 To the extent I've had training, I might have just turned it off. Look at the attendance. All right. Thank you all for coming to our second session on the MPO training. It's very exciting to see all of you here. I think the pizza worked. Thank you, Jeff. Anyway. So we did hear some comments and we tried to incorporate your comments from the last session into our presentation. And we'd be very interested to hear what else you would like us to include in the third session that we're going to have in November. So for today, we're going to focus a little bit more about the MPO business at the CCRPC. Talk a little bit more about the role of the Transportation Advisory Committee, the TAC. Talk a little bit more about the MPO process. We started last time around, but just a little deeper this time around. And just discuss high level and briefly because we can spend hours discussing all these different programs and plans. But we're going to just touch upon briefly the major responsibilities, MPO responsibilities of this board, which is the metropolitan transportation plan, our long range plan, the NTP, the transportation improvement program, our TEP, the unified planning work program, which is our UPWP, which we have every year, and our public participation plan. So we're going to just focus on those four responsibilities. The MPO has many more responsibilities, but those are the major ones. So the nitty gritty about the MPO. So when this board conducts an MPO business, the voting power, it has 24 votes. Let me just put it that way. Each municipality has one vote except Buells Gore for MPO business, except Burlington that has four, Colchester has two, and South Burlington has two. Bittrans also has one vote, and that is based on population, you know, our voting power and the weights that we have. And Essex essentially has two, but it's split between the two. Exactly, and that's the point right there, that, you know, Essex Junction has one, Essex Town has one, but, you know... But when I'm not here, Jeff's an alternate from me, so he's voting once. But he gets two votes. It's two votes. But he gets two votes, and he uses them. And Buells Gore, correct me if I'm wrong, but Buells Gore, their transportation budget has a special relationship with Bittrans, and that's part of the reason that they don't get a vote. I think so, yes. Is that true for all the boards? I assume the unincorporated towns? The governor appoints the supervisor of the boards. Does that also correlate with what constitutes a quorum? So does... Very good. That is a great question, Barbara, and he takes us to the second slide. Thank you so much for asking that. But before we get there, just the MPO business, what is the MPO business, right? Some of the MPO business, you know, that, you know, this RPC, CCRPC Board executes is basically you vote on our plans, right? Your MTP, our TIP, our PPP, the public participation plan. You also vote on specific policy directions and specific actions. Like we asked, we revised our functional classification of the county recently in the spring, and we send that request to Bittrans and FHWA. We also talk about the national highway system. We're going to be talking today about performance measures and, you know, voting on the targets. So that is all MPO business. Anything that has to do with transportation in the county, planning in the county that uses federal funding. And the quorum, you asked Barbara. So basically to have a quorum, we have to have 13 of the 24 votes. But in order to actually execute any of the MPO business, you have to have quorum. Which is 13 out of the 24 present. And the majority of the municipalities need to vote in favor of something to amend or adopt a plan or an action. Is that clear? Okay. So for the rest of the CCRPC, you know, work that we do, we just basically each board member has one vote. The majority and the quorum is when you have, well, the quorum is when you have the majority of the municipal, municipalities in Chinatown County including Billsgore now, and some of the regional board members excluding the transportation ones. So Bittrans is not included in this. That constitutes a quorum, the majority of that. And for any municipal plan and the planning process, only municipal board members vote on that. Those are the kind of the difference between the MPO and the CCRPC. The rest of the CCRPC, the non-MPO work that we do here. Just a little clarification for those of you that aren't here every month. The regional board members are Justin for socioeconomic housing, Don for conservation and the environment. And then IBM and Bakley for economy. So those, we have four regional kind of sector board members. So now Peter is going to talk to us a little bit more about the transportation advisory committee's role. So Peter, you want to, you have the clicker? Okay. So we're going to take a little sideways now and get back to the process. I'm going to talk about voting and boring things like that. You know, the RPC has, if you've read the bylaws, I'm not sure if you have or not, but there are six established subcommittees with more bylaws. I'm only going to talk about one, the transportation advisory committee. The one that focuses obviously on transportation and field business. And anything related to transportation that we feel needs to be an issue that has to go to the board. So the, the attack will discuss and make a recommendation to the board. The attack does have one exclusive right that the board does not have. It's the third bullet here. We can actually make a decision on hiring consultants. It was established by laws quite a few years ago. So we make a decision at the fact level who to hire for whatever task. Generally, we meet monthly, first Tuesday of the month, except for town meeting day in March, which screws everything up then we meet on Wednesday after. And on average, we'll meet 10 times a year and kind of corresponding with the board. And the board takes at least August off maybe another month and we'll try and do this thing. Occasionally, we'll have no items in the agenda, so we'll take a month off. But on average, just 10 times a year. We have the chair of the, the TAC is the public works director of Colchoster, Brian Osborn, husband, he was elected by the TAC several years ago. And no one else has come forward to want to take that. I think the rest of the TAC is very happy to have them sitting there. So it's probably going to be a happy relationship for a while. A little bit more about it. We do have one board member in the TAC that's Barbara Elliott sitting over here. All the municipalities in the county have a representative as well. Normally that's either the public works director or the town or city planner, the road foreman or the town administrator. That's kind of it. There may be an exception or two in that. We also have the transit table as well as the federal highway demonstration. And then we have our other mobile partners like Green Mountain Transit, the airport, CATMA and SSDA. And then we have these other interests that are on the board as well. Iconped, rail, business, disability, you can see them all here. I do want to note that we don't have all 31 people coming to every monthly meeting, especially in those interest areas at the bottom there. It's kind of sketchy in terms of people showing up and having people participate. But that's what we have. And we do get on an average, I think, 20 people per meeting. So we get a good representation. The municipalities especially are very well received. A normal TAC meeting, again, having the first Tuesday of the month or the bottom bulls there. Whenever we're amending or adopting a new metropolitan transportation plan, the TAC will have a number of meetings related to hearing about the changes, getting presentations, taking recommendations. The second bullet is something that happens nearly every month. Christine's going to talk a little bit about the transportation program, that four-year list of projects that we all agree with 3BTrans will be funded. That particular document gets amended sometimes monthly, so all those amendments will go through the TAC with a recommendation to come to you, the board. They'll hear presentations on various technical scoping or engineering studies. For instance, I think it was last month we had an update on the Wunuski Bridge. A major connection between two of our larger cities. So that's a pretty difficult part of the agenda. I mentioned already, they get to select consultants. Every year we go through this project prioritization. If you've been around this table for one or two more years, you're familiar with that process. The TAC first hears about it. And then we hear about planning activities that go on amongst our partners. The agency of transportation. I think next month we have two items on the agenda related to V-Trans. We heard a couple months ago about their long-range transportation. And we'll hear from GMT on their planning activity, like their next-gen plan that they approved. With all the emphasis and funding going into water quality and transportation, we're more and more discussing water quality and transportation issues at the TAC level. That's a pretty common item on the agenda as well. So they, in the minutes, in their last month meeting, they actually got involved in selecting the preferred alternatives in the Wunuski study, right? The TAC? Yeah, they said they, I thought they, I read in there that they, that the Transportation Advisory Committee recommended that alternatives 4 and 5 be used. I thought that was what I read in the minutes, unless I just read it. Oh, that may be related to the Wunuski Bridge project. Yes, yes. Okay. Yeah, the TAC didn't take action on that. No, that was just a presentation. It was just a presentation. Maybe we can check the minutes. Yeah, I'm sorry. The Advisory Committee recommends that both alternatives 4 and 5 move forward as locally recommended alternative alternatives. The Project Advisory Committee. There was a requirement to the TAC. Yeah. The TAC put no action. Sorry. So a Project Advisory Committee is not part of the TAC. They're just for a project. We set up project advisory committees for virtually every scoping report we did. Okay. And include some TAC members, obviously. Yes. Yes, yes. Okay. All right. So they don't get involved in selecting a recommending alternatives, but they do review decisions of Project Advisory Committees? Well, in this case, it was just an information item. Okay. Just letting you know about that project. We didn't ask for any consensus, opinion, or recognition at all. It's very infrequent, frankly, that they have to see the results of a scoping study for better or worse. Any questions on the Transportation Advisory Committee? Because I'm about to turn it over to... Since we're doing an orientation, I'm permitted to ask a really dumb question. Please do. So in regards to project prioritization, I was wondering about this this afternoon. I wonder how much discretion the TAC has in establishing those priorities, or if there are metrics separate to that that really drive it for the most part? Yes, the last. There are lots of metrics that drive that, and that's how it gets to consider that. Christina, I'm going to worry about this, and then I'll defer to you. So they kind of review what comes out of that process, and they concur with it and make a recommendation to the board. It was a methodology that went through the TAC at some point. Yeah, there's a methodology for that, and I think the comments that usually get made would be about scoring criteria specifically. There might be some factors about the project that they think should be slightly different. So they do have input, and it's the TAC agrees that can make changes. Would Jamie then ignore us? No. The one other thing I'll just... I get to say it. You know that. Occasionally, we talk about the metropolitan transportation plan, but there are also some sub-plans that we do, like it might be a parking ride plan, or we did the bike and ped plan a year or so ago, or the ITS plan. So there's some other sub-element plans. I think we kind of consider part of the metropolitan, the overall plan, but they may not be on the same schedule, so they may come up in interim years. Throw it over to Jason. All right. So moving up a level to the table that you all sit at, the MPO board, we have four main documents that you're responsible for voting on as an MPO, and we briefly touched on those in the introduction. That's our metropolitan transportation plan, our NTP, our transportation improvement plan, our TIP, our unified planning work program, our UPWP, and our public participation plan. And these are updated at different intervals. Our MTP being our long-range plan is done every five years, and our TIP is our more short-range planning document that is looking at just for the next four years, and that is to be updated annually. And going down even one more level just to our annual work program is the actual projects that we are set to undertake in a given fiscal year. And then we have our public participation plan that doesn't have to be updated on a regular interval, but it is something we strive to keep rather current, and our last version was adopted in 2014. And this is just a diagram that's kind of letting you know how each of these documents talk to each other, our public participation plan being a large overarching thing that dictates how we communicate these documents to the public. And we have our UPWP and the project development on the left, and that really is a two-way street to our long-range or metropolitan transportation plan. Sometimes projects originate at the UPWP level and move up into our MTP. Sometimes projects are conceived during the MTP process, especially larger sorts of things like the currently in the works to be underway interstate 89 study that we're working on. This is something, an example, that originated at the MTP level and is now part of our work program. Whereas moving into the tip, things are typically one way from the UPWP into our transportation improvement program and from there eventually getting funded and constructed. And last thing I'm going to touch upon is just a little more detail on our long-range or metropolitan transportation plan. This looks at at least 20 years. Our current plan is looking up to 2050 and that was just adopted this year. And this is really a visioning exercise looking at how do we make our system to be an intermodal system that will accommodate us well out into the future. This, it's, at the same time it is a visioning exercise. It's also physically constrained because there is a huge financial element to this so it's not just a pie in the sky plan. I'll take any questions if not I'm going to select. All right, moving right along. So I'm going to talk about the transportation improvement program for those who were here back in July. We approved our current transportation plan federal fiscal year 19 to 22 beginning October 1st, 2018 through September 30th, 2022. So we talked about this just really recently so just to give a few things. This is a little bit different than some of the other studies that the MTP in that these are projects that are to be constructed over a four-year time period. So it's a list of actual projects that we expect to be constructed in that time period. It's based on real money that we expect to actually be available which is what transportation needs and projects that spend transportation dollars in Chittin County have to be in the transportation improvement program. This is unique to Chittin County as an MPO. The rest of the state does not have a similar document. Federal regulations require that it be updated every four years. We have been doing it every year. VTRAN does it every year. There's also a state transportation improvement program. I'm going to say something about that in a minute. And it covers the whole county. The map on the bottom is the location of the projects. And we talked at the last training about this continuing comprehensive transportation planning process that's carried out cooperatively by the state. The MPO and transit providers that's language that's out of the federal regulations and were required to do this. And just a lot of what we do including the MTP content and the TIP content are really spelled out in a lot of detail in the federal regulations. So we have to do what the law tells us that we have to do. Just to clarify, the TIP is the spending plan. It's not projects that appear in it are going to be constructed over the next four years. It's the projects that are going to receive funding over the next four years. So just to clarify. I'll make that point. More of a spending plan than a construction plan. So multimodal includes transit, includes bike pad, includes vehicles, includes a lot of other stuff. There's some opportunity for public involvement and the development of it. And it authorizes the obligation of federal funds. So this is kind of a... So to Amy's point, the obligation is a process by which the funds are set aside for a specific project. So it really happens before it's constructed. So if you were ready to construct this bridge out here or something like that, FHWA would obligate funds. They would set it aside. This money belongs to this project and then that money is used to pay down the bills. So it's really... It's not a spending document as Amy said. It's more of a community argument. The top chart, the bottom chart, is the tip levels from 2009 to present. And what you can see, the green are airport projects. Airport products are listed in the tip just for information purposes. We don't have control over those. But the point of this chart is really just to show that it does vary a lot year to year. And that's because it's a dynamic group of projects that are trying to move into construction. So average is about $50 million per year in the programming. The actual spending is somewhat lower. We can talk about that at another point, but that's probably to tell that we don't need to get into right now. And it has... Yeah, so it's multimodal. What we said before has a whole lot of different types of projects. I just threw this in here. We don't really have to talk about this tonight. We do talk about this a couple months ago. But we have transit projects. Exit 16 parking lot in the bottom. Some intersection work. 15 bronze trace culverts. Exit 16 improvements. So a whole variety of projects. And the last point that I'm going to make is... So there is a tip, talking about that. There's also a STIP, the state transportation improvement program. Those are federal documents that are required by the federal government. And they are planning documents that lay out the money to be spent over that time period. There's also the state capital program. And I think from the state's perspective, that's kind of more important than their STIP, because that's what they're actually spending money on. So our projects have to be in the capital program and they have to be in the TIP in order to spend money on it. Are there any overlaps between TIP and STIP? The TIP is wholly incorporated into the STIP. The federal regulations require that. So a lot of people, we have a lot of confusion about that sometimes. If something's in the TIP, then people say, we have to get it in the STIP. It's automatically in the STIP. As long as VTrans are produced. Okay? Who's next? So the UPWP is perhaps my least favorite after that week. It stands for Unified Public Work Program. Unified Planning. There's no fun way to say it, but it's where the rubber hits the road and what we're doing as staff to help our municipalities. We are an organization of acronyms. We are. So the UPWP is our annual work program. We solicit projects from our municipalities that we represent. I'll get to the process in a minute. But it's basically how we implement the adopted vision, goals, and strategies of the ECOS plan. All the committees come together. The board came together, adopts the ECOS plan, which includes the MTP. And so the UPWP is the way that we identify projects on how we're going to ultimately achieve those livable communities that we all strive for. You can see this nice track poster that we developed as part of the ECOS plan back here, which you see. But like I said, we're trying to develop those plans and move projects ultimately towards construction. The process itself is one of those things that is sort of always happening at some level. Usually from mid to late November, we'll send out our solicitation to everyone in the county and say we are developing our work program for next year. What are the ideas that you have for your town? We also solicit projects from non-municipal partners to help us, again, achieve those identified goals and strategies in the adopted ECOS plan. Let me just make a point. In the application itself, which goes out in Thanksgiving time, and all the municipalities see that application, there is kind of a review within that that says, how is this further a strategy or action of the plan? So that's kind of the crosswalk. They kind of say, oh, this is going to accomplish X, Y, Z. So that's how we kind of connect the planning document to the programming application. Right, and we try... I don't like to think of it as a competitive grant program. It's not. It's based on the funding that we have available to help support the municipalities. So the down-sentence of projects that they would like planning assistance with, if they have more than one, we ask that they prioritize and rank them, and that will help the UPWP committee, which is another board-level committee, identify which ones of those that we are able to fund with the planning dollars available, and again, to Charlie's point, to help us meet those adopted goals in the ECOS plan. In January, those project requests are due. The UPWP committee meets January, February, and March to help sort of organize all of those. We do an eligibility review with Federal Highways and V-Trans to make sure that we can use transportation dollars for transportation projects. Those documents, the recommended work program comes. We present it to the TAC, the executive committee, the board, ultimately. Adostin approves it, and we can work by July. We do a menu review in December. We want to make sure we're staying abstract. Some projects take a little bit longer to start than others, so we're able to reallocate some funds as needed to help keep projects moving along. Jason mentioned our public participation plan. That's sort of that large, overarching umbrella. We're a public entity funded with public dollars, so this is really the keystone of all of our efforts. We have a public participation plan that we typically update every five years. We had a major rewrite in 2014. But, you know, project of early continuous, open, and collaborative. We want people to know about what we're doing. We want to hear from them on how we can do what we're doing better. And there's different levels of involvement, depending on the type of project that we're working on. For example, in our rewrite in 2014, we are using the spectrum of engagement, which came from a national public participation organization. We thought it fit well and would help us determine what levels of engagement we wanted to do depending on the type of project. For example, if we are just putting stuff on the calendar on our website, if we're putting out a newsletter, that's just forward-facing stuff, right? We're just informing the public about what we're doing. If we're going to move up the ladder a little bit, we're going to do some consulting. This is sort of a technical study. It's not really dependent on public feedback on how we're going to do traffic counts or run the traffic model, although all that is public information. I'm happy to share that, but we don't necessarily need to have a number of public meetings to run through those. When we move up to Involve, this is when we have those project advisory committees that meet and help move projects forward. And this is when we really start to have a little bit more public involvement. And when we reach this point, we have a form as a part of the public participation plan. It helps our staff and the consultant team, if we're using that, think through the different populations that may be affected by the project that we may want to come up with some different ways to reach out to them, some different ways that we want to have feedback from them. Not everyone can come to a meeting on Tuesday or Wednesday at 7 o'clock. So we want to come up with some different ways to take advantage of the technology that's there, meet people where they are, and in the language that they speak. When we get up to collaborate, this is sort of a bigger plan. We really do have a much larger process. These projects take a little bit longer. We want to engage them in what we're doing. At the RPC, we really don't have many of the empowered level projects. I see those as more of the municipal projects. This is really a citizen-led effort where as collaborate is sort of lockstep with our process. And as you move up, these projects, for example, the Magnusky Avenue quarter study, which were at the collaborate level, that project has already benefited from some of the work at the earlier level. Phase one was a technical analysis which didn't have a significant amount of public involvement. But now we're at this point where we use that information and really go out more broadly. Who drives that process? Is there somebody in charge of each project that drives down through those? Well, depending on the type of project, we can sort of use this to figure out, all right, we're just sending MR Communications Manager some information to put on the website. That's fine. When we do our work program, the UPWP, we go through those projects and some of them just are self-identified as go-to projects or quarter projects. And that will help us provide the framework. I would say most, you know, the involve, we sort of play in that space quite a bit. You know, the website, the flyers, ads in the paper, the inform, you know, the regular work consulting is more the technical assistance type of project counts and so forth. Involve and collaborate are those much bigger projects that have a more significant public involvement. Somebody want to drive that? Yes. So for each project we have a project manager from the CCRPC and usually we have a municipal representative that we collaborate with. So that person, the project manager and we usually have a consultant on board. So we all basically, we create a public participation plan for each project. There's some competition between these projects too, right? Some people push them harder than others. Or is this all move along at the same speed through the whole thing? No, I think there are projects that are much more complex, right? So they have a lot more, you know, a lot more participation than others. So that's what Brian was trying to say to collaborate. There is a difference there. Somebody could be more anxious to get their project through, right? Can they move ahead? Or does everything move together? So... They're trying to see how a project really goes. Definitely different projects move at different speeds, particularly within municipality. You know, municipality decided to slow down, have more meetings, more analysis. Yeah. But I don't know that they can, it depends on the comfort level, typically, the select board. If they're voting on a preferred alternative, are they comfortable? Do they have a lot of people in support or against? So that's what really changes the speed of things. And if it's a town level project, and I'm not sure if you're asking a different question about, like, how fast does then it move? After we do the study, how fast does it move through V-Trans to get through? Is there any way to accelerate a project if a town really gets excited about it? It's a different question. I mean, this is just for planning, right? Well, the planning... It can't implement until you plan, right? Right, exactly. So, I'm just wondering how you put... Is everything moved together, and it's all even, or can... Is there still an animal called Locally Managed Projects where a town can kick in their extra 10% so you can kick in your 20% and you can move it and have the management at your town if you want to do that? Yeah, just shared funding. 80, 10, 10 is most private. So you could do... You could pick up the 20, you could pick up the extra 10 and Locally Managed. So most of these projects come through our UPWP, right? So, the municipalities are our partners. So those projects, once they get into the program, they move forward. So I hope that answers your question. But I'm taking a note that maybe we should delve into how a project actually gets done as... Sounds like a topic for next time. Yeah. My question was kind of related to that in a way. Yeah. So any other... Something to look forward to November 28th? Is that what it is? So any other ideas about the November training session? We are thinking of those. We can definitely address that, but also we can address some of our actual work here, you know, UPWP, just the actual work that we're doing here. A good example. An example you might go through. Yes, yes. We'd be happy to do that next time. And we were thinking along those lines, but I want to hear from you if you have any other ideas. It's also interesting that, you know, I remember there was a time in Georgia when she was here. I remember we used to have to borrow the city of Burlington's light. We had so many people that would come to the January meeting to talk about and putting a project on our UPWP. And we always had... We always had a situation where it felt like a feeding frenzy, okay? And then we had to learn how to say no to about 40% of the projects that got suggested. But I don't see that anymore. We did a fundamental... Because we don't want people to come in with wish lists. We want them to come in with real... Well, and we also, because it's central to anything that we do that the municipality be on board, we wanted them to bring to their municipality and see if their municipality is on board with us doing it. And so, for better or worse, I think that kind of change in process, we went from not getting it all just scattershot. That was our longest meeting because we'd spent two hours listening to everybody talk about a light on their corner to... To a CCTA route. Municipalities are doing a really good job, I think, of talking and looking at what they want to do in their municipality and prioritizing it. So I think it's made that whole process hopefully more effective, but at least more efficient. We actually lose the creativity of some of the citizens when they come up. We still get that input, but a lot of it is in writing now, Jeff. So we're getting a lot of comments via email that we share with the municipalities and their staff for them to think about. Like, hey, you got three suggestions from a resident of yours. Do you want to do that? Is that a priority for you? I guess in the age of social media, come into an actual hearing as old school. Back in the day. And people will say more things on social media than they had to put their face and mouth behind it. A microphone. All right, thank you very much. I do a lot of stuff you have. It's something that occurs to you after tonight that you're thinking like... I think pizza was a good idea. We had an agenda. People are just getting quiet. Thank you all. Call to order the October meeting of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. Are there any changes to the agenda? Hearing none. We give an opportunity to members of the public to comment on items that do not appear on the agenda. Are there any members of the public who would like to make such a comment at this time? Move approval at consent agenda. First, does anybody want to withdraw anything from the... Back off a little bit. Under public comment, I just want to take a minute to introduce our only ones to leave. We have two alternates. This is Abby. This is Abby. She'll be staying home. Can hardly wait. Me too. Anything you want to say? I'm glad to be here. Fix your roundabout and we'll be happy. We're working on it. So, does anybody wish to remove any items from the consent agenda? Yes. Hearing none. I already blew it. I already blew it. Okay. Second. Second. I made a motion. I'm just being difficult again as usual. No. I just... The end. Until I was rudely interrupted by his former honor. All in favor of the motion, say aye. All opposed. Ayes have it. That's nice how those just move things along. Prove the minutes with corrections. Your second. Barbara. Catherine. Move minutes with Catherine's corrections. No, actually, I'm either slipping or it was perfect. Bernie's getting better. Just in time to retire. Your final questions. Changes to the minutes. Hearing none. All in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. Now we have a presentation with respect to transportation survey results. Peter will introduce this. Yeah. So a little bit of background on this particular project. We have, going back now, a proposal of what the public and Triton County felt about transportation issues. We did the first one in 2000. We did one in 2006 and 12 and not 2018. Why six years is pretty interesting. Yeah, we tried to do it at five year intervals and missed the first one by a year. So anyway, we've tried to replicate the same survey now or four different periods. We did have a problem with the first one. I don't see comparisons to that. But the last three in 2006, 2012, and the most recent one, we've asked the same questions and gotten the responses from a good sample size that we can extrapolate the findings to the entire population of Chiton County with a certain margin of error. And we're doing that here. And we do this well for a couple of reasons. One being we want to have some idea if maybe there's some trends in their thinking and you'll see in a couple of slides in a minute that there are. Most, however, remain remarked at GoPro time. That's probably not surprising. But it's good for our long-range plan just to have some idea of what the public thinks. It's sort of a check on when we do our metropolitan transportation plan, not that we're trying to match our recommendations to what the public thinks but we want to have some idea So the most recent one was conducted in April-May, this past year, in little into June. It was done by WBA Research. Kevin Polis is here. He works for WBA. He's going to be in the presentation on the findings and compare some of the previous ones. Steve Bobble is with Steadman Hills, also part of the consultant team on this, and we'll chime in on some of this as well. So anyway, I'm going to turn it over and he's going to go over the findings from the recent survey, do some of the comparison, and hopefully you're going to find some of this interesting. If you have any comments or questions at any time, please do check. Hopefully we're going to have an interesting and lively discussion here. If you are going to see some changes over time and what people think about this, I have a couple of notes up front. I don't think anybody wants to sit here and listen to me drone out for 20 minutes in silence. This is meant to be informal and interactive, so if you have questions, please chime in. We have a lot of data to go through and I have not memorized every single number. It's a lot of numbers. So some of my responses to your questions might be I'll have to get back to you on that, which I'm glad to do. But please, if you have questions, ask. Second thing I want to, and this is building off of what Peter just said, is what I am not going to show you here are the facts. Rather, what I'm going to show you here are people's perceptions of the facts. This is what people perceive. So if you see a number here and you think, hey, that's not technically true. This is what people are perceiving things to be. So keep that in mind. This is the public's view and the public and shit and account. What we're going to do here is we're going to just flip a little bit to the side. That's okay. We're going to go through the methodology real quick and then we're going to talk about system-wide results. From there, we're going to talk about the strengths and weaknesses by each of the four major modes in your total county transportation system. That's better. The four major modes we're defining is driving, walking, bicycling, and Green Mountain public transportation. Then we're going to talk about the importance of possible improvements, how people perceive those, and wrap it up with some initial conclusions and the results. Okay. We did a survey of 500 residents of the county. A random sampling of residents were mailed an invitation to participate in an online survey. What we did to ensure that people didn't fill out the survey multiple times or what's become too common these days posted on social media so all the friends can fill it out is we put a unique password on each invitation, ensuring that a person filled it out could only fill it out once. The question itself was 21 minutes long, so 21 minutes on average to complete. As I said, there is a lot of data here. You're only going to get an overview of what's here. We did also wait the results to ensure the results are representative of the entire county. Now, as far as the transportation people are using, this is what people use most often. Those are the numbers in green to the left and what people have used in the past month. Not surprisingly driving is number one. The majority of people drive. In fact, 84% of people say the driving is the mode of transportation they use most often. Interestingly enough 16% of people said that they use app-based transportation. Your Uber is your lips. And more so than that 16%, we have 35% of 18 to 34 year olds who say they've used app-based transportation somewhere in the past month. Now one other number we wanted to note more because it aligns up with other numbers that we've seen is that there's been a slight drop in GMT usage. It's down to 12% reporting versus 16% in 2012, which if you've seen any statistics come out of Green Mountain transit over the past couple of years, you've seen that ridership has gone down marginally in those years, especially commuter transportation. The 3 and 4% numbers you see is used most often is very much in line with analysis that we've done over the years calculating the transit mode share in Chittenden County. So that's a good emphasis on that point. But you do see that among the less frequent users that it's somewhat lower now than it was in 2012. And also remember in 2012 gas prices were at their nominal peak close to $4 a gallon. So some of those infrequent users have dropped off as gas has gotten less expensive. It's a different economy too. From here we ask people to rate their satisfaction with Chittenden County's transportation system overall. So keep in mind this rating is countywide regardless of whether you live right in the middle of Burlington or if you live out the farm road. And currently those who are satisfied, 71% of people say they're satisfied. That's actually up from 65% in 2012. The overall increase in satisfaction is largely driven by improvements in people's attitudes toward bicycling. And it's also supported by positive results we're seeing from Green Mountain Transit and from walking. Those seem to be largely carrying the driving numbers which are a little bit lower. Now this next chart I'm going to take a minute on. This isn't even really a chart. It's more of a primer. Explain some of the charts you're about to see. What we did is we asked people to rate how satisfied they were individually with your four major modes. Green Mountain Transit, bicycling, walking and driving. And then we asked people a series of attributes within each of those categories. And how satisfied they are with each of those attributes. The more satisfied, as you're going to see in the following charts, the more satisfied somebody was with an attribute the further to the right-hand side of this quadrant you see in front of you is LB. If you're more satisfied you'll be further to the right, less satisfied further to the left. And then we did some additional statistical analysis to determine which of these attributes are having the greatest impact on overall satisfaction. And those you'll see the ones that have a greater impact on overall satisfaction will appear higher on here. The ones that have only a moderate or little impact on satisfaction will appear lower on here. What does all of that mean? What all of that means is if somebody is highly satisfied meaning far to the right with a very large impact on satisfaction it's higher up. It'll appear in that top right-hand quadrant. It's a strength. People are satisfied with it and it has a significant impact on satisfaction. It's one of your strengths. You do well at this. With agencies I work with I know I tell them interestingly enough to focus on the top left. These are things that have a significant impact on satisfaction but you're not doing as well on it. It says people are not satisfied. It's an area you should focus on. Now in all that being said I'm not saying you don't focus on anything that falls toward the bottom of the chart. It's not that these are not important. It's just that they're not key drivers. They are not the key drivers that are driving people's satisfaction. And the first example of this is we ask people to rate me to the four modes overall. And you'll notice in the top right corner you'll see walking. People are satisfied with walking. Now when we talk about satisfied with walking we're talking about satisfied with walking countywide. And it has a significant impact on people's overall satisfaction with the area. Walking in fact is due to this county's greatest strength. This was brought up in our discussions. I was thinking about this so I looked into it. When we talk about satisfaction city residents 87% of city residents are satisfied with walking in the area compared to 77% of suburban and rural residents. Other numbers to focus on here, driving. Driving is a flip side. Driving is probably the area's weakness. It has a very large impact on people's satisfaction but your ratings are not as high on driving. Green Mountain Transit kind of straddles in the middle. It does have a significant impact on people's attitudes but whether it's a weakness or a strength it's right on the line where you can define it one or the other. The fourth that's very interesting is bicycling. People's satisfaction and bicycling has been improving for the past 12 years. It's becoming more and more important to people. First, and I know there's a lot of stuff here so I'll save you some trouble and focus on the key attributes. Number one attribute as far as driving goes people perceive driving as safe. It has a significant impact on people's overall satisfaction. Your weaknesses in terms of driving are the conditions of the roads and bridges in the area and neighborhood streets as well. In addition, traffic congestion. So it's the condition of roads and bridges and traffic congestion. That has a significant impact on people's satisfaction and it's where you're receiving lower ratings. In fact, regarding conditions of roads and bridges only 22% of people are currently satisfied with the condition of roads and bridges within the county. That's actually down from 27% in 2012 and 39% in 2006. That's the condition of roads and bridges. That is the condition of roads. That's exactly what happened. Now there was a fair bit of discussion we've had about this. There's always been work in the area. One comment is when you do work in an area you're bringing attention to it. I didn't realize it was a problem until I saw all of this construction. That's a possibility. Mind you that's also a conjecture. It's perception of condition. It is not everything. Thank you. Guess what led me to want to lead off with that point? You're looking at it right there. Now this is interesting. It's a little bit odd because all of these things are appearing on the top of this chart, meaning all of these have an impact on people's satisfaction with Green Mountain Transit. These measures were asked of everybody whether or not you are part of that 12% of people who ride Green Mountain Transit, 3% who ride regularly. Everybody was asked what attributes are you satisfied with and they said people are satisfied, generally satisfied with the system. It does have a significant impact on people's overall satisfaction with your transportation system as a whole. But people are having a little time trouble separating things out as to what's really important to them versus what's not. If we were able to measure this among riders I'm sure we'd see a much greater spread to be able to pull out individual attributes that are critical. Unfortunately we didn't speak to enough riders about that. We've seen little change in people's satisfaction with Green Mountain Transit over the years. These numbers are very, very stable. Green Mountain Transit's greatest strengths. Again, this is among all county residents. It's seen as safe. The fares are seen as reasonable and your drivers are seen as courteous. I guess there hasn't been a fair increase in how long now? At least a dozen years. Mind you that don't look at these results as advocating for fair increase or anything like that. That's a whole different type of research. All I'm saying is that right now people are satisfied with where the fares are. The weaknesses of the system. Getting me to where I need to be when I need to get there and its reliability. I do a number of studies with transit agencies throughout the country and these are always the key attributes. It's on time performance. It's always the number one most important attribute, be it here, be it New York City, be it Atlanta, be it Seattle. Now for walking. We didn't rate as many actions. There's not quite as much involved with the industry in walking, obviously. Safety. Safety crossing the streets is a strength and we've seen steady improvement in that number since 2006. We've seen also some improvement in the number of sidewalks. Again, these are sidewalks both in people's neighborhoods but it's still a weakness. Your numbers are better than they were but they're not high enough yet to say it's really helping drive and improve people's overall satisfaction. Now bicycling. What I mentioned to you before about Green Mountain Transit and how these things are all clustering together. We're seeing even more of that with bicycling where people are... Bicycling isn't as important as other things are driving to people's overall satisfaction and however not as many people bicycle as drive not as many people as bicycles do these other things. So that's why you're seeing everything appear as a weakness. What seems to be occurring is people really like the idea of bicycling but they can again separate out what are the key attributes. One area you have shown a great deal of improvement. All that being said is the number of bike racks. In 2012 only 42% of people cycled with a number of bike racks. That number is now up to 61%. And maybe one of... maybe even the largest increase in any number throughout this entire study. After we had people rate different attributes we then started talking about different transportation initiatives. What's important to people, what's not important to people. And we did literally dozens of different possible initiatives and these initiatives went from highway initiatives to safety initiatives to preserving your current infrastructure. After we asked people about all of these initiatives we then asked people to say all of these different groups of initiatives we've been talking about what do you think is most important to you. And rather than simply telling me what's most important we gave everybody 100 points. You take those 100 points and you divide those 100 points up almost like you were a budget. It's not quite a budget number again. Don't divide your budget up this way please. What you would give the most weight to what's the most important to you. Far and away the number one thing for people was preserving the condition of what they have the condition of the roads, bridges, sidewalks. That number has held true since 2006. Each study has not only been the number one thing for people it has been the number one thing for people by a wide margin. Now, as I said we asked people to rate dozens of dozens of different possible improvements. We're not going to sit here and go through all those today. I could probably get through them by 10pm if I try. So instead what we're going to do is hit on key things. The things that people really felt are most important. First of those, as we said preserving existing facilities is people top priority. Within that group is fixing bridges that are in poor condition. You remember earlier how poorly rated the condition of bridges was. It shows up here again. Repaving roads, preserving bridges high on people's list of importance. They've been trending upwards in terms of people's importance. Again, perceived importance to people. Repaving road lines, upgrading existing sidewalks are also quite important to people. As far as bike and walk facilities these numbers have really held true since 2006. We've seen a little variance. You'll see encouraging development that locates jobs, housing schools within walking distance. You'll see a little bit of change there, but really those are not even statistically significant results. Those could be as much random chance as anything. These numbers felt very stable. And really of all of the various bike and walk facility questions and improvements we talked about, they're holding quite stable. In terms of improving safety fixing poor bridges, that same attribute and that's trending upwards since 2006. The remaining attributes that we asked about are important but have held relatively stable since 2006. And we talked about the importance of expanding public transportation services and facilities. Real-time information there's been a huge increase in the interest in looking and receiving real-time bus information. A lot of agencies around the country are facing the same issue and attempting to deal with the same issue. So you are hardly unique in this regards to people's interest or having to tackle this issue. Interestingly lighted shelters is also trending upward. Another subject we were talking about. People see lighted shelters around. They like lighted shelters so probably people would like to see more of them. Even though safety on Green Mountain Transit is, Green Mountain Transit performing very well in terms of safety, lighted shelters are definitely a safety thing. If you ask somebody would you like a lighted shelter or not, people are more apt than not to say yes. Interesting as well, we've seen a decrease in the number of those who consider having public transit, express transit available to park and ride lots to be essential. Plenty of people consider transportation a public transit to park and ride lots to be important. Not nearly as many consider it to be essential as have in the past. We're interpreting that not as that people think it's unimportant that we should get rid of transit from other places but there has been a large increase over the past dozen years in the amount of commuter and link express routes so I think fewer people are saying this is an important thing we need to add to. People are recognizing we have a pretty robust system in place so that's why we're seeing what we think is the reason for the downward trend in the number of essential votes for those couple of categories. Second block, similar trend if it was essential to 35% of the folks in 2006 but it's dropped by 10% to 2018. Do you maybe also suspect there was a gas price difference from 2006 to 2018? There is no doubt this gas price difference. 2006 was actually pretty much where it is now. 2012 was the peak. So that variance, I don't necessarily have a coherent explanation for why that might have dropped from 35 to 23. There certainly has been development in downtown areas and in village centers so maybe people perceive that as having been addressed to some extent or it might just be random variation in how people answer it. It does seem to match the trend in block 3 and block 5 so I was curious. I would suspect there was a correlation between the three of them. Highway initiatives. These all receive lukewarm responses from people and the interest not only is lukewarm, it's seeming to trend downward. The only one that seems to be still gaining some traction is adding travel lanes to congested roads and even then you only have a little over 40% of people who consider it to be very important or essential. Now the next couple of slides are for commuter benefits. We ask people what is available to them where they work and if it's available we can manage of it. What just by the way does not show the frequency with which they do things. Only they take advantage of it or not. Probably the most interesting number we see on here is those who work in places that offer telecommuting. We're seeing that 37% of people currently work in a place that offers telecommuting. Not only 37% of people who work in a place that offers telecommuting you've got 29% of people who take advantage of telecommuting. So they telecommute some amount. Again that could be once a month, that could be five days a week. The 29% again is up from 16% in 2012. The other big numbers you see here free and subsidized parking that shouldn't be a surprise and you do see a slight increase in the amount of people who both offer telecommuting. In addition to the most specific attributes we ask people some questions about general transportation attitudes. These aren't all of them, but these are some key ones that we thought were interesting. 76% have reduced the number of trips that they currently take or say they've reduced the number of trips they currently take. Rather they're using the internet for shopping, bills, or for work. That 76% is up from 61% and people are definitely rather than going to the brick and mortar stores they're shopping online rather than work the telecommuting. Support for tax increases it's increased since 2012. Now when it comes to tax increases are a little bit of a funny thing to ask people about. I always tell people, or a very funny thing to ask people about, I always tell people when you look at something like this don't focus in that muddy middle I'd agree or someone disagree focus on your experience and people strongly agree or strongly disagree those are the people who are more sure of their opinion and this is an interesting, there are two findings on here that are most interesting when you look at them and conjunct. Currently if you look at people who strongly agree or strongly disagree that they would support increase in gas taxes to pay for highway, transit bicycle and sidewalk projects combined 25% strongly agree with that versus 28% strongly disagree with that. Why that's interesting, if you separated and just go highway projects rather than 25% agree, 28% disagree, it drops to 15% strongly agree, 33% strongly disagree. So you're going from 25 and 28% to 15 and 33% so if you add in the transit bicycling and sidewalk projects you're much more likely to get people support than going highway alone. Alright, in conclusion first talking about walking walking is your strength 80% of people are satisfied with walking within Chittenden County as a whole there are opportunities for you to improve providing enough sidewalks and improving conditions of those sidewalks leveraging the number of people who can currently walk to work of school and other places, walkability the flip side of that is driving that's a weakness of the area 61% of people are satisfied with their ability and pleasantness of driving within the county your areas to improve there roads and bridges, obviously bridges come up again and again improving the condition of neighborhood streets as well and reducing traffic congestion condition and traffic congestion now when we talk about public transportation there is an opportunity here for a lot of people who don't ride but it definitely improves people's perception of your transportation system that it's there and that it runs well your opportunities for improvement on time performance, provide efficient connections operate when needed and where needed motor transportation is only good to me if it can get me where I need to go when I need to get there and interestingly providing more bushelms bicycling is an area to watch 59% of people are satisfied but it's up I believe it was 50% in 2012 your opportunity to improve there I separated these out making bicycles safe for children versus making bicycling safe for teens and adults because obviously those are two somewhat separate issues having enough separated bike paths improving the condition of bike paths and providing enough bike racks which is an area you've shown a great deal of improvement but you're not quite to the point where you can say it's an area of strength anyway that concludes what I was going to share with you today so if anybody has any questions we'll do our best to answer them if you can't answer them today we'll definitely call off with you on them also to let everybody know there will be a much larger more detailed report out soon so you will have an opportunity to dive down into numbers if you'd like to and to add to what Kevin just said this is sort of a teaser of what's in the report that we're still trying to finalize here because a lot more data related to other modes and people's attitude towards those modes that will be in the final report yeah do we do anything pointed in the survey I mean one of the things that about pointed I mean any open-ended questions asking people what would it take to get them out of their single occupancy car auto trip we did ask a few open-ended questions that question actually that is that the behavior we're trying to change maybe it's a candidate for later surveys Green Mountain Transit over the next six months is going to be doing a public opinion survey and we do ask questions like that on that survey Kevin and I are actually going to be working on that with Green Mountain Transit can we ask those before and have we got answers I'm just curious we certainly always ask what are the key factors that would make you more well accused public transportation and it's things like Kevin said before better reliability, more service to my town more hours of service I can infer that from this I mean something more pointed about what would it take to get you out of your single occupancy trip the answer to that is take away my parking space but no so what would it take to get me out and still survive afterwards Brian do you have more yeah I think it's higher gas prices than eliminating free parking eliminating free parking there it lies in the rough just the whole $4 a gallon didn't do it it's the whole boiler lead and frog gadgets if you put frog in a pot of boiling water it will jump out where it's slow put it into a pot of cold water and slowly bring it to temperature from 3 to 325 to 350 you have to have a spike in prices to those people and that's proven not just here but everywhere could you remind me again of the 500 people that you talked to what geographic location were they the entire entirety of Chittenden County all of Chittenden County what we did was pull a random sample of residents and I think it was 8,500 8,500 residents were 8,500 households so somebody in Huntington and somebody in the north end old north end of Burlington those are I'm thinking in my mind quite different different and it's awfully hard to I think it would be more valuable to talk about the more heavily populated part of Chittenden County what we do and this is our report is we do drill down in various suburbs but one of the suburbs we do drill down into is we separate residents out and city residents, suburban residents which is a little bit of a money category and rural residents I just wanted to for the sake of time yeah and although the results were kind of weighted so the more populous we have two thirds or more of our population are in the urban area this kind of reflects that but when you look at individually when you look at the individual we can't separate out those two groups to compare differences and attitudes I heard what Brian said about raising the cost of gas but that, I mean all this study showing obviously Chittenden County the impression of the residents of Chittenden County taken from the sample group of 500 people randomly it was a joke about raising maybe not a joke about raising the cost of gas it's not practical to go under that premise of raising the price of gas because in these rural communities when you go up to the northeast kingdom they don't have the opportunity to get on GMT and get so close and do that cars are necessarily evil in the state so we go look statewide and then the other thing is I'd like to hear from outside Chittenden County how they feel about that stuff traveling through the people they're here for work at Gold Foundries people from other counties Washington County, Lamoille County Addison County, Franklin that are coming into our county they're the ones that have to travel and don't have access to mass transit and to be able to bike to work those are people I'd really like to hear from they're paying state taxes to our roads and teleports so Freud's worth can you mention I think the state has some sort of public opinion survey is there one coming up or not? I know we just did one in 2016 and we usually do it similar to what you do in advance of doing a major change to our long-range plan so I don't envision that's going to be done probably for another I'd like to have a follow-up to kind of compare some of the it's a myopic view of what we're trying to address I just think we gotta look bigger picture here beyond this I could also mention VTrans at the beginning stages of it's statewide public transit policy plan which I'm managing for them and we're about to do a large public outreach component there'll be a meeting hosted at CCRPC at the end of November and we're going to be doing statewide online survey there's going to be a lot of material about that asking people for their policy priorities and for specific things that can be done to encourage people to use public transportation so we're going to be using social media a lot to get the word out for that and certainly working with the RPCs to get as much public engagement as we can on this issue it's not going to be very specific to like local routes in Chittenden County it's more of a statewide perspective but we are trying to get input on that as well you are definitely on the right track with doing this I've been doing this for a long time I don't really count I've yet never once done a survey that has not worked through the results walk away I just wish I'd asked these two more questions you can never ask enough so that's why you need to see what other research is out there and be able to look at those results compared to what you have I think it's an excellent idea to see what statewide data is available to find out from other counties other parts of the state what's there that have been done down there that might be about or a two hour questionnaire I should say the survey that I mentioned is now live if anyone's interested you can just google VTRANS PTPP and that will take you to the page and then there's a link to this metro quest survey it only takes about five minutes but it's now live and feel free to take a look at it and answer the questions there it's not a random sample it's not meant to be statistically significant like this survey was we'll get that out if we haven't already in our newsletter and other ways one thing, one analysis that I think would be really interesting is people's perception of infrastructure condition versus what we actually know that condition to be perception is consistent with the actual data on that subject that's an opportunity reception is one thing in the reality it's different even if it's an education program that's trying to turn it around and we do have data from on tables and bridges and everything so we can actually do that we just went through it with the performance measures exactly, that's my point we got the actual data so we can just do that comparison about how to do it, there you go I don't know when that deadly bridge collapse in Italy or Spain something a few months ago a news event like that which is nowhere near here could affect people's perceptions in answering the survey a bridge collapse, that must be a terrible problem here too the reality is I take all your residents and stick them in a bubble for a month or so and just no other outside problem is that we put a survey out and some event does occur and it does change people's perceptions people's perception infrastructure condition is often how it looks not how it actually is this bridge out here is a great example in Manuski people perceive it as being really bad because the railing is crumbling and falling apart but when you actually look at the structural condition of the bridge it's in phenomenally good structural condition so it's just an example that needs to be replaced so I think the little bounce also helps the little bounce also helps conversely, Brand Newbridge seems to have collapsed if you have any idea when we'll be able to see this report couple weeks couple weeks I'll send it out to all of you I'll put it on the website along with the presentation where we're kind of finalizing you said you've got a break out between suburban or city results and rural did you actually do a tally of number of people from each community that responded you could what we did do is for just so everybody knows I don't know if we mentioned this or not bear with the other and we want to make a note the way this was weighted was weighted by the census tract level so that we're representative at that point we can certainly look at community the one thing we need to be careful of we have enough residents suburban city suburban and rural to be able to look at there are other cases where we've tried looking at some numbers we just weren't enough within a specific grouping that we could look at so you may, I encourage you I love when people use data to ask hey can you look at it like this but if we have to come back and say shoot we just don't have enough we can't slice the 500 that's fine our apologies Kevin you're saying that if the sample size was larger that you'd have a better take that the ends justify the means I love that I'm unquestionably yes and I'm going to use that line to take full credit for it let's go ahead National sorry did you say it was 500 out of 500 who actually completed it 500 out of 8500 it was only one person for households that was able to fill that but 8500 people didn't complete it only 500 people but it was mailed to 8500 so 8000 did so was it mailed just mailed once it was I think we sent out three separate mailings came to a total of 8500 each individual household however received it just once it was only via postal mail crime electronic mail you can't get electronic I don't want to go too geeky I'll try to avoid that easily do that online only sample is not representative and there's no you can't randomly generate an email with your own email they use and randomly generate those dark things so no it was just done by now anything further thank you very much we look forward to the final report there's something to chew on next item on the agenda which is MPO business is the latest iteration of transportation performance measures report you have a memo in your packet discussing the performance measures as well as the recommended targets for the three additional categories the infrastructure permission the admin and bridges that we're just talking about the system reliability travel time reliability as well as the frame management so no surprise here since we discussed it last week last that month when we had the presentation the staff recommendation as well as the tag and the executive committee's recommendation is for this board to agree with the statewide targets for all measures under those three categories so that is our recommendation I move the staff and executive committee recommendation second is there any further discussion questions yeah hearing none one of the best bits of advice I once got as a lawyer is in your if you're winning shut up so on that all in favor of the motion say aye aye all opposed the ayes have it thank you very much since we're unanimous we don't need a roll call correct next item our fiscal year 2020 municipal dues nobody wants to talk about this now so this is we every year look at the dues and we have a policy of looking at the employment cost I think it's for New England so it's kind of the cost of local government employees and how that goes up and it's been typically going up to plus percent or something so if you look at the table attached to this memo you'll see the 2.3 increase and how that breaks out for your town but the bigger picture on dues is when we merged for FY 2012 we made a commitment at that time to have three years where we wouldn't raise dues we did that and raised dues once 2015 and I haven't raised dues since fiscal year so we raised dues once in the last eight years so given that the staff of the executive committee recommended raising dues for FY20 by the 2.3 percent of the formula so and looking at the table Charlie on the far right there's a column that says fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 20 percent change does that change include both the annual changes to the grand list value and the 2.3 percent increase that's right so that is the total net change including both grand list changes and the proposed percentage increase what would result right yeah so you know the simple 2.3 everybody would have gone up 2.3 but if and you can see here that you know there's a few towns Burlington South Burlington Williston that had Essex town had much higher than average grand list growth so theirs are going up over 3 percent or 2, 3, 4 percent and there are even some towns that are going down because their grand list growth was so much lower than the average in the county so that's the discussion yes Jeff this is the sources but is there a uses for these funds issue just go into the regular operating budget or some of this match this is definitely the primary use and pretty close to correct but off the top of my head I'm going to say pretty close to of this goes to matching MPO spending so the staff work that we do work is the vast majority of this the rest may go to more matching but it's mostly matching funds for actual projects that this assessment is for absolutely for in general the UPWP work questions comments discussion hearing none all in favor say aye opposed you guys have it next item is the ad hoc committee on commission on act 250 appointments so I think I kind of tried to give a heads up last month I think there is a commission on act 250 next 50 years that the legislature formed in 2017 they are producing a report December 15, 2018 I'll look at Sharon occasionally I think you're part of the advisors to that process and so the notion and we've had some discussion at the executive committee about this was that we probably should have a committee that's kind of prepared to start looking at what that commission recommends and be able to provide feedback to the legislature as appropriate it may be fine it may be you should shift here and I think so last month these I think these were the folks that volunteered and Tony I am correct Andy you almost volunteered I think I think I did I'm not sure if you're interested in Chris Jim's not here but I'm pretty sure he did so I guess the question is there anybody else that really is dying to dive into this subject or even if they're not dying if they're interested alternates can do this as well absolutely alternates can serve on any one of our committees and we encourage them to serve on them they can head the committees no for like Deb Ingram from Wallston that's a better way to get to know what we do than serve on a committee because we're a committee organization and this is not the old I wouldn't be a member of any club that would accept me as a member this if somebody becomes interested in participating please let us know there's always going to be the opportunity to participate either informally or as a member of the committee the commission is going to produce recommendations by December 15th yeah what action are you looking for besides volunteering with the jurisdiction of the chair to appoint ad hoc committees right with the concurrence of the so we have to like say it's okay it was the old motion to I would move the slate of volunteers second I'll second I didn't realize we had to have the chair hamstrung on ad hoc committees any further discussion hearing none all in favor say aye I'll take that as concurrence and we'll move on to item 9 which is the Winooski tactical basin plan thank you Mr. Chairman so Dan Albrecht RPC staff here and with me is Karen Bates from Vermont DEC here to answer any questions the as I presented at your prior meeting the DEC has been working with RRPC and residents as well as other RPCs upstream and watershed groups and other individuals on crafting the Winooski tactical basin plan update it's quite a significant upgrade or expansion of the older basin plans in light of DEC's strength and commitment to water quality and increased amount of funding and especially because of Lake Champlain phosphorus issues so the whole issue that I talked about last time of the TMDL and tracking these improvements and using the basin plans as a vehicle by which the TMDLs are to be achieved so again a very comprehensive document so at the last meeting I walked through this elements of the plan the stressors we talked about stormwater and ag and roads and then the strategies that come from those plan and then the RPC role we're now here at the culmination of the RPC role which is in addition of course into providing input into the plan which we've done at the staff level and through our clean water advisory committee we're now at the primary purpose at the end is to deliver a letter to DEC on the conformance of the basin plan with the regional plan so this draft here was worked through the clean water advisory committee and the executive committee also looked at it and as noted in the memo both the committees recommended adoption of the letter I won't go into detail but I will hit the highlights here so the first page just gives you that can we just get the highlights of what changed from the last month? the letter is new but it reflects the comments it reflects the comments are there any substantive changes to the comments that we received last month? well no but this is really the first sort of look at the detail of the letter and talk about the strategies but in terms of that it won't be long so again page one just outlines the background and why we do this so beginning in page two what we really do is just highlight there's the basin plan top objectives and strategies which I outlined and what goals and strategies in our ECOS plan do they link to many of the strategies page two, page three and into four they link oftentimes to our strategy number three which is improving the safety, water quality and habitat of our rivers, streams wetlands and lakes in each watershed with quite a lot of detail and there's some linkage as well to strategy four for with regards to forest blocks and other habitat so on page four the letter affirms that the draft basin plan is in conformance with and supportive of our 2018 ECOS plan as I referenced earlier we making additional recommendations following on many of the recommendations we made on the 2016 LaMoyle Basin Plan which is another significant portion of our county LaMoyle Basin in the northern portion Winooski Basin in the central and southern and then what's called the direct to lake small streams that drain straight into Lake Champlain as opposed to part of the bigger river systems and that will be coming up in the next two years so again we make recommendations regarding prioritization on phosphorus removal we're trying to work with DEC on a way to categorize co-benefits similar to the TPI process so hazard mitigation or transportation improvement so you fix a major bridge that carries a lot of traffic you know at the same time you aid the water quality and stop erosion so that adds a benefit we do make a pretty strong statement in number two that some strategies are more important than others if phosphorus is really the goal and the TNDL is staring us in the face for these next 20 some years then the plan should really say that so yes invasives is a concern we don't want to forget about it but if we really have this 800 pound gorilla in the room let's note the fact of that 800 pound gorilla and recognize that some strategies are more important than others and then comments regarding some realism or how many of these projects are really going to be done in the next five years with additional recommendation number three continued emphasis on also some funds for project development as I mentioned there's well over a thousand projects in the watershed projects database there's a lot of projects that have been identified but have not been visited by an engineer or a river scientist or checking in with the landowner like would you even want somebody to plant trees next to the stream or fix this culvert or move this road or whatever so and then lastly a strong a strong emphasis on page five and six on the need to recognize that spending millions of dollars at a rate of roughly 45 million dollars a ton to get that one ton of phosphorus out of our sewer plants is not really cost effective and so there needs to be a recognition of that but that's yes improvements upgrades improved maintenance gradual upgrades yes can certainly be helpful but if we're going to focus the growth in the areas with our services with our wastewater then we need to recognize that causing requiring significant expenditures of funding just to chase another ton of phosphorus when you could much better spend that money somewhere else to get the best bang for the buck so that's how the letter concludes and as I say we'll make some minor staff comments on formatting or other additional recommendations but this is the letter which if you guys adopt it will be transmitted to the secretary tomorrow on the table on page five there's a list of various sectors encompassed by the natural resources sector what kind of I mean I understand stormwater pollution control infrastructure what's encompassed I'm going to turn that over to Kenny so that would be enhancing the resources that actually help to reduce phosphorus loading or either through wetlands where you actually have strong water that might sit in the wetland and phosphorus drops out or especially in ag fields and then flood plain expansion or restoration so that the river can expand into flood plain instead of maybe downstream providing more damage and more erosion those are the two resources that are protected probably the most and the other might be the your record of protection in straight landing any further questions comments yep Andrea I guess by default the natural resources thing is kind of talking about prevention and it feels like I just was looking for that word prevention anywhere in the letter from us because it is a significant way in which we can address this I just wonder if there's an opportunity to we do we do recognize the protection the very first strategy protect river corridors you know I see your point on the other hand what we're trying to do this letter is to some extent check the box to look at the document does it conform you know so I see what you're saying I know this is collaborative but what does ANR do with this after we send it so this information that we research see during the comment period we respond to so we will take every question sometimes we'll bundle them with the same thing and then respond with a a normal party public involvement process and we're in the middle of it now with comments accepted through 4.30pm to Karen so is there going to be another iteration that's going to be put out for comment or is there is this when you decide what you're going to do that that's what the end thing is going to be okay so there's not a lot of time from our process there will be a responsiveness some we will print it and it will be added to the basic plan itself so is there enough time for us to respond to the response there's not a process either what they do typically in these responsiveness summaries is they go through the comments and they either will point out how it was already addressed changes that have been made to further address it or why they don't think any changes this is a little bit different because this is a big ticket item going forward that's good any further questions comments hearing none is there a motion move the letter and send it to the secretary further discussion hearing none all in favor say aye opposed aye's have it for 10 executive director report so just to really just provide a little follow-up and update we did the governor brought his cabinet up to Chittany County a couple weeks ago now he may have seen some mentions in the news about that there are a few things that our PC staff were involved with we had a meeting with secretary Flynn there was another meeting with a bunch of the commerce leadership in Winooski the commissioner of the department of public service met with us to talk about the energy planning work so it was kind of nice for them to bring state agency leadership up to Chittany County and have some good conversations from what I could tell looked like the agency leadership got something out of it too so the building homes together results you'll see there's a couple pieces of paper in front of you and thanks to Emma for the stuff that looks pretty good you get some graphs about the production I think we had a press conference on this was that last week time flies when I'm having fun and it looks like there was a big drop in housing production in 2017 we did 954 homes in 2016 659 in 2017 the one thing that 2017 doesn't include is that we had one I think the shoeboxes and built new dorms so they actually added 300 beds we still have a good way to convert that into housing units but that also got added the vacancy even though it was ticking up going back to 2016 looks like based on the snapshot surveys that bricks do that are ticking back down so kind of watching that still the affordable housing goal we should be at 280 homes we're at 181 so not quite meeting that 20% percent of the new units being permanently affordable and at the bottom is kind of a call for more housing, local housing trust funds more full funding for VHCB and zoning changes and other things that we've been working with municipality also a kind of credit to Regina I don't think this is on here but there's a housing convening coming up October 29th and I think we'll focus on trust funds right? so she's been in touch you may have all seen emails from Regina about that but as I've gone around to your select boards and that's one of the things that people have remarked on that those have been good thank you for putting those together you also have the press release that went out remind me again? homes equals units and you can't use units because that interferes with your nice slogan building units together well but I mean we're creating the impression like an apartment unit is a home with a white picket fence for somebody it is it's a housing unit not a physical unit after you move in yes yes and the other thing so this is not answering your question it's okay, no I do it's alright there is a lot that's kind of under construction in 2018 and probably 2019 we may have an even larger number of people on the Cambrian rise depending on how fast the former wall moves forward but anyway so we're just watching all that public utility commission can I ask a question on the housing sure you say permanently affordable and I sort of forgotten how that was managed, how do you that's really stuff that predominantly Champlain Housing Trust manages our own school square so the 191 are going to have some link to Cathedral Square probably mostly Champlain Housing Trust, yep the other category is inclusionary zoning units in the city of Burlington it's a 99 year by fee out of zoning requirement so it doesn't have the nonprofit management but it has the financial restrictions 15 to 25% of the units in a private project at a time so the mall had a higher target self-imposed the majority of workforce housing projects that are privately developed fall into the lower requirement of 15% in total that's good to hear because I heard the developer stated to just pay the penalty and go ahead and charge the market rate that doesn't make financial sense the last project I think that happened with the west lake and that was a one off settlement I believe so going forward Burlington sort of made it tightened up yes it's a zoning condition and you don't get a certificate of occupancy until you demonstrate that you've offered them and there's a process where you have to offer the units first or make them known that they're available to Champlain Housing Trust and the public assistance and making that opportunity available so it's linked to their list there's a notification requirement it's not part of their managed portfolio you don't get your zoning permit unless you include that as part of the project thank you just this is an FYI the public utility commission has been from my view pretty interesting they've been opening up a number of cases just to kind of get input on issues so it's not that they got like a formal application but they've been taking input on electric vehicles and energy efficiency so I think they all report back to the legislature on electric vehicles by July so anyway we're kind of at least monitoring and may offer some comments since we spent all that work on energy planning over the last year so just so you're aware of that anything we submit to them will be consistent with the plan that we put together and then finally legislative breakfast we still have another month another board meeting before the legislative breakfast but number one get it on your calendar on the back of the agenda you'll see December 11th 730 to 9am at Trader Duke's hotel old old double tree but still Trader Duke's where we shared with the bankers last year yes Emma has worked very hard to make sure we're not sharing our breakfast not that there's anything wrong with sharing but I think it was a little hard for the legislators yeah it was hard for them to pick and choose so you can put that on your calendar and then I think we have some topics that we have been kind of routinely talking to them about whether it's kind of the water quality issues and funding housing transportation investment probably one thing I want to make sure they're at least aware of and maybe talk about is the 89 study which will be starting up in 2019 is going to be a big deal for us and then of course what comes out of that 250 commission which we won't know by that breakfast but kind of a heads up that we have an interest in providing them some input on that but other any other things that you think we should be addressing with our legislators at that breakfast money money money all those things are somehow connected to money but that's trying to be subtle so if you do have any thoughts feel free to call or email me we're going to update our contribution to state coffers data and things like that so we can just remind them looking at that we do have presented them some of our part of the state's economy picture we could review that quickly again or at least have a handout on that it's always good to remind them nobody has gotten too mad at me for that yet so that's good any kind of legislators so we've heard a lot in the news where they talk about stagnant growth outside of Chippin County and so there's been a lot of focus on that and I think the reciprocal focus should also be emphasized which is yes and in the meantime you know don't kill the golden goose here you've got one area that's that's generating growth and generating revenues for all of your state programs so we need to continue to encourage responsible economic growth in Chippin County while the rest of the state strategizes how to get them out of the muck as far as growth goes Mr. Chair, I'm believing that there has been an inflection point which has moved in the negative direction because of trouble with some of our economic drivers in Northwest Vermont and so it may be worthwhile to point out to them that we haven't had the best last year or so we've layoffs in higher education and we've had some right sizing at some of our major manufacturers and those types of things and I think if you look at the trend data it's not a pretty picture which is the point that you just can't assume that it's always going to be there which is I believe we have a statewide impact the last answer is just you'll see at the back is what we have for the upcoming meetings so it just heads up on that we'll attach to your packet our various committee reports in minutes are there any members items or other business to be raised? I noticed the response on the UVM gutterson complex and I just wondered whether there was ever any discussion about how to use that area for better connectivity between you know prospect street and sphere street and still it can be a pedestrian campus but not have the convoluted ways that one has to get around there and that that you know when there anybody ever talked about that go back to the old days when you kicked that across now we have not and to be honest with you we really have not really gotten involved with the site planning aspect of these because we're commenting at you know a couple minutes before midnight in these projects that particular project relates to you right now you have Patrick Jim and gutterson and there's a little parking area that sticks in and they're going to be filling in there with a new basketball court events that is it's going to have the same seating capacity as the current Patrick Jim it's going to be an upgrade in facilities and they're going to share some some suites or whatever up at the top and then the existing Patrick Jim it's going to be more multi-use space but so that project is really limited to the footprint of that project and was within they have a global parking requirement that they have to stay within and so that's it's with that we did ask some questions about was this going to increase the capacity of the facility and was that going to create any traffic impacts and we did have some back and forth on that but that was the issue we were most had to think about so I'll just mention I'm the Sustainable Transportation Coordinator again so we're on the hot seat no it's a great question but when that facility was built out athletic on campus deed it isn't the right word but we were required to sign a document that said forever we will not put any additional traffic onto spear street or prospect and that's why there's that heinous way of navigating through that part of campus but where our hands are tied with the ability to change that traffic pattern okay but I wish we could too any other other business hearing none is there a motion to adjourn second all in favor say aye opposed thank you very much folks have a happy Thanksgiving and we'll see you the week after that what do you think