 commissioner Brown we are ready to go. Okay, good morning everybody and welcome to the September 2nd meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. I'll call the meeting to order. And begin with a roll call vote. Excuse me a roll call attendance. Commissioner Bertrand. Commissioner Brown. Here. Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Montecino. Here. Commissioner here. Commissioner McPherson. Let's see him on yet. Commissioner Peterson. Mission alternate shifrin here. Commission alternate Pegler here. And commissioner Rotkin here. You have a court. Did you call me or not. Commissioner Caput. Yeah. Okay. Welcome, everyone. So we are now on to oral communications. So any members of the public who would like to address the commission on an item. On today's agenda may speak now and we'll do two minutes for oral communication. If anyone is here. Raise your hand and we'll, we'll get you. All on you. Okay, so oral communications. I see one hand up and that is very Scott. You're up two minutes. And it looks like. I got it. Thank you. Yeah. My, my. Comments are general, but do relate to the. Transit quarters alternative analysis in the process that we have. We have enjoyed. Following over many, many years. And I'm sure I want to fucking interrupt for just a moment. Make a comment and I wanted to. Make a comment. If I'd like to chair to make rulings that any kind of comments on the court are going to be ultimately be repetitive of a great number of comments we're going to get and really to ask everyone to restrict themselves from making comments on the use of the quarter. It just, it just cries out for a hundred people to talk to us twice about the same thing. That sounds fair. Thanks, Mike. That is fair. Thank you. Commissioner Rock and I was going to wait and see where this was going. But I think your, your point is taken. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And save those four. Later in the meeting items 19 and 20, I believe we'll give you an opportunity for that. Okay. So. He may have other things to say. Yeah. So Barry, if you do have other things that you want to talk about, Mr. Scott, you can, you can go ahead and do that now. Okay. I would. I don't think that the green way initiative is on the agenda at all. We have this remarkable and unfortunate influence by a, by an organization called greenway that is clearly against. Against. Transit projects that we need badly. And I want to alert everyone to the, the deceptive petition that's being circulated in the facts. That are included in the initiative language itself, which you see to remove from the Santa Cruz County general plan. All mentioned of rail transit planning. All mentioned of rail line maintenance. All mentioned of coordinating with neighboring counties. And working, you know, in a regional fashion on a rail transit solution. And I think that the community and all the commissioners need to be warned. I'm really excited to be here and talk to you about this initiative and be advised not to sign any petitions that. You don't understand any, any, anybody asked to sign a petition of any type should read every single word and maybe just walk away from that petition. If they don't understand what it's doing. And thank you for the term. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Okay. Next up, we have Michael saint. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, great. Good morning, commissioners and Chair Brown. Thank you. Michael St. with Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. Some news has come out lately. President Biden opens millions of acres for oil and gas exploration after his vow to end new federal oil and gas leasing during his campaign. At the same time, Greenland halts oil explanation and takes climate change seriously. Comment from Bernie Sanders. Money for tax, for tax breaks for the rich, no problem. Endless money for wars, no problem. And my injection on that, money for highway widening, no problem. When it comes to combating climate change and addressing the needs of the working class, one of our political parties say we can't afford it. Comment from citizens, are they even paying attention? Do they realize half the country is on fire? The other half is flooding. Is the RTC paying attention? We're in a climate crisis. You have a huge responsibility as our elected and appointed officials to do the right thing. For your constituents, our city, county, state, country and planet, you must have the integrity to help educate and inform our citizenship about the truth of climate change and take a stand for all citizens, no matter how uncomfortable or unprofitable that may be. With all these studies in the past 10 years and measures, very little is being done to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions or vehicle miles traveled from transportation. If you do not recognize the need to adopt projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then you are either not watching the news or just don't care about climate change and its catastrophic effect on human life and our planet. Ladies and gentlemen, we are losing the battle. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Mr. St. So I see, Ms. Bud Colligan, Mr. Colligan, you are up next. And I'm sorry, you probably know this, Bud, but is it star nine to unmute yourself? I'm sorry, I didn't. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. There you go, okay, star nine. Okay, thank you, Chair Brown. Appreciate the time. As you received comments in your agenda today, I would like you to consider the following. Over 100 volunteers have collected over 5,000 signatures in just one month since the Greenway Initiative Signature Collection started. We're required to collect 12,000 signatures, so we're well on the way to putting this measure on the ballot. And each one of these signatures involves a conversation with intelligent voters. It's not a one-click robo email that many of you have received in the last few days. This is a grassroots effort with no paid signature collectors. Just citizens actively exercising their civic duty. Why are people signing? I've done a lot of tabling. I've talked to a lot of people because they want movement in the endless debate on the rail corridor. Please exercise your responsibilities today to provide transportation in our county in a reasonable period of time with funds passed with Measure D. It's amusing to hear rail advocates ask not to engage in the democratic process, not to sign a petition when their supporters can easily sign and vote against it. I'm for democracy. I know all of you are for democracy. And I think we should all keep in mind the avalanche of signatures that have already occurred in the Greenway Initiative. Thank you for your time and thank you for your service to our community. Thank you, Mr. Colligan. Okay, Brian, yes, Brian, you are up now. I believe Mr. Peoples, go for it. Okay, thanks a lot, chairman. This is Brian from Trail Now. I wasn't gonna say anything, but my friend Michael, who I dearly respect, I wanna call out Campaign for Sensible Transportation for their inconsistent message. We continue to push for reducing automobile traffic while at the same time, while at the same time, they are helping to prevent the construction of the Santa Cruz Coastal Trail Now. So I'm calling them out, Campaign for Sensible Transportation to not be hypocritical, not go and say that we need alternatives and then not support the opening of the corridor and also support the Greenway Initiative. So you need to be less double standard. Again, I think Michael is a great person and I appreciate all the work he does on advocating climate change. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. I see one more hand up, Ryan Sarnaturo. Yes, can you hear me? Yes. All right. I'm gonna read a portion of a letter that was a mine that was published in the Sentinel the other week. There's an element in our community that operates under and ends justifies the means mentality. Some of those means are twisting the facts, spinning a narrative that demonizes and making the reader feel justifiable outrage. Now my friend Barry Scott, which is the reason why I'm talking now, just said something. And in that letter, I said the current Greenway Initiative has been attacked by Ford with polemics such as harms our environment, isolates our county, kills rail transit and is financed by dark money. A common recitation of the facts is no match for outrage. It is especially difficult when the facts get complex and legalistic. Scenarios or even dreams not grounded in finance and time, in other words, the rail, sounds so much better than realistic options. Our community deserves better than partisans going for the emotional jugular. And I really wish that, and actually I'm really happy that the packet this time had quite a few interesting facts in it or opinions about the feasibility and time period of actually putting rail on the corridor. And I think that if we are able to have more and more facts in front of the community, the options will become clearer and new commissioners can be guided by the wisdom of the crowd. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Sarnitaro. I see another hand up now and it looks like Jeanette Squire is, Jeanette, it's your turn to speak. You can, yep, you got it. Jeanette, I see you're unmuted. You could go ahead and speak. Okay, I'm not sure. We're not hearing you, Jeanette, Miss Squire. Okay. If you, it looks like your hand is down now. So we are gonna go ahead and move along to our consent agenda. And this is our consent agenda includes items four through 15. And all items appearing on the consent agenda will be considered in one motion unless somebody would like to pull an item. Are there any commissioners who would like to pull an item? Okay, hearing none, we will take it out to the public. Are there members of the public who have comments on any of the items on our consent agenda items four through 15? Move the consent agenda. Second agenda. Excuse me, sorry, you move the consent agenda. Yeah, that was me, my client. Okay, thank you, my, thank you, Commissioner Rockin. I hear a motion and... I second it. And a second, so a motion by Commissioner Rockin, second by Commissioner Schifrin. And we will go to a roll call vote. Commissioner Brown. Aye. Commissioner Johnson. Aye. Commissioner Montecino. Yes. Commissioner Caput. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Quinn. Aye. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner Jenny Johnson, Alternate Jenny Johnson. Commissioner Peterson. Commissioner Alternate Pegler. Aye. Commissioner Rockin. Aye. Unanimous. All right then, thank you. So we will now move on to our regular agenda. We will start with Commissioner Reports. These are oral reports from individual commissioners. Does anyone have anything you'd like to report at this time? Okay, well, I see Commissioner Bertrand. Yeah, if I may, a lot of people have been talking about climate change, and if it's okay with the chair, I'd just like to make a comment. So I've been following a particular piece of property up in Mendocino, well, actually goes way back to when I was less than five years old, but more recently for about 35 years. And the last five or so years is hard to tell when it started, trees have been dying again, and most of the winter storms and stuff like that, abundant trees have been knocked down. This last year, I counted about six trees or more, because I didn't survey the whole 20 or so acres have been dropped. And this is in Northern California, Mendocino County near Ukiah. And so if my point is, if you don't, if you're not really aware of what's going on in the wilderness, you don't see firsthand what's happening. And in this particular case, my little example, and I know this whole valley that I'm in is pretty much the same. Climate change is killing trees all over the place. Winders, et cetera, are knocking on dam as the roots fail. And this is what's providing the fuel that is for these fires that we're hearing about. And this is happening, as far as I could tell, all over the state of California. So it's something to think about. Unless you're out in the forest and see this happening, you don't get a real in-your-face example of how climate change is affecting our forests. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Bertrand. Hey, Chairman Brown. This is Bruce McPherson, I'm on right now, but I will have to go off at nine o'clock or 10 o'clock for a CSAC meeting. The director's meeting. Okay, that's the California State Association of Counties for anyone who's wondering. Thank you for letting us know, Commissioner McPherson. And Jenny Jones will take my place. Wonderful. Okay, we are now on to the director's report. Mr. Preston. Thank you, Chair Brown, commissioners and members of the public. The first item on my director's report is an update on the operations of RTC. As you know, we've been meeting virtually due to an executive order that made some temporary changes to the Brown Act. That executive order expires on September 30th. So unless that action is taken to extend the order, RTC will commence holding public meetings in person starting in October and all commissioners will need to attend in person. The October RTC meeting is being scheduled at the County Board of Supervisors Chambers. This location has been upgraded to accommodate hybrid meetings which would allow both in-person and remote attendance for the public. Staff is still assessing the technical capabilities of the county system and any requirements that they may have for RTC to use their facilities. We're also monitoring information from the County Department of Health and we're not recommending options for public attendance right now until we have better information probably closer to the meeting date. But if action is taken to extend the executive order, RTC will consider both hybrid and virtual options for the October meeting, including for commissioners. The meeting attendance options will be included on the October agenda packet. Throughout the pandemic, RTC staff has continued to primarily work at remote locations but have been preparing to transition back to the office using a hybrid work model where some staff may continue to work remotely. Our transition was expected to begin this month when staff would report to our new office based at the University Town Center, at 11 Pacific Avenue. But due to the increases in COVID cases, we are considering options to address health concerns including slowing or tempering the amount of in-person work until such time that all safety concerns are adequately addressed after we had a full assessment of everything. So that's kind of where we're at. It's a little bit still in the state of Blacks. We're very adaptable and we'll make sure good information gets out there and come for our next meeting. I wanted to highlight today measure D. Measure D was a significant victory for transportation in our region. And we continue to make significant progress on the delivery of your plan. It includes improvements in transportation investments for all of our county residents and highlight this progress. We're gonna be issuing quarterly reports and I've attached our first quarterly report to today's agenda. And I'd like to highlight some of the big victories that we've had starting off with the leveraging capabilities of Measure D and what we accomplished this last year in leveraging $107 million in state SB1 grants. A lot of that went to three projects on Highway 1 that promoted bus-hunt shoulders, auxiliary lanes, bicycle over-crossings. There was also significant improvements scheduled for Soquel Drive to make it more bicycle-friendly and more transit-friendly. And this was a package of projects that was approved by the CTC based on our commitment to providing multimodal investments to our community and our expenditure plan made it very easy for us to put together a package of such nature. So some of the things we did this past summer, we completed design work for the auxiliary lane and bus-hunt shoulder facilities between 41st Avenue and Soquel Drive interchanges, which also includes the Chanticleer Avenue by over-crossing. That project is ready to be advertised. We're waiting until January to advertise that project and we will be able to start construction in the summer of 22 unless something disastrous happens. Environmental review of the Bay Porter State Park auxiliary lane project and bus-hunt shoulder project with a bike over-crossing at Mar Vista. We completed environmental review in May of 2021. And then the environmental review of the auxiliary lane and bus-hunt shoulder facilities between Freedom Boulevard and State Park Drive. We just started environmental review in March 2020 and that includes segment 12 of the rail trail. And then on the traffic, the man management side of things, our cruise 5-1-1 program in coordination with the city of Santa Cruz's Go Santa Cruz program launched as commute manager platform. And we're gonna have items on future agenda giving you updates on that. The Soquel Avenue Drive Model Improvement Project that I mentioned earlier, the county started their final design work for that work and we met with the Bicycle Committee and we're making significant progress. The Monterey Bay Century Scenic Trail, we jumped the gun a little bit in our newsletter but the city of Santa Cruz is expecting a grant that will fully fund segment seven phase two. You know, that would connect the west side to the boardwalk. We've got 7.2 miles of rail trail segments eight and nine, segments 10 and 11, beginning environmental review work. The city of Watsonville completed construction of segment 18F1 of the rail trail. And then the North Coast rail trail advanced from 70% to 95% design just recently. You know, all pre-construction activities for that project is expected to be completed this year in construction of the first phase. Although technically delayed until 2024, due to limitations on the federal funds, we are gonna have this project ready to go that if money becomes available sooner, we're gonna get that project done sooner. On the rail corridor, we are working on the final design of the Faroe River Bridge repair project, final design of the Coastal River project above Manresa State Beach that we mentioned last. Meeting is now complete. We're gonna be seeking bids, infrastructure preservation and maintenance work has continued throughout the corridor and we completed the transit corridor alternatives analysis. On the highway nine SLB corridor, we've been working really closely with Cal Prans to implement a lot of complete street elements and projects that normally you wouldn't see that done. And I've been really working closely with Commissioner McPherson's office to put together a five-party memorandum of understanding to make sure that the improvements that the San Lorenzo Valley School plans to do for their circulation can be done in a way that is consistent with improvements on the highway nine corridor, you could say for children to get to schools. The highway 17 Wildlife Crossing was reported last month is ready to go out to bed. Actually, it may have been already out to bed, but we did finish that aspect of the project and expect construction this summer. There in the newsletter, there are numerous details of all the work that your agencies, the cities in the county have been doing to improve the quality of our roads and improve potholes. And there's a list of all of the different projects that have been completed. And I invite you to go through that list and see the great projects that we've done. Additionally, there's been purchases of buses by Lifeline, Santa Cruz, Metro, and Electric. Bus Watsonville circulator has been implemented. It's just really been amazing the amount of work that we've been able to do since Measure D have been tasked. And I wanted to thank the voters again for their commitment and making transportation better in Santa Cruz County. That concludes my director's report. Thank you, Mr. Preston. Does anybody have, I see people do have questions for Mr. Preston and we will start with Commissioner Bertrand. I do have a question, Chair. So I know when the Highway 9 Quarter project first came up, there was a committee of citizens that was working with Cal CSU, RTC with their concerns. I was just wondering if that committee is still functioning and working with the RTC. I've heard about the committee. Not sure exactly if the committee is still in fact functioning with it, but we were just talking about trying to engage again more with the community up there. So we'll look more into that and make sure that there is good community input. And I see a Commissioner McPherson has taken his microphone off mute. Now we're gonna get back on that because we're just, we're talking, they have a new superintendent who was there before as well. And we're just getting reorganized, so to speak. We were really critical. And my outlook is that it looks like it's a project of this nature from the school through the intersection with Granville Road. That's probably gonna be the 24, 25 year, that's probably about when it's gonna take place, but with all the reviews and reviews of what type of note have to be done. But no, we're still on this. It's a critical project for the San Lorenzo Valley and we're gonna service a re-up and get energized for that. Thanks a lot, Supervisor. I know that individual and the committee was very active. I just like to comment on the report that you just did, Guy. Thank you very much. I appreciate the anticipation of further reports and this is going to greatly advance transparency and letting the public know exactly what's happening in the RTC. So thank you very much. Thank you. And Commissioner McPherson, thank you for your leadership in this area. Mr. Quinn, I see your hand is up. Yes, thank you, Chairperson. Mr. Press and I'm just inquiring in anticipation of returning to in-person visits, will there be the possibility of self-assistation as to vaccination status to guide the proximity in the room? That is a good question. We have generally been following what the county has been doing. I do not have anything in place to have RTC do individual verifications of the vaccination of people attending the meeting themselves. We've been working as a staff and at the staff level in our office on an honor system where that, before the recent outbreak and the requirement that all parties inside wear masks. When masks were no longer required, if you were unvaccinated, you were expected to wear masks. So I don't expect that unless the county goes the direction to require proof of vaccination that RTC would be doing so prior to our next meeting. Thank you. Commissioner Rockin. Thank you. I had a comment on the Highway 9 issue that was brought up by Jacques and then responded to. I want to thank Caltrans for having worked so quickly to, and it doesn't seem quick sometimes, but relatively quickly in terms of how things work in the real world to move the high school kids onto the streets parallel to Highway 9 and avoid the kind of tragedy that we experienced there in the recent past with a school aged young man being killed, they've been very good about putting signage up on Cooper Street, the street, the first street parallel to Highway 9. And I don't know whether Caltrans or the county's doing that work or cooperatively it's happening, but it looks really great. But it turns out that a lot of the school kids are now actually going one block further over on Ashley Street. I'm sure you're going to hear about this, either Bruce McPherson's office will hear others from members of the public up in Felton and I've heard from them because I got involved in this issue early on and they've been emailing me about it, that there's a lot of speeding traffic happening on Ashley while there's, like I'd say scores would be probably the right, Edward Magnus of school children elementary through high school, walking along that street at the same time the traffic's speeding through it. And you might consider some slowdown type signage or warning stuff, pictures of school kids like you have on the Cooper Street the next one up on Ashley because we'd like to have avoided a tragedy up there as well. And I don't know to what extent that diversion is a county project or a Caltrans project and how it's been cooperative and so I assume everybody's working together on this but I'd like just to call that to your attention. Thanks for the time to talk about it. I'm waiting to hear if Mr. Eads if you want to respond at the moment. I'd be happy to. Supervisor McPherson may have some additional thoughts as well in terms of additional signing on the local street typically that would be up to the county to do so or certainly want to coordinate with the county to make sure our signs are aligned or our expectations for where we're directing folks are aligned but once they're on the local street system in this case the county we would expect that the county would probably be working to install additional signage as needed. Right, excuse me Madam Chair, we were looking at this of course we're doing as was mentioned by Mr. Preston we're doing a lot of signage work and we will continue to do so if when people have concerns and yes, Mr. Rock and you're right there there are concerns that has been pushed over from one street to another that I guess that happens most of a lot of the time. We will look further into that and I have received some of those concerns too. Thank you. Thank both of you. Okay, to be continued. Thank you. So seeing no other hands for the ED report we will move on to CalTrans report. Are there any actually sorry I didn't take it out to the public any comments from the public on the executive director report? Okay, moving right along next up the CalTrans report Mr. Eads, you are up to you. All right, good morning Madam Chair, members of the board have a few items to pass on to you. First is a federal funding opportunity we like to pass these on if it has some relevance to the work that you're doing and it may in this case. So first is that the US Department of Transportation Federal Rail Administration or FRA recently announced a grant opportunity approximately $362 million available through the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements or Chrissy grant program. The funds are intended to reduce congestion or improve short line and regional railroad infrastructure, relocate rail lines, enhance multimodal connections and facilitate service integration between rail and other modes such as sports or intermodal facilities. There's kind of a breakdown of categories within the program, rural set aside, interstitial passenger rail development and capital improvements for trespass prevention. FRA is holding a webinar about the new notice funding opportunity on September 21st and you can go to the FRA's grants and loans webpage for more information. Next item is just an update on Clean California. I talked about this at the last meeting actually at a pretty high level. Wanted to provide a little bit more information on the local grant program which is a subset of the larger Clean California effort. Approximately, well, $296 million are available over two years for the local grant program. The call for projects is scheduled for December. Applications will be due in February, 2022 and awards will be announced in March, 2022. So this is happening very quickly. As a reminder, the eligible project types include but are not limited to community litter abatement and beautification, community litter abatement events and or educational programs focused on cleaning up areas and beautification and litter removal. So we strongly recommend that local jurisdictions who would probably be our primary applicants prepare your applications now, start to identify potential sites or educational programs concepts. Go ahead and start community engagement. We recommend you do and start project or program design plans and stay informed on the guidelines that are being developed and updates that are available through a couple of workshops. The first workshop has already been completed on September 1st, just yesterday. There's a second workshop on October 7th from 8.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. and preregistration is required. You can just Google Clean California Local Grant Program and it'll take you to the website that has a fact sheet and further information about how to sign up for the workshop and other materials as the program develops. That concludes my report. Happy to take any questions. Thank you, Mr. Eads. Thank you for the grant opportunity information. Commissioner Schifrin, question. Yes, thank you for your report. I had a question about the rail program that you mentioned first. Did what agencies are eligible for applying for grants under that program? That is a great question. And I actually don't know a lot of details. I suspect it is entities that either own or operate rail facilities, likely public agencies, but I am not certain about that. I would encourage anybody that's interested to go and look at the website. I can certainly pass it on to staff and others. You can certainly email me directly and I can send you the web link as well. I would appreciate it if you pass it on to our staff and they follow it up. Happy to do so. Thank you. RTC has been invited workshop on the Chrissy grant and we have assigned staff to attend to look into the applicability of that funding source for the branch line and whether or not our projects would compete well. Great, thank you. Okay, other questions or comments from the commission? Yeah, I've got one. Thank you. Thanks, Scott. Appreciate everything. Caltrans is doing statewide. I mean, you got a tough job. The money you're talking about is that specifically for the rail and is it for passenger rail upgrade too? Or is it, you know, obviously it's not just a walking trail, we're talking about a, you know, multi-use railroad freight and passenger service and everything. So yeah, is it specifically geared towards one or the other or all? If I could answer that through the chair. My understanding again with limited information is that there's definitely an intercity passenger rail component and there's an emphasis on modal connection. And so that to me implies that there's an emphasis on passenger rail and modal connections, likely with bicycle and pedestrian and local transit. Sandy guy has his hand up. Mr. Preston, did you want to add something here? You're muted, guy. Thank you, commissioner. But Chrissy problem, the Chrissy grant grant opportunities have been around for a while. This is a new round of funding and we've been aware of it for some time. It's applicable to both passenger and freight rail. It's for existing rail lines. So our existing rail is a freight rail line. It's a safety program and the type projects that we could potentially apply for would be safety programs for like enhancements at intersections where maybe the safety devices that we have there are not as great as the other rail lines that we have here. There's improvements that can be made to make a railroad crossing safer for the general public. So we're going to continue to look to see if there's opportunities for the rail line. That would make sense for RTC. But it's a little bit challenging because north of mile posts three, we don't really have much freight traffic. So we think we would probably compete better if we are going to continue to go to the workshops. So we understand the program and we utilize our staff time the best way possible to maximize our opportunities. Thank you. I saw a hand up among attendees, but it seems to be down now. Mr. Pupils, did you have a comment or question before we move on? Hands back down. No, no, I took my hand down. Thank you for recognizing that. Thank you. Do my best here. Okay, moving along then. We are now going to item 19. This is an update on the Capitol at Tressel conceptual study to repurpose the bridges to a multi-use trail. Sarah Christensen is the RTC staff who will be giving us a report. Thank you, Chair Brown. I'm Sarah Christensen of RTC staff. I'm here to give an update on the Capitol at Tressel. I have a PowerPoint, which I will bring up. Just give me one second. Excuse me, Madam Chair. This is the person, I'm sorry, I'm going to be leaving now. And Jenny Johnson, my alter it will be in my place. I'm going to go to a CSAC meeting, but I did want to comment on the next item, number 20. The preservation of the branch rail line, an overview and the options available and what's going on. I have never seen a more compact, direct, understandable outlook as with Mr. Preston. This is not an item, action item today. You did a phenomenal job in looking at what's going on in the branch rail line. I just want to compliment Mr. Preston and the whole staff of that job before I leave. Thank you. Okay. Appreciate your enthusiasm, Commissioner McPherson. Okay, so we will revisit that after this item. Ms. Christensen, your PowerPoint's up and go for it. Okay. Second here. Okay, so today I'm going to give a update on the capital address. So this will be a three part presentation. The first part will be an overview of the current condition of the bridges. The second part will go over the repurposing study that we recently completed. And then lastly, we'll talk about how the potential repurposing could be integrated into the County's segment 10 and 11 coastal rail trail project, which is underway. So just a little bit of background. Obviously we purchased the Santa Cruz branch rail corridor from Union Pacific in 2012. And in 2018, we entered into an administration coordination and license agreement with progressive rail with part of that agreement requiring the RTC to make initial repairs to the branch line prior to handing it over for freight service. And we have accomplished up to mile post seven of these initial repairs and handed that part of the line over. However, we continue to chip away at preservation and repairs to the line to meet the requirements of the ACL. Just a few months ago in June, 2021, this commission authorized a repurposing study of this bridge to determine if the bridge in its current condition or with a rehabilitation could be converted to a multi-use trail as an interim condition. And this is potentially going to assist the County of Santa Cruz who's implementing agency for the Coastal Rail Trail segment 10 and 11, which the commission has programmed approximately $4 million for the pre-construction activities for the County as beginning the environmental and preliminary design of this project, excuse me. Okay, so part one of this presentation condition of the existing bridges. Here's an overview of the existing trestle perspective view showing the five bridges that make up the Capitola trestle from right to left or south to north. We have the concrete bridge over Capitola Avenue, single span, we have the multi-span long timber trestle over Riverview Avenue and the adjacent, there's adjacent businesses and residents to this bridge. It's a 15 span open deck timber trestle connects to the bridge over Soquel Creek, which is a single span wrought iron bridge. And then finally the three span timber trestle on the other side of Soquel Creek, which connects to the single span concrete bridge over Warf Road. And I'm just going to pause here. I want to make sure I'm sharing the right screen. So hold on one second. You're on mute. I'm not sure if you're aware of that. I am. I'm sorry. I'm just having a hard time with my PowerPoint, getting it to do what I wanted to do. Okay, so do you guys see the. We had seen the five segments with the labels on them. That was very clear. Okay, great. Okay, so I'm going to continue on here. So the condition of these bridges, we have the two concrete bridges here at the very ends over Capitol Avenue and Warf Road. These are ballast deck concrete bridges. They are in good condition in their current state. They rate for freight locomotive loads. They are in good condition. The two timber trestles, the long and the short timber trestles, those bridges are in poor condition. So those bridges require quite a bit of rehabilitation in order to get them to any kind of operating condition. And then the wrought iron truss, I gave an update about this back in June. And we recommend replacing this bridge prior to any freight bridge. So I'm going to continue on here. And then I'm going to continue on here. Locomotive traveling over it. However, it is adequate for lighter loads. So I give this one kind of a sideways. Or, you know, Poor condition for freight, but can be used for other purposes. So starting getting a little more detail about the three timber trestles just for terminology purposes, I just want to identify a few pieces of the bridge just so that we all know what we're talking about here. So the vertical parts of that support the bridge are called posts or piles. These diagonal pieces. These are all called bracing. So the longitudinal pieces, the diagonal pieces. There's many different types of bracing on this bridge. And then finally, at the very bottom, the piles are sitting on top of what's called a mud sill. And that mud sill is sitting on top of a concrete foundation. In this case. And the bridges are open deck, which means they don't have ballast. So it's somewhat of a lightweight deck system in the existing condition. There's timber walkways and handrails with cables. And it's existing condition. So the photo to the right really captures a problematic issue that shows up in quite a few places on this bridge. So the post comes down and sits on top of the mud sill. And then the bracing piece is connected with this bolt. There's a split in the bracing that's right. There's a split in the bracing piece. And it makes it so that the bracing is not able to do its job. And then another problematic thing going on here is that there's also a split in the pile at that bolt. So the pile is really not adequate and not doing its job either. You could see the split goes all the way down. To the mud sill. And then if you look closely, there's a split in the mud sill. So the mud sill is showing some distress. So this is problematic. You know, this bridge is in need of some rehabilitation, which I could talk about in a little bit. I'd like to go into a little more detail about the wrought iron bridge. So this bridge is an open deck bridge. And one big span that goes over. So Cal Creek sits on concrete foundations on either. And this bridge is also an open deck bridge. Here's a photo of a transition between the timber deck. Or the timber trestle and the wrought iron trestle. On the bridge. So this bridge is in need of replacement in order for freight locomotive traffic to go over it. However, as I mentioned, it could potentially serve in the interim condition for lighter loads. However, the current condition of the bridge, there's an arrow here that's pointing to what's called a bearing. So the bridge bearing in its current condition is not working properly. The bearing, the purpose of the bearing is really to allow this bridge to move a little bit. And the bearings not letting the bridge move the way it wants to. And that's causing a little bit of distress on this bridge. And we recommend replacing the bearing just to allow this bridge to do what it's supposed to do. So finally, our recommendation. Is really to rehabilitate these three bridges. So when I say rehabilitation, I mean, restoring the bridge in kind. For freight use, the rehabilitation to the timber trestles would allow freight to operate on these bridges. And for the timber trestles, the rehabilitation would include replacing all of the bracing. We estimate about 30 to 40% of the piles needing replacement, as well as some of the mudsills as needed. And for the Rotter and span, we recommend replacing the bearings to allow the bridge to move the way it wants to. So the scope of the work for the pre-construction of the bridge. And the scope of the rehabilitation would be to perform a detailed bridge inspection. A geotechnical site investigation. A seismic assessment. And then finally to prepare the plan specifications and estimate to put this package out for construction bids. And the preliminary cost estimate for the pre-construction work is to be estimated to be between $2 million and $3.5 million. And these numbers include contingency. So with that, staff recommends updating the measure D5 year plans to prioritize the pre-construction activities needed to rehabilitate the timber and wrought iron bridges. And as you may know, we've been working on this for a long time. So staff is going to the committees now with the measure D5 year plans. And we plan to go to the commission with a public hearing in October for the adoption of the measure D5 year plans. So moving on to the conceptual repurposing study portion of my presentation. And the scope of this study is really to evaluate the deck and railing conversion of this bridge from a railroad bridge to a multi-use trail. The goal of the study or the methodology behind, you know, what was evaluated, we really want to see a net decrease in dead load of this bridge. The dead load is defined as the weight of the bridge itself. So if we're removing certain members like the railroad ties and rails, whatever we put back in its place, we want to weigh less than what's being removed. Ideally, it's not required, but it just makes things simpler and it makes the long-term maintenance more manageable. Three deck options were considered, including the precast concrete panels, corrugated steel panels and fiber reinforced polymer concrete, which is a lightweight material for this deck. Here's a typical section of a existing concrete bridge. We have two of them. They are ballast deck bridges. You can see the ballast and the railroad ties and the rails sitting on top of the structure. The repurposing of this bridge would entail removal of the ties, removal of the rails, but then one of the options looks at putting the panels on top of the existing ballast. The second option is to remove the ballast and put in a steel channeled diaphragm. That would be the supporting structure for the bridge. Moving on to the timber trestles. These bridges are a little bit different than the others because they have these timber stringers, they're called stringers, that are supporting the bridge longitudinally. So the deck itself is the railroad ties, the walkway and the railings, but also we would look at removing the timber stringers. So looking at the conversion, those longitudinal supports are removed and replaced with some steel stringers. That would support the deck surface above and the whole deck surface would be replaced with a 16 foot wide deck and the new metal railing for the timber trestles. Finally, the rod iron section, here's the existing rod iron section. So the deck being removed would be the railroad ties, the rails, the walkway and the handrails. And it would be replaced with new smaller steel stringers with the deck surface and the railing on top. So in terms of feasibility, repurposing this bridge is feasible. So looking at the different deck types, we recommend or prefer FRP deck, the fiber reinforced polymer deck, because of its lightweight nature over the other corrugated metal and concrete decking systems. So it's definitely preferred to have the lightweight deck because it results in a net decrease in the dead load for all five bridges. This decking system was also used elsewhere on the corridor. It was used at the San Lorenzo River trestle, the walkway extension. So that project completed construction in 2019. And it would look similar to what you see here in the photo. The preliminary cost estimate for the deck repurposing is 3 million. And that's the construction capital, including support. Lastly, we're going to talk briefly about how this potentially could be integrated into the county's rail trail segment, 10 and 11 project. The county Santa Cruz is the implementing agency for the environmental and design components of the project. Measure D is being used to perform the environmental analysis and preliminary engineering for this project. The limits of the project are between 17th Avenue and Live Oak, the state park drive in Aptos. And the county is considering an interim trail as part of the required project scoping. So the project itself is just in the beginning of the environmental analysis and preliminary engineering. The county plans to release a notice of preparation of the environmental impact report for the project this year. The reasoning behind that they're considering a interim trail. We discussed this extensively at the June meeting. So I don't want to go into too much detail about it, but this approach would be consistent with the direction we received at that meeting to complete a complete environmental document with a reasonable range of alternatives. So what we're recommending here is to work with county public work staff to consider, including the debt conversion work in the environmental analysis or the coastal rail trail segment, 10 and 11 project. And just to, um, Quick summary, I just want to, um, emphasize the part one of the recommendation about the rehabilitation of the three bridges. We recommend that regardless of any, um, additional analysis on the repurposing, um, because, uh, you know, we would like to preserve this corridor. We'd like to preserve the infrastructure. And so just want to emphasize that that is, um, Still recommended, regardless of whether the, um, interim trail gets incorporated into the segment, 10 and 11 project. So that concludes my presentation. I'm available for questions and discussion. Hey, thank you, Ms. Christensen. I will take questions from the commission in the order. I see them, um, here. In my list. Okay. So commissioner shifrin. Questions. Um, thank you very much for the staff report. It cleared up for me, uh, fundamental confusions I had from the written staff report. Um, because I think what really is being proposed here. And I think it was a mistake to combine these two very separate issues. They're the first issue is what. Um, can the capital address will be rehabilitated and if so, for what purposes? The second issue is what should be included in the environmental analysis that the county is preparing for segment 10 and 11. By combining those two, it certainly confused me. And from many of the, um, many of the members of the public, I think it was confusing from what that I heard from, um, it was confusing to them as well. So I have a, I just have a, uh, a few clarifying questions about what the staff recommendation is for recommendation one. Is it true that the pre-construction, the priority, prioritization of the pre-construction activities needed. To rehabilitate the existing timber timber and water and bridges includes consideration of trail only passenger rail and freight rail. And I think that those three options are going to be looked at, uh, in the further, um, analysis that's done. There's a question for Sarah. Oh, thank you. Uh, commissioner alternate shifrin. Um, that is a very good question. You know, this is a very complex issue. Um, and we're faced with having a, um, you know, obviously we purchased a freight railroad. So, um, we, um, we, um, we, um, we, um, our bridges need to accommodate freight. Um, unless, you know, services abandoned on the corridor, which, um, isn't. In the immediate foreseeable future. Um, so we continue to preserve the bridges for freight loads. Um, obviously there's a desire to implement passenger rail service and then, um, the freight loads, uh, however that's a very separate individual project. So our analysis or any analysis for our, um, bridge rehabilitation, you know, obviously the, the loading question, um, if we, if we repair this bridge for freight loads, it's going to be able to handle a passenger train. Um, however, we're not proposing to study extensively the transit option because that's a whole separate project that would include. Um, you know, it would need to have its own logical termini and independent utility. There would be stations. There would be passing sightings. Um, so that I just want to make it clear that that's a very separate project from, um, what we're talking about here. Um, in terms of rail with trail on the bridge, um, this bridge cannot be modified to, um, accommodate like a cantilevered trail off of the railroad bridge. I just want, um, to make that clear as well. The timber trussles and, uh, the broad iron span are not, um, compatible types of bridges to allow a cantilevered trail off of it. So we're really looking at if we want to have rail and trail on this bridge, it would be a full replacement with a wider bridge, um, which we're not recommending to do at this time. We actually recommend, um, considering that as part of the future passenger rail project, as I mentioned before that project would, um, most likely need to replace quite a few bridges. Um, once you have passenger rail transit on a line, you really want your infrastructure to be low maintenance and reliable. The last thing we want to do is open up passenger rail, transit system, and then have to shut it down to do maintenance on this timber trussle. So, um, that's definitely more of a long term goal, um, which should be incorporated into, um, the future passenger rail project. So, um, I hopefully I explained that succinctly enough to understand, but, um, this is a very complex issue looking at the now and the future and making recommendations, um, that are sound and, um, you know, um, um, did I, did I answer your question? Not really. Um, I have a few questions for our attorney. Um, and they're kind of yes, no questions because I think, um, if I'm understanding what, um, the answer to my question is that the further analysis as being proposed, wouldn't include information on the course of, um, for passenger rail or freight rail. That was really what I asked. I didn't ask about the whole line. Uh, I didn't ask about rail and trail. Um, it sounded in this, in the staff presentation that there was information available about what it would take to rehabilitate the, um, the trestle for, um, freight and rail. And I think it's critical that the commission, um, um, receive that information in a side by side comparison with, uh, what is, um, move seems to be moving forward as a trail only, um, option for the, for the bridge or for the trestle when I have some real concerns with that. And those are my, and some of my concerns are based on the commission's, um, policies and some of my concerns are based on our legal situation, which is why I want to ask the attorney a few questions. Um, is there currently an existing and valid freight easement on the line? Yes, there is. Was that? Yes. Yes. Um, is there, uh, is the commission's agreement with progressive rail still valid and in force? Um, yes, it is. Does the agreement commit the commission to repair the tracks for freight service? That is not simply a yes or no answer. The agreement obligates the commission to do. The repairs, uh, past the first phase as the first phase repairs are, are nearing completion. But if the commission does not do that, then it extends the timeline for the commencement of further transportation service. So it is not an absolute requirement that, that has to be completed in, in a separate of time. But is it possible to have freight service without the, the line being repaired? Uh, it is, it is not if, if based on the reports with regards to the, the ability of the, of the capitol, a tracer to carry freight service right now. Okay. So, you know, obviously if the tracks are removed, isn't it true that freight service becomes impossible? If the tracks are removed, freight service, correct, you would not be able to conduct freight service. Um, if they were removed. So I mean, I mean, there is a freight easement on the line and I'm just very concerned with the potential of the commission moving forward to remove tracks. Um, when that would essentially undermine the ability for the freight easement to be implemented. And I would, I think could create a series of problems for us, not to mention the policy problems, but my, my, what I'm really getting at what I was sort of liking in the staff presentation is that it looked like it was, would be possible to really compare that the, the first recommendation really wasn't moving forward just with the trail only option. It was really doing the pre-construction activities that would provide information for the trail only option. Um, the passenger rail option and the freight option. And I think that that's legitimate. I think, um, there may well in the future be the possibility to have an interim trail only. I don't think at this point, given the information we're getting that it is possible, but it may well turn out to be possible. And I, and I think it's legitimate for the commission to get information on the, um, the, the relative, the comparative course of those three options. But then in answer to my question, it sounded like that was not the case. There are a whole bunch of reasons why that didn't make sense. I don't, I don't think it's at this point, um, we have the data to know whether it makes sense or not. What was very helpful about that report that was from a number, uh, in item 19, is it gave detailed justification for its, uh, conclusions and I found them to be pretty persuasive. I would like to have a similar, uh, financial analysis for both the passenger rail and the freight. So that the commission before it moves forward with one option, um, is able to really understand, uh, the difference in potential course for, um, the major, the three major options that we have at this time. So, and then as far as recommendation two is concerned, and I'll finish with that. And I really, I think it was confusing as I said to combine them because recommendation two really has to do with what the environmental analysis that the county is doing for segments 10 and 11, uh, what it should consider as the trail only option. Um, we've already agreed that there needs to be a trail only option because it's potentially feasible. And I think the, the, the report we have, uh, we've received, uh, makes a good case for the debt conversion work and having that be the, the, um, the option that the counts, the county looks at. I think it would, I would recommend though, that the language that I numbered to make it clear that what we're talking about is, um, the trade for the trip. It's only for the trail only option that the debt conversion in the environmental analysis isn't simply for the coastal rail trail segment 10 and 11. It's for the trail only option for segment 10 and 11 because that environmental analysis is going to consider a range of options, including the preferred option, which is a rail trail. So, um, those are my concerns. And, um, I really, uh, I don't know whether, uh, Sarah or Guy, you want to clarify what really, uh, recommendation one is going to, uh, analyze. So recommendation one is really a rehabilitation of the existing structure below the deck for no matter what use is needed is on the corridor. What would this bridge need? These bridges need to be done to get the bridge back up to the standard. Um, it's not, it would be for a trade as well and passenger as well as trail only. Yeah. And also its own weight. Even if we do nothing on the bridge, just continue to do what we're doing now. We need to do something to these bridges. The steel, the raw iron bridge is frozen in place and needs to be able to move. Those bearings need to be replaced. The timber structure, those joints aren't working anymore because those members are cracked. Those members need to be replaced. No matter what you use the bridge for, we need to do something out there for the integrity of the bridge structure. Now, in terms of what it would be used for in the future, it could be used for a trail. It could be used for light transit, but probably no additional modifications needed because transit is so light just like the pedestrian loads. But for freight, there would probably need to be more done. But what we're doing is, is moving in the right direction or whatever option the commission wants to choose, you know, as part of a separate recommendation. Does that make that part clear? I think that's very helpful. I would just hope that, I just think it would be useful to know what additional costs it would take to allow for freight to go back on the trestle. I understand that would be quite, if it's quite expensive, we need to know that because in a sense that's our obligation under the agreement to have a freight easement. We need to know what it would take to do that. So I think, I hear what you're saying about moving in the right direction and rehabilitating it for trail and light rail and potentially part of the way towards freight. But I think it would be helpful to know how much more it would cost to get to freight as well. To get to freight, our consultant was recommended something be done to the floor beams on the deck. And they're very concerned about starting to make modifications of that nature without a thorough analysis of the existing bridge considering its age and what not as to whether it really makes sense to make those sorts of improvements. So we concluded that the best thing to do right now is at least get the bearings fixed so the bridge can continue to stand over Capitola and move and not be a threat to the community. But to do further analysis to try to figure out future uses of the corridor is really beyond the scope of where we're at right now. So in terms of using it for transit, using it for further freight, you may decide that you want to replace that bridge. And again, that's on the scope of what we're trying to do right now. We have limited resources to work on the structure and I'm trying to get them to be stretched as far as possible in a logical way. I would love to be able to design a new bridge for the Capitola Trestle for our future transit project. But I can't fund it. So really kind of spending the money on it right now when I have other issues on the corridor in addition to just the Capitola Trestle, I don't think it's the best use of our funding right now. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So I do want to, while we're in this question period, we have a number of commissioners who have questions and I want to get to everybody. So Commissioner Koenig, I believe you are next. Thank you, chair. Just another clarification on recommendation one. So what we would be approving today, that'd be the pre-construction work on page 1932, the $535,000 or so that would then get out into the five-year measure D plan. Yeah, it's, you're essentially authorizing us to, you know, to come back next month with our five-year plan to show that money program. So we're looking for some sort of direction so we can put together a program of projects that we feel is approvable. And it's roughly that half million dollars. It could be more than that. It could be more. Okay. I think it was 640. Right. Yes. And that includes a contingency. Okay. I actually thought that was a little on the high side, but I'd rather come in under budget. So I wasn't. Got it. And then on the second recommendation, you know, of course, we're looking at the, the, the, at the county, we've already approved adding the interim trail option to segments 10 and 11, just like this commission did for segments 12, because, you know, we're required to do a complete environmental analysis and document. And so it just made perfect sense to look at that and consider the range of alternatives. So I guess I'm, you know, what, why is the second recommendation even necessary? I mean, we've got a public report here. That's specific to this, I think it's a good question. I think it's a good question. I think that the commission would be, that the commission would be able to reference it in its work. I mean, it's just really just saying that you'll, you'll answer county public works and phone calls if they call you and ask for any details. I mean, this can't be a lot of work, is it? A lot of work. Beyond what we've already provided to you, but I mean, there is going to be some effort. Expended by staff on it. And at our last meeting, we came to you to talk about the feasibility and guiding this, And yes, the county can move forward with their project without our approval, but I'm just very transparent in how, you know, what we're gonna be doing and make sure that I'm not following or going off the stray and I'm following the direction of the commission and providing the county whatever support they need because we're really the experts when it comes to this bridge. Right, and just to add another note, so that although, you know, the Board of Supervisors has approved the contract amendment for the consultant, the project hasn't gone through the formal scoping process yet. So just keeping that in mind and staying true to the scoping process, you know, technically because the notice of preparation hasn't been released and the scoping period hasn't began, you know, it's not a done deal what alternatives are analyzed for the project, if that makes sense, per sequa. Okay, makes sense. Well, yeah, I definitely, you know, just aside, thanks for the great report, Ms. Christensen. Definitely, I found the cracks embracing the pile is pretty concerning given that we've got a lot of businesses and residents right there. So I think it's pretty imperative that we move forward with this. Thank you. Okay, Commissioner Peterson, it's your turn. Thank you. And I also just briefly want to echo what's already been stated that the staff reports for this item and item 20 were phenomenal and I found them very informative. And so thank you to Guy and to staff for all the information that was provided in those reports. The questions that I have, and maybe it's a little bit too soon, maybe it's not the appropriate time for me to ask these questions, but I want to voice them and determine maybe when we will be receiving this information. As a capital city council member, I want to be able to reassure those who live and run businesses underneath these bridges that the work will be done in a way that provides for their safety. And additionally that the Soquel Creek will be protective because of course there's its own set of regulations about what happens in and around the creek. And so I'm wondering if, you know, perhaps it's too early to be considering those kinds of measures now, but at some point will there be a plan that can be shared in regard to ensuring that the residents and businesses, the homes and the environment directly under these bridges will be safe from any kind of construction activity. Nothing will be falling on their homes or anything of that nature. Will there be some kind of plan for that that I will at some point be able to share with with capitol residents? Thank you, Commissioner Peterson. Yes, definitely as part of the preparation of the plan specifications and estimate of any workout at this trestle, you know, tackling the safety issue for safety is obviously a top priority. And you know, the good news is this bridge is easy to access. So accessibility wise, you know, it can be constructed not so much the case at other areas of the line. So we're thankful for that. And we do anticipate quite a bit of outreach. We already have a lot of contacts for the residents and businesses and around the bridge. And we plan to have quite a bit of outreach to those residents and businesses as part of the, prior to the construction and as well as during construction of the repair, which is down the road by probably a couple of years depending on obviously getting the funding for these repairs. The second issue that you bring up is environmental. We would include environmental permitting any requirements for permits needed for the repair of the bridge. Luckily there's not a lot of work to the rod iron over the actual waterway, but there may be some impacts to say like the riparian right next to the waterway to access the bearings. And that is part of the pre-construction process to obtain the environmental permits needed to construct the repair. So we're definitely gonna check those two boxes and I appreciate you bringing those up and if we could do anything to further, you know, we could work together with the city of Capitola and go to the city council if needed to give periodic updates if that's desired as well. So I know this bridge is very important, right? In the city and the village. So thank you. Hopefully that answered your question. I also want to reassure the public too that the timber bridge is a very redundant structure. One member isn't able to outfit transfers to load over to another. So without having heavy weights up there right now that's why it's not a service. We're not worried about the bridge's eminent collapse at this time, but we're recommending this action so we don't get to that situation. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Yeah, I think it's important to consider the safety during construction, but also just that this work is important and necessary to ensure for the safety of the bridge as it is now because people are already using it or have continued to use it for a very long time. So thank you so much. That's all my questions. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Rotkin. So I don't believe this will be done and I wouldn't do it if I thought it were. I just want to sum up what I think we've been told by Sarah and I appreciate the clarity already of what's been said. None of the things, the study that's being anticipated here would not result in the without a different plan having rail and trail together go over this bridge. That's correct, right? Because of the cantilever issue doesn't work on this one or something, right? Secondly, there are five segments of the bridge and if I understood what you were saying, we believe it's not an absolute final decision. That's why we're having a study done, but with the exception of the wrought iron structure, this would allow, and again, that's what we'll be looking at and there'll be different costs involved, but this would allow trail only, rail only, passenger rail only and freight only on all but the wrought iron segment. The timbers in other words, or if they rehab the way we're talking about it, that would hold a freight train. Correct. And then third, so the logical conclusion is the part of this that will not hold a freight train is the wrought iron section alone out of the five segments of the bridge. It's recommended just based on the age and condition to replace this bridge part of freight. There could be some potential modifications done. However, just doing those modifications to this old, if I may call it rickety, a lot of language may create more problems than solve them. So that's one of the reasons why we recommend full replacement part of freight. And thank you. That's very helpful to understand that what's being proposed here. I wanna in a way sort of just echo and not get into a long discussion Andy Schifrin's comments or concerns. I'm waiting really so much. I'm not making an argument here. I'm just trying to understand the issue about to what extent we are in not in compliance with our legal obligations if we actually put money into fixing the bridge but don't do it to a level. Again, it's only refers to the wrought iron section. Don't do it to a level that would carry a freight train. And that's not a question to Sarah. That's more again to the attorney. If just to follow up on Andy's comment and in effect, people will argue this, to what extent and under what from what areas will face this risk but someone who was concerned about not continuing to allow freight service would have at least some concern about that might be the basis of a suit against us for not complying with our legal obligations. I'm not gonna say whether that suit would be successful and I'm certainly not encouraging that suit. That's a question to Steve. Yeah, so the action that is proposed today from staff I don't think that the action itself increases the legal risk to the city. It is conceivable. To the RTC me, right? I'm sorry, thank you to the RTC. The, you know, it's conceivable someone could try to make that argument but the other repairs that would be accomplished as noted in your questions, Mr. Rock, and would be ones that would facilitate potential freight as an option on the bridge. And so I don't find, I wouldn't find that to be a high level of risk if the commission were to proceed with the recommendation today. Okay. I wanna, that answers my questions, Steve. I wanna stand with this. I wanted to read a quick section. This is from item 20 on today's agenda. It appears on page, the end of page six and goes on to page seven. And I just thought I would introduce this into this conversation maybe before we hear from the public about it. And what I'm just, what it says is, rail banking designates a trail sponsor who becomes responsible for maintaining and preserving the quarter in a manner that does not preclude future potential reactivation, reactivation or freight rail. Rails and ties are permitted to be removed but could also remain in place. Some literature has stated that existing bridges and culverts cannot be removed. The legislation does not specifically state these limitations and freight rail bridges have been removed from rail bank quarters and replaced with non freight bridges. And this is the port that I'm particularly interested in. It would be prudent for a trail manager to consider potential reactivation before commencing work affecting major infrastructure. Infrastructure such as bridges that would otherwise need to be replaced could possibly be removed provided that the work including potential new rail transit or active transportation bridges does not jeopardize the integrity of the rail line for future freight reactivation. So again, this is from our own report. I assume that that's our staff that wrote that. That's text from our staff, not from some other source. So I just wanted to, I guess it's a question to guide from my last question is to what extent are we, again, I'm not asking that we would make that decision now but not having the information to understand what the replacement of the wrought iron section of this bridge might cost to understand, in order to make it capable of carrying freight, whether that wouldn't be prudent as your own staff report on 20 suggests. We obviously are gonna be looking at that in the next stage because we wanna make sure any action that we take is consistent with the requirements to preserving the right-of-way. That said, replacing the right-of-way or back to existing condition is to make it such that it can that it doesn't preclude freight from coming in. So the existing condition of the bridge is the bridge may need to be replaced. Right. So as long as we're not doing something that wouldn't allow that to happen in the future, we haven't done anything to the corridor that is precluding it. You can convert the bridge back. They may have to do that deck repair but that wouldn't be something that the trail project would be responsible for because the freight route would be responsible for doing that anyway. And if they decided they wanted to replace the bridge, it wouldn't be reasonable for us to try to analyze and determine what that future rail project would wanna do. So we are looking at conversion back but really conversion back in kind to what the corridor is today, which is a freight rail that has deteriorated bridges. So I wouldn't try to see if I could retrofit the floor beam and spend the money now or determine whether the bridge should be replaced but we will include what the cost would be to remove the trail decking and put back the railing. Thank you. Those are my questions. Thanks for the time to ask them. Thank you. Okay, I see Commissioner Bertrand you're up and then Commissioner Caput after that. Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you, Sarah Christensen for your report. It answered a lot of questions but also gave me many more. And one of the things that you brought up was obviously the condition of the various segments of the bridge. I'd like to understand what some of the ratings means. So in terms of segment A, for instance, or C or E, you're referred to E71, like on A, an alternate is the Cooper way of evaluation. Could you give me some idea what that means? And the reason why I'm asking is because the concrete box on segment A looks pretty capable. I've walked over it a million times but at what point does the designation go below something that's safe? Right now we're at E71 for the public. Sure. So E71, just to give you a little bit of reference, the standard, I guess, mainline freight rating is E80. However, very few of our bridges were ever even meant to have that rating. So what that means is, so an E71 bridge means that the maximum weight of each axle is 71,000 pounds. So depending on the locomotive type and the spacing of the axles, we're talking hundreds of thousands of pounds that this bridge can accommodate. And just to give you a little bit of comparison in terms of what we consider good condition versus not so good condition, the rod iron rates much lower than that. The last time the bridge was rated, it was under E30, I believe. What are you doing? Right, so that's not enough to handle the weight of a typical locomotive but that's a lot of weight for any other kind of use. So say a high rail maintenance vehicles, even light rail type of vehicle, the bridge can most likely accommodate. Definitely pedestrian and bicycle loads. Does that answer? Yes, you do. I was just trying to get an idea. I appreciate what engineers do when they estimate the load because there's a lot of safety considerations. You have a PE, so you know what that means. You're satisfying issues related to public safety. So the iron trash is easily not available for a freight and we have to do modifications even if that was possible. So this study will give us a better idea of that. The other thing that I'd like to focus on is the wooden segments and the pictures that you detailed and anyone who lives in Capitola is greatly familiar with the cracks. And I've had emails from neighbors who've talked about fallen pieces. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, we definitely find out about it. So at this point, is it safe to say we really can't say with any degree of certainty and maybe that last statement is appropriate how much the wooden trestles can actually carry and our study is gonna give us that. So I'm worried about whether it's light rail or with modifications or improvements getting to something that could be higher like passenger. That's safe to say. The timber trestles in their current condition, they're not rated because they do require such extensive repair. And so what we'd most likely do once they're repaired, which is common practice is to do the load rating calculations after the repair is conducted. And my understanding of similar timber trestles that we have, I think the highest intended capacity, they were never intended to mean that standard E80. They usually have a lower rating even at their best. So say E70 or maybe even E60. So, but that would be more than sufficient to handle typical locomotive. It fully repaired up to its intended loading for the bridge. So you just said something interesting. So E80 is for locomotives of high weight, but the wooden trestles, did I capture your statement? Were never meant to be at E80, but E70 would be sufficient for freight. Yes, definitely. Okay, so even if we repaired the trestle, it wouldn't be at the normal standards that is nationwide. So just, I mean, I'd love to talk about timber trestles all day, but just to give you more information about just the general intent of timber trestles, my understanding is they're not really intended to be permanent structures and they were used as freight railroads, use them for just to get from point A to point B and they're bridges that require extensive maintenance over time, periodic replacement of members. And railroads typically, they're very good at this. They have their own crews, they go out, they replace a piece of bracing when it is starting to deteriorate. And that's really somewhat incompatible, I guess, with any kind of more reliable, public transportation use, I guess. So having a bridge that you need to maintain frequently, obviously it costs quite a bit and it can disrupt whatever transportation service you have on the bridge above. So it's not an ideal bridge, but it's what we have. And at this time, we propose to rehabilitate and we think that we could get, obviously the more work we do as part of the rehabilitation, the longer we defer the next time we have to go out and rehabilitate it again. So if we try to go with a short-term kind of band-aid fix, we're gonna be out there again sooner rather than later, if we were to do a more thorough rehabilitation to restore the trestle. Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate that response. Certainly adequate PM is very important and the safety of the public depends on that. And then to get to a little bit more about the trestle itself in replacing the bearing. Now, has that been looked at carefully enough? I mean, some of these joints may have fused to the underlying support, like what's on the mud seal, for instance, how easily would this be replaced and still keep the integrity of the system? So Mike, understanding of what a bearing replacement would entail, it would be a pretty straightforward repair. You would just have to jack the end of the bridge up and replace, remove the existing bearing and replace the bearing with a new one. So it's not a super complex repair. It's pretty simple, doesn't require big heavy machinery to get to the bearing. So did that answer your question, Commissioner? It does, I mean, the only reference I have is in replacing bearings in cars and stuff is rather difficult at times. This is much more large. Okay, so that answers that. Steve Mattis was asked a few questions about our freight requirements on the line. And so it brought up something that I've been very concerned about. And so without going back to that question, but of guy, I'd like to have a report at some point, what are our freight obligations right now? The only ones that I've heard about since I've been in Santa Cruz which is well over 30 years is Watsonville. And I know that we're on camp would like to move something on the rail which they may be able to move it on truck. I don't know if that's been ascertained. So my main consideration here is to provide freight is gonna cost the County of Santa Cruz by all reports a considerable amount of money. And so I'd like to know what the plus minus is here in a detailed report. So presumably freight is something that would generate income to the County or to the RTC because it's running the service and how much is it going to cost to provide this service? So at some point in the future, I'd like to know what the anticipated investment is to the County taxpayers basically since we don't have any way other than to support this through the County taxpayers and actually how much actually on a cost to provide something and how much we're actually gonna get out of this. So that I think would be appropriate for a future report. I do have another question. And this came up from a letter from a, I don't have the lady's name right here. Maybe I shouldn't repeat it anyway from the capitol of public. And she mentioned that, if there is walking much more so if we improve the trestle for walking ability, then her public, the public is gonna be able to see over the fence and there's a lot of noise and stuff like that. And so I took a walk out there and I agree the section above Fanmart is the rail section above Fanmart is very high and you can see in everyone's yard there. And so I'm hoping that when we do this study we have something to do with anticipated privacy for those citizens. She mentioned a sound wall. I don't know if that's appropriate. Maybe vegetation. So I'd like to put that out there Sarah for our consideration for the neighbors in Capitol because it definitely is an issue. Those are my comments. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Caput you're up next and just a reminder we're still in the questions for staff portion. We will come back around for deliberations after we go out to the public. Commissioner Caput you're up. You bet. I just wanna say that some of the questions that were asked before, I wanna make sure they're part of the record that would be the questions of Mr. Rutkin and Mr. Schifrin. It's questions that I had also. And Guy and Sarah I wanna thank you for your report. Our recent decisions on RTC have put you in a difficult position because we're really not sure where we're going right now. I have a hard time. I don't see any benefit at all from what we're talking about. It's gonna benefit South County. I don't see any of it. And I don't know what this does for the future. Passenger rail or freight rail from South County of Watsonville. I find it more than a little bit irritating that people from outside of South County are telling residents of Watsonville, what's good for them? It's not just a mere coincidence and all the representatives on the RTC from the Watsonville area are for preserving a future plan for passenger rail and also freight rail. One legal question I do have is maybe Steven you can answer it. It was brought up. Do we have a 10 year contractual commitment to freight rail? You're muted, Steve. The current agreement with St. Paul Pacific is for a 10 year term. I believe there's roughly eight or so years left. How many years left? I believe eight, Guy. Can you confirm that? I believe it's about eight. I think it's seven now. Okay. It keeps ticking. Yeah, I know it's tough. If we keep talking about it for seven years, we'll get it down to one, maybe, I guess. But anyway, so is it possible? I mean, we can't, we can put a little trail. Capitola seems to be ground zero right now. You know, if we put a little trail in there and I mean, I guess we could even put picnic tables and barbecues on it so people can enjoy it. But contractually, that wouldn't be possible for about seven or eight years, right? Absent either an abandonment by St. Paul and Pacific, which has indicated that they wish to leave the service or an adverse abandonment as described in the item 20 that's on your agenda today. Okay, I just want to stand up for what I believe the people in South County are asking for. And they want to be connected to the rest of the county. They don't want to be cut off down here. It looks like state funding will actually connect Watsonville and South County to Monterey and the rest of the state of California. And that's something that we need to look at and support state money is for passenger rail only need not apply for some of that state funding that we heard from CalTrans earlier. Thank you. Anyway, are we gonna vote on this? We're gonna actually have a vote on this proposal or it's just just informational right now. We are being asked to take action after we finish up with questions and take it out to the public and then come back. I believe our staff is looking for direction today. Is it a vote or is it just informational right now? Well, yeah, we'll be at some point, hopefully somebody will make a motion and we will take a vote on how to move forward. Yeah. Okay, so moving along, I will now take it out to members of the public although Mr. Quinn, Dr. Quinn, I believe, I apologize. I will fan taken, go for it. Mine's a point of clarification and I think we've sort of digressed into the next item, number 20, that may bring light to this, but I just wanted to clarify that by looking at page 1932, I'm looking at what we will eventually be voting on. And that is three scopes of practice or three scopes of work. One is engineering who address the bridge independent of its future use. The second is renovation to bring the bridge up to speed independent of its future use. And the third is an estimate to put a new pedestrian bike deck system on top which doesn't pre-determine us to any future use, rather just gives us an interim use. Is that correct statement? Just to clarify, the only, so the measure D5 year plan update that if the commission approves a soft recommendation we would prioritize funding for the pre-construction that would not include the actual capital construction costs for the renovation nor the conversion of the deck. So the thinking there is going through the pre-construction process we'll have better cost estimates and we can pursue funding for the renovation or the rehabilitation of the bridge. And then for the deck conversion process, if that ends up being the alternative selected and that deck system moves forward, that would be included as part of the county's coastal rail trail project. So they most likely will be pursuing grants and that would be a future initial grant that they could potentially receive for their project. So the only thing that we're asking for is direction on whether we should move forward with the pre-construction of the rehabilitation work regardless of the use of the bridges. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I see, thank you. Commissioner Quinn. Mr. Hearst, did you have a question? I'm heading out to the public in just a moment but did you have a question you wanted to ask? And you're on mute. My apologies. Yes, I do have a question. The question is, are we gonna bring this trustee up to safety and code and comply with our legal obligations and promote safety and environmental stewardship? Or not. That's the question. Okay, I'm assuming that's a retor... Well, a somewhat rhetorical question for the moment. You're looking for a specific answer. We will deliberate on that. Thank you. Okay, moving right along. Go heading out to the public now. I see Mr. Peoples, you are up first. Yes, hey, thank you, Brian from Trail Now. We absolutely support the upgrading and repair of the Trestle. Once again, phenomenal work, Sarah, phenomenal work. Very much supported. We will say that this organization needs to bring, get back to realization that you're not going to have no freight going over to North County. It's not realistic that you can have passenger trains, multiple trains going over the Capitola Trestle community. It'll never happen. And so we continue to drag our feet and spend a lot of money trying to accommodate something that's never gonna happen. And so what happens is now we've sat here for 10 years. 10 years and we're gonna sit for 10 more, decades more as we keep thinking that we're gonna have freight or we're gonna have passengers. It's not gonna happen. And so it's sad how our community can't use the Santa Cruz Coastal Trail today. It's very sad and it really is terrible and we need to move forward. Thank you for your time. Okay, Mr. Sarnitaro, you are up. All right, I've got a question about the estimate which is, does the estimate include the value of recycling the rails? Or is it a gross number of 3.3 million or is it a net number after we get some value back from the rails? Listening to the presentation, it looks to me like there's going to be quite a bit of old timber and that's gonna come off of this project. And a question I would have would be whether this timber has to just go straight to landfill or is there actually an opportunity for that timber to be recycled, sold to the community, given away, whatever so that it's somehow utilized. And finally, I wanted to just thank Jack for bringing up the elephant in the room, which is freight, which is how much, sort of like what Brian said, the amount of time that's being spent and the amount of money that's being spent to support the concept that there's really heavy physical things that are coming out of Santa Cruz that need to be connected with the national rail network or that our food or some other stuff for Costco is gonna come in here and on a freight line. That's just so unrealistic. And I really wish we could at least move on from that. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next up we have David Dean, Mr. Dean. You are up. All right, thank you. I just wanted to thank the commission for the time and the effort that they put into maintaining the rail corridor. This is probably the most valuable resource we have right now. So much potential for public transit. And I'm very concerned that, this agenda item talks about removing the deck from the trestle. It's something that concerns me greatly because I want to see transit in our town with the state bills nine and 10 just recently passing that are going to increase density all over the state and no doubt in Santa Cruz, we're going to have to do something better than pushing more people out onto the cars and the highways. So I very much want us to not abandon the real line nor start doing things to push the rail the possibility of real transit further into the future. I feel it's going to be very expensive to remove the deck, put in this for it only to be removed later. But I do support rehabilitating the bridges all over. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dean. Next up, L. Faulkner, L. Faulkner. You are all right. Hi, thank you commissioners for your diligent work. I would support item 19, part one, rehabilitation of the bridges and other segments of the rail if and only if the work maintains passenger rail function. I urge you to not move forward with item 19 at this time until further clarifications are made. And I feel that parts one and two should be separate items. I am disappointed and concerned about Bud's Collegan's definition earlier in reference to his definition of democracy, in reference to his proposed ballot measure. I myself have received false information from Bud's Greenway that is being shared in the public. For example, the statements that building a trail would only take two years. Business information is the loudest petition to grow. Currently most signers are completely unaware that the Greenway petition seeks to destroy all language ensuring rail remain on the general plan so that there might be a future rail in the county. This is by design. True democracy can only be formed when an information, when the people are informed accurately. I support rail and trail, but my definition of democracy ensures the voters have clear and accurate exposure to facts, history and underlying motives. I cannot support item 19, part two, which seeks to remove trails and implement the same action sought out by Greenway in its current campaign for a smaller segment, but goes around informing the broader public. Manu Koenig is an avid Greenway member and his membership on the board of supervisors includes recent action to appoint Robert Quinn, also a recent board member onto the RTC. It seems obvious to me that Greenway's interests are heavily represented with two out of 10 members of the voting RTC. Manu Koenig and Robert Quinn should not have voting power on these rail and trail RTC issues as it strikes me as a conflict of interest. Item 19, part two includes language that seeks to potentially destroy segments of our important resource, our public rail system at a time when the state and federal levels are increasing funding. Greenway has not disclosed that rail banking and destroying the rail beds for an interim trail would increase the costs and time of implementing rail in this county exponentially, making it effectively impossible. Ms. Faulkner, your time is up. If I could ask you to drop it up. Thank you so much. I urge you to not move forward with item 19 at this time until further clarification is made. Thank you. Okay, Mr. St. Michael St, you are up. Thank you, Madam Chair and commissioners. Just wanted to get some clarification on the segments, 10, 11, 12, and my understanding is these two items on the agenda are just for the possibility might happen that we will remove the tracks and maybe some of the ballast. Will the basic design of the trail that has been done in segments seven continue on the segments 10, 11, and 12? In other words, along the side of the tracks with only removal off of the bridges specifically. Also, I have some concern about our local train company. It's my understanding that they have picked up the freight commitment of Watsonville and they do have some, I guess some diesel equipment or some new freight things. Once we do pull the tracks, they'll be unable to get them up to the roaring camp area and also agree with Commissioner Caput or Supervisor Caput on no benefit for South County. One of my questions is also, once we approach the areas where there's damage down from the storms of 2017 Harkins Flu area, are we going to jump the trail off onto San Andreas and bring it up West Beach, which was shown on one of our diagrams? Thank you for your time. Thank you for all the hard work. And I want to second my opinion about the two agenda items, Ms. Christensen and Director Preston had done an excellent job and it was relatively clear what was going on. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Thank you, Mr. St. I will just make a note here that folks are asking questions. Generally, we don't do back and forth during public comment, but I am making note of questions and we'll try to get those answered for you. Hopefully today for some of the more straightforward ones and then some of them I think are bigger picture. Okay, so up next we have Graciella Vega. Your turn to speak. Yes, my name is Graciella Vega. I don't know how to take off my image here. So you guys could see my face but you'll have to do with my picture. I'm a Watsonville resident in a Santa Cruz County resident. My family has been in Watsonville since the 1950s. We've worked in agriculture. I'm a professional, I'm a teacher. My husband is a body man. He grew up in Mexico City and has used transit, trail. I mean, Mexico City had the gondolas and I know that was one of the options that we have and they operate and it got the pick. Now, fixing the bridges would make lots of sense. I urged the board to apply for grants so that we can repair it. I prefer transit system and over-deriving in my own car. I'm 51 and I see in the near future traveling on the train and he himself traveling in a train to get to work. And there are a lot of people that are do hotel service industry. It would be wonderful if the workers can get over through other means, I mean, besides the bus. And so I would love to see all these possibilities, all these beautiful options that we have here in Santa Cruz County, as well as increasing our tourism and bringing more tax dollars into Santa Cruz County. Having the buses available, having the train as an option apart from having cars, green cars. But I envision a place where we have transportation coming from North County to South County. And I look forward to having the bridges brought up to code. I envision lots of money. If you build it, they will come like the field of dreams. Beautiful movie with Kevin Costner. And I believe in the board. Thank you for supporting. Thank you, Ms. Vega. Next up, Jack Brown. Your turn is your turn. Hi, I just wanted to reiterate thank you for having this agenda item 20, 19 on the agenda it was so refreshing to see a dose of reality and Sarah's technical capabilities to go over the options and something that we can really use here and starting utilizing this valuable resource in our area. One of the commissioners noted that if we do go rail trail that we're disconnecting South County. And I had to give pause to that because really the whole rail solution disconnects the Santa Cruz Mountains across most of the Supervisor districts yet nothing has made note of that. Maybe they'll say that it goes back to bus, which basically buses connected us to the state rail network for many years, 50 years since we've had a passenger rail service on the line and we should be looking at ways to improve that. Right now we're looking at a TIGM solution where the little street cars that are custom hand built are priced at $4 million a piece with no track record of doing commuter rail. So I think we have to get real about this. And as a volunteer for Yes Green Wang I have been spending the last month going door to door in my community going to the farmers markets and gauging voters responses. And it's been absolutely wonderful to see that there is about a 90% approval rating from these people that are signing the petition for the upcoming voter initiative. So out of the echo chamber of Barry Scott and Mike the city miller and all the others, I think this is really a step in the right direction and I would only encourage you to go forward with the recommendations on agenda item 19. Thank you. Thank you. Edward Estrada, it is your turn. And yep, there you go. Okay, thank you, Commissioner Brown. Hi, my name is Edward Estrada. I'm a Capitola resident, a UCSC student. I live here with my mother who worked for the county. You know, we are residents here and I am in full support of passenger rail. I think it would be a step in the wrong direction to take out any of the rail line. As someone has said before, we've been having this conversation for 10 years and we're still stuck in this conversation because of a lack of imagination and a lack of a determination. So I really hope that obstructionists like Greenway and Trail Now can realize that a vast majority of people in Santa Cruz County don't wanna rely on their cars for transportation, don't wanna rely on buses and that we absolutely need to not waste this valuable resource that we have with the rail line and it does not serve South County if we were to rip up the tracks and put in an interim trail. Yep, that's all I have to say. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Estrada. Next up, David Van Brink. Go for it. Hello, I'm David Van Brink, a solid public transit supporter. Public transit is literally how we save the planet. Thank you to Ms. Christensen for the very, very clear presentation. So interim trail on the bridge. So, I mean, you know, walking across the Capitola Bridge complex would be thrilling, you know, no question about that. But interim trail, in the current context, the word interim risks being somewhere between putative and shambolic. In the current context, we're just saying interim because we have to. One of your earlier speakers mentioned how citizens are tired of the controversy and that speaker, of course, has been instrumental in ginning up that fake controversy. And he's been arguably a little successful in distorting the democratic process. Respectfully suggest that you revisit adopting the staff recommended TCAA business plan. Then short-term long-term trade-offs like an interim trail in various places can be considered in a proper context as part of an actual plan. Thanks for your time. Thank you, Mr. Van Brink. Okay, next up, Barry Scott. Mr. Scott, you're on. Thank you, thank you. I wanna bring to everyone's attention the fact that in a nine to three vote in I think February of this year, the Transit Corridor's Alternatives Analysis was accepted by the commission. And that indicates electric light rail transit is the preferred alternative. Accordingly, I think it's a grave mistake in misdirection to not include work that could be done to look at that light rail rehabilitation for the Capitola crossings side by side with the interim trail approach. I just dug up this morning the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail section on Capitola and it says future plans for rail trestle replacement should include a new bike pedestrian facility in the bridge design. And then the next sentence is this crossing could also consider an iconic bridge and pedestrian bridge that will span the 500 foot long Soquel Creek crossing. Imagine, why aren't we looking at that? I mean, imagine disconnecting a rail need. And this is a well, how many times have we studied this corridor and every single time it comes back to rail transit or rail transit with trail? There's no question, but that's the right thing to do. And if we're gonna let the need for a trail and we do need trails conflict with our need for transit when we have an option to consider and to a certain degree a directive to at least consider a separate iconic bridge for bike and pedestrian users, that can clear up a lot. Would it be expensive yet? Everything worth doing, everything important takes money. So I urge the commission and staff to put together a more of a side-by-side consideration including more options and resist this interim trail rail banking direction. Thanks. Okay, next up I see someone with the phone number 8401884. It's your turn to speak. Good morning. So this is Gina Cole from Bikes Santa Cruz County. The mission of Bikes Santa Cruz County is to promote cycling. And our goal is for folks of all ages and abilities to feel comfortable using their bikes for daily trips. We support infrastructure that supports folks who are on the road and who are on the road. We support infrastructure that supports folks feeling comfortable, being able to ride their bicycles, wanting to send their kids on their bikes. We do feel that rehabbing these main connectors is a good idea. However, using bikes for daily trips when you live in South County, when for folks that live in South County, doesn't necessarily mean commuting by bike. We're a long way from the jobs in Santa Cruz by bicycle, whether it's on a trail that is separate from the roadways or whether it's on a designated bikeway. It is important to maintain for folks that live in South County or the benefit of our planet, a way for people to transport their bikes safely and comfortably across the county. Not everyone is able to ride the 20 miles they take to get to Santa Cruz. But maybe they would like to take their bike and ride in Santa Cruz or ride in Capitola. So I urge you please consider the future of not just North County, but South County, as we consider what is happening along our corridor. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Cole. I see one last hand up, actually more coming. I was gonna say, so last call, get your hands up if you'd like to speak. Faina Siegel, I believe, you are up next, Ms. Siegel. Thank you, Commissioner Brown. I would just like to remind the commission that we have a duty to our planet and everybody in this county to produce real solutions for transportation. And that means preserving our rail line. So thank you so much for doing everything in your power to get going on rail transportation as soon as possible today. And let's do everything we can to ensure we're reducing emissions and offering additional transportation options to everybody in Santa Cruz County. Remember that 60% of the emissions in our county are produced by transportation. And so it is vitally important that we get zero emission options as soon as possible. Please continue to apply for all the funding needed to rehab our bridges and get rail transportation going as soon as possible. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Siegel. Next up, we have Sally, Sally Arnold. Sally wants a rail plus trail, is your name. Go for it, it's your turn. Not that anybody is surprised to hear that. So I just wanted to say first of all how excited I was to hear that Caltrans report about the rail funding that might be available for us to apply for. And I think we're gonna start seeing more and more of that coming from the state and federal level. And I think we just need to really be positioned and ready for that. I also wanna thank Mr. Preston for the trail updates. I know sometimes it doesn't look like anything is happening, but there's all that behind the scenes work before a shovel ever hits the ground. And we're really close on several of these trail segments and that's very exciting too. And Ms. Christensen's report was really clear with all the pitchers and the arrows and was like, oh, that's what's going on with the trestle. So thank you for really making that very clear as well. And then Commissioner Schifrin and Rod Kanai felt like really brought up very important questions that we need to have these side-by-side comparisons to make choices. And it's having an agenda item where the only choice is a trail only option is like going to a restaurant with one thing on the menu and that's not a menu. Yeah, we need to really be able to see side-by-side what would happen to how what are the ways we can have rail and trail. And maybe that's maybe Mr. Preston says it can't be a cantilever. Could it be a different bridge? What would it take? Would it be a whole new bridge? We need to really see what the options are before people can be asked to really make decisions. And that if there is no plan to, if we can't see the costs and impacts to restore the tracks, then using the word interim is just misdirection and misnomer. We really need to see how we can have both rail and trail. That's what the community wants. And that's really what the commission has voted for in the past. We need both and we need to plan for both. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Colligan, Bud Colligan, you are up. Thank you very much, Chair Brown. And thanks to the staff for a very fact-based and objective report. Every time it looks like we're about to make progress, there are a number of commissioners and some in the public that want to study things more. We've done nine studies on this corridor in the last 30 years. There are comments about freight. There is no freight north of Watsonville. And there hasn't been for the last 12 years. It's so discouraging to a large majority of voters to hear as an action item more studies, particularly when we get an excellent staff report trying to protect the public from a bridge falling on their heads or their house or their business. People that we talked to in South County, and we've been very active down there, are very supportive of beach access, access to the sloughs, nature, their jobs, active transportation. And I just like to quote Casey Kirkhart, who is the medical director of Santa Cruz Community Health and is one of over 210 medical professionals who have endorsed Greenway. And I quote, the key to equity is removing obstacles. Oftentimes, the lowest obstacle is the simplest solution. I can't think of a more simple solution than a trail where a mother and her kids can hop on their bikes and ride to school, to market, to church, to jobs, to the beach for free, no ticket, no fences or walls. Equity is access, including access to this incredible resource. To deny access to the trail denies opportunities and is a disservice to all in our community. Again, thanks, staff, for a great report. And I look forward to your positive vote on item 19. OK, thank you, Mr. Colligan. Mr. Machado, you are up. Matt Machado. Thank you, and good morning. Thank you, Chair and commissioners. Matt Machado, County Public Works Director and Deputy CAO. I want to start by commenting that I really appreciate the staff report, very transparent, very complete. They did a great job. And I think it's really obvious and clear that that first step, that step to the proposed rehab of the existing structures is just essential, just to keep those structures in place. And I also want to share that I think it's critical and important that our two agencies continue to work together. And I think that item or the second part of the recommended action isn't making any conclusions. It's just saying that we're going to work together. Clearly, the county has to go through a full CEQA EIR process. We're looking at multiple alternatives. We're going to flesh out a lot of these issues and analysis. And I think the request to work together is really important. I think I heard it said that why do we have to take action for that? I mean, in some ways, we all work together daily. I think having that continued transparency of working together to work out the details, clearly your staff has the expertise in this structural area. And they have the history. They have the knowledge. We need that so that we can consider all these available alternatives. So I'm hopeful that the commission can support staff recommendation. And thank you for your time today. Thank you. Madam Chair, I wonder if we could ask Mr. Machado if he was able to stay on till after the other comments from the public to ask him some questions. Yes. I can. I will try. I do have to jump to another quick meeting, but absolutely. Thank you, sir. I'll do that. Thank you. It looks like we are finished with public comment and go heading back to panelists now. So I see Commissioner Schifrin, you have your hand up. We'll bring it back to the commission now. Yes, thank you. I think this discussion has been a very useful one for me. And I appreciate staff and other commissioners clarifying what is really before us. Let me first ask are the two recommendations on page 19? I think it's 19-1. The recommendations that were being asked to support. Can someone from staff? Yeah, does he ask? Yes. I'm willing to support those recommendations and move them, but with a little bit of clarifying language, which I think is consistent with what the staff has been telling us. And so what I would do just to kick off the discussion is make a motion that the commission approved the staff recommendation with the following addition to number one so that it would proceed with the prioritization of pre-construction activities need to rehabilitate the existing timber and rod iron bridges with their numbers and then add for the trail only light rail and freight rail options by updating the measure D five-year plans. And then in recommendation two, I would recommend the motion would include approving the staff recommendation with the following clarification language work with county public work staff to consider including the deconversion work for the trail only option. That would be the added language in the environmental analysis for the coastal rail trail segment 10 and 11. Can I ask a question about that? Well, if nobody seconds it, then. Well, I'll second it for purpose of discussion. And my question, Andy, is are you requesting that the county staff look at all three options in their work? I didn't follow what you're trying to do there in the second part of your motion. Well, there are two separate issues here. And that's why I think the staff report is a little confusing because it kind of makes it seem like they're the same. The first recommendation is simply for what further action should the commission be taking in terms of upgrading the capitol attress? That's all that's about. And I think what we've talked about as I understood it and staff can correct me is that the intention for the future work would include information on the course of upgrading for the trail only the light rail and the freight rail options. But my understanding, just to understand, Andy. Let me go directly to your concern about option two, a recommendation to recommendation to only applies to the environmental analysis to the coastal rail trail. As has been mentioned by staff and members of the public, the commission has already supported looking at a trail only option for the environmental analysis of the segment eight 10 and 11 project. This would only make clear since it's a little vague whether the debt conversion work in the environmental analysis is just for everything or is it just for the trail only option? And my understanding is from what staff said is that the report really that we got as far as the trail only option for the Tressel was comparing various ways to provide a trail only. And after doing its analysis, it recommended that the option that should be looked at is the debt conversion. So what we're recommending is that when the county looks at the trail only option for segment 10 and 11 that they look at the debt conversion option because that from our report is the best one. So we're kind of giving them some guidance, some direction that when that environmental document looks at the various alternatives for the segment 10 and 11 as far as the trail only option is alternative is looked at, it would focus on the debt conversion and not the other alternatives that were in the report. Well, I guess my question in terms of your motion, I had understood from Sarah Christensen's report that we're looking at the underlying structure of the bridge, the five segments or the three that need some work and that we're not actually talking about the decking on top, we're not talking about the decking on top, that's not part of the, as you said, it goes over to the county for a separate project and I'm just interested in that. Although we recommend that if you do a trail only that it be as you pointed out the, I forget the name of it now, but the... We are. Yeah. Well, I would ask staff to clarify that because it was my understanding that in for recommendation one in the prioritization of the pre-construction activities to rebuild the three segments, it would look at converting the deck to converting the area, one of the options would be looking at the deck conversion for trail only option. Is that maybe staff can... I didn't think that the motion did anything different than what the staff had indicated they intended to do. I just thought it would be helpful to put it in a motion so that it's clear to all the members of the public that all three, there would be additional information on all three of those options, but correct me if I'm wrong and if that's not what the intention is. Sarah, can you help us out here? Yeah, so the recommendation one is making that recommendation to rehabilitate from the deck down or below the deck. The rehabilitation, as I mentioned, would be needed regardless of any use and the deck conversion would not be implemented by RTC. It would be implemented by... Or it would be at least studied in the next phase of the project for the trail project. So they are somewhat unrelated, but we definitely recommend number one moving forward regardless of whether number two moves forward. So recommendation number one is basically to rehabilitate the three structures, as mentioned in my staff report previously, which would not include any work on the deck. Okay, I appreciate that clarification. Let me ask Guy, is the proposed motion inconsistent with what the staff was intending to do? No, the clarification points that you wanted included in staff's recommendation and you made by motion would be consistent. I would have no issues with the first part whatsoever. The second part also was consistent with what we planned on doing. I just wanna clarify that we actually provided three, the staff included three options and they were all repurposing options of the deck. And I believe what you're saying is you like the option that we like, which was the FSP and that we should focus on that as part of the EIR analysis. Is that a correct interpretation of your? Yes. Okay, then yes, I think that that, I would have no issue with that whatsoever. Okay, I think it's completely consistent with what we were planning on doing anyway. It was completely consistent with what we were planning on doing anyway, so. I think given the way, frankly, the staff report was written, I know I was confused about what was going to be studied in the future and I do appreciate the staff really clarifying that. I think others in the public were also confused and that's why I wanted to add that language to make it really clear that what the staff is proposing to do is to look at the moving forward. It's not more study, it's moving forward with options that the staff had already determined that they needed to move forward with and I think the report that we received said that. I had initially wanted to continue this to essentially get the information that staff is now saying they're intending to provide. And so I think given that, it makes sense to let the process move forward and really get more information about these various options. So Chair Brown, I just wanna say my hand's still on the air and I'll wait for you to call me in whatever word is appropriate, but I'm not done with my questions. I wanna talk to Matt Machado among other things. Thank you. So Commissioner Rock and I was actually just about to go back to you to ask if the clarifying response to your question makes you comfortable to leave your second on the floor and then I'll give it back to you for other questions or comments. At this point, it's still there. And then Commissioner Hernandez, you'll be up next. So were you also saying I can make a question to Matt Machado at this point or not? Yes, go for it. So Matt, my question is when the county's looking at the, you're now, we'll be looking at what goes over the top. The RTC, if we follow a few with what the staff recommendation is, we'll be looking at how we make these bridges safe and apparently capable of handling at least passenger rail and pedestrian and bicycle work, not necessarily freight, but possibly, but less certain, at least on the metals, the cast iron span over the, that part of it. So my question to the county is, is your plan, since you're looking at the decking, what goes over top of this in relation to the trail portion that you're working on, are you also intending as part of that environmental work that's necessary for that to look at the options of putting the decking that would hold a passenger train over the top of it as well. And perhaps freight, that's a different, that would be your study, not the one that's being done that we're being asked to approve here. So that's currently not in our scope. In fact, our scope actually excludes the entire trestle. We were envisioning to not study at all. And the discussion today would allow us to, at least include as part of one of our alternatives, the interim trail to be over the trestle with the help of your staff here. So we won't be looking at the details of freight rail or passenger rail. We'll still be looking at the two alternatives that we have for the entire segment 1011, which is rail trail combined or interim trail only. And for the interim trail, if this moves forward today, we would rely heavily on your staff to provide us the information we need to consider the capital trestle as part of the interim trail alternative analysis. That's our plan. Now, Guy, if you see it differently than that, I'd ask for you to clarify our relationship going forward. I'm gonna provide one additional clarification in that. And this has come from our discussions with your staff, is that the interim trail alternative will look at converting back to rail in the future. And so, but really replacing in time. If it's not a new rail study to try to determine an environmentally clear passenger rail, that's beyond the scope of this project. I understand that. But the conversion back, so we're at the same place we are today, that's my understanding that that would be included and that's the ask that I've heard from the community and the commissioners that I think we can accept. Thanks for your response, Matt, I appreciate it. You're welcome. I'm done. I, okay, so just really quickly, I wanna, I have a couple of comments just to clarify what's going in the process here. There is a person in the attendees list with your hand up, Sean. I just wanted to let you know we have completed the public comment portion for this agenda item. And we are now deliberating. So it's back to the commissioners and staff. But if you have comments on the next item and you leave your hand up, we'll, I'll set you up first to comment on the next item. And you can always send us a message via email. Okay, so commissioner Hernandez seems to have disappeared off my screen and I don't see your hand up anymore. So I'll go next to commissioner Bertrand. Commissioner Brown, he's there. He's unmuted. Okay, great. If you go for it. And then commissioner Bertrand and commissioner Johnson, I see you as well. You'll be up next. Sorry about that. You know, I was, I was gonna ask after the clarification if there's still support from the seconder. But my other question is two things. If one, if they can restate the motion concisely and that'll be my first question. And if, you know, it seems like there's still, you know, a lot of clarification that needs to happen. And, you know, I think that we can look at this in time. I think in the next two weeks and we can get additional clarification. But for the meantime, I'd like to see if we can concisely restate the motion. If it's okay with the chair, I'm happy to restate it. If you have the agenda and look on page 19-1, there's just a few words that are being added to the staff recommendation. And the motion would be to approve the staff recommendation with the following changes so that recommendation one would read, proceed with the prioritization of the pre-construction activities needed to rehabilitate the existing timber and rod iron bridges, 15.89B, 15.89C, 15.89D for the trail only light rail and freight rail options by updating the measured B five-year plans. And for recommendation two, it would state work with the County Public Works staff to consider including the debt conversion work for the trail only option in the environmental analysis for the coastal rail trail, segment 10 and 11. Does that clarify it for you, Mr. Commissioner Hernandez? You mute it there for me. And the staff has indicated that that is consistent with what they were sort of meant to do anyway. Yes. Okay, Commissioner Bertrand, you're up next. And then Commissioner Johnson, I gotcha. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Commissioner Schifrin for the clarifying wording. I appreciate that. And I appreciate Guy saying that this is actually what he had been considering to begin with in terms of staff direction after our vote. I also appreciate the exchange with Matt and trying to understand the costs that would, excuse me, in terms of the study, we, well, I guess it's RTC and Matt, but we'd also understand how much it would cost to revert back to rail. And I just want to clarification that would be in the study too. So if we improve this, we would also know if a walking trail was put in place, we would also understand how much it would cost the county RTC to put the rail back. Is that true? Yes, I can answer that. So my understanding of the scope of the project, which by the way, Matt Machado had to run to another meeting, but if we have the ability to, can we upgrade Rob Tidmore to a analyst in case there's specific questions about the scope that he can handle? But my understanding is for the preliminary engineering and environmental analysis of the segment 10 and 11 project, it does include the work you replace the rails back in place to convert it. Yeah. Thank you very much. I mean, many members of the public have mentioned that it's important for us to understand the costs. And so I just want to make sure this was included. I did understand that, but I just wanted to confirmation. Thank you very much. Mr. Tidmore, I see you have your hand up. Did you want to reply directly to this question, this discussion? Yes. I believe Commissioner Bertrand asked specifically if our project be looking at the costs to replace the rail and decking for rail infrastructure if the interim trail option was selected. And I just wanted to clarify that we are looking at the environmental impacts for the purpose of a complete EIR not doing the cost estimate for that work. Well, if I may chair, maybe addressed a guy. I mean, how would we deal with this issue? I think the public would need to know if we're gonna take off the rail and I know that's consideration for a lot of people, how much it would cost to replace that. Maybe this is an item that should be brought up at some time in the future, but it seems to me this is gonna be of concern to many people. Yeah, I stated earlier, I believe we can address that concern. Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Johnson, you. Thank you, chair. So it seemed to me that the response from Guy Preston to Commissioner Schifrin was the things that he wanted were already included and it obviated the need for us to add anything to this motion. So to me, I know Mr. Schifrin was trying to clarify things, but with all due respect, pretty hard to follow all the stuff that you were saying. And I'm always a little bit uncomfortable with kind of just bootstrapping something onto a resolution or a motion when in fact, I don't think it provides more clarity, which I think was the intent, but I'm not seeing that. So chair, is it my understanding then that if we're going to adopt any additions to the motion that we vote on, whether or not that's acceptable to the commission? No, that's the motion in front of us. That is the motion on the floor. A motion has been made with those additions and that is what we're discussing. So we will be voting on that motion, which includes the staff recommendation before us with those additions, whether or not they clarify for you or not. So we want, I heard the term freight at least 50 or 100 times today. And I just can't imagine that people's emails are exploding because people are so concerned and so aggravated that freight is not being used on this line, it's not being considered on this line. And took, I guess to kind of include that in more studies or more clarifications or whatever. To me, it's just kind of astounding. And here we are almost at noon talking about freight. When I think somebody said, there hasn't been freight on that line for two, three years, Progressive Rail with alacrity, along with the assistance really of commissioners here without Progressive Rail and freight was going to be such an outstanding idea. I said it was kind of crazy. Nobody listened to me. We went forward and here we are with Progressive Rail saying we want out freight is kind of a non-issue because there is no freight business. Yet we want to continue to study it and make sure that, hey, we have bridges, we have infrastructure that supports freight. It's crazy. Thank you. Hey, commissioner, when you're up next. Oh, thank you, chairperson. I'll be brief. I just want to echo what commissioner Johnson said. The motion has presented is redundant. I believe Ms. Christensen made it clear that part one of proceeding with the pre-construction did not predetermine any eventual outcome of the utility of the bridge. That's it. Okay, that was your comment. Okay, commissioner Bertrand, back to you. Well, I don't know if we're talking about something that has any difference in its intent, whether it's the first recommendation of staff or the one that was added to by commissioner Schifrin. So at this point, I support dying because he mentioned that this is the intent of staff. If we pass this motion, and I understand what Randy is saying that we've talked a lot about the issue of freight, et cetera, but we haven't had freight for a long time. That's why I asked for a cost-benefit analysis of how much money would we conceivably get for having freight all the way up to Watsonville and back to Santa Cruz? And would that pay for all the work we'd have to do to make everything viable in terms of our crossings and bridges and stuff like that? We just haven't done that. If someone mentioned that, that's the elven in the room. It's never been done. But I think the public, the reason why I support this is I think the public has never been actually informed how much these things would actually cost. The cost to our budget from Measure D that the community passed, it would supersede that by many magnitudes, many orders of magnitude. We could not pay with what we have now in income for Measure D to replace the Capitola Bridge, which it seems like we'd have to do if we're gonna have any kind of freight. It's just impossible. We do not have that budget. We'd have to go out to the public and ask for a new tax levy. In the face of all the other things this county has to do to meet the needs for public service. We do not have, I believe, the willingness of the public to pass such a tax measure. The tax measure was to make what we have now available useful for public use in terms of transportation. And I think that's what the RTC is working for. And I think that's what it will provide. But the public really does need to know how much some of these options will cost if we're gonna actually take advantage of it. And someone mentioned earlier, it has to be a realistic option to replace the Capitola's trestle. And I'm not necessarily saying, I don't wanna do it because I love the trestle. I'm thinking totally in terms of cost. And having been a finance person for a Capitola for a while, I believe that has way beyond the capacity of the electorate in Santa Cruz County. So I don't mind supporting what Andy has put on. And one reason why I don't is because Guy said that this is totally the same. And it's what the staff direction was gonna be after this was passed. So those are my comments. Thank you. Commissioner Rack and you're up next. I just wanna say really quickly, I understand people's strong feelings about this and a desire to provide some explanation about how we're seeing this decision we're making today within the bigger picture. And I just wanna remind us that the question on the floor is related specifically to what next step we're gonna take with respect to the trestle. Commissioner Rotkin. So the concern about freight is not because some of us think there's likely to be freight or we're all excited about how quickly we're gonna get it or willing to spend billions of dollars to get it because we have a legal obligation and the current situation that we're in to consider the maintenance of freight possibilities on this line and should be failed to consider those things. Think about this for a moment. We risk losing this right of way for any of our purposes, a trail, passenger service or anything that we might feel more passionate about. So our concern about freight is not because we're idiots and think that somehow we're gonna have freight there next week. It's because we're concerned about the legal obligation we have as a rail provider under federal law to move ahead on this issue. And so the idea of ignoring freight and pretending like it's, we don't want it or so we're making an absolute statement we're not gonna study it, it's not in our future. It's not, we're not bringing it back. It's not gonna happen. But it's a huge legal risk. And so I think we're trying to be fiscally responsible without the situation that we find ourselves in. And I'll just echo Jock's comment in terms of like the motion that's on the floor. I'm not arguing for or against the overall approach. I'm still rolling around about it and stuff. But I'll just say if you add some language that clarifies something and the staff tells you that it doesn't undermine their intent, you should take it a face value and understand what it takes to get votes to get a majority on something. It's as simple as that. And again, if the staff were to say, no, you add that it's gonna totally undo our intent and we're gonna move in the wrong direction under minus. And yeah, then you wouldn't wanna support additional language but the staff's already made clear that all it does is clarify what they were intending to do anyway, thank you. Commissioner Koenig, your hand was up and I see that it's down. Did you wanna jump in here? And then I'll go to you, Commissioner Schifrin. Thank you, yeah. I wanted to clarify, I mean, the one in reading the Commissioner Schifrin's proposed motion, the only confusion I had a little bit was, it says proceed with the prioritization of the pre-construction activities needed to rehabilitate the existing timber and wrought iron bridges for the trail only light rail and freight rail options. In Ms. Christensen's report, she explained that we gotta rehabilitate the timber for all three options. When it comes to the wrought iron bridges, we've gotta redo the bearings for all three options. For freight, we would have to look at replacing the wrought iron bridge. So I'm assuming that that's not being contemplated that we're adding that, it's just clarification that what staff had proposed before study of replacing the bearings and the timbers that applies to all three options. And we're not contemplating adding additional pre-construction work for replacing the wrought iron bridge entirely. I would agree to that clarification. Okay, thank you. And the seconder? Yeah, that's fine with me. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Schifrin, you're up. Yes, I think I hope we're ready to vote, but I just wanted to clarify why I think it's important to add the language that I added. I think there has been some confusion and given the intensity of feeling around this issue, there will continue to be confusion. The motions represent the commission's formal action. Those go into the record. Things that are said by staff or commissioners are things that are said by staff or commissioners, but they're not the official action of the commission. And I think given the confusion around this issue and the fact that the added language simply clarifies what the staff intended all along, I think that will be helpful in terms of members of the public irrespective of their point of view, understanding what exactly the commission is doing today. So if possible, I would call for the question. Oh, no. I don't think we need to take a vote on that because I do not see any more hands up. So I'll save us the time there and if folks are prepared to vote now, ask for a roll call vote on the motion on the floor. Commissioner Ramirez. I agree. Commissioner Brown. Aye. Commissioner Randy Johnson. No. Commissioner Eduardo Montecino. Yes. Commissioner Alternate Hernandez. Yes. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Quinn. Yes. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Johnson. Yes. Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Pegler. Yes. Commissioner Rodkin. Aye. One no. Okay, that motion passes. Almost unanimously. Okay, thanks everybody. We are gonna move on now to item 20 and this is a staff report on issues related to preservation of the Santa Cruz branch rail line. Madam Chair. Just could I clarify, would help I think if you clarify to the public that we're not intending, at least we're not being asked for action on this item today. Yes. And that might help the public to understand where we're going. And I assume that also, Mr. Preston will clarify as well what he is, why this is in front of us and so forth. Sure. Thank you, Commissioner Rodkin. Yes, this is an informational item. So as I said, staff report and Mr. Preston, I believe you will be giving us that report. That is correct. And Commissioner Rodkin is correct as well. This is an informational item. Only there is no action requested by the commission other than to hear this report and receive public comment. This is a report on the preservation of the Santa Cruz branch rail line. Our current approach to preserving the branch line has to maintain the corridor for heavy freight and recreational passenger rail service while developing a trail adjacent to the freight easement. When financially viable, it has been assumed that RTC would eventually environmentally clear design and construct a light meter passenger rail system that would coexist with heavy freight and recreational rail totaling four potential transportation uses for this very valuable but constrained corridor. RTC negotiated an agreement with our freight operator to maintain the freight easement in exchange for the rights to operate heavy freight and recreational rail. However, RTC is responsible for the 2017 storm damage repairs as well as initial repairs to bridges, culverts and track before providing the operator with the responsibility to assume maintenance and for him also being responsible for recreational rail service. RTC completed work south of mile plus seven outside in the slew area. It's actually about the intersection of Buena Vista and San Andreas Road, but there's still significant work to do on the remainder of the line. Due to the extent of repairs needed on the branch line, staff anticipates the shortfall and funding and this is somewhat answering commissioner for trans questions earlier. The complete all initial repairs RTC may need to consider directing other regional funding to the rail line and or securing grant funds. While it is possible to secure competitive grant funds, not much is available for rail lines that do not have very much great service on them. But we do have some discretionary funding and a call for projects out right now and we can certainly direct more of our discretionary funds away from our other transportation uses and towards freight if that is the desire of the commission. Our freight operator wants out of our agreement with them, which obligates them to provide freight service on a reasonable demand. St. Paul and Pacific and their part of progressive rail claims that they cannot make the operations of freight using the profitably work under the terms of the ACL agreement. They also suggest that the current terms of the ACL agreement do not provide a viable structure for the engagement of passenger rail operator. RTC interviewed several parties that have shown interest in assuming freight rail on the line, but did not find a suitable replacement operator willing to assume the existing ACL agreement. Roaring Camp is currently providing freight service to Watsonville customers under a separate agreement with our contract rate operator, but up until now has not indicated a willingness to fund the maintenance of the full branch line freight easement as required by the existing ACL agreement. We do not have a contract with Roaring Camp, but I'm going to discuss this a little bit more later. So that's our current approach and status. We are still under contract with St. Paul and Pacific for freight and recreational rail, and we are working towards meeting our contractual requirements, including what we did in the last report, while considering alternatives to dealing with an operator who would like to get out of their contractual obligation. This has led to conversations about different approaches to preserving the rail line, and I'll now discuss a couple of those. So this is a discussion now about public-private partnerships and this is based on some proposals that we've received. RTC has received persistent interest by a small hydroelectric streetcar manufacturer called TIGM. TIGM informed RTC that they would like to form a public-private partnership for the right to develop commuter passenger rail on the line between Watsonville and Santa Cruz. That was their initial proposal. Staff has researched the viability of a P3 on the branch line. P3s are built on the concept that private money would help pay for some of the upfront costs. It is assumed that these upfront costs would be paid back over time, with revenue generated on the project. In the case of our branch line or a transit project, revenue can be earned from ticket sales and the four land rights for development. And we concluded that that's not recommended, that we shouldn't, that we don't recommend entering into a P3 arrangement until a project has been properly defined as part of the environmental process. And this is to keep major decisions that are important to the community and the control of local public officials, as opposed to in the hands of a private or profit enterprise. One thing that was clear from the proposal is that additional public funds will be needed, will be needed to make any future consideration of a P3 arrangement work on the branch line. Staff recommends that the commission defer seeking additional interest in a P3 arrangement until a time when passenger rail planning is better defined. TIGM is also the firm that plans to use the branch line for an upcoming demonstration of its rail cars. The demonstration is planned to be from Watsonville to just before the Watsonville Slough, railroad bridge for two days and from the boardwalk to Capitola for three days. So Roaring Camp has now partnered with TIGM to put on the demonstration and is currently inspecting bridges, signals, and track at these two isolated locations and will be responsible for making any additional repairs needed for the demonstration. The license agreement is still under negotiations, the FRA approval is tending and a date for the demonstration has still not been confirmed. Yesterday afternoon, I received a new proposal from TIGM which appears to be a variation of their previous P3 proposal and includes Roaring Camp. I have not had time yet to fully review the proposal but this new proposal is structured different and does not appear to include computer commuter passenger rail. Instead, this unsolicited proposal is to use their vehicles for a new recreational rail service between Capitola and Davenport. So only between Capitola and Davenport would continue freight service using Roaring Camp in Watsonville. Although Roaring Camp appears to be willing to assume responsibility for some routine maintenance, the new proposal states that RTC would be responsible for the cost of any structural damage beyond normal wear and tear on the line. Since there may be public or commission or interest in this proposal, I will ensure a copy is posted on our website. Now, the third part of my report is another strategy to preserving the rail corridor called rail bank. Rail banking allows a freight railroad corridor that would otherwise be abandoned to instead be preserved under federal legislation that was designed to protect the property rights associated with a freight rail corridor. If a line becomes abandoned and the railroad properties consist of easements for rail purposes, the use of those properties will revert back to the underlining property owners under California law. Rail banking prevents easements from reverting back to underlining property owners. Rail banking is separate from any decision to remove the rails and may provide certain benefits to the RTC, both in terms of trail development and also with respect to development of a robust and modern commuter rail service. First, let's talk about why rail banking would make it easier for the RTC to develop any sort of continuous trail on the branch line. Although the majority of the branch line is owned by fee, there are some easements and also gaps in our ownership documentation. There are also parties now have disputed whether we really own certain parcels in fee. As long as we are only operating a railroad, the distinction between fee or easement is not important, but it is a very important if we plan to develop a trail. When a railroad owns easements, the same property rights issues exist, regardless as to whether the trail replaces the rail or is built adjacent to the rail. Underlining landowners of rail easements can claim that rail easements do not include land rights for the purpose of a trail. However, if the corridor is rail bank, a trail can be built either adjacent to or in place of the rail line without the threat of easements reverting back to underlining property owners. Remember, a decision as to where to build the trail is separate from rail banking. Developing potential passenger rail service on the branch line also has compatibility challenges with freight. Active freight lines have special protections. Mutor rail cannot unreasonably interfere with freight service. Great rail standards are designed to support the size and weight of freight trains, which are larger and heavier than light rail cars. Rail banking does not prevent any rail option from proceeding, but will ease restrictions, lower costs and facilitate future operations of any future rail transit on the branch line, especially light rail. Rail banking would also allow the branch line to be repurposed for commuter passenger rail without needing to meet the federal standards for freight as long as the repurposing does not prevent the future potential reactivation of freight rail. And I think that's why so many of you keep asking that we look at that as part of our analysis in the previous staff report and we do plan to do that. Yes. On a day-to-day basis, RTC expends in a significant amount of time and expense coordinating to satisfy freight requirements, including meeting freight rail safety, insurance and operator requirements. Federal freight rail requirements have and will continue to complicate approval and add costs to virtually every operation and development opportunity that RTC considers for the branch line. And I can tell you that progressive rail has become extremely difficult to deal with. I've had to universally approve, laterally approve the crossing agreement at Parade Street and now they're refusing to provide a right to entry to our biologists to do inspections on the storm damage jobs. It is an enormous amount of work to deal with this as a freight railroad. Rail banking designates a trial sponsor who becomes responsible for maintaining and preserving the corridor in a manner that does not preclude a future potential reactivation of freight rail. Rals and ties are permitted to be removed, but could also remain in place. Rail banking is part of the abandonment process. If St. Paul and Pacific files for abandonment, which they indicated they're considering and reserve the right to do at any time, a potential trial sponsor would have 30 days to seek authority to negotiate a rail banking agreement subject to the approval of the STB. The parties would then have an initial one year period to negotiate an agreement. And our agreement with St. Paul requires that they cooperate with efforts to rail bank the corridor in lieu of complete abandonment. Rail banking can be prevented by another freight operator who is willing to assume financial liability of the line by providing and offer a financial assistant to assume the freight easement, the associated commentary or obligations and the maintenance obligation of the line. But due to the significant cost of work needed to restore the freight on the line, a legitimate OFA seems unlikely. Rail banking can also potentially be prevented by objections by freight line customers or the owners of a potential stranded line. The Felton branch line owned by Roaring Camp is part of the national freight rail network and would become stranded from the main line if the branch line were rail bank. The best path to rail banking is to have mutual support of all affected parties, including the freight operator, affected freight customers and the owner of potential stranded lines. Misconceptions about rail banking continue to persist. So I provided a back sheet with FAQs to address some of these issues and that's attached to my staff report. So in summary, staff continues to preserve the branch line, meeting our contractual obligations and we're doing so with a look at freight and recreational passenger railroad in accordance with the ACL agreement. And due to limited funding, staff is prioritizing initial repair projects based on safety and potential damage to property. The rail operator desires to terminate the ACL agreement but they prefer to do so by assigning the ACL agreement to another freight operator with a modified ACL agreement and I talked about that a little earlier. Again, there is no action needed by the commission today. We recommend that you receive this report, immunity input and consider and provide any direction that you may have regarding our approach and options for preserving the rail corridor. That concludes my report. Thank you, Mr. Preston. I am going to now open up for questions from commissioners and I believe that Commissioner Johnson, Jenny Johnson, you had your hand up first and then we'll go to you, Commissioner Bertrand. Thank you, chair. I appreciate it. Mr. Preston, your report says the STP will not refuse to issue a rail banking order based on third party objections about the desirability appropriateness of the proposed use. And when you say third party objections, are you referring to people who are, in other words, roaring camp who's a current short line operator or other kinds of third parties? Did you just explain that a little bit or clarify that a little bit? Yeah, I'm referring to other sorts of third parties. They're really interested in keeping the freight network together. And they serve more of a ministerial role as part of the abandonment and rail banking process. They really are not interested in getting involved in the local debate and they really wouldn't consider that there's a strong desire to rail bank. There's a reason to rail bank because they want to use the rail line as a trail. They also wouldn't consider objections if we've agreed to move forward in this direction from third parties that are interested in commuter rail because that's not what they're looking at protecting. They're looking at protecting freight rail. Thank you. And then could you expound a little bit about if or in camp as a current short line operator were to object to the RTC and abandonment action or some kind of action to rail bank and they were to object to that because they didn't want to be cut off from the system. Could you expound a little bit about what that would look like and what kind of process we would use to try to address that objection or move forward with our, if we wanted to rail bank with the STP, what would that look like? Well, like I said in my staff report, I mean the best way of moving forward would be to get all parties to agree but there are processes to try to force it to happen but they're not recommended. There's not a good crap record of moving forward with adverse abandonment. It's not easy and their objections would be heard and based on a case law, it doesn't appear as if this would be an easy process to do but I wouldn't necessarily say that it would be impossible. They do look at the viability of the line and the cost of the line and the viability of freight on the line and that's all that they're gonna look at and consider now of cost that we have on this line. We certainly could make arguments. It's not to say that those arguments are gonna be well received by the STB when they really wanna keep the freight network together and there's a party that's subjecting to it. Thank you, appreciate it. Commissioner Bertrand. You're muted, John. Thank you very much. So I'm trying to understand what the issues of Roaring Camp are. I understand that sometime in the past they purchased some equipment which they'd like to get up to San Lorenzo Valley and I can understand that that at the time they thought they'd be able to move the equipment. I'm not sure if the line was capable at that time but they would like to be able to do that. So I understand that. So my question, are there other ways to move that equipment short of the amount of money we'd have to spend to get the line up to standard to actually move the equipment? I just don't know if that's a possibility. It seems to me there's other stranded lines. Miles Canyon, I mean that's one I know, Skunk Railroad, well, I don't know Skunk's stranded but I mean, I know of others and they seem to be able to get their equipment. So I was just wondering if there's other means to do that. And you could, you could potentially move locomotive by truck, but it's not cool. It's not regular. I'm sure it's been done before but there's gonna be limitations on overhead clearance under bridges and we talked a lot about load rating on bridges earlier. Load rating on bridges, highway bridges to accommodate the locomotive. Whether it could be taken apart and put back together. I mean, there are possibilities for that. We have not done extensive research in it. It's not our area of expertise. Roaring camp as indicated that they don't think it can be done. So, you know, that's kind of where we stand right now. It's a question mark. You know, I find it a little bit outside of my position to try to figure that out right now. I would need the cooperation of Roaring camp and would be more willing to discuss it with them in further detail. Thank you. I mean, this is beyond my capability but I have to answer that question. It seems hard to believe that, you know, we'd be held responsible to run a line, you know, just on the option that sometimes Roaring camp would need to move something up to their camp. And, you know, hopefully there's other ways to satisfy those needs, maybe with our help. Thank you. Commissioner Rockton, you're up. So, I want to just clarify with Guy Preston. When I look at the staff, I appreciate the staff report. I think it's clear and it's definitely advanced to the public to understand more about rail banking in which there was massive confusion on every side about what it means. I think it's not going to be gone at least we made a good stab here at trying to like make it clear what's going on. But my reading of the report leaves me, I tend to be an optimistic person but it leaves me somewhat pessimistic that we have any real out. I mean, pursuing it, as you said, our number one plan would be to try and pursue an agreement of all the parties and figure out, you know, what is, or maybe there's more than these two local motives that Jacques referred to. There's also the issue of use of the rail line to get to the boardwalk rather than the depot in Bicherry and Santa Cruz, which I think is a huge interest to them. I'm not going to negotiate in public with them right now about what that might be or something, but I have no objection to it. I think it'd be very great to try and see if we can work out a common agreement. But my reading of the report overall suggests pretty pessimistic outlook in which we're all in trouble. The people that want to have a trail, the people that want to have rail service soon rather than later and so forth. If we can't get a rail banking agreement, I mean, the irony here is, let's say we had a unanimous vote of the commission to do trail only on the entire, you know, 20 segments or rail only on the entire 20 segments wouldn't matter. We still wouldn't be able to do it without. And so my question has to do with, do people ever apply for a kind of a pre-reading from the surface transportation board? Or like, you know, how they would perceive, you know, this approach or that approach, or do you have to wait to actually spend millions of dollars to get in front of them and then have them sue you or fight you or not give you the permit and then you're dead? I'm trying to, I'm just trying to, again, I don't think the public is quite aware of the precarious situation that we're in in terms of our ownership or like access to the corridor given this report. And it really makes it sound like the fight that we're having with each other is kind of, I don't want to be overstated, but pretty convenient, you know, it's lots of sound and fury, but I think in the end, perhaps signifying nothing in terms of what we can actually accomplish if we don't get approval of the STB. Do I misunderstand the situation? I don't think you misunderstand the situation at all. I think you understand it extremely well. Unfortunately, I don't think that we would be able to get any sort of pre-reading. I think it would be a very complicated and long process and the STB would want to do that in a public forum with their full board, you know, present and available to discuss these very difficult issues, but we are in a very, very difficult situation. You know, I'm trying to figure out ways and that we can bring things, bring people together because, you know, we are in an untenable situation with this debate. And the one thing that I think people are most frustrated by is they would like to see some sort of utilization of the corridor. And so, you know, if we're stuck in this situation where we pretty much are not able to use the corridor right now, you know, is there a way that we can bring people together and so we can work towards a solution. But I think we need to start doing that so we can find a path out of this, you know? And if that's one of the things that we can agree that we have in common, we'd like to see this important asset start to be used in some sort of way, maybe we can work from that towards the next step of reaching community acceptance and agreement. Thanks. Okay, Commissioner Schifrin. I would, in the interest of time, I would say make a recommendation that we hear from the public and maybe limited to one minute each and then come back to the commission for comments. It's already 12.30 and I know other commissioners also have things that they would like to do this afternoon. Okay, so yes, I was just about to take it out to the public. I see four hands up. If folks could get their hands up if you'd like to speak, I appreciate the recommendation about going to a minute and I know we have been on for quite a while now, but let's start with two. I just see six hands up. So let's start with two, but if that number starts to grow, I may switch to, I may reduce the time. So... Growing. Oh, it's growing. Yes, it is growing. Okay, so how about if we do a minute and a half and just start moving through these? Okay, Jack Brown, you are up. Go for it. Give your staff a minute to get up the new minute and a half. Oh yeah, sorry. That'll take, I was trying to make this quicker, but I was like, you know. Love to see that, oh my gosh. Okay, let's just... Hi, this is Jack Brown, resident of half past. Guy Dresden, I can't thank you enough for putting this memorandum together. It really is the honest reality of where we are today. Rail banking makes sense. We've been saying this for quite a while. Thousands of miles across the country have been opened up thanks to rail banking to take this, basically oversubscribe antique that's out there and put it back to utilization. So, you know, if we can do this, I think it's the best thing to protect the corridor and give us some use out of it right away. I have read through the entire TIGM proposal that was put up before and was just absolutely shocked that, you know, the sponsorship by friends of the rail trail and the ecology action and all their funded nonprofits are looking to privatize the corridor with this sort of type of study. And now to see here, Boring Camp wants to make it a recreational rail line is more disheartening. The TIGM proposals, their little custom built street cars are $4 million a piece and they wanted to put four on. That's the equivalent of 29 electric buses that could utilize existing infrastructure that we have right now. Our solution has to be for all of Santa Cruz County. We're not called the Watsonville Regional Transportation Commission. We need to take everything into consideration. So please take into advice what Guy says here and let's get moving forward. Thank you. Hey, Corinna McFarland, you are up next. And you are on mute, we can't hear you. I got the mute button. Okay. Thank you. Supervisor Kanbuk said 10 years ago, we've secured the corridor. A passenger train has never been feasible on the corridor but that's a fight for another day. Since then our county government has tried like crazy to run a train on it. Three rail operators, three failed contracts, failed tourist trains and failed attempts at freight. No one seems to be able to make money on the corridor. Many millions spent on repairs and maintenance but the rail line is nowhere near ready for a train. Millions more on studies that could not find a way to feasibly run a passenger train. All three rail operators asked for abandonment of the rail line. Meanwhile, the people of the county who own the incredible corridor are barely allowed to use it. Rail banking was suggested when the corridor was purchased, it has indeed been a fight as John Butte's predicted. But I'm here to say there is a third side which is us, the community at large. Let's preserve the rail right of way on our stunning corridor and rail bank now. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Mr. Scott, Barry Scott, you're up. Okay, thanks very much. And I wanna thank the commission for permitting and working with TIGM for this demonstration. We haven't seen anything like this since 1996 when there were three demonstrations. I wanna say that movement of locomotives is impossible due to overhead constraints on the highway. But more than movement of vehicles, this rail line is useful for transit but also in the future potentially disaster response and preparedness where we've seen fire trains and other kinds of uses that would provide redundancy to the highway. We also have to think about MBANG and Caltrans and the regional considerations. Everybody's looking to us to be a part of our regional rail transit future. And that's in our general plan. It's in our regional transportation plans across the region. So let's do that. On rail banking, I wanna point to a 2018 frequently asked question statement that the RTC is unaware of any paved trails that have been converted back to rail once it has been a rail bank. So if we're gonna discuss rail banking, I think we need to make sure that any kind of rail banking we do keeps the tracks in place because we know that opponents to rail transit are going to capitalize on any, even an interim removal of the tracks. I'd like to know solutions-wise, I'd like to know, is it possible to rail bank for transit use, keep the tracks and rail bank the freight easement but also guarantee Roaring Camp the ability for infrequent movement of their rolling stock? Thank you. Thank you. Brian, peoples, you are up next. Yes, hi, this is Brian from Trail Now. Great report. Really appreciate bringing the facts on rail banking. The farmers that we support on the North Coast North Trail now supports any type of train, tourist train up North, but we do support working with Roaring Camp. Roaring Camping is parking their big train currently on the Boardwalk Trestle. I don't know if they have permission to do that. They're parking it on the Boardwalk Trestle. Let's work with them, have them move their onboarding and offboarding operations, what we propose to them to Depot Station. And this will allow our community to remove the tracks in the middle of the roundabout. It will be a win-win for Roaring Camp. They can have a museum, they can have onboarding, offboarding, they can have parking. You really need to provide a carrot of Roaring Camp because that sounds like it's our barrier here. And so we're really asking for the RTC, the city of Santa Cruz and the county to reach out to Roaring Camp and say, hey, we need to get you a better location for your onboarding and offboarding operations, which will allow us to build the world-class Santa Cruz Coastal Trail. Thank you for your time. Hey, Jacob was off with Saki, you are up next. Hi, T, you're my voice. Yes, thank you. Okay, thank you. So I'm a little new to this issue and I became aware of it when one of Manu Karnig's campaign managers or campaign people knocked on my door and was livid that we were spending all this money on this trail. So I've been investigating trying to educate myself as much as possible in advance of this impending vote. And I've been reading decisions by the Surface Transportation Board and I've put some excerpts from some of their decisions in public comments. And I think they're useful for the public to review just so we can form our own decisions. And everything that I've read is completely backed up by this latest report. And so thank you to the staff members for clarifying some of these issues. The phrase that I heard today and that I included in my comments is beyond my capability. And these issues are really complicated. It looks to me, and I'm not a lawyer, it looks to me like abandonment is completely infeasible, but that is up to the lawyers to describe. And I think this is highlights why the public vote is completely inappropriate. After I wrote my comments, I was concerned, am I committing unauthorized practice of law? And there's so many complicated issues here that I think it's beyond the scope of the public's knowledge. So good luck. And I hope that you consider retracting this public vote. Thank you. No arguments here about the complexity. Okay, Mr. Johansson, you're up. Johansson, you're up. Oh, good morning. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yes. So I'm a local attorney representing TIGM on this project. The new concept presented by Mr. Press and mentioned is essentially the excursion service of the original proposal or concept proposal, which goes from Capitol to Davenport. So this would be the type of recreational rail service that's described in phase two of the ACA with progressive. And the proposal includes improving the track ties and other infrastructure station development and other necessary improvements for a world-class excursion service connecting Capitol, Capitol and Santa Cruz to Davenport and the parks and locations in between and it will require zero public contribution. It would allow the track between Capitol and Davenport to be retained along the trail system as the RTC is continuing its planning and would also allow the future expansion of rail service to Watsonville pending further planning and resolution of the infrastructure issues as we discussed, you've discussed today on the Capitol Trestle and also the construction of the adjacent trail system. This submission as part of the agenda comments also includes addresses some of the community comments and misrepresentations that we've heard today about TIGM and its public and its technology and its experience in transporting millions of passengers in the system since 2000. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Johansson. Okay, Ms. Faulkner, you're next. And you're on. Hi, thank you. Thank you, Guy Preston, for that informative presentation that was excellent and there are many of us in the community really excited about this upcoming demo. So thank you for bringing this event to the community. Friends of mine who are members of the elderly and disabled immunity. Sorry, I have a dog that has a ball in his mouth. And South County communers are eager to have a local light rail and excited about this demo. Given all the evidence publicly available, rail banking and building an interim trail seems to render impossible the future of rail along our coastal corridor considering legal and cost considerations. Rail banking should be off the table until an a firm commitment is made that we're guaranteed rail transit can be protected on our line. And part of the issues we've seen that contribute that have held back to getting this rail going in our County have to do with organizations who work behind the scenes to stop that progress. Another issue has to do with general planning and process in our County when for example, it takes decades to create a County park, like for example, Shannon Clear Park that took 27 years from purchase to the grand opening. I'd like to reiterate that many of these costs, analyses and proposals should be happening within the context of the budget analysis which should be approved so we can actively seek funding for rail as well as evaluate other costs of various options that we're looking at today. The TCAA clearly states that rail and trail is the best use of the coastal rail corridor. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Sally Arnold, you're up next. There we go, I had to find the mute button. Yeah, well, I wanna echo some of the things that some other people have said that I'm very pleased that Mr. Preston clarified that rail banking is not the same as tearing out the tracks but it does open up the door to possibly tearing up the tracks. And obviously that's a concern for people who want transit for all the reasons that other people have explained and that's why, as again, other people have mentioned, it's what would the guarantee be that we would have transit or in the future. I'm surprised that the director said that we can't use the corridor without rail banking because we're building the trail next to the tracks now and that seems to be like a very good use of the corridor right now. It's not the full use because we'd like that transit too but we're getting the trail now. So I don't understand why the no use of the corridor that doesn't seem accurate. And I wonder just a question is and could roaring camp move their rolling stock on rail banked tracks if they were not torn up? Thank you. Thank you. We're gonna get through these here but Mr. Preston, if you wanna respond to that for clarification before we move on it might be worth. So yeah, rail banking wouldn't prevent them from moving their freight locomotives on the track. What would prevent it would be the condition of the bridges and the track and the various infrastructure that still needs to be done. Thank you. Okay, Bill, you're up next. Thank you. Can you hear me? Oh, very good. I'm very grateful for Mr. Preston's report and all the hard work from staff. It's so clear, so accurate, completely coincidentally, completely in concert with my own perspective. That's always a plus. I wrote this body, the first paragraph on the website of the service transportation board. It's very clear that anything that occurs in a rail right of way must be done in concert with their dictates. This ought not to be a surprise to anyone. Additionally, many of us warned of entering into a relationship with St. Paul Pacific. They've beat us over the head with the threat of abandonment. This is important. Working, finding a way to work things out with big trees is also a very important abandonment and rail banking for in concert with one another simultaneously, thanks for your time. Thank you. David, Dean, your turn. Yes, I also want to support the TIGM demonstrations. I think that that is a great use of our corridor and really will let people know that the possibility of safe electrical transit can be done. I'd also like to talk about the promise and the intent of rail banking versus the history of rail banking. There have been hundreds of lines, rail banks, roughly a dozen who have applied for return to service. And of those, not a single one has resumed service on those rail lines if the tracks were removed. There are several who have not removed their tracks and at least returned a portion of their rail to service. But I don't think we want to count on a less than 1% chance of retaining our rails and the possibility of future transit service. Thank you. Thank you. Jeanette's, you're next and you are on mute there. Oh, good morning or good afternoon. This is Jeanette. I'm a representative of Rory Camp Railroads. And we did send a detailed letter regarding our comments earlier, but I'd like to stress just a few of the points now. Easements are presented as a key factor that's motivating rail banking. And there are only a few easements in question. Couldn't such rights be acquired in a way that would not trigger the need for rail banking? Does this, I mean, this would really allow both the rail and the trail to exist together, yet no explanation of the significance of this risk is presented. Rail banking would eventually terminate the Santa Cruz big trees in Pacific passenger service to the boardwalk, yet the writeup claims this limited passenger service from the railroad is sufficient enough to prevent the state from seeking repayment of the bond. This approach appears to be in violation of the terms of the bond funding requirements. We'd like to thank you for all the work that you do. And hopefully someday we'll all come together in the meantime, again, we appreciate the opportunity to provide the impacts of rail banking to the Santa Cruz branch line. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Ryan Sarnitaro, you are up next. And I see after that one more person, Sean, you will get your chance to speak. And I'm intending to close off public comment after that. If there's anybody else out there, please do raise your hand. Otherwise we will end after our two speakers from now. Okay, Ryan. Yeah, the director's report said that funding needed to advance commuter rail has not been secured and appears unlikely in the short term. The consultant's report on the Capitol Trestles stated that there are many risks associated with a rail transit project, including funding. Rail banking, removing the tracks that have to be moved anyway, are not what is an impediment to passenger rail service in Santa Cruz. The impediment is money. And the impossibility, or at least that's my opinion, of securing the billion dollars necessary and the tax to construct it and the tax increase necessary to operate it. And people who are for a trail are not opponents to rail transit, or opponents to irresponsible public policy that pursues impossible options because it sounds wonderful. It does sound wonderful. I'd love to get on a train to take a latte and go down to Watsonville. And I'm sure everybody in Watsonville would like to get up to Santa Cruz for a dollar of a trip, but it's just not gonna happen. Anyway, that's what I need to say here is that it would be really nice if the commission, if the staff continues to quantify the impossibility of rail transit at the present time. Thanks. Sean, your turn. A trail only project ignores the needs of the disabled community and specifically the transportation needs. People have been trained since childhood not to stare at disabled people. As a default, we've become invisible to you. I wanna remind you that more than 20 out of 100 Americans lives with a disability, although the disabled community is never invited to the table with other minority groups for the first round of talks. The disabled community needs people movers, safe, reliable transportation for the same reasons you do. A trail only project is exclusionary and would ignore one fifth of your county, a fifth of, that's a fifth of friends, family and neighbors too. We've been taught to respect our elders, thank our veterans, be kind to children and be helpful to disabled people and those with special needs, but how does trail only thank them? You have the choice of thanking and helping your community to think of their future. We'll all be part of this community eventually if we're lucky enough to live that long. But don't look away one more time when you see a disabled person. I'm a guide for blind athletes. They know the disabled athletes I know rely heavily on CalTrain and BART to get to work every day. Adaptive cycling and kayaking. I have friends who are quadriplegics that travel around Santa Cruz independently. So why not Santa Cruz too? I'm disappointed the two commission votes come from former Greenway members. Greenway is pursuing endorsement from a nonprofit that provides outdoor activities for people with disabilities while it works to keep the disabled community disenfranchised from transportation equity. Thank you for your comments. Okay, Faina, you are up and you will be our last speaker. Thank you, Commissioner Brown. I would just like to comment on some of the misinformation that Greenway is spreading and we can see it be repeated back to us by comments such as those made just by Ryan who claims that rail is unfeasible. That's entirely untrue as found by the RTC. Additionally, we can see that we are being measured for funding by our political will. I've had several conversations with federal and state legislators who would be able to get us funding for this project but are unable to do so because we still have not passed the business plan. I'm going to urge you again to please consider that we need action today. We need to start planning for rail now. Any interim solution or rail banking that will block passenger rail service from starting tomorrow is the wrong direction. We have the funding and we are being blocked by Greenway and Budcull again specifically. I urge you not to meet with him as he mostly spouts lies and is a multimillionaire who did not grow up in this county. Thank you so much. Bringing this back around now to the commission and matters of the staff report on these options for preservation of the rail line. I will take any comments. Anything folks wanna say? Again, this is an informational report. I know people want action and various kinds of action that may not necessarily, it may be contradictory but today we are listening and learning and so that's where we'll keep going. Commissioner Schifrin, you are up next. Thank you very much. Let me just first say that I found the staff report and staff presentation very helpful and agree that it provides good information about and agree with the information it provides about the benefits of rail banking. However, I think it's important to understand the reality of our situation and really take that into consideration as we decide what we're gonna do. First, let me ask our attorney a couple of questions again. One is can the RTC rail bank align without approval of the federal STB? So since we don't have the approval of the STB the consequences, we could not now rail bank whether a majority of the commission wanted to rail bank align or not. Is that correct? That is correct, rail banking is a process that's approved as part of the STB process. Okay, and can the STB approve rail banking without abandoning the freight easement? Well, they, so the freight easement stops operating. The rail line is, and I don't mean the physical line but the actual right of way is preserved for future potential rail use through rail banking. But there isn't a freight easement anymore. There would not be a freight easement because in this case the holder would abandon, would place it for abandonment but in lieu of abandonment, it would be rail banked but if you are correct there would not be a holder of freight easement at that point. If there were ever to be a reinstitution of freight service that entity would need a freight easement. A new freight easement. Correct. So based on what we've heard today the likelihood of the STB at this point approving rail banking with the opposition of current user of the line. It sounds like it's a long shot, it's difficult and it may not be successful at all. Is that correct? I agree with the way that Guy has previously characterized it. It would be difficult. It is not impossible but it would be very difficult to get the STB to approve it. Okay, and at this point progressive rail has refused to apply for abandonment. Well, they have, they first said they wanted to abandon and then they withdrew that statement but they reserve their right to abandon at any point without invoking the 90 day notice again. But at this point they have not, they are not willing to abandon. At this point they have not commenced an abandonment process. I wouldn't go so far as to say they're not willing to abandon. Okay, thanks for the clarification. For me, this is a very frustrating issue because I feel that the commission is being asked by a large number of the people to do two mutually contradictory options neither of which the commission is able to do. The supporters of rail want the commission to institute it now. The supporters of trail only want us to institute the trail proposed by Greenway now with rail service. And this is a problem I think that responds to the guy's hope that it would be possible to work something out. The problem is these proposals are mutually exclusive with rail service. The trail only option is impossible. With trail only option, rail service is impossible but the reality is the commission doesn't have the ability to do either. We don't have the financial ability to do rail and we don't have the legal ability to do rail banking which would allow us to rip up the tracks because we can't rip up the tracks or take out the tracks and do a trail only project without rail banking. Whether we're not required to do it and I think that's why rail banking is desirable but given the political antagonisms that exist and the concern about what the commission would do if there was rail banking, it's hard to we haven't been able to reach an agreement where we could get the benefits of rail banking. So I just think it's a very difficult position for the commission to be in. We keep hearing about it. We keep having items on the agenda about it but the fact of the matter is that until the staff is able to work something out with Roaring Camp so that they're willing to remove their objections if that's possible or until the staff is able to identify a funding source that could pay for passenger rail service, we're just inching along unable to satisfy either constituency the way they wanna be satisfied. So again, I just think it's important for the public members of the public to really understand that the reality is we can't institute rail now and we can't institute a trail only on the corridor now whether a majority of the commission wants to do it or not, thank you. Commissioner Schifrin, I will just use my privileges the chair to jump in and say I wholeheartedly agree and thank you for those comments. I think it's really important for the public to hear that and to really listen because that is the precarious, difficult kind of hands tied position that we are in we can only do what we can do now and we're looking at getting some information about things that may happen in the future. So I think it's really important for people to just remember that. So commissioner Bertrand, you are up next. Thank you very much, chair. I appreciate this report for many different reasons but the main reason is that basically informs the public just like Andy and others are gonna be talking and we'll be talking about the difficulty of the situation. It clarifies things that have been in public discourse kind of muddled because of misunderstandings. And so we've sort of pushed the line forward a little bit towards possible solutions. All the different parties are gonna realize that to some degree they're gonna have to give and we're gonna have to reach that at some point otherwise nothing is gonna happen for the citizens and the various stakeholders in this particular issue. So we've advanced it a little bit and I believe that we're gonna be depending on Guy and his staff to negotiate with the major stakeholders progressive roaring camp and come back with proposals to the public that it ain't gonna be easy but I think we've progressed a little bit further towards that possible solution. Thank you very much for this report Guy and staff that helped put it together. Commissioner Quinn. Oh, thank you chair. I wanted to thank Mr. Preston and the team for putting together this excellent and level headed approach. I think many of the speakers have pointed out there's an assortment of permutations and combinations ahead of us none of which we can anticipate or plan for all of them but I think they've given us a common sense and level headed path forward that doesn't reclude us from any of the other options. I applaud that level headed effort. Mr. Hurst. Mr. Hurst. Thank you very much chair and I wanna thank the public today and the staff as well. Dialogue is important and we'll get there through discussion and talking and compromise and negotiation and bringing all the players to the table at some time. But the reality is the fact is throughout the nation that once tracks are removed, then there is no transportation, there is no transport, there is no recreational or there is no commercial travel on those rails. And so the public and the commission need to be careful what they wish for because once the rails are gone, they're not coming back and that's a reality and a fact that exists. There's many competing interests here but everybody really does want the same thing. They want access, they want transportation of one type or another and we certainly wanna see the corridor used to its highest and best interest and I wanna salute the folks who did make that point available. And clearly there's many opinions and some of them are ill-formed and some of them are well-formed but it's a tough go. I appreciate the dialogue and let's don't throw anyone under the train or the bus on this discussion. Thank you. Are you staying on track too? Okay, sorry. I was gonna say or under the electric bike. Okay. We have up next, Commissioner Hernandez. Your turn. Thank you. I wanna, first I wanna thank staff for the presentation today. I know this is an informational item but I just have a hard time supporting going backwards and supporting rail banking. I don't think that we should limit in any way shape or form or inhibit or eliminate the rail line use from roaring cam or its potential customers, future potential customers especially for the potential use of future light rail, passenger rail. You know, I don't think there's been very many cases of rail banking ever coming back and so, you know, for those reasons I just have a hard time supporting this and wrapping my head around it. So it's wanted to share my opinion. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Rockin. I just wanna thank Guy and the staff for excellent reports. They were really helpful and I think we had a very rational conversation here. We might, none of us be totally happy with the outcome given the constraints that we're facing, but it made it possible to have that kind of a conversation. And I particularly wanna thank Sandy for a superb job of sharing a very difficult meeting. Fine job, thank you. Commissioner Koenig, last words. Thank you, Chair. You know, I just wanted to make sure we clarified something because it seems that some of my fellow commissioners don't understand why we're talking about rail banking this way. So Director Preston, isn't it true that the smart train right now is facing a lawsuit precisely because they chose to build a rail and trail plan without rail banking? My understanding as there has been a suit filed by property owners, underlining property owners of easements on the smart line where they've built a trail. Yes. Thank you. So is it safe to say that our rail and trail plan here in this county is in jeopardy if we do not rail bank? Perceptions of the line where ownership could be an easement, we would have to do additional work to secure additional rights. That could be fairly easy if we have willing sellers, or not willing sellers, it could be a lot more challenging. So portions of lines could have serious complications but other portions could continue as planned. Right, so there could be significantly greater risks to a rail and trail plan if we don't rail bank. For the continuous line, yes. Okay, thank you. Well, thank you again for this report today. I appreciate it as well. And I was sort of taking no action, but a great report. Okay, Commissioner Schifrin. Yes, I wanted to follow up on the last comment. We've heard a number of times about the potential of easements and not even having fee ownership, but it's never really been clear how extensive that is. And I think it would be as, we've solved that problem on the North Coast. I don't know how serious it is. It doesn't seem to be a serious problem in the city of Santa Cruz. It looks like it could be a problem and is a potential problem in the unincorporated area, but we don't have any specifics. And I think given the potential of lawsuits, I would like to ask that we have a closed session item and maybe a couple of months that would provide information to the commission about how many parcels are we really talking about? Is this, does it really put the project in jeopardy? Does it represent a very significant potential cost or is it a minor problem? I don't have any sense of that. When the commission bought the line, we thought, I believe I thought at the time that we had the right staff a trail on it. It appears that for some of them, some portion that may not be the case, but I'd like to know more specifics about it. So I would ask that the staff kind of researched this and provide the commission a report, since it includes its potentials of litigation, I think it needs to be talked about in closed session. Thank you, Commissioner Schifrin. That does sound like a good idea. I feel like we've heard little bits about it and we don't know necessarily what that scope and scale looks like. So does that seem like something that we could get on our agenda for a closed session? At some point in a few meetings down the road here, Mr. Mattis and Preston, I'd ask you guys, if that's what we get a report on that. We could arrange a closed session and provide a report based on the analysis that's been done to date on the fee versus easement ownership issues along the right way. Thanks, I think that would help clarify. We're getting into that area of making statements about the risk and without really knowing what that entails. So thank you for that. Commissioner Rockin. Just want to lower everybody's expectations that when we get to that closed session, we're going to find out the answer to that question because this stuff is buried in the past. You never really know until you have a lawsuit. Even if you get a report back that tells you, we think this, this, and this, the reality is you never find out until you're in court what the reality is of those options. So again, I'm not arguing we shouldn't do it. I think it's great to find that out. The more we can find out about it, the better to lower your expectations. It's going to still be murky when we're all done. Yes, a very good point to remember. The more you learn, the less you know sometimes. But I think it would be worth getting that report. So thank you. I want to thank everybody for being here today. Thank you for hanging in there for a pretty long meeting. And I really want to thank our staff for, you know, we, we are, we've heard comments today from commissioners suggesting that we are, you know, a bit of a difficult situation here in terms of the decisions we can make, what we have control over, et cetera. And, you know, I also want to highlight the fact, and I know Mr. Preston, you have said this and you raised it implicitly today that we are in somewhat of a hurry up and wait, you know, or a wait and hurry up situation, I guess. So we do need to be ready to make a decision if we get to a place where others have made a decision about abandonment, right? So it's important that we kind of keep going through this educational process and discussion. We don't have to repeat the same discussion over and over, but we do want to keep, keep abreast. And, you know, I know that you're all in a difficult position too with staff trying to navigate how to make things work. And so just really appreciate all of your support in our decision making. Commissioner Rockin. Just really quick. I also want to call out Sarah Christensen for her presentation and a superb job of explaining delay people and technical engineering issues. That is not easy to do. And I think you did a great job of it. Thanks. Absolutely. It definitely made me feel like I have a little better sense of what I'm saying when I'm saying, talking about these things and what it actually looks like and what it means from an engineering perspective, structural perspective. Okay. With that, I believe that we, we do not have closed session today. And so that means that we have concluded our meeting. Thank you all so much. You should announce the last meeting. Next meeting is your last meeting. Oh, I'm so sorry. Next meeting is the first Tuesday in October. I believe that's the third. And we may or may not be in the County Board of Supervisors chambers. That is currently the plan. Stay tuned. Thanks. October 7th. Thank you. October 7th. Thank you. Bye everybody. Stay safe. Bye.