 Both don't talk. All right, let's get this. I'm gonna start recording if that's okay. Yep, yep, we'll open the meeting at 6.02 and let's see, any changes to the agenda? Hearing none, we'll move on to public comment. Anyone from the public out there that wants to make a comment to the board on anything not on tonight's agenda. We have any public beside Ben? Next, we'll move to consent agenda. Looking for a motion to approve? Move to approve. Second. Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Anyone wish to abstain? Okay. Who seconded that? I didn't hear. Karen, Dan Karen. Okay, next we have minutes of the February 17th meeting. I'm looking for a motion to approve the minutes and second. Motion would be with any corrections. Sharon, is that a motion? Yeah. If I have a second. Okay. Any comments or corrections? I have a couple of technicals and one that may be significant on page one, line 39. If you want to keep the tents the same, the board, it says attack and the board review and accept, take away the ED targets annually. I mean, it's real. I think it's up, but what's in there? Now page two is much more, could be significant. It's line 10 and it says $658,750 federal in FY21 and $1,207,526 federal in FY21. Is that FY22? Good point. It's like you're referencing federal dollars both in FY, you know, the same year. So I didn't know whether it should be fiscal year 22 or not in the tip. Yeah, thanks for catching that, Catherine. We'll double check that and correct it. I'm not sure if one is which one is which. Yeah, it can look like it could be the same year to have that spending like that. And then page three, line 36, line 26, excuse me. It's at this phase or the 189 study, it should be at this phase of the 189 study. But otherwise, I mean, the biggie was the fiscal year because that's significant. The rest would just English. Okay. Thanks, Catherine. Any other corrections or comments on the minutes? Okay. Hearing none. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye or raise your hand to indicate aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. We'll move on then to next item is warned public hearing on the FY 22 UPWP and budget for the May meeting. So simply looking for a motion to warn the public hearing for May. So I'll move. This is Garrett. I'll second Jim. Jim. Okay. Any discussion? Hearing none. Again. All those in favor, please say aye or raise your hand to indicate aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. Moving right along. It looks like we're at item six, town of Westford plan approval and confirmation. Is this Regina? Yes. So Westford is updating their plan in full. They're also asking for the enhanced energy plan determination. So staff and the pack reviewed this. There were some minor edits at the pack and the town has been able to incorporate the majority of those and the select board approved the plan on February 25th. So now we're coming to CCRBC board for approval. I'll move that we approve. This is Garrett. I'll second. Okay. Catherine. Any comments, questions? Hearing none. All those in favor of the motion, please signify with a hand or say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any wish to abstain? Okay. Motion carries. Thank you. We'll move on to item seven, comments on draft state rail plan. Yeah. So you have a memo in your packet with a recommendation that got voted and recommended to you by the attack. And I know Jim has some comments and edits, maybe as proposed for it. And Marshall can give you some more detail if you'd like. I'll go ahead and share the memo on the screen. That would be helpful. Yeah, please. All right. Can folks see that? Awesome. All right. Well, good evening, everyone. In, in February, V trans released a draft report for the statewide rail plan. And CCRBC staff have taken some time to review and, and provide comments on this. We've put together this memo here to outline our comments and some requested clarifications. So I'll just briefly run through these for you. The, the first section of comments here in this memo is, is really just related to projects within our region that have, have been prioritized within the rail plan. In the plan itself, there are 19 projects and initiatives that be trans has prioritized into three separate tiers with the first year being the highest priority. And CCRBC has reviewed our region's projects within these tiers and just have some comments on them. So the first comment in the first bullet that you see there is related to the Burlington rail yard enterprise project, which is currently listed in the second priority tier. We feel that this project should be added to the first priority tier since this was recently added to the, the proposed state capital program for FY 22. The next comment is with regards to passenger rail station improvements, which is a line item listed within the first priority tier. We would like to see these broken out into individual projects given, given the varying timeframes and priorities on rail station improvements around the state. And if these were to be broken out into individual projects, we think that the Essex junction improvement should be listed within the top priority tier. We had a comment on publicizing volunteer or voluntary efforts of railroads to promote the notion of freight as a good neighbor. So this, you know, would encourage railroads to publicize community related information or postings. There's no one size fits all solution here, but you know, encouraging more channels of communication between railroads and communities could certainly be beneficial. This is, is listed as a second tier priority. And we think this should be in the first tier. Our, our last priority area comment is with regards to the Burlington, the Essex track improvements and connecting the Ethan Allen Express with the Vermonter. We think this should be elevated to the second prioritized tier because this, this connection is really essential in connecting our Eastern and Western rail corridors. And, you know, this is likely needed to meet the statewide energy goal of quadrupling Vermont based passenger rail trips to 400,000 annually. Marshall. Yep. If I can interrupt for a second. I know what the executive committee meeting had this question. Can you explain briefly the, what the tiers are and time frames? You know what I'm saying? So you got first priority, second priority. Just third priority. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So those are first of the highest priority. Third is, you know, it's still a priority. I don't know if there's specific time frames aligned with each of those. There was no timeframe actually in the plan, Mike. So, so we can, we can ask that question. If you would like us to add that comment. Happy to add it. Yeah, I would. And I know you said that before. I wanted to make sure folks on the board. If they had the same question. Good answer, but we could add it as a comment. If they have an approximate ranges, you know, like within five years, more than five years, something like that. So 50 years, whatever. I hope not. Oops. Sorry, I keep clicking my mute button. I think it would be worthwhile to ask that question. Thanks. All right, we will add that in there. Where were we? Okay. So the, this next section here is, it's just related to some requested clarifications that we had. We'd like to see a brief comment on why commuter rail is not discussed in the plan. You know, we understand that commuter rails funded through federal transit administration rather than the railroad administration, which is, you know, which is why it's not addressed in the, in this plan. And it is in the public transit plan rather. We think this, you know, should be explained a bit in the, in the rail plan itself. We'd also like to see a description of positive train control and just to reference the training first responders with regards to how hazardous materials being moved by rail. Next, there are some performance measures listed on page 34 that don't have target years. We'd like to see a reference to these or some indication of the timeline. We also just have a comment related to updating the description of benefits associated with connecting the ethanol express with the Vermonter. We're requesting some more details on an initiative to explore transit oriented development. And lastly, we think there should be some more discussion on funding approaches. And then, we're going to take a look at some of these. Details on innovative funding approaches and the potential for public private partnerships would be. We think would be beneficial to include in the plan. Any questions on these. So, Jim. Donovan, you had forwarded us some. Comments that you had. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't get the rest of the group. Sure. Yes. Basically. I'm first of all, I'm sorry that I didn't get these to you earlier so that you could try to include them. I just didn't get a chance to really look at this until later than I thought. We're suggesting two. Potential additions. Would it be better if I gave what those additions are quickly and then the rationale, which would make more sense to you. We're presenting those first, which would make more sense to you. Either way. Can you, can you stop sharing this spring? Okay. Thank you. Well, I guess. Basically, our comments come from the fact that there are 15 locations around the state. At least 15 were hazardous materials are stored. And the city, the city, the city of New York, the city of New York, the city of New York. In train cars. And only about five of those sites are actually in rail yards. And the rest of those are in sightings that fall outside of most regulations. And two of those storage areas. One is the Burlington rail yard itself. And the second one is a sighting that is in West Charlotte village, and it's in the city of New York. And the last plan, this plan, several other plans. Haven't been getting very many places with it. And having regional planning commission support. Is very beneficial. We're thankful for the comments you have in there. We definitely agree about the ones you have in there about moving the rail up and moving the comments about the. Friendlier railroads are as good neighbors moving that up that those are sort of very similar to what we're talking about. But one of the issues is that. As the draft plan notes. That these rail yards occur. They say that, if I can try to find this quote. These storage areas are operating in the right of way. Those areas that are operating within the right of way. Are governed by federal rules limiting. The ability of state and local authorities to require change. So they note that in the plan and we understand that. But it says limiting. It doesn't say it stops it all together, but they don't go on to say what can we potentially do about these hazardous. Storage. These hazardous materials being stored in these areas. Other than to talk about what we're going to do. If there's a disaster. And they have a lot of information in there about what we're going to do if there is a disaster. But really nothing about how can we prevent a disaster from happening in the first place. At the state level. And then in addition to that, because they have all that information about how they're going to respond and there's a lot of it back in good information there. There is however no information as to who actually pays. For that response. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to do that. We're going to do that. And the railroad's responsibility is at the town in which that happens. Is it their responsibility? Is it the state's responsibility to pay for that? There have been. Numerous. I shouldn't say numerous, but there have been examples of these. Hazardous waste accidents happening in the past. And the recovery costs have been up in the 400 million, $500 million. And say the one that happened. The one that happened. The one that happened. Cost over $400 million to recover. To pay for the cleanup. And to repair and those things. And that the railroad had $25 million in insurance. And that the town had to sue. Everybody in order to try to gain back some of the money that it's spent. To pay for that disaster. Because it wasn't clear who was going to pay for that. So we recommend. Two. Additions to this. Comment. And naturally I don't have those in front of me. Can you hang on just a second? The first one has to do with. The. There we go. First one has to do with the comment. About on page 32 about. The first one has to do with. Information about first responders. And we would. Ask that there be another addition to that. Basically saying it would also be helpful to clarify which entities. Are ultimately responsible for bearing the costs associated with. A hazardous material spill or explosion. Response. Because again. We think that that needs to be clarified. And then secondly, to address that other issue of there are other issues. And I think that's a good point. I don't want to go into that. I don't want to go into that unless people want me to. Go into that. But we would suggest that there be another initiative. And. They mentioned that there are about nine or 10. 19 or 20 initiatives. And those are the ones that were ranked. We would suggest another one. Initiate efforts to improve oversight and regulation of hazardous materials storage. In rail cars. Outside of rail yards. At the federal and state levels. So I would like to. Move towards trying to find some ways to prevent spills. Rather than just only reacting to a spill if it happened. So. Those are the basics I can provide much more detail if you want, but I don't want to keep talking. On and on and on. I'm happy to try to provide more questions or any responses or. See how you want to go with the discussion from there. And I did provide these two in writing. Prior so they've got them. They've got them. They've got them. With them already. And again, I apologize for not getting them to them sooner. Anyone have any questions for Jim? Guess not. Thanks, Jim. Anyone else have any. Comments or questions about the comments. I do, I do. Garrett, go ahead. First off, I totally agree with what Jim had to say. As opposed to dealing with a disaster. So completely support that. My comment is more an overall one. That to me and reading through the plan, and I read through it a couple of times. It seems to me that once again. Rail is the illegitimate step child. I think we need to be more aware of transportation. In Vermont. As far as the state is concerned. I realize there are financial constraints. But. In this day of climate change and everything else, rail is so much more efficient than truck. So we need to encourage rail traffic as opposed to truck traffic. We can go back to the Western corridor study and how nothing ever really happened in great detail about that as far as moving truck traffic onto rail. So number one is a focus on getting the. The infrastructure upgraded so that the rail can be fully utilized. That means both weight capacity as well as speed capacity. When you have speed limitations of 10 miles an hour, that's not efficient. The other pieces in reference to passenger rail. I understand the. I'm thinking that they keep it separate because it's funded separately. I would like to see the rail plan actually quote the specific. Aspects of the public transit plan. So that all of the rail improvements are in one place. And the raw, not just improvements, but I think that we need to make sure that we have all of the necessary goals and everything else. Pertaining to rail. You know, I kept reading through there until I saw that text and, you know, whatever happened to David's bud cars kind of thing. There are so many things that we could do when we really need to. Thanks, Kara. And we'll have any comments. Okay. Hearing none. This is an action item. It's MPO vote. So I will be looking for a motion to. I guess approve the comments for. What's right or sending, sending over to the state. Go ahead, Eleni. What's the right. So what we're asking you to do is like to basically approve the comments. So, and allow us to transmit them to veterans for consideration with the added comments that we heard tonight, though. So from, from Jim and from Garrett and from. So I think that would be the motion. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Much more eloquently said than I did. So. Second. I'll second. I could, but I can't. So I want. There you go. Okay. Any further discussion. Hearing none. All those MPO members in favor of this motion, please say, I. Any opposed. Any abstentions. Okay. That motion passes with Garrett closing his eyes to it. Is the chair, even though. Can I say something? Absolutely. I, Garrett, I actually was. Pleasantly surprised by the draft of the real plan to be honest with you. I had lower expectations than you did, but I thought that. I thought that for the first time in a long time, it looked like that a priority was being placed on things like 286 continuous rail, you know, clearances crossing safety and all those kinds of things. And so I don't want the planning department at the, at the AOG to think that we're not. We're not happy with this draft plan because I think it makes significant advancements in the thinking and why it may not be completely as integrated because I know our transportation friends, you know, thinking in mode silo sometimes about things. But I think they're making tremendous. Strides in laying out the challenges that we have. And I think we're in the best mode. And I actually came away from the, when I read the plan. Thinking, wow, it's really exciting now to be in rail in Vermont. Because there's so many opportunities out there. And so I just don't want the AOT not to think that we don't appreciate the advancements they've made, but true to form, we should always ask them to do more once they meet. Certain level of expectations. Okay, I think we're all set with that. Amy, correct me if I'm wrong. I think we did the total vote, right? Okay. So next item eight. VPSP two process and initial review of potential FY 23 transportation projects. That's a lot to get out. Charlie. Yeah, thanks Mike. So we have Kevin Marchie from the trans. We're going to review this and then I think Christine will follow up with a little bit of detail about how we're following up on, on what Kevin presents. Take it away and Kevin is the, is it the director of the asset manager bureau now? Yes. Yeah, welcome. Excellent. Can you hear me okay? Yes. And can you see my screen? We can. Great. I'm going to just highlight one thing on this first slide down at the bottom of the screen. I'm going to just highlight one thing on this slide. And then I'm going to see that I changed the date to say spring 2021. I think that might be wishful thinking, but anyway, where I sit there still a foot and a half a snow on the ground. So here tonight to talk to you about our new project selection and prioritization process. I'm going to go through a little bit of the background of where project prioritization has been. It'd be trans over the last 15 years or so. And then take you through the new criteria, the new process, and then take you through the new criteria. Before I do get started, I did want to thank Charlie. And for Chris and Christine for their partnership in this. I know Christine, especially I don't know. She probably lost track of how many meetings she sat in with us going through this, but. Christine played a very important role in putting this together. And certainly Charlie support through the development of this has been critical as well. So thank, thank you to both of them for that. So I'm sharing my screen. There we go. Okay. So just a little bit of background. You know, if you're around 15 or 20 years ago working on B trans projects, you'd reckon, you know, you'll remember that our project delivery funnel was very full. It was overflowing. We had way more projects programmed in our capital program than we had funding for. We definitely were in a place where. We had a lot of reasonable expectations. Not only internally for ourselves, but with our customers with towns, regions, communities around the state. We really, we really had a significant issue. And I'll say one of the other pieces to it is that the way new projects were selected was very inconsistent. And a lot of times there was pretty heavy engagement and some of those decisions were quite political. Back then 15, 20 years ago and even more. In 2005, 2006 timeframe. We started working together with the legislature with regional planning commissions and decided, okay, it's time to take a step back, look at where we are. And how do we prioritize our projects? How do we burst that bubble of overflowing funnel of projects? And we came up with a system that was based on asset condition, safety, regional priority, cost. And in some cases project momentum, that project momentum really being where as a project in the, you know, in the design phase or the engineering phase doesn't have a lot of hurdles either environmental or community challenges or right away challenges. And we really were looking to improve our relationship and communications with our customers. We really frankly, in a lot of communities around the state, we've lost some trust. We'd been talking about certain projects for years and years and not delivering them. A lot of that was because that project funnel was full. And we needed to level set and set expectations around that time. We came up with the road to affordability. Again, some of you may remember where we really, you know, there was kind of two components to that. One was setting those expectations. And then the other important part of that is where we started focusing more on system preservation. One thing of the current system that we've been using since 2000, 2007. And it really probably in Chittenden County was more prevalent than in other areas around the state. That last bullet, it didn't provide, it did not provide a clear path for our PCs and communities to add new projects. That was certainly a downfall. Obviously we had capacity issues with our ability to develop both on the human resources and financial side, but we really weren't providing, even once we started to burst that bubble, this system didn't provide a really good path for new projects. So a few years back, we, again, we started this effort working, the legislature was very supportive of us taking a fresh look at our project prioritization. And really the vision for what we now refer to as VPSP2 is to develop that performance-based data-driven project selection and prioritization framework. And a key component of that, or a key term that's used as transportation value. And as we go through, as I go through the presentation tonight, I will hit on that transportation value, but it was really trying to understand the value that potential projects may add to the overall network that existing projects might add. And then even rolling it up ultimately, our vision is to look at programmatically, whether that be state highway bridge or paving. What is the transportation value that we're providing to the network? The objectives of this slide is really broken into two pieces. First, I'll focus on the left-hand side. Where we are right now, and I'm going to talk about it a little bit more, is we've developed a system that we're beginning to implement. This actually was rolled out to the Regional Planning Commissions, let's see, about 12 days ago. I think it was somewhere in that order of magnitude. This is a pilot. We're still learning. But what we're doing over the next couple of years is we're test driving a few of our programs, and I'll talk about that in a moment. But one of the key components to this is looking at how projects come into the VPSP2 process. Again, that graphic on the left. One is through the asset-driven programs. Since the 90s, we've had a pavement management system. We have a bridge management system. Understanding the condition of the network, the cost benefit, the deterioration rates, those types of things for our assets. That's the asset-driven side of things. Looking at the need, we have performance measures, both at the state level, and more recently, on the national highway system, the federal government has asked us to have performance measures. So how are we managing our assets and our asset conditions? So that's the left-hand side. And then on the right side are regionally-driven projects. And not everything fits nicely into, here's an asset-driven project, and this is where all our investments need to be. Obviously, there's lots of times where there's things that come through from the community side, from the regionally-driven side. And the process that we have here, I'm going to talk about tonight, really provides that opportunity for not just asset-driven projects to go through the process, but regionally-driven projects as well. They will go through this process, and the outcome of that is a project that gets into our capital program and is funded for design, permitting right away, and ultimately construction. The three main objectives that we have, really, I've talked about transportation value, but this first one is really identifying and utilizing the criteria that provide that transportation value, both for potential and planned projects. And another key term I want to just highlight is we're talking a lot, many of you have heard for years in our capital program, and it's a planned project, or it's a project on, quote, the list. And that is true. When it reaches our capital program, that is the commitment to fund the project. That is the commitment to deliver the project. A term that we're introducing with this new process is potential projects. And that's where, again, I'll speak about that in a few minutes, but the key is they're not yet projects, and we just sent a list of those to each Regional Planning Commission. We're going to go through this, this prioritization, this selection and prioritization process to understand and then select projects that would make it into the capital program. Obviously, a key objective, we spoke to it already, is really for us to have a mechanism for RPCs and communities to provide input and into the selection of projects from the regionally driven side. And then obviously a key component to everything that we do is we really want to make sure that what we're doing with this process is defined, consistent, transparent. We really want to make sure that we have a partnership with the Regional Planning Commissions and through the Regional Planning Commissions to the communities that make sense, and that we're really able to define what it is and how we are selecting our projects and prioritizing our projects. Well, I just talked a little bit, as I mentioned, we've been, this has been ongoing for a number of years now. And while it has taken maybe longer than some of us would have hoped, one of the things that we wanted to make sure is at the ground level, we had input from our stakeholders. What is important, what should be considered in a new project selection and prioritization process. What you see here is just, I don't believe every single one of our partners that was engaged in the process is listed here, but hopefully that gives you a little bit of a cross-section and understanding that we really wanted to make sure that we were looking at all modes and that we had partners from all around the state, state government, special interests, and so forth. This slide, again, has two pieces. On the left, you'll see the five modes that are contained in VPSB2. The pilot that we're focusing on right now is the highway pilot. And we'll talk about the programs within highways that we're running through this year. We are working on rail, the walk trails, bikes, I think of it as our bike pad programs, transit and aviation, those are in the works. The pilot that we have right now is a two-year pilot where the first year we're looking at our highway safety and design programs, so roadway, traffic and safety and paving programs. Next year we'll look at our structures. And while we're doing that, we're going to continue to develop the criteria in the process for these other modes as well. The eight criteria that you see here, I'm going to talk just briefly about those in upcoming slides. Important to note here that one of the pieces that we went through with our partners was a pretty formal process, actually, to determine not only the criteria, but what was the appropriate weighting for those criteria. So you'll see here that at the end of the day, each project will come up with a transportation value with a maximum score of 100 points. And this is how those points are allotted. I'm just going to pause right here just to make sure if there's any questions I can try to address them as we go along, or I'm happy to take some at the end as well. Okay, hearing none, I will keep going. And I cannot see everybody on the screen as I'm sharing my screen. So if anybody does have their hand up or have questions, if somebody could just alert me, I'd appreciate it. It's like Jeff does, Kevin. Jeff Kerr. Yeah. Kevin. I'm not sure why, but this always seems to be the case that we are the only metropolitan planning organization with professional transportation staff in the state to the degree in which we do. And we are lumped in a one size fits all approach for all the RPCs. And Amy's probably rolling her eyes now because she's heard this before from me. But I don't understand why we're treated just like every other RPC when you consider the economic importance of the Northwest part of the state. And the fact that we have a professional planning staff, we pull ourselves to the knot hole every year with a complicated factor algorithm for our part of the prioritization process. And then we go in and we're 20% or whatever the weighting factor is, just like every other RPC. And I've never quite understood that. And it looks like we're with what I've seen so far, we're going to continue to perpetuate that. And why is it that the state doesn't take advantage of the capability that our planning staff has as an MPO and the emphasis that we have, any differently than you would from Northwest or Central Vermont or, or Bennington, you know, regional planning commission. It's always been a mystery to me. Well, I guess Jeff, there's a couple of ways I can answer that one. I'd really like to get through the presentation and maybe that would answer a few of your questions. Maybe it won't. But to the comment about utilizing the RPC staff, I've got to say that we have an excellent relationship with the RPC staff. We draw off that all the time. You know, just one example is the I-89 study that we have ongoing right now. I think the agency has basically, you know, we haven't put that firmly in the hands of the RPC, but I will say that we're, you know, as just one person from VTrans as part of that group, we are looking to the RPC staff and they are leading that study. So I think there are examples where we definitely use the professional staff at the RPC and we have a great partnership and we appreciate that. We're going to have a difference of opinion, Kevin, because I don't see it reflected in the project prioritization when they come back from you. It looks like you treat us just like every other RPC in terms of prioritizing projects. And I'm sorry, Amy, to bring that up, but it's my pet peeve. I've been on the NPO board since 2001. So before 2007. And you just confirmed for me something that I always feared, which is in the old system, politics had a lot to do with prioritizing the project. And that is a great concern when we spend so much time prioritizing our projects and they get the same weight as any other RPC. That's my pet peeve and I will shut up. I won't pursue it any further. Understood and thank you for the comment. I just want to clarify when I talk about the early days of prioritization or before prioritization, when I talk about the potential for political involvement, that was prior to the existing system we have. That was prior to the 2005-2006 timeframe. As someone who was involved when we established the prioritization back 2005 to 2007, I can say that we have much less political involvement in the selection of our projects now than we did 15 years ago. So if there are no other comments, I will move forward. Okay. So what I would like to do now is I'm just going to talk briefly about, I'm not going to go through every single one of these, especially in the interest of time. Obviously some of these are pretty straightforward. Safety, we have a very robust crash system and we use that, we use crash modification factors to come up with a safety score. I should say before I go through these, and I know Christine can attest to this, we have these eight criteria. Within these eight criteria, there's a series of questions that gets asked for each project and each potential project to understand, what is happening with a particular project using safety as an example. Some projects address more safety issues out there than others, and primarily sometimes because there's more safety issues to address in those projects. But we look at those crashes, there's a series of questions that we go through to look at crashes, but also crash modification factors in terms of the various countermeasures that we may or may not be including in a project depending on its scope. So I always get the number wrong, but there's somewhere in the order of magnitude of 60 to 70 questions that are answered throughout these eight criteria to come up with the overall score and transportation value. So safety is one of them. I've already spoken about asset condition, understanding the condition of the assets. My apologies, my dog only wants to bark when I'm given a presentation. So there's the asset condition component of this. My apologies. The asset condition, the service ability and making decisions based on the deterioration and the condition of those assets. Mobility and connectivity, that obviously talks about, and there's pieces of this, it's not just about the mobility component, but it's also about connectivity as you see kind of in the italicized. Do these projects, do they connect to bicyclists? Do they connect to parking rights? Those types of things, there's questions there that are answered where you get scores associated with mobility and connectivity. Economic access. And I certainly am not, you know, to your point earlier, Jeff, certainly not going to use this as a, yeah, this is the criteria that sets the CCRPC apart from other regions of the state, but economic access is one of those criteria that we included, that wasn't included in the prior systems that really starts to look at, you know, the number of jobs within a certain vicinity and radius of projects, and there's a scoring associated with that. Resiliency. And, you know, that resiliency is one that if you talk to us at B-Trans prior to Tropical Storm Irene, we may have talked about resiliency, we may have thought we understood what resiliency was. We have a much better handle on that. I'm sure you're familiar with the transportation resilience planning tool that came through our policy and planning division. And that is something that's being used, that tool is being used to help us score projects in the resiliency criteria community. You know, we don't need to speak to you folks about the community input piece. Obviously that's been part of our system. I do believe that we've taken it to the next level with this new project selection process, but this is where we're looking, this is what helps drive that regionally driven side of things, but we also look to ensure that we have a community score for those projects on the asset driven side as well. The environment, I don't remember maybe Christine does, how many questions we have in terms of, you know, the impact or improvements that projects, you know, whether they be negative impacts or they be improvements understanding what a project does to whether it be air quality or cultural historic resources, what we do to either, you know, avoid minimize or mitigate impacts to the environmental resources. And then lastly, health access, not just access to hospitals or healthcare facilities, but also access to parks and to bike trails. And you'll see here down at the bottom, there's a whole list of things. So those are the eight criteria that we have that we're rolling out and we're using consistently for each project and each potential project that we have in our programs. I spoke about the highway mode and the project selection. What we will be doing on a two year basis. So year one, we are looking at the paving roadway and traffic and safety programs. As I mentioned, year two will be the bridge programs. What we will be doing as we move forward and assuming that this goes well is you'll see in year three, we'll come back to the paving roadway and traffic and safety programs. And in year four, we come back to the bridge programs. And over these next couple of years, we will be starting to integrate the other modes, the grant programs, rail, aviation, public transit. And actually not on here that should be is also those walks, trails, the bike pad programs as well. The next piece is kind of a nine step process that there's a lot of subsets to it, but just kind of an overview of how we get to where we, we're going with this process. So every year in the September to October timeframe, our, our, you know, we look at the revenue, revenue projections. We understand what may be available to us. We look at our programs and our budget committee starts to look at, you know, as an example, what should the level of investment be in paving? And, you know, for a number of years now that's been around $100 million a year. So in this timeframe, we go through when we set starting, start setting budget targets for the various programs. Step two, November through the end of February, what we do is one of the things that we do in this year, you know, we, well, every year we collect data out on the, on the network. Paving data is probably the biggest one that we do where we drive the roads. We collect millions of data points on the four distresses. We then put it in our pavement management system. We look at that at a network level, so that we can determine the needs where we should be funding. We can, we can feed that system. If you will, you know, budget scenarios. So it can, it can make recommendations as to where the, the most cost effective place to spend our money would be. And, you know, and in that system we do, we have two performance measures. One looks at the travel weighted network condition, which takes into account traffic volumes, higher or lower traffic volumes. And then our other performance measures percent very poor. That's really the one that gets at those lower volume roads. So what we do in step two is we take all of that data and information. We put it into our pavement management systems. Those systems will give us a recommended list of projects. Here's where I, here's where what we're trying to do and what we just did with the regions, try to explain this. So in this second step, our capital program looks at multi year budget, four to five years of budget every year. And in those, you know, for, I'll use paving as an example tonight. You know, obviously the, the, the budget for this construction season is full. We don't have any potential projects. We know what the projects are. We're moving forward with them. Year two is pretty much the same because of the project development process. Year three has a little bit of capacity. Year four has more capacity and your five has even more capacity. That capacity to add new projects into the system. So if we, if we have the paving program as an example, and we look at year three, four and five, and we say there's approximately a hundred million dollars worth of capacity for new projects. In this step, what we do is we're referring to it as the 150% list. We actually will identify 150 million dollars or 150% of that hundred million. 150% or a hundred, excuse me, 150 million worth of potential projects. We then, what V trans does is we look at those, all of those potential projects. And we go through, there's five criteria that, that V trans takes the lead on. And I should have mentioned this back on the, on the, I'll just go back here. There's, there's five criteria here that V trans, I'll say leads. We don't own, we're working, this is a partnership between us and the regional planning commissions. But what V trans will do is we'll provide preliminary transportation value scores based on data for safety, asset condition, mobility, connectivity, environment and resiliency. And then there's three criteria that we're looking to the RPCs to lead. That's community economic access and health access. And again, that doesn't mean that we don't have, we can't have discussions amongst those criteria. It's just who's taking the lead and making sure we understand those scoreings. So we do all of that. We have a list of potential projects. We have a preliminary transportation value for those five criteria. And then on the 1st of March, just past what we do is we transmit a list of asset driven potential projects to the RPCs with their associated preliminary transportation value scores. Then what we're asking the tax around the state to do is look at that list of projects and look at the three RPC leads criteria and come up with scoring for those three and add it to the five that V trans has. And in this process, there may be questions. There may be something that region says sees and says, hey, we don't understand what that safety score is. Let's talk about it. We're happy to have that discussion. And we will be having that discussion. I should say that one of the things that we're also doing when we transmit that, transmit that list of asset driven projects. It's not just the potential projects. What we're trying to do is make sure we transmit the list of all existing capital program projects. So if a tag happens to be looking at the list of potential projects, if they say, wait a minute, we trans forgot that paving project, that road's really bad. It may be that it's already programmed. So we want to make sure that there's a full snapshot of what's going on out there when we transmit that list. So you'll see March, April and May, the regions will be looking at those asset driven projects. But then step five is during the same time period, you know, a region will look and they'll say, again, these are all the existing projects. These are all the potential projects. But hey, we think you missed something. And we'd like to add a regionally driven project. So what's what we anticipate happening is we'd be in, you know, the region would begin a conversation with v-trans and we'll work together to fill out the eight criteria for that regionally driven project. To make sure that it also has a preliminary transportation value. June one, the regions will transmit that list. And we'll have full scoring for all eight of the criteria for all potential asset driven projects and all potential regionally driven projects. This next step, step seven is what I would refer to as, or I refer to as the smushing together step. So if you can imagine various programs, various RPCs, various scores for all of these projects, we get to take it all back in and we put it together on a list. And initially what we will do is we will rank that list based on transportation value, but we're also, it's not that we can just select projects only based on transportation value. There's a lot of other factors out there. We need to look at things like regional distribution of projects. I, you know, an example might be in paving. If there was a region of the state that saw no paving projects for the next three or four years, you know, you know, the industry has asphalt plants and they have different things that they need to maintain. And obviously there's needs in every regional state from a paving program perspective. So we would look at that and say, okay, let's make sure there's at least some form of regional distribution around the state. Other things that may happen and, and you know, you may have or may not have heard the term harmonization or corridor, corridor management. One of the things that we're really trying to do is take a more holistic look at our projects. It may have been 20 years ago that if you had a paving project, the answer would have been, and you wanted to add a cover to that project or you wanted to widen shoulders or there was a bridge within there that might make sense to address as part of the project. You may have heard 20 years ago, this is a paving project that's not within the scope. One of the things that, you know, where we're at right now is really a corridor management focus so that when we do have issues within, I'll say, you know, let's say that this five mile paving project, we want to make sure that we're looking at that and understanding what the needs are and, and what other assets may have needs along that corridor. Maybe that there's a minor safety improvement that could be upgraded with a paving project. And we want to make sure that we're looking at that through that lens. And I say that here because, and I'll use this example that maybe that in year one, we come up with a paving project on a road. And then in year two, we do a bridge project or we do the bridge project selection prioritization that I just defined for you. And in year two, you say, gosh, here's a bridge. And it's just below the cutoff line of the available 100% of available funding. So normally it may not get chosen, but you say, wow, there's a paving reclaim project in that same quarter scheduled for three years out. It only makes sense to combine them from an economic perspective. So that is something that we'll be looking at. The other thing that I would mention is also just, just looking at the impacts of projects and I use an example of down in a root 10 and root 11 Chester and Springfield, there are two short relatively short sections of paving four to five miles. If one's below the line and one's above the line, what we will look at will say, okay, from a community impact, from an economy of scale, from a contracting mechanism side of things, it only makes sense to advance those projects at the same time. So one may actually bump up above that line. If it makes sense from an efficiency perspective. That and a whole bunch of other things will be considered, but I just wanted to kind of give a little bit of an insight to some of the things that we're doing at this, at this stage. We also may have questions for regions. There may be some clarity issues. One of the things that, and I should have mentioned this earlier, I know Charlie, this is something that Charlie, we talked a lot about and has brought up multiple times is, it isn't just preliminary transportation value. We want to understand. So when the information is coming back into VTrans, if there's regionally driven projects, if there's questions, if there's concerns, if there's additional information that regions feel we, we may have missed, they're going to submit that back to us in steps four and five. And that's stuff that we'll take into consideration in step six. Step seven, as I started, that's where we put it all together. Step eight, we will come back. And what we're going to do, I kind of refer to this as the transparency step where we now have a list that's put together and we, we send it back out and say, these are the projects that we're recommending to move forward into the capital program. And in this step, we'll also provide definitions as to why any of those examples, the Chester Springfield example, I just gave you, if we pulled one up a little higher that had a lower transportation, but why did you do that VTrans? We, in my opinion, we should have a good answer. And we'll be providing that information back to the regions to understand our decision-making. Step eight, there may be some back and forth of three regions to make sure we understand. Step nine, we finalize that list. And they will become projects and we program them into the capital program with funding in the, in the upcoming governor's recommended budget that will happen, you know, usually the first couple of weeks of January. Just a couple more slides here. Just something to, to make sure that I pointed out. Ultimately, and right now we're focused on the potential projects. We also have transportation values. We're updating some of them because of some lessons learned late in the game for all of the roadway traffic and safety and paving projects right now. I've already mentioned that the two year cycle and ultimately the goal, once we get good at VPSP2 and we're all in agreement is we do start using that transportation value to make some budget decisions at the programmatic level. And with that, that is VPSP2. Are there any questions? Mike, can I jump in? Please do. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, thank you very much, Kevin. Yeah. And as you can tell, this is a real new level of transparency and integration between the regions of VTrans. And but it's a pilot. You know, I think we'll, you know, and I'm sorry, I'm chuckling not in a bad way, but just with Kevin, you know, kind of talked about that quite a bit that this is none of us believe this is a hundred percent perfect right now. And so we're really in the first testing year. And we wanted to make sure you were aware of this process in general, because it'll be coming back to you in May. We'll be working with ATAC over the next couple of months and with VTrans. As you might guess, we have a number of projects that were not on VTrans as potential lists that they sent to us. That would be, that might be regionally driven out of all the planning work we've been doing with our towns. And so we want to review that list and kind of see how they might rank, how they might score and see what issues come up with that. So two things, one will be working on the regionally driven project list with ATAC the next two months and with VTrans. And then also, we also know that the criteria itself, and Kevin just made reference to this, you know, might need some tweaking. One thing that has come up recently, particularly in the legislature is the issue of equity and just kind of take them, I think we'll try to take a quick look at that in this cycle. And then my hope is that over the next, you know, the next year or two, we kind of figure out where that gets cooked in, you know, whether that is that part of the RPC process? Is it something that VTrans can grab a hold of at the front end? So I think we'll be working together on that. But I think we're all very excited. And this is really the first time we've had the insight and opportunity to look at how do you get a new project in the back of the capital program? You know, we know it's year three or four or whatever, but it's a pretty new part of the process. And I really want to thank VTrans for opening this door and, you know, opening the black box to a huge extent. And I think Kevin touched on this, but we also know there is some criteria outside of this eight criteria. I'm not sure if I missed it, but you know, kind of regional distribution or fairness across the state. And Jeff, I'm kind of getting to your point. A lot of when I, we've gone through these criteria a little bit. Our projects are going to rank pretty well. We have a lot of communities, a lot of walking we have. And for better or worse, we have a lot of safety issues. We have high traffic volumes, more wear and tear on the system. And more jobs on the economic criteria. So I think our projects are going to score well, but we also know, you know, they can't just only do Chittany County projects. Even if we ask. So, so anyway, that's just a few thoughts. Christine does have the list of the eligible or the potential projects we got from Kevin. If you want to see those, but I don't know if you want to just wait for the tack to do its work and come back to you with the recommended priorities in May. Any reaction or more discussion or questions? Yeah, Sharon. I was just wondering if we could get a. More detailed view of the criteria at some point, because I still have a lot of questions. Equity was one of them. Thanks for addressing that. But things like even some of the other policies, I'm sure they're probably referenced in the questions, but things like complete streets, you know, a lot of the stuff consistency with plans. I saw that they're referenced, but a question is, are we going to put the statutory version of that into play? You know, and just how do all the policy things that we've been working with, smart growth, all that kind of stuff fit, fit into these criteria. Yeah, there's a pretty huge element of that. Threaded throughout the scoring. One thing though that you remind me of Sharon is that at this stage, we're really prioritizing the problems or the needs. More than a project. You know, recognizing that they may not, they may not all be fully designed, right? Like we're talking about, it's really prioritizing the needs or the problems that then, you know, get into the PE and, you know, and we've done, of course, our projects are usually a little, you know, step ahead because we've done scoping. Right. So there's some good sense of what they'll be, but not the final detail. Okay. Yeah. Thanks, Charlie. That's a really good point with these potential projects. And it's actually something that we learned. I would say, and I'm looking at Christine, probably in the last few months as we were dashing towards the finish line and willing to sell was it's very hard with these potential projects, you know, and there are questions to your point of, you know, are we widening shoulders for bicycles? Are we improving? What are we doing at this intersection? And at this point of a potential project, you may have an intersection project, but you may not know the answer to all of those questions. So that is going to be, I know that that's going to be part of the learning that we go through together as, as we go through this pilot. Other questions? Did you have a question? Charlie, was Christine going to add anything? You know, only if the board wanted to kind of do a deeper dive, I kind of paused that because like, once we look at the list of projects, I wasn't sure you're ready to do that. Or if you want to wait until you see what the tack kind of hashes out. Okay, right away. Any other questions? Not hearing any. Kevin, thank you very much for the presentation and your time tonight. Much appreciated. Yeah, thank you, Kevin. Well, thank you for, thank you for having us. We look forward to working with you as we, as we continue to roll this out and improve upon it. Great. Have a good night. Thank you. You too. Garrett, did you have something you want to say? Oh, waving goodbye. Sorry. Okay. Next item we have the equity leadership team member appointments. At this point we had, correct me if I'm wrong, Charlie, we had five folks express interest and there's a six. I think Elaine. Uh, expressed interest. Um, and I don't want to unfairly characterize anyone's interest, but I will say there was a lot of, um, I don't know everything about the subject, but I'm interested in the subject, but if you need somebody, I'll be willing to volunteer. So I appreciate all of you that did that. And even a couple of people that weren't able to tune in tonight. Did volunteer. So yeah, my God, I don't know if you want to run down the list or see if there's other volunteers. Yeah. Or my, can I provide context? I think you said the scope. Um, our contract with creative discourse has us setting up this equity leadership team is what they called it. Um, they're contributing one member of their team to it. Uh, we were going to have two staff members on it. And then, you know, we'd like a committee, you know, somewhere between five and seven. So, um, I think we're totally comfortable if there were, you know, up to four board members, um, hoping one of them is on the executive committee just to maintain, uh, the connection at that level. Um, And so Mike, I don't know if you have, you want me to talk more or do you want to take it from there? No, you're doing a good job, Charlie. Um, but the full, so we've heard from six people now who have expressed interest, though, um, one, I believe kind of. Uh, wasn't sure anyway. Anyone else who didn't express an interest previously interested in serving on this board? I guess not. Okay. Um, So, and this is a, these are appointments I make Charlie. Yeah, I think so. I think it's a check to do that. Yeah. Okay. Uh, so the folks who had volunteered. Um, I was in that group that Charlie said, I'll do it, but I will, I will. I will take a back seat. Um, Catherine's interested, but it looks like she's got stuff that piled up on her table in the town. Um, if I read that, right? Yes, that is correct. Okay. Uh, we've got to, you know, anywhere between three and six months to look for a new town. Uh, town administrator, plus other things. So, right, right. Okay. Justin Rabbit, who's an alternate from South Burlington, Don Meals, Jackie Murphy. And, uh, Elaine. Um, From Essex. Elaine Haney had expressed interest. Anybody else. Okay. I'm not here. I'm not here. I'm not here. I'm not here. I'm not here. Okay. I'm not hearing any. So I, Charlie, I think, um, I know you sent me an email earlier, but why don't we talk about it, um, After the meeting or tomorrow and then get back to folks. Okay. Okay. Absolutely. All right. Very good. Thank you everyone for, for volunteering. And, uh, I know this will be of interest to the whole board, uh, as we move along. Uh, next item, charge the board development committee for the FY 22 nominations. Andy, I think that's you, right? The chair of that. I think so. Okay. So charge ahead. All right. Um, so if anybody is interested in serving, you know, on the executive committee or any of the positions, um, let Charlie know or let me know that would be really helpful. And for those who are already on it, if you're interested in continuing, let us know as well. Uh, so Charlie, it says action that we need to make a motion to, to, uh, have the, the committee move forward. I think I'm sorry that I think that's just you, uh, give telling them to give you nominations. Okay. Especially if you can get out of the chair role, I think. So charge ahead, Andy, with your group. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next executive director report. Charlie. Um, so, uh, a few updates. Um, the UPWP is where we've kind of gone through with all the staff hours and sorting out this, uh, a few little communications going on with a few towns, particularly around land use projects. Um, just because we only have so many hours in the year. Um, but other than that, I think we're, have the resources to pretty much do just about everything that was asked. So I think, um, Catherine, hopefully the next week's UPWP committee is, uh, Barely easy. Um, and we're putting the document together here over the next few days. Um, the annual report, like it goes annual report. We usually have out by this year. Um, by this time of the year, uh, we're doing a more updated version. So it's, um, too much happened in 2020, where you usually have like a year lag. We're trying to have just a couple months lag. Um, so it's a little bit delayed, but, um, probably should be out by your next meeting. Um, the, um, at the last meeting. There was some discussion about digging in further to the 89. Um, uh, metrics and scoring and stuff. Um, so I did want to ask, um, if you would like me to schedule or, or the best way, or, or I actually, I guess I'd like to know who would be interested in participating in such a workshop. And then I'll work with you to schedule something where we can dig in a little bit deeper. That works for your schedules. I see Jeff, Sharon, Jim. Well, this is, uh, did anybody else raise their hand? Mike, was that you? Yeah, it was me. Okay. I was not swatting flies. I was raising my hand. I thought it was like, get out of here. Uh, okay. So I will follow up with the four of you, um, to try to find a time where we can all get together. Um, and, but prepare yourself as probably, I'd like to say it's an hour, but more realistically, it'll be two hours. Um, so I'm hoping to dig into it. Forget it. That's, that's what I was afraid of. Put me down to Charlie, Chris. Oh, Chris, sure. Yeah. Just, just pick a crappy weather day, Charlie. Cause right now, if you pick a nice day, you're going to get, you're going to have a mutiny. I will definitely do that. Like at least two or three weeks in advance. I'll find the morning when it's going to rain. There you go. Uh, maybe. Um, okay. Thank you for that. Um, And, uh, legislative update, you know, of course we're right in the middle of the session now. Um, and I don't know, there's so much going on and it's, it's so hard to follow. Uh, but I do appreciate, um, BLCTs, summaries and also the Vermont planners association does a good job tracking bills that, you know, would be more interested, um, to this board. Uh, a couple, I'll call out a few that, uh, we're watching. Um, one that I hadn't been really watching, but, uh, just how to change happened is a cannabis bill. It's S 25. Uh, and there's a recent change in how they're proposing to do. Uh, cannabis retail. Operation approvals. Uh, up at this point in time. A municipality needs to opt in to have a retail establishment. And you saw a few towns had votes, um, this spring, that time meeting day. There's language in this bill that would flip that on its head and says that if a municipality doesn't vote, I guess not to have a retail establishment. That by, uh, March of 2023. Your time will be considered open for retail establishments. Um, so it's, uh, I guess I heads up this is not law yet. It's still a, it's still a bill. It's going through discussion. Um, but it's a pretty significant change, uh, in the approach. Um, I think VLCT had been, uh, you know, always taking the position that it should be opt in if you want retail. Uh, and that is what is in the current law. Um, we've never had a position on this. Um, so I want to bring it to your attention. I don't know. Um, you know, it's not necessarily in the planning kind of realm that we usually get into, but, um, if, if you want us to take a position, this would be a good time to let me know because it's going to be. Moving, uh, pretty quickly. Um, so I'm sorry. I'm not giving you a lot of time to think about that or consult with your select boards or anything, but, um, Any quick reactions, John. Charlie. Yeah. This was discussed when they put the current bill together and it was thrown overboard for a lot of reasons. You know, one of which the governor didn't favor it as I recall. And you know, everybody joined together as a team and made good sausage and came out the other end with something everybody could live with. So, I mean, is this just the debt. Interest group continuing to do this and can't give up, or is it something we should be taking seriously? I don't say that something wrong with it. I'm not expressing an opinion either way. I just wondering if the, if this part of the sausage is really anything substantial. Yeah, I think it got voted out of a Senate committee this week. It's in Senate. Finance, maybe give her finance or appropriations. Um, and I'm looking at Sharon, of course, because I know she remembers this stuff better than I do. Um, so I don't know, John. You know, the Senate has been more liberal on this issue than the house. Um, and so I don't know how concerned about it to be, or if, you know, there are a lot of other voices, I think that will make the point you just made. Um, so I don't know that we need to weigh in, but I just wanted to give you a heads up in case you wanted to talk with your town and you want to weigh in as a town. Um, that might be the best approach. And probably more effective than me saying something to them. I don't remember what we were talking about, but did anybody bring the Fritos? We'll check back with you later. Thank you. Catherine, were you going to say something? Okay. So, uh, yeah, just heads up on that topic. Um, there is a smart growth bylaw bill, uh, the bylaw modernization bill called S one oh one. That is out of sudden economic developments in Senate finance. Um, and it's really, uh, they're trying to incentivize towns to update their bylaws, uh, in a smart growth manner. They're proposing to put another $500,000 into the municipal planning grant program. Uh, so that's in the Senate. Hopefully it comes out. We'll see if, uh, it gets over to the house and how that fares. Um, the rental housing program, uh, rental housing inspection program and S 79 does seem to be moving. Um, and so I'll just let you know next month how that's very, um, that would definitely take some pressure. Um, you know, off of town health officers. Um, and it does seem, you know, the, the league has been supporting that, I believe. Um, there's also been a bill S 33 about project based tip. Um, and Westford has been a big example, uh, talked about there, uh, allowing them to do the project would be their community wastewater in their village. And then allowing them to do kind of a small tip district, uh, to help pay for that. Um, that is moving. I don't know if we'll end up being a tip. It may end up being the low or no cost loan dollars made available to small towns, uh, for things like that. Uh, but I think it is, it has some traction to do something to address this issue. Um, and then the final issue I'll mention is really. The federal money that is flowing. Sorry. I'm using big arms, big dollars. That are flowing. Um, there's, uh, a bill. I think they're calling it the mini bill each 315, uh, to kind of spend some of the carers money that has, is left that the state still has remaining. Um, and then there is, of course, the American rescue plan that just passed in Congress. That is, um, that my quick math on that is it looks like there's about $197 million going just to municipalities. Um, and if you wanted to do some quick math to figure out how much money your town might get, I think it's about $300 per resident. So you can do the math for your town. It's, uh, coming in two pieces. One was targeted towards municipalities. The other was targeted for counties in the rest of the country. Um, there will be some strings attached to it for sure. It is federal money. Um, it has one part of it, or you can use it for a few, only a few purposes. One is to like address a deficit that got created by COVID in your budget. You know, so if your revenues went down, but you still had expenses, you may be able to, uh, backfill that. Um, you can cover any, you know, emergency responses. I think Vermont did pretty well by its towns, uh, with the Alger program at the end of last year. So I think a lot of those costs hopefully did get addressed, but if you still had more of those or have some going into this year, they could be covered. And then the really, um, the interesting part is that, and it has a one line that says necessary investments in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure. Um, so. Just kind of heads up. Um, you can do the rough math about how much is coming and then, you know, talk to your, I'm sure, uh, if you have professional staff in your town, they're already thinking and talking about this. Um, and there is a little bit of, um, discussion also, I think the legislatures, as they did with the Alger program, going to try to find a little bit of money to support RPCs and also maybe for the first time, VLCT to support towns, um, in, uh, using this money in a way that is compliant with the federal rules and is effective. So, um, there's more questions than answers on that, that all that money topic. But, um, if you have some questions that you want me to look into further to let me know. So anyway, the checks in the mail. I'll end it with that. Um, okay. And actually on a, on a serious note about the mail, um, I think Congress has to give out the first chunk of that money in the next, I can't remember it's 60 or 90 days. Um, and then there's a second chunk coming like, uh, I can't remember if it's end of December or a year from now, but it's in that nine to 12 month timeframe, I think. Oh, and, and timing wise, this money is a lot better than the money last year, where I had to be spent by the end of December. This money has to be spent by the end of December. 2024. So there's a three plus year timeframe, um, uh, investing this money. So. Okay. Yeah. Hey, Charlie. No questions for Charlie. I just curious because you know, broadband is such an issue. Um, but Comcast has hopscotch to a lot of these communities out this way, whether it's under Hill or Jericho, where you have, where you think that they'd have Comcast, but they don't, you know, trying to figure out how you can fill those holes where people don't feel like they have the, you know, they're starting to use the satellite system from the, like Elon Musk has put up, but you know, that, that's a significant investment to start with too. And nobody knows how well it's going to work down the road. How, how would, you know, community even begin to think about how you could help your community have better, you know, fiber, you know, fiber, essentially, you know, speeds and stuff. Um, yeah. So get in touch with us. Um, I give, uh, some credit to Bolton for, uh, giving us a kick in the pants on this topic. Um, thank you to, to your peers back at home, Sharon. Um, but so we've dug into this a little bit more. Um, so, um, you can, um, contact me, Regina or Pam Brangan. And, um, we're, we're starting to work with the department of public service and trying to figure out how to get, uh, to those providers because there's, yeah, it's a mismatch of solutions, right? Yeah. You could do Starlink is one option out there. Um, and then there are other providers. Um, and we think not just this municipal money, the state legislature is also talking about taking a big chunk of the state funding. I think I saw $150 million in the first draft of the FY 22 budget for the state's part of the American rescue plan funding going into broadband as well. Um, so there should be, it seems like there should be ways to work with providers to fill in some of those gaps. Um, and we've got a pretty good map now from DPS about the gaps in our region. Oh good. That had been a real problem because, you know, talking to one of our little local experts, he said, you know, Comcast would often say a whole road was covered, but it was really only one house, but they didn't want anybody else to fill in it. Yeah. I think we're going to fill it in either. And DPS has been pretty good. We've gotten better data about the speeds at individual locations. Um, and so, yeah, even though you might have internet, there might be, you know, three, you know, three megabytes up, you know, they're like really slow internet. So, and I honestly, I was surprised at some of the gaps because they're like, you can tell it's one stretch of road. Um, even in some towns, I didn't think had gaps like Shelburne. There's, there's a number of residents in Shelburne. I can't remember it's in, you know, double digits might be 40 or 50 that don't have good internet access. Um, and, um, and every town has some of those, some more than others. Um, but so I think we're really looking forward to kind of digging into this topic and figuring out how to help you, um, access, you know, either use some of the money that's come to you or as a town or the state funding to fill these gaps. Yeah. I'm sorry, Catherine, if you want an overview of what can be done, DPS commissioned this huge study that was done by Matt Dunn's group about all that could be done to address all these access issues, both hard costs and soft core costs. Um, it was written within the context of how to respond to COVID and the needs of COVID, but it's like 400 pages of put you to sleep. You know, including a broadband core, establishing a broadband core. So it's, it's pretty exhaustive. Um, I do not think, I mean, I heard an, an initial number that they were talking about 300 million in broadband over the next three or four years from Vermont. Um, whether, but not that comes true. I don't know. But, um, if there's money, there will be no shortage of ideas on how to spend. Yeah. Cause clearly, I mean, even, you know, even though our town, you know, it has, you know, some areas that are served well, others that sort of are well and others not at all. I mean, and it's, it's really become, you know, obviously COVID has really put out, um, how important it is to be, because I get calls of this periodically and you know, I've got people have told me, well, I'm jury rigged this and this and this. And I hope that's nice. But I don't understand what we can do for, how to make it work for the rest of the town. Yeah. And I heard something, I think somebody mentioned to me today that there's some issue about towns directly paying, um, uh, the internet providers. So I think we've got to dig into this a little bit more, but, um, it definitely is on our radar to try to figure out how to help you all, um, get better coverage in your municipality. So, um, if you have a specific, uh, you know, effort or part of your town that you think really needs to be addressed, please get in contact and, you know, let us know if it's a priority for your town. Um, obviously you have to look at the water and sewer options there too. Um, you know, it's, it's a, it's good chunk of money, but it doesn't pay for everything coming to the municipalities. But, um, as Jeff just noted, I think there's going to be a good chunk of state, um, state rescue plan dollars available also. Yeah. There's a lot, there's a lot coming from the state. It looks like the federal, um, the feds are going to be giving a lot for this as well. And beyond the, um, plan that Jeff was just talking about, the, um, Department of Public Service also is commissioning a, an update on the 10 year telecom plan for the state. And so that I'm not sure that is right now, but that's going to be in the works fairly soon. Um, and that's going to set out some of the more long-term benchmarks. The one that Jeff was talking about was really COVID related and all things that have to be done sort of like on an emergency basis of things that could be done. Um, and Charlie, as you, as you guys are looking at this, if you, I'd be happy to, um, chat more with you about it as well. We'll take you up on that. Just with jotting that note down, Andy, thank you. Okay. Yeah, Jim. Is it, uh, Is it possible to share with the towns the information and where the gaps are that you have? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Thank you. Any other questions for Charlie? All right. Thanks, Charlie. Next is committee liaison activities and reports. The, uh, reports are in your packet or there's links to them. Anyone have any comments or questions? Hearing none. Next is future agenda topics. Charlie, what do you got on the slate that you want to highlight? Yeah. On the back page of the agenda there. So, uh, the, the, uh, the board development committee has to present nominations next month for officers. Um, you'll get, you'll see, look at the draft of the UPWP and budget. Um, and then we were thinking we might follow up on Garrett suggestion from last month about, um, EVs and gas tax revenue and what's happening with, you know, EV deployment. So we'll try to get a couple of speakers on that topic. Unless there's something else that you'd prefer. Charlie. Yes, sir. On the proposed slate of officers. Does that usually come in April or does that come in May? It's, um, the bylaws have, I think I'm pretty sure it's April. Okay. And there's something funny. About, um, presenting at 60 days before the election, I think, which is would be in June. Okay. Um, would you mind scheduling a meeting of all of us on that? Thanks. Okay. Anything else? All right. And we will move on to members items or other business. We'll go to this before we take Andy's, uh, motion to adjourn. He made an hour and a half, an hour and a half ago. Any other business. Yeah. Before we started. Here we know other businesses. There a second to Andy's motion. I'm second. I know I'm late to the party, but that's okay. Uh, thanks everyone for being here all in favor of the motion. I, uh, anyone opposed. Thanks everyone. We'll see you next month. Thank you. Thank you. Good night. Thanks, Charlie. Thanks, staff.