 Okay, we are live and we are waiting for a one more commissioner to log on for quorum. So shall we wait to start that how it goes. I think we should probably. There we go. We're good. Okay, I will be in the meeting then okay so good morning everyone. Today is July 21st, 2022 and this is the 9am special meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. We have one item of regular business today. We'll start with a roll call. Commissioner Bertrand. Present. Commissioner Sandy Boehm. Here. Commissioner Randy Johnson. Here. Commissioner alternate Hearst. Here. Commissioner alternate ship friend. Here. Commissioner friend. Here. Commissioner Kristen Brown. Present. And Commissioner Brotkin. Here. You have a quorum. Sandy, are you frozen there? It's like she is. She's holding a position really well though. Yeah. We'll just hold on. I'm sure she'll be able to restore her connection in a few minutes. She'll realize. You could start or communication I suppose. Hi everyone. My apologies. I think it happens. Lost my connection. It was working just fine until just now. Okay, so we, it sounds like we did a roll call and we will now move on to oral communications. Is it time for members of the public to address the commission on item? It was that are not on our agenda this morning. But we still need Sandy to pick people. I think. Vice chair. I don't know. Vice chair take over. Our vice chair is not present today. So Steve, how should we. So the commission can select a person to serve as vice chair or actually for purposes of oral communications. I think it's time for us to move on to oral communications. Yes, and you can simply identify the speakers that are have their hands raised and bring them in to speak. Okay. All right. So we will go ahead and start with Mr. Brian. People's. Go ahead, Brian. Something happening here. Give me a second. There we go. Okay, Mr. People. There you go. I thank you. Appreciate it. Everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I would like to just say that along the coastal trail, north coast trail and behind him is the farmland that will be destroyed with the rail and trail plan. At the last RTC, Mr. Andy Schiffner made a false statement that farmland was not going to be destroyed for the rail and trail. It is the need to have the public transport, public transport that will destroy major farmland requiring major infrastructure will shut down farming during construction. It's a major issue. Andy participated in the discussions with the farmers during the forced buy in. Andy actually. Said that taxpayers are going to fund basically a train to a private tourist train with tax dollars is wrong. Spending millions for a private train is wrong. The third district office should not support a private tourist train over the farmers and taxpayers rather than wasting our tax dollars on expensive trail to accommodate a tourist train in the future. Let's do the restrooms first, the parking lots and rail bank, pull the rails and build an interim trail. Please support the farmers and the farmers do support the trail. And I did talk to the farmers and they concur with this and we're gonna have Congressman Panetta go back out in the coming weeks to months to visit with the farmers. And his district now is going to be after he wins, knock on wood, pretty confident of that, that section of the corridor. So appreciate your time. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. I am back, your chair is back. So I'll call on our next speaker and you will have two minutes. That would be Michael Sains. Welcome. Thank you, Chair Brown. Good morning, commissioners. Michael St. with campaign for sustainable transportation. Just wanted to not miss the oral communications opportunity to emphasize the need to move people and not cars in Santa Cruz County. I did borrow that expression from supervisor McPherson. If you have been watching the news or reading the newspaper, you couldn't miss the seriousness of the toll climate change is having on our planet. The United Kingdom has been said that it's melting. Europe is having devastating fires and heat. President Biden is considering calling for a climate emergency in the U.S. 120 million citizens in the U.S. are under severe heat warnings. What is the biggest contributor to this warming of our planet? It is greenhouse gas emissions from our transportation sector. If any of you commissioners believe that climate change is the biggest single existential threat to our survival on the planet, please step up and help your constituents mitigate this horrible effects of climate change. How can you do this by approaching transportation projects that effectively reduce our dependency on automobiles? This does not go back on your promise to getting Santa Cruz moving forward as stated in the 2016 measure D advertising. Starting two trans mass transit corridors is the answer to our issues. BRT dedicated on highway one and some type of Coast Futura rail project from Seascape Resort to the boardwalk. These two projects will not only get Santa Cruz moving, they will improve over time versus the oscillates that we all know will fail over time. We are at the crossroads and the public has spoken, measure D failed, and the tier one H-O-V-E-I-R has been set aside. Let us catch up with these 21st century technology of electrified mass transit and move people not cars. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Saints. Our next speaker is Rick Glonginati. Welcome. Thank you, hi. So I wanted to talk about my organization's lawsuit. So our understanding of the recent court decision is that it overturns the approval of the H-O-V-E-I-R project that allows the tier two projects to go forward, the tier two projects are the auxiliary lanes. And we haven't decided whether to appeal this decision. We've got 60 days. And it partly depends on what you all decide to do. It seems to me that you've got a couple of options. One is you could abandon the H-O-V lane project. And I want to remind you that the Unified Court or a study said that project won't be funded until after 2035. But my read of the direction that California is going is that it's moving away from highway expansion funding. So I don't believe after 2035 there'll be any money for expanding the highway. So option two would be to continue to spend money trying to fix the E-I-R on the highway of H-O-V project. And if you do decide to recirculate the E-I-R, it's going to need to comply with new CEQA guidelines that went into effect in 2020. And that's a requirement to measure vehicle miles traveled and to mitigate VMT. And that's a tall order. And there's not a whole lot of money around to do a mitigation project. So I think that's an uphill battle. And I would of course prefer if you chose option one. I think we all need to admit that the H-O-V lane project is unlikely to ever be built. And then we can put our financial resources behind transit. I hope to have more than three minutes if you would grant me a next meeting so we can talk in more detail about more organization suggestions. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Longinati. And I would just ask, yes, if you contact the chair, that would be me in advance to arrange for extra time. I'm willing to do that. So just shoot me a message. Our next speaker is Barry Scott. You're so kind. Thank you for permitting some public comment. I just wanna echo what Rick and Mike have said and add one few seconds of a conversation I had in a Zoom meeting, public Zoom meeting with Congressman Panetta when I asked him about helping us with rail funding and I hope this works. This is what he said. Congressman, thank you. Now, hand it off to Ron DeRondon. And let me ask you, because I know the answer to this question, when we defeat Measure D and this RTC begins to move forward with a rail plan, I know you're gonna help us all the heck, right? Bring those federal menis here. And that's exactly it. And I appreciate you saying that. And basically that is our job as a federal representative to make sure that the funding is there for the infrastructure that the locals have decided on. And so that vote is a big vote, obviously coming up here. But obviously I look forward to playing my part if I'm so honored to be in this position to make sure that those infrastructure dollars, those federal funding dollars are there. But look, it starts with you. It starts with people like Ron DeRondon who understands how important it is to ensure that we have the infrastructure that allows us to live and work here in this area. So, knowing that there's someone like Ron on the call, I'm humbled to be a part of this call because of everything that he's done for our community. And obviously being on this call, he's gonna be continuing to be involved. So it's my... So that's about it. And thank you for indulging me and enjoy the rest of your summer. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Okay, I don't see any additional hands up for oral communications. So we will move on now. I ask staff to respond to the erroneous statements made by the first speaker about segment five on the North Coast. Thank you, Commissioner Schiffer and I sort of was in and out for that portion. So yes, Director Preston, if you have any comments that you'd like to share in response to that, it would be very helpful. Sure, the North Coast EIR did identify a very small amount of agricultural land that would be taken out of commission. Grace Blakesley of our staff who worked on that document is also here and can comment on it. A lot of the farmland that is affected is farmland that's encroaching on RTC right away. And we are working very closely with state parks on a land swap to ensure that agricultural farming can continue on the North Coast to the greatest extent possible, which is almost exactly what's happening right now. And we have settled with the farmers and their concerns have been addressed as part of a legal settlement and we are following the terms of that settlement. And Grace, do you have anything else you want to add? No, I think that covers it. But happy to answer any follow-up questions if needed. Thank you. Commissioner Rotkin. I'll just stand briefly. The representation that we're tearing out, I forget the exact word that was used, massive amounts of agricultural land. The picture itself points out, we're talking about a little strip next to the railroad track that already right now, most of which already doesn't have anything growing on it right now. And the biggest irony is the double wide trail proposed by Mr. Peoples would have taken the same piece of land even if you put half the trail on top of the track. So I don't get it. It's a completely ridiculous accusation against Mr. Schifrin. Thank you. Chair Brown, I'm sorry to interrupt. We do have Commissioner McPherson on the line. It's the phone number and the attendees. We are unable to promote him, but I did unmute him. So if you need to call on him, he is unmuted. Okay, great. And Commissioner McPherson, if you would like to speak, you could, I think you know how to raise your hand. I'll keep it on attendees so I can see that and or just speak up. Thank you. Okay. So we have, let's see, I guess we'll move on now. Are there any additions or deletions to the agenda? We have one item. We just had a replacement agenda, but it was just the calling number. Calling numbers, yes. Okay, thank you. So we'll move on to our regular business item. That is item four, findings for virtual and hybrid meetings under Assembly Bill 361. Do we have a staff report? Yes. Good morning, commissioners. As you are aware to the COVID pandemic, it's been allowed for government agencies to hold meetings virtually so that the business of government can continue. And that was allowed initially through the executive order of the governor and then through the passage of AB 361. And AB 361 requires that government agencies make public findings to be able to continue those virtual meetings or also even hybrid meetings. And the commission has been making those public findings on a regular basis to be able to continue their meetings. But the AB 361 requires that those public findings be made every 30 days. So the special meetings being held to meet that requirement. So if you meet more than 30 days apart, then you have to have a special meeting specifically to make those public findings. And that's what this meeting is doing. And so staff does recommend that the RTC make the public finding says outlined in the staff report. Thank you, Deputy Director Mendez. I will now take it out to the public for comment on this item. And I see one hand raised, that is Brian Trail Now. And this is regarding AB 361. Thank you, this is Brian Peoples with Trail Now. I've been involved with this organization for over 20 years. Actually, for the last decade, I've been actually participating in these meetings actually physically going down to the public meetings prior to the pandemic. When the pandemic hit, there was a huge benefit to the community and myself, of course, because now we can do the virtual. I'm actually in Vermont for the summer where I spend my summers. Virtually 200 people I think have been able to participate. You've seen a huge increase. And as a transportation committee, this is a great benefit and continue to do this. The interesting thing about what this pandemic has shown us is these environmental conditions create real opportunities and force us to the future and to understand the direction public agencies need to go. Great example is sea level rising. Sea level rising is gonna force us as we're seeing with making commitments to infrastructure and the coastal commission requirements. In San Diego, for example, they're spending millions to reroute the train, the Amtrak train, planning for taking it off the coast and bringing it inland. Our own Santa Cruz Coastal Corridor is like 20 feet from the beach over in Manresa and we're seeing it fall into the ocean. So any idea of our community investing millions for a fixed rail system for that corridor really doesn't make sense when you look at the environmental impacts that are impacting our community, our world. And so I think it's important to understand the facts that we need to rail bank, pull the rails and begin to use that coastal corridor now as an active transportation resource. Thank you for your time. Here. Thank you, Mr. Peoples, Commissioner Johnson. Discipline of order. I think keeping people on track in terms of what their public comment should be with respect to the issue at hand is probably the best way to go. I don't know. The last speaker diverged just a little bit too much for my liking. Here, here. Yeah, I, well, I agree and I try to give people a little bit of flexibility there, but I do agree. So just, we don't have any more speakers for today, but I will make sure to do general reminders about that and monitor when we have multiple speakers. With that recommendation, I will come back to the commission. Okay, we have a, I think it was a race, but I think I heard Commissioner Schifrin first and I saw Commissioner Rockins hands second. So I'll go with a motion and a second. Just a question of staff before the vote. When we move to hybrid meeting, which is going to happen in August, I believe, do we still need to have these monthly approvals findings about virtual meetings or at that point, are we free just to have both in public and virtual meetings? That's a question, Steve. You will likely need to have them because the AB 361 allows for the remote participation without making the remote locations be publicly available. If you follow just the normal Brown Act teleconference provisions in the remote locations have to be places at which the public can also participate and attend. And so AB 361 allows you to do a hybrid without having the remote locations be ones that are publicly available. I wonder if without us taking action, I don't wanna open a big discussion on this. Our staff might consider contacting our legislators to get a change in the state law so that that just becomes ridiculous at some point of every month. Whenever you don't happen to have a meeting that's 30 days closer to the next meeting, you're stuck with these extra meetings that people have to come to. And I'm more concerned about the staff time than ours, but maybe our staff could contact our legislators and ask them if we might get some action to get that law changed. So yeah, thank you, Commissioner Rockin. We have talked about this at the commission and I believe that staff had been in conversation and I see Director Preston, your hand is up. So perhaps you have more info for us. Yes, Mike, you are unique, but you're not so unique in being frustrated by having to have this special meeting. The question is being had at the state level. There is several pieces of legislation floating around to try to provide a permanent fix. There's different versions, different likes and dislikes about the different versions and what they're trying to accomplish. So I'll continue to keep the commission posted. For now we will need to continue to make these findings of our meetings are more than 30 days apart. Thank you. Okay, seeing no additional hands up, I believe we are ready for a roll call vote. We have a motion and a second to make the necessary findings for virtual and hybrid meetings. Can we take a roll call? Commissioner Bertrand. I agree. Commissioner Sammy Brown. I. Commissioner Johnson. I. Commissioner Alternate Hearst. I. Commission Alternate Hernandez. Yes. Commission Alternate Schifrin. Yes. Commissioner McPherson. Yes. Commissioner Kristen Brown. I. Commissioner Parker. Yes. And Commissioner Rockin. I. That passes unanimously. Okay. Then we will adjourn this meeting. The next meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission is scheduled for Thursday, August 4th at 9 a.m. I anticipate we'll have a robust agenda. And so I look forward to seeing you all then until then, enjoy your summer. 24 minutes, pretty good. The meeting is adjourned. Keep it as moving. Thank you. Take care.