 That sounds even better. We'll go ahead and call the RTC meeting for March 7th to order. And can we begin with a roll call, please? Commissioner Rotkin. Commissioner Brown. Commissioner Johnson. Here. Commissioner Kaufman-Gomis. Commissioner Bertrand. Here. Commissioner Leopold. Here. Commissioner Botthorff. Here. Commissioner McPherson. Here. Commissioner Coonerty. Here. Commissioner Alternate Mulherrn. Here. Commissioner Alternate Gregorio. Here. Commissioner Gonzalez. Here. Commissioner Lowe. Thank you for that. Okay, we're going to begin with the review of items discussed in closed sessions. And before I let them give a preview of that, just let the people in the audience know we don't have access to our private room. So we'll be holding the first closed session here. So once we begin, it will ask you to leave the room and then we'll bring you back afterwards. So if we have a preview of what's in closed session. Sorry about that. Yes, we have two items in closed session. The first is a conference with legal counsel relating to initiation of litigation. The second is a conference with legal counsel relating to significant exposure to litigation. There's one case under each item and we do expect potentially a reportable action. Thank you. Is there anyone from the public who would like to address us on anything to be discussed in closed session? Seeing none, we'll adjourn to closed session. We'll ask you to quietly clear the room and we'll be back in a few minutes. We'll go ahead and continue with the meeting. I want to thank the public for clearing the room for us and coming back so we can proceed. Do we have a report out on closed session? Yes, we do. We need to report that litigation has been authorized and it was by unanimous vote. And the further information as required by government code section 54957.1 will be provided. Great, thank you for that report. Okay, we have a public hearing scheduled at 9.30, so I'm going to jump around a little bit on the agenda so we can accommodate that in a timely manner. So I think we might have time to get into consent calendar. So I'm going to jump to the consent calendar right now and see if there's any, anybody that wants to pull anything, anybody in the commission wants to pull anything from the consent calendar? Are there some additions to the agenda that I need to go through real quickly? Let's go to that first then. Item 8, which is on consent, there are replacement pages which includes a revised staff report and resolution. Since you've had a very little time to look at this, I wanted to inform you that Santa Cruz Metro has made a last-minute proposal to allow all of the funding this year to go to community bridges and lift line for LC top funds. They did request that in future years that we divide out in perpetuity a percentage share of certain funds that we had not had time to look at. But we believe that in the spirit of cooperation, we should move forward with today's recommendation. I'm going to pull that myself and have you expand on that and we'll do that after the public hearing. So I'm looking for any other items on the consent agenda if anybody wants to pull any. Okay, and additional handouts on item 20, there's a handout for item 23, including a rata to the final EIR. There's also comments received between February 27th and March 6th on item 23 and also a handout for item 24, which is the county's report. And that's the only changes in the agenda. Great. Thank you for that update. Appreciate that. Okay. And now I'm looking for the commission. Does anybody want to pull anything on the consent agenda? Anyone from the public like to pull anything from the consent agenda? I'll bring it back for a motion. I would move the consent agenda as amended. Second. A motion and a second for the consent agenda, excluding item eight, which we'll discuss later. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion carries unanimously. Okay. With that, I think we'll move into the public hearing. We can go ahead and start with the presentation on that. This will be as a public hearing on the consideration of the certification of the final environmental impact report for the proposed North Coast Rail Trail project and selection of the proposed project coastal side as the preferred alternative. And we have Corey Coletti, senior transportation planner. Welcome, Corey. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you, members of the public. We are here to present to you. Sorry. This one to move forward and then this one to move back. It's not moving back. Fernanda, this isn't moving back. You want it back or? Yes, at the beginning. Always good to start at the beginning. We postponed our communications to after the public hearing because it's important to get the public hearing on time. No, at the very beginning, the first slide. And I will, why don't I just, we'll ask you to advance the slides if that would work. So very first slide. So I'll just get started. So we are here to present the North Coast Rail Trail Environmental Impact Report. And before you, the consideration is the staff recommendation. And the staff recommendation is that you consider certifying the final environmental impact report as being compliant with the California Environmental Quality Act. So that's CEQA. And environmental impact report is EIR. And select the proposed project, which is the trail on the coastal side as the preferred alignment. We recommend that you adopt the CEQA findings and the statement of overriding considerations, and you adopt the mitigation monitoring and reporting program. Before that, however, we have a detailed presentation for you with a lot of information, so we appreciate your patience. And we will also be addressing the IRADA handout that has been provided to you that contains references to minor changes. So a second slide, please. That's the second slide. I think second slide. Very beginning. May I suggest, Corey, you could sit here and have the keyboard and advance as you go along. Thank you. Thank you. John Leopold, our IT department. There we go. Well done. It's a common practice at board meetings. Get comfortable because it's a long presentation. It is. Do you want to have the stand? So the presentation outline, I'll start with that. And we'll do. Is the green light? No, I think you were on before. Yes, I was on before. You should probably get closer to the mic as well. OK. So I'll introduce the project team. There are a lot of team members here today. And it's a complicated project with a lot of partner stakeholders and lead agency implementing agencies. So I'll go over that, provide a project overview for you. Then we will go over the environmental review process, the public engagement that we've sought thus far, and provide a summary of the final EIR. Following the presentation, we'd like to get your questions answered. And then we ask that you open the public hearing. Following the public hearing, you would close the public hearing, and then you will be deliberating and considering the staff recommendation. So I, Corey Coletti, I'm your program manager for the rail trail. Grace Blakesley, senior transportation planner, and your directors, deputy director and executive director, have all provided extensive review and assistance in the development of the EIR. FHWA, the Federal Highway Administration, their Central Federal Lands Division, is the actual entity that is delivering the project. The reason that that is the case is because we acquired a grant. We were successful in receiving a $6.3 million grant through the Federal Lands Access Program. And the way that that program works is that the federal entity actually delivers the project. You see the names of the project manager, the environmental specialist, and design engineer. They are not here today, but we worked very closely with them to develop the design that formed the basis of the project descriptions. Rinkon Consultants and Harrison Associates teamed up to produce the EIR. So you will be hearing next from Kate Giberson and Megan Jones. They will present the EIR itself. And then we have representatives from Ecosystems West. Erin McGinty and Justin DeVilla are here. Kim Lee Horn is the Transportation and Traffic Subconsultant and Pacific Crest Engineering provided the geology analysis. And finally, we have our legal team, Jim Moose from Remy Moose Manley and Brooke Miller, who provided guidance and legal oversight as we developed the EIR. We wanted to ensure robust mitigation measures and they assisted us with that. So for background and context for new commissioners and members of the public who are unfamiliar with this project, the Monterey Basinx Resinic Trail Network is the trail project that we're talking about right now is a part of that network. And the entire network has as the spine the coastal rail trail, which goes adjacent to the existing rail tracks. The Monterey Basinx Resinic Trail master plan and programmatic EIR were completed, adopted and certified in 2013. We identified 20 trail segments in that master plan and several of those segments are in various stages of development with the City of Santa Cruz segment scheduled to break ground later this year. Also through the voter approved measure D, sales tax measure, 120 million will, this project will receive approximately 120 million over the 30 years of the sales tax measure. The proposed project is a portion of segment five as identified in the master plan. It goes from Davenport to Wilder Ranch. It's 7.5 miles long. It includes a 20 foot wide path. 12 feet of that is paved, eight feet of that is unpaved. And we have parking improvements at three parking lots, one at Yellow Bank, Panther Beach, one at Bonny Dune that basically provides connectivity from the existing Bonny Dune parking lot to the future trail and then one parking lot in Davenport. The project also includes restrooms, trash cans, recycling, receptacles and crossing in Davenport. A lot of these amenities are to support the trail but they are also good planning which aims to address some of the needs on the North Coast to complement the trail project. Like I said, the trail alignment is arrailed with trail with the proposed project being on the coastal side. I identified the federal funding that we received. We also received local funding. This commission committed $5 million in measure D funding through the five year allocation process. We also received funding from some of our stakeholders and funding partners, namely the California Coastal Conservancy, the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, committed approximately $4 million. State Parks, Coastal Commission and County of Santa Cruz, they're stakeholders, they're not funding entities in that they're not providing funding but they are providing significant staff resources and support. We have yet to secure funding for the portion that we're calling phase two and that is a portion that's two miles long from Yellow Bank Panther Beach to Davenport and it includes the three parking lots. So we still have to secure funding for construction of those elements. We have enough funding to be doing the environmental clearance process and the design but before we go into construction we will need to secure that funding. You can see a map here of the proposed trail which is in red and in pink you will see the city of Santa Cruz trail project that's due to go to construction. In blue you see the existing Wilder Ranch path and the existing West Cliff Drive path and all of that is to show the connectivity of the current project and the extra added value that it will provide given the tie-in to all the other projects that are in the works or existing. So in terms of the environmental review process a full environmental impact report was not required for this project but the RTC nonetheless chose to produce one in order to evaluate project impacts, consider alternatives and provide the opportunity for extensive public engagement as per CEQA law. Kate Giberson will go through the EIR development process and she and Megan Jones will provide a summary of the draft EIR described project alternatives, summarize comments that we received on the draft EIR and the master responses to key topic areas that we developed to those comments. And included in that will be the finding in the EIR that the proposed project is the environmentally superior project and how the EIR came to that determination. And then at the end I will go over next steps that we need to complete in order to deliver this project within the timeframe that we have allocated. So with that I would like Kate Giberson to come up and continue. Sure, I have a copy right here. Hi, I'm Kate. I'm going to review the CEQA process and where we are and give you a summary of the draft EIR and final EIR. The purpose of CEQA is so that the decision makers can make an informed decision. We disclose the potential environmental impacts and identify mitigation measures. It also provides the public with an opportunity to weigh in on the process and encourages interagency communication. Next slide. There we go, sorry I forgot to prompt you. So the EIR process begins by issuing a notice of preparation or an NOP for a 30 day review period whereby the public and agencies can provide input on the issues that are going to be evaluated in the EIR and the alternatives that should be considered as well. The input received during that 30 day period included requests to evaluate a trail only alternative which the RTC had already committed to doing at an equal level of detail that's alternative one. And then a new alternative came in by the North Coast Farmers to have another alternative and the RTC agreed to evaluate that as well in the EIR. So after preparation of the draft EIR was complete it was circulated for a 45 day public review period where the public had an opportunity to review it and provide comments. The notice of availability for the EIR was distributed widely. It was published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. It was posted at five different locations along the alignment and it was distributed to over a thousand different agencies, organizations and interested parties. After the 45 day review period closed on September 24th RTC began reviewing the comments and developing the responses for the final EIR. The final EIR includes the comments, responses to the comments and any revisions to the draft EIR. And although it wasn't required by CEQA, the RTC distributed the final EIR for review four weeks prior to this meeting. Next slide. So the purpose of today's meeting is to receive comments on the final EIR and the merits of the project. It's to certify the EIR and to make a decision on the project. Next slide. This is gonna be a pretty high level summary. It's a thick documents as you know. Next slide. So in addition to the proposed project, CEQA requires the lead agency to consider project alternatives that are feasible, meet most of the project objectives and reduce project impacts. So the proposed project puts the trail on the coastal side of the railroad tracks. Alternative one trail only removes the railroad tracks and puts the trail on the rail bed. Alternative two inland side puts the trail on the inland side of the tracks. Alternative three farmers alternative, the northern portion is the same as alternative one trail only and the southern portion is outside the rail corridor and along highway one. And finally there's alternative four which is the no project alternative which is a requirement by CEQA that that be analyzed. And although there's differences in the trail alignment, the trail features are the same for all for the proposed project and alternatives one, two and three. So the parking improvements and the different features like restrooms and trash collection and rest stops are all the same. The RTC decided to evaluate the trail only or alternative one at the same level of detail as the proposed project due to the public interest expressed prior to the NOP being issued. And therefore the CFL conducted additional design work to elevate that alternative so that it could be analyzed at an equal level of detail. Alternatives two, three and four are analyzed in lesser detail in comparison to the proposed project in accordance with the CEQA guidelines. It should be noted though that because alternative three, the northern half is the same as trail only, obviously that had the additional detail as well for that. Next slide. The CEQA requires that all these different environmental topics be analyzed. I won't read them but give you a moment to peruse them. And the environmental impact analysis itself, the potential impacts for each environmental topic are based on a series of questions presented in the CEQA guidelines. And the thresholds for determining whether an impact is significant or less than significant is based on the CEQA guidelines, regulations, and industry standards. And a potentially significant impact can be reduced to a less than significant level with mitigation. Next slide. So for each potential impact identified, one of these determinations was assigned to it. Less than significant means it was below the significance threshold without mitigation. Less than significant with mitigation means mitigation was required to get it down to a less than significant level. And significant, not avoidable means it can't be reduced to a less than significant level even with mitigation. Next. So most of the 65 impacts identified, the potentially significant impacts identified are similar, almost very similar for the proposed project and alternatives one, two, and three. And most of them are less than significant or can be reduced to less than significant with mitigation. There would be a significant and unavoidable cumulative traffic impact for the proposed project and alternatives one, two, and three. And the cumulative, there's traffic generated because people are gonna drive up, park, and use the facility. And the cumulative traffic is the combined traffic from both this project and other reasonably foreseeable projects in the future. And that could not be mitigated to a less than significant level. Additionally, there was another significant unavoidable impact for alternatives one and three, which involve the trail only. And that's the impact to cultural resources because of the historic designation for the railroad. And Megan's gonna talk a little bit more about those impacts. Next slide. So of all those different environmental topics, we identified or considered these six to be key topics. And that's just based on the project objectives, the historic and current land uses out there and the natural resources in the area. As mentioned, the impacts to these resources would be similar for the proposed project and alternatives one, two, and three. But there are different impact determinations for agricultural resources and cultural resources. So we're gonna focus on those for this presentation as well as touch on biological resources and transportation. And Megan's gonna talk a little bit about that. And then I'll be back. Thank you, Kate. And I'm Megan Jones with Rencon Consultants. And I'm gonna summarize some of the key environmental issue areas. So first for agricultural resources, one of the main things we look at under CEQA is the conversion of what's called important farmland, which is designated in a mapping program from the Department of Conservation called the Farmland Mapping and Monitoring Program. Under that program, there's three map definitions that sort of constitute important farmland. That includes prime farmland, unique farmland, and farmland of statewide importance. So we did a mapping exercise to determine how much of this important farmland would be converted from agriculture to non-agricultural use as a result of the project. That show that ultimately there would be between seven and 7.6 acres of important farmland. This amount of conversion is not considered substantial. That's in part because the farmland mapping and monitoring program itself cannot even map below 10 acres. So that was sort of a threshold that we looked at. We also looked at the linear nature of the project so that these acreages are not in one specific area. They're distributed throughout the project corridor. In addition, a lot of that mapping program, it's not an exact science. And so there's important farmland designated in areas that are not currently actively farmed. There's even portions of that are on the rail line itself. So when we looked at what areas are actively farmed, the acreage reduced to between 1.4 and 1.5 acres that are actively farmed that are considered important farmland. So that is what would be ultimately converted as a result of the project. Because that's not a substantial amount, that was determined to be a less than significant impact under CEQA. However, given the importance of the impact or issue area, we did identify an optional mitigation measure AG-1, which if implemented would set aside 1.4 acres of important farmland elsewhere through conservation easements, deed restrictions, or an in-loop fee. Next slide. So also related to agricultural resources, we looked at the potential conflicts between the trail and the trail users and agriculture. So there's sort of two sides of the coin here. So on one side, we looked at impacts of the trail, construction and trail users on agriculture. And then on the other side, we looked at impacts of agricultural activities on trail users. So on the first side here at the top, we looked at impacts during construction that there could be conflicts depending on where construction is staged or the timing of that. Once operational, there could be impacts through trespassing, littering, or through dogs or human waste. Dogs, of course, are prohibited on the trail, but we acknowledge that there's a likelihood that some people will ignore such restrictions, and so dogs could be on the trail. So these conflicts will be a challenge and a nuisance for agricultural operators but would not directly convert agriculture, which again is what we're ultimately looking at under CEQA. Nevertheless, to limit these effects, there are a variety of mitigation measures required. These are sort of listed on the slide here, which I unfortunately can't see real well myself, but they include placing staging areas to avoid agricultural operations and timing construction to avoid peak periods, peak harvest periods if possible, so that's during construction. Regularly removing solid waste and litter. In the final year, are we added specifically human waste to that, although I think that was implicit. Now that is mentioned. And installing interpretive exhibits to educate users about the importance of agriculture to the culture and economy of the area and about the need for certain types of activities so they're aware of those kind of active activities. And with that impact was determined to be less than significant with the mitigation. On the other side of the coin is the trail users going through active agricultural areas and how they may be impacted primarily through things like pesticide exposure. We determined that if people stay on the trail and pesticides are applied in accordance with the pesticide use labels and applicable regulations, that exposure would be somewhat limited, but we do acknowledge that some people could still trespass, there could still be opportunities for people to be exposed. So we identify that as a potential impact of the project. Mitigation includes installing warning signs, making sure people are aware of those hazards. And then we also have a measure in there for establishing a notification procedure. So the RTC would work with the Agricultural Commissioner to identify what we're calling pesticides of primary concern. So it's a list of sort of the worst pesticides. It's not every pesticide used. And then when those are applied, the agricultural operators would need to notify the trail manager 24 hours in advance and so the trail manager would go out and then install more signage so that it would be very obvious that active pesticide spraying is happening. We also in a response to comments added an additional measure. So with those measures we identify that that would be a significant but mitigable impact, so reduced to less than significant. But in the responses to comments we added some further information about pesticides and health hazards related to that and added a recommended mitigation measure, which is HAZ-1, which would direct state parks to amend agricultural leases to include provisions that would limit some pesticide spraying. Next slide. So cultural resources in CEQA looks at a variety of issues but here I'm gonna focus on historical resources. So you're talking about typically where you're looking at buildings that are architecturally significant or tied with some historical event. In this case the Davenport branch line itself was determined to be a historical resource under CEQA and I will explain why that determination was made. The line was developed between 1905 and 1907 to transport freight from the Davenport cement plant, which ultimately provided cement for a variety of significant projects including the Golden Gate Bridge, the Panama Canal and rebuilding of San Francisco after the 1906 quake. It also included a unique construction method that was characteristic of the early 20th century. So the historians that looked at this identified that this was a potentially significant resource. They'd also looked at maintenance over time, which had been in kind, so a similar type of materials that did not result in, and I'm gonna look at my notes here because these are like specific terms and I'm not a historian, but they would not result in the loss of integrity. The rail line has retained its original alignment, grading and many other features such as the earthen embankments. It also retains integrity of location, design, setting, workmanship, feeling and association, which are all things that the historians look at. Because of that they determined that it was eligible for listing as a national and a California historic resource as well as a county landmark. So I should reiterate it's eligible, it has not actually been designated, that's a process to actually get formally designated. But because it's eligible for the purposes of CEQA, it is a historical resources for the EIR. So the project would impact this, although the proposed project would be on the coastal side and wouldn't really touch the tracks, it would introduce a modern element and so it would change some of that setting so that was determined to be a potential impact to the resource. So there's mitigation to install interpretive exhibits to explain the history and the engineering to educate the community about the importance of that historic resource. And with that, that impact was determined to be less insignificant after that mitigation. And I should mention that in contrast, alternatives one and three, which would fully remove the rail line or at least about half of it, would result in a significant unavoidable impact to this particular issue area. And that's pretty much because if you're removing the resource, there's additional mitigation measures that we identify, but ultimately you cannot mitigate such a removal. Next slide. Some biological resources, if you looked at that section, you saw that it's very long and lengthy and detailed and robust. So I'm not gonna get into too much detail, it's definitely a high level non-biologist summary, but I wanna reiterate that we have the biologist from Ecosystems West in the room who would be happy to answer specific questions on biological resources. But from a summary perspective, there's impacts to a variety of specific species that we look at, habitat types, and then a whole suite of mitigation measures to reduce those impacts. So the mitigation measures primarily include, I flip the slide here, minimizing construction activities in sensitive areas so avoiding some areas where that's possible, conducting surveys before construction and then doing construction monitoring to make sure that those are avoided during construction, compensating for the loss of wetlands and then developing a project-specific biological resources management plan. Next slide, Corey. And then the last issue I'm gonna touch on is transportation and traffic. There's two separate impacts under this that I'm gonna talk about. And again, I'll reiterate I'm not a traffic engineer. So I'll give a summary, but Frederick Ventner with Kim Lee Horne who conducted the analysis is also here today to answer specific transportation questions. So the first issue has to do with really safety hazards. So the project would cross a number of public roads and agricultural access roads and then of course includes proposed improvements to the crossing of Highway One. So we looked at the potential hazards of having trail users interacting with vehicles and ag equipment, which could be a potential safety hazard. So the traffic engineers identified some mitigation measures that were specific, design features, signage, that sort of a thing to make sure that those crossings were safe. And then related to the Davenport crossing, although a lot of those improvements are ultimately an improvement to safety. The project includes improvements to the northern half of the existing lot, which we're calling the Davenport lot north, but not the south. And so there was a concern that some people who are parking in the southern part that hasn't been formalized may not have much motivation to walk a little ways to the formal crossing and so there's mitigation to encourage that. So basically to encourage people to use the formalized safer crossing. And with those measures, it was determined that the safety impact would be less than significant with mitigation. Next slide. And then the last one is, as Kate alluded to a little bit, the project would result in some vehicle trips and that's largely because of the parking areas and the fact that this is a little bit outside the city and we acknowledge that people would drive to some of these parking lots to use the trail. So Kim Lee Horne did a traffic impact analysis that looked at how many trips would be generated and ultimately it would be about 300 daily and 150 peak hour. So that's in your morning and evening commute times. When added to existing traffic levels, that was not enough to result in an impact. But of course in CEQA we look at cumulative. So in addition to looking at the existing traffic scenario, we looked at 2035, 2040 based on modeling. You are probably very familiar with this but for the public. So we look at modeling that includes all the anticipated development in the area and just the general growth and anticipated projects. So we see what traffic will look like in 2040 and 2035 as well. And then we add the project traffic on top of that. So when we performed that analysis, basically the cumulative scenario even without the project was bad. So Caltrans thresholds are level of service. Right now we look at level of service or LOS. The condition without the project would be LOSF which intuitively is bad. That's the worst. So because these are Caltrans facilities we're looking at, we do use their threshold. And essentially if you add one vehicle trip to a level of service F, that's a significant impact. So it's a significant impact really without the project and then you add some trips to it. That's now significant unavoidable. Ultimately because there is no way to completely eliminate all trips. I feel like I fumbled that a little bit but if there's questions I can clarify. And with that I'll pass it back to Kate. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about the project alternatives. As I described earlier the SQL requires that the lead agency identify and consider project alternatives. And these four that I already talked about and are listed up there were evaluated in the EIR. And as mentioned overall the impacts of alternatives one, two and three are generally the same as the proposed project. Some a little less, some a little more but the impact determinations are mostly the same. The primary difference is with respect to agricultural resources and cultural resources which Megan elaborated on a little bit. Alternatives one and three the trail only would have less impact to agricultural resources than the proposed project but more impact to cultural resources due to the removal of the line. Next one. SQL also requires that the EIR identify an environmentally superior alternative that is not the no project alternative. And so because the impacts were so similar there's no clear environmentally superior alternative. So we employed a couple of different methods to try to sess that out. Next slide. This is a difficult table to read but I wanted to show you because this is a snapshot of the tool that we use to identify an environmentally superior alternative. It's table five dash five from the draft EIR. And so for example on the far left column that's for air quality. The air quality impact for the proposed project is less than significant. The impact for alternative one the next column over would be similar and less than significant but slightly less for construction related impacts because there's less excavation required and there's increased distance between construction activities and sensitive receptors such as residents. So for this particular topic alternative one was determined environmentally superior. So we did this for each of the topics and then the rationale is explained in the text of the table. We also developed a numeric measure whereby the overall impact determination for each topic was given a number. One for less than significant. Two for less than significant with mitigation and three for significant and unavoidable. So therefore the higher the number the higher the level of impact. And when we totaled them all up it again demonstrated how similar all the impacts are with a total of 27 points for the proposed project and alternative two and 28 points for alternatives one and three. So obviously the significant non-avoidable nature of one and three kicked it up a point. We then used three, with this information on hand in this table we then used three different measures to try to identify an environmentally superior alternative based on this information. Next slide. So the first measure we used was looking at what was environmentally superior for most of those 16 topics. And when you go through the table and add them up there was a tie with the proposed project and alternative one were both superior for seven of the topics. So then we looked at the next measure, a next method was to look at the environmentally superior for just those six key topics that we had identified. And of those six topics the proposed project is superior for four of them. Those being aesthetics, biological resources, cultural resources and recreation. And alternative one was superior for two topics, agricultural resources and transportation. And then the third measure we used to flush this out was looking specifically at which ones resulted in significant non-avoidable impacts and as we've already discussed neither the proposed project nor alternative two. So when you look at all three together as you can see the proposed project was superior using all these three methods and thus that is why it was identified as the environmentally superior alternative for purposes of this EIR. Next slide. I'm gonna go into the final EIR. After the 45 day public review period ended on September 24th the RTC reviewed the comments received developed responses to each comment and made appropriate revisions to the draft EIR for clarification and additional detail. So the final EIR again is comprised of the comments on the draft EIR responses to those comments and the revised draft EIR. Next slide. So the comments received on the draft EIR of the written, we received written comments from 10 public agencies, 11 organizations and businesses and 46 individuals. There were also two public hearings held during the review period for the draft EIR. One in Santa Cruz and one in Davenport and the combined comments from there were seven individuals spoke. Next slide. This is just listing the 10 public agencies that provided comments. California Coastal Commission, Coastal Conservancy, Fish and Wildlife, State Parks, Caltrans, the Air Board, County Office of Agricultural Commissioner, County Health Services and the City of Santa Cruz Water Department. Next slide lists the 11 organizations and businesses that provided written comments by Santa Cruz, Davenport, North Coast Association Ecology Action, Friends of Rail Trail, Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks, Horan Lloyd, Attorneys at Law, Land Trust of Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz County Greenway, Sierra Club Trail Now. Next slide. So with all those written comment letters and the public hearing transcripts, we identified 192 individual comments within and there's a response to each one of those comments in the final EIR. Many of the comments are similar or concern the same issues. And so for those, we developed master responses to address these in one fell swoop and to provide a more robust response. I'll touch briefly on those six master responses for these common comments. And I'll provide the gist of the master response and just some bullet points about what the response was. The first bulleted lists are those six topics. So those are gonna occur on the next, each of the next slides. So the first one, these comments include broad statements and specific criticisms regarding the adequacy of the draft EIR. The comments do not demonstrate that the draft EIR failed to comply with express legal requirements or case law. The RTC Legal Council did not find the specific arguments which cited case law to be persuasive. The vast majority of the assertions that the draft EIR is not legally adequate are examples of disagreement with factual assumptions or conclusion in the document and suggestions of how additional tests or study might be helpful to the decision makers. The RTC expended great effort to fully comply with CEQA and believes that EIR is legally adequate under CEQA. Next master response. These comments suggest that the project may not be feasible due to concerns about ownership and right of way and that the draft EIR is deficient for not including an extensive analysis on feasibility. The RTC is confident that the project can be implemented with varying degrees of difficulty. CEQA does not require EIRs to include detailed analysis of feasibility. EIRs are prepared on the assumption that a project at a minimum is potentially feasible. Next master response. This is a very comprehensive one that involves parking evaluation and I'm not going to get into that part of it. We do have Frederick with Kimley Horn here if there are specific questions. I'm going to focus on the gates and the hours and trail closure and parking lot closure. There were conflicting comments from agencies and organizations regarding trail and parking lot closure and hours. Some, like the California Coastal Commission, want parking lots to be open at night to maximize public access to coastal resources. Others, such as state parks and Davenport North Coast Association want them closed due to public safety problems associated with nighttime use. The proposed project does not include gates, just signage that the trail would be closed at night, which is a pretty general statement. The draft EIR was revised to provide a little bit more clarification and specificity. It clarified that the trail would be closed at night to support existing agriculture adjacent to the trail and protect the public from pesticide spraying and to discourage illegal camping. It was also revised to acknowledge state park hours are from sunset to 8 a.m. And it was revised to clarify that the exact hours of parking lot, restroom, and trail closure would be determined through coordination with state parks, coastal commission, Caltrans, and affected property owners. Next master response? Some comments state that alternatives one and three could be constructed much sooner than the proposed project due to ownership and right away issues. And because the process for alternatives one and three shouldn't take that long. The project description stated that the proposed project could be constructed by 2020, and alternatives one and three could be constructed by 2038. The draft EIR was revised to clarify that the proposed project construction would be by 2021, not 2020. And that's because additional time is required now due to RTC's decision to conduct this full EIR and CFL's responsibilities to do federal compliance with the National Environmental Protection Act afterwards. And the CFL said that the project funds, their flap grant could be extended by a year. RTC estimates alternatives one and three would not begin construction until 2028. I said 38 earlier, excuse me, it's 2028. Because of the amount of work needed to undo contractual and regulatory obligations related to the rail right away, and then the no termination isn't effective until the surface transportation board approves transfer or abandonment of freight service. Further, abandoning rail uses would require, require reimbursing the state 11 million or up to 29 million, which would take several years to amass. Additionally, the master response states that the threat of litigation is noted, but filing of litigation would not halt permitting nor preclude construction. The court would have to be persuaded that challenging an EIR on its merits was likely to succeed, and RTC believes this could not be demonstrated. I was getting a little out of my territory with all that legal stuff, so I'm glad we have the attorneys here for your questions. The next comment, master response. Some comments stated that RTC is biased in favor of the proposed project and that they inappropriately divided the project into small pieces by signing the rail operation agreement. The proposed project does not include rail service or changes to the rail line, nor does it preclude it. No piecemealing occurred because the proposed project and RTC's agreement with the operator, each have independent utility or logical termini meaning that they could legitimately proceed as separate distinct projects, neither depends on each other. Further, approving the operator agreement in 2018 was determined exempt from preparing a CEQA document because it is a continuation of an existing use and therefore does not constitute a new project. Another one, this is my last, common comment and master response. Comments inquired about funding and responsibility for maintenance of the trail, parking areas and mitigation. Funding would be provided by using measure D funds and may include other sources. Trail, parking areas and restrooms would be maintained by RTC, but likely through a contract with a private firm or other agencies that could include county parks and rec, county public works or some combination thereof through formal agreements. Once maintenance responsibility is determined, a trail manager would be identified and an operations and maintenance plan would be developed. That's the conclusion for the final EIR part of it. I have one thing to say about next steps before turning it over to Corey. There's some additional requirements after the final EIR that include making findings. CEQA requires that the lead agency make one of these three findings listed, those are prescribed in the guidelines for each significant impact and the alternatives. So the first one says that changes have been made or required or incorporated into the project to mitigate those significant effects. In other words, the mitigation measures reduce the impact to a less than significant level. The second finding are those changes that would be the responsibility of another public agency and can or should be adopted by that agency. And then third, there are specific economic, legal, social, technological or other considerations that make the mitigation or alternatives infeasible. So there's a separate document that lists the potentially significant impacts and alternatives and has a finding for each one of those things. For the significant and unavoidable impacts, an additional step is required and that is a statement of overriding considerations. Finally, CEQA requires that a mitigation, monitoring and reporting program be adopted before approving a project and this is to ensure that the required mitigation measures are implemented. It's what gives it legal teeth, if you will. And with that, Corey's gonna talk about the other next steps. Thank you, Kate and Megan. So before I go into the next steps, I just want to identify the fact that we have an Arata handout to you. I won't identify everything that it contains. It does basically amend specificity that we provided to buffers that would be provided from pesticide applications to the trail and it also eliminates a specificity of hours of spraying and its coordination with public use hours. So basically it removes some specificity and that is to align with state parks practices and also the Department of Pesticide Regulation Procedures. Corey, I apologize for interrupting but I found a typo on the handout and I wanted to correct it for the record. Near the bottom of the first page, you'll see a reference to changes that would need to be made to volume one of the final EIR to conform with the wording changes shown above. And in the fourth bullet, you'll see a reference to page 517 and then a response to response 517. That should be response 56.7. So just want to make sure that that's entered into the record. Thank you very much. So the next steps after today's meeting are outlined on this slide here. We have a lot of work to complete to deliver the North Coast Rail Trail project. We need to enter into agreements for right-of-way needs. Extensive work needs to be completed in order to make those arrangements. The team delivering the project will need to complete design and the environmental, the federal environmental clearance process. The RTC will need to seek funding for construction of the two miles to Davenport and the three parking lots. We need to enter into an agreement with central federal lands for implementation of some of the mitigation measures that are identified in the EIR. And that's because some of those are going to be the responsibility of the RTC and some of those are going to be the responsibility of CFL during the construction process and certainly as part of the design. And finally, we need to develop long-term maintenance and operations agreements as Kate identified. The RTC anticipates that we will be working with the County Public Works Department or County Parks in order to provide for trail management program. And we would do that through agreement. Those items need to be ironed out as we move forward. And construction, as has been indicated, was originally scheduled for 2020 in order for us to have the time to develop the EIR. CFL moved the construction schedule to the 2021 calendar year. So today's action before you is to hold a public hearing after we answer your questions. We recommend that you adopt a resolution certifying the final EIR as being compliant with the California Environmental Quality Act. Select the proposed project as the preferred alternative. Adopt the CEQA findings and statement of overriding considerations and adopt the mitigation monitoring and reporting program. And all of those documents are to be adopted or certified with the IRADA that has been handed out to you containing the minor changes. And that concludes our presentation. Corey, Megan and Kate, thank you for that great presentation and the coordination was fabulous. Okay, commission, I'll take any questions now that you might have on the item. Any questions? There was one statement that was made that no segment depends on another. I mean, don't they have to, don't they? Dependent. I wasn't in the context of, that was in your good presentation. I just, it seems like one segment does depend on the other. I think that what you are referring to is Kate's mention of the interaction between development of trail projects and the rail operations. So those not being interdependent, those each being standalone. I can be happy to take a stab at this. Jim Mosier outside CEQA council. It's a common contention for people who oppose projects that the lead agency is guilty of something called piecemealing, which is the sin under CEQA of defining your project too narrowly. The notion is that you're, you really have a bigger project in mind and you're looking just at a piece of it in order to sneak separate pieces through the CEQA processes separately and avoid looking at the big picture. And both the federal courts and the California courts in dealing with contentions like that and in the case law have developed legal tests as to when piecemealing actually occurs. And one of the tests is whether the particular project that someone contends is too small and is in fact part of a larger project actually has what's called independent utility, meaning that it can function by itself and is not solely dependent on larger undertakings in order for it to make sense to proceed with the project. The very early cases in federal law talked about highway projects and things called logical termini. So the content you would be if you're building a road from point A to point B and then there's point C over here, but you're not defining your project initially as going all the way to point C, is point B a logical terminus? Would anyone in their right mind build a road just from point A to point B or would you only do that if you were then gonna go onto point C? So with respect to the larger trail system, we felt that this particular segment would be a nice trail to have on its own even if it weren't connected to other trails because it would make a nice hike. It'd be great to have it as part of this larger system but it could proceed on its own. And then with respect to the action of approving a contract with a rail operator earlier this year, I guess late last year which drew litigation, that didn't seem to be inextricably intertwined with this project because the trail system, I'm rather the rail system exists, it historically has been operated as a freight system and to continue doing that was an action independent of this project. So it's all legalese but that's what it boils down to. We felt that this was a legitimate standalone project and it's not so inextricably intertwined with other projects that as a matter of law it couldn't have its own EIR. Thanks for clarifying that. Yes, sir. First I'm wondering about how to get the staff to provide a little more explanation on the difference in timing between the proposed project being completed by 2021 and alternative one by 2020. I heard you take off several reasons but I wonder if you could provide some more specificity because that seems like a long one. I think maybe Luis Mendez can answer that question. There are multiple steps and multiple contracts and agreements in place both with the rail operator, funding sources, California Transportation Commission, Surface Transportation Board. Luis, why don't you elaborate? Certainly. Yes, one of the reasons that it will take time is to undo a basic commitments this commission has already made associated with this rail line right away and one of the primary commitments is this commission using state funding to acquire this rail line right away that came from the California Transportation Commission. That state funding is specifically for rail, passenger rail projects and operations and the RTC could take the action to pay back the money to the state and get rid of the rail line which would be required for that alternative. It will take some time for the RC to have that funding available at the moment like for example from Measure D, the RTC gets at $1.6 million in funding per year that can be used for the rail pot in Measure D. What would be required to pay to the CTC would be at least $11 million but based on the agreement with the state it could be potentially up to over $25 million depending what the state determines the value of the property be at that point in time through whatever method they use and so on. So that's one piece and there's of course the obligation that the RTC bought this line with a freight easement on it and that freight easement is owned by a rail operator and the determinations of whether that freight easement will continue to exist or not has to be made by the surface transportation board or federal agency so that would be a process that the RTC would have to go to to undo that and it is uncertain what the results of that process would be. So that, those are a couple of the main points that are others of course. Any portion of the line or I think I said just this project is part of the entire line but just this section were abandoned and you believe the entire grant need to be given back as opposed to none of the other. Well any portion that the RTC then abandoned so it would be possible to have an abandonment of a certain portion of the line but still you still have to work with the California Transportation Commission to figure out how you're going to pay that money back and have the funding available to do that and you still have to work with the surface transportation board to get approval for that abandonment like I said the results of that process are uncertain because it depends on what sort of challenges there may be and so on et cetera. So is it absolutely clear that that money would have to be given back? The state, the California Transportation Commission has been unequivocal in its statements about having to pay that money back. Both in writing and in writing. Exactly. And then the last question is just the community, the EIR first, that direct this choice of alternatives doesn't limit us or can we still pick any one of these alternatives or propose a project if we agree on that? I can answer that. The answer is no. Certification of an EIR is a precondition to taking action on a project but it doesn't pre-ordain any particular outcome. You could sort of find EIR and just decide you don't want to approve any project. You could approve the proposed project. If you're inclined today to approve an alternative that would be within your discretion. The paperwork in front of you doesn't support that because the paperwork in front of you reflects the staff recommendation that you could direct us to go back and make the paperwork conform to whatever decision you made. But the final EIR doesn't steer you in a particular direction. Yeah, it's just a step you have to take before you can take action on the project. Sure. Commissioner Connerney. Yeah, so thank you. And I look forward to hearing public comments. I think it's worth, the EIR always goes right into the weeds and it's always worth stepping back and remembering the larger purpose which is we were able to get this federal grant that's very specific in its purpose which is to connect urban populations to national open air, national protected areas. We have the coast, Jitoni Coast Area National Monument coming online. This is a connection that brings us from Wilder Ranch to that. And then we're working with the Land Trust who's been a great partner in this. We can plan and design the trail going all the way to Davenport. It gets bicyclists off the highway one where we've had several fatalities. It leverages these outside funds, creates some infrastructure on the North Coast which is much needed to deal with the influx of population that have discovered the North Coast in recent years. And it also, and also to keep in mind, we do have a trail that runs from Santa Cruz to Wilder Ranch through agricultural, working agricultural fields for more than a decade that use has worked on both sides and we've given our staff now the opportunity to spend more time working with the agricultural uses which we really value on the North Coast to figure out how to best adjust this project even further than we already have to meet their needs. And it's a tremendous opportunity to create safe passage up the North Coast using funds that we need to spend sooner rather than later in order to create a project that works for this community. Any other questions? I've just got a note here to remind all the commissioners that the people in the back are having trouble hearing and these microphones work better when your mouth is close to them. So try to do that, okay? So at this point we'll go ahead and open the public hearing and allow people to come up and comment. We're gonna allow two minutes for public comment. So we can go ahead and line up if you'd like, come up and address the commission. I don't know what to add. I've known too many of these people too long. My name is Robert Radoni, representing the North Coast Farmers up there. Got probably a 90 year history, not a probably we do. I have a 90 year history of farming up there. We have in the past had some issues with RTC in trying to cut off a couple of our crossings that are critical to our operations. For those of you who don't know in the past, there's a lot of small farms up there 90 years ago. Now it's, we've kind of combined them over the years. So if you look on a map, these crossings may not look critical, but they are critical to our operations. And there's a lot of other issues in regards to, you know, our operations that coexist with our existing farming operations that I think need to be considered. The RTC has reached out to us. We encourage them to continue reaching out to us to come up with a win-win solution for all of us. But if we continue to butt head, we're not gonna have a win-win solution for all of us. Thank you for those comments, appreciate them. Thanks. Brian, people's trail now, thank you. Real quick, our plan, the farmers plan, diverts it about 30% up along the roadway. And it enables greater access by the public. You're working with the farmers, the people are gonna be living with this. Now to be specific on some of the technical things, we disagree that it will be 2028. You have to look at the records, the CTC in September 2015 authorized giving the money back. So there's no timeline on that. The other third milestone that you need on the surface transportation board, the 2020, 2009 study showed that it would not be objected by the surface transportation board from the Woodside Commission. The other thing you wanna take into account is the historical reference, this is very important because what you'll find is hidden beach, capitolic trestle, seascape trestle. So if you set a precedent up there to dictate how you're going to have your trail today for that north coast, the southern section, you're, to have a train, you gotta tear those trestles down. They're historical, so remember that part of that aspect. The other thing we wanna point out is, you know, the farmers are giving up land. The farmers came here, I tried to get Robert to wear the pink hat and the pink hat represents collaboration, right? He wouldn't do it, but that's what we're about. We want a win-win solution. We want you guys to work with him, so we're hoping that the EIR gets approved with the stipulation that you direct staff to work with the farmers, the property owners on a win-win solution and have that trail go more in the scenic area. And actually we disagree the timeline, we believe it can start before 2020 with our plan because you can begin the farmland section. So that's an important ask. Thank you, Mr. People. Thank you. Good morning, commissioners. My name is David Van Brink. I live in Santa Cruz City. On the subject of coastal access and regarding the Sierra Club's letter of March 5th, the Sierra Club letter makes a number of claims regarding the closure of the informal crossing at Laguna Beach that have no evidence to support them. That it's the most used access point for the surf break. It is a surf break of regional significance that the access is heavily used by the surf community and that's sunrise to 9 a.m. is when the access is typically used. It surprises me that the local group of the Sierra Club whose motto is to explore, enjoy and protect the planet would object to closing an informal trail that is obviously damaging the natural ecosystem of the California coast. Sierra Club also claims that closing of this informal access point will have a significant effect on public access to a regional surfing destination in conflict with the Coastal Act. But the California Coastal Commission in their latest letter from March 6th did not make an issue of this closing of the informal access. So there's no basis that we can see of the Sierra Club's claim there. Lastly, the Sierra Club mentions they see no enhancement of safety as claimed in the response as people will continue to cross the street at this point. Again, this is a claim without any substantial evidence or expert's opinion. So none of their claims are well supported in their letter. Please ignore these last minute claims and move forward with the North Coast Trail project today. Finally, IR is solid, reliable document and you can surely now make a decision in support of moving forward with the staff's recommendation. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioners, my name is Jillian Green-Site and I'm here representing the Sierra Club, Santa Cruz County Group. And we want to thank the final EIR, makers of that, who responded to many of our concerns. We did appreciate that. We noticed that there were still areas of concern and I'll very briefly, since I believe you have a handout, did everybody get the handout? Yes, okay, I don't, okay, good. Thank you, won't waste more time on that. I have some if you didn't. Three areas remain of concern and we hope that you will incorporate these into your vote today. One is the California red-legged frog that to be considered less than significant mitigation must replace lost habitat at a three to one ratio. We appreciated the inclusion of a qualified biologist but we'd like to see that specific ratio, that lost habitat replacement in the final final. With tree removal, we still note an absence of having an accurate and complete accounting of trees to be removed. We'd appreciate more detail on that. This is a very important impact. The pesticide use, we noted again that it is still in the monitoring period. We're not talking about agricultural work here. It's trail maintenance and we would like to urge you to take a closer look at that to extend that beyond just the monitoring period and ideally no pesticides or herbicides used in this segment. And just lastly on the coastal access, we still maintain that closing the informal crossing will have impacts and we hope that we will look at that carefully. And thank you very much. We hope you will consider these impacts in your final vote. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning commissioners. My name is Sheila Brandon. I am a senior park and rec specialist with California State Parks Santa Cruz District. The Santa Cruz District has been working collaboratively with the RTC on the rail trail project for the past several years. We appreciate the RTC staff reach out to us at its initial stages and continue to engage with us. State Park supports the trail and have participated in the design process. Recreation is an important part of our mission and we believe that this new trail will offer an additional source of recreation to the public throughout Wilder Ranch and throughout the Coast Darry's properties. We have successfully managed recreation adjacent to our agricultural leases for many years and look forward to many more years of farming on the North Coast. State Park supports the RTC staff report and we look forward to continuing our collaboration with RTC as the next phase proceeds into the future. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning commissioners. My name is Val Cole. I'm a 29 year resident of the county. This is a phenomenal project in my opinion. Myself and another citizen, Greg Larson, put a petition up in support of the final EIR on change.org on Sunday morning. I think you've probably seen it in your packet. By the time we submitted that, there were 343 people supporting it and my only point coming up here is to say as of nine o'clock this morning, that number had increased to 456. Everything Ryan said is true. This is a really dangerous part of the Coast, whether you're walking it or riding it and building this trail is gonna open up just phenomenal opportunities for us to actively recreate on our own and with our family safely. Thank you very much. Hi, my name is Barry Scott. I live in Aptos. I'm really excited about this project. It's like a twofer. You have a trail and you have a rail line and both of these could be activated. They could both be done in I think 10 years if we commit ourselves to it. I strongly support the proposed plan. It was the original plan until we discovered that the county had errors in the location of the easement with respect to the tracks and so we've gone through this process and I think it's a great process to have gone through. But here we stand at a point where we can go ahead with the original plan, keeping the trail on the coastal side. What a wonderful thing. Without sacrificing an active rail line that we will probably need when the Davenport work is done I think eventually something will happen up there. You know, I've said it before, the rail line is like a birthright. It's our endowment to the future. I can't imagine tearing it out for any reason, especially at a time when transit is becoming more important, when people, the use of private automobiles is declining. And the original intention of purchasing that rail line was for passenger rail service. So I hope you'll all vote for the proposed plan and move ahead with trail construction soon. Thank you. Hi, good morning. Hi, my name is Tina Andrea and I live in Amptos. I've lived here since 1985 and I'm a homeowner and my house is across the street from the rail. I completely support keeping the rail line and I'm asking you to please approve the proposed project as the preferred alternative and expedite building the trail along the coastal side. Please keep the rail for future use as it serves the needs of our entire community. The 32 mile rail trail is a historic landmark, let's keep it. Get the trail completed as soon as possible and then repair the rail line for light rail use as soon as possible. Highway one is dangerous. I used to ride my bike on highway one until my husband, when he found out I was riding it. He actually said, please don't ride the on highway one any longer, you know, up to Davenport when I lived on the west side. So please keep the proposed project and the preferred alternative. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Sally Arnold. I'm the new chair of the Friends of the Rail and Trail and as you've seen in your packet, the public comments are overwhelmingly in favor of the North Coast Trail as proposed along the coastal side of the existing tracks. It's gonna be a beautiful recreational asset for our community as Mr. Coonerty mentioned and unlike Tina, I would never ride my bike on highway one. It terrifies me just to be driving up there and see cyclists on that road. But I do ride that little spur that goes to Wilder and, you know, I feel perfectly safe doing that and if it was continued onto Davenport, I would do that. I mean, that would be a wonderful recreational opportunity and I think it would bring tourist dollars to our community to expand that and make it a real, you know, a worthwhile destination for cyclists who are perhaps a little more timid than Tina. We urge you to certify the final EIR and approve the proposed project with the preferred alignment. It is the best choice for the environment as was already presented. It's certainly the best choice for cyclists, far from the highway. It's the best choice financially because it does protect that more than $10 million that's already been earmarked for the project as well as avoids that 11 to $25 million payback to the state, which would be horrible. And it is the best choice for efficiency because it can be completed so many years sooner than the alternative alignments, you know, can be started in 2021 instead of 28. So we thank you for all your patient work on this project and it's been a long time coming and we just encourage you to support the staff recommendations and approve this trail now without further delays. I'd like to be fit enough to ride this trail when it finally gets built. So thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Erika Snovich and I'm the conservation chair at the Sierra Club. And I would say my personal biggest concern and certainly a huge concern for the club is the red legged frog. The California red legged frog is a species of concern and it does reside directly along the tracks, not in the streams next to the track, but directly along the tracks. And so the proposed one to one mitigation of habitat restoration for the frog doesn't seem adequate at all and we want to see a three to one mitigation for the wetland loss in order to support the frog. And again, we're also very concerned about the trees, tree loss that are not being specified. There's simply not enough information about that. And there's a one to one proposed replacement for the trees. However, mature trees are simply not the same as potted plants that you plant along. There's certainly a loss of death of trance that you replace of trees that are replaced. And so those need to be in much, needs to be a much higher mitigation. We ask for a three to one mitigation for the trees as well as, and of course to account for the fact that mature trees are very, very different from minute. So thank you. Thank you. Welcome, Ms. Strauss. Good morning, Yannica Strauss with Bikesana Cruz County. The most significant characteristic of the proposed project is really that it will, it could begin construction in 2021. The immense benefits which have been shared by many people so far, safety, access, a carbon-free access to recreational areas, these can all be experienced sooner by our community with moving forward with the proposed project. Additionally, the proposed project has a superior trail design, 12 feet wide with a six foot paved, unpaved shoulder and then two foot shoulder on the other side. This is a huge benefit to both cyclists, pedestrians, anyone using the trail. So we support the staff recommendation and we urge you to certify the EIR and to continue to keep this project moving forward. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, Marty DeMair, North Coast resident. I understand the limits of an EIR, project EIR, but it's not beyond the foresight of this commission to look at the bigger picture for the larger purposes, Mr. Coonerty put it. So I urge you not to certify this EIR and instead revisit the parking, traffic, and access assumptions. It's not sufficient to simply post signs and Santa Cruz promoting walking and biking or to suggest that parking on the shoulders of the highway is a mitigation because I'm sure you've all heard about the problems in Big Sur, Point Lobos and Muir Woods where shoulder parking has become untenable and dangerous for visitors. There really is a larger picture going on here with the confluence of this trail, the Cotonie Coast Darius Project and improved visitation to state parks facilitated by the Coastal Commission's new iPhone app. So I hope you will step back and look at the bigger picture on the North Coast and realize that a decision today could set a precedent for a very dangerous and troublesome situation along Highway 1. Thank you. Thank you. Audi, my name is Ian, I'm a Fulton resident. I wanna appreciate all the good work you guys are doing with coming up with the future plans for the rails and trails. I work for Warren Camp Railroads. I actually support the community a lot with volunteer projects around here. I also supported myself with the trail that goes from Poganip to Ringcon for bicycles to help people get a trail that goes along the railroad tracks from Fulton all the way to Santa Cruz. And also, Warren Camp serves the community where it's like we help the park rangers and we help the city with the trash train. We'll use our locomotives to help burn all the homeless trash that's accumulated along the railroad tracks over the years. And we also, the railroad benefits a lot with the community to be able to move the equipment in and out. And if you guys are building a trail from Santa Cruz to Davenport, you can use the train to bring materials and equipment to the isolated locations that are harder to get by road. Also, we use the train for emergencies for like in case somebody gets hurt somewhere along the railroad tracks. The fire department will call us and we'll bring the train out there, rescue the person whether they're on a bike or a canoe or somebody got hurt at a garden of Eden. The railroad actually benefits helping get the injured persons out and then get them transported to the hospital. Also, the railroad is a huge benefit for if there's an emergency like the 1982 flood. The Southern Pacific Railroad actually brought a bunch of tank cars of water up to Fulton and supplied the town with showers and washing materials and stuff like that. So the railroad benefits with the community. And I wanna appreciate you guys for doing a good job and support you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Steven Slade, Executive Director of the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. A lot of new faces on the commission. And most of you weren't here six years ago when the Land Trust got involved. When we were asked to provide matching funds for a grant to build this segment. And we agreed to do that. It didn't get the grant. So your staff came back and asked for more money the next year. We did get the grant. We have $4 million we are ready to spend building this section. We urge you to adopt the staff recommendations, approve the EIR, choose the preferred scenario and let's get this built. You've heard about the advantages. It's time to get it done. We wanna spend the money, okay? We're not earning anything in the banks these days. So let's get it done and then look at the next project and the one after that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, Chair, commissioners. My name's Mark MCD Miller. I'm a professional civil engineer with a three decade long career here in Santa Cruz County. And I just wanted to mention a couple of things you've heard from everybody. Everybody supports this project. There's a few that are detractors. But I wanted to mention the farmers. I think the North Coast farmers are an important asset to our community. And they've raised some important issues that need further work. But I don't think they've raised anything here that would prevent you from certifying this EIR. It's an extraordinarily thorough document. I've seen a few in my day. And this one's probably one of the best. And then I think in addition to certifying the EIR, you should go ahead and approve the North Coast Trail. The preferred alignment really is superior for many reasons. Not the least of which is public safety. The record shows that there are bicyclists getting hit. They're getting injured and they're dying. And the faster we build this trail, the sooner we can stop that personal injury and death. So I would encourage you to go ahead and select the preferred alignment. Let's move ahead with the trail. Let's make this place safer and better. And before I forget, I'll just check my notes. Gosh, that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Ryan Sarnitar from Live Oak. I'm a Greenway supporter, but I don't speak for Greenway because actually in this case, I'm gonna say something that they don't agree with. But the issue of taking the tracks out and putting a trail in, I think in the case of this North Coast Corridor, that's nowhere near as important as it is in other segments of the trail. So I'm supporting the staff recommendation here because the trail that we will get will at least protect bicyclists from traffic. It'll be 12 feet wide. There's enough room in this segment for this to happen. And so in my case, I'd say, I don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good. In terms of the rest of the corridor, I don't think that you should take this as a template for the most expeditious or beneficial way to go forward. There are other considerations. And so please don't generalize the decision that gets made here to decisions that need to be made in the future about other segments of the trail. Thanks. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak at the public hearing? Seeing none, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to the commission for action and discussion. So, Mr. Coonerty. Yeah, thank you. It's an exciting day. It's taken a little longer to get here than I think some of us anticipated. But I'd like to move the staff recommendation and also thank the entire team from the federal folks who did the design work to our consultants, to our ROTC staff, to the county folks who have partnered on this on doing a really good study that really identified the resources and possibilities and will continue to do as we move forward on this, continue to do excellent work as we move forward on this project. Second. A motion by Coonerty. Second by Leopold. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for everyone's comments today. You know, this vision of a trail has been a long sought after amenity for our community. This segment actually represents a great vision of collaboration and partnership because we're working with federal agencies, local government, local citizens and local organizations to fund, build and be able to use this portion of the trail. It's really exciting to see that we're gonna, we're gonna, with the action today that we can start looking towards a date of construction. The sooner, the better. I think is what the community would like. But I really appreciate the fact that people have come together to help make this happen. And I'm glad in doing this significant environmental review that we're able to identify the issues so we can move forward and create the best trail possible. Mr. Brown. I'm happy to support the motion. I do have a question related to the mitigations on the red legged frog and tree replacement. I'm just wondering at what point might we hear back about whether or not those, I mean, obviously this is ways down the road to establish whether or not those mitigations are adequate. We're sort of, we're talking about, you know, legally we have to do the one-to-one replacement mitigation but I'm just wondering if there's some, what the, I mean, I know we have a monitoring plan as well but I'm just wanting to get a sense of like when we might hear back as a commission about that. And then I have, I mean, I just have to ask closure of the Laguna crossing. I'm not sure how that could actually happen. So I know we're recommending it but it doesn't seem possible to me. So I'd just be interested to hear since it was raised. I'll address the Laguna crossing and then have ecosystems west. Our biologists address your first question. So in terms of the closure of the Laguna crossing it is a really dangerous crossing and it's really hard to accommodate a formalized crossing there. It's not approved by the CPUC in designing this project. The federal team is going to have to work with the CPUC to close some of the crossings that are used on an informal basis right now and formalize other ones that are being used. There is a no net gain in the CPUC's requirements and sometimes they actually require that you close down two crossings when you open one. So we're gonna need to work very closely with the CPUC and essentially the crossing at Laguna is not a CPUC recognized crossing. It's very unlikely that it could be formalized because of the dangerous location. We would be placing fencing what people do. We're not gonna be able to actually control but fencing will be put in place to ensure public safety. And that is really the overriding consideration is public safety. We understand the views are important but it's a dangerous location. And I will ask ecosystems west to come up and address your other question. Thank you for that. Hi, Erin McGinty with ecosystems west. With regard to the California red-legged frog, the intent of the no net loss mitigation ratio is to really give the stakeholders and the agencies that will be involved during the permitting process maximum flexibility. So further down the line, this project is gonna go through a permitting process and you'll have California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Fish and Wildlife, the Coastal Commission, state parks and the stakeholders all involved in designing the biological resources management plan. The no net loss will allow those participants to make proper determinations based on the resources. So for example, you might not want to mitigate a fallow agricultural land with backer shrubs encroaching at a ratio of three to one, whereas you would certainly wanna mitigate wetlands at a ratio of three to one, depending on what the agency is determined. So really we anticipate that for the more sensitive resources that the mitigation ratios may be higher than one to one. Hi, Justin DeVilla, Ecosystems West. I just wanna touch on the trees a little bit. To give a little background, during the actual process of preparing it, we did extensive on the ground field surveys. The entire seven and a half miles were walked over the period of two weeks. There was a rare plant survey and there was detailed habitat mapping that I did. Personally, hand drawing and using GPS units to come up with these different habitat types that you see in there. As far as trees go, there wasn't really the time or the need to do a complete inventory or arboreal tree inventory along the line. The vast majority of trees that occur along this line they're basically arboreal shrubs. A lot of them are willows or smaller oaks or the larger trees are actually off the line. They may be in the study area. They're not going to be impacted by the project directly. In the process of finalizing the designs for the plans and coming up with the mitigations for the different habitat types, whether they be Esha or individual trees or other species, that will be taken into consideration and the determination of the mitigation requirements, the ratio offsets will follow a similar process of dealing with the different agencies and the stakeholders and coming up with the best feasible plan for mitigating these resources and obviously taking close consideration into the value of the trees that are going to be removed. And then furthermore, if you were to look at the county significant tree ordinance for areas outside the Royal Urban Services line, those trees are actually not protected until they're up to 48 inches in diameter, which are large trees. There are no trees like that. And we're not saying that we wouldn't want to mitigate for smaller trees, but the tree species that are along this line, they're very important, but a lot of them are taking into consideration under other mitigation scenarios for the Esha, like the willow scrub and, you know, what's that? Coast live oak forest. These are talked about in other contexts. And again, those will all come into play into the resource management plan, which must be approved and certified before the project begins anyways. So that's pretty much what I have to say about that. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Bertrand. So I just have a question about the biological. So the thing that I'm wondering about, so mitigation measures are going to be taken, but like let's say for the red legged frog, I mean, it probably took years, I don't know how long, for them to adapt to a certain area. So in terms of mitigation for trees, frogs, whatever, how long is this process going to be monitored so that the successful outcome can be determined? So we don't have the exact number of years of monitoring that would be required, but US Fish and Wildlife Service will certainly be involved. And you know, that's their primary interest to protect federally listed species. So I think we can trust them to approve a plan that's going to be protective for that species. Okay, thank you very much. So I'd just like to make a general comment, not to you, sorry. Okay, thank you for those comments. Yeah, so Supervisor Kearney mentioned safety and this is going to be a great improvement. I was a member of InShape in Capitola and 41st Avenue and the accident along Highway 1 changed the nature of so many people's lives, that one particular accident won't talk about, but everyone involved in InShape knew about that. And I've heard of so many other stories in the 30 plus years I've been in Santa Cruz of the statements of the impacts on various people's lives. We have a dog park in Capitola dedicated to one of those persons. So anything that improves safety on Highway 1 for bicyclists, I think this is going to be a great boom for this area. Thank you. Comments? Yes, sir. I look forward to riding the North Coast in the trial on the beautiful coast with my family. So thanks also to everybody who has faded and brought it to this point. So I look forward to it. Thank you. Comments? Okay, I think this is, I think we're heading in the right direction. I believe that staff is working with the groups that are down to have questions and concerns. And I'm pretty confident that we're going to be able to mitigate all the concerns and keep all the interested parties happier. So I think we're moving forward. So no other comments. I'm going to go ahead and call for a vote. Yes. Sorry, Chair Bortrov, can you clarify that the motion is to support the staff recommendation that includes the rata? Make it a motion? Yes, it does. It was the staff recommendation, including the rata. And the second is okay with that. Okay, so we are intact. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Okay, with that, we're going to move on with the schedule. We're going to go back a little bit because we've got some cleanup to do. What I'd like to do first is I want to go back to the item on the consent agenda that we carried over. And I'll let, go ahead, Luis. I think you also skipped oral communications. I got a bunch of stuff I skipped. Yeah, I'm going to go, just to let you know, we're going to go back to item eight. Then we're going to go to oral communications and then proceed from there. Do you guys want me to do that? Sure, I can do that if you'd like me to do that. So if we can make your comments, are you going to make the presentation, Mr. President? Since it was pulled from the agenda and our staff person is here, I think it's appropriate to have Rachel present. Even better, thank you. Ms. Marconi, go ahead. Good morning, commissioners. Rachel Marconi of your staff. Before you today is consideration of some state funds that the Regional Transportation Commission is responsible for selecting projects to receive. These are the Low Carbon Transit Operations Program funds or LC-TOP. These funds are generated through the sale of carbon fees through the state's cap and trade program. This year, the funds are distributed to transit agencies as well as regional agencies. And this year, the Regional Transportation Commission's share of funds is about $511,000. The Regional Transportation Commission can select projects to receive these funds from the list of types of projects that start on page one of the staff report. They include a range of free bus passes, new vehicles that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, facilities at bus stops that might encourage more people to shift their mode from driving alone, perhaps to riding a bus, as well as infrastructure associated with electric vehicles. There are some rules associated with these funds because they are part of the state's cap and trade program, the California Air Resources Board and California Environmental Protection Agency has developed some charts showing what areas of Santa Cruz County and other areas of the state are considered disadvantaged communities. The goal of the program is to make sure that at least a significant portion of these funds are serving folks that live in those areas that have been so classified by the state. This year, we took a proposal to our Elderly and Disabled Transportation Advisory Committee soliciting their ideas for this grant program. They looked at their unmet needs hearing project list and identified free fixed route transit rides for ADA paratransit eligible passengers with the goal of shifting folks from paratransit onto the fixed route bus system as one idea and priority. And the other was projects that promote electrification of the transit and paratransit system. So we received some request letters from both Lifeline and Metro requesting some of these funds. Last night, we received a revised request from Santa Cruz Metro staff and that is reflected in underlying strikeout in the staff report. Staff concurs with the Metro's request as does Lifeline to allow Lifeline to receive 100% of what was requested by Lifeline this year because they have a project that can be implemented quickly. Well, Metro would anticipate that future in the future next year, Lifeline would waive any claim to the fiscal year 1920 funds and that those funds be made available to Metro staff and Lifeline and Metro all concur with this proposal to allocate 218,710 funds to Santa Cruz Metro for its electric charging infrastructure and battery storage project for zero emission buses and allocate $292,605 to Community Bridges, Lifeline to use towards their electric paratransit vehicles and charging equipment. There were a few other recommendations included in that letter we received last night. We would like to have a little bit more time to discuss those other ideas with Metro, Caltrans and stakeholders and would return to you in the future to address what would be possibly done with future year funds. But with that, we recommend approval of the revised staff recommendation and resolution. Thank you for clarifying that discussion. Any questions? I'm not going open to the public. Anybody from the public would like to speak? Mr. Cancino, step on up. Great Cancino, CEO of Community Bridges. We'd just like to thank the partnership of Santa Cruz Metro for kind of helping us get our project ahead of time and letting us do greenhouse reductions sooner than later. And so this is really gonna allow us, earlier last year we received a quarter of a million dollars to help us get two buses and they're gonna be in operation, but limited range is about 110 miles and when we're gonna put them to road, we're probably gonna get 80 miles. And so part of this project is allowing us the infrastructure that's gonna be a shared infrastructure. We're gonna start working with Metro, VTA and MST to try to look at where infrastructure needs to be developed in the county. So these current level electric vehicles are actually gonna be able to be used throughout the county and we don't have to wait for any type of long-term overnight charging. So we're just really fortunate to have that development and partnership with Metro and we really appreciate their management team allowing us to get our project done and kind of shifting dollars around to help us get there. So thank you also to staff for answering emails so late last night while this was being coordinated. So thank you so much for everyone's work. Thank you. Yes, sir. Hello, my name is Kirk Hans. I'm the program director for Lifeline, a program of community bridges and Lifeline is the Consolidated Transportation Service Agency for Santa Cruz County. I'd like to thank the RTC for their support through all the years and also with the LC Top, like to thank Metro for their working with us on that and we're looking forward and hoping that you approve this funding. We're looking forward to one nine passenger electric vehicle that is wheelchair accessible and two level three charging stations which will allow us to charge our vehicles in 20 minutes to 85% of the capacity and one of the charging stations would be installed in the disadvantaged area of Watsonville as well as the nine passenger electric paratransit vehicle will operate out of there but also that vehicle would provide transportation throughout the county and then one charging station is slated to go into the Mount Community Resource Center in Felton right off of highway nine with easy access and as Ray had mentioned we would share these with other transit services throughout the county and we look forward to this project and look forward to being part of reducing greenhouse gases and providing mobility as soon as possible, thank you. Sounds exciting, great. Any other comments from the public? Cal, go ahead and bring it back. Chair, I'd like to recommend the recommended actions and just say congratulations to Lifeline and Metro for working together, being a board member of Metro this is a great example of working together for a cleaner alternative for our public transportation system particularly obviously to Lifeline so thank you very much for working together and just like to recommend this motion. Okay, we got a motion by McPherson. Second. Second. Yes. And comment on that. And it is great to see the collaboration throughout our county and I think we need to continue doing this to lower down our greenhouse emissions and also serve our most needy, our elderly and our disabled and our disadvantaged communities. So I think this is a great opportunity to show to the rest of the community how we all work together. Any other comments? Comments? Okay, before I give a vote I want to echo what Mr. Cancino said and McPherson also and Gonzalez you know this is great I feel like there's a new energy in the Regional Transportation Commission here to seek out great relationships with our partners which is Metro and Lifeline here and to be able to figure out who needs the money we all fight for this money we know that but this is just a great way looking forward how we can all get what we need and get along so I'm excited. So with that I'll call a vote all in favor. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Carries unanimously. Go spend money. Yeah. All under the budget. Great work. Okay let's see so let me get back on schedule here. We're gonna go back down to back on the calendar to oral communications. This is a part of the meeting and you can come up and address any item that is related to the RTC that's not on something that's already on the agenda so if you'd like to come up you'll be given two minutes. Thank you Jillian Greensight speaking as an individual member of the public. At your last meeting here you were talking about sort of the buses and putting a GPS in the buses so people would know when the bus came and I think Commissioner Rocken mentioned that could be expensive so I started to think between then and now I'm from Australia I've been here 44 years and I took the bus everywhere in Australia not in Australia near my hometown and it was simple you got to a bus stop you looked up and the sign told you when the bus would arrive at your stop it included it had two columns AM and PM and weekdays, weekends and it gave you the full times of when that bus would arrive at that stop. When I came here and I wanted to catch the bus so I went to the bus stop and I looked up and it may as well have been in hieroglyphics I couldn't understand what it was saying it didn't tell me when the bus was arriving at my stop and as far as I could figure it out it told me when it had left somewhere else which was not of any help whatsoever so I got a head ways, read that again it was really incomprehensible for somebody who's used to simple statements so I'm wondering instead of spending so much money on GPS's and not everybody has a smartphone I'm one of them is what would be the difficulty of doing what they do in Australia and the buses run on time it's very rare but it could be a minute or two late but not usually but it would seem to me to be a very simple thing unless there's a reason that escapes me and maybe you know why it couldn't be done but it seems to me straightforward user friendly and I certainly would find it easier to take the bus if I knew when it would arrive at my stop thank you. Thank you I don't think anybody can explain as much detail as Commissioner Rotkin so I won't try but I'll give you the cliff notes is that I think the system we're acquiring is an AVL system which first and formally will locate the bus and I think with technology I don't know that what you're suggesting is out of the question I don't think we know exactly where it's gonna go but the start of our system with the AVL will allow us to address iPhones and if there is something else that they can do I guarantee it will be looking into it so we're not quite up with Australia but we're trying, okay can I? I would just add that we change the headways on a regular basis and one of the issues with congestion in the county is that buses don't always get to where they're supposed to be because of the traffic and people have said that they wanna know when the buses are actually gonna be there and this technology allows us to pinpoint the time with greater specificity than what our headways would be able to do so we'll still look to have better signage but this is just another technology we have gotten the grant that will pay for this so we aren't giving up service in order to provide this new technology. Commissioner, I just wanted to in a way that serves and I'll just give a quick example of sometimes our elderly they go to a facilities like Social Security and it's raining outside and where the station's at where the bus stops, there is no shelter so those days where it's either extremely hot or it's extremely windy or extremely cold for these individuals that have to sit out there and wait I think a service like this would be ideal for them because now they can time themselves more or less when they're gonna exit that building and be in a safe shelter and at the same time be able to catch their bus and not miss it. Thank you for those comments. Go ahead Ryan. Yeah, now I'm speaking as part of the community that's recovering from the vote in January to give the rail corridor away and or basically to block the implementation of a greenway and since then there have been two things that have happened one on the statewide level which is the cancellation of high speed rail and Gavin Newsom said and this is a quote it costs too much and it takes too long how long was too long? He said 2033 was too long and here we are keeping a rail corridor for an unfunded train for some very long future when there actually is an alternative that would provide active transportation. In relation to active transportation down in Monterey the agency down there, Fortag just received a $10.3 million grant for expansion of the greenway. Now this happens to be a grant for feeders into their 18 mile rails removed trail in Monterey but what it shows is that there is public money as well as public support for a full greenway option and I don't know the legalities I don't know what the possibilities are of Santa Cruz getting out of this arrangement to prevent a greenway for all these years but I do hope that something like that does happen because you're gonna find that a tremendous portion of your community if they're really fully informed about this is gonna be in favor of getting those rails out of there and giving ourselves this great public asset. Thanks. Thank you for those comments. Good morning commissioners and staff Michael St. from Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. Just wanted to take you back a little bit to the 12 nothing vote on the UCIS staff's recommendation specifically the Oxlain's project. Sound like a broken record don't I? I knew it would pass but I was hoping that there would be at least one or two of you that understood that we were in a climate crisis. That widening highways is exactly the opposite of what this RTC should be doing. I will not single out any of you as the culprit for this poor decision because all 12 of you are responsible and you have one 12th of that responsibility. The Oxlain project will be your legacy for years to come. You had and still have an opportunity to take us into the 21st century with a modern public transit system but you chose to take us back to the 1950s when our country decided on an interstate highway system versus a mass transit infrastructure. Global warming is increasing, highway deaths are increasing, owning and operating an automobile is taking this higher percentage of our family income yet you vote to slap more asphalt on the ground. Frankly you should be a little ashamed of that decision. You were elected and appointed to this commission to do what is best for the people of this county to enhance their transportation system, not to spend taxpayer money on temporary fix that will eventually fail. We need more leaders with vision, leaders willing to say no to political pressure when it comes to doing the right thing. Unfortunately no one stepped up when it was time to vote and once again we have politics 12, the citizens and the planet zero. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else like to come up and address this oral communications? Okay we'll go ahead and go ahead and close oral communications and we're gonna get back on schedule here which I believe takes us to item 19, commissioner reports. Any commissioners have anything to report? Commissioner Brown. I'll just say that the Santa Cruz City Council at its February 12th meeting voted to offer an eco pass, bus pass program. So all downtown workers will now be receiving bus passes in collaboration with the Santa Cruz Metro and so we're looking forward to that coming online and I'll keep you updated about the potential increase in ridership as time goes by. Great, great program. Any to come up? Commissioner Bertrand. When I found out about that pass I was hopeful that Metro would look at giving a pass to people at Metro, excuse me, at Dominican. A lot of people come off of how we want to go to Dominican. Any other comments? Okay, all right, that takes on to item 20, director's report, Mr. Preston. Thank you, Chair. After a prolonged search, I am pleased to announce that the RTC has hired its new director of budget and finance, Tracy New. Tracy comes to the RTC having most recently served as the director of business services and board secretary for the Aptos La Salva Fire Protection District. In that capacity, Tracy was responsible for all services of administration office, including accounting functions. Tracy has a bachelor's of science degree in commerce and finance from Santa Clara University and is a resident of Ben Lohman. Tracy started work on Tuesday, February 19th. Based on her qualifications and her experience, Tracy was hired at step four of a seven class classification series. A special thanks goes out to Daniel Nicuna, who served this role for 26 years. Daniel extended his retirement by three months so the RTC could have more time to find and train his replacement. Daniel will now officially retire on March 28th. The RTC also thanks Mary Jo Walker, the retired auditor controller for Santa Cruz County who provided professional services to the RTC during this transitional period. Mary Jo is expected to complete her work for the RTC by the end of the month. We now have a functional finance department at the RTC due to many changes in staff and I'm very happy with the changes and the additions that have been made. Excuse me, is Tracy new here in? Yes, oh, and my apologies, Tracy is here in the audience. Thank you for rescuing us, okay. And is here to address the commission. I'm really happy to be here. Thank you so much. Thank you guys for giving me this opportunity. I look forward to learning everything about transportation and I hope that my budget experience and finance experience will enhance the operations. Thank you. The last guy was here 28 years so we look forward to a long career, all right? Thank you. The next item I have to report on is the legislative program for Transportation Development Act funding. At the February 7th RTC meeting, the commission adopted the RTC's federal and state legislative programs. The RTC state legislative program includes language to oppose efforts that would reduce Transportation Development Act funds which are essential for the RTC's administration and planning. During a discussion on this item, the commission directed me to work with the general manager of Metro to resolve potential conflicts between the respective agency's legislative programs regarding TDA funds. Specifically, the RTC was concerned with a portion of the Metro's legislative program that would seek to cap the off the top dollars that are today taken by the RTC, the RTPAs for various line items such as administration, planning and reserves at 3% maximum. Current legislation has a 3% cap for certain planning and programming functions but it does not have a cap on administration. Metro originally proposed 3% cap on planning and administration would be a significant decrease in funding for the RTC. Metro and the RTC met on February 21st to discuss the legislative programs regarding TDA funding. Metro agreed to modify its legislative program to resolve this conflict. Metro's revised legislative program does not seek to make changes in the amount that the RTC can use for planning and programming. It only seeks to provide a cap on administration with no percentage specified. Currently, RTC expends approximately 6% on administration. RTC is committed to transparency and fiscal responsibility and is confident that Metro will not advocate for a reduction in TDA funds which are essential for RTC's administration functions. Measure D, revenue projections. As part of the voter approved Measure D, the RTC allocates, administers and oversees the expenditure of all measure revenues through an implementation plan. The purposes of the implementation plan are to define the scope, cost and delivery schedule for each expenditure plan, project or program. Detail the revenue projections and possible financing tools needed to deliver the expenditure plan within the 30 year promise to the voters. As part of this effort, RTC entered into a professional services agreement with Hinder-Lieder, DeLomas and Associates for Sale, Use and Transportation Tax Audits and Services. HDL provides quarterly reports identifying changes and allocation totals by business groups and categories. Quarterly aberrations due to state audits, fund transfers and receivables along with late or double payments are identified. That is used to assist the RTC in forecasting Measure D revenue growth for the Measure D implementation plan. On February 19th, HDL briefed RTC staff on their 2018 third quarter report. A summary of this report is attached for reference. Although Measure D transportation recedes from July through September, where 21.2% above the third quarter sale period in 2017, HDL concluded that actual sales growth was only 2.7% higher in Santa Cruz County due to those significant aberrations in how the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration has been distributing sales tax revenue. HDL further forecast modest statewide growth of 1.5% in sales tax revenue for fiscal year 1920. RTC staff is considering this growth projection in the preparation of both the Measure D implementation plan and the RTC fiscal year 1920 budget. Regarding the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trial Segment 7, Phase 2, at the February 7th RTC meeting, I reported that the city of Santa Cruz Planning Commission was scheduled to consider the initial study mitigated negative declaration for Phase 2 of Segment 2 of the MBSST and Coastal Rail Trial Spine at its meeting this evening. Phase 2 of Segment 7 extends from the intersection of California Street and Bay Street, Pacific Avenue and at the Santa Cruz Wharf. I have been informed that this consideration has been delayed in part due to public hearings by the RTC on Segment 5 of the MBSST as part of today's meeting. I have not received an update on when this item will move forward but will keep you posted on as information becomes available. Regarding the Highway 1 Auxiliary Lane Bay Porter, Bay Avenue Porter Street to State Park Drive, the RTC is working with Caltrans on a cooperative funding agreement to be implementing agency on preliminary engineering and an environmental document for the next two sets of Highway 1 Auxiliary Lanes. Currently, staff is preparing a request for proposals for a consulting firm to provide the necessary professional services to perform this work. Staff anticipates funding this work in part through a $1.83 million STIP funds which has been programmed by the CTC. This project is also eligible for Measure D Highway corridor funding. When staff completes the scope of work, advertises an RFP, selects a firm and negotiates the terms of a proposed agreement with the most qualified firm, staff will bring a proposed contract to the commission for consideration, likely at the August RTC meeting. Regarding the next B&A committee meeting date, please be advised that the March budget and administration committee meeting date time has changed. The next B&A committee will meet on Thursday, March 21st at 9 a.m. And for this last item, I'm gonna go to the front podium to do an appreciation to an employee who has 25 years of service with the RTC. Today we recognize, that's not gonna work. I'll just speak loud. He's got it, he's helping us. Today, we recognize that Luis Mendez for his 25 years and six days of dedicated service to the RTC. Luis is the longest-tenured member of the RTC staff and serves as my deputy director. Luis is a wealth of knowledge and his experience is invaluable to the RTC. A resolution honoring Luis is in front of you here. And I present it to Luis with sincere appreciation. Wow, thank you very much. When I interviewed for the position of foundation plan number one, I was asked what sort of a commitment I intended to make to the agency. I said about two to three years. I was extremely wrong about that. But that's mainly because it's, I mean, working for this agency and for this community has just been an extreme pleasure. It's great to work with a staff that's so dedicated and professional, to work with commissioners that are just as dedicated and very caring about the community that they serve and are looking to make sure that what the decisions to make are decisions that are in the best interest of the entire community. And it's also great to work with partner agencies that work so collaboratively with each other and with the RTC to come to solutions about the things that we need that again benefit the community as a whole in the work that everyone is doing. And of course, we would not be able to do the work that we do without the great engagement of the community. We do have a very informed community that gets very engaged in what we do. And that, you know, it is a very important part of the democratic process that we are a part of to make sure that we serve the community as well as we can. So I feel extremely fortunate and blessed to have the opportunity to serve this community for as long as I have. And I certainly hope that I can continue to do that for many years to come. Thank you. That was good, thank you very much. Chair, I just want to thank Mr. Mendes for his excellent service. He's unflappable and we've thrown him some curveballs over time. And when we acquired this rail line, it became his responsibility to learn all things rail. And he's been an excellent resource, along with all the other work that he does. And I just want to express my appreciation for his long service to this commission. Well said. Any other comments? Thank you, Louise, for your, for that. Okay, that will accept that report. We'll move on to Mr. I want to make a comment on the director's report. I think it's related. Thank you. I actually have a slide. Can you stop the clock until the slides come up? Congratulations, Louise, by the way. Just to give you the context here, what we're showing is the draft slides for the director's visit to the California Transportation Commission. And Trail Now, Representatives Trail Now, Santa Cruz Greenway, and other concerns and they're gonna be attending that. This is just the draft slide package where we're gonna go through some of the history of the train and the decisions made on the coastal corridor. And that's the subject item. Basically, one of our main emphasis is you're gonna be destroying the historical trestles. Passenger train from the Unified Corridor study showed it was not an effective solution. There's a lot of public opposition to the train, Major Al. 20 years, the coastal corridor is gonna be sitting vacant. 20 years, it's already sat almost 10. And active transportation is five times from the study, five times more effective than a train or even a bus. So if you just go through the next slides, and again, I'm just gonna roll through them. The trestles, I commented about the historical value. In order for you to have 60 trains a day, going 45 miles an hour, every one of those trestles is gonna be destroyed. They're gonna put concrete trestles in. It's not gonna happen, you're not gonna be able to do it. The study showed that it wasn't affordable. Next slide, you have a lot of backlash. Next slide, hey, it's running along the coast. I mean, you talk about climate change. It's gonna wash away. Next slide, expensive. If you're spending $1.6 million to maintain this, you've given away $15 million for an excursion train. Next slide, excursion trains. Next slide won't even go there. This is the truth. This is how wide it is. Next slide, that's by O'Neill's. Next slide, look, it's going right through 38th Avenue. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Appreciate it. Okay, with that, we'll accept the director's report. We'll move on to item 21, Caltrans report. Ms. Lowe. Good morning, Mr. Chair and commissioners. First, I'd like to just call your attention to an outreach event hosted by Caltrans as part of the Division of Local Assistance Program, and that is on safety. The California Strategic Highway Safety Plan includes the development and outreach of a program called California Safe Roads. There are six outreach events around the state. The one that would be closest to the Santa Cruz area will be held on April 11th in Oakland, and at this time anyone coming would be asked to help identify key strategies that would have the greatest potential to save lives and prevent serious injuries on all California roadways. And then I would like to report on the progress that we're making with the revenue sources afforded by SB1. In one year's time, Caltrans has completed 50 projects in addition to the normal work effort, and we have also been able to get another 100 projects under contract or under construction. That's just on the state highway system. Of course, we see the same level of commitment by local agencies and our transportation agencies around the state. In addition to our efforts to fix it first and take good care of the existing infrastructure, Senate Bill 1, the Road Repair and Recountability Act of 2017 also requires Caltrans to find $100 million inefficiencies every year. This year, we not only met that target, but we beat it. We found $133 million inefficiencies. And the areas that we did this in included acceleration of projects, streamlining and environmental review, conducting value analysis on studies on high cost projects, and innovating the use of contracting methodologies, contracting design, CMGC is a term that's commonly used. This is an innovation that differs from the traditional design build process and allows us to hire contractors much earlier. So that's a very aggressive ask, but it's our responsibility, the taxpayer, as SB 1 brings new revenue in, we're also serious about making these efficiencies. And then you have a report on the projects in the county that are underway and under construction. If you have any questions, I'm available to answer. Do I have a question for Mr. Chairman? Yeah, I have a, in regards to the project that's on the SHOP project, 18A4, sorry, 18A5, which is the project identifier I-1G-160. This is a San Cruz County on the routes, how we won, how we nine, 17, 129, 152, and says various locations install accessible pedestrian signage signals. Is that part of what we call our Merchant East Beach Street intersection? Signal lights for our students? Let's see, I'm looking at project number 22 on this list, and that does have the Merchant Street one listed, if that's the same one, 1G-160. On this program funded SHOP projects, it's San Cruz County, January 20th. It's a program for 1819. We might be looking at different reports. Yeah, you're looking at your other one. Yeah, but there is one. I'm looking at your SHOP projects, page 18A5, which is program funded SHOPs projects. I got two different types of SHOP project reports. Yes, sorry about that. So that's why it's kind of confusing, and that's why I kind of want a clarification. One says 1819, and the other one pushes it to 2122, I think. Let me see if I can get it here real quick. And I'd prefer it to occur on 1819. So this is agenda item 18, is what you're looking at? Agenda item 18A-5? Yeah, and here it has a program for 1819. And then it's a gap, and the question was, what were you referring to on 22 item? 1G-160, that should be the same one. The programming year, okay, I see what that is. The programming year and the construction year are not the same, so these are the same projects. So the programming, so that project, and I apologize, we'll try to merge these, I can see how you're using this. Efficiency level, yes, sorry about that. So the project that you're referencing on page 18A-5 is the same as project number 22 on this report. The anticipated construction is the fall of 2020. The programming year is when we lock in the funds to deliver the project. So 1819 is the year the project was programmed, and it's anticipated construction in 2020. That's not a slip, that's just a different milestone. Okay, yeah, because we just were under the impression that it was gonna be, that we're gonna be installed this year. No, the programming year is still coming up in the, excuse me, we're in the 1819 fiscal year, it's programmed this year for construction in 2020. Thank you. I know it's done. It's a choreo. Why in that same vein to find out a timeline for the Wagner, I guess the project is 1E-0-2-0? Yes. Is your microphone on? Is your microphone on? Sorry. That construction contract was approved in December, so we should be seeing construction activity out there this spring. Oh, so probably like June or? Well, the contract has been awarded. I'll have to get back and see what the, usually the contractor has to come up with his own schedule that meets the deadlines in our contract, and very often there can be weather delays and things like that, we'll make sure that we're more clear in the next report. Okay, thank you. Any other question to Ms. Low? I just wanna say thank you very much to Ms. Low for her focus on Watsonville. We have three state highways bisecting the city and we appreciate your focus. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Anyone from the public have a comment on the Cal 10 report? Okay, thank you. We'll accept that report. Ms. Low, appreciate that. Move on to item 22. Very, yes, Mr. Chair. This is, the RTC has one commissioner committee. That's the budget administration personnel committee and every year the RTC goes through a process of reappointing or existing members or appointing new members to the committee. So this is the time now when nominations, it's nomination time for the, for that committee. So any members of the committee that are currently serving can provide their interest in continuing to serve you to the chair or to the executive director by March 15th, which is a week from tomorrow. Or any new, any members who are not on the committee and wish to be part of the committee also can do that. And so that, and that committee is, is responsible for you as stated in the rules and regulations to review and monitor issues related to the budget work program and other administrative functions of the commission and makes recommendations to the commission and also serves as the personnel committee to review personnel matters and so on. It states that the chair will serve on the committee and up to five commissioners. So it can be a total of up to six. Over the years, it's very between four and six members on the committee. Currently there are five members and the committee tends to meet every other month and sometimes if there aren't items for the foreign agenda then the meetings will get canceled or sometimes meetings added if necessary. So with that, I just urge everyone to provide your interest to the chair or the executive director by March 15th. Great. Well, I think we can go ahead and deal with this now. I've got comments from three people. So five, commissioner Bertrand wants to remain on the committee, commissioner Leopold and commissioner Caput has shown an interest beyond the committee. So I just need to know if commissioner Coonerty doesn't have an alternative here. So maybe that's going to freeze me for now. Commissioner Friend still interested in being on the committee and commissioner McPherson. Yes. Okay. So with that, there is a meeting on the 21st. It's hard to believe that commissioner Coonerty's alternate Mr. Schifrin is not interested in being on that committee. Well, I did see him in the room but it was a cameo appearance so he left. No, but he's an active member of the committee. What I've been inclined to do on this is the existing board had five members and we've had anywhere from four to six on this. And so with the request of commissioner Caput, it allows the chair to be on the committee, which I don't really have an interest to be on the committee. So what I'm going to do is add commissioner Caput to this committee, keep the other five intact and that will be the new committee for 2019. And your first meeting is on the 21st. If that is your appointment, Mr. Chair, it does require concurrence by the commission. There's a motion to concur and so moved. Second. Motion by Leopold, second by Bertrand. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you for that unanimous support. Okay, that takes us to item 24. We have a Santa Cruz Public Works update. Mr. Machado. I need the appropriate rejoiner every now and then. All right, good morning, Chair, commissioners. My name is Matt Machado. I'm the director of public works for Santa Cruz County. Yep, it's on. And I'm also one of the deputy CAOs. The item I have before you this morning is a brief presentation on the county's effort to operationalize our strategic plan. So that's a bit different than what's in your agenda. It's much broader than just a public works update, but I will focus on reliable transportation. So bear with me. And I know you've had a long day, so I will keep the pace moving. Thank you. Let's see. All right, so we will begin. I'm gonna start by providing a brief overview of the county's strategic plan. Then I'll provide an update on the operational planning process and an overview of the operational plan elements. The operational plan will be comprised of county-wide strategies. So I will review their framework and development with you today. And then finally, I'll discuss next steps and give you an opportunity to comment. Our strategic plan was a result of a year-long effort. We engaged with thousands of county residents and staff to develop our vision, mission, and values. You see those here, as well as developing six focus areas and related goals. Here are those six focus areas. I will note that these plan elements are online. They are at sccvision.us for more detail. This diagram shows the hierarchy of our strategic plan and operational plan elements. The strategic plan serves as our North Star by providing a vision of the future. The operational plan will provide our approach for strategic plan implementation. The first two-year operational plan will establish a county-wide strategy with department objectives and key steps for achieving the 24 strategic plan goals. This will be an important step in changing county culture and collaborating with departments to achieve the vision of the strategic plan. This is a chart showing the input we've taken over the past year with development of the strategic plan. It results in the department objectives, which are most recent. We created 180 department objectives. That is truly the implementation of the strategic plan that will result in actions. Department collaboration is a priority. As you can see, we've worked closely together all of our departments. Their graphic here shows connections between departments based on their draft objectives. So the wider the line, the more related the departments are. And so looking at, say, public works as an example, there's a very wide line that connects to planning. We are together in most items. We are also working on embedding our county values and our strategies. Based on the work of the steering committee, operational plan development is being guided by the principle of equity. This equity is really the relationship between our strategies and objectives to represent our values. The values are listed here. And from our perspective, the county provides services and supports partnerships built on those values that you see here in the chart. For today's meeting, we did provide a handout. It's at the back of the room of all 54 draft strategies. And as mentioned previously, the strategy statements describe the county's approach in achieving our strategic plan goals. All of the strategies follow the same format, which is shown here, which is, we will act to have an impact. Next, I will discuss the strategy development for reliable transportation, which is probably most relative to this commission. Here we are. So under reliable transportation, our subcommittee was composed of representatives from public works, planning, economic development, human services, health services, and the CAO. The strategy we are highlighting today is within the goal of regional mobility. Additionally, our three other goals in reliable transportation included community mobility, local roads, and public transit. All items that I know your commission are interested in, yet today I just provide this one example. The major theme that emerged in our discussions of regional mobility was the burden on South County commuters to economic centers in the north and over the hill. The strategy here speaks to partnership, partnering with agencies such as the RTC to increase options and decrease and decrease strain on commuters. Some of the projects or initiatives identified to support this strategy are level of service improvements, specifically around say Soquel Avenue at 41st, transportation planning, and looking at options within the county that reduce overall traffic, such as opening additional office space in South County. We're almost there. I told you, quick pace, we're gonna keep it rolling. So next steps. So we have presented all draft strategies to the Board of Supervisors and are now asking this body to consider them. In particular, we would like to know what you find useful or important among the strategies. Additionally, we would like to know what gaps or questions present themselves. And finally, it is important to reiterate that this operational plan is the first step and a long-term vision to change the county culture. We value your input and ask for patience in terms of seeing any particular feedback materialized in this first plan. In addition to presenting to various commissions and boards, we will have two additional venues for community engagement. Focus groups with subject matter experts are being scheduled at the end of March and the county will host three community open houses in April. The open houses will be held in North, Mid and South County locations. Any feedback that does not come out in today's discussions can be emailed to our CAO at visionatsantacruzcounty.us. And I certainly can take any questions you may have today or record any comments you have. Any questions for Mr. Machado? You made it before noon. Good job. Thank you. Just a comment, Mr. Chair. Go ahead. I just want to thank Mr. Machado for his focus on South County. You know, it only took an hour today to go 16 miles. And so I think the commuters in South County are ready for some kind of relief one way or another. Thank you. Thanks for those comments and thank you for that presentation. Thank you. Okay, with that takes us to our next item which is adjourned the meeting. I just want to announce that our next meeting will be Thursday, April 4th at 9 a.m. in Watsonville. So we look forward to going down there for a visit. And with that, we are adjourned. Yeah. Oh.