 All right, I call the Santa Cruz Metro Board of Directors meeting of November 19th to order and ask for a roll call. Director Beesham. Here. Director Cullin-Terry Johnson. Not seeing her. I don't see her. Director Koenig. I don't see him either. Director Lin. Here. Manus in the other room. Oh. Okay. We'll bring him over too. Yeah. It made you do an update and then it said you couldn't join as a panelist. So I think people are just having some technical difficulties. Actually, there was a message sent out yesterday or the day before that sends you to that room. I was there and then you had to just people need to click on the one they got this morning or maybe yesterday or yesterday was the latest one, I guess. Okay. I don't see Bruce McPherson as well. Director Myers. Donna Bruce and Manu are in the other room. If Kinks didn't move them over, that would be great. And Donna Myers is now in the other room. Okay. There definitely was some confusion with what was sent out. But maybe, like I said, maybe one of the links had it wrong. Well, if you click on the one that came out, it would be Agenda that sends you to that other room as opposed to a separate invite. Yeah. That's probably what it is. It's attendees instead of panelists. Okay. Are you able to see them, Kingston? I'm not sure which room you're talking about. Let's see. Do you see Director Koenig there? In attendees. In attendees. That's where it's sent you. Okay. I'll promote them right now. Koenig McPherson and Myers, I show in the other room. Yes. And Donna, you're holding a place on the roll call, I'm hoping. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll just hold here until we. Thank you. Yeah. I think we should have all been promoted. Okay. Yes. We see them. Everybody was moved out of that other dark room into the light. So, yeah. Well, let's not make it sound too horrible. That's where the public is right now. Well, at least we can see their faces. So, okay. All right. So, just so we have some continuity, why don't I just start over from the beginning. Okay. All right. Director Dutra. Here. Director Connitari Johnson. Present. Director Koenig. Here. Director Lynn. Here. Director McPherson. Here. Director Myers. Present. Director Northcut. Here. Director Pagler. Here. Director Peterson. Present. Director Rockin. Here. Here. Here. And Exofficio director Henderson. Here. And we have quorum. Thank you. And today's meeting is being broadcast by community television Santa Cruz county and we thank them. Are there any. Comments from the board. See any hands. All right. Oral and written communications. We have several letters and things that everyone should have. Do we have communication from the labor organization? Yes. No, okay. Oh, Jordan has his hand raised. All right. Jordan. Yeah, they're bored. Good morning, everyone. I just want to say three quick things. First, I'd like to start off by saying I like the, I really like the topics that were brought up in the new strategic plan. And I really look forward to seeing those change being implemented. Second, despite being vaccinated, I still oppose the upcoming vaccine mandate on the grounds that it's inappropriate for an employer to take an away an employee's body autonomy. And third, I'm sad to see juniors departure and would like to see an improvement on employee retention and internal culture. And I'm really happy and really excited to work together with management and the board upcoming to improve on these topics. And I'm honored to be a part of the upcoming positive changes. Thank you. Thank you, Jordan. Any other communication? You may not have asked clearly enough for the public to talk about it. And, and I will ask again, are there any other comments. For the board. You have three people in the attendees list seeking to speak. Madam chair. All right, I'm going to. We open that and if. Just a second here and clear them. Okay, so we'll start with, oops, wrong. We'll start with Brian. Hi, this is Brian. Can you hear me? We do. Thank you. Thank you all for taking the time. I'll keep it short because obviously there's a lot of. Written information there. That we've responded in the main focuses. We want Metro to have a focus on their representatives for the Santa Cruz. County regional transportation focused on Metro. We want them to, you know, vote for Metro. We want them to have a focus. We want them to have a focus. We want them to have a focus. We. Voting for Metro focus on more buses. More funds for Metro. You know, let me talk a little bit about the communications because there's some additional emails related. Just a level set everybody. So trail now has thousands of supporters. We, we issue a newsletter that goes thousands of local supporters. So. So we're going to be in a conversation. To Metro, for example, we actually. What we do. Blind copies. Over 100 core team members and some of those rest. Team. Team members you see there responding. So I just wanted to give you that awareness. Again, trail now is a big supporter of Metro, you know, committees. The first time was when Measure D came. We actually opposed Measure D initially because they had a significant amount of money for the train and and then fortunately Metro or RTC changed the language and changed it from 24% funding for the train and moved it to the Metro. So we were really excited about that. We switched to become a supporter of Measure D and Measure D, as we all know, has been phenomenal for our county. And so we're really happy about that kind of results. And that's what we're really trying to send the message here to Metro is we want you all to be successful. We're right there with you. And so we're hopeful that you have a selection criteria for Metro representatives on the RTC board that vote for Metro, that support Metro. And again, we're fully behind Metro and appreciate it. We're hoping for more buses, more funding for Metro. So thanks again, everybody for continuing your work on support of Metro. Thank you. Over. How do you want to call the next person? You're muted. Alright, I'm muted. Brandon, I sneeze so I muted but anyway Brandon, you're next. Good morning, members of the board. Can you hear me okay? Yes. All right. So we just had two things for our labor communications out of smart. One, we wanted to reiterate how great it was to join you guys last week at Friday on the activity that we had there. That was a really good thing for us overall. The second is a quick piece on the consent agenda for 9.9 regarding the termination of contract with GMB Synchromatics and Award of Contract and Clever Devices. I'm not going to go into too much detail with it. I'm sure Isaac will have that covered, but I just wanted to let you guys know that our union and our officers are in full support of that movement away from Synchromatics and to Clever. And we're hoping that that will work out much better for us in the future. So I just wanted to put some backing behind that from the union position as well. Thank you for weighing in. Thanks, Brandon. And also thank you for being there last week on the for the workshop. Appreciate your participation. Absolutely. Thank you. Next, we have David. Good morning. Can you hear me all right? Yes, thank you. Hi, you know, I just wanted to say that the new route 18 is amazing. You know, I live on the West side and literally because of the 18, I've now ridden the bus probably more often since June than any other time living here. It runs well into the night. It's often packed. I've taken probably two dozen times, which you know, is a lot for a non student on the side of town. So it's a totally useful route. This kind of frequent efficient service I think could really help bring on new writers, people who might not have otherwise really thought about using public transit before. And of course, as you move forward with a better real time tracking and easier payments like Clipper or tap credit cards, that's going to help too. So really, I just wanted to say thanks and thanks for all you do. It's a great new route. Thanks. I thank you, David. And you know, it's always nice to have someone take the time to come and share positive things. Because like many of us, we only take that time when they're when we're unhappy. So thank you. And are there any I don't see any other hands. Okay, we will go back to just one second. I was looking at something else. We already asked for labor negotiations. So next would be consideration of a resolution. Number 11, Mr. No. Number seven. Okay, let me move back a bit. What happens when you start? multitasking. Oh, yes. Okay, Mr. Page Metro advisory written communication from Mac. And there are none. All right. Additional documentation to support existing agenda items. And that would be the staff report for agenda item 9.9 was distributed to the board members yesterday, November 18. And we'll be added to the online packet. All right. Thank you. So do we need a motion to approve the consent agenda for city council? We do so you should ask first if there are people like to pull anything. Thank you. And is there anyone who wanted to pull any items from the consent agenda? Don't see any hands adoption. Have we asked the public if they have anything? That's what I was asking. I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. I thought you asked first asking the board. That's all right. It's good to make it more clear. So we have a motion by Larry. I'll second that motion. Second by Mike Rotkin. All in favor roll call actually vote. Yes. Director commentary Johnson. Yes. Director Connick. Aye. Director Lynn. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Myers. Director Northcutt. Aye. Director Pagler. Aye. Director Peterson. Aye. Director Rockin. Aye. And we have quorum. Thank you. All right. To our agenda item. So number 10. I believe that will be from Chuck Farmer. Everybody. So I'm just going to talk to us. We don't need to show anything up. He's I know it's just presentation. So as we venture down this road of solving our debt issues, hence this pension outstanding balance or UAL and short, we need to put in place two policies so that we are structured accordingly. And one of them is the debt pension policy as well as because we are going after the pension right now, we need a pension funding policy. There is actually a third policy that we are not going to do. It's an investment policy. So to be clear, these two policies have no relation to any type of investments. We are not looking to invest it. Ask the board to do investments that may be risky or not risky. This has nothing to do with investments. This is strictly around how do we manage our debt as well as as part of our debt, putting in a policy on how we manage pension policy. So just to kind of give you a quick overview of the two different policies. So the debt policy itself is really put in place for the board to have authority around whether or not we want to issue debt or not issue debt and that debt could be either bonds, lines of credit, bank loans, etc. And there's a very specific law that indicates what type of debt we can issue to and that's actually written out in the policy. And then but at the end of the day, the board has approval on whether or not we go out with debt or not. And so that's really in a nutshell what the debt management policy is. And then the pension funding policy on the other hand is really a policy that focuses around our pension or obligation to the long term cost and benefits provided to our members or people part of the policy. And that kind of covers, you know, CalPERS or whether we go on our own with either a bond or section 115 and so forth. And then of course, putting in there a goal that our ideal goal is somewhere between 90 to 110 percent funded, which of course 100 percent always. But as investments go, it could go up or down. But our goal is to stay in there. And then at the end is truly the board has ultimate say on what we do with any money that goes into the policy and whether or not we want to change the amount of money we have in the policy and so forth. So it's really the due diligence. So those two policies in themselves will help us establish kind of the framework going forward to fully funding our pension here coming up in a few months. Okay. Does anyone have any questions for Chuck? Thanks for the report. It was very clear and it was an education. Thank you. And I just want. So when you're talking, I mean, some of the options you're talking about rather the board would have final say if we and I'm asking this word to say invest trust on 15 or we're pension or just pay early payments. I mean, some of those things are you saying those would be things that would be brought to the board? That's correct. So before we do, we will make a recommendation to the board that we would like to fund the 115 or just add payments in and then the board ultimately will say yes or no. And thank you that as Mike said, very good clear explanation. Thanks. And where there are two parts or they're both of those parts covering that. So pension policy and debt management. Okay, we will move to consideration resolution making certain findings and directing the board public comments. We do need to make a motion on that. Oh, right. Okay, we'll meet a motion to public comments first before a motion. Are there anyone from the public wanting to comment on the management or pension policy and I'd see no hands that I will move. I will move the recommendation staff on these two items. Second, Myers. Thank you. All right, director Dutra, director Colin Terry Johnson. I director Koenig. I director Lynn. I director McPherson. I director Myers. I director Northcutt. I director Pagler. I director Peterson. I and director Rockin. I and the motion passes. Thank you. All right. Next, it's number 11, the consideration of the resolution making certain findings and directing the board comments committee meetings to be killed to continue to be held via teleconference and that's with Alex, our CEO, Alex Clifford and Alex remuted. Hello, can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, sorry. Press the wrong button. Yes. So as we discussed, I believe last month every month, we must pass this resolution in order to continue to do virtual meetings for as long as the governor continues to declare a state of emergency. So this is just a repeat of what you did last month and what you will do in the coming months. Julie, anything to add to that? Nothing to add, unless anyone has questions. I think we're all having to do the same thing in our boards and commissions. So thank you. All right. So do we have a motion public public comments? I don't know. I don't think this morning for whatever reason. Long night last night is why and it works. Let me just add in case you haven't heard this week, the governor did extend the state of emergency until at least the end of March. So the AB AB 361 goes hand in hand with the declared state of emergency for the entire state of California. Once that state of emergency is over, unless another executive order or other action is issued, we would need to go back to in person meetings. So right now, that state of emergency has been extended to the end of March. Thank you, Julie. All right. And do we have a motion to adopt the resolution? I'll move the resolution. I'll second that. Okay. And I think Chevron was our first. Yeah. Okay. And Director Pagler seconded. Thank you. All right. Director Dutra. Hi. Director Cullin Terry Johnson. Hi. Director Koenig. Hi. Director Lynn. Hi. Director McPherson. Hi. Director Myers. Hi. Director Northcutt. Hi. Director Pagler. Hi. Director Peterson. Hi. Director Rockin. Hi. And the motion passes. Thank you. Hey, well, next we have Christina will update us on the year to day key performance indicators. Report for the quarter as of September 30th, 2021. Thank you. Good morning, board members, public. I think we have a presentation that will make this more interesting. Don, if we could maybe bring that it should be item 12 point B, point one. And that's us. Okay. Next page, please. So again, we'll start with our financial performance and it will be followed by presentations for ridership and trace reliability and operations and dependability with financial performance. We'll go over the system to system fair box recovery ratio next page, please. So as we anticipated, honestly, fair box recovery increased to 16% at the end of September. And it's significant increase from prior year as well as from the end of this year, 21 way it's still below pre COVID levels. Our average for Q one pre COVID was approximately 20% 2020% we're at around 16 right now. Real quick, are we putting the slide show up? We're seeing it. I believe it's up. Oh, I see it. Interesting. Okay. Sorry. Let me fix the problem at my end. Sorry. Maybe the people who got transferred over from the other thing don't see it. Donna, I got a problem at my end. Apologies. Okay, great. Thank you. So the fair box recovery that increase primarily due to increase in ridership and fares, while our operating expenses stayed pretty stable to the extent to which our operating expenses are stable and under control and ridership as well as fares are increasing. We will see an increase in our fair box recovery ratio for the next couple months. Next slide, please. Essentially the same story for the cost for revenue service hours, our cost, it's always the kind of a function of two variables cost and revenue service hours. Our costs are very stable year over year. If anything, actually, we have slightly increases in some areas. Revenue service hours are increasing in Q one. I believe we added approximately 8,000 hours year over year. So of course that we result in a lower revenue service cost. As you can see here. Next slide, please. And essentially the same thing for parent transit with an increased number of trips and stable cost our cost year to date. It's lower significantly lower than prior years. Do you have any questions about the cost per trip or revenue service hour? If I can ask, it's nowhere else in the world. Whether parent, how much excess capacity still exists in the parent transit system on which we were basing that experiment or, you know, trial run of on demand service. I don't know if Daniel is on, but very little capacity is left parent cruise ridership is approaching pre COVID levels. There is capacity at nights and weekends. And so we're thinking of possibly pivoting that pilot to focus on those areas of the day. Thank you. That's it. Thank you. And next slide. It's actually ridership. So we will continue with planning. So total ridership per hour has gradually increased each month and first quarter by 22. And this is largely due to the return of UCSC and career students into our system in September. We only captured about half a month's worth in September when campus activities really started to ramp up. But we're still down about 40% overall compared to pre COVID levels. Next slide, please. Again, UCSC ridership really shot up in September with a return of students. I think we'll continue to see that in the second quarter. But we're still about 40% down over pre COVID levels. Cabrera ridership also picked up. Not quite as much. Ridership is still down about 88% compared to the first quarter of FY 20, the last pre pandemic quarter. Next slide, please. And Highway 17 is more or less remained steady and is down about 30 or 66% compared to pre COVID levels. So we're still not seeing a return on our on that commute focused route. And local ridership, so a slight uptake in September. Again, we're still around, I think it's a 66% there, but I think that's actually the opposite. We're about 45% down compared to pre COVID. Next slide, please. And productivity. So with the return of UCSC students, our West Side UCSC routes are now again, our most productive routes in the system, and we'll continue to see that followed by 69AW71, our our major intercity routes connecting Santa Cruz and Watsonville. And just a pause on this slide real quickly. So, you know, every basically every route here is doing at least better than three passengers for revenue hours, except the Watsonville Circulator 41. That's really the upper limit that we could possibly hope to squeeze from our on demand service. So even though ridership is much less than it was previously, it's still not something that we could serve effectively with an on demand type service. We still need to be focusing on our fixed route service. Next slide, please. And risk management and safety with Curtis. Okay, good morning, everyone. This slide represents basically the KPIs for seven indicators that we've been tracking. And as you can see that now that we start to come out of post pandemic, that traffic patterns are basically starting to return. And as we start to see the number of incidents start to match pre pandemic. Also, what we continue to track is there are basically of the seven or five of them that are non chargeable to the operators. Next slide. This slide also represents once again, the same thing with the three years of the first quarter, basically passenger incidents. And this is kind of related to slips, trips and falls. What we have noticed once again, for this quarter, it has been 100% non contributable to the operators. The basically what we're still seeing is incidents where passengers are falling outside the bus or they're intoxicated. Or sometimes if they're incidents inside the bus is basically with some of the passengers carrying packages and not kind of paying attention to their footing. We did in the safety department examine with the video footage and observed that the 4200 series buses was one of our largest contributors for some of the incidents. Working with fleet maintenance, we did an inspection of the entire fleet to see what we can basically do to mitigate the hazard. What we did find on the 4200 series was that the stanchion poles did not have any type of indication for watcher step. Basically once fleet maintenance did modification to add watcher step on the stanchion poles, knock on wood as a 4 weeks now, we have had zero incidents and we'll still continue to track and mitigate the hazard. Did you tell which of the 4200 buses in more common parlance? Are those are those recent buses or older ones or which ones are those? I don't know the number. Those that are how we 17. Thank you. Yep. And that what we saw in that director was basically that bus series has a middle step versus most buses have a step up towards the end. And what we seen is when people ring the bell to exit, they were looking straight forward and was missing that step. So there was nothing to catch their peripheral view up high. There is a watcher step that is on the ground. So we added a visual enhancement. And as of now four weeks straight, we have not had any incidents. That's great. That's a really good example of proactive dealing with safety. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Next slide. Okay. And our maintenance manager, Eddie Benson will present reliability API. Okay. This slide is for our fixed route buses. We've had an increase in our miles and our miles, our main distance travel between failures has reduced when in July, we had 10 Charitable Road calls. August, we had 18 Charitable Road calls. In September, we had 12 Charitable Road calls again, from the last month, which would have been August, we've had an increase in our miles. And we had a reduction in our Charitable Road calls between those miles. Next slide. On the Highway 17 basically about the same thing we've we've we've had three Charitable Road calls for the Highway 17 increase in our miles. In July, we had three road calls, Charitable Road calls, August three Charitable Road calls, and we had no Charitable Road calls in September. Next slide. In Fair Cruise, basically we've seen an increase in our mileage there as well. One Charitable Road call in July, one Charitable Road call in August and no Charitable Road calls in September. Next slide. Thank you, Eddie. Next slide. It's operations and dependability with cancelled trips by area and calls. And I believe that would be Margo presenting those. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. So in July, the majority of our cancellations were due to the freeway closure on the 21st. Those affected a lot of areas of our service. And in August, all the trips fell on the 9th and the 28th. While in September, all cancelled trips around the 18th or the 30th. And they were mainly due to staffing shortages. The dispatchers do their best to disperse the cancellations throughout the agency to make sure that one line is not overly affected by the cancellations. It's just sometimes we have events or issues that come up in the operators are, you know, just basically don't show up for work. And we also tried something a little new where we gave a lot of the extra word Saturday and Sunday off because we were so short of personnel. So that contributed to it as well, hoping that we would have enough operators to cover the service on the weekend on overtime and make sure that we were able to cover the UC Santa Cruz service and regular service during the week. We'd be happy to answer any questions. See none. Next slide, please. Again, pass ups are the same. Everyone is aware we were reduced capacity. So we saw increase in pass ups. And then because we've increased capacity on our buses, we've seen a decrease on our pass ups. More people are able to get on the bus and ride it, which provides us a decrease in in pass ups. Next slide, please. Thank you, Marguerite. And with that, that basically concludes our presentation. If you have any questions about APIs, any other questions? Thank you. Okay, thanks. I was just looking to make sure there's none. Yes. All right. Thanks. Okay. Well, thank you for that report. The what I'm going to do next is move to closed session. So I'll ask us and we'll return for the other items after closed session. That's Julie to review the items for closed session. So you're changing the order so the CEO's report will happen after closed session. Yes. Thank you. I guess we just have one item for the closed session, which is a conference with labor negotiator, and it will involve met metros, all three unions. And I, I do not anticipate a report out after Yeah, we won't report out on the closed session, but we will be returning for the CEO report and announcing the next meeting and any items to be discussed. No, just those two items. So thank you. So we will return after closed session and see everyone see people allowed to comment on the closed session items or no, pardon. People are people allowed to comment on closed session. Yes, if if there are comments from the public before we move into closed session, you can do that. And we'll also ask for any after. All right. I see no hands raised. So we will go ahead and move to the room for closed session. We have a link that's been sent to us today on that. Yes, there should be. I'm not sure today. Do we have one for today? It's it came this morning. I thought I saw it. Yeah, it came this morning from in Barry, right? Yeah, should be labeled in the subject, SCM TD closed session invite link. Thank you. Yeah, be sure you find it before you leave so we can ask for some help if needed. I I don't see it on mine. But certain for Ian, Ian, it came. I found it. Thank you. Right at eight o'clock. Thank you so much. All right. The everybody in a few minutes. Kingston, Kingston. Okay, we're waiting for everyone to return from closed session to open session. And we will start with a report. Julie, would that be the way to do that? Yeah, all we have to say is there's no reportable action. Okay, and then we will can move to CEO or report and COVID update. Is that correct? That's right. And we can still address the other issues. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair and directors. I have a rather lengthy report. A lot has occurred in the last 30 days. So please bear with me. We were on a good glide path for a short meeting and I'm going to put that in jeopardy. So I apologize in advance. In the way of new hires and promotions. We have none this month. We'll get caught up with that in January. We expect to have an announcement of several new hires and promotions. I'm sad to report that since your last meeting, we've had two COVID positive cases. Both were unvaccinated. Both employees came up positive in our onsite twice a week COVID testing program for unvaccinated employees. So our program continues to identify the COVID positives as quick as possible. We've also since your last meeting notified all employees that as a condition of working at Metro, they must fully, they must be fully vaccinated by December 31st or face discipline up to and including termination. However, hand in hand with that, we have, we are accepting religious and medical exemption requests. We have received numerous requests, predominantly religious requests. And those are under review. In addition to that, two employees that are currently unvaccinated notified Metro that they've started the process towards full vaccination and have received their first vaccination. In the, in addition to that, in a way of trying to help our employees with that decision, HR has, has now had several onsite vaccinations. And today is another onsite vaccination clinic, which will be at pair crews and at Judy K. Suza operations. And at the, at these clinics, employees can receive their first second vaccination. Or their, their booster vaccination. Moving on to any questions on any of that before I move on. Okay. I've talked to you last couple of months about two federal audits that are occurring on our property relative to a federal requirement that the FTA audit, those recipients of COVID relief funds, which we are, one audit has now been completed. And that had, that resulted in just some very minor recommendations. So we're really pleased about that. And the second audit is still pending. We believe we've provided them everything that they need. So assuming that that's the case at some point in the next two or three months, that one will probably let us know how we did. Because we love audits, we also had the TDA audit yesterday. That's an annual process. And so it's a, it's called a TDA Triennial Performance Audit. And this is for the period of 2019 through 2021. And then we especially want to thank the leadership team for attending and representing their respective departments and providing important information. We'll get a report at some future date on that, but we feel based on yesterday's meeting, things will be just fine. Then we have currently going on RTC as a round of discretionary funds that they are, they are soliciting applications or they have solicited applications for. The staff recommendation is going to go to the December RTC meeting. I bring that to your attention because for those of you who are representing us in particular Metro on the RTC, we just want to make you aware that the County Public Works Director has been making rounds to try to have the various committees change the staff recommendation. Most pointedly, he is trying to have Metro's staff recommended $1 million defunded and moved over to the county for roads and streets and roads. We obviously oppose that. He made a play yesterday at ITAC to do that and failed. We hope he will fail at the RTC meeting. Just in the way of background, the staff recommendation is for one compressed natural gas articulated bus that we would use to replace one of our aging articulated diesel articulated buses. The recommendation is for $1 million and we are supporting that. I would just point out that our request to the RTC during this round of discretionary funding was much more substantial. We had originally requested that we be funded for two compressed natural gas articulated buses to the tune of $1.8 million and we applied also for $2.3 million for our local match for Paracruz facility. So, you know, we applied for over $3 million over $4 million and staff recommended one. We're not trying to make a play to change that. We're not trying to make a play to get more money for paratransitor articulated buses. And we just would like the RTC to approve the RTC staff recommendation for us of the $1 million for the one compressed natural gas articulated bus. Don't see any hands moving on. In the way of the South County bus division, which as you probably recall, we've reported that we're looking for money for planning. We want to get that. We want to get the planning money so that we can get that planned and engineered up to about at least a 30% level so that we can be the so-called shelf ready or shovel ready project and go after construction grant. Unfortunately, we were notified yesterday that the federal government did not fund our raise grant request. I believe California only got two raise grant awards. So that's unfortunate, but because want to move our grants person is very forward thinking and creative and innovative. Simultaneously with that grant application, he has filed two other grant applications. One is an FTA 2021 areas of persistent poverty program. A OPP grant. We're requesting $850,000 through that program. We're committing $150,000 in matching funds for a total of a million dollars. And simultaneously, we have a Caltrans division transportation grant request for $1 million. So there's two other grants in place. South County bus division is not dead. And we're hopeful that one of these other grants will come through. And if they don't want to move, we'll find another grant for us to go after. We think it's important and it is the way that we will comply with the CARB regulation absent a new division. We are going to have a very difficult time, maybe even impossible time. Moving on to PERS UALM funded liability. We continue to make progress towards issuing pension obligation bonds next year. To that end, we hired Urban Futures as our financial advisor for the bond. Urban Futures UFI is the number one pension obligation bond advisor in California, having done more than $3 billion in pension bonds across the state in the last two years. We're currently finalizing the contract for our bond council, which will be Jones Hall. They represented Santa Cruz County for the most recent pension bond obligation offering a few months ago. And the last consultant bond underwriter has gone to RFP and we are scheduling 30 minute Zoom meetings for the week of Thanksgiving. Hopefully we will have the underwriter on board in early December. And if you have any questions on that, I can bring Chuck up. If not, I'll continue on. Okay. So we also have the winter bid coming, which is effective December night. And you may have received some complaints. We are receiving some complaints about the canceling of the five a.m. first highway 17 bus out of Pacific Station. We are canceling that because primarily because of extremely low ridership about three or four riders on that bus per trip. And because we need to just simply trim back the number of assignments that we have out on the street due to our bus operator shortage. So effective December 9 that first highway 17 bus over the hill will start at six a.m. instead of five a.m. Okay, continuing on. We talked a little bit about bus operator recruitment or bus operator recruitment slash hiring bonus has resulted in I think we had something like 25 applications. And by the time we went through the screen process, we narrowed it down to eight employees that were hired. They'll start their class in mid December. We ideally wanted a class of 12. So that's unfortunate that we couldn't get 12 out of that group. It just means that when this class graduates, we'll be into another class and probably another class after that. The real exciting news about our 2016 loan a grant, you will recall we were reported in the past that our partnership with B. Y. D. and 2016 failed because B. Y. D. couldn't produce an over the road coach electric over the road coach that could do what needed to do on highway 17. And we convinced the FDA to let us keep the money almost indefinitely while the market continued the market or the production of of electric vehicles continued to mature especially in the over the road Rome. Region nine and corporate Washington D. C. agreed to let us keep the money. After we got our pro-terras which are not over the road coaches on board. Eddie very creatively said, hey, let's try him out on 17. Well, he did. He made several runs and they actually performed as we wanted electric buses to perform on highway 17. Only negative is it's not an over over the road coach. So we went to FTA region nine. We said, hey, can we can we program this money and by three possibly four of these pro-terras six sixties and run them on highway 17. The only deviation from our grant award is that these buses will not be over the road coaches. Region nine administrator said, I'm excited about what you're proposing. I'm going to go to Washington and ask them to support it. He did just that. We got our letter of approval and we can now move forward with the purchase of some more pro- terror six sixties for highway 17. Now, we're going to pump the brakes a little bit. We're going to wait until after January one because the human infrastructure bill is still circulating around and being modified and talked about in Washington, DC. And the last time we saw that bill that bill included congressman Panetta's 30% tax credit for zero emission buses. So that's that's an important thing and we don't want to leave money on the table. So if that stays in the bill and if the bill ultimately passes and it ultimately passes with Panetta's tax credit in it, that that credit would become effective for any purchase of buses January one 2022 and forward. So we don't want to prematurely order in December. The bill passes and we just lost $300,000 credit per bus. So we'll wait until after we see that lay the land develop a little bit more in the area of marketing and communications. Then y'all has arranged for Metro to have our first place for tots stuff a bus and that will be on December 11th from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. It will be in Watsonville at the Watsonville target and the Watsonville fire department is going to assist us in that. So that's pretty exciting. She'll be circulating that information with the media both print and in television media and hopefully they will also attend that event. Also she has completed applying holiday characters to four of our buses in the fleet and you'll see those buses kind of roaming around the system including the circulator and highway 17. They're really cute sort of vinyl applications that are on the windows. So be on a watch for those buses circulating throughout the county and then of course our winter headways will reflect the new schedules which begin December 9th. The headways this headways will focus on recruitment and hiring in the way of meetings with elected officials. So now that we're you know getting to a different place in this pandemic we have been reaching out to various state elected officials to try to get appointments and just bring them up to speed on how we've been managing the business through the pandemic. So in the last month since we last met we had a meeting virtual meeting with Senator Laird and just yesterday a virtual meeting with Assemblyman Rebus. So we would like to restart those sort of regular meetings that occur with our state officials and down the road we will certainly bring board members into those meetings or at least give you the opportunity to participate in those. Right now we just wanted to get ourselves reestablished because it's been so long since we talked to these folks. And then in the way of the federal FAST Act reauthorization known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or we'll call it the IIJA that has been signed by the president. So what does the $1.2 trillion IIJA mean to Metro? We're starting in FY 22 and estimated 1 million more in Formula 5307, 5311 which we use for operations. Nationwide transit formula funds increase from 10.2 billion in FY 21 to 13.4 billion in FY 22. Provided we continue to achieve our current level of sticks in small transit intensive cities, stick factors. And we have two, we have the Watsonville and the Santa Cruz stick. We'll receive an estimated $2.6 million more in stick resulting as a direct result from the stick going from 2% to 3%. And as you know, in the various committees that I belong to we've been fighting very hard to try to get with reauthorization, get the stick increase from 2% to 3%. About 20,000 additional funds will receive through the 5339A program. Those are funds that we use for smaller capital purchases such as para-cruise vehicles, non-revenue vehicles, and most immediate and critical non-bus replacement needs. There'll be more discretionary competitive money. Now we can't assume that we will get this but the bigger the pot, the greater the opportunity to compete for money. Nationwide the 5339B bus and bus facilities grant program goes from $447 million in FY21 to $456 million in FY22. Overall there's an increase of $808.6 million in FY21 to $2.1 billion in FY22 for the combined three programs, the 5337A, 5339B, and 5339C. Now just to bring that into perspective, we hope to be awarded $5 million in 5339B bus and bus facilities grant for the construction of the new para-cruise facility. One who has submitted that grant I believe now about a week and a half ago and sometime next year possibly by March we will hear whether or not we got that grant. And of course our construction of the para-cruise facility is in need of those funds. Nationwide the 5339C LONO, and we just talked about our 2016 LONO grant award, that program increases $5.25 billion over the five year bill. This is a plus up of the 5339C program of $5.2 billion spread out over the five year bill. And that's important to us because we hope to compete next year for a LONO grant that could fund say three to five hydrogen fuel cell buses. So next year or worst case in 2023 we hope to be able to apply for a grant to bring hydrogen fuel cell buses on to our property. And then there will be a $1.5 billion allocated annually to the raise grant. And as I pointed out unfortunately we didn't get a raise grant this time around but there's always that future opportunity. Any questions on that before I move on? Okay board members I would like to read a letter to you. And then I will submit this to you in writing. It is with mixed emotions that I announced today my retirement. My last day with Metro will be January 21st. Shortly thereafter on January 31st I will assume the position of CEO at San Joaquin Regional Transit District, RTD. I want to thank the Metro Board for providing me the opportunity to lead this agency for the past seven and a half plus years. I'm proud to say that during my tenure with Metro the agency has accomplished much. And when I say the agency or when I say we in the remainder of this letter what I'm referring to is the combination of the board leadership team and the employees of Santa Cruz Metro. So I just want to talk a little bit about what I feel are important accomplishments that have occurred during the past seven and a half years. We resolved the $6.3 million structural deficit with no layoffs. We completed the problem-ridden Judy K. Sousa Operations Building and we moved in. We rehabilitated the Watsonville Transit Center. We opened a customer service window at the Watsonville Transit Center. We started the agency's first zero emission bus service on a new circulator route in Watsonville. We completed a new mural and rehabilitated the original mural at the Watsonville Transit Center and we upgraded the lighting at the Watsonville Transit Center. We installed numerous bus shelters in Watsonville. We've initiated the phase one planning for a zero emission Santa Cruz County bus division. We won numerous state and federal capital grants over these years that were mostly used to replace our aging fleet, our fleet that we were operating beyond their useful life. We made significant progress towards a data warehouse. All of our tenant spaces are now finally leased. We launched new metro branding and we now provide much more professional looking headways and informational brochures. We kept our employees safe by keeping our workplace injuries and traffic collisions low. We added or improved surveillance capabilities both at our metro facilities and on our buses. We kept the agency fiscally solvent and always had clean audits. We created a bus replacement plan to reduce the backlog of buses we were operating beyond their useful life from 62 when we introduced you to the concept of this problem to today that just being a little bit right around 38 buses. Significant improvement in that area. We added four zero emission buses to the fleet our first electric buses and three more will hopefully be here soon that we discussed earlier. We created a transition plan so that we can be 100 percent zero emission compliant with carbs regulation and you'll see more of that probably in January or February. We created the agency's first strategic plan and strategic priorities. We created a 10 year state of good repair unfunded capital priority list that we use diligently when we identify new money. We created a board adopted reserves plan but not only did we create a plan but we fully funded every bucket in that plan. We created the agency's first transit asset management plan in compliance with federal regulations. We created a safety department. We had no safety department here when I arrived. We created a marketing communications department. We had no marketing communications department when I arrived. We outsourced our legal services. Thank you Julie for the fine work that you do. We successfully achieved a commitment from the RTC to provide Metro 16 percent of measure D revenues. We are working towards a 2022 federal loan grant to pilot fuel cell buses that we talked about earlier. We achieved shovel ready status and we have submitted our grant application for federal funding for the new para cruise facility. We hope to learn about that in early 2022. Our facilities across the metro system are in a far better condition than they ever have been and that because of our aggressive state of good repair program and a philosophy of attention to detail and this includes new roofs, exterior paint, new landscaping, particularly new landscaping at the Watsonville transit center, Scotts Valley transit center and here at the Vernon offices. I've represented, I hope this agency well on the CTA, CTA, CalAC, the bus coalition, Zebra and APTA mostly in a leadership role. We during this period of time we grew our right our relationships and partnerships with UCSC and Cabrillo College. We completed a major comprehensive operational analysis. We initiated the development of the bus on shoulder program. We initiated the process towards resolving the UAL unfunded liability. We initiated the process towards a new ERP. We reestablished board subcommittees. We created, we completed the class and comp study and we implemented it. For the first time in seven years, I now have a dream team leadership team in place. I will very much miss them. Their experience, their expertise, their intelligence will provide the board stability during this time of transition. Then the pandemic hit in March 2020 compounded even further by the CZU fires. There was no playbook for this type of a thing. We worked hard to keep our employees safe and we did. I made an early commitment that I would do my best to avoid layoffs and furloughs and we were successful. We implemented creative work schedules and we reduced employee exposure to the virus. Finally, in solidarity with our front line employees who had to come to work every day, I too came to work every day, physically came to work every day since March of 2020. The only time off I took was time off for a little bit of vacation here and there. In closing, I would like to suggest that the board chair establish an ad hoc CEO recruitment committee. If the board and committee wishes, and it's strictly up to you, this is only my suggestion, if the board and committee wishes, I'll be happy to help the committee identify a CEO recruiter who can assist in a nationwide recruitment. I'll be happy to help you get things well underway towards replacing me by the time I leave in mid January. I want to assure you, the board, that I will diligently perform my duties on my last day here as I did on my first day here. I want to thank you for the opportunity to leave this agency for the past seven and a half years. Thank you. Bruce has had his hand up from moment one, so we'll start with Bruce. Yeah, I'm deeply saddened that we're losing Alex Clifford as our general manager CEO. He's done a phenomenal job for us for more than seven years. He, you know, I can't imagine what we could have done better when we were facing that structural deficit and how he just laid out the roadmap to how we can get to success and continuance of our ridership and our convenience that we have. I've been able to go to several conferences or visits to Sacramento and Washington, D.C., and I can tell you that Alex Clifford has the highest reputation of anybody I know in the transit business. It's amazing for a relatively small transit district like Santa Cruz to have such an established and highly recognized person as Alex Clifford on those boards and commissions that he has put forward. We can go through those accomplishments that he has had. And ladies and gentlemen, I'll use that word phenomenal again that we've been able to achieve what we have been able to do because of Alex Clifford's leadership. And he'll be sorely missed. It's my understanding he didn't seek this. They sought him and I think he's had other offers as well. But I'm just very thankful that he was with us for seven and a half years to really sustain the transit system that we have and we couldn't have done such a good job without the leadership of Alex Clifford. So I'm going to miss him dearly. I really I applaud San Joaquin for putting out an offer that he couldn't refuse. It seems I don't know, but it's been a delight to work with him. And I appreciate his leadership and what he has done for the benefit of Santa Cruz but on transit district. Thank you, Bruce. Jimmy. Thank you. First of all, I don't know who leaves Santa Cruz to go to Stockton, but we will miss you. Get ready for some heat. But, you know, I do want to say that I came in with Alex basically just a little bit, I think behind him when he first came to Metro and and entering the board at the same time of him with the structural deficit that we had. We were in real real real bad shape and you know, through your leadership, which a lot of times, you know, some people weren't happy with because of the tough decisions that you have to make as a leader. You were able to get us into the strong position we are in today because of that. And, you know, I mean, as an advocate for South County, I, you know, I appreciate all that, you know, we've been able to do you listed some of it. And I worked with you on almost every single one of those projects, probably all every single project. And because I've been here this whole length, this whole time with you. And, and I appreciate that. I remember when you first came in, I was, I felt like you were like, who is this guy? Like, and, you know, I remember going to DC with you and just, you know, the way you're so organized. And with Gina, you're, I mean, you're, you're so organized. We look, we were always so well prepared. And that's why we were always so successful in getting, you know, the grants that we got and, you know, moving forward with our zero mission fleet, the electric buses, you've done a lot. And I, and I appreciate that. And I'm you're leaving this. I'm a little bit of a shock. I just was in a little we just lost our city manager too. So I feel like, you know, I'm getting broken up with twice. And, you know, it's kind of like, you know, we will, we will move forward. And with your help we'll, we'll be able to make sure that your team has, you know, another, you know, strong leader who can continue to move us forward and, you know, continue to build relationships with all parts of this community, all every part of this county, from Watsonville to Capitola, Scots Valley, Santa Cruz, the unincorporated, unincorporated area. Transportation is extremely important. People depend on it every single day to move across our county and over the hill. And you helped make sure that we were moving in the right direction. So thank you, Alex. I, I appreciate all that you've done. I know this was, this is not easy for you. I can, I'm surprised. I'm just finding out about this. And I can hear, I can hear your voice that this was a tough decision. And but I want to say thank you for all that you have done for us. And I appreciate you. Mike. Thanks. I want to start by associating myself with the comments both of Bruce and Jimmy. I don't know if the public fully understands that that long list of accomplishments that Alex read, first of all, being totally accurate, maybe even understanding what each of those things were. It doesn't, I don't know if you get a sense of how difficult it is to achieve all of those things in a period when basically, in terms of the overall national effort, there's been a reduction in support for public transit. We're still dealing with funding that comes from a gas tax in 1994. And the fact that we've been able to get the grants that we got that Alex's service, not just inside of this agency, but representing us on a variety of industry lobbying groups and his contacts with people in Washington and Sacramento. And what has made this happen. If nothing else, people should understand that the structural deficit that we confronted, I didn't I didn't know I came on right in the middle of that as well. Back on the board, I'd been on earlier, but it seemed impossible to fund it. It looked like we were going to lose a third of our service and I think in the end, we lost 12.5% or something only in that range. And that's due to Alex's knowledge of this industry and the way to make these things happen in a way that's constructive and it tries to really serve the public. They're probably not two people in public service that have a wider difference ideologically than Alex Clifford and myself. I mean, but what what it shows is that when somebody is as professional as Alex Clifford is that is not the issue. If only at the national level, people can understand that these ideological struggles are not the way we should be addressing things, but trying to figure out and actually make things work. And Alex has demonstrated that that is something that can happen. And so it's been such a pleasure to work with Alex on a regular basis. I was board chair during one of the years that that that he's been with us. And really, he was always so accessible, so focused on this agency. It was hard to get him to take you mentioned reifications where he wasn't here. It was hard to get him to take vacations. He's definitely a workaholic. And, you know, even on this thing, maybe people don't know this, but you know, when he was out in I think in Italy or somewhere in Europe, there were little things happening at the district and you get these emails on almost daily basis responding to what's going on. And he cared about this agency. He made a difference in this agency, and it would be a real mistake to think that this is just a kind of a formal rehearsal of, you know, positive comments as somebody's leaving you. I am so appreciative of what Alex Clifford has done for this agency. We would be in the world of hurt if it were not for him being our CEO and general manager during this period. So I'm happy for you, Alex, that you found something that, you know, will work for you personally. But I'm so sad that we're going to be losing your leadership. You will have more than large shoes to fill. And I don't know that they can be filled. We will, we will survive. We will do well. We'll make things happen. But it's a huge loss to this, to the public in Santa Cruz County and to this agency that that you're leaving us. And I'm quite sad that you're going. I look forward to the next we gave you a five year contract. I was hoping we would be renewing that one at the end of the five years. So it's going to be a real struggle to find someone who can even come close to providing us the service that you have. You've been a wonderful director for this agency. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you, Mike, Kristen. Thank you. I just wanted to take a quick moment. I know we have a couple more months with you. So I'll probably have longer comments in our final meeting together. But I just wanted to take a quick moment to thank you for your service to Metro and your leadership in the short time that I've been on the board. I've learned a lot from you. And I appreciate that every time I've reached out to ask for an opportunity to speak or to better understand something that you've always been willing to to speak with me and to share that information and that knowledge. So again, I'll keep my comments short today, but you will be missing. And thank you so much for your service. Thank you, Kristen. Shebra. Thank you. Now I'll also keep my comments brief, but I did want to just acknowledge and thank you, Alex, for the generosity of your time and experience of wisdom that you provided me as you were onboarding me just, you know, maybe eight months ago, not not that long ago. It's clear to me that that you care about this work and you connect the dots between transportation and community well-being. So in my short time on this board and working with you, I've learned a lot and I really appreciate it. And I also just appreciate your partnership with the city. I mean, just I think it was just this week that we had a meeting to problem solve together around some of the challenges that we face in our community. So thank you for the work that you've done. Thank you for the commitment to our community and and I'll have more to say as well in future meetings. Thanks, Alex. Thank you, Shebra. If I don't see other hands, I just want to add. I I echo everything that's been said when I came on board 2016. First 2017, probably. Actually, I couldn't imagine how how we were going to replace 62 or three buses that are made in a piece. And having seen the structural and we were close to bankruptcy when Alex came aboard. And there was real fear of survival of metro and to have watched in these seven years, these buckets be filled and and the buses, you know, be replaced and grants that have been obtained. And then I mean, and I think at about that time also, we're facing the 63 buses and Trina came in for Watsonville and brought up unfunded pension liability and serving with her. And and, you know, we were both facing it and you jumped right into that and address it immediately. And and now hearing today, the plans, you know, for addressing that and bonds, everything just so responsive and the attention you've given to all of our agencies to us in Scots Valley, the various whenever there's an issue, sometimes you were at home and responded and address that issue immediately. So it's been an honor to work with you. I we will now you leave very big shoes to fill. And I'm heartbroken to have you leave. So, you know, I just want you to know how much you are appreciated by our entire community. I hear so many times things that someone is addressed. And you just I know the same for Watsonville for Santa Cruz for capital, you know, you really have given heart and soul and you will be greatly missed. And we I look forward to you assisting us in this transition. And I know you'll give your heart and soul through that too. So thank you. Thank you all for the kind words and comments. I would just ask, please move on to the agenda before you bring me to tears here. You're not alone. Okay, we do have the next is up. I'll tell I missed you. I'm so sorry. It's okay. I'm looking around. It wasn't intentional. I know I know I was trying to get to a safe space because I had to drive to my next meeting. But I want to also thank you, Alex, for your leadership. And I want to point out that, you know, while you are moving to another place and not retiring all the way, I want to thank you for even taking the time to be an intentional, thoughtful leader in building a succession plan. I list I listened to your list of accomplishments for the team and for the department and for the agency. And I think about all of those shoes that other people get to feel and all of that room that we get to grow and all of that space that you have given every employee at Metro for the opportunity to have value in their work and the idea of where they're going. And so I appreciate that, even in the time of being a leader for the current, you were thinking about the future and building this path for your for the person who will succeed you. And while building up on the things that were left behind. So thank you. I thank you for your partnership with Cabrio. That's how I have known you in this role. And as we've established routes and build the bond, you know, funding sources and those sort of things, I want to thank you for your leadership, your efforts of dedication to our Cabrio community, as well as providing services to all of our locations between, you know, Watsonville all the way through. So thank you. Thank you. And thank you. Thank you, Alta. Okay, as long as I see Mike's hand still up, I think it's just I'll take it down. Sorry. All right. No, no, just want to make sure I didn't miss anyone else. Okay. And no public comments. And I was watching for hands in public. So I and I'll call for that opportunity. I don't see any hands from the public. Okay. So the announcement for the next meeting, it actually lists December 17. However, we do not expect to meet December 17. Our next meeting should be January 28th of 2022. And if there are no other comments, then we will move to adjournment. And wishing all of you happy Thanksgiving and a beautiful Hall of Aces. Thank you. Thanks again, Alex. Thank you.