Regional Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

So thank you.

Welcome, friends.

It is September 16th, 2026, just after 6 p.m. We're here for the CCRPC Board of Directors meeting. And I think before we start our agenda, it's worth going around and do introductions again.

Sir. Representative from Chicago.

Scott McCormick, Representative from the 6th Junction.

Renee Marshall, Executive Representative from the South Chester. Emma Vaughn, Communications Manager for the RPC.

Andrew Chalmik, Representative from South Carolina. McHugh Devitt, Representative from Williston.

Christine Ford, Supervisor of Staff. Matthew Arancio, Deans.

Jeff Carr, Representative from Sumner. I'm Bart Hill from Richmond and folks in back row.

Hi, I'm Kate McCarthy. I'm on staff. I'm the Community Development Program Manager.

Melanie Meno, GIS and IT Manager.

And this will be awkward, but try to do randomly introductions for those who are here virtually.

I'm Andrew Montroll from Burlington.

Andy Watts from Essex Town. Ben Bornstein from the town of Westford. Yes. Representative.

I'm sorry. Catherine McMains, Jericho.

Mike O'Brien, Winooski.

Brad Holden from Underhill.

Morris Cohen, Business Director, CCRPC.

Simone Bedford, Economic Mobility Manager, CCRPC.

So we have started recording, following us to order changes to the agenda. There are a few. We will move the financial update, I'm going to suggest, up to 3.1. Does that make sense? We're going to add a new item, 5.1, update on Winooski Bridge. Yeah. Type amendment, yeah. I'm for that. Sorry. Because it's related to the type amendment process. And members items. I think we put it between 9 and 10, so 9.1. Okay. So, OK, so that's the agenda. Are there any public comments or items not on this evening's agenda?

We have to hold up the amendment agenda.

That's a formal thing to do.

Yes, it is. I would move we accept the amended agenda as described by the board chair. Thank you, Jeff. So second.

Favor, please say aye. Raise your hand. Thank you. Any nays? Any abstentions? Then passes unanimously. Thank you for that comment. So returning to item two, public comment for items not on the agenda. It appears there were none. We'll move on to the minutes of the July 15th, 2026 meeting.

Move approval with conference edits.

I'll second that.

Thank you.

I will say that that was really very thorough minutes. And I really didn't see anything that struck me.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm impressed. All right. Thanks. Any other comments or discussion? Hearing none, all in favor of approving the minutes of July 15th as planned, say aye. Raise your hand.

All right.

Any abstentions? Two abstentions. Then also . We are on to item 3.1, the initial draft FY26 year-end financial results and the audit governance letter.

Mr. Chair, if you don't mind, if we do the B in front of the A. Just sorry, Kyle Connors is here for support explanation, et cetera for the. Governance letter, so just didn't respect to his time. So there was a memo in your in your packet about this. change, the overall change is moving how our audit is presented, represented the model for it from what had been an enterprise model, which is the one that we had basically, you know, like a private business. That's the model we had been using for as long as I've been here and probably before that. A new Gatsby rule came out this year that would have made that presentation somewhat awkward. It wouldn't necessarily be wrong, but it would look odd. It would make our statements look like we were having a huge deficit and then having all of our grant revenue added underneath the line, which seemed kind of silly. So one of the decision was to move to a government model, which makes a lot more sense for us in other ways besides just satisficing this new rule. So this was proposed to the executive committee a couple of weeks ago, and the executive committee approved that change, which prompts now this updated governance letter, which is a way that the auditors explain exactly how they're going to go about conducting the audit, etc. So We are asking the board tonight to acknowledge, take a look at and accept this new governance letter. I don't think it's actually an action item, but more of an informational item. Kyle, did I misrepresent or?

No, not at all.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Okay. So that's the item before you.

Are there any questions or wish to... What would we do without Gatsby telling us what to do all the time?

They're helping keep me employed, I guess.

Right, there you go.

Are there any comments or questions related to the audit governance letter? I kind of like the government entity approach because It's more in line, we're not a profit-seeking organization, and we've always kind of tried to finesse it, or I've tried to make us finesse it, so now we have either an excess of expenses over revenues or an excess of revenues over expenses. The bottom line here won't be net profit, which I think is offensive to our governmental agencies, but it will be a change in fund value, and it will more clearly recognize that We get most of our money from grants, not from sales.

Thank you. Anybody else? Anything else you would add?

No, I think Jeff just summed that up nicely. I mean, the point of the commission isn't necessarily to run an operating profit, and it's not to charge users enough money to cover your operating costs. I think this was probably, I don't want to say a long time coming, but I think Gatsby 103 really made it easy to move in this direction and show as a governmental fund.

Great. Thank you. So, Kyle, what are they going to do to us next year?

You know, between 103 and 104, I've done so much reading for this year that I'm saving that problem for Kyle from six months from now.

All right. I think unless there's anything else, we'll move on to the initial draft here in financial results.

Thanks, Kyle. Thanks, everybody. Have a good night.

Thank you.

Okay. Yeah. So let's move on to that. I'm going to share my screen. Hopefully I picked the right screen to share. Are we looking at agenda item 8A?

We are.

Wonderful. Okay. So I'm going to move through. the statements and using this memo to kind of hit the high points. Ask questions, speed me up, slow me down, whatever you need to do. So I'm gonna scroll, sorry. So our first statement here is our balance sheet previous year comparison. As I noted in the memo, 18% more in our cash balances than where we were at this time last year, or at the time, June 30. That's not a bad thing. Accounts receivable are down somewhat, which could potentially be a concern. However, if we scroll down to our liabilities, our accounts payable are also almost exactly the same amount down. Sorry for the bad English there. So that indicates to me that we've actually probably had received those receivables a little bit earlier and then paid some of those bills a little bit earlier. So the correspondence is nice there. Going quickly down, we have our wonderful long-term debt, lease debt. That's our amortized office lease. So that used to be called rent. Our pension liability, these will be adjusted by the end of the audit. Those are adjusting entries that we do usually toward the end of the audit. And also, we're not seeing them here because they're spent down. All of our ACCD and our municipal dues have all been expended at the end of the year. So all in all, and I guess also noteworthy, a bit more net income or net revenues over expenses than last year, about 10% more. And this number, 108,000 of net revenues is what we will look at here. That single number generated from all the this information coming up any questions about the balance sheet before we move on to the revenues over expenses not hearing any so again we have our previous year comparison it is a goal that we have to move toward more direct municipal support and Year over year, that looks like that's happening, almost a 700% increase in those revenues, which is nice to see. Also, a pretty dramatic increase in the amount of interest that we earned. All those high interest rates, while maybe not so much fun in a lot of other realms, at least we're earning more interest from our bank account. So that was kind of a windfall there for us, big increase there. This is a list of, and I'm sorry, went right past one of the biggest ones. There is a lot more information behind the project income transportation, but this is our V-Trans bill. This is a lion's share of our revenues, up 3.4%, just under 5 million, just that program. These are all of our, of course, we have our ACCD, Project income local are municipal dues that weren't allocated to V trans match essentially. A whole bunch of different land use. Programs all in all. 33.9% more year over year. I will say that a. Big piece of that. is the CUD. This is a lot of in and out flow, over a million dollars just for that, to do some broadband work, get some fiber out. So that number is somewhat inflated, but still a nice revenue generation from all of our land use grants. So yeah, almost 10 million here, just gross. Project expenses, nothing too surprising as far as the increase in our salaries and fringes. These were budgeted for. Looks like we're doing a little more traveling and conferencing, which is a good thing. That's more staff education, professional development happening. So sorry not to totally kill you going so slowly, but so our expenses are up 15.2 overall. Revenues up about 15.1% overall. And we end up with our result here again of almost 109,000 surplus of revenues over expenses. That's the previous year comparison. The other sheet that we look at is against budget. So a lot of information here. I'm going to pause for a second. Questions or comments? OK, not hearing any. So similar numbers here, but again, compared to budget instead of the previous year. So obviously, ACCD, 100% expended. Really nice staff time billing here. This 105% of MPO transportation funding, that's all staff time. So overperformed the budget. A number of our grant programs that I mentioned briefly. Overall, 104% of our budgeted operations support. So that's staff time. And we're about 78% of our direct project revenue. So that's our throughput, consultants, et cetera. And down here, we can see that our operation support expenses were a bit under the budget year, which obviously helped us to get to this surplus of revenues over expenses of $108,775. Give a couple dollars. Questions there? We had a confluence of really great staff billing. We had some help with some surplus health insurance premium funds that we were able to apply to our health insurance, to our benefits line is where that shows up, which helped us. And also, you know, almost $30,000 more, $25,000 more of interest income than we had budgeted for. So that helps to explain the delta here between what we budgeted for and where we actually ended up. Move on to the cash. Not a ton to run through here. except to mention that we ended up nicely ahead of our projection with this bottom line number and actually a bit better than the last few years. Our reserve is not growing terribly fast. It's not designed to, but it has grown some. And assuming that everything holds steady with our surplus of revenues, we could potentially consider moving some of our operating funds into our reserve account this year, depending on how Charlie and the board and everyone's feeling about that. All right. I'm going to stop sharing or at least attempt to. All right.

Hey, Forrest. Yes, sir. We have some pretty healthy bank balances. I'm assuming we're spreading it around enough so that we're within the deposit insurance limits of our bank accounts, so we're covered if something happens.

Yeah, actually, what we're doing is we have a situation with, well, we had a situation with Green Mountain where we basically had a note that ensured our balances beyond the NCUA. It's a little bit of a different instrument with East Rise. It's what they call a sweep account. But it essentially does the same thing. So it's not us. They take our balances and actually spread them amongst different financial institutions. So that none of our balances are exposed beyond that insurance. Yep.

I mean, we have, we have a number of that 7 digits now, the bottom line. So it's important to do that and be good stewards of our community funds.

Absolutely.

Just from an institutional standpoint, it isn't always like this. So we should feel good about where we are as an organization. And we don't have our reserve fund up to where we want it to be quite yet, but it's still pretty healthy. And we have an $8 million budget now. That's like real money.

Yeah.

It was always real money. Two notes just to follow up on that point. One is our auditors have advised us over time that we should have three months of operating expenses in our reserve account. And that is really an insurance fund to protect the municipalities. It's a little bit of a doomsday scenario, but if we had to close up shop or whatever, We're really trying to make sure the municipalities do not have any liability associated with us because it's really the municipalities at the end of the day that own us. And the second thing, I just want to go back to the budget that Ford presented. Just, you know, we've been pretty conservative in our budgeting and it was noticeable to me that if you look at the bottom line on the revenues over expenses, sorry, look at that row 111, But our budget that the board approved last year had a projected potential negative $57,000 bottom line. And so that's off $150,000, $160,000 swing because we're being pretty conservative in our budgeting. And so we've been trying to make sure that we can exceed expectations in our budgeting every time.

In defense of the budgeting, We've had some extended absences from things that happened. Like we had some babies and those kinds of things. So that kind of stuff is understandable. Where are any of those things coming up? Mother nature takes its course. Well, not that we know.

Marshall's actually having a baby any day now.

Yeah, Marshall's not alone. Well, technically his wife.

Yeah. But, you know, those affected us a little bit in the last couple of years in terms of our ability. When we have staff members that are out for significant periods of time, it's hard to advance the consultants for the same degree of efficiency that we have on the meter.

Anything else for us? Let me ask this for us. This is the initial draft. When might people think about the final threat?

Really, that's going to come with the audit report, Bard.

Yeah, and I think, and just so, yeah, we already lost Kyle, but for us, I think I'm understanding we'll probably, maybe we'll see a draft in November, but probably a final audit number in January.

I'm not sure of that. I was going to check with Kyle.

That was the last item.

And those of you that looked at the balance sheet, you'll see that the long-term liabilities were exactly the same, 26 and 25. That's because our auditor gives us the liabilities for our pension plan and our capital lease as part of the audit. And so that gets added in. And so that number will be updated. It's only preliminary in the numbers that we've got.

Thank you for that. Anything else on the financial update or audit?

I want to say something. I'm a little late, but I want to say with Simone, who was Economic Mobility, she worked as the manager. She did an incredible event at South Burlington in the library. I mean, it's like incredible. Over 60 people were attended. City managers were around. And she did a great job. I thought I was going to make and just sit there and say, thank you for your representation. And there is going to be a member's item, an agenda for you to do that.

Yes, sir. And I said that maybe in more detail, as opposed to here with these financial and moderate.

Yeah, I already followed her. I was there, and I had a great time. I learned a lot, and I met a lot of people, you know what I'm saying, to make sure that what she was trying to do. I met a lot of people, a lot of people, city managers, for the things that I did. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's move on to item four now. FY 27 to 30, transportation improvement program for TIP. Starting with a presentation and then a warning of other hearings. Here.

All right.

Okay.

All right, you know, that's awesome. Christine Forge, I introduced myself twice, so everybody should know who I am. But for those who were at the training, we talked a little bit about the tip. We'll get into a little bit more detail about it. I will say that it's a list. I think you had a chance to look through it in your packet. It's a list of about 114 projects. So there's a lot in there. I'm going to go over to some high level, but if there's any specifics and projects that we want to talk about, I'm really happy to deviate and talk about that. But just to orient us in our overall planning process here at CCRPC, it starts with the MTP, the e-goals where we do like the overall goals and the broad vision for the county. that then we dial it down, we do some planning studies, we do some corridor studies, we refine those plans, get into scoping, and scoping studies look at really location-specific issues, make recommendations, and from there is the time to seek funding. So the TIP, Transportation Improvement Program, there's a state Transportation Improvement Program, the STIP. The TIP is part of the STIP. They're both developed at federal documents, I mentioned the capital program, but you also have to be in the capital program in order to spend money. And then once the funding is secure, you're going to design by way of construction, and that's the easy part of it. So just a little bit more about what it is. So it's a list of projects. We talked about that. It's prioritized, fiscally constrained, multi-year list, federally funded transportation projects and operations in the NPR region. So to break that down, It's fiscally constrained. What we mean by that is that there is a fixed dollar amount that can be programmed. It's not a wish list of projects. It's based on actual funding that is expected to be available. We don't have a predefined fiscal constraint limit. You'll see when I show some bar charts how much the funding changes and going up and down over time. But once the TIP is approved, the fiscal constraint is set, and we can't exceed that over the fiscal year. It has to cover at least four years. Federal law says it has to be updated at least every four years. We update it every year. We try to update their STIP every year. There's just always a lot of change in projects as they're going through the development process. The dollar amounts the schedule, so we like to just refresh it every year. So we have the latest information. And it authorizes the obligation of federal funds. So just to talk about the funding a little bit, because that phrase is something that we don't hear a lot, this right obligation. But it's part of this funding process when money comes from the federal government. Congress makes an authorization. The state gets an apportionment, so that's the money that comes to the state. And then this obligation is a process where funds are set aside. They're committed to a specific project. So the TIP identifies obligations rather than expenditures. And that's just a detail that you don't really have to worry too much about. But what it kind of means is that the TIP will show money earlier, and then the expenditures follow later.

If the sponsor obligated them, are they guaranteed, or can the program call back if they decide?

They are guaranteed to the project. I think, you know, Matthew, I mean, I think there's probably always some, but I think in general, once they're obligated, they just belong to that project.

Excuse me? Do you have to do integration? Integration is part of the project. Yeah, that's a tip project, too.

So Charlie mentioned it's continuing comprehensive transportation planning process that we're required to carry out in for those who are in the training, sorry, shouldn't leave out those who weren't at the training.

But we are required to all work together, transit operators, the state, the MPO, in developing the TIP. Projects have to be ready to move ahead. They have to be ready to spend the money. So the TIP, we talked about being fiscally constrained, which means that there's a certain amount of money. If a project's in there that doesn't need the money, there's another project that can move into a space. So we don't want projects sitting there that aren't actually ready to spend that money. they have to have funding sources identified. So this will be typically since B-Trans is the implement mentor for most of these projects, they will be part of the capital program. They will be part of the budget. So they will have funding sources identified. And then most of the projects need to be in the capital program because B-Trans is the implementer of most of the projects and they have to be in the capital program for B-Trans to work on. So, There's three sections of the TIP. Section one is an introduction. There's a discussion of transportation performance measures and how the TIP will help achieve the goals of the performance vendors. There's an adoption resolution. There is a glossary. And then section two is the main meat of it, and that's the list of projects. And section three is just some summary tables that we use to just summarize it.

So I noted in the long document that congestion is not a performance measure. I guess we have good air. But I assume we nonetheless analyze congestion for quality of life reasons, etc.

It's part of the MCP process. It's part of whenever we do scoping, when we look at projects, we'll always look at that. Yeah, so it's definitely part of the project development process. So this is page one of the TIC, just to warn you on what it is. Projects are listed alphabetically by community, then they're alphabetical by project name. There's a CCRPC project number that doesn't really have any meaning beyond here. There might be some location-specific information there, and there's also the DTRANS project number, which is the number that you- Sorry.

John Gerstle PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB,

yeah sorry yeah yeah it's uh it's you know um and then what's i'm mainly just trying to say where this information is i don't actually be able to be reading these pages but i just want to orient like what the column structure means um so this section is these are the federal funds would be obligated in each of the four federal federal fiscal year, November 1st to September 30th. This is federal funds only. The state and local map are not included in this part of the document. And they're broken down by primary engineering right-of-way, construction, other, which is usually scoping, transit, other projects, and then the total project cost. These three columns that you can't read, I apologize. We have a total project cost, and this is federal, state, and local money. There's this column, past obligations through FY25. So basically, these two columns, through FY25, and then the FY26 federal funds, shows how much have previously been spent on this project. We added those two together, but that should be about, we don't know the FY26 obligations yet, but that will be close to that. Um, and then we have this category is for, for us to be able to summarize and tell a story federal funding source. This is for our, our federal, um, funders. So I just know that information, the list, we do list the percent federal, state, and local funds for the project. And then, um, remarks, if there's anything that we'd want to include. And then the B-transparency manager is listed here that we wanted to talk to them about it. Project manager and then the project number is what they would be. There's another, there's a comment in the center section. This one says remove. So after tonight, this project is going to be removed. It's finished. Another comment that appears there is scheduled to be determined for projects that don't really have their construction year determined. The most common comment there says funds to be obligated FY26. Those are projects that we expect to be finished this year before September 30th. And circle-turned projects are also identified. So Next. So this is like the bottom line. What is in this? It's the large program of projects, 113.9 million in 27, 75 million in 28, 72.4 million in 29, 57.4 million, and halfway 30, a grand total of 319.1 million. So what does this, how does this compare with past years?

So this table just kind of, this,

bar chart can just orient us on that. The dark blue is the amount that was in the TIP when it was adopted, and then the hashed lines are the amounts that were actually. So what you see is that the amount that's in the TIP isn't always obligated by the contract to play. There's various reasons why you don't obligate to the full amount. And then the 26, 27, 28, and 29 are in that bar. left-hand side. So what comes really clearly when you look at this first is how high 23, 24, and 25 were, and then how high 27 is. And when you skip those, you get to a little bit more of an even number. But first about the 27, which is part of this tip. This tip has a lot of interstates There we go, we're back, yes. That number is high. There's still some money for the Burlington. Burlington has some raised grant money. There's a bunch of interstate bridge projects. There's a lot of interstate paving that makes 27 quite high. The 23, this is the longer view of all the actual obligations. 23, 24, 25, As we know, we're Champlain Parkway. We had that the US-2 bridge in Richmond over the interstate that was constructed at 17 and 16. And 16 is still being funded in 27 as it's growing to the US-2 bridge. So I think that after this large level of projects, we expect to come back to a little bit of a more reasonable number, as you can see, 28th and 9th where you're finding that closer. Is that?

I don't know, 27 looks pretty reasonable to me.

So just the state, the state gets about 350 million. So, yeah, the amount that we've looked at is about 19% of the state money in Virginia County. So I think when you look at the long-term view,

We're 35% of the economy. We're 33% of the population. So... And we're getting... And we're thinking we're being greedy for 19% of the transportation funding.

So there's no grant-funded projects. We did have a slug of them last year, the last couple years that went through, but we still have some billed grant money for the We see where the bridge. There's still some ways grant money for Burlington. There's some EV parking money and then also state grants. So that's, I have kind of lists of projects. I don't know that we can, this is helpful to really talk about them. Bike sidewalks and paths, these are bike head grants, transportation alternative program grants, and the From the race brand that went to separate and for the British like the bridge over the interstate. The bridge preservation bridge program is very large large 24% of the total there's a lot of state bridges here that are all. Most of those are covered bridge in Charlotte mostly state bridges, but really the large numbers are there's. quite a few interstate bridges. These are all just in the development. Most of these are in the question and answer phase, but they're mostly rehab projects with interstate bridges. And then intermodal, we have one parking ride in Charlotte. This is going where the staging area was for the Exit 17 project. Sorry. New facility, major regular upgrade, almost nothing here, 3.3%. For those who've been here for a while, you know, this has been a large category for us, but now with the completion of those larger projects, we're really have very little spending. There is really an enterprise in Burlington is kind of in a building pattern and there is an ADI and exit 12, which I guess we have to see how 16 goes first, but that's a future project. i'm sorry i'm diverting that into the same oh yes that's what i'll be doing in most. And well, then we will start a tomorrow.

The new traffic pattern and it's a 16 solicitors are tomorrow. And then the the 12 dvi was something that came out of the sort of alternatives. So it's been on that list, but it's not really fully fleshed out and funded at this point.

Great. So paving, there was a lot of paving, $15 million here. There's a couple of interstate paving projects, a lot of the interstate projects moving through. Southern Angleton, Boston paving, Dr. Ellington, Shoei, and City of Richmond. And then we're really part of the province, we have essence of steam or we're putting in this category, along with this church street side street and reconnecting downtown Burlington were to grant projects that Burlington dot to do improvements right around. cherry street and reconnect around that through the old mall and that then. And safety, traffic operations, ITS, this is always a large list of projects, and these are largely safety projects, interstates, interchanges, or intersection projects, and kind of smaller safety issues. And both of these have been.

So can I ask you a quick question about the safety? So we say safety, you know, with with it, I mean, with stoppers.

So there's so a lot of them are intersected. So the quotient, the first one, Colchester Avenue, Mill Street, Barrett Street is the one right out here at the Domino's Pizza. And it's it will be intersection improvements or realign of the intersection to try to improve safety in that location. something like there's some traffic signals being replaced on room 15 in Colchester and Essex. A couple of new projects we have on here is some roadside barrier installation on 117 in Essex. So it's a whole variety of different types of projects, but a lot of them are realigning intersections and... Is it here towards slowing down traffic? Not specifically, typically not specifically, but really just to do signal upgrades and signalization in some cases. Yeah, everyone's kind of a little bit different.

Isn't it barrier so you don't drive into the river? So it probably slows you down from going to the river.

Somebody went to the river, right?

Yeah, I think it's, yeah. I mean, I think it's for visibility and yeah, market.

And one of those few roundabouts, I mean, this whole chapter. Yeah.

All right.

I don't become more like Massachusetts and then transit.

These are formula funds from FDA and seeing that industrial mitigation, air quality funds, FDA grants. And then that was really in the same. And those are most, those are funds that are. Either grants directly to green mountain transit or, um, part of B-Trans transit program.

So I ran a bike treatment everywhere, so you get bike pedestrian funding. So they work with different groups of the works.

So the bike, there are bike type projects that are either through the B-Trans bike type program or transportation alternatives. So those are grants that the towns would apply for. But then also things, the intersection projects would include pedestrian accommodations at intersections as well. So most of the projects do include consideration of how bikes and pedestrians are going to move through.

Most of the safety projects are, yeah, like beds and cars, safer for all users.

And then stormwater environmental, these are These are, again, mostly grant projects. Municipal highways, stormwater mitigation program grants, that will be BCHAS grant program. Transparency alternative grants, funds, stormwater. And then there's some electric vehicle chargers that are put into this category. Bar chart that shows the total. Transit is the highest. I think there was something in the way that the transit, the transit grants appeared in the program that some things that were in last year ended up getting put into this year. And we have an explanation why that one is particularly high this year. But then followed by bridges and culverts, as we said, for paving the safety. And to those two talking about The Circle Center projects, which we do in Silky Traca, for those who are remembering that, this era was canceled in, I think, 2011. And there was a task force that met for a couple of years after that and had a list of, I don't know, like, I don't know. Well, we'll see. We'll count up all products and we'll see how many. But these are the projects that have been completed. Quite a few of them have been completed.

Except for the ones at Wilson.

Yeah. So this was the fate. This includes multiple phases, actually. And so the ones that are still working through the system right now, the remaining phase one, both of those are seen as a phase one. Phase two projects, seven corners, Mount 15 Stanford, Road to Essex, used to try to... Is the title of this by the way?

Are these in the 27th or 32nd? Or are these...

Now, the dates are correct. The title is just incorrect.

Okay, the title's old.

Yeah, sorry about that.

Oh, sorry. And then there are a list. So the phase three projects are now competing with the rest of the projects in this state for funding. And these are projects that are not moving forward.

And... I'll pry Chris Roy off the ceiling because the... Wilson circle tournaments were all back in the back end of the time.

Well, they do have, um, it's good.

Now's your time though.

Two way industrial avenues under construction, but James Brown drives. All right. And that is the end of the slides. Um, I can go back to anything if anybody wants to see anything again. So we are looking to one hearing in one or public hearing in just over on 27.

Christine, I just had one comment when I every time I look at these documents that the scale of the projects is pretty striking from like $50,000 to $10 million. Like, you know, for $100 million, suddenly, it's like, They sort of cluster in sections across that scale, but it makes one, I think, appreciate how much money it takes to build a main building. Any other comments, questions?

Mr. Chair, I would move that we warrant a public hearing on our FY27-30 Transportation Improvement Program notice that's it. Second. Sorry. 6 or 5 p.m.

Moved and seconded. Was that Andy?

Yes.

All right. Any further questions or discussion? All in favor, please raise your hand or say aye. Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? That motion passes. We are on to item 5, which includes a new 5.1 of the TIP amendment process update.

All right. Sorry, but it's me again. I just wanted to bring up, I think Charlie had mentioned that. I'm not sure how familiar anybody is with the TIP amendment process or even aware that we have a process. but we do, and we have a lot of different amendments. So we just wanted to refresh this, try to refresh this process and make it more in line with federal regulation and just make it make sense. So I'm just gonna look at, I'm just gonna show it in a red line strikeout version Um, just the red is the new and anything that's stricken out, it's going to be deleted of what we're proposing for the students from Megan policy. So first of all, um, there's a lengthy, there's an introduction that wasn't there before. Just I'm saying what it is, what we just launched into it for this policy, but this, we have some, the federal regulation, the federal reference, um, reference our public participation figures and. And then talk a little bit about it before we go into it. And I think one I'll say here, which might be confusing in a spot, but there is the third paragraph talks about this physical constraint. We talked about this constraint earlier. The state, all state, all money is fiscally constrained at the state level. The state can only get a certain amount of money. For the TIP purposes, not every project is part of what is our, what we're calling our local fiscal constraint. So projects on the interstate, when something needs to be done on the interstate, you know, they make it, they don't, if they needed to add an interstate project, they wouldn't tell us to take something out of the TIP so they could add an interstate funding. It's considered kind of a regional important issue. So that is not part of our constraint. Transit projects are also not part of the fiscal constraint and grants aren't because those have their own funding source. So they don't pass the model constraint. So that was just, there was no explanation for that previously. So we have added that. So one important change is there used to be two categories, two funding levels. There was an under $600,000 and an over $600,000. I mean, frankly, it didn't really, it was not really that relevant. And I think a lot of other states don't do that. B-Trans doesn't do that. So we completely, we consolidated everything into one funding category. So all of that stuff is gone. Now federal regulations have two, I should have said before I started that this is an information item, a discussion item for tonight, not, no. Federal regulations reference two types of changes, amendments and administrative changes. We have always had a major amendment and a minor amendment. So we changed them, what they're called, but we are retaining that What we're calling now, the major amendment is we're just calling like a public hearing amendment. So it's distinguished between amendments that require a public hearing and then amendments that have our normal public involvement process, which would be to go to the tab, to go to the board, and then to be approved by you guys, to be approved by both the tab and the board. So there's this higher level of public hearing amendment that's meant to be for major changes that we really think our normal public involvement process should be enhanced a little bit. What would those be? That would be a brand new federally funded project as part of our history. If somebody wanted to build a bypass of Heinsberg, you know, you would have to, we would have to have a public hearing. If somebody wanted to widen, I mean, you know, You think of crazy events, but it's just to be that there's a brand new project that's subject to this constraint, it has to be a public hearing. If there is a major change to the location, the terminate, or the purpose of the project, it has to have a public hearing. And then also, if the executive director or the board think a public hearing is necessary. So all you can... elevate an amendment, but otherwise it would be just those two things, a major change and a major new project. The other projects will be part of our, the standard review process, which is, you know, satisfies public, satisfies federal regulation, satisfies open meeting law. The amendments are warned. They're part of, they're part of the PAC, which is public meeting. They're part of the board, which is public meeting. So, So we're not to suggest that they're not getting a public review process. So what's in this category is mostly everything. Adding a project. When all of these have to maintain physical constraint. So if you're adding some preservation project, if you maintain physical constraint, you're moving the funding around. Actually, you know, I think a probably better way for me to do it is to go down to the administrator.

Because when you say bridge preservation, I mean, it's pretty complicated. You know, to make sure the bridges are safe.

Yes. It may also go all the way to replacing an existing bridge, as opposed to a new bridge, right? That's a new line. So, yeah, the original bridge, I think, is technically a preservation project. It's replacing the bridge.

If you were building a brand new bridge and brand new location, then it would be a new project. So probably a better way to talk about this is then the administrative modification section. So these are agreements that will just be signed by the executive director. And they will be on the agenda, I think, as a consent agenda or just as an information item for the board's awareness. And these are things that are just really routine. So if the bid adjustment, if you put a particular bid and the bids come back higher, up to 25% higher, then that's an administrative change. If the federal funding source changes, if they're moving projects, you're moving funding between projects Transferring 50,000 from right of way to construction. Adjustments to match a grant or earmark award. If there was additional earmark funds, that would be administrative modification. Moving between fiscal years. If your project is delayed and you need to move some from 27 to 28, or if you're advanced and you're moving some forward. If it's got more money than it needs and you want to remove that money.

A lot of times, Christine, isn't it like a project is delayed and it can't move forward, spend the money, and then there's another project that had a cost overrun. We take the money from that fiscal year and apply it to that project that had a cost overrun, and then we move the other one into that, and then we might take money from the same project we just increased money the year before from our next year's money and move it back with that other project. Exactly. Got it.

This regional line item, there's a number of projects, if you notice, under the category that says regional that are just general ideas, general bridge scoping, they're meant to help, they're mostly to develop projects, and they're mostly used by VTRAN, so saying, you know, you can use $50,000 of safety money to design barriers. That's at 117. And then typographical changes, form items, description corrections. This number, not one of the nine, it's not changed. That was already there before, but just, when we approved the 27 tip, 26 tip is still in effect, so we can make changes to that. administratively. This last one is this is a new one that we've added. But I think one of the things that we've talked about here this part of the board doesn't meet in August, but there is an August redistribution process where if federal money is not spent all around the country, it comes back into a pool of money and states can ask for more of that. And so typically Vermont get some additional money as part of this August distribution redistribution and it has to be obligated quickly. So it's not obligated quickly, it's lost.

And that's the amendment that we had this past August when we didn't need for the executive committee to approve the amendment so that It could be, we could update. That was different.

That was similar, but different, but we'll talk about that in a minute. But that wasn't, so there still is an expedited process. This has been tightened up a little bit. I think just to acknowledge that sometimes things happen. And, and, and I think one of the things here also is if there's an emergency, if there's a safety issue, if there's a, You know, something where...

The interstate culver collapse about 10 years ago. Yeah.

And there's just not time. I mean, federal law still says you have to have a public process. So, you know, it needs to not be done to try to get out of that federal process. But it is, in this case, and we have this process now. And really the only thing that's changing in this, Brad, is to tighten it up a little bit, to say that we still have to follow public participation requirements. We need to post it on our website. We need to notify the TAC and the board. If not, if we're not able to do it before the fact, do it after the fact.

Yeah.

So that is... And just some information about transmitting it to be France and being changed and documenting that is within the strength.

That's what Using most of our amendments or administrative or ones that are handled by the consent agenda versus major tip amendments.

So I don't know if you want to go back to The regular two minutes, or if you feel like so basically. These are the things that you know we didn't think that don't fit there between early and.

Yes, sorry, what are your questions what you're showing us is different than what is in the packet is out of more recent version or someone to the back of the reason i'm.

Just mark up versus.

Yeah, I will clarify. I mean, this is the most recent version, and I don't, I mean, it's been, it's been a little bit of a moving target, and it might be, I can clarify that.

And I kind of want to get to that, just to let the board know, yeah, that we, the reason this is not an action item is because we need to spend some of the time with B-Trans and Federal Highway to make sure that we have this, I know there's already one conversation, but maybe another one or two, so that when it comes back to you next month, it's really the It's fully cut with B-Trans and Federal Highway. But the point here is if somebody hates this, they should go to Smith.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If somebody thinks this is a bad way to go, we should say it now so that the staff has the opportunity to make any fine-tunes that it needs to and go back to Matthew and then before it goes on to Federal Highway.

You mean the board? Yeah, I think it's probably that one of them was this...

the funding, the 25% funding limit, the plus limit is that, because I think there was, there, I mean, federal, so B-Trans has their major amendment, their amendment is like a $5 million change. And I think we're not required to have a limit in funding that triggers percent change or an amount change.

My initial reaction was given, The recent construction environment, maybe not the last couple of years. Isn't always a good idea to box yourself in with percentages or with dollar amounts. Because then you end up having to come back to the board and go back to the trends and federal highway all the time. Make it more functional. Christina, I'm going to standpoint of. If it's something like they can't spend the money in a year, even if it's 27%, it doesn't have to go through a major. amendment process. I think it, whether it goes to the full board, and then goes through the few review through this hack, and then up to the board, again, should be something that is not necessarily a function of some percentage of the total, or some dollar amount. It's, it's characteristic, Drew. Yeah, like, and, and I know that there's a certain amount of coverage to the board by saying that, well, if it's larger than 50% or 2 million, whatever, like it is, then that gets the board involved and gets the board's hands dirty and things like that. And that's a good thing, okay? Because we all love Charlie, but Charlie's not going to be here forever. And there may be somebody else that comes in. Charlie I'm about to do too already. Yeah. And so, you know, if there's a way to do that or... Conversely, if we increase the percentage to like 40 or 50%, if we increase the dollar amount to a billion, this would have the opportunity to stand the test of time a little bit, given the world that we're in. Maybe consider that.

So what this says, this may be the thing that was not the same, Charlie, is does limit the cost increase that can be an administrative change? Um, I, the previous version might say 10%. This one says 25%. It feels like it needs some amount that it needs to come to the board and it can't just be the director signing off.

Um, I think that's the only, the only, my only response to that is even if the executive director signs off on a tip amendment, what's going to be informed. Okay. Okay. That's okay.

I mean, I'm not, but it's going to be approved.

I understand, I understand.

I mean, it's going to go, once it goes to be trans, they are able to move it.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time that somebody got pissed off at something and said, I didn't like the way that that happened. Can we change something? But, you know, I'm just, I'm just, look, we need to sometimes get out of our own way in some of these administrative things. And it would seem to me that I'd go with something like 40 in a million. Okay. And, but be clear that if there's a nature of, if, for example, the whole nature of the project is changing or something like that, then it doesn't matter what the dollar amount is, it has to come back the same. But if it's the same project and we're just moving money between years, and if it somehow gets above the 300,000 or 500,000 or 25%, it's going to then come to the board when it really doesn't need to. And so I'm just trying to think of a way, you know, if you make those targets higher, those are non-negotiable, we do it every time it happens types of things. And then the other thing is there's some gray area when it's below that and the nature of the amendment is something that the opinion of the staff and the executive director would need to go to the whole board. I think we need to give the executive director that discretion.

Oh, because I will continue to.

And I'm just throwing, that's only one person's opinion. But I've been around the process a little bit. And it just seems to me that we don't want to do something that just compels it then to have to go through the attack and back through the order. It doesn't really have to.

Yeah, I think my perspective on this is that it's the public hearings that end up slowing us down. And I think this limits the amount of public hearings. But I think the routine coming to the board or being on a consent agenda is usually that happens within a month. So that's not, that's really not an issue for partners generally. Yeah, typically. I mean, sometimes if we, I mean, we try to work closely with B-Transit that we know when things are coming up, but We don't always know because we're the only MPO, we're the only place in the state where the V-Trans project managers have this extra step they have to go through. So sometimes, you know, when any of our project managers are like, oh, wait a minute, I forgot to get the ticket that minute and I'm going to bid on this project.

I'm just trying to make it more flexible. Yeah, no, I'm... Or I'm just so menu or formulaically driven and so on that we put our attention... where we need to put our attention and not have our attention. The learning is something that we got to go through this process now because it violated 25. That's all. That's all. Okay.

But it also, that's our, it all, that also proved that it introduces the public participation piece of that. It's a public an opportunity.

Well, that's what I'm talking about. Our attention gets diverted then because we have to go through process and things like that when it really is something that happened and stuff happens on projects you know stuff happens on projects and just just just the thought that i agree with con even on the consent agenda so many times someone has prepared themselves we can always pull them off the consent agenda if we want to talk about them yeah please um

Stonie Cooper- Take a look at what's in your back. It's got a bunch of criteria. Yes, if you get a chance to look at it and get back to me or Christine with any feedback on that that criteria seems like Stonie Cooper- That's, that's not major enough to require the public review or or or maybe something in the administrative review that should get public review.

That's the kind of feedback that will be really, I could be convinced to go with 25% if I do that over the course of like the last year only three minutes we're seeing 25% for if it's like 12 that I think we've got an issue.

We need a copy of the. Yes.

yeah Christmas yeah let's send a picture so whatever the latest yeah it is because. There's definitely some discrepancies in content.

Yeah, it was continuing to evolve.

Clearly, it's not a final document. So if we treat it as an update, this is an update in the process of the process. Are we ready to move on to the Winooski Bridge tip? This is a case study, I guess. Round three.

I'm reluctant to share something else with you because I think I've exceeded my...

This is Christine's purgatory.

I've exceeded my shared capacity. But this was... So this happened in July. It is an expedited amendment. So what happened here is that V-Trans realized that they had to out-gate all of the raised grant money that was in the Burlington-Winnipeg Bridge. So that's one thing that's easy, right?

And that was just to, there was a deadline, like they had three years.

This was our August meeting. We knew that this was coming and we didn't have the information.

I think that the programming, I'm not my stepdad. I mean, what I've heard from B-trans is that navigating the RAISE grant was kind of a constant sort of moving target. So I think this exact date may not have been exactly known to them, but I think just what the thing that made it complicated, more complicated, is that the bridge is being bid with as I think, is it five, one, two, three, four, it's like a whole list. So there's the bridge raise grant, there's a build grant for the bridge, there's also STPGs, surface transportation, performance grant, I don't know if I'm... I got the wrong acronym, but those are regular, the regular funds.

Interlocal forms, where it is. That's just a label that the Congress put on a funding category. So it's kind of, it's the most generic transportation funding the state gets. So it's not targeted to bridges or like, they're generic funding, it's the most flexible.

So there was utility work that was being done. So that's moving utilities that are around the bridge. There is work being done at the Vermont 15, I-89 southbound on-ramp to improve performance there. There are improvements being done at Main Street East Avenue. Those are signal, I think, improvements, traffic signal improvements to help traffic flow through that intersection. And then the Colchester Avenue, Riverside Avenue, Barrett Street, Milk Street, Intersection. I was pumped on those pizza. But the way that the federal regulations work, these are all going to be bundled into one project that are going to be bid together. When you bid a project, all of the money has to show up in the tip. You have to account for every dollar. It doesn't have to be in that year. And if you'll see these, they're like, They're like the amount in 26, 27, 28. I think we even know for some of them as far as money in 30 and 31, but you have to tell. But every time you want to say, okay, you're going to bid this project, show us that you're going to be able to pay for it all the way through. So all of these had to happen before they could bid the project and before they could propagate the raised funds. So this came as an expedited amendment. The executive committee heard it. Charlie signed off on it. Everybody got an email. The board got an email about this.

So when will it be completed? You can see the construction money here is programmed for FY29. So, yeah. So when will it be completed, Bruce? 30? 31? 31. How long did this take?

30 hours. Oh, yeah. We needed to have that because in the July meeting we said that we would get back to the board on what happened in the expedited amendment process because the board didn't approve the amendment because we didn't have the opportunity because we didn't beat the

back in progress. All right. All right. Thank you. I think we're ready. I hope we're not going to have Christina come back in.

We're on to item six, demographic forecast.

Another light topic for you.

Christine, do you want to take this? No, no, no, no. Jason Charest, Transportation Technical Program Manager here and half of the transition team taking over for Lenny, Brian and the other half.

Jason, can I just say I want to remind everybody that I was a subcontractor of SG on this project. I won't be voting on this project because I was a subcontractor. I'd be glad to leave the room if somebody wants me to leave the room. I supported RSG in the projections process, allowing, helping them to access the consensus forecasts that were in Montpelier that covered the same territory. for at least part of the forecast process. And so I'd like to sit here, and I could answer questions if people have technical questions or something like that. But if anybody wants me to, I'll be glad to go walk around the parking lot. What do you think of that stuff?

Thank you. Good work.

I have technical questions, so I appreciate you saying that.

I appreciate that as well, because technical questions I'll probably just phone over to Jack. So as Jeff mentioned, RSG teamed up with EPR to conduct this work. And taking a step back, we, CCRPC, partnered with BTRANS to conduct this work. It just so happened to work out that we all needed some new forecasts. And ours were both about around the 10-year-old. timeframe. So we last updated these, they were last approved by the board in 2017, or probably started 2016. And I'm just kind of summarizing some key takeaways from the memo in your packet. So if you're looking for more detail, some of that can be found there. But this is really, I really want to be clear, this is a reflection of current trends. It's not what we're planning for. Um, we're continuing to focus on our housing targets, which we achieve those that will also far exceed some of these, uh, the grand podcasts. And lastly, this is some essential input data for our regional models. So we have for those that don't know, we have a. Acroscopic travel demand model for the whole county and. input data that is key input data that is employment and households. And that's an update that we'll be starting as soon as I think kickoff meeting we have for this next week. So we'll be utilizing this data as part of that model update process.

I appreciate the follow-up comments.

Anytime. I want to thank whatever staff member took that photo. It was just in the folder. So I appreciate your position on it. Okay, starting with population forecast just the high points here we're looking at 12,000 additional people by 2050. And just for comparison purposes Vermont as a state is forecast to grow by around 10,000 people over the same time period, so you can kind of think about that a little bit some counties will are anticipated if current trends continue to decline in population, whereas others will be increasing. all hold to be true, which I think people are actively planning to reverse some trends. And employment forecast, we're still Chittenden County, and Jeff can speak a lot more to this than I can, as mentioned, still expected to be an economic driver for Vermont, looking at a 4% growth over the forecast period, almost 4,000 jobs. additional jobs by 2050. And then for contrast, that's around 3% for the state of Brooklyn. And moving on to household forecasts. This has been in the news recently. Vermont, like many places, but Vermont in particular, we have a declining household size. So we currently have around 2.3 persons per household. And that is anticipated to decline to around two people per household. So just that alone, without taking into account additional people, puts a strain on our households and the need for additional homes. And we're forecasting the need for just under 16,000 additional homes by 2050. And for those of you that have really been paying attention, we have our low, medium, and high housing targets. Those are like the low housing targets. Those really represent the trend. And we're shooting for the mid, which I have the note there is just about double the amount of households that we have forecasted. Almost 32,000.

Can I ask a question about household size? It was somehow I picked up the impression that our household size in Vermont is is lower than the national average. That's my understanding as well, yeah. And so I think that's part of the story here when people talk about, you know, especially older people living in houses with three or four bedrooms and two or three are empty, but they can't afford to move. So the household size may have declined, but the house itself hasn't. And so we have this sort of mismatch of who is living where. And part of it because there's no track device

We were about 2.85 people. We were also 1980. So we were about 40 years ago. We had half a person more in every house.

So you have a couple of questions. I don't know if you want to know.

No, it's statewide. Sure. Actually, that's in the six-county region. Chittenden County, Grand Isle, Franklin, Um, as in Washington and Washington, Illinois.

No. So, um, I looked into data with the chair. It wasn't here in class meeting, so I missed the presentation. Um, couple of points, points and questions. One is I understand you use the low point for housing targets in this chart here. The question is why? And backing up a little bit, Essex Junction, we've just gone through a whole process of TOD, master plan, strategic planning. We're now doing the comprehensive plan, trying to figure out our housing and transportation sections and that. They're very much late. And we've also adapted what's a radical change in five corners that belong to Pearl Street and Essex Junction. We'll go into 921 stories. which is for the community, a drastic change. And it also affects how we look at transportation. Now, we tried to meet the mid-target of 35, it's around 3,050 approximately for us. When we finished up with the TOD, we came up with a little over 2,000 housing units. If you take two people per housing unit, it doesn't correlate. If you go back to the last slide, doesn't correlate to the projection of number of people. They're going to be in this junction within the next 25 years. No, then the one with population. The population. The population is 12,000. Yeah, 1,163. You can take even the lowest target, which is 1,500 households. That's 3,000 people. So I didn't understand the dynamics of the calculation here. But also, in terms of what we're looking at, we're looking at a much more dynamic extension of housing and form-based code. So I'm trying to get a sense of what, I'm trying to get a sense of how these data are going to be used and how it impacts the F6 junction.

Okay. Can I have a final one? Because I have the same thoughts, questions around South Point. So our mid-housing target was for 76% growth in years. This data, projects 40% growth of the population and even the change in household size and differences are significant. So, and I appreciate you announcing these targets and different projections, but it's so that I'm having cognitive distance here on how we're targeting 76% housing unit growth and projecting 40% population growth. I think something is wrong here.

Just one more comment, which is what the planning commission is struggling with is getting away from conventional transportation and looking at more multimodal, you know, bicycles, car share, et cetera, et cetera. Less parking places in the downtown area so we have more open space, more activity spaces. And so I'm trying to figure out, again, how are these data going to be used and how does that impact that situation?

Well, I'll answer that last question first if it's fresh. These are really a baseline, and that's why I think you'll see in your pocket where the executive committee wanted us to add in the term trend. These are truly a reflection of the past. If previous trends continue, this is where we'll end up. So we're considering that kind of a baseline starting point, if you will, as part of our long-range planning efforts, which we'll be talking about our metropolitan transportation plan, which is our long-range transportation plan in the coming months. And part of that effort, we will be looking at when population increases, that might reflect as well. So I guess I hear you, there's a little, there's some dissonance there, but we're looking at it as like a scenario planning exercise.

It's called a forecast, presumably because past trends are indicative of future growth, right?

And I think one important thing that we've been saying around this is without any change in policies or what we're doing in the world, this is the path we're on. Right so 12,000 people and 15 or 16,000 how many minutes that's so that's the trend or you know transportation terminology was it. that's the no bill like if we don't do anything different that's the path that we're on and all this housing target conversation is and all the work that you're doing like that you're zoning and you're doing on your zoning. is let's change the trajectory we're on, right? Let's get more housing. I don't know if that helps at all.

The question, so the lower number, 1,500 units of gas extraction, it would be as if we continue as- That's right. Those are very close. That's the number of houses that could be built in the current situation.

Not the number of houses that could be built. That's about the pace of housing construction that we're on. Right, that's what I'm- Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so that's why that's why you pick a little.

So, a ticket it picked itself. This was part of a broader state wide thing, and this was the county's portion of the state. Okay. And then it was moved to the municipal level using various algorithms. like we're used to do the housing target numbers and things of that nature. So you guys would be really easily beating these numbers if you do what you do. But remember, 50 years is a long time. There's going to be down cycles in the economy. They happen all the time. And there's going to be years where you're not even going to do this because of things that are beyond your control. So this, so this was, this is for us, this was just one county out of 14 and you should be happy you're not in Bennington County or some of the other counties in the Northeast.

Jeff, so if the numbers that are here is a low target, 15 or 16,000. Is that assuming that we're going to meet the 40,000 units shortage, or is that just we're going to continue?

Yeah, we're not making any progress towards our housing issues. It's our training.

And it's still going to be hard for the housing... Inventory thousand unit inventory to get some change in households. Because we're losing another. 0.3 people for housing unit. For household, and that means that for every 1000 households, the housing stock is going to have to work 30%. 15%. from 2.3 to 2.0.

And I think that was the question you were kind of getting at, Andrew, is like, why do we need 16,000 housing units for 12,000 people? And it's really because we're in such a... The dissonance for me is the 76% household unit growth in the

forecast population growth. And I get it that those two things are not the same concept, but they're so dressed and even accounting for little change in household size that it just looks to me, honestly, you got something wrong. It's just too different.

That's my perspective.

That's my perspective. That the numbers have to be represented.

It just sort of stands out.

Yeah. You can't allocate more than 100% of the state.

Well, but maybe the state federal, right? Yeah, but that wasn't the objective function. The objective function was to look at what the forecasts were for the state and then allocate it to the counties. And for Chittenden County to go there, a whole bunch of other counties would have had to go negative. Well, I'm also the state, so. And so far, we've not been too bad. The projections from 10 years ago weren't that far off.

That's funny. I ask people who have done these projections, do you ever check back to see if they weren't that far off?

And most people say, no, I never did. Well, we always know we're going to be wrong. It's just how much and why.

Well, maybe that's a good time for this transition to a blast from the Boston. These are our numbers from the 1976 regional plan. And they projected as 2000, you're going to have 182,000 people. And that is really close to what our 2050 forecasts are. So they are wrong, but I've seen them be wrong. But to just point out.

Well, that was also that friend like our bill that came after the fifties and sixties. That's right.

And the baby boom generation moved to come on. We are baby boom. That's where we got all the population. Yeah.

Anyway, there's a little discussion between the population household and that now requires a number of years. And years and.

Yeah. Which is why we do this every five years, or try to do it every five years. I didn't mention at the outset, the reason we didn't, we haven't done it in so long is because of the pandemic. We're trying to wait to see what happens and what's there. And there's a lot of people that do not believe

that the pandemic population bounce is real. They think it's, well, because now we have a Census Bureau telling us the last three years, we've had significantly negative population change in Vermont. And a lot of it's because the population in Vermont has changed internationally. It's slowed down, which you could argue is probably the case because of what's going on federally. So I... I'm having deja vu because in the 2000 O's, the Census Bureau had us when we got to 2006, 2007, 2008, had us losing population. And then it turned out we got to 2010, and oh, we discovered we had 15,000 more people than the population estimates were sending. Then we got to 2010, we got to 2016, 17, 18, and 19, and the Census Bureau was saying, Bob's losing population. And we get to 2020 census. Oh, we found 22,000 more people than we thought that we had before. So here we are in 2026. And we're now with the 2025 population estimates, another estimate of a couple of down years. And I'm feeling the deja vu all over again, as Jovi says, with the census numbers, population counts. So I only raised that issue because what's going on now with the job numbers, okay, with a number of employee Vermonters, it's driven off of our population estimates and the population estimates have us going down. So our labor force numbers and our way people are going way down. And then that spills over into the job count methodology for the businesses and the underlying scenario from the national macro economic forecasting for Moody's analytics, which is one of the top ones in the country and Vermont actually losing 35,000 people between 2030 and 2050. And we said we didn't believe him. That's how we got these numbers here. So the overarching scenario, that's not just Booty's analytics. Other macro firms are saying Vermont's going to be losing significant numbers of population as the baby boomers die off, and then people don't move in to replace them. And so that's the other analytical challenge we had with this, which I pulled out a lot, I still have a lot left, but I pulled out a lot of air for about two weeks in April.

Okay. This did go before the PAC and the executive committee. Both of them recommended improving this, these numbers as forecasted and presented. And this is an action item that is up there. That is the recommendation, staff recommendation in your packet.

And just so everybody knows, statewide, I work for the administration and the Legislative Joint Fiscal Office has a state of commons. We have a single-age cohort model for population growth that we have for Vermont, and we use those population estimates out through 250 to make adjustments to the other macro services that we had in play. And that's how we got to the statewide population number that then we worked back down to the numbers, including Chittenden.

So given what we're looking at here, in spite of the uncertainty and our ability to see the past better than we see the future, we're looking for a motion to approve the 2050 trend for this.

I'll move to approve.

Thank you. moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion of these four guests? It appears that having first moved and seconded, all in favor, please say aye. Raise your hand. Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? One abstention. Two abstentions. Two abstentions. Three abstentions. Who's the third? Any other abstentions? All right. The motion passes by line numbers. Thank you. I think we're on to, so I think we should all come back in 2050 and see if those numbers. I hope somebody does. I'm going to send you an appointment right now.

I'm one of the baby boomers, sorry.

I think we're on to item seven, committee appointments. So, sorry, it's getting late. Committee appointments.

Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry, I thought I heard something. There's a document, I'm not sure what page in your packet, but item seven. We did adjust this based on what folks said they wanted to volunteer for in July and also some comments or feedback in between. So I think we have really a couple openings right now. One is there's one open seat on the board development committee and one seat for a board member to be the representative from the board on a TAC. And other than that, we I have a pretty full slate of volunteers for the committees. Oh, is there another edit? I just wanted to make sure that Andy was still confirmed for long-range planning committee. We had talked about him stepping back from that. He's on there? Yes.

I mean, I'm stepping back from that one.

Oh, okay. Sorry. All right. That's one more opening there. Sorry. Thank you for that.

Are you looking for expressions, Danny?

Yeah, this is your time. Sorry, I'm letting you go about this. Any other interest there?

Yeah, I would be interested in long-range language.

That would be good. I'm not committed.

I joined relatively recently, so I'd be happy to do one with John Williams, for instance.

That sound reasonable?

Yeah, that's like one or two meetings a year. Except when we have to do bylaw changes or something like that, then we meet 19 times a year. Yeah. Oh, 25. We're not doing that again.

And the other volunteers are a chain that is. Yeah, is there anybody that would be interested in being the liaison to the TAC?

All good questions. All right, well.

If I weren't already on two other subcommittees, I would jump into the breach, but... between planning commission, the subcommittees, this meeting, and the select board meetings, I think my dance card is full. Thanks.

I'm sorry, Taylor, we can just say that that means you're during the day. Yeah, there's no 1 a.m. on a Tuesday morning.

School hours.

If you're working, it's a challenge. All right, we'll save that. Okay, so subject to potential future changes, I think we're looking for a motion to the board chair to appoint these people.

Yeah. I move that the board chair appoint people as indicated on the write-up with the changes. Good enough. Is there a second?

Second.

We have a second.

Second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any abstentions? We're on to chair updates. I know we're short on time. Yeah, I will try to go quickly.

One note for you. Emma sent out appointments. We had one board member that asked her to send appointments for the board meeting so that they are on your calendars. I know maybe not all of your email systems talk to our calendar appointments well. But so ignore it, delete it. If it doesn't work for you, third Wednesday, 6 p.m. But we're finding a board member or two were having difficulty making sure they had another calendar and didn't get into conflict. So just heads up, manage that however you want to. I hope it's not too much spam for you. We kind of touched on the upcoming regional plan updates, you know, even though we finished the regional plan is one of these components that are starting up here in the next few months. The MDP, the comprehensive economic development strategy, the all hazards mitigation plan. We're also trying to undertake a housing needs assessment in the coming months. So all that continues. Act 181 updates. I don't really have a lot to report. South Burlington has applied for Tier 1A status, which would make them fully exempt from Act 250. Not for the whole city, I don't think. I think for just portions. But that is underway. Rutland went first to do that process. So South Burlington was number two in that pipeline. We'll see how that goes with the Laney's Review Board. Next item is just, you're probably starting to see, most of you have seen appointments from me when I'm going to your select board or city council to do our annual report. And as we actually have the annual reports, I'll also attach an annual report to that appointment. I'm hoping you can join me at that meeting, not required, but certainly if you sit on the select board, you'll be there. And then upcoming events. Emma sent out a note to save the day for the sub board chairs or a delegate to come to the sub board forum on September 29th. Also, we have scheduled now. And Emma, did you send out a note to save the day for December 10th yet? Okay, so just heads up, legislative breakfast, December 10th. Looks like that morning where it's always a little fraught with Somebody else may stand on top of us and cause a conflict for legislators. There's only kind of a couple weeks where everybody tries to do these same events. So we'll see how that works. And then finally, as Emma sent you an email this afternoon about Brownfield's press release that went out, we have a million dollar grant from EPA for Brownfield's revolving loan fund. So Um, you know, if you do know anybody in your town or property owners that might have profitable issues, you know, so now you've always been able to do assessment or typically have money to help with assessments. This helps bring some money to actually help with cleanups. So, um, please share and distribute.

And that's all I have, Mr. Chair. If there's any questions. Any questions, comments? Um, uh, our new agenda item that we should have put in earlier is members. I am learning members items. You mentioned one of them. Um, this should be on every agenda, so it should be an opportunity for anybody to say. Well, almost that's where it goes. Yes. Okay. That is our next agenda. All right. Okay. Um, Briefly, the committee liaison activities and reports. I think these are live links to the committee information. You'll note that head of your future board agenda is on the next page. Above it, of course, the schedule for our committee meetings and the outline of the annual action calendar that you saw earlier. Well, that said, I think I move we adjourn. Second. Second. Moved and seconded. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. No nays, no abstentions. Thank you all. Have a good night.

Thank you, everyone. Good night.