 Well, good morning everyone. Welcome to the Santa Cruz Regional Transportation Commission meeting. This is March the fourth and can we go ahead and begin with roll call. Commissioner Bertrand. Present. Commissioner Brown. Here. Commissioner Johnson. Here. Commissioner Montesino. Commissioner Caput. Here. Commissioner Coneg. Here. Commissioner Schifrin. Here. Commissioner Mulhern. Here. Commissioner Coneg. Here. Commissioner McPherson. He had trouble last time. Here. There he is. Commissioner Peterson. Present. Commissioner Gonzalez. Here. Commissioner Rockin. Thank you folks. Next on the agenda is oral communication. Any member of the public may address the commission on any item within the jurisdiction of the commission that is not already on the agenda. The commission will listen to all communications. But in the compliance with the state law, they may not take action or items that are not on the agenda. Speakers are requested to sign in and state their names so clearly that their names can be accurately recorded in the minutes of the meeting. So we're going to go ahead and we're going to give three minutes this time around to the public. Is there any public that would like to speak? Please raise your hand and you'll be identified. Mr. Brian Peoples. Thank you. This is Brian from Trail Now. Thank you for sharing the train to derailment at Manresa Beach in 1978. Multiple train cars crashing into homes in Selva Beach area. This derailment took place in an area with few houses close to the tracks and at slow speeds. The train was traveling five miles an hour. Imagine trains traveling 45 miles an hour through our neighbors hoods, 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Imagine the consequences of 60 trains a day through Capitola, Apos, LIBO. We believe heavy traffic, train traffic, transportation should remain on the highway corridor, not through our neighborhoods. Please, how about we start having a conversation about realistic use of the coastal corridor for transportation resource? We need to talk about when will we use the coastal corridor. Opening the coastal trail for alternatives for biking, walking, running is critically needed for our community. The facts show that it is possible to have an interim coastal trail started this year and completed by 2023. Rail banking has been recognized by the RTC as a means to preserve the coastal corridor for future transit. RTC has stated that 100% of the rails have to be removed for any future transit system. Any future public transit system along the coastal corridor is decades away due to the cost. We ask you to support building an interim coastal trail from Watsonville to Davenport by 2023. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Veebles. Mr. Michael St. Go ahead, Michael. Can you hear me? Yes. All right. Good morning, Chair Gonzalez and commissioners. Michael St. from Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. Something a little different. Let's talk about climate change today. I'd like to share with you a letter that was in the January, February, Sierra Club magazine. Just imagine that you're in the year 2030 and we're looking back over a pivotal decade in human history. Allow me to paint a picture for you of the energy transformation that is possible. Number one, first we powered the country with 100% clean energy. An electric grid powered by clean energy was the foundation of turning the corner on climate change. Number two, we got well on our way toward electrifying everything. Here in 2030, one of the best parts of energy transition is that it has made our lives healthier. COVID-19 made Americans realize the importance of walkable cities and accessible public transportation. Congress included funding and infrastructure bills for clean and affordable public transit, biking and walking options. Thirdly, we stopped attempts to expand drilling while we reclaimed abandoned wells, mines, and drilling sites. Fourth, finally, we engaged millions of people in the work for climate justice. Let's be clear that none of this was very easy. In summary, we were unafraid to go after not just Republicans who were denying the validity of climate science and supporting misinformation campaigns, but also Democrats. We said to them, you too have not done enough on this issue. You have said you believe the science. You have voted the right way, but truly, we need champions. We need fighters. We need people who are ready to stick their necks out on issues who will fight day in and day out. We'll be the leaders that we so badly need on the critical issues and talk about them from racial and economic justice perspectives. What's crucial is being willing to call for the level of action you want and we need as your citizens to mitigate climate change, no matter what your political affiliation is. We have yet, and I please do not take this personally, not found any champions on this present RTC commission. We really hope that you will walk the walk instead of just talking about it. I hope you don't take it offensive, but I've enjoyed the talk and thank you for listening. Mr. Barry Scott. Go ahead, Barry. Okay, thank you. I wanted to speak to the rail transit business plan and the TCAA. I think it's clear after all every study that we've conducted indicates that rail transit on the right of way is the best investment across every every dimension and every every criteria. And we want to, you know, build for future generations, as well as solve current problems. However, we know that the cost is high and I think that everyone's concern is really around costs, not, not, not mode, not vehicle types so much, but what is the cost of this and I encourage commissioners and staff to be sure to provide a rapid streetcar type of vehicles similar to the TIGM type, which will, you know, indicate which will represent present and and coming technologies that are lighter and less expensive to implement and operate. Maintenance of the rail infrastructure. It's so important right now as you mentioned that measure D began with a healthy, robust, I think it may have been higher than 15%. But I remember as it was reduced and reduced to just 8%. We've been spending a lot of that measure D 8% money on studies and maybe not as much as we might on rail infrastructure. I sincerely hope that we will not neglect the rail line because there's more storms and things occur. We, you know, it takes, we need to take care of that of that infrastructure infrastructure. The conversation about rail banking seems to be, would seem to suggest moving in an opposite direction, kind of, it would signal a weakening of our resolve and commitment to maintain that line. And it's a bit early, I think, to consider rail banking if what we're trying to do is is create, preserve the, the, the integrity of the infrastructure and implement rail at any time in the future. And finally, I know that we're looking for a replacement for progressive rail. And we know that roaring camp is interested a local company with local employees and local interests. And I think they'd make a fabulous partner, not just for providing freight, but also the fact that they will have an interest in the entire rail line and permit staff and consultants to, to conduct the kinds of operations that need to be done. Right now, I don't believe that the RTC has any vehicles or any capacity to get out to every part of the rail line, unless you were to rent or find a high rail truck. If roaring camp is our partner, you can be sure that they will help the RTC get out to any part of the rail line for inspections and for work. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker. Mr. Kerry Pico and then Faena Segal. Mr. Kerry Pico is recognized. You there, Kerry. I see it now. Thank you. My name is Pico. I live in Aftos, Rio del Mar. I've been testifying at the RTC since 2014. And all this time I've been allowed three minutes and less otherwise announced. Last month's cut off of my presentation was unprecedented, an insult and a loss for the commission. Second, a commissioner stated trail advocates should quote, check their white privilege unquote, an insulting racist statement on its own. Let me tell you about my white privilege. I grew up in a broken single parent home in San Diego. Welfare, shopping, the goodwill, government powdered eggs. My neighborhood was not privileged among the kids I grew up with. One went to federal prison. Another killed in a drug deal and another suicide. As to my home, police visits were regular. My brother and sister were each sent to county homes for the incorrigible, incorrigible, never graduating high school. My sister died of heroin overdose. It messes with your head. It leaves scars. But I was smart enough not to huff spot remover or worse. Mine was not a life of white privilege. I made it to college before you talk about white privilege. Check your own. I survived better still I accomplished far beyond my means. That's my rear view mirror. That is my privilege. I know it and I'm grateful. That is why I try not just here, but as some of you know elsewhere in the community to improve those around me. I come here repeatedly because I see great failure in the RTC, an organization that has created controversy where none existed before. It's expertise is disappointingly skin deep. Take traffic, for example. The RTC uses it to justify its trains ambitions, but doesn't have the basics. For example, the RTC stated for years, only 15% of highway one north traffic heads on. Highway 17 north towards the Bay Area. Had it looked at the Caltrans data, it's 50 to 60%. That's a factor of four difference. That wasn't a mistake. That was an intentional misinformation or intentional ignorance used to justify how millions of dollars are spent each year for ideological rather than data driven goals. The same can be said about a lot of RTC misinformation. So yes, I will be back again and again with my three minute presentation unless you cut me off. I look forward to seeing you. Seeing each of you in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Fico. Good morning, Chair Gonzalez and commissioners. My name is Faena Siegel. I am the board chair of Santa Cruz County, friends of the rail and trail. I just wanted to welcome and congratulate capitalists past mayor and current city council member Kristen Peterson for being selected by the Metro Board to represent the interests of Metro and all the people who use Metro's countywide public transit system. Every year, on behalf of the entire four organization and our thousands of supporters countywide, we look forward to working with you to create a more robust public transportation system that will transform our county into a more equitable, sustainable and prosperous county. Welcome. Thank you, chairs. That's all I have for you now. Thank you. Chair Gonzalez, we don't have any other hands raised, but I do need to make a correction on my real call. I call commissioner Scott eats. Okay. There's been a correction in the roll call. I take it. They're here, right. They're here, right. And Eduardo hasn't showed up yet. Yes, Eduardo is now on as well. Okay, good. Welcome. We're going to go ahead and we're going to move on and we'll move on to item number three, which is additions or deletions to consent and regular agendas. Chair Gonzalez. Yes, there is a replacement page for the agenda. It doesn't change the content of the agenda except that it Kristen Peterson as the additional commissioner instead of to be determined. There's also replacement pages for item four, which are the minutes from last month's agenda. Those are posted on our website and that is all of the changes. Thank you. As your question or motion to accept the consent agenda. Or is there any comments anybody would like to make on the agenda. We have a motion in a second. We should wait wait that's the public again. Yeah, is there anybody from the public that like to comment on any item on the consent agenda. Janet. Good, Janet, we recognize you. What item would you like to speak upon. I would like to unmute yourself, Janet. I would like to move item seven to the regular agenda. Is there any commissioner they would like to do that. Well, she should say something about why. Yeah. Because the there is no consideration for handicapped parking in that project. And I'm a person in a wheelchair. Can I just clarify here a little bit? I think this is something that. I understand the importance of handicapped parking. But again, that is something that I think the city of Santa Cruz needs to address. And not this commission that is there in their jurisdiction to address those issues. So I feel that's how I feel and I feel we should continue to keep this on the consent agenda. Yeah. I would like to move item seven to the regular agenda. I would like to move item seven to the regular agenda. I would like to move item seven to the commission. I feel differently and wishes to pull this item. And put it on the regular agenda. And now is the time. Well, I would suggest rather than pulling it. Give her three minutes, give the person who, who called in three minutes to say what she was going to say. If it had been pulled. She gave a very brief statement, but if you. Yeah. I think she should have additional time. I think that would make sense just Sandy from the city rep. It would help me understand so I can talk to our staff about it as well. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and allow her to speak. Two minutes on this. Consent agenda item. Janet. Okay. Um, the project is to, um, I'm going to move item seven to the commission. I would like to move item seven to the commission. I would like to place some drainage in the area on Pacific Avenue and front street. And, um, That particular street is the most level in that area. And there is no handicap parking, especially for, um, Van access where parallel parking doesn't work. And you are putting in extra motorcycle parking. Um, Um, For, um, Front in, uh, parking that would allow handicap parking to be put there. There is little handicap parking in that area. And, um, It's, it would be advisable when you have all the people out there doing street work to add some handicap parking. Um, I would like to move item seven to the commission with that project. That's all. Thank you, Janet. Mr. Chair. I'm not sure the order. Um, but. I like stats and question if I could on this topic. You could tell me whether we want to pull it and talk about it later or now. It's up. Uh, I'm leaving it up to commissioners. If any commissioner wants to pull this item. I don't think you need it. I don't think you need to pull it to ask your question. I think you can just ask your question, Mike. Thank you. I just wanted to do whatever you'd like. So my question is when we have a claim, um, this, this is a, um, Basically, uh, um, Transportation, it's a claim for 50,000. Is this after work is completed or money that's going to the city to allow them to proceed with the project? That's a question to our staff, I guess. So, uh, commissioner, And this is a TDA claim as for transportation development. Um, money, which is limited to, um, Bicycle and pedestrian improvements on this project. It cannot be used for parking of any kind. Um, the project, I believe has multiple funds sources. And there are other things that could be possibly done with this or other projects. And that's why, uh, you know, when I have briefed commissioner Gonzalez that the city had said that they are, um, willing to look into the disabled parking issue, but it's really unrelated to the, the TDA claim. Um, that's in front of you as, as part of this. Thank you. I won't pork. And I understand that the first, uh, I believe my name is Janet should go to the city of Santa Cruz to talk to them about this. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner. Okay. So we have a motion and a sandy. Did you have a question? I just wanted to make a comment here, uh, to Janet, if you, uh, want to reach out to me, I can try to help, uh, facilitate that conversation. Uh, we have talked about the project. Um, I'm, I'm happy to try to, um, help get your, your, uh, perspective in, in that conversation. So just contact me at the, my city city of S Brown at city of Santa Cruz.com. And, um, we, we can connect that way. Thanks. Thank you. We, we have a, um, motion and a second motion by. In the second by Andy. Um, vocal. That was a motion by commissioner Schifrin second by commissioner Bertrand. Um, Yeah. Okay. Commissioner Bertrand. I'm sorry. I was muted. I. Commissioner Brown. Hi. Commissioner Johnson. Hey. Commissioner Montesino. Hi. Commissioner Caput. Hi. Commission alternate Schifrin. Hi. Mission alternate Mulher. Hi. Mission to Koenig. Hi. Mission or McPherson. Hi. Mission or Peterson. Hi. Mission or Gonzalez. Hi. And commissioner Rockin. Hi. Uh, we're going to go ahead and move on to item, um, 17 is the regular agenda. And the commissioners reports. You know, anybody's commissioner report. Commissioner. I don't see any hands. We're going to move on to item number eight. It's a chair. I have an item. I'd like to mention. Okay. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. Um, so with the derailment picture that we saw, I'd like to remind the commission. And the staff of the commission that ever since I've been on, at least, um, we've raised a concern of the trestle over Soquel Creek. And. At that time, George promised they report on that. So we're still waiting for a report on the viability of that trestle and what its limits are. Because there are many houses actually below that trestle. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Sure. Any other commission. I hear somebody. Yeah, I. I was, I wasn't going to comment. Yeah. A picture of a freight train with massive cars and the weight, one assumes of a heavy locomotive. It's not what anyone is thinking. And no one I'm aware of is thinking about in terms of what we would put on this quarter in terms of passenger rail. So it's more than a little misleading to show us a picture of a wreck from a freight train from a couple of decades ago. To imply that that's what we're thinking of running on this. And it's really misleading to the public. When we're talking about, you know, it's something that the weight of I don't know what it would be. Perhaps what Barry Scott talked about a trolley car of some sort, or even if it were light rail, it would be a very different kind of a animal than that. So it's a middle, little misleading and not particularly helpful. And it's a little, I don't know, I don't know what it would be. I don't know what it would be. I don't know what it would be. I don't know what it would be. But it's a little, little misleading and not particularly helpful to the public debate. It's my only comment. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner. Is there any other commissioner? I'd like to make a reporter or comment. Hearing none. Seeing no raised hands. I'm going to go ahead and move on to item number 18. Committee appointments. That's me on this note. I'd like to nominate Eduardo. I want to see no to the budget and administrative. And I think. Manu. Conan is also. Wishing to. Be placed. I will be taking the. Coastal corridor. It's the coast or something. Sorry, I don't have that in front of me right now. A coast route coordination committee. And Bruce McPherson, wish to maintain. His commission, his committee commission. Is there any one other one I'm missing? I understand. It's going to be wanted to stay on the budget and administration committee. Okay. And I had desired to do that too. If there's no spot for me, that's fine, but I still was interested in staying on. Okay. Well, there would be one too many appointees. If Eduardo was appointed and Manu was appointed. I don't know. I don't know. Well, I'll, I'll back off. Thank you. I'll back off. I didn't know that there was too many. I did want to continue, but these others are interested. I'll definitely back off. Thank you. So for clarification purposes, I have the five board of supervisors and Eduardo Montecino as being nominated. And then I have. Commissioner Gonzalez being nominated for the post route coordination committee. And then I believe it's actually a commissioner friend who is appointed to Cal cog. He's wishing to continue. Yes. So are these appointments or nominations? Nations. In that case, I'd like to move the chair's nominations. Second. I'll second that, but I have a question normally doesn't the chair just appoint rather than making the nominations in the commission after a point. I don't remember having to vote on these appointments in the past, but maybe I just forgot. Good morning, commissioners. This is, this is Luis Mendez. It is correct that the chair does. I don't know if you can call it a denominator point, but the chair does make the designations. But with concurrence from the commission. So, so then a motion for concurrence of the commission is certainly something that, that would be an order. That's my motion. I'll second it. Thank you. Oh, I'm going to do roll call. Commissioner Bertrand. I agree. Commissioner Brown. I. Commissioner Johnson. I. Commissioner Montesino. Yes. Commissioner Caput. Commissioner Caput, you're on mute to commissioner Caput. Commission alternate shifrin. I. Commission alternate Mulher. I. Commissioner Koenig. I. Commissioner McPherson. I. Commissioner Peterson. I. Commissioner Gonzalez. I. Commissioner Caput. Okay. Well, thank you. It's been a. Silence is consent. So I think that's right. Unless he calls back to correct it. There he is. Commissioner Caput. We were looking for your vote on the nominations for the committees. Yes or no. You'll have to unmute yourself. Commissioner Caput. What are you doing? We're looking for your vote on the committee appointments for the commission. We have the budget and personnel committee, the calcog and the rail coordinating committee. The vote. Okay. I'm sorry. I guess I was muted. Okay. Thank you commissioners. We're going to go ahead and move on to item 19 director's report. Thank you. Chair Gonzalez and commissioners. I have an announcement of Metro appointed RTC commissioners at Santa Cruz Metro's board meeting on February 26. Metro approved the nomination of Kristen Peterson as Metro's final appointee to the RTC, joining chair Gonzalez and commissioner Rodkin as one of Metro's three appointees. Kristen is a city of capitol, a council member. Welcome. Commissioner Peterson. Metro also approved the appointment of three alternate RTC commissioners. We have the commissioners, chair, and Larry and Donna. For the rest of my report, I'm going to provide some observations on the transportation landscape that I've kind of seen during COVID. From the beginning to where we're at now. We've all been experienced various impacts to our daily routines due to the coronavirus pandemic. Notwithstanding the need, desire and ability to experience the freedoms related to transportation. Transportation provides freedom to move, but often this freedom comes with certain pitfalls. How free are we if we need to spend hours of our daily lives stuck in an inefficient commute? Soon after the virus arrived in California, all but essential workers were told to stay home. Freeways once clogged with back-to-back traffic became virtually empty. By being afforded the new freedom to work from home, many non-essential workers were freed of the perils associated with their once often grueling daily track only to now feel trapped in their own homes. So it didn't take long before routine congestion returned to Santa Cruz. Highway 1 is experiencing regular congestion. Highway 17 still appears to be a little bit less congested during the work commute, but it backs up on weekends as tourists continue to seek freedom by escaping their homes and traveling over the hill to Santa Cruz for a day. Our metro buses have continued to serve customers throughout the pandemic. They have employed new safety and prevention measures onboard their vehicles and out their transit centers, including face mask requirements, plastic sheathing between rows of seats, increased cleanings, and a limit on the number of passengers depending on the size of the vehicle. Metro is currently offering free fares to COVID-19 vaccination appointments. Nonetheless, Metro's ridership is still well below pre-pandemic levels. Metro expects that riders will eventually return, but there will likely be changes to usage patterns. Metro is utilizing an opportunity provided by the decrease in ridership to conduct a pilot program of on-demand microtransit open to the general public. This program could help provide very useful information about demands for transit in our county. To help encourage ridership, Metro is also implementing a temporary fare reduction program, which would discount all adult and youth fares by 50% and provide free fares for riders with an eligible discount fare. Metro project projects this proposal, proposal could increase ridership by 20% by lowering the financial burden of transportation for customers who need it the most. For our biggest changes that I've observed is the number of people using active transportation modes, such as walking and biking. Within the active mode, we are seeing an entire new class of electric personal transportation vehicles with e-bikes leading the way. And putting as new e-bike legislation, which provides a tax credit to individuals who purchase an e-bike, Congressman Jimi Panetta acknowledges that due to the distance, speed and ease by which they can travel, e-bikes will help replace vehicle trips and commutes and reduce carbon emissions. Bike sales are booming and Santa Cruz appears to be fully on board. It's therefore extremely important to further advance active transportation infrastructure projects as part of our overall strategy of a balanced multimodal transportation system. This concludes my report. Thank you. Commissioner Gonzales, we have a community member with their hands up, a few community members. Okay. We're going to go ahead with the community members. Any comments or questions on the report by the executive director? Yeah. This is Commissioner McPherson. I just want to say thank you for what Metro has done. The ridership is down about 85% plus. And that's understandable, but they have gone to great efforts to accommodate those in need. And they're going to allow free transportation for those that want to get a vaccine shot. So Metro has gone above and beyond what it really has to do. And I really want to compliment the administration of Metro and the board members of which I'm one, but we're trying to continue the service, very essential services to our customers. Very much appreciated. Thank you, Metro, for what you're doing. Thank you, Commissioner McPherson. Is there any other commissioner that'd like to comment or have a question for the executive director on his report? Seeing none are here. None. I'm going to go ahead and do the public now. Is there anybody in the public that'd like to comment or have a question for the executive director on his report? Brian Peoples, then Michael St. Hi, this is Brian from trail now. Great news on the e-bike tax credit from Congressman Panetta's. We gave him a message of support for that. We're actually met with his office and we're meeting with them again tomorrow. I do want to comment. And e-bikes are a game changer for our community and why we absolutely need the Coastal Trail Open ASAP. That is going to be a game changer for our community. The study showed that there would be 800 users an hour along the corridor. And that's essentially almost half of a single highway link capacity. So it will be a game changer for our community and letting that property sit unused for decades is not appropriate for our community. I do want to make one other comment in reference to Commissioner Rodkin's comment about trains through our community. Mr. Peoples, this is on view. It's not about that. It's basically the trains are multi-ton vehicles. They're smart trains. Mr. Chair, you should force your rule. You will be reasonable until it's not on topic. And I'll stop. Everybody's got the message that 12 people have died. Thank you. Mr. Michael St. then Barry Scott. Good, Mr. St. Thank you, Chair Gonzalez. I want to take a little exception to Mr. Preston's comment about feeling trapped in their homes. My wife works at Stanford. And she, this has been her most relaxed year. She's not had to commute except for one day a week versus three or four times a week. She can take breaks at home and occasionally goes for walks. And I think most of the people may feel trapped if their social life revolves around their work. I can understand that. But for our point of view, things are much better with the telecommuting. You don't need to make that drive to do just as good a job as you do at work. When she goes to work, she's basically trapped inside her office because it's so busy. She's a nurse coordinator on oncology. So I really think as a suggestion, RTC should pursue telecommuting as an option. The best thing anything can do about transportation is to get cars off the road and not widen it to put more cars on the road. I've seen the traffic come back. I agree with Mr. Preston on that. Emphasize it's used to telecommuting, especially for those going over the hills. So that would mean the RTC would get some type of program. Maybe do an ad hoc community to get in contact with the larger businesses. Google, Apple have buses. Stanford does not. A lot of the medical places do not. So those would be good people to talk to as well as our own local people. So, and I do agree with the e-bikes program. I think that's a super thing. I hope we really pursue that as well. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. States. Very Scott than Mr. Vernasa. Thank you. I just wanted to mention that I'm excited about e-bikes too. And I hear sometimes this binary argument that because of e-bikes and electric vehicles, we might not need public transit quite so much, which I reject. And I hope all of you understand that these, these good ideas are not mutually exclusive. As regards of working from home and again, I was on a call a month or two ago with, with a Bart rep, the Bart director on, on the call. And she was pointing out how, how things have changed with respect to the most popular stations. And they found that pretty much the poorest neighborhoods, the stations in the poorest neighborhoods where essential workers are likely to need transit are now the most popular stations. And those financial district types of stops where people can telecommute are, are less busy. So let's, let's, let's, let's not kid ourselves. So let's, let's, let's resist the transit versus bikes arguments that we hear and let's embrace all of, all of the above and boost. And thank you Metro. Good grief. I love Metro. And, and let's, let's remember to support our Metro and think of, and think of, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, I hope to support our Metro and think of inclusive multimodal integrated networks of transportation, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott, Mr. Vanessa, Mr. Okay. Recognize. Well, first of all, four months ago when I talked, I thank the commission because 20 years ago, I was 40 pounds more than I am now. And I got a lot of. Yeah. pounds more than I am now. And I got a chip from Iacocca for $350 to buy one of his bikes, which I did. I'm 87 now. I bike every day. It's wonderful. There's a problem though. There's so many new bikers in Mid County. It's getting dangerous. Somebody's gonna get injured badly or worse. The trail between Capitola and La Selva Beach is seven miles long, and there's only six cross streets. That's what we need. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. There are no other hands raised. Commissioner Gonzalez. Okay, thank you. We're gonna go and bring it back and we're gonna go out and move on to item number 20, CalTrans report, Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the commission. I'm Scott Ead here for the district director today. I have two items for you. The first is that we have our first ever district five, CalTrans district five active transportation plan out for public review. It's been a very intensive effort. It's involved a lot of input along the way from a technical committee. And now it's out for public review. The plan identifies locations where bicycle and pedestrian improvements are needed along the state highway system. It's really focused on the state highway system that exists in district five. And the plan is based on a thorough inventory of our roadways and the real estate we own throughout district five and a focus on where bicycle and pedestrian needs exist. We took into a lot of factors into consideration in doing so. And we're now looking for additional input from the public. We've received early input in the process. And now we're looking for input on the plan itself. I do wanna highlight that the plan itself is a summary document and then it includes a web-based interface where it has mapping called a story map that provides additional information on other conditions that might influence bicycle and pedestrian use on our facilities and other factors associated with where we should be prioritizing those efforts. So look forward to any input they receive the deadline for comments that's been out since February 8th. And the deadline for comments is quickly approaching on March 9th. And the plan and the comments can be provided if you go to www.catplan.org there's a district five tab there at catplan.org. And that's where you can interface with the plan and provide comments. Second item that I wanted to provide an update on is the highway one closure at Rat Creek. As probably all of you know, we had an event in January that took out about 150 foot portion of highway one of full closure. It was related to the fires that happened earlier in the year and then inundation of water that we received in a single storm which took out a portion of the highway. And so the good news here is that we have been assessing technical options for fixing that location. We've come to a conclusion that a enhanced fill with culverts can be replaced at that location. It's the most efficient effective way to get the work done. And we expect to have the roadway open in early summer which is great news for those that wanna travel through that area or for those business owners and residents in that area. The cost we're anticipating to be around 11.5 million and there's other improvements around the area as well that we're working on. The highway will remain closed during the time until it's fully reopened. We need to allow a contractor to have full use of the sites and preserve the safety of those in that area. And it'll allow us to get the work done quickly. All businesses and activities south of Rat Creek including Lucia, Gordo, Tree Bones, Ragged Points and Simeon, Cambria and Point South are open and that the entirety of Route 1 is open on the Big Sur coast except for a small portion rights on Jason to Rat Creek on either side. Happy to take any questions that you have. Thank you, Scott. Is there any questions from the commissioners? Yes. Commission recognizes Andy Schiffer. Hi, yes, thank you. I appreciate the report. I have reviewed the act of transportation plan and for the district and while it does provide a lot of very interesting information, useful information, it's on a fairly large scale. So if some of it is difficult to understand what areas are really included. I'm particularly concerned about Davenport. There's a really strong need for a pedestrian bike connection between the old town and the new town. The regional transportation plan commission's rail trail is scheduled to stop at old town and the National Monument is going to have an access point off cement plant road, which is a county road. But there's a short link between old town and cement plant road that's along Highway 1 that is very dangerous or quite dangerous now. And it's unclear from the plan whether it includes that one, whether it includes that stretch, which I think it really needs to, and two, what kind of a priority it has. So it seems like the North Coast of Santa Cruz projects don't have a very high priority. And I'm concerned about that both because of that connection and because the Pacific Coast bike runs down Highway 1 and having just rode my bike up to Davenport recently, there are some pretty hairy sections where the shoulder is pretty narrow. So I wonder if there's someone I could speak to in the District 5 office to get, or who would be willing to get in touch with me so I could get the information about what's going on in Davenport. It may be covered, it may not be covered, it was just too general for me to tell from the document itself. So I'd appreciate somebody contacting me to clarify the situation. Did you want to comment at all, Scott, on that? Yeah, if I could, Mr. Chair, that'd be great. Yes, happy to follow up on that. Maybe just a note in terms of the context of the plan. This is the first effort at this scale. There's a lot of roadways to cover. We did try to take into accounts and considered all the different planning efforts at the city and the county level and in the regional RTP, for instance, documentation that was an input to our process. And it doesn't identify, the plan does not identify specific priorities. That's a follow-on process. It really, the intent is to identify the areas of greatest need that will lead to prioritization in terms of funding and consideration in terms of other project efforts that are being programmed. So understand that in some locations, the detail may not be as specific as we would desire for a very specific project context, but we want to be able to take the plan information into context as projects come along or as efforts are being considered. But either way, that's the kind of input we're looking for. We'll make sure and I'll have somebody from my office follow-up with you. All right, and the reason I wanted to follow up is because my understanding is the active transportation plan is going to be used in evaluating project applications. So whether it's seen as a high need area or a low need area, that's going, maybe important should there be proposed projects that may be a high priority here, but if they don't show up as being important in the plan, they may not be much of a priority to CalTrans. So I appreciate your willingness to have somebody get in touch with me about the Davenport situation. Sounds great. Thank you. Is there any other commissioner that'd like to have a question? Mike? Yeah, Highway nine got a great deal of attention from CalTrans thankfully and local agencies, particularly Chris McPherson's office, Supervisorial office. I guess what I'd like is to make sure that CalTrans contacts the community activists that you were already in contact with around the Highway nine issues around active transportation. I don't expect you to know off the top of your head exactly what's planned for Highway nine and this thing, but it would be really critical if these people know they have a right to give you some input before you make your final decision about that active transportation plan. But for my own two cents, it should be a great high priority. And as I said early on, CalTrans put a lot of effort into that. And I think the local community appreciated that, but we found it's a very complex issue for having in terms of driveways and slopes on both sides of the road being steep and so forth. So it's not a cheap project to fix the active transportation, but it has a lot to do with school kids going to walking along the road and bicyclists that are running into like diagonal parking as they ride along the road and a bunch of other kinds of stuff. So I mean, I think it's critical that the people that live in that, I don't live in that community, but the people who do know that they have a chance to weigh in on the question of how high a priority and what exactly is understood to be the need along Highway nine in this plan. Thank you for that. Thank you, commissioner. Go ahead, Scott. You want to respond for- Yeah, if I could respond to that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just say that there are a lot of efforts on Highway nine happening right now, both project efforts as well as consider a project initiation document that's actually being sponsored through SECRTC. And you absolutely agree. There are a lot of complexities there and a lot of challenges that result in potential real estate right away takes, as well as other really high cost improvement. So it's a challenging environment. And I think that the team members are really taking it seriously and there's an interest in trying to figure out how to do it best. And there has been public, I should say that there has been public meetings recently related to those efforts. And I believe that Supervisor McPherson was directly involved in some of those. So appreciate the input that we received. And certainly we, any additional input on the plan itself is appreciated as well. I don't know whether Caltrans itself could send some kind of messages to people letting them know of this opportunity to comment. Again, to the name, I'm not expecting to go out there and do a bunch of research on your name. But there's people that you've already been in contact with in the community. They're fairly well organized. So if you get through four of them, I'm sure you'll eventually get to be aware of what their opportunity is here. Thank you. Is there any other commissioners? Any questions or comments on the Caltrans report? Yeah. Go ahead, Mr. McPherson. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mike for bringing that up. And yes, we have continuing conversations going on. And yeah, it's a huge project, very difficult one to correct, but we're going to continue that effort and get public input. So thank you for your input. And Mike, you were right there at the start from the concerns we had with the fatality that we had there a couple of years ago. I just want to say to Caltrans, thank you and congratulate you for the safety improvements, I think about $19 million worth that you've just completed in the six mile stretch between Scotts Valley and the summit. The safety improvements will be very, they are being very well received. And I want to also just say, I do recognize there's many, many programs that are on the list of funding opportunities in the Fifth District, Mind District in Santa Rosa Valley and the North Coast District of Supervisor Coonerty. And it's very much needed, never needed more than four in the aftermath of the CGU fires. So I appreciate those continuing to go up the ladder on the list. So thank you for those efforts and look forward to more improvements in the near future. Thank you. Is there any other commissioner? If I get a chance. Mr. Caput. Go ahead, Mr. Caput. Mr. Caput. Thanks Chairman Gonzalez. I want to thank Scott, you and your staff for the wonderful job on a project update here at Marchend and East Beach, which is part of Highway 152, right by the high school. The pedestrian activated crosswalk, they did a great job out there. They put in the lights that are activated when the high school kids are off campus during lunchtime and in the morning and the afternoon. So anyway, it looks great. And they finished up the enhance the crosswalk also and they put warning signs up. And I think it's going to be a great help. So it was a safety concern for a long time. So thank you. And I want to thank the city of Watsonville also for letters of support on this. And of course, County staff and the Board of Supervisors. So thanks a lot, Scott. Thank you, Kevin. Commissioner Caput, is there any other commissioner that has any questions or comments on the California Board? Hearing none. Seeing no raised hands. I want to go ahead and go to take it to the public. Brian Peeples and then Mr. Vernasa. Hi, this is Brian from Trail Now. You know, I want to concur with Commissioner McPherson's comments about Highway 17. I remember the efforts that you did years ago in closing down some old crosses crossing over the road. So I think that you all have done a phenomenal job on that. So thank you. On the active transportation solicitation, we made comments, but I will say that my experience, and I think the general public's experience is the comments usually don't go far. They don't go, they never, don't go far from that. I mean, we don't really get a response and you never really change the path that the public agency has taken. You're not, you're not alone. There are other agencies like that, but I will take the time here just to mention again, our advocacy to actually when the widening of Highway 1 in Aptos occurs and the two railroad crossings are removed and replaced, we're recommending that you actually keep the rail corridor along the ocean side and then just have one crossing over into Aptos Village bridge crossing. And then what we also recommend is that the southern trestle that is on the southern part of Aptos Village, rather having that extend to a bike lane, a protected bike lane between Soquel Drive and Highway 1 that would go all the way to the Aptos Junior High and possibly all the way to Aptos High School. That would be phenomenal when they widened the highway that you put a bike, protected bike lane between Soquel Drive and Highway 1. So appreciate again, you've taken the time to come to the commission. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pioz. Mr. Vernasa. Mr. Ben Vernasa. Okay, can you hear me? Yes. Do you have any questions or comments on the Calcans report? Absolutely. In October, I mentioned after Scott's presentation about the trestle that has the fence overhanging the freeway, which is a distraction for those people going south, looking at it and they're not keeping their eyes on the road. And Scott called me a couple of days later and he sent out a crew. And three days later, I got to report back that that is true, but it's not their responsibility. It's the RTC's responsibility. So I set that up to the RTC and for action and it's still there. When are we gonna fix that? It's a distraction for people driving south. They take their eyes off the road. I've had that comment for many people. Thank you. They're in response to what? I'm thinking to what you're gonna fix it. What are you gonna fix it? The repairing of the fence. Oh, the broken fence. Okay. Yeah, the broken fence on the rail overpass. Gotcha. You don't see any other hands up, Commissioner Gonzalez. Thank you. Thank you Scott for your report. Thank you. I'm sorry, there was another person who lowered their hands and just raised their hands. Michael Pizano? Yeah, hi, Michael Pizano. So Cal, just real quick on the southbound 17, right before the Pesotepo exit on 1C, there is a digital sign that has a speed limit sign 55 right in front of it. So it's basically an effective. So you don't see it until you come right up on top of it. So I was wondering if we could be done with moving that speed limit sign in front of the digital sign. Thank you, Michael. Okay, now we, Michael. Go ahead, Mr. St. Thanks, Chair Gonzalez. Yeah, this brought up a thing that's bothered me a little bit on my biking. I'm in the unincorporated area of Santa Cruz County. Zach Friend is my commissioner. So maybe this is a question for the alternate commissioner, Mulherne. Basically along the San Andreas road, basically after seascape up to Larkin Valley and through Manresa parking lot area and beyond. We have a lot of eucalyptus trees, yeah. I don't want to interrupt you, but we are on the CalTrans report. I was wondering if it was a CalTrans. Yeah, I'm wondering if it's a CalTrans priority. Do they deal with that? It's basically they never cleaned the shoulders so you have to ride in the car lane. Yeah, since that's a county road, I would imagine county responsibility. Maybe Mr. Mulherne could give me a call or I can call in and ask him. Okay. Thank you, Michael. Thank you. I do not see any other hands, Commissioner Gonzalez. Okay, thank you. Okay, we're gonna bring this back and we're gonna go to item 21, Projects Update from Santa Cruz County Department of Public Works. Staff, Steve Wines, I'm sorry if I act that name. That's okay. It's actually Steve Wiesner. Wiesner. I'm happy to be here this morning. I would love to share my screen if I'm able to use any of it. It looks like I'm not able to. There we go. Perfect, so let me know when you all can see this. There you go, it's kind of... We see it now. We got it. Great, great. Well, thank you for having me. Good morning, Chair Gonzalez, Commissioners, Director Preston, and members of the public. My name is Steve Wiesner. I'm the Assistant Director of Public Works here for the county. And I'm pleased to be here to give you an update on transportation related projects within the unincorporated area of our county. I usually do this type of update once every two to three years, but actually, I think it's been since October 2016. So I have quite a bit actually done it today. The focus of my presentation, we have a lot going on in county-wide that we see, but the focus of my presentation today will be on projects that have been funded fully or in part through your commission and will consist of a Measuring Program update, recently completed projects, projects that are currently in construction, projects that we have under development, and I'll touch a little bit on the future needs for our county the way that we see it, for our local red network, and then hopefully there'll be some time for Q and A again. Okay, so, Major D, so this is new since my last update to you all, and we're very appreciative that this got passed by the voters in our county in November 2016. And it provides a huge amount of transportation funding county-wide for a wide variety of projects. The county's share is part of the Neighborhood and Streets portion, and we estimate around $2.3 to $2.5 million a year, and we've been using this funding primarily from resurfacing of local roads and the neighborhood roads. But it had been a couple of decades since we had any kind of good payment management program on the neighborhood streets in the unincorporated area, and so we're happy to be able to deliver these projects utilizing this critical funding. And so we've put out three projects since Major D came on board, and we're doing them annually, and we've got nearly 20 miles now of the Neighborhood and Streets resurface program. Right out the gates though, this came on board right after we had a huge storm event in early 2017, which actually in South County destroyed one of our bridges down there. And so we used just a little bit of Major D funding and a couple hundred thousand that was slated for South County to replace this bridge. Pretty critical that we did that, and we were able to get that done in 2017. And then moving on to 2018, we started putting out an annual project, and what I'll say is that we are as best as possible, trying to equitably share this money across our geographic region. And so 2018, we saw some Neighborhood Streets up in the middle of the hill, middle of the cutoff area that's up in the side area. We were able to do some streets down in La Selva Beach. We got part of Martin Road done up in the North County area. There's the Casterly bridges for part of that first slate of projects, and then we're able to do some roads in downtown Boulder Creek. You'll see a little bit of a theme here. We're going for sort of core village areas or town areas to begin with, and so 2019 saw some roads in Livo. We were able to hit some roads down in the real Delmar Beach flats area. I think the photo here is Beach Drive, you can see before and after. We completed Martin Road in 2019, and then we were able to do some streets in the downtown of that moment here. 2020, which is just this past year, we did some streets up in the third area, that's the Santa Cruz Gardens area of the inter-corporated Ivo area, and then we're able to get some roads down in C Cliff Beach area. We started a project on Lakeview Road, and we're able to get some roads paid in the Felt area. So what we've got slated for this summer are some streets up in the Ruinway area, that's actually off Soquel San Jose Road by the high school there, by Soquel High. We're gonna be able to do some roads down in Corralitos. We're gonna finish off Lakeview Road, which is down in South County, and then we're gonna hit some more streets in sort of the downtown area of Boulder Creek. Okay, moving on to some of the projects recently completed, and I say this is within the last three to four years because it's been so long since we've spoke. Utilizing some critical funding really through your commission, and I just wanna thank your commission, I can't thank y'all enough for providing some of this critical federal resurfacing dollars that we're able to hit some of our federal aid routes. So roads, this project was a fairly large project that did the entire length of Granite Creek Road in some events before they drive. Granite Creek, much like Glen Canyon, these are roads that connect Highway 17 down into the central part of our region, so that they have become commute routes at this point, and so really important for us to take care of these, and we're able to fully rehot Granite Creek Road through this project. And you can see we used some of that local partnership money, which is a direct result in benefit of our motor's passing measure D. So that's fantastic new funds that come into our area that we're able to put to work by the way. This was a really long project, I've been planned for better part of a couple of decades that we were able to bring to fruition in completely 2018. This utilized a lot of leftover RDA funding from that RDA area near the harbor there. And you can see, I mean, it's fantastic, it's being used today. They're really organized the parking out there, provided really great pedestrian facilities and sidewalks, bike lanes and so forth. And we built around about the entrance to the harbor there. And a lot of water quality benefits, of course, working coastal in this project as well. So we're grateful we're able to get a little bit of RSTP funding on this project to help compete it. We've been very active in the outcast village area for the last many years. If you've driven through there, you've probably seen a lot of the construction activity. And we have two critical signal projects that we've been working on. The first here, Tchakolch and Sokel Drive. And this was actually one of the last stop controlled intersections on Sokel Drive. And it's definitely one of the more congested areas of Sokel Drive, which is one of our main already recently area. And so getting the signal up, and it's pretty tricky, this area working so close to the railroad. And we had to construct the crossing still, the modern standards and so forth. It's pretty tight. I think folks weren't real sure whether the signal was gonna actually do what it was intended to do, that once we got it up and running and kind of fine tune the operations, I think it's working really well in the area. So we're really happy to be able to deliver this again with critical federal resurfacing dollars here on one of our main arteries. And so we actually, the projects we have in construction, I was gonna parlay on that outcast village project here. So this is the phase two of that project, which is basically installing a signal at outcast creek road. This is the entrance to Nicene marks and the entrance to some of the new development that's happening in the village area. And again, critical federal surface transportation dollars to match some of the local developer fees and some local funding there to bring this project to completion as well. We're just towards the end of construction on this. We anticipate will be done by end of spring or beginning of the summer. And I will note that as part of these two projects, we've actually put wire in the ground and we connected all the signals together in this corridor. So that would be truck bulge. This new one, we're building an outcast creek road signal and speckles. And then actually moving all the way up to State Park Drive. We will tie it in the signal at Rancho Don Mar and then at State Park Drive. And then we're gonna come through after this. All this is done with an adaptive management project through an airboard grant that we received, which really should help to fine tune the operations and the timing of all these signals working together. And so we're helping that it'll really help reduce congestion in this area and help traffic operations and safety as well. Because there's a lot of pedestrian and bicycle improvements too. Okay, yeah, this again, and I'm just gonna reiterate how grateful we are for the federal resurfacing dollars that come through your commission to help us bring these types of projects to our communities. This is probably the largest single resurfacing project that we've had in the county for a couple of decades now. Close to $7 million. We're able to do 26 miles just to give you a little bit of a gauge. We've been averaging four to five miles a year through the hard times the last couple of decades. We really think we should be doing about 50 miles a year. We have a 600 mile river network. We could get to close to 10% every year. We feel like we can take care of the roads in pretty good shape. But we haven't been able to do that as your commission is aware. But with Measure D and with these critical federal resurfacing dollars coming towards us, we're actually putting out large projects now without a lot of huge impact on the quality of our roads and in our community. So this one's actually still in construction. We weren't able to quite complete it last year due to the fires and some other things that delayed this project. But we'll come back in the spring once we're sure that the rainy season's over and we'll finish this project up. But this project represents like a huge step forward for us and we'd like to kind of continue that trend. Okay, so some of the projects that we still have under development that we're looking towards building more funding for so we can complete. This one's been on the books for a while. We haven't just completely designed all the rideways been purchased. This would be a fantastic project in the C-Cliff Village area. And it's really a streetscape improvement project. And it'll come on the heels of a large utility undergrinding effort that had been happening out there for many years as well. That works pretty much complete. And this project really aims to organize parking in the area and provide increased pedestrian and bicycle safety as well. It'll really spruce the area quite a bit. Because we basically got a shelf ready, we have all our permits, we've purchased all the rideway we need. And really at this point, we just we need to start working on building up our construction funding. So that's gonna be a goal of ours over the next couple of years to seek additional grant funding so we can bring this project to fruition. Okay, this is a intersection improvements down in South County. I would say this is our number one priority for transportation related projects in the South County. For sure we've been working on this project for quite some time. I mean, as you can see, it involves quite a bit of funding sources to build a bank up to get this thing done. We're in partnership with CalTrans on this. They own two legs of this intersection 152. And we know that there's traffic operation problems down there. There are big queues in the morning going towards the school. And we know that there are big queues in the evening coming back into town. This project is gonna really help that out a lot and also improve safety for bicycles and pedestrians. And this project is nearly complete in the design phase. We have all our environmental done and we're very close to completing the rideway. We think we'll have that done by the end of this fiscal. We still do have an additional need. We've made a couple runs at different grants to try and complete the funding for this project. Unsuccessfully, we are on the process of trying to turn over as many rocks as possible to see if we can come up with some local funding to get this thing out of construction this summer. That's a very important high priority project. Okay, touching a little bit on the Monterey Bay Sinks Racing Trail. This project is just getting underway. This is segments 10 and 11. And it kind of excludes some of the areas in the city of Capitola. More complex, you know, getting over the river trestle. That is not in this project. And this is a great project we're working in concert with RTC on. It's a partnership. We've got an initial seed money of Measure D to get through the preliminary design and environmental phase of the project. We have to make that'll be done. It's just kicking off right now. We've got a consultant on board. And so probably in the next year and a half or so we'll be done with that preliminary design and environmental phase. And at that point, we'll be looking to do the final design and looking for construction knowledge as well. And I will mention also just as a note that we don't have any funding necessarily through RTC on this, but we're working on segments 89 as well in partnership with the city. And that's just starting to get into the design phase as well. Okay. Oh yeah. This is a fantastic project. Another great partnership with the RTC and really want to compliment RTC Director Preston and his staff. In particular, I think Ginger Dycar Road really helped us write a fantastic grant. We want just a huge amount of local money, state money for our local roads. And this is just a portion of the larger project which I think is in the neighborhood of 100 million that we want for the entire County and Highway 1. And I believe this project was kind of born out of the unified corridor study which recommended buffered bike lanes, pedestrian improvements, transit priority and these types of things. And it's on a large segment of Soquel Drive. Again, Soquel Drive is one of our main arteries through the County. I heard it referred to as Highway 2 many times. This is actually, I think five plus miles Soquel Drive that runs all the way from the city of Santa Cruz to State Park Drive. And so we're really excited to get underway with this project. We have an RFP out for design services. In fact, I think that the proposals are due today March 4th. So we're excited to rapidly get into this project. It has a very aggressive schedule and we'd like to get into construction 2022 on this. We'll be working very, very hard on this project over the next year or so. Okay, just going to touch a little bit on future needs. The way we see it here for County roads. I didn't talk a lot about this, but in 2017, and I think your commission knows certainly our entire board knows what a big year that was for storm damage to the County maintenance system. By the time everything was said and done the end of February of 2017, we got over 200 sites that were damaged and over $100 million worth of work to do. And so it's a huge effort. It's been a large focus for myself and for my team. And in spite of the pandemic shutdown and the CZU fire impacts that we experienced last summer, you know, we're still full war ahead. And we've got most of the biggest baddest ones repaired, but we still have about half of them to do. And so we're just going to continue plugging away on that. But I'm keeping our eye out for the payment management fall and we're going to, it's many dollars as we can get into our payment management program. We will put that on our streets as quickly as we can. We see the impacts that the program that we've been able to do in the last couple of years, what a positive impact that has been for our communities. So we're full war ahead on that as well. We're continuing to work on safety improvements throughout the County, a lot in the rural areas, replacing old dilapidated guardrails, installing new striking standards and new signage to that type of thing. And then active transportation work that we're, we are currently actually in partnership with Ecology Action and the Environmental Health Services Agency here in the County. We've won a planning grant a couple of years ago from CalTrans, we're real appreciative of this. And so what we're doing is we're creating an active transportation plan for the entire unincorporated road system. It's really focused on what's our existing inventory and what is our vision for the future when it comes to pedestrian and bicycle facilities. And it's totally focused on County roads, but looking at links to other jurisdictional facilities as well, as well like the rail travel obviously and our neighborhood agencies. And then we're continuing, we're quietly continuing to work on our bridges and large culverts. I think you've probably all seen nationwide, we have a pretty bad grade when it comes to our infrastructure and our County is no different. We manage and maintain approximately 150 bridges and large culverts that pass like, you know, our big creeks and our rivers in all the way to the ocean. And we've got over a dozen bridges right now in design for replacement. So we work very closely with CalTrans and with FHWA on these projects. And our goal was to get about a bridge a year out, a bridge every two years. And we'll be continuing that on through the next couple of decades to bring our bridges up to standard. And then last but not least is our signal operational improvements that we've got planned for the County. We operate about, I think, somewhere of 46, 47 signalized intersections in the uncorporated area. There'll be one more once we bring out across Creek Road online. And what we've been doing, what we've been up to is trying to upgrade all of our controllers and, you know, the digital stuff along with the physical hardware that's out in the field to bring everything up to a modern standard. So these things can really start to speak to each other and we can optimize the operational aspects of these signalized intersections to get folks moving through these intersections as best as we can and create as much safety as we can. Okay, so with that, I just really, I wanna think, you know, first, I wanna thank my staff. I have a fantastic staff. They come to work every day. They work really hard through all this calamity that we've been through the last few years. We're still delivering projects to the public. And when we get funding thrown our way, boy, we really put these projects out. So I'm a particular Russell Chin, I think it's Carlson, Tim Bailey and Great Jones. Those are my senior managers and these are the folks who actually deliver these projects and work through all the problems to get them completed. And I wanna thank Matt Machado, who's the County's Public Works Director. He's been with us for a couple of years now and Matt's fantastic. He provides critical guidance on all of our projects and he's really instrumental in the partnership that we enjoy with the RTC. He sits on a lot of the product delivery teams for projects that RTC is involved with and he's involved with everything that we do. Director Preston, his staff, he has fantastic staff, very professional and in particular, I'd like to throw a shout out to Rachel Morricone. Rachel continues to provide our local agencies and your commission with extremely accurate and up-to-date information, current state and federal transportation funding and legislation. She's like invaluable to us and anytime I have a question, basically it goes to her first. And then of course, last but not least, I wanna thank your commission. We all continue to support our County's Transportation Infrastructure and of course, without your support, we wouldn't be able to meet the critical needs of our communities and we wouldn't be able to bring these projects to fruition. So thank you and we continue to look forward and continue in our work with you. And with that, I'd be happy to take any questions that your commission may have. Thank you, Steve. I'm gonna go ahead and bring it open to the commissioners and I recognize Mr. Commissioner Great-Captain. Okay, how you doing, Steve? I'm doing great, great, thank you. Okay, I miss seeing you down at the county office in person, but anyway, thanks a lot for all your help. I wanna thank your staff, Public Works out there on Grimmer and Hulahan at the county yard over there. They've done a great job. Some of it, maybe it's not even our responsibility when we get close to the creek beds and all that. They've been cleaning out a lot of junk and stuff actually went down there last week and there's a homeless guy that's been there for a long time and he goes back and forth. He's panning for gold and maybe one day he'll find some. And but anyway, with him doing that, we had a pile of junk there right by the creek bed, South Spades Creek and your staff cleaned it out. It's good to see. Yeah, and the other is did a great job on the Casterly Bridge that we put out there by Smith Road at probably about half the price as we'd originally thought it was gonna be. That's because of you and your staff and engineers looking at it and coming up with a better alternative at a much cheaper price. Highway 152 and Hulahan and college, you had a little picture there. Is the only thing holding us back right now is still the lack of funding. We have the plan but we had a grant application that fell through that we applied for another grant. I don't know how that's going. Yeah, we're actively searching and you're right. We just got out a couple of great opportunities and we'll keep trying everything we can to supervise the capital. But we are searching internally as well to see if we can bring our project to construction in the summer. So we're going on that. How about how much we're still short about a million dollars, a big round figure? About a million and a half, yeah. A million and a half, okay. All right, I'll keep talking to you on that and we'll see how that, but we have a grant applications in, right? The last one we had in, we found out that we did not get it. Okay, okay. Thanks a lot, Steve. Thank you, Mr. Capp, Mr. Capp. Commit the Manu County Recognize Manu Commissioner. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Steve, for the great presentation. Just wanna, particularly the projects resurfacing Granite Creek Road and Branson 40 Drive, those are major streets in the first district. And I saw, I know those are really important to a lot of residents. And also really excited about the SoCal Drive, the five miles of buffer bike lanes that we're going in. It's great to hear that we could start construction as soon as 2022. That's really cool too. I just wanna make sure I understood you correctly on some of the funding challenges we're facing. And you said the goal would be to resurface roughly 10 mile, sorry, 10% of our county roads every year. So you said 50 miles, about 600 miles total. But currently you said we can only cover about 26 miles per year, is that right? So actually that's 26 miles. And if you combine that with the measure, the work we did this year, that was 30 miles. But this is like a banner year for us in any single year we've seen in the last 20 years. We've been averaging, so prior to measure D and prior to SB1, we were averaging 45 miles a year. And the last three years, we've been averaging about 15 to 20 miles a year. We still think that's obviously far shy of what we need to maintain our system properly. 600 miles, and so roughly 10%, if we could get 50 to 60 miles a year done. And that'd be various applications from chip seals and rural areas and larger payment projects in the higher dense areas. But yeah, we're still far short of what we think we need, but we're doing everything we can with what we have. I completely appreciate that you're working in a resource constrained environment. But yeah, so it sounds like we've basically got a little less than half what we would need to maintain the system that we have today. And I think some of the presentations you've shared with me, it looks like with our current funding environment, we're basically looking at continued degradation of county roads. And of course they get more expensive to maintain as they get in worse and worse shape. So definitely a challenging environment. And I appreciate you're doing everything you can. My next question is about the signals in Aptos. I think they're both around three and a half million dollars but the one recently completed and the upcoming one. I'm just curious like how much of those costs were for accommodating rail in those crossings? That's a great question. It's about a half a million to three quarters of a million is what it's taking to build those crossings. So they vary between Trout Gulch and between Aptos Creek Road, they're both a little bit different. But just calling about a half a million dollars for each of those crossings. So they're quite expensive. Right, so specifically for the rail portion because it's- Right. Right. Thank you. And then I just want to point out, segments 10 and 11 is kind of cool to see that rendering of the bridge next to the rail bed. Of course there's also some challenges there. I noticed there was no pedestrians in that rendering. And it's one of the challenges we're seeing on segment 7A built over on the west side is, the reality is the current plans for the rail trail are combining bikes and pedestrians in an environment where you've got these fences on both sides. My understanding is I believe someone broke their arm on the west side this weekend trying to dodge some pedestrians. They were on a bike, they went into the fence and broke their arm on the fence. So it's kind of a scary environment to ride a bike in when you're moving fast and you've got these walls on both sides. And I just want to point out, I pull up the fact sheet for segments 10 and 11 on the R2C page. That estimated total cost is about 66 million total for those two segments. And we still need $62 million of that. So I just want to point out to the commission we're directing county staff to do work on these design documents for which we basically don't have the funding to actually build the proposed designs. And so, I think it's critical that we look at updating the direction to create realistic plans as soon as possible. And especially ones that separate bikes and pedestrians to create a safe environment. That's all. Thank you. The chair recognizes, did you want to answer back, Steve, at all to any of those? No, just thank you for your comments to the rest of the committee. The chair recognizes Mike and then Patrick and then Andy. Okay, I have two comments. First, following that, I want to appreciate the work on Grants of Forty and Granite Creek. The pictures, if anything, understate how bad Granite Creek and grants proportions of those roads were. And the before picture, it looks like it's cracked a little bit and stuff. It doesn't show you the potholes. I ride my bicycle up there regularly up towards Scott's Valley in the summit and it's made a huge difference. Again, fixing these roads means that we'll avoid huge expenses and fixing them years later when they finally collapse if they're not dealt with. But the problem for bicyclists is right now. And these fixes, you just notice the difference hugely when you do these resurfacing projects. They make just a tremendous difference. And for safety, among other things, those are really narrow roads without even decent shoulders. And so if you're on your bicycle, you do not want to be swerving around a pothole that would bury your front tire when you're being maybe in the oncoming traffic even on Granite Creek, for example. On the second question, I want to kind of disagree strongly with Manu about the segment seven. I use that regularly and my neighbors use that regularly. And that's been a tremendously successful project. And I think a lot of people sort of made the comments that it's not the ideal bike path for them or it's not as good as it could be or that these risks. That's not my experience of it. There's like hundreds of people using that thing every day and they get along fine in the bicycles. So it's a lot easier to ride, for example, than West of Drive, which has got also shares pedestrian and bicycle use. And it's been a tremendously successful project that's deeply appreciated by our neighborhood. So those of us, I think, using that thing regularly have a different experience of it than the picture of the man who was painting of the dangerous aspect of the thing. That's not the way people experience it. The most difficult part of that experience is the crossings. And that would be a problem for anybody's vision of what a bike path or pedestrian path might be along there. But I've found for the most part that traffic's pretty good about stopping for people. And it's well marked. So as you ride your bicycle along it, you know you're coming to a road that you have to be careful about where you're crossing in the pedestrian see that. And it's well marked for the cars that you're about to like, you know, you're going and you're driving over a place where there's likely to be bikes or pedestrians coming across. And as I said, those crossings are gonna be an issue. We don't have the money ever to sort of imagine building bridges over tunnels under the road crossings for each of these little neighborhood streets, sometimes just to block apart. So I think that trail project's been incredibly successful and appreciated by the neighborhood. Thank you. Commissioner Patrick McCollum. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Assistant Director Wiesner. I'm trying to find you on the scale there you are. Hey, Steve, really very much for all the work that your shop has been able to accomplish in really terrible environment. The 2016, 2017 storms had a huge impact on all of our county infrastructure. And while we had to figure out some way to pay for and repair all those things in really restrictive timelines, you were still able to deliver normal county services to everyone. We're still delivering road projects. And I wanna highlight in particular, the current resurfacing program, our pavement management program has been consistently unfunded. And I recall that when I first started working for the county, our conversations with public works were really grim. Not only were all of our roads failing, but there was zero money to do anything about it. And that was every year we met with public works and that was the story. Until Measure D certainly gave us some advantage in grant seeking and gave us a little bit of money for local streets and roads. But I think what has really been fundamentally changing the game for us at the county has been the RTC's reconsideration of its policies regarding disbursement of RSTPX, STBG funding from the federal government. Instead of making it an internally competitive grant program within the RTC, we voted a couple of years ago in this grant cycle to try disbursing the money directly to the jurisdictions to allow them to do the projects that were important to them. And that resulted in $4.3 million in new surface street money for the Santa Cruz County Department of Public Works. So that 26 miles of roads that we were able to do as compared to the four miles of roads we were doing previously is due in no small part to the RTC changing this policy. So really, I want to thank the commission because there are several projects that we're now building, Pioneer stands out that would never ever have been built if it hadn't been for this money. So when this grant cycle comes up again and we reconsider the policy again, I hope that- We lost you, Mike, Patrick. Patrick, are you there? I think to be frozen. Hosts of projects sitting on a shelf that are ready to go, but have no funding. And so this opportunity has been just huge for us. And I want to thank everybody for all their work. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner. Commissioner Andy Schiffer. Thank you. I'm just going to echo what other people have said about the Public Works Department. The third district, Supervisorial District probably has the fewest mileage in roads and but we have, it's pretty much a rural area and it has lots of needs. And we appreciate the work that the department has been doing to respond to those needs in terms of trying to keep the roads open and manageable and improved. So again, thank you, Steve, and your department for the work that you do. And as you know, we're working with the department on numerous projects in our district as I know you're working in other areas as well. I wanted to echo also what Commissioner Rodkin said about the segment of the rail trail that has been completed. I use it at least once a week walking the whole trail on Sunday morning. I've also used it a number of times on a fairly regular basis on my bicycle. And it's unfortunate if there was an accident on there but I've been there where there are lots of people and although not as intense as West Cliff and it's worked very well. People are responsible as most people are generally responsible. And let me say one of the things that I've really enjoyed about the bike path and what makes me really feel strongly to urging the commission to continue to build the trail segments is how quiet it is. Not walking along the road, not riding a bike along the road. It's not just a matter of safety, it's just a noise level that's so different. And it's such a pleasure to walk along a bike path where you're not hearing cars and motorcycles and trucks and God knows what, zooming by. So in my opinion, the segment is well used. It's relatively safe for most of it. There isn't a fence on both sides. There is always a fence on the side adjacent to the tracks but for most of the way there's a distance between the trail and adjacent fences if there are fences at all. So again, thank you very much Steve for your presentation and for the work that the department does. Thank you. Is there any other commissioners that'd like to speak? Yeah, Mr. Yes. Mr. Chair. Oh, go ahead. I thought I'd put a participant. Certainly I want to reiterate my very, I can't overstate my appreciation for county public works in the county of Santa Cruz has experienced natural disasters 2016 to this, 17 to this year. And it's going to be a long time to catch up because there's so much the depth of the monetary need that we have. But I also want to thank the voters of Santa Cruz County to approve measure D. The good thing about that is it include all forms of transportation and I think it's evident from this presentation by deputy director Steve Wiesner that we are including bike pedestrian vehicular and considering rail and so forth. Everything was included and everybody can say you wouldn't have passed it without Maya support and they're right. But we needed everybody's support to pass it is the point and to implement it the way you are to serve all modes of transportation is much appreciated and we're saying we're doing what we said we were going to do. So I think the voters of Santa Cruz County should be pleased with how we're progressing with our measure D funds. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you commissioner. Is there any other commissioners that would like to speak at this time? Seeing none. Well, thank you Steve for your presentation. I just want to echo what all the fellow commissioners said. I know you showed the church coach project signal like there and it reminded me back in the days when I was working in construction with a company that did the upgrading for the sewer line in that area. And they gave me the task of being the actual traffic controller in that intersection. And that was a very challenging thing to control traffic and I was like a policeman in the middle of the intersection controlling all four in all the directions of traffic. So I mean, it's good to see that there's a light there and it litigates some of that traffic congestion because being a flagman in the middle of an intersection that's that highly occupied is extremely, it's an experience that I'll never forget. I actually got a coffee from some folks that appreciated me moving the traffic along so smoothly. And so those good projects, I know there's a lot of deferred maintenance for many years. I've been a long-term resident of this county and I know it's gonna take a while for us to catch up but I think we need to continue to press on and also always keep in mind our pedestrians or bicyclists. But I do have one question. Well, actually I have two questions and I do on the whole hand in 152 project I really want to make sure that we move with that forward as fast as possible for the safety for the children that go from Lakeview to their houses. There's a lot of students that travel that path. And then the other one is on the Lakeview, I understand we're gonna be building a roundabout at the intersection of 129 and Lakeview, is that correct? So that is a CalTrans project. I think Scott, if he's still on, he could probably speak to that and I'm aware of it but it really is a CalTrans project. Okay, thank you. So I'm gonna go ahead and bring it back to the public now for any questions or comments on your presentation. And I noticed we have Mr. Ben, Nasa. Yes, Steve, good job. You got a lot of responsibility, a lot of projects going. I wanna talk about the Aptos and State Park Drive. That's very significant. And when you go to State Park Drive, remember if we rail bank, one of the first trails to start is for Monterey Park Drive to La Selva Beach. That's six crossings of other streets. Two of them are controlled now in Aptos Village. And maybe you have something going for State Park Drive. That would leave only four that are uncontrolled crossings. And that's Mar Vista Drive, State Park Drive, unless you do something there, Clubhouse Drive and going into Seascape. And you're all the way seven miles to Seascape, through Seascape to La Selva from Capitola. The other thing is the Mar Vista Overpass. Once that's completed and with the trail there, the transportation system in Mid County is absolutely fantastic. You will see so many e-bikes, so many scooters, so many elderly in their eight chairs, kids. It's gonna be great. The school's on one side of the freeway, Mar Vista. Now they don't have to have that. They can come from Rio de Mar and they can go to the coastal from Mar Vista over and they're there. So it's a wonderful transportation system and I encourage you to rail bank and start first on Capitola, La Selva Beach Rail. Thank you. Thank you. Here, Brian Peeples and then... Mr. Peeples. Mr. Peeples. Mr. Peeples, Brian Peeples. Here. There, there, here. I'm on, you didn't disconnect it. Thank you, Brian, from Trail Now. Hey, Steve, good to see you again, how you been. Hey, I got one word for you, roundabouts. Can we get more roundabouts? I think they were fabulous. I do wanna remind the commission, we were a, Trail Now was a pack initially when Measure D came out as opposing it because they had 25% of the funds going to a train and the RTC adjusted the language and diverted the money to Metro and other areas. And we became a supporter of it and we're proud of that being a team player on that. One note on the Aptos Village, you know, as a reminder, there's no train station in Aptos Village. The plan is actually for trains to fly through there every 15 minutes. So when you talk to the PUC, the entire village shuts down every 15 minutes. So, and I think this brings up the issue that Commissioner Cohn is really pointing out. In industry, when you design something, you understand what your requirements are and what your goal is and what happens if you're designing something that's not feasible project, you're over designing it. When we looked at those photos that you showed, that looked like a very expensive elevated trail next to this old railroad tracks and actually you're not designing it to meet the requirements of a commuter train. The federal guideline requires that a train traveling over 25 miles an hour be separated from a trail by 25 feet. So we're, and I think that's the main thing that Commissioner Cohn was pointing out is we're wasting a lot of money on a design that doesn't even meet the requirements of your train. Does that make sense? That is really poor public policy. And then finally, I'll talk about the Valencia Road when it shut down, remember when it flooded? Well, my wife's a teacher at Valencia Elementary School. We actually live over of quail run up by the post office. She normally would ride her bike to school. It's a half a mile, but when that bridge went out for like a year, she had to go all the way around Freedom Boulevard. And that's really our point about the coastal trail. We're sitting here 10 years now, not using that resource. And it's causing us to go all the way around and not leveraging that, basically that transportation resource. So that's the frustrating part for the community. And I do appreciate Steve coming on and your boss Matt is a great guy over. Thank you, Mr. Peeples. Mr. Gull. Hi. Mr. Gull. Yes. Thank you. I just wanted to give a huge shout out of thanks to the County of Santa Cruz Public Works Department. So thank you very much, Steve. And we are so excited here at Friends of the Rail Trail to see this starting on segments 10 and 11 of the rail trail, see all the walkability projects that are happening in each of the villages and all of the connections that are being made. So thank you so much. These are hugely popular projects among the County and you have the support of thousands behind you. So thank you again for all you're doing there. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Jack Carroll. Hi, I wanted to agree with Supervisor Koenig about the lack of safety on the segment seven section of the trail. It's true that the pedestrians I encounter are very polite, lots of families with strollers, but it means that bicycling, I have to stop and give them the right away as I should, but it's only because of the narrowness of the trail that that's a requirement. I've actually had to stop because of a car's bumper coming across the trail. And this is all while we have this open space right next to it that's the railroad right away with tracks on it that we can't use. We can put some gravel on it and widen that whole trail for everybody to use. And similarly, the money we're spending for the traffic lights was a half a million for a piece for two traffic lights. A million bucks we're spending in today's dollars to provide for a train that even the wildest enthusiasts think are 20 or 30 years away. So we're spending today's dollars for a fantasy. I think the RTC doesn't have their priorities correct. And that's my comment. Thank you. I do not see any other hands raised commissioner Gonzalez. Well, thank you Steve for that report. That was a great report. Hope to see you soon again. And we can go ahead and move on now on to item number 22, financial constraints project list for 2045 transportation plans. Amy Narrajo. Hi, sir. Can I get the screen share please? Just have it already, Amy. It says I can't start the screen share while others are first. Okay, there we go. Thank you. Okay. Well, good morning to listeners. Thank you for having me today. My name is Amy Narrajo. I'm a transportation planner for the RTC. Today I'm requesting your approval of the draft constraint project list for inclusion in the 2045 regional transportation plan. This is provided in your packet as attachment one. Excuse me. The RTP is a state mandated long range transportation plan and investment strategy that's prepared every four years and is incorporated in the federally mandated metropolitan transportation plan and the state mandated sustainable community strategy. Both of these are prepared by the association of Monterey Bay Area government. The projects that are, projects are required to be included in the RTP and or the MTP SES in order to receive certain transportation funds. The 2045 RTP is considered a minor update and projects on the constraint project list are similar to those that were included in the previous 2040 RTP. So the RTP includes three major elements which then guide the development of the constraint project list. So first is the policy element which defines the transportation goals, policies and performance measures that have been set for the county. These have been developed using the triple bottom line approach of environment, economy and equity. And the RTP reviewed and approved these in February of 2020. Second is the financial element and this is estimates the funds that'll likely be available for transportation projects over the next 25 years. And a summary of the $5 billion in anticipated revenue sources is provided in your packet as attachment to. And third is the action element which then identifies the complete list of transportation needs in the county through a list of projects and programs that are needed to operate, maintain and improve the transportation system. The complete cost of transportation needs in our county is currently estimated to be approximately $9 billion over the 25 year RTP time period. So given the gap between the complete cost of transportation needs and projected revenues through 2045, staff with input from the project sponsors, RTC advisory committees and members of the public have developed recommendations for which projects should be included in the financially constrained list. The project list that's provided in your packet it contains the full list of projects and then it breaks out the portions that are constrained and constrained. So the mixed transportation projects that are proposed in the constrained list really strive to advance the performance targets that are set through 2045 with this particular emphasis on maintenance and improving the transportation options that reduce vehicle miles traveled that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that support active modes of transportation. Additionally, projects that are on the constrained list include all the projects that currently have dedicated funding, projects that have already been programmed and then projects that are prioritized for discretionary or semi flexible funding. However, in some instances, projects which are defined, which are identified as unconstrained may be high priorities, but given the funding constraints, they just may not be fiscally or excuse me, financially feasible under the current funding sources and projections. So staff's recommendation today is that the RTC approved the financially constrained project list and identify any particular projects that could be funded with projected revenues through 2045. And the RTC should inform staff at today's meeting if there are any specific projects that the RTC would like moved between the constrained and the unconstrained projects list. So the next steps, once the RTC approves the constrained project list, we'll provide this project list to MBag, which will then determine which transportation projects undergo program level environmental review for the entire RTP and MTP SES. The draft RTP and EIR will then be released for public review in December of this year. And then the final RTP is scheduled for RTC approval in June of 2022. So that concludes my report. I'm happy to take your questions or comments. I also have Rachel Morakoni of RTC staff available to answer any questions specific to the financial element, as well as Heather Adamson, planning director at MBag to answer any specifics about the MTP SES. So with that, I'll take your question. Thank you, Amy. Thank you. Commissioner Hopkins, I see your hand. Thanks, so my question is, when we develop this constrained, financially constrained list, I'm assuming that there are, as you said, input from the various agencies, the cities and the county about their projects and their areas. And sometimes projects are high priority because they're good for transportation throughout the county, not necessarily to the particular area. In other words, if something's in the middle of a roadway or something that needs to be supported by the RTC, even if it's not the highest priority for that particular public agency, the city. But I'm curious whether there are projects that are totally within a city or within the unincorporated part of the county that where there's disagreement between the agency, the city or the county and the RTC staff about whether it should be on or off the list. And should I just assume that the people who represent those agencies, for example, the city of Capitola would be speaking up if they felt there was something on this list that was, they had, you know, where they would want to substitute something that's not on the list for something that is that's totally within their city. Is that a reasonable way to assume that this process addresses the highest needs of these various agencies? I think you assumed correctly. And the agencies that had an opportunity to review the list and to either add additional projects, remove projects or adjust any of the descriptions and or costs that are associated with that project. So I looked through this list, that's extensive. It took a while to read through them. And I don't know, I don't know all these areas or some of them I didn't even know what the project was. But the ones in the city of Santa Cruz, I sort of grasp most of them. But I'm curious whether just trying to, you know, understand the process. For example, did these cities formally approve the list that's in front of us? Say that we're fine with what you're recommending or is that we've not had a formal action by these agencies before it's coming to us? There hasn't been any formal action from the cities on, as far as I'm aware. As far as these, this list is the continuation of the previous RTPs project list and the jurisdictions and the project sponsors in particular have just looked at the project list and reviewed it and then just, yeah, made their additional comments. And it's been reviewed both by the planning staff as well as the public work staff. Great, absolutely. I'm just gonna state, you know, for the public record, I'm depending on the various agencies to represent their interests as they see them and let us know if there's something they're unhappy about. Otherwise, I found no problems with the list, but I'll put it back to the rest of the commissioners. Thank you. If I may add, commissioners, sorry, Mr. Chair, may have a, may I add something to what Amy commented? Go ahead. Okay, hi, this is, this is for the staff, commissioners. And some of you who've been on the commission for some time or, you know, are aware of it, may remember that, you know, this is something we go through every four years of establishing this regional transportation plan working in cooperation with all the local jurisdictions, with Santa Cruz Metro, other project implementers, and then also, of course, with the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments. And as part of working with all of them, yeah, we are getting input from all of those entities on what should be in the project list, and, you know, and we were, of course, providing information on what funding may be available and so on to be able to determine what may be in the constrained list or unconstrained list and so on, and also taking into account the priorities of the RTC that the RTC established the policies and goals and targets that the RTC approved for the regional transportation plan. And this list that you're seeing today has already, has gone to the ITAC, the Interagency Technical Advisory Committee that has representation for all the planning departments and the public works departments, Santa Cruz Metro and others. And it also has gone to the Bicycle Advisory Committee and the other in the Civil Transportation Advisory Committee for their, for their reunion. Thanks for that, I appreciate it. Thank you, Luis. Commissioner Beltran. Yeah, Michael, thanks for bringing that out because that was something of my concern too. And as Luis mentioned, ITAC reviews this and we in Coptile have a representative on ITAC. But I was wondering, Amy, can you give us an idea of how you proceed to review this with the city of Coptile and other cities? What's the timeline? How much time do they have? And like Michael, I reviewed the projects, they seem fairly reasonable to me, but I didn't talk to Steve in our city planning department about everything that's on that list. So I was wondering, how do you initiate this review on a city-wide basis? Yeah, so in early 2020, as we were approving the draft or that we're approving the gold policies and targets, fastened out reminders to all of the local jurisdictions with their previous project list that was in the 2040 RTP. And so we sent it out for multiple times for different levels of review when the first draft was developed and then approved at the RTC in September. And so the agencies have been looking at those projects throughout. And then as we've gone to the committee meetings as well, asking for their input on specific projects and any updates. Okay, so the ITAC, that would be a more drill down review. Totally. Yeah. Okay, thank you very much for your response. I appreciate it. Sorry, Commissioner Brown, I recognize you. And then Commissioner Manu Cohen. Thank you. Yeah, just on this question about the communication between planning and public work staff and RTC staff for the individual jurisdictions. I guess I just want to make sure I'm clear about the new projects that have been added. And that Amy, I correct and assuming that those were based on the cities and counties review of the previous list that you've sent to the cities and things they just wanted to add. And those were communicated to you. Or is there another reason for, excuse me, these new projects to show up and either be constrained or unconstrained? Yeah, during the project review when we were soliciting new projects and new project ideas, they were primarily solicitor. They were given from the Agile project sponsors and their updates. So the updates that we received were any specific updates to the current project that was going to continue on the project list, whether that was the cost, project description, so on and so forth. And then we also, the direction that we received were to remove any projects that have been completed against the previous RTP and then any new additional projects based on needs in current assessment. And to add to what Tim's comments, part of the process is also including the public, and determining whether any new projects might be needed and so on. So that was also an effort to go out to the public and get public input. And I think you saw, I don't know if we gave you all of that public input or a summary of that public input when the draft total project list was for that year, so I think back in September. And so from some of that public input, sometimes public suggests projects and then we provide that information through the local jurisdiction that would be responsible for the project, whatever area that's being proposed. A lot of the times the projects suggested by the public are already included in other projects, so that their component of existing projects, but where that's not the case, then the local jurisdiction will let us know whether that's something that's feasible for them to add to the list or not and so on. We did get that list on there when we looked at the policy stuff of the hearings that were held with the public and opportunities for input. Yeah, thank you. Just a really quick follow-up. So yes, I remember seeing those, I guess I'm just, the reason that I'm, I guess what I'm trying to figure out is one very specific piece. There's a new, it's SCP 130 Mission Street Improvement plan, which is new and it is listed as with a cost of 1.5 million and all unconstrained. So I'm just trying to figure out because that seems to be a very important kind of the area and given the safety issues on Mission Street, I would think that it would be a higher priority than what I'm seeing here. And so I'm just wondering, is that something that I just want to go talk with our city, just work on that at the city if we're trying to make any changes, because I don't want to start tinkering here without having that conversation. But I do feel like there's at least a couple where there's, these seem to be much higher priorities in terms of safety. So I'm just trying to figure out how each project got, and each new project got into the plan and how it was determined where they would fall in terms of constrained versus unconstrained. So I think I get it, but I'm, yeah, anyway, thanks for helping clarify. Thank you to Commissioner Brown. Commissioner Manu, kind of, and then back to Commissioner Rodkins. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Manu. Great, thank you, Chair. I just want to kind of clarify what the process would be if we did want to add a project. I mean, you know, this is a, it's all about constrained funding environment. And so if we were going to suggest adding something would we also have to suggest removing something from the, right? Because I mean, I'll just point out, I can see lots of projects I'd like to move from unconstrained to constrained. I mean, whether it's, you know, 6.8 million and lump some bike projects or Murray Street Harbor to Path connection at 790,000 or lighting along the San Lorenzo Riverwalk at 952,000. I mean, complete streets for Watsonville school connection, 16 million. That's on the unconstrained list. Improving 26th Avenue in the county, 2.58, which is on the unconstrained list. So I mean, even, you know, updates consistent with the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan, 15 million unconstrained list. Yeah, I mean, obviously we can go on and on, right? There's $4 billion worth of good projects that have been identified, which are completely unfunded. It's a much harder decision to actually try to remove some of the 5 billion projects that have been identified. So I just want to point that out and, you know, and say, yeah, we're operating in a resource constrained environment. Thank you, commissioner. Commissioner Rothkins, then commissioner Johnson. There's no excellent end of Rothkin. Oh, Rothkin. Yeah, it's a common mistake. I totally want to agree with Manit about the observation, you know, these other projects are not bad projects. There's just the issue is, yes, what would you take off the list to be able to find the funding to do something different? That's a whole different word, magnitude. The, on Mission Street, the issue that Sandy Brown asked a question about, the, because of utility issues along the highway, along Mission Street where the highway one runs along there, and because of the lack of right-of-way ownership by the public decision was made, we started that project in 1985 when I was still on the council and it was a hard decision to not put, you know, full bike lanes on there or protected bike lanes. It, a decision basically was made, I think that people with bicycles need to really ride their bicycles along California or King Street or the other wall, the other alternatives that exist rather than on the road in there because it's a quantum leap to be able to fund a project that would include reasonable bike lanes along there. And that was a hard decision to make, but that decision was made pretty much by the city council, not by the RTC in terms of, you know, otherwise we would have waited forever for that. We wouldn't have the improvements that we got. Mission Street used to be some places two lanes, some places three, some four, became a total four-lane road while in the RTC funding and another funding we got from CalTrans in 1985. And so the decision to add that for all the obvious safety issues you might consider, you'd have to make a decision to sort of blow out every other project in the city of Santa Cruz and not fund it and fund that instead. And you still would be short of funding to make it happen. So I think that was the thinking that was going on at the time. And I suspect that hasn't changed, although you could ask RTC staff or the city staff about, you know, whether they have some different view of that now, but that was the view about 10 years ago. And I'm assuming it hasn't changed. Commissioner Gonzales, Chris Schneider of the city of Santa Cruz would like to respond. Good morning. This is Chris Schneider, assistant director of Public Works. And the Mission Street project is in our capital improvement program. And we've had a number of intersection improvement projects listed over the years as part of capacity and safety improvements for specific intersections. And this is combining them into one project, working with Caltrans to do the design and environmental review. And that's why you see that as a new project. The other new projects in there are in our capital improvement program. And, you know, we give those to RTC to include. One of the things that we're doing is we're working on our next capital improvement program. And so we have two new projects to propose, which I'll be talking to staff about after the meeting. Thank you, Chris. Just to be clear, you know, this, having all the projects listed in this document is great. It really helps us to get more funding for projects, et cetera. But even projects on the unconstrained list does not prevent us from getting grant funding. So for instance, the San Lorenzo River lighting, we did actually get a grant for that. So, you know, technically, it's really on the constrained list. It's 100% funded by the grant. So it's really not an issue for the list, but it's really important to have these projects listed here, whether they're unconstrained or unconstrained. It's important that they're in the system. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. I'm going to go over to Commissioner Johnson and then Commissioner Schiffer and then Commissioner Brown. Thank you, Chair. Just wanted to bring attention to Grant Creek Road overpass with bike improvements. It's a very modest, 200,000 plus another 50,000. And to me, it just kind of underscores, you know, this is pretty dangerous. We have a school of 4,500 kids right there. It's very highly used. It's a modest amount if we wanted a fix. There's kind of a fixation on Highway 1 versus Highway 17. You know, Highway 17 gets massive numbers of cars, drivers every morning. So, you know, something like this that is very reasonable, I think. I just want to draw the attention that, you know, we have overpasses for bikes and so forth that are in the Highway 1 plan for construction that are in the sometimes of five, six, eight million dollars. And here we have something for 250,000 that is really needed. But in some ways, I think Highway 17 all the way up gets ignored. And so I would just like staff, you know, maybe it's beyond your efforts for Grant Creek, but just pay a little bit more attention to Highway 17. It's an important Highway in our transportation system. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Schiffner, Andy. Yes, thank you. I just wanted to mainly follow up on what Chris Schneider said in terms of keeping the RTP, the Transportation Plan in perspective. This is a 30-year look into an imperfect look into an imperfect future where there are all sorts of uncertainties and we do it every few years. So it's not like anything is cast in stone here. It's just, in a sense, it's everybody's wish list. And then trying to say, well, what on the wish list might be funded and what on the wish list is unlikely to be funded? And then four years from now, I'll do my wish list all over again. So, I mean, my sense is there's, we have to, as Chris says, it's very important to have projects on the list because you can't get them funded. The jurisdictions can't get them funded if they're not on the list. But when opportunities to fund some of these projects come along, it's not that big of a deal getting them put on the list, even between RTP timelines. So I think the other final point is it's never enough. I appreciate what Commissioner Johnson is saying, but every month when I look at the Caltrans report, there seem to be lots of projects on Highway 17. So I think it's not enough. If you want to widen Highway one, the projects that the commission is funding is not enough. If you want to build out the rail trail, the amount of money isn't enough. Whatever, as we've seen them to do passenger rail, there's not, there doesn't seem to be sufficient funding. So the challenge is always finding the resources to carry out the range of projects that the commission as a whole and the jurisdictions individually want to do. And I think that's what the Regional Transportation Plan is just the federal requirement that tells the commission and the various jurisdictions that if you think you might want to do one of these projects, you better put it in the plan. And so I think that's really what it does. Thank you, Commissioner Brown. Yeah, thank you. I just want to be clear. Perhaps my question wasn't framed as clearly as I would have liked, but I understand that this is the laundry list, kind of inventory wish list. I understand that there are many great projects on here and I understand the constraints with Mission Street. What I'm talking about here is just simply, and it was an example of trying to figure out how it is that we identify or try to, what we can do to help some of these projects rise to the top because it's a matter of public safety. It's a safety hazard. Not that I'm, I know there's no chance of bike lanes on Mission Street. I'm talking about specific intersection improvements, the kinds of things that are on this list. And I'm just trying to understand how it is that we, when we have the big list, but certain projects get done and certain ones don't from this list over time, the list changes. I'm not questioning that process. I'm just trying to figure out how it is that we can, either at the RTC level, or perhaps this is an issue for, me as an individual council member to try to get on the city council agenda. I just am trying to make sure that I walk away from this understanding, where, what the channels are, I guess. So perhaps Mr. Schneider, you can help me understand that. Would this be a matter of talking with colleagues and trying to connect with you about, where the chances of safety improvements on Mission are since they're in this list, like where they're headed. I'm not sure I've been unmuted. You are now. Yes, we definitely can have that discussion about what the priorities are for you and for the council as a whole. Thanks. Thank you commissioners. Commissioner Rod Kim. Thanks. Sandy, I was not in any way attacking your question. It was a totally reasonable one. I'm just defensive as a bicycle rider and activist that we weren't able to build those bike lanes. And I believe me, I've gotten a rash of complaints over many years from close friends and enemies about not having delivered bike lanes on Mission. So it was more of my defensiveness than any kind of a critique of what your question was. Thank you. Thank you commissioners. I know we're all, we really care about our communities and we really want our projects to be out and forward front before everybody else's, especially the city of Watsonville that has been so far behind in a lot of their projects. So with that, I'm going to go and take it to the public for any questions. Brian Peoples. Comments. Hi, this is Brian from Trail Now. Commissioner Brown, Commissioner Johnson, absolutely you're right is, it's not clear the prioritization criteria set on the decision factors. It's not really clear on this. So I think you're absolutely right for asking for clarity on that. One other thing I would also suggest is clarity on how you come up with your wrong, your rough, rough order of magnitude on the cost estimates. And I'll reference the segment seven phase two which you have priced in for $11 million on age 22-14. You know, initially when segment seven came out as a cost estimate and it was estimated at $2.5 million that quickly went up and actually seven A turned out to be eight, I think eight million dollars. And that was the easy, easy segment that you considered the most easy, simplest segment to do. Segment phase two has huge retaining walls. You have to deal with roaring camp railroad. So my question would be, is how are we recalculating based on actuals? And are we doing that as part of this effort? Because it feels like a lot of your criteria that you are setting is based off of two things is the price or the cost, as well as the bucket that it fits in. And so to say you're bucketing it by the cities, by Caltran, by all that, rather than criteria that may be more suitable like safety as Commissioner Brown said. So my question would be, are you keeping up with the wrong cost estimates because of that feels like a lot of your planning is based off of the cost. And so if that's one of your primary drivers, then you should be keeping up with that. And anytime you have an actual to go to, you should use that. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. Mr. Gault. Thank you, commissioners. In reviewing the constrained project list of friends of the rail trail we're so excited to see rail trail segments five, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, and 18 have all been selected to receive all the funding needed to construct and open them for public use. This is wonderful. Furthermore, we are pleased to see that all the remaining segments will receive further funding. Thank you. Completing the rail trail will improve mobility for generations to come. We also applaud a number of other important projects that have been included in the constrained project list, including the live oak transfer for hub at 17th Avenue and many rail line projects, including 25 million that have been allocated to advancing public transit on the Watsonville Santa Cruz rail quarter. However, we noted the funding for all these rail line projects totals only 42 million, far less than the projected 73 million generated by measure D specifically for the rail quarter. Accordingly, or urges the commission to move the following projects to the constrained project list to take advantage of that rail quarter dedicated funding. These recommendations are 25 million for freight service upgrades, which will upgrade the rail line allowing for more reasonable ongoing maintenance of the line and 5.34 million for recreational rail infrastructure, which will demonstrate the county's commitment to meeting the terms of the proposition, 116 funds that were used to purchase the rail line. Adding these two additional projects to the constrained list will increase the total funding allocated to the rail line to about 72 million consistent with the voter approved measure D expenditure plan and without even touching the 375 million and other discretionary funds at the commission's disposal. We look forward to seeing these projects included and thank you for all you're doing. Thank you. Mr. Barry Scott. Yes, thank you. I'm, first of all, I wanna welcome all the new commissioners and when I look at these agenda packets, I try to imagine what is it like for a brand new RTC commissioner to go over all of this information? It reminds me how important it is that we have a commission and how much work it is to really drill down through all of these different projects. But I thank you for all of the investments that you're making across the board. And I wanna echo Faena's comments that including thank you for all of the trail investments that are identified, but also she picked out the very same two unconstrained line items that I had made notes of RTCP41 improvements to class two and RTC 25 recreational in the amounts of 25 million and 5.3 million because both of these are the commitments to the future of this rail line commitment to future generations. It's known around the world that rail transit is effective, efficient and over the life of the system more cost effective than alternatives. I also wanna say, and I can never say this enough, it's not rail versus metro and it's certainly not rail versus trail. We need all of the above and this rail system is likely to improve Metro's bottom line, Metro's ridership and Metro's revenue streams because the state permits funding of shuttle services in support of rail systems. We don't have a rail interest group so much that it's able to chime in. We have our bikes and our elderly and so forth, but maybe speaking for future travelers, let's make sure that we express the commitment to modern transit and move a little money over into those buckets and constrain some funds for the future. That's it, thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Mr. Barnassa. Yes, in response to several comments, I would like to suggest that Metro probably has the best opportunity over rail. It has the possibility to service everything that you think you can do with a train that a train won't do. Look at Marin County. Look at the state's system. That's dead in the water in the valley. The Metro you should consider as one of the choices and the only choices. When you come to vote on it on the business plan, bus plus trail, bus plus trail, that's where it's at and gives the best service to our community. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. I do not see any other hands up. Commissioner Gonzalez. Okay, can I bring it back? Can I hear your motion? Under the staff recommendation? Second. We have a motion by Andy and a second by Mr. Rutkins. And I have a quick comment on the motion if I might. Go ahead, Mr. Rutkins. So it's not appropriate tongue, I think to make the addition being proposed by the Fort friends of the rail trail and Barry Scott, I think, supported that as well. My view is that if we're working on a business plan, that's our next step really and they're looking at the rail possibilities. And my understanding I should be corrected right now if I'm wrong is that it's possible to amend this plan. We don't have to wait five years. If it were to turn out that the business plan suggested we really should be moving forward more quickly with rail, I don't know that it will come out that way. But if it were to move that way, we have the, I believe we have the ability to amend this plan. And if they're correct, that adding it would be simply using measure D money that's already available and not fighting with other projects would be the kind of thing I would support. But I would wait, I wouldn't change the emotion that's on the floor now. I would wait till we see the business plan. What that, what tells us about what are, you know, the real, the realistic possibilities that are there for rail transit. Thank you. Thank you. Is there any other commissioner that'd like to comment? Seeing none and hearing none. Mr. Chair, before the commission votes on the notion, if I'd like to just add one thing, I think Chris Schneider, the assistant director of the worst decision cruise who said that he's going to talk to staff about a project that is on the unsconstrained list, but it's got funding that should be in the constraint list. So just want to, just want to, the commission to consider that your motion include minor corrections that might be needed, in talking with local jurisdictions, whether it be, there's a project that needs to be added to the constraint list, as Mr. Schneider said, that you actually do have the funding and it is constrained. Or also we continue to work with local jurisdictions on their updates to, or anybody else, updates to cost estimates and so on as was mentioned by a member of the public on how we take into account actual costs. And we do, that's why we update this plan every four years with the local jurisdictions that there are updates to costs. We certainly do that and we learn that there might be a few projects that need some minor updates. It's acceptable to me as a maker of the motion to add direction that staff continue to work with local jurisdiction staff to make any minor clarifications that seem appropriate and to make any updates in the information in the RTP that seems relevant and acceptable to the jurisdictions. My, as a second, my understanding is that wouldn't mean bumping some big project off of the list to make space for something but simply adjusting things where that's possible. And on that basis, I agree with Andy. I'm not happy to have that added to the motion. Yeah. With that, is there any other comments from the commissioners? Or I ask for a roll call. Can I have a roll call, please? Commissioner Bertrand. I agree. Commissioner Brown. I. Commissioner Johnson. I agree. Commissioner Montesino. Yes. Commissioner Caput. I. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin. I. Commissioner Alternate Mulher. I. Commissioner Koenig. I. Commissioner McPherson. I. Commissioner Peterson. I. Commissioner Gonzalez. I. Commissioner Rodkin. I. With that, that is approved. We're gonna go ahead and move on to item 24. I'm item 23, federal and legislative updates. Rachel. Good morning commissioners. Rachel Morricone of your staff. And in recognition of what time it is now, I'm just gonna quickly go over some, highlight some of the points that are listed, especially in attachment one of the staff report of different legislative activities that have been happening. The regional transportation commission does annually adopt or approve a legislative program. You most recently looked at this at your February meeting and accepted the legislative programs included as a attachment to we use this to help inform staff and commissioner comments on different legislative actions that might come up throughout the calendar year on both the state and federal level. One of the focus areas, especially recently, has been on COVID relief proposals. At the end of December, Congress approved the coronavirus response and relief supplemental appropriation act or HR 133 or Chris depending on who you're talking to to give it some new acronyms. What that bill did was for transportation included a lot of support for health and safety and some stimulus money, but on the transportation side, it included $14 billion for transit, which includes about $13 million that will be coming to Santa Cruz Metro. And then about $911 million coming to California through the federal highway administration and distribution on how those funds will flow is still something that's under discussion we've had a few meetings with California Transportation Commission and Caltrans staff, it's most likely to be distributed on a 40%, 60% split between regional agencies and the state for the shop. And as far as how the regional funds will go out, we anticipate based on the latest proposals that the CTC will recommend distributing those funds through the state transportation improvement program or a regional surface transportation program like program. So we will know hopefully by the end of this month how much money that is, we're thinking it's probably in the $2 to $3 million ballpark figure estimate. And we'll be coming back to you with recommendations on programming those funds if indeed the funds do flow through regional agencies. Congress today, actually the Senate this afternoon, our this morning started debate on a new American rescue plan which is a $1.9 trillion proposal from the Biden administration, which the house approved in the wee hours of Saturday, last Saturday, which includes, which could include depending on what happens at the Vodorama that the Senate is undergoing over the next few days, $30 billion nationwide for transit and $350 billion for states and local governments. There's no federal highway funding in that proposal right now. I don't anticipate that the Senate will amend it to include federal highway funds, but it is something that we're tracking and I know a lot of our local agencies are looking forward to having some relief for the revenue losses that they've incurred over the last two years. The next step after that gets approved, President Biden and House and Senate leaders have started talking about a more massive infrastructure bill that would include transportation, water, housing, and schools and a few other infrastructure components. The focus there on the transportation side is on shovel worthy instead of shovel ready projects there'd be a few years for agencies to put projects into place. They might as part of that address the Federal Transportation Act reauthorization and on the House side, there has been a call to congressional legislators to identify any possible earmarks. So we are tracking that. We have many projects as discussed earlier in this meeting by both the Public Works Director for the County and City and all the projects in the regional transportation plan that could be implemented quickly, but on page 23-6 of your packet, there's a quick list of some of the preliminary projects that local jurisdictions have identified that they could put that money to work within the next six to 18 months on if it were available. Also in our legislative program attachment to, I think it's page 200 of the PDF, is a list of yeah, as well as page 208, is a list of some of the local priority projects including our projects on highway one, transit projects, local street and road repairs, and the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Senior Trail that we would be proposing if earmarks do become a reality. On the federal level related to the federal transportation and act reauthorization, they really are focusing on bringing existing facilities into a state of good repair. This includes bridges, roads, transit systems, also addressing climate change and conversion of our vehicle fleets, both freight, transit and passenger which has zero emission vehicles or ZEV. The e-bike proposal which Director Preston mentioned earlier that has been put forward by Congressman Panetta. Congress is still struggling with how to fund this, especially as vehicles become more fuel efficient, the gasoline tax which hasn't been raised by the feds since 1993 really is not cutting it. It does not cover the cost of all of our projects and as shown in the regional transportation plan, even assuming all the different funding sources and special grants that we think we can compete for. We're still only gonna have enough money to cover about half of what the needs are or the desires that have been identified. So Congress is gonna be struggling with that. There's a lot of hesitancy to support a gasoline tax. I'm not sure if they'll look at a per mile fee or some other type of vehicle registration fee, but they're looking at a variety of different options and it'll probably be a tiered implementation that will happen over 15 years or so, but that is something that they're struggling to deal with right now. On the state level, we are tracking Governor Newsome presented his budget proposal back in January, so we've been tracking that and discussions at the legislative level, the state legislative level on specific proposals. The state legislators introduced over 2,500 bills already for this two year session that began. Just began, a lot of them are focused on climate change, zero emission vehicles, resiliency, fire prevention, as well as some modifications to the way things like the regional transportation plan and sustainable community strategy is implemented. And then in recognition of our transition to so many meetings like today's, there are discussions about making some more permanent changes to the Brown Act and how we conduct public meetings and that would apply to public agencies statewide and to make sure that they're accessible and sometimes encourage more public participation than we're able to have in-person meetings. At the state level, the California State Transportation Agency, CalSTA, has started drafting something called the Climate Action Plan for Transportation Infrastructure. This cap tie is expected to be released for public review later this month. They have some workshops that they'll be hosting and it generally proposes to change some of the ways that state funding is distributed. The planning documents that Caltrans and its partner agencies at the state level produce as well as climate resiliency and mitigations. And I won't go through this full list, but there are an increased emphasis on rail and transit and bike and pedestrian infrastructure and zero emission vehicles within the initial list of ideas that they are anticipating releasing in this draft plan. Today, we just have one primary recommendation for you, which is just to make sure that we have clarity. Our chair and vice chair are gonna be attending Central Coast Coalition lobby day with Sacramento legislators and agencies this month, but throughout the year we would like to just ensure that we have the board's authority to provide input to legislative and administrative proposals that are consistent with the RTC's 2021 state and federal legislative programs, which are included as attachment to. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you, Rachel. Is there any questions from the commissioners? Commissioner Patrick. Thank you, chair. Good morning, Rachel. Nice to see you. When do we expect the next round of STBG grant funding will be coming to us for approval? Sure. So the surface transportation block grant funds or what we also sometimes call the regional surface transportation program funds are STPR, STBG. Those are based on what happens at the federal level. So the current federal act, the fast act expires in September of 2021. We are anticipating that the next act will include a similar type program. Maybe they'll change the name of it again, but we do have some preliminary estimates of how much money we anticipate each year. And currently the commission has programmed all the funds out through fiscal year 2021. So I anticipate that we would issue a call for projects or start the discussions on how to program those funds once we see what some of the initial proposals in the federal act are. And then again, I would recommend because it is a odd fiscal, odd calendar year. It's also the year that we would be selecting projects for any state transportation improvement program funds and to kind of look at those as well as any kind of new COVID relief funding collectively rather than run three or four different cycles for the different funding sources. So I think we'll hopefully have a little more clarity this spring and have the commission selecting those projects no later than December of this calendar year. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is there any other commissioner that has any questions or comments? Seeing none, I'll take this out to the public. Mr. Varnasa. Yeah, I wanna tell you about a new development that's significant. The House bill had in it the $150 million for BART extension from Fremont, San Jose, Santa Clara. That's been withdrawn, it's not in the bill anymore. So don't count on getting all this money because it's one of the problems we have is interest rates are going up because we've borrowed so much already from ourselves. One pocket to the other and it's gonna get tougher. So that's all I have to say. And thank you very much. I will say this, I'm sort of zoomed out because I had an early morning like five o'clock in the morning, zoom in London in Detroit and here with me. So I'm gonna take my nap. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. There aren't a lot of hands on commissioner Gonzalez. I don't see no other hands on the public. So we'll get and bring this back. I'll move the staff recommendation. Second. We have a motion by Andy and a second by Eduardo. All right, Mr. Rotkin. Oh, okay, I've seen Eduardo's hand go up, that's why. It's up to you. Go ahead, Mr. Rotkin. I was seconded. Commissioner Bertrand. I agree. Commissioner Brown. Aye. Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Montecino. Yes. Commissioner Caput. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Mulher. Aye. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner McPherson. Aye. Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Gonzalez. Aye. Commissioner Rotkin. Aye. Thank you. We're gonna go ahead and move on to item 24, review of items to be discussed in closed session. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have two items in closed session today, both real property negotiations. Mr. Chairman, we do not anticipate a reportable action coming out of closed session. Thank you. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you to the community and those out there. We will be going to closed session. You could have a separate link commissioners that are new to the board for the closed session item. If you don't, please let me know and we'll get that to you. There would have been an email from Ian Berry this morning around eight o'clock. Yeah, I got it. Thank you. Okay. See you in five minutes.