 Let me start the recording on my side. All right, thanks. Yes, ma'am. I want to see a few more directors. Come on here. Okay. And Shebra, I know it was tough. Thankfully, all went, everyone's safe. And thanks to all the law enforcement partnership. Yeah, pretty incredible. Yeah, great. And the hospitals that were quickly responding. I learned of it from a text from my niece in at Packard Hospital at Stanford that was beginning to move people. Wow. They already had a life flight apparently in the air, but didn't turn around. I'm seeing a good group of folks here. Okay, we'll give folks just a little bit more time and then we'll get started. Rebecca. Hi, Larry. There's Mike. Yeah, very good. All right. Well, should we get this going? I'd like to call this meeting to order because the Cruz Metropolitan Transit District Board of Directors meeting for October of 2022. And we have a roll call, please, Donna. Yes, Director Brown. Present. Director Downing. Present. Director Dutra. Here. Director Cullin-Terry Johnson. Present. Director Koenig. Here. Director Lind. Here. Director McPherson. Here. Director Myers. Director Pegler. Here. Director Parker. Here. Director Rockin. Here. Exofficio Director Henderson. Here. And Exofficio Director Northcutt. And I see that she's just coming on. She is. Yeah. There she is. Thank you, and we do have quorum. Great, thank you. All right, under announcements, I'll note that today's meeting is being broadcast by Community Television of Santa Cruz County. Thank you for your work on this. And any comments from our board of directors before we dive in? All right, let's dive. Oral and written communications to the board. I know we have two that were included in the packet. Donna, did we receive anything else beyond that? We have not received anything else. All right. Looking to our public members, any comment from the public today on items not on the agenda? I'm looking to my list of attendees for any hands that might be raised. Give it just a moment. I'm not seeing anything. I'm not seeing anything. All right. Any communications from labor organizations? Brandon, I see your hand. Good morning, would you like to speak? Good morning, members. Good morning. I just want to take a moment this morning to talk about some one of the upcoming changes to our schedule. As we continue to push through our driver shortage, we have on average 20 drivers now hitting their maximum limits, working 70 plus hours a week to provide service. These conditions are becoming unsubstantable. We have been working hard internally to come up with creative solutions to minimize impacts to service while providing a bit of relief to our drivers. Part of that solution is a reevaluation of our Highway 17 schedule. Since COVID, we've only brought back roughly half of our 17 service, even though our ridership has doubled in the past year. Ideally, we would be able to restore some of these trips, but we just haven't recovered our numbers enough to make that feasible. Instead, we looked at how these trips are schedules and realized that we have a massive time syncing to our frequency by sending these routes past Deirdre on station. These routes can be found consistently playing leapfrog with the VTA buses that run the exact routing that we do out of Deirdre on. For the coming bid, we're looking to eliminate that redundant routing past Deirdre on station. And as a result, can add frequency to the Highway 17 trips. Working with VTA schedules and practice, this means that some passengers may need to transfer to a VTA bus to complete their trip. However, the majority of our riders are using the service between Deirdre on and Santa Cruz Metro. VTA frequency ensures that a transfer should be kept, should keep wait times to a minimum, and no one should be waiting longer than five minutes for a transfer. We do have programs in place that VTA will accept our period passes, and we also provide light rail transfers from our bus. By making these changes, reducing these runtime service hours, we can start to add back some of the mason frequency on the Highway 17. So I just wanted to touch on that briefly. And I know that Mr. Ergo probably has more to follow up with on that for you. Thank you. Thank you, Brandon. Any other labor speakers? Seeing none, let's check with the Metro Advisory Committee. Exactly, John Ergo is trying to speak. Oh, thank you, John. I'm sorry. I hadn't come back up on my screen. Please respond, John, if you'd like. Yeah, Chair, if it makes sense now, I just wanted to touch briefly on a few changes that we've been working with SMART to relieve pressure on operators. Should I do that now? I think that's fine. Okay, great. We don't normally go into detail on the service changes a bit, but there's one other change that's potentially significant this winter along the lines of restructuring for routes to provide more frequent service and to relieve the pressure on operations. We're looking to restructure the 69A, 69W and 91X, three routes to travel once an hour between Watsonville and Santa Cruz into a single route this winter bit that would serve Main Street, Watsonville Hospital and Cabrillo College and then continue on to the normal 69 routing to downtown Santa Cruz. So the end result of this means that if you're a commuter from Watsonville to Cabrillo College, there really is no change in the frequency of service you have or the travel time. And there's actually going to be additional service throughout the day serving Cabrillo College because the 69s run at a significantly longer span than the 91X does. So I just wanted to bring that change up now. This will be in December and we'll make sure we're out ahead of not providing customer information on our website and through our channel so that people are aware of this change. But this will help by restructuring the 91X into the 69 and it'll help relieve some of the operator pressure that we're facing while still maintaining the service that we want to provide to Cabrillo and to Watsonville. Great, I see a question from Mike Robson. Just a quick comment. I wanna appreciate working with an agency where the employees, the bus drivers who actually run the routes are involved in the planning and appreciate John Ergo and our staff's response working with them. We shouldn't take that for granted. There's lots of places, including my employer at the University of California where employees who are doing the work don't necessarily get consulted about things like schedules or how the place runs. And so it's really, I think a positive feature of the way our agency is running and we wanna appreciate both the employees and our management for the way that relationship works. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Alta, I see your hand. Yeah, thank you, John, for that email and no warning just part of the process. We're out December 17th, I think and we're not back until the end of January. So some of that note should be lightened just with us being out of session. So thank you for the heads up and I will make sure that we mention that in our meetings. And I appreciate all of the effort that everyone is making to help serve the increased ridership from Cabrera. Thank you. Thanks, Alta. Just to briefly touch on that. So the winter, because of this change, well, as we work through it will extend two weeks. So we'll actually cover your whole, the end of your semester with the existing service. There won't be any disruptions for the following year. Right, thank you. That's very good. Next, I see Director Dutra. Thank you. Thanks, John. And I think it's all the bus drivers as well. I know this has been quite difficult, not having enough staff to cover all the routes that we have and all the service. I just wanna kind of maybe, excuse me, have a little bit of clarifying question. So basically it's gonna run every hour through the 69 and then the 91X would be just, you know, put on hold for a while. Is that what I'm hearing? And also, how has the ridership been on the 69? Is it been low? And so this kind of makes sense that we're doing it this way. Yeah, so the 69A will essentially replace the 91X in the winter been at the same frequency every hour. The combined check between 69A, W and 71 means there's four departures per hour serving Watsonville completed downtown. So it's a slight improvement on the frequency and also because the span is longer. The 69A ridership is about 70% of pre-COVID levels. And it's been increasing throughout this time, but there's definitely room on the route for riders, the 91X ridership is less than that's about 50% of pre-COVID. And part of that is due to the Cabrera ridership hasn't quite recovered, but actually is below 50% compared to pre-COVID levels. Well, I think it was like Alta said that we're going into, they're gonna go into winter break. So that'll lessen it as well, the impact. When do you guys, I mean, is this like until we find people to hire or how do you, what do you see when you see this changing? It's back in spring, are you thinking about a date that you guys are aiming for? I don't have a date in mind, it is dependent on operator hiring. So we're in constant recruitment and training mode. You know, Brandon maybe can touch on it, I think we've got, or it might be touched on later in Michael's report, but we're training a current class. I think we have 15 offers in the works for the next class and it's just a constant cycle. Any change that lasts for greater than 12 months, what we would do at what's called a title six analysis for federal transit administration. So, you know, that would trigger a larger public process. If it's less than that, then we may add it back. If it goes beyond 12 months, then we'll come back to this board with the title six process for any, any change that lasts beyond 12 months. Okay, great, thank you. Next, I see Director Parker. Thank you. Hey, I wanna just reiterate what Michael said a few minutes to go about having your drivers and your supervisors working together to solve a problem because I was heartened to hear that anything from Watsonville to Cabrillo was pretty much the same. The frequency would be regular that you took pains to make sure that Crestview through Watsonville High was gonna be continued so they wouldn't have disruption at that point. And I totally get that you're maxing out on your driver operators and their time for even any overtime as my understanding is correct. Like, I mean, you can make the call and say who could drive this and then the 91X would, if they don't have a driver, they don't have a driver, the route doesn't run. So it's getting to that critical point and I really appreciate the solutions that are happening way before that happens, way before that critical time happens. And I look forward to talking to you, John, a little bit more about the specifics but I just wanna compliment everybody in the problem-solving process that it's good for everybody. And hopefully, I know I've been out there beating the bushes and saying, hey, come on, this is a great place to work and it's a great career to start and I know that we have great hopes for continued people in our classes but what happens if we have a 15 that we're giving offers to and do we usually get 15 out of 15 or is that usually 50% of the folks take the offers? How does that work, John? Historically, it's been about 50% for the last couple of cycles but we'll see, we may get more at this time. Okay, well, great, I just wanna compliment everybody involved in making this happen so that the ridership, I hear from Cabrio Pass is gonna be a little bit, maybe a 10-minute difference in timeframe but that's minimal compared to the bigger picture and I really appreciate the solutions that you guys came up with. So thank you very much in some count, I appreciate it. Thank you for those comments, Secretary Parker. So we're bringing it to you now. We just wanna get ahead of any concern that the public will have about this. When they hear 91X is being suspended that's gonna raise some alarms but through working with SMART, we've developed a solution where there really is no change as you mentioned between the service between Watsonville and Cabrio. There is that 10 to 20 minute extra travel time to towards downtown Santa Cruz and to end Watsonville Santa Cruz and we'll look to restore that service when we have the operators to do so. Very good. Thank you, Ari. Thank you, John. Next, we're back to the Metro Advisory Committee. Did we receive anything from them this month, Donna? And there is no written communication. All right. And in terms of additional documentation, I know you sent out revised item 9.5. That should have been- That's correct. All right. So folks should have that in their email and in front of them now, I hope. All right. That brings us to the consent agenda. Quite a few things in there this month. Any items that the directors wish to have pulled to discuss? Anyone in the public have questions or requests to pull an item from the consent agenda for discussion? I'm not seeing any. I'll give it a moment. Entertain a motion to- No approval of the consent agenda. Thank you. Your motion from Rothkin. Second. That was- Conan. Thank you. And all, if I may just add, I'm really excited to see a supportive of 9.5 to submit a grant for significant improvements along the Soquel Drive corridor for bus rapid transit. It'll be a highly visible project if we can pull it off and is a really absolutely the best place for efficient transit in our community. And we'll definitely be looking at adding housing along that corridor as well to support more ridership in the future. You're here. Very good. Thank you. Donna Linde. Well, Manu reminded me that I wanted to share. I had attended a meeting with the governor's affairs. I'm forgetting the term. But anyway, a group from the governor's office and they were talking about infrastructure funding, the once in a generation type funding. And I was able to share the RTC project that, you know, that this is a project ready to go and moving forward. And that would be something that would provide or serve a great area, which is one of the things they were looking for. So I was able to share that information. I think they had visited Metro that morning before a meeting. So, and I mentioned that to Michael Tree. So just hopefully, you know, hopefully being able to share a few of our needs and at that forum will be helpful. So. Thank you, Donna. Very good. Good point. All right. We have a motion and a second to approve the agenda and scent agenda. We have a roll call, please. Director Brown. Aye. Director Downey. Aye. Director Dutra. Aye. Director Conantary Johnson. Aye. Director Koenig. Aye. Director Linde. Aye. Director MacPherson. Aye. And Director Myers. You're muted, Donna. Oh, you. I think we saw your mouth moving in the affirmative. Okay. Aye. Sorry. Thank you. Director Pinkler. Aye. Director Parker. Oh, you're muted. Yeah. Yes. And Director Rockin. Aye. And the motion passes. Very good. Thank you for that. We're under the regular agenda. And the first item is a longevity award presentation for Holly Alcorn, who has been with us for 10 years. I think we have an action on that, don't we? I don't have anything to read. But. Oh, there's no. There's no. Thank you, Mike. Just an announcement. Yes. Very good. All right. So we have, we have her item of our accounting specialist. 10 years of service. It's been a long 10 years. A lot has happened during this last 10. Next item is a retiree resolution of appreciation for Bonita Kramer. And I think, Donna, you had a, did you have a picture up that we can, let me know who she is by the way. There we go. All right. And here we do have a resolution, an action from the board. I'll move approval of that resolution. We hear a second. Second. Very good. Director Koenig. Oh, Mick Pearson. He didn't want Bruce. So I think the motion was rocking. The second was, was McPherson. McPherson. Very good. All right. Can we have a roll call vote please? Director Brown. Aye. Director Downey. Aye. Director Dutra. Aye. Director Conantary-Johnson. Aye. Director Koenig. Aye. Director Lin. Aye. Director Rick Pearson. Aye. Director Myers. Aye. Director Pagler. Aye. Director Parker. Aye. And Director Ruffin. Aye. And the motion passes. Very good. And thank you for your many years of service and congratulations on your retirement. Okay, item 12, request for authorization and funding of a safety and training coordinator and I'm turning this over to Margo, I believe. Good morning, everyone. We are requesting for a safety and training coordinator kind of in the line of moving along our classes, our bottleneck to make sure that we have enough operators for the future. The position will not only help with that but our VTT accident training just an overall support. It'll give us a third person to work through our proposal of four classes, for the upcoming year. And also to assist with our other increased training needs, our new vehicles, the Protero electric vehicles and the new Gillix. So we are asking that you approve and fund this position and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Any questions from our directors? That's great. Entertain a motion. I'll approve. Second. I think that was McPherson and Rothkin. I think this is a very good idea and I appreciate trying to keep the classes moving as fast as we can to get folks through. So let's have a vote, please. Director Brown. Aye. Director Downey. Aye. Director Dutra. Aye. Director Conantary-Johnson. Aye. Director Koenig. Aye. Director Lin. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Myers. Aye. Director Pegler. Aye. Director Parker. Aye. And Director Rockin. Aye. And the motion passes. Thank you. Very good. All right. We're on to items 13 and 14. Wandomu, are you going to be introducing our colleagues from the state and federal here? You're muted, Wandomu. Yes. Yeah, good morning, board members, staff. My name is Wandomu Mangisto, Metrol's Capita Planning and Grants Program Manager. I'm here to introduce Michael Pimento, Metrol's Legislative Advocate at Shao Yoder, Antwik, Shilmizer, and Lang Advocacy Team. Today, Michael will provide a state legislative update to us. Thank you, Michael. All right, well, thank you so much, Wandomu and Mr. Chair and board members, pleased to be with you this morning. It's Wandomu noted. I am Michael Pimentel, Legislative Advocate with Shao Yoder, Antwish, Schmelzer, and Lang. And I'll be presenting to you solo this morning and without my usual co-pilot, Josh Shaw. Josh does send his regards and his apologies. They cannot be here today. Unfortunately, since we scheduled our time to present to you this morning, he had to schedule a medical procedure, which unfortunately conflicted with this meeting. And so with that, I do wanna begin my presentation with a recap of the 2021-2022 regular legislative session. That two-year session ended in the evening of August 31st, and that date kicked off a month-long bill signing period for Governor Newsom that ran through September 30th. Now, in that period, Governor Newsom evaluated and signed several hundreds of bills, including one, SB 957, that directly impacted that increased metro on its workforce. But during today's presentation, I will focus on some of the most significant bills impacting public transportation generally, and that align well with the priorities of the interest of metro. And of course, as I conclude my presentation, I'm happy to answer any questions from the board to further inform this update. And so I'll begin with SB 922 by Senator Scott Wiener from San Francisco. This is a bill that would expand and extend a variety of FICO exemptions for clean transportation and transit projects, including those that are noted for you on your screen. I think what is of critical importance is as Metro continues to advance its program on zero-mission bus deployment, this bill would extend through 2030 the FICO exemptions for building out zero-mission charging and refueling infrastructure and notably related facilities. This is a new get for this year. It means that Metro would be able to, in the event that it's building new operational and maintenance facilities to support the transition to zero-mission technologies, also see those exempted from CEQA. That was signed into law by Governor Musa. Additionally, knowing that appointed interests for this board has been continued progress on reducing fares or making fares free for various key populations. All note that SB 942 by Senator Newman of Orange County would authorize transit agencies to utilize their low carbon transit operations. Program dollars, these are monies that flow to Metro on a formula basis from the state of California can now be used to subsidize and support on an ongoing basis, fare free or reduced fare programs that was signed into law by Governor Musa on September 30th. But as I mentioned, this bill that relates to fare free transit, I will note that there was a larger, more expensive bill that was also before Governor Musa. This was AB 1919 by assembly member Holden from Pasadena. This bill would have created a youth transit pass pilot program that would have been funded by a new state budget support to fund fare free transit passes provided to students under the structure of the bill. It would have been purely a permissive program that transit agencies could subscribe to in partnership with educational institutions that was broadly defined. UC, PSU, California Community College System and also school district. Because the budget support to bring this bill online was ultimately not included in the final state budget. The bill was vetoed by Governor Musa who noted that the bill would create some undue cost pressures on the state budget at a time when we are facing a potential deficit in this next fiscal year. Now I do wanna touch on also a few other bills that relate to public transit, but from a slightly different bet. And those would be two bills that relate to the nexus between public transit and housing. The first bill that I'll be presenting on is AB 2011 from assembly member Wicks from Berkeley. This bill creates streamlined approval processes for affordable housing and mixed income housing projects along commercial corridors. And the way that this bill has defined this form of ministerial review and that expedited review would be to tie that type of streamlined approval to the project's proximity to what is known in California state law as a major transit stop. And that speaks more particularly to existing rail stations, ferry stations, and bus stations, but also to corridors for which you have bus routes that have service intervals of 15 minutes or less. This bill also signed by Governor Musa. I also then wanna cover AB 2097 by assembly member Freeman from Burbank. This bill would prohibit a public agency from imposing parking minimum on residential commercial or other developments if the project is located within one half mile of public transit. And the idea here is that we can help encourage more transit riders by not making parking and car ownership the default mode of travel for everyday California. This bill also signed into law by Governor Musa. And then finally, I do wanna highlight one other bill related to that transition to zero mission technologies, AB 2622, it expands on current law that currently provides a sales and use tax exemption for the purchase of zero mission buses by extending the life of that sale tax exemption through 2026. This is expected to save transit agencies between $30,000 and $50,000 for every zero mission bus purchase. And it is meant to serve as a compliment to other forms of state support that ultimately reduce the incremental cost of transitioning to these technologies, hopefully making those vehicles more economic for the agencies and therefore more natural choice to move into as you are considering fleet replacement. This bill also signed into law by Governor Musa. So as I move on, there are a few other items that I wanna touch on that depart from the legislative at least with regards to this last session. And the first is a look ahead to the 2023-2024 legislative session. Here I wanna note, the legislature will be convening for the first year of the 2023-2024 session on December 5th. At that time, it will largely be an organized meeting where discussions around leadership for the assembly for the Senate will take place. And I will note for you that there will be some significant changes in the legislature in this next two-year term. And that's because fully 100 out of the 120 seats in the state legislature are gonna be seeing a form of election or re-election. Note for you on your screen that 20 seats are up in the Senate. All 80 seats are up in the assembly. And then as you'll see on your screen, there is a balance between both houses where we have seats that are fully open because of retirements or term limits. And then we have a balance of incumbent speaking re-election notable for Metro would be Senator Laird will remain in the legislature. His term is not yet ending. And Assembly Member Stone ultimately chose not to seek re-election, which means that Metro will have a new representative in the California State Assembly. Now, finally, as we look ahead to 2023-2024 legislative session, we'll highlight for you that already Josh and I are in conversations with CEO Tree about Metro's priorities for the calendar year 2023. And we'll be meeting over this fall and into winter to find a clear set of programmatic and legislative priorities and objectives for Metro that we can pursue on your behalf in that calendar year 2023 and with an eye toward that 2023-2024 legislative session. Now, Mr. Chair, as I move forward, I do wanna highlight one final component that does relate to this legislative session that just passed. And that is with regards to funding. Here it was a banner year for public transit in terms of the funding support that was provided by the California legislature and Governor Newsom. Governor Newsom did introduce and there was some legislative back and forth between himself and legislative leaders on a transportation funding package. Ultimately, that transportation funding package was approved and what's notable is that roughly $3.5 billion was approved in new investment for the state's transit and inner city rail capital program. You'll see under the second and third bullet point the split between Southern California and other areas of the state. A balance of those dollars are gonna be going toward projects that previously received awards from the TIRCP and that need additional dollars to either see themselves through completion or that can help them capture additional funds from the federal government by way of the Bipart's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. But then there will be a balance of funds that will be provided for wholly new projects bus and rail that help transition us to cleaner modes of mobility for the entire state. I do also want to note that there's this $4 billion at fourth bullet point that is identified for fiscal years 23, 24 and 24, 25. That is money that the legislature has made a soft commitment to the language talked about the intent of the legislature to appropriate those dollars, but I want to be clear that does still require additional action to actually see those dollars come online. And so one of the things that we certainly will be doing on Metro's behalf is advocating for those remaining dollars to be released because that does create some additional funding opportunities for Metro in those out years, fiscal years 23, 24 and 24, 25. Now there's one more item that I want to touch on here and it relates to this transition to zero emission technologies. Here you will see that there was $3.53 billion that was invested in fiscal year 22, 23 for zero emission vehicles in charging and refueling infrastructure. We'll note that transit agencies in the state will be receiving roughly $100 million per year through fiscal year 25, 26. It's made a multi-year appropriation with that investment to help the transit vehicles move into zero emission technologies. Much of those dollars passing through usual program that agencies across the state are subscribing to like the California Resources Board's hybrid and zero emission truck and bus voucher incentive project. Similarly to my points around the TIRCP and those out year investments, the legislature made a soft commitment also moving forward with $2.4 billion in fiscal years 23, 24 through 25, 26. And again, that is intent language. There needs to be some further action to actually see those monies come together. And so Mr. Chair, that concludes my report and I'm happy to take any questions from the board. Michael, it's very informative information and I especially appreciate all your work. It's been a busy year in the transportation realm. And that last information was very relevant to our transition to zero emission buses. I see Director Rockin has a hand. Mike, take your mic. I have just two quick comments. First of all, I'm just noting that of the money of $3.53 billion that's being, it's getting soft. It still needs some follow up, but that's hopefully moving towards the public that only a hundred million of that's going to public transit if I understand that correctly. And I think that's a political fight. I hope that our legislative advocates can be working on. I mean, how many presentations have we had from experts that the solution, not that we're against having electric cars. I think they're a huge improvement obviously over fossil fuel driven vehicles. But the real solution here is public transit. And that's a pretty small percentage of the money that's going to fund what really should be the solution to a lot of these kind of climate change related issues. So that's a question about, I guess, our legislative program for the coming year, which we'll get to later, not at this meeting. So that's one comment. And the other comment is really, I'm somebody who's a strong supporter of CEQA environmental reviews and obviously supporting sales tax for public transit. But it's very refreshing to see that we're actually seeing some reform in CEQA and in the sales tax exemption issue. How many projects get tied up when it's clear that adding transit in a community really improves the situation environmentally. And in the name of the environment, sometimes one or two people can totally tie up a huge project that would make a big difference in terms of both the convenience to the public for public transit, but also the issue of climate change and effect on our planet as a whole. So I'm very pleased to see that the legislature and the governor sort of moving in the direction of these kinds of reforms that basically make it a lot quicker to get these projects going and moving through and recognizing that they clearly have positive environmental impacts although there may be things to be worked out and there's no question about that. But some of these CEQA reviews have often tied things up. And even as somebody who supports CEQA, it's hard not to win when you see some really good project that spends an extra year in a process because they're going through a CEQA process that really is not necessary in terms of the logic of what's being built. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And director Austin, if I may, I do want to provide some additional context on that $3.5 billion in the investment in transit. We'll note that that $100 million is a $100 million over the next three fiscal years. $300 million total for transit buses. What isn't spoken to there are also an additional $500 million that gets sub-allocated by the California Air Resources Board. We don't present that as being scored for public transit because it's still subject to public discussion, but a balance of that will flow to public transit. Additionally, we'll highlight that. While I highlighted the investments in public transit buses, as the state is also compelling transitions to zero-emission rail, zero-emission ferry, there are additional dollars in that $3.5 billion that are dedicated for that transition as well. Final note on that is that fully $1.5 billion of that $3.5 comes from $98 and are specific to school bus transition. School bus. Those dollars because of the constitutional lockbox around those dollars means that they can only be dedicated towards school purposes. And so certainly I'll follow up with your staff and provide that full breakdown, but there is continued progress in really amplifying the needs of public transit in this space. And you know that we've had a very warm reception from the California Air Resources Board and continue to make progress on this transition. Thanks for those clarifications. Very good. I appreciate both of those. Director Koenig, you're next. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Mr. Pimentel, for the update. It's really exciting progress all around. First, I just want to point out that while we are losing Assembly Member Stone, his district has been split into two districts really. So we're actually expecting two new Assembly Members that have an interest in Metro there. And then given the way the county's chopped up is actually it could potentially be three Assembly Members with a strong interest in advocating for Metro. So that's potentially great news. I just want to make sure you're talking to all of those folks. And then I did have a question for you on AB 2097 that's prohibiting a public agency from imposing parking minimums within half mile public transit. I mean, this is fantastic, really groundbreaking. I mean, parking so often is a huge cost and an impediment to building more units. I'm just curious, what's the fine print there? Is a transit stop a major transit stop or a high frequency transit stop? I'm just wondering really how soon we're gonna apply to some of the areas of the county. Yeah, sure thing. So the definition of the major transit stop and here I'm actually on the slide before the bill that you were speaking to, but it is defined as a site containing an existing rail transit station, a ferry terminal, served by either a bus or rail transit service, or the intersection of two or more major bus routes with a frequency of service of 15 minutes or less during the morning and after noon peak commute period. And so we'll follow up with your staff so that they have clear insights into how this might apply to the Metro service territory, but would agree fully with just the groundbreaking nature of this legislation and the ability for it to actually encourage more folks to hop on public transit. And then finally we'll acknowledge that certainly as the Metro delegation expands as part of our ongoing conversations with your CEO, we will be talking about a means of engagement with the expanded delegation that will be supported by it to make sure that you do have coverage and that they do have familiarity with Metro's priority for the upcoming session. Great, thank you. Very good, good question, Manu. Director McPherson. Yeah, I just wanted to say that on behalf of the Central Coast Community Energy, we have a carve-out for grants for zero emission vehicles and public transportation. I know we've been working very closely with Metro. Our triple CE has been working very close with Metro. And I hope that maybe if the matching grant opportunity will give us a more opportunity to have more of our buses become electric in the near future. I know we have a great working relationship triple CE does with Metro. So I really can look forward to this. I think this is good news and how this is moving ahead. I hope more for public transit can be allocated by the state and I know that triple CE is interested in seeing how that can be expanded. Thank you. Thank you. Great comment, Bruce. Any other directors with questions or comments on this? I'm looking to our attendees in public. If anyone from the public would like to ask a question, comment, raise your hand. Give you a few seconds. I think not. So let's move on to our next item. Wanda Mu, I think. Director Koenig still has his hand up. Did he have additional? Nothing else. I think Director Ratkin's hand is still up too. But... Yeah, that's, sorry, let me take it down. Sorry. It's in the sun. It looks kind of the same. All right. Let's go to the next item, Wanda Mu. Would you like to do the intro, please? And Michael, thanks again. That was great. Yeah, and thanks for your service for us. I mean, this would be a small amount of money we spend for this legislative representation. Makes a huge, brings in way more money to us and this is a real service to our district and the public in Santa Cruz County. Thanks for your work. Very useful. Thank you, Director. Great, thank you. Thank you for providing that. Thank you, Michael. We also have Chris Aguilo from Capital A.H. Team. Chris is a legislative advocate, our legislative advocate at the federal level and so Chris is going to provide us a legislative update as to Metro today. Thank you, Chris. Thanks, Wanda Mu. Thanks, Chair Pegler. Good to see everybody out there. I will say that Michael and Wanda Mu recently shared with me your recent work with regard to strategic planning and kind of goals that are coming up and I may be biased, but they sound really exciting to me. Just exactly, this is exactly what Santa Cruz Metro does. They lead, they punch above their weight and it's really great things. I'll also add that the CEO and Wanda Mu in August kind of previewed a little bit of this with our congressional delegation, with FDA. They made a really, really strong case for assistance with all of these things and I would not be lying to say that whenever Michael mentioned sort of housing and the connections with transit, everybody's eyes really lit up from Congressman Panetta to the Federal Transit Administrator to everybody. So it's really very exciting and looking forward to helping all I can with regard to all of this. I did have a couple of slides that I will try to share here. If I told Donna, I wasn't quite sure if I'd be good at this, but- And so far. There you are. A couple, just a few things that I wanted to mention since we last spoke. First, what is being called the Inflation Reduction Act was sort of surprisingly approved by Congress in late July, early August. Of course, the Federal Fiscal Year 23 budget for the Department of Transportation then of course, I think you guys are all aware we've got some elections coming up pretty soon so I thought I might do a little bit of a preview of what we expect there. So I won't go into all of these bullets but the Inflation Reduction Act, I like to call it distant cousin of the President's Build Back Better program, his sort of soft infrastructure proposal. It was sort of a very robust 3.5 trillion dollar Build Back Better plan was approved by the House last November right after the bipartisan infrastructure law was passed. The Senate never took it up because they couldn't get 50 votes to approve it. And a couple of Democratic senators were not excited about the spending in this plan. So we thought for the most part in 2022 that this thing was dead. And all of a sudden in late July, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and one of the kind of Calcitrant Democrats, Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, kind of popped up and said, hey, we've got this thing called the Inflation Reduction Act. It's got some decent things in it. Let's vote on it. And it passed with fewer, actually in the Senate, there were no Republican votes for it. I think there were a few in the House and the President signed it into law. In many ways, as you can see from these bullet points, it's very much sort of a tax bill and a healthcare bill in many ways. I'm not exactly sure how it's going to reduce inflation but IRA is a great acronym and so they're sticking to it. As far as things that we would care about, there are a few highlights in there. Unfortunately, one of the things that's not in there and especially would be especially pertinent to sort of your new plans with regard to housing, the original Build Back Better proposal that the President had and that the House approved last November had a $10 billion program. It was going to be a joint Federal Transit Administration HUD program to make connections for housing and public transit, $2 billion a year over five years, very exciting, kind of unfortunately got left on the cutting room floor. However, a few things were included in this final IRA and one is the $3.2 billion for what they're calling the Neighborhood Access and Equity Grant program. There is an existing program from the 2021 infrastructure bill called Reconnecting Communities and it's a program to kind of address transportation facilities for lack of a better word, roads and things that have split communities and it's a big part of the President's efforts to address equity issues through Department of Transportation grants. He only got about a billion dollars for this in the original infrastructure bill but was able to kind of get another $3.2 billion in this IRA. And so those are grants that I think, for the most part it's talking about kind of roads and bridges and things like that, but transit agencies are certainly eligible for these grants and potentially there's something in there that maybe a regional approach might work. EPA's got about a billion dollars for replacing heavy duty diesel vehicles, mostly with zero emissions one. So we'll see that's gonna be a new program so they'll have to develop rules and regulations for that. And the other is with regard to the tax stuff, there's a lot of tax credits for clean energy production and mostly sort of commercial entities would be able to take advantage of that. But there are a couple that might be of interest in that they provide as opposed to Santa Cruz Metro, not filing taxes, but as we do with the alternative fuels tax credit currently, they call them direct pay tax credits where we could apply for a rebate. And one of those you may be familiar with the zero emissions commercial vehicle purchase. This was something that Congressman Panetta first introduced a couple of years ago on behalf of Santa Cruz Metro when we kind of explained to him that there was a pretty big delta between the cost of a CNG or a diesel bus and an electric bus. And in his position on the tax writing committee, ways and means he came up with this. Unfortunately, it got shaved down to capping that rebate to $40,000 per vehicle. Congressman Panetta's original legislation had no cap on that and it was gonna be 30%. Now it's 30% or 40K, whichever is larger. And unfortunately 40K would certainly be larger in the case of purchasing electric buses and then things like facility production for not only clean hydrogen, but other things like solar and other things. I mentioned hydrogen here because that's a potential alternative to electric buses, right? Is that hydrogen that we may be looking at. So there are some highlights for transportation in there. Transportation wasn't a heavy focus in this bill because of the bipartisan infrastructure law. A lot of people felt like transportation got theirs, but there were some good things in there with regard to hopefully taking advantage. The fiscal year Department of Transportation budget, fiscal year 2023 started officially on October one, but as has been the case for the past 25 years, Congress has not been able to finalize a federal budget before that October one date. It's been 25 years since all, the entire budget has been approved by Congress and signed into law by the president before that October one deadline. So not a great milestone, but here we are. Here we are. So right now we're operating, the government is staying open under what they call a continuing resolution that Congress passed in August in anticipation of not meeting that October one deadline. And it kind of keeps programs funded at their current levels essentially through December 16th. So it kind of gives them time to, they've been off for the whole month of October campaigning Congress has and they're expected to kind of come back in mid November in this post-election lame duck session which they hope to finalize a budget with regard to that. There is the potential that we could see this, what they call a year long continuing resolution or CR or stop gap funding measure, which would kind of freeze everything at FY 22 levels. That wouldn't be terrible for us. It would have been terrible for us last year because that infrastructure bill, really kind of increased federal transit administration formula programs for that first year for FY 22 from 21 to 22, there was a big jump. And so a full year CR last year would have been pretty harmful to us. This year not as bad if there were to do that. I hope they won't end up doing it but those FY 22 levels are much more robust than 21 and the expected increase from 22 to 23 was certainly not as much as that jump we received from 21 to 22. Both the house and the Senate in their proposals for the 23 budget which haven't been enacted yet, both include what they call in the goofy federal budget parlance as plus ups. There's guaranteed money for these low and no emissions bus and bus facilities grant programs that are baked into law. They're guaranteed over the next five years from that 2021 infrastructure bill but Congress has provided a little bit more money. So there's about one and a half billion dollars total for those two programs, competitive programs both the house and the Senate have wanted to increase those by about $200 million in sort of additional general fund money for that. So that's always a good thing. And as always, I like to mention that the DOT programs are not necessarily contentious. These are not why the budget's being held up. It's more about sort of overall spending levels the way that the budget is split between defense and non-defense. Spending tends to be a problem between Republicans and Democrats. That's more of the issue and but unfortunately everything else kind of gets stuck in there. And so we are in this sort of stop gap funding limbo right now. Last one I'll say, just like Michael was mentioning there are federal elections too coming in about a little over a week. And as is the case every two years, all 435 house seats are up in November. In this evenly divided chamber, Republicans just need a net game of about five seats to get that majority. The Senate, 35 seats, Senate seats are contested. They are up for reelection every six years and they're kind of staggered. And right now the Senate as you know is divided evenly, 50-50. The Vice President right now breaks ties and so Democrats are technically in the majority. So Republicans would need to just one net gain of a seat to gain the majority there. And then probably as you also know, the California redistricting just like in the state did affect the Santa Cruz County federal delegation. And so what would be the new 19th district which Congress and Panetta is running in right now will incorporate areas that are currently in Anna Eschews district, the old 19th or the current 19th, the Scotts Valley, San Lorenzo Valley, things like that. And then there the new 18th district which currently is represented by the city of Watsonville and other areas around there represented by Congress and Panetta would move into a new, this new 18th district that right now Representative Zo Lofgren would be the incumbent and would be representing Watsonville should she be re-elected. Just a small note about, you know, hey, what happens? What's gonna happen to all of this if Republicans are to take charge of one or more of these chambers? I would say we will see a lot of legislation, a lot of proposals to reduce the deficit and to pair back lots of things like the Affordable Care Act that's something Republicans have liked to do in the past. Maybe even try to claw back or take back some of this money from the pandemic relief bills that we've had that's unspent or possibly from the, you know, from the 2021 infrastructure bill which was a five year bill. I don't think that they'll at least for the next two years while we have a president who supports those things I think he would veto anything that would reach his desk. And I think that the division in both the house and the Senate would be so small that overturning a presidential veto would be difficult. You need two thirds to do that. So, but I think that, you know, again, I will say that if Republicans were to take charge in either one, we would probably be doing a lot of defense with regard to the spending that's been approved in the last couple of years recruiting that IRA that I spoke about, the bipartisan infrastructure law. And again, things like the Affordable Care Act might be things that Democrats at least are going and the president are going to try to protect. So that was all I had, but happy to answer any questions. And again, thanks again for your time. Thank you, Chris. Bruce, I see your hand. Yeah. First of all, Chris, it was great to see you at the Pawaroe Levy event. Everybody that was important in politics, state and federal was there. But nice to see you, but thank you for your work in Washington, DC. I just want to say that even though our incumbent Congresswoman from the San Luis Valley and Northern Santa Cruz County, Anna Eshoo is not going to be representing Santa Cruz County now. Jimmy Panetta will have it all. And that's an excellent representation, but I just want to let you know that Anna Eshoo said, I've not forgotten Santa Cruz County in the North County of Santa Cruz County. We have two tremendous advocates there. And just want to assure everybody, Anna Eshoo will be on our side, even though she's not representing Santa Cruz County. Thank you, Derek. Thanks, Supervisor, yeah. Absolutely, she's been a great advocate for Metro. And I think, and also you mentioned the Levy event. It was, you know, Congressman Panetta, I think those of you who heard him say that, you know, while Zo Lofgren might, you know, be the next Congresswoman from Watsonville, consider it yourselves to have two members of Congress. I'm not going anywhere. So yeah, I think we've got a nice strong delegation that cares a lot about this region. Thank you. Mike. First of all, thanks, Chris, for your work for us. Seeing kinds of comments I was making about our state representation, this is really valuable for us as a district. I had a question, of course, nobody, I don't think anybody really knows what's going to happen in these midterms. It's scary on some level. But you pointed out that if, even if there's, it's unlikely there would be a majority of Republicans sufficient to overturn a presidential veto for the next two years. But for at least, I haven't heard about it recently, but about a month ago or two weeks ago, there was lots of discussion about Republican desires to perhaps not pass a continuing resolution, bring government to its knees. And I'm wondering, again, it's a difficult prognostication, but what's your assessment of the likelihood that there could be a majority in the two houses? I mean, I won't take, actually, one house could stop it in either of the houses that stop a continuing resolution, which the presidential veto doesn't help you with. You need to have a resolution that actually is offered to the president to sign to make it, the thing move forward. Are we likely to see that happening? I'm sure somebody will rattle that saber, but is that a likely prospect for us? I don't know if it's a likely prospect, but I think you're right. I think there'll be a lot of saber rattling. I think that there are a lot of members of Congress, particularly those in the Republican side who wouldn't mind a government shutdown. I think that that's sort of all part of the process of, hey, look, we survived. There was a government shutdown for a week and everybody survived. And so this is a great case for smaller government. So that is something that people think about. I don't think, I think the majority of Republicans do want to have that budget passed. What they might wanna do is, however, if they do take control of one or other, one or both of the houses, chambers, they might want to extend that continuing resolution into calendar year 23 when they have more impact on the finalizing of that budget. And so we could potentially see that CR be extended into calendar year 23. And then, again, on the other hand, does a new member really wanna continue to fiddle with a budget that should have been passed several months ago, they might just say, yeah, let's just do this CR and get it over with and we'll deal with the FY24 budget. So I think probably the chances of either of those happening are pretty good. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for your service again, appreciate it. Thank you. Next, I see Shabra, your hand. Thank you, Chris. Yeah, actually, Michael, I can sort of ask Mike question. So I won't repeat it, but you don't have a sense. Are there national polls that are indicating in either direction? Yeah, I think most of the polls are showing that the house is going to flip into Republican areas. It's interesting, I have a buddy who's a pollster and I'm sorry if I'm extending your meeting, but it was interesting to me. He said that a lot of times with these federal sort of polling is that what you see in the polls in the beginning of the summer is usually what holds in November and a lot of stuff happens in between, but usually sort of, and so, and that would say, Republican flip, he said, however, there is one thing, there is one thing that happens every once in a while, we get this anomaly that kind of moves the needle and that Roe v. Wade decision potentially is going to be that anomaly. So, but I think that again, most of the polls are sort of showing that it's sort of between the redistricting that happened in all these state legislatures that sort of has helped Republicans as well. Okay, yeah, I was wondering how Roe v. Wade would play into it, but maybe not. Okay, thank you so much, thank you for the work. Thank you. Director Parker. Thank you. Hey, I just wanted to reiterate just like a supervisor. I'm sorry, my brain just went, but anyway, I just want to reiterate the fact that Zill Lofgren has been a great friend to Watsonville so far, and I hope that she continues to be a friend to Metro with our infrastructure as well as all the issues that we have with our South County. And Chris, I'm glad you said that about Jimmy. Jimmy said he's right outside our city limits. So we, we at first were kind of shocked and horrified. We weren't going to have Jimmy Panetta, but now we've embraced the fact that we have two Congress people working for the Paro Valley and all the infrastructure that goes in there. So we're pretty happy about it now. Good point. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I think that Congresswoman Lofgren has a great reputation as a hard worker and a compassionate member of Congress. And I, I can't imagine that she's not going to be helpful to Metro and we're going to make sure she is. Thank you, Chris. All good stuff. I appreciate your taking the time to tell us what's going on in DC. Your perspective is most appreciated. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All right. Next item, I believe. Looking to the public just to see if there were any hands. I haven't seen any come up. All right. Next item, Michael Tree. You're going to talk about social equity and community funding policy. Yeah. Well, good morning, everyone. It's good to be here. And, you know, maybe just to set the stage on this policy that we brought to you today for your consideration. At the recent workshop, we talked about the one right at a time program that we were putting together. And this is a pretty collaborative program where we're working with the Regional Transportation Commission. They have a TDM program, which is really a customer rewards program. So, you know, at the onset, we recognize that purely by riding the bus, you're doing more than your share to, you know, preserve the environment just by riding. And enjoying the bus system. But we wanted to go a step further and allow the opportunity for our riders to basically make financial contributions to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. And so in partnering with RTC and their customer rewards program, if you take a certain number of rides, there's a scale, but as you take rides, you're able to assign dollars to a nonprofit of your choice. And so having an option for them to assign their dollars that they've earned from riding the bus to the sanctuary, we think is a great partnership. And I think we showed you at the workshop how we were going to take a certain percentage of the buses and with our partners, dress them up, so to speak, with wildlife from the sanctuary, which would be really stunning. So in working with Julie Sherman, your legal counsel, we began asking the question, what can contractors and those who are coming to work who are consultants for Metro, how can we help them with our key mission preserving and improving the environment, much like we're helping the riders through RTC's customer loyalty program. So with that said, Julie really worked with a team of legal counsel there at Hanson and Bridget, and we've come back and want to present to you really a policy that allows them to do that, to have our suppliers and our consultants that are coming on board at Metro be a part of even furthering our mission statements. So with that, I'll let Julie walk you through the policy and talk about it for a few minutes, but I'm pretty excited. This is kind of groundbreaking, I think, in public transit. And I think we can have a big impact with it. Thanks, Michael, and good morning, everybody. So yeah, as Michael said, we've been working on this policy and it basically is a procurement policy and it has a couple of different aspects. The first aspect is the community funding policy that Michael talked about and you learned a little bit about the retreat. And because we're talking about using public funds, we have to have a bunch of reminders in the policy about tying those funds to support Metro's purposes because we don't want to run afoul the gift of public funds prohibition. And so that first piece is for best value procurements and the reason it's best value is that Metro has the ability to use best value procurements for certain things. So you can't use this policy in a construction contract, for example, where you have to award by law to the lowest bidder. But you have the ability under your enabler- The most responsible bidder. Yeah, thank you, Michael. Yeah, that's important. But you have the ability under your enabling legislation because we actually amended your enabling legislation a couple of years ago or it could be more in time flies to use a best value process when you're awarding contracts for certain types of contracts. And in the best value process, you get to make up your own criteria that are in your best interests. And so typically, you do consider price, you always consider price, but you would have experience, qualifications, references, key personnel. Those are kind of the standard things. But agencies are now starting to say, what else can we do to encourage our contractors to be partners with us and good corporate citizens in our communities? And so agencies have started to look at awarding points in best value procurements for things like a community funding policy and a corporate social equity policy. So that's the first piece is that community funding and it would work like just like this. We have a community funding policy. We're supporting partners in our community that intersect with our metros, mission and purpose. And if you give us a discount in your pricing, we're gonna take that discount and we're gonna give it to our community partners. And it's also gonna be an advertising promotion at the same time like you saw at the retreat. And it's an optional program. We're not saying you have to do this. If you don't wanna do it, you don't do it and you give up those points and you would focus your proposal on points that you really wanted to go after. And that's no different than any best value procurement where there's points and you go after what you feel you can go after. And then the second piece is the corporate social equity piece. And that encourages companies again with points that they can be awarded to show us what kind of company are you? Are you hiring in our community? Are you, do you have fair pay practices? Are you using sustainable products and sustainable supply chains? And it's gonna take some time for staff to think about which procurements it makes sense to do these, do you do one or both? And what are the key things that you're trying to achieve in terms of the social equity piece? That's basically how it works and I'm happy to answer any questions if anybody wants to look specifically at any aspects of the policy. Thank you, Julie. Any questions for, it's the one I would ask is just, are there other jurisdictions or public agencies that are examples of this and have had it in place for a while? So the short answer is, well, for my clients, I do have some that are very close to adopting a policy like this, but they haven't done it yet. There are definitely agencies out there that do have social equity policies. They're not my clients, they're not transit districts. So you're on the cutting edge, others have done it, but legally you're totally fine and it's just sort of a matter of seeing how it's gonna work in practice. Thank you, that's helpful. Any other comments, questions from, I see one from the public, just a moment. Brandon Frazier. Brandon Frazier, Brandon Freeman. Brandon, take it away, there you go. All right, there we go. I just wanted to jump in real quick and say that I did have a couple of questions on this item and Michael met with me yesterday and kind of explained to me what the vision was for this type of thing. In my time here over the last 10 years, we've kind of been a little isolationist almost with Metro and as far as the involvement with the rest of the city, the county, things like this. So I really think that this type of thing is a really good step forward for us to try to move forward into becoming more of a complete picture type of local government rather than Metro and something else. This is really a way for us to reach out and start getting into some of these environmental programs and really start showing the community that we're stepping up into more things than just getting a bus on the road. So just want to jump in and let you guys know that as far as we're concerned over here at SMART, you know, we're on the same page with Michael on this one. Thank you, Brandon, that's helpful. Any other comments from folks, either public or on the board? I see one from the board, Michael, take it away. Tell us more. You know, I just wanted to mention that, you know, as we move along and apply this policy, if it's the board's direction to move forward, you know, we'll bring back how it does get applied in the procurement process. And I think that'll be important because it'll be kind of a living policy, so to speak as the board moves along that they can tweak as they see fit. But I think reporting back to the board how it's implemented will be important. Very good. Any other comments? Shepra. I just really appreciate, Michael, you and staff bringing this forward and Brandon's comments just now. I think it is important that we see ourselves as more than moving people from one place to another, but that we're really part of a larger system and network of reaching climate response, being climate-responsible and being in action around climate response. So if there are other comments, I'm happy to make a, do we need to accept this, make a motion to move this forward? Yes. There's a motion. One second. There we go. Thank you, Mike. We have a motion from Chevrolet, a second from Mike. And with that, I see no other comment. Let's proceed with a vote. Okay. Director Brown. Aye. Director Downey. Aye. Director Dutra. Aye. Director Conantary-Johnson. Aye. Director Koenig. Aye. Director Lin. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Myers. Aye. Director Pagler. Aye. Director Parker. Aye. Director Rockin. Aye. And the motion passes. Very good. Thank you for your work on that. Julie, good, great stuff coming forward. And Michael, I, again, would like to echo Brandon's comments. I think this is a good approach and a great direction. Thanks for this discussion. Thank you. All right. Next on our item is the oral report from our CEO, Michael Tree. All right. Well, tomorrow my daughter's getting married and then next week I have surgery. So I'm hopeful to give you somewhat of a, you know, understandable executive directors. Yeah, Michael. But, you know, things are going well. September, you know, I'll start with ridership. The staff really has the goal of getting that ridership up 100% over five years, as we mentioned in the workshop. And that'll hit that 7 million ridership mark for a year of ridership, which hasn't been done in about 20 years at the agency. So it's like the, probably the top focus, I think, in addition to the other two goals that we have, we spend a lot of time talking about it. September was a great month. I mean, UCSC got into full motion. We had the fair free going for a couple of weeks to get people accustomed to the new schedule that had been introduced. Just real briefly, total ridership was 91% of pre-COVID in September. So it just rocketed up the charts, which was great to see. UCSC ridership was 104% of pre-COVID, kind of comparing it to September of 2018. And I know there were some, you know, to make that apples to apples, certainly I think there were a few more days for the school year in this particular session than back in 2018, but, you know, ridership's going in the right direction. It's about 71% of pre-COVID if you go back and take the last three months. So we're making progress, it's exciting. With Paratransit, you are at pre-COVID ridership levels. In fact, September was 112% of ridership as compared to September of 2018, that last September before COVID came around. So we're excited. We've got a couple of things coming up in regard to pilot projects that I think we'll be talking to the board about before the end of the calendar year to further increase fixed route ridership. New operators are key in keeping that ridership momentum. We've got nine in the current class. I think we've been reporting that for a month or so as they've been in classes. They actually went to the DMV this week to get their license to be able to drive the buses on the public streets. And so we're excited. Number one, that they're in class and that things are going well there, but we're excited that none of them have dropped off. All nine have kind of come along during the class and now are with the DMV. So retention's going well with these classes. We've got 15 in the incoming class after interviewing some 50 applications that came in in the latest recruitment cycle. We've got 15 narrowed down and then we've got a new recruitment cycle that'll be happening in the near future. So hats off to Margo and to Don in their efforts to really increase the throughput of folks coming into recruitment and then through the training. In regard to COVID, we've had three positives over the last month, but none of our departments are in what they consider that minor outbreak stage or status. And so things are moving along there and certainly manageable. Couple of other things to cover. We talked a lot about zero emission buses and our goals moving forward at the workshop. We outlined, I think at the workshop, 12 different funding sources that we had assembled that Wandomu had worked on to assemble funding for zero emission buses and near future purchases. And this week we're working really hard to assemble the funding for infrastructure because that's the missing ingredient for basically ordering the buses and taking delivery of them. So we've got a lot of discussions ongoing. I think we'll bring back information to you on November as to how that is shaping up. And 3C Energy is playing a key role in those discussions. I know Director McPherson had made a comment there and it's great to have kind of a regional local agency helping us with those efforts. And I know Guy Preston at RTC has also been actively involved in our mission there with Zib. Finally, in regard to housing, we talked about the housing goal, staff had a goal of 175 new housing units in the next decade on Metro property. We're continuing to move those concepts forward but I would like to say that in the interim we're really working at ways that we can redevelop that Watsonville Transit Center. And so happy to announce that we've got two new tenants that are either in or going to be in. In the near future, we've got a Mexican food restaurant that'll be going in as well as a place where you can buy avocados of all things. So, but a nice mix and we're really working hard to see what we can do to make improvements, to make that environment for folks that wanna eat with that Mexican food restaurant. And otherwise, just give them a good ambiance kind of like we've done at the Scotts Valley Transit Center to feel comfortable as they're enjoying their meal. I probably, if you were looking at big challenges and what's keeping us up at night, certain the supply chains are continuing to be difficult to work with. I think our maintenance department and our operators, everyone's done a great job at managing the situation. But just to give you an example of our supply chain challenges, we've had an order in with Ford for delivery of seven paratransit vehicles, cutaways, the vans with the shells on them. That order has been in place since 2019. And this week they actually canceled that order. So we're looking into that and what rights we have in the cancellation of that order. But it just gives you an idea of how difficult it is to get chips and parts for the manufacturers to actually be able to make the delivery of the vehicles. And then if you look on the fixed or outside of things, we've got a handful of, you know, awaiting chip related parts for transmissions. So thank goodness that we've got a pretty robust fleet that allows us to keep the buses, you know, on the road that we need to for the service levels that we've promised the public, but it's a real challenge behind the scenes and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Eddie and Margo and the great work that they've done in maintenance to keep vehicles moving while we're working through those challenges. And then last but not least, I think there's a couple of procurements that we'll be bringing to you before the end of the year and it'd be good to put them on your radar. We'll be having a consultant selected and then your consideration of a contract for our short and our long range planning. And so that'll be key in making sure that you reach your goals, your vision for what you have for Metro moving forward. And especially it relates to the concepts, the principles that you talked about at the workshop in regard to how public transit functions and what you can do as policymakers to make adjustments. And then we've also got a marketing proposal, proposals that we'll be receiving this week and we're hopeful that by the end of the calendar year you're looking at a marketing contract and that would include revising or kind of renovating your website and a host of other really prominent rider interface tools that they use, which will help with the ease of using Metro. And then finally, as we mentioned at the workshop, your automated passenger accounting system, which is a fantastic tool for riders and for the agency. This week we actually started installing those in the buses and so you've got Isaac and Brandon from smart working to get those installations done and ready for the public usage. And their goal is to have that project wrapped up at the latest in February, but it looks promising that that could even happen earlier. So long story short, there's a lot going on at Metro, but I think we're pretty focused on ridership. We're focused on the zero emission bus program and we're focused on housing. So there's a lot of good things to be talking about. Thank you, Michael. Congratulations on the wedding and best wishes for the surgery. Questions from the directors? Dan Henderson. Hi there, thanks for the summary, Mike. Can you confirm who the firm is that you guys are utilizing for the automatic passenger counting? Is that clever devices or am I mistaken? It is clever devices. I'll be thanking anyone else. Looking to the public. Any hands there? I'm seeing none. So gee, we're reaching the end of our meeting. Always interested in moving us along on a Friday. We'll announce that our next meeting is a little early. It will be on Friday, November 18th, thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday. It will be via teleconference once again. And with that, I believe we adjourn the meeting. Thank you all. Have a great weekend. I'll see you next month. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye. Metro staff could stay on for a moment. And Chevron, I'm gonna give you a call. And Donna, you'll let me know if I need to sign anything. Absolutely. Thank you. Great, thanks everyone. Take care. Okay, so do we want to just take like a 15 minute break here and come back to do the postboard or do you want to come back at one o'clock? This is good now. I feel like now, I don't need a break. Okay, all right. All right. It's only 10 30, we're good. I know. Hey, Donna, when was the meeting with Ari and Jimmy? 11 o'clock. Okay, got it. So we stand on here, are we gonna move on? Yeah, why don't we just stay on here then? Everyone's here, so. We need to get out of the corner. It's still recording. Yes, it's recording and you got 26 participants. Yeah, that's okay because I can't, if I cut it.