 Can you close that for us, Justin? Thank you. Hi, I'm Representative Burton Corners, I'm the chair of the Transportation Committee, and I have about five weeks of seniority in that position. And my counterpart in the Senate has about 55 years. So I'm going to ask him to run this hearing. Well, thank you very much. And thank you for coming. We appreciate it. It was a beautiful day we picked for you. You can travel, you don't have to south your road, you can plow or anything out of the spin crowd here today. So what we'd like to do, we have a sign-up sheet. If anybody wants to add to it, the first thing we'll do is we'll go around the table and introduce ourselves from audition for a job. And then we want to hear your concerns. And I know you're here to tell us that we're doing a wonderful job. You know me, Dave. Right? That sound right? OK, from there, we'll start. I'm Dick Maslach, the chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, and we'll start over here. Jim McNeil of Rowling County. Daniel Pertzlik of Washington County. Barbara Murphy, I serve their facts. Tim Corpin, I represent Bayton. Molly Burke, I'm representing from Rattlebrook. Mike McCarty from St. Alms. Dave Potter, I represent Clarendon, West Rowland, Proctor, Wallingford, and Alwulekton. Catty McCoy, I'm representing Holtley and Ira. And Coyby, I'm from Coybrook, and I represent Eighth County, so he has this kind of a history. Brian Savage, I live in Swanson, but I represent Swanson and Sheldon. Rebecca White, I represent Herkford. OK, Raelle Sett, I think the first one will be out here. We can make sure we get the names correct. Chris begins? Yep. From Waterbury. OK, good morning. Good morning. Well, I came here a little early to make sure I got on the list, but I certainly didn't want to be the first one. So I'm the current chair of the select board in the town of Waterbury. I kind of go through, I got a list here of, I'll make sure it's in the paper, you see. That was, yeah, a couple of hate and discontent here. So I'll just give you a brief background here of myself. The excavation business has been in my family way back to my grandfather, who started his business, number one, working for the town of Faston prior to 1938. My uncle Fred and my dad both carried on with that business. My dad worked on the interstate for a number of years. He was a drill rate runner, drilling for blasting. And I've been in the construction industry since I was 21. I'm 59 now, so 38 years plus. And my son has been running an excavator since he was 10 years old, and he's in his mid-30s. So there's a little bit of background there. I've been on the board for going on seven years. One of the reasons I got on the select board was the desire to help improve our infrastructure. I could see it deteriorating at a rapid rate. Four years ago, I did a little presentation in front of the townspeople at town meeting. Cost analysis on just the paper roads, issues that we had. It had been a long-standing effort with the previous boards to try to put in $300,000 or somewhere in that range in the paving CIP. There were years that that fell short. But due to my presentation, a result of the information that I put forward suggested that we need closer to $1.4 million in order to keep up with the life expectancy of about seven years for paved roads in the state of Vermont. So you can see there's quite a disparity there. Last year was the first year that we were actually able to double that $300,000 to $600,000. We actually had the ability to improve a lot of the smaller sections of roads in hopes to kind of put those to bed for a while and enable us to attack some of the bigger road problems. I attempted to walk this path three years ago with a gas tax and a poll for gas tax. Early on, I realized that it seemed as though the legislative body didn't have the stomach for it. So I kind of dropped the ball. It had been an issue right along in the last few years that I've been on the board. Waterbury had accomplished some major issues over the last few years after the flood recovering ourselves. At one point here just recently, so we've taken care of a lot of our major problems in the town of Waterbury as far as our municipal building, our fire station upgrades, and some other significant issues. So now it's time to focus on the bigger problem, which is our infrastructure. Mr. Frytag from Stratford had put an article in the paper suggesting that there may be some small items that the legislative body here at the State House could consider doing that would be relatively easy solutions. And one of them was considering the possible gas tax to help with roads and infrastructure. Well, that re-energized my efforts. I immediately got on the phone to him. And with the help from him and Kerry Dolan and BLCT, here I am. I'm the last person to want to come up here and ask for taxes or any form of revenue. I know it's a touchy subject, but the problem that I'm trying to address is not going away. The fact it's gotten to the point where it's becoming exponential. There's many reasons that cause the destruction of our bad roads. The number one problem is a forced up base on a lot of the roads and the frost that accompanies that. There's three things that create heaving in roads, poor soils, water content, and cold temperatures. If you can eliminate any one of those three items, you've eliminated the frost problem. From what I understand, from a very reliable source, our asphalt quality today has become poor because of the refining process. It's taken a lot of the goodness out of the asphalt, which makes it more susceptible to early destruction, and that comes from the gas companies and how they're refining. People are reluctant to slow down. That's another damaging aspect to the road systems. And excessive salt use contributes highly to creating that water that sits in the roads and the vehicles continue to pound it. This winter is a great example of the amount of salt use and plowing and ongoing destruction to the road systems that we've seen in quite some time. So, through talking with the Waterbury Town Manager, John Freindag, and a few other people just kind of bumping heads on this gas tax issue, we came up with the idea of suggesting a four-cent tax. Is four cents going to be enough to solve this problem? Well, certainly not. But I know we're sensitive to any additional taxes in this state. You know, 40 cents would probably be closer to help it solve this solution, this problem. The problem is you've got to try to create a revenue source that can somehow get ahead of the deterioration rate. Because if you don't have the revenues to do that, you're just going to continue to fall behind. There's been some calculations on what the four cents might possibly generate. And it seems like it'd be somewhere around 10 million to 13 million a year, somewhere in that range. The request from us would be to, if it's possible, I know that money is typically goes into the general fund from what I understand. I'd hate to see any of it diverted to other avenues, simply because of the issue that we're trying to address is so dire that any additional money is needed. And all I'm asking is that we have the ability to bring our infrastructure back to a manageable state. And I had one select board member, previous select board member say to me, you know, Chris, I was part of the problem of not pushing to try to get more revenues into the infrastructure CIP. And that's this, you know, this problem didn't just occur yesterday. It's been building for a number of years. And then I find out that the governor is interested in cutting some of that revenue source out of the agency of transportation. I understand, and you could correct me if I'm wrong, that it was perhaps maybe some federal funding that was initially given to the states to try to deal with stormwater and whatnot. That seems to have dried up. So I guess the money is getting pulled out of that in the agency of transportation. You know, the governor has suggested paying people to try to move to Vermont. I won't call it a bribe, but it seems to be we're desperate to try to get more people to move into the state. But quite frankly, who wants to move in into a house that's falling down around again? Our infrastructure, you know, not only the cost of us trying to deal with this problem, not only impacts our budget, town's budget. I mean, our town's budget for just November and December was $20,000 over the salt budget. We're using more salt because the roads are so bad. We're using more salt because the snow just can't be cleaned off. So more salt has to be used in order to melt the snow that's in them low spots and in them wheel tracks. And so we're damaging the town's vehicles and also people's vehicles. And the impact of the environment to me is getting worse and worse and worse. At one of the board meetings I brought as part of the agenda, a discussion about salt and sand use. And my suggestion was if you don't think salt is causing any issues with the water problems, next time you go to drink a glass of water, let me pour some rock salt in it first, you'll see how you like it. You know, it's impacting the wildlife, it's impacting the microorganisms, their approach to streams. They don't have fish in the rocks anymore like we used to have. The basis species, you look along the road sides and the riverbanks are having a field day because the soils are being toxified with the amount of salt that's being dumped on the roads and all the other stuff that runs into the brooks and streams. No other native species can grow in that type of acidic soil, but the basis species sure can. And the solid residuals, just because winter's over and the roads are all dried up and the snow's all gone away, the solid residuals continue to run into the waters all year long because they're in that soil, saturated in the soil along the riverbanks. I don't want to slow down with short 17 hundredths of the wind, we want to make sure that it's happening. Yeah, so if we can improve these better roads, you know, it kind of reverses all of what I'm talking about. We can't keep kicking the cam because the longer we kick the cam, the worse the problem is. We could attach more costs to the property tax, but we're about maxed out and you know, it's either property tax or gas tax, picture poison, whatever you want. And like Judge Judy says, if you eat the steak, you gotta pay for it. So people coming in from out of state, big trucks that have heavy impacts on the roads, all those things go into deterioration of our roads, and we seriously gotta consider trying to do something to reverse this problem. Thank you. Okay, David Bronson, the board on select man, some person member, the board, down the board, and the select board adopted this. Town of Red Ward is against the governor's proposed fiscal year 2020 transportation budget decrease. Could you pull the mic closer to you, please? Is it close now? Yeah. The town of Red Ward is against the governor's proposed fiscal year 2020 transportation budget decrease of 6.6 million, about 9.5%. And funding for combined town highway programs, yet the state has recently increased the burden of towns with new highway requirements under the visible road general permit. The report's budget is based on continuing to receive at least about the same in state aid for class two and three highways. Report is small in the world town, about 1,200 people, has ridges and large culverts needing to be replaced at substantial cost. For example, the town is in the process of replacing a large metal culvert with a proposed 20 foot wide, 9 foot high, 43 foot long precast, concrete box culvert, one estimated cost of which is $500,000. This cost includes needing to meet state, federal and or federal requirements, such as for hydraulic analysis and environmental analysis, and includes sustainable engineering analysis. General state aid to town highways should increase at least as provided for Title 19, the SAA Subsection 306A on general state aid to town highways. Given the financial hardship for towns like Red Quarter to try to fund the great expense of replacing ridges and large culverts, the state should potentially increase of the usual $175,000 grant limit and the total amount of grant money available to towns for such projects. I appreciate it. General, three days. Thank you very much. You're after getting points. Representative McCormick, members of the House and Senate Transportation Committees, thank you so much for allowing the town officials to testify before this German session of the Transportation Committees. Vermont, as you know, is a Dylan rule state in which the power and the authority of the towns derive from what is given by the legislature. We who serve on our local boards do our best for our communities with what responsibility and resources you provide. We are your roots on the ground. The main responsibility of select boards has always been the memons of our community's transportation infrastructure. For many communities like my own, this represents over two thirds of our budget. The governor's transportation budget recognizes the cost of maintaining our state highways and interstates and has dramatically increased and his budget includes a $6 million expenditure in this regards. It's the right thing to do. Unfortunately, the governor's budget neglects the fact that 70% of the roads in Vermont are maintained by cities and towns. At a time of climate change, bringing wild swings of weather, far more ice storms and often multiple mud seasons, the governor's budget rather than recognizing that local roads need the same increase of the state-maintained highways, his proposal cuts the amount for the combined highway program at $6.6 million, leading towns to rely even more heavily on property taxes to further, to defer needed upgrades. We're here to seek regress. We urge you to acknowledge the poor conditions of many of our communities roads and the towns need to help address their needs. We ask that at a minimum, restore the amount provided in this year's budget and increase it by at least 2.8% to cover the cost. Further, we ask you to consider providing additional funds to local communities to allow us to address the many pressing infrastructure needs faced in maintaining over 13,000 miles of town maintained roads. My own community of Stratford with a population around 1,400 is a good example of the challenges we face. Stratford has 67 miles of highways, over 40 bridges to maintain. We have no state-maintained highways in our community and we rely heavily on paving and bridge grants and what is currently given from the gas tax to help meet our needs. I'm able to keep up with the cost of maintaining our paved roads. We have begun to grind them up and we have rebuilt over seven miles of paved roads and turned them back into gravel. A mere $1 million bond was taken out in 2012 to do the majority of this work and at this point, you're still falling behind and maintaining the remaining 11 miles of paved roads in our town. We desperately need more, not less help in keeping up in our end of the state's transportation system. Currently, the greatest amount of funds collected by the state gas tax, 12.1 cent, per gallon, goes into the general fund, not maintaining our highways. A 4% tax on the price per gallon goes into maintaining our highway infrastructure with another 2% fund transportation improvements. A final one cent per gallon goes to fund the cleanup of gasoline spills. Please, in your wisdom, consider adjusting either the current distribution so that more of the gas tax goes instead of to the general fund for its local infrastructure highway needs or if it is feasible from a legislative transport to add an increase to the gas tax that would go directly back to towns using the current distribution formula. This, thank you for this opportunity to speak before the joint session regarding the most basic pressing needs for the people of our state. Left unattended, it will only get worse and the cost in the long run will get higher. And finally, I'd like to say something nice about the state transportation department. They are incredibly helpful in working with the local towns. It is a partnership and we need each other and we're here for you. Give us the tools to do our job. Jeff Kay. Good morning. My name's Jeff Kay and I'm as of now the chairman of the public select board. And first off, I'd like to thank the transportation department. We do have one bridge, I don't believe you know which one we'll be working on this summer. And we've gone through a lot of prep work so that the project can be done. Pulling, in the village of Holy they also have replaced the water lines down the side and across Route 30. Route 30 is slated to be resurfaced next year. I have to ask you, is that still going to be, do you know? You know, everything that our book said, unless you heard it, it's slated to be in the book. Thank you, because I've been asked a lot if that is still going to happen because it's very difficult driving through the village of Holy and down Route 30. Our infrastructure, everybody's saying it's falling back, it's falling. With, we have another small problem other than Route 30, but with three amount of college announcing its closure this year, we're losing 150 jobs and 400 students. We are now actively trying to develop a plan to replace a business that we lost in Vermont. It is going to be extremely difficult to replace a new business to come into the state of Vermont with a highway system in this area for two, three years. So all of us down in the southern part of the state down that area are really hoping that the state will continue and just resurface Route 30 through the village of Holy from Route 4 all the way down. And that's all we have to say. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, thank you. Okay, Nick, thank you. Glover. Thank you. My name is Nick Necker, I'm from Glover. There's a W after most of my positions. The W stand for was, slightly was, EMT was, chairman of the planning commission was, BLCP and board was, et cetera, et cetera. But I have lived in the town of Glover for about 50 years now and it involves local government most of the time. When I first came here, the roads were marginal, but everybody knew they were. And so the fact that I had to park my truck beside the road and walk home through the three miles occasionally, the first winter I lived here, it didn't strike me as being anything unusual. If I really needed help, the farmer would come down the road with his tractor and pull me up to the hill and eventually the town truck would get there and clear the road. What has happened to the transportation system and the way that it's maintained in the state of Vermont, I think has been driven by what we now view ourselves as a tourist state. What we do on the roads is driven by the expectation that somebody can whip up here from a lower New England municipality among like Hartford or Boston or New York in a few hours, get to his condo in Stowe or somewhere and go skiing and leave late on the day on Sunday and get home with the expectation the roads are gonna be bare. When I first came here, there wasn't very much road salt used in the state of Vermont. We were like the countries in Europe which have ever did as much snow as we do, ever did as much terrible topography, small communities isolated off on the side, the roads remain snow covered in the winter. Every car's got a set of spot chains. Every car has winter snow tires and they usually have studs. They know that they're gonna have to slow down in the winter and the roads are curvy anyway in the summer they don't go 60 miles an hour. They know that it will take them some time to get there and if you're visiting Sweden or Norway or someplace in Scandinavia or elsewhere, up in the mountains in Germany or Italy, it's gonna take you some while to get there. Here, there's the expectation that people could come up here in all season tires and go where they wanna go and if they get in trouble, it's our fault. It's not their fault. Now I think we have to turn this around. I think you need to explain to people that they're coming to the state of Vermont we're not gonna keep putting these quasset chemicals on the road which destroy a brand new Vermont car in five years. Talk with any garage owner in the state he will tell you that there are people coming in there with cars that were bought five, six and seven years ago and they say, current inspection centers, I can't inspect your car. This is now a throw away. So this does, obviously that's more than disappointing that makes a lot of owners. Pretty angry. The guy who comes up four or five times in the winter with a car from Connecticut and drive home, jump in the car washing, he doesn't have a car that's gonna be dirty so bad. I live here and I rely, especially if I'm all over income for moderate and I'm relying on, I gotta buy a car in the secondary market that's been got 40, 80, 100,000 miles on it. Gee, it's a super route, it'll go anywhere. I buy it and now it's a $2,000 repair bill and now it's a $3,000 repair annual. Pretty soon I'm paying as much to keep that car on the road as if I were making payments on a brand new car. But I don't have any money to buy a brand new car so that's out of the question. So the new inspection protocols combined with our overuse of these caustic chemicals as the first gentleman told us, mean that the average and monitor, now I'm not quite sure what he's gonna do because he's gonna either run a car that can't be inspected and try to get away with it. There's no public transportation so he can't go anywhere anyway. Which is not the situation with the old people who can probably come to Vermont and the people from the other state who whip in, they're not paying any gas tax, they fill up their car south of here and they can drive all the way through the state and back again to just get 40 miles on the gallon. They're not buying any gas here unless they're about to fill up. The big trucks that take all that garbage to Coventry, they're not paying any gas tax either because they got 200, 200, 100 gallons south of Tennessee that's going all the way to Coventry, right at Route 14 and driving all the way back down and they're not buying any tax here either. So I personally have absolutely no pressure to a four cent or a 10 cent or a 20 cent gas tax because six years ago I was paying $4 a gallon. Now I'm paying $2.89. Exxon is still making $6 billion a quarter. They are paying any taxes here in Vermont. So that's one amount of gas tax I think is really nominal and as others will testify and have testified we need that money to rebuild our roads. We don't have it in the budget and every year it's a discussion, it shouldn't even be a discussion. You can't own equipment without putting money so if you have a business you don't buy a piece of equipment you can't maintain it. Now as a select one, what were we supposed to do? We're still required to maintain our third class roads for the travel of a standard pleasure car and all seasons of the year that's a definition I will never forget. Pretty hard to do that when there's no money in the budget. When the gravel that the sand that we used for our roads was when I was on the select board in the 2000s it was a $1.50 a yard. I'd keep you by it, roads and today we're in this state for $1.50 a yard and buy it a lot of places where we got it we can't get it anymore because active 50 permit won't allow us to get it there. In a few years we will not be able to get this material at the same time you're relying more and more on these very cost of chemicals. I think we need to reverse the trend. I think it's in this committee's responsibility to do something about it and I hope you will please cry. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, very late. What's what? Yes, good morning. Good morning. I've been 10 years as a town manager in West Trafford and the last six years I've been asking when the state's gonna be paving our class one roads. It's been 21 years ago, it was the last time they were paid and thank you for giving me an issue this summer. So thank you very much. 21 years was a really long time and towns are faced with how much do you maintain these roads and how much do you make so they're drivable so people don't complain but we also don't wanna fix them too much because the state won't pay them. So it's very difficult for towns to wait and keep asking for six years. We have 21 miles of roads to take care of ourselves and that is a huge burden but we find a way to do it with the state's highway help. Anything more than to give us with the gas tax would definitely be appreciated. We have an industrial park with a lot of heavy trucks and the road was very difficult for the businesses in that area. So we actually took a bond out and fixed that on ourselves. Huge, first small town to take on something like that but we knew it was our own but when it's a class one road and there's nothing you can do about it, it's very difficult. So anyway, thank you for getting us on the list finally. I just wanna put a quick thing on the US Route 4 bypass mile mark with 13, it's a twin bridges. Pretty much everyone knows it's a safety hazard. There's many accidents that happen on this area. It's a curve in the road. There's a ledge nearby so the sun doesn't get on that road at all so it's always very icy. We've been complaining until now in the state that something has to be done. Our fire department responds to the many accidents and they put the lights in jeopardy because it's a 60 mile on our highway and they're up there responding to an accident. So that's been very difficult for us. They addressed it last year by putting up some delineators which are small reflective. They turned blue when it's icy. And my dad had two teenage sons and I was pointing them out to my sons to say this is what they're supposed to be doing. This is supposed to alarm the average driver that it's icy to slow down. And they couldn't believe it, they're teenagers. They're like, what blue sticker? They couldn't see it. So they're very small. They don't really tell the driver to be alert to slow down and then go over the head is icy. So I do think that something needs to be done in that area. It is a U.S. route for the crash data. It's difficult because it's inaccurate on how the responders bring in the data. Sometimes it's U.S. route four, sometimes it's route four. Sometimes it's just not consistent on how it's reported. So I think that the crash data does show there is a problem there. I think when the skiers are coming in to go to Killington they don't know. People locally know that there's an issue but it's usually Friday nights when there's accidents. It's early in the morning when kids are going to Cowzaltons to school. And again, I think it's something that just needs to be aware of. And we've been asking for years now and nothing's really been done. I think flashing light perhaps or something in this little thing. Thank you. That is done. Good morning. Thank you for your self-assertion. My name is Tad. Can we use that from the town of Eroge? Try to get right. It's hard to do that. No, sir, you're living just fine. It won't be the first one that we know of. I'm not sure of you. No, it's just fine. Start off with a good note. Your district AOC divisions are fabulous. And that leaves me to a rumor, and I think I heard it again today, that there might be some thought to consolidate the districts. Make sense. Here we are asking for additional funding. On your side, you may be looking to see how you may reduce certain expenses and reallocate different funds. However, coming from a town as beautiful as Barrow, our resources are limited. Just as they are in many of the quarters of E5 and East of West from there on other roads. And that said, we were lying. I asked to be very resourceful with the funds of limited tax dollars. So having the amazing people from the AFP district just up in St. Jay, or when I was in Hartford just right in town, if they were consolidated, I could be selfish and say, make sure it's in St. Jay. Might be easier. But nevertheless, the services needed would be that twofold of the towns that need those services. Let's say we resourceful with this VLCP of your regional commissions. We are very amazing groups that I put the AFP in, relating that same group. We don't have a highway apart. We don't have a public work site. We have means to contract the services. So in essence, you rely heavily on it. You may be a two-edged sword in respect of having to reduce expenses. But I remember last year being in the same room and talking about the level of service that was of the expectation of every ERT employee. And I'll try to exemplify what I would think would mean to my expectations as a town administrator. Thank you. OK, Russell Hodgkin. Good. Great. I'm Russell Hodgkin, town of Westminster. I'm the town manager and road commissioner. I'd like to talk to you about X-64 and what the burden that's placed on us. We're a population of about 3,200 people. We have 88 miles of burden, 53 of which are dirt. We just got our road inventory mappings. And we have hundreds of segments that need to be looked at. The effort to get in our area is deceased. It's charged and come by. We as a town that have been proactive in changing even our inventory of equipment. We've gotten an excavator. We've gotten 10 wheelers versus the single axles, trying to get aggregate further away and sand. But the stone is our biggest concern. With a small road crew, this extra work is very much of a public concern. We still have to maintain public safety and do the maintenance of our regular work, plus added work from X-64. We're very concerned about this. We've had two years to attempt to get a handle on it. And we're not winning. The deadline is too close for us. Again, being active and proactive with our development. Our small road crew of between five and six employees isn't going to make it. I would hope that you look at this, giving the towns a little more leeway and doing the best they can. And not having a strict deadline of it has to be done by now. As long as we're giving it a great effort, I would hope that would be good enough. Thank you. Steve Baker, Kirby. Hi, Steve Baker from the town of Kirby. It's a very small world town in the Northeast Kingdom. And the reason I'm here is to address three issues. Your water quality control has become a very big problem for us because of the requirement of the stone line ditching and stormwater runoff from phosphorus, which we now only have two farms left. I think the biggest problem the state observed because we had 26 miles of dirt road in a very low small section of favor, which is very true. When I traveled to other towns, such as Lindenville, St. John'sburg, the excessive use of road salt is off the scale. They're salting and salting and salting. I think the AOT uses too much also, but less than the towns. At $109 a ton, this becomes an issue of instant gratification versus highway safety. Bigger roads don't matter. Safe roads better. In conjunction with that, I'd like to say that perhaps the state would look into something that all the legal states would look for. Mandatory snow tires. We mandate everything. I'm not a mandate person, but it is what it is. Riding around with what I call all states that slide around us is absurd. It's just absurd out of control. Accident after accident is caused by the slush. You can't steer, you can't stub, you can't start up. You spit. This is why accidents happen other than the obvious factors of speed now and all. I see no reason why this can't happen. I've heard people say they can't afford a lot of snow tires. It's not true. They've got a bunch of beers, cigarettes, pizza, and they don't. They have money for snow tires. It's just not a priority. I think at this stage of the game, when you look at roads like Route 15, there will be more still. Hard wind, the road is split wind plus. The salt goes down, the thaw's the ground up, heaves the road. It's a vicious circle as it keeps going on and on. The concrete, base of roads like Route 5, goes down through the cracks, eats up the concrete, heaves the road. This is ridiculous. It's completely out of control. The amount of salt is being used at $109 a day. The sand is about $6, $7. 10 times the traction, one-tenth of the problems. I know these issues with certain towns can store water runoff in the drains. They don't want sand. Most of those towns have a back truck that can clean them up. Very small issue in the big picture. But just to keep dumping salt and dumping salt and dumping salt, it's so absurd. And this is in the brine. It's a speciality trail in places like 89. It just has a few plows straight that's handed. With snow tires, I had no problems whatsoever. Nobody else did. And as far as the stormwater runoff, you can see we're still in the streams and rivers. New York State has already had a huge amount of problems with road salt as a result of that. It's got to come to a head and just people are going to have to bite the bullet and have to slow down by snow tires. It's just one of those things. It's too many people per square mile in certain areas have created more and more access because they won't be 10 minutes earlier. I think part of the problem could resolve by less salt, more sand, and mandatory snow tires. But what's more, people could hear your message because they can't criticize and not put enough salt. I know I know. I really don't know that. So bear in mind, my observation, and I drive the big track over the road, I know exactly what goes on. You can't steer, you can't stow. It doesn't work as a fantasy. That you go commons at it. That's correct. And I believe that instant gratification is the driving force to get out of staters, to go and ski over some water or whatever. And we could have perhaps a size of it. I do one for two. Snow tires are required. You can't force it. It's not a lot. There's certainly a lot for residents. It's good in Canada, and it works. I see no reason why this couldn't happen. Thank you for your time. Thank you for coming over. Jeff Lindbergh brought one. You're not a good carpenter, so we'll break it. I don't know. I don't know if you're right, Dr. Good morning. Jeff Lindbergh, Commissioner of Public Works in the city, brought one. And then I'm more in multiple hats over the years. At least the chairs in the committee are well aware of that. And several other members. I would also like to add my words of thanks and praise to the agency of transportation. I'm going to have some complaints coming up, but I want to start from a point of view. You could add that right here. No, I need to start with this. We have had multiple major bridge replacements and thank this committee and the legislature, but also the agency have done some marvelous work in our city before longstanding infrastructure problems that have been in our being addressed, our transportation infrastructure. And there's absolutely no way that we could undertake those things with local resources on our own. And the quality of the work that they've done, there's little issues here and there, all in all the quality of work that's been done by the agency and by the contractors has been exemplary. So I want to start by recognizing that. I also want to recognize and give you a specific example of an area where the agency is making difficult decisions relative to the limited resources they have available to them and those decisions have a direct impact on property taxes and local infrastructure. In particular, it has already been mentioned, the Class 1 roads, Class 1 roads are basically state highways, US highways and travel through cities or incorporated villages. And there is a program to pay Class 1 roads with relatively small, I think it's a 10 or 20% bonus share. It's an excellent program, but over the years, the amount of money available and the demand for those dollars have gone somewhat in opposite directions. And as a result, the schedule, the cycle for the Class 1 roads paving program is now 15 years. These roads are some of the most heavily traveled. They're in urban centers. They take some of the heaviest truck traffic. There's a lot of traffic, because these are in villages and cities that tend to take quite a bit of traffic in anybody who's ever traveled to the city of Brooklyn and knows a little bit about our traffic lights on Good 7. And as a result, there's a lot of stop and go there, more stop and go sometimes. But that has an effect on the pavement. And so we've had to spend significant sums of money, large percentage of our limited local budget in order to patch Class 1 roads together to try to get to that 15-year cycle. I understand the reason why the agency is doing that and the limitations they're working with and anything that you can do to help them so that they can do perhaps a more appropriate job of helping us. Seven to 10 years is the most you can ever expect to get out of even a first-class project on one of those roads. 10 years is really stretching it. But 15 years just is never gonna work for me. The only other thing I'd like to speak to, and this is mostly just as a heads up, this is gonna sound right out of left field because most of you probably never heard this before. The city of Brooklyn has attempted for the last two years diligently to negotiate with the agency of transportation and also from our railway, who own and lease and operate the rail system within the city. And there are 24 crossings within the city and the town of Brooklyn, where railroads cross our streets. In fact, the rail yard is principally within the city. Oh, rail crossings and everything in the city are essentially within the rail yard itself. So there's a lot of activity there. We have water and wastewater infrastructure that needs to travel, it currently does, underneath these crossings. Historically, it's been there for 100 years plus. And a recent project that we are nearing completion of at this point to solve a very important public safety and health challenge in part of our community has been held up by the requirement that the agency and the railroad have placed on us and are placing on every other municipality where this comes up for what's called master of the license agreement. The concept of the master of the license agreement is perfectly reasonable and appropriate. However, there are specific terms that we have been unable to negotiate to a point where they're satisfactory to the city that are being insisted upon and that has resulted in the city filing lawsuit of the Superior Court against both the railroad and D-Trans to try to get some determination from the court, whether or not these entities even have the authority to require a license for us to use our own roads for municipal utility purposes. Historically, it's very, very costly and successfully with both the railroad and with D-Trans and we look forward to doing that in the future. Unfortunately, we've run into this thumbing level. Since this is something that is being pursued everywhere, there is a similar project throughout the state and there's an enormous amount of infrastructure, water and sewer infrastructure work being done and there'll be more in the future. This is something that should be brought to your attention, I believe. I do understand that representative Fading from the city of Baltimore will be reintroducing a bill that will address at least some of the concerns here and I would be surprised if that bill came before you. I'd love to come back and talk about the specifics of that whenever that happens if it does. Finally, I'd just like to let you know what the terms are that we find offensive and I'll decide three. First of all, we would have to agree and we've attempted for two years to negotiate acceptable terms. We haven't been able to do that. We would have to accept liability associated with any losses of loss of life, loss of business, loss of property as a result of an event at a crossing that was related to water, sewer infrastructure underneath that crossing and we have to assume that responsibility even in the instance when the event is caused by the negligence of the railroad or its employees or V-trans for its employees and we object to that. The second one which is not a significant is in the event that we signed this agreement and the railroad or V-trans determined that we are not living up to the terms of the agreement they could file a lawsuit and try to enforce the agreement which is perfectly fine. What is unacceptable is that even if the city prevails and as a result of that lawsuit we still are responsible for the legal fees and costs associated with the railroad or the V-trans bringing the lawsuit, we object to that. Finally and from my personal perspective perhaps my greatest objection is with the requirement that the city would have to get permission from the Secretary of Transportation and the President of the railroad before any future infrastructure projects, replacement, extension, upgrade, maintenance, anything at any railroad crossing within the city. Under this agreement, we'd have to get their permission to do that and the agreement also states that we by signing the agreement waive all rights to challenge or appeal any adverse decision that the railroad or V-trans would make. As the Commissioner of Public Works and the person most directly responsible for the integrity and the safety and the adequacy of our drinking water system and also environmental protection associated with our wastewater system and human health protection, it would be I think unforgivable for me to ever agree to give that kind of authority over the future disposition of those critical environmental and public health and safety infrastructures to entities that quite frankly have no interest and really be cared less about whether or not that system is operating as it must and as it should. We simply can never accept that term. So it's in the courts, we'll see what the courts decide. There's a bill coming, you may see that bill, but I wanted to at least allow you to know that this is an issue and it's an issue across the state. It is our understanding, although I haven't received the list, that at least a few dozen municipalities have already signed these agreements and I can assure you that the city brought them along unless we're ordered to buy more. Thank you very much. Thank you, appreciate it. We'll come back in the morning after I sign my contract. Bill Shephol and the municipal manager at Waterbury and I won't take much of your time at this point because I really can't add too much. And so I'll let them be stated by colleagues and friends. Keeping with Commissioner Whiteburger, I do want to acknowledge to the committee that we appreciate so much of the work that has been done in the Canadian community over the past seven or eight years in particular since the flood. These are not flood-related projects. The state was quite helpful in our recovery from the flood, but since 2011, the state has rebuilt room two from Waterbury to Boulder last year and the year before have rebuilt room 100 from Waterbury to Stilwell, which we have this year. Primary play improvements are part of that project. The Roundabout and Interstate bridges, the Roundabout is fabulous. It works tremendously and has saved many, many, many gallons of gasoline, which we don't have the tax, but because the money has been saved by not sitting there at that intersection. Main Street is going to be reconstructed over the next three construction seasons. People will still come to Waterbury and pay for nicer businesses. But that's a project, you know, when I was hired in 1988, I interviewed for the job in Waterbury in November of 1987. And the chairperson of this Lightwater at the time who unfortunately is no longer with us told me that Main Street was going to be reconstructed in the early 1990s and that there's a cooperative agreement between Waterbury, the agency of transportation and the Federal Highway Administration that was signed in 1992 that spelled out the funding formula for this project. I've been in the Department of Waterbury for 31 years now and the project's started this April. So we've waited a long time for this project, but we do appreciate the fact that it's going to be done retransstaking the lead on this project in terms of the oversight. You're doing a wonderful job. We have nothing but good things to say about those folks. With regard to the particular issues that we're talking about today, we understand everybody has tight budgets. I can't remember what I was told but it was paper yesterday, I'll get the year wrong, but I believe it was 2009, Waterbury's Highway budget was about $980,000 and we were receiving $106,000 of general stay-dating from the state, not British money, not paid, we might have adjusted general stay-dating to the highways, $106,000. Our highway budget is over $1.6 million now and we're receiving $109,000 from the state and general high-weighting, you know, the increase and not that quick. I know our increase is about 60% all the time and the general highway to the towns has gone up just single-digit percentage-wise. You know, much of our increase in our budget is catch-up work, so we now set aside $535,000 a year for our highway budget, so including that $1.6 million is $535,000 that's going into capital budgets, that will pay for paving for bridges and culverts and for highway equipment. Some years we spend much more than that on all those three items and some years we spend a little less than that, but it is safe to say that the general aid to the highways is not keeping up at all with the cost of doing business or the cost of inflation. I think that perhaps my friend from Clutter, I can't say it better than he did if there's a time to raise a gas tax to provide orbit to the state that can be shared to the municipalities, one better time than now. No one likes to pay taxes. No one likes to have to pay gas taxes or property taxes. We have raised the property tax in our community. It's going up about 13% this year and not all of that is transportation-related, but there's a lot of factors to that. We tried hard over the years that we were recovering from the flood to keep the tax rate as level as we could just because the community had other things to spend their money on to recover, but at some point when you pay your reserve money every year that's left over from the budget and use it to keep taxes at a level of rate, when those reserves start to use it up, well, we only have one place to go to get that additional money. So we're raising property taxes. I did a quick calculation and I tried to be very conservative. I said, you know, somebody in the Northeast Kingdom like Nick who lives there and maybe they have to travel a long distance to go to work. They traveled 22,000 miles a year in an old pickup truck that gets 12 miles a gallon. You know, they're going to pay up $75 for a gas tax. And if that gas tax, that four cents, can be used and shared with municipalities to increase our generated highways from that over 9,000 maybe to 30,000, 40,000. I mean, the reporter asked me the other day, he said, well, you can't fix all your roads for $30,000 more of general state aid. And I said, no, we can't. But if we get that $30,000 more over the course of five or six years, you know, that's $150,000. And I've got a bridge in my budget this year that we're going to be doing major repairs to. It's not a rebuilt bridge, but it's major repairs to a bridge. That's a $138,000 project. So in that time, we can get another bridge repair so we don't have to completely replace it, you know, in five years, we're going to extend the life. So I think with gas prices where they are today, if you look at them in terms of real dollars, I don't think we're spending any more on gasoline than we spent in the 1980s. And the folks who have talked about this issue have suggested that the best place to put it is into this general aid to highways. As opposed to putting it into a bridge grant program or a paid grant program, the town managers, the select board chairpersons and the highway road commissioners, they know what needs to be done in their communities, the rest of the needs that are important to their communities. I think there can be an easy way to make sure that this money, if it is passed along from the state to the towns, isn't just used to reduce or lower or maybe stabilize property taxes. There's a simple way that I think we can all think about and come up with saying, you know, how did you get to use this money? I would not ask this money to be sent to the towns so that the town could spend the same as they did last year and just lower the taxes for it. Anyway, the details of that could be worked out at any time in the near future. I will just leave you with my thanks. The one last thing on the consolidation of the district transportation offices. I still remember Jim Bassett who was the district transportation officer of the United Kingdom when I was the manager of Ida's Park 35 years ago. I remember him because I had a lot of interaction with him. I bet that he helped us with our projects. I moved to Waterbury in the late 80s and there was a gentleman by the name of Lambert who was the district manager here in the Central Park area. Our district has been consolidated. That was a consolidation a couple of years ago and now our district is in the Colchester and nothing against having a district office that's in the Colchester. But the more that you consolidate, there are savings that can be had, I'm sure. But what you lose is the people in the districts are familiar with the issues that you're talking about. If you consolidate to the point that we heard about eventually this morning through the districts of the whole state, having that on the ground knowledge of what is needed is going to be more difficult. So I would caution against that. I don't know enough about it at this stage. I'm sure you don't know anything about it at this point. Okay, well, thank you. I'm sorry about it. I'm sorry about it. Thank you very much. Okay, we'll go back to the time that you said you left. So I'm going to try to run it closer to this point. Jack, would you like to hear? My name is Jack Hagan-Karth, I'm in the town of Tondon as a town manager, formerly the director of pilot facilities. I wanted to bring to the attention of this committee is the idea of sustainability and the structure of planning for the factory. One of the things that I think the program has set up for funding is basically looking at what they consider to be the most urgent project needs of which projects have the biggest problem and fund that amount of money for a year. However, if you look at the program that the AOT has, it actually outlines what the replacement plan should be for their roads. It's an eight to 12-year cycle for all state roads with a 40-year reconstruct program. We're not anywhere near that at this stage. I mean, we're not even in the fall part. And the thing that happens when you allow that type of funding mechanism to go forward is the projects get more involved, way more expensive, and to create an ending that's gonna be very ugly. So we're gonna get to a point where we can't fund. We have developed a sustainable funding program for Capital. I think you'll find it very surprising if the state were to undertake that type of process to determine what should we be funding if we were gonna do this correctly? What should the funding level be for state infrastructure? And once the program is in place, because we have it set up with inflation factors and things of that nature, if you delay a project one year and you take that funding out for that year, five years out, the whole program goes negative, it's not, I was very surprised at how quickly things fall apart. And it's an exponential loss of value and an area where you can't catch up. So what I wanted to hopefully impart to you was to really start to look at what we need to be doing for infrastructure funding. While we have a gas tax, only a portion of it actually goes two highways. So I echo the sentiments of my and the prior speakers in that we need to take a higher percentage of that gas tax. I mean, technically, if I could have it my way, it should all go to infrastructure spending because that's what it's for, is to replace the people who are paying the tax or using the roads and deteriorating the roads. And then on top of that, an increase in the gas tax, I'm not, nobody wants to have a new tax, I'm not opposed to the concept as long as the money's actually gonna go to infrastructure and highway funding. I mean, if we're gonna allow this to be going to the general fund and start funding other projects because it's what's happened with funding related to star water treatment, that money has now been funneled from paving and projects in the infrastructure world to stormwater to taking more programs out of the same funding pot. And I think, yeah, for a little bit, not going different to that hot anymore because it's pretty close to dry as far as I can tell. Thank you very much, appreciate it. Okay, James and Davis, I'll start with you. Good morning, man. Good morning, how are you? Good morning, everybody. You got a chair for me? You got a next book for me. I do, man. I'm not both an old thing to worry about. I've thought about it though. With respect to the members of the committee, thank you for having me today. So, I'm here today, I just want to first acknowledge that like my peers and my colleagues that came before me, I also share the love of my community. I love my town, town of Hartford and just what it's done and that's provided for me. Hence the reason that I'm not in property law right now as I should be. And I miss contract law classes this morning as well. So hopefully the cameras won't give me too much trouble. But that's out of the way. So the town of Hartford, for those who may not know, from my belief, I could be wrong, but my belief, we have the highest miles of paved road at 140 miles, which is enormous. 10 miles of those, we also have 10 miles on the sidewalk as well. So when we speak as a slight board of doing infrastructure work or doing any type of work with the roads, no matter what the project is, it usually turns out to be a happy sum of money. So everything that happens in this committee and the decisions that are made in this room have a very specific impact on our community. So I just want to take time to thank you for the work that you do. We have dealt with you guys quite frequently, just in my short time of being on the sled board in the town of Hartford. We've had the Creechy Main Street Colbert work being done. We've had a group five. We've just got a notice about a ride-away that's been in stages for I think over 10 years. The Hartford Village Bridge is something that we are going to be getting a presentation on very soon. And we've got excellent work at the Creechy Courage Bridge as well, which is, we are still appreciative of that and getting some positive feedback from our citizens about the work there. So I know all the work that can be done in this room, great work that can be done in this room. So with that said, there are a couple things I wanted to say and leave you with some food for thought when I wake up. So lack of accessible transportation, it's huge. And what that does, that leads to missed healthcare appointments, leads to social isolation of our elder population. And that's something that we do not want to happen. Monetary assistance is needed from the state and it's critical, but they tell the ability to offer a safe, affordable, and efficient transportation. We need this money in order to provide choices for people. The increase in pedestrian, bicyclists, and disabilities, also a major factor in this. And we would like to keep all of our citizens, especially those with disabilities, and those who need accessible transportation at the front of our minds to make sure that they have the adequate resources they need to get to the places that would help them and their health. So I have a couple questions to kind of give you guys just proof of thought. So my question to you is, what is sustainable transportation in a rural area look like? What does that actually look like on paper? How can that be emphasized over time? The second thing is with the state's goal of reduction of fossil fuels, and the consumption of fossil fuels, in regards to the gas tax, is the state preparing a way to meet the needs of infrastructure with the increase of sustainable energy in terms of vehicles. So obviously with electric vehicles and vehicle of the low nature becoming more accessible and more used on a regular basis that will obviously lower the amount that the tax revenue's gonna generate. And so at some point, there's gonna have to be a give and take in terms of when that tax revenue is kind of hidden ceiling or when you kind of squeeze the last dollar out of it in terms of comparing that money that we can have brought in now not being there because there are an increase of electric cars and other sustainable vehicles will be in the same transportation sphere. So in closing, thank you for your time. Just wanna ask for additional funds for the roads, additional funds for accessible transportation and the funds that we do get from the tax, the gas tax are now hope would go more towards infrastructure, transportation and less towards the general fund overall. So thank you for your time. Great that you say all that you do. Thank you. For transportation. Yes, sir. For accessible transportation, is that transit? Yeah, yes, transit and specifically speak about transportation that allows accessibility in terms of disabilities and finding a way to make me have some type of public transportation that allows those who have disabilities to have an easier time getting around. For research that I did prior to being here today, 65% of elderly people have at some point one way or another either had to reschedule or miss their purpose overall because they don't have the simple needs of transportation. They usually rely and lend on their family members and not all the time is that something that could be added. Thank you. Thank you. Stuart Rogers. Thank you. Good morning, thank you. My name is Stuart Rogers. I'm the current slack board chair for the Delta Center. I would like to reiterate or follow up on concerns of cost for infrastructure. We currently are on the western side of our town in group 132, which is one of the very few state designated highways that is not maintained by the state. And on the eastern end, it starts in Norwich, goes through Stratford in Sherrod and the four towns of their respective sections maintain that road. It's a cost in that infrastructure of those upgrades in that meeting that realistically each of us can not afford to do. Conversations that I've had with the transit, one of the concerns that they have in this is they don't have a facility close enough to be able to maintain it, such as plowing, et cetera. I would offer a thought of a hybrid approach that the state could take over that route so that it is, as far as upgrading and paving, that the valley would maintain any of the plowing and roadside going. We currently have the facility, we have the equipment, we have the personnel to do that. We don't have the funds and ability to be able to upgrade and pave that road. And it's been at the best points and areas. It's been shimmed and top-coded, but that's become just a very expensive mandate approach. We have, you know, Africa has 87 miles of town road, so our costs are spread wide over all of that. But this is a roadway that's also listed as a major collector. It's also listed as a FEMA evacuation route. So it's a debt. That would be a cost that would be helpful if the state could consider it at that point. And again, it would be an interesting discussion to have if we could do so with a hybrid approach. Have the towns plowed up as we have been. Do the roadside going, we just cannot do the other aspects of it. As an added note, yes, VTRA has been very helpful, especially district board, in work that we have been doing in town. They've been a big help in what we went through in the process of rebuilding from the July 1st to the 17th storm, which we incurred over four and a half million dollars damage to our town roads. Roads that would not exist after that. And they've been a great help. We'd like to say appreciation for that. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, last but not least, Cheryl Stafford. So for the next few years, it's you who probably come to give us 20 back. That's right. Okay, so that's a good way to start off. Thanks for having fun with the snow. The snow is great. I really want to thank you folks for your, we've had so much. Challenging the snow one was getting up the mountain road and last year the state stepped up and paved the mountain road. We received a lot of complaints about its conditions. But then, and this year, Remount Transit was talking about pulling our public transit and our service that goes from the downtown to the hotels and up and down the mountain road to, so we don't have to build as many parking lots and widen our roads and continue to do so. And BTrans very effectively worked with us to step in and ensure that didn't happen. So that's very much appreciated. We've had some great partnerships with BTrans. I think Joe Flynn and his team are doing a good job. That being said, you know, I often reflect my try not to be passive aggressive. So I'll tell you some broader thoughts. My father always told me that in perspective there was a function of position. Where you sit is where you stand. I had an interface with the legislature last year which was pretty expensive. She said, all you folks do at the LCT is come and beg for money. And I think said, I'm a silent and I've tried to learn not to do that. Sometimes for better or worse. But the reality is, is without a homeroom state or self-governance, we don't have the ability to raise revenues other than what you allow. We're essentially left with a property tax. And that is just a stretch very thin. And very burdensome to folks. And when we started to hear about cuts to aid to municipalities, you know, that's troublesome. As folks said, where the government's the road. And we have a lot of them to take care of. We depend on you folks. You have broad-based tax and authority and federal aid, the gas tax. And we're dependent on you to redistribute it and or allow us to have more tax and authority locally so we can pick up some of that load on our own. And, but that's the reality. We're not beggars, we're partners. And we can work effectively together. You know, and sometimes I still see glimmers of the state. And I can see in the type of budget and times how that could occur about the state budget. We brought the state budget online. And my agency, you folks have a much heavier burden than we do, you have to look at the whole state. More subdivisions of that state. And we're part of that equation. So I encourage you as the people's house to keep looking along those lines. And I have great confidence when I hear someone's fire spirit here, that they can't help but be connected to the folks and where it matters. And I would encourage that to continue to occur. And, you know, Bill mentioned a little bit as it comes to your play about the district transportation administrators. And, you know, we talk about efficiencies and everyone's trying to set a dollar. I get that. I remember it was 30 years ago when I started as a hardware town manager. And I knew the district transportation administrator. I remember his name to this day was Dick Hodgstein. I had someone come up, I think, from St. Almond's last place he shoveled us. And I welcomed him to the stove and tried to show him around. So he could see the lay of the land, but the acknowledging stretch so thin. I don't know if he's ever been there. I told him he's welcome to come back skiing. No fault of his own. So, you know, from my own point of view, I realize how it's a kind of activity. And they do have a lot of municipalities and we can't make their reach so broad that people aren't able to know each other and the issues that are on the data facetime. And that being said, I thank you for your time. I appreciate your good work on behalf of the people of the state. Thank you, I appreciate it. Just a couple of things for clarification. Let's write this down. In general, a couple of things. One, I've heard some remarks about the money going to the general fund or one of the few states that have its transportation fund and the general fund separated. So we do protect our transportation fund. The second thing is the federal government has nothing very active to produce a bill. So we're getting very small increases. As we've said here today, they have to raise the gas tax in 1993. Just take that on the past level. So we're waiting for some sort of incentive from the federal government to help us out a little more so we can pass on to Obama. One of the last things we want to do, I think, is hurt the town. That's why so far we haven't had a complete discussion with the agency, but we have protection here. We have programs downtown Highway 8 structured in the class of Highway 8. So those are protected, but we will have a discussion with the agency about the other, the store water, the big man, and the gas tax. That's all for the discussion. So with that, I'll give you a little bit of a shout out. Just to thank everyone for coming. I think the testimony was just excellent. Extremely informative. I'm going to try to grab four or five of them before we need some room ahead now. Thank you very much for coming.