 Good morning and welcome to the November 1st meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. Trent, Commissioner Brown, Commissioner Johnson, Commissioner Kaufman-Gomez, Commissioner Caput, Commissioner Alternate Schifrin, Commissioner Alternate Mulherrn, Commissioner Leopold, Commissioner McPherson, Commissioner Bahtorf, Commissioner Chase, Commissioner Alternate Lin. Okay, now back to our regularly scheduled meeting. Welcome to the November 1st meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. We did the roll call, so now we'll move to oral communications. This is an opportunity for people to address the commission on items under our purview but are not on today's agenda. You all have three minutes. Does anyone want to come forward? It's okay to, it's okay to line up if you'd like. I've talked with, my name's Kerry Pico, I live in Aptos. I've talked with many of you and one thing that's common that I hear over and over again is that there really is no plan to have a train in the near future or even 30 years from now. So what does it cost to keep the option of having a train now or whatever? Anyway, the point that I want to say is you can keep the option in the future if you do consider a trail. But what does it cost to have, you know, to not put in the trail? This is what I want, you don't know what's going on now with the rail trail. Willie Brown once wrote, we always knew the initial estimate was way under the real cost. Start digging a hole and make it big. So there's no alternative to come up with more money to keep filling in that hole. So what I want you to know is that phase one of the segment seven, the estimate of construction has come in three times over the initial MBSST budget. And also you have to include the, multiply it by the overhead, the 60 percent overhead. So if you take that, it's three times the initial cost. And then you look at the next budget or the estimate for phase two, which is, let's go back. Phase one is from natural bridges to California and Bay. It's flat. It's wide. It's not difficult. Then you go to a difficult part, which is right along Neri Lagoon. And that's four times the initial cost. This is all done by the city of Santa Cruz, by the way, their public works. So this is my take home message. If it's between three and four times the cost, and the first one is based on real bids, okay? The second one is based on updated estimates. If it's between three and four times the cost, three times, what is that, $130 million for the MBSST, that brings you up to about $380 million. If you do four times, that brings you to $508 million. So it's a cruel joke that you guys think that we're going to have any rail trail built next to the tracks and afford it. And if you want to know why, it's because you're going to have to create a whole new area next to the tracks. Tracks that aren't going to be used, tracks that have no use today, no use in the future. And if you put a trail on the tracks, you'd still protect that area for a future railroad. And if you don't have the guts to have a good contract to make sure that that happens, that's the fault of the RTC, not the fault of political will, okay? That's really what I want to say. I don't think we can afford $400 to $500 million for a trail. In fact, I say take that money, make roadways, not roadways, but protected bikeways. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. I'm Sally Arnold, longtime resident of Santa Cruz. I also want to address the economic impacts of your decision about how to use the right of way, but I have a different perspective. I think scenario B is clearly the best option from a fiscal standpoint. According to the RTC's own frequently asked question sheet, if we tear up the tracks, we may incur $41 million in additional costs. I know every infrastructure project is expensive and you just decide this is our values, we're going to do it, but there's no need to add additional unnecessary costs. What I haven't seen addressed yet is the fact that 70% of the right of way is not owned outright by our community, but is a 19th century rail easement dependent upon the operation of a railroad. As soon as we tear up the tracks, we void those easements and we invite litigation that could cost tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars, ending with us having to repurchase the very same easement we already bought. That's fiscally irresponsible. For these reasons, I think choosing anything other than scenario B is a mistake, and I think we can make B even better. The proposed mission street improvements are largely car centric, but we know that when we improve the walkability of a street, it increases nearby property values. People spend more money in the area stimulating the local economy, and it is safer for everyone avoiding those attendant costs as well. According to American city planner Jeff Speck, improving the streets for bikes and pedestrians has another benefit as well. It's less expensive for the city to maintain. According to his figures, if a resident drives, it costs the city $9.20 in services like policing and ambulances. If a resident takes a bus ride, it costs the city about $1.50 in bus operations, and when a resident walks, the cost of the city is about a penny. Clearly, it would be financially wise for the RTC to plan any mission street improvements to increase pedestrian and bike access, not speed up the car traffic in those two miles. Lastly, delays can be costly. Please take this month to consider the options in the UCS, and then make your decision on December 6th. We've been planning and discussing how to best use this right-of-way for 20 years. It's time to act. I think it's the fiscally responsible thing to do. Thank you. Thank you. I'll just point out that we do have a brief outreach activities update about the UCIS. So you can speak about it now, or you can speak about it then, but you only get one shot at it. So please come forward. Thank you. My name is Jack Carroll. I live in Soquel. When I read the feasibility study, I didn't think that rail myth would continue into the future, but it has. I don't know why our thinking has existing rails maintained. It just doesn't make any sense to me. The train doesn't go through the density that's required, the housing density that's required to support a train. We have to replace all the rails eventually, anyway, so covering them up now isn't that big a deal. The same thing is true for two-thirds of the ties. What I suggest is that we spend that money on improving bus service. The disabled and elderly will be better served by buses. The buses have those nice, kind drivers that help people when they need it, again, on and off the kneeling buses. And that kind of service just won't be available on a train. Without a train, we can have enough money to actually reduce the metro's fare box revenue to zero. The fares could be zero, free for everybody in the county. The actual O&M expense that was quoted in the study was more than double the audited 2017 total fare box revenue for Santa Cruz Metro. So get rid of the train, get rid of the operating expenses, and have twice as much money as needed to reduce the fares in the county to zero, which has to have a positive effect immediately on our traffic. So what I would like to see is two changes to the draft report. I'd like a scenario B that has no train service in it, but all the other elements, plus assume that the bus fare is reduced to zero. And let's see how all the checkboxes look after that. And I'd like to also know how the additional housing is going to be supported. By that, I mean, we all know that we have a housing problem in Santa Cruz County, and we all know that we're going to have to do something about it. So how does our future planning, the investments that we're going to be making, how do those investments support the new housing? Where's it going to go? Do our routes that we're proposing, will it support that? And I want you to remember that all the scenarios in the investment study require us to go out into the public and ask for more money because none of those scenarios are covered by any source of funding, even the imaginary ones that might be in the study. So can we go out for hundreds of millions of dollars for a rail that nobody or at least half the county doesn't like or end affordable housing? I think it's one of the other. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. I'm not going to bore you with a UCIS thing. I wanted to tell you I was on a bike ride on Sunday. I got over to Coralitas Market. I was having my lunch and some people sat on the table with me and we started talking and he was a retired bus driver from Metro here and I mentioned Les White and he said, oh, I've got a Les White story for you. He said I was driving my route once from Santa Cruz towards Watsonville on Route 71. This old lady got on the bus and she could barely get up and she had canes on both hands and he thought to himself, oh, this could be my mother and she said, are you going to Dominican Hospital? And he said, well, yes, I am. And she said, well, you let me know when we're there. So they got to Dominican Hospital and all that traffic there on Soquel and he thought to himself, how is she ever going to get across all these lanes? So he knew it was against the rules, but he stopped the bus, helped her off and with passengers on the bus, he helped her across the street with her holding his hand, came back and finished his route. And then on Monday when he went to work, he got called up to Les White's office and Les White says, what you did was totally against the rules, says I was on that bus. But I want you to know that the service that you gave to the customers is what makes us liked by our community. That's a nice story. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Good morning. Good morning, commissioners. Keith Otto, number of comments that I wanted to share with regards to observations around the universe, the UCIS, the investment study. So first, you know, when the study was released, there was an article in the Sentinel. It noted, based on data in the study that traffic flows in the evening commute, we're not going to noticeably change under any scenario. Seems that, you know, in the big scheme of things, we're missing the mark, right? We need to get traffic moving within the county. Next, were the figures with regards to the costs, right? 899, 830 to 740 million dollars, 1.2 billion, depending upon which scenarios are pursued. Commissioner Borough, you noted, you know, those figures are estimates and they're likely to change. I appreciate that comment. Commissioner Johnson, you mentioned you're concerned about an investment that would be a risk. I appreciate that comment. You know, a lot of folks, myself included, have a hard time getting my head around numbers this large. Just as a point of comparison, right? Consider measure H, right? Totally different issue, completely different. But consider the dollars involved, and in particular the process that will be pursued there. Measure H involves 140 million dollars. And it goes to the voters for an up or down vote. And for that to go forward, it requires a two-thirds approval, right? Not a simple majority. I hope that whatever direction the commission pursues, that it would be ideal if such a proposal would go to the voters for a vote and that there was that level of support for whatever you choose to pursue. You know, the costs that I mentioned are just the implementation. They don't involve maintenance. You know, it was noted there's, on the order of half of that funding has been identified, but it's at risk by 40 percent if Proposition 6 goes forward. There's great concerns with regards to the cost. Along those lines, I question why it makes any sense to invest in a rail. The ridership numbers that are in the report, 7,000 a day, I'm having a hard time understanding how that's even close to reality. How long is it going to take to implement what's the opportunity cost there? There was some discussion about that at the October 18th meeting. The train is going to be a fixed piece of infrastructure. How do people get to it? How do they get from it to their end destination? It's going to be very inflexible. You know, my guidance would be beyond the rail that we already have as far as servicing freight within Watsonville that's servicing the business community there. It makes no sense to invest further in rail. Rather, I would prefer to see the investments in Highway 1 and bus service for flexibility. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. I'm Brett Garrett, resident of Santa Cruz. As you know, I'm a big supporter of personal rapid transit as a solution for our corridors and for our community. I'm working with a consultant to produce a report that I think will show that personal rapid transit is the best solution, serving more passengers using less energy per passenger and providing better service for each passenger than anything that's currently on the table. So I want to plead with you to whatever decision you make about the scenarios to please leave the door open for newer technology that may provide better options than what's already been planned. I've been told that scenario B would leave the door open, but depending on how a decision is worded, it may or may not leave the door open. So please leave the door open for newer technology. And also I just I've asked the staff to break down some of the information in the unified corridor study about how the various things add up to get the results that are given. I find myself being skeptical of some of the results and to show more detail would be kind of a sanity check to show that it's correct. And so I think it's important to show more detail on some of those items. And I have some time remaining. I'd like to cede my remaining time, if possible, to Mike St. who has more things to say that he can fit into three minutes. Thank you very much. Yes. Well, thank you for the generous offer. We don't we don't cede time to other people. Good morning, Barry Scott. I live in Aptos and I wanted to make a couple observations. One is that it's interesting that Measure D, thank God it passed. It was a great multimodal pie. But you know, it's 30 years of future taxing, largely to backfill a lot of projects that needed to be done 30 years ago. I hope with what we're doing with this new work might include more future providing for the future. I think about I've been trying to find an analogy. I mean, I love Scenario B. I'm glad it came out and scored well, because it's got a lot for Metro. It's got a lot. It's got the passenger rail piece in there, bike infrastructure improvements. So it's really serving a lot of different different modes and and setting a stage for a more sustainable future for our kids, which is what we ideally be doing rather than backfilling. I thought of an analogy. I don't know if it'll work, but I'll bet all of us, all of you all had a set of Encyclopedia Britannica in your home growing up. I did. And you know, that was a little bit of a lot, a little bit of information about everything in the world, all countries and everything. And I used to sit there and pour through those things. And I want to think of your selections of scenarios and pieces of scenarios as being a little bit like that. Would you want your, you know, would you buy just classics for your children to read? Would you buy just poetry? Would you buy just science titles? Or would you buy something that had a lot of everything in it? And I'm submitting to you that the best thing we can do is look way out. Let's look 30 years out and see what people are doing. Let's look at other countries and see what they're doing for transportation. People will use a train. I have no question about that. There's so many examples of it. There's so much funding for it. And I'll just leave with this. And I mean, metro and rail transit combined, the symbiosis between that and bikes, bikes going on trains, bikes going on buses, is pretty substantial. A quote from Enrique Penelosa, who was former mayor of Bogota. He says, an advanced city isn't one where all the poor, where the poor drive cars. An advanced city is one where the rich use transit. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning commissioners. Michael St. with campaign for sustainable transportation. Most of us here on both sides of the podium have a lot in common. Basically, we would do anything in our power to protect our families and our children and leave them a future that is safe, environmentally sound and sustainable. Unfortunately, in this UCIS, this isn't happening. But to save time, I really urge you to read Rick Longinati's letter to the RTC dated October 31. There you'll get information on CFST's position on the UCIS. Now I want to take you into the future. Imagine a picture of my family and my two and a half year old granddaughter up on the screen. Here is a pretend conversation that I'd love to have with my granddaughter about 15 to 20 years from now regarding transportation here. I'm playing two parts, so bear with me. Papa Mike, I really enjoyed visiting with you and Grandma. I was so happy to be able to travel around the county without having to use a car. My favorite was the electric train, of course, bringing and bringing my bike to use when I reached my destination. And I was really surprised on the way back to your home that Highway 1 was not very congested. I guess the buses on shoulder by themselves has become quite popular with the citizens. They seem to run quite frequently. I didn't get a chance to ride the bus on Soquel Freedom Boulevard, but I heard there's also a bus rapid transit system and all electric system there also. I really wish all cities and counties were as smart and progressive as Santa Cruz County. Papa Mike, I'd really like to know who these people who were at who initiated and planned this wonderful transportation system. Well Millie, all credit can be given to the 12 members of the RTC and staff that was in place in 2018. If it hadn't been for their vision of a robust mass transit system and having said no to highway widening and single car occupancy, we would still be stuck in heavy congestion. Don't get me wrong, Millie. This was not an overnight success. They took a lot of flak from the automobile constituency, but they held their ground for mass transit. It and they are now considered heroes in the transportation world. Papa Mike, weren't they afraid of losing their jobs and maybe getting voted out of office? I'm sure they were, but with increasing threat of climate change and transportation becoming the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, also they're concerned for not only their family's future, but the people they represented. They made a bold move to go all in for protecting our planet and its citizens. Yes, they put aside politics, voter mandates, special interests, and even their own future aspirations to do the right thing. When I see these people on the street today, I personally go up and shake their hand for making your world, Millie, and your children's world a better place to live. I love you, Millie. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to address us during oral communication? Seeing none, I'll see if there's any additions or deletions to today's agenda. Good morning, Mr. Dondaro. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and commissioners. Yes, we have two additions, Item 7, some replacement pages, and Item 26, one replacement page. All right. Then we'll move to the consent agenda. Are there any items that members of the commission would like to pull or comment on? Is there any member of the public who would like to pull or comment on? Bring it back to us for action. I have a comment on Item number 10, the UCS outreach. I just want to make sure that when the next draft of the study is distributed, the changes are highlighted with course out underlined so it will be possible to see how the study has changed from the first draft. With that, I hear that I see the Executive Director nodding and said yes. I move the consent agenda. Motion by Schifrin, seconded by Bertrand. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. So we'll move to our regular agenda. The first item is commissioner reports. Are there commissioner reports? Mr. Bertrand. I don't have a report, but I'd like to offer something for a future agenda item. Okay. Okay. So I think the first speaker or one of the first speakers was Kerry Pico, and he brought up something that I've heard many people talk about and it has concern to me. And that is the, I forget which segment it is. Maybe George, you could clarify that. The segments that go north from Santa Cruz and our trail project there. There's two projects, segment five and seven. Okay. So the cost overruns there have me greatly concerned and I've received a lot of comment about that. And so I would like to propose, and hopefully the commission here will accept this, is putting that on a future agenda item. And the reason why I'm concerned is because if this gives us an example of what future costs are going to be, we need to know that information. Future costs for something that we are just sort of stepping into and we have no real idea. This is the first project that we're actually stepping into and it's going to give us an idea of how much those future costs might be. So I kind of like a staff report on a near item, excuse me, a new scheduled meeting as soon as possible because that's going to be important for us to consider. Thank you very much. Am I correct, Mr. Dunder, that the UCIS estimates how much the trail is going to cost? Yes. Well, it estimates all the projects that are being considered. I'm trying to point out that it's actually part of that document. It is. No, I could accept those are estimates in the UCIS, but we have an actual project that's happening now. So those aren't estimates. Those are real costs. So I'd like a staff report on what the actual costs are now and what the difficulties are now. That's what I want. Yeah, well, we could have a staff report on the Segment 7 and Segment 5. Thank you very much. I just want to make one comment. Last week I was contacted by, I was contacted by my daughter who's going to school in Boston. She was contacted by an activist here in Santa Cruz about a transportation issue. They reached out to her in the hopes that she could convince her father who she claimed was not doing anything to protect the planet. And could she get involved in that discussion? My feeling about that is it's completely inappropriate for activists to reach out to family members to try to convince us to do things. I'm elected as a member of the Board of Supervisors. My family is not on the ballot and it was especially, it made me very aware given the actions of last week. So I just want to remind people that we may have different opinions on what should happen on the UCIS, on transportation issues. We're passionate about those, but let's keep it within the confines of these meetings or public meetings and keep it a respectful dialogue because we're going to see each other in lots of different places. I totally agree with you. I mean, we're a member of this community. We're representing segments of the community. We're trying to do a good job and I totally agree with you. Thanks for bringing that up. Thank you. I'll just make a very brief. With many efforts made on behalf of the RTC and engaging with them on how best to go ahead and reach out to Watsonville as a community as a whole, I believe that they have been successful with their meeting this week in getting well over a dozen people which I think is pretty consistent with both ends of the county in getting people here and engaged as well as I'm going to be doing a little bit of information out to the RP in conjunction with getting more said in the newspaper because putting an ad that says RTC is not communicating, it's just informing that there's a date to go somewhere. So having something actually in writing and engaging is I think going to be beneficial to reach out to people who won't be able to take the time for those type of meetings. Any other commissioners? Seeing none, I'll turn to our executive director for his report. Good morning, Mr. Dondaro. Good morning. First, I'd like to announce that the bike signage project, countywide bike signage project was released for bids yesterday and staff will be coming to you on December 6th with a recommendation for a contractor. There is a time clock on some of the funding for that so we need to get that project going. And just the other item I was just wanting to respond to one of the previous comments and also to Commissioner Bertrand, this is actually not the first project that we've delivered. The auxiliary lane project between Soquel and Morrissey was RTC was the lead on that and the bids on that project came in well under the engineer's estimates. The reason for that, of course, is that because the economy was in a real downturn at that time and the bidding was contractors were basically bidding at cost at that time just to keep their workers going and their equipment moving. So it's one of the challenges of delivering public works projects in that you have to deal with the ups and downs of the economy and the pricing, of course, varies according to supply and demand and right now all the contractors are in high demand. So that explains a lot of it. We'll put some more detail in the staff report but I think it's something you all probably have heard at your other city council and supervisors meetings that projects are coming in high right now. So it's just part of getting it done. That's all I have for today. I'll be glad to answer questions. All right. Any questions for Mr. Dandero? Seeing none, we'll move on to item number 22, which is a nominating committee for the 2019 RTC chair and vice chair. Has been our practice. I as chair form a subcommittee to select the chair and vice chair. It usually includes the current vice chair, which is Mr. Botthorff. But if there's others who are interested in being involved, please let me know. We generally try to have a city council member and a member of the Board of Supervisors as chair and vice chair. That's been our practice. So I know Mr. Bertrand has expressed interest, but if you're interested, please let me know. I'm not sure if there's any other comment about that. Any comments from the public? Next we'll move on to what I think is a great accomplishment for the year. Item number 23, which is the executive director employment agreement. Earlier this year, Mr. Dandero announced his retirement from the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. Our commission decided to hire a recruiting firm to help us ensure that we looked far and wide for the best people possible to fill this position. We received a number of applications and we did a first round interview that included both the subcommittee of this commission as well as a technical committee that included staff and other transportation officials. They selected two candidates for the full commission to interview. We interviewed those candidates and we're very pleased that Guy Preston was selected and accepted our offer as the new executive director of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. Mr. Preston was in some ways right under our nose. He lives here in Santa Cruz and he has 28 years of experience in transportation and what was impressive to us was his work up in Sonoma County working on delivering projects from their sales tax measure. Mr. Preston will be starting on December 6th or December 3rd so he'll be coming right on board as we conclude the Unified Corridor Investment Study but I think it'll help provide a great direction for him about the goals and aspirations of this commission. I want to thank the members of the staff who participated in that process and I want to thank the thoughtfulness from all my fellow commissioners for being part of this process. I thought that there were great questions that came from commissioners. I felt like we engaged in a really good conversation about this and I'm really excited about Mr. Preston starting. So today we have his employment agreement and we'll take comments and a motion at one time is appropriate. Mr. Bertrand. So I read over the employee benefits and like to tell the public that our future director will be receiving the same health benefits as staff, the same retirement plan and paid leave. So he's not giving special treatment over and above our regular employees. Also I'd like to comment on John's comment on Highway 1 improvement. I've been traveling Highway 1 up in Sonoma, Ren, that whole corridor for years and I brought this up in the interview with Guy. That program, that project was handled in sequences that was not interfering with traffic flow in general. You know something wasn't planned and something jumped on top of that and completely gummed up the corridor which is pretty bad to begin with. A lot of traffic uses it and I noticed that as I was driving north over the years, well planned, well executed, a lot of consciousness given to traffic coming in and out for the various communities. So I think if one is on here and contemplating all the plans that we have for merge lanes, et cetera, I think he's going to give a job that's well worth the salary he's getting, which I think is reasonable and it's going to lessen the impact to this community, which is something I think we could all appreciate, especially those coming from Watsonville to Santa Cruz. Thank you. Any other comments? Is there any member of the public who would like to comment on this item about the employment contract? Seeing none, I'll bring it back to you. Approval of the employment agreement? Second. Motion by Schifrin, seconded by Batur. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? A motion carries unanimously and we will get to welcome Mr. Preston here on December 3rd. Thank you for everyone's participation. Next we'll move on to item 24, which is the Caltrans report. Good morning, Ms. Lowe. Good morning, Mr. Chair, commissioners. I would like to start by reinforcing Caltrans commitment to helping communities plan for sustainability into the future and we're offering $40 million in grant funding statewide in three different programs. I think I mentioned this opportunity at a prior meeting, but I want to make sure you know that the grant, the deadline for applications has been extended now to November 30th. The three programs are Sustainable Communities, Partnerships and Transit, and Adaptation Planning. And the majority of the funding allowed, allotted to this program is also through Senate Bill 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017. We look forward, we're always getting a lot of good proposals for this. It's a very competitive program, but it's a very successful program. We're proud to support that. Meanwhile, at the federal level, I'd like to mention that the USDOT through the Federal Transit Administration is supporting transit coordination projects that will improve access to healthcare. They have a $6.3 million program that's available now for applications due November 13th to improve access and mobility partnerships, again, specifically for transit and access to healthcare. Meanwhile, the investments afforded to us through SB 1 were putting right to work to restore and preserve the infrastructure. Already, Caltrans has completed 53 projects around the state, totaling more than $15 billion, much of this afforded through the Senate Bill 1 Road Repair and Accountability Act. In Santa Cruz County alone, as shown in the report in your packet here, there are several projects totaling $51 million that are either in development or in construction right now through the SHOP program that Caltrans manages for the state highway system. Of course, there will be more coming, assuming things carry forward. We're keeping track of our progress as well. We've repaved about 740 lane miles of pavement. We've replaced 37,500 feet of guardrail, 950 highway light and signal systems, repainted 2,000 miles of roadway with better striping that you've seen for higher visibility and better safety all around the state. That's it, unless you have questions for me. All right. Well, let's find out if members of the commission have questions. Seeing none, let's see if any member of the public has any questions. Okay. This is not a chatty group today. So it will be unusual. We'll move on to item number 25, which is the City of Watsonville report. Good morning. Thank you very much. Good morning, commissioners and staff and members of the public. I'm Maria Esther Rodriguez, the Assistant Director of Public Works here at the City of Watsonville. And welcome to Watsonville. There's a lot happening here, and I'm going to tell you what's happening on the transportation realm and things that the commission here has helped us secure in funding. Sorry, technical difficulties. Thanks. Again, a lot happening and here to share that with you, I'll start with some roadway projects that we're working on. Watsonville has several roadway projects that provide multimodal improvements and use transportation funding secured through the Regional Transportation Commission. Fundings from various sources, including a state transportation improvement program, state transportation block grant program, measure D, SB1, and highway safety improvement program. These projects reconstruct or upgrade facilities for pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, and drivers and include some of the following. A quarter mile on Airport Boulevard from Free to the City limits, that was completed earlier this year. And that project is one that included pavement reconstruction, pavement widening that improved and installed bicycle lanes, better pavement for cyclists as well. It relocated a bus stop that was in a tricky location and it's now been upgraded. It also installed pedestrian safety crossing there at one of the crossings that we've had past incidents of collisions and making that safer. That was recently completed and so I invite you to go and take a drive out. There's some flashing beacons at that pedestrian crossing, so you'll see which one it is. The next Airport Boulevard we're working on is actually happening right now. This is about three quarters of a mile on Airport Boulevard from Westgate to Larkin to about Home Road. That one also includes a lot of pedestrian facility upgrades. We're installing sidewalks where there were none, reconstructing the pavement which will provide again safety for bicyclists as well as motorists and transit users and also upgraded pedestrian and ADA facilities throughout that quarter and a upgraded and safer crossing at Home Road. The next project is on Green Valley Road and that one's about 0.2 miles from Struve Slough to Freedom Boulevard. That's about where Home Depot is to Freedom. It's an area with also desperately in need of road reconstruction and it does have, it is lacking in pedestrian facilities now and this project will address that and the next one would be Freedom Boulevard from Altavista to Green Valley. That one's about 0.6 mile. It's the next series in the Freedom Boulevard projects that we have, our heavily, our most heavily used corridor and that one is scheduled to be done in 2022 and we'll look forward to that one. I don't have the magic touch. There we go. Some traffic operation improvement projects that we've been doing with, this has been, we've had two projects that provide adaptive traffic control system through grants secured from the Monterey Bay Air Resources District through the AB 2766 program and our matches through gas tax funds. These projects optimize traffic flow along these corridors and making it more efficient and reducing gas emissions. The improvements to the Freedom Boulevard corridor were done last year and work on the Green Valley corridor is beginning now and will be starting to get implemented next year. The next involves a lot of planning outreach and education. We do have a number of again planning outreach and education programs and projects underway. These include Caltrans planning grants to develop complete streets plan for our downtown area and a second planning grant developing complete streets to schools plans for the 15 schools within Watsonville City Limits. Both of these are have been projects that we've been having a lot of public engagement and really concerted effort to do outreach to members of all ages of all backgrounds, languages, residents, business owners and we really have had a lot of input so it's been successful to date and we haven't reached the final, reached the end of those projects yet we're working on but really pleased at the engagement we've had on all of those. We also have a state transportation block grant funds used to prepare a plan line for Freedom Boulevard and this is in the portion from Green Valley to Freedom, I'm sorry Green Valley to Buena Vista at the edge of the city and counter limit and we also had a project open streets Watsonville that was also led by Bikes Santa Cruz County and this also is very engaging to all members of the community and providing open streets that gives an opportunity to people for people to know what other modes of transportation they are included a lot of education and a lot of activities a really fun event I'm not sure if anybody here had an opportunity to participate in Watsonville's but I invite you to do so in the future. Also Vision Zero is another project we have that we're in the works on here in Watsonville again safety is one of those items of most concern and residents engaged in this project we are in the planning process to do that as you may recall the city of the city council approved the plan to start working on Vision Zero early this year and again the community has been very engaged very interested. The next are bicycle and pedestrian projects the city has used Measure D state transportation improvement program and urban greening project grant funds to complete several pedestrian and bicycle projects in this past fiscal year these include bicycle and pedestrian safety education at local elementary schools this is with walks market and bikes bike smart we have also installed additional street lighting and flashing beacons installing sidewalks where none existed previously and we reconstructed a popular pedestrian path near a middle school during the past fiscal year the city also secured funding from the straight state transportation improvement program the active transportation program and the coastal conservancy to design and construct several valuable pedestrian and bicycle projects these include installing green lanes on several arterial roadways improving bicycling and awareness to motorists that bicycles need to share the road with us providing pedestrian and bicycle safety improvements on Lincoln street that will benefit Watsonville high school and this has been a collaborative project with the high school we've been working with them and they're very excited about this project happening and that is a location where Watsonville high school Lincoln street cuts through the middle of their high school and it's a roadway that's a soft closure during the day where students have to cross multiple times so it's going to greatly improve the safety in that area and the last one is the design of a 1.4 mile pedestrian path along lee road that will link the city's rail trail project to the pahoa valley high school the city is also developing two regional pedestrian and bicycle projects that use state transportation improvement program and active transportation program funding these include segment 18 of the Monterey bay sanctuary scenic trail network that will extend from the city limits at lee road to the intersection of walker street and west lake avenue the project will go to bid late next year so we will have real costs coming up very soon on that project the second project is installation of a bicycle and pedestrian bridge at harkin slew road crossing of highway one this is one of those projects that's really been of importance to members there at the high school we see the students walking and traveling to the high school and it's a very congested and difficult location we're currently working with caltrans to develop the environmental documents and currently the construction is scheduled for 2022 next on another topic of conversation that we've heard not only at the local and state level but the national level level is the infrastructure in the state of our infrastructure as you may recall pavement condition ends dex is a way to measure the condition of an existing roadway the score ranges from zero to 100 where zero has failed and 100 is a brand new road this slide shows the road condition and the maintenance or repair needed so um note that the higher the pc i the lower the cost of maintaining or repairing the road the goal is to keep the pc i at seven or above at good so that the roads are in good shape and the maintenance or repair costs are minimum in watsonville specifically the current pc i is 54 to bring it to 70 it would require about six million dollars a year for 10 years watsonville currently receives a total of two point almost five million annually in funding between gas tax sp1 and measure d while the city is fortunate to have new funding sources such as measure d and sp1 additional monies will be needed to raise the city's pc i to 70 and also noted here is that 2.4 million is used for more than just the maintenance on the road it also deals with our lighting our street light maintenance our sidewalk repair so it's really funding that has to be really stretched it is also funding that is used to leverage grants for other specific projects but that is indeed our funding source on a statewide level the city figures for pc i and funding are similar to those of the entire state pages 19 b1 and b2 in your agenda packet include a summary of the recent state publication of the california statewide local streets and roads needs assessment of 2018 this assessment states that the current pc i for all roads within the state is 65 it notes that the statewide pc i will decline to 57 over the next 10 years if the only funding is the 2.1 billion available through gas tax it says that with the addition of sp1 funds the 10-year average annual funding would increase to 3.1 billion and the pc i would only drop one point the assessment says that the annual cost to raise the pc i to 87 would be 6.8 billion for a 10-year period like the city the state will need to find additional funding sources if it is to raise the pc i of its roads and that impacts everybody the last slide i'd like to leave you with is a beautiful view of one of our freshwater sloughs in and around wassenville from one of the city's many trails this is uh you're invited we're going to invite you to a public planting day at hazelwood park at 10 a.m. on november 17th where the city and wassenville wetlands watch partnered to reconstruct the existing trail and will plant up to 1200 native plants including 10 large trees at that location that way you can come and enjoy what beautiful things wassenville has to offer and be part of what our projects we're doing and that concludes my report thank you very much are there questions uh for uh city of wassenville miss goffman gomes i just have a complimentary comment there as well um the vision zero that the city of wassenville has adopted was invited to participate with a conference in new york and so we're the first small city that has been invited to a vision zero conference and we will have one of our council members attend and participate that and hopefully we'll see a report back but they were very interested in hearing from such a small community like ours that have adopted that and want to engage some city of our size in the big conference of vision zero great others uh mr burton uh yes i'd like comment about the trails around the slew friend that lives there and i've walked them many times in wassenville really has a great facility for the public there it's wonderful any other questions if there's any member of the public questions please come forward thank you maria um i was bicycling on tuesday uh through wassenville as common and um the best way to get from downtown for me to get over to larkin valley anyways is to go up cry and go around rolling uh hills and then i come out on neilson way to green valley um where the project is currently uh underway uh repaving and working on curbs that on long sorry uh airport excuse excuse me airport in neilson and uh when you try to make a left turn on a bicycle anyways uh from neilson on to airport going towards the freeway there's no sensor on the roadway and i always have to go over and push the button and then get back and to the left turn pocket and is that part of the project on airport at neilson way in front of the old in front of the hospital site let's just see if there's any other comments being none maybe you can come back up and just uh respond yes indeed actually was part of that project we are improving the detection at that particular signal so we have video detection going in which will definitely be programmed to pick up bicyclists all right thank you very much thank you for uh sharing with us the work of the city of wassenville it's very exciting to see these uh improvements being made and it's great to see that the public investment uh both through the measure d and sp1 um is really helping out in in the city and it's a good reminder that uh we as a community and we as a state have uh we'll we'll have an opportunity to say whether these funds get to be kept here um in wassenville and throughout santa cruz county when with proposition six on the ballot and uh if uh if proposition six passes you could see what a big hit that would be the city of wassenville um and it would be to all the other transportation systems in our county so remember to vote uh next week uh now we'll move on to item 26 which is amendment to the fiscal year 2018 19 budget and work program uh mr mendez good morning good morning commissioners as you know uh each fall the staff prepares a fall budget amendment for consideration but your budget and administration personnel committee and and by the rtc the budget uh that's proposed and uh and in front of you today is a balanced budget that implements the rtc's priority projects ongoing programs and measure d as you know one of the main sources of transportation funding in santa cruz county is the transportation development act which is a half cent uh sales tax from the state sales tax that comes to uh each county for transportation uh and most of that all its funds go to santa cruz metro for their operations in fiscal year 1718 the tda revenues came in about 430 000 above uh the projections and the rtc tends to use those funds to build up reserves and to make additional distributions to tda recipients or to fund uh needed uh projects this budget proposes to use those funds to meet the tda and rtc reserve targets and then distribute the remainder to the cities in the county for biking pedestrian projects um and that distribution is based on population local jurisdictions have recently been expressing a significant need especially as project bids are coming in significantly higher than the engineer's estimates and since november 2016 another main source of transportation funding in santa cruz county is uh measure d the proposed budget includes a new page on measure d uh listing uh the measure d funds carried over from the prior fiscal year um the budget also includes funds received from the state one of those funding sources is the state um uh transit assistance uh fund sta uh sp1 more than double the amount of sda funds for santa cruz county and added the state of good repair funds uh to sta uh in august the state comptroller's office issued revised estimates increasing the amount of sta by about 700 000 this is reflected in the proposed budget and all those funds are apportioned uh to santa cruz metro the rtc has been implementing projects as you know one of those is the countywide bike signage project um it's uh and the the budget shows a carry over some funds for that project now for a number of years of developing the project it is finally out to bid as your executive director uh mentioned earlier and uh has been mentioned many times bids have been coming in significantly higher than engineers estimates uh for our construction projects and it's anticipated that the bids will come in significantly higher for this project as well therefore uh more funds are needed for the project and this proposed budget uh proposes that 49 000 dollars or about 48 000 and uh regional surface transportation program exchange funds that that remained after the completion of the highway one stocco de morse the xero lanes project be reprogrammed to this uh countywide bike signage project to uh help with um where the bids uh might come in for for that project this may not be sufficient uh to cover uh the cost of the project depending on where the bids come in so the rtc may have to consider additional funding after the bids come in um and the planning program uh we do include an addition of 200 000 and measure d highway corridors uh funds to help complete the unify corridor investment study significantly more consultant and staff work has been necessary to produce the study and conduct all the public outreach now in the past the rtc did program 625 000 and measure d railroad corridor funds and as you know this study is looking at railroad or the highway as and also this soquel and freedom boulevard corridors so here it is proposed at 200 000 dollars that is needed now come from the highway corridors part of measure d now the staffing resources section of the budget incorporates the recently approved labor agreements and then a number of other changes throughout the budget that are noted the budget administration personnel committee did review the budget and thus recommend your approval there are a couple of additional recommendations from the staff that just weren't ready at the time with the bna committee and those are the reprogramming of the rstp exchange funds to the countywide bike signage project which is recommended by staff and then also amending the the measure d five-year programmer projects to add the 200 000 dollars of measure d funds to the unified corridor investment study at the time of the budget administration personnel committee we staff did communicate that we were that this would likely come to you but we didn't have all the final numbers because we were still negotiating with that with the consultant and the the amount of money that is proposed for the consultant is of course lower than the consultant initially wanted because that's what we we do we negotiate with the consultants and get the best uh deal that we can for the commission so with that i'll take any questions that you may have thank you mr mendez we'll have questions mr johnson okay speaking of consultants i mean you have piqued my interest okay so you're talking about is this kimberley horn yes it's kimmy horn okay and how much have we spent in consultant fees so far in the whole ucs i want to say it's uh i'm trying to remember to stop my head it's it's i it's a little over 500 000 over 500 000 dollars that we that we spent in consultant fees 500 000 it believes about 500 500 000 so yes i thought you said we gave 625 000 625 000 was provided by the rtc um but that's not just for consultant costs it's also for all the staff work and it's been a significant amount of staff work as well okay so you're asking and so out of that 200 000 60 000 is going to go going to go additionally for staff work that is correct yes and another 140 000 for i guess the highway corridor am i hearing you correctly uh what's 140 000 for the overall consultant work i mean if we if we were to uh you know parse out how much of the work has been associated with the highway corridor it would likely be more than 140 000 where it's worth the work so why wasn't this done uh during the whole ucs uh study to begin i mean the study of the high or the highway was a big component of this whole corridor and yet you're saying that it wasn't uh fully addressed during the initial corridor study the high we're not saying that the highway analysis wasn't fully addressed it has been fully addressed it's just that the funding was caught you know came from uh different sources previously one of them was from a a um caltrans planning grant that was received by the rtc and then another one was from measure defunds so so what's going to go what what kind of things are they going to study about the highway that requires another 200 grand it it's not that they're going to study um you know uh an additional 140 000 dollars worth of analysis on the highway they have been studying the highway as part of the project throughout uh so that's that has been happening okay so you're making my point why do they need another 140 000 what are what are they going to study about the highway that we don't already know uh they there's still uh i mean there's been a lot more consultant work necessary for for the highway analysis as well as for the other analysis that has been necessary on this uh on this study um and that work isn't yet done like what um well they are continuing to to analyze uh of the various uh performance measures and um projects as we're getting also the uh comments from the public uh on uh you know what the public would like to see and they are going to be producing um you know a final report so that it's taking a lot of work to take all the comments from the from the public and everyone to you know analyze things uh accordingly and then produce that next report for you so that it would be a valuable report for you to make try to make a decision the analysis from the public and the comments for for the public purportedly were uh anticipated in the initial of uh bid and so forth why do they need more money for additional comments and reports and so forth it just seems like so much money for something that should have been covered and you're not you're not really giving me details in terms of why we this this commission has spent another 200 000 on a study that purportedly should have been uh worked on in the initial study i i can't really support hard-earned tax dollars going to another 200 000 for something like this i'm sorry um mr shifrin let me try to clarify my understanding about what what's happening here this additional money is really to prepare the second and final draft and to respond to comments is that correct that is primarily so i guess we've received i know of just looking through the agenda um um correspondence we've just received voluminous comments we're having all sorts of public meetings the previous meetings of the commission and people have raised a lot of very technical questions i don't think it's possible to have anticipated when we were doing the um when when the contract was first uh uh proposed and approved that the extent of the comments and the details of the comments and the and the additional work that might be uh to uh be required the commission uh wants i know i assume the commission wants to provide uh competent complete if not complete at least extensive responses to the comments so that members of the public who have commented and uh other agencies that have comment will feel like their comments were taken seriously and an attempt is made to give them a serious analysis and response that takes a bunch of money i personally i'm not surprised having lived through a number of environmental impact reports where the draft comes out and then the final um based on a lot of public uh involvement increases the cost of the contract that's that's not unusual um i think from my perspective it's worth spending the money because we want to have the consultants provide a response that will be a detailed meaningful response to comments and not just a slapdash because the commission has there isn't enough money to really have them do further analysis so um i from my perspective the um it's not desirable to spend more money but given all the testimony that we've received um the reports from other traffic consultants raising a bunch of concerns i want those concerns taken seriously i think it costs money to have our consultants the commission's consultant take them seriously and i think it's important that the commission support the additional money to for the necessary staff work and uh consultant work um other okay mr. justin what's wrong if the two of you are just going to argue the point i'm just trying to get other comments from other well i was just going to respond okay because it's a direct response to what i said and i want to respond to what he said okay is that a problem um uh i'm giving you the time mr. johnson no why don't you go to other commissioners and i'll wait my turn okay miss kaufman gomez um thank you my my question had to do with that as well but um i think between hearing both sides of things um first of all i thought it was services rendered already and we had the money come from another source and we're switching where the money is coming from to then pay for those services so that's sort of the question that i had about the 200 but in the dialogue it sounds like it's for services from to complete what they've started at that last um you know five percent of the the work that needs to be done for us to get to the december point um so that was my question about that the 200 000 where it came from and what it was for um and i do have line 39 about measure d there's a 602 000 and it says recently programmed can you help me with recently programmed i just want to understand the page is it's line 39 in the report let me see sorry let me get to the right line 39 this is lots of 39s yes every page has it um let's go with a 26-13 line 39 and it says 602 87 that's the difference but i don't know can you just help me understand what recently uh programmed means 26-13 line 39 correct yes um i mean there's a verbiage i don't know yet that's why yes yeah the regional transportation commission through its five year um well approves a five-year program or project for measure d and through that the rtc program funds for um for different um highway projects and then the rtc also program funds in december of 2017 that also included funds for highway projects and so that's that's why that's there so recently program is that carrying forward is that another term for that well it wasn't yet the funds were not yet in the budget they were programmed but were not needed yet so they weren't in the bud they weren't in a budget yet but now they're being added to the budget so okay and um the other thing is page 2616 the rtc reserves um what is our reserve policy and page 2616 yeah the rtc's rules and regulations state that the rtc should have a 30 percent um reserve which is 30 percent of operating costs for the agency and where we currently sit with that policy with this with this budget you would meet that reserve target for the very first time yeah this this has been a long-standing effort to try to get this reserve set up good and there's more than one target too isn't there for the different buckets for reserves there is also reserve for the transportation development act and that is an eight percent target for that and and that's eight percent of the revenues that come in from from tda and that is to help the rtc meet its commitments during during the fiscal year for all the recipients in case there are changes in the and the funding as it comes in and sometimes it has happened where the funding came in below uh projections and those reserves had to be used to to meet the commitments okay and again if it's eight percent are we there based off of this budget on this yeah we would be there and then my my last question thanks for your your patience um it's on page 26 dash 21 hi we want to so kill the auxiliary costs uh they went from one and a half million to 2.75 after the competitive procurement um and i think maybe the word consultant is in here as well aren't we doing some of our own design work why did we have such an incremental cost on that if we're looking to do more projects either in-house or cal trends is taking them over so can you help me understand where we brought that price up in terms of what that bid what happened with that bid uh yes unfortunately the note isn't this is a limited doesn't doesn't communicate all the information so i apologize for that but partly is also that we did not have um sufficient funds in the budget at that uh previously uh to help cover what we're going to say would would fully be the the costs uh for that and um um we were able to then add to that based on the uh uh measure d five-year programmer projects that the rtc approved and the the bids you know recently for for that work did come in because the rtc did actually go out and and uh request consultants and we do have a consultant on board to do that work now and so now that the amount here is based you know on the uh bids that were received and of course the funding that the rtc had had already programmed for the project and this is part of the effort to speed things along that is correct yes we're we're trying to advance the design to try to speed things along so all right thank you mr botard uh in relation to the handouts you passed out the two new pages we got i appreciate as mr shifrin mentioned here when we do get these if the changes are like highlighted with the changes it makes it easier for us to just look at them because we get them this morning uh my question is on this attachment twenty six fourteen that we have this i didn't see any changes on it is there is there something i was supposed to see or it might be a little bit difficult to see but it is it's basically line number eight on that and it is just the the net the text on that line that unfortunately the um what you received was incorrect because originally um staff had proposed that that um that money from the tda go to a different project and after the bna the budget measures personnel committee that recommendation changed okay so staying on that page because this is what my question is if we drop down to line uh 47 yes bike signage project is that money already there well that's not actually all there with this budget if you approve the recommendations and that money would be there because one of the recommendations is to reprogram money that remain from the highway one square more six range project and that money so the 292 is not there oh no the 292 is the the the new money the 326 thousand that okay so the bike signage project is not a 300 thousand dollar project more or less it's a 600 thousand dollar project um what we want we don't know for sure yet until we get the bids um well right now i see there's 292 that's been approved it's going up 34 000 and and then it's and then it's proposed to 326 and that's an estimate on the cost so but that money is there is that that's what i'm trying to understand isn't there an ATP grant that we're running out on and then this is reprogramming some rstp funds for what you expect might be overage when we get the bids in that is correct and the majority of the ATP grant carries over from last year we haven't spent most of it so the 292 is there thank you joy i that my question is the 292 is there it looks like there's an a a increase pot potential of 34 that may not be there that that no it is it is available okay yeah through the rstp or no no it was left over from the auxiliary lane project after we made settled the claims we had money set aside for for that and this was this was left okay so i'm just trying to get my hand because there's nothing here that tells me the the the magnitude of this bike project right and i was perceiving it as an approximate 300 000 project right appears now that it looks like about a 650 000 no no it's about a 300 000 project okay then why are we asking for another 299 000 and uh to be to be put in there no you're you're asking for to move a 34 000 into that project and that's the money from from the highway one project okay because when i go to the notes here uh from the the uh the um meeting of the budget committee there was some residual money residual tda money that normally goes to metro in the amount of right approximately 300 000 dollars would come to call 298 whatever and that money was designed not to go to metro but the recommendation with on this hand that i just got out says it's going to redistribute that form this is the recommendation of the committee to uh other jurisdictions for bike signage project so my it needs me to believe that there's a 300 000 project and another 300 000 so so help me with that okay so the the tda money is what's showing up in line eight on that on that same page okay and that was the recommendation of the bna committee so that was uh maybe mr shifrin yeah well maybe i could try to explain it um at the budget and policy uh uh subcommittee this initial staff friend recommendation was to use the the additional tda money that came in over budget uh for what was expected uh overage on what was needed for the bike signage project we had a robust discussion and uh the committee voted to instead put that tda money uh into the local jurisdictions um rather than putting into the bike signage project but see what it says here what it says here alternate funding source for bike signage project yeah i'm i'm just trying to explain but can you see my confusion yeah i'm i'm that's why i'm trying to explain it right now keep going so and then if i understand correctly uh since the budget and policy committee the staff has identified that there is a little bit of money extra after closing out all the pieces on the on the auxiliary lane project um that we have 34 000 that we could put in which is less than what the original tda overage was going to be to cover what might be some extra expenses given that things are coming in higher right now on bidding so it's it this is this is different than what we talked about in the budget and policy uh committee that's on our agenda that's this money that's the rstp money that's going to cover the overage that's what they're asking for us to vote today i we have an authorization for 48 000 to cover an overage and i understand that because in my mind i see this as a 300 000 project that may become a 350 000 project but i don't know why if the if the 292 has already been budgeted and you're going to get the 48 which just comes up to three and a quarter why is it required to take the tda money another 298 000 and put it in this part no no where's this money where's this 292 the 292 comes from the ATP grant that the commission has already received correct so we got a grant for this for the bike signage project it has a long torturous history that that i'm very familiar with because i got this commission to put money towards the bike signage project from a different funding source and they held off on doing it and then they've got this ATP grant and we've still been waiting years for it to happen and now we're finally going to get it done uh and they were trying to use tda money to help cover the overage that that wasn't let me just let me see maybe this is not correct here because maybe what you're trying to say is that the money is the 298 that's left over from tda is not going to go to the bike project it's just going to go to distribution to the other cities is that what you're trying to say that's correct so the line in here where it says for bike signage is in is not correct this is the correct copy i just got today is that that's from the that's from the uh that might have been the the staff report in the uh budget committee no let me read it because i'm not is it confusing not if you read it carefully i think from you i take that as a compliment so go ahead i think that's always a problem when we get things at the commission meeting because we're expected to sort of understand them um and this was one where unfortunately the original minutes were incorrect so staff has corrected the minutes and what it is is that the committee recommended that the commission approved the proposed amended fiscal year budget with the exception of the 298,475 and tda funds for the bike signage project and that instead that money be distributed by tda formula to the local jurisdiction cities and county and that staff present the rtc alternative sources of funds for the bike signage project so the 298 was just you know the recommendation of the committee was that that be distributed to the local jurisdictions and that the staff be directed to come back with other funding sources to try to supplement the amount of money that was available to the bike signage project i'm crystal clear thank you mr shifrin for explaining that i'm sorry for delaying that that topic okay it's thank you and just because we're going to come back next month with with the bike signage contract hopefully we don't know what that amount's going to be it just went out to bid yesterday so got it as i previously announced so hopefully we've got it covered but we don't know for sure thank you very much and i would just say there's one other change now looking at these draft minutes it says that uh virginia johnson was there but actually supervisor mcpherson was there oh that's correct yes was there a fifth person oh yeah and tony gregorio was there so it should say gregorio instead of johnson no no it should say mcpherson and it should also include right it should say gregorio instead of johnson gregorio instead of johnson would give us the five people there okay well you see it shows here molhorn johnson shifrin but it should say molhorn gregorio shifrin oh yeah oh yeah i was looking at them on the front page just trying to make it clear as much okay yeah mr kafit oh mr molhorn oh go after him okay mr molhorn um i just uh i have a quick question about the it's now many minutes ago that we were discussing it but um we were talking about um uh the the the funding for the universe the unified corridor study um and we had said that the that we had 625 thousand dollars in initial funding and we are going to be adding another 200 thousand dollars and we are there's also a caltrans planning grant how much was the grant there's about 300 000 300 000 okay okay and so i mean i i also i agree with commissioner johnson that we should have assumed that we were going to get a uh a surfeit of technical questions based on our experience with the highway one um eir that we got a thousand comments many of them very technical in nature we should have anticipated with with our constituency that we were going to get a lot of technical questions that that being said i we still need to complete we still didn't answer those questions so we still need to pay for those so i understand the 200 000 allocation i just when we're doing these things in the future we should assume that we're going to get technical questions um then uh to uh to commissioner botthorff's questions about uh the the bicycle signage program the the proposal that came to the to the committee was to spend this 298 000 on the bicycle signage program um we made a motion to not do that so so yes the the anticipated cost at at the committee meeting was that this bicycle signage program was going to be 600 000 and that that was part of the discussion that we had was whether or not we should be spending 600 000 on science um and that's all thank you morning mr gap thank you yeah actually this discussion is important because it's clarifying a very confusing part of the uh you know allocation but anyway i'm i'm satisfied with uh what what i've heard but uh on 26.5 uh just to um you know to make it clear uh to the public as it is everything we're talking about is taxpayer money of course it does say um one time cost 68 000 result of increase in executive director position and uh also pay pay out of vacation and sick leave you know what what is the limit on how much uh uh vacation uh hours somebody cannot use and then get it use it as a retirement uh parachute uh per the uh lever agreements that you have approved that's two and a half times so it could be earned in one year for for for vacation and then uh sick leave i can understand sick leave more than vacation but go ahead how many hours there's no limit on that uh there is a limit but it's but it's quite high so that's what i remember uh so you know it just you can pretty much it's almost like there's no limit you're right i don't know but quite high as anyway i don't know the number on my head okay i don't expect but pretty much no limit you're right sure and then i guess the one thing i just want to make clear when it came to the hiring of a new executive director uh i was questioning how we're going about with the starting pay of the new executive director uh when you have an outgoing one you have somebody who has like maybe 15 20 years of experience and then somebody new who has not had the position comes in is actually getting more so anyway i i just want to make it clear that i was not uh i was not satisfied with that um that amount we we ended up coming up with thank you hey other comments on this end of the table go back to mr johnson thank you so again i want to talk a little bit about consultant fees you know kimberley horn is doing our general plan amendment and we got comments we're anticipating maybe a hundred people who commented on the on the website we got 800 so that is an increase eightfold increase apparently um from our constituents in scott's valley we didn't raise and give any more money uh based on that i'm just looking at again doing the math sixty thousand dollars for staff time at fifty dollars an hour is another 1200 hours of staff time to complete this that's a hundred and fifty work days of a staff member working on these this item and if you go at 140 thousand for kimberley horn at a hundred and fifty dollars per that's over 900 hours of time of hours devoted to quote this completion i mean we're handing out i realize it's close to halloween but we're handing out dollars like candy and i can't really support it sorry other comments now we'll open it up see if members of the public have comments good morning morning mr chair commissioners i'm just here on a very narrow portion of your overall agenda which is that topic you just discussed earlier about the tda ltf uh additional revenues that came in above budget um that that's uh 434 684 dollars i believe that was referenced so what i'm here to do is to ask you to to follow your past practice and that is to treat those dollars just as you do at the beginning of the year at the beginning of the year you go by the controller their staff goes by the state controller's estimate for tda ltf dollars and then those get programmed and uh when they get programmed there is money that goes if needed to replenish the tda and the rtc reserves there's money oftentimes placed in rtc admin and planning and then the remainder of the money goes to community community bridges the county the cities and metro with metro receiving 85.5 percent of that by your own policy so with with that i went to the budget committee and asked the budget committee just exactly that to respectfully please follow your past practice it's not only just about the beginning of the year allocation but my staff went back and researched all the way back to 2010 and between 2010 and 2018 there were three years in which excess revenues excess tda ltf revenues came to this county and in all three of those years staff followed that exact same policy as they do at the beginning of the year look at whether some needs to go to admin planning replenishment of pots the remainder 85.5 percent to metro and then community bridges county and city splitting the rest staff did that in all three of those excess years going back to 2010 we're simply asking you to do the same thing here look that amounts based on the numbers the updated numbers given out today it appears that's about 255196 dollars to metro that's a little over the third of a cost of a bus and as you know and as you hear my refrain over and over no matter where i'm at metro needs to replace its equipment out of our 98 bus fleet we have about 60 buses today that have to be replaced that's a 38 million dollar proposition if those buses are compressed natural gas and it's a 60 million dollar proposition if they're electric and as you probably know the california air resources board is soon to mandate that we must begin buying 100 zero emission buses and become 100 zero emission transit agency by 2040 so that's a big undertaking with very expensive vehicles we must cobble together every penny we can to replace that fleet if we do not then we fail to deliver what we have a mission to do which is to provide service to the customers because our buses break down we become undependable and customers won't stay thank you is there anyone else who would like to address us about items on the budget hey michael sain again campaign for sustainable transportation just been taking notes on all this conversation going back and forth here and i really wanted to thank deputy director lewis mendez and his staff for the hard work informing this budget the tda funds to the bike and pedestrian trail i think that was a good thing to shift those over also the sta funds to metro great idea bike signage project mr mendez said there might not be enough money to do this bike part of it or complete it appropriately i think we need to pull funds from where you can to make sure the bike signage project is completed as planned um and taking those from the old ox lanes project was a great idea the two hundred thousand dollars more for the ucs i really emphasize not to cut the public short in answering their questions on this ucs program i know 800 questions are extremely high but having public input is one of the major criteria of democracy so please approve this plan i it's an extra amount of money but the public needs to be heard also being fiscally responsible in reaching that 30 percent reserve is a good thing so i recommend approval of the the new budget and changes and amendments thank you thank you good morning good morning berry scott aptos um i one thought i have about budgets and i've i've spoken with the folks about this on i don't know how many people realize most that i speak to don't know that the highway 17 bus is an amtrak bus um i wonder if the staff has looked into i imagine they have and would look into whether or not state rail plan funds can be used to support shuttle services to rail stops so that we have a integration of our rail transit and our bus bus system that's all thank you is there anyone else who would like to address us on the budget seeing none i'll bring it back to our commission for action mr bantor i'll go and start there seems to be a couple issues here i'm going to uh the measure d money which uh you know i'll let someone else weigh in on that but i want to address the uh the tda money that's that's particularly what i'm here for um i have a problem as mr cliver mentioned you know i've got the the budget sheets that i have here that clearly shows that the past practice of the rtc over the years is to allocate when there is a surplus funding to allocate it to metro it's what we've done consistently and when i go to our um these are actually the rules and regulations of the rtc measure f or item f on page eight states any surplus funds which is what we're talking about here the surplus funds are 434 thousand less the rtc costs which we've already said go into topping off the the reserve buckets no problem there there's a residual amount of approximately i'm at a ballpark at 240 thousand dollars says any surplus funds remaining in the local transportation fund after accounting for the adequate reserve shall be reported to the commission and appropriated by the commission during its fall budget which is what we're doing here the intention of this provision is to maintain the allocation priorities established in section three c and those priorities are 85.5 to metro 8.4 percent to community bridges and 1 percent to volunteer center um however the commission retains flexibility to appropriate a portion of the surplus to other high priority activities by special allocation well since the committee recommended not to fund the bike program they recommended just to give it back to the cities and counties that in my mind does not equate to a priority that just means more of a distribution of the measure d allocation for roads which is a 30 bucket which is the highest bucket we approved so i don't see a special circumstance in here but what i'd like to do is try to make a motion on this particular item and i'll and i'd like to wait out and just see what how it floats but what what i'd like to do is go back to the original allocation um as was mentioned here this bike program is important so i mean i'm here right now and i'm representing people like yonica strauss who is not here and i'm here representing a ray cancino from community bridges who's not here and if we ignored in these these two people i'm sure we'd hear from them down the road so my intent is that the tda money be allocated under the regular formula but i'm going to hold off a portion i'm going to recommend that we match from that funds looks like we've set aside what's on our agenda today is to allocate 48,491 from rstp money into that fund because we don't know how it's going to go because what i really didn't get a clear answer on today was how whether this is a 300,000 400,000 five up to 600,000 dollar bike program so but any money we put towards is good so you're recommending 48,000 from rtp i'm going to say that i'm going to use the intent of this measure and allocate a portion of the money and match that 48,941 from the tda money into that bike fund and then the remaining goes to metro so that's going to be my motion on item on on the recommendations and the staff recommendations say the budget recommendation so that's how i address the budget and item one i don't know what we what the the feeling of the board is on item two whether to go ahead but for the sake of the motion i'll recommend staff recommendation so yeah so just to declare the instead of doing the whole budget we're just going to talk about the tda funds uh if you'd like to break it up into two well i just want or if you want to do the i can do the whole thing i'm okay with recommending staff recommendation for the 200,000 dollars okay and i will include that in my motion and if it turns out that it falls apart because of that but my i'll repeat that the motion again is that we stick to the residual the 434,000 give or take after the rtc deductions are made it leaves a balance of approximately 240 we follow the formula so that community bridges volunteer center and and metro are funded at their percentages after taking off the a matching fund of 48,941 to the bike program i'll second that all right so there's a motion and second on the floor mr shifrin yes um i don't support the motion it's not it's a prize and i'm going to make a motion to amend when i'm done making my comments but i would like to clarify a a couple of points uh one is that the recommendation of of the budget and administration committee to uh take the uh surplus funds and distribute it to the local jurisdiction is based on the fact that the bike and that the local jurisdictions uh spend the tda not on road projects but on bike and pedestrian projects and these are high priority projects and in fact um they just like the the transit district have a huge backlog of projects that um they they are trying to fund and so the notion that um that money should only go to the transit district i think is a little bit misplaced i think normally it does in the past i've supported the money going to the transit district usually the transit district comes with a particular program that they want to spend the money on um and not just to have it put into uh just put it into their general budget and particularly this year when the transit district is getting excess funds of over of around 700 000 it seemed to me that this might be a legitimate year to give the local jurisdictions who get a very small percentage of tda money on a regular basis um and let me just remind the commission that giving 85.5 percent of the tda revenues after administration to the transit district is a discretionary decision it's not required by state law and the commission could change that the commission has been very generous to the transit district over the years justifiably so and i've always supported that and commissioner uh the third district commissioners have always supported it but it is discretionary and the the the transit district has great needs but it also has great resources it gets a half cent sales tax it gets a portion of measured d money this year it's getting the sta money as well so i it just seemed to me that it was legitimate on a one-year basis to try to provide a little extra benefit to the to the local jurisdictions for their high priority projects um and i i don't think that that's unreasonable i don't think it sets a precedent the reason why the the regulations say what they say is to provide some flexibility to the commission when it deals with its surplus to look at what's going on uh in a in a particular year and make decisions based on that so i'd like to make a motion to amend the motion on the floor to simply approve the staff recommendation on this item which would include the district the committee the committee's recommendation on the distribution of the tda funds and the additional money for the bike signage program and for the the ucs study okay so there's now substitute motion well it's it's it's a it's a movement to amend it's basically uh substitutes i'm not willing to amend my motion so it has to be a that's why he needs a second to see whether someone will second his amendment is there a second i need some questions answered is that okay well i just want to see if the if it's on the floor or not but i need some clarification before i can second it and then we can discuss it but we're but i want to see if there's a second for his motion uh yeah i'll second it okay based on so if i'm reading this correctly and again um we're looking at a proposed budget for metro of seven million seventy four thousand dollars then the difference then adding zero of this two hundred ninety eight thousand and then giving an additional so out of that proposed budget i'm just looking at scott's valley gets we don't get seven million we get thirty one thousand for things like signs and what what have you and then we're just asking for our city another thirteen thousand dollars so if we give this all the metro you're saying you want to deny the the local jurisdictions uh just a small little bite at the this two hundred ninety eight thousand i i guess you know maybe we support metro i've ridden metro in the last uh two months let me uh i'm happy to say also ride bike though so i don't see why we shouldn't be able to have another thirteen thousand for our citizens who by the way during measure d didn't get its quote fair share um so i think to recapture for scott's valley um i would support this so yes andy and i don't agree in a whole lot but i think having a small a small little bite for our for our for our city is probably a good thing so thank you all right so we have a motion on the table to amend the motion so we're having discussion it's about the amendment about the amendment so basically it's about allocation and um i i hear um alex's comments and i think something that's not on the floor here is um who rides the metro um there's going to be an immense requirement on metro's part to upgrade and the reason why there's upgrade requirements is because the buses are breaking down in in my campaign for city council here in capitola excuse me i'm in wantonville in capitola i receive many comments about that issue and these are riders that depend on their schedule that's metro schedule to get to work perhaps after getting their kids to daycare and stuff like that metro needs reliable buses and so that's why i support the intent of the comments from metro and those on this board that support metro that's it mr capit you bet uh actually just a clarification here uh if we had a motion for an amendment and then now we have an amendment to the amendment we have to have two separate votes we had uh the first we had a recommendation okay then we the first motion that was put on the floor was to change the recommendation we got from staff in the allocation the way that mr batorf uh explained some for bike signage rest for metro community bridges and volunteer center then mr shifrin made a motion to amend the motion to go back to the original staff recommendation all right we're going to vote on that amendment first and then we will vote on on the uh on the original motion uh if it's still if the amendment doesn't all right then just for my clarification maybe everybody else here has understands it's and i don't i i it is a little confusing here which one benefits uh the local communities and metro the most well that's that's a that's a matter that's a matter of a perspective right i mean that the metro is going to get tda money they would get more tda money under the proposal by mr batorf right the local jurisdictions would get more money under the proposal by mr shifrin all right i'm going to go with the local jurisdictions okay thank you all right uh hold on mr mulhorn uh thank you um i just just very briefly this this act this decision is consequential and it does actually set a precedent because the rtc hasn't yet exercised this discretion to divert tda funds away from metro or not go with the policy in our the formula in our policy so this is consequential we will reflect back on this vote when we look to redirect tda revenues to other tda appropriate uses in the future yeah i think that may not be completely accurate i'll look to mr mendez because i think we've done this before i'd like to yeah correct things um the commission has in the past exercised that discretion a number of times uh mr uh mr cliffer did say that they looked back 2010 if you go back further uh you would see that there were tides would actually all that money went went to set a cruise metro because they they had needs there was one year when it all went to uh lift line because they had certain needs so it has varied and most recently when the when the rtc had a need to try to develop a a transportation sales tax measure which ended up being measure d uh the transportation commission decided to use some of the uh i don't know if it was all of it or practically all of the surplus money that we had at a certain point to um uh pre up uh funds uh that could be used to uh develop that measure so the commission has to exercise that discretion a number of times i just wanted to get the clarity about that uh so i'm going to try to get the people who haven't spoken yet miss kaufman gomez and then mr mcfearsen thank you um i'd like to just let's do the mouth on this uh we have 298 000 um the carve out is about 48 going to the bicycle um signage kind of situation leaving about 250 that would then be divided between um metro and then the volunteer and the community bridges that's correct in terms of the mouth there um the question that i have here is of the 298 if it were to go less admin and what the other part of it was towards the bike signage what programs do we have in play between the different jurisdictions ready to go with this check to be cut to the community i mean i i don't know i i i don't know where to go with how much money the different cities are looking at from this that can go effectively if if this is allocated different you know to them i mean that is for each local jurisdiction to decide how they would spend that money but typically we do get on a regular basis uh requests from the local jurisdictions for bicycle pedestrian projects that get funded with tda revenues i think and they were actually were a couple in your uh and your uh consent agenda today uh that that did ask for those tda revenues that they they've been getting to use for bike pedestrian projects so this will be prioritized based on the report we have here on those cities that have something ready to go or is this going to be equally distributed for allocation it gets distributed by formula it's a population formula and so then whatever money the uh local jurisdictions get and they decide how to spend that money they get by that formula thank you mr mcpherson yes i'm i'm going to vote against the amended motion and for the motion by um the director uh bautorf um metro metro is our transportation our public transportation system in santa christ county and if we want to give it the attention it deserves and we would want to increase the ridership in that i think we have to continue our commitment to giving to metro when the opportunity presents itself and that is why i'm going to be supporting um director bautorf's motion and voting against the amended motion thank you uh miss lind yes and i i want to take this time to appreciate the um partnership that that we have benefited in scott's valley that will be on our agenda coming up for the bike route signage program and we've also been beneficial of benefit of projects and glenn can't or green hills road and some of the projects that have been really wonderful to have but i think i i agree with uh director bautorf that we have a severe situation with metro with buses catching fire with uh and being mandated to to uh comply with state requirements federal requirements and going to uh completely energy efficient buses are going to be very expensive so i think this is an opportunity to continue the support and the policies that have been in place and uh and i believe also benefits our community in scott's valley as well as the county so it's my position um well we're going to go around for a second round i will just say that uh i support mr bautorf's uh motion uh mr bautorf then mr burkhard i just want to clarify you know the document we have these are tc regulations and it's pretty clear in here that the intention of this provision is to maintain the priorities and and to uh to mr mohler's point you know i i think that when we have a document that gives us guidelines we should try to follow that if we have a problem with this document then that's what this board should change that if we feel that there's something coming up but i think to go against the document when there's not a clear priority here and we can say that it doesn't make us consistent so i think being consistent what's important and uh hopefully that will that will prevail thank you yeah mr burkhard the policy of the rtc board represents the rtc's commitment to the metro and to the community to provide a robust transportation that's dependable um i think we've also had a talk here at this chamber about how effective buses are and reducing congestion on the freeway and one of the main deterrence to people using buses is lack of good service it's not only buses breaking down but it's also the frequency of service i think in the long run we would do best to really support metro as much as possible so i'm definitely for the buckhouse motion okay mr shifrin yes thank you i just i wasn't going i think you're doing a second round i didn't feel the need for a second round until uh i felt i needed to respond to some of the additional comments the reason why the policy allows for flexibility is so that the commission has some flexibility if the commission just wanted to give the money to the metro the policy would say the money will go to metro period there was a whole lot of discussion over the over this policy and it was felt that sometimes there are good reasons to use that money for other purposes as staff has said this is not unique generally the comm the commission has allocated the money to metro but it doesn't always do that and it depends on what the circumstances are at the time and it just seemed to me that in a year where um the sales tax revenue is good and the metro is getting a half cent of it when they're getting metro is getting extra seven hundred thousand dollars in sta money when the measure d money is starting to come through and i think metro is getting about 15 percent of that that this was a this was a relatively good year for metro do they have additional needs of course they have additional needs everybody has additional needs the city of watson was talking about how they're at 57 percent uh 50 percent seven on their street maintenance they need more money for street maintenance we got a report on how the uh city is doing a number of bike and pedestrian um projects as are all the jurisdictions these are all high priorities and it just seemed that for one year to take what um you know a 298 thousand dollar surplus and distribute it to the local jurisdictions who are at the who are at the end of the line always in terms of money for their bike and pedestrian projects that it was not an unreasonable request to make so that's why um it was recommended and um i still think it's the the correct thing to do this year okay um real all right we're going right to that second round i guess no i was just going to say i know where we can find a quick 200 thousand dollars to solve all our problems we're not we're not taking other motions at the at the moment um uh i would i will agree with mr shifrin that we that we have a policy that gives us a flexibility to make these decisions and wherever we end up here today it it it is in keeping with our policy um that we have that flexibility so first we're going to vote on mr shifrin's amendment which is to go back to the uh staff recommendation um or and the or the budget and policy uh committee and staff recommendation if that uh fails then we will vote on mr bator's motion if it if it passes we will not vote on mr bator's motions so is everybody clear so on uh on the motion to amend the motion uh in which means you're in favor of mr shifrin's motion uh say aye hi maybe we better raise our hand so the um so that we can see mr johnson mr capet mr shifrin uh and those who are no the knows have it i'll ask if there's any abstentions i hope not but uh then uh then we will go to mr bator's uh motion which is to make a change in the tda fund uh for a small amount for the bike signage and the rest to be gone by allocation uh of uh of how we spend our tda fund to the three organizations all in favor signal i get a clarification because that's not really what mr bator said um as i understood the motion there would be no under his motion there would be no money for the local jurisdictions all of it would go either the bike signage or to metro um lift line and yeah i think that's what the i sorry if i missed under the normal tda distribution guidelines which are believer in section which is 85 point whatever percent to there was a small carve out that you there is a small carve out in that goes to the states it it's wasn't really worth mentioning it's not in the nature of 13 000 dollars it could be clear so staff knows what you want to do okay yeah under the normal tda distribution okay that's what you want that's correct okay and is there a carve out for jurisdictions yes there is a small amount to go to your six right thank you all right so are we clear in what the motion is i'm seeing a little quizzical face okay so there's a small carve out for the bike signage program and then the rest would go by the distribution formula so the small carve out is the 48 000 you mentioned yeah and then the rest would go as to the normal yeah tda distribution okay thank you we all clear oh this is 48 on top of the amount that's recommended in the staff report so it's like 90 000 to the bike signage program 96 96 thousand i'm matched all in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed no was it the three the three knows who were also the three yeses on the on the amendment patrick oh patrick oh patrick is also a no did i get everybody who was a no four no there were four no's right mulhern cap it shifrin and johnson as clear as mud all right mr burton i want to thank mr shifrin for his motion because it expanded the conversation and that was greatly appreciated well next we'll move on to a review of items to be discussed in closed session but did we did we vote on that that was voting on the whole budget yeah yes yep all right okay um yes uh mr chair we do have a closed session scale schedule for you today um the first item uh conference to do a council will not be necessary uh this morning but we will need the conference with a real proper negotiator uh and it does have to do with the sancron's branch rail line your agency negotiators sorry uh your executive director and deputy director negotiating parties on the list that on your agenda but they are of course the regional transportation commission and it's also the uh make sure i get the name correct you i believe it's the hall family trust um that is correct the whole family trust okay is there anyone who would like to address us on items in closed session i don't see anyone it will this be able to anything be reportable we don't expect that to be the case we don't expect that to be the case okay well thank you our next meeting of the regional transportation commission is back here in watsonville on thursday november 15th it is an evening meeting uh six o'clock we will be taking testimony on the unified corridor investment study i look forward to seeing everyone