VLCT urges state help for town road funding, inventories and resilient design

Representatives of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT) told a legislative transportation committee on Feb. 5 that towns are facing rising costs, inconsistent inventories and shrinking relative funding for town highways, bridges, culverts and stormwater work, and asked the state to take several concrete steps to help.

VLCT said the state should lead a standardized, statewide inventory and condition assessment of municipal roads and drainage structures, consider returning some transportation revenues directly to towns, and authorize new municipal finance tools to let communities bond or manage emergency borrowing more effectively. The organization also highlighted capacity-building work it provides to towns, funded in part by a federal grant, and cited examples of municipal projects that required outside assistance to assemble funding.

The request grew out of testimony from VLCT staff that municipalities are being asked to shoulder more of the cost to maintain and upgrade local infrastructure at the same time municipal budgets are strained. "We've been around for a while since 1967," said Josh Sanford, director of intergovernmental relations at VLCT, introducing the group and its municipal services. Samantha Sheehan, VLCT municipal policy specialist, described a municipal operations support team that helps towns with grant writing and grant management and said that work is funded with a "million dollar USDA level development grant" for the next couple of years.

Why it matters: VLCT told the committee that climate change, heavier vehicles, more frequent storms and longer mud seasons have increased engineering and construction costs for culverts, bridges and roadbeds. Without a consistent statewide inventory, VLCT said, the state cannot accurately measure collective need or set an appropriate multi-year funding target for town-level transportation work. "In order to understand and assess the need, we don't know what the budget for (it) is because we don't know the collective need," VLCT said in testimony.

Details and proposals offered - Inventory and condition assessment: VLCT asked that VTrans lead a standardized, statewide condition inventory of municipal pavement, culverts and small bridges so priorities can be set equitably across towns rather than by which communities have local engineering capacity. - Revenue sharing and fees: VLCT recommended exploring revenue-sharing of vehicle registration fees with municipalities and cited New Hampshire as an example where fee-sharing funds a notable portion of town highway aid. Members also raised the idea of assessing delivery fees to capture wear-and-tear from parcel delivery vehicles. - Municipal finance authorities: VLCT described a three-part municipal finance package it and the Vermont Bond Bank are proposing to the legislature: allow amortization schedules that avoid balloon payments for municipal general-obligation borrowing, permit emergency borrowing terms of up to five years (rather than one year) to bridge FEMA reimbursement delays, and authorize broader municipal use of unassigned fund balances where charters allow. - Capacity building and grant assembly: VLCT highlighted a municipal operations support team that helped all 247 member municipalities with ARPA funds and helped assemble funding for major projects such as South Burlington's Overpass project, which VLCT said received about an $8,000,000 grant as part of its funding stack.

Concerns raised by committee members Committee members pressed on several practical questions: whether regional planning commissions already provide inventories or tools (VLCT said some do, citing the Chittenden County RPC's software tool as an example), how private roads and homeowner associations fit into statewide stormwater and culvert planning, and whether registration- or delivery-fee proposals are politically and administratively feasible. Representative Molly Burke said finding revenue for transit and roads could include delivery fees: "One of the things...was to look at the delivery fee," she told the committee. Representative Hough asked whether towns have the technical capacity to plan and prioritize projects; VLCT replied that some towns have engineers and asset-management systems while many smaller towns do not and therefore seek state-led standardization.

Numbers and context from the VLCT presentation VLCT told the committee that, in recent conversations about town-highway needs, municipalities reported roughly $17,000,000 in awarded activity versus about $58,000,000–$61,000,000 in requests to advance town highway work (figures described by VLCT as approximate). VLCT also said town-highway aid appeared to be down about 5 percent and that other related line items had declined as well in the current period. VLCT warned that flat funding amid higher construction prices has left towns at risk of falling further behind on maintenance and resilience upgrades.

Next steps and committee work Committee members asked to bring additional witnesses, including operators of public-transit systems that run school routes (Mover and Tri-Valley Transit were mentioned) and the Chittenden MPO to explain regional planning tools. The committee also signaled interest in additional budget briefings and said staff would add a transparency briefing requested by legislators. No formal vote or legislative action was taken at the hearing; VLCT presented priorities and the committee discussed potential follow-up testimony and options.

The committee hearing closed with an agreement to continue the discussion and invite further municipal and regional witnesses to provide technical details and case studies on inventories, revenue-sharing models and municipal finance options.