 Hold on, Chris. I need to start recording. Recording in progress. Thank you. All right. So my name is Chris Shaw. I'm going to be filling in for Catherine McMaines this evening, and Catherine is traveling. So we hope she's having fun and good weather. Welcome. We're going to call the Wednesday, October 19th Board meeting for the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission to order. First item would be any changes to the agenda. And I will call to your attention, the consent agenda that if there was any issues with the consent agenda, that if you wanted to discuss it further, that we would need to change it from the consent agenda and put it in the regular agenda. Is that correct, Charlie? Yeah. And just not a real change of the agenda, but I'm just wondering is kind of under attendance here if we can acknowledge some new members that are here for the first time. Oh, yes, very good. I think Benjamin Bornstein is the new representative from Westford. Welcome, Ben. Well, just a point of information. I've been asked to attend the meeting today and I understand there is a more formal process and I'm all about process. So while I'm here taking diligent notes and done some background reading prior to the meeting and on time, I wanted to be clear that I will not be voting tonight because until the select board makes its official vote on the record. Well, thank you. So you're the provisional representative. We will take your vote, but we will determine whether it needs to be counted later. Thank you and welcome, Charlie. Other new names, I know we had, but I'll let you rattle them off. Yeah. So Chuck Wilton is a new representative from the town of Milton. So welcome, Chuck. Thank you for joining us. Thank you very much. My camera doesn't seem to be working right. I'm I hope you're getting the audio. My still picture over there. But yes, appointed by the town. A little bit of background in this as I was the chairman of the board of the Rutland redevelopment authority for about six or seven years when we lived there. So like to jump right in and and get rolling on on things. So thank you. Thank you. And I think other new member, Bruce Wilson. I think this is your second meeting, though, Bruce, I think. And and Brad, you're you're not new, right? Well, I'm not really new. No, Kirk couldn't make it tonight. So I'm filling in here. We're still in the process to of I guess, technically, I'm still an alternate, I believe. And and so Kirk can be here tonight. So I'm here. Great. Nice to see you. And I guess the other new face here, Chris, is Mackenzie Spear, who is new on our staff in our business office. So if you can welcome Mackenzie, that's great. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Thank you. Well, great. Thank you. Welcome all and thank you for being here on time. So let's get moving. As I explained, we do have a consent agenda tonight. There were two items on it. I'm asking now for any changes to the agenda. As I explained, if the items on the consent agenda require discussion, we would have to move it to the regular agenda. Otherwise, we'll just keep moving. So any changes, any alterations, any deletions? Hearing none, I'll move the consent agenda. Well, we haven't gotten there, but we're going to wait for. Thank you, John. We're going to we're going to go to the public comment item number two for items that are not on the agenda. Is anyone here from the public who would like to speak to us? Again, hearing none, we're going to move on to staff introductions. This is something new. The executive committee talked about with Charlie last week, two weeks ago in what we had seen in our training just this past hour, we got a precie of the fact that they're about 19 and a half full time equivalents working here at CCRPC. And we also got a look at our website when we see 16 faces. So we asked, could we see or hear a little bit more about these faces because it's great when people come to us and they present and we're able to see like Christine Ford doing a presentation as I think you're on for us tonight on something. But we'd also like to get to know you as an individual. So I'll let you introduce Charlie. And then I think Dan is on tap for just a quick snippet for the two staff. Yeah, so we kind of took that direction, Chris, from the executive committee. And so probably have two or three staff present you just a couple of minutes. You can see we just kind of budgeted eight minutes for this in the agenda. But really just to say hello and you probably get more than you want for me. So I'm going to try to keep it short. I hope you have some sense of executive director responsibilities. But you know, in the bylaws, I have the responsibility for making sure we're complying with all the rules and regulations and responsibility for staff and a bunch of other things that I'm not going to list off. But so that's my role. And then we thought I'd give a little bit of background. So I've been here almost 15 years. And before that, I worked for a county in the state of Delaware. Spent about 20 years in the Philadelphia area, but worked for a county there in charge of all their land use functions. So planning, stormwater, building codes and property assessment. And we're going way back in my career. I've worked in a couple other MPOs before moving up here and another county in New Jersey also. So just a little bit of background on what I do. And then I'll turn it over to Dan to give you some of the same. And thanks, Dan Albrecht, senior planner at RPC. Been here in 2003, since 2003. And I'll just sort of start in the back and move to the forward. So from Bethesda, Maryland, grew up in the Burbs. Masters from Haverford College, Masters in Anthropology from McGill. And my first career was in Alaska, working as an executive director of a Alaska Native Fisherman's Association, so salmon marketing and economic development, things like that. Moved here with my then wife in 2001, going back to school. Masters from UVM and natural resource planning. Worked for the town of Charlotte for one year, as they're what they used to call their select board assistant. Now they have the town administrator role, hired here in 2003 with RPC and initially did a lot of the work that Jim Brangan, Pam's husband, you may have remembered long ago and did a lot of the scenic byway work. And I'll just to just briefly share screen here, just to show you like what I work on now. I do mostly water quality stuff. So we have our committees. We have the Clean Water Advisory Committee, that one meets pretty regularly. Clean Water Advisory Committee is the broad committee, like the PAC and the TAC. We work on the basin plans and anything water quality we're kind of replaced. And then we also have what's called MS4 subcommittee, all the stormwater permit tea towns, our nine towns, plus the airport, UVM and VTrans. And the other project that I work on with Taylor is the Brownfields work. You can see there's the Lake Champlain Byway work, which is kind of dormant now. The Brownfields work, we meet, we give out funds. We, excuse me, we have engineers that we hire to do projects on behalf of environmental site investigations. And then going forward, a lot of my time is gonna be on this Clean Water Service Provider. We are Northern Lake Champlain Clean Water Service Provider. So it's not the Winooski and not the LaMoyle. It's all the stuff in between and not the Masciscoy. So a lot of our towns in Chinden County, the islands and then St. Albans, Georgia, Swanton. And we have a council that we work with Basin Water Quality Council. And it's got people from watershed groups, municipalities, the conservation district, RPCs and land conservation. So that's gonna be a lot of my work going forward and looking to continue to keep working for the commission and enjoy it very much. That's it. Well, thank you both. Anybody have any quick questions for Dan or Charlie on their responsibilities? I might offer Dan, the MS-4, you mentioned there were nine towns out of all the towns in our county are not all of them on MS-4 towns? Correct, it's just pretty much our urban and suburban towns that have what's called a municipal separate storm sewer system, which means that they have a dedicated storm system. And it also is somewhat of a population trigger that gets a Milton gets in because of the population but the other towns outside of those areas are not MS-4 permittees. So they're sort of not required to do as much as the MS-4 ones are. Correct, all our towns have to do that thing called the municipal roads general permit taking care of the gravel roads, the dirt roads, but the MS-4 permittees have to have an overall phosphorus control plan for all their impervious services owned by the municipality. And eight of the nine towns have flow restoration plans for those impaired streams. You hear about them in the news, Sunderland, Potash, Centennial, Engelsby, Monroe, Indian, et cetera. Okay, well, great. And please define for those of us who are new what a Brownfield is quickly. A Brownfield is a property that has real or perceived contamination. So this is maybe of a leftover gas station or something like that. That's the classic one, but a lot of banks as well as developers or most banks won't lend money now with what's called a phase one environmental site assessment, which is to get a consultant out there looking at a property history because nobody wants to buy a property that might have been contaminated. So to break that chain of liability, you wanna get one of those phase one environmental site assessments done. And then that may say, yeah, there was a gas station two doors down the road or dry cleaner or maybe there was a history at the property. Get a phase two and do actual sampling in the ground. So we've had the benefit of periodic grants from EPA to fund, we have six firms on retainer to do that kind of work. And we worked a lot in Burlington-Wanuski but a lot in Westford, Richmond, Colchester, Milton, Shelbur in South Burlington. So a lot of assistance we can provide if we've got that grant money. Well, thank you. All right, let's move on item number four, the Consent Agenda. John, are you still ready to ignite the move moving for the Consent Agenda? I move the Consent Agenda. I get a second for that. I'll second it. Thank you, Andy. All those in favor, please say I or raise your phone. Anyone opposed, anyone abstaining? All right, thank you. So that will pass. And then I will have you look at the minutes from September 21st. We'll look for a motion to approve the minutes, potentially a motion to approve with edits. Garrett, are you moving that? Thank you. A second for approving the minutes from September 22nd. Andy, thank you. Second. Any discussion or edits? And if I've done my job, I would be able to be a wordsmith and Catherine would be proud of me but I'm afraid I am not that fastidious. We have one edit. Okay. Line 21, I forgot the word, or I forgot the R on manager. So it's ends up saying manage. So I'm going to add the R in case no one else noticed. I found that. Page four, line 21. And very good. The equity manager. Thank you. Instead of equity manage. Are there any other discussion or points that need to be brought up on the minutes? Hearing none. I'll ask all to vote in favor. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Or thumbs up. Aye. Anyone opposed? Anyone abstaining? Zirconi abstains. I was not here. Oh, right. Thank you. O'Brien too. O'Brien and Zirconi abstain. I guess I should too. I wasn't here. That's not necessary. I'm 100. Yeah. You do not need to abstain if you weren't absent. If you read the minutes, but up to you. Okay, I read them. Thank you. Keep me in. All right, Jackie. Appreciate it. Is someone summarized who abstained? I'm sorry. John and Mike, as far as I know, was there anybody other abstain? Brad. Brad? Underhill abstains. Okay. So Brad, John and Mike. I'd like to add Charlotte also as abstention. Thank you, Dieter. Yeah. And Dana, I'm the alternate. I think Dana was also absent in September and I don't see her on tonight as well. So. Appreciate it. Did you get all that, Amy? No? All right. So Charlotte, Deidre Holmes as alternate. Brad Holden, Underhill alternate. John Zirconi, are you doing Shelburne now, John? Or is it Jeff? No, I'm the primary and Jeff since the secondary, but Jeff will be with you next month. So you won't miss him for long. And Mike O'Brien, when it was... Milton would abstain because I wasn't here. And now Chuck Wilton, Milton. Wow, that's alliterative or assonant, sorry. So that should be five. Do you have that, Amy? We're good. Okay. Let's move on. Municipal dues, is this you, Charlie? Of course, do you want to walk through this or do you want me to? Go right ahead, Charlie. If it was zero, he would have done it. So just sorry not to leap to the conclusion, but the executive committee is recommending a 3% increase in dues, but just for a way of background, we have a procedure of policy in place that says we should look at the employment cost index for state and local government employees published by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. So that is what we looked at. That number was like 3.4% increase for the last year. And so we kind of discussed that with the executive committee. They certainly didn't feel comfortable going to 3.4%. This is, so the recommendations go to 3%, which, and I'm sorry, I'm scrolling to get down to the bottom line. It's a total change of $7,600. So we'd go from 255,000 to 263,000 in total. And the next question you're gonna ask me is why? So I think there are three major reasons in my mind that the staff was recommending a dues increase. It's not cause we're about to go into the red and the $7,000 is gonna make the difference between having a positive or negative fiscal year. It's really about the trends that are driving and some of which you see in that Bureau of Labor Statistics was 3.4% last year. We know inflation is going up or has been higher than that this last year. The employee compensation is gonna be a lagging indicator. And so I don't wanna be in a place where that is maybe 6% or 7% in a future year and we're asking for a more significant increase. So we're trying to take it in bites, I think, was some of the thought, but there's a couple other dynamics that maybe are a little bit more pragmatic. One is that the bipartisan infrastructure bill that came out of Washington, if you remember some of the press about that, significant increase in its infrastructure funding. Well, one part of that was an increase in our transportation planning funding. And I don't have the exact percentage, but I wanna say it's in the realm of 30% increase in transportation planning funding. And you may remember me kind of noting last year, like there are more planning funds here available, but also in order for us to match it for regional projects or staff time, we need more dues to match those transportation dollars. So that's one significant driver. And I lost the other one I was gonna mention. So Forrest, if you have another one that you were gonna mention, throw it out, but otherwise open or turn it back to you, Chris, for more discussion. Forrest? I didn't have one. Okay. I didn't have, yeah, I'll leave it at that. In general, I mean, the drivers have often been, well, I think inflation has been the primary one as we discussed in the executive committee, but in the past, we've talked about health insurance and things of that sort, the benefits. I don't recall any of that from our discussion two weeks ago with the executive committee. So I can't recall the other driver either, sorry. But I think three is reasonable. Again, to be clear, the proposal from staff had been 3.4%, but the executive committee settled at 3%. And so this is our recommendation from the executive committee to the board. So what I'll be looking for is a motion to approve the 3% increase in municipal dues for this next fiscal year. And then a second for that. And any further discussion that we'd like to have before we vote? I'll move to approve the request for a 3% increase in fiscal dues. Thank you, Michael. I'll second it. Thank you, Michael. Would anybody like to ask questions, have further discussion? Go ahead, Mike. Chris, I just wanted to go back to the executive committee meeting because we had a, Charlie, correct me if I'm wrong, we had a surplus last year, but we talked about that. And the concern, one of the concerns was, I think you mentioned it was, we don't know how much funding we're gonna actually get in the next year. So we can't count on the fact that we have this nest egg, if you will. Is that an accurate recollection of some of our conversation? Yeah, I think, thank you. You reminded me of the third driver, which is that we are still, yeah, we did do pretty well. You'll see the audit next month. We had some tens of thousands of dollars of revenue and excessive expenses, but we are still not at the kind of three months of reserve. And so, and that's really a buffer for the benefit of the municipalities or risk management, if you will. And so that was the other piece of the dynamic. And Mike, yeah, I think, yeah, there is, I think the infrastructure money is going up, but there's been a lot of money moving through the state legislature that you're seeing hit our budget, right? Like there's a reason our budget's going up, but there's no telling what will happen from year to year. So that may not be the same next year, it's true. Thank you to add on to that for folks in the training that we just had for the folks who are new to the board in the last hour. 95% of our budget is coming from outside these municipal dues. These municipal dues represent 5% of our budget for about a quarter of a million dollars. So we're talking $250,000. I'm not sneezing at this, but the reduction the executive committee proposed from 3.4 to 3% represented $7,000 against that $250,000. So we're not talking about a great deal of difference. And at the same time, yes, 3% is gonna get a lot of towns excited because we focus on the percentages but the value that the towns and cities get from this in the leverage that we gain for the other 95% of the work that we get is really just leaving money on the table in the long run. So I think it's a great value for all our cities and towns. Hey, Chris, in the previous meeting, I didn't get the most of it. Did you talk about how the increase affects different towns because it's not 3% per town? No, it isn't. And that's what makes it a little indefensible or hard to defend in front of your select boards. Certainly South Burlington, we have a tougher, I have a tougher job in trying to defend an 8% or 8.7% increase for South Burlington because they're gonna be like, what? It's a 3% across, but we're paying 5% more. How come we're paying so much more and how come these other towns are dropping? Well, it comes down to the grand list. So South Burlington has been the beneficiary of the grand list, which has grown. And we've actually seen that with our reapportionment in gaining another representative at the state legislature. So there's a price for that. And here's part of it. We're a bigger town. Therefore, we're gonna be paying a larger share of the pie. So that's the answer that we have here. I suspect that the towns that have shrunk more would be Burlington and Charlotte and Buell's Gore even have seen reductions. So, you know, their grand lists have shrunk apparently in relation to everybody else. And Chris Chuck Wilton had his hand up, Chuck. I don't know if you still have a question or... Yeah, I just wanted to clarify only from my standpoint because my wife was a treasurer of major city in Rutland for 15 years or so. And that is that that money that is excess flowing throughout the state and whatever is mostly that ARPA money, which yes is up there for people, but it's a one-time shot and it's not gonna be there again. So if people get spikes in their coffers throughout the state, it doesn't mean that's an ongoing thing. And with the ARPA originally, I think it was tagged that if you didn't use it on qualified projects and such, you'd have to pay it back. And so therefore I don't think that that would be one of those places to expect towns to have any gold mines is because that's unreliable funds. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely short-term money. And I think almost all the municipalities in Vermont now have used the, and I might not have the terminology exactly correct, but the revenue replacement provision. So they've been able to kind of add it to their general funds, but you're right, it is short-term money. Came in over two years and that's it. That's it, yeah, one and done. Okay, other questions, Garrett? I just wanted to say as much as this creates really tremendous economic hardship for Buells Gore will still support the increase. For those of you not looking at the table, the Buells Gore dues go from $35 to $33. So I am hopeful that they will recover from the trauma of the situation. I just wish I were getting the $2. Wow, that's why I say is the danger of just looking at raw percentages. So any other questions or discussion? No, I do encourage you to look at the table that's on the page 13 of your packet. It really is interesting to see where the grand list is growing or not growing as fast. And that's where you see the change in percentages that Chris was mentioning with South Burlington Bay and 7.6% and others actually getting a reduction in dues because they were kind of under the typical grand list growth. So you can kind of see the percentages vary year to year when we do this. Garrett? If it makes anybody feel better, the Gore just had a reappraisal and the grand list will be going up substantially. So we might even hit $40 next year. And point to Garrett's reappraisal or not having yet been reappraised on his thing with the equalization of the grand list, that's already been factored into these numbers. So that it was already taken into account if he was 80% of common level of the appraisal. So it's not as if he was dogging us or sandbagging us by coming in until just after the dues come out to then do the... With the new numbers, we're at 1.47. So it was a big jump. No, come on, give us a break. There are eight. Wow, wow. Okay, well, thank you. Any further discussion? All right, well, I'll call for a vote. And then all those in favor of the municipal dues as motioned to raise 3%, please say aye or thumbs up. Aye. Anyone opposed? Anyone abstaining? Okay, thank you. That will pass unanimously and we'll move on to number seven, Park and Ride Plan Approval. Marshall, are you gonna take this? Sure, yes. Good evening, everyone. I'm Marshall Distal and I'm a transportation planner here with CCRPC. And tonight I'm here to seek board action on our Park and Ride Plan. So for those of you who weren't here last month, we heard a presentation from our consultant, RSG on the plan development, which essentially builds upon our previous plan update from 2011. And, you know, overall the new plan identifies opportunities for improvement at all of our existing Park and Ride facilities. And then it also evaluates the, you know, the sort of potential for new facilities throughout our region in the future. So, you know, while the updated plan incorporates many of the elements from the, you know, the 2011 plan, we use somewhat of a revised approach to account for all the many changes in the demand for Park and Ride that we've seen, you know, over the past few years with the pandemic and the work from home environments. In our 2011 plan, I think we concluded the study with around a list of 30 prioritized new facilities in our region. And this time around, we have a list narrowed down to 10 new facilities. And, you know, actually at the September CCRPC Board, meaning we brought forward nine facilities, but we, you know, we heard there was some interest in evaluating another additional Park and Ride near the route 117-289 interchange in Essex. So that was brought up at the meeting. So we took a look at it with the project team and concluded that, you know, that location could be a suitable site to consider in the future with it being on a significant community route. So we've added that facility in Essex to our list for future consideration. So that brings our list to 10 facilities to consider. And, you know, earlier this month, the TAC approved the list of 10 new facilities and they, you know, they approved the plan itself. And, you know, following TAC approval, we also actually received a series of comments from VTRAN staff, which we just sent to the board today. So you may not have had a chance to take a look at that. But, you know, the VTRAN's comments, they include a number of minor edits, requested clarifications, some electric vehicle charging, suggestions, and just a number of other helpful details that we plan to add later this week. Anybody have any questions on this? Garrett? Yeah. Not so much a question, but a comment if I may on the state comments. Where they recommended against fast charging. And I fairly strongly disagree with that. With the goals of increasing the number of electric vehicles, we need all the, number one, we need all the fast charging stations. We can get a lot of the stations in Vermont are lower level than what more metropolitan areas of the country have. The idea of having say four chargers in a park and ride that can hold 50 cars, five, 10 years from now, you know, having four cars plugged in for the entire workday, hogging, if you will, those chargers doesn't make a great deal of sense. Plus, there's the non-work hours where people will need charging for cars and the better quality charging. In other words, the higher speed charging that we can offer the more people are likely to actually go to electric cars. So I would really strongly suggest that we have as high a rate charging available there as possible. Thank you. Thank you. And then I think Bard was next. I'm hoping Amy might have some response to that carrot. That's a good point, Marshall. I'm sorry, Bard, go ahead. I could also wait for a response if that makes sense, Chris, it's up to you. Well, I'm not sure if Amy's raised her hand yet. Amy, do you wanna go or do you want me to just? No, I mean, I can attempt to respond and Eleni, please add in. Yeah. You know, I think that the comment, well, I'm not gonna say it's a misperception, but I think there isn't a lot of knowledge of this yet that we're in a very aggressive timeframe right now to actually identify and cite fast charging throughout the state. And so if you look at it in the context of what we have today, it perhaps may not seem like a good direction, but if you look at what the plan is and what the intent is of establishing fast charging along all the major corridors in the state, that is where the focus is being placed on creating that infrastructure at the prime locations. Whereas the parking rides, there's some of them that may seem to be in better locations than others, but the reality is the majority of parking rides are sighted outside of many of the key corridors in the state. So, and the other thing is that parking rides, we can't guarantee how those designated spaces will be used. So you could establish fast chargers, but if someone with a traditional gas powered car parks in that space during the day, we don't have any way of ensuring that that stays available to those who want access to fast charging. So it's just from an administrative and a proximity location, parking rides are just not viewed as being the best option for where fast charging should be located, but understand there's a much bigger and much more diverse and comprehensive plan in place and we're working on it for fast charging networks throughout the state. Can you give us a quick example of where fast charging might happen? I can't give you a specifics because I think they're still working on the plan, but Eleni, do you have more context? I don't have a detailed location, Chris. We can, the plan is almost done. I think it's out. So we can provide more information later. I think one of the issues with fast charging or level one in parking rides is that a lot of our parking rides do not have any amenities. So even if fast charging, I believe that it takes like anywhere, around half an hour maybe. I mean, it's not fast fast, like five minutes. So the idea is that they're gonna focus this fast charging, fast chargers in places that they have other amenities so a person can just get out, there are bathrooms, there is maybe a convenience store or something like that. So that's one thing. And the other thing is what Eleni basically mentioned is that if somebody parks on that space in a parking right, either it's a gas power car or somebody is parking there all day is not gonna be very useful as a fast charging. Those are the things that we are hearing about the fast charging at the parking rides but we'll dive more into the study that is out. I haven't really read it yet. I mean, it just came out very recently. So we can provide more information to the board. Thank you, Taylor. Taylor put the link in the chat if you wanna just dive into it but we're happy to bring somebody from V-Trends to talk about this study. Patrick, maybe Amy, we can just talk to Patrick to just come and talk to us a little bit more about this because it is an important information and a lot of people are wondering about it. So let's have somebody, an expert that can actually talk to us about it. I did talk to Dave Roberts a little bit about this yesterday and he reiterated what I heard from Patrick too about fast charging at the parking rides. I don't know if that answers the questions. Well, we're gonna move on to Bard and we'll come back to Garrett. But thank you, Amy and thank you, Eleni I had to fill in some of the gaps there. It's obviously of heightened interest and if we can get more information I think we all be happier. Bard. Thanks, Chris. So this will be familiar to some of us. I think I contemplate this from a specific bias of a resident in Richmond where I've contemplated the park and ride here for, I don't know, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, whatever it's been. And my question is sort of brought about multimodal multimodal or intermodal. So to the degree we build park and rides that obligate people to have a car to access a transportation hub, we seem to to some degree under value or under represent the interests of people who might want to walk there or bike there. And so just a question about when we think about park and ride the term itself suggests that you got in a car and went there and parked. The idea that people might wanna walk or bike there how we contemplate that in the future in terms of our design and perhaps retrofit of preexisting park and rides where I guess we might have assumed that people did not walk or bike to places where they gathered or connected with transportation hubs. Okay. Great. John. Marshall, question. The Shelburne facility that's on there, we're talking about the parking lot near the old train station, I assume by the description that you gave in the documents we had. Yes, and that location was first identified in the 2011 plan, but reached out to town planning staff and said they'd be interested in continuing to take a look at that in the future. The railroad owns that property. It's been the subject of several disputes over time and the railroad has closed it off, which is a major issue for the craft center in town, which uses it as parking and others who might find it and use it. The idea that we're gonna invite people there is not gonna sit well with the railroad. In fact, before you even publish anything that it's even on a list, you should have a chat with the railroad first because this is a very sensitive issue with them and they tend to overreact when things come up and close it off completely, which would cause way more harm than any plan for good you could ever do in the year in the center of Shelburne, especially to the little craft school that's in town. So that's an extremely sensitive thing if you have not approached the railroad with caution, by the way, when you approach the railroad, I would highly, highly, highly suggest that you do that. And if they want nothing to do with it, then you need to reassess. John, do you think we can actually, right now in the table, it says Shelburne train station feasibility study. If we change it to discuss this with the railroad and town officials, instead of a feasibility studies are gonna be a good edit for this because reaching to the railroad, we might not have like a response in a timely response. So it would be really nice to adopt this plan tonight. So if we can just make a simple edit to this, can we just say, further discussions with the owners of the park and ride lot? Can we say that instead of feasibility study? And I'll just quick note that this, this has already been on our list for a decade or so. Right. Yeah, I'm not trying to blow up anything that you need tonight, Eleni. What I'm saying is that none of the new planning staff, none of the current select board and not our town manager have ever been around when we've had the blowups with the railroad. Yeah. So staff in town is gonna have zero history with this. Okay. I totally understand, John. And I think that a simple edit to basically say, this is, we're not even doing a study. We're just gonna start discussions. Yeah, that's fine. Like I said, I'm not trying to blow up anything here tonight. I'm just trying to make you guys aware that I'm sure the, and I would have talked with some of the folks in town first. I just read up on this today and I missed the meeting last month. I apologize for that. But yeah, this just has to be handled with some kid gloves and probably very differently than you've handled the other sites. So John, what we're hearing is that we want to amend the Shelburne terrain station in the table there to mimic what we have for South Burlington, discuss with city officials as necessary or in this case, discuss with city officials and railroad representatives. Yeah, yeah, something like that. Something like that would probably be wise. And Marshall, that would solve the potential, head off the potential issue there. Yes, that sounds very reasonable. Okay, is there anything on the comments, John, that relates to the Shelburne facility? No, the supplemental comments. I read, at least I read everything that was sent to us today and I didn't see anything that drew any buyer other than I just wanted to point out to the staff here. Because like I said, you're not gonna get the history from talking to the staff in town. I will make a point now that I know this is coming up to circle to them and make sure they understand all of this too, but I just wanted to put it on the staff's radar or put the B in the bonnet as they say. Okay, thank you. All right, let's come back to Garrett. Garrett? I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but I guess I will a little. Number one, the idea of needing facilities or more facilities for fast charging. I don't get that one at all. If you need to spend a half hour to charge your car versus four hours, aren't you less likely to need to use a restroom? Then I will add to that and say that I realize that fast chargers are more expensive to install. But to me, since you're doing all the work of running the lines and everything anyway and installing the stations, I don't see is how it makes sense to do any slow charging installations that the focus should be on all fast charging so that people will be more likely to adopt electric rather than less likely. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else would like to discuss we are being asked to adopt the park and ride plan with the VTrans comments and Bard has pointed out that the third bullet point from the bottom on the supplemental comments that you've got is something I think you would like to have eliminated. Is that correct, Garrett? Garrett? Bard or Garrett? No, sorry, if I misspoke, but I'm sorry to get it all working backwards. Yes, we did. I'm gonna go with you, Garrett. The third bullet point from the bottom is the one that you would like to delete. Page 651. I think it makes complete sense, but am I going to vote against this if it stays in? No, but I would prefer to see all charging being built be fast charging. Okay, and I'm just trying to summarize what we've heard. John, of course chimed in about changing the table so that it would reflect discussions with city officials and the railroad representatives rather than just go ahead with a feasibility study as if it was a done deal. And then Bard had mentioned about the park and rides. I think it was more about the nomenclature. Is that correct, Bard? Well, it's about the concept of being like not just parking, which implies, and I don't care about the name, I care about the function. So you can't walk there, you can't bike there. If you literally enrichment, you need to have a car to park there to access the bus. I consider that a problem. And I think there are other park and rides similarly situated that they're isolated. And maybe we could think about the function of the different park and rides, but in a smaller or peripheral towns like Richmond where the park and ride is our single bus stop, the only place to connect with a bus. So if you can't walk or ride a bike there, you can't get a bus. So are you advocating for more bike racks at park and rides and having that written into the plan and or sideways? I would ask that like the park and ride plan pay conspicuous and conscious attention to where in small towns or even in bigger towns, it is intermodal or multimodal, that if it's where people connect with a bus or Williston was another example, if you get off a bus in Williston, you should be able to walk to a job in one of the box stores in Richmond. In original plans that wasn't really clear how that was gonna happen. And it seems to me that that should happen in the early planning stages that when we plan places for people to park, we should plan for a combination of pedestrian and bicycle access to and from that site. As I think Williston, we saw originally had parking access right there off the square and next to the Shaw's. And still do. What I remember is that the park and ride up on the hill, there was no way to walk to that from Williston. They're working on that now. I understand that's correct, but it seemed to me like that should come at first stage. Yes. Not in the third or fourth or fifth or 10th stage. Okay, I'm looking for something language-wise that we could have inserted as with VTrans comments. So I'd cut to the chase and to say in any development or redevelopment of park and rides, due diligence should be paid to access by pedestrians and bicycle users, particularly where that park and ride offers a transportation hub by bus. Okay, so could you repeat that slower? I can't. I can't. You know, so Chris, I got it. Okay. I got it. Thank you. You got the gist of it. Thank you, Bart. I'm going to go back to Garrett and then Deirdre, if you're still raising your hand there. Garrett? Sorry, I'm once again probably beating a dead horse, but Bart reminded me of something I meant to say before, which is we are seeing a lot more e-bikes and not just bicycle accessibility, but e-bike accessibility because more, I'm seeing a whole lot more on the road and they have a limited range, so charging for e-bikes would be good. The other thing that I have seen is that electric scooters like your basic Vespa but electric powered, they are coming way down in price and are actually competing with and beating the price of e-bikes. And somebody who wants to go 10 miles to a park and ride may need to charge most of them right now run 20 or 25 mile maximum range. So there should be something in the way of charging facilities, which are generally straight 120 volt AC for e-bikes and electric scooters should also be considered at the park and rides. And that's not included at the moment? Not that I saw. Maybe I missed it and that would be my bad if I did. Well, and in V-Trans supplemental comments, they do mention that the e-bike program language should be updated. I'll note that there's significant discussions about emerging modes and mobility and the impact on park and rides in the plan itself. I don't recall anything specific related to bike charging though. I agree with Garrett that there should be consideration of that. And I thought of the fast charging issues that he brought up that, you know, you often have maybe multi prongs for bikes that are a little less expensive than the single prongs for vehicles. So I don't think fast charging is an issue on a e-bike since it will hopefully be there for a while as long as you have multiple prongs to be able to attach. Deidre, did you have, or Deidre, did you have a comment? It was actually a thumbs up as opposed to the hand raise. Just yes, full support and agreement of Bards comments. And the only thing I was gonna add is what Garrett just asked is consideration for electric bike charging. Just to throw in just a little example, in Charlotte, we just added really a very small solar panel to a shed at school and added a bike rack. And so now there's an outlet available that is attached to a battery charged with a solar panel and with a little bike rack available for electric bikes to park and charge during the school day. Great. So Bruce Wilson here. So I just wanna add that usually I ride my bike and get on a Green Mountain Transit and sometime I take the link bus to like Middlebury and places like that. And it's pretty much a luck of the draw because it only holds two bikes, most bikes around, I mean, most buses, I'm sorry, around only holds two bikes when you're traveling. So it's, sometimes I can put my bike, most times I put my bike on the bus and ride the bus and then get off and get my bike. But those two bike holders is, I don't know how that, we can work that out, but a lot of people wanna ride their bikes and be economic and get on the bus instead of driving in cars like me. And a lot of times or sometimes I can't even put my bike on the bus. So that's really bothering me. I don't know how we can, I mean, this is a whole little different topic. I just wanna add that, that we need to look at that too, you know, thank you. Well, thank you, Bruce, appreciated that. So other questions or comments? Marshall, any thoughts that we have? I think Bruce, your comment and Marshall, correct me if I'm wrong, would be more appropriate for Green Mountain Transit, is that correct? And not necessarily in this plan? I sit on Green Mountain Transit on get advisory board. So, you know, I'll bring it up to John or whatever. All right, and we do have other plans that this would weigh in on absolutely that was hopefully we would have the pressure and leverage to work on Green Mountain Transit for that. But you're absolutely right. If we want to grow public transportation like that, that's an area that's throttling that growth. Absolutely, I wouldn't wanna take that chance. So, Marshall, are you getting all that? Yes. Okay. From the discussion that we've heard, again, Bard wants to include language. I think that Eleni jotted down. Garrett wanted to eliminate page 65 comments and John wanted the change to the tables. Are we all on agreement on that? Is anyone against any of that? Go ahead, Garrett. I just would like to add that I would like to see e-bike in e-scooter charging added to it. And wasn't that really part of Bard's discussion there, Eleni? Or no, that was more. I thought his was straight bicycle. Okay. So, we can incorporate all bikes, right? I mean, it doesn't need to be like, you know, just e-bikes or, you know. Right, but some charging for e-bikes and e-scooters. Yes. Thank you. I do think that was a fourth line item. This is Bard. I think that makes sense to me. If we think multimodal in all its dimensions, it would include that. I didn't call that out, but I think it's proper to include it. So, is eliminating the language on page 65 from the supplemental notes any issue with anyone? Okay. And then we'd be adding language for the multimodal access to the park and rides that Bard mentioned, adding the electrical vehicle chargers for e-bikes and scooters and the train station on the table for John. Did I miss anything? No? Okay. Any further discussion? Would somebody be able to make a motion for approval of the park and ride plan with those edits as noted? Is that you, Garrett? Thank you. And do I have a second for that? Jackie, thank you. All right. Any further discussion? If not, I'll ask all those in favor of the park and ride plan, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thumbs up. Anyone opposed? Please say nay. Anyone abstaining? Amy is abstaining. Thank you, Amy. Is Matthew still on, Amy? Did I miss anybody? Is Matthew abstaining as well, Matthew? Matthew, we only have one vote. Sorry, I'm going by faces. You're correct, we only have one vote. I'm watching and observing. Thank you. You're doing a great job. Appreciate it. All right, so there we go. Let's move on to number eight, the town of Bolton enhanced energy plan. Thanks, Chris. So Taylor Newton, Planning Program Manager. And I think it's been a while since you folks have seen one of these requests for determination of energy compliance. I know we have some new folks, so I wanted to provide some context before we talk specifically about Bolton. A few years ago, the legislature required regional planning commissions to develop enhanced energy plans that are really intended to help implement the state's comprehensive energy plan. And that led to us amending the ECOS plan a few years ago to include an enhanced energy plan in specific targets for conversions of feeding systems and for conversions to electric vehicles and to include maps to help guide the setting of new renewable energy facilities within our region and also to have some specific actions to actually achieve the goals in the state comprehensive energy plan. Another part of the changes the legislature if one of the few years ago is to create an optional process for municipalities to do the same thing, to develop their own enhanced energy plan to help accomplish the goals outlined in that state comprehensive energy plan. And so most of our municipalities in Chittin County have adopted an enhanced energy plan. Over the past five years, Bolton is one that's seeking that, Bolton has just adopted their own enhanced energy plan locally and now they're seeking this determination of energy compliance from Chittin County Regional Planning Commission. Our role here is that since we have a regional enhanced energy plan, we're now the body that essentially gives regional approval to that municipal enhanced energy plan. So that's what we're doing here tonight. So we're making sure that the Bolton enhanced energy plan is consistent with the regional plan. It's consistent with the state comprehensive energy plan and the state's energy goals and policies. And so back in March, the PAC reviewed Bolton's enhanced energy plan. You'll see in your packet, the staff report in the actual motion made by the PAC to recommend this plan to the board, essentially certifying that it meets all the requirements of a municipal enhanced energy plan. The Bolton Select Board adopted this enhanced energy plan back in September. And so tonight, I'm hoping you folks pass the resolution on page 18 of your packet to grant an affirmative determination of energy compliance for the Bolton Town Plan. Thank you, Taylor. So you've read the information in your packet and our PAC has recommended to us as a board that we do grant an affirmative determination of energy compliance to the 2017 Bolton Town Plan. Does anybody have any questions for Taylor or any discussion? Absent that, I'll ask for a motion to grant the affirmative determination of energy compliance for the 2017 Bolton Town Plan. So moved. Thank you, Michael Bryan. I'll second. I'll give you a second. Was that John Zaccone? It was. Thank you. All those in favor, please say aye. Or raise your hand. Aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Anyone abstaining? Okay. Well, thank you very much, Taylor. Hope you're feeling better. Thank you. Rest and fluids into you. And we're on to item number nine, the equity update. Is that Charlie back in the floor? Yeah. Yeah. I'll provide that. Just a quick update. I think the biggest, well, I don't know if it's a big thing, but one big thing is that we went through a hiring process and have an equity and engagement manager planning to start in a week and a half on October 31st. Her name is Ann Nelson Stoner. So we'll introduce her to you more directly at your next meeting. And just as she grew up in Virginia, so she goes by two first names. So it's Ann Nelson. If you can't do two names, she prefers Nelson to Ann. So just heads up on that. That's happening soon. The equity advisory committee is still kind of coming together, they're having their next meeting next week on October 27th. We have eight community members planning to attend to express interest and hopefully we'll get some clarity on those that wanna continue on the committee and bring their names to you to formally appoint to the committee, probably at the November board meeting. So that is one item on the committee itself. Then we've also been continuing our training program with the creative discourse group. We were planning a training for October 24th and realized that that was on a different holiday. And so we have moved it to November 9th and the topic is how to engage effectively with people who have been minoritized or excluded. And Emma will send an email reminder if any of you are interested in participating in that training sometime in the next week or so. And then finally, this is just kind of we're getting to the time of year where we're kind of hitting the end of the creative discourse groups scope of work. So we'll be sitting down with them and seeing what's come out of the equity advisory committee in terms of priorities and figuring out what staff can do, what we might still need that consultant assistance with to support the equity advisory committee and the equity work. So that's the quick summary questions, additions. Oh, and I guess one other thing, Katma had a transportation summit. Brian, was that yesterday? I think maybe it was yesterday. And equity was a major focus there, including in their keynote and panels and breakout sessions. So it's, yeah, we're not the only ones talking about it. I guess, no surprise to anyone here. Any questions, comments? Well, if nothing further for Charlie, then we'll look forward to when will we be introduced to Ann Nelson-Stoner? Your next board meeting. Okay, all right, super. You may get something in advance of that, but she'll be there, I think for your next executive committee, Chris for the executive committee, but she'll be trying to make the rounds to the committees and introducing yourself. So. And we'll be rescheduling creative discourse to November 9th. Yeah, October 24th is off. It's been rescheduled to November 9th. And Emma will send a reminder about that, so. Excellent, thank you. Yep. All right, the number 10 legislative breakfast priorities. Yeah, so Emma has also been working on finding a morning that we don't have a conflict with another group. And I think we've landed on Thursday morning, December 8th. Okay, thank you, Emma, for nodding your head in the right direction. So for those of you who are new here, every December we try to have kind of a, we spend an hour, hour and a half with legislators, select board chairs, time managers, and CCRPC board members, talking about policy issues that are important to CCRPC and our members. There have been quite a range of issues, but I will say there are some perennial ones like support for smart growth, housing development, and clean water, funding and issues, multimodal transportation and energy stuff. So just kind of planting a seed now, don't need any final answers today, but if you have thoughts about topics that should be on or part of that discussion, please let's throw them out and talk about them. We'll talk about this next month also in preparation for December 8th, but any issues that are coming to mind off the bat? Well, I can keep mentioning other ones, broadband, economic development, and okay, you're all saying yes to all those. Okay, I didn't really see you all do that, but we'll try to flesh it out a little bit more. Broadband in particular. I think we have one of those votes on our ballot for November 8th. Five of you do, yes. All right, so think about those. I would be offering, as I parked a whole kind of person, I'm gonna be offering peanuts and pennies to Charlie and say that we should be discussing with the legislature speed limits so that we can have more latitude within the city or town for speed limits. And I suspect the legislature set the city statewide speed limit rate at 25 miles an hour so that they would keep the smaller city in towns of the 251 from setting speed traps and gaining, garnering so much revenue that they would suddenly become big towns and threaten Montpelier. But I'm told that you can't lower speed limit in town below 25 miles an hour unless it's in a designated downtown or in a school zone area. And in some ways, I think that's been superseded by some of the safety concerns and studies that have come out there, places in Denmark that have lowered the speed limit to 19 miles an hour. And people are more polite, they're more considerate of pedestrians and bicyclists at 19 miles an hour. And it has reduced crashes and those type of conflicts with pedestrians and bikes by at least 25% in the cities that have done that in Denmark. So that would be the only thing I would talk but I'll talk to my own representative directly about that and he'll be bored to tears with yet another small ticket item that I bring him. So moving on, the chairs, the executive director's updates as I don't have any other updates. Yeah, so and feel free, I think on the last topic if you have thoughts, please email or you don't have to do it within the meeting, any thoughts would be welcome. Hiring updates, I've already given you a couple of them over the course of the conversation. Obviously Mackenzie just joined us within the last couple of weeks. So we are glad to have her in our business office and really helping reduce some of the strain there. And I think Forrest and Amy are also happy. So thank you, Mackenzie for joining us. And then I just mentioned Ann Nelson who is joining us in a couple of weeks. And I don't think there's anybody on here from Essex, so I can say this with apologies to Essex, I will say anyway. We stole one of their planners, Darren Shibbler from the town of Essex will be joining us on November 1st. So as we promoted Taylor that created a vacancy for a planner and Darren will be joining us from Essex. And thank you Dana for training him. This was no way reciprocal for us losing. We're gonna be really happy with that hire. And he's been trying to work here for quite a while. So we're glad to be able to have a good match there. Just great. Yeah, thanks Dana. You got to trade for Regina though. That's okay. You know, the only thing you can count on is change. So building homes together, just a heads up there will be a press conference next week. And just to give you a little preview, you may remember last year or we started the first year of a second five year campaign. We did a five year campaign the five years before trying to build I think 3,750 homes. We exceeded that by a little bit. This five year increment, we're hoping to try to get 5,000 homes built in Chittinac County. And so we'll talk about the results of what happened in 2021 and also the importance I would kind of give a little nudge to the legislature. Well, I know it was already focused on housing, but we'll kind of support those efforts. Communications Union District, Chris just made reference to this. Five of our municipalities have on their ballot for November election to create and form Communications Union District in Chittinac County. We missed the opportunity a few years ago to do that by select board or city council vote to form one. And so statute says now it has to go to the voters. So Shelburne, South Burlington, Essex Junction, Essex and Williston all have it on their ballots for November. Other towns will be able to join that communications union district by a simple vote of their select board assuming one is created. So I'll just offer that. And Dana, do you have a question on that? I just wanted to bring up the housing issue and the urgency of it also brings up issues with permitting and planning and action 50 and that we need to have conversations about how that happens and jurisdictional issues. And I think there was someone from VNRC or CCRBCB that brought that up to just bring up a dialogue about what it means to meet housing demand but also issues with regard to permitting and character plays and all these issues that are the other side of the housing issue that are really important. So I just think that we need to be cognizant of that. Yeah, that will be the subject of debate with the legislature, I am sure. All right, there's something to watch. Yeah, thank you, Dana. And then the last thing is just it may have briefed you at some point about this 40 something million dollar bill that passed this last session, H518. There had millions of dollars of ARPA funds. Chuck Wilton referred to the ARPA has a lot of strings attached and the purpose of those funds was supposed to be to help municipalities do building energy resilience. A lot of it was talked about fuel switching, going from maybe heating oil, boiler to name your other source and it got hung up for a while because what the legislature intended did not meet the ARPA requirements. The state has finally worked their way through it and they're I guess using revenue replacement funds as opposed to ARPA funds. And so it looks like that program is now moving forward. If you had asked me a month ago, I would have said I'm not sure if it is or not but it does now look like that's moving forward. The real specific impact on the RPCs is that there was a significant amount of money, I think about 2.4 million over the next two or three years for the RPCs statewide to help the buildings and general services department administer that grant program. So just a heads up, you'll hear more about that in coming weeks. I'm not sure exactly how long it will take for BGS to give us information to share with you all but heads up it's coming. So if you have municipal buildings that could use some investment in terms of energy, whatever that might be, I think there will be some opportunity there but we'll have to see what the specific guidelines might be. Okay, thank you. That's all I have, Mr. Chair, unless somebody has a question for me. Dana, did you have your hand up or is it still up? No, I need to put it down, sorry. All right, well, for the rest of your day. What I would like to do is introduce my puppy to everyone. Is everyone seeing my puppy? Give us a name and a breed, I think. His name is Birdie, he just came home today and he's North Terrapin and he's in my arms and he's becoming a planning expert. Outstanding, so Bernie, is it named after Bernie? Bernie's that we know. Yeah, that's all, I'm gonna lower my hand. Thank you. Beautiful. All right, appreciate it. Item 12, we have the committee activities and reports that start actually on page 23. I'm gonna draw your attention to the equity work and the equity committee that isn't listed should have been under the equity update more item number nine, but here it is, beginning on your packet, page 23. The next 46 pages are all the committee activity reports and for those who are new to the board, this is riveting late night reading for you to catch up on what the TAC has been doing, what the PAC has been doing, what the MS4 committee has been doing, what the Long Range Planning Committee has been doing and what the Executive Committee has been doing. In addition to what I suggest everybody else who isn't otherwise, focus should catch up on where we are with the equity workshops, the one that's gonna be coming down the pipe for November 9th, that gives a great summary of what happened on September 29th and it gives you a list of the membership of our equity committee as it stands at the moment. So that'll be exciting. So any questions on those reports? If not, I'll look for item number 13, a motion to adjourn. Thank you, Garrett. A motion to adjourn. And Bard will second that. So Garrett got there first. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed. All right. Thank you very much, folks. I will see you next time.