 a bunch of people coming in right now. Do we have a quorum? We should. Okay, yeah it looked like we did. All right it is 6 p.m. so we're going to call this regular meeting of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission in to order at you know 6 p.m. and as we have the attendance so we have a quorum. Are there any changes to the agenda? I don't see any. Catherine? Yep. I'm not sure they require changes but Charlie on consent item one. I'm pretty sure I understand but reading through it the first time it said talking about the Williston rest area and said replacement of Culver in this area and then later it's talking about Richmond. I believe that that should be the the Culver is on the northbound interstate in Richmond where they did the south bound is that right? That's correct. Okay yeah that's what I thought but it was a little unclear and then in consent item two I just I don't know if anyone new people wanted to take that off the consent item because it's kind of a you know we talk about it every year. I think it's fine on the consent agenda I just you know I know for new people they may not understand what we've gone through in the past. You mean we can't do anything about it? Right and it's just numbers that you know that looks good. But an explanation I don't know if anyone wanted to be explained that's all. I mean that's a good question because we do have some new people and it is you know it could be useful. We'll talk about it when we get to the consent agenda then. Well you can only take it off the consent agenda when you talk about it. Oh that's true. That's why I'm bringing it now if anyone wants to take it off that's the time to do it. This is a good orientation item for those meetings beforehand. That's true. So what is the preferred way of doing it? Take it off or leave it on and just have people ask questions if they want to before the vote. She can't. No that's true it's good. She can't. It's just an up and down vote on the consent agenda. If you want to talk about either item you have to have a motion to take it off the consent agenda and we have to vote on. And that's why I bring it up. I forgot about that. We haven't had that happen in a long time. But it doesn't sound like anyone cares so we just leave it I think. Well give them three seconds to bubble up and make a motion to take it off the consent agenda sounds like the plan. Nothing looks like it's happening so we'll just move on. Next is a universal item for open meeting is that the public comment period for any items that are not in the agenda. Do we have anybody here who wishes to speak on something that is not on the agenda? We don't see anything. So we will move on. Next on the agenda is to open the public discussion for the FY 24 UPWP. So I'll make a motion to open a public forum for the fiscal year 2024 UPWP. Is there a second? I'll second. Jackie Murphy. I guess it's probably easier to raise our hands. So all those in favor raise your hands. It appears that the motion passes. And so the forum the discussion the UPWP is open to the public now. Do we have anyone from the public here who wishes to propose or talk about an item four of the UPWP for fiscal year 24? Okay. Michael Arnold would you introduce yourself? Hi. I'm Michael Arnold. I'd just like to recommend that you consider adding transit-related infrastructure to the upcoming work plan. Things like studying stop consolidation, installing signal priority, installing Q-jumps, and potentially dedicated lanes in places where there's an offerative way can substantially reduce operating costs while increasing travel times for our transit riders. And I think this would be something that could help GMT with its budget while also increasing transit mode share and increasing access for our lower income residents. Thanks. Thank you. Is there anyone else who has an idea for the UPWP who wishes to speak at the moment? Well, we'll leave it open for a while just in case somebody does decide to come in and wants to speak to this item. So then we'll move on to the staff introduction. It's Emma, Ann Nelson, and Mackenzie, and I guess you do the honors, Charlie. Oh, sorry. Just let them run with it. I'll run for that. That sounds good. Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm Emma Vaughn. I'm the communications manager here at the RPC. I've been here for just over nine years now. My background is in more traditional marketing. So I used to work for a couple of companies doing creative copywriting and editing and graphic design and advertising, that sort of thing in my previous life. At the RPC, I work on all things communications related. It's very broad, including sort of the big one, which is the website and managing, keeping that up to date. So my main focus is I sort of like to think about them as internal and external communications. So for internal communications, providing communication support for staff and our municipalities and our partners, and that sort of looks like individual project support, public participation and outreach, strategizing. I manage our committee appointment process, event planning, lots and lots of graphic design support for our projects and as well as for our municipalities when they need that. And then I also manage our external or sort of public facing communication. So regular communication with the public through media alerts and press releases, front porch forum posts, lots and lots of direct emails and use letters and that type of thing. So one major thing I've been working on lately is equity, working with staff and our board members and the creative discourse group for the last couple of years to get that up and running and getting our equity advisory committee off the ground. Obviously, that said, we've hired Anne Nelson, which I'm so happy about and I'll let her speak to that a little bit more. But I'm looking forward to continuing to support Anne Nelson and also that committee and this work as we move forward. And another sort of major thing since it's on my mind and taking up a lot of my time at the moment is the website, is a CCRPC website. It's really our major hub for information and there are so many committees and projects happening all the time to keep up to date. So in addition to sort of literal everyday updates in January, I do sort of an overhaul of kind of a content audit, if you will, and do a deep dive into the website to keep things refreshed and up to date. So that's what I'm spending a lot of my time on. Now it's a seven year old website, but it's still in really good shape. So that's sort of what I'm focusing on this month. And yeah, I think that's with that, I'll just pass it to Anne Nelson. I think that's a pretty comprehensive overview, but thanks everyone. In a nice segue. Thanks Emma. Hey everyone, my name is Anne Nelson. I am the Equity and Engagement Manager at the RPC. I started November 1st, moved up here from Virginia with my partner. I went to grad school for urban planning down there and worked for a couple years in conflict resolution work and facilitation work within the planning world. But my interest and focus has always been equity related. So I'm excited to be here and start thinking about how we can make the RPCs work a little bit more equitable both internally and externally. So I work with the Equity Advisory Committee that Emma mentioned, kind of getting them off the ground and running and setting up a system for them to start to review the work that we produce at the RPC and are involved in. And additionally, I'm starting to work on rewriting our mission statement and code of conduct and putting together an equity action plan for the RPC, rewriting the public participation plan and coming up with kind of a guide to community engagement for municipalities. And then some other work on project specific related tasks. So yeah, excited to be here and nice to virtually meet you all if I haven't already met you. I'll pass it over to Mackenzie. Thank you, Anne Nelson. I'm Mackenzie Spear. I'm a Business Office Associate at the RPC. I've been here for approximately three months now. And I work primarily with Amy and Forrest in the business and accounting side of things. Previously to my employment here, I ran my own online business for about three years. And I also helped the startup and management of DRCO construction. And I was there for approximately six years. I currently hold my associates in business. And I'm currently working towards my bachelor's in business management at Champlain College. I'm a born and raised rematter, a mama to three littles and an avid reader. And it's nice to meet all of you virtually. Thank you. Thank you. Well, now the thing that I completely forgot about because it hadn't happened since I'm from here is the discussion about consent agenda, but now we have the actual vote on the consent agenda. So we need a motion to approve. I'll move approval. Second. Michael Bryan. All those in favor say aye. I got to remember one or the other. Next is the approve the minutes of November 16th, 2022. I'll move approval of minutes from November 16th, 2022. Do we have a second? I didn't hear. Dan Karen. Oh, sorry, Dan. Thank you. Are there any corrections or anything needs to be changed in the minutes? Well, hearing none, all those in favor raise your hand. I remember this time. Thank you. Oh, Chris has his hand up. Sorry, I was trying to raise my hand, but I'll make that go away. Oh, thank you. All right. Next on the agenda is a discussion of the fiscal year, mid-year UPWP and budget fiscal year 23 mid-year. And we should close the public forum. No, that's different. The public forum is number 13 on the agenda. There we go. Thank you. Yeah, we were trying to leave. You know, just in case somebody, you know, actually walked in and talked to Charlie, you know, had a chance to, before the weather changes on us. Who is going to speak to this item? I am going to try to, but I'm getting a wicked echo. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay. Thanks. Sorry about that. So there were two documents attached. One was the full work program with edits. That is color coded so that projects that are proposed to come out of the work program are pink, new land use or non-transportation projects are colored blue, new transportation projects are colored green. And then also where there's any changes or maybe there's a pending contract, it's yellow. In deference to this format, I was not going to walk through the work program unless folks would like me to do that amount of scrolling on the screen. Is that okay? Any objections? Okay. And I'm hearing everybody's okay with that. So, but I will share the budget in a moment. And hope that you can all see that. Hoping you can. So the budget, and I think most of you have gone through this before, this is really kind of a big summary. The first page here is our revenues. And you can see we are getting some increased revenue in ACCD this year. I'll talk a little bit more about that because there's a little bit of complexity that is built in here. One pending on a project on line 16 and 17, you may remember in November there was a vote to form a CUD that is resulting in an application to the broadband board for a $300,000 startup grant. We're just kind of doing some rough estimating now. We may provide some staff support for that. Well, we are providing some staff support for the board as they get going. So that's a $26,000 in staff time and then $273,000 to pass through to consultants when the organization is ready for that. Yeah, if you can let them in, Taylor, the X-ray door must be locked. Sorry, we got someone showing up in person here. And then for the, I guess I want to, the regional planning money, you may remember last spring, there was a significant increase in regional planning funds approved by the legislature. And it's in the upper 500,000s. It's split up a little bit between this just regional planning work, some energy work down below. But also the other thing I want to mention or highlight for you is here on row 22 is $100,000 that we're proposing to use of that regional planning money to match MPO funds. So that's the first time we've had that situation. It's allowing us to draw down more of the MPO funds and also allowing us to use all of the regional planning funds together. So some good synergy on that. I'm happy to take any questions on that, but that's kind of a new dynamic here for us. Are there any questions? If not, I will keep scrolling. So the pink projects, as I mentioned, are coming out. There is, we have $100,000 in here. You may remember going back a few months, we mentioned that we got a U.S. DOT federal raise grant to do TOD planning and bylaw work in multiple counties here in northwest Vermont. This is just a placeholder. We're not sure how long it's going to take to get under contract, but we're putting in $100,000 as just, it may start up this fiscal year. And that's why it's still yellow. Even though we're certain we're going to get the money, we're just not sure when. And then Brownfields also is subject to the Budget Adjustment Act that the legislature is considering right now. So that's why this is highlighted yellow. We did not get the federal EPA Brownfields grant, so that's why that's pink or whatever color that is. One other small addition or a couple of other smaller additions, floodplain map and bylaw work that's under contract from DEC and hot weather emergency response planning, which is a possible thing that we may do with the Department of Health. So just the bottom line for all this, and for those of you not familiar, maybe I should have done a little orientation here. The numbers on the right reflect money that is really going into staff. The numbers on the left in these columns reflect money that's passing through us. And you'll see the corresponding direct line over here. So that's money that's flowing through us. When we look at the bottom line here, we're looking at a little bit over 2% more revenue for staff and almost 10% more potential revenue to go through us to consultants and other partners. Did that raise any questions for you on the revenue side for these adjustments? And then I'll scroll to the expense side. The most significant thing is just updating salaries and benefits. And we are a little bit under where we thought we were. That reflects a few things, particularly Ann Nelson and Darren joining us. And actually Mackenzie all joined us partway into the fiscal year. So that's a significant part of the savings here. And also we always try to be a little bit more conservative. Maybe then we need to on the benefits line. So there's more savings there, relatively speaking. And other than that, we kind of left the expense lines alone. A little nickel and dime we could have adjusted. Overall, our expense lines go down by about 2%. Again, you see that the consultant expense is the same, that 10%. But overall, we have a pretty good budget swing from our more conservative estimates in the fall, or I'm sorry, in the spring to where we are now, which we hope is a little closer to reality of going from minus 40,000 to plus 76,000. So I know that's a big swing in previous years that has happened because of our indirect rates. This particular situation is not related to indirect rates. It really is increased investment in the RPCs by the legislature, which is good. But it will also brings challenges in terms of how to manage it and staff it. So happy to take any questions on that, but that's kind of the summary of work program and budget changes. Stunned you all into silence. Well, for the new members, it isn't always this favorable. So that's why you're not hearing much from the people that have been around for a while. The 40,000 conservative estimate that was our initial budget was something that we always hoped that we would turn around and make it turn it into an excess of revenues over expenses. And we were able to do that for a variety of reasons. But it's a good outcome. And we should be thankful that this year looks like it's going to be good. And it looks like we're going to be close on our indirect rate, which usually is the thing that makes us swing wildly at the bottom line. Yeah. And I don't know, Charlie, if you want to give the new members a little bit of background on what our indirect rate is or not, that might be helpful. I feel now I'm feeling guilty in advance. But so the indirect rate that we mentioned is under the standard administrative guidelines that the federal government publishes the Office of Management budget. They basically have a process for organizations to recover costs that are not directly attributable to a grant. And so, for instance, these meetings with our board are not something that we directly charge to any individual grant, because we kind of figure it benefits all of our work. And as you saw from our revenue budget, we have probably 30 different grant agreements. And so we try to spread those indirect costs evenly across all of our funders, all of our grantees or grantors. So that's really what the indirect rate is real simply. But we always have to estimate it in advance of the fiscal year based on the actual numbers from two years previous. So there have been times where we've been a few percent off and every percent is probably 10 plus thousand dollars of a swing. So if we're underestimated, we're, you know, $10,000 less. And we've had some pretty big swings where we've been seven, eight percent, 10 percent off in years gone by. But we have kind of, hopefully, I think, managed to level that out a little bit. So we're having very small swings, I hope, now and going forward. Jeff, did you want more on that, Jeff? No, it's just our overhead budget, basically. And as long as we're having a decent amount of throughput on the real stuff, usually our federal funders, and we work, obviously, through VTrans on that, don't give us a lot of grief over what we put in our, what we ask for and get in our overhead budget. The problem, as Charlie says, is there's a difference between when we estimate it and when it actually happens. And the worst thing is that, from my perspective, is that we overestimate what our overhead is and collect on that overestimation. And then the following year, we have the slingshot back where we have to correct it. And so therefore, we don't collect as much. And that's when you see negative fund balances relative to our expenses. Those are the things. And we've been working very hard as a staff with VTrans to try to make sure that if we see something off that we can make some adjustments to it, or we don't have to live with something for eight months or six months that we know is off. And it's, if anybody wants to have fun, join the finance committee. I was going to say any other questions on the UPWP or the budget before we move on? Anybody? Charlie, I think you were going to say something. No, I was just, I was just going to prompt to ask for emotion. That's right. I would move approval of the mid-year budget adjustment. I'll second that. All those in favor, raise your hands. The motion passes. Catherine, you probably should ask if anybody's opposed, even if you don't. Yeah, probably should. I forget to do it because we've got such a good group that it doesn't happen too often. Well, we always have to do an MPO work, but not necessarily an RPC. Yeah, that's true. So are there any, is there any nays, any abstentions? Seeing none, the motion passes. And just as something for the record, Amy, can you note that Bruce Wilson joined us prior to that item? So he just noted. All right. Next on the agenda is the active transportation plan approval. Is someone going to discuss that before we reduce it? Yes, that someone is me, but like I said at the TAC, we can save a lot of time and you can just vote now, but I got some slides ready to go. Oh, I'm sure people want to see what kind of active transportation we're going to have. Yeah. Great. Let me pull it up, share my screen and we will get going. This was a nice photograph to start with. All right. How are we looking? Okay. Hello everyone. My name is Brian Davis. Yeah. Do I need to switch? Yeah. Yeah. Just swap them. Okay. I got you. Thank you. I was wondering about that. All right. How are we doing? Beautiful. Great. Thank you, Jayce. Okay. My name is Brian Davis. I'm one of the transportation planners at the RPC and tonight we're going to learn a little bit more about the active transportation plan update. You might remember that I presented to you in September, so some of this is an overview, but I wanted to revisit this. We finished the plan and are looking for your motion tonight. The active transportation plan serves as the active transportation element of the MTP, which Elayne will share after this. We generally update the ATP every five or so years and there are numerous reasons why active transportation is an integral part of the transportation system, including that it helps us per region meet the goals identified in the ECOS plan. At the end of this process, we decided that the final plan should be a shorter executive style plan that covers everything at a higher level, but includes links to all of the technical memos for people who are interested in the details and how the analyses were run. They're all linked on the active transportation plan website, which you can see there. The plan itself also links to all of these memos directly, so everything is there for those people that want it. We finished the update in less than a year, which included advisory committee review and input at key steps in the process shown here in this timeline. I'd like to note that the project committee included four TAC members, so we had good RPC representation and input throughout the process and I appreciate their involvement. This presentation, I'm going to hit the high notes on these different analyses and these different key points here. We did four types of data analysis that inform the plan development in addition to the public input. Again, I'll keep this brief, but I want to share these. Again, the memos for each of these are linked on the website as well as in the plan itself if you're interested to learn more about that. The first analyses, which is the equity analysis, is it examined racial and other disparities in Chittin County through several lenses. First, there was a qualitative review of the historical inequities in the county with a focus on urban renewal, highway construction, public housing, and deindustrialization. Second, there was an overview of current policies and trends that continue to cause inequities, such as police harassment and racial profiling. Finally, a quantitative spatial analysis of eight equity indicators, and those included things like poverty, race, youth and seniors, vehicle ownership, and those things. The plan itself offers key takeaways about the disparities in income, transportation access and cost, and environmental conditions throughout the county. The focus on this historical context is unique for us a little bit deeper dives than what our organization has done in the past. You might recall from previous presentations this year that the county's population grew seven and a half percent from 2010 to 2020, with 99% of those new residents identifying as black, indigenous, or people of color according to the census. Those populations currently make up 11% of the county's population. We do recognize that active transportation may not be the top priority for every community, so the decision makers must listen to residents' priorities for things like better housing, education, and other systemic improvements. The second analysis is a bicycle network analysis. In this examine the existing bicycle network connectivity, as well as the impacts of potential improvements to measure how effectively people can connect to destinations by bike on comfortable, low stress routes, and there are three steps which you can see here. The level of traffic stress helps identify appropriate bicycle facilities that are comfortable for people of all ages and abilities. Second, we did a block-to-block connectivity analysis, so this looked at routing bicycle trips from every census block in the county to every other census block in the county, and summarizes those types of destinations. They fall into several categories, which we identified, you know, these include parks, retail, transit access, population centers, and employment centers, and then we aggregated the destination to look at all of those that are within biking distance and then evaluate what proportion of those are reachable on low stress bikeways. So the map, the colors reflect that level of connectivity with the darker black and purple colors showing more connectivity and the lighter tan showing less connected areas. In addition to that county level bicycle network analysis, we also did two specific scenarios to see what would happen if we took a segment that was high start, high stress, may change as to it, so then it made that segment low stress, re-ran that bicycle analysis to see how that would impact the connectivity. The two scenarios, one we looked at the route two corridor starting at the waterfront in Burlington, heading east to Taft Corners in Williston, it's about a seven mile stretch of roadway, and the second scenario was an environmental justice scenario. In that one, we selected all the high stress segments in areas with high proportion of BIPOC population, households without vehicle access, and also households with income below the poverty level. So this would help us look at a more systemic impact through changing to lower stress. For the route two scenario on the left, you can see sort of the before on the right, that yellow line is that approximately seven mile corridor of route two, and when we change that to a lower stress facility, you can see how the colors change. We get a lot more black in there, meaning that there are a lot more destinations accessible if that were a lower stress route, and that analysis did take in the projects such as the new bike ped bridge over the interstate at exit 14, which will be coming along soonish. And for the environmental justice scenario, again, we looked at all of the higher stress segments in those environmental justice population areas. Again, we looked at the poverty, race, and commute mode share, took all of those blue, I mean, green lines, changed those to low stress. And you can see on the right how much more connected those areas become if those segments are lower stress. The next analysis was trip potential analysis. This is an evaluation of factors that are likely to lead to higher levels of walking activity, biking activity, and trail usage. So we wanted to see where existing infrastructure already supported high numbers of people walking and biking, or where it's currently low. And again, we can make those changes in infrastructure and the expectations that it would increase that trip potential. Index was calculated for each type of origin destination pairs. We identified features in the origin and destination data sets that are within walking and biking distance. So it's sort of based in reality. And then you sort of do this process over and over again. You draw a straight line as you get further away from the origin destination. There's a decay factor there. So we want to make, you know, we want to understand the potential connections between origins and destinations, not just simply highlighting where destinations are. Using this process, we did four analyses, one for bicyclists, countywide, one for pedestrians, countywide, and then two local pedestrian analyses into areas. So the bike results, countywide bike results kind of confirms what we may already think is happening is that the Burlington metro area with its higher destinations has a higher bike potential than the outlying areas. Again, we use this with the bicycle network analysis to identify routes for better cycling and higher trip potentials. And we'll show you that recommended network here on here. For the countywide pedestrian results, initially it showed very high values for Burlington because of large number of destinations there. We're so high that it sort of overshadowed everything else in the county. So the consultant applied a logarithmic rescaling factor to suppress that effect. And then you can see on the bottom image there more of those pedestrian oriented destinations there. And pulling back to the full county, again we might expect that sort of the Burlington metro area has more of the trip potential for walking trips, but you can also see in some of those outlying areas that those village centers, those more dense areas also have some pedestrian potential there. So I mentioned that we selected two different communities to do a more specific analysis. We chose Milton and South Burlington. They're two of the fastest growing communities in the state, according to the census data. Both are homes to populations historically excluded from the planning process. And neither has an adoptive comprehensive walk bike plan, but I should say that walking and biking is identified as important to those communities and other plans or they have active walk bike committees. But we chose these two for those reasons. So again, we calculated the trip potential for all the different origin destinations pairs. In the memo for this analysis, if you go right to that memo outside of the plan, we do have specific recommendations. And this is what just a snapshot of what that looks like. We've got a map showing different points and lines that corresponds with a spreadsheet with specific recommendations for both Milton and South Burlington. And we wanted to use these as examples of other communities are interested in doing a similar process. We can help them with that. And again, here's the South Burlington map as an example. And the fourth analysis is an unpaved trail analysis. And we were looking to see if so these unpaved trails might fill some of the gaps in the active transportation network. They might also provide options for users in areas where on road facilities might be too circuitous too expensive to construct or there might be other challenges associated with them. We use the online data tool Strava to select some unpaved trails to identify priority connections. I do recognize that Strava doesn't capture all of the users. And for those who aren't aware, Strava is an app that if you are running, walking, biking, you can record your routes and do a lot of other features with that. So it's one one data set that we looked at. That doesn't include everyone we recognize that. So we did some basic data consolidation using GIS. And we looked at the ones in some of the off-road trail networks. The result shows we've got some high levels of activity on the Saxon Hill trails out in Essex, the Sunny Hollow Trail Network in Colchester. And then there's some other activity out Jericho Richmond-Hinesburg area. So you know, the high the high level takeaways were there. I do want to say that, you know, each of your communities likely has unpaved trail networks that are more destination oriented rather than sort of recreational trail focused. So if we do work in your town, if we scope some sort of facility, if we do a walk bike plan for you, you know, we do want to understand those off-road routes that people are using to get places. We just did a similar exercise in Richmond to create a walk bike trails plan for them. All right, so that's all the analysis. While all that was happening, we gather the public input. We use some traditional methods like using an online survey tool. I had a lot of people email me, which was great. And then we also held some different listening sessions with different population groups to better understand their experiences walking and biking and what they would like to see in a regional network. And some common themes emerge that we might expect the lack of connectivity, some of the challenges at intersections, just the general maintenance of facilities. Those were some of the common things that we heard. So when you take all the data analyses, when you take all the public input, when you look at all the projects that are in the TIP and the MTP, you pull all that together, you create that recommended preliminary infrastructure network. And then we also complement that program and policy recommendations. That's a way to maintain and encourage people using active transportation. Here is the recommended bicycle network. It might look similar to the recommended network from the 2017 plan, if you pulled that out recently. And also a lot of these overlap with the segments identified in that environmental justice scenario that we did for the bicycle network analysis. So this highlights the importance of a connected high-comfort, low-stress bicycle network in order to get people to choose walking and biking where it feels comfortable and safe. In addition to identifying that overall network, we did a project prioritization process to establish an order for funding and implementing projects using a common set of criteria. The team divided the entire network into 106 distinct projects. These were based on road characteristics, whether they had existing bicycle facilities, whether they were planned TIP projects and so on. Each of those were assigned a score based on the criteria. And those include equity, network extension, speed as a factor, safety with volume of vehicles as a factor, overall demand and stakeholder input that we heard. So the objective of this exercise is to identify projects that rank higher within that framework so that we can focus investments on those accordingly. Again, I would point out that if you go to the memo for this, there is a spreadsheet that has the list of prioritized projects in there. And again, it's not just about infrastructure. It's also about the program and policy recommendations. There were 32 actions divided into these five categories which you see here. And those actions maintain and encourage active transportation. And if we pursue them now, it will ensure a strong policy framework as we build out that infrastructure side of things. So that is my quick overview. I am happy to answer any questions. Happy to hear your discussion. I would point out that at their January meeting, the TAC voted to send this to you. And so that's where we are today. So does anyone have questions for Brian? Or is it so wonderful that you just want to prove it right now? One question, Catherine. All right, Dan. Brian just curious on, I know we have traffic counts and I'm curious about bicycling or headcount. I mean, whatever we can possibly get for numbers on bikes, especially for usage of these trails or these routes or such. Yep, counting, people walking and biking is a part of our count program, which Kristuben manages. At turning movement counts, capture people at intersections. There are specific tubes, the tubes across the road that capture auto traffic. There are tubes that capture bicycle traffic as well. There are eco counters which have an infrared signal across. They're better for separate shared use paths. And those also capture some of that data. It's a little bit harder to tease out if someone's walking or biking or if you have people together, the beam might only see one. So it is there. I will say one of the challenges we have. People often ask like, well, if you are planning and what's the demand for a type of facility? And because we've been focusing on automobiles for so long, the technology, the modeling aspect of anticipating the levels of demand is different. It's just not there yet. But that's what people are working on. So I hope that answers your question. And I will say that we, the UVM Transportation Research Center last year helped us with, they gave recommendations on creating a walking and biking count program. Right now, we're a little bit reactive if a town is going to do a project, you know, they request a count from us. But we want to come up with a system so that every year, every three, five, 10 years, we're identifying specific types of facilities that we are getting counts on so that we can go back over time and look at any changes based on new infrastructure, changes based on weather. And the city of Burlington, I think, is also going to apply for funding from us to do a similar count program in their city as well. Does that answer your question, Dan? Whoops. You're muted. You're muted, Dan. I'm sorry. I was just trying to get an idea of numbers of, obviously, this time of year, we're not really going to have much for traffic on the roads for bike traffic. I mean, there are a few brave souls that go out and brave the weather, but I'm just curious on how much usage there was. Sorry. You're looking for actual numbers. It really varies by location and the online platform that we use with VTrans. It takes a little getting used to to pull out those numbers, but we're happy. You know, we can work with Chris to pull out specific numbers for a certain area if you're interested in that. Well, yeah, I think it would be handy to have that information where the heaviest usage is to, I'd like to see more effort put into expanding lanes or paths for people. Obviously, in Burlington with the students and such, I've walked the bike path multiple times and sometimes you got to watch out for a bicyclist coming when you're walking and if we could, you know, expand the opportunities for bikes and pedestrians, that'd be great. Yeah, great. Thank you for that. Thank you. Chris? I think Dana had her hand up first. Oh, thanks. Actually, the little thing punched you first, but if Dana's... So in the sort of master plan that you showed a few slides back, the Ansharlot, the Mount Philo to Beach Proposed Trail, is that on there? I think I saw. That's a good question. Let me see if I can zoom in on that. You know, we have Mount Philo Road as a recommended route and then there's an existing trail off of that to the west. Is that what you're referring to? Yeah, and the idea is to keep it going all the way to the beach. Yeah, and I think I was looking through, Christine put together this great spreadsheet with all the bike ped projects we've done over the years and I did see those town link phases. Yes, definitely. Yeah. Thanks for another job. Yeah, thank you. And again, a lot of those sort of smaller local networks weren't captured on this map, but we do have another online map that Pam created that has a lot more of those sort of local trail networks in there, but it's hard since this is more of a regional effort. It's hard to have that kind of level of detail in here, but thank you for pointing that out. Thanks. So, Brian, my question would be more for related to problem areas for pedestrian and for bike crossings, if you will, primarily like we widened the three lanes by the Staples there coming on to exit 14 on the interstate and inadvertently created a hazard for pedestrians crossing from the hotel there to the Plaza. So I just wondered if these areas were highlighted as potential fixes in the plan. Similarly, I know in South Burlington, we have issues with right across at Linden Place, I believe it is or Linden Wood Terrace there at the junction right near 189 and Route 7. So, first that question, then I had another thought. Yeah, I think you've heard that. Sorry. Go ahead, Kasim. I was just going to say, did he want to finish his thought or he's going to pass to the next person then, obviously. Well, the other thought would be related to the intrusion of electric bikes now on bike trails and paths of that sort. And similar to what Michael Arnold just posted about having rights of way with fast traffic being separated, it's not feasible, I think, for folks going 55 miles an hour in cars to be having bikes, even if they are electric bikes along the way. But we're similarly talking about bike paths here in South Burlington, where we can begin to see the problematic issue of people going 30 miles an hour on their bicycles in the same place where people are walking, jogging and pushing carriages and stuff. So, those two considerations. Thanks. Thank you. Sure. You know, the plan, some of those areas that you mentioned, the plan itself doesn't call out specific areas of concern, although over the years, you know, as a planner at the RPC, I've heard there are different areas that do come up often, and there are certainly some legacy areas, like for example, exit 14, but South Burlington got that wonderful federal grant to build a separate facility. Another key regional connection is that bridge from Burlington into Winooski that also just got funding too. That's another, you know, there's probably, I think in the 2017 plan, there were like five major regional barriers, and those were two of them, which are really huge to address in the very near future. What this plan really does is sets us up to help the towns whenever you decide what your priorities are. It could be based on this, it could be based on your own local plan. Hopefully, they're talking to each other. That was our intent here, but then we can get down to the scoping level and decide what the best alternative might be to address those specific challenges in certain areas. Let's take one specific example that's been happily resolved to a certain extent, exit 12, where they've now put in a sidewalk that was horribly missing before. How would that have been included on this plan five years ago, or was it? Right, it would have been included as a part of, it would have been identified as a part of the regional network saying this is a corridor that is an important regional connection for walking and biking, you know, to get to important destinations from different origin points. We did, the process we used this, this time was a little bit different by using those origin destination data sets, all the different analyses that we did. And I think, you know, we tried our best to capture projects that were, that are existing now that are new, but also noted, you know, for example, Spear Street along UVM, there is a facility there, but then there's not a designated facility. And so we're including, we're recognizing what's there, but also recognizing that as you continue south, it's still a part of a priority walking, biking network. Okay, and I just, I don't want to pester, but we look ahead at diverging diamond there at exit 16, and you're going to see my common thread here, which is, these are barriers for walking and biking that I want to see in the plan that we're prioritizing, hurtling over what our major interchange is for cars. It's been a problem in the past, and it's got to change for the future. This is what keeps people from walking and puts them in hazardous walking conditions if it isn't properly addressed here at the beginning. Is that, are we secure with that, Brian? Are we happy with where we are with changes like diverging diamond in 16? I'm happier with 12. I'm still not happy with 14. You get my thread. Yeah. And, you know, the DDI does a better job of accommodating walking and biking than the current situation, which is scary to put a mildly. And so as a project that's included on the tip, it would be included on this recommendation as well. May I just jump in here just to answer, Chris? From a different perspective is like these very, you know, like facilities that they have major safety issues for biking pedestrians, we usually do scoping outside the bigger, higher plants, right? So for the Exit 14, we have dealt with it in the ID9 study, and we are proposing a DDI at the Exit 14, even though we are going to be doing scoping next year. And the way that, you know, and we are proposing mainly for biking pedestrian safety, because we recognize how difficult it is right now, because a DDI basically forces, you know, the cars to stop, the pedestrians cross at signalized intersections, and they're protected as they cross the interchange. So there are other ways that we address those issues, Chris, but you know, I do hear your comment that maybe the bike and pet plan should have just identified some of the safety issues. Well, thank you. And, you know, it's a common thread I've seen in when I fight here in South Burlington, where, you know, we don't plow oftentimes the sidewalks over the interstate, when the college students are walking from UVM over to the U-Mall in, you know, droves. So it's difficult to look at it from the perspective of a biker, from the perspective of a walker. And, but Brian, if you can just give me a clue on anything to do with the electric bikes, as they're included in the plan or separately included? Yeah, the plan itself doesn't include any recommendations for e-bikes. I'm not sure if they're even mentioned by name, but I think they are, well, I don't think, I know that they are becoming much more popular. I think they're the highest, you know, they're becoming the most popular selling style of bike. They're getting more people on bike. They're more comfortable to ride that distance. You know, I was talking about from Burlington Waterfront out to Taft Corners, that distance of seven miles, could be a struggle on a pedal bike for a lot of people, but if you're on an electric assist bike, it becomes a doable distance. So it opens up a lot of opportunities. It addresses some of the other barriers, you know, people don't want to show up to work sweaty. So this becomes an easier process to get places. I do hear the concerns about speeds. For something like bike share, those electric fleets can be speed regulated or the assist cuts off at a certain mile per hour. There are different levels, different types of e-bikes, and those can be regulated in different ways, either at the state level or at the local level, on what types are, you know, are allowed on what facilities. So I'll say that. I think it's opening up a lot of opportunities for people who bicycles could, you know, been up there years past. Well, thank you, Chris, for all your concerns that, you know, but we'll move on now to there's a hand up in the conference room. Hello, everyone. This is Bruce Wilson, someone that everyone who also supported me. Brian, thank you for your presentation. Well, I love to hear the words diversity, equity, and inclusion. So when you use the word equity, what's your definition? How do you use that word? Hello, Bruce. Nice to see you. And that's a good question. I'm going to pull up that specific memo and see if there is definition that we're using. So I'm not speaking out of turn here. As a quick scroll, I'm not seeing definitions for equity in other terms, but it is the way that I'm using it is everyone has access that we're not creating barriers for people. We're identifying populations that could benefit from other transportation choices. We want to make sure that we're not introducing any barriers to them. And we also want to prioritize investments into those communities who haven't benefited in the past. Is that answer your question, Bruce? Well, you mentioned some demographics like, you know, when you see another and people who look like me, how we are not getting the service or the service that we deserve or we should have or for access to bike pathways and different things that we should know about and have access to. And so I'm just trying to figure out, you know, I get it, I get it, you know what I mean? But I'm trying to figure out how we're going to make sure that those types of services are for people who are economically challenged in some of the higher risk environmental issues. And so how are we going to make sure that we get those services to them? Well, I could say that we are kicking off our project this week to do a walk bike comprehensive plan for Winooski. So that will be even a more local level than this regional plan we get to. You know, but the analysis that we did for this regional plan identified using some of those, you know, race, equity, population, age, vehicle ownership, a number of factors that would help us identify areas where different populations lived and that we should prioritize investments into those communities. Maybe that answers your question. Bart, I see your hand. Yeah, thanks, Brian. First, as always, I'm impressed by the depth and breadth of information and the quality of presentation and documents like this. So first, thanks for that. A question and then a comment. When you talk about point of origin and point of destination, how or did you factor in a point of destination being a public transit access point? Is that like built in or baked into sort of the assumptions about origin and destination? It is the methodology for that trip potential analysis. We looked at the origin destinations. They were mixed and matched in all the ways possible. And they included commercial activity, employment, employment centers, K through 12 schools, parks, areas with dense population, and then transit. Okay. And, you know, really where I was going is then I was looking, I think the map on page 32, and I just observe as one of the small towns for those who don't know, I live in Richmond. You know, most of our town cannot feasibly access public transit as it is for the park and ride, which is where it is without an internal combustion vehicle. And so to the degree that we don't have the population or the trips that justify anything we sort of are locked into it would seem to me a low priority where the public transit access point stays inaccessible for those people who might want to use it. I don't blame anyone. It just seems like a conundrum based on our population size, density, et cetera. And it's kind of a pattern perhaps of the sort of Chittenden County fringe communities, if you will, that are smaller like Kynesburg and Richmond, just an observation. Yeah. Thanks for that observation. And, you know, I'll share that whenever we have the opportunity to help a town like Richmond come up with their own comprehensive plan, that is saying the same things, you know, priorities as a regional plan, right? Then when you want to go to the state or the federal government and say this is important to us, we've identified it in these numerous ways. Can you help us construct it? It puts you in a good place for that. So even though potentially, but, you know, a better place, a better place. But my observation is there's lots of bike paths in the other towns that have been built in the last five years, Colchester, Willis, and it just appears we don't have the sort of priority based on that. And unfortunately, the access points that we need are actually very expensive. So that's where we sort of have a catch-22, small numbers, high costs. And I just point that out because I think some of the other smaller parts of the county experience the same sort of challenge for what it's worth. Thank you, Bart. Thank you, Bart. Are there any other questions, comments before we vote to approve the active transportation plan so that everybody has a chance to speak? I see Rand Holden from Underhill. I guess just following that same sediment on page 32 of the plan, I noticed that there was a connection Ripper Road from Route 15 to Westford. And I totally understand the idea there. That was an old connection from east to west that hasn't been existence for a very long time. And I think that that road is very different from the others that are depicted on the plan. I don't know if you've actually physically seen Ripper Road. It is a town trail. It's classified as a town trail on both sides, Underhill and Westford. But it's literally very, very rugged, leggy, very different from the other roads that are depicted. So I was just kind of curious why I understand why that was picked, but because of the east-west connection, but just a little curious about that. Yeah, that's my thinking was the same as yours, you know, based, I haven't set foot out there, but when I was looking at the connections from both sides and saw the middle piece, and I, you know, asked a few people if they'd been out there and is it even feasible? And an early draft of this map didn't have that link. And I wanted it on there, as you mentioned, because it sort of makes that connection in that area. And it may not be feasible or usable to most right now. But I thought showing it on the map might give that visual, like there is a connection between those towns along this route. It's certainly not applying anything from us to either of those towns. But I thought it could be a potential connection for people who are willing to make it, and also using those existing town trails on both sides. Benjamin, I'm sure you have a response to that as well. Yes, and I hope you all can hear me. Actually, I'm intimately familiar with this, and the Goodridge Trail, formerly Goodridge Road and Repa Road, formerly, and that last 238, 68 or 368 feet of what was Repa Road is now Repa Trail, actually subject of no fewer than three different court cases. And actually, there is a trail and there are our access, Bornstein's, Air Successors in Science, and A. Johnson's Air Successors in Science. We still have rights for all uses to use Goodridge Trail as if it were a road. Of course, we choose not to upgrade it extensively. It is a town trail, but there is access for us because it's the only way to get to our properties. And I'm speaking a bit personally now, but there is a Westford interest as well, as the Westford Select Board has acknowledged that that is the basis in particular of the stipulated court order of October 2001 that was signed off on by Underhill, Westford, A. Johnson, and my father back in the day. So there is access, there is use. Also, the town of Westford's Conservation Commission has improved to a certain extent and has been enhancing and encouraging people to use the trail for everything from cross-country skiing to hiking, not for vehicular traffic, except again for our access, our Air Successors in Science, because again, it's our only access to those properties and our parcels. So there is, it should well be at one of these days, it might be good enough to be able to be accessed by, as a bike trail. Certainly, the Conservation Commission, which I've worked with and voluntarily to keep it clear and make it accessible for hikers, weed whacking and removing fallen timber and the like. So there's an active program going on to encourage hiking and access. And there's also a very clear legal basis and foundation to have it open and actually be able to have a through put. So there you go. Thank you. Yeah, great. Thank you very much for that. I guess just to follow up, I guess, I don't dispute anything Benjamin said, but it's just, I found it to be just very different from the other routes that were. Yes, absolutely. I appreciate that, Brad. And just that I would just simply point out that my attorney currently is Paul Gillis, who was the former Deputy Secretary of State, and actually in the day in 2001, represented Underhill and assisted in drafting the stipulated court order. So, you know, that things are clear regardless of how others might come along to attempt to reinterpret them. It is a bit of an issue. The point is, is one can't engage any attempt to reinterpret the terms of a stipulated court order, of course, is a serious violation of where it's called the Rest Judicata. And with that, I yield. Thank you. Do we, if all questions and comments are taken care of, do we have a motion to approve the active transportation plan? So moved. Second Barbara. All those in favor, raise your hands. It looks like the motion passes. Any nays? Without slapping the screen, I don't see any. Any abstentions? I have a question, Catherine, on this. In the past, we've always put on these things whether they are RPC or MPO business. And I didn't know whether this was MPO business or not. If this was MPO business, then we have to be very careful about the way we vote. Right. Absolutely. I just have an action on this. It doesn't say whether it's MPO or anything, just action. My apologies, Jeff. It should be MPO business. So we have to make sure that first only MPO members vote, and then you have to get an affirmative from every member community, whether a GA or NA, you can ask if it's unanimous. But if it isn't, then we have to call the roll. Well, based on what I saw, I think it's unanimous, but we need to, as you said, recognize that it is an MPO business and only those that are eligible to vote under the MPO rules can take part in this vote. So. And I'm assuming everybody knows what MPO stands for. I hope so. We have, well, no. I mean, we have new members. That's the only reason why. And I haven't been around a lot since I moved. You know, this is Bard. I think for new members, you should assume that they don't, you know, rather than call people out for maybe not knowing. So I think it's probably worth explaining what that means and the significance briefly when we get to these votes, especially if there are new members. Well, thank you. Do you wish to handle that, Charlie? Yeah. So I'll talk to just a little bit, I think. Thank you, Jeff, for bringing that up. You're muted, Charlie. You're muted. We're picking you up in the background. Sorry, I'm getting up there with me one minute. It's okay. I got it. Okay. Can you hear me now? Still echoing. Okay. How about now? It's good. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Sorry about that. So Metropolitan Planning Organization. So that's the federally required transportation planning part of our work. So that's done under a lot of federal rules and regulations and obviously where we work with federal highway, FTA and V-Trans. And as Jeff noted, when we merged, we kind of had some different voting requirements. So municipalities that are part of the MPO can vote on MPO business, which I don't mean this in any way negative, but so like the interest area, board members, so those that represent the environment or business or the socio-econ, you don't have a vote on MPO business. And the same kinds of things happen when we do some like town plan approvals where there's some different folks have different voting rights in those situations. But Jeff, did that address enough of the situation? Yeah. Those are just votes that involve federal fundings that are part of the federally defined Chittenden County Metropolitan Planning Organization. And all the member municipalities have a vote except for Buell Score and then and so I just mentioned that only because Buell Score not voting has been an issue in the past and some of it's because of their unique relationship with the V-Trans. And Jeff, do we also note, I think Burlington has four votes in these MPO votes? Yeah, it's weighted voting and South Burlington has two. Even though we should get adjusted upward, should we not? We just gave legislative districts. We're happy with two. Not related to legislative districts, but yeah, Folchester gets to, South Burlington gets to S6 and S6 Junction get one each. Used to be two and they were part of the same community, yes. But everybody else, all the other municipalities have one. So sorry, but yeah, and Madam Chair, I do think you were correct from what I saw, the vote was unanimous and so we shouldn't have to do roll call. I just want us to be careful when it involves federal funds so that nobody can go back and say that we didn't do it or could buy the book. Okay? Yeah. That's the only reason why I'm doing that. I haven't been here all the time now because I'm only the alternate for Shelburne, so the institutional memory is slipping. We're going to have to make it a referee, umpire role of some sort. I mean, because the institutional memory is substantial and it keeps us honest. But since it was unanimous, can we assume that it is adopted to move on? Now that we've explained everything. Yes, only when there's a no vote do we have to do a roll call. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on, we're going to discuss the Metropolitan Transportation Plan for you. Yes, I'm going to start this. Hello, everyone, Eleni Churchill with the RPC. I'm here tonight. Myself, Jason and Christine are going to just present a very draft MTP. So let me see if I can share my screen. Interesting. It just seems I'm just going to try and close some windows because I'm having a lot of windows open and it's not helping me. That's an Apologies for the delay. I can't seem to bring up the presentation. Jason, can you do that? Yeah. Yeah, I can take care of that. Yeah, I can't see the presentation on my screen for some reason. Let's see. Oh, I got it. Now it showed up. Do you see the presentation? You did. Okay, great. So let's do that. Is it in the right mode? Yes. Excellent. So thank you, everyone. This is our, as I said, is a draft MTP presentation. This is our 2023 MTP. It's very, very draft still. But I'm just going to start with what is the MTP following what Jeff said before that we need to be explaining ourselves. So the MTP or the Metropolitan Transportation Plan is our region's principal long range plan on the transportation system. It sets up, as we say here, vision and goals. It includes strategies and very specific projects that we need to include per federal regulations. And it addresses needs that should be intermodal and integrated with all the modes together. And it's just basically it's, we're looking at the transportation system that facilitates efficient movements of people and good, but also supports our communities in a way that is livable and equitable. The MTP is one of our four key responsibilities as an MPO and, you know, Charlie and Jeff explained what an MPO is in addition to the, the tip is the transportation improvement program, the UPWP is our annual program, and the PPP is the public participation plan. Those are the four key responsibilities. We have a lot of other, you know, like, you know, things that we do in the MPO, but those are our federal requirements. And there are a number of needs that they need to be included in the MTP based on those federal regulations that you see there. Our 2023 MTP is slightly different than our 2018 MTP. I failed to mention that we update the MTP every five years. So we need to have, to have an adopted MTP at the close of the five years. So the last one was in 2018, so we're hoping to have this plan ready for your review again in the spring and then hopefully by June we can adopt it. So you see here the chapters that they were included in the 2023 MTP and the ones that they are having are like, I'm not quite sure what color you see, but I see like a green blue color on my screen. They are chapters and they're sections that we added for the 2023 that they were not in the 2018. If you went through the plan that we sent out, you're going to see that some of the sections are incomplete and mainly the performance management, you know, chapter as well as the environmental management. You know, chapter as well as the environmental consultation and mitigation chapter, the performance management chapter, we are actually working on it right now. We were waiting for some data from V-trans to on the performance of pavements and bridges to actually complete that, but we're working on that now and the environmental consultation, we're going to get together with our, you know, the regulatory and resource agencies, ANR, Corps of Engineers, sometime in February to talk about the MTP impacts and possible mitigation measures. One of the first things that we do as in the plan, of course, it's develop a vision and you can see the vision there for our regional transportation system in Chinatown County that is safe, efficient, reliable and resilient. And we are talking about again, these mobility choices in support of livable communities. We are addressing the climate crisis, you know, by reducing VMT and also dust greenhouse gas emissions and we are trying to support the economy at the same time of the region. We have seven goals that we develop under the, you know, for this plan and you can see the goals there and we have a number of objectives that we developed, the underage goal that is going to help us kind of, you know, develop actions and strategies that is going to achieve our goals in the long term. The MTP is a, oh, I have one more slide. So in the plan, we have a lot of data on existing conditions as well as how the system performs. So I pull a few, you know, data points here just to talk about, but there is a lot of data in there. Please take a look at it and let us know if you have any questions or you want to just talk over anything in that report. But just in general, our transportation system, and I'm talking about, you know, vehicles right now, has enough capacity to actually move the existing traffic that we have except certain, you know, areas of the system mainly on the interstate and on interchanges and in some other facilities like the circulator in Winooski. There is, having said that, there is congestion in the system and the congestion is mainly during the AM and PM peak hours and it's during, you know, so it's just like you have two major peaks and sometimes you have the peak during the, you know, the middle of the day. And it's mainly, you know, around the intersections. Intersections, you know, create congestion and then that spills out into the roadways. One of the trends that we actually, you know, influences this congestion is the, you know, especially during commuting hours is that we have seen a steady increase of people that work in Chinatown County to live outside the county. It's not a dramatic increase, but it's definitely a steady increase. So we see that we have a lot of commuters coming into Chinatown County from just the periphery or just outside the Chinatown County. Another interesting data is that the American Community Survey data show that there was a decrease between 2015 and 2020 of people commuting alone. Of course, that includes data from the pandemic, which we saw a huge dramatic increase of telework and people not being able to go to work. So it would be really interesting to just monitor this trend and see how are we doing. And then I added this slide, which is a pretty telling slide of what happened well throughout the years, but also during the pandemic on the vehicles miles travel. And you can see, you know, how there was a, you know, like a steady decrease from the early 2000s. And it plateaued kind of like the middle, you know, like in the 2000, you know, like 11, 13, 15, it went up and down, but then you see that dramatic decrease during the pandemic. And unfortunately, we have seen a steady increase in, you know, vehicles in volumes on our roadways as well as VMT. And we're also monitoring that data. The MTP is a Fiscally Constrained Plan, and Christine is going to talk about this financial plan that we developed. And there is a lot more specific VMT detail in the plan. Christine. Excuse me. Thank you, Eleni. Can you hear me okay? I sometimes in trouble with Zoom. Yeah, so as Eleni said, the MTP is Fiscally Constrained. And what that means is that any recommendations, projects or programs that we have have to have funding sources. And let me do this on the floor. And so the financial plan is what is how we determine how much money we expect to have for the implementation of the plan. It's an estimate. We don't know it's future funding, but we need to have a methodology for doing that estimate. So we had a four-step process to develop this plan. Can you go to the next slide, Eleni? So first of all, as we know, Chinden County doesn't get money directly from the federal government, right? We get money through VTRANS. So how we started this was to look at how much money we expect VTRANS to get over the next 27 years, between 2023 and 2050. So what this chart shows, what this chart shows, so if you look at the first four bars on the left-hand side, this is the amount of money that we know that is coming to Vermont in the next four years under the current transportation bill, the IJA. So that's known and we need to project how much will come after the IJA. And we don't know how much will come after that. But what we did is we looked at the funding in the 10 years prior to the current transportation bill. I have another table that I didn't throw into this slide show that shows that that funding level, if it's adjusted for inflation, is pretty constant over the last 10 years. And the average was 264 million. So as a very conservative estimate, we assumed that after the IJA is finished, we go back to the previous funding level. We don't know if this will happen. It's just a conservative estimate on our part. And so as you see from this chart, in 2027, we're going back to 264 million each year, going up to 2050. This is FHWA and FTA formula funds. Right. And next slide. Eleni, please. So that was 2022 constant dollars moving forward. But this slide is attempting to consider inflation. How much will we get moving for? Will the state get moving forward considering inflation? We escalated each year after 2026. So 2027 through 2050 at 3.5% per year. We don't know what the inflation rate will be. We took an estimate of the prior 10 years and applied that moving forward. The only thing we're certain of is that we'll be wrong about that. But hopefully, we won't be too far wrong. And so this is the amount that's going to come to the state during that time period. Next slide, please. So as we said before, Tinan County doesn't get a set amount of money per year. We get funded transportation projects in Tinan County, get funded through the Transportation Capital Program. That's approved by the legislature each year. And the capital program is developed based on project schedules, project readiness to go. So it varies a lot. And this chart, which probably you can't see that well and maybe is not that interesting. But what you see in this chart is really the amount that came to the state and the amount that came to Tinan County over the last 22 years. And the far right column is the percent that came to the state varies from a low of 7.4% and 14 to a high of 40.6% in 2005. And I think those high numbers in the early 2000s were just because several projects due to scheduled delays in various other things happened at the same time. That included the Lion Kiln Bridge in Colchester, I-89 Bridge repairs in Bolton. We did the Shelburne Road reconstruction, Riverside Avenue reconstruction, Kennedy Drive, and also the Winiski Circulator was built during that time. So the bottom line is 19.2% is the average over that 22-year time period. And so we applied that 19% moving forward. So next slide, Eleni, please. Shows that projection out to 2050. The orange-ish color on the top is 19% of the total. And that is what we expect to come to Tinan County over the next 22 years, 27 years. So the next step in this was really to, so the federal, we're also required under federal law to estimate the amount of money it takes to maintain and operate the federal aid highway system. So this isn't the entire transportation system, but these are the federal aid roads, the state highways, the bridges, and to maintain it in a state of good repair. So how we did this is we looked at the amount that we've spent over the past 10 years, and we looked at the categories, paving, bridge, slope and ledge improvements, and transit. We considered those items to be part of this operation and maintenance total. This is an estimate. I mean, there's a little bit of fuzziness in these categories compared to the bottom categories. But for the purposes of this plan, we considered those to be the maintenance and operation. It was 67.6% of the total funding. And so we applied a 70% for operation and maintenance to the total coming to Tinan County. And 32.4 would be available for modernization and expansion. So next slide. And last slide of numbers for you guys. So this sums it all up in one big and busy slide. So the four columns to the right are the inflation numbers. The four columns to the left are the 2022 constant dollars. This is the amount per year going up to 2030. And after 2030, we aggregated into five-year increments just so that we don't have so many lines in this table. So we're just looking at how much comes to the state, how much the 19% for Tinan County, the 70% to go to maintenance, the 30% to go to the modernization and expansion. And so when you get down to the bottom, the amount for new projects, modernization and expansion in this plan, using 2022 constant dollars would be 440.6 million. Using escalated dollars would be 734.8 million. We're looking for this, we're looking at the 2022 constant dollars because our cost estimates for our projects are also in 2022 constant dollars. So apples to apples, that's the number that we're going to be talking about when we get to the end of the presentation. Next up. Thank you, Christine. That was great. Lots of numbers, but really good. So one of the things that we also look very closely in our MTP is land use. And we all know how land user transportation are interconnected. They affect each other. And it's very important for our transportation goals to have, you know, density in some of the areas so we can actually have a walkable bikeable and, you know, like communities that we can actually operate effective transit. So just a little bit of, you know, like a history here in 2018 ECOS plan, which is our regional plan, the goal for the land use was 80% of households should be in existing areas, plan for growth. And I'm sorry, I don't have that. Actually, I do have a map in a little bit that shows where those areas plan for growth are. When we were doing our MTP back in 2018, we increased that. We felt that it needed to be increased in order to meet our transportation and climate goals 90% of households in existing areas plan for growth to again provide us with those dense communities that they are walkable livable. So we can bring people out of their vehicles single occupant vehicles and then, you know, provide those model options. For the 2023 MTP, we're staying with the 90% of households in existing areas plan for growth, but we are hiding what we call a transit oriented development overlay to the land use map to reinforce the need. And I'm just going to move to the next slide if I can. Yeah, this is a slide you probably not seen very well, but on the right on the on the map, you see all the the colored areas that you see that they're not green. Those are areas plan for growth. And within it, you see like a harsh area. And those are those that is our transit, the TOD planning areas that basically they are those areas are within a quarter of a mile from GMT primary commuter as well as other transit routes. So these are the areas that basically we think that in order to have like a viable transit in the county, we need to see increased density in those areas. This this overlay does not have any regulatory, you know, you know, you cannot use it in regulatory actions, but it is something that we will encourage our communities to consider as they do their own planning. The next step in actually developing an MTP is just to evaluate the number of different scenarios in order to come to the MTP scenario and then basically choose the MTP scenario that basically meets the vision and goals. So we we evaluated four scenarios. The first one was just basically the current conditions is the 2020 base scenario. We're using current housing and employment data and demographics. The 90 percent again is something that we it's paid into our, you know, our model. And I should say that the evaluation happens, you know, through our original travel demand model. Jason is running that and he's going to talk about a number of results in a second from that that effort in that process. The second scenario is the 2050 base 2050 again is our future year for the MTP, but with just the plan transportation projects. And when we say that we mean just the tip projects, the transportation improvement project. So this is a view of what's happening in the future if the only projects and improvements we do is just the ones that we have planned now. And then the next and I hope that made sense. The next one sees the 2018 MTP 2050 year and you can see all the, you know, elements of that 2018 scenario. Again, the housing employment for 2050, the 90 percent is the same. We had a substantial increase in walking biking infrastructure as well as, you know, the transit services and frequencies. We also had, you know, a number of safety improvements, intelligent transportation system improvements. And we assumed or that all the tip and the MTP projects were completed. And we're going to talk about the MTP projects in a little bit. Finally, the fourth scenario, which is actually the one we're proposing to be our 2023 MTP is also the one that we developed for the just recently completed I-89 2050 study. And you can see the elements of that scenario. And I would say that a lot of them are the same as the 2018, you know, MTP with noticeable differences. One of them is that we are proposing the new exit 14 interchange. And I mentioned before the DDI, the diverging diamond interchange, which is the interchange that is being, will be constructed at exit 16 at this point. That DDI design or conceptual plan came out of the I-89 study, but we are moving forward and doing like a scoping this next fiscal year, starting July 1st to see if that is actually the preferred alternative to move forward. The safety improvements, the tip and the MTP projects are the same as in 2008. Well, not the same projects, but, you know, they are included in this scenario. And the other major change in this is that we are proposing to move away from gas tax and move into a mileage based fee. For the purposes of this scenario, we had the five cents per mile fee, but that is definitely needs a lot more evaluation and discussions. And they're going to, oops, sorry, I moved. And they're going to be like, we're going to have many discussions with, and we need to have the legislature as well as the executive branch to discussing all this. And the very last thing that it's included in the I-89 2050 and the proposed MTP, which is the proposed MTP scenario for 2023 is very significant, transportation demand management investments. And as you can see in the sub bullets there, we are, you know, like, we are planning for a, you know, 50% increase in teleworking from what is happening right now, double the trips made by bike, triple transit, double participation in TDM programs, as well as increasing cost of parking in villages and downtowns. I have to say this is an aspirational 2023 MTP. A lot of these basically improvements and investments, we're going to further evaluate and in a study that we're going to start July 1st to basically see if it's visible to have like triple transit. And what is that means? And, you know, how much people can we get out of our highways and out of their single occupant vehicle if we do that, if we have a much more robust transit system? The same with bike and pet. So stay tuned for that. We're going to be coming back to you with a lot more information next year on that. And I think this is the last slide before Jason comes in to talk about results of these scenarios. Go ahead, Jason, take it away. Sure. Thanks, Lenny. So as Lenny mentioned earlier, we have a regional model at the RPC. I think some of you are aware of that. It's a tool. It's not a crystal ball. But it is something that we use heavily during the development of the Metropolitan Transportation Plan because it is the best tool we have to take a look at what the future might hold for us and what we might want to think about as we plan for the future. So this is a map that shows a metric called the volume to capacity ratio. And it is, I like to use the analogy of a pipe. You know, there's only so many cars that can use a given roadway. And at a certain point, the roadway starts to become congested and no longer able to process more vehicles. And some of you may remember that during our last MDP between the exits 14 and 15 on I-89, we were showing that the interstate was going to be over capacity in 2050, which was kind of the impetus for the I-89-2050 study that was mentioned earlier that just wrapped up and is our proposed MDP scenario. So this is the current conditions of 2020. That's our base year that was discussed earlier. And if, Eleni, you progress forward, if you keep your focus on that link between 14 and 15, that thread right now, you should see that change to orange. And you may have seen some other links change, but that is kind of the big one that we've been focusing on for, you know, I would say, since our last MDP and over the course of the whole I-89 study. And so that's volume to capacity ratio. There's also levels of delay that we looked at. And this is kind of more of your on-the-ground feel of your everyday travel throughout the county, your delay that you're experiencing at a traffic light. It's a little different from the volume to capacity ratio that we showed earlier. So we like to show them both to kind of give you the whole picture. And this again is 2020. And as we progress forward to the proposed MDP scenario, you should see the colors start to, you should see more yellow on the map due to the less travel and improvements being made in the MTP scenario. And the last graphic that I have, oh, I also, I do want to note that while I'm highlighting kind of the urban area here, just because it has all the action kind of going on, if you will, in the actual MTP, the maps cover the whole county. So you can, you can take a look at those if you're interested in what might be happening in your community. And this last map is just showing the kind of changes in delay. This is basically like what was achieved, if you will, or what we think might be achieved by if we were able to implement the proposed MTP scenario. So these are the changes from our 2050 base scenario to the proposed 2050 MTP scenario. So the green, green means good. So where we're seeing, you know, decreases in delay, the darker the green, the more decreases in delay that we're anticipating. And red is an increase in delay. And most of those, if not all, are due to new roadways that just, you know, they don't exist now. They're going to have delay when they get built. So that's why you're seeing maybe a dark red there on Garden Street in South Burlington, for example. Other areas where we're seeing an increase in delay compared to the 2050 base scenario are mainly due to intersection improvements. There might be a location where a signal doesn't exist right now. And we're proposing that either a signal or a roundabout be constructed in the future. And so I have a few charts here. I just wanted to try to, you know, peel back the curtain a little bit of why this is happening and what's going on in the model. This chart shows vehicle miles traveled per capita. So on a given day, how many miles is the average, you know, person traveling in the county. And you can see how 2020 is just over 25 miles. And it increases as we go out to 2050 with the middle two bars. And then in our proposed MDP scenario, you can see it decreases down to about maybe 23. And getting out, you know, kind of why that's happening and why we're seeing the reductions in delay that we showed earlier. We're showing a substantial increase in the mode split. So the percentage of people that are choosing to take transit, walk, or bike instead of taking their automobile. And you can see from 2020 to the proposed MDP scenario. So about a 10% increase in the mode split. So we're seeing almost a quarter of all trips being made outside of a vehicle. This is the total trips that are made in the whole network. So it's literally tallying up all the trips that everyone in the county makes in a day. These are daily numbers. And you can see that for the proposed 2023 MDP, again, the purple bar all the way to the right, how we're showing an actual decrease in the number of trips. And this kind of gets at the robust TDM transportation demand management that Eleni was talking about earlier, kind of, you know, more people working from home, more people, you know, just choosing to combine their trips and just make fewer trips. And I have, I think, one more graph after this that this really gets at where we're seeing the greatest reductions in the amount of trips. This is just specifically showing the amount of work trips in the model on a given day. And you can see the substantial difference that we're showing there for the proposed MDP scenario. So that's all the people that are teleworking. I think we were saying about 50% in our proposed MDP scenario. So that's why we're seeing great reductions in delay and no issues in the volume to capacity maps that were shown earlier. Thank you, Jason. So just before we start looking forward in our 2023 MDP and develop our strategies and projects, we just took a look back and see how we did with the implementation of 2018 MDP. And we have some encouraging results. I mean, we still have work to do, but really good results. So, you know, remember that we had a 90% goal for the new household growth in areas planned for growth. So right now we are averaging 87%. And so that is, we didn't meet our goal, but we are closer. We have also done, there was a significant progress in implementing our 2018 MDP project. We spent, let's see, there is a table after this, can move this slide. We spent almost 215 million for more than 152 projects since 2018. And we also met our goal of a minimum of 70% going into keeping our system functional and maintain our system and in just a good repair, kind of like a stage. So we are, you know, quite happy with these results, even though we still have a lot of work to do to achieve our vision and goals. So looking back, now we are just looking forward without 2023 MDP investments. So you can see all the investments that basically flew through all the vision and goals and all the analysis that we did and also for the MDP, proposed MDP scenario. So maintaining our system, we talked about minimum 70% of our budget goes there. A carriage higher density, we talked about the TOD overlay district. Also, we need to find more sustainable sources of transportation funding. The gas tax is not providing us enough money at this point, you know, for all the investments that we want to do due to efficiency in vehicles, EVs and other reasons. So we need to start thinking about something different, mileage-based fees, something that we need to explore further. Just basically implementation of MDP projects and, you know, basically work with the intelligent transportation systems, which means that we're working with, you know, like smart signals, technology to actually facilitate, you know, movement of vehicles, as well as other modes. So we don't need to expand and create more capacity in our roadways. We have, you know, as I mentioned before, robust transit system, increased investment in that, increased investment in walking and biking, TDM. And also in order to meet one of our goals that we haven't really talked a lot is how to basically lower greenhouse gas emissions. And we are working on that specific section still. So you're going to see next time we come to you. But we are having a goal to promote the shift from, you know, gasoline, you know, like power vehicles into electric and hybrid, and also support rail infrastructure, especially, you know, there is a special mention of the rail line between Burlington and Essex on this. Christine is going to talk a little bit more about the MTP projects. We have, you know, a very long list of projects in our actual plan that I encourage you to go in and review. It's categorized by kind of community. So please at least look at your community and get back to us if you have any questions or comments. And Christine. Yeah, so this is just like a few bullet items about the MTP project list. So where the MTP, where the list came from, first of all, we looked at the list that was in our 2018 plan, everything that was finished, we took off the list. And we took the remaining projects, we looked at everything that had completed planning studies and scoping studies and added those to the list and then reviewed it a few times with the tax. So that's really where the list came from. As we said before, $440.6 million in projects in federal funds, federal transportation, I'm going to say it again, FHWA and FTA formula funds. So it's not everything, it's somewhat limited in their projects on the federal aid highway system. So 121 projects, over 95% of the projects include bike and or pedestrian improvements. So that would be either from shoulder widenings for bikes to sidewalks, paths, crosswalks, signal phasing for pedestrians. So that's a pretty significant amount that consider bike and pedestrian needs. Over 95% of the investments were in areas planned for growth. We talked about that earlier, Eleni Flash at the slide of the areas plan for growth. I did want to point out that these are of the new facility, what did I call it before, upgrades and system upgrades. Paving and bridges aren't included on this list. So that 70% that we talked about before is still available for the areas that are not planned for growth. So state highways and bridges would still get funding as needed for repairs. There are projects for improvements at 40 high crash locations in the county. Then we also looked at some equity factors. We looked at census data on race and poverty and English proficiency and determined that 24% of the investments are in census tracts with 20% or more people identifying as not white alone with 20% with incomes below the poverty level. And over 24% of investments are in census tracts with 8% or more people with limited English proficiency. And I realized that I'm reading as I'm reading this that that's a little bit lack of something to compare it with so we can share the full table so that you can see how the other 75% of the county does for these factors. So next slide, Elaine. And just another chart because you know we love charts and this was supposed to have alternating slices of color so that would have made it a little bit more interesting. But this is the MTP investments by use category. So our largest use category is interstate and interchange. And that's really some very large projects. It's about 98 million and those are upgrades to 16 that are happening right now. Significant upgrades to 17. 17 needs a new interstate bridge. And because it has other categories besides bridge it's included for counting in this category, the interstate category. Exit 14. Elaine, you talked about the DDI. There's $30 million as a placeholder for that. And then also exit 12 improvements, potentially another DDI at exit 12, 23 million. New facilities, we have kind of the same old projects that we've been talking about for a long time. Champlain Parkway, Enterprise and Crescent Connector and Champlain Parkway and Crescent Connector are under construction. So that's great. There's a lot of bike pad projects on this list. There's 50 projects, 70% of the total. The roadway corridor improvements, complete streets are, there's several complete street projects in Burlington. Also two way reconstruction in Colchester, Susie Wilson Road, Williston Road in South Burlington, and two way from Industrial Avenue to Rivercote Road in Williston. The safety, traffic operations, our intersection projects, signal projects, that type of thing. And transit expansion. So we have included transit in the maintenance, the basic transit. But this item is for expansion of the transit system to try to achieve those goals that Eleni was talking about before. We have funds for TDM projects yet to be defined. And then the regional stormwater, those would most likely be the transportation enhancement grants or the municipal stormwater mitigation grants through VTrans. And then Park and Ride Intermodal, those are results of our Park and Ride plan. And a lot of these need, those projects need more definitions. So that's part of the reason that that number's low, because we don't have, we don't know exactly what the projects are. And that's it for me. Thank you, Christine. And this is the end of our presentation. Thank you for your patience. So just very quickly, next steps. So we are presenting to you today. It's just informational only. We're going to take this draft MTP and we're going to review it with the equity advisory committee and other stakeholders. And that is going to be starting from late January all the way to mid-March. And then we're going to come back to you in April. And we're also going to present a final draft to the TAC, the Long Range Planning Committee, and to you in April. And we're going to be asking you to go on a public hearing for May. We'll have a public hearing in May and then hopefully adoption in June. So that's the end of our presentation. I'm going to stop sharing to see if anybody has any questions, no questions. All right. Well, thank you so much. Just please review the report. If you do have any questions, please let me know or any of us know and happy to respond to any comments you have or any questions. Thanks. Well, thank you, Eleni, for all the effort and all your other supporting presenters for the information. Appreciate it all. Next is a discussion on the SEDS at this point. And I don't think we need any discussion, but there's a little memo in your packet, really, to just give you a heads up that we are taking final comments on the draft SEDS Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy document. And it will be probably at your table in March for action. So just really just a preview, a quick heads up. So and apologies that this meeting is running so long. So I don't know, Catherine or Madam Chair, are you okay if I turn it over to Ann Nelson for a quick equity update? Yes, that's what I'm going next. Is Ann Nelson still here? Good. We are in the process of scheduling another equity advisory committee meeting on a SEDS 1, 2 mission statement, and I'm pulling together an equity action plan, SEDS document. The breaking up. Yeah, we still can't hear you Ann Nelson, but I'll try to cover the info. You heard that, yeah, we're trying to get the equity advisory committee kind of committee back together after the holidays here. And there's some working groups working on several different items, including the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, our equity statement and code of conduct. And I'm missing one item, but and then Jackie or Michael, if you want to, Mike, you want to pop in. But anyway, I think, you know, we kind of took a little bit of a break for the holidays and we're going to get the group back together and keep working on things. No problem, Ann Nelson. Yeah, that's too bad. But we'll hear from her in the future. Yeah. So next on the agenda is the legislative breakfast debrief and the 2023 priorities. Yeah, and maybe we should start with the the legislative breakfast debrief. I guess I'll start. I was wondering, we probably had only half of the legislators show up that had registered. See, I'm getting choked up already, hold on. But so I just I guess want to plant a seed and wonder if we should think about changing the nature of that discussion to make what seemed most productive was really having the town leaders in the room together and have that municipal conversation about priorities prior to the session and make it a little bit less about the legislators and a little bit more about issues that are on our municipalities mind. So I know that's one thought I'm having, but open to other thoughts or other reactions. I do want to chime in there since I was presiding with you here, Charlie, and I do think it was a little under-subscribed just based on our previous experiences, pre-pandemic, so I agree with you. And it was hard. We had a new crew of five or four brand new representatives from South Burlington, and I don't think any of them showed, which was tough and we had reached out to them or I had. But I agree. I think the benefit that we get and that reverberates around the room is having the town managers there and staff planning and zoning folks and people of that sort. And that you do, I think the legwork during the session in getting in front of the representatives and traveling to Montpelier and reaching out on your own with the phone. So I tend to think that that emphasis is probably something we should look for going forward. However, when we get hot topic buttons, like the housing proposal that's going on right now that you've read about, I think we definitely would want to have FaceTime with them, but there wasn't at that time that hot topic proposal in front of us. Well, thank you, Chris. Thank you for also doing that. Catherine, can you see Jeff has his interest? Madam Chair, I just hate for us to lose the opportunity to have our representatives and our community people interact with the legislators and around topics that we need to discuss. I think it's a little bit of an aberration with so much turnover in the legislature this year. And maybe we just have to do a better job of reaching out to the reps and tell them that this is an important meeting for them to meet with people that's a key part of a constituency that they have to be concerned about. Not only that, we can be a resource to them. I hate to think that it's going to be up to Charlie to hook up with all those. And if breakfast isn't enough to get them to come, we've got to think about something else. We've got to think about doing more outreach because I think that previous pre-pandemic representatives came because they understood how important the RPC was. And so maybe we have a mismatch between the importance of the RPC with the new crop of legislators, to be honest with you. And the new crop of legislators have their mouth on the end of the proverbial fire post right now. So maybe they didn't show up because they didn't want to have another bunch of stuff to swallow. So maybe the thing to do is invite them to our annual meeting when it's at a nice place and do some more outreach and then follow up with, I still think we want to have a legislative oriented program where we not only make a clear what we want from them, but we make it clear that we are available to them to be a resource to make their jobs easier. So I really don't want us to get away from that. And I realize I'm only one loudmouth among the group. But you have a lot of weight. Andy? Yeah, not to take away anything from what Jeff said or certainly not to take anything away from any effort that the disorganization might want to do with regard to interlocking with legislators. But the Vermont League of Cities and Towns does a lot of that as well. I don't know if there's a certain overlap with what we're talking about here. They also, you know... Oops, did he freeze? Andy, if you can hear me, you're frozen. Maybe I want to kill your video. Maybe we could hear your audio. Okay. Yeah, I've been having internet stability problems here and now I can't stop my video. So let's see if this helps. I've attended Vermont League of Cities and Towns. The town fair is one where municipalities certainly get together and can interact. And there's also the local government day, which is actually held in Montpelier where local government folks are invited to come and interact directly with legislators. And I don't know if there's some synergy that could be done there. I don't know, just... Yeah. Well, I guess I'll just put out there for you to think about it. I do think Jeff was right. I think we had a lot of new legislators drinking from probably more than one fire hose in a pretty small window between November and January. So there was a lot of competition for their time in that small window. But so next fall, we don't have an election. So there's some more freedom of time and some definite opportunities. Andy, those are good thoughts too. So just if you could think about us some more and we'll obviously come back to it months from now. I mean, just one reaction to Andy's thing. Andy, I mean, I think there are opportunities for synergy, but League of Cities and Towns has different agenda items than we do. And ours are very specific. And we do a lot of the same thing from the standpoint of advocacy for certain positions. But I just don't think it makes sense for us to do something with League because the League is focused on a whole bunch of different issues than we are. I mean, we're driven by transportation. We're driven by, you know, our ECOS plan. There's some overlap, but not a lot. Yeah. So one of the things that happens in local government day is they explicitly try to get municipal folks to go to the transportation committee to comment. And so that's, I think, at least one, you explicitly mentioned transportation. Maybe that's a, maybe it's only a subset of what the League does that could get involved in. Yeah. And I think it is Andy. And I have my own feelings about local government day. They can round you up and put you all into a Room 11 and knock off things very efficiently. And that just doesn't, you know, do as much as more constant and personal relationships on our issues all the time. Because there's a whole bunch of people that are down there whispering in their ears over other things that aren't on our agenda. And we have to try to do a good job through Charlie and through selected participation of our own member municipalities on these issues with them more than just allowing them to hurt us all into one room and listen to us for one day. And then that's over. That's like traveling. That's like travel and tourism day, you know. They hurt them all into one big room, listen to them for three or four hours, and then they're done with them, you know, that kind of thing. On the good side, I will note that they definitely, to Jeff's point about, you know, inviting us into the rooms. We've had very good success early on in this session. I think I've already, well, I don't know if this is good or bad. I'm thinking somewhere between. I've already been down there, I think, to testify five times. And so it's really just because there are so many new legislators. And, you know, some of them have worked with their RPCs before, some haven't. But also, and really this is on behalf of the statewide RPCs, the statewide association. I've been down there in a bunch of committees, and it was actually, I think for the first time, they invited us into house appropriations yesterday morning to look at the Budget Adjustment Act, you know, and there's a Brownfield provision that impacts us. And that was pretty new. So it's like, things are, I'm feeling pretty good about where we are. It's nothing, there's nothing wrong with where we are. I think vis-à-vis the legislature, I think it's just how to have more sharing here locally on issues. There were some issues for just a story. The Vermont Emergency Board, which is all the money chairs and the governor approve the consensus revenue forecast every six months. There was a group of legislators who said, what's the emergency board and what's the emergency? Yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of learning going on. So, so sorry, I don't want to belabor this evening. There was a list in the packet of just really legislative topic areas that we're kind of tracking. If you have any feedback for me on those, Chris mentioned the housing bill that hasn't been introduced yet. We were asked for some technical input into that. Regina started it off and Taylor picked it up in terms of providing some just technical expertise on zoning issues and planning issues to that group, to that billmaking. And I'm saying that very purposely. Do not kill us when that bill comes out. It does have implications for municipalities and just trying to encourage more density in our centers. So, I think we'll have some more chance to talk about it in our next couple of meetings. But heads up on the housing bill. And the last one on that list, I wanted to give you heads up. We were also asked to take a look at what should be done to strengthen the implementation of regional plans. And I think this is really kind of a response. You may remember in the last couple of sessions, there was some discussion about a state planning office. And I think this is a little bit of a, well, maybe we don't need to say planning office, maybe we just need to look at the planning we're already investing in regionally and how to make it more consistent. And so anyway, there's just, there's some very direct conversations going on like that. And there's a bunch of other ones. So we'll see I'll try to keep you updated. I'll probably use that list and just update you with information each month. And certainly if you're aware of issues, please feel free to give me a call or a quick email, whatever works for you or text 735-3500 is my number. So it's fairly easy to remember. Feel free to be in touch as things go on. Because there's likely to be a lot going on as they start to get their feet underneath them this session. Well, thank you, Charlie. Well, I guess it's time to close the public forum for the fiscal year. I will make a motion to close the public forum for the fiscal year 20. Can you see if there's any more public comments first? Sure. After I make my motion. Sorry, sorry, Chris. So you've made the motion. We'll get a second and then we'll see if there's any other people before we actually vote then. Jeff Carr will second it. Is there any other public here to make comments on the UPWP for fiscal year 24? We have a decent number of participants on the list. I just want to make sure that you have the opportunity to speak before we vote to close the public forum. I don't see anything on my screen. And I think Michael and Ryan put a couple of comments in the chat so we'll grab those out of there. Yeah, because that's where I've been seeing Michael had a really ongoing conversation, which was nice. So given that there are no other participants who wish to say anything, all those in favor of closing the public forum raise your hands. Motion passes. Are there any mays? Okay. Any abstentions? Thank you. Moving on, Charlie gets to talk some more. Briefly. Briefly. The executive director's report because I have nothing at the moment. So just I kind of mentioned this a little bit already. The communications union district has had their initial board meeting a couple of weeks ago and Janda on our staff is providing the primary staff support for that. And thankfully the Vermont broadband board is talking about providing a $300,000 startup grant to get that effort moving. So that'll be a big deal and stay tuned for more as they get going. Item B here is the municipal energy resilience program. You may remember me mentioning this after last session. I think it was like $42 million was put into this program to help municipalities weatherize and maybe change their fuel that they use in municipal buildings. I will say there's some priority. They're looking at towns that are poorer and have less resources. So I'm not sure how Chittendon County Towns are going to fare in that program, but we are participating in it. And Janda is also staffing that program. She's already sent out some communications to your town managers or administrators and maybe energy committees as well. So that program is just starting to get going now. And I'm not going to add any more on the legislative update, although happy to discuss or take any questions on legislation that you may have heard about or are wondering about. Happy to take any questions. I don't see any questions on the screen I'm looking at. Thank you. Thank you. Given that the next agenda item is the usual committee liaison activities and reports. And these are either available in your packet or via link. And after that it's what Jeff always likes. What, member items? No. I move we adjourn. All those in favor. Now we can say aye. Aye. Good night all.