 Hello, everybody. Start. Okay. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District Board of Directors regular meeting for June 26, 2020. Can we begin with a roll call, please? Put the sound on my TV. Remember to unmute yourself to respond to the real roll call. Gina's muted. Okay, how's that? That's better. That's better. Sorry. Director Valtuaz. Here. Director Kaufman Gomez. Dr. Gonzalez. Again. Dr. Leopold. Here. Dr. Lind. Dr. Matthews. Here. Dr. McPherson. Here. Dr. Myers. Dr. Myers must have stepped away. Director Pegler. Here. Director Rothwell. Here. Director Rotkin. Here. Exefficio Director Henderson. Here. Exefficio Director Northcott. We have quorum. Thank you. First of all, I want to appreciate everybody being on the call this morning, both the members of the board and the public and the staff. And I want to appreciate that it's difficult to have these meetings in this format. And so I appreciate everybody's patience with us as we try to make sure that everybody has their opportunity to speak at the appropriate time. And I appreciate the extra effort you're putting into making this work in this sort of form, this digital format. Today's meeting is being broadcast by Community Television of Santa Cruz County. Lynn Dunton is working for us in the studio and there may be another person from the Community Television but I'm not sure at this point. Ian Baer. Ian Baer is also here. Appreciate his work for us this morning. Members of the board of directors have comments on issues that are not about transit that are not on today's agenda. Excuse me, Chair Rotkin, I'd like to announce a staff that's online. Please do that. We have Alex Slipper, Julie Sherman, Angela Aitken, Christina, I'm not gonna try to pronounce the last name. Margo Ross, John Ergo, Rufus Branson, Veronica Elsie-McChair. And we have Sarah. No, Sarah, okay. Thank you. And Donna Miles, if you're hearing me at some point, when we did roll call, you didn't respond but I think you're here because you're at least your computer's online. I am here, Mike. And I had gotten an email right next to, because it was the RTC meeting. I kept clicking, going, why isn't it open? Then I realized I clicked on the wrong email. Too many Zoom meetings. That's right. That's Donna Lynde. Do we have Donna Myers? Donna Myers also didn't hear her respond but we'll assume that she at some point she'll speak up. This is an opportunity now for a labor organizations to speak to us on any item that's not on this morning's agenda. It will try and, we'll take long pauses here to make sure that we give people a chance to get on if there's confusion about how they're locked in. Are there, is there anyone from the labor organizations like to speak to us on item not on this morning's agenda? And Mike, I might remind you that we had some public comments received that have been posted to the website and the directors have them. Yes, I will note that. Everybody should have received those by email. We received, I believe there are three of them. These were comments about opening up for more passengers on the buses. Alex Clifford will address that issue during his CEO's presentation, I believe, this morning. Mike, there is a comment in the chat feature from John Bartholomew saying, when is the lobby at the Metro Center is going to open up? Oh, that's Alex to answer that right now instead of going through some difficult protocol. Sure, sure. The best answer I can give you is to be determined. We're still playing it by ear, trying to keep the throughput at that facility as low as possible and dedicated to the essential travel. Mike, you do have two hands up, James Sandoval and Peg Daniels Fletchner. Let's start with James Sandoval. James. Good morning, board. Can you hear me? We can, James, go ahead. Okay, so James Sandoval here, general chairperson of smart local 0023. I represent the fixed route operators, parachutes operators and lift line. We have a few problems coming up. Santa Cruz Metro management is imposing changes to our work environment. We know we'll jeopardize our safety as well as our passengers. Management has put forth requirements that would increase the ridership levels on our buses to 50% seated capacity by July 1st. And they're also gonna revert back to counting occurrences against bus operators, which means imposing discipline on us for calling and sick for whatever reason. We're currently following the county orders by limiting our current ridership to around eight people on our buses to maintain the social distancing requirements. Increasing ridership to 50% will increase the passenger capacity to about 20 people per bus to accommodate these 20 individuals. Metro management will remove the fires that close off every other seat and will expect passengers to self-regulate the social distancing requirements on our buses and somehow expects them to maintain it. Eight passengers are barely able to maintain social distancing as it is. We find that Metro management requirements to be ill timed and extremely problematic in regards to the occurrences for discipline. Schools are still shut down and parents are still having trouble finding babysitters to care for their children during this time. Yes, we have COVID related leaves, but we have operators here that have exhausted those leaves already and they're not gonna be available to them anymore. A driver that feels sick will come to work because they don't wanna get in trouble for calling and sick. All it takes is one driver to bring the virus here because we share and change buses every day. Another problem is higher risk operators will be forced to return to work because they can't be approved for some type of leave. How it is now, they are able to stay home and use their hard earned accruals without having to fear discipline or losing their job. Operators have responsibly saved their accruals and have used them responsibly during this coronavirus pandemic. To this day, we have not had one post-operator test positive for COVID-19. And this is only possible by Metro being flexible with our ability to take time off whenever we feel slightly sick or cannot come into work for whatever reason. And in regards to the ridership capacity limits on our buses, it will be physically impossible for our passengers or operators to maintain social distancing guidelines on our buses with 20 riders. If Metro puts this requirement in place, it will be violating the social distancing county's orders which have been extended through July 6th. Metro will also be aiding and abetting passengers violating the order as well because it would be impossible for them to maintain social distancing on our buses. We have to remember that most of our passengers do not have other means for transportation and they will be forced to violate the county orders too. Violating the county orders can actually result in fines imprisonment and our state and federal funding could be affected. Also, I checked in with our neighboring transit agencies VTA Valley Transportation Authority and Monterey Salinas Transit MST. They have strict ridership capacity limits and they are keeping them until the state announces that we no longer need social distancing. VTA has only allowed six people per bus and MST is allowing about eight to 10. Why are we the only ones proposing to increase ridership? We should be the leading example of what it means for safe transportation during this pandemic. And having passengers self-regulate social distancing on our buses can lead to physical or verbal altercations between passengers or passengers against bus operators which both can be deadly during this pandemic. Self-regulating social distancing will lead to anxious passengers because they can't escape other passengers violating the social distancing requirements within our bus. And also metro management proposed to put barriers in between each seat which we like, we saw the prototype but it won't be done for a few more months. Why are we in such a rush to increase ridership when we have so much backup service now? We are currently fully staffed and have the resources to provide the necessary service safely without leaving passengers behind. There's a lot more backup service being provided as of yesterday which means we can keep our current safe capacity limits and continue to follow social distancing requirements. And the number of confirmed cases in California are going up dramatically. There was a record number of 7,000 plus in one day in California and we just had another COVID related death here in Santa Cruz County. I also wanna remind you that we did lose a former driver here to COVID-19 recently. In the city of New York, close to 100 operators have died because they contracted the virus at work and bus operator death across the nation are skyrocketing. Our position is we have the manpower and resources to maintain the necessary service in a safe way without leaving people behind. What we have in place is working because not one passenger or operator has gotten the virus yet and it doesn't make sense to take step backwards when we have been doing so well and a number of cases are going up dramatically. Governor Newsom has implied that our state might even shut back down because the virus is getting out of control. We're not Metro management to retract the proposal of increasing the ridership capacity because it will put the drivers in our community's safety and jeopardy. The last time I checked, Metro management doesn't ride our buses. So they have no idea how it is out there. Before Metro management proposes to modify bus ridership capacity, I would hope the board of directors would encourage them to start riding the buses so they really know how it is out there. We do not agree with the timing and hazardous conditions being forced on us with increasing the ridership and preventing our ability to take time off without fearing of losing our job. If you are as board of directors and Metro management won't even have meetings in person at 50% seated capacity, then why are the passengers and bus operators expected to? We're asking for the board to step up today because these requirements are set to take place July 1st and Metro management is already removing the fires and caution tape within our buses which regulate the social distancing. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, James. We appreciate your speaking out this morning. Other members of the labor organizations would like to comment this morning. I believe we have one more. Yeah, Mike, you have three other hands up. Okay, we're gonna recognize you before we may have a response to some of these comments. I'm not sure we will, but let's hear from everybody first. Yeah, I don't know if these are labor organizations. Peg Daniels, Fletchner, I believe as a bus operator has hand up. Yes, we have a letter from her as well. So Peg, let's recognize her if we can do that. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, we do, Peg, go ahead. Thank you. Yes, my name is Peg Fletchner. I've been a bus operator for the Metro for 14 years, will be 14 in December. The first thing I like to do is I wanna thank you and the management in our union for all the safety protocols you have in place right now. The screen, shower barrier screen that we use, the cleaning that we have done after every run, and the six foot distancing with the eight passengers on our 40 foot buses, that's all great. And I wanna thank you guys for that. I also want to apologize for my email that if it came across as confrontational and in your face, I apologize. Emotions are running high now and I'm not immune to any of that. I know you know that we lost one of our former Metro drivers to the Mingotovar and I think I'm still in shock and sadness about that. I also know his wife Serena who was also a former Metro bus driver and I ran into her the other day. Just last week at the grocery store and we were doing our social distancing and our masking and she got to talking about what happened and on a Thursday, Domingo went in the hospital and that was the last time she saw him. And she didn't know that was gonna be the last time and you know that we both started crying and I wanted to give her a hug and obviously I couldn't. And so I'm still very sad about that. I'm also sad that a dear friend of mine in Ohio where I'm from contracted COVID-19 was on a ventilator for six weeks. She has recovered but it's a long haul for her so emotions are running high. And again, I apologize if my tone in my email was confrontational and in your face and I did not need to be rude. But I will not apologize for the content as far as I am, I have great concern about this implementing of increasing passenger capacity. I think it's highly irresponsible and extremely dangerous. You're putting bus driver or fellow bus drivers and the public in increased danger and increased risk. And COVID is not going away. If nothing else, it's made its statement very clear yesterday that it's here. And to put us in that more risk for our passengers and the bus drivers is just at this time is just it's not warranted. We are like James said, we have backup buses that are accommodating all the riders in a safe manner. And that seems to be working. I don't see the rush on trying to increase capacity at this time. The majority of the people that ride our bus are the elderly and they're at high risk already to be the contract this virus and to increase the capacity and put them in more proximity with other people. It's just putting them more at risk. And as a bus driver, I have real palms about continuing with a bus that's that full. And I think it's a safety hazard and I think it's a health hazard. So that's where I stand on this. I appreciate your time. And like I say, I appreciate everything you've all done so far in keeping us safe and its work so far. And I would hope that we would keep that up. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. And your tone this morning with us was perfect. Thank you. The comments are taken. I do want to point out to any members of the public that are listening that the bus driver, the former Metro bus driver to which Peg was referring was not actually working for the district. This was not a person driving one of our buses when he died. It's no less sad for that, but it was actually driving at UCSC. And it's not even clear that it had related to the driving work at UCSC on their transportation system. It's very sad the person passed away, but just so the public understands, this was not somebody actively driving one of our buses. Are there other members of the labor organizations that want to speak to us this morning? Mike, you still have three people with their hands up, but I think one, Mr. Todd Pinsky, I believe is a bus operator. And then there are two that I do not know if they are drivers or a public at large. Let's start with the one you know is a bus driver and ask for his comments. Todd Pinsky. Good morning, Todd. Hi, are you able to hear me? Yes, we are. Thank you, Todd. Hi, I submitted my comment via email, which I would like to read. I just wanted to ask whether that email was going to be read anyway. I don't want to be redundant, but if it's not going to be read, I would like to do that. We received it in writing and members of the board, I think typically read all the things they're sent, but it's your choice. If you'd like to read it, you have that option this morning. Thank you. I would like to do that. Go ahead. Metro holds public safety as a highest priority, and now the agency finds itself in the spotlight called upon to provide crucial support to our heavily burdened health services agency as they work to coordinate effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is accepted as fact that widespread, unified public cooperation can slow infection rates and buy time for the development of new solutions. And thus, Metro to me has two choices, either support a public health effort or undermine it. This is a really enormous opportunity to step up as community leaders and to save some lives. Now, although I've not had the opportunity to read the proposals that James mentioned, it seems clear they're not consistent with guidelines and mandates from CDC, the state and county public health. Increasing the capacity would make it difficult or impossible to enforce distancing and mask guidelines. Half capacity means about 20 passengers. And currently when I transport eight in the same bus, I frequently need to engage with specific passengers to remind them to put their mask back on or to move away from another passenger. And I should also point out that means pulling the bus over in a safe location, setting the break so that I can actually turn around and speak to a passenger. This of course means that I have to be more diligent watching the passengers in my internal mirror while I'm driving, which is not optimal. Now, furthermore, proposed changes to employee sick leave policy, as James mentioned, would discourage drivers from staying home, even if experiencing symptoms or having knowledge of exposure. Public transit is widely recognized and known as a primary vector of infection. And these proposals would dramatically increase the risk of infection among employees and their families in the community at large. And would basically create a feedback loop for increased exposure from the public and from coworkers and then exposed drivers, then not exerting due diligence and staying away from work for fear of discipline. So the scientific community and medical professionals have been loud and clear. Face coverings and social distancing are currently the best we can do. But in order to be effective, widespread compliance must be modeled and normalized and upheld. And I feel that Metro is obligated to everything in our power to support these efforts, but that'll require big changes. And first of all, Metro must commit to a total internal compliance with guidelines and legal orders. We have flyers put up for company regs and county health orders copiously all over our properties and actually individually put in our mailboxes. And so far that's not been entirely effective. The April 24th order of the health officer, which clearly applies to all the Metro properties and vehicles and workplaces in no way suggests that any of these orders are optional or open to interpretation. And in fact, the order bluntly states that violation of or failure to comply with this order is a misdemeanor punishable by fine imprisonment, et cetera with citations. There's really no substitute for leadership by example, top level management, administrators, supervisors must consistently model appropriate and legally ordered behavior in order to foster a culture of cooperation within Metro. And only then can we enforce compliance with guidelines and orders in a meaningful way. I could agree with or would have no problem with a zero tolerance policy or health order violations, but I feel that would be meaningless without also some sort of 100% encouragement approach to community safety and mutual respect. Once we take full responsibility for our own organization, we can then become a helpful model for the community and a trusted partner with other agencies and with other concerned professionals. I respectfully ask the board to consider these remarks and to reject the proposed changes as a first step toward promoting and rewarding responsible leadership at Metro. I'd like to thank the board and the Metro management and staff for allowing me to join this meeting and for all of the safety precautions that have been taken thus far. Thank you very much. Thank you, Todd. Thanks for your comments. This is an example of the patience that people need to have under these conditions. We have two other speakers, I believe are not members of labor organizations. Our next item on our agenda is going to be comments from the public. I am gonna ask Alex Clifford, our CEO, to respond to the comments in an app, but I'm gonna wait till after we hear from the public. They may be perhaps commenting on the same issue. So let's take all of our public comments and then rather than waiting for his CEO's report, I'm gonna ask Alex to pull out the issue of the any changes that are now being proposed and carried out in that area. So let us now move on to the other oral communications from the other. I'm sorry, you do have one more union representative. Joan has raised her hand. Okay, Joan, go ahead, Joan. Thank you. Hi, thank you. Just trying to figure out how to unmute myself and I think I got it. Can you hear me? Yeah, we hear you fine. Go ahead, Joan. Okay, great. Thank you. So just wanted to thank Metro staff, Metro and all the facilities people that have done a really great job in making adjustments to our office space. SEIU members have various mixed feelings about coming back right now. The plan is to gradually come back over the next month, over the month of July and for everybody to be back in the office together in August. So like I said, some people have a much higher level of concern about that than others. I think things are working out actually quite well right now with the ability to work from home. We are, SEIU is gonna do a survey monkey. We are gathering input from people to just get more of a general sense of how the entire SEA membership is feeling and we'll report back to Alex Clifford in one of our weekly COVID meetings with him. But I do also want to say that as a union, we do support our bus drivers. I know that the risks to them are at a much higher level than the risks to us. So that's just it. I wanted to say that we definitely support them and in their concerns. Thank you. Thanks for your comments, Joan. Let's now go to open public communication from others that still would like to speak to us. I'm not seeing the hand, so if someone can let me know who else. Mike, you have a hand up. It is Elise Kespi. Go ahead, Elise. Can you not hear me? Yes, we can, Elise. Go ahead. Okay, great. Thank you. Maybe a little louder, closer to the microphone. Can you hear me now? Much better. Thank you. Go ahead. Okay, I'm like kissing the screen, but that's okay. Good morning, everyone. I am here as a member of the public. Back in 2016, I founded a grassroots group called the Bus Riders Association and I am a regular bus rider. I have been very, very glad to see the measures that the bus company, the Metro, is taking to protect the public and the drivers. Thank you so much for that. I've been really pleased that you care so much about the drivers and the public to do what you've been doing. I'm calling in today because specifically, I am calling to support Jane Sandoval as general chairperson of the smart local workers of the Metro, the drivers and other workers. James has told me that he believes from everything that he knows and that the union knows that we have the resources to maintain the standards we're currently holding. That is the physical distancing on the buses that we're doing currently and that we can increase the number of buses on the road is what I believe I heard James say to me in a conversation on the phone. In other words, that we can increase the number of buses that are out there servicing riders and we can get the bus drivers back into regular schedules, at least more of them, maybe not a, I'm not sure how many more and that we can maintain the physical distancing that has been, I think, so successful in protecting our health and the health of the drivers. So I just want to ask that the Metro Board please do everything that you can to respect our need for the increased service and yet at the same time to maintain the physical distancing in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Thank you for hearing that. And I also just want to add that our bus system is protected under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is considered an absolutely essential service in times of national emergency, which I believe this is. That is the pandemic is a national emergency. And as such, we need as many buses as possible. Real quick, I just want to add a flyer appeared on the buses recently. And this is the last thing I have to say. So I'll be hopefully less than a minute. It's a notice attention Metro riders. The filing routes are no longer being serviced until further notice. And then there's a list of the buses that are going to be cut or not serviced. And one of them is the route for Harvey West to Emeline. The people who go access these services out at Emeline and the Coral Street campus and Harvey West area are usually people who have need for assistance with mobility. They may be in wheelchairs, they may not be. These are people who are in need of going to the social services buildings out there at Emeline for medical care and to make their social services appointment, why we would ever cut such an essential public service. And also, for example, the 91X, which is the only bus that doesn't stop all along the route to Watsonville, or from Watsonville to Santa Cruz, for people who don't own a car or can't afford a car or for whatever reason don't have cars, can't drive cars, the 91X is an essential bus too. I just have to say this because what I'm mostly concerned about here, there is somewhat of a history of the management trying to cut the drivers and cut our routes, which is why I formed that grassroots group back in 2016. We were able to prevent cuts to about 30% of the routes. So what I'm saying is I'm concerned that this is also a way to shrink our labor force. That is the Metro workers to cut them out. And as an activist who's one of my main focus is civil rights and democracy, I'm just concerned that this might be being used as an abuse of power instead of doing everything possible to keep as many of our buses going as possible and to keep our drivers employed and yet maintain social distancing. That there might be, I'm not saying that any one of you in particular, so I feel a little queasy actually saying this, but I do think there's been a pattern which was established in early in Mr. Clifford's taking over the management to see our buses cut and to see the attack on the drivers union. So please, let's get more buses on the road. Let's not just suddenly cut out essential service buses like that flyer that I'm holding in my hand talked about. And let's protect our drivers and our drivers union and our public health. So please do not increase the capacity on the buses to 50%, but do increase the number of buses out on the road that are being scheduled and let us maintain the safe social distancing. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Is there another member of the public? Mike, you have Bonnie Moore. Bonnie Moore, go ahead. Good morning, Bonnie. You have to unmute yourself, Bonnie. Yeah, I did. I'll hear you now, go ahead. All right, thanks, sorry. I just doing multiple tasks right now and I never know whether I should pop in as labor or under public. I decided to come in under public. Right now in Santa Cruz County, as everybody is aware, the numbers are spiking and we've opened up our beaches, which to me is gonna be, you know, it just shows another hazard because if we compare us to Florida, as far as the beach community goes, they're out of control right now and have had the highest spike anywhere else in the country. Increasing the number of passengers on a single bus puts everybody in jeopardy here and there is no reason for it. We can't control the beaches, they're coming in. You know, we never put up a toll booth on Highway 17, which we could have maybe controlled something but we've got people that are coming over, they're gonna be going to the beaches and the beaches are gonna be packed. That's gonna create an additional risk for this virus to continue. And then we have on top of that, folks increasing the number of passengers on the buses. That's not a good recipe here for the outcome in our community. And I think we have an obligation to protect our county and the community. So please, please, I beg that you do not increase the number of passengers on each bus. It isn't the proper time to do that. We can do that later when we go into the fall. There is no reason why we should be increasing the numbers on the buses. It's just wrong. And the public and the community understand that. People that know that they may have to wait for another bus, they understand that. They may not be as happy about it, but they do understand it. And for us to increase the numbers on the buses, you're putting our drivers in a very serious jeopardy situation. You're putting passengers in a jeopardy situation and the liability and the responsibility for protecting both the public and your employees lies with you. So please, please, not at this time. It's bad timing. Thank you. And it's nice seeing everybody. And I hope you all stay healthy. Thank you, Bonnie. Are there any other members of the public who want to speak on items not on this morning's agenda? Mike, there's someone who only identifies by email last numbers, letters in the email 63SS. Okay, if that person can understand what their numbers are, please share your comments. There you go. Can you guys hear me? No, not very well, a little closer to the mic. We do hear your voice, but it's not very loud. Yeah, sorry. How about now? That's better, thank you. Okay, name's Johnny Lopez. I'm one of your operators. Just got on here. Just wanted to comment on a few things. First off, COVID-19, as we all know, it's no joke. And the safety and comfortability to your drivers, a passenger load that we constantly on a daily basis have to police and babysit on a daily. The unit has helped with onboard and is highly appreciated. And I like to say there are heroes as us operators. They help us out a lot at this time. In regards to the six feet policy, the way I see it, I think it's more like a three feet policy because the seats from seat to seat, I kind of see it more as a three feet versus a six feet. Let's get this straight, everybody. This is a life-threatening situation. COVID-19 doesn't come in waves of one, two, three so-called experts and people talk about. It's a giant tsunami. And we have no cure for it right now. What I would like to see is, I would like for everybody to wait out 2020. Wait till the end of the year, see what happens. Come into 2021. Right now our system what we got going on right now, the A passenger load along with the backups and the resources we got right now seem to be working extremely well. And as a bus driver, it keeps me very comfortable and keeps me focused. So the 50% increase would be a terrible idea for us drivers. Not to mention we'd be stressed out. And again, we're right behind the wheel and this pandemic thing is, yeah, and in regards also to the occurrences, I think that should be left alone. We shouldn't be penalized for that. In some cases, we need to take a day off to be aware of our families and our kids who are somewhat trapped at home, going crazy, going bonkers, wanting to go back to school strangely. And if I were to say anything again, I would wait till 2020 is over. Let this year just blow over. Let's not rush into things. People have already made the mistake of jumping into opening businesses and letting their guard down. Let's not let our guard down. Let's protect our drivers. Let's protect all friends, our unions, everybody, including yourselves. All it takes is one driver to get it and then we should have what. So that's all I wanted to say. I am a little frustrated with the 50% increase situation and I am a little frustrated as far as the occurrences. I think everything should be left in place. And I just wanna say also, I thank you guys for all the safety and the disinfecting crew, the B units on board. And let's not forget, life-threatening situation, that's the key one. And when it comes down to a hazard, it's a hazard. So that's all I wanna say and thank you guys and now it's time to get back to work. Thank you, Mr. Lopez. Is there anyone else? Yeah, Mr. Chair, you have Ezekiel. Ezekiel, please share your thoughts. We're not hearing you yet. Are you unmuted? Ezekiel shows is unmuted, but we don't hear. Ezekiel, are you there? We can't help, it's gotta be something that Ezekiel's hand and maybe his microphone is not turned up, hard to say. I'm not hearing anything. Ezekiel, let me give you one last chance here. Are you available? All right, we are gonna move on at this point. And Mr. Chair, if I can interject, if Ezekiel would like to send a message through the chat, we can of course read that if you'd like. Yes, I'll assume that he heard you. So let me just say, during the conditions of this emergency, management is making decisions that needs to make decisions and has a legal right to make decisions that typically might come before a board for a couple of weeks or months of discussion, big policy changes, effects of how the system's operating and so forth. But during this crisis, they have to make decisions where we don't have a chance for the board to meet before. They have reported all these things to us and our policy has been that we, the meeting, when they make these kinds of decisions, we hear about them at a meeting following what they've been doing, so the board's kept aware of what's happening. But I wanna ask Alex Clifford, I know he was planning to speak on these matters during his CEO's report, but let me ask him to respond to the two issues that James raised at the beginning and that others have spoken to, both about the issue of occurrences and the question of increasing the capacity on buses. Mike, before we have Alex speak, can you hear me? I do, James. Okay, I have easy on the phone because he had technical difficulties. He still wants to speak. Okay, let's hear that. All right, go ahead, Izzy. Okay, real quick, thanks for taking my comment here. I've been a bus operator for almost 15 years and remember that we made 15 years anniversary and I just want to reiterate what the other bus drivers and the lady from the public commented, it's in regards to safety. Since I've been working here, safety has always been emphasized at Metro. And I think, as James mentioned earlier, we are taking a step backwards by allowing more people on the bus, so safety is being set aside. I just want to say, please reconsider, allowing more people on board. We do have more men power as far as doing backups for routes. Yesterday was the first day that we had a lot more operators available to do backups. And from my point of view, from my radio, it wasn't hectic and it appeared like most of the routes, if not every single route got covered and with very minimal issues, if any. Thanks again, thanks to the union and everyone. And again, I will ask the board to reconsider and put safety first, as they've always done and emphasized to us and to all the employees. Thanks. Thank you for your comments. Thanks James for patching them through. Back to Alex now. Yes, Mr. Chair, your choice, Elise Caspi, wishes to speak again, your choice whether you wish to do that or not. Well, I think we only take one comment from members of the public, thank you. Sorry Elise. Okay, you can certainly send us a written commentary that we'll be sharing with all the board members. Mr. Chair, thank you so much. Let me just point out at the onset that this, I had not planned to speak on this. As we have done in the past when I use that emergency executive authority, I report to you at your next board meeting that would have actually been in August because this item came about or this decision came about following the posting of the agenda. But I'm happy to speak on it and answer any of the board member questions. I do wanna say at the onset that I think it is hopefully safe to assume that everybody involves, understands, and believes that my management team and myself have been focused on safety and the protection of our bus operators and our public, our writing public since the onset of the COVID crisis. And actually, as I discussed with the board previously, we started preparing for the coming of the first case over a month before the first case actually hit this area. We have an incredible management team and we were able to draw from experience with prior crisis, although this is unmatched, but we were able to draw from prior crisis to begin putting structure in place and protective measures in place. And then soon after the first case hit, we went to an extraordinary measure for our bus operators and created an A and a B schedule, which allowed bus operators to reduce the level of exposure while we got through the initial onset of this crisis and tried to understand what it is. Because there is no book on this, so we're all learning as we go. And what we have done here at this agency is to not speculate about things. We have said that we'll be guided by the professionals, the people that are in this business, this profession. So we've taken our guidance from the CDC, from the EPA, from the California Health Agency, from the County Health Agency and numerous other resources, expert resources since the beginning of this crisis. And one of the things we wanted to do in those initial days while we sorted this out and those initial days ended up being almost three and a half months, we put our bus operators on an A and B schedule where they worked two weeks and then they had two weeks off with district pay. So in effect, an operator, in a two week period, what the net effect of that is, if you work 80 hours, if you work 40 hours, you get paid for 80 hours. We thought that was an extraordinary thing to do to help protect our bus operators. There are not very many transit agencies out there that have done anything even closely approaching that, but we did that here. And it sends a message about how important we think it is and have thought it to be since the beginning of this crisis to protect our bus operators. We have done a number of other things along the journey. Again, this is a bit of a journey. We're learning as we go and we keep implementing changes, safety measures as we can and we identify things that work here, for example, we hired cleaners to be stationed at all of our different bus terminals so that every time a bus comes through that terminal, they jump on board with the disinfectant and they hit all of the high touch surfaces to help protect our customers and our bus operators. We purchased a fogging machine and ramped up our cleaning and disinfecting of our buses every night to ensure that those buses go out every morning as disinfected as they possibly can. We've been investigating, I think as James alluded to, the possible installation of sneeze barriers within the bus. There's several different concepts out there. We're looking at a measure that would be short-term, quick thing to implement and then more permanent measures built into the bus because it's likely that the sneeze barrier, which in effect is a plexiglass barrier, will likely be with us even after COVID has gone away. For the bus operators, we identified when the CDC said, hey, airborne droplets, aerosolized droplets can be a problem. We started to work right away in-house to manufacture the clear curtain and install that on all of the buses so that we could protect our bus operators from droplets in the air. And the bus operators are able to deploy that as they feel a need to do so, particularly as they pull up to a bus stop and then push it back when they pull away from that bus stop. So we started to work right away from that bus stop. So that has been accomplished and we did not propose to increase capacity at all until that was accomplished because it was an important change. We do mandate that our bus operators wear a face covering and as soon as the county said that across this county, including on bus transit, people must wear face coverings. We told our bus operators, you're the captain of your ship. If somebody tries to board who does not have face covering, you can refuse that ride and you should refuse that ride. So that's been accomplished and I think working fairly well. So a number of measures, there's a lot of other even smaller measures that we've taken, including things like following the guidance about airflow and our management team have talked to the bus operators about what they need to do in the morning and the way of opening some windows and the emergency hatch to create the proper airflow and air exchange within that bus. So again, important things to help the operators be safe and all of those things we've done over the last three and a half months and that brings us to where we're at now. So we've come through the immediate part of the curve of the crisis and what I would describe as sort of our learning curve, learning what we need to know, going through extra measures to go up and beyond what may be the call of duty to try to protect our bus operators and the riding public until we could learn more about the way that we should provide the service. Keep in mind since the beginning we have been identified as an essential service, essential critical infrastructure on the federal list. That is, we are obligated to provide a service to help people meet their essential travel needs. And we have taken that to heart as have our bus operators and we have performed that service day in and day out. As you know, we took service way down when ridership dropped substantially, we took it down to a weekend level and in some cases even less than weekend level. We're gonna, with the summer bid that started yesterday we're starting to bring back some of that service including service into the evenings. We're beginning to put back some service. Keep in mind one of the delicate balances here as we approach this in a really thoughtful fashion, one of the delicate balances here is trying to make sure that we always keep our bus operators safe while at the same time trying to balance the need to try to not only address the current ridership which has been spoken about but this issue really goes beyond that to trying to put some service out there and some more capacity to begin attracting people back to the service. If we're not careful, we will be out of business simply because we will not have customers. We cannot assume and we should not assume that when we drop to 95% of our riderships, consistently we dropped 95% of our ridership over the last several months. We cannot and should not assume that whenever we give them the green light and we say, okay buses are fully at full capacity and with standees we can carry 60 people again. We cannot assume that they'll all come running back to us. And if we don't start taking some measures to attract some percentage of those folks back to our service, we will be doomed because we will have no ridership. We cannot sustain the system on 5% of our pre-COVID level ridership. So again, as I talked about, we took a very thoughtful approach. We've come through three and a half months of all of these extraordinary safety measures but it was now a time to begin to look at putting some capacity back. As I talked with the board, provided the board some details about pass-ups. The pass-ups are extraordinary and they're a sign of problems that need to be fixed. The most recent closed-out week in June, in one week we had 343 pass-ups because of capacity. If you contrast that to the first week in which we implemented back in April, April 1st through 7th in which we implemented the capacity limitations, we only had 37 pass-ups. And then I provided details about, April was 325 pass-ups which is a little bit overstated actually because there's little- Let me interrupt just to say the members of the board should have received an email with this information, I believe. That's correct, yes. I am highlighting it for the- No, I appreciate you sharing it. The public needs to hear it as well but I just want to make clear that we all have, if you want to look at more detail on this, all the board members have been sent an email with this information as well. Yes. Thank you. So April was 325, probably less pass-ups actually due to capacity but then in May we started getting more granular in our data and the number was substantially up to 759. And then just in June alone, we have 815 pass-ups through June 21st and still nine more days in the month of pass-ups. So the pass-ups are going up. One of the things that concerns me about pass-ups is at some point, if we don't take action, at some point that will actually begin to drop off and that would not be a good sign because that would mean that our customers just got to the point where they were so frustrated with us and our inability to provide them a seat that they went away and they found some other way to do what they need to do. And we should not be presumptuous and try to assume that they will just come flocking back to us later. We need to work hard to try to attract them. And again, it's a delicate balance. We're not, on July 1st, we are not opening up buses to full capacity. There are many, many examples across the United States in which transit agencies never instituted any capacity limits and simply said, customer beware, whatever you choose. If you think the bus is too crowded, don't write it. But if you wanna write it, come on aboard, we'll fill every seat, we'll have standing loads. There are examples after examples of that across the nation. As a matter of fact, I sent the board members a quick survey that I did yesterday in which I was able to actually get over 30 transit agencies to respond very quickly. And what that showed is that over a third of the agencies that responded currently or within a matter of days will have their capacities at a higher number than we're going to on July 1. Another third of those, about another third of those what we currently have pre-July 1, and in some cases a little bit less, with a caveat that several of those are actually up in Northern California and sort of moving in unison and studying what their next move is going to be, they're gonna launch that any day now. And the word on the street is that they are proposing to go to the so-called European standard, which is one meter or roughly three feet. And you may or may not be aware that the World Health Organization has long suggested contrary to what we do in the United States with the six foot, the World Health Organization has suggested three foot as the social distancing that is appropriate. So I know that the Bay areas are looking at that and we expect any day now for them to announce where they're gonna go next on that. Before we got to this point where I announced that we're putting some capacity back, and by the way I should clarify it was, it was said erroneously several times that we were talking about going to 20 persons. That is actually not correct. Now on a 35 foot bus, July 1st would be 10 people limit, up from five to 10. And on a 40 foot bus, it would be up from the current eight to 15, 15, 15. That because what we do is we calculate the limits of that bus, that's the seated capacity. We remove the seats that are in the procurement area from the count, and then we base it on 50% of the leftovers. So that leaves you a number less than what was stated by several of the speakers. There was also a mention that we're, or an allegation that we're violating all kinds of things, including county health order. And I just wanna say again, we went through a very thoughtful process before we, as management team came to the conclusion that this was the right thing to do and the right timing. We reviewed all CDC and state health guidance. And both the CDC and the state produced information that is specifically transit oriented, transit operator protection oriented. We reviewed all of that to ensure that we have been and continue to be, and would continue to be post-July 1 in compliance with all of those orders and guidance. Keep in mind, one of those guidances is that we should ensure six foot of social distancing for our bus operators. That in fact is the case. As we've stated, we are keeping the seats in the procurement area locked in the upright position. And we are telling the bus operators to strictly enforce that no one can stand in that area. So that gives our bus operators in excess of six feet of social distancing. Because we reinstituted the fare collection, and that was heavily advocated by our union to reinstitute the fare collection. We didn't do that until we completed the installation of the clear curtains on all the buses. So that even though we would, at that point in time, when somebody's paying their fare for that brief period of time, we don't have six foot of social distancing. The operators are protected by two things. One, they have a face mask, and two, they have the curtain that they deploy. So again, the emphasis is we've done everything we can to protect our operators from the beginning. We continue to do that. And we have reviewed state and federal guidance. Then that brings us to the local county health officer. And Rufus, our safety officer, has communicated with their officials over the last several weeks on our behalf so that we could try to figure out what we could move to next in a safe way. They gave us verbal guidance that we can do what we think we need to do, but we weren't comfortable with that. So we went one step further, and Rufus and I wrote a letter to the county health officer, Gail Newell, requesting relief. Gail Newell sent us back a letter very promptly, and I'll just read one of the important sections of that. As has been discussed, it is often not possible to enforce physical distancing recommendations for riders on public transit. This is understandable. You do not need to bypass potential customers to maintain any specific amount of distance. So once we got that in writing, as we did, we convened later that week a meeting of the management team again. To talk about this, we felt comfortable. Our safety officer felt comfortable that this would be the next step in the process of recovery. It would not be an overly dramatic step to go from eight to 15. And keep in mind, if you go back and you read everything that I've posted on our website about social distancing, never once did I reference that we put reduced capacities on buses in place as a protection measure for bus operators, because in fact, that's not why it was put in place. It was put in place because of, one, our interpretation of a previous county health officer order, and two, put in place to help customers, social distance. It was always about the customers because we took other measures to protect the bus operator. We're not proposing to go to standing loads. We're gonna continue to counsel operators that if people are standing and they don't take a seat, that the operator can choose to not move that bus, radio dispatch, do all the same things they do today when they have a problem. They call dispatch and we'll either send, depending on the nature of the problem, we'll either radio for a police officer for our security or our supervisor to go and handle that situation. That will continue to be the case. I think I've said a lot, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to entertain any questions from the board members. I just want, I'll just make a comment. I don't think it's not a question, but you are having regular meetings with all of the various union reps. Once a week, I understand. We have a weekly, it was a weekly conference call. It's now a weekly Zoom call because we all got to get on board with Zoom these days. And yes, all union reps participate, SMART and SEIU in the various chapters. And I think it's fair to say that, and again, correct me if I'm not correct about this, that during these meetings, as conditions change, we may be in a situation where we decide, again, it won't be overnight, but in the future to either increase capacity based on new safety regulations, whatever the county health officer tells us is possible, or to perhaps go backwards and decide that this experiment that we're involved is all an experiment, is not working well and we're having some problems with it and actually go back to reducing the number of people allowed on a bus. That's, I take it to be the case. That's super accurate, Mr. Chair. That we, again, we aren't going to play the speculative game. We're going to try to be objective and not subjective. We're going to try to follow what the professionals say. And if the guidance we receive from the professionals, be that the county health officer, state health agency, CDC, EPA, whatever, we will take that into consideration and do what we are supposed to do. If it's a guidance, we have some discretion. If it's an order, we have no discretion. Thank you. Are there questions from other board members to Alex? Chair. Thank you. You know, in this situation, there's nobody wrong. Bus drivers concerned about their safety is real. And as detailed, the agency has tried to meet that needs. And I think that one of the things that I've seen in this pandemic is we have to follow the science and we have to trust our public health officials. And sometimes they're going to ask us to do things that we, that doesn't make sense to us, that seems counter to our own intuition. That's hard. And we've seen a lot of it in the last couple of months, asking people to stay home, put on face coverings, keeping six feet away from others. These are all things that we're not used to doing. And before March 1st, none of us ever thought about. And as we've moved through this pandemic, I know that Dr. Newell and our health staff have taken very seriously the issue of health in our community. And they've worked to protect people and also ensure that we have a good infrastructure set up to be able to support people. And that their leadership and thoughtfulness, they've been the architects of Santa Cruz County having some of the lowest level of virus transmission in our region, if not the state. And it is not surprising to anybody in public health that as you relax restrictions like we have, and they have all over California, that the amount of transmission would go up. And so this was not surprising to us. But, and our health staff is looking very closely at the numbers, both in terms of number of new cases and the number of hospitalizations. And that is something that they will continue to do day by day, week by week, month by month, because we're gonna be with us for a long time. I feel confident that with the recommendation or the sign off from Dr. Newell that she has taken this issue very seriously, that there has been a discussion about safety precautions and that this plan is something that intuitively may seem putting people at risk. But what we have seen in terms of transmissions here in Santa Cruz is the vast majority of the people who've contracted this virus in the last three to four weeks have been through family contact. It hasn't been through community contact. And even as we've opened up and the hotels have opened up and more people have come to the beaches, we aren't seeing virus transmission through the visitors that are coming here. Now this could change, but Dr. Newell doesn't take these issues lightly. She understands the weight of the responsibility. And as my conversation with health staff and seeing the letter from Dr. Newell believes me that we can move forward with this and that we should pay attention to what's going on. And if drivers would like to have more conversations with health staff, we should provide that to understand what the real risks are. And we should all be tracking what's going on, but we should base our decisions on science and data, not just our intuition, because in public health that usually doesn't always, doesn't always match up. So I appreciate the update. I understand the concerns. And I think we can move forward, but we should not let up on any of the other parts of the cleaning of our buses, the sharing of the efforts to keep our buses clean, to watch the health of our drivers and to make reasonable accommodations if there's concerns about the spread of the virus. Thank you, John. Anyone else from the board of directors have a question? Aurelio, you have to unmute yourself. I know, I know. I just did it a little slower. It's not really a question, just a comment. I know the importance of keeping our bus operators safe and also the public safe. One of my biggest concerns though is right now that the county has opened up the beaches and we're gonna be expecting an influx of outsiders coming into our community. And I think it's gonna be, I think we need to stay the route that we are on right now. And I think we need to be able to give our operators that flexibility for them to make that judgment call as they're doing now is how many they have on the bus, their capacity. I think increasing it is a dangerous position right now because it's not, just like Clifford said, Alex, we're doing this for the safety of the passenger by increasing the amount of passengers and then we're pushing passengers in a precarious position. You never know when that one passenger that gets aboard that doesn't wanna wear the mask that may be asymptomatic. And now we've increased the amount of folks in that bus. And so again, then we're putting those passengers in jeopardy. So I'm really against opening up to more passengers right now. I think we have to wait a little bit. I think two months and then we can go look at it and continue this conversation and how we address this issue. I have a feeling that this is gonna hit us, it's gonna hit us even harder now since folks think that they can come to the beach and relax and tourists are gonna be coming in and hotels are gonna be starting to be occupied and people are gonna wanna get on the bus. And in a sense, I understand administration wanting to try to catch that funding and not lose passengers also at the same time. But I think right now, the ones that are using our buses is our community. Folks that really live here and utilize the bus on a daily basis. And to increase the amount just for the sake of right now of trying to get some revenue, I think it doesn't do well for our bus operators nor to our public to ride the bus daily. So I'd like to wanna say that, make sure that we make the right decisions here. And I don't think increasing the amount right now is a good decision. Okay, let me briefly respond just, I mean, we're not changing the policy that people should be wearing masks on the bus, that customers or riders should be wearing masks and drivers still have the ability to not allow someone to enter the bus, not wearing a mask, or if they take their mask off, as Alex said earlier, I think to literally stop the bus and call for some backup to remove that person if they're not willing to comply with our standards for riding. Are there other comments from- No, I understand that point, but I mean, you're slow, I was having a kid that taking a mask off and possibly exposing fellow bus riders. So that's still a danger zone. And again, just to be clear, I don't think we're doing this for revenue. Revenue has never been more than 20% or 22% or something of the cost of a ride. It's really about the issue of the future commitment of people using the bus. And there's room for people to disagree about this for sure. But I don't think it was a matter of we're looking for a couple of dollars from a few more riders that really had to do with the long-term prospects for the district. Donald Lynn has a comment or a question. Yes, I agree actually with John's comments and with Mike's, the steps that I think I have been taken with the plastic curtains around the bus drivers, the list of things that I've read through Alex's email detailing the various safety steps that have been taken, even with the HEPA filters for improving the air, just helping keep that step as well. And I'm blanking on the right technical terms, but I've just been really impressed with the steps that have been taken. And I've read the research and I see that 343 people have been left behind just this recent, you know, the recent statistics show a large number of riders that we've had to leave behind. So I think that I feel confident in the steps I've been following the health, county health officers, changing orders and recommendations. And as John said, there's a difference between a recommendation and an order. And I believe that Metro has really been ahead of, you know, been very proactive and been ahead of the steps many of the times moving forward to protect the passengers and the riders at the first moment this came forward. So I really commend Metro for taking steps to be concerned about safety. So I am supporting, I agree with the comments that John's made and with Mike. And I think that this can be done safely. I believe that it can be done safely and also trust Metro to pull back if they feel that they, that this is not working the various steps to protect our drivers. So, and riders, well, those are my thoughts. Ed. Go ahead. Ed Montorf. Thank you. I appreciate the conversation and dialogue. My question is directed at Julie Sherman. Julie, this item's not on the agenda. How are we, how do you feel about us discussing this item at this point? So thanks, Ed. The item is on the agenda because it's, it's public communication and labor communications and the board has the ability to briefly respond, which is what you're doing. We also have the general managers report on COVID is on the agenda. So from a Brown Act perspective, I think your brief responses are fine. I wouldn't want you to take any action on anything because there isn't like specifically an item that talks about should we or should we not increase, you know, bus capacity? That is not on the agenda for action. So I don't want anyone taking any formal board action, but this brief, you know, discussion is okay under the Brown Act. Thank you, Julie, that's helpful. I'll have a little comment that I'll make. I'm going to go along with a couple of what the speakers have already said and that is, you know, I think that Metro has definitely taken a stand to provide safety for the bus operators and everybody at Metro organization. I think this is a calculated move and I think it's based on statistics as John brought up, you know, from our health administrator. I am concerned about people getting left behind. I don't want to think this, I never would say this is a revenue measure, although if you pick up somebody that would do revenue, but I'm more concerned about not fulfilling people's needs that need transportation, because our service is obviously less than what it can be. I think that the main thing that we've all learned from this pandemic from the beginning is the wearing of the mask is essential. And the space that might be provided could be less. And I still believe that there are enough safety mechanisms for bus operators. I know that if we have any problems with this, we'll react to it quickly, it's essential that we as a nation try to move forward calculated safely. And so I support the moves that Metro is doing it. I don't think this is a huge jump. I think going from eight to 15 is a very calculated increase. So thank you. Thanks for your comments. Trina. Sorry, thank you, Chair. I think we also need to look at this as a bigger picture as well. Our unemployment numbers have actually reduced since there are more businesses that are going back to work. Watsonville numbers went from 24 down into the teens. That tells us that we have a lot of our population in Watsonville, which serves the rest of the county in the services that are starting to open up. And if we are gonna continue to limit the number of seats and these employees that are trying to get to those jobs that have reopened will become more of an issue with them getting to work on time or having the ability to get to work because of the reliability that they do have on our Metro system. And I believe that going with all of the data that talks and the guidelines from the CDC and with our local health agency, all of those will impact what's happening there that can be carefully monitored in terms of making sure that the passengers and the staff are as least amount of exposure as possible so that we can move the county around. And it's gonna be growing pains whether it's an expansion or contraction and it's something that we'll have to closely monitor. Thank you. Thanks for your comments. Anyone else? Let me ask, that's all right, Dan, go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to say that I have the same ambivalence I think that a lot of people do about this whole issue as to whether we should increase the ridership and so forth, the capacity. And I'm sure, especially to the public and I know it even hit me initially this way. The numbers are going up dramatically in the state of California. We peaked out at 7,100 just a couple of days ago in terms of cases. So on the one hand, it seems odd to seemingly increase the risk both to the drivers and to the riders at a time where the pandemic is not getting better but is actually getting worse. At the same time, when we first instituted all of these limitations on capacity, we hadn't taken all the steps that Alex has taken and that Metro has taken in order to protect both the drivers and the riders. And I think we've done some extraordinary measures to ensure that safety. And we're not going to 100% capacity which some, as Alex pointed out, some metros have. We're going to about 50% or even less capacity. So on the one hand, I would say, yeah, I'm a little leery about this but on the other hand, I feel fairly comfortable that we have taken some rather extraordinary steps to protect everybody. And so I guess my initial feeling now is that we should go ahead with the increased capacity. Thank you. Okay, Alex, I have another question. James also raised this issue. This will be a little arcane for the public and even at the board level, but the policy of occurrences, could you explain what the issue is briefly and what the expression, James expressed a concern that this was going to be forcing people to come to work when they're sick. Could you respond to that please? Sure. There is nothing in anything that we are doing that would encourage people to come to work sick. Again, sort of in the same vein of early mid-March, this crisis hits. There is no playbook on how to handle this crisis. I took extraordinary measures and this is a good example. I waved off on some language in the MOU for a temporary basis to encourage people in those early days while we all settled in and tried to learn what this means and for people who are at risk for personal medical issues or age or whatever to determine what they wanted to do relative to this crisis and coming to work. And so I said, what we're gonna do is we're just not gonna charge any occurrences on a temporary basis. And if you choose to not come to work because you're scared, we're not gonna charge you an occurrence. And what occurrences mean is after you get so many of them, you would be at risk of progressive discipline. If you get up to 19 of them, 19 of them, I would underscore in a 12 month moving window, moving window, not a single year, so they fall off, you get that 20th, you're terminated. Irrespective, we didn't look at anybody's count. We just said temporarily we're going to stop this while we get a handle on this. In the, along the journey, our Congress and our president signed Family First, which provided extraordinary relief for our bus operators to use. And in some case, our employees actually, and in some cases, in many cases, people chose to use that, the leaves that come with that, which are up to the first two weeks. And if you qualify being paid, and then there's some other complications associated with figuring out if it's 100% pay or not 100% pay, but it's Family First, that came along. So now, we're three and a half months later, and we're putting back more service, effective yesterday, and we put some additional backup service out, effective yesterday. And we're increasing work capacity on bus. We need our employees to come to work. They still have the right to use their protected leaves. They still have the right to use their Family First, if they have not done so. But let me just be clear about this one point, Mike. Never, ever have we encouraged, demanded, or otherwise, that an employee come to work sick. Even in a pre-COVID environment, we have insisted that if an employee is sick, they need to not come to work. If you have a common cold, the flu, we don't want employees communicating that to other employees and extra underscore in the COVID environment. We don't want that. So a bus operator wakes up in the morning, doesn't feel good, should take the self-initiative to call in and call off sick. Is that gonna put them in jeopardy of being terminated? It is not. And especially since I held this in abeyance for three and a half months, because of that moving window, those bus operators lost a number of occurrences that they had. If they come to work sick and dispatch us, a supervisor, a manager, identifies them as sick, we're gonna send them home. We don't want them at work sick, period. So it's MOU language. There is nothing new here, Mike, that I'm instituting. We're just after three and a half months going back to saying we're following the MOU. Is it standard in the industry to allow 20 occurrences before termination in a transit facility? This agency's MOU is one of the most extraordinary ones that I've seen in that respect. Very gratuitous. Thank you. Any other comments on this matter from board members? Obviously, we'll continue to monitor this. And as I said, I think the most important thing to say is there are weekly meetings between all of our employees, representatives of all of our employees through the unions, and this will no doubt be an ongoing discussion with Alex and other members of management. Mike, yes? Can I jump on? I just want to clarify this one thing real quick. Yeah, James, go ahead, James. This was not brought up at our last weekly meeting. And it was sent to me in an email two days ago. So there was no dialogue on the situation. So we had two days to bring this up to the board of directors, with it being implemented on July 1st. It's really rushed. There was no conversation that was had. I had a few conversations with some managers, but within this last two days. So there was not much time to really figure this out before coming to the board. And there's a lot of talk about the stats, about pass-ups. I advocated at the last park meeting where we're talking about the summer level service. I wanted regular summer service. And this weekend level service was imposed on us, which is why there's such limited routes out there. And as of yesterday, we have everybody back. So I'm tired of hearing all these stats before yesterday because there's gonna be a lot more backup service provided now, where there's not gonna be any more pass-ups. So I just want to clear that up. And I hope you could read the comments that I've been writing to all the panelists. But I just wanted to clear that up because it seems like that's the biggest concern for you guys as pass-ups. And we shouldn't be making decisions for the passengers. We should give them some time to show up to the next board meeting so they could tell us that they want this. Why shouldn't we be making a decision for them? Thanks for those additional comments. I assume this will be a topic of conversation at your next weekly meeting, however. I'm gonna move on with the agenda. People do have to do other things with their day-to-day. We're now at the consent. So first of all, are there any additional materials for this morning's meeting? I believe there are. There are not any additional materials, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Then we are now at the consent agenda. These are items number seven, one through, it's all the sevens, so I forget the last one of them there. Let me ask, first of all, if there are board members who would like to pull for further discussion, any of the items on the consent agenda? I don't see any hands. We don't show any hands, Mr. Chair. We have members of the public who would like us to discuss any consent agenda items. And again, these are the sevens, seven dash whatever on our agenda. We're gonna take one action on all of these altogether, unless there's somebody who wants to pull one of these for further discussion. I don't see any hands from the public. I am looking at, we'll block everybody. Then I'm looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda. This is John Leopold, and I'm prepared to move the consent agenda. Motion by John. Second by Donna Myers. Are there any other comments? It looks like Cynthia has a comment. Cynthia, sorry, your hand is in your hand there. You have to unmute yourself. Yeah, thank you. I'm not gonna pull it. You know, 713 and 714 are big ticket expenditures for necessary improvements. And Alex and I spoke about this earlier. I am wondering about a longer term facilities master plan so that these things aren't just happening, you know, one crisis after another. And Alex, maybe you've been addressed that in your oral report, but that's okay. I can hit it super briefly if you'd like. Up to you. Good to know, Alex. Yeah, so the federal government mandated that we have a transit asset management plan. We've never had that before. They've mandated that across the nation. We don't have that. It puts a life expectancy on all assets, including things like this and air conditioning, HVACs. So we now have a plan that shows us what's coming when it's due for whether it be rehab or replacement, we're in a much better place today than we have ever been in as a result of this new mandate from the federal government. Wow, so being positive from the federal government. I'm so happy. And I guess maybe a comment at some point in the future would be for us to have an overview of what that looks like. You know, this is what we did for the library system eight years ago or so. So, you know, it helps us see what's coming down the pipe. Okay, so state Brown Act recommendations or requirements are that we have a roll call vote on each of our motions. So Gina, please call the roll on this item. Quick, before you guys, there was a question during when you asked about public comment on the, can you guys see the comments for the all panelists section for the messages? Yes. Okay, there was a question on 716 on the consent agenda. I'm not, James, I'm not sure which comment are you referring to? It's from John. 716. 716. Chair, Johnny Bartholomew's question is 716 on the consent agenda says there is a six month extension amendment contract for UCSC. Can someone explain what has changed within this new contract? Maybe we can get a quick explanation of that for the roll call. Not sure of the question. I'll just say briefly that in this environment in which UCSC is going to have online classes during the summer session and some level of students on campus for labs and whatnot. And what appears to be the same happening in the fall, we're not in a position, neither UCSC nor Metro in a position to negotiate a contract beyond that because we're uncertain about when they will return to full strength, particularly in person classes. So we'll bite it off in chunks. We'll do a six month extension and then review it as that six months approaches. And just for the public, normally the UCSC ridership is about half of our ridership and it's not counting 17 half of our ridership in the district. So this is a significant issue but there's nothing we can do without clarity about where the university is going. And as a faculty member there, I can tell you we have no idea where they're going and neither do they on this question. Back to the roll call vote on the motion to approve the consent agenda. Remember to unmute yourself for the vote. I'm unmuted. You might want to unmute me. You are, but as people vote they need to unmute themselves. Can I ask a question before you take your vote? No, sorry. It's not about the consent agenda. It's too late at this point. I'm sorry. We already have a motion on the floor. Sorry. Director Botthorpe. Aye. Dr. Kaufman Gomez. Yes. Dr. Gonzalez. Yes. Dr. Leopold. Aye. Dr. Lind. Aye. Aye. Dr. Matthews. Aye. Dr. McPherson. Aye. Dr. Myers. Aye. Dr. Pegler. Aye. Dr. Roswell. Aye. Dr. Rotkin. Aye. Motion by Leopold, second by Myers, unanimously approved. Thank you very much. Thank you all. And I want to, you know, I'll just move on at this point. Our next, first of all, let's note for the record Angela Akin and where was I? Ciro Aguirre have joined, staff members have joined us on this call. They were not here when we earlier had a report on staff present. We are now to item number eight. This is an oral metro advisory committee, the MAC Semi-Annual Report. And we have Veronica Elsie, the chair of that committee to give us that report. Good morning, Veronica. Appreciate it. Good morning. How are you all doing today? I thank you so much for your flexibility and for holding these meetings and allow us to still attend and share our views and accomplishments and concerns and questions. So for the, any viewers who may not know, I'm Veronica Elsie and I am currently serving as chair of the Metro Advisory Committee. We meet once per quarter. And this one I spoke to you last in February and we postponed our April meeting and held it last week over Zoom. So the first thing that I want to point out about your advisory committee is that we have still continued to have perfect or near perfect attendance. I've been really proud of this committee for the past several years because we've got so many people that are engaged, that are committed to pay attention. We've probably got more members on this committee right now that look at your board meeting agendas and pay attention to what happens at the board meetings than I can remember for a long time. So you've got a really good group here. We are unfortunately losing one member and you will be receiving that notice fairly soon and that's Jason Lopez. But again, with every committee member that we've lost, the only reason we're losing him is because he's moving out of the county. And when we look at members that have left, that has been the only reason. So I think that also speaks to what we're doing in our committee. So later this year, we will have two more members whose terms end. So your ad hoc committee will be called up to help us refill those seats. We also had the pleasure of being introduced to Margo Ross and John Urgo also did his first presentation to our committee. So we were happy to welcome the new staff members and look forward to working with them in the future. We had one communication from a member of the public that came to the committee, which actually Metro had addressed even before we met. And the gentleman had three different questions, mostly related to asking about the customer service hours and contacts. So if you look at the Metro website, you can already see that they've added a contact link, the customer service phone number is right there. So thanks to the one comment, it's now much easier for people just to go to the homepage of the website and figure out how to get in touch with Metro if they have something to say. We did have a long discussion, of course on COVID-19 and Alex gave us a very thorough report. We did not discuss most of what you have been discussing this morning. So I'm not at liberty to comment on that as a committee spokesperson. But the first thing that I would like to do on behalf of the committee is to be on record here, the committee really wants to thank the bus operators and the maintenance people for your hard work, for taking the risks, for living with your fear, and for being out there and helping to transport the public that really needed to get somewhere during this time. And we really wanted to appreciate and acknowledge that hard work and say a particular thank you to those bus operators that are out there for us. Second thing that we did talk a lot about the finances and got a good report on what Metro did to get grants and how Metro benefited from the CARES Act. And we are grateful for what Metro has done to actually keep the system operating and hopefully lasting into next year before the next set of ideas kick in and we go for one more year. We did bring up in our discussions some interesting angle. We had people ask about some of the food vendors that are near both the Santa Cruz and the Watsonville stations. And we were told that there were various ongoing discussions, but it was a question that came up at our meeting. One of the other things that did come up is when we were talking about when the lobby would reopen and people and thinking about some of these long bus routes if somebody comes all the way in from Watsonville and then has to transfer to another bus to go to Scotts Valley. And this is a problem everywhere, not just Metro, but restaurants and every place and that's bathrooms. If you're a bus passenger, not everybody can hold it for a couple of hours. And even under normal transit conditions, sometimes if you're going from Santa Cruz, say out to Soquel or out to some of the distances, it can take an hour and hour and a half. It can take a couple hours. And one of the questions that was coming up, especially if you didn't know exactly when you could get on a bus. And Alex pointed out about how challenging that is to keep them clean. And you don't want places where people come in close contact. But we wanted to raise it on the radar because it's something that's part of passenger comfort and people that are taking the bus, it's kind of one of those natural human functions. We also did address and Trina commented on this a little bit ago that we did have members ask about the fact that things are opening up and that you do have more employees who may need to take the bus. You're gonna have summer jobs at the boardwalk and people going different places. And they have to get there at a certain time. Most people are being pretty understanding about it from what we're hearing from people. But it was an issue that the committee did raise. And we did have a little chat about what the facts were about whether public transit was in fact responsible for COVID transmission. And we had a little discussion with Alex Clifford about it. And as a result, he did post an interesting article to Metro's Facebook page that was in the Atlantic where they were actually studying transmission from the New York subway system. So I would urge anyone who hasn't looked at that yet on the Facebook page, it's really a very interesting read. When we again talked about the COVID recovery plan, you got into it a little bit this morning. And the main thing that came up was obviously keeping everybody safe but looking at how to engage with and meet the needs of people that are going back to work and trying to figure out how to get there and get home at night. We had another excellent budget presentation from Angela. And most of us were quite interested in the different models that Christina had come up with and how you were building into the budget to be flexible because of not knowing what the sales tax is gonna be and not knowing all kinds of stuff that are gonna happen in our future. So we really appreciated that particular update and it got a lot of good participation. We received updates on the various technology that Metro's been working on, the automatic vehicle location and the real time signage that was gonna go up hopefully in the fall. We kind of heard about certain things that were on hold as a result of the vendor and our committee members did ask a lot of good probing questions about all of this different signage. We had a demonstration of the mobile ticketing app, asked a lot of questions about that one and we had had a previous question about a more mobile responsive website and we're pretty much told that that needs to wait until a complete redesign of the site because you can't just plunk one from one to another. We ended up, Ciro responded to a question that had come from our committee quite a while ago and it kept getting tabled and tabled and we finally got around to it but we had an absolute fascinating discussion about alternative fuels and what Metro was procuring in terms of battery operated buses and the different ones that would work in the different situations and when they were gonna start showing up and what was going on and what the problems were with different things and I never imagined I would get so much out of a discussion like this but it's something that this committee is really interested in understanding the requirements of the different types of buses and what things are out there and what Metro is trying and again, as I mentioned in my last report about on demand transit and this is probably even coming up in some of your discussions trying to provide the backups for people that are waiting at the bus stop. So this is something that got a lot of participation from your committee members. Our meetings run on time. We get a lot done. They're very respectful. I'm thrilled to be chairing this committee and we'd be happy to entertain any comments or questions from the board. Are there questions from the board? Thank you for that report and thank you and your members of your committee for your service. We do appreciate it and we don't take it for granted that people contribute their time to this district and its customers in the way that your committee does. It's really important. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. We'll move on to item number nine. This is the introduction of Margot Ross, our new chief operations officer. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And this is a happy moment and a sad moment. It's a sad moment because Ciro Aguirre who has been with his agency for a long time and been in the business for, I believe, close to 40 years is taking leave and retiring in the near future. And those are some tough shoes to fill and to that end, we went through a rather exhaustive nationwide survey, survey search and interviewed a number of candidates and our most qualified and ideal candidate is before you today. Her name is Margot Ross and I'd just like to tell you a little bit about Margot. She arrives at Metro with over 30 years of transit experience, including fixed route, inner city service and paratransit. She began her career at RTD LA Metro. I mean, you may know that in the early days, it was RTD down south there as a bus operator. So she worked her way up from a bus operator who was promoted to a road supervisor, a window dispatcher and instructor. As manager at LA Metro, Margot had responsibility for safety and training department of one of Metro's largest operating divisions. She retired from LA Metro to become the city manager of Greyhounds, Los Angeles facility. In the city manager role, she focused on customer service and customer satisfaction working for the city of Riverside as the paratransit transit manager. She was responsible for bus operations and customer service overseeing all federal state and local grant reporting and applications. In her latest role, she was director of bus transportation for SamTrans just up the road a short distance as a matter of fact, where she had responsibility for fixed route paratransit training and contract services. On a personal note, she and her husband Odell have been married for 42 years and have four children and four wonderful grandchildren. She enjoys traveling and attending UCSC football games, but don't hold that against her. Her favorite quote is from Martin Luther King, the time is always right to do what is right. With that, Mr. Chair, if you'd like to ask Margo, she'd like to say anything. I'm sure she'd be happy to. Please, we'd love to have a couple of words from Margo. Welcome on board, Margo. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity. I look forward to working with all of the board members and certainly I'm doing an awesome job for Santa Cruz. I'm very excited to be here. I hope the wealth and breadth of my knowledge will be a plus for the agency. I'm happy to work with Alex and certainly aware that I have very big shoes to fill with Cyril. So just excited and happy to be here. Well, on behalf of the entire board and the Santa Cruz community, welcome to your new position and we are looking forward to working with you very closely. I'm sure over the next several years. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. And is this going to be Cyril's last board meeting or is he coming back in July? We'll figure out a way to get him back in August, even if he's gone and I'm trying to retain him as long as I can. He's doing an excellent job helping to orient and onboard Margo. And we also value his help in the implementation of our Protera electric buses, which I promise you someday they will arrive on this property. In that case, I'll save my comments about Cyril, which will be as you might imagine very positive for our next meeting. He will be there if I'm assured of that because working with him has been such a pleasure over these years. And he's had the confidence, I believe, of the drivers and the other employees of the district and certainly of the board and appreciated as many contributions, including getting us effectively 10, they weren't free, dollar each buses from Santa Clara, from the Valley Transit Authority. We should not forget that. That's a small little contribution on his behalf in recent period. So again, welcome onboard Margo. We're gonna move on then to our next item, which is the fiscal crisis oral report. There's still some stuff left perhaps that Alex didn't share with us earlier. Yes, Mr. Chair, with your permission, if I could take 10 and 12 together and then after that report and motion take up the CEO oral report. Yes, that would be okay to take 10 and 12 together. Let's do that. Okay, great. Yeah, so for 10, we had a really, and 12, we had a really good conversation with the finance committee. We talked to them a little bit about the timeline. I've shared that timeline with you before, which involves looking at our upcoming bids and how you have to plan for those bids in advance. And how those do or don't align with the monthly numbers that we get relative to sales tax dollars, those sales tax revenues being two months in arrears. And all of that becomes important because we're trying to carefully watch how much lower year over year are critical, what I call economy-based revenues, diesel sales tax dollars flowing through the state, STA state transportation assistance flowing through the state that are sales tax based. Our local measure D, our 1979, those are all so important to monitor carefully because they have an impact on what is coming down the road. And we want to make sure that we do our best to ensure that we don't have a fiscal crisis, a fiscal cliff just suddenly arrive on our doorstep. If it's going to get here, we want to make sure that we can see it coming and we can plan appropriately and try to take whatever measures we can to reduce its impact on this agency. So we created the timeline. It suggested the one I presented to you last month suggested that our period of uncertainty is the fall bid. I would say now that we've done our intense modeling of revenues and expenses, the next version of that will move the period of uncertainty to the winter bid. So right around the end of this year, December, and hopefully that keeps pushing out over time, right? We don't want a fiscal cliff. And so Christina, who's on today, put together an incredibly intense model and it looks at our revenue sources and our expenses and it has some assumptions about sales tax dollars year over year reductions in that and state diesel tax and depending on the source that we get that from and it has to be a trusted source before we go in and change any of those numbers, we will change a particular assumptions block and those new numbers will flow through the entire spreadsheet. It's a really great model. So right now we're using numbers that came out of the state budget, the revised, the May revised, which is saying there's going to be a pretty heavy hit. And so when we plot that out and we look at our CARES Act revenues, which are $20 million to this agency, and we learned how that money keeps us afloat, right now if we sustain existing levels of expenses and what that means is we make an assumption that our service levels remain in pre-COVID levels, therefore our employment, our number of bus operators providing that service remain at pre-COVID levels. That's how we've modeled it. And that says we can sustain ourself potentially through about May of next year, at which point if we don't have help, additional help from the federal government or the state, then we will have some really dramatic fiscal issues to deal with. Can I clarify the point that means that we don't intend any layoffs before that period? Yeah, I'm doing everything I can do to use that CARES Act to accomplish what I think I heard and what a lot of people heard from Congress is that they wanted us to use that money to try to sustain employment in the transit engine street and with that sustained levels of service available on the street. Now that service may move around a little bit, right? So I already talked about fall. We don't expect all of UCSC students to be back in the fall. There'll be some number, but UCSC will need dramatically less service than they otherwise would have in the fall. So what I'm trying to do is instead of taking and reducing costs by those loss of revenues that we would have gotten from UCSC that we take those equivalent of bus operators or that service that we won't be providing and reallocate it throughout the system. So it helps us to augment our capacities and maybe even our frequency of service over that period of time and potentially protect those operators to be called back to provide UCSC service in the winter if they return to full strength in person. So it's a strategy of trying to be careful and thoughtful about how we approach this. But as you said, we're trying not to reduce expenses dramatically because if we do, that means potentially layoffs. And I'd really like to try to avoid that. So to that end, I just wanna launch into some prepared remarks about that. So our strategy right now has been one that is a don't panic strategy. Try not to prematurely reduce expenses and workforce. Now that doesn't mean that in parallel with this, what it does mean is that in parallel with this, we will monitor all of our expenses and do the best we can do to reduce expenses without impacting service on the street and without having to go to a place where we layoff employees. So we always have that duty to engage in that analysis and look for opportunities. And you can see by the bids that we built, we almost completely eliminated built-in overtime into those bids as a part of that strategy of trying to reduce costs. The extent I can do that, then we help that CARES Act money last longer. And I'll come back to the CARES Act money in a moment. We're also in an environment in which, in conflict to the way we normally operate, which is short, medium and long-term strategizing, almost a hundred percent of our effort right now has to be on the short-term thinking. Why is that? It's because, if we don't survive the short-term, then there is no long-term, it's immaterial. So we must put all of our effort into the short-term. We wanna try to give our customers the opportunity to return restoring as much service as we possibly can in the fall, what I would call a fall reboot. Whatever happens on the operating side of the equation, struggles, deficit challenges, I will always encourage you to maintain your commitment to the capital program, your $3 million a year commitment to the capital program, because what you don't wanna do is what has been done in the past. All of a sudden the money is more important on the operating side, you don't invest in capital, you don't keep up with state of good repair, you use that money to fix things on the operating side on a short-term basis, and you sacrifice the capital side, and then the consequence of that is you fall behind, your fleet gets older and older and older, and then you are where we were a couple of years ago, staring down the barrel of well over 50% of your fleet needing to be replaced tomorrow or yesterday. So we wanna try to manage this strategically so that we don't, while we're solving the operating equation, we don't create a capital problem that we have to pay for down the road. Some challenges to think about. Current ridership is down 90 to 95% surprisingly that in contrary to the way we believe in this business, that's actually a good thing. We, since COVID hit, we've been discouraging customers from riding our system openly and on our website in various memos and trying to reserve what limited capacity there is out there for those essential trips. And as we discussed earlier, essential trips have now moved from, essential in the sense that you are needed in order for the economy to continue moving forward. Now essential includes getting your nails done, getting your hair cut, going to a restaurant. So as a result of loosening the shelter in place orders, essential has become more broader and we need to have capacity to address those folks coming back to our system. And a fall reboot as it approaches, the maximum number of peak hour buses may return to pre-COVID levels, but here's something to think about. If we restore 100% of our pre-COVID level buses on the street, let's just talk about it in the sense of peak hour. And let's say that 77 peak hour buses, 77 peak hour buses, let's call that 3,000 seats available. But if social distancing, if we're still only at what we talked about earlier, 50% of capacity, then that's only 1,500 seats. So instead of 3,000 seats and even more when you include standees, which we have in the peak hour, we would only have 1,500 seats, especially if we continue to enforce that you have to be seated. What does that tell us? That tells us that we have to be careful with a fall reboot. And that is we can't overmarket the fall reboot because if we do, then people may come back and they may not be able to ride because our buses may still be at a capacity limit and they will be really unhappy with us. So the FDA has suggested that the answer to this in a social distancing environment is you just need to add more buses, run more buses back to back so that you increase your ability to provide more seats. The struggle we have with that, of course, is during the peak hours, where do we get those buses from? We don't have them, right? Because in the peak hour, if you go to pre-COVID levels of service, you've put all of your fleet on the road with the exception of those that are in your spare ratio, which are rotating through the shop across the street for preventative maintenance and other types of repairs. So that's probably not an option for us. We don't have all those buses to put out there. And even if we said, oh yeah, we do have the buses, maybe we can figure this out. Where do we get the bus operators to operate those additional buses? So then if we spend four to six months recruiting and hiring and training additional bus operators, what happens when we get to a recovery stage down the road? And we can now go back to normal capacities and we don't need a bunch of trailer buses following each other. Do we really want to set ourselves up to lay off people? The answer is clearly no. So I don't think the FTA's guidance and that respect works for us very well. Other considerations are university and community college. Their ridership represents about 60% of our overall ridership pre-COVID and 10% of our overall budget. That's a chunk of change that impacts us. When will the college's return? We think probably not fall at this point. So when will the economy return, right? We don't know what that looks like. Is it gonna be the V and we hit the bottom and it's rapidly gonna recover? Is it gonna be kind of a U? And that is we sit with a bad economy and lower year over year revenues for a little while, but then we recover pretty fast. Or would it be what I call the hockey stick, right? The hockey stick, we fell real fast. And then like in 2008 through 2014, it's a slow recovery and that slope of that line is a slow recovery and it takes us several years to get there. That one's problematic for us if that were to happen. But our economy-based revenues, those things I talked about before, state revenues, STA, LTF, local sales tax, that's $38 million of our $52 million budget. That's huge. So you can see dramatic changes in those revenues will cause dramatic problems here. If the economy slowly returns to normal and our CARES Act, what I'll call CARES Act one, funding runs out, will there be a CARES Act two? There's some talk about that and there's some talk in the Senate about stop dreaming. So we got to keep advocating for a CARES Act two. So in closing on this part of my comments, I will say that there are really two questions right now that are sort of keeping me awake at night. One is the longer we wait to reboot to full capacity, the greater the risks that our pre-COVID level of ridership, pre-COVID customers will leave the system for good because they will have found another way to get to work, to the store, to their doctor's appointments. So in our strategic planning, we have to be thinking about the longer we wait to try to get them back on our buses, the greater the opportunity is that they're gone for good. Then there's another question, which is what if we're successful in attracting back most, many, a good portion of the pre-COVID ridership but our economy-based revenues don't recover commensurate with that and CARES money runs out, how sad it would be to then have to cut expenses, cut service on the street when people really show that they wanted to come back and ride our system. So those are the things that we should think about and I hope will become some guiding principles as we move through this. Finally, moving sort of to the 12 part of this, if we could put up slide 27, slide 27, that'll be the buckets. Okay, which slide is the buckets? There you go, thank you, yep, yes. Okay, so in 12, we're asking you for a policy statement to create what we call a new temporary reserves bucket. We're gonna call it the COVID reserves bucket. Now there's a reason why we don't call it the CARES Act money and reflect the 20 million being dropped in there. It's because the federal government expects us to spend the CARES Act money as rapidly as possible. The beautiful thing about this is I think I've talked about previously. When the FTA tried to figure out how to implement the CARES Act that Congress adopted, the CARES Act said this money is being provided to transit agencies to cover expenses associated with the COVID environment and loss of revenues. And they identified the 5307 and 5311 programs as the mechanism to transmit that money to us. However, when the FTA got to the implementation stage as happens after Congress enact something, they said, whoops, these two programs they enacted do not include revenues. They're only expense-based programs. So the FTA said, well, we're not gonna pay attention to your revenue side. We're gonna let you use 100% of this money for qualifying expenses going back to January 20th of this year. So what we do in effect through this policy statement is we pull down that CARES money as quick as we can and we think we'll have it all pulled down and legitimately used against operating expenses by the August closeout. What that does in the early months is that creates a surplus in effect of our other revenues that would have been used to bridge the gap between expenses and revenues. So measure D, state, STA, TDA, LTF, all these fungible monies now are not needed because we used CARES Act money to pay our bills for several months. And so what this policy does is it takes those dollars, those residual dollars if you will for lack of term and puts them in this COVID reserves because after August, after we've pulled down all of the CARES Act money, month over month we're gonna have a deficit, right? Because if we hold our expenses as I discussed earlier at relatively nominal and revenues are down and substantially down, every month thereafter there is a gap to be bridged and that gap is bridged month after month by pulling dollars back out of the COVID reserves bucket. Until such time as it's exhausted and that goes to what I said earlier, preliminarily modeled, we think right now we might be able to sustain ourself through May of next year. If the state produces worse projections than they gave us in May relative to sales tax revenues and diesel tax, that bar moves closer to us and we exhaust the money sooner. If things recover a little better than they projected then the bar moves away from us and our CARES Act money net effect of it is that it lasts longer. So Mr. Chair, that concludes my presentation on those two items. And again, we have within item 12 a request that you adopt the policy statement allowing us to create this new reserves pot and the policy on how we would draw it down. Thank you. Does the angel have anything to add to that? I just wanted to add some more detail to what Alex said. So the numbers that he was using saying that our money would last year about May those numbers are hot off the press. Finance Department has been extremely busy since last Friday because we've been getting information from RTC, the state and all kinds of other entities that we get money from with their updates. So RTC is having a I believe emergency meeting or a special meeting on Monday. And in that budget packet that they put out our Santa Cruz Metro's TDA money is going to be going down by 17.36%. And that's for this coming fiscal year and that's about $1.3 million. But that's a pretty big hit test. Also measure D their estimating is going to go down by 20% and measure D we don't get as much but that's still another $680,000 down. So the numbers that Alex is stating to you does include what RTC is putting forward in their budget on Monday. Additionally, between last Friday and actually yesterday we got our final sales tax numbers for fiscal year 20. And so for the half cent sales tax for the month of June I'm going to say we were only down 16.75% and that's a significant change from the previous two months where we were over 30 to 40% under budget. For the fiscal year for the half cent sales tax we're down $1.4 million. But if you put that over the last 12 months we only went down less than 6%, 5.9%. So that's pretty darn good compared to what's going on around the world. Measure D also same thing we're down about 4% for the year, $120,000. So total, total our sales tax came in about $1.5 million less than what we thought we were going to get for fiscal year 20. And so that's about $5.6 million down or 5.6% down. So I just wanted to give a little detail to what Alex was saying on those numbers of lasting it through around May of next year. And he is correct, we are going to quote unquote run out of the CARES Act money sometime around July or August. And that's based on the information we have today. We're still waiting on, as things go through the next few months we're all hearing that cases are going up things are starting to shut down again Texas to shut down all their bars and everything again today could happen here. Who knows? So we're just being very fluid with the information we give you trying to give it to you as fast as we can. But unfortunately over the next few months as we give you presentations at the board information that we give you in the packets are probably going to be outdated by the time we get to you in the meeting. And my staff and I are committed to making sure that you guys have the latest and greatest information as we go. Thank you. I want to say, I sure the entire board appreciates the work being done by our folks in the finance area because it's a real key to our future at this point to understand, and it's a moving target, but I think you're doing a wonderful, you and your staff and others in the administration and the agency are doing a good job. I think of keeping us on top of those questions. Are there any questions concerning these matters from board members? John Leopold. Thank you, chair. Thank you for the presentation. I think this strategy is a good one about creating this new bucket and being able to draw on it. You know, there's a lot of unknowns this year. Anybody who's been doing budgeting this week and will be doing budgeting throughout the summer as we try to figure out what's going to be happening at the state level, what's going to be happening at the federal level, what's going to be happening with our primary funding sources. When May, when our board look, the board of supervisors looked at the budget outlook, we assumed that hotels wouldn't be open again until September and we forecasted a 45% decline in our TOT. Then they open up in June. How will that affect it? What will that mean? We're going to find out. So we predicted a 25% drop in sales tax as we didn't think things were going to open very quickly. A lot of things have opened quickly. So there's a lot going on. So being able to draw for this bucket certainly makes sense. I think it actually helps not only the service, but our employees and the community as a whole. So I support this activity. Thanks, John. Any other questions about this matter? Any comments from the public about these issues, the budget issues that we're talking about? Don't see any hands. Mike, there is a chat. There is a comment in the chat. Okay. It says, so no drivers are anticipated to get laid off in 2020, right? But possibly in May. No, they're both questions. Yes. And I think the answer to that was everything's possible at any time, but certainly I think it's good news that unlike a lot of other agencies, we're not, our plans are not to lay anybody off at least until May. And then of course we're not announcing we're laying people off and maybe we're just trying to be clear that we don't know the future that far out. I think it'd be a fair response to that reasonable question. The further we can push it out, the better off that is. I think we always have time to figure it out. Well, and I would just add to that, Mr. Chair, that as we have retirements, resignations, whatever along this journey, we won't rush to fill those positions because how sad it would be, heaven forbid if we have to lay off bus operators somewhere down the road who have just recruited them months before that would be poor planning on our part. You do have a hand up. I'm looking to see where that is. Somebody named Greg. Greg, please share your comment or question. You have to unmute yourself, Greg. There you go. I hit that by accident. No comment. Oh, okay. Thank you. That's our Greg. Hi, Greg. So I'm looking for a motion now to approve this policy change to create a new reserve fund. I would move the recommended action. Thank you. Trina, I'm going to have you seconded, John, if that's all right. Perfect. Thank you. And you have a comment as well, Trina? No, I just I just supported having heard this and been on finance committee and understanding the fiscal impacts. Thank you. So motion by Trina Kaufman-Gomas and second by John Leopold. Let's have a roll call vote, please. Remember to unmute yourself for the vote. I'm muted. Dr. Botthorff? You're on top. Dr. Kaufman-Gomas? Yes. Dr. Gonzalez? Dr. Gonzalez, yes. Dr. Leopold? Aye. Dr. Lind? Aye. Dr. Matthews? Aye. Dr. McPherson? Yes. Dr. Myers? Aye. Dr. Pegler? Aye. Dr. Routhwell? Aye. Dr. Rotkin? Aye. Motion by Dr. Kaufman-Gomas, second by Dr. Leopold, motion passed unanimously. All right, thank you. So we now have that new fund, which now we are to Alex's general oral report from the CEO. It's item number 11 on our agenda. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And this one too has a number of aspects to it that are important. A lot of things have been going on at the state and federal level that I want to brief you on. But first I want to acknowledge our promotions and new hires. Sandy Woods, who started with us as a temporary employee helping us out with our project management has become the project manager. Congratulations, Sandy. Also, it's always exciting to report internal promotions. Christina Miha Lova, apologize, Christina, if I messed that up, has moved from being our financial analyst to the position vacated by Debbie Kinslow when Debbie retired. So she is our finance deputy director. So congratulations to Christina, who's on here today. And then also a Joan Jeffries promoted to our purchasing agent. So congratulations to those internal candidates. And I think Joan is also online here today. What I'd like to do is go on to telling you a little bit about state and federal things going on that are important to us. On the state level, through the CTA, California Transit Association, which we are a member, I'm on the executive committee. When the crisis first hit, we mobilized to try to convince the state to allocate at least $1 billion statewide, help transit agencies survive COVID and all of the economic impacts associated with that. And then when Congress enacted the CARES Act, the state lost all interest in helping us out financially. So the CTA made a pivot at that point towards statutory relief, which was another important issue for us. And so far they've been successful in getting three important measures to us, included in AB 90, which is a budget trailer bill. One is a whole harmless provision for the calculation of state transportation assistance program. Also the STA state of good repair and the LC top program. So that's important because all of those are based on various performance measures that are going to be dramatically impacted by COVID. It also temporarily suspends financial penalties associated with the Transportation Development Act requirements or transit to obtain specified fixed percentages of their operating budget via passenger fares. And then finally, the third point that's in there is it temporary suspends financial penalties associated with the state transit assistant program requirements that a transit agency's operating costs per revenue vehicle hour may not exceed the operating cost per revenue vehicle hour adjusted for CPI year over year. So this attempts to force transit agencies to be careful how much they grow in expenses year over year. So those would all three be suspended if AB 90 is enacted and signed by the governor. The California Transit Association is now turning its attention back to the funding need of transit agencies across the state because they now have learned through their survey that similar to what I described earlier, the CARES Act money is obviously not a permanent panacea and there is going to be a day in which that money runs out for transit agencies across the state and we need more help. So we're still gonna, we're gonna move now to trying to get the state to allocate dollars for transit statewide. So I'll keep you informed on that as that goes along. On the federal side, Congress, the House enacted the HEROES Act and sent it over to the Senate. And that's sort of a CARES Act II kind of a thing. It was a $3 trillion proposal with $15.75 billion going to transit. It's a bad bill for small and mid-sized transit agencies. $11.75 billion of that money would go, would be broken out with 85% of it going to the 14 largest transit agencies in the nation. We are not one of those. And 15% distributed via the 5307 program, it would be a small amount compared to what we think we will need in a CARES Act II if that were to go through. It also has a $4 billion, additional $4 billion for a competitive program called the Emergency Relief Program, which we would not compete well in because under the Emergency Relief Program, you have to spend the money and then go ask for a reimbursement and you will only get a reimbursement, a partial reimbursement of what you asked for because there's only so much money to spread out across all the agencies. Therefore, to qualify under the Emergency Relief Program, which by the way, as I said last month, was a part of the APTA, the American Public Transportation Association's program, is a horrible idea because it would tell you that you need to spend $10 now, right now, to sustain your services. And some months later, go in and ask for a reimbursement and if you're lucky, maybe you'll get $2 or $3 of the $10, where do you get the other seven from? Your deficit spending under that program and it only works for large agencies who have substantial reserves and can sustain themselves for that period of time until they can get a reimbursement. So in my opinion, we would be wiped out. So there's very little in there for small and mid-sized properties and we hope that that will get on the transportation side of that bill will get severely revamped if it goes anywhere in the Senate and the Senate has sort of shown a lack of enthusiasm for this type of an approach in general. And then interestingly enough, in parallel with all of this, the House got really focused on the FAST Act, which expires in a year or at the end of this year and said, well, we want to work on reauthorization. So they created the Invest in America Act, which is a reauthorization, a new FAST Act. The central themes of this new reauthorization is a focus on bus frequency. So Congress really wants to focus on frequency of service. They've really bought into sort of those Jared Walker themes that you heard about over the last couple of years when we had Jared come present to you about the importance of frequency of service in drawing in more ridership, in growing ridership. Another theme is state of good repair. They really, really want to address aging fleets and the sustainability aspect of it, which is zero emission buses. Interesting thing about this is it's a 71% increase over the FAST Act. That is extraordinary all by itself. In the 5307 program alone, that would rise from 5.37 billion in FY21, which is the current FY, federal FY, to the final year of 7.5, I'm sorry, to 7.5 billion in FY22, to 7.9 billion in FY25. So you can see, if you think about us as a proportion of that, going from 5.37 to 7.9 billion is a lot of money to be distributed via the 5307 program across the nation. Metro will receive about 4.6 million 5307 in FY21. That's what we estimate we will receive. So then another component of reauthorization are these programs, these 53.39 programs, A, B, and C, that we've talked about often that we would apply for to get buses. And in fact, we've been funded through those programs on the competitive side. And that next year we would hope to go get money to build our paratransit facility. So that has some pretty interesting and exciting changes. One is on the A program, which is the formula. That's the portion of capital money that they push out via formula. We would jump from 400,000 in FY21 to 765,000 in FY22, and then progressively ramp up over the life of the new authorization to 807,000. Now that becomes, that puts us in a good place, if this were to happen, where we could start banking a couple of years of that money and go out and buy two or three buses. So that's really exciting. The 53B program, which historically has allowed you to go for buses, no longer will be available for buses unless you're going for an expansion of your fleet. Again, they want to see higher frequency service. They want to see agencies applying for higher frequency service, adding buses. That's how they can qualify. Other than that, what they hope to accomplish with this fund is putting more money out there for facilities. Transit agencies replacing their maintenance facilities, their operations facilities, transit centers. So that's their intent of this new revised competitive program. It would go from 290,000,000 in FY21 to 437,000,000 in FY22, and then it drops a little bit over the next several years to 353, but a substantial commitment to facilities. And then on the LODO side, again, that was another point I mentioned one of their focuses is zero emission buses. They're proposing to ramp that up 500%. They don't want agencies asking for 1Z2Zs anymore. They want agencies to come in and ask for more than two buses. And that program increases from 55,000,000 in FY21 to 500,000,000 by FY25. So that really shows their desire to get more electric buses out there. In addition to that, there's $5.8 billion that they propose to allocate in the current fiscal year as sort of a CARES Act II. They wanna push additional dollars out to the transit agencies to the tune of 5.8 billion. We think that's a good start. We'd like that to get up to like 24 billion. And we might work that on the Senate side of the equation, but that's a good commitment to what could be a CARES Act II. And we have to keep a foot in both camps, right? So we don't know if reauthorization is gonna happen. All signs are that it probably won't before the end of the year. But just in case it does, we need to fight for everything we can get in reauthorization, including a CARES Act II. If we get a bigger number in a CARES Act II, then we're less concerned about going the independent approach, the heroes, or whatever you wanna call it. However, we gotta focus on the other foot and try desperately to get a standalone CARES Act II because what if reauthorization doesn't happen? We still wanna have a bill moving forward that provides a safety net for us. So we'll keep working both of those angles as we work through our organization that we belong to, APTA, the national organization. Another good point, a final good point in this new reauthorization is the small transit-intensive cities, the infamous stick money that helps us tremendously in our budget. And as you might recall, went from a percent and a half to 2% a few years back would jump a whole percent to 3%. So that would help us substantially. And fine, that is the house bill, yes. So finally on FTA regulatory relief, FTA has established a website, agency submit questions and requests for regulatory relief. I submitted a request for regulatory relief because the stick program is dependent on various performance measures that are gonna be dramatically impacted by the COVID crisis. We suggested that they use prior years, prior to COVID for the next several years in allocating the stick money going forward so that we don't see us and other agencies across the nation don't see a huge decrease in that particular revenue source. The FTA responded and they responded even more broadly by saying funds apportioned during the FY21 budget years starting October 1 of 2020 will be based on 2019 NTD data, which is pre COVID data, further that for FY22, the FTA will use either 2019 or 2020 NTD data depending on whichever one is higher. So that's a really a good outcome for us on the stick and for all agencies nationwide who have other federal funds that will be allocated based on various types of performance measures. Mr. Chair, that concludes my lengthy remarks. Is there anything we should be doing as board members with our other agencies, those of us that sit on other boards to deal with California senators on the issue of do we know if we already have their support or need to lobby them for their support on this House bill? I think even though we might assume that they would be very supportive of it, they have at any given day a number of different folks talking to them about their needs. I would definitely talk to our local officials. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I do have a brief video if you want to indulge me just for a couple more minutes. Because we are running a little slower, go ahead. Okay. We'll let the folks at CTV put that on. Whoops. We got a problem with audio again. I think we had this problem. Economic recovery. These are truly unprecedented times. Yet during this public health emergency, the transit industry continues to serve their communities by providing essential transit services, transporting healthcare personnel, first responders, and others critical to the COVID-19 response and our nation's economic recovery. In fact, transit agencies across the country are continuing to provide nearly 5 million trips every day. I know that many transit workers have faced tremendous personal challenges. As Secretary Chao said, your courage, determination, and dedication inspires all of us. Thank you to our frontline workers for all you are doing to keep America moving. You are American heroes. Under the Trump administration's whole of government approach, we are awarding CARES Act funds quickly, already obligating, more than half of the 25 million in funding. The administration has also sent out 4.6 million protective-based coverings to the nation's public transportation workforce. And we will continue to work around the clock as your federal partner, provide transit agencies with funding, safety support, and administrative relief. I am amazed at what the transit industry has accomplished in the last few months. You've given vulnerable residents access to food and healthcare. You've rolled out innovations like delivering test kits with autonomous vehicles. You've even helped students learn with Wi-Fi-enabled buses. We are stronger when we work together, and we will emerge from this time better than we were before. Thank you. Thanks for sharing that, Alex. Our next item is public hearing. You have Cynthia Matthews with her hand up. Cynthia, go ahead. Yeah, I wanted to follow up on your comments about getting support from our various member agencies. And, Alex, if you could do a cheat sheet and get that out to us, we can get those letters in the pipeline. Thanks for that. Yeah, that's where I was trying to go, and then I dropped the ball. Yeah. Give us the clip notes. If it's all right, then I will move to a public hearing on the final adoption of the Santa Cruz Metros 21 and fiscal year 22 operating budget. And fiscal year 21 capital budget. We'll start with a staff report on that. I assume that that's coming from... First of all, is there a... Angela, probably give us a presentation. Then we'll ask if there are any public comments on that budget proposal. Angela, go ahead. What are you gonna open your public hearing now? Yes. Thank you. And we'll start with a staff report. So, Mike, in the essence of time, would you like us to go over the highlights of the pages? Yes, I think that would be appropriate. Again, we're running a little late today and I think it's a little bit through our... So, CTB, could you go to tab number 36, please? Because this is a pre-COVID budget. It's $57 million. And all I'm gonna be doing today is going over the changes that we were from between the May 8th meeting that we had and the June 12th when we had the changes at the finance committee meeting. So, as you can see on this page number 36, operating revenues, we did not put any changes for it in the operating revenues. We do know that there are significant changes to our revenues as I kind of alluded to in the previous comments that I put forward, but in the budget as a whole today, pre-COVID budget, we did not make any changes. Next slide, please. On the expense side, we did have some changes. So, we brought down FY21 by $45,000 and FY22 by $152, $153,000. You can see there in the notes, changes were some of the CalTip premiums. We had some provisional positions that we put in and we had some savings and some overtime and some employee training in both years. So, those are the changes that we had in this budget. If you'd like me to go in any more detail, I can, but everything else basically stayed the same from what I presented to you in May. Let me ask if there are any board members with questions in that very brief overall presentation about the budget. Again, we understand this budget is kind of a, is placeholder in a way, it's got some reality to it, but it's largely a placeholder budget because this is what we'll be operating under, but we'll obviously require, if not a formal amendment, at least some creative work during the year as we actually get our real expenses in and know more about our revenues. Are there questions? I don't know, buddy. This is a public hearing. Are there any members of the public that would like to comment on this matter? No hands, no chat. Wait a second and see. I see none. No hands up, Mr. Chair. I will bring this back and ask for a motion to accept this budget, approve this budget. A motion by Larry Pagler. Second. Who was that second? Leopold. John Leopold second. Any further comments? We have to have you once Cynthia have a comment for a question. You're muted Cynthia. I'd like to see as part of the motion that we, that this budget does reflect the pre-COVID status. It's a fluid situation. We anticipate modifications going forward. I'd just like to see that in the motion. Is that friendly to the maker of the motion, Larry Pagler? It's friendly to John Leopold, it is. Okay, we have a roll call vote then please. Remember to unmute yourself for your vote. I did. She keeps thinking it's you, I'm saying, I'm talking to all the board members who will vote before they vote. Go ahead, I know you've got it. Dr. Bautorf. Aye. Dr. Kaufman-Gumiz. Yes. Dr. Gonzalez. Aye. Dr. Leopold. Aye. Dr. Lind. Aye. Dr. Matthews. Aye. Dr. McPherson. Bruce, you're still muted. Bruce, we're calling on you for a voting you're muted right now. I think he's frozen. No, he's still, he's moving, my picture. Bruce, are you hearing me? Come back, we'll come back to Booth. I can't unmute him. Dr. Myers. Aye. Aye. Dr. Pagler. Aye. Dr. Rothwell. Aye. Dr. Ruckin. Aye. Well, with Dr. McPherson trying to vote, we have an almost unanimous vote. Bruce, are you hearing me? I see that you're there. And ask him to raise his hand. Bruce, can you right, there he goes. That's a, yeah, affirmative vote for this motion I took. Thank you. All right, that's a unanimous vote of all board members. So it's approved. And so we've closed the public hearing at 1137. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We'll keep the board updated as things change. We appreciate that. Number 14 on our agenda is consideration of adoption of Santa Cruz Metro's amended conflict of interest code and approval of the resolution confirming this action. We have a report on that, please. It's coming from Julie Sherman, I believe. Okay, I just had to unmute. So this is really just housekeeping. Every two years, you all have to take a look at your conflict of interest code and the designated positions they're in, make sure that they're up to date, check any new regulations. There haven't been any new regulations that impact this. The only changes that you'll see in your red line is that there was a new position added and a position title change. Those are the only changes. Once it's adopted by you, it just gets sent off to the county and we're done for the next two years. Thanks for that report. Thanks for keeping it brief. Are there questions from many board members about this? I see none. Are there members of the public? Trina, go ahead. So the question I have is the employee that's been added and the title change, they're aware of the agreement that they need to sign as a result of this conflict of interest. Yeah, so I don't handle that part of it. Perhaps Gina, well, she looks like she's, there she is. I'm not sure. They can't be notified until you guys have approved the changes, but as soon as the changes are approved, then we'll reach out to them so they're aware of it. And the requirement, obviously. Any other, Trina? What to find them to be included at this point if there were no changes at the state level? So there, it was a new position. And so anytime a new position is added, we have to look and see, should it be included in the list of designated positions? And it would be a position that has some kind of authority over choosing products or whatever, where there could be a potential conflict. Okay, thank you for that. Any other questions? Are there any members of the public like to comment on this? Seeing none, I'll bring it back for a motion for approval. I move the recommended actions. Second by Donna Myers. Any other comments? All those, right, roll call vote. Sorry, once again, roll call vote. Okay, Dr. Valtorf. Aye. Dr. Kaufman-Germas. Yes. Dr. Gonzalez. Aye. Dr. Leopold. Aye. Dr. Lind. Aye. Dr. Mathews. Aye. Dr. McPherson. Aye, that's an aye, raised by raised hand. Dr. Myers. Aye. Dr. Pigler. Aye. Dr. Rothwell. Aye. Dr. Rutkin. Aye. That's unanimously. Thank you very much, that was unanimously. We now have from our planning and development director, John Ergo, a update on our riders, we did a rider survey, and we have some results from that, John. Yes, good morning, directors. As many of you are likely aware, staff is in the process of conducting a customer survey that asks our riders some questions about when they plan to return to Metro and the timing about that. There have been various reports in the media that perhaps transit ridership will never recover from COVID-19 and certainly following the shelter-in-place orders as Metro had to reduce service nearly 50% and ridership decreased more than 90%. There are concerns about the long-term impact of COVID-19 on ridership. So we wanted to ask our customers directly and those in our community about their concerns and their future plans. And I'm going to bring a comprehensive report on the survey results and how it is informing our COVID-19 service recovery planning to the board in August, but I wanted to share a quick synopsis of the results to date because it's broadly encouraging. So first off, we're conducting the survey online. It's in English and Spanish. We disseminated the link through our delivery list and we also asked some of our partners like San Jose State, UCSC and Cabrillo to share it with their lists. It's been live for about two weeks now and we have about 250 responses. Most respondents, about 46%, are frequent riders. So meaning they ride five or more days per week or at least they did before the pandemic. We first asked how likely people were to ride Metro again once the stay at home orders are lifted and three quarters of all respondents said they would either likely or definitely would return at that point and 90% of frequent riders said they would return. We asked customers the primary reasons they might not return and the biggest concerns were social distancing mentioned by about a quarter of all respondents and cleanliness and sanitization on the bus mentioned by 18% so far. We also asked about timing which informs our service restoration planning. Over a third of all respondents and half of frequent riders said they would feel comfortable returning to Metro as soon as the stay at home orders are lifted and we're already kind of seeing that as ridership slowly ticks back up. On the other side of things, 17% of all respondents so far said they would wait for a vaccine. So that points to potentially some longer term ridership impacts. Finally, we asked a series of questions about the types of improvements that Metro could make to encourage riders to take our service again or more often in the future. The highest rank response was to improve or increase service and this ranked higher than maintaining COVID-19 specific measures or any technology enhancements like mobile ticketing or infrastructure improvements that we could make. And even when we asked specifically about the types of COVID-19 specific measures that we could implement, again, the restoration of service scored higher than all other measures. So the next size mentions were maintaining cleanliness standards, seeing a significant decrease in new COVID-19 cases and requiring passengers to wear personal protective equipment. Interestingly, in this question, maintaining social distancing ranked towards the bottom as did the continuation of free fares which we've already reinstituted fares. So far at a high level, the message is that the most important thing we can do to encourage customers to return to Metro is to continue to work to restore service. We began this with yesterday's service change. And in fact, over the last two weeks, over a time when we started, ridership is up about 20%. It's still down 88% year over year, but that's up about six percentage points from the low point of the pandemic. So ridership is starting to take back up as we're increasing service. So again, I'll bring a full report in August. We're gonna do one more survey push with the COVID-19 service recovery plan. There's lots of ways we can dissect this data. I'd be happy to take any questions or comments on the efforts so far. Thanks, John. It's nice to hear that our ride, given that half the country's going crazy. It's nice to know that our riders have fairly rational responses to the situation that we're in and how they would respond to it for themselves. I mean, that's quite impressive actually. Are there questions? I'm encouraging. Gina. Had there been any, like a few little comment for any comments outside of the questions house that should be of a concern or that should be addressed by Metro? So we have some open-ended questions and we're still compiling the answers on that. So again, I'll bring a full report in August, but we did leave some questions open so that people could write in particular questions or comments. So yeah. Any other questions or comments from board members? Any comments from members of the public? I see none. Okay. There is one comment, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Let's have that. James Sandoval. James, go ahead, please. I think you're still muted, James. There you go. A quick question to John. How do you, I don't know if I missed this, but how do you get that survey out to the riders? Because that's the first time I've heard of the survey going out. You mentioned it briefly. We go, please repeat it, John. Yeah. So we've, it's primarily, well, it's a link. It's online. It's to our gum delivery service alert list, which I think has a couple thousand email addresses on there. Again, most respondents are frequent riders riding five or more times a week or before the pandemic. And we've also sent the link out through the community, San Jose State, UCSC and Cabrera. But we'll do another push for continuing to work to get it out into the community. Thank you. Thanks for the question, James. Thanks for the response. Anything else? Okay, this item doesn't require any action on our part. Trina has a comment or question. You're muted, Trina. Trina, you're still muted. Don't get like me, Trina. Trina, you're still muted if you're trying to speak to us. Do you still have a comment, Trina? You were muted. We didn't hear any of that. Right. It's the mouse is just playing cat and mouse right now. So it's not just me. Is it possible for you to send us a link that we can then share on our Facebook and other social media format so that we can expand the bandwidth for that survey that you're conducting? Yes, absolutely. Thank you for offering that. So you, will you send that out to all of us automatically without us asking further for it? John? Yes. I'll put Gina to send the link out to everyone. Thank you. Okay, no other action required on that item. Mr. Chair, you have Cynthia Matthews. Sorry, thank you, Cynthia. Just another suggestion to get it to the downtown association, the city's transportation planner, which does have a mailing list of people who've been engaged in transit outreach. Great. You got that, John? Yeah. I mean, so far it's been very rider focused because we focused on our government delivery list, but it'd be great to open it up more. Absolutely. So, I mean, for those suggestions, needs to be a question then whether people are riders because we do ask that. Yeah. Some of those people on the city list may not take the bus. We are now to the safety plan issue and Rufus Francis has a report for us on that matter. It's item number 16. Rufus there, I don't see a connection. Jeanine, you know where Rufus is or what's happening? We're gonna check his office real quick. We'll wait a moment here. If he's aware that he lost connection. Yeah, he was on earlier. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I still show him there. Let's see, let me hit allow to talk. Rufus, if you can hear us, you need to unmute your mic. There you go, it looks like he's there. Rufus, your report on item number 16 on the agenda. Mike shows that it's alive. Yeah, no, it does. Mine shows that as well. It's our last item before preparing for closed session. So let's give it a moment. He's on his way, Alex. Okay, he's probably just gonna use this computer. I'm sorry, I missed what was said. Rufus is coming on right now. So I can speak from here then. That will work. Good morning, Rufus. Good morning. Good morning, chair and members. Sorry for the delay, my mic was not working. So I have to come to this area. So today we are requesting the board of directors to approve Metro's public transpiration agency safety plan. I gave an oral presentation sometime back that this plan is under the process of development. So this is required by FDA and they published a rule 49 CFR part 673 which requires us to develop this plan and all those transit system which are receiving or recipient of federal funding. They have to develop this plan and this plan has to be based on the four principles or pillars of SMS, which is safety management system. You will see in this plan, those four systems are our pillars and each pillar. Why did they want me to unmute on my phone? Go ahead, Rufus, go ahead. Okay, so the SMS four pillars, each pillar has its own associated processes and procedures. So you will see in the plan those four pillars and these four pillars are safety management policy that we should have a very strong safety management policy. We should have a safety risk management process in which we evaluate those safety risks and take mitigating factors and steps to take control of our safety risks. Then it has a process called safety assurance. We should have those processes in place to assure that we have a good safety program in place and is the last fourth pillar is the safety promotion. Safety promotion means what kinds of things we are going to do to promote safety at all levels. So it's a very good plan, good guidelines from FDA to develop these plans. And one of the requirement is that this plan has to be presented to the board of directors for adoption and approval. So the board of directors have to approve this plan. You will see that approval page on page four of this plan. The deadline for this plan initially was July 20th, 2020, but due to COVID-19 effects, they have extended the compliance date to December 31st, 2020. A little bit of background on the development of this plan that this plan has been developed working together with all the stakeholders, all the departments within Metro, the unions. And once this plan was developed, it was sent to the state safety oversight, which is California, and also to the FTA Technical Advisory Committee. They have looked at this plan and they have responded back and saying that this plan meets the requirement and they are satisfied with it. So at this time, we are ready to go with this plan and seek your approval. If there are any questions regarding the plan, I'll be happy to answer. Thank you. That plan is in the agenda reports. So board members and the public have had an opportunity to review it. Are there questions from board members, first of all, about the plan or comments about the plan from board members? I see none. Let me ask if there are any members of the public that would like to comment on this. I see none. Chair, I'll just say that I appreciate that the process that went through to make sure everyone understood what was going on. And it's helpful that the federal government actually gave us an extension of time to actually get it done so we could do it right. And I'd be prepared to move the recommended actions. I'll accept that motion. And we have a second from? Second. First. Who's McPherson? I'm back. I'll turn on the microphone. All right, that's good. Are there any other questions or comments from board members or the public? All right. Then we need a roll call vote on this motion. Dr. Baltorff. Hi. Dr. Kaufman Gomez. Yes. Dr. Gonzalez. Hi. Dr. Leopold. Hi. Dr. Lind. Hi. Dr. Matthews. Hi. Dr. McPherson. Hi. Dr. Myers. Hi. Dr. Penguin. Hi. Dr. Rothweil. Hi. Dr. Rockin. Hi. The unanimous eyes. Thank you. That was approved. Our next item is a review of items to be discussed in closed session. I'll ask Julie Sherman to comment on that. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, Metro's workers compensation attorney, Marie Sang. will be addressing the board in closed session to talk about one workers compensation case. And there will not be any reportable action after the closed session. So in that case, we don't even have to come back into open session again afterwards. Is that correct? So we need to come back to report out, even though my report out will be that there is no reportable action. I still have to give that report and then we have to adjourn. But you and I could do that. Okay. I'll leave open. I'll leave that open and we'll come back to this. We're about to go into closed session. Let me report, since people have no real reason to wait around, our next meeting, which I expect still be a Zoom meeting unless we hear other report otherwise, will be on Friday, August 28th, 2020 at nine o'clock in the morning. And so that's what we expect to be back here for our next regular meeting. Can you ask if there's any public comment on the closed session, please? Yes, I will. I was about to. Sorry about that. I just want to make sure before we leave that everybody knows when we're meeting next. Is there anyone who has a comment on the closed session item? That's before us. It's a personnel matter. I guess what it's actually a compensation matter. Before we go off here, everybody should have received an email, board members, that is not the public. It's a closed session. All the board members should have received an email to give a place to click or to join us in this closed session. Anybody have a problem with that? If you do, I would suggest, I'm going to give you a phone number to call to get some help. That would be 426. 626. What's the number again? I forgot, I thought it was 2060. Is that right? 206. Who do you want them to call? New, if there's a crisis. I can't be there. Okay, Bruce is leaving now then. Right, but in case anybody messes up and you can't get back on, call Gina. Gina, your number to call you? It's 831-420-2504. Everybody got that? Go look at your email. Cynthia has a question or comment. I'm not sure I'm finding that second link. It's in the bottom of the email that you got this morning. Oh, okay. There were two links. There's one to the public and there's one to the private. Should have been this morning's email. Okay. And also Director Kaufman Gomez has a conflict at 1230. Hey, we still have a... You still have quorum with those two without. I expect we'll be out by 1230, hopefully. All right, we're now going to recess. I guess it's the right word. We're not adjourning until we get back to work. Yes. The meeting or the email I got this morning, I do not see... Well, I can't open the wind attachment that I have, so I don't see the number for it. I don't see it either. I don't either. Well, actually, you should what you should have. It's not in that. The place to find it is an email from Ian Berry, B-E-R-R-Y. I mean, I think that might have included the board meeting. Oh, there it is. I got it. That's what I got this morning. That email from Ian Berry. The one I got from Ian Berry had a DC meeting on it. Say it again. The one I got from Ian Berry had RTC meeting on it. Is that the wrong one? It had a closed session at the bottom, though. Was that the closed session, Donna? Because it was the wrong meeting. No, that can't be right. I think it's the same thing. I went to Ian Berry's meeting and it was RT. I did that this morning too. So I don't know. That's not the right one, then. Let's take a moment. Here we're all going to get on this call. Not going anywhere. So... Subject says board meeting and closed session personalized links. And I asked, if you wouldn't mind, Gina, we'll take a moment to do this. Resend us the email that has the link for our closed session or maybe I'm asking the person in the television. Mike, I've been having my hand raised to say something for the closed session. Oh, okay. I'll recognize you before we go out. But meanwhile, we're just trying to get clear on how people are going to get to our closed session. Okay, I can wait. It's up to you. I will call on you before we leave. Okay. Gina, you'll resend or have somebody resend us the link. Yes, I'm asking you to send it now. Okay, so James, go ahead and make your comments while that's being sent. So while you go in the closed session, I just wanted to mention that Bonnie Moore has been extremely supportive and vital to the success of Metro for a very long time. And that we hope that in good faith, you treat her properly as a retiree to show your appreciation that after she dedicated so many years of service to Metro in this community, she deserves a clean and honorable retirement. You all have an opportunity here to show all of Metro staff and the community that Metro takes care of its employees because we are all paying attention to this. Please make this right. Thank you, James, for your comments. Okay, have we yet received? I'm gonna wait till we receive that link. Okay, and I'm gonna go into the closed session just to make sure everybody joins and then when you're all there, I'll pop out of it. Is that okay, Julie? Yeah, that's fine. And Marie said she's already waiting in that closed session. So I think whatever link she had worked. Okay, good. I'm gonna sign off and try that link. Okay, thank you. I'm gonna do the same. I'm gonna sign off and try that link. Okay, thank you. I'm gonna do the same.