 Good morning. We'll now begin the regular meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. It is 9 a.m. Thursday, February 2nd, 2023. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Commissioner Peterson. Here. Commissioner Sandy Brown. I believe she is trying to join us. I'll call her name in a bit. Commissioner Johnson. Here. Commissioner Montecino. Here. Commissioner Hernandez. Commissioner Altschiffrin. Here. Commissioner Alternate Quinn. Here. Commissioner Koenig. Here. Commissioner McPherson. Here. Commissioner Kristen Brown. Here. Commissioner Rotkin. Okay. Commissioner Eats. Here. Commissioner Alternate Pigler. Here. And you have a quorum. Thank you, Clerk. Director Preston, do we have any changes to the agenda today? We do not have any changes to the agenda, but we do have a handout for item 24 and a replacement page for item 30. Both of those have been posted to our website. Thank you very much. We'll now proceed with oral communications. Any member of the public may address the commission on any item within the jurisdiction of the commission that is not already on the agenda. The commission will listen to all communication, but in compliance with state law, may not take action on items that are not on the agenda. The speakers are requested to state their name clearly so that it can be accurately recorded in the minutes of the meeting and you'll have two minutes each. Go ahead, please approach the podium. Thank you. My name's Jim Helmer. I'm a lifetime San Lorenzo Valley resident. I have a 32 year career. Most of it spent with the city of Santa Cruz as its traffic engineer and also with the city of San Jose as the director of transportation. I'll just get right to my key point. I'd like you to consider the following. Make Highway 9 from Felton to Boulder Creek wider, safer, through a combination of retaining walls, wider shoulders and walkways and particularly drainage systems. Caltrans and RTC, you've spent millions and millions of dollars on retaining walls on Highway 17 and Highway 1. None of those locations even involved pedestrians, let alone a primary walking route to school. Now is the time to insert into your current contract with Mark Thomas and associates. We're looking at solutions from Felton to Glen Harbor Road to incorporate, if by change order necessary, retaining walls, pedestrian, cycling, drainage improvements that lead to the 21 foot substandard sub seismically safe bridge at Brackney Way on Highway 9. It's 96 years old, built in 1927. It's got a 21 foot wide driving deck which is the narrowest on any state highway in the county and it serves 21,000 cars a day when Highway 9 is open. The headlines usually lead off in San Lorenzo Valley with letters RE, react, respond, repair, rebuild, review, regulate, resilience and repeat. I would like to see a shift to more proactive, proactivity in San Lorenzo Valley. And I did want to thank Supervisor McPherson for everything he's done to guide the RTC and Caltrans in that direction. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Helmer. All right, seeing no one else here in chambers, there was just a comment, is there anyone on Zoom? I will begin with Joanna Lighthill. Good morning, commissioner. Thanks for considering comments. I like many who follow these meetings have been following the development of the trail plans and I just wanted to announce that the final EIR for segments eight and nine are available for viewing, public viewing on the city website. I just discovered it last night. I didn't get a chance to read it, of course. It's over 1,300 pages. And I realized that that is more than the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail master plan and the master plans EIR combined, quite a document. It shows us how significant the potential impact can be and that people are very concerned. Thanks to the commission for considering the document. I know you guys have many hats to wear and it can be very time consuming. I hope that when this subject comes up, the comment period will be more than the one week that is posted on the agenda before the meeting. So thank you for your consideration and all of your work. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Lighthill. Next up is Michael St. Good morning, Chair Koenig and commissioners, Michael CFS and Aptos resident. Instead of criticizing the poor choice of the Oxlain's hybrid bus and traffic problem, let me share a little bit of a true buzz on the phone with the dedicated line. Number one, they have proven on time performance of the bus when the last car came up with them by using existing hybrid bus. If your bus on Shover League has costs as little as $1,500 to $100,000 as the lane model to implement the average cost of the freeway lanes for cars is two to 10 million dollars. A side benefit of bus on shoulder that it will allow out-of-service buses that normally didn't have used the freeway to dead head quickly and then do quicker turnarounds for use. Also a true bus on shoulder improves access on and off of the freeway, which can speed up passenger stop, especially for express style service. Bus on shoulder can be very quick to implement if all the parts or part of the infrastructure is available. Safety, which is always a concern. As an example, along this running bus on shoulder in the country at Twin Cities has a good safety record, only 20 accidents with no fatalities in 10 years. It may be a challenge to motivate policymakers to allow bus on shoulder dedicated due to its limited use in the United States. As an advocate for mass transit and those that share these news of safe reliable efficient math mode of transportation, we are hoping and advocating for an RTC that will switch its priorities from single occupancy vehicles to mass transit opportunities. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. St. Next up is JB. Hi, first thing I just wanted to note, it seems like there's an awful echo coming from the RTC chamber. I don't know if you guys can mute that microphone, but it would be good probably during public comment. I'm gonna mute my speaker actually, I'm not hearing it now, so I'll go ahead and start. I just had a quick one for you in regards to the progressive rail roaring cam request for storing oil cars on the corridor between mile post three and four. It was on the January, the 10th agenda was pulled the last minute and then said it would be brought up in this meeting but in this agenda, there is no meeting or there is no agenda item for it. So just to cure this, if the commission can report back on what is the progress of this, it progressed around completely, pull this request or if it's still out there and coming up on a future agenda. I've been here a while and I saw what happened when I was with the Civic at the sort of thing and basically left the commission powerless putting in a hundred car requests and then having it for 200 cars in there, Iowa Pacific pocketing the money and then splitting 10, leaving the cars behind. Even though this sounds like it's good intentions for doing biofuels for the martini refinery, it really brings nothing to our community and is something I think we should put aside because we're supposed to be using that border for active transit or public transit and that just doesn't fit the bill. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brown. Next up is Mr. Nelson. Let's try that again. I'm unmuting here. Good morning. I'm Jack Nelson. I'm a retired land use planner and environmental planner and I'm a book titled ecological footprint managing our biocapacity budget by Mathis Wackernagel and Burt Byers there with the global footprint network. And I thought there's a fascinating chart on page six of this book which you can look up your year of birth and see an estimate of how much, what proportion of all fossil fuels have ever burned and burned by human beings since you were born. So for instance, my year of birth is 1951 and this table tells me that 87% of all fossil fuels that we've ever burned have been in my lifetime. So it's taken one lifespan to set up the destruction of our civilization through climate change. What is your commission doing to stop building a greenhouse gas chamber on this planet? Another little factoid I'd like to share with you is the climate scientists are telling us that the heat generated by the greenhouse effect is being absorbed at the rate of 93% of it by our earth's oceans. So how long will the earth's oceans continue to give us a little break? We are heating the kettle we live in. Please do not keep building the greenhouse gas chamber. Thank you. I think that was our last speaker on Zoom. So I'll now. I'm sorry, commissioner. We are having an echo issue. It looks like I can't hear it. You can't hear it. So we're trying to figure out what's causing it. All right, thank you for that. Let us know if we can help at all here on the stand. I'm here for the record. Mike Rodgen, I'm sorry. I had trouble getting on this morning and I hear the echo online for sure. I'm seeing all the nodding heads. All right, thank you, commissioner Rodgen. Also, I recognize commissioner Brown has joined us and Sandy Brown has joined us as well. I will now proceed with the consent agenda. Just any commissioner wish to comment or have questions on the consent agenda? Mr. Chair. I just want to make a question. One comment on item 21A, a letter from Congresswoman Anna Eshoo about the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission's Boulder Creek Complete Streets Project had $1.5 million in the Consolidated Appropriations Act. And she worked very hard on that. It's very important to Boulder Creek and the Santa Runes of Valley that that be implemented. I appreciate that. She is with redistricting, not representative of the Santa Runes of Valley. But I know the new congressman, Jimmy Panetta, is very much aware of this. We've made him, he's very much aware of this. And I just want to thank her in particular for pushing this forward for the Boulder Creek Community and Santa Runes of Valley. Thank you, Commissioner McPherson. Are there questions or comments from commission members? Seeing none, is there any member of the public wish to comment on the consent agenda? Is anyone on Zoom? Move the consent agenda. Second. Okay, we had a motion by commissioner Schifrin, seconded by commissioner McPherson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk will call the please. So if you are not speaking, can you check to make sure your mic is off? It sounds like that might be a problem. Continue to work on that. Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Sandy Brown. Aye. Commissioner Johnson. Aye. Aye. Commissioner Hernandez. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin. Commissioner Alternate Quinn. Yes. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner McPherson. Commissioner Christian Brown. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Pigler. Aye. Commissioner Rotkin. Aye. And that passes unanimously. Thank you. Consent agenda being passed will proceed with item 22, commissioner reports. Is there any member of the commission wish to share anything? Seeing none, we'll proceed with item 23, director's report. Director Preston, take away. Thank you, Chair Koenig. Are we still having the echo problem because I'm hearing it from the audience. Is somebody in the audience logged on to the Zoom call? Because that would be causing our problems. Okay. I will proceed with my director's report. I'm gonna start with a quick announcement of a new alternate commissioner appointment. At the last RTC meeting, I announced several new commissioners and alternates in addition to what was announced in January, the city of Santa Cruz has reappointed council member Sandy Brown as their primary representative with Mayor Fred Keely serving as for alternate. There are still a few more appointments forthcoming, including from Metro and an alternate for commissioner Hernandez. Moving on to RTC appointments to committees as just accepted by the commission on the consent calendar, there is important information on committee appointments included with item number 17. With the exception of commissioner Alex Peterson's interim appointment to the Coast Rail Coordinating Committee, appointments will occur at the March RTC meeting. So if any commissioner is interested in serving on the budget administration and personnel committee, the Coast Rail Coordinating Committee or CALCOG, please contact either Chair Koenig or myself by February 15th, so we can be prepared for the March meeting. One more thing that was on consent is AB 361 findings. Those allow us to meet remotely during the pandemic. We are meeting here today in what has been penned as the hybrid method with some commissioners here in person and some commissioners attending by video conference. With the governor's expected list lifting of the emergency orders at the end of February, it will no longer be possible for commissioners or committee members to attend by video conference unless some very restrictive circumstances are met in accordance with AB 2449. The staff report for item number 14 contains very important information regarding expectations for physical attendance at meetings starting in March. If you are seeking more details, I recommend you review the staff report and contact either administrative services officer Yusenia Parra or myself with any further questions. RTC will continue to make both commission and committee meetings available for members of the public to attend either in person or remotely when the technology permits. And I know today it's been challenging, but I will likely have the great fortune of seeing most of you commissioners in person each month starting in March. I have an announcement regarding state route one construction earlier this week. The CTC approved our $72 million construction allocation for the highway one hybrid bus on shoulder auxiliary lane project between Bay Porter and State Park. This allocation is part of our $107 million SB1 grant that we received two years ago. This project will now go out for construction bids with construction starting this spring. This project is right behind the active highway one construction project from Soquel Avenue to 41st Avenue, which was also partially funded by the CTC SB1 grant. Some preliminary clearing and grubbing work between Soquel and 41st Avenue has commenced, but that project is now expected to be placed in winter suspension until the spring. So both projects from Soquel Avenue all the way to State Park are expected to be in full construction this spring and summer. With regards to the public comment regarding the operator's proposal regarding rail cord car storage on the branch line, the January 12th commission meeting regular agenda had an item on it to consider a proposal for rail car storage on the Santa Cruz branch rail line. The proposal was submitted by our freight rail operator St. Paul and Pacific Railway at the request of their contract operator, Roaring Camp Railroad. On the morning of the January 12th meeting, we received a letter from St. Paul and Pacific and a phone call from Roaring Camp that they had not reached an agreement with the biofuel plant seeking to store vegetable oil cars on the branch line, requesting that the item be moved from the January agenda to the February agenda. I announced this at the beginning of the meeting and the item was subsequently pulled from the January agenda. RTC has contacted both railroad operators multiple times to engage in a discussion about where an appropriate location might be to store cars, but we have not been successful in scheduling any such discussions with either of the operators. We do have a quarterly meeting set up later next week. Hopefully that item can be addressed at that meeting. As of yesterday, St. Paul and Pacific said they may be ready in March and we advise them of the need to engage with RTC staff in discussions as early as possible so that staff can have adequate time to make an appropriate recommendation to the commission. Staff will continue to work towards having these discussions, but it is possible that the rail storage proposal will not be pursued by the freight rail operators. And with that, that concludes my director's report. Thank you, Director Preston. Are there questions or comments from members of the commission? I'd just like to make a statement first. I think I'm on it. I'm very disappointed. We don't have a proposal or a recommendation from Roaring Camp and St. Paul. I mean, this is important to people in South County in particular. And I just hope that they do or you can get this meeting together that seemed to be online last time. And we set it for this month and now we have to wait another month. I think I just want to urge Roaring Camp and St. Paul to please get together a suggestion so we can make it right. Our staff can get ready to make a recommendation to this commission. I think it's time. Let's get with it. Thank you, Commissioner McPherson. Other comments or questions? Commissioner Modicino. Yeah, I just want to thank staff for getting all those grants and being relieved for a community in South County. And also just want to report out if I receive the letter, my new alternative would be Council Member Casey. So if you haven't received it, I'll get the clerk right. Thank you. Edward, could you repeat your alter ego? We couldn't hear it. Yes, Casey Clark. Thank you. Thank you. Other comments or questions from board members or sorry, commission members about the director's report? All right, seeing none, take it to the public. Chair recognizes Brian Peeples. Thank you, Brian Peeples from Trail Mail. Hopefully I'm coming in clear. Just want to suggest that you all really encourage the governor to continue to allow commissioners to call in the hybrid. You're a transportation community leadership. And that's really important. So hopefully there is a concerted effort by others, other agencies that you could work with. It's very, very important that you all on the commission be allowed to continue to call in. It helps everybody's life. So I just want to encourage this agency to do that. Thank you. Mr. Peeples, anyone else wants to comment on the director's report? Seeing none, we'll proceed with item 24, the CalTrans report. Mr. Eates, are you the honor of bringing it from here? All right, thank you. Okay, good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the commission. I will, at some point here, I'll probably turn my volume down. So if somebody cannot hear me, please start waving or something because I'm getting a ton of feedback. So hold on, I'm going to turn my volume down. Please give me a visual signal if you can't hear me. All right, so I wanted to touch on a few things, a couple of grant opportunities. First, the CalTrans Sustainable Transportation Planning Grants. We've mentioned this before, there's nearly $85 million statewide in three grant categories. There's three workshops coming up. The first is, and these are all hosted by CalTrans headquarters. The first is Monday, February 16th from 1 p.m. to 2.30. And the second is Wednesday, February 8th from 12.30 to 2. And then Thursday, February 9th from 1 p.m. to 2.30. Please follow up with me if you're interested in gaining access. There's a, you can go to the CalTrans website, but you still need to ask to be given permission to attend the workshop. So please follow up with me and I'll make sure you have the correct information on that. And then those applications are due by 5 p.m. on March 9th this year, and they'll be submitted through a smart sheet portal. So please follow up with me if you have any questions on that. Second grant category I wanted to highlight is the Clean California Local Grant Program, All For Projects is coming on February 14th. And this is the second round for this grant category. It's focused on local streets and roads and targeted towards underserved communities. And it's focused on cleaning up and beautifying public spaces. And applicants can include local and regional public agencies, transit agencies, tribal governments and nonprofit organizations. So there's information online. It can be found at the Clean California website. And you can certainly follow up with me for more information as well. And then the application deadline on that, it will be April 28th. And then I wanted to provide an overview just on storm damage and road closures. So I have quite a bit here. I'll run through these unless you're getting so much feedback that it's too disruptive for me to continue. Okay, it looks like we're okay. All right, so Highway nine, we still have a full closure between Lower Glen Arbor Road and Holiday Lane. It's due to a slide. Our crews are working to clear the debris and repair the damages caused by the slide. We have an estimated date for reopening. And we're also working to install a temporary signal, which will allow for one way reversing traffic control beginning late next week. That'll be the opening, but we're doing everything we can to get that open as quickly as we can. We're expecting that the repair itself will take approximately six weeks. Second location is on Jane. Hold on there, I'm getting feedback again. Near Jane's Timberlake Resorts, there's again on Highway nine, approximately half a mile south of Glen Arbor Road. It's been reopened to one way reversing traffic control via a temporary signal. And then the third location is about 1.8 miles north of the upper intersection of Route nine with 236. We have a tension crack that's opened along the shoulder. And we have it open to two-way traffic with K rail presence along the roadway. And we're working on a wall solution at that location. Okay, moving to Route 35, we have a slip-out about three miles north of State Route 17. We have one-way traffic control at that location. Construction may be required for repairs. We don't have an estimated time of opening for those at this point in time, but we're working on that location. Moving to 236, there's a couple of locations and there's settlement of a lane at two different locations. The route remains closed between Little Basin and State Park entrance. And then the second location is embankment and pavement settlement on the outside edge near Via Raton and State Route nine. We have one reversing traffic control at that location. And then finally, the last thing I wanted to announce is you may have seen that the California Transportation Commission allocated funds at the January CTC meeting for the Route nine pedestrian and safety improvement project between Felton and it's near Felton on Kirby Street to Fall Creek Drive. It's a shot-funded project and it's not construction. So just to clarify what's happening there, it was for the right-of-way and design phase of the project. And so that allows us to go ahead and move into that next phase of development. We're still looking at a construction begin date of spring 2025. Happy to take any questions. Thank you, Mr. Eads. Are there comments or questions from commissioners? Commissioner McPherson, excuse me. I just wanted to say in general, thank you to Caltrans for its attention. As you know, in the Santa Rosa Valley, we got hammered like everybody else in these atmospheric storms and there's been really some difficulty between state and county routes for people to get around or even get into town. So I just want to thank you. I know it's a tough haul and it's going to take some time, but I think your ability to get to it as quickly as possible to open one lane at least. Same goes with the county for Bear Creek Road. Thank you for your immediate attention on those. It's just critical of the people of the Santa Rosa Valley. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner McPherson. Any other comments or questions from commissioners? Seeing none, does any member of the public wish to comment on the California report? Regarding the California Transportation Commission funding of that section of Highway 9, in the reported indicated there's consideration for a non-intersection mid-block pedestrian flashing light beacon on Highway 9 from the west side to the east side, which would then allow students or other pedestrians to walk into Felton on the east side of Highway 9. I would highly recommend not doing this. Putting in a pedestrian flashing beacon in a non-controlled location will lead to major issues. Highway 9 on the east side has blind driveways, steep driveways, no walking room. Pedestrians have to walk through the cornerstone of the gas station to reach the signal light. And since most of the pedestrians and students living in Felton live on the west side of Highway 9, all through town, to send them on the east side would be requiring them to cross two times across the signalized intersections in very unsafe corners and mid-block islands or mid-intersection islands. So I would highly recommend to make all of the improvements on the west side and to consider lane narrowing from 12 feet to 11 feet along the retaining walls, which is perfectly legal to do with a minor exception to Caltrans standards. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Helmer. All right, any other member of the public was to comment seeing none. Thank you, Mr. Eads for the report. We'll now proceed with item 25, which is a storm damage to transportation facilities in Santa Cruz County report. And Ms. Christensen, I see you in the hot seat. Are you the one giving this report or will it be Deputy Director Mendez? It'll be a tag team. Okay. I'll start it off. And then Ms. Christensen will do the big finish. So as you know, the pretty much home with the entire city of California including Santa Cruz County was hit by severe storms this winter in the form of atmospheric rivers. And there's been lots of damage and to the transportation facilities in Santa Cruz County and state of emergency has been declared by the governor and the president. We do have a list in attachment, one of some of the damage that has been done at transportation facilities. The initial estimates for some of that damage are at $50 million, exceed $50 million. But that's as of the middle of last week, the first we had at that time. And so public agencies, local jurisdictions in the RTC, we were all still working to access and assess a lot of the damage that was done by the storms. So it is likely that that figure will be significantly higher than that. So in local jurisdictions and public agencies including the RTC are already working with the county office of recovery and response recovery and resiliency and the California office of emergency services and the federal emergency management agency to be able to submit for financial assistance to cover the cost of both cleanup and repair of the storm damage. It is likely that we will not get 100% of costs recovered but it's likely that most of the costs will be recovered. Now the Sanctis Branch rail line did suffer damage as well in the form of fallen trees, weakened trees, slope slides onto the right-of-way and at least one railroad bridge that was damaged by a large tree that fell on it. This is the bridge that the railroad over the road that goes into the entrance road to a new Brighton State Park. We're still not fully aware of the costs of all the damage that's been suffered and staff did have an estimate on the staff report about one and a half to $3 million. Again, based on what we knew in the middle of last week without full inspections yet and there've been further inspections that have uncovered additional damage that we were not yet aware of last week and so Ms. Christensen, when she does a report will provide information on some of that. Now during the storms, staff and contractors also responded to address fallen trees that cause damage to neighboring properties and immediate attention to be removed in order to do that and the executive director authorized initial contract change order with our existing tree contractor for $14,700 and also contacted the RC Chair, Chair Koenig for authorization of an additional 50,000 to be able to address that work. And with those funds, staff has been working to remove trees that need most immediate attention. However, more funds are gonna be necessary to be able to not only remove trees but also clean up debris and do a regrading of drainage ditches and so on. But that is not for repair of any damages. The cost repair damage will be quite beyond that and we'll like to have to come back to the commission as we know more and get your authorization to be able to have the funds available for some of those damages. And this commission will also report more on some of the potential ways that we might have to use to address repair of those damages. We do estimate that at this time, $400,000 is what is needed to be able to address the additional tree removal that we must do as well as debris removal and the drainage ditch regrading. So staff does recommend that the OTC approve the attached resolution, authorizing the executive director to enter into amendments or make amendments or enter into existing contracts or new contracts as necessary to address storm damages, including the removal of trees that were damaged or weakened or knocked down by the storms and the removal of debris and the regrading of ditches for a maximum amount of $400,000. And RTC does have sufficient funds in its budget for railway maintenance to be able to cover this amount in addition to it's already existing commitments for those funds. And as I mentioned before, staff is already working with Cal OES and FEMA to be able to obtain reimbursement for RTC costs. And with that, I'll pass it over to your senior engineer, Kristen Sint, to provide more information. Thank you, Louise. I have Brian on the line who's gonna be pulling up a PowerPoint. And as Louise mentioned, we have completed more inspections since last week's staff report was released and I just wanted to give you a more comprehensive update to the Santa Cruz branch rail line storm damage that we sustained. So Brian, if you could pull up the PowerPoint. We see it. Hey, can we go to the next slide? All right, so I'm gonna talk real quick about that damage bridge that Louise mentioned at New Brighton State Beach. The fallen trees give a summary landslides that are quite common in major storm conditions on the branch line. We've had a few slope embankment failures, also known as washouts, not full washouts, but partial washouts of the slope embankment that require immediate attention. And then the Manresa coastal bluff has been weathered quite a bit and needs additional attention as well. And then we'll have time for questions and discussion. Next slide. So there was a large eucalyptus tree that fell on the New Brighton State Beach Bridge. It's at mile post 14.85. This bridge is a short single span bridge that goes over the driveway into New Brighton State Beach. The bridge broke off a piece of the reinforced concrete walkway and damaged the cable railing. Next slide. We had 40 trees fall throughout the 32 mile branch line. This was some were more critical than others and we are responding accordingly. So we are tackling them by, you know, how critical they are. For example, if they're blocking a roadway or encroaching into a private property, we're addressing those first and then chipping away at it through our existing tree contractor who's been really great with responding to these emergencies. Next slide. Here's just a couple highlights of fallen trees. You can't walk very far on the branch line without running into one. Next slide. We also had 20 landslides along the branch line. These are quite common during storm conditions when the slopes become saturated with the rainwater and then they kind of slough off and it's usually when the rail line's in a cut location with side slopes that go up alongside the rail line and what happens is the debris that comes down the slope clogs the drainage system and causes additional problems if not addressed. And then it leaves a bare slope that requires some erosion control type of measures to be placed. And so these repairs look like a debris removal and then putting on erosion control fabric with anchors to restabilize that slope. Next slide. So here's an example where you could see the bare slope that needs to be addressed with erosion control measures and then all of that debris in the ditch. So next slide. So now onto the more critical repairs that are needed due to the recent storms. We had a slope embankment failure just south of New Brighton along the branch line at milepost 14.7. This requires immediate attention and we are planning to issue an emergency contract to address this location as well as the second location on the screen which is milepost 8.5 just south of Manrasa State Beach. The photo on the right doesn't really do much justice in showing what really is going on here. So we had about a very, very large tree about four or five foot diameter tree that fell and that tree was located maybe five feet from the drainage cross culvert outlet. And what happened was when that giant tree fell, it took the culvert head wall with it. It pulled it out and disconnected it from the drainage pipe. And so now we have our cross culvert head wall is disconnected and we've got quite a mess on our hands to clean up. And then also because of all of the erosion and heavy flow of drainage through this area, it has resulted in a critical slope embankment failure that needs to be addressed immediately. So this was not known at the time of the staff report. I think we were out in the field when the packet was being posted. So this is the biggest repair that we're aware of at this point. And we are planning to address it as an emergency because it does, if you have a failed culvert and heavy flows are going through it, it's gonna cause additional damage. So next slide. I mentioned the Manorisa Coastal Bluff. We've been chipping away at maintenance projects up here at the Coastal Bluff to try to slow down the erosion and address some drainage issues up there. So we recently completed a maintenance project that included placing plastic cover. So you see the left, the picture on the left is the most critical location that we're working on repairing. And that plastic cover is kind of a bandaid, a short-term bandaid for stopping the erosion. Well, that plastic cover that we just replaced was torn and needs to be replaced again because of the heavy winds and rain. And so the project also included drainage ditch regrading on the inland side of the tracks. And that was to re-establish the drainage system on the inland side and kind of more of a preventative maintenance effort. And that drainage ditch is right next to a very steep slope embankment and that slope embankment failed and a bunch of debris came into our brand new ditch. So we have to get back out there and kind of fix up the work that was already done. Additionally, we've been working on a culvert rehab project just north of this erosion location near Manresa State Beach. And the sinkhole that we've reported to the commission previously, that sinkhole opened up and now it's just a big giant hole that we've barricaded off. So we're gonna be starting that rehabilitation project very soon, we're meeting with the contractor and so we're, luckily, we have a contractor on board that they could address that as part of that project. And finally, we had some additional failures and erosion at that existing retaining wall along the branch line at the top of the bluff. So you could see that retaining wall failure, the picture on the very right and the picture on the bottom are the same failure but it's two different views. So you could see the embankment slipped out underneath the wall. Next slide. So our recommendation at this point, no additional action is needed today but we're gonna continue to assess the branch line storm damage. We're going to issue a task order with our on-call civil and structural engineering consultant to develop the plans and specs for this railing and walkway replacement or repair at New Brighton-Sapark Bridge. We're gonna continue removing the 40 fallen trees under our existing contracts. We're also gonna be procuring an arborist to assess and remove additional trees as needed when we do this periodically to address tree risk and determine if we need to remove trees that haven't fallen yet. For the landslides, we're in the process of developing a scope of work for the debris removal and erosion control measures to address the 20 landslides. We are planning to issue an emergency contract due to the critical nature of re-establishing the drainage system. So that is forthcoming. And then for the slope embankment failures, we plan to issue emergency contract to address the slope embankment failures for those two critical washout locations. And just to explain how emergency contracts are a little bit different. So the RTC procurement policy allows the executive director to enter into emergency contracts as needed to prevent obviously future damage and continued problems for the RTC. And then the way that it works is he, you know, we identified the emergency. He contacts the chair of the commission and then we report back at the subsequent RTC meeting, the details of that emergency contract. So just a side note there. And then the Manorisa Coastal Bluff, we're planning to issue a contract change order for the maintenance project that we just completed to address the debris removal and the plastic cover. And then we're gonna continue working on that slope stabilization and continue our work at the Manorisa Coastal Bluff that needs attention. That concludes my presentation. I'm here for questions and discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Senior Engineer Christensen and Deputy Director Mendez. Thank you for those pictures. They're very helpful. All right, comments or questions from commissioners? Chair recognizes Commissioner Rockin. Thanks, thanks, Manu. On a number of the mic, which is, you seem to be unmute. I'm unmuted, I think. Well, we can't hear you at least here in chambers. I wonder what's going on. How about now? Can you hear me now? Go ahead. Okay, sorry. A number of these hillsides have slid down. I was talking to Sarah Christensen. The typical way of responding to these is some kind of like a, I don't know, cover of some sort on a hillside to stop it from sliding further. But some of these are vertical and I'm wondering whether any kind of, anything short of a retaining wall would stop it, would make any difference? Oh, so you cut back the slope so it's no longer vertical before you put something on top of it. Thank you. My question was just, when do they plan to do some of those repairs? We've got some more scheduled rains coming in this week. Just wondering if it's gonna have more continued damage to some of the erosions. But yeah, just wondering when they plan to do some of those repairs. I feel there, I hear the echo. Tree issues through existing contracts. We are preparing a scope of work for the landslides and that I anticipate in the next week or two our staff will have a scope of work ready and then what we do is we contract, we contact contractors. What's challenging for the RTC is that a lot of times we need contractors with the track mounted equipment. Those are not, you know, there's not a ton of them out there. They're not local. We have to reach far and wide to get interest and try to get these contractors to Santa Cruz and, you know, enter into contracts with us. So it could take, you know, a month before we actually break ground but the breaking ground part also is weather dependent. So we're gonna get to it as fast as we can. But you're right. The longer we let these sites stay out there, the more challenging the repair is gonna be and the more damaged potential. Thank you, Commissioner Hernandez. Other comments or questions from commissioners? We've got just a couple of questions. The first is we saw in some of the news media reporting that there was also damage to segment seven phase two. The construction that the city is undertaking right now is that any further information about that? We've been working with city public work staff and we are aware that there has been some damage but we are still working with them on understanding the full extent of that. The city's engineer, Josh Banger, is also available if you have additional questions. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Banger. Did you wanna add anything to that? Okay. Nevermind. The second question was regarding the emergency. Oh. Matt, Chair Cohen, members of the commission, can you hear me now? We can, thank you. Okay. Yeah, we suffered quite a bit of damage on that section due to erosion from drainage above the slope. So this is just below Bay Street in the city of Santa Cruz from California heading down towards the boardwalk. A lot of the damage occurred because of drainage systems that are not associated with the project actually but come from housing developments above the project. And we would have seen that kind of erosion regardless of whatever kind of construction active use was happening. Unfortunately, we lost all of our grades and we suffered a great deal of mud on the, we lost all of our survey, we lost all of our grades. And so it set us back and the estimate right now might be a bit too generous but it's better to, in our estimation, estimate a little bit larger now and then window it down once we get a better sense of the damage. And I saw some initial estimates north of a million dollars. Is that? That's correct. All right. All right. Thank you, Mr. Spengrin. You're welcome. And then the other question was regarding some of the emergency tree work that I authorized the executive director to enter into I believe some of that work was in response to trees that fell on Depot Hill and that some of those trees may have fallen on homes. Do we have any liability there that we expect to have to resolve? We do work with our liability insurance for some of these things when damage occurs to neighboring properties and our liability insurance carrier has told us that typically for acts of God as this each property owner basically uses their own insurance to cover their own damages. That's normally how it's handled. And we certainly have talked to some neighboring property owners who have been concerned about that damage to the property communicated that that's typically how insurance companies have to look at it. However, they still are able to whatever costs they incur to deal with any damage to their property. They can submit a claim to the RTC and we will submit it to our insurance company for evaluation. Okay, thank you, Deputy Director Mendez. I see no other comments or questions from commissioners all up to the public. Actually, just quickly. Sorry, yes, Commissioner Rodkin, go ahead. Sorry, thanks. Just so we don't set up a bunch of unreasonable expectations. People understand that submitting a claim to the RTC doesn't mean that we're necessarily accepting that we are responsible. And I think the earlier comment from our staff that Madam Mitmano made this comment as well that when there's a tree falls that had been on our property and falls onto a private property it's not necessarily the case that we're liable for that. And it cuts both ways. If somebody above us is responsible for a washout that comes down a hill from their property we don't necessarily get to blame them for it and claim it either. So people should just understand that we're willing and encourage people to submit claims but we're not saying that submitting it means that it's gonna get paid. It really will come down to what the legal requirements are I think and that's important for people to understand that. Commissioner Rodkin, yeah, Commissioner Peterson. Thank you. I was just curious about the rail mounted equipment. You're talking about hiring specialized contractors. If it would be possible to consider purchasing some of this specialized equipment by the RTC so that we could provide just average contractors the ability to do some maintenance and repair along the rail line moving forward. That would make sense. I think about this all the time. That would be a big undertaking for the RTC because not to say it's impossible but we contract this workout because it's not just the equipment itself but it's the operation of the equipment that requires specialized training and scale that staff doesn't have currently. So that's why we tend to contract everything out because we're a regional transportation planning agency who happens to own a branch line and we don't have like a maintenance crew like the county or the all the cities not to say that that can't be in our future but that's kind of our current approach with maintenance. And I will say the damage just being I've been with RTC a little over five years now if you could believe that. We established a preventative maintenance program in 2018 and the damage this time around was way less than the 2017 storms because of that preventative approach. We periodically clear our culverts, hire contractors clear the culverts, reditch the ditches and establish a drainage system and we're taking more of a proactive approach instead of a reactive approach. And just want to say thank you to all of our staff who's been in the field the last two weeks Riley, Brian, Jason, Thompson, so anyway. Did that answer your question? Yeah, it does. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Peterson. All right, seeing no other commissioners with comments or questions, I'll take it out to the public. Chair recognizes Brian Peebles. Hi, I'm going to turn off my speaker if that helps with that back up. So a couple of things real quick. You know, we have those historical thresholds and we'd encourage you to look at the dangerous eucalyptus trees that may fall so maybe do some preventive measures of, hey, that trees could take out our historical, that's something to look at. One of the difficult things with repairing, obviously that you just spoke about is the tracks are there and you have to have special equipment. And so it would be ideal if we start using that property as a trail and which would allow our community or the agency to go and make these repairs with standard equipment because that's really preventing us. And when you look at preventive maintenance on a property, it's accessing that property frequently, looking at the culverts, making sure that the debris isn't building up. As Kristen mentioned in Manresa, that tree fell. If we had seen it earlier before the washout was created, maybe we could have done something and saved ourselves some money. So we really want to encourage you to start looking at opening the corridor from Watson, all the way from Watsonville through Santa Cruz to allow us to start preventing these major disasters because we know we're going to see more, we're going to see more with climate change. And then finally, the segment seven erosion, you know, when you do major construction and excavation like you're doing, those bad things happen. And so we want to really encourage you to not do such major excavations, you know, tearing out trees, destroying trees. Let's see how we can build that trail without that major excavation because we're seeing what happened. You got another million dollars. You got a 10% increase in your costs for that project. And those type of things happen. So again, I want to encourage those mitigations. Thank you. This is Jack Brown from Aptos. One, I just wanted to say, I think the echo is happening from Chairman Koenig's microphone when the public speaks remotely. But it looks like you're getting a handle on that. But I just want to bring that up. Thank you, Sarah Christensen for another outstanding presentation to the RTC. I always appreciate those. I'm hoping this one gets published on the RTC site as well. One of the things that should be noted is this is now happening like every five or six years with, you know, the effects of climate change and we're getting more severe storms and to consider the corridor, the coastal corridor is a major thoroughfare through the city or through the county is something we need to take to heart here. The repairs being hindered by having rail equipment as Sarah and Brian Peebles just noted really is an opportunity for us to look at what we should be doing all along here is rail banking and removing those track so that we can get standard equipment in to make these repairs quickly. And once, because these rails are unfit anyways for commuter rail, if ultimately through the millions of dollars we're going to do in studies and additional tax measure on the ballot sometime in the future, we decided we want commuter rail. We'll put in the right things at that time, but right now we need to open the corridor and make it so that it's easily repairable. Remember, trains don't swerve. Thank you. I hope you can hear me. This is Michael St. Thank you, Sarah, for the presentation. I wanted to follow up on what you mentioned about damage in 2017. I was wondering on this present damage if there's any federal funds that may come forward to help us fix these areas and what is the history on 2017 damage has the federal government funded anything to be damaged or to be fixed from the damage five, six years ago? Thank you. Manu, you may be muted if you're talking to us. We have one more comment from the public here in Chambers. Good morning, commissioners. I'm Nat Ferrell, and I am currently the chair of Friends of the Rail and Trail and we want to thank staff for their proactive work on addressing the storm damage on the Santa Cruz branch line and throughout the county because I think we need to protect all the transportation assets in our community and the branch line is one of those assets. And lastly, I just want to say that in 2016 and last June in 2023, 2022, excuse me, the voters decisively supported preservation of the rail line. So the mission and mandate is clear and I want to thank staff and the commission for moving forward. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ferrell. I'll return it to the commission for discussion and action and chair recognizes Commissioner Schiffer. I have a question about what the staff recommendation is. There was a staff recommendation in a packet and then in the presentation, it seemed to be expanded upon is to propose staff recommendation a combination of those two pieces of information. I think the staff recommendation stands at what was in the packet, the $400,000 authorization, but more information is going to be forthcoming. There was a slide that had a staff recommendation for the various components of the repairs that are needed. So those are our recommendation, our recommended course of action, but it doesn't require any action, additional action by the commission. Okay. So I have already have authority to enter into emergency contracts. We're giving you a little bit of a heads up that that's going to be the direction that I'm moving in. The only action that is required was stated in the staff report and that was to enter into $400,000 worth of contracts to get things started. I just asked a question to clarify what motion I should make to support the staff recommendation. Understood. I was wondering myself. Second then. All right. Motion by commissioner Schifrin and a second by commissioner McPherson for the staff recommendation to accept the information presented today and approve $400,000 in repairs. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote please. Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Sandy Brown. Aye. Commissioner Johnson. Aye. Commissioner Montecino. Yes. Commissioner Hernandez. Aye. Commission alternate Schifrin. Aye. Commission alternate Quinn. Yes. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner McPherson. Aye. Commissioner Christian Brown. Aye. Commissioner Rotkin. Aye. Commission alternate Pegler. Aye. That passes unanimously. Thank you. Well, now proceed with item 26, which is the 2023 state and federal legislative programs to present presentation by senior transportation planner, Rachel Maraconi. Good morning commissioners, Rachel Maraconi of your staff. Before you today is our proposed 2023 legislative platform for both state and federal legislative proposals but also administrative proposals. The regional transportation commission prepares this list of issues and positions on different issues to allow staff to react quickly when legislative proposals are put forward at the state and federal level or if state and federal agencies have put out notices of rule changes or other administrative actions which we might wanna provide input on. All of the legislative platform is consistent with advancing goals and priorities that have been identified through an extensive public process through our regional transportation plan. We see these as more specific actions and priorities that we would anticipate coming forward either in the legislative platform or realm or through other activities. We work with our regional transportation commission advisory committees and partner agencies throughout the state to identify priorities for the next fiscal year and calendar year. And that includes agencies like the California council of governments, the self-help counties coalition, the California special districts association and other organizations that the regional transportation commission participates as a member of. Some of the issues in 2023 that we anticipate coming up are as discussed earlier in the meeting, modifications to the Brown Act, both the California special districts association, Calcog, the league of cities and several other organizations in the state have already started writing some bills there. I don't think they've secured an author quite yet. They have a few more days to do that, but we do anticipate that there'll be proposals that at the minimum would allow our advisory committee members to attend meetings remotely. We see this as a critical way to engage the community in the decision-making process. The other thing is to at a very minimum modify 361 so that we can do the updates on notices of hybrid meetings at least every 45 days rather than just every 30 days. Some other issues that we'll be following closely and providing input on throughout the year relate to implementation of the federal infrastructure act both at the state and federal level, supporting federal actions to ensure full funding of that program through the federal appropriations process and then providing input on proposals such as AD 6 and 7 that would potentially impact how regions spend funds that we have discretion over including our sales tax measure funding. And so as folks know, measure D was approved by voters in 2016 and has an expenditure plan that was well vetted and built through extensive community's input and engagement. And we do have concerns that any proposals at the state level that might impact our ability to implement the projects that were identified as priorities for the community would be an issue. On the state budget earlier last month, the governor released his preliminary proposal for the fiscal year 2324 state budget. Some of that would impact how much money becomes available including some new transit funds that would flow through the regional transportation commission through the transit inner city rail program. As you folks might remember, last year the state was facing unprecedented surplus. It was an exciting time. There was a lot of commitments, tripling funding for the active transportation program, boosting funding for transit, zero emission vehicle programs. With the latest revenue forecast, the governor's recommending to scale back some of those commitments. And as staff, we recommend that the commission advocate that there is a continued commitment to the active transportation program and transit programs especially to make sure that that boosted funding is there to address the massive backlog of needs both on the transit like and pedestrian fronts. Some additional information about some of the governor's proposals are included in the staff report. I won't go into detail on all of those. I also wanna just report, and though it also has been mentioned several times today on some of the recent federal activities. With the Federal Infrastructure Act, there was some more flexibility on boosting funding for competitive programs such as the MAGA program and rural programs in the state, which led to us being able to apply for and secure $30 million for Highway One and Metro buses as part of the Freedom to State Park auxiliary lane projects. As earlier mentioned by Commissioner McPherson, Congresswoman Eshu also secured funding for Boulder Creek sidewalk projects through the Congressionally Directed Funding Program. The return of earmarks has been helpful to address projects that just would have a hard time getting implemented without that boost of special funding. On the federal level, we're also closely tracking the debt ceiling conversations and what that could do to impact transportation commitments that were set forth in that IIJA. In the staff report, there's also a summary of a few of the many, many bills that were approved last year that we have been tracking and we'll be looking at how those are implemented. For next step, staff's gonna continue to monitor bills throughout the year and legislative activities. If there are specific bills that commissioners or members of the community would like RTC staff to review, feel free to email those to our executive director and we'll dive deeper into what the impact of those bills might be on local transportation projects and priorities. So with that, I'm happy to answer some questions on page 219 of the PDF or 26.7 of the packet is the focus areas for 2023 on the state level and on page 200 and I'm trying to think what it was. 227 of the PDF has the federal legislative program, but with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions and just wanna recognize one of our newer planners, Matt Schroeder for his work on this report as well. Thank you, senior planner Laura Coney and new planner, Mr. Schroeder as well. Good questions or comments? Yeah, I just wanna thank you, especially a year ago we had better high hopes than we do today and thank you for adjusting. And I just wanna point out as you have to the Clean Streets program up in Boulder Creek, but also our cooperative effort with Metro has really paid off and we have two electric buses. Now we're gonna have four or we hope to get to 30 in the near future, but budget wise, who knows when that will come, but just so that the general public know that we're really moving ahead in the RTC as well as Metro and the transportation and climate programs in general to seek as many grants as we can from the state and federal levels and you're just right at the top of the list of getting there when the money arrives. So thank you for your efforts and we're not going as quickly as we wanted to, but we're moving ahead and that's really something to say in itself this day and age with the budget cuts that we're gonna be seeing. I think it's nine point or 2.7 billion in the state. We're holding our own and thank you very much for your efforts. Thank you, Commissioner McPherson, Commissioner Schifrin. I also wanna thank staff for all their work, not only in terms of DPS informed about the legislative situation, but for being so successful in obtaining the various grants. We met with a County Director of Community Development yesterday and we talked about all the grants that have been coming into the County both through RTC and through the County and through the cities. And one of the points that he made about why we've been so successful is the collaboration that exists between the various agencies. And it sort of really brings to mind and we sort of builds on what Commissioner McPherson said working with transit district, the RTC, the County and the cities. This is an era of real cooperation between the agencies doing these multi-agency projects, a rail trail, rail planning, highway projects and projects up in the valley that really represent the ability of the agencies to work together. We've gotten used to it, but it doesn't exist everywhere and it isn't necessarily easy to obtain. So I think thanking staff for the kind of spirit that they bring to this effort. And I think we're rebelling the success of that. I do wanna just add that Caltrans District 5 staff has been instrumental in helping us advance some of the Highway 9 and Highway 1 projects as well. Happy to thank them as well. Thank you, Commissioner Chevron, Commissioner Rockin. I wanna echo the comments of my colleagues, but I wanna give the public some sense of scale of this. We're the smallest county in California except for San Francisco. And when I look at these reports on the funding that we're receiving, sometimes we're getting a fifth of the money that's available in the state out of a particular grant or program or something. And you can't take that for granted. And it's just very, very impressive that our staff again, for the reasons Andy laid out and others. I think we've also been successful because we're looking at things in a multimodal way. And I think the status shifted to that approach. And I think we exemplify that way of looking at these projects. So I mean, we've just done extraordinarily well to get a sense of that. Again, you think 58 counties and we're the smallest one in terms of physical area. And we're taking a fifth of the money in the state on a bunch of these things. That's fantastic. Thank you, Commissioner Rockin. All right, any other comments or questions from commissioners? I think now I'll open it to the public and the chair recognizes Mr. Peoples. Hi, Anne, I'll turn off my timeline. Hey, so yeah, great job, Rachel on the success you're doing on getting the awards. Phenomenal Measure D obviously has helped with that. We support it Measure D. You know, the other thing to realize is their realistic projects, right? Realistic project, electric buses, rubber wheels on asphalt using the existing infrastructure. Highway 1 widening, that is critical and using the infrastructure that's there with buses. That's the type of projects that are granted that are awarded by the government agencies because they look at it, say how realistic is this project? It doesn't violate things like the coastal commission requirements where you may have a transit forward or runs 20 feet from the ocean. So really want to encourage us to keep looking at projects that are realistic, that we can accomplish, that we won't destroy ecological systems. So again, Rachel, good work, looking really great that we're winning so much grant money. Very excited to see how we move forward. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Peeples. I see no one else on Zoom or here in chamber. So I'll return it to the commission for action. Move the staff recommendation. Second. Motion by commissioner Schifrin, second by commissioner McPherson to move the staff recommendation to adopt the 2020 or 2023 state and federal legislative programs. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote, please. Commissioner Sandy Brown. Aye. Commissioner Johnson. Aye. Commissioner Montecino. Aye. Commissioner Hernandez. Aye. Commission alternate Schifrin. Aye. Commission alternate Quinn. Yes. Commission alternate Pegler. Aye. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner McPherson. Aye. Commissioner Christian Brown. Aye. Commissioner Rotkin. Aye. And that passes unanimously. Thank you. The 2023 state and federal legislative programs being adopted, we will now proceed with the commission will move into closed session. And counsel, are there any items that will be reportable from closed session? We are not anticipating reportable items given the follow-on item on the open session. All right, thank you. And do you have any sense of how long we'll need for closed session? I would estimate not more than 10 minutes. Okay. Well, let's take a five minute break. Move then so that we can transfer over to closed session for commissioners. And then initial. Mono, ask the public if they have any comments on the closed session item first. All right. Is there anyone here in any public members that have comments or questions? All right. Seeing none here in chambers or online. Commissioner Quinn. Manu, can we resend the closed session link? I hate to say it, but it may take me 10 minutes to log into the closed session. And if it's only 10 minutes, so it could be resend, it would be great. The clerk can work with community TV to send the closed session link. That'd be great. Or even put it in the chat. Or write. Well, as long as it's not a public link. All right. So we'll take a five minute break as a commission reconvening closed session at let's just say 1030 and then anticipate that to take about 10 minutes. So the commission should be back in public session to hear item 30, 29 and 30 at about 1040. Thank you. Regular agenda of the regional transportation commission. Item 29, was there any reportable action out of closed session? There was no reportable item from closed session. Thank you, Mr. Chair. All right. Thank you, council. Then we'll proceed with item 30, which is approval of purchase and sale agreement for acquisition of 7994 and 7996 SoCal drive for highway one auxiliary lanes and bus on shoulder from State Park Drive to Freedom Boulevard and Coastal Rail Trail Segment 12 project. Senior transportation engineer, Sarah Christensen. Thank you, Chair Koenig. My name's Sarah Christensen of your stuff. I'm here today to recommend approval of a purchase and sale agreement for the acquisition of 7994 and 7996 SoCal drive. I'm gonna read the staff recommendation. There's an attached resolution that details all of the approvals here. So approving and accepting the term terms and conditions of purchase and sale agreement attached to real property located at 7994 and 7996 SoCal drive in Aptos. Accessor parcel number 03923202 and 01. Authorizing the executive director to execute the purchase and sale agreement to complete the feasibility studies required to waive the contingency set forth in the purchase and sale agreement to make payment on the real property acquisition and related escrow fees pursuant to the purchase and sale agreement. Authorizing the close of escrow. Authorizing the chair of the commission to execute the certificate of acceptance for the associated deed and escrow documents. Amending the measure D active transportation five year program of projects to shift $2 million forward to the current fiscal year that were previously programmed in a future fiscal year for this purchase. Amending the RTC budget in the current fiscal year accordingly and then authorizing a short-term interprogram loan from the measure D highway category to the measure D active transportation category if needed to manage cash flow in the current fiscal year. And that's gonna depend on the actual expenditures this fiscal year. So I'm gonna talk generally about the project. So the project is a long highway one. There's bus on shoulder and auxiliary lanes proposed between the state park drive interchange and the freedom Boulevard interchange. The project also includes segment 12 of the coastal rail trail. The trail is proposed on the inland side of the tracks. There's currently one alternative. The reason for that is the placement of the trail on the inland side of the tracks was the least impactful to right-of-way and the environment. And then at January 12th commission approved the purchase and sell agreement for the adjacent parcel 7992 Soquel Drive. The there was a property that went on the market at 7992 Soquel Drive and through the conversations with the seller broker he also represents the next door. You got muted suddenly. Sarah, you got muted. She can't hear me probably. We got rid of the echo and then some. Yeah. People in the room can probably hear her, but we can't. Yeah. Is anybody on this? Yes, they can't hear us. Nobody can hear us. I don't think that's heard by me. Talk about Silo, she's back. She's back. Okay. There we go. Apologies. Okay. So the project has an EIR that's going to be circulated this month. And we anticipate CEQA being completed later this year. Protection acquisition prevents properties needed for future transportation projects from being acquired and developed by private developers. And staff is pursuing a Caltrans approval for the protection acquisition. Staff recommends accepting and approving the purchase and sell agreement and acquiring this property and just some fiscal impacts. The programming for the project right away capital is out in fiscal year 2025. And staff recommends reprogramming that measure D in the current fiscal year, which may require an interprogram loan to manage the cash flow of measure D depending on actual expenditures in this fiscal year. That concludes my presentation. I'm available for questions. Thank you, senior engineer Christensen. Are there comments or questions from members of the commission? So you can now hear chambers done online then I'll open it up to the public. The member of the public wish to comment on this item. All right, not seeing anyone here in chambers or online. So I'll return it to the commission for action. Commissioner Rockin. I'll move the staff recommendation and I want to make a brief comment if it gets seconded. I assume it will. Second. So my comment, there've been a number of comments in the letters to the editor of the Sentinel comments from our, the public at our meeting. I'll get this echo again. The auxiliary lane project is not gonna deliver very much in the way of improvements to traffic on highway one. I tend to share that view, but I know that there's huge divisions among the public about this. Other people think it's gonna make a big difference or even if it's a small difference, they'd be willing to pay a fortune to make it happen. And in 2016, we put together a spending package and measure D that included these auxiliary lanes. And so the public, I think, when they voted on measure D had every reason to expect that we were gonna build these auxiliary lanes. My objections, not the material. And so I just want to make clear that I contain to support all these various decisions we're making about the auxiliary lanes because I think a higher priority than the particular issue of this or that, when you tell the public, we're taking your taxes for something and this is what we're gonna spend it on and this is how it's gonna go, that you need to follow through on that. The worst thing you could do is, you know, again, just because of all of a sudden we woke up and six of us thought the auxiliary lanes didn't make a lot of sense. I think it'd be a betrayal of the public trust at this point to abandon this project, even if we individually think it's not gonna make a huge amount of difference. I don't think it's gonna be terrible. I think it'll make some improvements. I think they're maybe not as great as some people expect they're gonna be. But I'm gonna continue to support this for that reason. I think we have a responsibility to respond to what the public thought they were voting for. And that's the reason, though, although I have my doubts. So every meeting we hear from a number of people that think that this auxiliary project is not gonna do much, it's not gonna make a difference. And I hear those comments, I don't disagree even with those comments, but I don't think they're very helpful to me because I'm gonna continue to support what we told the public we're gonna spend measure D funds on and do everything we could do to get leverage additional funds from the state feds and everybody else to make the project happen. And we'll see what happens with it. And I may be proven right in the end that it wasn't a great project, but at this point, I reserve the right to say that when it happens, but I'm not gonna do anything to prohibit these projects from moving forward. So that's my motion on this, the reason I have the motion on this item. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Rockin. Commissioner Quinn. You know, I'm listening to Commissioner Rockins' comment. And I agree, but it does raise a question, maybe for another time. Does the commission lead or follow the public? And when we commit to a decision and subsequent data comes in, what data would change our mind? And I think those are important questions that we should keep in front of us. I agree with that totally, Robert. And I think if there were a absolute factual question of what's gonna happen, I might at some point be willing to undo something I'd said earlier in public or what the public had asked us for. But I think there's enough controversy about what the results are gonna be that at this point to substitute my judgment for that if the voters would be a mistake. And that's what I'm trying to say here. It's not that I would never change my mind when new facts come in and make clear that something we're doing is stupid or it's a waste of public money and so forth. We're not quite at that point, I don't think on this project. Agreed. And Rodkin, we do have a motion by Commissioner Rodkin and seconded by Commissioner Schifrin to approve the purchase and sale agreement for acquisition of 7994 and 7996 and authorize the executive director with associated, to perform associated actions. So any further discussion? I think we did, I had called for public comment once. I see a member of the public which is a comment now. I'll take that comment at this time and any other member of the public that can miss the first opportunity. Thank you, Chairman Koenig. This is David in Los Alvo Beach. How does the echo happening in the room? Could you meet the, thank you. So just to clarify, induced demand isn't saying that traffic, there's no benefit to traffic or it gets worse. It's all saying is that if something's easier people will do it more often. So by widening highway one, we're actually improving the flow of traffic. The fear is that more people will then occupy that lanes because there's a market decision that's easier to get into town. So by objecting to widening, all you're saying is that we need to maintain or worsen the level of congestion to discourage people from traveling in our own communities. I really think that's an important position. So I'm in total support of this and thank you so much for your work on it. I think we've been separated out from the discussion again. There's, all right, I think we're all back. So we have a motion by Commissioner Rodkin, seconded by Commissioner Schifrin. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk will call the please. Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Sandy Brown. Aye. Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Montecino. Aye. Commissioner Hernandez. Yes. Commissioner Schifrin. Aye. Commissioner Quinn. Yes. Commissioner Pegler. Aye. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner MacPherson. Aye. Commissioner Kristen Brown. Aye. Commissioner Rodkin. Aye. That passes unanimously. The purchase and sale agreement is approved. All right, that brings us to the end of our agenda for today, the next regular meeting of the Regional Transportation Commission will be according to our old Brown Act rules, Thursday, March 2nd, 2023 at 9 a.m. here at the County Board of Supervisors Chambers at 701 Ocean Street, Room 525. And I also have a note that for a transportation policy workshop scheduled for Thursday, February 16th before the next regular meeting, 2023 at 9 a.m. by Zoom teleconference. Do we have no Director Preston if we anticipate having that meeting? That has been canceled. Okay, that has officially canceled. So we'll see you next month, March 2nd, here at the Board of Supervisors Chambers. Meeting adjourned.