in a second. Looks like everybody votes to have the hope in public hearing. Is there anyone here to speak who is just to speak on the Metropolitan Transportation Plan? Please signify with the little icon. I don't see anything. So I think what we'll do is we'll again, we'll leave this open until later in the meeting. So anybody who has the opportunity to speak has will be able to do so. Next is the typical if anybody from the public is here to make comments for items that are not on the agenda. Do we have any such person here tonight to do so? Please do the little icon. Can you have anybody? Can I ask a quick question? Ben, did you second the motion for the Metropolitan Transportation Plan opening? I believe there was somebody else seconding it. I'd be glad to. But I was just voting in favor. I understood that there was a further yeah. Who seconded that? I guess I guess somebody else too. OK. Oh, whatever. Michael, Michael. OK, Mike Bissonnette did it. Yep. OK. Thank you. Sorry. All right. We are not since we do not have anyone to speak for items that are not on the agenda. We can move on to number five of the deliberative agenda and it is to approve the consent agenda, but we do not have any of those tonight. So we move on to approving the minutes of the April 19th 2023 board meeting. I'll move approval of the minutes with any edits noted. Is there a second? Oh, Garrett, I see Garrett waving his hand. Excellent. All right. Are there any corrections to be noted on the minutes? Please raise your hand. I think Ben. Yeah, just a minor one on page two. It's the I believe it's the first bullet second line. And I'm sorry, it's the first bullet at the next, I think, third to last word. It should be, I believe, board, B-O-A-R-D as opposed to B-O-R-D. Just wanted to show you I am paying attention and I appreciate all your hard work going into constructing the minutes that somebody ought to read them all the way through. So do you have a line number for that bench? It's the I can tell you one second. It's line 11, by the way. Oh, thank you. I think that's exactly right. Yeah, excellent. Yep, thank you. Excellent. Are there any other corrections to be noted? Comments? No. OK, then we shall vote to pass the minutes and with corrections as noted, because that was the only one I had and I thought I'd see somebody else got it. So raise your hands to adopt those minutes with corrections as noted. All right. Thank you so much. That's terrific. Next on the moving red. I think we've lost the audio on Catherine and I'll jump in and ask her staff introductions. This month we have Anne. I had a lot. There you are, Catherine. We can hear you again. Go right ahead. Catherine. Oh, no, you dropped out for a bit. We were about to introduce Anne and Melanie, but please finish. That's exactly what I was saying. But I I really apologize. This is, you know, it's tough to be a chair when things just seem to disappear on you. But anyway, who wishes to go first? Anne or Melanie? Oh, no, am I going again? No, we're here. I guess I can go first. OK. Hi, everybody, I'm Melanie Meadal. I'm a senior planner. I have been at CCRPC since 2004. I am I guess my responsibility is our split between GIS and land use. I work specifically on energy planning and I guess that's been taking up a lot of my time lately with updating the ECOS plan. I also update the ECOS indicators on our scorecard and help to prepare our ECOS annual report that we do annually, respond to municipal technical assistance requests for mapping. This year, we've gotten a new piece of software called ArcGIS Urban to help do build out analyses for municipalities to understand their development pattern. So I've been spending some time on that learning that software. We have a project with Essex Town under the municipal bylaw modernization grant. Also working on the South Burlington Climate Action Plan transportation implementation component. So that's a little bit about the work that I do here at CCRPC mostly focused on the work that I'm doing this year. I live in Burlington. I have two kids age 15 and 11 and two dogs. I enjoy skiing and running. And let's see. I think that I'm originally from New Jersey. That's about it for the brief introduction. Happy to answer any questions. I see Chris, you have your hand raised. Thank you. Yes, I need to know the dog's ages. If you go 15 and 11 for the children, I need to have the follow up right there in parallel with the dogs. I apologize. Probably older, right? The one dog is six. And he is a white golden doodle. And the other dog is three. And she is a gray golden doodle who is the daughter of the older dog. We bred them while we bred the older dog twice. And that was an experience. And he is no longer able to have children. Thank you. I had two other follow ups that I'm going to drill down a little bit more because in South Burlington, I'm ashamed to admit the number of vehicles in my driveway can add up to three or four due to the five adults in the household. How many vehicles do you operate? And whereabouts in Burlington are you north end, south end, somewhere in between? Just curious, working with South Burlington's transportation and climate action folks, this probably comes up. So we have a very elderly internal combustion vehicle that we are keeping going. And we also have a Nissan Leaf. I've been an electric vehicle driver for the last 10 years and actually just yesterday installed charging equipment at my house. So we have two cars for family of four. And I live off of East Ave, like across the street from the hospital. Great. Thank you. That's a great vision. I'm sure that that's something you're addressing. Is there a quick snapshot of what South Burlington is doing with their transportation thing, an item that they are focused on that you could share with us? Sure. So in October, the city council approved the climate action plan that we consulted on with the South Burlington Energy Task Force. When I say we, I mean me and Anne, Janda, who you'll hear from in a little bit. And we established greenhouse gas reduction targets. They're pretty ambitious for the transportation and building sector. And so the project that we're working on now with South Burlington and VHB as the consultant is what are the implementation steps for transitioning the vehicles to electric vehicles? The target is 75% of the fleet being either all electric or partial electric by 2030, reducing vehicle miles traveled by 2.5% and focusing up development in a high density, compact manner. And then also encouraging more walking and biking to reduce that vehicle miles traveled. So VHB is doing the work and coming up with the policies that South Burlington would need to implement or the education that they would have to do to realize those very ambitious climate action plan targets in the transportation sector. Thank you. And then the last question, I don't want to hug everybody's time, but we had put solar fields both on our capped landfill and in the Southeast quadrant, we had two placements of solar farms by private developers. The school district, I think, reaps the benefits of the capped landfill one. We have one at the Veterans Memorial Park, Dorset Park, by the hockey rinks as well. And then specifically in the Southeast quadrant, we were looking for reuse because these farms are set for 20 years, maybe 30 years. And so where we see houses springing up with panels on their roofs, one can imagine that the need for farms may lessen over time. And I know it's been a grapple with our land use planning in the entire county to try and find places where solar farms would be acceptable. I just wonder if you've stumbled over reuse of these farms yet or if you've seen any planning for that yet. And then also whether wind is making any effort whatsoever in the county. So is your question more about reuse of the panels once they have expired and gone through their useful life or more co-land use? The footprint of the land that we were specifically interested in South Burlington at reclaiming it, we're having an option for the city to obtain it to regenerate the green field that we envisioned it to be. So that's what I'm thinking of. As I say, it's been tough to shoehorn these farms in into areas that the cities and towns want to have because not everybody wants the reflections of a solar farm in their backyard. And so we are getting to the point where 20 years from now we can envision that these fields may not be as necessary as they were before because they'll shrink in size or the paneling as you will become obsolete. And or people will have them more on their parking lots or houses or commercial spaces. So and the other aspect was are we doing anything for wind beyond the ones that we, seven windmills I can see from my house? So wind is a little tricky currently because of the PUC's sound rules for wind at night, have a very quiet decibel level, and has made wind not a viable option in Vermont since the wind rules were enacted at the state level a few years ago. And then regarding your question about reusing the land that solar panels are on, I mean, it's site specific and I think falls within the realm of South Brompton's land development regulations. So I think if solar is no longer there, whatever is permissible under zoning, I think could happen under for a different land use purpose. Well, thank you. I just wanted to bubble up on that. Anyone else? I don't see anybody. I'll add a comment that if we get an administration that wasn't anti-renewable resources and anti-wind, we might get a little more wind power in the state. But that's a separate topic. Yeah, and I think that once the board in a few months when we start to talk with the board about the enhanced energy plan, this issue about wind will come up again. We're working with the Energy Subcommittee of the Long-Range Planning Committee to talk about wind and are currently considering adding a policy, encouraging the PUC to take another look at that wind sound rules so that we can realize our 90 by 2050 renewable energy goals in the state. So I think we could have a more specific broader conversation in a little bit once we start getting into the enhanced energy planning work with the board. Well, thank you. That's very interesting. Any other comments or questions? If not, we'll move on to Ann Janda, who is the energy coordinator for the RPC. Hi. Yeah, I'm an energy project manager. And I have been with the organization since September 2021. And I was brought on to assist municipalities with projects related to their enhanced energy planning that Melanie had been working on previously. We found that a lot of what would be wonderful to do in the enhanced energy plans involved money. And in my first year, there wasn't a lot of money flowing just yet. So I got involved with Melanie and the Climate Action Plan in South Burlington. And like she said, now we're also working with an outside consultant, VHB, to work with South Burlington on implementation steps on the transportation portion of that climate action plan. So that's one piece of what I'm doing right now. In my second year at CCRPC, the funding for my role changed a little bit. Instead of coming through the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, my funding is now coming through the Agency of Buildings and General Services, otherwise known as BGS. Because I'm primarily now focused on helping to implement the municipal energy resilience program in Chittenden County. And I was also chosen, I guess, with two other RPC planner, energy planners, to assist all the other RPC energy planners in learning about the, we call it the MERP program. And that's been rolling out kind of slowly. BGS, this is the first time they've ever put together a grant program. But the program is intended to help municipalities do upgrades on their buildings, like energy efficiency work, as well as potentially putting in new heating and cooling systems. And so we're at the beginning stages of that process, but it has been a big learning curve for everyone involved, including BGS. And so there has been a lot of work to do, even though it hasn't actually rolled out to the municipalities yet. And then the last big thing I'm involved in is the Communications Union District that was formed in Chittenden County. I was helpful in sort of getting the word out about that to communities so that the communities could vote on whether or not to join. And once that came together, then I was chosen to be the clerk for what we're calling the CCCUD. So that's taken up a good portion of my time and we're in the process of hiring a consultant to help us with an RFP process to sort of move forward and to do some project management for us. I've also done a lot of work since I've started with energy committees and just general increasing awareness of all the things having to do with addressing climate change. And I live in Heinsberg and I am married and have a cat and I like to garden and hike and I've really gotten into watercolors lately. And I just signed up to take a class to learn more French so that I can be cooler when I go to Montreal. Thank you. Well, actually, now that I know that you're in a wonder color, I'll put you on my list for the Town Hall Art Project. Oh, fantastic. Because of the nice walls and the great lighting in the Jericho Town Hall, we've for over 11 years had programs to emerge, whether they're emerging or established artists to show depending on the theme in the Town Hall for months at a time. That way you get something to look at that's nice too. Yeah, it's nice when you've got a space like that to give people the opportunity. Exactly, because it's not as intimidating as going to a gallery. And so people have actually come in to just look at the art now, so it's wonderful. Any other comments or questions for Ann? I don't see any little hand icons up. So I will thank Ann and appreciate all the work that she's doing, especially now that I definitely need communication help. All right, so moving on then, we have the Infrastructure and National Highway System Reliability Targets and who wishes to speak to this one? I will start, sorry. I was somehow the sign came up, so which is wonderful, but it was in my eyes. So hello, everyone. I'm just gonna just start, I'm here with Sai. We'll provide a very brief presentation on this agenda topic. But before that, you have a very detailed memo in your packet about the transportation performance management process, the measures, specifically the targets that we're gonna be, the measures and targets we're gonna be talking tonight, as well as the proposed motion for you to take action on. With that, I will try to share my screen. Okay, do you see this? Do you see the screen, do you see the presentation? Yeah, you can see it. Yep, no, oh, there it is, there it is, there it is. Excellent. And is it in a presenter mode now? Yes, it is, good now. Thank you. So again, I'm just gonna provide, together with Sai, a very brief presentation and happy to answer any questions at the very end. So this is the presentation outline. We're gonna very briefly talk about what is the transportation performance management, go over the national goal areas where FHWA developed measures for, and then we meaning the DOT and the MPOs are in charge of developing targets for. Talk a little bit about when action is needed from us on these different measures and targets. And Sai is gonna specifically talk about the infrastructure condition measures and targets, as well as the system reliability on the NHS with the general national highway system, as well as the interstate freight travel on the interstate. And then we're gonna conclude with the recommendation. So real quickly, in both MAP21 and FAST Act, which was the federal act thing that maybe started back in 2011, maybe, 2012, they put a lot of emphasis on transportation performance management approach, which is basically an approach that uses data at a strategic level. And it's an approach to make sure that the investments that we make on our transportation system takes us closer to meet our goals and achieve our national goals. And I'm gonna talk about the national goals in a second. There was rulemaking happening back in 2015, 16, I believe. And that rulemaking basically set the measures. So the performance measures are set and the targets are what the DOTs and the MPOs are basically setting either yearly or whatever the schedule is for that specific measure. It also identify roles and also set the target deadlines. And this approach requires a lot of close coordination with DOTs, MPOs and transit authorities. And this is something new that we've been accomplishing the past few years. So I talk about the national goal areas. So FHWA, through rulemaking, established performance measures for these specific areas. The first one is safety. And I wanna remind the board that we came to you back in January of 2023. And we had a memo that looked at the performance measures and targets and you approved the statewide targets for our area. And then they set measures for the infrastructure condition of the national highway system. This is the condition of the pavement and the bridges on the system. It also, the next area is basically the national highway system reliability. And we're talking about travel times on the system. It's also economic development, the freight travel day, time to reliability, only on the interstate is another area that there is a specific national goal. There's also a goal and measures on congestion on NHS. This area and these performance measures are not required in Vermont because we are in attainment at this point. So the state meets the national air quality standards. So we don't, we're not required to develop targets for these measures and the environmental sustainability is another goal area which we do not have measures yet. As a general rule, the MPOs, which is us at this point, this is your PC in Vermont, has 180 days after veterans develops their targets to either agree to accept their targets and veterans develops statewide targets. So the MPO, the MPO board needs to kind of like, consider and agree to accept those statewide targets as the same targets for our metropolitan planning area or we have the option of establishing our own targets. I think, Sai, this is your cue to start talking about the data and the actual targets for these measures. Sure, thank you, Eleni. Hello, everyone. My name is Sai Sarapal, a senior transportation planning engineer at CCRPC. So I'll be talking about, I'll be talking actual numbers now. So as Eleni mentioned, FHWA set the rule setting for the performance areas. And this is the National Highway System infrastructure condition, which is, this is for payment. So the performance measures are a percentage of payment on interstate in good condition at 28% and the target for payment in on interstate in poor conditions 4.9%. And the target for payment on non-interstate which includes like arterials, state highways on the percentage is 30% and the target for payment on the non-interstate national highway system in poor condition at 9.9%. So we trans already established these targets in December and submitted to FHWA. So as Eleni mentioned, we have 180 days to adopt these targets or we have to come up with our own but we are sticking with the state targets to apply for MPO. Next slide, Eleni, thank you. So as of August 22, 2022, in Indian County, we have about 77 miles of interstate out of which like 80% of the payment is in good condition and about four miles of interstate in poor condition. And then we have about like 48 miles of non-interstate NHS out of which like 11.5 miles of about 24% of payment is in good condition. And about 7% is in poor condition. Next slide, please. The next infrastructure is bridges. We have about 59 bridges on national highway system. About 52.5% are in good condition and there are no bridges in poor condition as of December, 2021. Next area, next performance area is a travel time reliability on a national highway system. So this is measured by person miles traveled on interstate and the target is 90%. And person miles traveled on non-interstate NHS is at 80%. And the next one is the freight, the truck travel time reliability. It is measured as an index, as a ratio. It's like the target is less than 1.75%. So next slide, please. So this is a graph showing the travel time reliability for Chitineng County. This is the data available from FHWA. It's like a big data set. The acronym is N-P-M-R-D-S, which stands for national performance measures, research data set. And it is a data vendor. They actually take all this big data and they develop this nice user-friendly graphs and reports. So they perform all the data analytics using all this data. And this data is pretty much like, the data coming from roadside devices and also from vehicles and maybe some cell phone data. So there's a lot of data in there. That's like big data. So this chart shows that interstate travel time reliability for Chitineng County in 2021 is at 100%. So it's about the target, like 90% is the target, but we have more than 90%. We have like 100% of reliability. Next slide. This graph shows travel time reliability for non-interstate NHS travel time, which we are about like 94% and the target was 80%. So we are above the target on this one. And the next one is this graph showing the truck travel time reliability. And we are at 1.23 index and the target is 1.75. So we are well, like, achieving targets in the MPO area, Chitineng County. Thank you, Zai. So before we get to these recommendation, we presented all these to the TAC a couple of weeks ago and the TAC as well, the staff recommends that the board accepts the statewide targets as established by V-TRANS for the NHS infrastructure and system reliability performance for our area, the metropolitan planning area. This is our recommendation. Are there any questions about the measures, the targets, you know, the motion? I see Barb has his hand up, but I'm gonna take, I just wanted to ask a question first. Is there any kind of punishment for not meeting your targets? Because, you know, technically the mileage for poor on the interstate is slightly above the federal maximum. Yeah. There are some, they are different for different kind of measures and areas. For example, for the safety measures and targets, if you do not, if V-TRANS does not meet their targets, then they need to use all their safety funds for safety projects or safety, you know, specific initiatives. I believe V-TRANS has been doing that anyway, but other states haven't. So if they don't meet their targets, yes, there are some repercussions. If you don't meet their targets and you have to refocus your programs to address the issues to start meeting their targets. Does that answer your question? Yes. Thank you. And can I add to that, Eleni about the, about the travel time reliability and also infrastructure performance measures that those targets are set every four years, like full time, like, you know, full four years targets, but the state devotees have to report every two years, like, you know, how they're doing on their system, how the system is performing, you know, how their infrastructure is performing every two years, but the targets are set for four years. So they'll have like a state, like in the middle of the time where they can like, look at how things are working, how they can distribute the funding to different things so that they can achieve that target in the next two years. There is a checking kind of period. Yeah, there's a checking kind of thing, yeah. Yeah, so for some measures, for others, so that's where kind of like, there are different, you know, time lines with different measures, so safety is annual. Yeah. These measures are, you know, two and four years, so yeah, this is kind of like a complicated process here. Thank you. Bart? Well, first I'd observe, and I don't mean this to be amusing, but if a bridge were to abruptly fail, that would probably feel like a punnage. So I think there are some natural consequence punishments. Oh, it's true. Yes. My bigger question though, and I apologize if I just have failed to grasp this. I'm struck by what appears to be a binary rating system, if these are good or poor, and I know I've seen more nuanced rating systems, so maybe just describe or explain that briefly why there are two. So presumably a brand new bridge would be excellent, and one that's 10 years old and good is good, and are they both rated good? What does that tell us? So, you know, this is the FHWA procedure, how they do the ranking. So they look at the bridge deck area, the surface condition, the structure condition, and they come up with scores, and according to the FHWA procedure, they divided the scoring between good and poor. So there are so many bridges, which might be in fair condition, like you know, which falls in that umbrella between good and poor, but they're not, they're still, I think it's part of the FHWA process that we are looking at how many are good and how many are poor, and if there are a lot of poor bridges, then you should be working on those poor bridges, you know. So like how you divert funding to like structures, which we need more attention. So this is more like for performance, it's not, I mean, yeah, one is excellent, one is good, yeah, both are in good condition. So you don't need any funding for those, you know, maybe maintenance funding, but not capital funding. I don't know, I mean, you know, that's something that's definitely good. Yeah, no, I think you're right, Sai. So Bart, I think that, you know, it's not just, you know, like good and poor, we do have fair. So we have different gradations when you're just basically you're looking at, but it's like when you come to performance measures, we are looking at good and poor. There are other in between. In between, yeah. Yeah. Any other questions? I think Mike had a, right? I can't see all of them. Okay. Yeah, I was going to ask you about a couple of things, but it's really not that important, but can you explain the freight ratio? What's that based on? Yeah, I love it. That's a big, I mean, it's a technical question, but I can, I'll try to answer as much as I can. So the freight index is a ratio of 95th percentile travel time to the average travel time. It takes like a segments of interstate. And then they also look at the timing, like, you know, in the morning, afternoon and evening, and then weekdays, weekends, and then they do like a weighted average. So there is like a big formula for that, but this is more like a, to be, to be not like, you know, to tell you, like in a short form, it is like a ratio of like 95th percentile travel time to 50th percentile, like normal average travel time. Like, no, it's a shorter form, but there is a big formula for that. Okay, that's good. That's too complicated for me to understand. Yes, yes. And it looks like the MPR area is in good shape with these, all of these metrics. Okay. It seems that we're meeting all our targets for the travel time reliability, as well as the freight reliability. So that's good news for us. When it comes to condition of the, you know, of the pavements and stuff, you can see that we are kind of falling a little bit behind, but in some, but we're pretty close to the target. So, yeah. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments on this before there is a motion to accept the statewide targets? Please raise your little icon. Oh, I see, are you gonna speak again, Bard? No, okay. So, all right, then we'll make a motion to accept the targets. And this is an MPO vote. Just to let you know. All right, so everyone who- I'll second that. So, all those in favor, raise your hand. I can see that, right. Thank you very much. The motion passes. Next is the, on the agenda is the federal adjusted urban area boundary approval. And who will speak to this? That would be me. Hello, everyone. I'm Jason Shrest, Senior Transportation Planning Engineer here at the RPC. And let me just fire up a presentation here. Would someone be so kind as to let me know that you can see this? I can. All right, see some hands raised waving. This is lovely, thank you. Okay, let's get going. So, this is what is known as the federal adjusted urban area boundary. It's a FHWA process that we undertake about every 10 years following the decennial census. Some of you may recall this 10 years ago, maybe not. Let me see, okay. Just, I wanna give a brief introduction of what the terms we are talking about and what this means to you. And we'll take questions from there. So, we start with the census urban area that comes out following the census. And you can see the definition I have there up on the screen. And to make things a little more complicated, FHWA has their own definition of what an urban area is. And the key thing to take away there is the threshold for an MPO designation is 50,000 people, which as you're all very much aware, we are an MPO and the only one in the state of Vermont. Following the 2020 census, we have two urban areas. The census, sorry, I'm retraining myself. The census has revised their terms as they tend to do every time we go through this. You may recall we used to talk about urbanized areas or urban clusters. Those terms are no longer. They're just urban areas and they just have different populations. But anyway, back on track here. Two urban areas in Chinatown County, the Burlington urban area and the Milton urban area. And I just included some population and housing statistics there for food for thought. I took a look, there's always been a lot of talk at this table of what were to happen if we weren't the only MPO in the state. When would that happen? And the closest, I don't really wanna say competitor, but the Levin and White River Junction, New Hampshire, Vermont areas, at 30,000 people. So there's a bit of a ways to go there. So I don't think we have to fret too much about that right now. Now just mention that, if you're not aware of it, MPOs don't need to stay within state boundaries. They can very much cross state borders. So that's what would happen in that case if they were to exceed 50,000 people. Why is this urban area expansion important? We use it for planning purposes. It more or less exists in the background. After you hear this presentation tonight, you probably won't hear about it again for 10 years. And that's okay. I think that's generally speaking a good thing. But we use it for categorizing and reporting highway traffic characteristics. Urban roads versus rural roads have different growth factors associated with them. So when development comes along and does a traffic impact study in one of your municipalities, they will typically, if it's at a large enough scale, produce a traffic impact study. And part of that requires them to get traffic volumes and adjust them based on whether or not they are classified as urban or rural. So it's kind of one of the more common cases that this would come into play. And there is also a little funding nuance. I'll talk about the functional classification system. I know we're inundating you with systems of highways tonight. We just talked about the national highway system. I'm gonna talk to you about the functional classification system in a moment. But urban minor collectors and the functional classification system there is this thing called minor collectors and they can either be urban or rural depending on where they fall. And the key takeaway there is if they are urban, they are part of what is known as the federal aid system. And if a roadway is on the federal aid system, it's eligible to receive federal funding for transportation projects. And so that is the one nuance where this can sort of come into play if there's a minor collector and it's considered urban, it's eligible to receive federal funding. If it's rural, it's not. And so as part of this process, really the goal is just to smooth out the boundaries primarily just based on geographical features, preferably. But we also use property lines if we need to. And it's important to note that these adjustments don't affect any funding that's that ties back to population, the census boundaries would cover in that instance. And also important to note that this doesn't make any actual changes to the functional classification system and the federal aid system itself remains the same aside from whether or not it's, again, this cuts back to that nuance of the urban versus rural minor collector. That's the only nuance there. And I put a link in the chat to the online map that was shared and this is just a screenshot of what it looks like. So the light pink are the census urban areas and then the dark pink are the proposed additions to create the federal urban areas. And so if a roadway falls on a border, like hopefully you can see my mouse, like North Williston Road over here that falls on a border, that would be considered urban. The only other thing I wanna make mention of is that as we go through this process, it's a real good time since we're looking at the federal aid system and functional classification in general. It's a good time to consider whether or not there should be any adjustments to a roadways functional class. And there were two that we wanted to look further into in the town of Essex and that those were weed road right here, which would form a border and towers road, which would also be a border. And right now those are just local roads. They are not on the federal aid system, but from a cursory look at them, we feel like they would likely meet the criteria for a minor collector. And in this instance, if we were to propose that and you were to approve it and they would then be urban, they would then be on the federal aid system and eligible to receive federal funds. Okay. So Jason, quick question. Yes. Light pink existed from the census and would have stopped where the dark pink comes in. And the adjustment is in the process of being made by the state to make it all look more contiguous the way we see it when we look at our maps. And then to sketch the border, the roads that are on the edges to be included, like you just pointed out with tower road that may more appropriately be seen as urban. Is that correct? Correct, except for it's, this is an internal thing. This was, these are, this is a staff proposal. This is not coming from veterans. These are our proposed expansions. And then how is that gonna, you're gonna show us how that works up the line. Okay. Thank you. How it can get approved. Right. From here, should you be so inclined to, approve these proposed boundaries that we would then send them over to VTrans and they would work with Federal Highway to get them finalized. Thank you. Sure. Any other questions or comments about this? All right. You know, I'm struck. I can't picture a downside but it seems worth calling the question. Is there any potential downside to classifying these roads as you just described? Yeah. It's a good question. And it came up at the TAC meeting as well. And really, no, I couldn't come up with one. It's a head scratcher for sure, but. Any other questions before a motion is made to approve the proposed Federal Adjusted Urban Area Boundary where there may be minor changes down the road. And it is in D'Empiovo. If I may, I have a question. So, Jason, just to use my town because I'm curious here, as I understand your map, I put my camera on the line, wait here. The, if you go up to, off of Shelburne Village now and you go up, not to Dorset Street, but to Spear Street, Spear Street and Shelburne, if this map is approved would become part of the designation for roads and would be subject to be able to get aid, correct? No, sorry, I didn't explain that nuance. I was trying to understand how the funding versus putting the maps in the border because as I'm looking at your map, if I'm reading it right, because the streets aren't labeled is that Spear Street and Shelburne would now become part of the federal aid system. But am I reading that wrong? So the federal aid system consists of, you can see my mouse, right? Yes. Okay, the federal aid system consists of all of these top roadways above minor collectors. So interstate freeway, principal arterial, minor arterial, major collector. All of those are part of the federal aid system regardless of whether or not they are urban or rural. Okay. The only time this boundary comes into play is in the instance of minor collectors, so the dotted lines. So urban minor collectors are on the federal aid system. Rural minor collectors are not. So in the instance of Spear Street, it's always on the federal aid system based on its functional classification. I think it's, is it Thomas Road? There is a Thomas Road. I'm not sure which one, what you're trying to say. Yeah, in Shelburne, it's a minor, there is a minor collector here. I can't, I wanted to say it's Thomas Road, but I can't remember it, I'll stop my head. But there is a minor collector that we are proposing to include in the urban area. And so that would be on the federal aid system. If we didn't. That would be a change. I'm looking at your map here. In the area where you've got that, I think that is Thomas Road. Okay, so that's how that would work. And it looks like there's a couple of others that might come into play as well, or at least one other in Shelburne. Correct. Okay. All right, that helps explain to me. So the expansion there of the urban area is it only takes into account those minor collectors as far as adding them to the system. Okay, thank you. Yes, great question. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify that. Yep, thanks for your explanation. It was very clear. Jason. Jason, kind of picking on by that. I don't know if you said it, I missed it, but how much roadway would this add? Do you know? In terms of mileage, perhaps? Yeah. I don't know the answer to that question in terms of the increased amount of roadway mileage that would be now considered urban. I don't have that answer. That probably is something we could do, a mapping exercise and calculate, but I don't have it right now. Yeah, I don't know if in terms of funding and whatnot, how that narrows the pot. It's probably not significant, right? No, no, not significant. Okay, thanks. Are there any other questions or comments? This is quite interesting. If not, we need a motion to approve the proposed federal adjusted urban area boundaries. So moved. I'll second. All right. Is this an MPO vote? Yes, this is an MPO vote. Thank you. So all those in favor, raise your hand, please. Yeah, that's good, all right. The motion passes. So if I may, before we leave this topic, Jason, if you know, is the other minor collector that's in Shelburne that's gonna become part of the network now, is that Mount Philo Road? It is, yeah. Apologies, there was a comment. It could have included some road names on here. If you have the online map and you zoom in, the road names do eventually come up. It's just, we didn't wanna, it would crowd things quite a bit if we included all of them. But it is Mount Philo Road, that a portion of it would be considered urban. Okay, thank you, I'm familiar enough to make the leap with my own town, but obviously other towns were, I'd be remiss to even guess. So, but thank you. Sure. That was just a point of order. Is an MPO vote, do we have to show what towns voted how? I think Amy takes care of that because it comes out in the minutes. Yeah, we'll include a table in the minutes, Mike, as long as nobody's voting no, or there's not a split vote, we're just working. Yeah, I just didn't see all the hands go up and I don't see the whole screen. I didn't know if anyone was abstaining or whatever. If I held up one hand, was that one vote? And if I held up, didn't hold up the other, was that a no, I'm confused. Well, you're with South Burlington, so that's two votes, so. Yeah. But I only used one hand. Still two votes. Yeah. Yeah, and just for those of you who are newer to the board, and when we talk about MPO voting, there's some discussion of this in our bylaws where there's some weighted voting. So, Burlington gets four votes, South Burlington gets two, Colchester gets two. We used to kind of talk about Essex getting two, but now it's really the town gets one, the city gets one in Essex, and then all the other towns get a vote. But Buells Gore and the other non-municipal members do not have a vote other than V-Trans. V-Trans, of course, gets a vote on MPO business. And that's a subject for discussion at some point. Well, especially as V-Tran often gets the final vote. They do. And I hate to belabor this topic, but I am curious to Jason. Our funding is finite, right? So as you add these minor collectors and the fact that they're now eligible for funding, it takes the existing pot and just stretches it more. It's not like additional funding comes in as a result of this, correct? No, additional funding doesn't come into it. I don't know if I'd say it's dredges it further because it's all project dependent and where it's been planned and where it's being moved forward. So it's only if there's projects that are involved, so paving as an example. So you don't actually receive any potential federal funding unless you're doing something to that road. It's not like V-Trans is formula where they give funding every year for miles of road that you have. It's not like this is a similar kind of thing that just comes to the town. Correct. Okay, thank you. Thank you. That's all very helpful. Before we close the public hearing and adopt the FY24 UPWP and budget, is there any public who would come in during the presentation, the meeting to make any comments? I don't see anything in my... Not see any, so I don't believe there's anyone outside of the board in the meeting. All right, I'll move that we close the public hearing and adopt the fiscal year 24 UPWP and budget. And we have to take two votes on this because there's transportation funding involved. So the one, there's an MPO vote for it and an RPC vote for it. Second. Just so that people... So should the motion just be to close the hearing at this point, since we have two votes? Yes, so that's what we took it to be. All those in favor of closing the hearing, raise your hand please. What I can see, it looks pretty good. So now we can move on to the two votes. Unless the board has some other questions. So we need a motion to adopt to the UPWP? Yes. And then another motion to adopt the budget? They can be done together. It's just that one is an M, you have to do it twice. One is MPO and one is RPC. Sounds like two motions to me. I'll move the UPWC. I'll second that. All those in favor of saying... So is that for the, is that for MPO or RPC? Point of order. Yeah, it's for the RPC because Garrett made the motion. Thank you. So raise your hand please. Because I could, good man. The motion passes. Now we need to have a motion to adopt the UPWP and the budget for the, with the MPO because... I'm not moving this one. I'll move it. Dan, Karen moves it. Thanks, Dan. I'll second that. All those in favor, raise your hand please. Looks good to me. Thank you very much. The motion passes. And now I'll move to close the public hearing and adopt the 2023 Metropolitan Transportation Plan. Second. And this is an MPO vote as well. So just to be sure. All those in favor then raise your hand. Excellent. Thank you very much. The motion passes. All right. Now, Mike gets to have time to speak because this is, we're moving towards agenda item 12, the Executive Committee nominations. Hey, thanks, Catherine. And it was in your packet. As soon as I find it here to make sure I don't make any mistakes. The slate that we're moving forward would be Chris Shaw moving up to chair. Bart Hill moving to vice chair. Jackie Murphy moving to secretary treasurer. Michael Bisonette staying as the at large for towns under 5,000. Elaine Haney being the representative for towns over 5,000 and Catherine McMains being the immediate past chair. And I wanna thank all those folks for agreeing and volunteering to take those positions. And sad to say, we have to say goodbye to you on the Executive Committee. It's about time, right? All good things. And just, this is a information item obviously would be an action item at your next meeting at the June annual meeting. And at that meeting, Charlie, anyone who wants to make a motion from the floor will be welcome to do so. Is that right? That's right, yeah. Yeah, somebody else wants to run for position. They're more than welcome to do so. So we could bring it back on, like. Pardon? Oh, yes, you could. You could vote to bring it back. No, no, no, no, no, no. You, any position but yours. Cause if you don't, then it looks like Andy will have to go in cause I'll refuse. That's right. Vandy was a, a regular fill in for immediate past chair for quite some time. Well, thank you, Mike. Looking forward to seeing everyone at the annual meeting to vote on these things. Next agenda item 13 is the equity update. Yeah. So, and Nelson's out of town. So I'll give you a very brief update. And Nelson is continuing to work on relationships around the county. Has also been connecting with individual municipalities to find out what's happening in terms of equity work or not in different municipalities. So if you have somebody that you wanted to talk to, please get in touch with her or let me know. I'm happy to forward along that. And then in terms of more substantive work, we're kind of starting to dig into some sort of equity statement and code of conduct. I'm at this point, I'm expecting a draft to get to you for your July meeting. So heads up on that. And then the other big substantive issue is in the work program that you just approved is $100,000 for building capacity within marginalized communities. And we're trying to kind of flesh out the details of that and work with the community and the equity advisory community about how that funding will flow out to community groups to help them build capacity within their communities. So happy to take any questions on those, but that's a quick summary of what's happening on the equity front. And Nelson would probably have done a better job on giving you a lot more detail, but that's at least a sense of what's happening. Yeah, any questions? Charlie, where would the $100,000, is this a matching grant of some sort and is it from the state or the federal? It's MPO funding, it's federal highway funding. And so the notion as we looked at what federal highway is kind of has in their equity plan and what they're encouraging states and MPOs to do is to build relationships with marginalized communities within your region or state. And so that's what we're really kind of following through on that and trying to figure out how to get those funds. My best guess right now is that they may be getting invested in like a community liaison. So let's say it's a Nepalese community. It may help fund somebody there that will gather that community and kind of bolster their efforts to build their community so that when we have a project, let's say, well, one that we know is coming is the Winooski Bridge, right? And it's very likely VTrans is gonna ask us to, hey, can you do some outreach? And if we've already invested in that community, we can contact that liaison and say, hey, can you give us some perspective from the Nepalese community? So that's kind of the idea there. Thank you. Great. For what it's worth, Charlie, too, we have the Equity Advisory Committee has an in-person meeting at Oak Ledger. I think it is. That's right. Next week or I've got the date. Two weeks. May something, two weeks. Yeah, May 31st, yeah. Yeah, and this'll be a big topic of discussion is kind of trying to flush this out a little bit more. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. That's terrific. Might as well just continue then with the executive director's updates. Yeah, just a few items. First, thank you that you guys went really quick with the work program, budget and the MTP, but it was a lot of staff work. It felt anti-climatic, but thank you for approving those. That was a lot of work leading up to those. You guys went so fast. Eleni was like, did they approve the MTP? Sorry. So thank you staff for all your work on that. And if you want, we can go back if you want. We're good, thank you. Thank you. I'm not asking more questions than I want answers to, but part. I appreciate, as you say, that it's really true. People spend hundreds of hours on this thing and we go, yep, bing, bang, boom, done. So I apologize if it feels like funky. No, no, thank you. It is credit to the staff for all the time and effort they put in producing a high quality document. And also trust in staff. Yeah, and I apologize. That wasn't me fishing for compliments, but thank you. And it is true, but it was just, sorry, a little humorous to me. But in terms of my updates, we are in the process of hiring a planner more on the land use side right now. We finished first round of interviews this week. I think I may have mentioned last week or last meeting, but we did get 15 pretty good applicants, which was actually a pretty good result in this job market. So we were pretty pleased with that. And we got three of them that were bringing back for a second interview in the next couple of weeks. So that's progress. And then the other big thing, obviously the legislature has adjourned or at least temporarily, we'll see if they have to come back for a veto session, which seems fairly likely. But two big updates within that in terms of what they accomplished in impacting us, one is just financial. They did approve. If you remember early on in the session, we asked for support for full funding of the regional planning commissions. All the RPCs did that. And it really did make a difference. I think when the appropriation committees saw that all the RPC boards had weighed in to support that. And they approved 1.5 million. So we're now a little over 6 million. That's about 60% of the full funding statewide. Which is, but it's great. And it was a huge step forward. So thank you for your support in that. It really did make a difference. We'll try not to do that too often, but it did matter. And the second more of a policy issue was S 100, the housing bill. There's a lot in there. There's definitely some implications for municipalities and zoning. But if I kind of step away from the details of local control and things, I'm very hopeful that it does have a positive impact over the longer term on our housing market in Vermont. It's not gonna do anything in the next six months or year, but over the longer term, it seems like it should be making housing construction in the state a little easier than it has been. And there's a lot of studies attached to that. So that was a good more housing, hopefully. The bad is I think there were three or four studies that incorporated into that involving RPCs around, well, the Natural Resources Board has one that will participate in around improving Act 250, which was a major point from VLCT. Concerned that S 100 was not addressing Act 250 changes. So there will be an opportunity to address Act 250 changes. There's also a study on the state designation program and related to that because there's some thought that maybe our regional planning future land use maps, sorry, I don't have a good, like this, might be able to get used and be used in the future rather than a state process have more of a regional process for designating where growth is desired in each region. So there's a designation study that the Agency of Commerce is running and then there's also a future land use study that the RPCs are charged with. And the fourth one is a study to look at delegating Act 250 responsibility to municipalities. So this was particularly our urban core municipalities, Burlington, Winooski, South Burlington. We're very interested in that. And so we're gonna be pretty involved with that. For a while, that one actually had Shiton County RPC as being responsible for that. It turned into the state RPCs, but we'll still be very involved in all those studies. So the next six months are gonna be pretty busy giving recommendations back to the legislature about how to do some more improvements around Act 250, designations, RPC role in that. So sorry, that was a lot to digest there. Happy to take any questions and take a breath on that. I just overwhelmed or put you to sleep. Okay, well, I see nodding, so you're awake. And then my last update is really on the second page of the, well, I guess not the agenda, but the page after the agenda, just to note the annual meeting is at the McCom Barn and Winery in Milton on June 21st. Emma has, I hope, gotten you and saved the dates. Hopefully you've seen those communications from Emma and there will be more details coming to make sure you get registered for those. We are asking for, I think like a $20 payment and that's really just so we can get a secure firm headcount for dinner and it'll be more of a buffet sit down dinner and a couple of things in terms of programming there. Keisha Rom-Hinsdale, Senator. Keisha Rom-Hinsdale is gonna be the guest speaker to really talk more about S100, that housing bill. And secondly, we wanna spend a little time celebrating the fact that the MPO turns 40 this year. So that will be a little, we'll kind of have a little bit of maybe some boards and some commentary about that. And we're asking the previous directors of the MPO to join us for that. So yeah, any questions for me? The only thing I have to say is given that, it is celebrating the MPO and there are several members of the board as well as staff who've came from the original, from the MPO prior to the merger because most of them are all gone but there are still a few left. Would it be worthwhile to at least acknowledge those people? The people that were on the MPO board before merger? Yeah, yeah. And plus the staff who came from the MPO, that kind of thing. Yeah, no, we can think about incorporating that somehow. Sure. Yeah, because most people have moved on but there still are some that are still here and kind of fun to acknowledge how many people have continued like Jeff, of course. All right, Garrett, sorry. How do we pay the $20 or whatever it is? Emma is going to, I'm sure give you some sort of button to click on that will magically withdraw from your account. Cool, I want one of those buttons. Yeah, careful, right? No, I didn't see that detail so I don't know the answer to that, Garrett. I think it may be a PayPal type situation or something. Yeah, that's fine. I just hadn't seen a place where we can go do it and pay it so we can get there. Yeah, I think we were just kind of waiting to get through this meeting and I think she'll get the more formal notice out on that to get registrations. Yeah, thanks for- Excellent. Ben? Quick question, there's not going to be any Zoom on this, will there? For the annual meeting? Yeah, because I'm overseas actually, but I would get up at 2 a.m. to be there. We were not planning on that to be an option, yeah, be that we're kind of out of our office space, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, yeah, so I'm hope, yeah, try to get a good night's sleep. All right, okay, we'll do. Thank you though. Sorry, that's how I'm not in the chair yet. That would be a commitment to get up to to do that. Any other comments or questions for Charlie? I certainly don't have any chair updates. So moving, if there isn't anything else, we'll move on to the number 15 on the agenda, which is the Committee of Liaison Activities Reports and is usual for those who wish them, they are in your packet, otherwise they're available on via link. And so that brings us to the last thing of the meeting then. I'll move adjournment. Back to them. All those in favor, raise your hands and say goodbye and try to stay warm tonight and protect your plants. It's going to be cold. Thank you everyone, all the best. Yeah, thank you everyone. Have a good night. And pray for no more.