 Welcome everybody. It's nine o'clock. I'd like to call in order that the conference meeting of the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District for May 15th, 2020. And before we begin, let me note that this meeting is being recorded. And I'll ask the board secretary, Gina Pye, to please call the roll. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Here. Dr. Coffman-Demez. Thank you. Dr. Gonzalez. Here. Dr. Liverpool. Here. Dr. Lind. Here. Dr. Matthews. She's got his motion made for me. Dr. McLearson. There he is. There he is. I see her. You're muted. Here? Okay. Okay. Dr. Myers. Here. Dr. Pegler. Here. Dr. Rothwell. You have to unmute, Dan, to say here. Hold your space bar down. I got it. Right here. Dr. Rotkin. Here. Ex officio director Henderson. Not here. Here. Oh, thank you. Ex officio director Northcote. Okay. We have quorum. Additional staff presence that we have online. I have obviously Alex, the CEO, Julie Sherman, general counsel, Angela Aitken, CFO, Christina Mililova, acting finance deputy director. Myself. We will have John Ergo. We will have Pete Rasmussen, and we will have Ginger Dreikar, a city of Santa Cruz representative. Is she not? Is this not the person who works for the regional transportation commission? I'm sorry, yeah. RTC, not Santa Cruz. Yeah, RTC. Thank you. Okay. Before we move on, we were great at our last meeting. Instead of using the high tech, raise your hands thing that exists on Zoom, just raise your hand by your head, and I'll be able to see it on my call on people. And if you'd keep your mics muted generally, if you're not speaking, that would be helpful. And I'll make sure, please remind me if I don't invite the public to comment on each of our items, because that's important. I'm not sure if we have any members of the public online, yet I don't see any pictures from any of them, but we may have some later in the meeting. Thank you, Chair. Let me, first of all, today's meeting is being broadcast by Community Television of Santa Cruz County. I wanna thank them, particularly Jordan Vasconas for his work. We couldn't be doing this without them. Appreciate their support. And let me start by asking if there are any comments from directors on items that are not on our meeting agenda this morning, I don't see any hands. Then I'm gonna ask if there are members of the general public who would like to make comments to us on items that are about related to trends that are not on our agenda this morning. Can I ask Jean, do we have any members of the public on listening or tuned in? Mr. Chair, you have 30 attendees, which is a combination of Metro staff union representation and there is likely some public participants here. There are a number of phone numbers that don't have names associated with them, so those would be difficult to tell. Well, let me ask, we'll take a moment here. Well, it might be some mid-air time, but let's ask if there are any members of the public who have comments to us on issues on items not on the agenda this morning. Let me check with Jean to see if anybody's raising their hand and nobody has raised their hand. All right, let me ask if there are any members of the labor organizations who'd like to comment to us on items not on this morning's agenda. James Sandoval, Mr. Chair. Yes, James, go ahead. Welcome, good morning. Good morning. Can you guys hear me? Yes, quite well. Awesome. So I just want to reiterate my last message regarding what we drivers are facing every day, because it's very difficult to capture what we're actually going through. We are on the front lines risk in our lives. We're on the face of this deadly virus. We have to go home to our family's pain. We didn't get it, bring it home. We have been dealing with frustrated, belligerent passengers on our buses with all of the new rules and policies. The tension is extremely high out there and we can't even run away when someone is coughing or sneezing inside of our bus. We really hope Metro and you all as board of directors appreciate what our drivers have been asked to do. Not only have we stepped up to the plate, we have not asked for much during this time and we've actually sacrificed financially to help us get through this. This speaks to our dedication to Metro in this community. The drivers are the unsung heroes making sure essential workers get to their essential job and the community could still get to their doctor's appointments and be able to put food on their table. We know hard decisions are around the corner and we hope us frontline heroes, we drivers, after all we've done and continue to do won't be the only one sacrifice in the help keep Metro afloat. Thank you. Thanks James, I'm sure your comments reflect the views of the board as a whole as well. Any other comments from labor organizations? None at this time. Okay, are there any new changes items on the agenda? New documentation. There are none. Do we have any written communications from the Metro advisory committee? The MAC is it's known. We have none. Okay. Next on our agenda is the consent agenda. These are items we will consider all in a single action. If staff will help me, what are the numbers on the consent agenda, the item numbers? Item 801 through 812. So all of the eights basically. Let me ask if anybody on the board who would like to pull one of these for further discussion and perhaps not accepting the staff recommendation. You're sharing your screen there and so now I can't see people's faces. Gina's double checking, nobody electronically raising their hand. I'd like to thank Gina. She's getting just even better and better on being able to show us the consent agenda. Good job. Let me ask if there are any members of the public who would like to comment on any of the consent agenda items. Those are the items on your number eight and various letters. There's nothing yet, Mr. Chair, if you want to just give it a couple seconds. Sometimes there's a little bit of lag time. Yes, let's do that. We're not showing anything. Like to move this consent agenda. That's from Chris McPherson motion second by Larry Pigler. Any other comments on the consent agenda? I see none. We have a roll call vote, please. Mr. Chair, just double checking motion. Was that Mr. McPherson? Mr. McPherson's a motion and Pigler's the second. Pigler the second. Okay, Gina's going to come over here and do the roll call vote. I apologize. We're doing the bounce back between the computers because if I turn my sound on, we're going to get some horrible reverb and we don't want that. I'm sure we'll survive that horrible situation. We have to go back and forth. I'll get my steps in. The roll call vote for this motion is Dr. Autorff. Aye. Dr. Coffman Gomez. Aye. Dr. Gonzalez. Aye. Dr. Leopold. Aye. Dr. Lind. Aye. Dr. Matthews. Oh, not there yet. Dr. McPherson. Aye. Dr. Myers. Aye. Dr. Pigler. Aye. Dr. Rothwell. Aye. Dr. Rotkin. Aye. Unanimous. Unanimous of all those present. That's through with Matthews absent. So we have hearings. We're now on to item number nine. This has to do with presentation of Employee Longevity Awards. And I'm going to read some information. I want everybody to sort of like buckle your seats for the first one. Our first person is John Fuentes, who has 40 years of service for the Natural Transit District. 40 years of service. Yeah. Think about that for a moment. Were there buses when he started? It came a little after I did actually, but I was not here the whole time. I left for at least six years in the middle and he's been here the whole time. Pretty impressive. I'm going to read you a little bit about John. John Fuentes started driving for Metro in 1980. He remembers driving his Grumman bus down 41st Avenue during the 1989 earthquake, watching the telephone poles on either side of the street, rock side to side like rubber. That day he was very concerned for his family and young children who were at home and probably very frightened. Yet he knew he had a duty to perform. So he stayed the course and completed his driving assignments that day. He's driven over a million miles with Metro and his motivation to keep on driving was simple and one we all share here at Metro to help people. So when let's actually we could have, I think applause as best we can do here at the assistance and so I have virtual applause for those with their mics closed. Thank you. That's very impressive, I have to say. Driver Erlen Osorio, 15 years of service began his career with Metro in May 2005. Since that time has received the safe driver award and has never had a chargeable incident or accident during his tenure with the Santa Cruz Metro. Recently Erlen married one of his fellow operators Ms. Norma Flores. Erlen also serves as the president for smart local and is well versed in all the union work rules. Let's have applause for him as well, I think appropriate. Cynthia, welcome. Let's note that Cynthia Matthews is joining the meeting. Also in terms of longevity, we have Vicky Sanchez who has 20 years of service. Vicky Sanchez joined Metro in 2000 as a customer service representative working from Pacific Station customer service booth. She's been serving our customers in the booth and phone selling tickets and providing travel information. Vicky has demonstrated her creativity in helping to create the coloring book used at the county fair in the early days much to the light of our young passengers. As Metro expanded services and ridership, Vicky helped develop and participated in the public outreach and represented Metro at many on and off site public presentations. When Metro brought its paratransit service in-house she assisted Metro and her SEA union in finalizing an acceptable working agreement that eventually brought our service to efficient ride delivery for all. Vicky has repeatedly shown her dedication to our Spanish speaking community working from Metro's customer service booth at Watsonville station as well as on the phones assisting our Spanish speaking passengers who rely and depend upon both our fixed route and paratransit services. Vicky's focus and dedication to the Santa Cruz County public has been her number one priority and Metro thanks her for representing us so well through these ever changing years. Vicky's an established member of the customer service team and we're pleased to honor her today with an award for her service. Congratulations Vicky and applause for her as well I think is appropriate. And last but not least, Mario Torres has 15 years of service. He's also receiving his 15 years of service award. He has received his 10 years safe driver award in 2017 and a safe driver award for both 2018 and 2019. When Mario isn't driving for Metro he DJs, rides his mountain bike or motorcycles and spends time with his son and two grandchildren. So let's have applause for his service as well. Are there any director comments on this item? Any comments from members of the public on this item? Not showing any hands raised at this time. Thank you. Next we have item number 10 this where we have a resolutions of appreciation for retirees and the fact that they can't be here today. I'd like to thank both John Gose as it pronounced and Bonnie Moore for their many years of service to the Metro. Let me ask if there are any director comments at this point. Chair, I would move the resolutions that are attached. That's a motion by Leopold. Second by Buegler who's got his mic off but is held in the air. Thank you guys, please. And any other comments from any directors? Any comments from the general public? Not showing any. Double check, Mr. Chair, before we do it. Yes, not showing anything. Okay. Let me ask Gina to please call a roll on these resolutions. Okay. Director Botsworth. Aye. Director Coffman-Gummeth. Aye. Dr. Gonzalez. Aye. Dr. Leopold. Aye. Dr. Lin. Aye. Dr. Matthews. Aye. Welcome. Dr. McPherson. Aye. Dr. Myers. Aye. Dr. Pegler. Aye. Dr. Rothwell. Aye. Dr. Rotkin. Aye. Enanimous. Thank you very much. That is what you meant, Mr. I want to appreciate those folks who just retired recently from the district for their years of service. Next is item number 11. This is consideration of a resolution approving a compensation adjustment for the CEO and a fourth amendment to his employment agreement. Let me say that there's, we had a committee, a temporary committee that was appointed to do an initial review. We met in closed session at our last meeting and the whole board discussed this issue. So I think people have a clear idea of what the information that was gathered by the committee. I interviewed all the top managers and about two thirds of the people in the next rank of managers as well as talking to each of the unions. In fact, the subgroups of the unions to sort of get any input that I could before we met and the board got that information. We are, as a board, the recommendation from the committee, I guess that's the best way to present this to the board, is that we give Alex Clifford a two-step increase. Last year, we did not have a review because we were undergoing negotiations and a number of other difficult issues. So basically, Alex Clifford on his own initiated this, but we agreed that we not have a review at that point. So we would like to basically increase his steps by two, one for last year and one for this. These steps would be, this is not a pay increase in like a COLA or some special award. This is a step increase. The district has not denied any of our members any of their step increases despite all the crisis that we're going through. And so as long as Alex was performing satisfactorily, he would get these step increases. The board's decision is that his performance has been well above satisfactory. We do have issues which we've talked with him about and will continue to talk with him about, but in terms of his overall performance, I think people believe from the board that it's been excellent. So I'm looking at this point for, before we do the final vote on this, but I wanna get the motion on the floor, I'm looking for a motion that we, I see Donna Lynn's hand in the air, where the increase is, I'll let you turn your mic on and make the motion. Go ahead. Yes, I would move approval of this recommendation for a step increase for the two years. And noting too, he didn't ask for retroactive. There's no retroactive pay in this, that's correct. Yeah, right. I wanna add before I again open this to the public, I think the board believes that Alex has done an excellent job during the last period in general and that an extraordinary job since we've been hit by this COVID crisis. And I think that's a unanimous view of the board at this point. It's under very difficult kinds of conditions and we think that things are going as well as they could at the district given the constraints that we're operating under which are quite severe. I think there's been improved communication between Alex and the labor organizations during this period trying to, because it's difficult times and I think everybody recognizes that. And so I think we've had good cooperation both from management and our labor groups. And I think the board's quite pleased with Alex's performance at this point and the motion's now on the floor. Let me now ask if there are any members of the public including the labor organizations who like to comment on what this motion that's now on the floor in front of us. James Sandoval has his hand up, Mr. Chair. James, please go ahead. Hello again. I just wanted to mention, Alex has been doing a tremendous job and it's sometimes a roller coaster ride when dealing with issues. However, we always come out with a positive solution when we move forward. I do want to take a note that the drivers have taken cuts. We lost our bids and people are being laid off all around us. We believe Alex's step increase should be frozen or postponed until we get a better idea of where Metro is financially. Okay, thank you for your comment. Any other comments from the public or labor organizations? Any additional comments from the board? Mr. Chair, I'm sorry. We just got to give it a couple of seconds. Sometimes there's a little lag. Bill Henson. Bill, go ahead. Your mic is muted, Bill. You're gonna have to turn off your mute thing. Turn on your mic. Oh, let's see, I cannot do that from here. I can't, yeah, we can't do it. Bill, if you're hearing me, you need to turn your mic on. Yeah, we don't have the ability to unmute. Bill, if you're on a computer, if you could push your space bar, that might resolve the issue. I don't know how they would do it if they're on a phone. The issue's just available. Ian, can you unmute it? You're in, because I don't have that control. Still muted. Well, Bill is trying to get on. Let me ask Julie if there's any additional words as our attorney that she needs to say about this matter that's before us. Thanks, Chair. Under the Brown Act, you're required to do an oral summary of the motion and the action being taken. You basically have already done it. I'm just gonna do it a little bit more just to capture it for the record. The committee's recommendation is to approve an increase of the CEO's compensation to $21,029 fund that is step four of his employment agreement. And that reflects a June 15th, 2017, total increase of 2%. And that will go along with the corresponding Fourth Amendment to his employment agreement. Thank you. I see Bill is now on mute. Bill, go ahead, you have comment. Yeah, I mean, I want to indicate to all you guys like drivers and everything that you guys are, you know, out there contributing. I mean, I'm sorry I came in the middle of this whole whole like deal. I'm a frequent writer for the Santa Cruz Metro and I just want to over time see if we could, you know, see if we can improve, improve the Metro as a whole. And I have some pretty unorthodox ideas. Bill, let me suggest that you'd send us an email at this point. That's the best way you could probably communicate for any thoughts that you have would be happy to like look them over and respond to your concerns. Well, I mean, part of it is, and I'm not knocking anyone whatsoever from top to bottom. I feel with this whole crisis coming down real quick, we, all of us need to come together, no matter who it is from executives to management to assessment management, et cetera, et cetera. And I would like to see them plus a lot of other people, you know, let's come to a deal where we don't just talk about it, we act on it. Like I could write an email to people, but who knows where that'll get funneled to and who knows if that'll get intercepted, how long that's gonna take in getting a reply back. One of my projects I just did a few days ago is help change a website into being fully compliant with all of the ADA, the WCGA 2.0, 2.1 guidelines, and it only took roughly 48 hours. So, Bill, let me just assure you, if you send us a name, if you go to our website, you'll find a way that allows you to make comments. I will assure you that that will get to every board member and as well as our CEO and anybody who has a response to be able to give one, and I will assure you that I will read it carefully and certainly give you some response once I see it. So, if you do wanna add additional things in detail, please feel free to send us an email. We do respond when people contact us and we wanna make sure that the public knows that their ideas are being taken seriously. Thank you. Thanks for your comments this morning. Share anybody else from the public. No further hands, Mr. Chair, at this time. Okay, well, we have a roll call vote then, sorry, Donna Lynn has a comment. Just one thing I wanted to add, something that our city, our metro attorney advises too is this is under contract that, you know, it isn't really an optional. It's something that Alex is under contract to receive as long as he's performing at least standard. So, it's not additional compensation or raises or anything of that nature. Thanks for that clarification. That's not to say we might not give him an additional increase to be in position to do it, but this one, all he had to be was satisfactory and the board's view is that he's quite above that level, thank you. All right, can we have a roll call vote please, Gina, on this action? Before I go on, Mr. Henson, we do have the email address. If you want to send your thoughts to board inquiries at scmtd.com, and that's a great place to start. Okay, roll call. Dr. Botsworth. Hi. Dr. Kaplan-Gomez. Dr. Gonzalez. Hi. Dr. Leopold. Hi. Dr. Lind. Hi. Dr. Matthews. Hi. Dr. McPherson. Hi. Dr. Myers. Hi. Dr. Pegler. Hi. Dr. Rothwell. Hi. Dr. Ruckin. Hi. Unanimous. That's unanimous. Again, Alex, thank you for your service and we'll now move on to our next item. That's item number 12, which is the CEO's report. Nice place to, nice segue there. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and in advance of that, thank you to you and the board for that vote of confidence. It's been a pleasure serving you for six years. It's been a great relationship. We have been through some really interesting times during that period of time and we've navigated our way through that. And I appreciate that. It's been a fabulous board to work with. So thank you so much. What's going on for the conference? We have a number of items that I wanted to cover. If you'll hang in there with me. First of all, we always like to talk about new hires and promotions. And we have Mariano Bernal, who has been a temp employee for us and was running up against his hours limitation. And during this COVID crisis, so we felt that we needed some additional IT support. And he's been happy to stay on board as a provisional. We don't have a position to hire him nor can we commit to such a thing right now, but he will stay on board and continue to help us at least through this COVID crisis as a provisional employee. And then we have Matthew Marquez, who is moving from one provisional position to another provisional position to continue to help us out in the planning department. So we're happy that he's agreed to stay and help us out. He does a lot of fine work for us, including various types of surveys out on the lines. And maybe more recently, you might recall our bus replacement program, which was quite an intense program that was undertaken over numerous, several months. And he pulled together quite a wonderful spreadsheet for us to help us understand where we are at and what the challenges are ahead and how we can get into a state of good repair. Then Ryan McDonnell from the parts and materials lead to parts and materials supervisor. So congratulations to all of those folks. We have really dedicated staff and it's always nice to see internal promotions too. I wanted to point out briefly that if you noticed at our transit centers, we're flying the flag at half mass today and that is in honor of police officer's Memorial Day. So that is happening today and we'll leave those flags at half mass through the weekend. And now I'd like to go into, I have several items, but the next item is three consecutive videos that I'd like to play. They're very brief. So is it Ian that's gonna play those for us? Ian, if you can hear me, we're not hearing any sound at this end. That was a very nice piece put together by the California Transit Association. We are a member of that. I sit on their executive committee, well done acknowledging our employees working on the front lines, our heroes. Okay Ian, if you want to go to the next one, there you go. Oh, you want to replay that with the sound? Play the game with the sound, you have an aftereffect. I did the music. Thank you Ian. Yeah, well done by the CTA. And onto video number two, please. It's challenging time. I want to give a very special shout out to all the public transit workers who are going above and beyond the call of duty to keep these critical systems operational. Your courage, determination and dedication inspire all of us. You are a critical link to helping others in our communities get to work and access essential services. You are helping our country get through this crisis and successfully prepare for an economic recovery. The department is on the job 24-7 doing everything possible to help you, including getting federal dollars out quickly. Thank you for all that you do for all of us. Thank you Ian. And then on to the third video. The next row is taking extra steps to ensure passengers and drivers are safe when they ride on any of their buses. Every day 30 to 35 buses are sanitized inside vehicle service worker where it's effective gear during the disinfecting process. It's called fogging. You can make sure that he gets all the corners, nooks and crannies behind the seats, under the seats, ceilings, everything so that the entire bus is completely covered by the time he exits the buses. Drivers are also protected by plastic sheeting that kind of looks like a shower curtain, to be honest. Metro also hired 10 additional employees to help with the disinfecting process. Great, little news story, local news story. Yeah, yeah. Ian, if we could move on to the photos. So each meeting, I try to give you a couple of photos representing some of the things that have been going on since we last met. Ian, if you put the theories of photos on, signs that we had developed for the sides of our bus since we had some vacant space on the buses, we added several COVID messages. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. This is on the interior of the buses. This is one of the first signs that went up way back in early March. Next slide, please. Added later when face covering became required by the county. Next slide. And of course, we've been broadcasting the six feet of social separation for quite some time. Next slide, please. Some of our materials that we have on the buses, this slide is here because of the slot on the far right attention Metro riders. That is a trifold brochure that we have been updating regularly as things have changed in our service and our requirements. So we use that on the bus for customers to understand what we're doing and why we're doing it. And then also our security personnel at the terminals hand those out to customers to help them understand, particularly the biggest issue of being the capacity restrictions on the buses. Next slide, please. IT did a fabulous job when I asked them to have the head signs intermittently reflect essential travel only within a week. They were able to get all of the buses programmed and then our folks over in the maintenance were able to get it uploaded in a very timely fashion. So this flashes intermittently on our head signs just to reinforce that message. Next slide, please. The news brief talked about the shower curtain, if you will. Actually, that's a pretty accurate depiction of it or representation of it. It is in fact that type of a product. It is a clear product. And what the bus operator is able to do. Next slide is to close that. You can see it in its open position. So when they're driving, they have it in an open position. There's magnets that have been installed. Eddie and his teams have done a fabulous job over in maintenance getting these placed on the buses. It's not complete yet. We're hoping to have that complete within a week or so. But when it's, when they're driving, they put it in the open position. The magnets keep it out of their way. Next slide, please. And then when they pull up to a stop and customers are boarding, as you might recall, not every bus has the ability for a driver to actuate the rear door. We have old fashioned buses in which you have to push on the rear door to open it. Only about 25% of our fleet, our newer buses actually have that actuator. So many, many people still board through the front door, potentially exposing our operators. And so when they pull up to the stop, they close the curtain like this. And that gives them some additional isolation against the airborne droplets. Next slide, please. And then you saw on the news clip, the additional cleaners that we hired. Next slide, please. These are folks that are placed, two of them at Pacific Station, one at Watsonville, one at Capitola and one at Scotts Valley Transit Center. And each time a bus pulls through there, they dip their rag into the disinfectant, they jump on that bus and they very quickly move through a disinfecting of that bus. So the buses get disinfected at night. And then of course they go out on the road and germs and viruses can accrue thereafter. So this adds another layer of protection that each time that bus comes through a terminal, it gets a quick wipe down of disinfecting so that if it picked up something between last night and today, we're able to jump on it with our cleaners. And these are all temporary employees. They have a great attitude. They're doing a fabulous job. Next slide, please. Capitola cleaner. And I think next slide, please. And such a nice slide to close with. This is what you have to don in order to get on a bus and fog it. And that's what we do in addition to what occurs at night, because we're running roughly 60% of our service, we have a lot of buses in the yard daytime. So we do additional fogging during the daytime of those buses so that when they get put in service in the next day or so they are disinfected and ready to go. And I think that's the last slide. Oh, thank you to all of our Metro frontline heroes. Okay, so finally, I'd like to just go on with a couple of legislative updates. As you all no doubt saw the governor released the May revise of the budget for the 2021. We're still digesting that, but clearly the one number that sticks out is a projection in the coming year of a negative 27.2% decline in sales tax revenues. That is huge. Not surprised by it, but that is huge. Now, how we interpret that we'll see in the days to come. I mean, certainly a straight line approaches every month for the next year is down 27.2. It could be any combination of numbers you could have for the first few months, 50, 60% declines, and then decreasing to five or 10% by the end of the year with an overall average of 27.2 by the end of the year. There's different ways that will manifest itself. And we won't really know that until we start seeing actual data come in. And I know this is no new message for those of you at cities and at the county. You're hearing the same exact saying, we're trying to determine based on very limited information how to make projections into the next year. And I think we're all of the same frame of mind that you can't look back in history and grab some piece of history and apply it to the situation. We've all looked at the great recession following the 2008 crash. There are things we can learn there, but we don't think you can apply that model to what's going on right now. And then if you're following unemployment, it continues to escalate, which is concerning. So big, big predictions, at least for now, we would certainly expect the state to continue to modify that. They've even communicated the message that we can expect that there'll be additional revise as those numbers start coming in. On the federal level, APTA, our American Public Transportation Organization that we belong to, put together a proposal that they sent to Congress last week for a second round of cares. We'll just characterize it as CARES Act two for now. I will tell you that I actually oppose that particular proposal because it is a proposal that panders very heavily to New York and their demands for $4 billion and also other very large transit agencies and it places smaller to mid-sized transit agencies in a position in which basically we compete in a much smaller pot, a 20% pot under their proposal for a significantly smaller amount of money. I just firmly believe that's the wrong way to go. I think Congress and the FTA got it right in round one, CARES Act one in which they took a bulk sum of money that they approved about $24 billion and they put it through the FTA 5307 and 5311 program and dealt it out to us in a formula fashion. I think that's the right approach. It's still based on reimbursement but through that approach, we know today upon enactment and signature by the president, we know today how much money we have to work with as we're planning forward. So the APTA proposal is heavily flawed in my opinion and it also changes that dynamic away from the 5307, 5311 formula program to a based on need program out in time. Here's the challenge. It's also structured proportionally. So under a proportional look, if New York puts in their need, their demand and they get 30% and we put in ours, we might get 30% of what we asked for but that happens after you've made the expenditures. In this case, it's difficult for us to gamble on that. We can't maintain a certain level of expenditures on a hope and a prayer that will get reimbursed some amount of money that's likely not gonna be anywhere near 100%. So if we go down that road and we get 50% of what we asked for, where does the other 50% come from? We're in a deficit situation. So it's a horrible proposal and then transition to the heroes proposal, which is presumably being adopted by Congress today, on our part of that, I realized there's money in there for cities and counties and I applaud that and for roads, but on our transit part of that proposal, it has the same types of flaws as the APTA proposal but goes even further in the negative direction by now isolating out 14 transit agency regions that have populations of three million or greater and they would get $11.7 billion of the total 15.7 billion proposed, but we're not even in as a small transit agency, we're not in that mix at all. We would be in a sub pot of about $4 billion that we could compete for and similar to what I described as the dilemma with the APTA challenge, we would be presented with the same dilemma in which we would have to gamble and hope that we could get some portion of that and make 100% expenditures hoping to get something less than 100% back again running a deficit situation. CARES Act got it right. Run it through the formula, let us know today what we can do to help cover our expenses going forward and we can keep the service at reasonable levels. We can keep our employment at reasonable levels because we have a known quantity. It's difficult to gamble on an unknown. Now, hopefully this will all change. The word is that the Heroes Act is the term is using publicly is dead on arrival at the Senate. The Senate has given some indication that they will not wanna talk about this till sometime in June. They will likely have to talk about it at some point in the near future. And the important thing about the Heroes Act is it becomes sort of a document that they could potentially work from as they remold what their proposal would be. And then ultimately the House and the Senate have to reconcile their two proposals. So there's a lot of process ahead and a lot of opportunity to try to get messages through that help them understand better what actions they may take, how they impact particularly small to mid-sized transit agencies. So I'll try to keep you informed on that as we go forward. And let me just double check on Mr. Chair. I think that concludes my CEO comments, it does. Let me ask if there are questions. I'll start with one. Have we got our 20 million yet? So that's somewhat tongue in cheek, but. It's a good question. There are a number of constituencies out there who believe that the federal government sent us a $20 million check. And that it's not how it works. 5307, 5311 formula program is a reimbursement program. And under that guideline or under that program, the cares act program, we can go back to January 20 of this year. So we've put in place all of our paperwork that's required at the front end to be approved for those drawdowns. WandaMu has done a fantastic job in keeping up on that, both on the 5307 and the 5311 side. And we've already put in for our first partial reimbursement under the 5311. And we've done, we're finishing up on the process for the 5307, which is the bigger chunk of money. And what'll happen is we'll end up drawing it down likely in, for example, monthly tranches. So we should, based on our expenditure rate, we think sometime around July or August we'll have those dollars drawn down. Now there's another much more complicated part of this equation that we'll start talking to the finance committee about at their next committee in June, and then ultimately the full board into your full board meeting on how the mechanics of this work against the other revenues that flow into this agency. So we'll be talking in finance soon about that, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Are there other board members with comments on? Yes, John Leopold. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for the presentation, Alex. First of all, I just really appreciate seeing the pictures of what's going on every day. I think that's important also for the public to see. I'm glad KSPW did the story and the Paronian did the story about the extra efforts that the Metro is using to help ensure safety on our buses. And it's good to see the ingenuity about figuring out ways to help protect our drivers too. With regards to the funding, in some ways it's not surprising and in some ways it is surprising. It's not surprising about forgetting about smaller systems. We know that when the first CARES acts passed local government assistant was for only those with 500,000 or more. And the number of jurisdictions that actually qualify for that with less than a hundred nationwide. And so we're hoping in another round, whatever the bill is called that there's local government support for everybody else in the country. And we're all fighting for that. What I'm surprised about is APTA and the role that they're playing because they're supposed to, we've been faithful members of APTA for decades. I'm surprised that they have put forward a proposal which leaves out small systems like ours. Can you give me any insight about what's going on there? And it really makes me question during our time of need, if we can't count on that organization, why are we part of it? Yeah, I think that's great question, great observations. There is a little bit of history to this. A year or two ago, New York dropped out of APTA because they felt APTA wasn't representing them well. In other words, they weren't able to flex their big muscle as strongly as they thought they should be able to do. So they dropped out and APTA unfortunately fell all over themselves to do whatever they could do to try to pander to New York to get them back into the APTA program, which they did. They got them back in. And so now New York in particular, their representatives are taking advantage of that. And basically they've leveraged APTA by saying, hey, if you don't get this right for us, we need four billion in round one and we need four billion in round two. And if you don't get it right, we're gonna go it alone and we're big and we're strong and we can make things complicated. And you can imagine how difficult that would be to have a major city, a major state, a major transit property like that going it alone for such a significant chunk of money when APTA has a different agenda over here. So APTA combined theirs, well gave in to what New York wanted to do. And basically what New York has been able to do is to solicit some other large transit agencies to join them, though they're not going it alone. And leveraging that at APTA, I'm very disappointed. I'm still trying to fight that at APTA to make sure that my colleagues understand what I explained to you about the difference between knowing what you have today and spending against it versus a hope and a prayer and a future that you might get some partial reimbursement but yet you may still go into bankruptcy. It is disappointing. It is very disappointing. And Mr. Chair, as you know, and Mr. Leopold, as you know, we do the annual journey to Washington DC. We didn't this year out for COVID reasons, but we always go visit APTA. So please keep this in the forefront of your mind for the next time we go visit APTA and talk to their CEO. Yeah, I mean, it seems to me that it's also worthwhile to try to activate the coalition that helped pass the small transit systems funding portion years back. There are a lot of us that are small transit systems. There are obviously the big players in the big cities, but it seems to me that we need to be put together a coalition because there's a lot of members of Congress that represent those smaller systems than there is that represents the bigger systems. And I just think we have to fight to be able to get resources. Let me add that this is not really anything completely new. For years now we've had an issue with APTA about their sort of not just this recent thing with New York, but generally they're focused on the larger properties and larger cities. And that's why we now have both formal and informal relationships with other small districts already that we've been involved in. And Alex, I forget the name of the association we belong to that actually is a different group at APTA and often at odds with APTA on their recommendations to Congress. Yeah, you could describe that as sort of a splinter group that is the bus coalition. And we have a call on Monday and this will be a big part of that topic. I'm also running this discussion through CalAC which is the state organization representing the smaller agencies to see if I can get there by and to sort of rejecting the APTA side of this. Any other comments from board members about this item or other things Cynthia? Yeah, I actually raised my hand electronically but I don't know what works best. You weren't here when I said earlier that we're gonna, I'm not gonna use that, just raise your hand later. Oh, okay. Yeah, thank you. Well, starting at the top, thank you for the photos of all the COVID messaging on the buses. I'm assuming that you've shared those with the county health officer, but if not, I encourage you to do so. I think it's helpful for everyone to know how, quote, we are all in this together. And that's a great way to use those messages as well as the cleaning, but the messages are great. So I encourage you to share those and with our city jurisdictions as well. Good to know what everyone's working on. And on the APTA, again, probably stating the obvious, I assume we've been communicating with our local house members on that. And we have good relationships and I second John's comments about not being passive on this one. It's obviously still in flux. We are, just on that point. Let us know what we can do. And also, do you see a role for the California cities on this or other jurisdictions? Absolutely. And just on that point, Chris Gillio, our federal representative lobbyist and I have been communicating and he's getting those messages out. The sense that we both had right now is what is happening today is a juggernaut. You can't get in the way of it. We're just a small portion of a much, much bigger Christmas tree that has a whole bunch of ornaments hanging off of it. There's much more to happen in the coming days that we can try to influence. Just to get a sense of the scale of this, Alex had said this, maybe 100 agencies would be funded out of the proposal that's at least moving forward at this point. There are 50,000 cities in America. Yeah. Yeah, you've got 100 people get money and the remainder of the 50,000 get almost nothing or a trivial amount is really non-acceptable. Any other comments from board members? Are there any members of the public? And I'll pause here. They asked to check it out whether who were on comment on Alex's CEO report. So far, no hands, Mr. Chair. Okay. Next, Alex has a report specifically on COVID-19 and our response to that. Some of that was covered in his CEO's report, but he may have additional things he'd like to add. Here, Mr. Chair, this is a graphic that I put together, COVID fiscal crisis graphic, to try to somehow boil down a really super complex analysis and challenge yet ahead into something visually that tries to represent what we're faced with right now and what we think is coming down the road. This was presented to the finance committee and discussed, but what I wanted to do is to make sure that you understand sort of visually some of the challenges yet ahead as we plan. I mean, you could say, gee, it's a no-brainer. Tax is gonna drop dramatically and CARES Act money is only gonna go so far and we should start decreasing our operating costs now. Take dramatic efforts to reduce service and overall operating costs, including overhead. What I'm trying to show here is that, no, let's not take a reflex action like that. Let's breathe a little. The CARES Act money, thankfully, allows us the opportunity to breathe a little. It's not a fix to the economic problem. I won't use any more words than to say it's a bridge, all it is is a bridge and we don't know how big that bridge is yet, but as we look at our operation, we have to prepare for the summer bid, which we have done and we're in the final stages of completing and then soon thereafter, we start preparing for the fall bid and if we're gonna do dramatic things aside from sort of an emergency bid, like James has helped us out on twice now, we need to plan a little bit in advance. And as I discussed earlier, it's difficult to do anything just like at the cities in the county, it's difficult to do anything dramatic because we don't know what's gonna happen to our sales tax dollars. We are an agency much like a lot of other agencies that are heavily dependent on revenues that are dependent on the economy, the economy dependent revenues. Well, later this month, maybe as soon as next week, we might get a little glimmer when we get the sales tax dollars, sales tax calculations in for March. And remember, March will show sort of a partial impact of COVID because things really began to be shut down around mid-March. And then another 30 days later and 30 days thereafter, we'll get successive months of data. April data, which we won't get until almost the end of June starts to really give us some insight into what one month of COVID economic impact looks like. So we wanna get that information, track it, analyze it, trend it, study it and then match that against the drawdown of the CARES Act money. So what you see is for now, it looks like we're pretty secure in making our way through to the fall bid. Now that becomes an interesting challenge at that point because again, we have to sort of prepare for that in advance. And one of our significant funding sources are the two educational institutions, UCSC and Cabrillo. And all likelihood, we think at this point, although we don't have final analysis or announcements, all likelihood, at least we think in the fall, they will stay with online and not go back to in-person classes. So that's interesting because remember, they tend to be about 60% of our ridership. So, and then now factor in the 27.2% projected decrease in sales tax revenues, CARES Act money probably won't carry us through the end of the current fiscal year or through the current, through the end of the calendar year, not the fiscal year, calendar year. I mean, in this year alone, if the state projection is right, we could potentially draw down nearly $8.5 million of that 20 million just getting through June 30 of 2020. So that money begins to get used up very quickly. Now, what do we do? We don't wanna be at a fiscal cliff. We don't wanna be in a position like we were at back in 2014, 15, where you have to make very dramatic decisions quickly. So we have to be constantly looking forward so that we can plan for whatever's going to occur. If we're gonna run out of money before the end of the calendar year, if UCSC and Cabrillo aren't coming back until winter, maybe, that's a substantial amount of our service. If we, as we project out running out of money, start bringing our expenses in alignment with projected revenues, now we're gonna cut down on the number of expenses, the number of employees that we have providing that service. And then what happens in the winter, if they come back in session, you just can't ramp up and go back to the bank and say, let's pull in another 20 bus operators so we can provide the UCSC service. That just doesn't work that way. As a matter of fact, there's no guarantee that if we have to reduce the number of employees we have that they'll be available to us in the winter. And then if you have to ramp up the machine to go recruit, hire and train, that takes time. It doesn't, you don't just flip a switch and make that happen. So there's some real challenges we're engaged. I think John is meeting with Dan next week to have conversations with UCSC about, how we can work together in a partnership to try to ensure that we have the employees there to provide the service when they need the service to return. That period of uncertainty can move to the left, it can move to the right. This whole graphic is only a point in time. It is as of about April 30th and it could easily change one way or the other tomorrow based on new data coming in. So don't take the slide to the bank. It's just a representation to show you the very difficult challenges and decisions yet ahead and what the dependencies are. But let me note, as a faculty member at UCSC, we all received a request for proposals for online courses in the fall, $4,000 on top of your regular salary to design a new online course that would meet certain criteria like either a large class or allow people to graduate on time and so forth. The UCSC wouldn't be putting out 4,000 bucks a pop if they didn't think they were gonna be pretty much online in the fall already, even though they haven't made that as a formal decision yet. It's pretty likely that's where it's going, I think. We assume that to be the case, Mr. Chair. Any other comments or questions from board members about this? I am. The Cabrillo College trustee weigh in about what Cabrillo is thinking? Our CFO, Angela Aitken is working with them. Angela, when is your next meeting with them? Is the ball in their court, Cabrillo? Yeah, so Angela has communicated information to them. The ball's in their court. We're waiting for them to come back to us. Altish, you have to unmute yourself if you're gonna make a comment. Oh, I wasn't making a comment. I was just nodding. I will make a comment. I know that our team is working with Angela to make sure that we can both honor our contract and continue to provide the service that is being provided at cost at worst for us and the Metro. The decision to go online won't be made until after July 1. So the team is still working together to see what it looks like because there's a possibility we might have some hybrid courses. So anyway, they're working this out and they won't have an answer for us until after July 1. Thanks, Alden. Anyone else? Are there any members of the public who'd like to comment on this COVID-19 report? I'll wait a moment for people to check. So far, no hand up. You got a hand, Bill Henson. Bill, go ahead. You have to unmute yourself, Bill. When you first came on, Bill, you had yourself unmuted. Go ahead, Bill. You're on. You know, I want to get that email address again. I heard it in the recording earlier. By one of your representatives as a point of where I can start with the email correspondence. And plus, you know, I want to give a great support to everyone that's trying to work with Cabrillo and do the hybrid online courses. The, you know, because I know this is a strenuous time for them as well, because the metro depends on, you know, the students, the faculty as like writers. And please let me know if I'm going off topic. I want to just try to stay on point. And, you know, I feel like, you know, we could, I've been listening to everything you guys have all said, and it, you know, makes good sense of, you got to kind of not only, you know, structure everything accordingly to, do we have money coming in versus more money going out? And, you know, as a right now, everything's unsure. And, you know, I just commend like the Cabrillo, like people to, you know, give students some type of education during this time. And I commend everybody else for, you know, the drivers being on the front line. And, you know, if at any point after my initial correspondence, I would love to help the Metro just in some way innovate the, you know, innovate their services via, maybe we might have to be a little unorthodox at times within reason. And just how we get more creative and, you know, look forward and look ahead. Thanks, Bill. Gina, can you now say again what that email is for any member of the public who'd like to comment with us? It's difficult to communicate under these conditions. And so we want to make sure the public is aware that they can speak to us, at least through emails and get a response if they have concerns. Yeah, Mr. Chair, I'll go ahead and do that. Just for the general public's knowledge on page one of the agenda, you'll find that email address. It's in the blue underline. It's Board Inquiries at scmtd.com on page one of the agenda. If anybody needs to go back and get that. And then also on the website. And you can find that agenda on the website. And it's also on the website generally as well. And you'll also find it on page five of the agenda. So it's scattered throughout the agenda. Thank you. And I'll make sure that, I mean, the staff would do this as well, but I'll make sure that anybody that emails us definitely gets a response back to their concerns. Aurelio. Can we put it on chat for anybody that's online right now? Yeah, Gina's gonna add it. She's gonna add it to the chat. Mr. Chair, can I just double back to one other item? Sure, go ahead. Yeah, I just, I'm really trying to encourage a very transparent environment right now during these very difficult times. No surprises. It's very difficult for me to talk about reducing service, reducing expenses, potentially laying off furloughing people down the road. That is very difficult, but I want us to be transparent. I want us to talk about those things so that we have them in the forefront of our mind as we move forward. So my message really right now for our representatives at UCSC and Cabrillo is this, we may be looking in the next three, six months, maybe longer at a sort of non-traditional type of a contract. That is a type of a contract in which those institutions continue to provide resources to Metro in order for us to provide some limited level of service, actually less service than you're paying for, but protecting your ability to have that service in the future. So I just want to put that out there and ask you to start thinking about that as we enter into the negotiations. I highlighted the big problem, the big problem is this, if we scale down, it is not as easy as we would hope it would be to scale back up. We need to do everything possible to retain the employees that we have and provide that greater level of service when your two institutions are ready to return. Thanks, Alex. Walter has a comment. And I appreciate that. Thank you for the transparency. And I know that that's also a part of our desired outcome and our communications. Our hope is that we continue service and it may look like we're paying for what's being used. So it may be that the students who actually get a bus pass, that's what we pay. There is a lot of room to be creative and I believe those kinds of conversations are happening. I'm providing input on my side to say here is what the needs are and this is what our students are saying. And I know that the conversation is active and it is open. Thanks for that. Anything else? Okay, we've heard from the board and the public. We're then done with item number 13. That's not an action item. Got a report. Thank you, Alex, for your work and your clarity on what's going on. Item number 14 on our agenda is the basically recommended approval of Metro's fiscal year 21-22 draft operating budgets and fiscal year 21 capital budget along with the resolution setting of public hearing for June 26th. I'm not gonna steal all of Angela's thunder here but I do wanna say that we understand that this budget is basically a place-holding budget. We don't have enough information about our revenues and other issues to be able to do a budget. We have great confidence in but we can't make any claims for funding if we don't sort of keep moving ahead with this budget and approving it at the various levels. So Angela, you're on. Good morning. So instead of calling it a place-holding budget I wanna call it a pre-COVID budget because this is the budget that we would have put forward if COVID would not have happened. And so usually I go through all my slides and go through each thing that's going on but because it is pre-COVID and there's a lot of stuff in here that's gonna change dramatically but we do have to adopt a budget by June 30th. I would like to skip to slide nine which on the presentation is slide small numbers 58. Thank you. There we go. All right, so what I'm showing you here is we had the March budgets ready to go and then we did not have a March meeting so you guys saw this budget in April and then we've made some changes. I've listed three things there because of what we know is going on with the COVID service with UCSE. We had put a 2% escalator in there and we had taken that out and that would have been $90,000 on the revenue side. We also got a new number from RTC which brought down our TDA LTF funds by $539,000. So we incorporated that into these main numbers. And then on the good side we did get a lease contract with Netflix was supposed to be $2,000 a month but they're not running either. So we put it in there just so in case things do start coming back starting July 1st we do have that in the budget. Move on to the next slide. Next slide is the operating expenses. So the only change on the operating expenses we've decided to lease 14 buses and there are 14 CNG buses. What we can do is give them capital money to lease on the principal side of that lease but the interest on that lease has to be on the operating side. So that's what the $136,000 and $150,000 increases from the March budget to the May budget. And then the next slide, there we go. This is, we got an increase in SGR money. And so what this slide is showing you is the budget has or the board has to commit it to a $3 million always going into the capital budget to sustain our buying of the buses and the fleet. And to do that, we use different pots of money. And so we got an increase in our SGR money allocation. What does SGR stand for? Yeah. Sorry. Sorry, I was focused on something else. State of good repair money. The allocations for state of good repair money was increased. And so we were able to use less of our quote unquote own money to make that transfer $3 million happen. So that's why it's positive $769,000 and $887,000 going into 21. So then the next slide I wanna jump to is, find the number. Number 65, please. There we go. So this is our little bucket slide. And this is actually changed. So we put this together for May. I'll talk about a couple of changes that we're gonna have going into the June budget. But the middle bucket there, we are actually gonna bring that back up to the target at 7.5. So we will have that in there in June. In May 8th, it was a different story as this stuff changes almost every day. And then on the operating capital reserve side, we are gonna have some money left in there yet I just don't know what it is. So this was our snapshot on May 8th. But this snapshot of these reserves, our guesstimate or our crystal ball for June 30th, will be a little bit different and actually more positive when we get down to putting forward the June budget in a month. So let's go to the next slide going on to the operating risk and budgets, budget risk that we have going on. This is always something that we have, but we actually added a few things in here that are COVID related as well as service related. So as most of you know, we went to zero fix route and peer transit fare starting in April, 2020. So no more passenger fare revenue until the immediate future right now. Special transit fares, we've reduced our trips almost down to 98% the ridership in April, 2020. UCSC Cabrillo and the city of Santa Cruz, those contracts are either being eliminated or severely cut on the sales tax side. This is very much a big swag. Right now I'm saying 50 to 80% reduced sales tax receipts. I know the state came out and said a 27% reduction on their side of sales tax from a state level, but we do have a little bit more fluid money that comes through here. And my guesstimate right now is a 50 to 80% reduction in that sales tax. May 22nd, I believe, is when we're gonna get our first sales tax number that will reflect the whole month of March and the kind of sales tax that we did receive versus what we were expecting us to receive. So that's gonna give us a pretty good indication of what probably happened in April and probably happened in May since everything pretty much shut down starting in March. Let's see what else. The federal FTA and alternative fuel tax, those are things that we always have out there as a risk. Next page on the expenses. Oops, one more. Light 68, thank you, Gina. There we go. Okay, so on the expense side, the top part of this are the normal things that we have out there, engine failures, fuel costs, workers' comp insurance, things like that, but the ones that we've added are towards the bottom starting with changes in unfunded mandates. So we were very fortunate in getting that CARES Act. There was a significant amount of money that we will be receiving. We haven't received it yet, as Alex told you, it's reimbursable. So the $20 million will help us tremendously to get through the next few months. But we have some overtime that we are incurring that we would not have been incurring because of the COVID crisis and the response that we've had to that. We also have expenses that we're incurring above and beyond that 20 million that were received on the CARES Act. So we have to think about those costs. And then I'm gonna read this one. Delay and cutting expenses to new revenue reality, including the CARES Act's 20 million. And what I mean by that is we are trying to be very, very cautious about the costs that we cut because Alex said numerous times, if we start cutting service and then we have to bring that service back, it's not going to come back quickly. It's gonna take months for us to bring that service back. So we wanna be very cautious about what expenses we cut in anticipation of what we think the revenues are gonna be to cover those expenses. And then the biggest one is more government mandates for employee paid leaves that are not reimbursable. Right now you have some of those leaves and some of the new leaves that are reimbursable through the CARES Act and some other reimbursement means. But there may be some mandates that come out from either local state or federal government that mandate us to do something and there's no money to cover it. So we would have to find a way within our budget to cover those additional expenses. So the next one, Jean. Gina says- Angela, can I interrupt at this point just to ask, do we know anything about those three bills that were going through the state legislature that were promising to like, it doesn't matter, it's in the short term because we're not charging fares anyway, but that we're gonna basically, free rides for college students and other of those kinds of issues. I think they've been delayed. They've been going on. I think the next year is what Alex said, all three of them. So nothing to help us right now. Okay, thank you. Can I ask one other question here? Bruce, you said the next day, you'll have a sales tax realistic, well receipts on that on June 22nd. Will you have that updated and ready for us on our June 26th meeting? Can we get a better realistic view of what's going on? So May 22nd, next week, I will have actual sales tax numbers for the month of March. And then in June, I'm crossing my fingers before our June 26th meeting, I think it is, I will have actual numbers for April. But we will start, when we get those numbers in March, I think that's gonna be a pretty good indication of what we would expect to see in April and May because not a whole lot has changed between when everything's shut down around here in March and what is continuing to happen. So May 22nd, June 20th, something is when I think those things are gonna be coming through. That answer your question? You'd ask whether by the 26th, you would have time to process that in order to give us a report. Verbally, but Gina needs her reports a week before. So not into writing, but I can verbally tell you what's gonna be going on with the sales tax actuals that we received for the month of March and April. Thank you, that's fine. And that'd be wonderful. All right. Back to your report, sorry, I interrupted you. No problem. Let's move on to slide number 76, please. So this is our capital budget. As most of you know, we do a one-year capital budget. We do a two-year operating budget. This capital budget is a little different than prior years. It has absolutely no brand new capital projects. What this money is is projects that we've either already started or we haven't finished in the current fiscal year and we're moving that money forward into fiscal year 21. And so this is the projected revenues, right? Yes. Yes, this is the revenues. And the next slide is what we'll be buying. So revenue, van purchases, replacement campaigns, instructions, IT projects, facility upgrades. Those are kind of our big guys. Onto the next slide. Whoops, one back. Oh, we're missing it. I don't know. Okay, well, I guess I'll just talk to it. So in your package, you'll have another slide and it says slide number 78 is the budget timeline. And what it will tell you is that we started this back in February. We were supposed to go to the board in March. We actually went in April. And then we're going to you in May. This is what we would call the draft budget. Usually this time of year, we're ready to go. There's not a whole lot of changes that we would encourage on going forward into the June budget. But this year, as we all know, it's very different. So that's why I'm calling this the pre-COVID budget. A lot of things are going to change between now and as we get into July and August of this year. But we do have to have a board adoptive budget by June 30th. And so that's the purpose of this budget. The changes going forward into the June budget and month from now, when we present the final budget, though, I would need you to adopt for June 30th. We have a couple of FTEs that we're going to be finalizing. We had some ideas of which ones there, but now we have the final numbers. The two contracts that you approved today will be putting those operating numbers into the budget too. So any questions? Very questions. I don't see any hands. All right, thank you very much. Any members of the public with a question? John Leopold has a question. John, go ahead. Angela, thanks for the presentation. I know this is a very difficult time to try to figure out, to forecast effectively, as Alec pointed out in his earlier piece. I'm trying to figure out, I'm glad that we did the hard work in terms of refilling our reserves and all those buckets. So seeing the slide that we're gonna be fully funded in those buckets is a good thing. But obviously, as we've seen, I know at the county, we're taking a look at this, and when we saw the state-made budget revise, they looked about using those reserves over a period of time. Have you started thinking about that? And what are your thoughts? Thinking in my head, nothing I'm ready to share. We have a lot of strategizing to do. There's a lot of big unknowns. The sales tax number is the biggest one I'm waiting on. I mean, if that thing comes through at say the 27% that the governor thinks, then we'd be in pretty good shape. We can figure things out. But if it comes in at the 50 to 80% that I'm envisioning, which I really hope I'm wrong, we got a lot of things that we're gonna have to have some hard decisions on. And I can't stand here and tell you, it's gonna be in a certain area. It's gonna be in a certain department. It's gonna be a lot of different areas with a lot of different conversations. Yeah, I know at the county, we got a presentation just this past Tuesday. Looking out at our next budget and the estimate that we were using just as the placeholder, because there's so much unknown, is a 45% decrease in TOT and an annual 25% decrease in sales tax, if I remember correctly. Supervisor McPherson could correct me if I'm remembering that incorrectly. But even that is devastating to the county budget. So if you're right and it's closer to 50 or 80%, that would be catastrophic. Yeah. See, we have a lot more revenues. I mean, sales tax obviously is our biggest revenue, but we have multiple revenues that are sales tax-based or even diesel sales tax-based. So because- No, and then that's the same way for the county. There's a whole bunch of public safety, health and human services, realignment dollars that are all connected to the sales tax figures. Right. And then you add on top of that the contracts that we have with UCSC Cabrillo. I mean, those are big money for us. And so having that service not being provided and we can only charge for service provided. I think the example I use the other day is we had $300,000 or $325,000 a month is what we should be receiving with all the service that we have been providing. And I believe it was April where we went down to about 1,100 trips. And so that went from $325,000 a month to a little over 100,000 a month. That's a lot of money in one month. And if that even goes down more, it got to include it all. That's where my 50 to 80 comes from. Yeah. Well, good luck keeping all your hair, pulling it all out. No, a couple of things. So Ian, you might have to let all the attendees in like you did at the start of the meeting because I'm showing zero on the attendees side. James put his hand up and James has his hand up. He's back online. Yeah, I'm gonna get to him. I was just about to say, sorry, let me, this should be there now. And I had my hand up too. You're back. So I started with, Aurelio had his hand up. He was number one. And then Cynthia and then we'll get to James. I always wants to speak. Aurelio, did you still have a comment? No, no, go ahead. Let me add before we go further. This budget was recommended by the finance committee unanimously. And so that's the item before us. I'm taking any other comments from board members. And so next, who was it that wanted to speak? Matthews. Cynthia, go ahead. Yeah, I appreciate that it's pre COVID subject to enormous change. And Angela, you mentioned you're going to be getting some figures. I don't know how the others feel but I would appreciate even some just updates. I don't even have to be a formal reporter or anything but as you're getting this information, it would just be help us wrap our heads around all this. Alex and I will coordinate getting information out to you. Because I know you'll send some stuff to finance, et cetera. But just, I think we all want to be as much in the loop. You're not a burden on you guys but occasionally it would be helpful. Yeah, I think Alex and I will coordinate as soon as we find something out, he'll probably contact you, whatever process he uses, the project, whatever, yeah. Thank you. And then at the board meetings, if there's something above and beyond them, what's in the budget, we'll probably just do some kind of oral presentation. As Dr. McPherson said that you wanted some information about the May 22nd and June number. Yeah, exactly. That's kind of what I'm thinking. Yeah, we'll just talk to it. Any other member of the board with a comment? Mike, can you hear me now? Yes, I can. Okay, I don't know what happened. Yeah, I thought you guys. Our host apparently got scared with automatically went to another meeting and left us in the dark, but we're back. Okay, we had some retirements and I really liked the promotions and so forth. But if somebody leaves now, and I understand the difficulty in getting somebody, getting the position filled if we lay off somebody, but if somebody leaves at this point, are we leaving that position vacant or are we initiating, hiring as usual? That's the question. So Bruce, focusing right now, well, we're analyzing current vacancies across the board to answer that exact question. On the bus operator's side right now, any vacancies are being held vacant. We're not planning to run a new class anytime in the near future until this dust settles out a little bit. I think it's fair to say the district for the reasons Alex laid out, but in general, doing our best to not lay people off or we can avoid it. But we may come to that point, I think as he said in full transparency and James and I have spoken about this, no question that things may be going there, but we'll do our best to be sensitive to the needs of our employees and not capriciously be precipitously laying people off when it's not a good decision. So James, you're now on, if you'd like to make a comment. Did he get back on the call? James, if you can hear me, you can start whenever you're ready. Get your spacebar. You're still muted, James. Have to hold the spacebar. Can we unmute him on our side? No, he has to unmute himself. There you go. James, go ahead. There we go. A little louder, please. Okay. I thought you guys booted me because I raised my hand. I'm glad everybody else back there. Please get closer to him. James, get closer to your mic. It's hard to hear you. First, I wanted to say great presentation, Angela, and also thank you for answering most of our questions before presenting it to the board. I'm curious to see if you guys got that, or you got that final number on how much the operator saved by restructuring our bid. Not yet. Christine is still crunching that. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Yes, as people are, I think, aware, we've saved a great deal of money in overtime because this is for the public that are unaware, but I think most board members know this, but we're on an AB shift where people work for two weeks on and call basically at home for the next two weeks. And when people are on call, we call them up to come and fill in when we need folks. And so we don't have as much demand for overtime as we, there's a little bit left, but very little left. And thanks to the drivers for that situation because that's a source of income for drivers. They are a lot of them dependent upon the overtime and they're basically not getting any of that now. So they're being hit by that in no way as individual drivers. Go ahead, James, any other comments? No, that was it. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Any other members of the public with a comment for us? No more hands. All right, thank you very much. We are on now on to, we need to approve this budget. And so I'm looking for a motion. Wait, Mike, we need a motion on this to start the public hearing and everything. That's what I just said. I'll move the item. This is done by Donna Myers motion. Seconded by Aurelio. You get that? Okay, any other comments? Any other comments from members of the public? Then we'll have a roll call vote, please. Dr. Botsworth? Aye. Dr. Kaufman-Germans? Aye. Dr. Gonzalez? Aye. Dr. Leopold? Aye. Dr. Linz? Aye. Dr. Matthews? Aye. Dr. McPherson? Aye. Dr, excuse me, Dr. Myers? Aye. Dr. Pagler? Aye. Dr. Rothwell? You're muted, Dan. Sorry. Aye. Dr. Rotkin? Aye. Enanimous. Carries unanimously. Okay, we are now on to item number 15. This is a demonstration of the Metro's new mobile ticking application for Highway 17 service. And Ginger Dicar is, there's both a misspelling of her last name. There's no R after the D. And she works for the Regional Transportation Commission, not the City of Santa Cruz, which was an area in our... Mr. Chair, let's see, are we on, we're on item 15, I believe. Ginger would be on item 16. So we're on item 15. And John Irgo, our new planning director, will introduce that item. You're right, I jumped ahead, I'm sorry. That's all right. John, are you coming on? I don't see him here. I don't see a microphone listed for him. Is he in your office or at home? Or where is he? We're gonna find out right now. One of the challenging things with Zoom while we're waiting is I had a landscaper coming around, not realizing I was on the deck. So I moved quickly out of the way and then we lost the Zooms. I thought that was to me. We all dropped off. We all thought it was something we did, but it was a system problem. I realized it, but it was funny when you see a landscaper with a big blower and a mask and you're standing here on the deck going, okay. Something new with Zoom. Good morning, directors. John Irgo, planning and development director. Luckily I didn't have to travel far to get here. This is an informational item, an update on our mobile ticketing pilots. For some of you who may remember, the board issued the release of a request for proposals last spring. We awarded to Masabi in the summer and the original plan was to launch in March of this year. Obviously that was disrupted by COVID-19. And we are now looking at launching in the summer or fall depending on the resumption of fare collection. This whole crisis has also emphasized the importance of contactless payment in our system. And I'm gonna turn it over to Pete Rasmussen who is a transportation planner here and the project manager for this and he's gonna go through the demonstration. So do we have his presentation? Okay, he's here. Pete, raise your hand and they will open your mic. Yeah, he should be. Yeah, Pete, he's on. Pete, I think you're on, go. Okay, I don't see the presentation. Okay. There it is, Pete. All right, good morning chairman and board members. My name's Pete Rasmussen. I'm a transportation planner for Metro. I've been asked to do a mobile ticketing overview and demonstration. As John said, we were tantalizingly close to launching in March when the coronavirus hit and we suspended fares. But I'd like to give you a view of what's to come at some point later this year. Next slide please. Actually, there we go. So let me start with some background. Metro's current fare equipment was installed eight, installed eight to nine years ago and it is showing its age. From Metro's perspective, there have been issues with reliability of ticket vending machines and other equipment. From a customer perspective, customers want convenience but unfortunately our fare options are not convenient. A customer that wants a 31 day pass has to go to a transit center or has to wait for a pass to come in the mail. These days people are used to making purchases online. Customers wanna be able to add value to their cruise passes online too but that capability isn't available. In 2018, we explored a full fare system replacement but it was out of reach in terms of cost. We decided to scale back to a limited pilot with mobile ticketing on Highway 17 Express. Mobile ticketing was the right fit because it can be added on without having to rip out any existing equipment. It also has the benefit of bringing the ability to purchase a ticket anywhere that the customer has their phone and an internet connection. Highway 17 Express is a good fit for the pilot because the ridership includes a lot of college students and Silicon Valley commuters, both groups which are avid smartphone users. As John mentioned, an RFP was issued and Masabi was selected as the vendor. Masabi calls their product fare collection as a service because instead of a large upfront capital cost, the payment is a monthly fee and percentage of fare revenue collected. They also make it possible to start with the simplest product, mobile ticketing, and then progressively add more features in a phased approach. Next slide, please. A lot of customers have told us through emails and surveys that they don't typically carry cash. They pay for everything they can with their credit or debit card. And it's hard to get more convenient than being able to purchase and carry your pass on your phone as most of us carry it with us wherever we go. For Metro, a significant benefit is expected to be faster boarding time on the Highway 17 Express as it takes time to feed in $7 in bills or even change. And for riders that purchase a 15-rider, 31-day pass every month, it's especially convenient as frequently purchased passes are stored for a quick repurchase in just a few quick taps. Next slide. So this next slide shows an example of one of our marketing posters that will be used to promote the product once we're closer to launch. We're calling it the Metro Splash Pass to give it some local character. And this poster highlights the ability to purchase a ticket anywhere, anytime, and that the app is available for both iPhones and Android phones. Next, I'll show you the app itself. Next slide. This shows the Splash or Welcome screen that pops up briefly when you first open the app, showing the Metro logo and the Just Ride logo. Just Ride is Masabi's brand name for the product. Next slide. This is the home screen like the homepage of a website. The By Passes button, as the name suggests, is where you would click to purchase a ticket. My Passes is your ticket wallet that stores tickets that you've already purchased ready to be activated later. And in that gold color, you'll see top tickets. That's where if you always have a certain type of pass, that will show up in the top tickets area for greater convenience. Trip Tools takes you to another screen that links to online schedules, Google Trip Planner, and other info such as the Metro Writers Guide and Bike Policy. The Help button takes you, as you would guess, to customer service and FAQ and terms and conditions. Next, I'll walk you through a purchase. Next slide. Select Fair Type. From the home screen, you would click By Passes and that would take you to this Select a Fair Type screen. From here, you would either select Full Fair or Discount Fair depending on whether you're an eligible customer for discount. Next slide. On this screen, you'll see that all of the Highway 17 fares are available. You can select a one-ride fare or day pass if you're an occasional rider or for more frequent riders, you might opt for a 15-rider, 31-day pass. You'll see on the right, it says Multiple. You have the option to purchase more than one ticket at a time so a person could purchase for themselves and a spouse or a child or a friend. So you would click on one of the Fair Types and then go on to the next screen. Next slide. In the interest of time, I did skip ahead a couple of screens to the confirmation page, bypassing the billing info, but I assure you that it's a quite simple and quick process, but I wanted to move on to the activation part of the process. Next slide. Once you've got your ticket in the ticket wallet or once you purchase the pass, it's in this ticket wallet. You can purchase in advance so that it's ready to go once you head out to the bus stop. A key feature from our vendor is that you can purchase the ticket when you're at home or wherever else you have internet access, and then the activation, which needs to occur just before boarding, can be done offline in case you're boarding in an area with poor cell phone coverage. From the ticket wallet, you select the ticket and then it will prompt you to activate that ticket. Next slide. And that activation screen is shown here. You would click on the green bar. It actually brings up another screen that asks if you're sure, like you want to activate, then you proceed and it generates your ticket. Next slide. Excuse me. And that ticket is shown here. This is just a picture, not a live demo, so I can't show you, but the ticket actually has a number of animated features. And no, I'm not talking about Toy Story or Frozen or Cars. There are elements of the screen that are dynamic. That 11.19 a.m. time that you see there would continuously update and it would scroll back and forth from the left to the right. The tri-colored bar behind that switches colors at various times through the day. And that square QR code that you see above the ticket is also dynamic. These are all security measures designed to make it difficult to fake a ticket. I should add here that there's more than one way to enforce the validity of a ticket. The most common way is for operators to visually verify. That's the method used by most of the over 100 transit properties that have mobile ticketing. It's the easiest to start with since it doesn't require any installation of hardware. It does, however, place more burden on the operator to know how to properly identify a ticket. And significantly in this age of the coronavirus, it also means that customers have to step up close enough for the operator to see the screen. Next slide. The other way to validate it, actually back one. There you go, thank you. The other way to validate a ticket is by using an electronic validator. For those of you that have used Clipper in the Bay Area or fare systems in other major cities, it's common to see these standalone validators apart from the fare box and they generally look somewhat like this. With the electronic validator, the customer would put their phone up close to the middle section and it would read the QR code similar to a boarding pass at the airport with both the visual and audio confirmation. If you look at the bottom of this picture, you'll see what looks like a credit card with a symbol on it. That lower section has the capability to read multiple types of cards. One of those is smart cards, which would be plastic cards like our current cruise cards, but unlike our cruise cards, these could be reloaded online. There are also some other interesting capabilities of this validator. Next slide. So next I'd like to talk about future capabilities. These may not be in place right away, but I wanted to give a preview. In addition to the transit-specific cards such as cruise passes or Clipper, these validators also have the capability to read what's referred to as contactless EMV. If you've received a new credit card recently, there's a good chance it is a contactless card. They're the ones that you can simply put up close to the credit card reader rather than inserting the chip or swiping. It's still new in the US, but it's been very common in Europe for years, and it's a very popular way to pay for transit there. You don't need to carry exact change. You don't need to purchase a pass in advance, and you don't even need to download an app. Apple Pay and Google Pay are also feature options. Just tap the phone to pay. And then there's the UCSC One card. Sorry about that, my phone. UCSC One card. UCSC has been asking for years whether we could combine the UCSC student ID or staff ID with a metro card that can be tapped so that the operator doesn't have to push a button for every boarding. And when someone leaves the university, their pass can be switched off. It will take some time to iron out the details, but I can say that other Masabi customers have already deployed this, combining a student ID and transit into a one card. Next slide. Now, some of you may be thinking, this sounds great, but what if someone doesn't have a credit or debit card? That's a good question or tends to pay with cash. There are a few options to address that. Someone can use cash to purchase a prepaid debit card. They're available at most supermarkets and drugstores. Some employers offer payroll in the form of a debit card account and disability insurance from the state is paid that way. Masabi is also working on a retail network option in which a customer could purchase a transit card directly from a gift card rack at, say, Safeway or CVS and pay with cash at the check stand. Next slide. So with this new system, if all goes well with the vendor, there are capabilities that don't exist with our current fare collection that allow for some potential adjustments to fare policy that might be worth considering. Some of you may recall that transit agencies used to offer free transfers with a paper slip given to the rider. For the most part, that's been abandoned in part due to a lot of fraud with those transfer slips. With this new system, customers would use phones or reusable cards rather than the disposable paper slips so it's less likely to happen. The system keeps track of when a fare is activated so a transfer can be allowed within a set amount of time. One fare policy that many transit properties have begun to adopt is fare capping, also known as best fares. It is designed so the transit rider who does not wanna commit to the entire amount of a 31 day pass can pay as they go by purchasing single fares each trip. Generally, after a certain number of rides in a day, generally two or three, it becomes a day pass and additional rides are not charged. After a certain number of uses in a month, any remaining rides are not charged, it converts to a 31 day or monthly pass. It is viewed as a customer friendly fare policy because it simplifies fares and doesn't require a large upfront purchase to get multi ride discounts. These changes would not only require having this new fare system across the fixed route system but would also require a change to the metro fare policy should the board choose to go that direction. Next slide. I ask a question before you move on. Sure. Isn't the purpose of having a discount for buying a monthly pass or a 31 day pass that we get the money upfront and therefore it's worth it to us to give you a discount? Why should someone be rewarded who buys daily passes when they get to this other level? All we're doing is cutting our revenues. What am I missing? I mean, the benefit for the customer, I get that, but it comes at the expense of our bottom line and our ability to provide service to the public. That's a question for finance. I think usually it's more of kind of a loyalty discount rather than trying to increase our revenue by getting money upfront and being able to put it directly into the bank. John or Alex, do you have anything to add to that? We don't need to resolve that now. I just think that's our consideration because we're not about to implement this, but when we get back to it, I think it'd be an important question. And Mike, just real quick on that point, Mike, can you hear me? Yes, I hear you fine. Yeah. One of the reasons why you implement a best fairs type of program is that you do have a constituency that I'll just call the poorest of the poor and their paychecks, their income come in over the course of the month. They don't have the financial wherewithal to buy the product that's best for them, which is the monthly pass because it takes such a large outlay of money at the beginning of the month to buy that product. They don't have that money. And so what best fairs does is it allows them to have the net same effect because as they ride our system over the course of the month, they start working their way up towards qualifying for that, say that 31-day pass, and then they get the benefit of the 31-day pass without having to fork over the money at the beginning of the month. Do people have to declare their interest in the 31-day pass before they get part of that, or is it just anybody who eventually gets a certain number of daily passes gets one of these 31-day benefits? No, this is John. It would be automatic as they go through the month. Thank you. You can go on with the report. Thank you. Okay. Next slide, please. So finally, the roadmap for implementation. This summer, SAC will bring to the board a codified tariff which will incorporate a lot of disparate changes to the fair policy that have occurred over time and will incorporate language for mobile ticketing. Once fair collection is eventually resumed, there's the option for a soft launch of mobile ticketing this summer using visual validation, which I explained earlier. However, staff's recommended route is to go straight to electronic validation because of its many benefits. There may be a hardware cost of up to $40,000 for the 20 bus Highway 17 fleet. The Metro is also pursuing a potential partnership that would cover some of that cost. Going the validator route directly would take longer to start. So that would be a fall launch, but it would provide an opportunity to evaluate right away, whether this is the fair system that will meet our needs for the longer term. Looking into 2021, if all goes well with the Highway 17 pilot, then we would expand to the full local fixed route fleet. Thank you for your time and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. That was a very clear and interesting report. Any questions from board members or comments? I can see Larry with a hand up. Yeah, Pete, if you're still there, my question would be have you had a chance to review the JustBride app with our disabled community? Any introduction of new technology has to address certain issues of accessibility. And I just wonder if you've had an opportunity to do that review yet? I have not yet, but I have asked them about like an audio version for someone who's visually impaired, and that does exist. But I would take note to reach out to that community. Great, thank you. Trina had a question. You're still muted, Trina. Off. My question was, is there a possibility to do the auto pay every month if we've got regular users and they've set it up to do it electronically? I believe so, but I would have to check to confirm that. Generally, things are pretty automated with this system, but I'm not 100% certain. Maybe you could get back to her if you looked that up and figure it out. John Leopold. Thanks for the presentation. I know this is something that people sort of expect that we have that they will use. And I'm wondering with, it would be great during this time where we don't have a lot of service to see if we could expedite some of these pieces. So when people are coming back to our service that we have these tools in place, waiting till spring 2021 seems like a long time. And I'm wondering if there's anything we could do to speed that up. So thinking around the first of the year or sometime sooner was people are returning to our system that this tool is already available. Well, the original schedule for the Highway 17 pilot was to do that for 12 months using visual validation and then consider the electronic validators and expanding to the full system. So actually what we're looking at now is already to accelerate it. But of course, depending on if things are going great then I see no reason not to accelerate it. I agree with you that the sooner that we can roll this out and provide these new benefits would be better. Rolling it out to the full system with validators, of course that doesn't involve installation of hardware and that can be a bit more time consuming. Yeah, I'm just thinking that for the next couple of months we may have less buses on the road. And can we take advantage of that time by not having all of our fleet out every day to install that hardware and make that work so we can move this forward? That would depend on whether we find out that it can be done, the installation can be done in-house. I understand that there's part of the delay on our AVL implementation and the eventual real-time app is that the installation of that product was handled by an outside vendor and that had to be put on hold due to the shelter in place and not bringing in outside people other than Metro employees. So that may play into that. But if things are loosened and we're able to bring in people that is something definitely to explore. Yeah, I mean, that was my next question is about AVL. I mean, wouldn't it be great by the first of the year we'd say you can pay with your phone and you'll be able to use your phone to know where the bus is. I think as we move people, as people are more engaged, hopefully there's a lot less restrictions by January one that we have this new tool. And I think we're gonna have to work to get people to come back to mass transit because there's gonna be a lot of concerns and any tool that we can use to make that easier will help us in that transition. So if we can take advantage of that time, that's what I wanna encourage as much as possible. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for that comment. And by the way, you reminded me of something that I forgot to mention and that's that with Masabi, they have a way to integrate with the transit app, which is a very popular transit app used worldwide, a variety of different transit systems. In Las Vegas and Denver, you can pull up that transit app, look up your bus schedule, plan your trip and then directly click one button and it takes you to the mobile ticketing app. So you don't even need to go to a separate app to purchase your fare. That's a very nifty feature that I'm excited about. But let me just add, as somebody who used Highway 17, a great deal in the last couple of years, you have no idea how critically important this is. It's sometimes take 10 or 15 minutes to load a bus at your end station. As people get on the bus, I was carrying like $40 in ones because people needed, I get on and say, no, I don't have change and there'd be these arguments with the bus driver. I don't wanna give you my $10 bill, I don't have a $20 bill. I need change. Or people say like, I didn't know it was gonna have to pay cash for this. I don't know what to do and we'd stand there to be these arguments and lines of people and stuff and people trying to see if they could borrow money and so forth. So this is something we need to put in place as quickly as we can. At least the idea that people don't need to bring $7 in exact change. It was a terrible situation. It may deride 15 minutes longer. I mean, by the time of it a long day over the hill, you're definitely ready to come home and you don't wanna be sitting there waiting for people to find their money. Not all in. You used to think about it. And just echoing what's been said, even though there's some expense in the long run, I think it's going to particularly now. It would anyway, but particularly now pay for itself. Any other comments or questions? Thanks for that report. It sounds like something really positive. Alex had a comment. Gina has a comment. Actually, director Kaufman Gomez has a question. Would there be an auto pay option for the regular users? Yeah, that question came up earlier and I'm gonna have to look into that and get back to the board. Okay, great. So I think we're done with item number 15. We're now on to item 16. And this is again, the- Mike, did you wanna go to the public? I'm sorry, yeah, I should have asked for it. Any members of the public wanna comment on this new app situation that we're developing? Thanks for that reminder. Doesn't look like we have anybody. What on? James. James, do you have a comment? You have to unmute yourself, James. There you go. All right, I just wanted to mention that we have a great opportunity here with this mobile taking app with the public becoming more tech savvy with all the Zoom meetings and them being more conscious about viruses and germs, maybe with cash that we capitalize by trying to expedite this mobile ticketing to promote it as an alternative, safer alternative than cash. So as bus operators, we totally support this. Great, thanks, James. Anyone else? Okay, now we're at item number 16. It's an update on the transit corridor alternatives. Let me just introduce this briefly by saying there's planning going on to determine what would be the best mode of transit to operate on the public transit along the rail corridor that runs the 32 miles through the county. And it's a joint project at this point of the transit district and the Regional Transportation Commission. We have overlap in members. And we're going through various phases of this and the first phase now is to try to select out of a large number, I think it's 16 or 17 possible, even maybe more options to reduce this to a smaller number to have serious consideration and serious quantitative study of which would be the best mode for us to carry out. I'm gonna turn this over to our planning director and let's take it from here. Thank you, Director John Ergo again, Planning and Development Director. That's pretty much the introduction I was gonna give to this item. Sorry. That's perfect. Metro staff has been working with RTC on this transit corridor alternatives analysis and we've invited Ginger Dicar, Senior Transportation Planner with RTC to give an update on milestone two, which as you said is this narrowing down of all the alternatives into four that will be studied further. So, Ginger, if you wanna raise your hand and un-mic yourself and we'll load your presentation. You're still there, you're still there. There you go. Welcome to you. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes, we hear you fine. Okay, fantastic. Good morning, Metro Board, Ginger Dicar, Transportation Planner on the RTC staff and also the project manager for the transit corridor alternatives analysis. It seemed like between Mike and John you got me started here so I know we don't have a lot of time today so I'll just keep going. But I do wanna say it's been a great overlap between Metro staff and RTC staff working together on this project. I think we've got a good rapport going. We also have the consultants, HDR engineering that have been a great team. It's a large team of people that have been working on this project and I think it's going pretty well. Next slide, please. I'll just get a reminder of the various steps of this analysis. It's depicted on the right there. First we start out with the initial list of alternatives. We then use the high level screening criteria to reduce these down to a short list of alternatives. And then from there we'll have a more quantitative analysis utilizing the performance measures that were developed in the first milestone to then narrow down to a locally preferred alternative. So where we are right now and what we're seeking your input on today is the short list of alternatives. And we will be, we have drafted these, provided this information to many, many stakeholders and we'll be bringing this recommendation to the RTC board on June 4th. Let's see, yeah, next slide. So the initial list of alternatives that have been considered are shown here on these next six, the next three slides. This is all of the rubber wheeled options. As you can see, there's the local bus, a commuter express bus. We also have the bus rapid transit option in the top middle, as well as an autonomous road train. That's calling it a train is actually a little bit of a misnomer. It is a rubber wheeled vehicle on pavement. And then the other two options that are associated with the bus is the dual rail and bus vehicle, as well as micro shuttles. Next slide, please. The rail options that we've evaluated through the screening is an inner city rail, commuter rail, electric, local rail, as well as a diesel local rail. And then the mono rail or automated people mover and a tram trolley streetcar option. Next slide, please. And then a few other options we've also evaluated just to make sure we're looking at the complete list here is a personal rapid transit, either on the ground or an elevated system, gondola, hyperloop and a string rail. Next slide, please. Let's just skip to the next one. So we'll just show you what the analysis shows here. So we, through the screening that it was showing your packet, the various different screening metrics we evaluated and the results of all the different alternatives that we evaluated. So what we came down to in the screening is that the top seven alternatives that came to the top are listed here. And then the alternatives in bold are the ones that the project team is recommending to move forward into the more quantitative analysis. And of those, there's a list of them here, the commuter rail, electric commuter rail, electric light rail, the bus rapid transit system, as well as the autonomous road train. And again, that's actually rubber tires on pavement. Then next slide, please. So just a little bit of details about the electric commuter rail. It did show that has reliable travel times, strong ridership potential. It does support transit oriented development, which would be important for this transit facility. And level boarding is, it really came up a lot in our stakeholder input, the importance of people being able to independently access to get on the transit vehicle with their mobility devices, as well as with bicycles and plenty of space for bicycles. And this option could commingle with freight in a shared use corridor. Next slide, please. Also, we'd like to move forward the electric light rail option. It also has a strong ridership potential. Travel time would be reliable. It's supportive of the greenhouse gas reduction goals. It also supports transit oriented development. And this would be compatible with freight rail if it's as long as it's temporarily separated. These vehicles are typically lighter and are not FRA compliant. Next slide, please. The rubber wheeled options that we're considering moving forward is the bus rapid transit option. This has less capital cost compared to some of the other modes. It also has the ability to have level boarding, at least in areas along where it could be utilized along the rail corridor, and the thought behind the bus rapid transit system is take advantage of the flexibility of a rubber wheeled vehicle and that it could be on the rail corridor for certain lengths of the corridor, but it could also operate on the roadway. So for the level boarding, it could have level boarding on the rail right of way, but that would not likely exist for the areas where the bus rapid transit would be on the local roadway network. There's also a possibility of just going back to the bus rapid transit for a minute here. There's also the possibility of transit oriented development as long as it was looked at as a permanent system. And for the autonomous road train, that also has strong ridership potential. This isn't a system that has been out in many places. We've only seen it in China at this point, but the HDR team feels strongly that this is a type of system that's going to become more and more examples of it out along the global as well as national because of some of the technology benefits of a system like this. Again, would likely support transit oriented development because it would be a permanent system. I'm also support greenhouse gas reduction goals. Next slide please. So with that next steps, we are like I mentioned, we're planning to bring this to RTC for approval on our June 4th meeting and work over the summer to do work on the quantitative analysis and bring in the fall to RTC, a locally preferred alternative based on the quantitative performance measure results and planning for a January 2021 business plan to be presented for this, whatever locally preferred alternative is chosen. With that, I'd be happy to open it up for questions. We do have besides myself on the project team, obviously the Metro staff as well as Guy Preston who executive director at the RTC and Luis Mendez may be able to join us. I know we had a commitment up until 11 around a good man also transportation planner. So if there's any questions you wanna direct in any of those directions, just wanted to let you know who's on the phone. Thank you. I have some questions, but let me ask if there are others first from the board who have questions or comments, really. Yeah, mine's just a real quick, simple question. You said one of the alternatives was not FRA compliant. What makes it not compliant? The weight of the vehicle and it just means that it can't run at the same time as a freight vehicle. So for a commuter rail, typically those vehicles are heavier and they are RFRI compliant. And so that a freight vehicle can commingle at the same time, essentially, you know, one the train, the passenger rail could get onto the siding and the freight could pass it by for the light rail system. It would, you would need to have a different timeframe so the freight would have to be at a different time than the passenger rail service. Considerations that the light vehicle would be obliterated by a heavy freight train. So you want the train to at least have some substance to it. So it doesn't collapse like an accordion if it gets hit. Yeah. And you know, my concern was that if it was required to have a separate rail line for service for that. Well, it wouldn't be necessarily separate. I mean, there would be sidings would be the way it would be dealt with. You know, not for the whole length of the track, for various places where they, but again, she says maybe the freight would only run in the evening or at certain times of the day when the other trains were not, the other vehicles were not on that in the, in the corridor. Well, thank you. Are there questions or comments? John Leopold. Thank you, chair. And if there's going to be passenger service or freight service, there's going to have to be some kind of transit control effort, I'm forgetting at the moment what exactly it's called. But after a series of crashes on the East coast, I think all new systems require a system where you can actually track where the freight is, where the passengers work, where all the trains on the systems are. I know that they have that up on the smart train. I'm going to call on myself. So I have an actual large issue here that I wanted to raise about two things. We, there's a little committee that was appointed that has three members from Metro and three members from RTC, all of those overlap, that sort of looking at these issues. I'm part of that committee. And we've sort of gone through these things and looked at them. But at that meeting, we were told that there would be more description of how the letters A, B, and C were awarded for the variety of categories that we're looking at. That actually, as far as I can tell, hasn't been presented to us in any significant way. In other words, it's a quality of judgment being made by the consultants, I think with our staff and RTC staff involved in the process. But I'm still not clear why some of these A, B, and Cs were awarded. I'm not sure in the process here, because we're coming up on June very quickly, when we get a chance to sort of look at those. For example, when I look at the, let me start back at another level actually. PRT or inverted PRT, maybe I'm too focused on the coronavirus affects on our world. But the idea that people might be able to ride in a system where they would basically be social distancing and each little car or pod on the system is fairly attractive in the short term. This isn't gonna be built in the next year or two. So that's not the issue. But in the long run, whether our future contains more need for that than perhaps we've thought about in the past. And also in general, there's kind of a lot of people like their private cars because they don't, maybe this is not healthy, but it's the reality in America that people don't like riding on public transit or concerned to many people or concerned about it because they don't like being in the sort of crowded situation even if there's got their own seat and everything else. And I wonder to what extent, so it made me interested in the inverted PRT for that reason. And then once I got to that, I was, you don't wanna do something that makes sense in that abstract level. But when you get down to it, it's too expensive or it doesn't function or carry enough people or whatever. So when I started looking at some of the A, B and C awards on an inverted PRT, I started wondering why those were awarded they were where they were. They were given C's or B's for things that I thought were some of the real virtues of PRT. The ability to be fairly flexible. For example, when you come to Cabrillo, none of the four options we're looking at now could get off of that corridor, either the autonomous road train or either the rubber tire or the untrack vehicles. Whereas a PRT it's not that expensive to run a spur off or run off to Cabrillo or perhaps up to the university when you got to that end of the line. And I'm sort of wondering how this is, my question is when would we be able to have this discussion when we can look at the actual award of the A, B's and C's and question, the logic behind it or getting it's qualitative but what it was that made people award the consultants award those particular values, A, B and C to the various criteria that we were looking at. I guess that's a question from Ginger. Yeah, I'm happy to answer that, Mike. We did go back to the criteria that were used for each of the different metrics and make them have those provide much more information in them and so I don't know if you had a chance to look at those. I wasn't able to find those. I looked through the entire report that we got and maybe I wasn't looking in the right place. So I would just direct you to- It's a general discussion of what the item means or like what it is that's being judged as the award of A, B or C is given but the idea that this is the reason that we gave this A, B for this particular thing is there's a document that tells us that because I didn't find that and I was looking through all the material. So in the packet for the Metro meeting there was the tables of all of the evaluation, the A, B, C and if you look at the top- One for the economy, one for the whole triple line for the environment, the economy, the social justice and other I think is that the document you're talking about? That's correct. And so if you look at the top it has the criteria of what A, B and C is referring to. So for an example, the capital cost I think when we had the meeting last we did not have actual numbers in there but now it has A, capital costs per mile is less than 20 million per mile, B is 20 to 40 million per mile and C is greater than 40 million per mile. So we really tried to give more detailed information about the criteria that's being evaluated here and what the A, B, C means. And just to address some of the personal rapid transit questions, we're fortunate to have HDR engineering have some experience with personal rapid transit. They're actually working right now in the Morgantown system. And they've related to us that the cost of the capital cost of that project is 560 million per three and a half miles. So it's the type of capital costs that are really kind of out of the ballpark for our system. It also has a lot of, it's just really an unknown there's not a lot of examples of it being out there in the world to really get some good information about how viable it is and how it would be able to support the various different metrics that we're evaluating. It's just such an unknown technology. There's just not that many examples. The elevation, if we were gonna go with an elevated system that has obvious challenges with the visual impacts and the coastal commission. And also some additional information that we've been learning is just the reality of when you or any of these systems that it needs to be two directional unless they can utilize the roadway system like a bus rapid transit. And so for a rail system, you can have sidings. And so you can still have a one lane but a siding system to still be able to be to fit into the right of way that we have for our rail corridor. If you go to a system like PRT you need to have room for it in both directions. And especially the widths of PRT are very substantial at the stations because you need to provide the ability to turn those vehicles around at the stations and have room to park all of the individual vehicles. And some of the numbers we've seen are on the order of like 150 to 200 feet wide and a substantial area of the right of way for a personal rapid transit. So I think with a lot of those various different ideas in mind that's really why the personal rapid transit did not make it in the draft recommendation or what to evaluate on a more qualitative level or quantitative level, excuse me. I mean, my understanding of what you're calling or we're calling inverted PRT is that it can use a siding as well as anything else. I mean, basically because they're individual cars they get programmed to go where they're gonna go that they could sort of sit by the side. They don't have to turn around in that sense that they can, they end up going both ways but they don't have to be, they can run effectively running backwards but you wouldn't know that from the car. But I'm not sure what level, my big question is I know that we got a letter from Brett, I forget his last name, to the RTC and Garrett, thank you. And they're sort of raising some of these questions about the award of these things and made me start thinking about a lot of these issues. And I'm just wondering where in the process we would get a chance to have a full public discussion of this before we make a final decision in June at the RTC because I think that's when we're gonna decide the limit to four. I mean, my inclination, I don't know how much more it would cost to study a fifth option. I'm not proposing that the PRT replace one of the four that's in front of us but how much more it would cost to look at that given the sort of changes in social distancing issues at least for the foreseeable future. And I don't think this is our last virus unfortunately but Ginger, my question is sort of what, where's the process where someone like Brett gets a chance to come in there and make his arguments and have it seriously considered by the RTC and at this point, this is our last meeting on this where it gets to the RTC? Well, certainly he can always attend the meetings. We are gonna have a public hearing at the June 4th meeting and he can lay out his information and what his concerns are. Again, I would refer you to the criteria that's at the top of these tables that I think it does provide some really good information about how this screening process, how these various different alternatives were evaluated through the screening process. And this is a high level analysis where we will be delving into the shortlist of alternatives at a much more quantitative level. But obviously our team takes direction from the RTC. So if you are wanting us to do something different we're happy to hear that. I have one other question. Could you summarize for us what it was about the tram? It's a tram trolley streetcar option. Why that scored badly in this overall alternatives, high level alternative assessment? I wouldn't necessarily say it scored badly. I think the issue is that tram trolley streetcar, the typical system is on a roadway system. They go for very short distances and they go very slow. And I think it's just a different type of system than what we would want for our railcarter that is more of a 20 mile length system. And I don't know, I'm pretty sure it was in the handout in the packet, the statement that said it, we could still consider a streetcar type of vehicle, but it would need to go fast enough to motivate people to ride that vehicle from Watsonville to Santa Cruz. And so, you know, we're kind of trying to, it's a little challenging to try to categorize these various different rail systems because with newer technology, it's all seems like they're kind of merging together and there's not the distinct lines that they're used to be. And so, you know, the idea is, well, how are we gonna define the type of system what we want? And what the project team came up with was it has to be fast enough to travel between Watsonville and Santa Cruz. That's gonna be faster than if people are sitting in the traffic of Highway 1 and a 25 mile or less of a vehicle that travels 25 miles per hour or less is not going to meet that metric. And so, if it is a TIGM type of vehicle, hydrogen fuel cell that goes 30 miles per hour or more, that's, you know, in a streetcar classification, by all means that would still be considered in this analysis. Thank you, that's very helpful. And anybody else with any questions or comments at this point? Okay, well, at this point, we're being asked if we are prepared to make a recommendation to the RTC meeting on June 4th. Mike, you probably want to ask for a public comment. Thank you. I was just gonna make clear that's coming up. There was one. I'll let you do that now. The guy has his hand up. Guy, go ahead. Thank you, I don't see that hand. You're still muted, Guy. I'm muted now. Thank you, Metro Board and Director Rodkin. I wanted to make a couple of comments about the PRP option that you had brought up. I'm gonna speak to it. It's Oculades first. I mean, Brett Garrett and yourself have made some really, really good comments about PRP and why it would be a really interesting system. You're talking about the ability for social distancing, the ability to be in individual cars, have more accessibility that it would come at more frequent intervals and be able to go where you wanna go and stop where you wanna stop. The problem with PRT on our line is, if you're talking about an at-grade system, we have dozens of at-grade road crossings. So you're talking about frequent interruptions to the local road network if you're not an elevated system. So anybody who's looking at PRT seriously would be looking at an elevated system. And when you start talking about an elevated system, you're talking about major visual impacts. You're talking about a very urban type of a system where you're 20 to 30 feet up in the air, which this rail line goes right behind people's homes. These vehicles would be able to be very visible from people's backyards, you'd be able to see into their backyards. You're also talking about with an elevated system about 10 times the cost of what an at-grade system would be. So using the figure that was provided for Morgantown, we're talking about $160 million a mile or about a $3.2 billion system for the full lane. So there's great benefits to a PRT. And if you have all the money in the world and you wanna build a system like that and the community has the stomach for a very urban type system to be built in their backyards, it would be a great system. But considering the really, really high cost in the proximity to neighborhoods, it's really not a realistic alternative to be moving forward with. And then I wanted to also mention a little bit about the question on the tram trolley street cart. It was actually a question that I had to. You may know that we have been trying to get a company out here called TIGM that produces what has been referred to as a trolley to run a hydroelectric battery cell vehicle on our line. It's very quiet, it's very clean, but it was kind of characterized as a trolley. I met with these individuals and I asked them, do these things only go 20, 25 miles an hour? How fast can they actually go? Because if you're only talking about those speeds, you're talking about an hour, hour and a half ride from Watsonville to Santa Cruz, that's not gonna be very attractive. They've informed me that those vehicles can go up to 50 miles an hour. So if you look at the way we've moved forward with the EMU light rail alternative, we put a speed in there rather than a designation that a street car would not qualify for. So we're not trying to select the actual vehicle at this time, but we provided more parameters that these things would not require an overhead cantonery system. It could be a lighter rail and the TIGM hydroelectric battery cell vehicle would actually qualify for. And that is really something that's included in the EMU light rail option. So I just wanted to provide that additional insight for your consideration. Thanks, that's very helpful. I do have a question. The working town systems is on the ground system. It's not an elevated system. So I'm not clear how the cost of an elevated system gets extrapolated out of the working town experience. Guy? Or Ginger? Unmute. You're still muted, both of you. Okay, I didn't know how to unmute myself. I didn't know that I had been remuted. I wasn't particularly familiar with the Morgan town number. I just took that number and extrapolated. But my experience is that from my work with structures for both Caltrans and for high speed rail, that an elevated system is about 10 times the cost of an upgrade system. Okay, I was particularly moved by the visual impacts because that certainly impacted our last look at a PRT system in the city of Santa Cruz when a lot of public reaction against it and that's certainly a factor to be considered. Are there members of the public who'd like to comment on this issue that's in front of us? The alternative for the process and the selection of these four choices out of the many possibilities is what's in front of us for a possible vote here in a moment. Not seeing any. Okay. Okay, and we're just looking for input on this item. No, not a vote. Thank you, that's very helpful. And again, last chance. Anybody else like to make any comments here about this issue? Okay, this is an important decision. It's going to affect us for the next 40 years or something once we finally get to it. And it's important to trend and likely whatever selected that Metro is going to probably run this system, my guess, whatever it is. So it's a very important to us to understand what our options are and what the choice is going to be in the end. I want to also say, I'm very pleased so far with the cooperation between Metro staff and RTC staff on this whole process. It's important that we work on this together and not find ourselves in a fight with each other over. So far it's been quite a good process, I think. Anybody else? Okay, we're done with that item. Sorry, what? Okay, we're onto item now, number 17. Yes. Mr. Chair. Which is a specific update that comes from Alex Clifford. Mr. Chair, just briefly, I would hope to bring you an MOU at your June meeting. We've completed the process of negotiating that with the city, they're now taking it through their process. As you can imagine, the city like us are challenged by COVID and all of the fiscal crisis that comes with that. My understanding is they have earlier this week had that discussion in closed session. So I would hope to hear very soon about hopefully their approval of that MOU. Likely that MOU still has to clear the hurdle of their council. I will tell you, Julie and I work in collaboration in such a way that everything that we put forward in this draft MOU has already been concurred with by Julie. If their council comes back, city council comes, city general council comes back with any substantive changes, then we'll still be back in a position likely of negotiating. Hopefully they'll buy off on it, not make any substantive changes and we can bring it to you in a timely fashion at your June meeting. That concludes my remarks, Mr. Chair. Well, we're running kind of late into the day and I was going to ask for some highlights of that agreement, but I think we'll put that off and perhaps you could give us some update about it as we get closer to our meeting that's coming up later. Absolutely. Anything else? Okay, we are then about to adjourn. We have completed all of our business. Thank you all. It's been, I think, a good process. I appreciate everybody's... Mr. Chair, you have James Sandoval with his hand up. Thank you, James. I don't have a picture, so I don't see it. You have to unmute yourself, James. There you go. You're unmuted. Is this the time to speak on items for a closed session? I'm not going, there is no closed session for today. No closed session. Okay, got it. That's correct. Thank you. Otherwise, it would be the time, but we're not having a closed session. Our next regular meeting probably still be, well, at this point, we're saying it might be a real meeting. We don't know whether we'll be able to meet in person, but people have to keep posted here on whether it's going to be a Zoom meeting or a meeting in actual connection. And that meeting is June 26th, 2020. And as I said, you have to check our website and you could certainly call the district. I wait a week. We probably don't know anything for a week, but find out whether it's going to be an in-person meeting or whether it's going to be a Zoom meeting. I'm going to put my money on Zoom meetings still. Things are not changing that quickly, but we'll find out. Mike, I don't mean to interrupt you, but there is an item on closed session. Did you guys remove it? Yeah, there's no closed session. We've canceled the closed session. We're not going to closed sessions. Got you. Okay. Whatever that item is, it'll be put off to the next meeting if there's still an item left, but we're not, there's no further meeting after we adjourn. Okay, thank you. All right, so we are adjourned. Thank you all very much. Everybody stay safe. Mr. Chair, you have Mr. Henderson with his hand up. Mr. Henderson, comment. Hi, very quickly. Is there currently a framework or timeline as it relates to fair collection and when that might be reinstated? Any leading thoughts on that or still to be determined? Yes, Mr. Chair, with your concurrence. Yes, right now I'm entertaining the concept of putting it back in place on June 1st. That is dependent primarily right now on the completion of the clear curtains that you saw earlier in my presentation. Remember, the key reason why we went this direction was to reduce the potential dwell time of a customer within inches or within a foot of the bus operator to create more social distancing. That curtain should replace that concern. If we get those curtains installed and James comes back to me with a good report about how they're functioning and concurrence that they agree we should put fares back in, we're looking at June 1 right now tentatively. That's pretty good, thank you. And James has his hand up. James, go ahead. You have to unmute. That was a mistake. I left it raised from the last time. And yeah, I've been talking with Alex about the fares and it's definitely supported by the operators. Good, thank you very much. Then we are adjourned. Thank you all. I'm gonna leave the meeting to myself and I assume that the people in charge will close it down. Bye-bye everybody. Stay safe.