 Point at everybody, in the event of an emergency, there's two names to be addressed for this room. If you need to exit to your left or right over here or either over there, we will basically congregate in the parking lot. Myself or either Donna will basically take the head count and show that everybody is safely evacuated from the room. In the event of a medical emergency, I am first day certified. I'll be the first one to contact EMS should that be needed. Thank you. That concludes my safety content. Thank you. Okay, I'd like to ask Donna to please follow up. Director Brown will be absent today. Director Downey. Okay. Director Newtruck. Director Cullin-Terry Johnson. Present. Director Coney. Here. Director Lynn. Here. Director McPherson. Here. Director Newsom. Director Paper. Here. Director Keros Carter. Here. And Director Rockman will be absent today. Ex-Opicio Director Henderson. Here. And Ex-Opicio Director Narcaz. And we do have one. Okay, great. Thank you. Just a couple of announcements that today's meeting is being broadcast by community television of Santa Cruz County. And we have Spanish interpretation available through Maria Avila from the language line services. At this time. You see her for me. My name is Maria. I'm here for any interpretation services in Spanish. Thank you so much. And realize you were here in person. Perfect. Okay, with that, we'll go to agenda item number five, board of director comments. Any comments from directors? Seeing none, we'll move to agenda item six, oral and written communication to the board. Is there anyone? Okay. Is there anyone here who'd like to make oral communication? You want online? Moving on to item seven, labor organization communication. There are none. Okay. Moving along to item eight, additional documentation to support existing agenda items. There are none. Moving to consent. That is items 9.1 through 9.11. Are there any questions or any items that you have comments or need to be pulled from the board? Is there anyone in the public who's just to make a comment on consent item 9.1 to 9.11? I'm assuming no one online. Done. All right. We'll move to the consent agenda. All right. All right. We'll move on to page one and seconded by COVID. And we'll do a roll call vote. Director Downey. Aye. Director Nutra. Aye. Director Cohn, Harry Johnson. Aye. Director Coney. Aye. Director Lin. Aye. Director Witt-Fierce. Aye. Director Newsom. Aye. Director Pagler. Aye. And Director Keros-Kartner. Aye. And we end the motion after. Thank you. Okay. We're moving on to our regular agenda. Item 10 is presentation longevity awards. And I believe there are some of our employees here. So let me just read the names and ask you to stand up if you are here so that I know you're here. Efren Adayano. I'm, excuse my, if I'm mispronouncing. Okay. Josephina Cruz. Jose Escobar. David Horvath. Okay. Wonderful. And I ask you to come up, David Horvath. Thank you for serving the Metro. Oh, there you go. Yeah, there you go. Thank you for your 10 years of service. Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate it. Would you like to see it? Well, I was hoping that my Metro siblings, Joe, Manny, Jose and Efren would be able to make it today, but I guess they're out doing what we do. I remember when we finished training in August of 2013, seems like yesterday, we went to the board meeting at Scotts Valley City Hall to be introduced to the board and the riding public. And just like that, 10 years went on by. So I wanted to say thanks to Metro and our wonderful riding public for 10 great years and looking forward to 10 more. Thank you so much for all your work. See if anyone else is here. Bonneville Pérez. No, okay. And Mitchell Dupas. All right. I'll go back to my seat. I do have a bio, Mitch. Mitch is a dispatcher schedule. Scheduler, he was just 27 years old when he started to work at Metro Paracruz. Back then he was just trying to make monthly payment on his Toyota trip and have a little left over for food. 15 years later, he's now happily married to his wife, Mada, and has two wonderful children, Maddie, six years old, and Marissa, nine years old. The Metro has provided me and my family the ability to live comfortably, have great benefits, and eventually a great retirement. Mitch enjoys spending time with his daughters, Marissa and Maddie, mountain biking, when he has time, his daughters usually keep him busy, barbecuing, relaxing and enjoying Santa Cruz County's beautiful beaches, parks and beautiful weather. So thank you to Mitch and thank you to everyone who has received a longevity award today, just a round of applause for it. I am going to move on to item 11, which is the retiree resolution of appreciation or delete from it. Are you here? Okay. She's not online. She's not online. I'm gonna take a moment and read parts of this resolution to acknowledge. Not gonna read the whole thing. So we'll skip down to, whereas Billy Bruebert provided Metro with dedicated service and government during the time of her employment. And whereas Daily Bruebert served Metro with distinction. And whereas the service provided to the residents of Santa Cruz County to Daily Bruebert resulted in reliable quality public transportation being available in the most difficult of times. And whereas during the time of this group service Metro-improved existing and built new operating facilities, converted the fleet to a CNG propulsion systems, developed accessible bus stops, improved ridership, responded to adverse economic conditions, assumed direct operational responsibility for Highway 17 express service and the Amtrak connector service and assumed direct operational responsibility for the Paracruz service. And whereas the quality of life in Santa Cruz County was improved dramatically as a result of the exemplary service provided by Billy Bruebert. Now therefore be it resolved that upon her retirement as administrative assistant, the board of directors of Metro does hereby commend her efforts in advancing public transit service in Santa Cruz County and express the sincere appreciation on behalf of itself, the Metro staff and all the residents of Santa Cruz County. And therefore further resolved that a copy of this resolution be entered in the official records of the Santa Cruz Metro Transit District. So thank you for this Bruebert and let's do a round of applause. It does. Okay. So I will move adoption approval. Yes, sir. That was all I was gonna say. Okay. And then the third. Who was the second? I think it was Dr. Oh, okay. McPherson. Thank you. All right. Director Downey. Director Dutra. Hi. Director. Very good. Hi. Director Cummings. Hi. Director Lynn. Hi. Director McPherson. Hi. Director Newsom. Hi. Director Pagler. Hi. Director Kuehers-Carter. Hi. And the motion passes. Thank you. Okay. Item 12 is consideration of Santa Cruz Metro staff and FY24 and FY25 operating budget and capital budget and resolutions setting the public hearing on June 23rd. Mr. Farmer. Hello, everyone. I'm gonna go through the budget. I went through this with the committee and a little bit more in detail. So I'm gonna stay a little bit on the high level and stop me if you have any questions. Like I said, it's for the reason why we're having this board meeting today. A week from now is the fact that we have to set up this early day period before we can go to the public hearing and get approval. So to move on, I'm gonna skip some of the slides, but kind of give you an idea of the budget itself. Primarily back in March, I presented the budget in draft mode for approval with RTC. And what I'm gonna do is just gonna give you a couple items that have changed since then. So that's why I'm gonna stay at kind of a high level. So since then, we've actually had some slight increases in some of the revenue as well as some of the costs. One of the big things is we actually brought down our CNG fuel. So it's a saving for about almost $900,000. But that's misleading because we are still up over 50% over FY23, this fuel costs are still pretty high. Bottom line is we're making total changes of about $685,000. So our bottom line went from $6.8 million before transfers to 7.5 million. So that's the changes that we've made. I said, I'm just gonna flip through these unless you want me to stop. One item I want to point out on the P&L, an FY24, if you go down to the non-operating revenue on the budget, there's a, Brian says, federal state grants. We have a one-time $4 million TDASTA earnings coming in. It's only in for FY24, and then it goes away. So just beware that number is including that four million. On the proposed FTE changes, since the March board meetings, we, the mechanic one and two that we defunded, we initially had two of them. Now we're only defunding one. We're defunding customer service assistance. On the flip side, we are adding one mechanic three, not two mechanic three. We're adding the assistant parent crews and customer service manager and a parts and materials service manager. So those are the changes on the FTEs. And that's 24. And then in 25, you made a few more changes. Like I said, we've adjust a little bit on our revenue changes, which is our contracts and our passenger fares. Big change right now on the expense side is the fact that we have no raises in here yet. Our coals cost a living adjustments. Right now it's just steps and benefit changes. And that's driving about $1.4 million dollars worse. At the very bottom, we are about $4.1 million dollars lower than FY24. So we're coming in at about 3.4. There's some clips and tapes between federal grants and COVID because we run out of our COVID money. So that's the $9 million negative. But on the flip side, on our federal grants, that's our 5307 and that's slightly offset by that $4 million of STA, TDA funds that go up. And that's where we get to 6.0. And then moving on to this slide, as you can see at the very bottom, we've got from 7.5 million operating service plus and deficit before transfers. Sorry, I don't have something I can point to to show you this near the bottom. The 3.4 and that's about a 54% decrease. So if we stay on this trend, by the time we get to 26, we're zero and then we start falling in. So some of the operating budget and risk, like I said, you baked in what we know, but there's always stuff above and beyond. So unsure about ridership is always, it could be a change that could flush right up and down. Again, we also have contracts with the colleges and so forth, that could also be changed. So that's a risk, sales tax, TDA, uncertain inflation is creating a lot of issues and we're keeping our eye on, especially with sales tax. Things are starting to flat out and if we start coming down, that's not baked into our budget. So that have a bottom line dramatic impact. And of course, with the FTA means the federal government who knows where they're gonna go, especially passing the budget and so on. And this could actually impact our 5307 and 53 lenses of money coming to us. Economic downturn, floods, fires, and if we move on to the expense side, set the cost of, you know, engine failures, we have that fuel cost of volatility like we had in January, February, or a fuel cost, shut up out of the room, but the graduate coming out, but there are no way near where they were in December of last year. Workers' comp insurance, medical, they have settling costs, if you have any type of settlement cost, and then of course any type of other type of costs that come up, under each one. On the capital side, on the capital side, like I said, we have now included all the TURSA funding now that we know we have it. So as part of it, we're gonna receive 27 hydrogen buses. So this is now in our numbers. We're receiving 10 of the CNG Arctic buses, seven parent transit vans, five electric buses, and right now the three hopefully new fly releases go away at the end of the life. So right now we're looking about 34 million dollars just in buses alone over the next few years, not just in the next year. And then on the construction related process, we're really looking at the Paracruz facility we're still holding money aside for that, if that gets off the ground. We've added another 500K for Pacific Station redevelopment. We have four million, now four and a half because we added the bytes as part of the TURSA grant. Hydrogen fueling station, that's $12 million. So we've added that in, eight million of that is the TURSA, or eight and a half is the, or eight million is the TURSA grant, three million is our funding to get it off and going. SoCal Drive with the rapid bus enhancements, whether nine and a half, that's coming from SOCA. That's coming from the TURSA grant. And then at the very bottom, Watsonville Station redevelopment, that's eight and a half million cents for the TURSA grant too. So, the TURSA grant is great for us. That's a $38 million construction projects. And then moving to the next side, I'm not gonna go through each one of these, but ultimately we're looking at a portfolio that is funded either by TURSA grants or other grants at this point, $78.7 million dollars. And in that, I'll break it down here, almost 50% of that money has come just from this TURSA grant we just won. So, which is great news. The rest of it is coming from our capital reserves right now, 15.8 of that, and then transfers from our operating budget of another 11.7. And then we have some federal grants, which is not a lot, FTA, it's only 6.7 million for 9% of this. So we're gonna cover the money, the TURSA's coming up with it. And then we have some discounts where we're getting some, the lawsuit with DW, we're getting some money back, which is 3.2 million, which is actually good news. And that's really kind of where our funds are. Now that's the budget. And then the one thing that Director Rocken asked us, if I could present the buckets. So, I'm gonna present the buckets right now. So here's where we stand on the buckets. This is our projection as the end of June of this year. At the end of June of 24, 25, after we've been spending money, but as of a month and a half from now. Yeah, a month and a half. So I'm just gonna walk through, especially I know some new people here. So our workers' cop fund is 2.3 million. We hold that money. It's fully funded aside, and it's to cover all the work in cops issues. We don't touch that money. They're just very little out here. Our liability insurance reserve fund. So this is our liability insurance. So this is matching money that we have to use as part of our liability funds. Very little money, but still it's 3 million between those two buckets. Our operations, actually I'm gonna go to this bar, right one at the very top. Our cash flow reserve fund, this is $3 million. So think of this as our working cash fund. So think of this as we have to pay a lot of our stuff up front, but we won't receive the money from the governments until later on, two, three weeks, maybe a month later. So we have to float that cash. And that's the money that we need in order to kind of keep money in our bank. So we pay our bills too, while we're waiting for that money to come in. So that's $3 million. And then our operations sustainability reserve fund, which is our 16.3, that is our three months worth of operating spending. Should something happen, like if the federal government shuts down, they stop spending money, the state government shuts down, and we don't have money to come in, we can sustain operations for three straight months and pay our bills. So that's really what you're looking at there. Moving down to the bottom line, where we don't have kind of minimum balances or a defined balance. The first one is our bus replacement fund. So the bus replacement fund of $10.8 million, that is the 3 million that we set aside, which is a major D sales tax, as well as our STA state of good repair funds. It's approximately 3 million every year. And this is the pay for our buses and matching grants that we have for our buses. And right now it's currently 10.8 million, and that's already all reserved for the capital I just showed, because we have those 27 buses. So that's already been spent or going to be spent. On our operating capital reserve fund, we have 13.2 million dollars. These are funding that we use above and beyond the bus. So for example, we have 3 million that's going with the TURSA grant to pay for this hydrogen fuel tank across the street. We have another, I'm sorry, that was 3 million dollars. We have another 4.4 million matching funds for the SoCal corridor upgrade that's going in. So that's 7.4 million dollars. And there's a whole bunch of others that are in this funding, but this covers a lot of other projects that are not kind of restricted to just buses. And that right now it's 13.2 and that's all reserved in our budget that I just showed you on fire slides. The last one all the way to the right, I'll cover that. So the UAO and OPEC, we've agreed that we're going to put 2 million set aside for our underfunding, should our pension though not return the amount of money that we need and we have to make up the difference as well as if we had some kind of catastrophic OPEC or basically this health insurance for retirees if it ends up going too deep that we need to cover it. So this is our reserve fund for this and it's 2 million set aside and the bucket right now is 6 million. I can tell you that CalPERS has returned 6.1% name negative funds and FY22 when they're supposed to return 6.8 or 6.8% positive as part of it. So you're talking about 12, the 13% lower return. So we will have not this year in 25 a gap that we will have to make up because the returns were negative not positive. So I'm just gonna forewarn you but it's not in here because I don't have the results locked in yet to figure out what that will mean but that's gonna be millions of dollars. And then on our COVID recovery fund, 13.5 million. So we're using that as we move through time and the funding, this is to help us recover from COVID I'd say not go to COVID but I can opt downturns, whatever the case may be to keep us afloat as we're going and currently right now the 31.5 that puts us approximately into like FY, end of FY29 before we actually run out of money and get that cliff. And this does not contemplate any type of like say cost of living adjustments or anything of that nature. So we have to be very cautious on what we're doing not just that but just in general moving forward so we can extend this 31.5 or any other funding that you see farther in the future. I know it's still far out. It's just right around the corner. So gotta keep our eye on the future so we don't run out of money. That's it, I think that would be it on. So I've got some few more things. I'm not gonna go through, this is the explanation if you have any questions on the different buckets and then some additional information that we always present for the budget. So this is supporting activities that we're gonna be doing and then here's a listing of all the different memberships on here. Should you have any questions on it? I'm not gonna go through each one, these are two pages of this. Actually, I'm sorry, three pages. There's about 100,000, it's built to about 107,000 next year. And then here's a couple of the board member possible budget of different conferences to go to possibly. Big ones at the meetings and then the next one is CTA, could be more. And then some employee incentive programs, I think the big thing that Michael might talk about is the Agency of Rodeo, some awards, employee appreciation and so on. And then lastly is the timeline and we are in May which is the bottom left. And by presenting this to like I said it's gonna be going out to everybody to review. We're gonna come back on the 23rd for a public hearing at nine o'clock in the morning. And so yes or no, and if we say yes that finishes up our budget timeline and we're good to go. Any questions? Thank you. It's good to see who we funded across the top because back in 2012, it's nothing like that. It was Tuesday every single day. So we're at the point where I thought even Metro's probably shut down because there was just no money. I have a few questions for you. One is how much does it cost to run a bus every single day? Like what's it used to feel that we're gonna be taking off on the streets? What does it cost usually? Or what about a month or a year? How much do you think each bus costs? In actual fuel itself? Yes, fuel itself. Is there different buses? Fuel itself and how much the cost of the running that bus would be because we are switching over. So you're talking about between the difference between a hydrogen bus versus a CNG bus and cost of running a different two. I'd like to know what the savings is gonna be now that we're moving over, we're moving over the kind of buses that we're using out on the streets. Initially it's gonna be a lot more expensive. I could tell you, I don't have any answer to the dollar figure yet, but I can tell you because hydrogen fuel is more expensive and the hydrogen buses are more expensive. Initially it is gonna be more expensive to run a hydrogen bus than it is for a CNG. But as what's out in the market is saying that hydrogen fuel is gonna start dropping and dropping as they start getting these plants to deliver it, it should flip so that the hydrogen fuel is actually cheaper than CNG. And then therefore you're just gonna start seeing the benefit of the hydrogen buses actually becoming cheaper. Oh, I thought, I mean, well, I guess going greener is not always cheaper, right? So what was I thinking? I thought there was gonna be some sort of savings because of the transition that we're making from our buses, but it sounds like it's gonna be more expensive. So just to kind of give you an idea, just the buses alone, the gross price, not what we pay, but the gross price about hydrogen buses, about $1.4 million for CNGs 800. Well, we're getting rebates against the $1.4 million and that's gonna get us down to roughly a $1 million maybe, but it's still gonna be a little bit more expensive than the 800. And you're right, we're still ways away before they kind of slips the other direction. Right, it's still gonna be more expensive. Okay, so that means our costs are gonna go up then. Our costs are gonna go up, yes. So does that play into what you were saying how it seems like the budget's gonna be, it's beautiful today, but it's maybe in a few years not looking so good. They have to be very cautious going forward because this is just 24 and 25. We're gonna start delivering these hydrogen buses kind of end of 25, end of 26. We don't know the fuel price yet, but we're gonna start delivering these buses. And at that point, we're gonna then really take a hard look at how much does our costs go up or do they stay the same or do they go down? And it's really around the fueling price at that point. So we don't wanna kind of overspend ourselves now to get ourselves in a hole in the future, so. So that dump hole is not a set hole, but it could be a hole. Could be a hole. Okay, okay, good to hear because it sounded like you were headed that we were gonna be given a lot of that funding out of the supply. Well, we are, this is just in general running. So if we stay, let's assume that hydrogen and CNG remain the same and hydrogen, by the way, does get better gas mileage than CNG. So let's assume everything's equal. Then yes, we have a hole and we know exactly where it's at, but we know the price is gonna be different. We just don't know where the pricing is at that point in time. And we said it's, if it comes way down, it's great, but it stays up in that hole of shrinks and it goes years to FY28 or so. And so the bucket that said COVID recovery, I think it had 30, a little over 31 million in it, that's gonna be depleted, right? Or is that gonna be depleted by the end of FY29 at this point right now with those holes? So that bucket will be gone. So we're gonna have to actually find some of the funding that we're using that money, I'm sure, for other reasons. So that money is gonna be that we're using it. We're gonna have to figure out how we're gonna replace it. Have we been thinking about that? Oh yeah, yeah. Trust me, we're thinking about different ways. And I think, you know, micro-pike allude to it. I think some people have talked about it. But for the most part, yes, we're looking for another way that now, so that in the future we'll have some other mechanism of funding in the way to supplement that gap and take the sense of like, you know, possibly 24. Yeah, and I think that's good that we're thinking about it now because I don't wanna be putting it back in the same position where, okay, now we're a short, you know, X amount of dollars and where we're gonna get that money and everyone's kind of stressed out that we need to cut, you know, fairs and routes and service. So even further, because we weren't thinking about how to replace that funding. And then I think that was just, thank you. Okay. So I think that kind of discussion is talking about going to voters and what approach and what would be the best way in the past meeting on whether there's sales tax. Those options will be coming back to us with the research that you were talking about doing, right? Yeah, and that's why it's important is the sales tax because we're looking out in the future and making sure that we sustain our ability to go forward without running into the life of 2014 hiccups where we're cutting the world or sustaining the service. So we're trying to get out ahead of that. I have one more question, sorry. The Paris peace facility, I feel like we've been talking about this forever as well. What's going on with the funding for that? Is that what's holding it back or what's the, why are we kind of just every year just seeing that but we're not saying anything? Yeah, it's like we've got an update on the federal level. Yeah, I mean, it's a, so that it's currently under development that preliminary design and engineering with the housing. And so we've got a meeting coming up next week with the architect of the branch specter who had a good book for us. That one's perhaps a little more tricky to fund from a state and a federal level, just given its location. So long story short, I mean, it's still in designing and engineering and we're trying to figure out the game plan on how to get the gap funding piece together for it. Okay. Oh, that's a good one. We're gonna meet next week, so we can have, yeah, we chat about that as well. That'd be great, thanks. So I'd like to follow up on kind of a thread Ginny introduced in this. Do we have any knowledge across the industry yet about possible maintenance costs savings as we shift to hydrogen and other sources? I think of myself switching from the ICE car to the EV I'm spending a lot less on many things. Is there a parallel for transit? Good morning, everybody, Marco Ross. Yes, there are savings in the maintenance side. You're not dealing with engines and transmissions and things like that. We'll have to analyze the costs certainly, but know that there is a big savings. We're actually gearing up to have our facility ready for hydrogen fueling. So, you know, that's one of our goals next year, but yeah, there certainly is a cost savings. Great, thank you. Obviously, the projection of ridership get into this exactly. Are you embedded in this? Is this ridership is gonna improve 25, 6, 7, whatever? Yeah, ridership continues for every single year. And like I said, the one thing we don't have is fair increases. So, you know, really it's just ridership at the same fair prices. You know, not to say we're gonna go out there and charge people, but it also doesn't do the other thing. We do, we did make an adjustment for the free fares for continuing law for everybody under 18 and the students. But if we decide to take that a little step further and add other people into that mix of free fares, it's not included. So that could be an impact for our price. Thank you. Other questions from directors? Yeah, I'll take it out to public comment. Just one more. Sorry, Brandon Freeman, Senior Vice-Chair of Equal 23. I don't have any issues with it. I just wanted to thank publicly both Don and Chuck. I think I made Chuck go over that with me like nine times over the last month. And when we got into the FTEs, I had concerns as well, but I just wanted to let the board know that Don made sure to address those with me. Margo, Daniel, Anna-Marie, and these two met with me yesterday for about an hour. So we are comfortable with the FTE changes at this point. I just want to make sure that you guys knew that. I know that I had spoken to a couple of you that maybe we weren't, but we are, that everything's figured out, so we're good to go. Thank you. Thank you for making the time to do that. Anyone else? Do you want to online? Yes. Yeah. Tate, Bao. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Yeah. I just want to let you know that I got an email almost quite a while ago about reimagined Metro, like any plans that's going on has to do with ridership or something, and also like planning plans to reroute some of the bus routes, Santa Cruz Metro, so which I didn't know at the time, and that's when I got involved. So I just want to let you, so I want to thank you for trying to get this taken care of, and I'm hoping that this could all work out for this, whatever's going on with the rerouting of bus routes in Santa Cruz County, especially for one of the arrangements regarding Scotts Valley, which I think has to do with Scotts Valley Drive or something. So, and I'm also hoping that more bus drivers are getting more hired to prevent further cancellations of bus trips. So that is all I wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Anyone else? I don't have any more from anyone here. We'll take it back to the board for a motion. No, thank you. Thank you. Second. Thank you. That was due track. Director Downey. Aye. Director Dutra. Aye. Dr. Terry Johnson. Aye. Director Cohnett. Aye. Director Flynn. Aye. Director Newton. Aye. Director Pagler. Aye. And Director Kiehler's card. Aye. And the motion passes. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Chad. Okay. We are now on item 13 and that is a public hearing for the adoption of California Uniform Public Construction Cost Accounting Act ordinance to provide informal bidding procedures for public projects. That was a mouthful. I'm going to pass it to Julie Sherman. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to pass it to Julie Sherman. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to call it Cupca. So I don't have to. You're late next time. So this is a continuation of the process that was started last month when the board had its first reading of this ordinance and adopting a resolution to opt into the Cupca program. This program will allow the agency to use informal bidding processes for the purpose of small value in particular, small and medium value public works projects so that staff has an easier time letting those projects out to bed and getting successful. So this is all to help staff and the agency have more success getting small and mid value public projects completed. And so this first part is the public hearing to take public comments on adoption of this ordinance. And then then you'll go into the next item where you'll actually adopt the ordinance. At that time you don't have to take more public comment. You can. But this is the public comment part. I'll hand it back to you. Thank you. Is there anyone here who would like to comment on this? It's your opportunity. Anyone online? Okay. Then I'd like to close the public hearing and I think that's all we need to do for that item. Is that right? Right. Okay. So now we'll move to item 14. And that is to waive the second reading and adopt an ordinance to provide informal bidding procedures for the Cupca. So for public projects and adopt a resolution to amend title two of the administrative code procurement policy. So let me just ask if there are any questions. Sure. Is our organization worth doing this have any procedures in place to keep these purchases within the county so that they are effective? Well, that's a good question. And it's a complicated answer. There are certain, well, it depends on funding. And there's like, if you have FTA funding, you're not allowed to have a geographic preference. It's actually legal. It's a limit on competition. There are some exceptions for that for A&E contracts because at least there you might say, well, this, you know, design firm has a particular knowledge of this particular area and then you can get away with it. So out, but then outside of the funders, you know, if you have just local funds, if you have a really good business case to make for having, you know, a geographic preference, you might be able to do it. Yeah, it's complicated. But then you do have small business and disadvantaged business enterprise outreach and that they do focus on local firms doing the outreach. But this agency has never had geographic preferences. It's certainly something that you could, you know, as a board member, the agency could ask staff to look into and see, you know, if that's something the agency wanted to do outside of a federally funded context. You may or may not have success because this area, it can be difficult to get folks to be on projects locally. But legally, it's something that you could do in some circumstances. It's your complicated legal answer. Well, sometimes if you just put the checkbox there as you're making these purchases, it's just bringing it to mind so that people say, oh yeah, maybe I should check locally first just to see so that that expense, if there's any taxable things here. And I don't know if anyone is here from the contracts office, but they might be best to answer how they go about doing that. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions? Okay. I will give another opportunity to see if there's any public comment. Seeing none, I'll bring it back for a motion. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead and take your down. All right. Director Dutry. All right. Director Collins, Terry Johnson. All right. Director Tony. All right. Director Lynn. All right. Director Macriessen. All right. Director Nielsen. All right. Director Dutry. All right. Director Keros Carter. All right. Motion passes. Thank you. Item 15, the CEO or of course. What? Goodness. Well, I do have just a few items and I know you've got probably some discussion. We've got two closed sessions. So I'll keep my comments fairly brief, but I did want to let you know we continue with the operations to make headway. So let's do with getting more operators on board. Since we last met, we've released five new operators into service and I guess I should put into overall context we're about 22 operators down. So we've released five into service. We have 14 currently in the classroom. Then you have 72 applications for the subsequent class coming up on that class. So it's amazing to see what Don and Margo put together as far as just getting the applications, getting the process, getting interviews done and Margo lining up, but it's training classes. Just a lot of work behind the scenes, but it's the number one priority that we have to hopefully all get back to 100% basically of our operating positions being filled. And our goal is to do that in the fall, but also when the university starts school on the fall to have all the bus routes of the university going, all the schedules fully filled and they have the 10 art ticks. And as you saw in your consent calendar today, you've approved the purchase of the 10 articulated buses from San Diego Metro, $10,000 each, which is a pretty good buy considering they're probably about a $1.6 million bus. They've got a little bit of a life left on it certainly from a youth perspective, they're like 10 or 12 years younger than the current artists that are running on the street. So that'll be a big help at the university. I think to be running those routes with articulated buses yesterday, San Diego approved the sale of the buses to Metro at their board. So this thing's just about all in and ready to go. Hopefully we'll actually sign all the paperwork today and then it'll be done and we'll go get those during the summertime, get them wrapped, our pair of boxes put in them and so on. So I think there's good news, it's around the corner still but we're making big headway with getting there. I did want to mention yesterday, I think there's always something interesting going on at that show, I tell you when it comes to passengers and drivers and I don't know, here it is, I just want to make sure I've got the name right. We have an operator that was hired in 2012. So he's been here about 11 years. And yesterday this operator was coming on the route that serves a career college and noticed about a 20 year old young lady who was slumped over. So he pulled the bus over, tried to get her to interact, saw that she couldn't, saw that she had a really weak pulse and so he called the paramedics and they were able to revive her. And so I will make mention of that again, I think coming up and perhaps give a special award for Travis Havens but that kind of stuff just, it almost happens on a regular basis. It's why they're called essential workers. Not only are they getting people to places where they need to go providing an equitable environment for them to succeed in life but these guys also just see and react to it and respond to it including saving up the lives of folks. I remember last summer a similar situation happened with a man who was in a wheelchair on route 35 and he had slumped over and had gone into a heart attack and the driver was able to call quick with the paramedics and that was a good outcome. So anyway, we're going to Travis back at a future date that I can recognize but just, you know, it's going above and beyond, right? He's there to drive a bus but when you see somebody and, you know, something's wrong, we'll put it in part and go out and take care of it, take care of that. I had just a couple of other things. There is a program called ARCHES and I'm not sure what ARCHES stands for. I should have written it down. I had it in the back of my mind but now it's blank. But the long story short of it is there's about 20 transit agencies in the state that are partnering with other vendors and experts on hydrogen. And so to be able to go after a sizable federal pot on building hydrogen plants where you actually built the hydrogen, we've all teamed up and come in as part of a consortium and we've made a pitch to have a hydrogen plant in Northern California and then to be able to buy off of that as a consortium and there's over a thousand hydrogen buses within the consortium and add up all of the transit agencies. And there's also others that I think are either in or coming into the consortium. It would be like trash refuge trucks and other heavy duty vehicle school buses and so on. But it was just like Chuck was mentioning that projection is we want to get the price of hydrogen down to about $5 per gallon equivalent. And then you also for Chuck say there's better efficiency with hydrogen. So if you have a $5 gallon equivalent of hydrogen and a $5 gallon of diesel fuel, you'll get twice the mileage out of that gallon and equivalent of hydrogen. So that's a big deal. So there's a lot of things in motion. What was really interesting is we had submitted all this to the state. This arches packages consortium's proposal for a hydrogen plant. And Wanda Moon and I were back in Sacramento on Monday and Tuesday and without even prompting our legislatures about arches, they already knew about it. It was already circulating back there with the legislature that this was a proposal but it's likely to see some significant funding. So I just wanted to give you a heads up where we'll be an innovative trying to not just look at the market price but actually trying to influence it by coming together as an industry and proposing just good innovative projects. And that would be a hydrogen plant that has a lot of green hydrogen associated with it through solar and through wind power. Still working on the South County facility. You had authorized me to negotiate a lease agreement. We're going back and forth. I'm still feeling that that will come together. Part of the issue is a lot of people own that piece of property and have a lot to say in regard to lease price and so on. So we're working with the broker that you have here at the agency. I just want to let you know we're still working on it. I've not lost the lease by any stretch but we're just trying to get the details hammered out on that. So hopefully at the next board meeting I'll have some news about that. And then we're also still looking for that opportunity and I apologize for not having gotten that solidified since the last board meeting that's really celebrating down in Watsonville that TIRSA grant. Just a lot of funding for the Watsonville area in that grant. And you can consider they have money for the T.O.D. and the housing component for the development of the Watsonville Transit Center. There were a lot of things in motion. Without Watsonville you wouldn't have got the grant. Let me just put it that way. Just based on the fact that Watsonville has some advantages they bring into our agency that allow you to go out and be aggressive with the grants. And then I just couldn't say enough about your main or more than once you know in the phone calls that you may have put funding in and you sit down with the deputy secretary of transportation. I mean, that was just, right. So with that I'll back off and be quiet other than one other thing actually July 22nd, we'll send this info out July 22nd, we kind of locked in a date for the company picnic, the agency picnic that we have each summer. I have it over at the GAKS building and also have associated with a rodeo for the company, for the drivers to be able to come out and show off their skills while we're having the picnic. And you know, Marco would kill me to say this but I'd love to see the board members get behind the wheel of the buses we're having. I have a mini training session but to take it through a few cones I think. But with that, I'll let it stop. Thank you. Well, I'm really sad I'll be out of town for that. Are there questions or comments? CEO or rapport. I actually had a question. The story you heard about bus driver supporting the person who was left over and unresponsive us. That's really incredible that our bus drivers are doing that. I'm wondering if we have Narcan available on our buses and if not, if that's something we can work towards that probably goes beyond the scope and responsibility of a bus driver but it could save lives. Yeah, I think we've begun in having a discussion about that, whether our insurance provider will be okay with that and just what are the other liabilities that are associated. But right, it seems to be a timely remedy for a lot of issues out there. Okay, great. I'm glad we're exploring it. Okay, so if there aren't any other questions or comments, we will move on to getting into our closed section and I'd like to ask Julie Sherman to just make some comments. Sure, we have two closed sections. The first is a public employee performance evaluation for the CEO position. And then the second is conference with labor negotiators and that will involve an update on labor negotiations for all three of Metro's bargaining units. Thank you so much. So I'd like to ask members of the public and staff to please step out while we... Oh, I'm sorry, public comments. Any of those items? Thank you for reminding me. Are there any public comments online? There are none.