 Good. Chris, we do have a quorum now. Okay. So you want to give another couple minutes for people to enter, but well, I think we can start right now. Thank you. So let's call the meeting of Wednesday, July 19, 2023 of the CCRPC to order at six o'clock. And for the purposes of attendance, Charlie, I hope it's not inappropriate. I just wanted to have folks quickly introduce themselves since we seem to be somewhat number of new folks in addition to the ones we have. So I'm going to start with myself. I'll start with you, Charlie, go ahead and introduce yourself. Yeah, Charlie Baker, I'm the executive director of the CCRPC. Okay, and my name is Chris Shaw. I'm the rep from South Burlington and the chair of the Executive Board and this board, I believe. Chuck Wilton would be next. Chuck Wilton, I represent Milton on the board here. Thank you. Miles, wait. Hi, I'm Miles Wade. I'm the conservation and environment member of the board. Thank you. Christine Ford. Christine Ford, transportation planner, CCRPC staff. Barbara Elliott. Town of Huntington Alternate. Thank you, Barbara. Matthew Aaron, CEO, I hope I pronounced that correct. Yeah, you did. Matthew Arancio, V-Trans, and I am the liaison to CCRPC and also do the MPO voting business for V-Trans. Thank you, and Forest Cohen. Hi, everybody. Forest Cohen, RPC business. Thank you, and Bard Hill. Thank you, Chris. Bard Hill from Richmond on the Executive Board and the Commission. Great. Benjamin Bornstein. Yeah, Ben Bornstein, representative of the town of Westford to the CCRPC. Thank you. Andy Montroll. I'm Andy Montroll. I'm the rep from Burlington. Thank you. Taylor Newton. Taylor Newton, the planning program manager at CCR from Seattle. Thank you. Andy Watts. Which one? Essex Town. Thank you. Yeah, I'm Andy Watts from Essex Town, representing Essex Town. Thank you, and Marshall Distill. Hi, everyone. Marshall Distill, CCRPC staff. Thank you, Marshall. Catherine McMaines, our former chair. Thank you. I'm Catherine McMaines, and I am represented from Jericho, and I am the immediate past chair. Oh, thank you. Emma Vaughn. Hi, everyone. I'm Emma Vaughn. I'm the communications manager here at the RPC. Thank you. Eleni. Hello, everyone. Eleni Churchill, the transportation program manager at the CCRPC. Thank you. Dana. Hi, everyone. Dana Hanley, representative from Charlotte. I'm also serving on the Long Range Planning Committee, working on the ECOS plan update. And we'll have more on that later today. Sarah Muskin. I am Sarah, and I am a planner with CCRPC. And I don't want to miss our technical director here, Town Meeting TV. Is that, please go ahead and speak for yourself. Thank you, and thank you, Scott, for recording this for posterity and review for those of us who aren't here tonight. Alayne Haney. Hi, Alayne Haney, representing Essex Junction. Thank you, Ann Nelson Stoner. Ann Nelson, Equity and Engagement Manager for CCRPC. Thank you, Melanie Needle. Hi, Melanie Needle, Senior Planner at CCRPC. Thank you, and Andy Watts on the phone from Williston to be distinguished from Andy Watts from Essex. Good evening, everyone. Andy Watts, like I said, from Williston. I am not to be confused with Andy Watts from Essex Town, although he's a lovely man. Thank you, Andy, and not to be confused with Alayne Haney from Essex Junction, now separate from Essex Town. Jackie Murphy? So I'm sorry, my camera is not working for some reason, so you can't see me, but I'm from Colchester. I'm on the executive board, and I am also on the town select board. And thank you. And Mackenzie Spear? And I'm Mackenzie Spear. I'm the business office associate at the RPC. Thank you. And Bruce Wilson, if you can unmute Bruce. Commissioner Bruce? Yes, so Bruce Wilson, a kind of regional planning and commissioner for the state of Vermont, a human rights commissioner and when it's the school district, anti-racism committee, Greenland Transit, and a lot of things. So I'm hoping I'm answering the right question, because I just didn't get enough. But you did great. We were just introducing ourselves, and thank you, Bruce. M. Langham? Hi, Matthew Langham, Vermont Agency of Transportation, Finance, and Admin Division. I work with RPC staff on the tip. Great. Thank you. We'll be having more on the tip later tonight. There's one phone participant, the 802-324-4642. Can you identify yourself, please? Unmuting? If not, we'll keep an eye on you. All right, so let's proceed. Any changes to the agenda? Any additions, deletions, or so on? Not from staff. Nope. All right. Hearing none, we will go for public comment for items that are not on today's agenda, tonight's agenda. Anyone here for public comment seeing and hearing none? We'll move on to staff introductions. We've met Marshall and Sarah briefly, and I understand they're going to give us a more background about themselves. So I'll hand it over to Marshall, your first on the list. Sounds good. Thanks, Chris. So yeah, hi everyone. I'm Marshall Distill, and I'm a senior transportation planner. I joined CCRBC back in 2014, actually as a summer intern, and then was hired full-time as a transportation planner in 2015 after graduating with a bachelor's from UVM in geography. And I also have a master's degree in natural resources with a graduate certificate in global sustainability from Virginia Tech, and I earned that degree in 2019. As I was working through that Virginia Tech program over the course of a couple of years, I maintained my position with CCRBC and completed some both virtual and in-person courses, which included coursework in both India and South Africa. And they kind of focused on challenges related to rapid urbanization, climate change, economic inequality. So it was a pretty amazing program, and I'm very appreciative of CCRBC's support as I work through it. So yeah, while I've been at CCRBC, I've really been involved in a wide array of projects and programs. I manage local and regional transportation studies from everything from roadways and intersections, parking rides and bike and pedestrian facilities. I also manage our unified planning work program process and also lead our public transit planning efforts with GMT. And I've also previously been involved in other things like emergency management work, local DRB review assistance, some water quality projects, grant writing for build and raise grants, and often work on large countywide initiatives. For example, like Chittenden County's Functional Classification System update and NHS update, I led those initiatives. There's plenty of other studies and projects that I've been involved with over the years, but that seems like a fairly good snapshot of my role at CCRBC. I'd also say just as a planner, I've become really passionate about working to support the growth of walkable communities, especially in our downtowns and village centers. I think that strong and vibrant communities, they attract people, investment, opportunity. I think that focusing investments here not only helps create just a better sense of place, but it's really essential for a community's overall livability. And I feel that one of the most powerful tools that we have to combat climate change involves building more communities centered around walkability. And after participating in a couple of the national gatherings for the Congress for the New Urbanism over the past couple of years in Oklahoma City and Charlotte, just feels like I've become more sort of impassioned about being a champion for a more sustainable built environment and definitely critical of sprawling and single use, low density patterns of development, which seem to inflict so many negative economic health and environmental impacts on our communities. So yeah, that's a little about who I am and what I'm passionate about and happy to answer any questions if anybody has any. Let me jump in there and thank you as using State Church Street in Burlington as a model of what we hope if you get the pit built and the mall that was there redesigned in some form of fashion. But where malls have suffered in this country, you see Church Street, I would say probably hasn't. It's probably remained as vibrant as anything. So we would hope to do the same in South Burlington. And I constantly am trying to grab the year of planning commission and ask them why we put a street with parking straight down the middle of cities replicating something from 50, 60 years ago. Just a quick question for you, Marshall. Has anything changed in the last week as a result of what we're mindful of here in Vermont with the flooding and the weather impacts for your workload at the moment? I know we've been relatively spared here in Chittin County. Yeah, not for me specifically, but we do have a handful of other staff who have been doing, you know, local liaison work, communicating directly with municipalities about damage. And we've had some folks participating in the state emergency operations center as well, I believe. Well, thank you. And I don't want to, you know, slight bard who has probably taken most of the impact from the storm Richmond, I'm afraid, has been probably our number one city in town in Chittin and County that suffered and probably continues to suffer. I hope they have old stage road and everything all open back up. Thank you. Anybody else have questions for Marshall? If not, I'll ask Sarah Muskin. Hi, everybody. I'm Sarah. My intro is going to be significantly shorter because it is my day eight on the job. So brand new planner here getting up to speed with all the projects and really excited about everything I've learned in the first weekend, three days. But yeah, my background, I just graduated in 2022 with a master's of public health. And I really focused during that program on environmental justice issues and health equity issues. But I did take almost all of my selective courses at the urban and environmental planning department with at UNC. So that's where I did my graduate studies. And also while I was in my master's public health program, I focused not my studies, but my professional life on housing justice and did some housing work both with the county, so Orange County in North Carolina and also at a nonprofit. Prior to grad school, I come from a sort of nonprofit background, mostly waterkeeper, riverkeeper, environmental nonprofits. But like I said, also have some of that housing work nonprofit experience too. And then my undergrad degrees in environmental studies. Yeah. So like I said, really brand new to the job and excited to be here, but happy to take any questions. Well, thank you and welcome, Sarah. I'm sorry, we had to have this major event and storm to bring you into the state on top of. But we look forward to it sounds like you're well aligned with Marshall as far as the urban planning is concerned, looking for density, walkability, and creating less fewer barriers to folks, one of which is having to have a car and commute into work and facilities and places that, you know, make it difficult. Anybody else have questions for Sarah? Seeing or hearing none, I'm going to move on to agenda item four. We don't have any consent agenda, so we're going to quickly move on to approval of minutes for June 21, 2023, which are in your packet. I'll need a motion to approve the minutes with any subsequent edits. Move to approve with corrections. Thank you, Sandy. And I'll need a second. I'll second. Thank you, Catherine. Do you have some stuff? I haven't. And you may feel like you've had 20 years of service once you're through, but on the other hand. I was picking up on that, too. Thank you for correcting that. I remember signing just 10 years of service, but we do appreciate, you know, the longevity of the board members. It speaks a lot of what how people care about Chittenden County and their towns. Catherine was referring to page two, line 30, where I was recognized for 20 years of service. In fact, I was recognized for 10 years of service. So hopefully we can make that correction. Were there other corrections, Catherine? No, I think that was the only one. And does anyone else buy it any other corrections? Okay. We have a motion with these corrections in a second. I'm going to ask everybody to please raise your hand if you approve. And everyone, thank you. Bye. Bye. Thank you, Andy. Appreciate it, Jackie. Is there anyone opposed or anyone abstaining? Please speak up. Okay. The motion passes unanimously. I'm going to hand the fiscal 24-27. Is that correct? 24-27? Yes. A tip plan over two. Was that Christine? It sure is. All right. I'll hand that over to you. And it looks like we have three action items. So should we start with opening the public hearing at this point or wait till after your presentation? Charlie? That's a Charlie question. Yeah. Sure. We can open the public hearing. And I did see one resident who looks like he's in here that joined Romeo von Hermann. So I don't know. We may have some public comment. I don't know if you want to take a public comment right now, Chris. I would. I don't see the full screen. You're handling it for the presentation at the moment. So I'm not able to quickly navigate around the faces, the Hollywood squares to find extra people who are online. But let's first things first. I need a motion to open the public hearing for the tip for fiscal year 24 through fiscal year 27. Is that correct, Charlie? Yep. So moved. I heard Jackie. Was that you first? That was Elaine. Elaine, I apologize. Thank you, Essex Junction. And who was the second? Was that Andy? That was me, yes. Andy Williston. Thank you, Andy Williston, as opposed to Andy. Oh gosh, try me on this one. Essex. There we go. I'll get these Andy squared away. All right. So we've had a motion. We've had a second. Any discussion? All those please in favor, raise your hand or say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Aye. Anyone abstaining? Okay. So the motion passes. Our public hearing is open. Let me check in with Mr. Romeo Van Herman. Van Herman, I apologize. Are you there, Mr. Van Herman? Yes. Yes. Can you hear me? Sure. Fantastic. So thank you for opening the floor for public comment. So I'm just here, honestly, to listen rather than talk considering this is my first time attending this. I am very familiar with Commissioner Bruce Wilson. So this is my first time attending. So I just want to be more listener than anything else. A quick background of me, I work at the GMP, the stations and customer services supervisor. I've been doing quite a little bit of observation when it comes to how our streets are and the shape they're in more than anything else. I'm not going to comment at this time because considering that this is my first time, I just want to, like I said earlier, listen more than talk. So thank you again for opening the floor to me. I guess I might be the only person here. But beyond that, thank you for all the services you all do. And I'm glad to be part of the public conversation. Thank you. Well, great. And thank you for, you know, introducing yourself and bringing your experience at least to eyeball what we do here. GMT certainly is the rubber meeting the road when we talk about a lot of the improvements and efficiencies that we're trying to generate around Chittenden County. So it's great to have someone who's right there and can see what's going on. I know in South Burlington, we too often try to change the paving budget to expand the regular budget. And I always felt that's a detriment to the better operations, especially when you see what happens after a winter in Vermont. All right. I'm sorry to delay and we'll get over to Christine in the presentation. All right. We'll do this again. We'll give this a new start. Does everybody hear me okay? I hope. Okay. So we're here to talk about the federal fiscal year 24 to 27 transportation improvement program, as Chris said. The tip is one of the documents that CCRPC is required to prepare. The others are the Metropolitan Transportation Plan, the annual work program, the UPWP, and a public participation plan. The tip, just this slide is just meant to orient us in the where this fits in with our planning process, which really starts with our long range transportation plan where we're setting goals, objectives, visions, and from there we get into the work that we do day to day, the transportation staff of identifying issues, problems, doing corridor studies, doing planning studies, doing scoping studies, and then it all feeds into this funding plan, which is the tip for moving projects from a concept into design right of way construction. So the tip is a list of projects. It is a fiscally constrained, fiscally constrained list, which means that we have a limit that we can program to. So this funding limit is really developed in cooperation with VTRAN. So it's not a set dollar amount each year. It changes every year, and you'll see an example of that later. Based on projects that are ready to go, the state is balancing the federal funds across the entire state. So it doesn't all come to us, but we have the portion that ends up being in the tip. The tip has to be four years, and it must be updated at least every four years. We have typically updated it every year. The tip authorizes obligation of federal funds. That's just federal highway's way of saying that funds are then set aside for projects that then they use to pay down all of their bills and yeah, bills. So projects. So this top sentence is part of is out of the federal regulations, and the tip must be based on a continuing comprehensive transportation planning process carried out cooperatively by the state, the MPO, and transit operators. So basically, the federal government just wants us all to work together for the benefit of the county. Projects on the tip have to have completed or be nearly completed the planning process. So the money has to be spent in the year that it's shown. So if projects are not ready to spend the money, they just waste the slot. Projects have to have funding. So funding sources have to be identified, and projects also have to be in the transportation capital program, which is VTrans's budget. They're the implementer of most of these projects. So projects also have to be listed in the capital program. Three sections in the tip. The section one is an introduction says what the tip is. There's a discussion of the federal performance measures. There's an adoption resolution. There's a glossary of acronyms. Section two is the list of projects. And then section three is a bunch of tables and figures just allowing us to talk about what's in there, show examples, and things like that. And this is page one. So this is the first example of the project page, if you have or haven't had a chance to look at it. Projects are organized in alphabetical order. I'll just point out that there is a section for interstate and interchange projects. So if you were looking for exit 17, you wouldn't find it under Colchester. You would find it under interstate. Projects have a CCRPC project number. I don't know if my pointer will show up. That's too small, so I'm not going to use it. But they have a CCRPC project number, which is just our reference number. There's a VTrans project number listed. So if you were talking to VTrans, you would want to use that number. What we're really most interested in is the four columns that are just past the project names. These are the federal funds that are in each of the four federal years. This is federal only. The state and local match is not included in this. And then they're listed by the project phase. So preliminary engineering, PE, right-of-way, ROW, or construction, there's also some projects in for scoping, which is the process of getting projects ready to get into construction. On the other side of the double line are just other project information that's there for interest or not interest. We have the our latest cost estimate, which I would point out may not be the latest cost estimate, but it is the latest one that we have access to. The column federal funds obligated through FY22. That means the money that was that means what was spent through the end of federal fiscal year 22, which is September 30th, 2022. The next, the FY23 federal funds is what's in the current federal fiscal year. We're in federal fiscal year 23 now going through September 30th, 2023. And then 24 will start October 1st, 2024. Project use category. We have 11 categories, probably too many right now, but we just use these to tell a story about how the money is being spent. Federal funding source percent federal, state, local is probably not really is more interested to our partners, our federal partners. The remarks column, anything else we want to say about the project. We didn't have a lot to say about these projects, but but if we did, we would put it there. And then the the trans project manager is listed. So before we go any further, what I wanted to point out is some changes that are proposed from what was you received back in June. These are what I would generally call relatively minor or administrative ish changes, but we would like to get them in at this time if we can. The first one. So what was in the tip for the Burlington Winooski Main Street Bridge? The project won a federal raise grant rebuilding American infrastructure with sustainability and equity. And we just put in part of the grant. We didn't have the full spending profile for this project. So in this version, we have added the rest of that money. The second one is truly an administrative item. It's changing funding sources for safety projects. The third one, there was inadvertently left out some funds for exit 17 in FY 24. So that's been corrected. The fourth one. So the Colchester Avenue Riverside Avenue Barrett Street in Burlington was in the tip. We had PE funds in there, but that project is really trying to advance so that it can move in the same schedule as the bridge. It's the intersection right on the other side and the Burlington side of that Winooski River Bridge. So that project is being advanced a little more. So we're going to add a little bit more PE to that project. And the last two are just adding some additional funds for some paving projects. We don't have construction dates yet for these projects, but it's adding some design funds. A class one paving in South Burlington and then US two paving in Williston. So down to the bottom line here. This is a very large tip. 24 has 96.5 million. 25 has 89.5 million. 26 has 85.7 million and 27 is 55.2 million for a grand total. 326.9 million. So just to give you context, this is the last 10 years of tips. This is not adjusted for inflation. And you can see that we really have a big slog of projects. 23, 24, 25, 26. This is largely driven by a small number of very large projects. There's three projects in this tip that are over 30 million dollars. That's Champlain Parkway, the Main Street Winooski River Bridge and Exit 17. Exit 17 is a complete reconstruction of the Interstate Bridge as well as intersection improvements at Route 2 and Route 7. And there's also another like five projects that are over 10 million dollars. So quite a few large projects. To give you like a little bit of a longer view and these numbers are not adjusted for inflation, but this further highlights like how large this amount is. And I think we would expect it to go down again after, but this is where we are right now. I'm going to kind of walk through this quickly. The list of projects is going to flash on the screen. If you see anything you want to ask me about, but I'm not going to go into detail about these, we can talk about them later also if you want. So the category New Sidewalks and Paths, there are 17 projects in this category, 13.3 million. So these are V-Trans Bike and Pedestrian Program Awards and Transportation Alternative Program Awards and also includes a RAISE grant that was awarded to Burlington for the I-89 Pedestrian Bridge at Exit 14. Bridge preservation, we talked about before, 60 million, a lot of money in this category nine projects. The two largest ones, the Main Street Winooski River Bridge and there's also a US-2 Bridge over I-89 in Richmond that is going to, has started, reconstructs, has started work right now. And then Intermodal, one project in this category, Park and Ride near Exit 17, Jasper Mine Road and Colchester. So the New Facility, I highlighted these, these are sort of similar categories that are separate, but maybe next time we'll put them back together into one, but New Facility, Major Roadway Upgrade, there's three projects, 53 million. Champlain Parkway we talked about is under construction. Rail Yard Enterprise in Burlington, still in the design phase and then Crescent Connector, Assets Junction also under construction right now. Interchange, Interstate slash Interchange, three projects, 48 million. So this includes improvements of Exit 12 that are just in the planning phase. Exit 16 under construction right now, Exit 17 to hopefully begin construction next year. And what's really driving Exit 17, I would point, I would say, is the condition of the bridge that bridge needs to be replaced soon. Paving 11 projects here, 21.1 million. Several of these are wrapping up. There's some new ones coming online to mostly state highways, some class one town highways. Roadway Corridor improvements, five projects in this, what we call this category, 15 million. So this includes, there's two grant projects that Burlington has won. There's the Church Street, Side Streets. And that's, I believe, that's 11, that's 14 million. And then there's also reconnecting downtown Burlington. And that's a new raise grant. We don't have those funds programmed in the tip yet, but we do have it listed. That's another 22.3 million, 22.4 million for Burlington. Safety, Traffic Operations and ITS, these are intersection improvements. 16 projects, 39 million. On the right side of the slide, we list the VPSP2, regionally driven projects. So those are projects that were selected through the new project prioritization process that VTrans has. And most of those are just starting the project development process. Transit, 65.4 million. Formula funds from FTA, congestion mitigation, air quality funds, FTA grants, and then elderly and disabled programs. And last category, stormwater environmental. These are a combination of municipal highway and stormwater mitigation program grants and town and transportation alternative grants, eight projects here, 4.4 million. This chart just lays out kind of how the categories stand up against each other. Transit is the highest bridge we talked about is next new facility, major roadway upgrade. We have those few major projects under construction, interstate interchange, and then continuing down from there. For comparison, this is just our historic funding in the last from FY 13 to 22. And I think we can show here that historically our, I mean, painting has been by far the largest category in our history for funding. The major roadway upgrades, a small part, 9%, the roadway corridor improvements, a small part. So while those categories are really high right now, historically, they haven't been and we don't expect them to be in the future. And the last thing I'm going to talk about is, for those who are still tracking the CIRC alternatives, I'm not sure if anyone is anymore, but in 2011, the CIRC highway was canceled. There was a CIRC task force that met from 2011 to 2013 and identified 34 projects totaling 99 million. And they were in three phases. So this top group, I think there's eight projects in that group have been completed. There's two more of the phase one projects and the phases were really just the timing of when they rolled out. So two more phase one projects, both of them are under construction right now. The phase two projects, there's three remaining phase two projects, all of them are in process. Phase three projects, how many six are listed there are mostly in process. And I have one more slide, Dana, and then I'll get to your question. And then there's six phase three projects that have not started. And that is the end of the presentation. And now I can go back to any slides if anybody has questions on them or we can close the presentation and look at each other. Well, I think you said Dana had a question. That's a lot. That is really a lot. And very impressive collection of projects around the county. I have a question about the Church Street side streets project. I'm just wondering what that is. So the one is improvements to Cherry Street. So the first one is improvements from Church Street to Cherry Street to, yeah, I don't have more written on that, but that is just to do a more streetscape on that one. And the second one is not right here. The second one, which they are called reconnecting downtown Burlington is going to largely be to do those, the two streets that are disconnected by the mall are going to reconnect those. Got it. All in pine. Thank you. Totally get it. Thanks. If anybody else would have a question, please raise your hand. Bart, go ahead. Well, first is a simple one. I'm going to fail this quiz. What's a DDI interchange? So that's the diverging diamond. That's the same thing that is being done at exit 16. Yeah, the same thing at 12. Right. And one other comment, this is a general comment. I don't know if it's relevant. I was contemplating, I actually drove around Richmond today and saw a lot of our roads are now passable by one lane. For those few communities in Chittenden County have steep slopes. The increasing prevalence of abrupt intense rainstorms is washing stuff out. And so I'm struck, well, there's a whole FEMA pattern that goes there. And we've been down that road, so to speak, a number of times. That sort of, it dislocates some of our focus from what other projects might occur to or what we might plan to, oh boy, what do we got to deal with like this year? And so I don't know if you have any thoughts on how that kind of emergent or urgent activity impacts either local or county planning for longer range transportation initiatives? Well, I think one of the things that we can talk about is resiliency is trying to build in more resiliency of our transportation infrastructure. And I guess I'll jump on that too, Christine. And Bart, I would not be surprised in the coming months if we get asked to do some tip amendments as the state kind of starts to chew on federal transportation dollars coming to do some of the big fixes, you know, route four, right down around Killington that, you know, one lane washed out, like I'm sure that's going to be a pretty significant project. And it may, I'm not going to speak for V Trans here, but I would not be surprised if they came back and said we need to shift the schedule a little bit on some projects that are on their normal schedule to deal with some of those emergency transportation projects coming up in the next year or two. And I don't know if either of the Matthews have any more input on that thought, but. No input as of yet, but I think it is a good thing just to be aware of that there is a, there's the pot of money to work with and priority shifts and situations like this. And so we're all trying to grapple with the like a firm understanding of the damage and what will be needed to recover from it. So I think it's good to manage expectations in that regard. I don't want to quite say that we're at that point yet, but it's certainly good to be aware of as you mentioned, Charlie. Yeah, I would expect that. And also there's just, you know, the reality of limited resources, you know, not just money, but you know, human resources at VTrans and the consultant engineers and the contractors. So I would expect there's probably going to be a little shifting of project schedules as we move forward here. But this is what we know now. We certainly, I'm sure it will change in the coming months. So Charlie, this is the other Matthew from VTrans. You know, I agree with what Matthew Arancio said. Additionally, for a declared disaster when it's an emergency relief project, it shouldn't affect the flow of formula funds to the state as long as we can get to the project within 270 days. It's just, as you said, a question of are the resources there to do everything we would have in our regular program plus the additional requirements for fixing the emergency projects? Great. Thank you. I had two questions for you, Christine. One was the memo in our packet indicates it was 284 million and your presentation showed us at 329. Is the difference of that 40 million, the state, the match and all those? The difference is the Gwonuski River Bridge. The difference is the things that I pointed out. I mean, there's quite a bit has been added for the Gwonuski River Bridge. I think there was about, you can do the math, but that is, it's the new total. It's the new total with the changes. Both of them are the federal funds only, including any state or local matches. All right. Thank you. Then the second big ticket item that jumped out at me was the parking ride at exit 17, which with your percentage numbers jumped out at 18%. That seemed to exceed what we were putting into reservations and bridges over the course of the four years. I was rather surprised that one parking ride would come to that number in your presentation, although I'm proud of the one that they're putting in at exit 12. I know they're doing a lot of electrical charging stations that can be expensive, but still. So I'm not, so that's, that's 1, that's .4%. So there's something. That's wrong. That title has a wrong number of percentage after it, because it was in the title par at like 18.4%. I'm okay. Okay. But it's not as large as that is what you're saying. So there's a confusion on exit 17, because you got two things going on. You have the whole rearrangement of the interchange, and then you have this parking run. I'm trying to get back to share. So I'm looking at a slide where it says .4. So there's, I'm not sure where, so one of the slides is not correct, and I'm not seeing where it is. It was directly after your bridge and you went through the sidewalks and paths, then you had the bridge and then I don't have reference to the, to the, yeah. All right. I think it was. So this is 1.2 million .4% for intermodal. And that's where you would have it. Yeah. I mean, that's the, that's that what, that's the one parking ride project. So it looks like my eyeball jumped to the 18.4 of the bridge preservation. Thank you. Okay. My bad. All right. Anybody else have any questions for Christine? Please raise your hand. Absent that we have two items that need action. As you can see from your packet, the recommendation that has passed three different gates is the executive committee has looked at this, the transportation advisory committees looked at this and staff has looked at this, and they're looking to approve the federal fiscal year 2024 through 2027 transportation improvement program for Chittenden County. And one caution for this, Charlie, if you would help me on this, as a metropolitan planning organization, anyone voting on this needs to be what, a city in town only, Charlie? Yeah, just the municipalities and VTrans. So apologies to Miles and Bruce, but just the municipalities and VTrans have a vote on this. And one clarification to the memo, if we could ask that the motion include the changes that Christine kind of just introduced at the end of her presentation. So I guess approving the tip with the changes is noted by staff. I'll make a motion. We approve the tip as chain as updated by staff. Do you need to close the public hearing first? Oh, I move we close the public hearing. Sorry, I came in a little late as I worked right through the beginning of the meeting. Thank you for that motion. Do you have a second? I'll second to them. Thank you. Jeff has made a motion. Andy has seconded to close the public hearing. Anyone have any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye or raise your hand. Aye. Thank you. Anyone opposed? Aye. Do you say nay? All right. The motion passes. The public hearing is now closed. So back to you. Now I'll move Mr. Chair that we approve the FY24-27 transportation improvement program with staff updates. Thank you. I'll second again. Thank you. Andy Montrell of Burlington. Any discussion on that? All those in favor, please say aye or raise your hand. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Please say nay and or bang on the table. I would just say as an organization, as an MPO, that I was encouraged to see the project on the Circle Alternative Projects even though I'm not a representative from a CERC community anymore. I was for a long period of time and it was nice to see that and I won't forward this to Chris Robb to see all the not-started Williston projects in phase three. Someone got the priority before Williston. Yes. So we have the motion passes unanimously. Thank you. We do need to go through the certification of the planning process. Christine, are you able to speak to us on that? Yeah. And there's one thing that I wanted to, as I was thinking about this, there's one thing that I did want to point out about it. So this is in federal, in the federal regulations, the language that's in this certification. It talks about federally protected classes that we need to consider and anything that's funded with federal funds. We're a lot of equity work right now in the organization and I just wanted it to be clear that this isn't to preclude other things. This is a technicality that we need to do for the federal government. That's not saying that we don't want to, it's not our goal to expand it further, but this is the requirements that we're required to do. So that didn't make much sense, but hopefully that did make sense. So are you able to take us through this in table one? Yeah. So this is, I think it's, do you want to walk through it? Let me try to get out of the presentation. Mr. Chair, this is a pretty pro forma item that we do every year after we approve the TIP. I mean, the staff has given us a lot of information for the people that want to delve into the specifics of this. So I'm going to make a preemptive motion that we authorized the chair to sign the certification of planning process and forward it to the secretary of administration. Yeah, of transportation with our adopted FY 24 to 27 transportation improvement plan. Unless there are members that really want to dig into the certification of the planning process, which like I said, this is pretty pro forma stuff. We can find that out in the discussion. Is there a second comment? Barbara seconded. I'm sorry. Thank you, Barbara. Beats you to it, Catherine. So discussion. Is there anyone who feels the need to dig deeper at this point? I just had one quick question. Go ahead, Benjamin. Yeah. I just had a quick question. There were references to specific federal regulations and statutes in the document. Is if that's the basis for all of this, then I think it's pretty clear. So I just wanted to confirm that because I read through all of that. And that's yeah, pretty comprehensive. I think we should be able to move forward. Hope you did it at bedtime, Benjamin. Yeah, this is overrated. I mean, these are all this is all basically saying that we can't discriminate in any of our federal highway funded, our federally funded programs for race, for religion, for age, for gender. And we're very thankful that that it's somewhat pro forma in this day and age. So it's and that it's there. It's critical. So thank you very much. And we've also done a lot in terms of our public participation plan and things like that to actually put these words into actions, which I applaud the staff in the board over the years for doing that. I mean, I remember doing this back in 2000. It wasn't nearly as comprehensive. Any other discussion? All right, I will call the question. All those in favor of Jeff's motion, please raise your hand or say aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed, please say nay. All right. So that passes unanimously and so ends our MPO action. Again, the MPO is I think Charlie correct us if we're wrong, we are the only MPO in the state. That's correct. Despite the fact that there are how many regional planning commissions? Yeah, there are 11 regional planning commissions, but we are the only one with 50,000 more than 50,000 people in in an urbanized area. We're about maybe around 115,000 people in our urbanized area now. Every every decennial census, Mr. Chair, we get nervous that somebody like the Lebanon MSA or something like that might qualify as an MPO. And so it's the type of thing that we always have our eye on. There's a certain advantage to being the only MPO in the state. Very good. So again, that is why we have certain different voting requirements for MPO actions as opposed to the general CCRPC regional planning commission action. So just just as you know, when we call for an MPO vote versus an RPC vote. Okay, moving on to item 7, revised fiscal year 24 budget, I assume forest. Actually, I think I'll take this if it's okay. So this is actually the first time I think I've ever asked the board in my 15 years to amend the budget outside of our spring, May adoption or January adoption of the mid-year. So I'm going to refer to the memo that's in your packet, which is followed by the revised budget. And really, there are two significant things that happen really at the kind of the end of the session or the end of the fiscal year, if you will. One is I was I guess a little too conservative in counting on what the legislature would approve for us in terms of regional planning funds. And so we ended up with about $190,000 increase when the legislature got done. I'd only budgeted $50,000 trying to hedge a little bit and being a little insecure, I guess. I'll be more confident in the future. But so that's one big change. So $190,000 more revenue is coming our way in FY24. And then the second thing that happened, and this is really unrelated to the legislature, but we got that large raise grant, a $2.1 million raise grant that they notified us of last August. We're still in the process of getting that under contract, but with FTA, but we had budgeted $50,000 of MPO funds to kind of manage that project, thinking that we would have a consultant do that. We put out an RFP and got no response to that. And so we are proposing to shift those funds from a consultant category into the personnel category and manage that project with staff. All this is kind of a long way of saying, so those are two revenue changes on the first page of the budget. The expense side of the budget is proposing to hire a new senior staff person with that kind of transportation, land use background, transit oriented development to help manage that raise grant and obviously work on other things in those categories. And then there's funds in the regional planning line to do a website consultant to help get our plan to be more web based and also to update state planning manuals, not solely by us, but to contribute towards those updates. So then there's one, I'm sorry, a minor one that I caught, which was, we had a formula error. There's $240,000 in the communications union district line as a direct expense, which will pass through us in FY24 that we missed in the spring. That might be a couple other really minor amendments, but altogether that's $400,000 increase in revenue, $379,000 increase in expenses. So our net actually gets like $24,000 better. We go from a projected budget of revenue exceeding expenses by $33,000 to $57,000. So that's my quick summary of the proposed budget changes and hoping asking for your approval or any questions, happy to answer any questions about this. Does anyone have any questions for Charlie? Go ahead, Jeff. So everybody knows during the joint executive committee finance committee session, we had quite an extended conversation about the pros and cons of adding staff and the sustainability associated with which. And as someone who generally opposes making long-term commitments and environments that we're in, this I think is a well-reasoned staff addition, not only because of how the expenses and the revenues aligned, but also from the standpoint of ensuring that we have the capacity to do what we have to do over the long term. And that's, I think, strategically another aspect of this hire that necessarily isn't reflected in the dollars and cents that are in the proposed budget amendment. And with that, I make a motion, Mr. Chair, that we approve the amended budget. Thank you. Is there a second for Jeff's motion? I'll second it. Thank you, Catherine. Is there further discussion or questions for Charlie on this? If not, I will call the question and ask everyone to in favor, please say aye or raise your hand. Yeah. And Chris, while you're doing that, if I can, I just want to expand just because I want to make sure the board understands more what Jeff was just indicating. We are kind of staffing up a bit for to kind of deal with this unprecedented surge of federal funding, which is, you know, and frankly, the disaster is just going to make it exaggerate that issue even more. And so we're kind of staffing up, but with the notion that we are going to have retirements in a few years. And so we're kind of staffed up. And I'm hoping that we have a kind of a graceful transition as our staff may be right sizes in a few years. So that's the plan right now, assuming, you know, everything we know. So sorry to interrupt. No, no, thank you. I appreciate it. And Jeff is our sharpest pencil in the pocket protector there is our part time. Sometimes state economics certainly has the best perspective to guide us to be conservative and go slow and not jump on these bubbles when they're likely to burst. So I think we all did take a sound look at the future. And we feel that this is a sustainable move. And thank you for putting that out there, Jeff. And I think we asked for everybody to say yes. I'm going to ask for everybody, anybody who's opposed to this, please say no. And I'm not hearing anybody or seeing anybody. So it will pass unanimously. Thank you. Sorry, Jackie just raised her hand. Go ahead, Jackie. I was just trying to vote without speaking. Okay, sorry. I think we were voting well. Charlie was explaining it, the lengths we went through, and it was a lengthy discussion. And Jeff spoke well to it. Thank you. So let's move on. Item nine, draft enhanced energy plan initial review. Who will I kick that one over to? I think item eight, the ECOS plan schedule. Oh, I skipped that completely. Yeah. All right. So we are at eight ECOS plan schedule review, Taylor. Awesome. Thanks, Chris. I'm going to provide a brief update on where we are with updating the ECOS plan with schedule deduction in 2024. Then the preview item number nine, as Chris did, Melanie Neato will check in and she'll do a little bit of an update on what we've been doing with enhanced energy and energy plan specifically. And so I know we've got a lot of new board members. So first, just want to talk about our existing ECOS plan, what's in it, and what it does. And so the ECOS plan is our regional plan. It is a comprehensive plan. So within the context of this plan, we talk about everything. We talk about health. We talk about land use transportation. We talk about energy. We really talk about the full gamut of topics that affect folks lives here in Chittenden County. In terms of how that document is organized, we have what we call the main document. Within that main document, we have our Chittenden County vision, 17 specific goals, and eight strategies that are going to guide us to accomplish those goals with specific actions listed as well. We also have six supplements to that main document. The first one talks about our public process that we use to develop the 2018 ECOS plan. We next have our regional analysis portion. And this is where we have a lot of data about demographics, about change within Chittenden County. Third, we have our regional plan itself. And that's where the meat of our future land use map is located. And we talk a lot about how we interact with this section 248 in the Act 250 process and how our plan is compatible with surrounding regions. Supplement four is our comprehensive economic development strategy, which in 2018 was just Chittenden County. And now we have a SEDS with four other, excuse me, three other regions. Supplement five is our metropolitan transportation plan, which you guys are mostly familiar with, passing the recent 2023 plan. And then supplement six is our energy analysis target methodology. A lot of the data that goes to support the main document and the goals there related to energy planning. And having that data is required because we have an enhanced energy plan as determined by the Department of Public Service. Any questions on our 2018 document and what's in it and the organization document? Hearing none, we'll talk about our 2024 ECOS plan. And so we started working on the 2024 ECOS plan way back in January 22 throughout 2022, the long range planning committee, which is a committee that we stand up every time we're working on the ECOS plan and it's composed of members from the board, from the planning advisory committee, from the transportation advisory committee, from the clean water advisory committee. That long range planning committee reviewed about 80% of a draft plan. The original intention was to adopt that plan in June 2023. In the fall 2022, we actually stopped the process and we stopped the process for a few different reasons. The big one being the Regina left. And Regina was the project manager on the ECOS plan. And it took a little while to replace her and to get me on board and then to backfill my position. And so we were down staff for a few months and we're just lacking capacity. I'm going to skip equity and come back to it for a second. The third bullet there, we were anticipating having updated data about energy use and energy targets from the Vermont Department of Public Service last fall as well. That data was all delayed. And so we knew we weren't going to be able to update that part of the plan. That was another reason why we figured we should put a pause and wait for that data to come. And then lastly, a lot of the focus of our organization between 2020 and 2022 was really related to equity and better addressing equity in our planning documents. We felt even though we had gone through 80% of that plan that we hadn't talked about equity enough. And we had talked about pointing out where there are problems within our region. And so that combined with knowing that Ann Nelson-Stunner was going to add to our rules, was being hired onto our staff at the time. We felt like we could take the next year to better integrate equity throughout the entire plan. I do want to note too that the MTP and the SEDS were actually adopted here in 2023 off cycle from the ECOS plan. And we did that in 2023 because both those plans were going to expire. Those plans expire every five years, kind of per federal rules. And so despite putting ECOS on pause for 2023, we went ahead of the adoption of those two other documents. Any questions on what we've done so far and why we paused the work? Okay. A little bit more of a quick synopsis of work to date. Like I said, 80% plan done and reviewed by the LRPC and by PAC. I'll mention as well the Planning Advisory Committee. We are reformatting the document a little bit different this time. We decided to kind of combine a lot of the regional analysis with the main document. We felt like we were missing some connection between the key issues in the regional analysis where we talk about data and the actual strategies and actions themselves. So we've combined and tried to streamline a bit. And then lastly, Melanie's going to give you an update here in a few minutes about the work of the Enhanced Energy Plan, excuse me, the LRPC Energy Subcommittee and their work on the Enhanced Energy Plan. So we've commenced working on a second draft of now the 2024 ECOS plan this summer, really starting in earnest in May. This time around, we're feeling like we're in a really a pretty good policy place given LRPC has already reviewed the document, so we've really focused on data updates and making sure we have the most up-to-date data. We're also focusing on making sure that we're addressing any LRPC or PAC comments that came around during the first draft. And then lastly, Ann Nelson, and Ann Nelson actually has an intern working with her as well. We've started the highlight places in the document where we can better talk about or more comprehensively talk about issues related to equity. I think the easiest example being like talking about income, household income within the region and then talking about how household income differentiates between different populations within the region and talking a little bit about why and providing some context to why those differences exist. And so we've been meeting with different subsets of staff really led by Ann Nelson to talk about how we can better interweave throughout all these really broad topics, equity throughout the document. Just a couple other considerations I want to talk about in the context of updating the ECOS plan. We are going to create a new website for ECOS plan. We actually just released an RFP to hire a contractor to help us develop that website this past Monday. Our hope is that in developing this 2024 ECOS plan, we're taking a step to having a truly web-based plan. We may not go no paper this time around, but our hope is to develop a plan that eventually lives on the web and has our data dashboard, our indicators, kind of integrated into the plan and then also a lot of our mapping and our map dashboards integrated in the plan so the actual plan itself becomes much more interactive. We're also hoping that in future iterations of the ECOS plan, we can use that website to help guide our Republican engagement efforts. I already noted the two supplements, the MTP and the SEDs have already been adopted. Just want to reiterate that one more time. I also just wanted to mention that the HOME Act or S100 that recently passed the legislature talks about the statewide housing needs assessment setting housing targets by region in terms of new housing that's needed and then requiring the RPC to put those targets within our regional plan. Just want to note that we're not doing this for the 2024 and the reason really is simple. Statewide housing needs assessment is going to come after the 2024 plan. It's slated to be updated in 2025. Our thought now and this could change is that we likely will do an amendment to the ECOS plan in 2028 to incorporate those housing targets and we're thinking 2028 specifically because that realigns us with the SEDs and the MTP because they'll be both be up for expiration at that time. Charlie just popped on. So Charlie do you have anything to add about that? All right. Just an idea but that's what we're thinking we're how we're going to approach that particular topic and so timeline in terms of the board. We've already started to take the second draft to LRPC starting this month and then taking the 2024 second draft to LRPC and to PAC we've divided the ECOS plan really into three different sections. There's ECOS prosperity, ECOS people, and ECOS place. And you can see on your screen the key issues we're talking about within each one of those are groupings of topics. And so ECOS prosperity will come before the board for an initial review in September, people in October in place, which probably has the most meat on the bone. Those are big topics, land use, transportation, energy in particular is going to come before the board in November. And so continuing on that timeline is our hope is that time between November 2023 and January 2024 may do some outreach to some specific partners to get feedback but we're really hoping to get a solid final draft done to have the board warn the first public hearing in January. Hold a hearing actually in February in April, address any issues that came up during that first public hearing, bring the revisions back to the board, may award a second public hearing and then aim for adoption of the plan at your annual meeting in June 2024. Any questions about the process, the plan or the timeline? I'm going to jump in if you don't mind. Taylor, I wanted to get a recap certainly of the building homes together when you talked about not setting goals in the home act. Building homes together was targeting 5,000 homes by 2025, 1,250 of which we're going to be affordable. Do you have any clue on how we've met that? That was a target I think regionally that we set as a goal. Chris, I can tell you a year one from last year and I can tell you that in September we're going to have 2022 data for the board to look at. That's what I can tell you. Okay, so I think this is something that goes back to 2018 when we first started 5,000 or so, okay. Yeah, yeah, but then kind of building homes together, 2.0 started the first year that being 2021, so 1,000 units a year is the goal essentially. In 2021, I believe Chittenden County added about a little over 900 units. We'll get a big picture look at that target that we already set back in 2018 and here we are going, well, we're going to wait until 2028, a full 10 years later to set another target. But I understand what you just said that we have to wait for the housing needs assessment to intervene before we set any hard numbers. And I'm sure it will become a real arm wrestling match when targets get laid out. Thank you. And that's kind of more the reason too, Chris, is that I think when we're also going to be required to municipalize those targets, we really want to be thoughtful about that methodology about how we're going to municipalize those targets and not rush it this time around. Yeah, that will become our political hot potato for sure. Anybody else? Yes, I'm sorry. Well, this was just discussion, so if nobody else had any questions, I'll thank you, Taylor, and ask us to move on to Melanie with the item number nine, the draft enhanced energy plan initial review. And again, this is just information. We won't be taking any action on this. Welcome, Melanie. Did we lose, Melanie? Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yes, thank you. Okay. Great. Hi, everyone. And so this presentation is focused on the enhanced energy plan process that we went through for the 2024 ECOS plan update. The presentation, we'll talk a little bit about what enhanced energy planning is at both the regional and local level. Talk about what the 2018 ECOS plan said in terms of energy key policies and how we established the use of the ECOS plan in the 248 process. And then we'll talk about the proposed changes in the 2024 ECOS plan. So enhanced energy planning really came to be with the Act 174 of 2016. Essentially, that was born out of a lot of, I guess, public comment and opposition to large wind projects. And at the time, the legislature enacted Act 174 to give municipalities and regions a chance to do some upfront planning on where they want to have renewable energy generation because we recognize we need more renewable energy generation in the state. So they established the energy planning standards that a municipality or a region would have to follow in order to get substantial deference or greater weight, higher influence in the public utility commission's process for permitting renewable energy generation projects. If you don't have an enhanced energy plan that follows the set of energy planning standards, the Public Utility Commission only gives you due consideration. So less emphasis on your plan, both at the regional or town level. The energy planning standards, they have pretty much three components, analysis and targets, which provides an entity with an idea of the magnitude of change needed for energy use in the heating, electricity, and transportation sector, as well as targets for renewable energy generation. How much renewable energy generation do we need to produce to get to 90% renewable by 2050? And then pathways, what are the actions that the region or the municipality, in this case, the region is going to take in order to reduce total energy, become more renewable, electrify the heating and transportation sector. And then a set of maps that identifies areas that are suitable for renewable energy generation, given high potentials for solar and wind and natural resource constraints. So at the time when the enhanced energy plan standards first came to be, we were guided by the Comprehensive Energy Plan that was current in 2016. Fast forward now, they've updated it, they being the Public Service Department have updated the standards to align with the 2020 Vermont Comprehensive Energy Plan, as well as the Global Warming Solution Act requirements. And then also our process for participating in the Public Utilities Commission, Section 248 process is we look at the regional plan, we look at our natural resource constraints and identify whether there are any red flag issues in terms of the project being cited on natural resource constraints. And then we have a set of citing and suitability policies that would be given substantial deference in PUC's review of a particular project. So in 2018, that was the first time we adopted an enhanced energy plan. It was a two-year process. Through that process, we had an energy subcommittee of the LRPC. We established key citing and suitability policies that talks about directing renewable energy generation away from natural resource constraints. So in particular, there's known constraints, which are the most restrictive. So avoiding those known constraints, those are wetlands, floodways, for example, and then there's possible constraints. So they're a little less restrictive. If you're going to impact them, you need to do mitigation examples of those natural resource constraints are deer wintering areas or highest priority forest blocks, for example. And then the additional citing and suitability policies talk about renewable generation on preferred states. So that's rooftops, previously disturbed areas, gravel pits, closed land fills. And then just talking about the scale of generation and talking in terms of directing large projects outside of our areas plan for growth so that those areas are prioritized for infill development. And again, those are the land conservation member measures, essentially, that the PUC will use in the Section 248 process. And so the overall framework that we established in the 2018 ECOS plan is using less energy for heating, electricity and transportation. Overall, our total energy demand would go down into the future. And planning for new growth in areas planned for growth so that we're reducing vehicle miles traveled fossil fuels in the transportation sector, giving people more opportunity to walk and bike and take transit and car share and car pool. And then doing a renewable energy generation analysis to understand how CCRPC, how Chittenden County could advance 90% renewable by 2050. And then lastly, transform transportation and heating sectors to be powered by renewable electricity. So what that looks like is electric vehicles, widespread adoption of electric vehicles and then swapping out fossil fuels for electricity in the heating sector, mostly in the form of cold climate heat pumps. So now we're updating the ECOS plan. We convened the Energy Subcommittee of the Long Range Planning Committee. The Long Range Planning Committee decided that they wanted to convene a group of energy experts to go through this process with staff. We started the process in March. Pleased to say that our last meeting is next week. So we were able to do the update in five months. The energy data that Taylor talked about being delayed, we finally got. So we are able to do that process. We have representation from Richmond, Milton, Essex, Williston, Underhill, Charlotte and South Brompton. So I think we had a good cross-section of municipalities on that group. And then LRPC will review the Enhanced Energy Plan draft at their meeting in August. So the proposed changes in the 2024 ECOS plan include a new map data on rooftop solar potential. The last time around, we did not have good data on rooftop solar potential. The Public Service Department and the Vermont Center for Geographic Information utilized the LiDAR data to get better estimations on what is possible for rooftop analysis. That's really helpful for our urban communities to understand what their potential is for meeting the renewable energy generation target. And we have a little bit more confidence in the solar potential for roofs this time around than we did the last time around. And then the state made modifications to the state natural resource constraints. They were very minor, highest priority forest blocks along Riparian and surface water areas was added and unconfirmed vernal pools, which are seasonal wetlands, I think changed from unknown to a possible constraint. So it was really not big changes, but all of our wind and solar energy resource maps needed to be updated because of those changes. And then we also made sure that we were using the correct local constraints to represent some of the land use measures in our municipalities. And then in terms of the pathways, I talked about them earlier, those are our strategies and actions in the ECOS plan that represent how we're going to get to where the data tells us where we need to be. So the Energy Subcommittee proposed additional language about net metering and supporting increases in the maximum size of net metered projects and to establish a tiered system for net metering rates to make it more equitable and allow for public and nonprofit entities to access the net metering program. Another pathway that has been proposed or an action that has been proposed is advocating for the Public Utility Commission to open up the rulemaking regarding sound levels from wind generation facilities. Currently, the sound rules in Vermont make wind generation infeasible and the Energy Subcommittee felt that we need to encourage the state to take another look at that in order to meet our renewable energy generation targets and having all the potential technologies available to us. And then the third change is VELCO and just identifying that our transmission and distribution system does have some constraints and supporting changes to how the statute is written that oversees VELCO to address grid constraints in an equitable and proactive manner. Another standard that was new to the energy planning standards was equity assessment. As a result of the Climate Action Plan, producing the just transition framework, the public service department added this equity assessment, which I think is a good change if I may editorialize because in the enhanced energy planning process, if a region or a municipality chooses to do this, it makes equity a requirement, which I think is a good thing. And CCRPC has been working really hard to increase our equity capacity. So we took a look at energy specifically here to understand where our deficiencies were in talking about equity. How is the electric transformation to electric vehicles and cold climate heat pumps going to impact marginalized communities and then strengthen the language to identify how marginalized communities could not be burdened and can be thought of first and be brought along so that they're included in the transformation as well. So we really strengthened that language in the energy section. And I know Ann Nelson is working on threading equity into the entire document. So I think we're going to at the end of it do a very good job of being sort of equity forward in our ECOS plan. Another proposed change is how we have established our renewable energy generation target. So the renewable energy generation target is a required standard. In the 2018 ECOS plan, we had a range. There's a little bit of flexibility in the guidance from the public service department on how to do this. This time around the public service department gave us a tool, which was very helpful and streamlined the process and made the update a lot more efficient than it was the last time. But the tool only allowed us to do a single target. So you can see on the screen that we are anticipating that Chittenden County needs to plan for about a 57% increase in renewables from where we are today at about 606,000 megawatt hours. We need to increase up to about 954,000 megawatt hours. So that's the target is the additional increment that we need to add in the region. So that's 348,000 megawatt hours. And then the last part of the proposed changes are the LEAP data. So LEAP is a modeling tool that the public service department did to understand how fuel use is going to change in terms of demand and type in order to meet 90% renewable by 2050 and Global Warming Solution Act requirements reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So you can see in the top graph, total energy demand from 2015 levels and 2015 in this graph is modeled. We are planning for almost a 50% decline in energy demand. And this is total energy. So that graph also includes transportation. And then going down to the bottom on the left right, that's the residential sector, final energy demand. And you can see that this is where we see the big transition to electricity in buildings. And then same in the transportation sector, we are seeing also a decrease in demand, but a big increase in electricity. And we're seeing the fossil fuels being phased out in 2050. I should have started with, there was two scenarios that were done. The first one is the baseline scenario, which is business as usual. And then the CAP mitigation scenario seeks to model the climate action plan. So the shorter bars are where we need to be and what we're planning for for the climate action plan mitigation scenario. So that is just a really quick overview of the draft enhanced energy plan. I'm happy to take any comments and questions and also just wanted to share the link where all the energy subcommittee information is. Feel free to follow along, see what our process has been up to this point. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen and wonder if anyone has any questions. I think Melanie, you mentioned in your memo that we're going to be getting a deeper dive on this on the October board meeting. And all of this is part of the second draft. We're getting a closer close up of the enhanced energy plan, which was being included in the second draft that Taylor had referred to in his previous presentations. So I mean, this is good stuff. I think I'm intrigued by one of the pathways that looks for the sound levels of wind generation, because I know from my experience with Milton and all those places that having a decibel level of 40 decibels or something is often the low bar that they can't exceed, which makes it somewhat impractical in any populated area. And yet, we have our own airport here in South Burlington that happily pumps out 115 decibels, grant you, not continuously as long as the wind flows. But there is some variation there that people will use as a block or barrier to things of that sort. Questions for Melanie? Seeing hearing none, we'll move on. Thank you very much, Melanie. We'll look forward to more in October. The economic development introduction. Who's doing that, Charlie? Yeah. Back to me. All right. This is to build on the SEDS, the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy. Now we have to stop doing it ourselves and start doing it with other people. That's exactly it, Chris. You guys see a presentation view. You guys don't see display or presenter view. Do you see the full screen? Excellent. So as you folks are called, CCRPC adopted the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy in cooperation with three other regions, Central Vermont, Addison County and Rutland, I think back in either February or March. And so that was kind of step one. And step two is to consider whether or not CCRPC wants to work with our partners in that same geography to create an Economic Development District. We're going to talk a bit about what that is and how that may benefit us. I will try to be quick because I know we're running against eight o'clock. I will not read this totally. I think you folks have a pretty good idea about who the EDA is. It's part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. And you folks have a pretty good idea about what a SEDS is. It's a Comprehensive Strategic Economic Development Document. In our case, again, we adopted that in cooperation with our partners. And through the parts of the state, in our SEDS not only was adopted here locally, but was also approved by the U.S. EDA on June 2, 2023. And so now that we have that approved SEDS, we can consider whether or not we want to create an Economic Development District. The rest of Vermont besides our four regions is already a part of an Economic Development District. So we're the loan outliers. EDA is very interested in us creating an Economic Development District. An Economic Development District is a multi-jurisdictional area that does economic development planning on a regional and local basis in cooperation with the various parties and the various municipal entities and regional entities that exist within the EDD boundary. To be in EDD, you have to have a SEDS and you also have to have some geographical areas within your larger regional geography that are economically distressed. We have several of those within the West Central Vermont region here in Chittenden County. It's at least one census tract in Winooski, at least one census tract in Burlington as well. And I'm not sure if that opportunity zone in South Burlington also counts, but we certainly have that outside Chittenden County, Berry City, Rutland City. And I'm trying to think in Addison if there are any or not. I can't think off the top of my head. So why would we want to be in EDD? One is to provide more formal structure about how we do economic development planning together in terms of RPCs, but also in terms of our regional development corporation partners and also in terms of the municipalities themselves. Being in EDD does provide some opportunity for receiving non-competitive priority EDA funding in the usually in the form of planning and technical assistance grants from EDA. I know the Northern Vermont Economic Development District along the border here in Vermont receives about $300,000 every three years, so $100,000 a year to do economic development planning and implement their sense. Not quite by right. They still have to apply, but it's a pretty consistent funding source. By being in EDD, there may be some federal programs that do treat grant applications with priority because they're coming from an economic development district. As I noted later, EDA is very interested in us becoming EDD because we complete the geography within Vermont and all of Vermont will be covered by an EDD. The process itself, right now we're just trying to give you the basics about what an EDD is. We're still working with our partners to develop potential bylaws for this EDD, our government structure, and developing a draft MOU about what our responsibilities to each other may be once we create an EDD. Right now we're thinking that we will create an EDD via MOU. There won't be a separate either non-profit or governmental entity, it'll just be via MOU. Likely with one partner serving as fiscal agent. I hate to say it, probably going to be us because EDA knows us, EDA likes us, EDA trusts forest, so we may be that fiscal agent, but perhaps with other partners taking the lead in terms of leaving the programmatic portions of being an EDD and implementing the SEDS itself, at least that's my hope. Our hope is to bring those documents to you folks, probably maybe not September, probably more like October now, and then to formally consider actually applying to the EDA to create EDD later this fall. Our regional partners, our West Central Vermont partners, are meeting with EDA next Friday, the 28th of July to review our bylaws to answer any outstanding questions regions may have, and so we're hoping that we've got our documents together in a firm place that we can move forward this fall with creation. Any questions for folks about being an EDD, why we may want to create an EDD, what it means for a CCRPC in terms of day-to-day life? Yes. What is the relationship of this with the entity that stretches across northern New England that gets a lot of earmarked funds, and are we plugging into that in any way by doing this because I know that places like Addison County now are part of that as well as upstate New York and northern New Hampshire and northern Maine. There doesn't ever seem to be any economic sense to these regions and I just was wondering whether or not this was an opportunity to plug into that type of funding or are we going to still remain separate and apart from that? Yes and no. And so short-term, no, Jeff. So that's the Northern Border Regional Commission, is what you're speaking of. Right now, as of the past couple of years, any municipality, any spotty or nonprofit within Vermont is eligible to apply for MBRC funding regardless of geography. It didn't used to be that way and you don't necessarily need a SEDS or to be a part of an EDD to apply for MBRC funding. So no short-term changes. Theoretically, if we create an EDD and this EDD becomes, I don't want to see an independent body because I don't think it's going to head in that direction but let me put it this way. At present, let's use the Community Selling Center as an example. Last year, they received an MBRC grant and every MBRC awardee is required to work with what's called an LDD, a local development district, to help administer their grant. Right now that always defaults to the RPC, pretty much unless the RDC wants to do it. If we create an EDD, that EDD could be the body that does that for any project within that four-county geography. I don't know if that really means anything in reality or not, Jeff, but that's something that could theoretically change. Charlie, do you have anything to add to that? No, but I think I'll pick up from that when I start the policy participation conversation. I mean, just an initial reaction to that is that's a good thing. I think it opens up additional opportunities for us to compete for different parts, pots of money. My only concern is the MBRC has opened it up to so many things that you used to be a member of a relatively exclusive club when you were part of that organization. Now, particularly for rural development funding, it's just gotten silly in those kinds of things. If that just opens up another avenue where particularly with these resiliency projects and all those kinds of things and how they affect infrastructure going over time, I'm all for having a full quiver of arrows to participate for federal infrastructure and economic development money. So it's a great thing that we're doing it and hats off to Forest for cultivating that relationship and we should be very anxious to have Forest continue to cultivate those and any other relationships that spill out on the floor after this one. Taylor, actually, I think one thought is that related to the Northern Borders Regional Commission funding, they have been asking that any projects they fund be a priority of the region in some way. And so I do think through this SEDS and Economic Development District process, we do have the ability to plug in there a little more tightly with our economic development priorities and elevate in terms of where we stand in line for grant funding out of that organization. And maybe we don't have to give the Vermont Housing and Conservation trust as much of a cut as we have to because they're the convenient LDD. There's that. And I want to mention more than anything when it comes to funding before taking Dana's question. And so I want to point out that Chittin County municipalities, since we've had a SEDS have been able to apply for EDA funding, but a lot of our municipalities can't and that they can't because they don't meet the distrust criteria. That's typically unemployment rate or lower median incomes less than the state median income. And so besides when it is in Burlington, folks haven't been able to apply to EDA for funding oftentimes, your municipalities haven't been able to apply. And so part of our thought here is that in cooperating with a larger region, the EDD could perhaps be the applicant and be able to aggregate projects for municipalities. And so we could have one application from the EDD where we're aggregating projects from distressed communities outside Chittin County with applications from non-distressed communities in Chittin County or wherever else. And so the Westwards, the Schalburns to Hinesburg, Hinesburg is like a key example. I talked to EDA about the water project in Hinesburg for like six months trying to make something work, and they just couldn't meet the criteria, even the special distrust criteria. And so that's part of the impetus here too, is that we can work cooperatively to kind of make these more competitive grant applications. Dana? I just want to say that having worked on the SEDS in a neighboring county, Addison, Taylor talks about, you know, doing the SEDS because sort of on a casual, like no problem basis, but it was a ton of work, multi, multi years. And Taylor was so awesome. He just led the whole thing, always kept his cool. There were differences in the regions that we had to iron out. Some of the regions, you know, had different feelings about the Act 250 component of it. And so this all had to be finessed. And so there's much more that went on behind the scenes. And Taylor should really be complimented. Thank you. Thank you. That's great. Thank you, Dana. Hardening to hear from Taylor. And so this sounds like a wonderful plan. Has anyone else got any questions for Taylor? You will probably have questions when we get those draft files to you and what the government structure is going to look like. So it sounds like September and October are going to be full months on our calendar. The good news for you guys persisting tonight as we push on towards eight o'clock. And I'm going to hand it over to Charlie, our legislative priority mid-year review item number 11, is that I think we're skipping our next month, August meeting, is that correct, Charlie? That's right. We're putting in time now and then we'll save our energy for September. Charlie, go ahead on number 11, please. Hopefully we don't get to four hours tonight to make up for it. But I just mentioned, Jeff kind of made me think about Northern Borders Regional Commission. What you got in your packet, this two-page table, listing, policy, or potential things for us to engage in, doesn't include anything federally, but one of the things I'm working on federally is to get Northern Border Regional Commission dollars to be considered as local funding for the purposes of matching other federal grants, which is something that at least one or more of the other regional commissions around the country has. So I'm just going to mention that, kind of working on that also down in DC a little bit as part of my involvement with the National Association of Development Organization. And I jump in here and point out that Charlie is the secretary, I think, of that national board for what is it, Regional Planning Commissioners? Yeah, it's kind of rural regional commissions around the country. We are benefiting from your experience in finding out what's happening in other states and other planning commissions. Thank you very much for that extra effort. I never knew that one of those regional commissions was considered local dollars for matching other grants. I was like, why don't we do that for Northern Borders too? Actually, I missed a meeting with Chris Saunders next week to advance that effort, but and there's a real opportunity actually to get it in the Farm Bill, which may be one of the few bills that Washington produces this year, no offense to anybody in Washington. But so having said that at the kind of DC federal stage, this list in your packet, for those of you who haven't been on the board too long just to refresh in January and July, we try to bring this list to you of like things that staff are mostly monitoring and some things that we're engaging more directly in that either are going through the legislature or came out of legislature and are being worked. So I'm not going to walk through each one of these. I'm happy to take any questions. Under my report, you'll see in a few minutes, I was going to highlight these four studies that are required under the HOME Act, S100 or it's Act 47. Did I have that right Taylor? I think it's Act 47 this year. So and this is, you know, in case you came to our annual meeting last month, this was the bill she was kind of talking about. There are four studies here. The RPCs are the lead entity on the regional future land use mapping. And on number three there, the municipal delegation. The Natural Resources Board is working on the Act 250 improvements with a direction to work on location based jurisdiction. And the fourth study is being done by the Department of Housing and Community Development to revamp the designation program. I am hopeful, more hopeful than I've been in my 15 years, I will see significant Act 250 change that will kind of realign how Act 250 engages with municipalities and developers to better promote smart growth. So I'll leave it at that. But and the rest of these, I am not going to review unless somebody has a question. Unless you want me to address. No, I'm good. Does anybody else have any? Yeah, or any concerns about, you know, a lot of these things we're monitoring. One thing for municipalities, a couple things on our 10 and 11, open meeting law, you know, they did extend our ability to do what we're doing right now for another, I don't know, eight or nine months. But the legislature will have to address whether we can continue to do meetings like this, like 100% virtually to be specific. And also VLCT has been, you know, trying to make advances on changing the municipal power statute so that municipalities don't have to go with charter changes to the legislature all the time. So a couple things I've just wanted to call out or call your attention to. But thank you. Okay, okay. And are you able to help us on number 12, the committee number review and volunteers? I think yeah, yeah, happy to do that. So in the packet, and this is typically a two month conversation. So we have it on the agenda this month is just discussion. But just to kind of get you thinking about if you want to change committees or if you're not on a committee, if you want to get on a committee, there's a couple different things that happen. One is that we have the regional board member appointment you see for those categories, agriculture, socio econ housing, Bruce is here tonight and Miles was here earlier for conservation environment, those appointments. And then committees you see down below with, I'm not going to read all of them out but the finance committee, board development committee, UPWP committee, the TAC, there's a board member that serves on that. There's a planning advisory committee, we have one board member serving on that. The long range planning committee is pretty much wrapping up their work in the next two or three months. So hopefully we don't have any significant changes on that committee. We have a board member and an alternate on the clean water advisory committee updated the brownfields advisory committee. There is a spot for a board member there. You'll see a couple blank lines on this page. Those are kind of really where there's specific openings for a board member if so desired. Yeah, so Chris, I don't know if you want to add more to that but I would say that this is where the again, Rapper meets the road where we're trying to, you know, make sure that people get involved and put a shoulder to the wheel. Ben? Yeah, what would be the appropriate avenue to, you know, to volunteer for one of these? You know, you're speaking up right now. It might be a matter of our need. I we certainly see a blank line on the long range planning committee, which was one place that I started. Yeah, I'd be glad to join that. Well, thank you. And please, you know, send the word out and about because we have a number of people who are new and at the same time, this is a place where we can get started and a number of people who probably have been doing it for too many years and would like to, you know, give way to the next generation of thinking. So these are a lot of the working committees that this planning commission puts together. And this is where a lot of the decisions are made. You saw the TAC would put it together and send it along to the executive committee and so on. And so I also had done the all hazards mitigation plan update committee, which becomes more important when you see something like this last week happen. So this is they're not desperate demands on your time, but they're very important work and very detailed for those specifics. And we've just added, as you can see, economic development in some regards, and we have clean water service, which we're doing as well. And the studies that are coming down will probably impact a lot of the committee work that we have. So please raise your hand. Thank you very much, Ben. I appreciate it. Okay. So just to be a hundred percent engaged, then that long range planning committee meeting, the next one would be August 8th at 7 p.m. I'll have you deferred it, Charlie. Who was that? Taylor? Thank you. Okay. Thank you. And Catherine, I saw your hand. Yeah, I just wanted to comment that we will see a change in the UPW committee next month when we actually appoint all these members because Bard, as being the vice chair elected, will be UPWP rather than you. Thank you, Catherine. I missed that one. Thank you. Yeah. So yeah, the vice chair is just kind of, I think by bylaws, is actually the chair of the UPWP committee. So thanks for catching that, Catherine. So anyone else? All right. It's going to make one quick plug for the Brownfields committee. If anybody's interested in kind of redevelopment, environmental issues, that's a great committee to plug into. They don't meet on a regular schedule. They're setting one, Charlie. I think they've set a regular schedule now. I don't know what it is, but they're starting to because they've got a lot of money. Yeah, right. We just got a bunch of money, so there's a good opportunity to help property owners clean up properties and turn unproductive property into productive property around our region. All right. And this will be an action item in September. Excellent. Thank you. All right. Let's move to number 13, equity update and Nelson Stoner. All right. I'm going to share my screen. I just have one slide, but figured it might be helped to visualize this instead of me just talking at you. All right. Quick update on my ends internally, what I'm working on. Some of you already know all of this, but an equity statement that I've been working with all CCRPC staff on developing, and now I'm bringing to community partners and the equity advisory committee. I'll hope to bring that to you all in September. And then following that will be conversations with staff to develop a code of conduct. Following the equity statement, I'm working with this intern of mine, Annie Henderson, on an equity action plan, which really just hopes to outline what does it look like for us to do this work, and also how do we start to prioritize and think about a flow of equity work within CCRPC. As Taylor mentioned, I've been digging into the ECOS plan as much as I can, just trying to flag where we can pull in some more equity language context and framing and data points to really try to do our best internally to work in that language before we bring it to the public to review. So working with equity advisory committee, we have a meeting next week. A lot of my time goes to meeting with community partners and getting involved in other equity initiatives to figure out what other folks are working on, what's front in people's minds, what should engagement look like, do people know that we exist, just kind of getting a lay of the land as I start to build out this equity action plan. And then working with the equity advisory committee on figuring out how to use federal highway funds to support community capacity building for greater engagement in our transportation projects. This is basically designing a grant application and process to give out to community partners over the course of the next year to do just that, build capacity, basically more formally partner with them so that we can support their work before we ask them to support our work. And then involvement here and there with specific CCRPC projects as much as I can, as much as I have time for. Yeah, that's kind of a broad overview. Does anybody have any questions or thoughts? Your equity piece was mentioned multiple times during the ECOS review. And I'm sure that you'll be able to point out those areas as we come through the plan. We're trying to shape up and have in place by June of next year. So it sounds like your plate is full. But it also sounds like Annie Henderson, your intern is helping you. How long will she be able to assist? She's going to be on through the end of the summer. She's looking for jobs now, so it depends on when she finds a job. Yeah, I have a question. Yeah, Bruce Wilson. Hey, can you tell me what equity language means? Yeah. Really, it's like so one, adding some like upfront framing to this regional plan of what are we talking about? What is the history of planning and what role should equity play in this plan? How is it going to be woven throughout and why is that important kind of upfront? And in there, hopefully adding some language around data and like what data are we included, including in the plan, what data are we not including in this plan and why, what data exists and maybe doesn't exist. Really just contextualizing information and then throughout the different sections, integrating equity language meaning like honestly adding more context and trying to disaggregate data as much as possible. So if we're talking about incarceration, we need to be talking about incarceration by race. If we're talking about income, we need to be talking about income by race and adding some context around bullet points that might just be a data point to then say, okay, well, do we know why this is the case? And if we know why it's the case, can that help us inform our strategy moving forward? Hopefully that'll become more clear as we start to review the actual plan and dig into it. And there's also an option, Bruce, for the Equity Advisory Committee to dig into. But yeah, adding more context, adding more information just around marginalized communities in Chittenden County as it relates to all the different sections of the Ecos. All right, thank you. Anyone else for Ann Nelson? Well, thank you. And again, I'm sure we'll be hearing more in September and October. Let me kick it back to Charlie for some updates before we tap out. Yeah, I mentioned the S-100 studies, and I'm not sure if I was clear, but we are taking kind of a lead facilitation role in the RPC portions of those, and also coordinating regularly with the Natural Resources Board and Department of Housing and Community Development. We're also going to give an update tomorrow to the VLCT Board and try to make sure they're continually involved in the process. Sorry about that. I was afraid of that when I saw a new person pop in at 8 p.m. Oh, dear. Thank you. We haven't had any of those Zoom issues in a very, very long time. Yeah. Well, we actually got like a notice from Zoom because we put this out as a public hearing notice that the Zoom link was out more publicly than normal. So I'm sorry to say that I wasn't totally surprised that that happened. Just wasn't quick enough with the trigger finger to remove. Sorry about that. So that was S-100 studies Brownfield Award. Just to let you know, actually, EPA was supposed to do a press conference last week announcing that we have gotten a $500,000 award from EPA for Brownfields, which is what Taylor was just referencing. We have money now. And we also, there's another $100,000 or so of state Brownfield money. So there is a good amount, you know, $500,000 to $600,000 of Brownfield money for the next few years, which is more money than we've ever had for Brownfield. So if you know sites that need help, this is a good time. And then finally, and somebody's got to remind me of Merp, but the Municipal Energy Resilience Program, I think it is, that can help municipal buildings. There's applications live and now for assessments and things to access. That was the $42 or $44 million program that the legislature approved. So if you have municipal buildings, and hopefully your town staff at least has heard from Anjanda about that, if you have questions or want to get engaged with that, definitely contact Ann. And Benjamin, were you about to ask a question on that? Yeah, I was. I was a little surprised. I know that right now it's at the energy audit level and level one, level two. But we have an interest in this. But I'm curious as to why it's being pitched. It seems to be being pitched as looking to go to alternative fuel sources away from fossil fuel. And yet it doesn't seem to be providing funds or supporting actual putting in place or implementing a transition to solar, for example. I wish I had a good answer for you Ben, but I don't. That's something that Ann noticed early. And we were surprised that solar either for electricity generation or for hot water was not included as an eligible product or project through MIRV. Yeah, and I've been working within it really spectacular. And I appreciate all of her efforts. And just I guess I was looking for the collective wisdom. Perhaps there were greater insights because of the inclement weather. They canceled the big presentation meeting in Milton was a week ago or Monday. So that should be rescheduled, I think, Ben. So I keep an eye out for that. Ann's on vacation this week. So she may have a new date for that, that ARPA visit. But I don't think I'm being too extreme that BGS has been a little opaque in terms of what projects are eligible and why. Yeah. I will say that one of the genesis for that program was really about shifting thermal. So I think it may be largely related to solar panels not being a huge factor in thermal warming of your building. So that's my guess. But it's nothing I've specifically talked to the state about. Okay. Thank you. Yep. Oh, that helps. Yeah. Happy to take any other questions. That's all I've got, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Charlie. And if nobody else has any other questions, we have in your packet about five draft minutes for various committees and liaison reports. You can review it your leisure if you haven't already. Beyond that, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. And check Wilton and I assume it came up with a hand first and Barbara Elliott, I'll take that as a second. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chuck. Thank you, Barbara. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. All right. No one opposed. Then I'll wish you all a good night and we'll see you on September 20th at 6.