SmartTranscript of House Appropriations - 2025-02-11 - 2:00PM

[Tiff Bluemle]: We are live, and we have with us representatives from transportation. Thank you very much for joining us. I've you have not met this for formal yet, have you? [Joe Flynn]: Not everyone. No. [Tiff Bluemle]: Alright. Well, why don't we start with representative Jacobo? [David Yacovone]: Good to see you, Dave Jacobo from Morrisville, Memorial Washington District. Welcome. [John Kascenska]: Good Welcome. John Kasenson from Burke, and I represent Essex Caledonia District. [Joe Flynn]: Hi. Mike Nigro. I represent Bennington and Powell. Tom Stevens from Waterbury representing the Washington Chittenden District. [Tiff Bluemle]: Our chair is giving a bill presentation, and our vice chair is in another meeting. I'm Tiff Bloomley, and I'm from Burlington. [David Yacovone]: Trevor's excuse me. Trevor Squirrel under Helen Jericho. Wendell Rush, Pai Yi, Franklin, Pierce. [Joe Flynn]: Hi, Mike. Wendell Thorpe, Putney, and Emerson. And and thank you and all your staff for all your work this winter across the state and [John Kascenska]: and when the academy. Thank you. [David Yacovone]: Lynn Dickinson. I represent Saint Albans Town. [Tiff Bluemle]: And also thank you for [David Yacovone]: all the work you've been doing up in Franklin County. Thank you. [Joe Flynn]: Well, for the record, Joplin, secretary of the agency, and I I would introduce folks with me today. To my right is Gina Morse, the director of finance and administration for the agency. Starting in the front row in the in the pink jacket, Candace Elmquist is the CFO for the agency. Next is Andrew Collier, the Commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Michelle Boomhower, the Director of Policy Planning and Intermodal Development. On the end of the first row, Jeremy Reed is the chief engineer and the director of the highway division for the agency. And behind Candace is Todd Law. Todd is the director of maintenance, lead operations for the state on the picture of the garages and the orange trucks, if you will. And next to Todd is Ernie Patno. Ernie is the director of maintenance operations for the state. I don't believe we have anybody online. So, again, thank you very much. We're here to present the budget for the agency of transportation. There will be a small slide on the Department of Motor Vehicles, and I know that they're following you are following us after I do this afternoon. [David Yacovone]: Yeah. Like sure. If you wanna follow me. Yeah. [Joe Flynn]: So again, Joe Flynn and I, however you wish to handle this, I can go through the slides, take questions as they come up or do them up. I leave that up up to you. The first slide you'll see is just a bit of a graph of where our budgets have gone over the last several years. The governor's recommended budget for fiscal twenty six is eight hundred and eighty three point four million dollars And that's continued growth, frankly, since the beginning of our administration. And much of that, of course, in the last several years has been, I'd say, meaningless money, but the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that, you know, came in in the last administration was very generous to the state of Vermont and remains so. Perhaps I should say quickly for that this is my first time under this assembled committee of these members. And for those of you that may not know, and I don't if if I've if I'm presuming something that's not the case, please just tell me to stop. But our agency does not come in and ask for general fund money in that. Our funds all come from the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration, the Federal Transit Administration, and the Federal Aviation Administration, and from the National Highway Transportation Safety Fund. And, what we do is we raise money through the DMV, through licenses and registrations and fees, and that creates state funds that we need in order to match the federal money. So when I say, for example, that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was very lucrative, it it certainly was. We are currently within a five year period of what we call formula money through Federal Highway Administration. It revolves every five years. It is quite insulated from the other machinations in DC. By that, I mean, it is stable as far as the formula money goes. It is not impacted by any of the positives currently with respect to the Highway Fund. And right now, Congress is beginning to discuss the next five year tranche. So in many ways, we are fortunate in that respect because we have a predictable funding stream. And we also know what the pressures or the demands will be for our revenue that we need to use as match money. So all of that rolls up to this budget recommending and asking for eight hundred and eighty three point four million dollars The next slide just gives you a breakout of the funding sources. On the left side, the transportation fund was really what I was just speaking about when I say federal dollars, I'm sorry, transport or state funds. Federal dollars is, at this point, attributed to a lot of money from twenty three and twenty four that came in as a result of flood projects. [David Yacovone]: We [Joe Flynn]: receive federal highway emergency relief money, which is above and beyond our book of business, if you will, as far as the projects that we intend to do. And AOT is also eligible for FEMA PA because we own infrastructure independent of the Federal Highway network. But for example, the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail is owned by VTrans. So if it gets damaged, we can apply for FEMA PA like, the town of Johnson could or the town of Powell could. Also, with respect to Central Garage, which is down on Route three zero two across from the Wayside Diner, that's our primary state focal point for mechanic type maintenance work. We say maintenance and sometimes we conflate to the definition. That was destroyed in twenty twenty three. It was flooded again in twenty twenty four. We have a very skeleton component as far as the buildings that are used there today. Most everything has been mothballed. But that's an example, and and we can talk further about what we're going to do, but that's an example of what would be FEMA eligible. So that that accounts for the federal line. Local and other is primarily, when we grant money to a town, there's match money that they have to pay for the project, and we grant money that comes from the federal government. So we're just a pass through entity to the town who's a subrecipient. The transportation infrastructure bond is a fund generated through statute that requires a percentage of the transportation funds to be parked in this account to pay off bonds. The agency paid off all of its bonds probably three years ago. So we are bond free. So we have no bonded indebtedness, but we still must park a percentage of our revenue that comes in. And so we just refer to that as TIB funds. We can use those dollars for highway projects under chief engineer REITs program. We can't use those dollars for something like paving an interstate, but those dollars have to go to projects that have a longer life cycle. And if we had a bond that we had debt on, it would be the revenue that we would pay that down from. And Central Garage Fund, we'll we'll explain in some pie charts that follow here, but Central Garage Fund is is a fund that generates, revenue for unplanned occurrences, if you will, at Central Garage. That it I won't say an emergency fund, but it's a contingency fund so that if if something comes up and we needed some equipment that we hadn't forecasted or an example I would give you is where we're currently nearing completion on a new garage maintenance facility for the district up in actually, it's in the town of Swanton right on the line of St. Albans. Because there will be a wrench turning element, when I say maintenance there, typically that means we'll have plow roots and we'll have summer maintenance that starts from there. But we will have a component of people that are mechanics up there that will be working on some of the vehicles. So we were able to tap that central garage fund for a few million dollars toward that facility in addition to the rest of the money that we had. So it's a a little bit of a less scripted fund that I'm sure the CRO might be cringing at my definition. But Okay. [Tiff Bluemle]: We have a question. [David Yacovone]: On your local other with the increase on that, could you just explain how that would work? Sure. See what's sure. You want [Joe Flynn]: did you say? Yep. Sure. [Tiff Bluemle]: For the record in the Southwest CFO, the large percentage point increase there is because we are budgeting interdepartmental transfer [David Yacovone]: fund, [Tiff Bluemle]: the ITT. Portion of that is the FEMA component that brought to UPS. And then the state map component of both FEMA dollars and FHWA eligible projects would be from AOA. So AOA has a pot, I think, at least to one time that they use a general fund, which they are holding for for state match for the flood related projects, the flood in twenty three and and then twenty twenty four. And there is, language in the governor's recommended, budget that expands the definition of what those one time death IDs could be used for. Originally, the language said, we we are here proposing to also use it for FHWA eligible projects. [David Yacovone]: So definitely what we wanted to do? Yes. [Joe Flynn]: The next page is intended to show you where the revenue breakout comes from. And you'll see the largest single piece is the Federal Highway Administration in the lighter shade of green, that is three hundred and eighty eight point four million dollars that'll be what's coming to us and what's available to us in fiscal twenty twenty six. The second largest source of revenue to us would be through those fees that I spoke about that are raised from the Department of Motor Vehicles. The third largest is the other federal funds, say, a federal highway, I'm sorry, federal rail transit aviation, and NHTSA. The fourth grouping is local and other, we just talked about that. Fifth, central garage. So, we we bill ourselves for the use of our trucks. And so that appears as a revenue source. And then we have a pie chart that will show you in two pages that shows expenditures, and we built and then we pay for that. That's so that we have a fund available for the flipping of all of our vehicles on a regular basis. And then last but not least is the TIB fund that I described a moment ago. So this is this in totality is the revenue stream for us. As far as the consensus revenue forecast, when the e board met in January, and it looked at the revenue forecast specific to the agency in addition to the general funds. There were some ups and downs between the transportation infrastructure bond forecast and the transportation fund forecast. But the upshot of that was three point eight million dollars to the good. So this budget does reflect that we well, Candace, I should say, not we had forecasted, I believe four million dollars because we didn't get this of course until the budget was submitted to the Governor's office. So but so this budget is assuming the revenue increase. The next page shows the pie chart that I was referring to as far as where the money goes. And you can see I I'm not gonna read every single one. Happy to talk about all of them if you have any questions. State and interstate bridge, so these would be bridges on Vermont state routes, whether it's U. S. Route two or Route one hundred or eighty nine or ninety one this year for a lot of reasons, which we can discuss project prioritization, but the single largest expenditure would be aimed at state bridges and interstate bridges. The second largest is maintenance. So this is everything that you see the orange fleet doing from snow and ice control this time of the year to litter picking, which is done almost every week of the year to patching, to guardrail work, to mowing, to tree removal and brush removal, and the myriad of things that are done under maintenance. The third largest bulk of the funding goes to roadway and safety. This is a program that's also under the highway division. This addresses many types of construction projects, intersection projects, things that are not entire roads or lengths of interstate that are being paved, but they're not bridges like over eighty nine. If you think of, I believe, a new intersection for Shelburne Road a few years ago, had many, many new lights signals put in all the way down through. That's an example of where that would come from in our budget. Next is state paving. So state paving, our transportation fund dollars that we use to match federal money to pay like the interstate, for example. This particular line item reflects this administration's determination to not drop below one hundred million dollars Although this budget does reflect a reduction from one hundred and thirty million dollars in fiscal 'twenty five to one hundred and two million dollars this year. And that is a reality based on what I was saying a moment ago, we have budget pressures due to increased costs that we're seeing across our entire business model, which are on average about forty percent higher than they used to be a couple of years ago. And even though inflation has come down to a much more favorable position from its highest point of about nine percent, we are seeing costs being bid to our projects significantly higher than they used to be. It's just a fact. So as a result of that, we had budget pressures, and the only place that we have the greatest amount of flexibility to move, where we have a piece of the business that's based on the state funds, that's based on transportation dollars versus the TIB dollars for things like building a bridge. That's a short attempt to answer why the paving budget has been decreased for this year. [David Yacovone]: I mean, historically, it seems like our bridges are aging. And my understanding is some years ago that a lot of them were approaching their lifetime. Given that, given the increased costs, where where do you stand now in terms of, are we gonna have catastrophic catastrophic failures in bridges? Are we gonna be able to keep up and and get to a point where we're gonna be on the right with those bridges? [Joe Flynn]: Well, no secretary of transportation wants to testify to we're going to have catastrophic failures. The first thing I'd like to say is that if if a bridge is ever in thought to be in an unsafe condition, it's immediately closed under the authority of the Secretary of Transportation. And that's happened probably five times since I've been secretary. And it happened in twenty twenty four over in Norwich. We shut, we closed one lane of ninety one southbound right in the Norwich area where you come onto the interstate going southbound and the on ramp creates a third lane of the interstate. And there were some troubling inspections underneath there. So we shut that down that day. So I just want to in open forum address that. The point you make though is a real issue. We are at a lifecycle moment where we're looking at the replacement or the significant rehabilitation of many of our bridges on the interstate highway system in Vermont, because they are the original structures. And I-eighty nine is an older piece of infrastructure than ninety one, but they're both close to a half a century and eighty nine, I believe is more than a half century in some cases. They are approaching the useful life that they were built for then. So structures we're building today like the new structure in Richmond that goes over eighty nine on Route two is a bridge that we're looking at the seventy five to one hundred year model. So we have a lot of work to do and you are correct and that's why you saw the pie that reflects expenditures with the largest piece for State Bridge and Interstate Bridge. We also monitor the condition of bridges. We inspect our bridges annually And we have what we call a deficiency rating and we catalog every single bridge. And we also inspect your local bridges in all the towns that you come from, even though the town has to program a project for it that will help to pay for, but we do the inspections. Efficiency does not mean safety. So, if a bridge is in what we call structurally deficient fashion, again, for the record, that does not mean it's unsafe. But what that means is compared to the metrics that are looked at nationally, it is in lower condition than optimum condition and we continue to follow that. And that feeds into a large part of that feeds into the prioritization of our projects. That and in fiscal reality, maybe just deviating slightly from that sort of scripted response, I think it's reasonable to say that in the United States, especially in the Northeast, the infrastructure is the oldest in the country. It's if you compare it to Las Vegas or Phoenix or Nevada, I'm sorry, New Mexico, cities, I mean, there's older cities there, but a place like Las Vegas is relatively new when it comes to infrastructure and the weather is not as damaging to the infrastructure as it is in the Northeast. So I think it's reasonable that the last administration recognized the need for major infrastructure investments. It's a bit unfortunate, if you will, that there was a perfect storm with inflation, supply chain in the beginning, that we may not have gotten the lift that others might have hoped we would have been given from the extra investment. And I think the federal government at some point is going to need to look at that as well But, again and that's not just roads and bridges, but, I mean, rail. We'll talk about rail. So and and we have rail bridges that we have to deal with where we own three zero four miles or five miles of active rail in Vermont. And we lease the operation to Vermont Rail Systems and there is a limited requirement for routine maintenance that they carry. But we're responsible for the major infrastructure. So our rail program is sixty one million dollars on this pie chart. And so bridges are an issue there as well, and they predate every highway bridge. We have there are rail bridges out there over a hundred years old. So [Tiff Bluemle]: Representative Hassan is gonna ask a question. [John Kascenska]: Yes. Well, next, that was one of my big questions was the process that what you're using to prioritize all your projects here, identify, you know, [Joe Flynn]: the lifespan. We're at a [John Kascenska]: at a point where we need to do something now. Mhmm. [Joe Flynn]: And, you know, we have [John Kascenska]: a relatively short construction season as we all understand. We volunteered long enough to know that And, you know, potential shrinking dollars from the federal government here, revenue changes here, all the way up here as well. Here, everything kind of sort of looks like it's a priority here for sure. And not fixing or not not launching into a replacement of a bridge for example here. If you have to postpone it, on average, how long would you be able to postpone replacing something here? You know, just if things are heating, we got all projects making a number up here in twelve projects that need to happen like this construction season here. But number thirteen and fourteen really follow to that list here as well, but it can't because of that. In postponing that, What does that do in the next construction season here in a major project I'm talking about here? Right. [Joe Flynn]: Because I suspect, you know, things can become exponential here or time. Things can really be they can become significantly exponential and it's almost like compounding with interest. Yeah. Compounding with interest gets better year after year, the delays almost are the reverse, things get worse. In fact, while we're talking right now, the infrastructure network around us continues to deteriorate. And I like to say that because that really brings home the reality. The brand new bridge that was built in Richmond already has begun to deteriorate. I mean, we're dump what we're dumping salt on it. It's freezing, it's thawing. And so that's my point. I'm not suggesting there's anything to do with the construction quality, but that's the reality of infrastructure in Vermont. So more to your question, which is a great one. If we have to postpone a project, we do triage the things you talked about. And if we have let's say, we have a bridge project that was in the queue for fiscal twenty six, hypothetically. And if for whatever reason we needed to slide that to fiscal twenty seven, when we plan those projects, we don't wait to the bitter end in the first place because we can't do that. We have a very detailed asset management process. That's part of the project prioritization process. And it's the project prioritization process that answers what are we gonna build. That gives us the menu of what the plan is. But if we have a pressure, we have to go through that list and we have to ask ourselves, first of all, what types of projects are available to move based on how the funding stream is created? And most importantly, to your point, where is the criticality of what we move? We're not going to make a decision on something that we believe is critical and move it out. But again, we have to make decisions because there's just we can't do everything at once. If you took a look at our white book, our white book is the program for our business. And in that book, we list every single thing we're doing. There's I believe over eight hundred. Now that doesn't mean eight hundred bridges are being built like you see in Richmond. But what that means is there's an element of work on hundreds of projects and that element of work could include designing, which is still being done in the office. It could include right of way acquisition. The representative from Waterbury, we celebrated the Main Street project three and a half or four years ago. It took twenty five years to acquire the right of way to just do that stretch of Main Street in Waterbury. Twenty five years. Now that we have to buy real estate. There were hundreds of pieces of real but sometimes you bought three feet, sometimes you bought six feet. So it's like buying a house. You still gotta buy it. You gotta go through that process. We can condemn, but that's not the preferred alternative to do that. So my point in bringing that up is that might have been a bit unique, but it's an example of what is on the front end of a lot of projects. When I say eight hundred, there's a lot of work. Then you have the designing process. Scoping is actually one of the first things, you know, do what are we gonna do here? Then we start designing, then we buy right right of way. We have to permit everything. So there are there's a lot of projects on the books that are in some part of a life cycle that aren't yet something you'd see that's being constructed. But as far as making decisions to move a bridge out, if we had reason to believe there was a critical situation, not from a safety perspective because that bridge will be closed by now if there was, But the deficiency rating is going to suffer significantly. If there's a delay, we would have to work with that and we'd have to figure out something else to delay. If I can [John Kascenska]: follow-up with one more Yeah. Question here too in terms of because I know you had to put some temporary bridges on in place here to deal with the corrosion from the flooding. One fourteen is a good example. Yep. I believe if they want to burk and there's other places that could stay there as well. So how how long will those stay and place? [Joe Flynn]: They could stay five years. That bridge in particular by Brook Road Right. I know well. A lot of time on Red Village Road and on Brook Road, even those are town roads, we work closely with Casella, removes all the debris. Right. Still working on it. I talked to Casella last week. You know, that's a that bridge is rated. I mean, you know, locked trucks can go over that bridge. Structurally, it's it's no less than the bridge that was there. It's probably in better condition than the bridge that was there. So wider. So to give you an answer specifically, we would take into account that that's a temporary bridge and we also like to get that back into our inventory because that's our bridge. But yet we also have to look at the pressures for the structures program where our bridges reside going forward into the out years. And if there's a bridge out there that we need to replace, we can leave that bridge on one hundred and fourteen where it is for now. The other temporary bridges, the majority of them we put out over the last two years have been the ones that we've put out for municipalities. But you're right, that's an example of one and we have, I don't know if there's any left on Route one ten, but we had two or three on Route one ten as a result of the twenty twenty three flooding. If you go out down through, the Chelsea area, first year, I believe there was one. So and there was yeah. I mean, we have them everywhere. We have two we still have two off route two in Marshfield. For some curious reason, one bridge that goes to one residence was a state owned bridge. We found out in twenty twenty three. So we had to put a temporary bridge in. We have a temporary bridge in the village of Plainfield right now. That bridge structure, they got wiped out right in the center of town. So again, I mean, those are engineered, frankly, the history of those bridges come from the US military. They were designed for rather quick direction in less than optimal locations. Although we try to make the location optimal for a lot of reasons today, but you can erect them to different widths, different lengths, and they can be assembled in relatively short order compared to anything else you could do. So I hope that answered [John Kascenska]: your question. Okay. Thank you. Okay. [Joe Flynn]: The next slide is getting more into the actual divisions of the agency. Program development is really the group that delivers things, that that builds things. It resides in the highway selection under under Jeremy. I won't go through each one of the programs on the left hand side, but I wanna point out two in particular. The the park and ride program, you're seeing a sixty six point three percent increase. That is a planned project at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, breast area in Sharon Northbound. There's a project there. And below that you see eighty seven point eight percent bike and pedestrian facilities that is a pass through. That is for the I-eighty nine pedestrian overpass that the City of South Burlington intends to build. They received a grant previously, but for a lot of reasons, like I mentioned, the cost that they were seeing for that project have escalated as well. So they went back to the federal government and asked for more money and the government agreed to that, but that always gets sent to AOT and then on to the subrecipient. So, that's why you see a larger increase there. Under program development, what you will see in fiscal twenty six are around Vermont, thirty eight paving projects, you see sixteen interstate in bridge projects to the conversation we're just having forty state road bridge projects, forty five roadway, seventeen traffic and safety and I mentioned the example of that. Seven park and ride, nothing is in the works of a grand scale like in Williston when we built that one brand new, but there's some expansion, there's some repaving I think on some of these thirty three bike and pedestrian projects around Vermont. Transportation alternative projects. This came about from the cancellation of the circumferential highway in Chittenden County. These when I first started, these were called CERC alternative projects. I'm looking at Michelle. I think that's the right term. They changed that because the CERC was ancient history and a lot of people in committees didn't even know what we're referring to. So we just call them alternative projects now, but an example of that type of a project would be, Essex Junction. They built a Crescent Connectors Group. It's a new road that goes from, I'm gonna date myself where the old Flanders Lumber was, over to Maple Street. So you don't have to go to the five corners and turn right, you can just do a slice over there. That's an example of a transportation alternative. So that the deal was, if you will, that because of the circumferential highway couldn't be completed, you know, two eighty nine is part of that as is the Burlington BeltLine that's been around for fifty five years, fifty years anyway. There would still be these types of projects. So anyway, that's what that category is. And then rest area improvement, we have a bit of a binary relationship on rest areas with EGS. We do some things, they do some things. They're responsible for the operation of the rest area for the people that are in the rest area, making the coffee and making a phone call if the toilets break or if there's anything that needs to be addressed quickly. We're responsible for the roof system, the HVAC system, the walkways out front, and we obviously plow rest areas or we contract for plowing. So it's a fairly nominal piece of our budget and a bigger piece of their budget. The next slide is district maintenance and fleet. I won't go through all the categories, but again happy to talk about anything you'd like in there, but we tried to break out some of the major items that add up to the one hundred and seventeen million dollars but this is across nine districts in the state of Vermont. How many individual garages, Ernie? Sixteen? The garage counts out. The amount of sixty four. Right. So sixty four garages around the state, all that have trucks, people. So this is that list. This includes our materials. This includes salt. This includes labor and overtime. [Tiff Bluemle]: What are you doing to reduce salt usage to [Joe Flynn]: We are we have a great story on that. We're probably one of the the best you'll find in reducing salt. We have, Ernie can speak more thoroughly to it. But when I started, we were getting permits from ANR and the limitation at that point is was eight hundred pounds per mile and we're down below three hundred pounds per mile now. We're really acute. We have telemetry on our trucks. We can set how much salt goes out to spinner. We spritz it so that it doesn't bounce across the road and end up in the ditch before it does any good. And we I'm going to let Ernie speak again if he'd like because we're very proud of what we do. And we're frankly, Vermont is one of the leaders on the national front for snow and ice states and it's all control. And I know it's a hot topic right now with the bill here, which is a good suggestion that there'd be some best practices shared with others. [Tiff Bluemle]: Right. Right. And training people, snowplow drivers and others that are not your organization, private people. So good. No. That's really all I need to [David Yacovone]: we the [Tiff Bluemle]: details really is in the transportation committee. We just need to see hear the kind of broad picture. [Joe Flynn]: Aside from the financial motivation, there's an altruistic reason here and we think we are as forward leaning as we can be and still find the balance for safe travels. In Vermont, for the record, we do not have a bare road policy. Our policy is, our policy states, safe roads at safe speeds, which does not mean that every road will be bare pavement within so many hours of a storm, But we prioritize those roads and they start with interstate highway systems and then they move to the US routes like four and nine and two and then down from there. So, but we are very proactive and we also are very mindful of the amount of sand that we use because it too is a concern on the environmental side. The next slide just speaks to policy planning, intermodal development, that's Michelle's area. This includes clearly what's in the title policy and planning, but the intermodal development piece is the rail, the aviation, and public transit. So this deals with the funding for those three modalities as well. Environmental policy and sustainability, we're all sort of in a holding pattern on electric vehicle and charging infrastructure deployment. As of this minute, it's been totally shut down. And it it may not it may not refire as far as the federal piece goes. The funding that came to Vermont was grant money. It was not money that was baked into the formula funds I spoke about earlier, which is not interrupt. But, EV funding was was grant funding. There was one caveat to that. There was a program launched by the last administration called the National Electric Vehicle Initiative, NEVI, and it it was pressing states, put in fast charging networks. I think they're four eighty volt fast chargers. We built the first one in partnership with the Norwich Technologies in Bradford. And it I I didn't know how to use in fact, I went over with a electric vehicle to use it because I wanna see how fast it would work. But I wasn't authorized as the secretary to use the card that it took to swipe your thing. So I just I had a nice trip. I do know the governor's used it in his vehicle and it's very fast. And so that program, that project was built and the contractor was paid. But the rest of our projects that were either under contract, but shovels had not started going into the ground yet or had been we received bids and we were ready to award contracts, we've had to pause everything because we've been told that that grant program is over with. So as of this minute, it stopped and we'll see where we square that up in the budget. [Tiff Bluemle]: Robert, do you have a question? Go ahead. [Joe Flynn]: I'm looking at rail. Can you just is is there an update on that connector to to Montreal? Yes? That's the perpetual question. The first thing I would say is when I started with the agency fifteen years ago, when I started in state government fifteen years ago, my job was rail program manager. We've come a long way in the positive category since then, a long way. We're probably in the hardest part right now. The infrastructure between the border in Alberg and Montreal would need upgrades to provide sufficiently fast enough travel to encourage riders. And if you've ever taken the Adirondack on the New York side, which I've done, not only do you currently sit at the border for maybe an hour, if you're lucky while they check your papers and run dogs up and down the train, but then you clippity clop your way into Montreal, because the rail is really just sufficient for freight. It's owned by freight and the freight rail companies living in the U. S. Aren't tremendously anxious to invest in their infrastructure to facilitate passenger rail because their shareholders are shareholders of freight rail companies. There is a relationship. We run Amtrak out here and this is a privately owned railroad. So there's the infrastructure piece, but probably the the biggest piece left is the the construction in Central Station and Montreal to facilitate pre clearance and the governance model. The good news is there's been a refresh of the architectural estimate, as recent as last fall. So we both we, I say we New York, Vermont, Quebec and the country of Canada is actually got a piece of this, as well as the City of Montreal. We're working with fresher dollars, if you will, on what that's all going to cost. The complexities around how does this get paid for it because we're not able to spend money in a foreign country, we're not really able to spend money in another state. But we're going to have to work around that because we're going to be asking them to host us in a fashion and we think we're going to work through with Amtrak who can do that. The governance piece is going to be it's just gonna be a bureaucracy. We've been saying three to five years for fifteen. I don't wanna say three to five years, But I would say this, it could be done in five years if everybody who had a piece of this thing could get in a room like this and make some agreements. And by that I mean, if we could get back to where we were a few years ago, where we had the Canadian federal government, we had border services in Canada, we had border patrol and customs from the U. S. We had the Canadian federal government. We had representatives from the delegation in Vermont. And at that time they were speaking for the U. S. Federal government. President Obama signed a treaty that enabled pre clearance. So everything is aimed in the right direction, but there's got to be the collective will to get this thing pushed to prioritize it. And that at times can be complicated enough even in house, and so much of the outcome of this project is not in house. It's in partnership. I do know that this continues to be a conversation between the administration and premier Legault's office. And, you know, there is a meeting coming up in Quebec City. I was in Quebec City a year ago in September. We met on this and and, you know, it's there's also a new counsel general out of Boston. We met with that gentleman two weeks ago. He claims that this is a refreshed priority. It could really be done in two years as far as the muscle movements. I think personally based on how I see infrastructure being done. There just has to be a decision that we're going to collectively address these complicated questions and move forward. And and much of that is just not in our control. And I'm sorry. I can't give you a more definitive answer. But I I don't wanna be negative. This is so much closer to being done. And it it could it could be done. It could be done in the construction world a couple of years is pretty quick. It could be done. [Tiff Bluemle]: I just wanna remind you, we've got about ten more minutes and we need to take a break and we have one more party coming in. So if it's if it isn't high level, but you can ask them. Thanks. [Joe Flynn]: Next slide is public transit. I I think I just would point out to you then, the third bullet talks about, fit ups for e buses. There are currently seventeen e buses in the state. There are forty forty eight more that are in some form of procurement. Again, we we subgrant money to every transit provider in Vermont, all ten. So we're heavily invested literally and managerially, if you will, with all the transit providers across Vermont. Finance and administration, it's audit, it's legal, it's the business operations that you would think about, it's the CFO. We also have transportation buildings is in there, transportation board is in there. We don't tell the keyboard what to do, but it's on our org chart and we pay for it. And it's it's great. I'm not criticizing it's that we don't tell what to do. It has to be an independent board, but it it it's just on our budget and that's why you see it here. The next page, you'll hear more from the commissioner and from the CFO, the Department of Motor Vehicles. Probably the biggest story there is the replacement of the core system. The legislature two years ago generously listened to to AOT's concerns about our cobalt based computer system, which may actually be older than the Department of Labor system, but it's that same general age. And we are now in phase two of the completion of that project. There's only two phases. And it is due to be finished in November of this coming fall. And it is still running on time on budget, and this is nearly a fifty million dollar IT program. And I, for the record, wanna thank the people at DMV for this, and I also wanna thank Agency of Digital Services because without them, we couldn't have done this. We're not at the finish line yet, but we are we are probably as successful if not more successful in something of this scale financially and and as far as impactfulness, if you will, to the department's operations as as the state has seen in recent history. Last but not least is the town highway program. The list on the left are all the programs that we fund. We fund these programs based basically on a level of readiness. So by that, I mean this, if one year, a town or multiple towns in the queue have projects ready to go for building new bridges or rehabbing a bridge, the town bridge number might go up. The next year, if they're not that many ready, the town bridge number goes down. The one number that remains constant is the formula funds. And I'm just trying to look at which line that is. We do have, town high town aid program. That's a constant number in so much as a town is not in a revolving queue for that number. Every town gets money from us every year based on a formula, which is generally derived by the miles of road in that town. That investment is supposed to go toward a transportation related need. We're very flexible on that. In twenty three and in twenty four, director Morris's shop advanced an entire year of payments to the tune of twenty two million dollars twenty eight million dollars, to Towns because of flooding. So we paid out the door, rapidly what otherwise would have been, to, you know, it would have taken a year to pay towns. So this is the budget at this point and I do realize you're short on time. I'm happy to we're all happy to answer any questions you might have. [Tiff Bluemle]: So I just have one last question for me. And, yeah, I think you may have addressed it a little bit while I was presenting it now on the committee, so I apologize. But we are one of the agencies that has a lot of federal funds, and it sounds, you know, we have a lot of uncertainty and what we can do. I got it. Some of the federal funds are maybe not at risk, but what's at risk from your perspective based on the little bit we all know now? [Joe Flynn]: As I said, the biggest piece of this, which is the Federal Highway Administration money is is really not at risk at this point, and and and it doesn't the new secretary, Sean Duffy, at USDOT has stated that. Federal aviation, federal highway, and federal transit are all grant programs to us, but they are not suspended at this time. And and I'm not I like, as much as I don't wanna prog prognosticate about bridge condition, that I don't think from everything I've seen come out of DC at this point would fall into the category of a target rich funding stream. Okay. Like some of the things we've seen cut. Now EV, I've talked about. That clearly falls into the vulnerable risk area for this administration, and I'm not sure where it's gonna go. And I don't know if anyone else between our programs has other opinions they wanna add to that, but this will be a great time. So please feel free. [Tiff Bluemle]: Sure. For the record, Michelle Boomhower, Vermont Agency of Transportation. I think two of the other areas that are currently at risk are the urban reduction program, which has been investments in public transit, walking in, like, a some electrification or charging stations. So that one, I think, is we'll see what happens with that one. And then they also had a new program called Protect, which was basically a hazard mitigation resilience type program. So we can do the incremental upgrades to make sure that a culvert is sized properly for replacement. We'll be doing back ledge projects where we're having the freeze thaw more frequently than we might have been traditionally. So there's a number of areas longer to protect. And those programs over the course of the five year build, carbon reduction program was, I think, twenty three million and protect is around that same amount under the exact amount. But Okay. So we'll think. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And they [Speaker 4 ]: said, okay. Yes. Also, for the record, Jana Morves, finance and administration division director. One of the other areas in addition to what Michelle just spoke about is the funding for our civil rights program. So those are the folks that do our on the job training, our disadvantaged business enterprise, international summer transportation institute. And as of it's very dynamic situation. So we've learned some new information about, protect that Michelle didn't have. So some of that is now, a portion of that is now back on the table. And that literally changed about an hour ago as I was coming into the work. Change again. And I'm sure it will change again before the end of the day, perhaps. But the there's a portion of funds in the ballpark of one hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand that supports our civil rights team that will be as currently at risk, and we have not received funding for fiscal twenty five. [David Yacovone]: I totally Yes. I don't wanna end on a bad note. I'll preface this by saying you folks do great work. Route twelve Worcester, Winch Road. Have you ever driven that lately? [Joe Flynn]: I have not been on Route twelve in Worcester since Capital for a Day in Washington County, which was probably in early September. [David Yacovone]: If if you could just ask your folks, is something wrong? [Joe Flynn]: Okay. [David Yacovone]: It's like I think it was built with concrete, you know, pump pump. [Joe Flynn]: Do you mean the bridge? [David Yacovone]: No. The whole road. Oh. Well, excuse me. Yep. A good length of the road. For the [Joe Flynn]: balance of it. Alright. Yep. I do know that we did some work out there, and I know a person is fine. I know a person, and that's this person's favorite bicycle route. Okay. So we get rather updates in the summertime on the condition of Route twelve. So I hear you. [David Yacovone]: I have a bad backup. I'm sorry. I didn't hear my mic. We we had a lot [Joe Flynn]: of damage, but on the Elmore side, as you know, back in July. So that part, but [John Kascenska]: Anyways, if you get a chance to ask Yep. [David Yacovone]: Who knows more about it than me? [Joe Flynn]: Everyone's in the room who needs to hear that, so we'll talk about it on our side. [Tiff Bluemle]: We'll do that offline. Other people have particular things that they need to let that secretary know of their their area. I want the roundabout, but, you know, in Middlebury, so we all have our things. Anyway, thank you all to what you are doing. Thank you. So thank you all for coming in, and, Rep Kesenska is your liaison. So maybe if we have questions, we'll, ask John to to speak them out out the answers for us. So Thank you very much. You very much. We'll take a break.

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