 50% but that's a jump they raised things six feet. But we're half board half line. Yeah. I was wondering because it was going to rain like three weeks. Well, Big Sur got five inches, over five inches. We didn't. You know, it's sort of, it's been drizzling most days. I like it. It was walking. It comes pouring down. I hope you're backed up. There's been a couple of nights where I'm like, I do love the sound that I hear. It was changing. I like to call the March 23rd meeting of 2018 meeting of the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District to order before we call the roll. We have a little different procedure today. We're going to have a swearing in of a new director. And I think Julie Sherman will provide those services. We're Trina Kauffman Gomez of Watsonville. Trina Kauffman Gomez. I Trina Kauffman Gomez. Do solemnly swear or affirm. Do solemnly swear in the phone. That I will support and defend. That I will support and defend the Constitution states. And the Constitution states. All enemies for and domestic. Against all enemies for and domestic. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. I will bear true faith and allegiance. I will bear true faith and allegiance. And the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state obligation free. I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation for purpose of evasion. I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to do. Could you say a few words or you're just fine? I'm just I welcome. I'll get up to speed on what's happening here and thank you Okay, now the clerk, please call the roll. Dr. Rothworth? Here. Dr. Chase? Here. Dr. Dutra? Here. Dr. Kaufman Gomez? Present. Dr. Hagen? Here. Dr. Leopold? Here. Dr. Lind? Here. Dr. Matthews? Here. Dr. McPherson? Here. Dr. Rothwell? Dr. Rotkin? Here. Ex-officio Director Thomas? Ex-officio Director McKee? Here. We have corn. Thank you, and we do anticipate having Director Rothwell with us within an hour or so. I'd like to announce that Carlos Landeverry is in the back of the room here. If you raise your hand, he will be available for Spanish language interpretation during the meeting. And if you'd like any of his services, there are headsets available. Thank you, Carlos. I'd also like to announce him in Spanish, that he's in Spanish. If you would like to make the announcement in Spanish, that'd be fine. Acer, good morning. Buenos dias, Directors. Para las personas que hablan español, voy a estar en la parte de atrás. Gracias. Gracias. I also would like to announce that this meeting is being televised by a community television of Santa Cruz County, Channel 26. Our technician is Mr. Lynn Dutton. Now we will go to item number five, comments from the Board of Directors. Any comments that they might have or items that are not on the agenda? Mr. Dutra. Thank you. I just want to say, you know, we're getting ready to go to D.C. to go and, you know, advocate for, on behalf of Metro, and I just wanted to say that I know that Mr. Rotkin, Mr. Bautour, his first time coming, we're going to be going and meeting with all representatives, as well as with, I would have assumed the administration, and try to, you know, work hard to get some funding and resources back to Santa Cruz Metro. I know that in the past we have been quite successful, and we have buses coming or being built so that we can start replacing the ones that are failing us. So this is a really important trip. And as we go out there, we'll be working and fighting on behalf of Santa Cruz Metro against an administration who doesn't want to really fund a lot. So thank you very much. Any other directors' comments? Any other communications from the public that, of our items that are not on the agenda? Good morning, directors. My name is Rick Longinati. I wanted to appreciate the Metro staff for working on a plan to cover everybody who works in downtown Santa Cruz with a bus pass. They've developed a price for that. It would be a pilot program, a one-year program, a $311,000 that would be charged to the downtown parking district. And this is a great pilot and a test for a bus pass program such as they have in the Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority, in the City of Boulder, everybody in the downtown. All the employees of the downtown are covered by a bus pass paid for by parking revenue. I think this would add to the revenue stability of Metro and also increase ridership and also reduce the demand for parking in downtown Santa Cruz, which would be a benefit to the merchants downtown. So I have a letter here for you. I just encourage you to give staff a pat on the back and encouragement for this program. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's an extra pat on the back because we really do appreciate our staff and the drivers and what they do for us. They would make us run on time. Yes, sir. Good morning. Brett Garrett from Santa Cruz. And I agree with what Rick just presented. And also, I was at the Transportation Conference this past Saturday, and I want to thank Barrow Emerson for coming and speaking to us. He discussed Metro's challenges very frankly and said we need a game changer. I agree we need a game changer to address these challenges. Operating costs, running buses are expensive. Service frequency every half hour is really not enough. Operating hours difficult to operate late at night. Traffic delays of course and the delays of each passengers at the stops along the way just because of the nature of a bus system. So I'm here to propose a possible game changer that I've talked to some of you about before. I advocate for personal rapid transit, PRT, small automated pod cars on an elevated guideway. It does solve operating costs possibly. The system in Morgantown, West Virginia, I've read different amounts about how much it costs to run, but under a dollar to a dollar 50 per passenger. That's 3.6 miles in each direction, so there'll be a little more for connecting Watsonville to Santa Cruz with a PRT system. But it could be a tremendous savings in operating costs. Also, service frequency. PRT is an on-demand system. When I show up at the PRT station, either the pod car is waiting for me or it shows up shortly. Solves operating hours because it could run all night silently, at least in theory. Solves traffic delays by going over traffic. Solves delays that each stop along the way because when I get off the pod car, it pulls off to the side to the station and the other pod cars just go around. And from a climate perspective, it could be run by solar panels and just intrinsically uses less energy per passenger than a typical bus or train because you're not lugging all this heavy. It doesn't have the bus running with two passengers and an enormous bus is less efficient than a pod car. And profound safety advantages. So if we need a game changer, I really suggest looking at PRT. The RTC Unified Corridor Study is for the long term and I insist that to be complete, it needs to be looking at this modern technology. It provides what transit advocates want. It provides what trail advocates want. And I think it provides what Metro wants. So thank you very much. Thank you. Any other comments from the public on items that are not on the agenda? Yes, my name is Robert Kibrick. I'm a 45-year resident of Santa Cruz and I want to first thank all of you for your service to the community and I want to thank Santa Cruz Metro for reliably getting me to and from work at the University over a period of 36 years. I'd like to second the comments that Rick Longinati made in support of this pilot program for the downtown EcoPass and just to describe my personal experience with a similar program for UCSC staff. When I started working there in 1976, staff members had the option of getting a free Metro bus pass and I had a car. I could drive to work if I wanted but parking permits then cost several hundred dollars a year. They now cost eight hundred and sixty four dollars a year for a parking pass. So there was a strong economic incentive. I also found that although I could drive to campus faster in my car than I could get there on a bus, I could get to my office faster on the bus. Why was that? I could be to campus in ten minutes but once I got there even if I had a parking permit I could be driving in circles trying to find a parking space and when I finally found one it might be a very long walk to my office. So I actually found the Metro got me to campus at least as fast and as often faster than it would in my car. It was more cost effective and so I was a bus rider by choice and this was a fabulous capability. Now over the next few years gradually the university started charging a modest amount versus I think three dollars a month and five and eight. I think that they're now charging fourteen dollars a month for the staff bus pass but it's still an incredible bargain when you think of the savings of eight hundred and sixty four dollars for a permit which doesn't even guarantee of a space the cost of gasoline my insurance rates on my car were lower because it wasn't listed as a vehicle that I commuted to work in and so I imagine that over the thirty six years I worked on campus I saved many tens of thousands of dollars and I also enjoyed a more relaxed way of getting to work because I didn't have to worry about finding a parking place when I got there and I would also like to commend Metro on having tremendously courteous and wonderful drivers and a reliable service so I think there's a huge potential for this pilot program to have similar effects downtown to save the number of parking spaces you have to build, maintain and enforce parking regulations on. So I would very much like to support this concept and hope that it goes forward. Thank you. Thank you very much. That will be our next promotional advertisement. Thank you for taking the time to come down and share your experience. Appreciate it. In general I want to say thank you to the University of California Santa Cruz for the cooperative efforts and the knowledge that they have of our needs and their students and staff's needs they've been tremendous throughout the years to complement the UCSA for everything they've done in cooperation with Metro through the years. Yes, sir. Good morning. Cynthia, John, Mike, how are you today? I wanted to talk a little bit to advocate for changes to the Highway 17 transit that we have, the mass transit that connects us to San Jose. I was told by a VTA representative that they're going to have a Bart Terminus next to the Great Mall in Milpitas as soon as this fall. And one thing that I've talked to a lot of drivers about and they, many, many occasions they've said you should send a letter to Alex Clifford or you should tell the, you know, you should go in front of the Metro Board, but I feel this is actually more appropriate body to speak to because this is as far as everybody here who's spoken has been talking about mass transit and public transit. I think it's a very important aspect of transportation in this county, especially as things grow and develop. So basically, my interest is I've been riding the buses since I was 15 in the mid-80s and they came up with the 17 Express at the time of the earthquake. I don't remember if it was right before or right after the earthquake, but they had the 17 Express from that point and they haven't revised it since and they've since gotten light rail all the way down to Winchester, which it just passes by. You just go by and you go, I wish I could get off there and go to the light rail and go directly to the light rail. And so I'm just suggesting or inviting you to consider the possibility that it's maybe time to revise that but it's like five different agencies and it's a hairy mess from the standpoint of politicians who have to do all the work. I just think it should be kind of looked at as something to be given more consideration. Thank you. Thank you for your suggestion. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Joshua Stevens. I'm a resident of Santa Cruz City. I wanted to also commend the Metro for sending out Barrow Emerson to last week's transportation justice conference. It was great learning more about the Metro system and its struggles it encounters. And I felt that was actually a great tool to outreach to the community. I also agree with the prospect of bus passes downtown the EcoPass pilot program. That would be a great addition. I for one work at an employer that is grateful enough to provide commuter benefits and I think that's a great way to incentivize ridership in general. I just wanted to also note that on my bus ride experiences as of lately there's been a lot of buses showing the time 1998 for the year on their display time clock. I've noted that on buses 2308, 2211 and 9823. Not sure what's up with that but may seem to be having a little glitch there. I also wanted to advocate for seasonal fare sales. I noticed I remember when you guys did that one year, the youth summer discount that got a lot of people aboard. Great incentive and also consider just general flash sales there. I also noticed that the fare structure was planning on the discussion is planning on being put on hold because of the SB1 unsurity and I also wanted to remind the board to keep in mind that when it comes to our Highway 17 bus service, we're paying $7 to go about 23 miles when our peers down south Monterey Salinas transit charge 350 for about 30 miles of travel between the Monterey Peninsula and Santa Cruz County. So please keep this in mind when we're working on or when this discussion gets brought back up again because I feel that is an important piece as to why ridership might be declining on our express service and let's see and one last item is to also consider flash sales for small business. If they say that 82% of businesses in Santa Cruz County are of micro or of less than eight employees be a great way to outreach to boost advertisement sales all around. I just wanted to thank the Santa Cruz Metro Board for all they do and can't wait to see what we can get with all these upcoming opportunities for funding Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to for the public would like to address this or all communications. Thank you. Hello, I'm Dinah Bad Shaw and I started the bus by choice movement here in Santa Cruz. We're working hard to change the mindset from the idea that the buses are just for poor people who don't have cars to saying everybody needs to get on the bus and so I really applaud the step in the right direction of the Metro passes being offered to the downtown employees. I think this is a great step in the right direction. It will encourage people to get on the bus, try it out and save space in parking downtown. So thank you for having a good service here and we just need to make it more public. The future is in public transit. We've got it public transit right here and we need to support it by using it. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Susan Cavalieri. I moved here from New York almost three years ago now. I chose not to have a car here in order to cut down on my greenhouse gas emissions. I am extremely concerned about climate change on Santa Cruz and the world. I am also concerned about the future for my grandchildren. Since I've been here I have not needed a car. I do ride the metro frequently. I am always impressed by the courtesy of the bus drivers by their concern about other people who may be lying on a park bench. They are a real asset. I support the eco pass. I believe that public transportation is absolutely essential if we are going to have a future. I thank you very much for the service that you offer. It would be wonderful to see it improved. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else from the public? Okay. My name is Becky Taylor and I just want to reiterate the last two speakers who said that they took the bus for their speakers. I've been writing them on and off for the past almost 30 years now and at one point my uncle was trying to get me to look into driving a car and I just saw that more household than it was worth because I like the bus so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anyone else from the public would like to address this on items that are not on the agenda? Any communications from the MAC? No. Labor organization communications. Item number eight. Do you have any comments from Labor? Good morning board members. Michael Rios PSA president leader representing SEIU. I'm a period just one who congratulates director Gomez and you're a new appointment and we look forward to working with you. Hi, I'm Joan Jeffries. I am the president and also part of SEIU and I would also like to congratulate and welcome Ms. Gomez Kaufman. Thank you. It's a mouthful. Sorry. Hello, my name is Juan Garcia. I'm the VMU president representing the mechanics. I'd also like to congratulate Ms. Gomez and I'd also like to bring up at this time. Earlier I think it was last week there was a driver appreciation day where we had some kind of breakfast served and everything. I'd like to bring to the attention that not everybody was notified that this was going to occur or we weren't notified needless to say we weren't invited. So there was many people I've spoken to in the different chapters of SEIU representative members that feel the same way as I do that perhaps if there's no appreciation day for mechanics, office workers or custodians, vehicle service workers and the like we feel underappreciated. So my suggestion is perhaps if the board would consider or the powers that be consider making an appreciation day for all metro employees so we don't feel left out and we all feel included and I think you'd get a happier workforce that is all I have to say thank you very much. The other, oh yes. The one of the Montesinos representing the bus operators and transit folks I was just going to thank you for that appreciation for the breakfast. Sorry. I'm putting that in anyway. And I want to welcome you Ms. Coffman Gomez for our organization. It's a wonderful place to be. I've been here for a few years now so I just want to welcome you. But I also wanted to for everyone to look at as we have ventured into getting measured in money and at the state level we're getting state transit assistance more money and we're going to look at even with the fare restructuring when are we looking at the service that we provide. We still have a lot of gaps in service we're still not providing the services that we need for the services industry that we're asked to provide service especially the service industry here in this community so as we look at budgets in the future and as we look at the fare restructuring what are we going to do about the service and it's not a lot it's not a lot of investment but we do need to cover some gaps especially nights and weekends. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone from Labor that would like to address us? Okay we'll go on to the next item item number nine. Are there any additional documentation? We have fine. We moved out to the consent agenda and would like to recognize that Director Rothwell has been with us now for about 15 minutes. Thank you for ending and we knew that you were going to be a little tardy so thank you for being here. Now it's stuck in traffic. Way to get called out. Okay we will go to item number 11 for recognition. Excuse me Norm. Concerning on item six description of claims of Garcia. Do you mean 10-06? Which item? Are you talking about agenda? Consent agenda. On the consent number 10. Item six. Lucila Garcia while I accept the idea of rejection I want to inform that we have a severe problem of buses getting to the side in Santa and Watsonville especially on East Beach and East primarily on East Beach. I saw yesterday in the rain the day before both. People having to enter in between cars to get on the bus cannot get to the curb. They were stepping in mud puddles or rain runoff. Elderly women wait literally ankle high water in some cases. This situation of this lawsuit I see as a severe problem especially on East Beach which I ride five or six times a day on 79. Are people parking in the bus stop? Among other things there are the red spot marking. It may be three feet especially on hushback. As long as it's not locked the bus pullout is not big enough for the bus to get into. There's no way they can get near the bus to get into the bus stop. I see in the future much more if these people are aware of they can get some access to it. Norm which one are you talking about? I don't know what you're talking about. 10.01.2 10.01.2 10.01.2 10.01.2 10.01.2 10.01.2 10.01.2 10.01.2 10.01.2 10.01.2 10.01.2 This is merely one situation if you saw as I do riding the bus almost every day on East Beach there are a number of people who literally are in between trying to get to the bus access. The bus can't get close to the curb. The red markers maybe three feet. I don't know if you want to pull this and have some extra action or directions. I'm saying that we need to look into what we should do is ask the staff to contact Watsonville. We don't control pullouts but if there's a problem we should have our staff contact the city of Watsonville and ask them to look into particularly on East Beach if that's where the problem is. We can't take any other action today. I think we should ask for that. Excuse me. You have a comment? I'm going to ask Watsonville Transit Center and it was an angle issue. We attempt to come within six inches of the curb in order to allow people to egress or board the bus in a manner that's safe. In this particular case there were some other buses there and the operator was unable to achieve the angle that necessary so there was a little bit larger gap and she missed the step but I will be looking into that. Thank you. Is that because the buses were parked there for break or something and they left their buses parked there? We share the spot with MST and our buses so consequently there's periods where there's quite a number of buses there and the space area is probably not that long in order to get the angle that we need to approach so the last bus is kind of at a disadvantage. In the wrong direction I had nothing to do with this claim. I understand. There was the access to the curb. We'll hook up and take a look at that and get back to us. Thank you. Just want to note that we are actually doing a lot of the red curb painting so what we'll do is indicate that for them to take a look at and include the safety measure for the width that's necessary for those buses to come in we'll place a recommendation in there. I'm aware of the new painting. The problem is you need to expand from three feet. She said that. Okay, very well. Anybody else have any comments on the consent agenda? I would move the consent agenda. Second. Move to second. All in favor of approving the consent agenda. Aye. Give a motion. Anybody? Are you guys working? Did you get your coffee? This is a weird day already. Right. Yeah, I know. Now we we'll go to item number 11 presentation of Employee Longevity Awards. I understand that two of the recipients are not here. Patrick Fortun is not here and Marizio Italia is not here but President I think we have John Nevin Tenure Employee, is that correct? Come on. Thank you very much. Somebody I don't know. There be light. Is the word, where is that? The awards are right up here with them. You got it. We want to thank you for your service today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to thank the community, the passengers I used to drive around Norm as a bus operator when I started and it's just an honor and pleasure privilege to serve the community, work with the public which I enjoy and with the bus operators I'd like to thank maintenance, fleet facilities, HR administration I get to work with Santa Cruz Police Department during Halloween traffic and different first responders of Santa Cruz. It's certainly a pleasure to work with continue to work with the public. Thank you very much. Thank you and our Vice Chair will present you with that. Thank you. Okay, now going to item number 11, approve the establishment of the second Friday of every month for board committees to meet. Discussion from the board. We've had some discussion on this. Yes, Mr. Leopold. Yeah, at the recent finance committee meeting we actually did sort of set up a schedule on a Friday. We're sticking to those. Okay. Finding a date is very hard. We're sticking to those. Okay. Mr. Chair. This is an item that's sort of a plea for help if you will. We're struggling. We have this great new program that you put in place to have standing committees and a lot of good work is getting done in the standing committees, but we also need the standing committees to happen in a fairly timely fashion so that we can take important items to the committee, flush out the details and bring a recommendation back to the board and meet our posting schedule which is fairly complicated and limited in the committee meeting and a regular board meeting. And your calendars are just massively complicated. You are very difficult people to get together in the same room. And then sometimes from time to time our chairs of the committee want to make sure 100% of the committee members are there and so that complicates it even further when we're trying to make sure we only hold it there. You might recall that several years ago long after I got here you were meeting twice a month, the second Friday of the month and the fourth Friday of the month and at some point in the past I understand this board had standing committees and then they morphed into kind of that the second Friday of the month would be a work session and the fourth would be a board meeting and then that morphed further into just two board meetings every month and not much of a work session and then at the chairs urging at Mr. McPherson's urging about three years ago the board considered eliminating the second Friday of the month and just doing all the meetings on the fourth Friday of the month in order to help us logistically and be able to produce all the quality materials that you would like us to produce in that fashion. That has worked out really well. We have been able to yield some savings in staff time and reinvest those savings and that is the same. Now we have these standing committees and we've sort of tried for the last year or so to figure out how to in an ad hoc-ish way meet with reach out to each of you and figure out how to coordinate your calendars and in some cases to do that. So what I'd like to do is to go back and reinstill the second Friday of the month on your calendar and do something similar to what the RTC does. If there's no business that month for that particular committee then we'll notify you in the same fashion that RTC to let you know that you won't be needing to meet that. Under this proposal we would try to get all of the committees to meet maybe we would have a 9 to 10 or 1030 and 1030 to 1130 so we bring you in in a sequential form if all the committees happen to be meeting. So that just doing that would help us tremendously. You note in the recommendation that I suggest we not start it until June 8th because we do have some committees that are already prescheduled and if you agree with this it'll take you a little time probably to coordinate your calendars so that you can wipe out and commit second Friday of every month to us for committee. That's my plea, that's my cry, that's my cry. Do you have any sense of what committees would come first so to speak? I mean not that they're better than the others but like starting at 8 o'clock and then going through noon or something like that which ones, I mean if we could get a calendar year in advance for that second Friday so we know if we can get it on our calendars and that's where we are at 930 or whatever it is, if we could do that. I'd like to see that first though I mean what's 8 o'clock? I don't want to start at 8 o'clock. So Dutra's not at 8. Everybody else? Yeah, but we're like down here. Director Matthews. I would actually like to move that we go ahead with this. It makes total sense. We always so much time doing the doodle polls and blocking out 10 different possibilities so I commend you for that. We won't have, you can be at 8 then. Yes, I agree. I would do that too because I have some things later. I'd rather meet at 8 o'clock. It might be a good idea for directors to say maybe they do have some standing appointments or committee meetings. If you do, on Fridays for some other committee or something that would be good to know about them. Let's give the direction. We do this in council. I think others do. You just block it out if you need it and then you adjust your calendar. I've seen John stand up there. I'm honoring and I'm waiting to be acknowledged by the chair. Thank you chair. I know we were looking for a date for a retreat and that might be an excellent opportunity. That's mid to late August. That's way off. That would be a chance that we could map out the schedule. That won't start till 9. Whatever it is. Okay. Yes. It's like hurting cats, I guess. Isn't that the saying? But I just want to say that I am supportive of this but I just want to make sure that I'd like to see how you're going to schedule out the committees and then also if that does happen, if the first committee doesn't stay at the same time, say it's the director's committee or executive committee or something and then they don't have a meeting, the other ones will still stand, right? You're not going to move everything up. I would guess not. If we try to juggle them just because we canceled a particular meeting, that just adds another layer of confidence. Okay. I think if we say finance always meets that, you could put finance first. That's one I will never sit on. So, there you go. Chair of that committee, we've already established a meeting time. Okay. Are there any other comments? Yes. Just in order. So what I think I'm hearing just to be clear is that we're going to establish kind of as much of an advanced schedule that we can. Now, my question is do you want me to send out a placeholder from 9 to noon from June to December or do you want us to wait until we actually have that schedule in place? I'll send something out or actually I'll ask Gina if she would send something out capturing our proposed schedule and if we don't. And just for housekeeping purposes, if you can give me the different committees so that I know who, what, when, the frequency, maybe the duration, the last meeting so that I have I'm a bit more familiar with what committees. I think you're taking over Oscars committees. Okay. Well, just so that I can take a look at all of them and then knowing which ones are going to be relative to what I'll be taking on. That would be helpful. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. I don't know if the public would have any comment on this. Probably don't want to get involved. No, you do. That's okay. Okay, we'll just wait for that then. Thank you very much. We'll now move on. I don't know if we need a vote on that. We got one. We had a first and second vote on it. We never voted on the second. We have to vote. Got a motion to second. All those in favor? Aye. So ordered unanimously. Okay. Yes. Thank you. And thank you for the last item. I'll sleep well tonight. Gina will have some time. She can reinvest in other activities. We'll be doodling in your dreams. We may miss those. Okay. A number of items for you. And thank you chair for allowing me to move the CEO presentation up a little earlier in the agenda when I can have you nice and fresh instead of at the tail end of the agenda when you're ready to bolt out the door. And it'll make me feel a little bit less stressed too to be able to do this earlier. I wanted to go back to the eco pass just real quick. You had all of these folks coming up and thanking you for something you actually haven't seen yet. And you're probably saying when did we act on that? I feel so good about it. Well, you didn't. What's happening is in the backdrop. Metro staff have been meeting about the concept of a downtown eco pass. The city reached out to us. We've had several months worth of back of the city. We've had a lot of time to figure out how best to make some sort of proposal. The city is seeking to deal with some of their issues related to transportation. Demand management. As they look at increasing municipal parking in the downtown and there has to be a balance there. How do you encourage people to get to the downtown some other way than a single. So they're struggling. I know with that. We have more customers. There will be a win-win. And we just need to figure out the economics of it. So at this point, what has happened is our staff and city staff have met. We now have a proposal that the city is reviewing. And once we hear back from that, we'll have to take it to the two bodies. You haven't seen it yet. It's strictly the backdrop. But know that we're working, both parties are working in earnest to try to figure this out. We think transit appreciation day. Thank you for the board members that could make it there. Believe me, I've realized that your calendars again are complicated and it's tough to get there. Those of you that weren't there were there and sent nice notes along. It was a very good day again. This is year two of that. Now this is a national event. This occurs on this day nationally across the nation. And it's just our opportunity to say thank you to our bus operators, both the paratransit and our fixed route operators for a job well done. It's not meant to be exclusionary to exclude other employees. I really get one's point and I appreciate that. I apologize publicly for whatever mix up occurred where employees didn't realize they were invited because we do try to invite all of our employees. I respect his point about maybe we can find another day during the year in which we can come up with another one that sends more of a message of all employee appreciation. We'll talk about that too. Juan, thank you for bringing that to my think. Here's that message. But this is a really important day and we think of our bus operators as going out there, hey, they get paid, they perform a service. So do the rest of our employees. But these are our front line folks. These are our face of this agency. They represent this agency. They are trained in customer service and customer service on a daily basis, 8 to 10 hours a day can be challenged to be good at. We sometimes have customers that work hard to pull our chain. I will tell you, when I was in Washington just last week on the news was a story about a bus operator. He had some unruly youth on his bus and they showed the video of this by the way, but he had an unruly youth and he said, you know, enough's enough he pulled over. He said, you have to leave the bus. And so these students just gave him a lot of guffin and they were walking out, one of them fit in the operator's face. The operator secured his bus, maybe not necessarily, I don't know whether he's following their rules or not, but he had some words with them. And one of them grabbed pepper spray and then proceeded to pepper spray him. So they have the video, they have the pictures of the individuals they're looking for them. That's an extreme example, but our operators do encounter things where people, you know, unfortunately spit on them, say mean things to them. They can have a rough day and they deal with the best of the best and they deal sometimes with the worst of the worst by the bus. And it's challenging for them to do what they have to do, get through a day and then on top of that, be safe so that we drive those buses in a safe fashion, don't have collisions and deliver people safely to where they need to go. So their job is a hard job. They are the face of this and I think it's pretty cool that nationwide transit properties across the nation on this day celebrate all that they do for us. So it's a special day. We'll look at the other issues brought up too and see what we can do. You have in front of you some notes from Barrow. This is some things that you requested. We also wanted to double back and let you know that Ms. Gomez comes to our meetings frequently, but she oftentimes repeats the same things that she has presented to us before. We just want you to know and you have a copy attached to that. We have responded to her. We have told her that we took in all of her notes and those things that we can identify as our unmet needs, if you will are now added to an unmet needs list. We'll consider them against all our other unmet needs at the end time in which we have more money to invest. Those things that were related to city infrastructure, county infrastructure, we have communicated those things to the cities and counties to make sure they understand that. We try to do the best we can, even though she continues to come back, we try to do the best we can to respond to it. And then there are some other questions in that document that you had asked and we have answered. Also in front of you is a document. It's on the top. It's labeled attachment B. You'll also find it in 1006B5 in your packet. This actually directly results from a document that I and my staff had with Director Chase. Not too long ago she asked a lot of questions about the various types of funding that we receive and just thought that you probably would like to know that information too. And so we took that little briefing with Director Chase and laid out all of the different funding sources, tried to help you understand which ones are fungible, that is can be used for operations in capital, which ones are more limited. This is a first cut. We'll try to refine the agreement for you to keep in your packet referral at any given point because we're always throwing these crazy numbers and names at you. 5339A, B and C, 5307, low no grants and bus and bus facility grants it probably boggles your mind. And so then you'll have a cheat sheet now that you can try to get some quick references on that. And it's good for you to know when there's fungibility if that's how you can use that term of the particular types of funds that maybe you'll have an alternate thought and that you need to be given that information so that you don't necessarily take it for granted that what we say and what we recommend is the only way that it can be done. Yeah, good information for you. Mr. Mr. Clifford, I just excuse me for interrupting. I think that would be a great thing to put on our website. People come to these meetings, they could be familiar with what we're talking about, more familiar with what we're talking about when these acronyms we use or what's for and so forth. They could be a real benefit to the general public too. I think it would be a good idea to put it on our website. And I just want to repeat my appreciation for you first putting this together and making it available for the board. This is something that I know I've mentioned before like when we were working on Judy case who's a people really didn't understand that that money was intended for capital. It could be not be used for anything else and they had a really hard time with that because they wanted us to put it on our website. And we couldn't. And this is helpful in terms of all the acronyms for us as a board and also the public but I think it's also helpful for us as well as the public to understand what the limitations are of the funding. So I just really appreciate you putting this together and making it available. Thank you to Barrow and Tom in particular. What item does it appear in? Sorry. It's in this packet. Anything else? Yeah. Thank you. Could I also ask if we could indicate the funding and then whether it's restricted funding for that particular item or not because then we know whether funds are available that could be made adjustment for other other items because some funds are very restrictive and I don't know how much money we're talking about when I see this. So I'd like to see the dollar amount on this if we could. Actually these dollar amounts vary. Some of them are formula and they're tied to federal appropriations which is a topic I'm going to talk about a little bit. We can give you kind of ranges. Ranges would help or maybe what percentage of the of our budget these items might be especially the more significant ones. So that's a good question leading to another clarification to this to maybe break this down further into operations dedicated capital dedicated flexible kinds of dollars. We knew we would do another generation of that. Thank you. Continuing on on the April we're going to take a team of managers up to the FTA regional office. We're going to talk about some of the things we need to discuss with them but this is also to sort of do some pre-flight advanced background before we go with the board members to Washington D.C. next month. So we have a beautiful award for the NOLO grant to buy three electric over the road coaches but BYD is unable to perform to our performance standard to hold the money there and wait for them to innovate and get the bus to perform as it's supposed to perform or can we move that money over to buy some other electric buses that are not over the road coaches. The problem here is over the road coaches have not been tried and tested it's new technology they got a first generation that just did not do well and we're not going to buy something that doesn't do well. That's not how you handle public's money but we need guidance from the FTA and pre-flighting with the FTA to make a better argument to the federal office when we go next month. I'll let you know more about that. Also a couple of weeks ago we took a team of folks out to Livermore and toured the beautiful new Gillig bus manufacturing plant that is just an absolutely impressive plant. We don't have Gillig's in our fleet right now but if we get this award of our bus and bus facilities grant which is supposed to have been announced any day now in September of last year the FTA assured us that it's any day now when we were in Washington this week let's see if that holds true but we have nine buses in that grant that we would like to get awarded those are CNG buses in that particular grant and if we get that award there is a possibility we'll want to maybe take advantage of some contract options that Gillig have they are really building a quality product and I think our team is a whole lot. We spent most of the whole day out there touring the line and seeing how buses are. Tiger grants, I sent you all some information about tiger grants and it's just bad news we don't have a tiger grant we kind of like to maybe have one in the future maybe if we figure out a plan to build our new Pacific transit station or our paratransit of course we need to replace that too maybe in our future you have to have a shelf ready project before you apply for it what's distressing about this is even though we don't need it today we hope this pattern doesn't continue in which you have $500 million of nationwide money terrible, terrible odds to try to compete again we will be vigilant in that and team when we go to Washington DC in a couple weeks we'll talk about there was some good news that occurred while I was in Washington subject to Congress approving the current omnibus appropriations bill and of course our president signing it but new money has been put in that will benefit us so funding in the bus and bus facilities program growing that program would increase $400 million that is an incredible amount of money that begins to recoup what we lost in 2012 when Congress in the map 21 act took away a bunch of money from bus and bus facilities and moved it over the rail gave it back to us only recently in the fast act however did not give us everything that they had taken away this is not recurring money this is one time money so you need to be mindful of that but still another $400 million in the bus and bus facilities program for the next round helps us all more money in there the better and this is a program just like the LONO that's oversubscribed at least 10 times every round of grant funding formula money they're going to add an additional proposing I should say to add an additional $209 million to that now that has I had Tom just do some extremely preliminary analysis of that but that has the potential of yielding about another $200,000 that's nearly enough to fund two operators adding additional service it's enough to part of the way to funding a bus or it's good money for a grant towards a bus so the options will be many if that money comes through that's just our preliminary estimation again approving the omnibus bill competitive grant programs another $161 million I don't know where they'll drop that in yet but that's really good news and then LONO would get another $29.45 taking it up to $20 million nationwide remember that's the grant that we want a couple years back we apply for that grant every year and that could be really good and then finally in closing just thinking about what I learned in the last several days in Washington and how that dovetails into what we do in a couple of weeks I'm beginning to better refine where we would put our energy going forward certainly stabilizing the highway trust fund is going to be one of those keynotes that's important because the highway trust fund is subject to all of these pay-for general fund money feeding it it's at risk especially in the Trump administration it's at risk we need the highway trust fund to be funded with stable recurring forms of money revenues and if that happens then of course transit being 20% of that we become more stable too in future reauthorizations that's the exact problem FASTAC was put together at last minute really decent program had a small amount of growth but the FASTAC is not built on stable recurring sources and that's one of our points the big one that we'll focus on is the infrastructure bill Trump's infrastructure bill is absent in any discussion about transit whatsoever and then he has decided that he thinks the model should be flipped to 20% FEDS 80% local 20% FEDS 20% FEDS 80% local that is just a no-starter every office that we visited in the last week said that's a no-starter that just ain't happening hope that that's the case we'll speak to that when we go but we need to get transit into the conversation and right now the president does not pay attention to transit it's about a whole lot of other things like we heard about last year broadband and dams but it's absent in any discussion about us and then last what we'll talk about is we'll talk about the alternative fuels tax credit that's a little over $600,000 for us that's good money to match grants we need that it's a really crummy program the way they do it today where they're supposed to give us give it to us early in the year and then we're subject to into the year tax extenders we hold our breath hoping every year it'll come through we're lucky it comes through retroactive but then on the day that they approve it today we should be getting the next allotment and we don't get that yet we need to fix that that's what our agenda is looking like it shapes up for changes I'll add to it just one half hour session I'm sure but I just I want to say a few things about the cooperation between the city and the district about the eco pass thank you for moving ahead on this this is a win-win situation and it's a great example of a cooperative effort to solve a transportation issue that we have in this county in the city county as well and the appreciation day the concerns were well taken and thank you for mentioning that and I just want to point out that when we were going through some tough times a couple of years ago or just up to a year ago it was everybody got in the boat and started rowing in the same direction and we couldn't have done it without everybody on board literally so I want to I just want to point out that the city is throughout this organization of what they did when we were going through some real tough times it really helped us all and we're going to get better and we hope that there's more to come good things in the future Director Leopold thank you chair just a couple pieces one I think the eco pass could serve as a model as we think I know the city is doing it the county is looking at the local Santa Cruz county plan but the idea that as we look at these increased densities along our transit corridors requiring the purchase of bus passes to help support the system and make us make real the idea that we want people to take transit instead of driving their cars maybe something that we should take a look at and so I'll be curious to find out the details of the plan and how it was done the other thing that I just want to comment on is two weeks ago I was in DC for the National Association of Counties Conference and Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao spoke to the group and she gave out the 60 page document about the infrastructure plan she was the cabinet officer to tell us about infrastructure and it was a nice 60 page document with lots of pictures short on specifics but she tried to tell us how great it was that they were incentivizing local development dollars by only giving us 20% of the money and everybody at my table and we were from around the country we did everything we could not to yell back at the stage later in the afternoon there was a a session a legislative session from NACO and they said well the good news is we were one of the first to get this 60 page document and the other part of the good news about it is their infrastructure plan did not come to the Congress as a bill so what NACO was telling us is it's unlikely that any infrastructure bill will look like what the president wants because when you're dealing with people who have no experience in government they don't do the things that you would expect a presidential administration presented as a bill so the legislature will end up crafting something so hopefully it will look much different than what the president has offered I'm not sure it will get done this year I mean this with the passage of the budget document this week I think they passed it last night in the Senate it's hard to believe that before the end of March we passed the last piece of major legislation that will be accomplished this year in Congress we should only work so hard anyway I support my colleagues going to DC and want to acknowledge our CEO for putting together this trip I know last year was helpful not to go during the AFTA convention because we were able to get to see people and not be in conflict with the many other transit properties who were also trying to see the Department of Transportation the FTA and everything else so I think it was wise I saw it firsthand last year why that was a good idea so good luck on the trip bring back some money I just wanted to say about the eco pass downtown the speakers from the public supported it I wanted to thank them for having done so but nobody mentioned explicitly what really the alternative is there the parking district downtown in the city of Santa Cruz will either build a very large new garage or one or more new garages to handle people's parking needs at the cost of millions and millions of dollars or they'll put the money into something like this eco pass alternative doesn't mean there wouldn't be a lot of space but the scale of them and how many of them are directly affected by this so in terms of global warming or greenhouse gas issues you're either putting money into public transit and encouraging people not to take their cars or you're deliberately encouraging them to take their car now there's enough spaces for you to drive down here by yourself in your car you can find a space it'll be great so you're going to move one direction or the other and it really is more than just some people will have an incentive to get out of their cars and get out of their places for the people that are looking for them and that's why they're going to need these passes the two things go together and what really happens is it frees up the parking spaces that customers need so that they'll be able to go shopping in downtown right now most of the people that work in downtown take all those spaces up so you're driving around in circles you look sometime at the Trader Joe's parking lot people just driving around yesterday in the middle of the day they literally take them 10-15 minutes to find a parking space people fights going on both of them waiting for the same space and so this is a real alternative to that kind of stuff going on in our downtown I really appreciate it Thank you I just wanted to comment on a couple things one was outside of the room but he spoke on the participation day or the appreciation day and that's something that we definitely want to make sure that you guys are, everyone's appreciated we do a day for all of our departments so hopefully that's something that I encourage that we can continue to do we're going to find a day that works for everybody so that we can appreciate everybody so thank you for bringing that up also I wanted to say that I also agree I like your idea of moving the over the the hill buses to just regular route buses I feel like we're waiting forever we're going to be waiting longer than the Watsonville bus for those to get and sorry Erin she's nodding her head but I don't know how feasible that is have you already started that conversation and if so I think a good idea is when we do go to DC is we really to start working with our Silicon Valley representatives to maybe work with them to getting grants for those buses and it affects both of us going over the hill that maybe they can help us get funding for those buses when we eventually get them and maybe use these buses for Santa Cruz or Capitola or Scott's Valley it'll be a good conversation we're going to get our notes together on what our ask is and prioritize that but if the FTA were to say no you submitted a grant for over the road coaches and if you don't buy over the road coaches we'll take our money back then we'll have a conversation about how long can we keep that money waiting for the technology to improve now the beauty of waiting a little while if that is the default is that MCI in 2020 is supposed to be producing an electric over the road coach MCI has been in the over the road coach business for many many years that's a fall back plan I would rather right now my leaning is the priority would first priority be let us move the 3.2 million over the fix we'll just buy some fixed routes move away from BYD into pro terra we have pro terra options and buses call it a day and life is good on your other point Ciro is actively has been for months negotiating with VTA to buy us some buses we're trying to get 5 or 6 buses out of them through this partnership that we have I wish I could be here today saying done deal but he's still working aggressively on it if you don't know this if you haven't seen the articles about it he has a massive structural deficit problem very similar on scale to what we had we're focused on that and less focused on us okay that's what I like to hear those relationships especially with VTA is important but I think that as soon as you get that letter out just let us know because I think it's important to see if we can move those over and maybe they can do a ribbon cutting for Santa Cruz getting their first electric bus the other thing is you talked about Tiger Grants earlier from my understanding I thought Tiger Grants were mainly for economically disadvantaged communities am I wrong on that because you were saying downtown Santa Cruz or the Paracruz building which I don't find are in areas that are probably disadvantaged they're pretty flexible Tiger Grants your grant application can be assisted by things like disadvantaged communities the disadvantaged community really comes into play more on the state level like the LC Top Grants that we go after that's where it weighs heavy into that but Tiger here's the thing about Tiger you can't go for that grant if you have a qualifying project until you get it shelf ready so shelf ready means you've got to get through all of the processes of design and environmental to get it ready to go so that if they award the money you can say I'm going to build it but we do have projects like Pacific Station like what we'd like to do at Paracruz it could be potentials but we have to know what we want to do and then we have to do a lot of expenditures in advance of that to get it ready shelf ready which do we just don't have the funding to do that though I mean this been my conversation over the last three years sitting here so that's going to be a rough one so okay thank you yes thank you the Eagle Pass makes a lot of sense and we really look at the business model and what kind of increase that we're getting on the ridership from our downtown to use that business model to go after some of the larger employers and or employers where their employees are going over 17 and seeing if there's a possible incentive that maybe those employers can attract more employees from this side of the hill to those businesses that they go to to work that are now getting some of them but maybe not nearly as many as could be the potential the larger employers maybe even for example I'll use a boardwalk just as a basic employees that need to get to the bus need to get to the boardwalk for work being able to have a conversation with them to see if that's feasible to I don't know demographically yet where people are coming and going on that so we may be able to have more data or the metro has more data than where I'm coming from at this point but business model is important and I think also attracting and incentivizing some of these other larger employers will be very beneficial for that and the when it comes to the employee appreciation and I don't know if it was used but maybe when the payroll checks go out with a notification of an email that something's put in there and I know the people just go in autopilot sometimes even with emails but doing some sort of a blast that most people are really wanting most staff will want to open up the email when it's coming from a payroll service or a CEO something like that so that we're getting a bit more email opened messages so that we don't have an issue with people not being informed of the invitation might be helpful we already do have a relationship with the boardwalk and they do provide funding to support a late night bus to take their employees back to Watsonville I just wanted to let the board members know that the eco pass discussion is part of a much broader discussion on transportation demand management specifically for the downtown parking district right now and there is a very detailed report that will be coming to council April is that when they're shooting and we actually should let you know about that we will be losing several significant lots in downtown Santa Cruz the church lot will be building some housing in the relatively near future our downtown plan has been accepted by council and approved by coastal so we're anticipating in the relatively foreseeable future some real significant density some new construction downtown so it's a very exciting time and the parking needs can be increasing but should also be offset and there's some very very good work going into the bigger picture transportation demand management which includes cycling etc person transportation planner working on this is Claire Flesler who used to work for Metro so it's a good discussion and I think as Alex said it's still an active discussion is that an accurate comment so I think when that discussion is planned we should just let the other board members know because Metro is a big piece of it when you're ready and it's done you have a package together to present it or somebody present it from the city Director Lynn and I echo everyone else's comments on the eco program that definitely sounds like an exciting thank you for all of your work on that but I was when Commissioner Dutra mentioned engaging with Silicon Valley I was thinking many of us I know are members of the Silicon Valley leadership group and that may be another resource before the Washington trip to reach out to and get you know work and support for this area with Silicon Valley and Santa Cruz County so maybe and if you need contact information I know I have that so that that may be a resource for support that's a great idea and City of Santa Cruz economic development is also connected with Silicon Valley groups and as I'm sure you know Casey Byer is very well connected so that's a good idea Casey Byer of the Santa Cruz Chamber Chamber yeah okay there's been a lot discussed here is anybody from the public would like to discuss any of these items that we have just mentioned I just wanted to commend the mention of Gillig buses in that oral report I know that AC Transit is a big customer of theirs and in my experience of writing their new Gillig buses that they offer they seem to work well some of them are even quieter than the normal CNGs that we're used to hearing and I think that would be a great addition to consider to the Metro fleet I do hope that we do see more electric buses rolling in though as time and time progresses and yeah we just wanted to and I also just wanted to wish the board luck on their DC journey thank you thank you very much anyway also the public would like to comment on any of the items that were mentioned here your oral report we need a motion to I guess we need a motion has somebody made a motion on this yet just an oral report okay we'll move to accept the your date monthly financial report from Manjulay and finance manager good morning along in your board package you can go to meeting December 31st our revenues were $492,000 over budget which is wonderful total operating expense for $242 under which makes us $734 ahead for the month of December year to date we're about $1,009,000 ahead our revenues are around $800,000 and our expenses are around $1,002 the next page here it shows you the budget versus the actual budget our ridership is down as we have been discussing you can see that in the passenger fare numbers our sales tax is up so this is through the month of December I just got the information through March and March is our true ups where the state goes through and makes sure this is what we give every other month it's estimated we're done good news we're done we spent a lot of time on the oral report from the CEO so we're going to just rush you let's see what else we got so year to date we are 4.5% above the last year so that's just basically the bottom line of what we're doing here actual last year receipts versus actual this year receipts we're about 4.5% ahead of schedule we only budgeted 2.5 but I am seeing a slowdown just so that's out there tracking about 5ish a little over 5 and now we're tracking about 4.5 so things are starting to stable and slow down here's the differences on the passenger fare shows you the $240,000 the $800,000 on the sales tax because we have been so far in the first 6 months of the year $800,000 we have ads and investments ads and interest coming in a little bit higher than we thought budget wise UCSC has been contributing to our other operating assistance for the $27,000 with the tick buses they've been helping us with that and then on the $172,000 that's the STA money that comes in that we have dedicated to moving over to capital for capital projects but it hits our operating budget first so that money did come and we'll be moving that to capital day to day expenses budget versus actual we're doing pretty good there our actuals are pretty much below what we are budgeted there's the details to that the first three bars the two blues and the one red take those all together and favorable adherences on the labor is due to your vacant positions that we have and extended unpaid leaves honoring that we've had to fill those positions with overtime and that's where the $630,000 comes in we've had lower medical expenses and we thought we're going to have and because of the consistency that we've had in looking into our workers comp cases we've been able to bring those expenses down from what we budgeted last year professional technical fees we have some contracts that we haven't entered into yet but we will be getting into those for the rest of the year so we have a favorable variance right now mobile supply so it's tire and fuel I will tell you it's going to be showing negative next time so they they buy in lots every few months not every month so we're positive right now but it will be going negative at the next month and then the settlement costs that's just a factor out there we have not had settlement costs to what we thought so far this year which is a good thing but that favorable variance could be wiped out at any time questions on the operating side of this Dr. Kaufman thank you on item 14A4 can you give me an idea of because you're saying that we're up a little bit what would it be seasonally at the same time from year to year because I would imagine that there's some fluctuation of expenditures that aren't you know every single month at the same amount maybe some parts of the year there's higher amounts so what would this look like relative year over year of the same period of time revenue is this page on it 14.4 yes I believe so operating revenue so for revenues it depends on the revenue some of the revenues we straight line for 12 months some of the revenues we know when the money is going to come in from certain grants like the FTA we know exactly when that's when those amounts of money are coming in I'm going to say that the money that's coming right now is consistent with what you would see on a year to year basis we haven't had any huge anomalies of money being withheld or money being dumped in sooner than we thought it was going to be put in the variances that you're seeing here are the first two explicitly the ridership is down from what we budgeted that's my explanation of why the revenues are what they are are they slower or higher than they were last year I think it's about the same same same scenario with the sales tax sales tax comes in every month and so the sales tax has come in so far for the first six months this year we've gotten $800,000 more than what we budgeted we budgeted 2.5% we're running about 4% right now good because I just wanted to make sure that some things are our grant money that comes in and it blips in terms of what it looks like on year to date that is either more positive even though it's supposed to be all the money coming in and then it stretch out for the rest of the year I just want to make sure what I'm comparing apples to apples with and that will be removed over to the capital budget next time it comes into our operating money but the board has made a directive decision that we take that money we move it to capital to a certain dollar amount Mr. Hagan Angela on slides 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 12 you have labor overtime my question is how much of this overtime is because we lack more permanent positions and if this is so shouldn't we be working to fill these positions to eliminate this overtime so we focus on bus operators we have multiple positions that are vacant right now but I'll focus on the bus operator position normally in positions you have a vacancy you go out for recruitment takes 30 days you go through the interview process the testing process that's another 30 days the normal position would be open about 90 days with the bus operators we can't do one-offs we have to have a class and so we keep track of when people leave, retire, whatever reason that they're no longer employed and we come up to a number I believe the number right now is 6 or 7 and then we recruit and that goes through the 90 day process and then you have 12 weeks I believe 12 weeks of training of those individuals quite a big span before you're able to put that person into service or hire that person on the overtime has to cover that whole period of time from when that person leaves to when that person is actually on route by themselves including the training process and the recruitment process so you have a pretty big window that we have to cover all of the shifts that this one person is now going to cover with the overtime we do have overtime customer service I have a vacancy three vacancies right now for sure I know we have a lot of vacancies that the HR manager can talk to if you want to know all of the vacancies I need thank you I'm just concerned that we have positions in how long they're getting leaving due overtime I know the board members all know the answer to this but the public watching on TV don't could you tell us what are we doing with this money we have one plus it looks like right now we're doing pretty well we're spending less than we thought we would and we're getting more in than we thought we would but why don't we run out there right now and create six new routes and do all the things people like to do what are we doing with this money so the budget is created on full compliment so if we have 320 positions today we budget 320 positions it would not be fiscally responsible of me to only budget 300 positions because historically we have 10 to 15 that are open on a 12 month period of time so we fully budget for the 320 odd positions during the course of business over that 12 month period of time we have people leave positions are vacated for whatever reasons so that's where some of the savings comes from but we have overtime that eats away at that a little bit additionally we have non-personnel costs fuel parts painting a bus engine replacements things like that if it is an operating expense then we want to budget that are a fleet that is is waning right now we have more repairs that we're anticipating sometimes we don't have all those repairs so what you're seeing right now is um our need to make sure that we're covered just in case and what you're saying is we're being very concerned about spending our money our equipment and our people are hanging in there and doing the jobs that we need done so we're able to save money not spend as much as we anticipated we might have to the million dollars or the almost two million dollars that I'm showing you today six months in that does not mean that we have money to go out and get routes that does mean that we have the ability to take this money and do things give you options of what the board would like us to do because our reserves are not fully funded we do have service that might have to be put out there better than it is today we have positions that have not been funded for a very long time or positions that we've never funded um we've uh there's just all kinds of opportunities that we're going to be coming back to you later and saying here's the anticipated money that we think we're going to have one time shot it's not recurring money here's the things that we think the board should consider spending this money on and that's something that Alex and I will bring forward to you probably in a few months but no it's not something to go out and put a brand new route on the street or some some kind of recurring expense in place because this is a one year deal it's not going to be there ever yeah Dr. Rothwell well there's also the issue of whether they're going to take that gas tax away on the state level so I mean you have to have a reserve just in case something like that happens in terms of the polls right now it looks like that if they gets on the ballot they may in fact be successful I did forget that you're right that that's actually a huge risk that's a huge risk above and beyond everything I just said on the operating side if I could just jump in on Norm's question a little bit too if you if you look at 14A3 look at a number like the overtime being at 633,000 over budget what you want to do is in order to evaluate what that might mean you want to look at two other numbers you want to look at your labor regular favorable and your fringe benefits regular so in a when things are working out nice those two numbers labor regular under budget run favorable and fringe favorable will be at or more running your overtime that's just sort of a little check that you can and if you will when you're talking about vacancies it's obvious if you don't have people here you're under running your fringe benefit so that kind of a balance like you see there well and and on overtime obviously the mechanics and having to send people out when buses break down because of that situation with so many buses that need replacing that's heavily contributing to the overtime as well and something we can anticipate at this point that overtime number is all employees not just luck up okay they are a significant number of that but it is all employees overtime I have overtime but we're adding more when we have the need for new buses Dr. Kaufman yes you had brought up the reserves are not fully funded and from this packet I didn't see anything about the reserves is now a good time to ask the question of what is our goal to make sure that we're meeting the needs of what we're supposed to fully fund for our reserves on reserves and that's something that we can discuss further with you at our meeting we have a three year goal and a five year goal and so I can walk through those details but that was presented to the board they approved it and we're trying to walk down that road and we'll discuss a bit more later thank you on the capital this is the capital budget this is the kind of funding we have we have 20 million dollars in funding of which through the end of December we spent almost a million dollars on to the what we have spent that funding on I want to refer you to page 14B1 this is a new piece of the report that we've put in here and it directly corresponds to this chart that I have in front of you on 14A9 14A9 shows you the buckets that we are spending construction related projects the IT projects, revenue vehicle replacements non-revenue and then we have miscellaneous 14B1 shows you all the details of exactly what is budgeted in those particular buckets how much has been spent in those buckets who's responsible and the kind of funding on the very right side there's something called grant expiration date so that kind of tells you how fast and what kind of money we have to spend I wanted me to go into the detail of that I can otherwise go ahead so additional information unemployment rate is a little lower than it was a year ago at 6.5 versus 7.5 the gas is much higher a year ago it was 2.74 and it was 3.16 the ridership for the total ridership a little bit lower than it was a year ago that's the blue line up there and our local ridership is slightly higher than it was last year Highway 17 and Cambrio they're about the same the last piece is our operating expenses at the end of February we're thinking our expenses are going to be about a million six under budget which is great it's from what I can see here it's about a 62% personnel and 38% non-personnel savings on this side oh wait I'm going to keep going uncontrollable budget risk this is our SB1 slide and the numbers are a little bit changed from what I showed you before it's still a million two a million two and 18 a million eight and 19 for the TDA STA in our operating side so that's that's the risk having that million nine to the good right now we'd actually be close to zero if this happens and then on the capital side those numbers have slightly changed they used to be $137,000 and the state controller office has amended those numbers and brought them down to 600 so it's about a 2.2 million risk right now for this year almost 2.8 next year and from what I'm also reading now any questions any other questions to the board questions from the public any questions you might have move we accept the report what's going on will someone please explain to me what's going on because I thought I heard if the last board meeting that ridership was up ok thank you that's all I have to say any other questions thank you thank you thanks for the question that report was through December my comments last month on ridership went a little farther into time and things are picking up slightly in the ridership world depending on which of the categories of ridership you're talking about local UCSC or highway 17 so it ebbs and flows month to month UCSC is up let's say UCSC is up 10, 15% again depending on the month overall we're flat to 1% loss gain depending on month UCSC is up strongly highway 17 is down about 5% so that leaves the rest of the local service down 1 to 2% it nets out we're hanging in there barely at flat as I told you last month the national trend of down the fact that we have as I included in your note today 50% of our ridership is from a university that is growing in its demand that's helping us fend off the national trend of downward ridership is Cabrillo flat Cabrillo is up I'm gonna miss the percentage 6% I need to check that 6% last year was 270,000 this is projected to be a little over 300,000 so I gotta do the math of that real quick again with the college's month to month is a really tricky it's always nice to reconcile that for you at the end of the school year much like our fiscal year this may not be the right place but you can figure out where to put it I'm just wondering where to get a status report on the UC student fee measure because that's a big part of the budget going forward I don't know if this is the right place it's a financial you can fit almost anything under financial this is Larry Pegler I could give a very brief synopsis we've received the sponsorship from the student union assembly and from the graduate dean which allows us to put the measure on the ballot in June I'm submitting the final paperwork for that by the end of today and then we will once that's on the ballot we'll begin it's under if I could just follow up on that we had a good initial meeting I think and is there anything you can use from us I know it's only the students are voting and there are some students interested in this is there anything you can use from us to support that I'll be back in touch with you I know at the last board meeting I believe there was an agreement from the board to split the funding of some decals that will go on to the windows related buses we see that as a sort of campaign promo for those vehicles but we'll be putting the rest of this together and I'll be in touch with staff about opportunities to support it and board member Rotkin may have some students we'll be on this I'll be in touch with all the usual suspects thank you thank you Mr. Pegler thank you Mr. Pegler for your work on this too any other questions from I have a motion from Mr. Rotkin second all those in favor to accept the financial report I pose unanimously item number 15 is our strategic business plan update this is about good morning chair board members staff and public welcome to director Kaufman Gomez I know the rest of you know who I am I'm Barrow Emerson I'm the manager of planning and development seeing you over time and by the way before I started into this item I feel a bit sheepish about all the good comments I got from the citizens about the transportation justice conference because Eduardo Montesino and I actually tag-teamed that event so I'll share of the credit to Eduardo we presented to the group of well over 100 people for almost an hour so it was a very productive session but thanks Eduardo back on topic real quick verbal update on the strategic business plan in terms of the schedule the strategic business plan exercise we want to start it with a board retreat and for a variety of reasons we think the best time to try to propose that is the late August early September time frame so we'll be checking your calendars it may relate to this discussion of freezing Fridays for committees but we'd like to start that off and you all know what a strategic business plan is we try to paint you a picture of the longer term financial realities maybe a 10 year picture is what is used in most of these and we'll identify the key risk we've discussed things like SB 1 whether the CTC is going to allocate the levels of money this year for the things we need so by then we'll know whether those happened the 62 bus issue is our number one issue out in front of us fair restructuring will be part of the context and the para cruise facility and realities like that so it'll be part of but really what happens in a strategic business plan is we prevent you present you with some alternative financial futures which makes you all consider some policy issues and some priorities and that's what we're going to do and I think we're going to have to wait until after November but if you want to go ahead and make a presentation on that as well yeah I mean you I could probably stop right there you've sort of summarized the issue but I feel out of it but I think we're going to have to wait until after November but if you want to go ahead and make a presentation on that as well yeah I mean you you've sort of summarized the issue but I feel obligated to share some of the details for the wider audience I'm here to ask you to hold an imbalance consideration of this issue until late 2018 at our March 12 finance standing committee we presented this topic they endorsed this position and told us to bring it to you today as you know for the last few months staff has been conducting preliminary analysis of the financial impact of a fair restructure including both new revenues that are possible but also costs that come along with it also under consideration have been opportunities for improvement to the fair technology for payment which can both improve metro operating efficiency and provide additional customer convenience as staff has established some general understanding of the possible revenue and cost impacts these forecasts are relatively inexact because of possible variability in the number of factors including exactly how much ridership would you lose if the fair went up 12 percent we have a good understanding through the industry of that but we have very few discretionary riders in our system so it's a bit of an inexact science we've warned you about the national trend of shrinking ridership that could be a background of this whole issue also the revenue impact of various potential fair discount scenarios which we were proposing could help these costs to many of our non-UCSC and Cabrillo riders various higher discounts on various passes etc that's a pretty inexact science the cost associated with introducing new fair payment technology as I noted previously metro is looking to release a request for proposal soon to learn more accurately how these improvements could cost in both their initial capital outlay but their possible ongoing operating costs is someone going to charge us a penny a transaction five percent a transaction is that more or less if we do more up front so that we're going to get a lot clearer picture before we come back and start this process up again so before we offer you a final restructuring proposal actually we also need to understand more accurately our actual revenue needs over the next few years there are a number of significant financial issues and flux at the moment I won't go into detail but SB 1 is at the heart of it and and remember that we always balance our budget but we sometimes do that at the expense of spending some money we'd like to spend on capital issues we have to balance our operating budget so there's more or less left to chase these things and SB 1 is at the heart of that as Larry just said the outcome of the UCSC election is very important we'll go on to that also Cabrillo college is dealing with enrollment fluctuations at the moment so that affects their ability to either make their current commitments or grow in their commitment to their bus program and lastly the background to all this will be the adoption in June of the next two years annual budget and the five-year plan that goes along with it so in addition to this we'd like to get away from the ordinary thing of every few years oh my goodness we don't have enough money maybe we need to increase fares what we'd like to do is establish a fair policy which includes triggers for fair increases rather than just when all of a sudden we need some money we envision establishing operational performance benchmarks based on the requirements of our various funding providers I've told you before about the requirement to maintain a 20% fair box recovery ratio which marks could be that topic it could be subsidy per passion or once it starts to climb above a percentage we also have to watch CPI growth so in terms of the outreach you know that we just recently completed an initial cycle of informal public meetings to share the concepts of fair increases specific cost savings ideas and we discussed the fair technology with them if the board approves today's staff to advance the previously proposed formal public meetings that were scheduled for April we'll hold all that until such time as we progress with this process again however staff is continuing its research into the revenue needs the fair technology issues we're working with not only the public but our customer service staff and our operators on that the whole issue of fair payment and the realities of what goes down every day out in the field also the creation of a fair policy which could include the triggers which would identify when we need the additional revenue so with the board's approval staff would return her to later date when the variables noted above her resolved to determine the road forward on this issue that completes my presentation thanks thank you any questions from the board any questions from the public so first question with the new if this abeyance is held will there be upcoming outreach meetings like there were initially for the fair is structuring since I'm sure there will be a different outcome or different set of variables being presented to the public by then if there will be one of those another set of those meetings I'll be able to make it to those to provide my two cents and also when it comes to the topic of payments we might want to also look at our current ticket vending machines I've noticed that there are occasions where I go to the metro center downtown and the TVM would not be working and there's no customer service booth because it's after six months so also worth keeping in mind but yeah thank you comments from the board then any other comments from the public I guess a comment to the motion is that makes sense let's not do anything that we're going to have to vote on until we have all of the facts in order director leaf hold thank you chair we had a good discussion at the finance and budget committee about this trying to figure out how to negotiate the work of the staff I think it does make sense to to hold off on this and so I would make the motion to hold this in advance until late 2018 second second by director lin go ahead mr. rockin echoing in a green with what director leaf hold and I know since we all three felt this was wise and so I've seconded that motion but I know there may be discussion so to answer the question from the member of the public we won't be holding I don't think any informal renewal of informally but when we come closer to this no more we'll start to hold those meetings again but in the meantime if you have input that you weren't able to give because you couldn't go to those initial meetings nothing stops you from sending us an email now and have the staff consider your thoughts about the issue have this just delayed the reconsider their consideration all those in favor opposed so ordered unanimously maybe the only motion this year with the word of bay incident not really consideration of issuing formal invitation for bids for roof and window replacement the pacific station Aaron Alvey purchasing manager morning directors so you'll have to forgive me I'm going to almost read the first paragraph of the discussion verbatim but I believe this is a really good summary of the past actions so this item was brought to the board in February at our meeting in Watsonville and after some discussion the item was tabled so that it could go to the capital projects standing committee with the understanding that the committee would present its recommendation for action to the full board here today the issue centers on the requested use of PTM ISCA which is public modernization improvement surface and enhancement account program from the state of California and so the capital project standing committee met on March 15 Alex Clifford our CEO gave a report on the history of these funds how they were parked and allocated and moved throughout a few different projects and local matches for grants throughout the history and this is a fiscal year 15 allocation of these funds so we've been using them for a while so we had a great discussion with the committee and the committee approved the staff's recommended action and referred the item back to the full board for discussion and action today so let me take you through just a couple quick points what this item is is we're requesting to go out to bid to replace the entire roof at Pacific Station it's about 20 years old we've patched it several times it's leaking the ceiling tiles have stains fresh stains every time it rains so this is definitely needs to be taken care of several of the windows in the building also leak quite severely every time it rains right I kept saying we're going back to the board just hold on these windows are so bad they leak when it's not raining well that's how we can solve our water problems well unfortunately they're also leaking into the structure so we have tried to anticipate some costs for unforeseen repairs that are going to be in the framing and such but obviously there's a risk once you open that up that there could be more damage in there so the 350,000 we're asking for has some funding in there but should there be more extensive damage we'll come back to the board and let you know and tell you how much more money we might need to complete the project so another part of this going back to the PTM ISCA is we're currently under discussions with under we're in discussions with the city of Santa Cruz to possibly reconfigure or have some new project with the Pacific Station where it's where it's at or an unknown the city attended the Watsonville meeting and also the sub-committee meeting and I think we had some good discussions with them part of our part of the issue as well is that PTM ISCA is a restricted type of funding you cannot use it for the planning and environmental phases of a project so that's where we're at with that we are in planning and next would be environmental and we know that that's going to be quite an extensive phase of the project at that site it's known to be contaminated so these funds can't be used for that so we are asking that we can please use the funds we believe we're going to use the transit center for at least three to five years no matter what we come up with the city so staff is strongly recommending the approval of this item so we can have these repairs done and have a safe working environment for our staff and for the public to conduct business thank you thank you very much questions from the board sorry I don't mean to be too active to keep this going on any longer you said contaminated what can you elaborate a little bit more about what you meant by that so this was were car dealers repair shops back in the 60s so there's gasoline and oil contaminants and the soil was also a transportation at one point so we purchased the land next to it which was the greyhound property and we had to remediate that property so we took about three feet of soil out and had to cap it and we know those conditions exist on the other part of the property where we're operating the transit center thank you questions from board members questions from the public you know one of the things that I encourage you to do it in favor of but you also need to look at Mr. Clifford has arrived he's done you know painting some carpet and some improvements there but we keep doing peace meals and peace meals we're still going to live there even whatever the conversation sets up with the city we're still living there there needs to be investment in the bathrooms both the public bathrooms you know they're probably the worst bathroom in the county because they get readily used because they're open to the public so it needs to be considered some other items in there too it's a simple question what happened to the reimagined pacific station campaign hosted in I think it was around 2014 but yeah just wanted to see what that happened to that I could speak to it or you want to that's the last question any other questions go ahead I'll just say that that topic is in active discussion right now it's morphed from the earlier discussions but we do have a study in process now that's very much related to that that's a quick summary Mr. Clifford just to tag on to that the reimagining thing that we did where we were out on pacific avenue and talking to people what could be getting public feedback on that that was a part of that group 4 project that we alluded to in a report that you have in your packet today and at the end of that particular stage of this ongoing process determined that group 4 was not going to be a fundable project over a hundred million dollar project that involved a transit center down below and commercial and retail and housing and over 200 municipal parking spaces us was too prohibitive and our share of that being 20 to 30 million was not attainable and so then it moved on to discussions which are ongoing Director Chase yeah well I'll let Dr. Matthews speak first I'll just say that the reconfiguring of the Metro pacific station is part of a much larger package of projects that are kind of converging for downtown in a short horizon shortish horizon and I'd be interested to get your name and contact info because there's a lot of interrelated things that are happening having to do with housing library farmers market et cetera et cetera so it's an exciting time and it's an active process right now so I want to sort of comment on a lot of the comments that have been happening here and so this item is back to us today because part of the capital committee was really looking at different pacific stations pacific but also other capital needs and we met last week and approved this to come back and I think in the larger context what we're looking at is what do we as a board want to do with the pacific station which is why we have these two studies happening that the board supported I believe unanimously and I think that's really the point where the board is going to have to figure out what do we do sort of in response to Eduardo's points about peace I don't think the staff nor the board want to continue to invest little by little by little in trying to keep that building working but we need to be thinking about what the larger investments are for this entire transit district meaning what is the use of that station look like and is it encouraging for ridership and is it a good place that employees feel supported and they have their needs met there as well so there's no question that the repairs need to happen so that people can continue there and be safe and have an environment that is workable for a while but then the larger question is how does this fit into the transit districts needs overall and then how does that fit in with the partnership with the city which is really dependent upon an active and thriving transit system to really support a lot of the housing and other economic development activities we have happening downtown and I know that staff from Metro and the city are meeting and talking about that and working together to find mutually beneficial solutions to that I think another part of the answer this question is how we started this project when it began we believe that the city council believed that the private sector the housing development part of this thing would generate so much money that they would subsidize the transit piece of this and we wouldn't have to spend as much money and we had earmarks in congress and a member of the appropriations committee in sam far so that we thought we'd be able to get additional funding that they could do he'd been getting for us for years well they got rid of earmarks maybe they're bringing them back we'll see but they got rid of earmarks and sam far is no longer and we have a new congress member who's a low seniority and not on the appropriations committee so all the sort of money that was going to rain down on this project went away and now it comes down to something of this scale which of course we would never do so I do appreciate the capital projects committee going into this because one of the issues that hasn't been talked about but should be clear to everybody is we try to protect this PTMI SCA money and hold on to it see if we could use it for this but the reality is for the reasons that we're expressed here that's not really something we can do at this point and it's limited ability to use for a variety of reasons but this is an appropriate way to spend the money for this but I do appreciate the time that committee spent trying to wrestle with these issues and figure out whether this was a reasonable expenditure from this source for this project Director Leopold thank you chair with regard to the question about the bathroom do we expect to be looking at that anytime soon I think the best answer is we keep looking at it we spend a lot of money on those restrooms and then they get trashed again and again and again so there may be a broader question in the future irrespective of what happens with this facility or new facility do we build facilities with restrooms try to keep up we're going to keep on spending spending some money to try to get to some level yes we have to unless we're ready to padlock those doors where we are we have to do it and we'll keep doing it as we have unfortunately it just gets beat up you would think the folks that use those facilities would respect that we've created a public facility for them to utilize and they would treat it nice I'm clueless why somebody would choose to go in there and trash those places director matthews are you in communication with our public works department yes no I'm just agreeing that we have this constant same issue we're going for state of the art we're trying to just FYI maybe that they're somewhat self contained we've looked in anyway our public works department has invested a huge amount of effort in this you may have that conversation one factor in terms of the expected funding way back in the day and reality now that's redevelopment disappeared I've left that piece out redevelopment agency again I want to stress no one is interested in throwing good money after bad and it is kind of galling to spend even this amount of money but given the timeline for any improved facility people have to be able to work so the conclusion was unfortunately self evident director botter I want to thank the board for indulging the capital committee for bringing this back we had some concerns about the dwindling capital fund which I think we're all trying to protect and we're down to 1.9 million and I see a bigger dip here and we all have projects that we want to fund and the money has been spent on good projects back to the building itself I think the important thing that we need to be aware of is even though their estimates are for $350,000 for the roof and the windows given the nature of this building and the reports that were given to me is that this problem has been going on for a long time so we all need to be aware that the cost is for replacing the roof and for the windows and it doesn't include maybe a little anticipation a little Erin but a little of the damage that has occurred over a long period of time with dry rot and other conditions in that building so I just think the board really needs to be aware that in my estimation from contracting business this could go from $350,000 that by the time we finish this with that being said it's still very vital that we do we do need to take care of our building Cynthia being up a good point we don't want to put good money into bad we have this study done we're hoping to get some insight on it I'd like to really think about good potential projects that enhance our delivery but for right now I think the committee was unanimous on that this is a good investment of our money at this time to do these repairs not to bring the bathrooms back up but I'm going to but I was thinking though do we need to make them public so that people can just walk in there freely some places you can go maybe go to the customer service booth and get a coin and be able to enter the restroom we might want to think of something like that for both stations I'd be completely supportive of that in Watsonville I know we do have some of the newer bathrooms I think they need to be redone as well that would probably cut back on a lot of the damage that you're going to be seeing from people just randomly walking into the bathroom using them and then destroying them so hopefully maybe that's a further conversation we can have about the bathrooms because honestly there's no point fixing them if they're just going to continue to go down the same path and then be abused and like you said I have no idea why people just go in there and vandalize so that could be a good kind of like meeting place and I'd love to have that conversation at least for the Watsonville station and hopefully maybe Santa Cruz is on board with that as well and I want to say I do agree with actually maintaining your buildings that we've seen in our city alone with the problems of not maintaining what we own and then they start failing and that costs a lot more than what it is if you can just start preserving and we decided to go in a different direction with our Watsonville station and I think that was just doing a little bit of a fix up just between windows and a roof and I guess you guys have already done a paint job or did you not do a paint job already? We did. I think that all helps because to me aesthetics are really important and it means that you're taking pride when you take care of what you have that's taking pride and pride is important I think that it shows that metro is taking pride in their facilities it takes pride in the city of Santa Cruz when facilities look nice and that's really important I want to say that I encourage this I do know how construction works so it could be 700 by the end I know that you guys don't want to hear that but whatever it takes to make this building look nice and safe and usable that's great If you're having that much water damage do you have any idea whether there is a mold issue because I can't imagine that you have all of this leakage from water and there isn't then a mold problem and to me that's a health issue and that I think also is a liability issue so for us not to take care of that immediately seems to me to be very short-sighted There isn't any evidence that's on the exterior at this point that's definitely a big concern once we open that up it could be there Black mold is almost a sure thing Absolutely and that's again the health of our employees and the public in the building maybe this is getting embarrassingly personal but I want to say as someone who comes off the highway 17 and rides other buses around town and I'm a senior you cannot imagine a transit district that doesn't have public restrooms sorry that's not even on the agenda is a possibility how we're going to maintain and what kind they're going to be but you know there's no personnel around there after six o'clock so you can't use coins or the key to the restroom or anything else they have to be available when you get off the bus I'm sorry speaking for myself and others like me you got to train your bladder better any other comments from the board unfortunately it's not always trainable Director Matthews go ahead and move the recommendation motion by Matthews second by Vator to approve the recommendation all those in favor aye opposed so ordered we are I'm going to pull item number 18 to be discussed probably at our next meeting so we will that completes our regular agenda we will recess to closed session we have one item to discuss is there anything reportable there won't be any reportable action will not be anything reportable okay so we'll be going back into this room here so we will adjourn then now to our next meeting Friday April 27th at 9am at the Metro offices at 110 Vernon Street thank you and have a nice day