 so harsh that something had to be done, but you cut your nose off despite your face. So, Madam Chair, we have a quorum and let me know when you're ready to start so I can hit the record button. All right, well, I think that's what we'll do right now. Oh, God, I think this is what we'll live with it. Okay, we'll call this meeting to order at 601. And as usual, we have a quorum. So the next item is there's any changes to the agenda? Recording in progress. Nobody has any changes to the agenda. So then we'll move on to the public comment for people, anybody who has anything to say that it's not on the agenda? Do we have anybody here who wish to speak to one of those something not on the agenda? I don't see any hands or arms or anything else. We can then move on to the consent agenda and this is an MPO item. And it's a minor tip amendment that we need to deal with. Move to approve. Is there a second? All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Abstain. I'm sorry, I'm gonna, we're without Amy tonight. So Regina's taking minutes, but I think Dan seconded who moved that. I did. I did. Okay, thank you. And so the motion then passes. Hearing no. Next on the agenda is the approved the minutes of March 16th. And do we have a motion for that? Garrett, a motion, so I'll just second. Second. All right. I'm gonna let Shelburne's alternative member vote on this item. Oh, very good. That's right. He was here. Are there any corrections to be noted on the minutes? Been called a lot, but never an alternative. I just have one little tiny thing on page two lines, 34 and 35 say the same thing. It's a bullet point, high criticality. At high criticality. But that's all I have. So there isn't no other corrections. All those in favor of approving the minutes say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any abstentions? I think I should abstain as I wasn't there. Okay. Any, so the- I'm sorry, who abstained? Deirdre from Charlotte. Dana was at the meeting. I'm here in Dana's place today, but. So the motion passes. And then we get to move to some of the, the meet of the meeting. It's an MPO action item. And it's to warn the public hearing for the major tip amendment on the Champlain Parkway. Can I ask Christine to kind of review the outline of the major tip amendment and then may have a little follow-up from the city of Burlington and maybe from VTrans if they want. Thank you, Charlie. So the item is a little bit convoluted. So I hope I didn't lose anyone in this description. So what we're doing, there are three projects that are involved in this amendment. Two for Champlain Parkway and the third is a separate project and we'll talk about that last, but basically what's happening here. So the, this has come about because the cost Champlain Parkway has gone to bid. The bids have come in higher than the cost estimate. We had an estimate in the tip of 35 million and the estimate came in at 62.7 million. So just to make clear that that number, the 35 million is what was in the tip. It's not what was Burlington's previous cost estimate. So this is changing the amount in the tip because as we talk about frequently, the tip is physically constrained, which means that we're limited by the dollar amount that we can have in the tip. We were looking for a way to add this money based on any projects in the tip that have funding that is not gonna need them. Excuse me. And so this is primarily coming from the exit 17 project. This project has excess funds in our tip as compared to what's in the transportation capital program. So this change in the years of FY 22, FY 23 and FY 24 do not take money that is needed by that project. It's taking excess funds. So when you look at the agenda item, you'll see that there is a funding schedule for each year 22, 23, 24, 25. And it's a combination of taking funds that are available from the tip. And then we're talking about releasing some of the excess funds to VTRANS that then we will look to program back into this project in FY 25. VTRANS has agreed to this proposal. I believe they can speak if they have something else to say about it. There is at the end about, let's see, 9 million plus about 4 million that will be funded outside of the fiscal constraint. It's money that just cannot fit within our fiscal constraint limit. And this is for phase one of Champlain Parkway, which is Home Avenue to Kilburn Street. So the change is to Champlain Parkway that's on the front side. Exit 17 is on the backside of your agenda item. I'll let Burlington speak to the reasons for the changes. And then just to call your attention to, there's one project that seems like it doesn't belong with these, but this is just another major tip amendment to add a bridge project on Route 7 in Williston. It's a major amendment because it's a new project to the tip. And Champlain Parkway is a major amendment because of the cost increase. So if you wanna talk about any more details, I'm happy to go into more detail. If not, should I turn it over to Chapin or Norm to talk a little bit about the reasons for this increase? Yeah, Chapin. Great, thank you so much, Christine, for having us, Chapin Spencer, Director of Public Works. And first, thank you to the Regional Planning Commission Board for your patience over the years, shifting this project in many out years. And I am pleased to say that after decades of diligent work with V-Trans Federal Highway, the RPC and partners, we are now doing what many think is unthinkable, which is bringing this legacy project to construction. I'll have city engineer Norm Baldwin and senior engineer Corey Mims provide an overview of just how the bids came in and where we're at financially. So Norm and Corey, yeah, we see the image, but we don't hear you. Sorry, didn't hit the mute button, sorry. So you should see the image of the route for the parkway itself. Does anyone see that? Okay, good, so perfect. So this is a depiction of the segments that Christine was referring to. This project was broken up into two different phases, the first phase being the connection between Home Avenue and Kilburn Street. And there was significant conversation about how this project would be coordinated with other projects within the city, particularly in the south. And we have the Shelbert Street roundabout ongoing right now. We have the Rail Yard Enterprise advancing. There have been significant conversations about EJ issues within the King Street, Mabel Street neighborhood and how making these final connections to the project would affect them. And so I think this plan has been responsive to both what the state and federal process requires, but also to our local community. And so that's why we've broken it out into two separate phases. You can see that red segments are the balance of the project to be completed in phase two, which follows phase one. So yes, we did have a bid process and this is just the South End Coordination Plan that I referred to in terms of all the number of different products going on. What's important here is to understand how the sequence of work will occur and that we have only really primarily two means of access to the city north and south, Shelbert Road and Pine Street itself, which Shelbert Road roundabout in place, we've had to coordinate those product schedules. So see next slide. I'm not gonna get into the merits of the project and its details, but I think what's important to the board is really what the estimate was and what the bid we received was. And so the engineers estimate was 26 million and access to 26 million came in at just short of 41 million leaving a difference of 14 million over a three year period that was in excess of our estimate. We'll always just a listing of our local match obligations that came with that we as a city have to assume that we presented to council. And then the series of reasons we believe drove up the cost of the project. One is of course, as everyone knows, Russian forces invading Ukraine has had impacts on our energies. Inflation has gone incredibly high all at once. And then you have what we believe is a competing market for contractors, time and effort. They have obviously a lot of work that's backlogged from as a result of COVID, they have staffing issues in terms of people transitioning out of the workforce. And it's been, I think a challenge for contractors to really staff up and deal with the volume work that's in front of them. As a result, they're selective about the work that they are bidding on and are unfortunately at a narrow market of competitive contractors in this work. We've seen other pricing come in higher than what was reasonably expected in a recent past. And we've also seen material costs going strangely right through the roof. It's my belief that this project because it's got such a long duration of construction and scale and complexity that contractors had covered their risks by having an exceptionally high price more than we would reasonably expect in a competitive market. So all these things combined have made for so-called perfect storm of financial challenge with this project, but we believe if we were to try to repackage this at a later date that it would have more serious consequences both from a permitting standpoint, but also would we get any more competitive pricing than we already have? And we don't believe, at least in the near term in the next five years that we're gonna see that. So we think this is the best approach to move forward with and we've consulted with Federal Highway in the state of Vermont and they are in agreement. They've had our, we've submitted our bid analysis that bid analysis has been accepted by V-Trans and forwarded to Federal Highway who is in a concurrence to proceed with the award. So there's been a significant amount of work to talk through this complex issue, but we are here tonight to seek your support to continue forward and advance this project. There's just a other longer list of, and then a prospective schedule of things and events that we need to, steps we need to follow through, milestones we need to follow through to arrive at commencement of construction. And I will stop sharing unless people want to see more or ask questions. Norm, could you go back to that timeline that you had? Cause this is, I mean, we're looking at the tip through FY25, but this is going to go past FY25, right? Yep. Apologies for, Mickey, you go back in there. Can you, can you, can you, can you see that now? Bringing this up, just, can you see that? Yep. Okay. So, not that schedule, Norm, the big construction schedule we showed it going out over years. Yeah, the self-insequencing schedule. Yeah. Okay. And probably I just wanted to kind of have the board focus on that for a moment that, you know, this is not, this doesn't end in FY25, even though that's what's in the tip amendment. It's going through 26 and 27, probably, I don't know, I don't know if I should cross my fingers or what emotion to put on that, but that's the projected schedule right now, right? Yes. And it appears to be holding, but obviously as we get further down through this process of all the other projects that may change, I think a critical project to that is a really enterprise project. And I think council's expectation is that, that makes significant progress for next phase of Parkway is advanced because of all the express EJ issues that we've talked about. And that's a really important one. Thank you. Yeah. Sorry, Catherine, I don't want to steal the chair's gavel here, but John Zaccone has his hand up. Just a quick question. I don't know if it's just a, only includes one phase or not, but you just told us that the bid went up to $41 million and the packet we received, we were informed that the amount has gone from 35 million to 62 million, almost 63. So those numbers are not jibing and I'm trying to understand what the bill is. So the answer to that is it's, I think the 62 million is all inclusive of both phase one and phase two, and also all soft costs that are anticipated. There was an adjustment or reconciliation of what it would take to actually construct a product both from RE services, environmental services, force account engineering within our team, so on and so forth, all those costs that go with not just the construction costs, but support to bring it forward. So the 41 million is the full cost of just phase one. I went, absolutely. The construction costs. 41 million is just the construction costs, that's right, thank you Corey. Okay, of just phase one. Just phase one, that's correct. Okay, thank you. Why don't you stop sharing so we can see everybody's questions. I was gonna actually see if the financial. I have a point of clarification to that item is that the 35 million was the entire project. And so for the way that we look at our, what constitutes a major amendment, we need to compare apples to apples. So that's why that overall cost was the full amount. And there is a schedule in the tip amendment that talks about what's gonna be in phase two and what the amount per year is that we expect to happen past the four year window of the tip. Catherine, you're still muted, but I think Jackie has her hand. Sorry, I'm still working on that cough. Sucking on the cough drop here. Okay, Jackie, thank you. So I'm not sure this question's appropriate, but I'm curious, since you're taking money out of the exit 17 project, because you say it was extra kind of, I hear extra, what's to say the costs for that aren't going to go way beyond what is anticipated? And will we be in sort of the same situation when that actually comes to construction? I think for that point, we re-evaluate the tip every year. So we will continue to monitor that what we're reflecting is what's in the current transportation capital program, a transit budget. And yeah, we will adjust it every year if it's necessary. Any other questions, comments? Hearing none, are you ready to vote on the amendment to the tip? Well, and I just want to be clear, we're voting on a warning of public hearing for the next meeting. Exactly, that's true. Yep, so although the, yeah, what's in the documents as approved the tip, I think, is that Christine, is that what the TAC recommended was to approve the amendment? I'm sorry, I did. It's just to warn to public hearing. Oh, well, the title is tip amendments, but the issue is to warn of public hearing. The word, the wording for the TAC is to warn a hearing and oh, I'm sorry, the typically is to warn of public hearing and approve, but I think we didn't have the final numbers for the TAC. So they are going to hear this at their next meeting. So they haven't made a recommendation yet. So I've moved to warn for a public hearing. I'll second it. All those in favor, say aye. And it is the MPO, no. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any abstentions or any noes? Hearing none, the motion passes. Now that the public hearing vote is behind us, can someone from staff, Charlie, Christine, whoever it is, please provide us what our actual authority is here. This project has its detractors as we all know. And if we have the power to kibosh everything because of it needs all of this additional money, some of us are liable to get lobbied, if you will. And when citizens come to us, it's very important that we understand, first off, what our actual authority is as a commission. So I'm not trying to say I want anything done or I want to block anything or approve anything or anything like that. I just want to know what our authority is. So when, if we actually wanted to vote no on this, can, does the project die? I mean, just what is it? Please tell us what our authority is so that when people approach us, we can talk intelligently to them about what it is that we need to do. Yes, thanks for asking, John. And so I think this is probably a good conversation to just MPO authority in general, right? MPOs were created in the 60s after the interstate era and local governments didn't have a voice in the decisions that DOTs were making, putting interstates through cities, et cetera, right? And so we, you all have a pretty blunt instrument power. You could vote not to include this in the tip and not allow federal funding to be used for this project. However, that doesn't come without any implications, right? And so my understanding is that, you know, federal highway and V-trans have communicated to the city that there's a $45 million payback of federal and state funds that have been extended to date on this project that would need to be paid back. And that's, so just so you know, yes, guess you could vote no, but you know, there's dominoes that happen after that. And I don't know if either the city or V-trans wants to add anything to that comment. Lord Matthew? Yeah, I just wanted to add that bear in mind that this project has already been authorized by federal highway administration. So they've already authorized the amount that we had in the tip. So we're looking for the difference in the funding here. So if the MPO were to decide not to fund the additional amount, then at that point the city would have to decide whether to proceed forward and find the money elsewhere or to not continue with the project and face paying back 45, 49 million, something like that. Thank you. Does that answer your question? Well, it answers my question. I just wanted to make sure everyone, not just myself, was understanding of what our authority is because like I said, that's the only way that when people approach us, we can have an intelligent conversation with them. So I appreciate the time. Thank you. Are there any other comments or questions before we move on then? Sort of apply in the background. Otherwise, we're moving on to warning the public hearing for the UPWP and budget. Yeah, so I'll try to address this one. So this is another action vote to warn the public hearing for the work program and budget for the May meeting. You got the draft work program, the draft budget were separate links on the website. Hope you had a chance to look at them. You're welcome to the city, thanks Norm. And the thing I think I want to spend the most time on is maybe the budget document, which was just a couple of page summary kind of what's in the work program. And this work program process was a little different than previous years. In part, two reasons we had more money or there were two reasons why we had significantly more money from a MPO funding standpoint. One is was the Infrastructure and Jobs Act that increased our funding by about 30% of MPO funding. And that's in the realm of $500,000 to $700,000 a year between Federal Highway and FTA funds. And Chris, I hope I don't mischaracterize Chris Jolly from Federal Highway informed us that there were also some excess Federal Highway funds available in the realm of around 500,000. So there was quite a bit of additional funding compared to previous years available this year. If you remember, I think I sent out a encouragement email early or probably around the end of the calendar, you're saying, hey, there's more money available, please apply and you all listened. And so it had a couple of effects. So we got about $1.8 million of MPO funded requests and going back in years past, we were more like 1.2, maybe 1.3. In that realm, it was a little bit more last year. Again, as we were trying to invest some of the available funds that hadn't been used previously, but there was a significant increase and probably about 20 more projects than normal were added to our overall work program. Some of that was MPO funding, but there were also other dynamics going on in the state, which I'll touch on briefly, but so that's kind of the big picture. Just to let you know, and the UPWP committee chaired by Chris Shaw walked through all of these projects and have recommended this to you all for consideration. And so I don't know any big, any questions about kind of the big picture. Okay. And then I'm gonna, let me know if you want me to pull up the budget. I'm just gonna do a little walk through the budget just because it gives you kind of the broad perspective of what's happening in the work program. And so I'm not gonna pull it up unless somebody asks. So, and first we talked about the municipal and regional funding. You'll see there's a yellow highlight in the dollar amount for FY23. And that's really noting that the legislature is having discussion in their budget about increasing the amount of the regional planning funds going to RPC statewide. And you'll note in red text in column B that it may be about 150,000. That's the average per RPC. We tend to get a little bit higher share. So it could be more than $150,000 increase in that particular line item, which would be very helpful for our kind of general regional planning tasks. And you'll see that there's more money in that direct line because we don't have the staff capacity to spend those funds right now. And I certainly didn't want to hire without knowing if that money is really coming or not. So that may create a little opportunity for us to do some more general planning work than we've had in the past. Sorry, I spent a little bit more time on that than normal. And I don't know if there's other things to touch on here. We're still working on the SEDS and other municipal assistance. You also see that line is gone from like 50,000 last year to 70,000. So we're getting more requests kind of for, I'll call it kind of consulting assistance from the planning staff. Any questions on the municipal regional planning section? Okay. For the transportation section, you'll see kind of an increase in staff time there of about 10%. That is largely due to the idea of hiring an equity manager and spending more time on equity work, particularly with MPO funding. And that's a big emphasis for US DOT right now. And then looking further at the transportation section, you'll see on road 21 that there's over a million dollar increase in consultant funding. And so that's really where you're seeing that impact of additional funds available. We're not hiring a lot more transportation staff to manage those projects. And Eleni would want me to say yet at this point, but we're kind of, we're trying to see how efficient we can be with existing staff, but there is a significant increase coming through that line. And any questions on the transportation funding program? And obviously I mentioned those 20 extra projects, most of them are in that MPO section. Okay. Going down to the natural resource and energy section, to see some yellow highlighted rows. We have a four or $500,000 brownfield grant that's pending. We'll hear about that in the next couple of months. There's another funding program under consideration of the legislature for municipal building energy retrofits. Well, no, no, it's municipal resiliency, I think. So it's been having a couple of different names as it's going through the legislature. But they're talking about providing some funding to the RPC staff to help municipalities access about $40 million of state and federal funds that will be available for weatherization or energy conversion and all kinds of energy improvements to municipal buildings. So that's what the outline is. And then you see water quality programming. We've talked the last two or three years about being a clean water service provider. You see that our rows 45 and 46. The DEC is, and please flag me if I'm using any acronyms that need to be expounded on it. But the Department of Environmental Conservation is providing a grant to us for about 650, 640,000, something like that to do natural resource based projects in basin five, which is kind of the watershed that is along Lake Champlain and also includes a lot of Grand Isle County and a little bit of Franklin County too, including St. Albans. So that's a big chunk there. And then emergency management and health, you'll see the health department has gotten a pretty significant grant to deal with health equity. And that's actually impacting our work program in a couple of those, two or three of those different yellow lines as they are working on how to have more healthy community design and address equity issues. And there's a little smaller grant for hot weather emergency response planning. So those are, I'm hoping that was helpful covering some of the pending new things that look like they're coming through the budget this year in the legislature, which we should know in the next couple of weeks as they go into conference to sort out the differences between house appropriations, vote and Senate appropriations and what came out of the two houses. Any questions on the revenue side for budget? You'll note a big, it's a $2 million increase over last year in total. Don't see any questions yet. Yeah, no, nobody got too scared yet, except me. Okay, great. Well, and staff. On the back, the next page of the budget is our expense side. And you see salaries. I forgot to mention one thing about the Clean Water Service Provider work is that we are also working on hiring another person in our business office because there's gonna be, I don't know, 20 or something, probably new contracts just related to that Clean Water Service Provider. So our admin work is gonna go up significantly in the coming years. And between that and the equity manager that's a big part of that 12% increase in our salary line, which is, our biggest investment is in staff. Around 80% of our operating budget, exclusive of the consultant work. Not too much else notable, kind of minor things otherwise on the expense line. And we are working on refining some of these numbers. So when you see it, what I hope is the final version next month, there may be a couple of little tweaks as we're kind of doing the fine tooth combing through this. Any questions on the expense side of the budget? At this point. And then I hear anything. Now, the executive committee asked me to spend a few extra minutes. And I'm gonna apologize to John Moore right now who's next up on our indirect rate down at the bottom of the second page there rose like 113 to 122 on the lower right. You'll see a little indirect rate history. And it's just something that I think the board doesn't hear too much about, but there's a lot of our staff time or a good chunk of our staff time. And of course, our rent and those other kind of overhead expenses go into this federally approved system of being part of an indirect rate. So things that can't be directly charged to a contract go into this indirect rate. And you see how our rate has been approved by VTrans every year. You see that on the column, I can't see the heading, but the approved indirect rate column and then it gets audited. We have an actual indirect rate and it gets reconciled every year really by forest and then reviewed by VTrans for approval. And depending on the outcome of the audited actual numbers, we have to adjust our rate. So if we over collect one year, we have to, and we get, then we get audited kind of the second year and this is on a two year cycle. So we're in FY22. We got the FY21 audit informs our FY23 indirect rate. And so, and of course, the even years move together also. And so there's been some fluctuation in our indirect rate. We over collect one year and then two years later we have to under collect. We've been trying to reduce the fluctuations, but you can see FY21, we had significant revenue over expenses of 86,000. So that means that probably FY23, and if you look at the bottom line of our budget is minus 52,000. The reason for that is because we have to under collect our indirect expenses in FY23 to compensate or mitigate the over collection in FY21. I'm sorry. I know I feel like a really detail oriented bureaucrat right now and I apologize because I think half of you want to go to sleep right now, but is there anything? Did I raise any questions in that overview? Was it helpful? Was it helpful at all? All right. Thank you. Somebody nodded. Yes, thank you. And I don't see any hands up for questions or anything either. I thought it was a great summer. Thanks, Charlie. Of course I paid. Okay. Yeah. So Madam Chair, we're looking for a motion to warn this Republican for next month. Yes. Garrett motions to do so. Do we have a second? As far as I will second that. Thank you very. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Looks like the motion passes and the UPWP will be warned. We now have a nice presentation by John Moore of GMT to talk about its proposed service reductions. Yes. Good evening, everybody. My name is John Moore. I'm the general manager at Green Mountain Transit and give me a second so I can share my screen. Can everybody see that? Okay. And I will start with a little bit of a spoiler alert in that this agenda item is listed as GMT proposed service reductions. But I'm happy to report that just yesterday the GMT Board of Commissioners did vote to avoid the implementation of the vast majority of our plan service reductions. So tonight's presentation will be more of a general budgetary overview of GMT and highlight some of the challenges that we're facing, but also some of the opportunities that we see in FY23 and beyond. So I'll start with a quick summary of some ridership trend data. And this really starts back in July of 2019. So about eight months before the pandemic hit. And as you can see and probably expected, we saw a dramatic reduction in ridership around March 2020. Since that time, you can see that we've been kind of on a pattern of increasing and then dipping in ridership and then increasing again, which generally follows the COVID case counts. So pretty logical. Just to put it in perspective, in fiscal year 19, which was the last full year pre-pandemic, we provided about 2.3 million passenger boardings and FY22, that was down to about 1.2 million. And then as you can see from this chart, we are trending at the moment down a little bit, but certainly have increased from the real decreases that we saw early in the pandemic. So in terms of our revenue sources, this is an important chart because we are publicly funded. We get our revenues from four primary sources. For FY23, this is a little skewed because we're still using some federal COVID relief funds. So our federal revenue amounts are higher than they typically are. And our state and operating revenues are lower than they typically are. But as you can see, 60% in federal funding, including those COVID relief funds, 7% from the state of Vermont, 22% in local funds. So in Jitton County, that's from our eight member municipalities in Colchester. And that 3.5 million funds, the fixed route service, in addition to the ADA paratransit service operated by SSTA under contract to GMT. And then the operating revenues of 1.7 is primarily made up of our passenger fares. And we'll talk more about that in a few slides, but that is down significantly based on the ridership chart that I just showed. So I just wanna give a quick overview. You folks are certainly aware and familiar with federal funding, but like a lot of federal funds, federal transit administration funding does have matching requirements. So operational expenses do require a 50% non-federal match. And I did highlight that fuel is considered an operating expense, not a maintenance expense. And I'll talk a little bit more about some of the pressures we're seeing with our fuel budget. And then in terms of maintenance capital and a new start costs, those all have a 20% non-federal matching requirement. And I do wanna just highlight that with the IIJA, there has been a 35% increase in federal transit funding, which is really good news. But that non-federal match is really the limitation that GMT is facing. And that's the area that we're focusing on to make sure we have the non-federal match to maximize all of that increase in federal transit financing. So I'll get into our FY23 budget a little bit. We try to follow the municipal budgeting cycle as much as possible as we do collect assessments from our member municipalities. So we really started our FY23 budgeting last summer. And obviously a lot has changed since then. And in the next slide, I'll outline some of those changes. But in terms of the fixed route assessment, which is the local funding in transit, we typically have a three to 4% annual increase. FY23 was a 4% increase, which generated an additional $90,000. And that's a 2.26 million total local investment in transit. When you add the ADA paratransit service, that's how you get that 3.5 million number from the pie chart. Originally we balanced our FY23 budget with about 6,000 hours of service reductions planned. That was about 5% of our total Chittenden County service that we provide. And those proposals included reducing service on the Shelburne Road and North Avenue routes from a bus running every 20 minutes during the rush hour to every 30 minutes during the rush hour. And then also eliminating four daily Montpelier link trips. Again, as of yesterday, we are going to avoid any service reductions on the Shelburne and North Ave routes. So we'll continue the 20 minute peak hour service instead of eliminating four daily Montpelier link trips. We're only going to eliminate two of those with the current plan. The 23 budget as originally approved by the board also included $1.58 million in passenger fare collection. We have been operating without a fare since the start of the pandemic, but our budget currently does assume that we will restart fare collection in July. That 1.58 million number is based on our current ridership projections, which are still about 20% less than what we had for pre-pandemic ridership. And that's important to note because we collected about 2.3 million in passenger fares before the pandemic. So that $700,000 in revenue difference has not been offset in cost savings. We've had more of a focus on getting people back on the bus as we come out of the pandemic. And we feel it's very counterproductive to reduce our service. And that would have a spiraling effect in terms of more ridership loss. So we think it's the right move, but it's certainly a financial impact when your revenues drop $700,000 and you don't reduce your expenses in a similar fashion. Our 23 budget also included about 200,000 in reserve funding. That's important because through the pandemic, receiving these COVID relief funds, we have had an internal goal of meeting our fund balance policy, which is having two months or about $2 million of cash on hand. We've currently met that goal for the first time in a very long time. And so taking the 200,000 out of that did have some impacts there. And then another cost increase we're seeing is in our ADA program. SSTA, as I mentioned, provides that service on a contract to GMT. That service provides service in a three quarter of a mile buffer around the fixed route service for folks that are unable to take a regular city bus due to a variety of reasons. Like GMT, their fuel costs and labor costs are going up. So there are certainly some cost pressures there, but there's also just a general increase in demand for that service as the population ages, more folks qualify for that door-to-door paratranded service. So we do expect additional cost pressures in that program. And then lastly, our FY23 budget does consider that we are in the second year of two new collective bargaining agreements that we executed in the fall. We feel very happy to have reached agreements with our union partners. But while we feel that we're paying market rates, those market rates have increased during the pandemic, especially for commercial drivers and skilled mechanics, there's a severe shortage of those employees in the area. And because of that, the wages and those job classifications have certainly increased since our last collective bargaining agreement. So that's put some more pressure on our budget. As I mentioned, a lot has changed since we started our FY23 budgeting. And similar to what you heard with the Champlain Parkway project, we have experienced some recent cost increases. You know, number one, restoring the service that we had originally planned in our 23 budget adds about $275,000 in cost back to our 23 budget. And then fuel is a real wild card right now. We are expecting to pay about 500,000 more in FY23 than we originally budgeted. And that's based on an original budgeted amount of $2.75 per gallon. We're currently paying about $4.35 a gallon. So we're likely going to adjust our budget to $4.25 per gallon. We are planning on removing the 200,000 in reserve funds, again, with a strong internal goal of having that two month of operating cash on hand. We think that's incredibly important. And then we are currently awaiting the award of our state operating funds. There's an annual application process that we go through with the Agency of Transportation. And that's really what dictates the timeline of our budget adjustment. Typically we get that grant award sometime around July 1st, but we are expecting about $1 million less in state operating funds than what we typically received before the pandemic. For 23, we do have $2.2 million of COVID relief funds left that will offset that. But after 23, we will be out of our COVID relief funds. So if we don't get back to pre-pandemic state operating levels, that will put a lot of pressure on our budget. Mostly in that every dollar we get in state operating, we can leverage another dollar of federal funds. So every dollar reduction in state operating is really $2 in revenue reductions to GMT. So that's very critical. And then lastly, the current versions of the House and Senate Transportation Committee passed transportation bills H736, includes between $1.2 and $1.4 million for GMT and FY23. There are some differences in the flexibility for the two versions of the bill. The House version is the $1.4 million amount, but that would be restricted to zero fare. And then the Senate version is a lower amount, that $1.2 million, but provides some additional flexibility to GMT on how that is spent. And I will illustrate why that's important here in a few slides. So a general summary of all of those FY23 budget adjustments, they all add up to about a $1 million deficit from what we had originally budgeted. And so we really have two options to fill that hole. The option number one, and this is what we would do if we don't get the additional legislative money from the transportation bill, we do have about $1 million we're projecting in unspent COVID relief funds from our FY22 budget. That again is significantly impacted by the price of fuel, but we feel relatively confident we'll have somewhere in the $1 million range at the end of this fiscal year. So that would fill that deficit. Or if we were to get the money in the transportation bill, we would use roughly a half a million of that to leverage the same amount of 5307 federal funding. We would balance the budget that way. We would keep the $1 million in unspent COVID relief funds for 24 and beyond. And then our board would then make a policy decision on how to spend that additional 700,000 or so of T-bill funding either for some level of continued zero fare service in fiscal year 23 or saving that money to avoid future service reductions. And that's where the flexibility that's included in the Senate transportation version of the T-bill becomes important for, as you'll see on this next slide, as we look at our 24 budget outlook, again, assuming that our revenues generally stay flat, fuel stays at $4.25 a gallon in that our ridership does not rebound to full pre-pandemic levels in FY24. We've looked at three different scenarios. All three scenarios assume that we avoid the service reductions in 23, which our board voted yesterday. All three assume that we get 1.2 million in additional legislative funding. And really the only difference is the fare-free piece in fiscal year 23. So you can see that if we were to remain fare-free in fiscal year 23, it's gonna create about a $750,000 local fund deficit in FY24. If we were to operate only half the year of fare-free in FY23, we'll have about a $56,000 surplus in local funds to start FY24. And if we were to charge a fare starting in July, we'd have about a $1 million surplus in local funds. And while that is excellent news, I will say our very early projections of FY25 is that we will need all of that $1 million, and then some in local funds to balance our FY25 budget. So in summary, we're planning on minimal service reductions in FY23 per the board action yesterday. And then next month in May, the board will make a policy decision on the zero fare status for FY23. That will be pending T-bill funding, and it will really be an exercise in balancing what we can afford in FY23 versus what we know we're gonna need in non-federal dollars in FY24 and 25. One option that we've discussed internally is a means-tested program in that there would be some eligibility, income eligibility requirements. And if folks were eligible based on income, we would allow them to continue zero fare for FY23. So that could be a way to provide the benefit of a fare-free service to the folks that need it the most while trying to balance our budget by collecting fares from folks that may not need that economic relief. And so the biggest takeaway is that we need additional non-federal funding in future years. We can balance 23 and we can balance 24 based on what the decision is for a fair collection in FY23, but we're gonna continue to face cost pressures. We think fuel is gonna stay high for the foreseeable future. It's still unclear the impacts of teleworking and other COVID related reasons for ridership rebounding. And then lastly, our ADA program, we do expect as the population ages, we'll continue to see more demand in that program which will increase the costs. And so all of this does highlight the needs identified in the CCRPC Transit Financing Study. And I think GMT working with the CCRPC and VTRANS will certainly focus our legislative outreach this summer and beyond on that study and really the need for more sustainable non-federal funding of transit in the state of Vermont. So that's what I have tonight and I'll stop sharing and I'm happy to answer any questions you folks may have. Thank you very much. Given that the ridership often drops when the gas prices go down, would you expect the ridership will increase with the increase in gas prices for people? Normally, yes. Back in 2008 is when we had our all-time record ridership when fuel prices were at all-time record highs. The one difference of course is COVID and really teleworking and trying to figure out what the long-term impacts of teleworking are. We support teleworking. It does reduce VMTs, which is part of our mission. But it certainly, when you look at our link routes, especially the Montpelier link particularly, we're only at about 30% of pre-pandemic ridership and a large reason for that is folks in Waterbury and Montpelier being able to telework. So it's kind of a new scenario that there's not a lot of industry literature or research on what the long-term impacts of this will be. So the long answer is we don't know, but typically, yes, higher fuel prices do result in higher transit demand. Are there other questions or comments to be had? Okay, I don't see anybody's hand. Well, thank you very much for your presentation. It was quite useful. Sure, thank you. Given that there were no questions or comments, the next thing on the agenda is the Board Development Committee, FY23 Executive Committee nominations. Do you want me to jump right in, Catherine? Yes, because you were the chair of the Board Development Committee as immediate past chair. Okay, so the Board Development Committee is recommending that you saw the slate in your packet, but I'll go over it, Catherine McMains as the continuous chair. Chris Shaw as vice chair, Bart Hill to move to secretary treasurer. And the reason for that is that John Zaccone, who would have gladly stayed, I hope I'm not misquoting you, John, but he hit the ceiling for time served. So we had to get a new secretary treasurer. We recommend Bart Hill, Jackie Murphy as the at-large for towns over 5,000, Michael Bissonette from Heinsberg for the at-large for towns under 5,000, and I will stay on as the immediate past chair. Are there any questions about the slate? You do want to think Bart and Mike stepping up, Bart to moving up to secretary treasurer and then Mike moving into the under 5,000 category, because that turns out to be a real problem that we need to have more people from the towns under 5,000 to attend the meeting so that they can serve on the executive committee. Let me also thank John Zaccone for all his service to the executive board, including a phenomenal job as the secretary treasurer. That's true. I should have recognized that first because he's been there for four years and it's hard to get people to want to be secretary treasurer. Oh, and then you're fired me. What can I say? Yeah, but you were in a nice place to receive that news. Yes, I was, but I enjoyed my time and I highly recommend anybody who's really interested in this organization to spend some time on the executive committee. It's a much different experience and you do have much larger access to just information and day-to-day workings, simply because you're more involved, not because anything other than that. And it was a very rewarding experience and I appreciate everybody's help and cooperation along the way. That's true, because Forest does a great job of helping on that part. And I thank the staff for putting up with me all those years. No problem, John. After I saw Charlie had his hand up, I think. I think he was gonna mention that now that John's gone, we can afford to go to Hula. No, that was just a thumbs up, thanking John for all of his contributions. Really appreciate it there. Indeed. But basically that's all we had to do. The next thing is a larger discussion and I imagine it's you, Charlie, on the equity update and the new scope of work. Yeah, so you may remember in January, we reviewed Creative Discourse Group. We hired them probably about almost 18 months ago now. And so during 2021, a lot of community interviews and stakeholder interviews, and we had an equity summit in November, you'll recall. And that resulted in a report with some recommendations that they gave us at the end of the calendar year. We reviewed it fairly quickly at our January board meeting. But, and I think maybe it might have been Mr. Zaccone that kind of said, well, we haven't adopted all these recommendations. This is just a consultant recommendations. And so here we are today, a couple of months later kind of digesting that. And I had started to move ahead with kind of their first recommendation, which was to hire an equity engagement manager. And after some more conversations and reflections and input, I put that hiring process on hold. And I think at least the executive committee, I think supported that decision just to give us as an organization some more time to work through this issue. And I say this issue like it's a simple thing. This whole host of issues related to equity and how as an organization, we really wanna move forward on this topic. And so pause the hiring, but then also ask the consultant team, could you come back with a scope of work that would help us work through as a body, staff and board, how we should move forward on this work in a more collaborative way where, I guess I don't know if it's the right way to think about it, but so that everybody's in the boat, right? And we're rowing in a similar direction most of the time. So knowing this will not be perfect work by any stretch. And so we put in the packet, and I'm looking at like page 15 now in your packet, the scope of work, we have not entered into the scope of work, it's still a draft, the equity leadership team looked at it maybe two weeks ago now, 10 days ago, in the last week or two, we made a few edits after that committee meeting. But I think the equity leadership team and I certainly thought it was important to bring to the full board and see if there are any tweaks to the scope of work that would be helpful in our equity work over the coming months. And you'll note that the task numbering starts with number two, because from the consultant team standpoint, the 2021 work was task one, you know, all that assessment work and culminating in that recommendation report. So this is starting with task two, and I'm going to walk through these tasks. I'm not going to read every bullet here, but I'll just kind of give you my perception of what will be accomplished under each task and how. So the first task, which is titled expand and diversify the equity leadership team. And please, again, let me know if anybody wants me to share this or I'm hoping you're following along on your own screen. It talks about expanding the equity leadership team, which had been an idea the consultant had proposed from the outset, but we haven't done that yet. So that is still on our to-do list. And you'll see that's the first major bullet there, the process to recruit new members and of course get them on the team. And then the third bullet, also defining the role of the equity leadership team. What is their role within the CCRPC? Are they providing advice to the board or they're providing advice to the staff, both on what topics and when? So that's something that we're hoping to get more fleshed out with in this task. And then the second and fourth bullets are a little more related to my mind about our shared understanding of our approach to equity and how we move forward. And specifically the second arrowhead bullet there that says work with ELT to review recommendations from the consultants report, develop an equity statement and specific tasks recommended for action to the board. So that work is really to hone in on, what does the equity leadership team specifically want to recommend to the board in terms of what's our statement around equity? We don't have an organizational statement of intent or inclusion or there's a lot of conversations going on around the state, different organizations have adopted statements. Not many of them have adopted action plans. And so we're trying to both get the broad statement of what we're trying to achieve with regard to equity and then also some specific things about how we intend to do that or what's our action plan. So this is maybe the most important thing is having a more diverse equity leadership team and having a clear set of actions that are recommended and decided upon by the board. And I think that was really my big takeaway over the last few months is that you as a full board have not had the opportunity to really guide the equity work or direct it as a board of directors. Any feedback on that kind of big first task? Did it make sense? Or in his appointment? I just had one, you know what I and maybe the sequence doesn't matter but the first item is recruit new members and then the third item is to define what the purpose of the group is. And it would seem to me, you define the purpose of the group before you recruit members for the group. Does that make sense? That's a great feedback. Thank you. Any other comments? Yeah. Sorry, Catherine. I'm just gonna say if there are any other comments. Charlie, I'll just, Bart makes a great point. I was just gonna say that I believe the equity leadership team has three board members right now. We need a fourth, but maybe it's once we get the definition of what it's about, it'll spur more interest hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. Another topic that came up at the executive committee sort of this is a slight tangent but that I need to do more recruitment. We've had that socio econ slash housing seat on the board has been vacant pretty much for the last year since Justin Dexterater moved to North Carolina. So it may be that person depending on their interests to Mike's point that might be interested in this or somebody else on the board currently. So just a little tangent hanging out there. Any other feedback on this task? This is Wayne, Wayne Howe. And I know we talked briefly Charlie at a meeting or two before about possibly me joining this group. And I did look at this proposal before and looked at the minutes from the last meeting that happened just what a week or two ago. And I just kept struggling with looking for things that were ultimately actionable, rather than conceptual notions about where we should be going. And maybe Mike O'Brien has a sense of that but to me it seems all foundational and important but I just wish it sort of intimated about where this was going to go. Was this going to dip its toe into looking at regulations for affordable housing or I'm just sort of making that up. And I didn't see any of that in the consultant's proposal. And to me that's what struck me that one of the later steps wasn't getting our hands dirty in kind of the regs themselves that ultimately would result in improved opportunities across the board or whatever. That's just my feedback. Yeah, thanks for that. From my view, I think that is what I'm talking about specific actions. Like is that what we wanna do? Like let's talk about that and decide that's what we wanna do. And then everybody's eyes are open and you can go back and talk to your select board and they know that that's what our board decided to focus on. And that's why we haven't had that conversation yet. Thank you. And that could be a good one. Okay, I'm gonna move on to what they number as task three. And this is a workshop series with staff, the ELT and the boards. This is really more of a training task. And they listed some examples of things maybe to focus on but those are not decided. And certainly I think between the board and the ELT, you can certainly guide what topics would be most helpful to hear about and learn more about. This is asking, kind of mentioning eyes wide open. Note that they're asking for four, one and a half hour sessions. So that's pretty much the length of our board meetings. So this could be most of four board meetings over the next number of months devoted to this topic. Feedback on that. Somebody's choked up. Oh, is that just Catherine? That was just me. I don't mean to say just Catherine. I hope your cough gets better. Me too, I got no medication today. Folks okay with engaging in some more the learning and training on this topic? Take silence as acceptance at least. If not, not enthusiastic support. Thanks Garrett for a thumbs up or an A-okay. Jackie. It would be helpful to hear from other board members because those of us on the equity group, we've been through some training and I think we all pretty much attended the summit. And I think there was not a great representation of other board members at that summit. So it feels a little frustrating to not hear from people now. I saw Deirdre's hand up, but did she still, did you still want to talk? I think Deirdre was giving a thumbs up to training on this, but I don't know. Oh, I see. I shouldn't interpret. It looked like a hand to me, so I couldn't tell. But don't use a hand up. That's correct. And I'm happy to add that I've been very appreciative of the time and the attention and the training that the board has offered its members. I've not quite known how to share that with the select board in my town. And I welcome any suggestions on how to do that effectively because I thought it was, what I've been able to experience, two thumbs up. Thank you very much. That's a good thing. I'm going to kind of make a note that whatever training is delivered, we try to do in a way that you can share. I think that's a good point. Sorry. Yeah, I just want to bring up the practical thing. It's got nothing to do so much with the topic at hand, but if the training is going to take an hour and a half per month and then we have regular business to do, which is another hour and a half. I can tell you that in the months of May through September, that is just not going to work. Don't even kid yourself that that is going to work that we're going to be here for three and three and a half hour meetings during the some months or any month for that matter. So be very mindful that, especially on Zoom, it's one thing to have us all in a room. You can take a break. You can mingle a little bit. You can have something to eat. Three and a half hour Zoom meetings are just an absolute stop. Don't even try. Thank you for that. And just so you know, I was not thinking about three hour meetings for you. You know, I'd like to, I care about you too much to do that too. I was thinking our business meetings are probably going to be 30 minutes. Right? And we won't have a presentation from John Moore, right? Like we would just be focused largely on this. You know, we have had presenters and things that we probably would not have for most of this calendar year or the rest of the calendar year. That's fine. I just wanted to point, I guess my whole comment is just about time, not just time. Other people agree with that? Like, and we'll certainly work with the executive committee each month to kind of make sure the meeting is not more than outside limit two hours? Yeah, that makes sense because if we know ahead of time, you know, how much we're scheduling, you could take a few minutes, you know, five minute break, 10 minute break or something between our regular meeting and the equity training so that you come back a little more focused. Yeah. That just adds to the length of the meeting, which is I think what the issue is. You're still gonna do that even if you were in person if you took a break to have food or, you know, as you said, take a break, whatever, it's still gonna take time. Yeah, so that's fine. Anything over two hours in Zoom meetings I've been on has been a complete waste and nothing to do with the RPC. I'm talking other Zoom meetings. Two hours is a real, I think, kind of max limit. Nope. Yep. All right. Well, I was just gonna sort of beyond strictly duration, the ability and willingness of folks to participate in more things is always what we think of as risk factors to projects or initiatives. So that's just a general comment. The more we ask of people, and I'm not saying this is low priority or anything, it's just the more we put in and the more challenging it is for many people, especially folks who have multiple commitments outside of work and have work as well. Thank you. Andy? All right, thank you. I want to second John's comments. And I don't know if I'm the only person thinking this, but I thought that the two events that we had this year were interesting and kept attention as I recall, there were two. Is that correct that we had this year? Two of the equity trainings, am I correct? Yep, yeah, and they were shorter, yeah. Yeah, I'm kind of wondering if we spread to four that it's gonna cause people to lose interest and that the effect of having, that it will be more effective to have two meetings than rather than four, just because it might cause people to, I hate to say the word zone out, but when you have more and more and more, there's less impact on the meetings that are already had. And I wonder if it was more effective to kind of go ahead with the format that we had this year, perhaps with slightly different presentations or different subject matter. But I thought that it was, I questioned whether it's more effective to have more meetings or having fewer meetings that have more impact. Thank you. And I think that kind of dovetails with what Bard said as well. Yeah. Chris? I'll build on what everybody else has been saying and thank you, John and Andrew and Wayne for pointing out some of the things. And Jackie, even when we talk about what I've seen today, and I'm sorry I wasn't to do the summit, I think it was a Saturday or so, but there is a lot of time involved and it seems like the more canned approach that we get from Creative Discourse is counter to engaging our interest. And I think I mentioned this before and I'd love to see if Creative Discourse can actually get down into our area of expertise and begin to apply case studies and provide examples and illustrations and outcomes rather than just throwing it out there. Well, what's your thinking on such and such as we've had in the past thing on these generalized 10,000, 100,000 foot level discussions when I think we're all here with a finely sharpened pencil for stuff that relates to transportation, land use, planning and the communities in which we live. And so it would be really helpful and would really get me sharpened and focused if they could do just that as provide examples from around the country of situations that exemplify what we're, I believe, supposed to be learning about and how to deal with it. Yeah, thank you for all that feedback. And it's making me, I'll go back and talk to them also. Some of this, even like reading some of the bullet points that they have here may be more appropriate for staff who are actually conducting either the public engagement work. Like you may be interested to hear how it's going but you don't need to be trained in how to do it. Right? Like, I don't know. Maybe some of you want that training. We'll flex this a little bit and also, you know, try to focus it up more for the board so it's doable. One thing I'm thinking, just looking at May to October, you know, that's like five months. We may need to stretch it out some too. Like maybe it doesn't all happen in the first four or five months. Harley's summer is tough. Yeah, I agree. If you really want people's time and attention at a six o'clock meeting when it gets dark earlier and where we're engaged is much more focusable if that's an actual word than in the middle of July and August when everybody's got other things on their mind and they don't want to be in their stuffy little office on a computer. So if they really want our attention, I would work that schedule. Yeah. And our reality, just to follow up on that point, John, which is, you know, our June meeting is, I mean, that's a more of a social meeting with a 10 minute board meeting. We have a decent business meeting in July but we probably don't ever go more than an hour in August, we don't even have a meeting. So, yeah, I'm with you. Summer's too short here in Vermont to... So we typically start with trainings in September anyway when people are coming back. So I mean, it makes sense to start training then. Yeah, thanks. Wayne? Oh, you're muted. I just want to underscore Chris's point. It would be really good to have a case study of here's what they did in Cumberland County over in Maine, you know, to get rid of redlining or whatever the deal is that we would then have something to reflect upon the kind of actions we might take rather than a more generic assessment of our own internal values, if you will. I just think it might be a little more useful. So I just want to underscore his point, thanks. Thank you, Wayne. Any other comments before Charlie goes on with the discussion? I don't see any other comments currently. So the number four task is it says equitable review of the UPWP, I'm not sure that's exactly the right phrase, but we didn't have some conversation with them just and I think this is actually following up on the point that Chris and Wayne just made. How do we actually apply some equity thinking into our actual projects? We've dipped the toe in this, we've had an equity impact worksheet where we look at where we need to do more public engagement and we've been carrying out those efforts, whether in Winooski or the old North End in particular where we have done significantly more engagement to try to engage underrepresented communities. And I think this is a little bit of an effort to try to apply some work. And so that's what this task is about and sorry, Bart, I don't know, did you wanna, are you going backwards or on this task? No, it's really this one and I appreciate that comment because consistent with what people just said a few minutes ago, when I read this, it reads like they will do it and tell us what the results are, which I think, well, that's fine, but what we really want is to embed that process in our own staff and our own process. So they aren't doing it for us. They are helping us to stand up a process where we do it ourselves. Does that make sense? Yes, that was absolutely the intent, Bart, thank you. I'm trying to make that clear. I'm sorry, Catherine, did I cut you off? No, no, I was just gonna say, I agree with that. That it just didn't read well for one thing because you really do wanna know, you wanna learn how to do it rather than have somebody tell you what it is. Yep, yep, good, thank you. So test five is just kind of a generic, we've kind of had them on call, if you will, on various situations that have come up over the last year. Might have been a specific project or a relationship with a specific group where we kind of say, hey, can you give us some advice on how to handle this situation? I think maybe following up on the points you were just making, like how can we best approach this or what would be a more productive way to approach this relationship? So this is a little bit of on-call task to be honest. Any feedback on that coaching and consultation with staff? Okay, and then number six here, it was really kind of following up because we had that convening in November and there was discussion at the end of that session about how do we follow up? How do we use our position in the community to host or facilitate or sponsor? And particularly with all of our municipalities, the ones that are engaging in this work, how do we provide maybe a forum for them to share? So we're not telling anybody what to do at those meetings but more allowing for group learning across municipalities. And so this was, I think, intended to be some support to us to support those convenings. Any feedback on that? I don't see any comments right now, it's not in your hands. Oh, I think that's an applause symbol from Garrett. Yeah, oh, Marvin has his hand up. Oh, was that a hand up? Yeah, I'm sorry, I think I may have said this in an earlier different meeting that I'm struck that we're using different words sort of interchangeably at times, I think. So we're using inequity, equity, justice, racial justice. So I still ponder, is this focused on racial justice or is it broader? And so that's just a question. And I think we should just be consistent with our language and our focus, if that makes sense. And maybe this is where we start. It's a conversation that we've had before that we start with racial justice and the broader work is more inclusive, I think of things like gender identity, disability, age, things that have come up elsewhere. And so it's just a comment. It's more about the semantics and focus than anything. Yeah, thanks, Bart. We did have some conversation with the consultant team and I apologize for not actually starting with that because you've made that point to me two or three times and I don't seem to pick it up too well. But I did hear you and had a conversation with the consultant team. And I think they do agree, like we are ultimately trying to address equity more broadly because just from even a legal requirement on us, both from federal government and state government, we're supposed to be engaging all a pretty wide array of underrepresented communities and Bart just listed off a bunch of them and different identities that can be overlapping. And so it's not just racial equity or racial justice but we may come back to address all those broader equity for all those underrepresented or marginalized communities. We may do some targeted work initially on racial equity. So I'm not clear on that yet either but I do wanna kind of put a flag out there that we do have to address equity in the broadest sense. And yeah, we may get specific at times but ultimately the, I believe the objective needs to be broad and not narrow. That's helpful, Bart. Sorry. Garrett? I'm going to be crass and mention money. I may be missing something here but looking at number four, they're talking about eight hours and as far as I know, it's two of them and that one works out to $1,500 an hour. Now, I'm being a consultant, I'm good with consultants making good money but it seems like a great deal of money and as I say, I must be missing something there. And just wondered if, what it is I'm missing. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you for your crassness, I guess. But I think, so I think it's a good question. I'll follow up with them on that. I don't think you necessarily, well, I think if you're missing something, it's in that first line of the lightly shaded box that follows the title row on the top of page four of working with several TCDG consultants. So there's two members of this firm but they have what they refer to as associate consultants. So there's kind of a broader network of consultants that they use and they bring in on a task basis. So that's a good question. I'm not sure how many people they're thinking about bringing in to this task, Garrett and what that works out to. So I'll have some conversation about that. Hopefully doggly. All right. Well, thank you very much. That was really helpful. I hope it was helpful to you to feel a little bit more part of this conversation, because I was definitely having a lot of anxiety about the board members not being a part of the conversation. Thank you for the effort. I mean, I think it was really good comments that have been made. Moving along, you get to keep talking though. Oh my God. Executive director reported. With apologies to you all. Okay. So hiring update already covered that the equity manager is on pause. We'll see when we're ready to come back to that and maybe fall. And I mentioned the business office associate, the advertisement for that just went out last week and did you, I don't know that you all saw the advertisement. Did you see the advertisement? No. I see a couple of notes. We will forward it to you in case you know somebody who might be a good fit. You know, it's more of a, you know, more, I was gonna say enter level. I don't know if that's the right term, but we don't need somebody with a lot of experience. I'll put it that way. There are a lot of education. I think we're looking for somebody with an interest in bookkeeping and financial management to help the team. So force is that a fair characterization? Yep, it is. Thanks. Yeah, so we'll send you that job ad and please send anybody you know that might be a good fit our way. Any questions on that? Just a heads up item B there is just a heads up that the input that we get into V Trans Capital Project projects for FY24 is happening, I think at your next meeting, Christine or Laney, does that have that right? So this is a heads up that I'll be an action item next month. Yes, it will be. Yeah, so and it's focused on bridges. Yes. So it may be a little simpler conversation that we had last year when we were looking at roadways and safety projects. Item C is just information on it to let you know we were involved with two raise grants, which is a USDOT discretionary grant program. You may be familiar with it from past years. It was called BUILD under, I think that was under the Trump administration and I think it was called Tiger Grants under the Obama administration. So this program's been around for a while with different names depending on who's in office, but it's really a discretionary program where there's some good amount of money available. We've been a supporting partner with V Trans and the cities of Winooski and Burlington, bless you, Tony. On the Main Street Bridge between Winooski and Burlington and V Trans is applying for a $25 million capital grant to replace that bridge. So that will be a big deal if we're able to get that and just more construction for Winooski on the horizon. Yeah, Mike says, yay. And the second one is a grant that the RPC applied for directly more of a planning grant to really look at how we can support economic development, housing and transit services in downtowns in our larger kind of commuting region. So Franklin County, Washington County, Addison County and even going down to Rutland, they were kind of interested also. And so we submitted that it's like a $2 million grant because it's the geography we're talking about is so extensive. So, and we've submitted similar grants the last three years. So the fourth time might be the charm and we will see. And thank you to Eleni and Marshall for all the work that they put into that. And we'll hear about that. I think maybe August timeframe is what they're targeting decisions. And then finally, legislative update. There's, well, the big news, well, big news for the RPC parochial budget was I covered in the budget, which is the legislature was very supportive of RPCs in a variety of ways, regional planning, energy, water quality and transportation. And so that's been very positive and slightly potentially overwhelming. So, you know, kind of getting love to death. And I'm hoping that all works. And then on policy issues still debates about exactly how the legislature is going to address Act 250 or any changes that come in Act 250. Part of that is in the Omnibus Housing Bill. There's also an Omnibus Economic Development Bill. Not clear to me at all how those are going to turn out in the next two or three weeks. So just stay tuned. You know, I think there'll be some tweaks in different programs and different incentives out there for both economic development and housing. And maybe a little bit of permit improvement or change anyway, I don't know. And Regina, is there anything you want to add about those two or three bills? No, nothing else. And then the last thing I want to mention in the legislature just kind of came up over the last week or two, is that Senate Transportation Committee included a provision in the transportation bill to have us engaged to some extent in an examination of the governance of the Burlington International Airport. And so that's getting discussed tomorrow and Senate Economic Development Committee. And we'll see if it gets through the process for both the conference committee of both houses. But I think it's just something that looks like they're asking V-trans to kind of fund and hire a consultant to be kind of a neutral party to kind of look at the issues over the years about governance and see if they can come up with any recommendations that, and they have a pretty defined list of folks that they're appointing to the group with us called out in that section two or three times. One was having me be on there as a non-voting member, okay. The second that was us, the CCRPC, so this would be something that would come back to you appointing a member of the General Aviation Committee, or I'm sorry, General Aviation Community at the airport to be on this, I don't know if it's called a task force or advisory committee, something like that. And then also for us to find and appoint someone to represent underrepresented communities that are impacted by the airport operations. So I'm not quite sure who that is or exactly how to do that, but it was interesting and I just was not aware of that until today. So that's a little bit of evolving conversation going on about looking at the airport. John, did you wanna pipe in there? Yeah, why do we have any interest in this? This is a mud flinging contest between the two cities, South Burlington and Burlington. And quite frankly, I don't want any part of this, I don't want us to have any part of this. I will convey that individual sentiment tomorrow. Unless a board wants to take it. Or not. What'd you say, Chris? I said the option is always there to not transfer that information. Obviously, this is the topic that the General Assembly wants to look at. So I think it's a prudent look at this point in time. They're more than one town, South Burlington, that's affected by this. Colchester, Essex, Winozki, it's gotta be looked at to see what are the pros and cons of having a single municipality controlling what is an international airport. It's in the best interests of the state, I think, to look at that too. So I disagree with John. And that comes from someone's town who's flinging the mud. So I would still say that we should have no part of this whatsoever. Okay. Sorry, I saved that one for last. I think I'm welcome to get any other viewpoints that would help me have conversation with the legislators. I have no clue. No part? So this just for historical perspective, you think back of what the terrain around the airport looked like when the airport was first put there? In my opinion, that's when the mud started. It was a mud airfield surrounded by not very much other than fields and farms. And so what we have is the greater metropolitan area that's grown up around it since, what was it? 1919, something like that when they first started landing planes there. So I think this illustrates for me that we are the heirs to development by accident. You put an airfield outside of town and suddenly it's not outside of town over a period of 100 years. For what that term? Garrett? Just to muddy the waters further, I don't know what the arguments between South Burlington and Burlington are and don't really care. Is there anybody in this meeting who hasn't flown out of that airport? It's a regional airport and I believe that's a part of our commission's name. And therefore I think it's important that we have something to say about it. That's all. Thank you, Garrett. Yeah, and just, I don't know if this helps or not, but just the language I saw today does have me on there as a non-voting member. And I think that was partly my response to their suggestion because I was like, I don't, well, and this may not be right. My perception only, I'm not sure that this body, the RPC board is going to be able to take a clear position on resolving issues, but happy to support the group having a conversation. I think it was kind of the way I phrased it when I was speaking with Senate transportation. So that's where I would not there. But just, and John, I don't know if that's helpful or not to know. I don't think there, at least that committee was looking for this body to take a position. Still, if you're involved when you speak, it sort of comes with us in the background. And again, this is a turf war between two individual municipalities that I don't think we should or really have any business getting involved in. The legislature's gotten dragged into this because they've been lobbied by those municipalities and we've had this chat in small increments before and I still maintain we need to stay as far away as absolutely possible from this and not be involved. This is not about anything but the turf war and let them fight it out. And it really does not matter to us because it's not about service. It's not about how all the rest of our municipalities can access the flights there. It's not about how well it runs or how well it doesn't run. It's just a hundred percent turf war and we should stay a hundred percent away from it. Well, to follow up with you, John, since it, you know, because it really is more than just the region. It is, as you said, it's an international airport. So is that why the state, I mean, you'd think the state would be much more involved than it is, but it's probably, they don't want to get involved either. Yeah, Bart made reference. There's a long history of the airport, you know, predating the current systems, right? I mean. Yeah, well, you would think that the state would be much more involved given how important the airport is to the state itself. I believe the state would be involved that there was an actual problem. There is no actual problem. It's a turf war and that's granted my opinion but there is no problem. It's a turf war and that's why we should stay away from it. If there was an actual problem, people who needed to be involved would be involved. Thank you. Are we ready to move on? I kind of would like Charlie to have a little bit of an idea of what the commission really thinks. If he's going to talk to the legislature. I really, you know, this is probably the most important thing we've talked about all night. I want our hands, I move that Charlie tells the legislature that the RPC does not want to be involved. Okay. Is there a second on that for discussion? I'll second it just for discussion. Thank you, Karen. All right. So this calls for a discussion. Well, can I make a comment? A little bit from Chris. Any other comments from other people in the commission? Yes. Whoops, wrong hand. I wanted to raise my hand. Anyways, if I could just comment briefly, I agree with John. This has been something that's going on for a long time. There's more to the airport. I mean, we call it an international airport. The actual international aspect of it is somewhat limited, realistically compared to any other international airport in the country probably. It's also very important to the defense department for having our fighter wing there with the F-35s. So our involvement in the dispute between Burlington and control over the airport and what have you, I kind of agree with John. I think that's something that they have skin in the game more so than any of us. And for us to, as much as we could say we have involvement with it, would be to say that we have involvement with IBM being an S-extrusion. It impacts the whole county. We do weigh in on those things, but it's kind of a more local issue between those municipalities as far as I'm concerned. Thank you, John. Chris? Well, I'm just going to reiterate, I think we don't need to belabor our points that I see it as more than a turf war. We're in the business of doing planning. We've got to be looking 30 years out. Is this model going to be something that's sustainable for the next 30 years? And I really think that this is a Chittenden County decision, and at the very least, if not a statewide decision, as to who they would want to be operating the airport in the longer term. We can wait till there's a problem, but I think by then it's too late. I think it really needs to be evaluated. We all know what happens to these study committees in Montpelier. They're going to do their study and then stick it on a shelf. And nothing may happen for 30 or 40 years, but at least the process is being discussed and looked at. I think it's really important. We do get involved. And I appreciate what Charlie's done as a non-voting member, because it does keep us in an apolitical situation, which I think is very important here. But running away from a potential looksie, I just think that's sticking your head in the sand. Thank you, Chris. Garrett? I, Charlie, could you give a little more description of what this is about? From what I heard from you, yes, we know about the turf warts. I don't care about that. But it sounded like there was more to this than just who's the boss or whatever. Could you go into that a little bit? Maybe there isn't more to it. I don't know. Yeah, give me a moment. I'm actually pulling up the, you know, there's kind of a to-do list of, you know, the agenda for this. Sorry, I'm scrolling a little too fast. But so sorry, going from my memory. I'm getting closer. It was really to look at the governance. And this is, you know, I think I don't know who made reference. But it's not a new issue. It was looked at in 1985. It was looked at by the Airport Commission, I don't know, maybe in the last 10 years. And maybe a couple other times. And so it was kind of, I think the language now calls for this group to, well, for V-Trans, to hire a consultant for the, and the secretary would be on this committee amongst others to review those previous suggestions or recommendations that came out of the previous looks at this and decide which of them were worth looking at. Okay. And so here's the creation language. One sentence. To examine the existing governance structure and alternatives to the existing governance structure of the airport and report to the committee's, report the committee's findings and recommendations. So, you know, it does, that's it. So it is. So it is purely about governance. Yep. And the members that they have here right now, one member designated by the mayor of Burlington, one member designated by the council of the city of Burlington, one voting member by the city council of South Burlington, one voting member by the mayor of Winooski, one member, I mentioned this by the RPC to represent individuals such as BIPOC, comma immigrants, comma individuals with low income, individuals residing in disadvantaged communities, adversely affected by the airport. One member, one voting member designated by the RPC to represent the general aviation organizations at the airport. The secretary of transportation, one voting member designated by the CEO of the Lake Champlain Chamber, the director of aviation non-voting, the director of the RPC non-voting. So just, if that gives you a little more flavor of detail, sorry, I should have started with that. So we would be appointing two members as well as you're showing up. Yep. So, okay. Well, in some ways, appointing a member of the under-representative goes along with our new look at equity. I think that's important. And so that does make a lot of sense. And they're thinking is that you have a broader range of people to draw from the same way with the aviation community. It is nice to know that the state is more involved in, because I go, I listen, I don't have, I don't have anything in this game because I'm out here in Jericho. I just hear they have 35s go over every once in a while. But, I understand the turf wars to a certain extent and I, certainly having the Jericho was one of the community members that had a larger number of Air National Guard represented. We had a plane named after us. And that, so Dan's comments are well taken that we have the guard there. And then of course, Chris is talking about sustainability. It's good to see that the state is taking more of an interest because to me, it seems like the state needs to have much more of a long-term thinking about what the airport is and how it is sustained over time. Of course, my thinking is concerned at the moment. Kay, Wayne. I just wanted to say something contrary to what your statement is, we live out Jericho so we're not so affected. We're not close to it, so to speak. Yeah, as I became involved in the select board, I learned this is all pre-COVID. There were, they're not quite commuters but people who regularly, because we're only 20, 25 minutes from the airport live in Jericho, Richmond or whatever and they're hopping on a plane to DC or hopping on a plane to Chicago quite regularly. So I think we do have some skin in the game here. I'll just mention that. I mean, because my thinking is not so much skin in the game because of proximity in terms of organization but I think, because it makes sense that the state has more involvement because it does impact so many other communities. Deidre. Yeah, I would say welcome this opportunity to participate in the conversation, even if just for the opportunity to recruit and nominate somebody from the marginalized communities. I feel like they have a very important voice and probably have not had an opportunity to participate in these conversations. And I suppose we could consider it an honor that our organization has been designated as the one which may be appropriate to recommend such a participant. Actually, if I heard Charlie right, he's the one that's participating and speaking on behalf of those. We are not recommending that someone from those alternatives communities wind up on the committee itself. So. John, yeah, that's, I'm sorry, I did not say what you just said. I said the board is appointing somebody to represent those underrepresented communities. Okay, I misinterpreted that then when I thought you said that was your role as the non-voting member. No, no, there are two members that they want the RPC to appoint, one to represent those disadvantaged communities, I guess is what they have in quotes in there. And then also the general aviation community or organizations at the airport. I still say the legislature is attempting to drag people that we would nominate into a turf war and you're setting them up for doing nothing but being involved in a turf war. You're not setting them up to actually have any input in anything because this is nothing about who, about anything except who runs the airport. It's not about the services that it gives. It's not about anything else except who runs the airport. And I'm sorry, but this is South Burlington trying to drag the rest of us into the mud. And appoint people who are gonna be unwillingly dragged into the mud by us doing it and we need to stay completely away from this. All right, John. Any other comments while we have, while the floor is open? No, Andy, you go. Sure. So I'm finding myself in a little bit of an awkward position here because I don't really know what the city of Burlington would wanna do. I haven't had that conversation on this. So I'm actually going to abstain from this vote and I'm happy to do what is being directed by the legislature if they're asking us to take certain steps. As long as we're staying more or less neutral as long as I don't know what the city wants but given that I don't know what, you know, what Burlington would really wanna do in this situation. I don't normally abstain from votes like this but I will be on this one. I just don't wanna vote against what the city might be wanting to do and what their position might be. So noted, Andy. Jackie? Well, I started following what Andy said. Is this really a choice? If there's legislation that's saying the Chittany County Regional Planning Commission will be on this board or, you know, even and make the appointments. Am I misunderstanding it? They're asking Charlie for his, our input on whether or not we do get involved at this point in time. There's no, there's no law yet. Obviously if they, when we wind up in there I think that's a different conversation and, you know, there's a bill that becomes law and we're involved. That's one thing. This is about should we be involved at all and are we directing our, my motion was, are we directing our executive director to tell the legislature we're not interested in being in this as part of the law? Not that we will go against the law if that's what it is. Okay, thanks for that, Claire. That helps me to under, because I'm reading what Charlie just said. I'm like, wait a minute, do we have a choice? So, yeah. Garrett? Well, I'm now thoroughly confused. It isn't law yet. So it seems to me since there is no law there is nothing currently to do. I've been reading through it from the length that Charlie put in the chat. And it is a proposed law. So all we could do at the moment is to advise on this depending on how people feel but if it does go into law then we don't have any choice. We are required by law to do it. So I'm not sure what you're saying you want us to do or not do, John. I don't understand the motion. My motion is to have Charlie tell the legislature when he meets with them. Is it tomorrow, Charlie? Yeah, thanks. So I started this with the context we've been asked to testify tomorrow morning about this. So I'm asking, my motion was to direct our executive director during his testimony to tell the legislature that their RPC does not want to be involved. Now, if they listen to that, that's up to them. If they put us in, that's a whole different conversation. I am in no way making a motion that we will ignore the law as written. This is, they're forming the law at the moment. And my motion was about nothing but directing Charlie to tell the legislature that the RPC commission does not wish to be involved in this discussion. Jackie, you still have comment? No, there's your hand still up. So I didn't know. So is there any other comments? Any, so I guess we're ready to vote on the John's motion. And given, I think probably we'll have to do it with the little hand thingies, if I can figure out how to use it myself. Or you can just raise your hand on the video screen. That's true either one, because that it's not going to be a all in one vote. I think there'll be a variety of votes. So if people are in favor of John's motion to tell the legislature not to get us involved, then vote yes, if you disagree, vote no. Is that clear, is that clear? John? That's clear to me. All right, so everybody who's in favor of the motion, raise your hands. Okay, all those who are voting no, raise your hand. Oh, wait, there's one more question. I see Amy's, oh, Amy's hand up. Okay, she's going to vote no, correct? You haven't- No, you need to allow an option for abstaining as well. That's true. I was going to do that last. Okay, just make it sure. Thank you. Be careful when you raise your hand, Amy. That's why I was concerned. I wanted to make sure you had- I only caught two yes votes, was that all there was? That's what I saw. So the next was going to be all those, again, voting no, raise your hands. Okay, I'll do that myself, okay. And those, after Charlie gets the votes, we'll do the abstentions. Did you get all of them? So I got, as no votes, I got Chris, Jackie, Garret, Andy from Williston, and Kurt from Underhill. Any other no votes? Oh, and Milton. My- One is free, one is free. Sorry. I had it in my hand. Mine. Oh, and Charlotte, okay, thank you. And Jackie. I got her. Okay, and Garret, you got Garret. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Okay, and then abstentions. That's Amy and Andy Montrell. Yes. Well, thank you for everybody's comments. I think that this was a very good discussion. And it's not an easy task. Yeah, and just, thank you, John, for pushing the conversation. So I can convey, you know, there's not unanimous support for engagement. And frankly, we didn't have a vote saying we definitely want to engage, right? We just had to, emotion did not pass to not engage. Sorry to use a double negative, right? So all right, I will try to finesse that in my conversation tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you. So if we're ready to, oh, Chris, do you have a comment? I think we were going on. I was reading you, leading you by going to number 12. And I was going to suggest we could have governance of the Burlington Airport on a future agenda topic. Let me first give the very brief that your committee and liaison activities and reports are either in your packet or your link, depending on your choice. And now you're good, number 12. Sorry, jumped the gun, as I said. But that's probably worthwhile. I'm very worthwhile discussion based on what we just had. I think what's important to South Burlington is that we see wider representation and I disagree with the turf war characterization of the thing. I think just to follow up that Williston, you barely hear about and seem to be as affected as South Burlington in ways. And I work in Williston right underneath the whole thing. So as a regional economic driver, nobody can compete with the airport. It's wonderful. So I think we want to see the value of the airport, but you also want to see that the region is invested in it more than perhaps it is at the moment. And it goes to what is Burlington going to be like politically and how does that then reflect on the county and the state? So there you go. Thank you, Chris. Anyone else have any other topics they'd like to have discussed in the future? I'll just bring up that the equity leadership committee meeting, I don't know if it was Jackie or Elaine. We talked about having something about the equity every meeting just to keep it on the plate. Okay, Dan? Just furthering the discussion on the airport, if you just, I find it interesting that in regards to Chris speaking about the other communities weighing in on the governance or the management of the airport rather than just Burlington or South Burlington, but the community as a whole, as an MPO, we don't have all the communities in our county voting on MPO business. It's just MPO communities. So using the same logic, everybody in our county should be voting on MPO projects if I read it right or understand it right. Any other future agenda topics out there that people would like to have? I mean, you know, because equity is important. A lot of issues right now. All right, well, if there's no other items for agenda, are there members items or other business? Nobody has any other things to talk about. Really interesting. Who have we adjourned? This is Garrett. That's exactly who we are then, Garrett. You got it. Do we have a second? Second. Andy, Andy, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you very much for your comments. Good night, all.