 transportation commission and call the meeting to order and can we have a roll call vote or a roll call for attendance? Thanks. Commissioner Bertrand. Commissioner Brown. Here. Commissioner Randy Johnson hit star nine to unmute Commissioner Johnson. He'll be on the phone today. I see he's on. Commissioner Montesino. Here. Commissioner Caput. Here. It's Felipe Hernandez. I'm sorry. Here it's Felipe Hernandez. Oh okay. Commission alternate Schifrin. Here. Commission alternate Quinn. Here. Commissioner Koenig. Here. Commissioner McPherson. Here. Commissioner Peterson. Here. Commissioner Calantari Johnson. Here. And Commissioner Rockin. So you do have a quorum. I apologize. My internet sound just cut out for a moment. So are you we've established a quorum and taken the attendance? Yes. Okay. So next up is oral communications. This is an opportunity for the public to comment on items that are not on today's agenda and we'll have folks come up and speak for two minutes. And I see five hands up. It looks like it's any do you want me to call on them or will you go ahead and do that? I can do that for you. Mr. Garrett. Good morning. This is Brett Garrett here to suggest that we need a better transit solution between Santa Cruz and Watsonville. I'm not promoting a train or greenway or definitely not suggesting more highway lanes. We need an efficient transit system that provides convenient ride serving locations such as downtown Santa Cruz and UCSC and hospitals and a large portion of Watsonville. Personal rapid transit is a better solution that deserves your attention. It can serve key locations because it is not restricted to the rail corridor. This technology could work anywhere. It solves problems and it could help solve the climate crisis. PRT is the most efficient transit in every sense of the word efficient. Efficient use of a passenger's time because you show up at a station and just go direct to your destination with very little waiting. 24-7 it could be efficient use of infrastructure and space because it can transport a large number of people in the space of a bike lane. Efficient use of money which can include both public and private financing because this is a kind of system that could actually generate a return on investment. And it's efficient use of energy because the vehicle is kind of like a golf cart, electric golf cart moving at a moderate space pace and it can be powered by its own solar panels. PRT is coming soon to nearby Contra Costa County where a company called Glideways is working with four cities and the local bus agency to build a 28-mile system that will serve several BART stations. Have you seen the massive parking structures at a BART station? If this system can serve BART, it can serve Santa Cruz County including high-traffic destinations such as UCSC. Even closer to home, the San Mateo County Transit District is considering automated vehicle transit for the Dunbarton corridor crossing the bay and the Spartan Superway Group at San Jose State University is designing a prototype system and they could get something built here probably faster than a train could be implemented. So please keep your eyes open and find a good transit solution to connect Santa Cruz and Watsonville and hospitals and UCSC. We need modern solutions not more freeway lanes. Thank you. Before I call on the next person, Melissa, can we make sure we put up the timer please? The next person will be Mr. Kerry Pico. Do you have the presentation up please? Thank you. Thank you. Rail banking will save the county over $400 million. Next slide please. The county doesn't own two-thirds of the rail corridor between the Boardwalk and Watsonville. The railroad is allowed to use railroad easements. That's why it can go through. But 4 million, 58,000 plus feet are not owned by the county on the rail corridor between the Boardwalk and Watsonville. This comes from your 2008-2006 appraisal report. Next slide, please. The trail, no matter what, violates a railroad easement with or without track. Quote, building a public trail on a railroad easement constitutes a new unauthorized use. And then I put in, regardless of tracks remain, what it really said was abandoned or not and things like that. And who pays and what happens is the courts have ruled that trail owners pay landmark value. Next slide. How much and who pays? At $100 a square foot, and I just priced it out along the rail corridor. It's about $100 a square foot. There's 4 million square feet. That comes to $405,881,100 that somebody's going to pay when somebody sues for taking their land. If rail banks, the U.S. government pays. If not, the county pays the $400 million plus attorney fees, I should amount of tracks or no tracks. That's all I really want to say, but I really want to say there is a difference between rail banking and a trail with rail. Thank you. Mr. Brian Peoples. Hi, this is Brian Peoples with Trail Now. First of all, I want to thank Cary for continuing to drive the technical elements of our community. We don't know how lucky we are to have Cary Kinko as an advocate for our community. What I would do want to point out here is we think that we have a conflict of interest with the Ecology Action participating in the Interagency Technical Advisory Committee due to the fact that this committee recommends funding projects that are awarded actually to Ecology Action. They're the only private organization on this committee which has all public agency. Ecology Action receives funding and there's a major conflict of interest. We've requested Ecology Action remove themselves from this committee, but they refuse. And actually, we believe that a violation occurred in May where there was an allocation plan to allocate 100% of public funds and the committee voted not to allocate 100% because nonprofits were not going to get an opportunity. The Santa Cruz Public Works Director had recommended that 100% be allocated so that they can move forward with projects that need to be take place. But the committee said, no, we want to give money to the nonprofits. And Ecology Action was initiating that discussion and they voted on it. So there's a clear violation of conflict of interest. And we're asking that the RTC Commission take action to remove Ecology Action. Ecology Action does great work. We're not arguing, but they should not be on this committee. And we're hopeful that we do that because we don't need to waste our time. We don't need to waste RCC staff on this date. So appreciate your time. And thank you very much. Hey, next speaker. Okay, this is Ben Vernazza. And I'm talking again about you can fly, which means you can fix aircraft mechanics or you can find avionics and look at the this month's issue of avionics. The program is going to start in 2022. And at all Santa Cruz County High Schools, including charter schools, it's going to start at Pajaro Valley High School. It's a one one day a week for one hour after school, sometimes two times a week. And then every Saturday once a month, those that are interested in the fly will go to the airport. Fix will go to the airport another Saturday. And those that want to be in avionics a third. I would imagine that we're going to we're talking about the next couple of years 50 to 100 students coming on a Saturday. And most of them will probably want a bike from Watsonville. And that's why we need the coastal trail. You know, I used to bike to a mid county to the airport and go flying and then come home. It's too dangerous now for me to bicycle to fly as the safest thing in the world for me to do. Anyway, we might also need temporary help from Metro to help from San Lorenzo Valley plus Scotts Valley. I can tell you that I can see the future as Watsonville Airport being a major aviation training center. Which means the traffic is going to start going the other way, not the Santa Cruz. It's from Santa Cruz. So we need a coastal trail. The way to do that, rail back. Thank you. Senior, can you pull up my slides, please? And you say you're muted yourself. I will go ahead and pull up yours. Go ahead, Mr. Otto. Great. So I'm assuming everyone can hear me. Okay. Yes. Great. Thank you. Keith Otto County resident. Good morning. So at the June meeting, one commissioner asked about the status of the demonstration train discussion followed. The topic is rather odd as there's absolutely no serious momentum for implementing passenger train service in Santa Cruz County at this time or in the foreseeable future. Next slide, please. When the idea of a demo train was promoted back in 2019, its purpose was to help inform the then upcoming decision on the transit corridor alternatives analysis. Well, that decision has been made. And the follow on business plan and related decision to proceed with passenger train service was voted down. A disturbing part of the discussion last month was that another commissioner described the demonstration train as no cost. But there is a cost. First, there's an opportunity cost. If staff and the director are working on this project, they're not working on other higher priority projects. But beyond all of that, let's remember that we're spending $60,000 to upgrade the tracks for this demo train. So yes, they're very much is a cost. Now, some want to train in a demo train too. So who knows, maybe this demo train does go forward. But let's at least be honest with ourselves and the public and let's not label this demo train as no cost. Thank you. Mr. Matt Machado. Thank you. Good morning, Chair and commissioners. Matt Machado, Deputy CAO and Director of Public Works for the County of Santa Cruz. I want to share with the commission this morning the importance of maintaining critical existing infrastructure for our community. Our county has hundreds of miles of roadways that are in poor condition, but yet are expected to serve the motoring public and non-motorized public. These critical corridors need basic maintenance and striping to ensure safe travel. This is of high importance to our bikes and pedestrians who depend upon these routes. The type of roads that I'm speaking about are roads such as Soquel San Jose Road, San Andreas Road, Alba Road, Jamison Creek Road and Hollahan Road. There really is no substitute for these roads. We must invest in them. Most state and federal funding is programmed through your commission intended for our local agencies to maintain and improve our transportation system. I'm hopeful that working with your commission and staff, we can fund and maintain these corridors for the safety of our community. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. Mr. Berry Scott. Yeah, thank you. First, I'd like to welcome Dr. Quinn to the commission. You're my representative and in district two, I live in Aptos. I want to thank Matt for mentioning infrastructure repair and I want to thank the RTC for all of the significant work I see being done and being funded on the on the branch line. The rail line is, as you know, an active part of the national state and national infrastructure and while parts of it are out of service, it's a vital and essential piece of not just county but regional, regional infrastructure. With Caltran, you know, we may be at a 6-6 tie on the commission right now with moving forward, but everybody else around us is moving forward with rail transit. The Caltrans, if you've seen the state rail plan, page 14, it calls for a 20-fold increase in the mode share for passenger rail between now and 2040, 20 times. And we just need to, you know, keep in mind our, I think, our responsibility to think of, to realize that we're a part of a regional program. I was on the, I attend the TAMC Transportation Agency of Monterey County rail policy committee meetings and they are, are just so saddened that Santa Cruz is on the fence. Contrary to what people have been saying, we haven't voted, you all haven't voted no to rail. You simply are at an impasse. And I think the more we look at the information we have out there, the more we'll realize that we, we should move forward with the business plan to find out more information than we have now to Mr. Keith Otto's comments about the county spending money on this demonstration trade. That, that money was already spent. That was for upgrades that were done and it's all done. As far as I know, there is no new money being spent to bring this demonstration to town. And I thank the RTC for any assistance that you are providing in, in permitting that to happen. And again, just thanks everyone for all the hard work you do. Mr. Van Brink. Ah, good morning. Hi, I'm David Van Brink. As you know, the 501c4 Organization Greenway is intending to place a citizen ballot initiative on a future Santa Cruz County vote. Like their measure, Alex, they can feel good and enlarge the advisory with the only actionable elements being certain prohibitions on progress. I think it would be valuable for the public to hear the various commissioners' interpretation and analysis of this and, well, how you would recommend each citizen to vote. I should amend that slightly. Obviously, two members of your esteemed commission are pretty clear on their position. But for the remaining 10 commissioners who are doing their real jobs, I do think it would be useful to hear your take and guidance on the Greenway ballot measure, which eliminates real transit from our general plan at some appropriate juncture. It would be much appreciated. Thank you. Do not see any other hands up. Commissioner Brown. All right, thank you. So I just wanted to give you all an update. My internet connectivity is going in and out. So if I disappear, I apologize. But for the moment, I will ask if there are any additions or deletions to the agenda. Thank you, Chair Brown. There are no additions or deletions. However, there is a replacement page for item 10 and handout staff reports for items 11 and 25. All right. Thank you. So we'll now move on to our consent agenda that consists of items 4 through 23 on today's agenda. Do any commissioners want to pull an item or ask questions about any of the items on our consent agenda? Chair? Yes? Just a quick question on item 16 fiscal year 21-22 budget and work program. I notice that there's 1.1 million being moved up funds to the city of Santa Cruz for the Monterey based scenic sanctuary trail. I'm just curious if that was for segment B or segment 9 or something else? All right. Question is that Mr. Preston? Luis, do you have the answer on the exact use of the 1.1 million? I don't immediately. From what I recall it was for the city of Santa Cruz to to use projects that they're working on and potentially to match grants that they might receive and certainly project 7, you know, segment 7 is one of the projects that they are working on. I believe it is for segment 7 phase 2 and that money needed to be moved up since they did receive the grant for that funding and this is the match associated with it. Rachel Morricone has raised her hand. Let me get her on here. Rachel? It takes a second for the unmute to come up. Just to clarify that funding was utilized for segment 7 phase 1 which was completed. It's carryover funds and we just received the invoice from the city of Santa Cruz so that will be paid out in the next few weeks. Rhonda, thank you. Right. Thank you. Any other questions from commissioners? Hey, seeing none, we'll take it out to the public. If anyone has comments on any of the items on our consent agenda, that's item. Mr. Brian Peoples? This meeting is being recorded. Yeah, hi. This is Brian from Trail Now. I want to point out and highlight that we're spending a lot of our tax dollars on maintenance of the Santa Cruz coastal corridor as it sits there for a decade now as being unused. That's a very, very important resource for our community and the organization, when you're spending this type of money on a corridor, transportation corridor like that, the expectation would be is that you would have a plan to open it in a reasonable and a cost-effective manner. The other thing is I want to look at, I guess, 23. I'll stop there. But just in general, please start to realize that you're spending, I know you realize that you're spending a lot of money maintaining this piece of property. You are a property owner and we need to open the corridor and we can't keep debating it. Thank you for your time. I'll move the consent agenda. Second. All right. So we have a motion and a second to move this consent agenda. Can we have a roll call vote, please? Commissioner Bertrand? I agree. Commissioner Brown? I. Commissioner Randy Johnson? You have to hit star nine, Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Montesino? Yes. Commissioner Alternate Hernandez? I. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin? I. Commissioner Alternate Quinn? Yes. Commissioner Koenig? I. Commissioner McPherson? I. Commissioner Peterson? I. Commissioner Rotkin? I. And Commissioner Alternate Colin Tarey-Johnson? I. That's unanimous. Okay. That passes with a unanimous vote. We will now move on to our regular agenda. Item 24, commissioner reports. Anybody on the commission have something you'd like to report to the group? Okay. Seeing none, we will move on to the director's report. Thank you. Chair Brown, commissioners. Can I interrupt you for a second? I think Commissioner Johnson is having an issue. So I'm going to. Commissioner Johnson, did you have a question? Maybe he raised his hand to both. Okay. Sorry about that. Go ahead. Once again, thank you, Chair Brown, commissioners and members of the public. I have a statement on the Greenway Initiative. On July 21st, Santa Cruz County Greenway published its notice to circulate petition and the county council's title and summary for an initiative to change the county's general plan and local coastal plan. The proposed initiative seeks to amend certain sections of the circulation element to remove certain rail planning and insert planning for an interim trail or Greenway on the Santa Cruz Ranch rail line. They have apparently begun the process of collecting signatures to place the initiative on the June 2022 ballot. RTC is a special district independent of the county. RTC purchased the branch line in 2012. There's actively trail projects on the rail line. We recently also commend certain studies that will consider both an interim trail and a trail adjacent to the rail on various rail trail segments. As the regional planning agency staff has reviewed the initiative and believes it is RTC's best interest to focus our efforts on the delivery of our authorized trail projects. As always, we will continue to provide the commission and public with information needed to make decisions moving forward. I have an announcement on RTC's consolidated call for projects. RTC has issued a call for applications for the RTC's anticipated regional shares of new state and federal funds including STIP, RSTP exchange, PIP, and CRISA funds. Those are special funds for response to coronavirus. Applications are due to the RTC on October 5th, 2021. Approximately $11 million is available for programming through this consolidated call for projects. This bring Caltrans and the Federal Highway Administration informed regions that regions cannot distribute funds by formula such as by population or mode projects should be prioritized on how well they advance federal, state, and regional goals, targets, and performance metrics. The ITAC provided input on the programming process, schedule, and evaluation criteria at its 2021 meeting. These are funds like Matt Machado mentioned that the county might seek for projects such as those significant roadway routes he mentioned earlier. I also have an announcement on the Measure D five-year plans for regional projects. Measure D requires the RTC and local agencies to prepare an annually update five-year plan showing how they plan to spend measure D funds in the near future. Staff will be presenting draft Measure D five-year plans for regional investment categories to the committees at its meeting this month with final plans scheduled to be reviewed by the RTC board in either September or October in coordination with our fall budget amendment. I also have an announcement regarding the Federal Reauthorization and Infrastructure Plan. The Senate is currently meeting and considering amendments and potentially hold a vote today, but likely later from what I hear on the passage of a $1 trillion infrastructure policy package, which would include reauthorization of the Federal Transportation Act for roads, bridges, highways, ports, airports, rail, and transit transportation programs. This is a moving target. Things are changing on the hour. The staff would continue to monitor the infrastructure policy package and conform the commission as the legislation moves forward. I wanted to call your attention to a couple items that were recently approved on consent. Two items for the last two storm damage sites by 7. We received your authorization to move forward with construction contracts. These are the last two sites from those storm damage jobs and include work on the north coast, as well as the chain link fence on the bridge over Highway 1. I wish this could have been done before Alternate Commissioner Patrick Melter moved on to North Carolina. But I believe that the community at large will be happy to see this eyesore removed. Sorry it's taken so long, but I'm glad to announce that we will be moving forward with that. As you may have heard, Chair Gonzalez has taken some family medical leave. Please provide your thoughts and prayers to Aurelio and his family during these challenging times. Aurelio and I have spoken and he plans to return to his post as soon as possible. Thank you, Sandy Brown, for stepping in as our Chair and Aurelio's absence. We'd also like to welcome three new Alternate Commissioners. Alternate Commissioner Shepard Collin-Harrie Johnson is here representing Santa Cruz Metro for Churganzales. Alternate Commissioner Rob Quinn is here representing County District 2 for Commissioner Friend. And Alternate Commissioner Felipe Fernandez is representing a great cabinet on today's meeting. That concludes my report. Thank you, Mr. Preston. Does anybody have any questions for Mr. Preston? Commissioner Koenig, I see your hand up and then Commissioner Bertrand. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director Preston, for their great report. I fully agree that with the Greenway Initiative out there collecting signatures, the best thing for this organization to do is stay focused on the projects before us. I do think that the organization also has an important role in dispelling misinformation. It's done a good job of that in the past. Again, I want to express my thanks for the statement regarding future rail transit planning, which dispelled or countered misunderstandings in the community. It was extremely helpful. And I think we would be helpful to do something very similar with addressing rail banking in the future. We heard a couple of the public speakers today talk about rail banking. Mr. Kerry Pico talked about a figure of around $400 million of potential liability for the organization. I'm not sure if that number is particularly correct, but I do think that there's some merit there. And just want to ask a couple of questions, which is my understanding is that Sonoma County and SMART didn't rail bank and that now about 50 property owners are suing SMART and Sonoma County. If we were to rail bank, wouldn't the federal government have assumed liability in, or if they were to rail bank, wouldn't the federal government have assumed reliability in that case? Yes, that is my understanding. Okay, thanks. And so whether the rail trail or Greenway plan or something else is implemented, ultimately, wouldn't we be better off as a county if we were to rail bank the corridor? That's, I think, subject to interpretation. Certainly, we would not be subject to lawsuits from underlining property owners regarding easements. That would significantly decrease our legal liability regarding building the travel configuration on the rail line. Got it. Thank you. And again, it was really helpful to put out that statement in the past regarding future rail transit planning. And it'd be great to do something, you know, a very simple document addressing rail banking in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Koenig. I believe Commissioner Bertrand, you had a question. Yes, Chair. Actually, a comment. And this is a question, I guess, in a way, in a comment also. I was at the ITAC meeting where membership issues came up. And there was quite a bit of discussion about who should be on the ITAC and conflict of interest issues were brought up. And I believe someone in the public did bring it up recently in comments earlier. So I'd like, if Guy Preston could address that at some point and let us know, is the membership actually the proper components representing the public? And is there any issues of conflict of interest that you can see? And if you could address that, maybe at the next meeting, take some time to go through. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Bertrand. So we'll probably get that answer, an answer for you and get it to you. So I do see... I had it as I was saying. Oh, sorry. Commissioner Rock, and I see your hand is up. I just wanted to say, I don't know what the resolution of the issue on conflict of interest is. And I won't opine on that. So people are not left with an impression that something is going to miss here. Let me point out that everybody in the ITAC has at least the appearance of exactly the same conflict. Everybody on the ITAC are agencies who receive funding from this from RTC. So we'll see what the legal opinion is on this question, but why one of the members of the ITAC should be attacked for that and not misunderstand the nature of that committee and how it operates as a advisory body to the RTC. Let's just suspend our judgment to re-hear a response at some point more formally to that question. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Rockin, for that clarification. I see hand up, Mr. Peoples. I see you have your hand up, and we generally don't take questions from the public for these items. Listen, Brian, I think we did make comments on the director's report, and I'll be sure if you don't mind. So Trail, now we support the ballot measure. Having said that, it's unfortunate that we have to do this. Really, I think I'm hopeful that this agency can lead the way. I think they have the technical capability. I know the staff has the capability to do it, and I'm hopeful that we continue to move forward with rail banking and do that. But honestly, it's a little concerning. The language in the code, the planning, was put there when George Dondaro was trying to justify the millions he got from the state, and that's why he did it. When we hear Matt Machado come on here asking for money, asking for money, asking for funds to fix our roads, we know we're broken. And when we continue to argue and spend money on this railroad, it's wrong. And so I just want to point that out, and I appreciate the work staff is doing, and I'm very impressed by the work they're doing. You've got some smart people on staff. Let them do it. Let's stop being the politicians, and that's our recommendation. So I appreciate the time. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. Do we have any other comments from the public and or commissioners? Any other hands up in the public? A thank you, Ms. Parra. Okay, so we will move on then to the CalTrans report, and I see Mr. Eads, you are here. Take it away. Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the board. Scott Eads again here representing Tim Govins today. I've got a couple of statewide items I want to talk about, and then a little bit more on local projects. So first, I wanted to announce the draft ITSP or Interregional Transportation Strategic Plan was released this week. It's a headquarters-led planning effort that focuses on interregional routes and interregional travel. There's 11 strategic interregional corridors that are called out in the plan. Unfortunately, Santa Cruz is not identified anywhere on that list. Route 1 and Route 17 are identified as segments in the interregional road system, but not as strategic and regional corridors. So just wanted to highlight that. There's some workshops scheduled on the plan. It's in draft form, so comments are being accepted until the 10th of September. The workshops are on August 12th, August 24th, and August 26th. There's details, and the plan can be found on the headquarters website. And if anybody has a problem looking for that, let me know and I'll send the link. Second thing I wanted to talk about was a very big initiative that Caltrans is engaged in now related to the new state budget. It's called Clean California. And as a point of reference, last year in 2020, Caltrans removed 267,000 cubic yards of trash. That's enough to fill 18,000 garbage trucks. This is occurring every year. It's a systemic problem. And so that's what this is about in terms of Clean California. It's an attempt to not only make an even bigger dent in cleaning up trash that accumulates on our roadways, but also to try to create a culture change through education and some local beautification projects. So it's a $1 billion initiative. It is focused on removing litter, creating jobs, and beautifying California. There's several subcategories to the overall initiative. One is a big focus on litter abatement. Caltrans District 5 is hiring two 10-person crews stationed in the northern and southern parts of our district. One is in Salinas and the other is in Santa Maria. And these folks will be specific to trash removal and cleaning up. And that's over a three-year period. And just a side note on that, we're attempting to or the plan through Clean California is to quadruple the amount of trash removal over the next three years. So enough to fill 81,000 garbage trucks. And then there's also state beautification projects on the state highway system. And then there'll be a local beautification project program. And it'll be a grant-focused program with applications. Caltrans local assistance is working on developing the application process. We expect to have the grants application call for projects in about six months. And then the awards will be about three months after that. So we're attempting to move that along quickly. They're having to come up with criteria and application process and the like. And I will say that they're also looking for matching funds. So be aware of that and be ready for that. That the goal is to stretch these dollars and be able to address both the local street system as well as the state highway system. And then there's a public education component as well. Let's see here. There's a fact sheet in your packet on Clean California for more information. And also we'll highlight that that separate the funds from that are coming out of the general fund, the state general fund. It is not diminishing the amount that we have available for state highways and bridges or local roads since it's a different funding source. And then finally I wanted to highlight three projects that are included in your Caltrans project update in your packet. The first is the 10 in your packet and that's Santa Cruz Route 9 South drainage and erosion control improvements. This project includes culver replacements. It's slightly north of the Glen Arbor Road. And it's expected to be completed by December 2021 and it will require some overnight closures. Second one is Project 14 and that's the Route 9 retaining wall project. It's near Boulder Creek. It's about 1.1 mile south of the 236-9 junction. And then we will have traffic signals operating 24-7 at that location. They're now in place and they're providing one-way traffic control. It's expected to be complete by the end of 2023. Sorry, June 2023. So mid 2023. And then the last project is some good news. The bids came in for the Highway 17 life crossing project near Laurel Road. This is Project 15 in your packet. And the low bid was Granite Rock at and then with the state furnished material supplemental work continuities and the like. It came in at six points just under 6.2 million. We had a reservation jointly through all the different funding sources of 7 million held to cover that. So that's under the cost. So we're feeling all very good about that. And just want to highlight, this is a project that there's a combination of funds from the RTC as well as the Land Trust to Santa Cruz and then Caltrans contributed to CHOP funds. So the capital cost again are under 7 million. Caltrans contributed just over 5 million in support costs. That includes construction support. We're expecting to approve the contract at the end of September and begin construction in December. And we're also looking forward to coordinating with RTC and the Land Trust on a groundbreaking event and some press release. Happy to take any questions. Right. Thank you, Mr. Eads. So questions or comments from commissioners? I believe Commissioner McPherson, you had your hand up first. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Eads. On the inter regional corridor, as you said, nothing in Santa Cruz County. What is the nearest connection point to Santa Cruz County that some improvements are going to be made in this program? I would assume it's probably Highway 101. Yes. Mr. McPherson through the chair, Commissioner McPherson. Yeah. So 101 is a big, is an inter regional corridor, of course. And then 156 and 152, the east west, going into the Central Valley is another inter regional strategic corridor. But the, and then south of us is 46 is the other big east west corridor and District 5. But the primary one throughout District 5 is the north south rather 101. Very good. Thank you. And I'll just maybe also highlight that the plan sets the stage for programming of the ITIP funds, which are controlled by Caltrans and focused on inter regional routes. It does not program anything and identifies recommendations for types of improvements, but the actual, and it also will, it also includes proposed criteria for selection of the ITIP projects, but it doesn't go as far as to actually recommend funding for projects. Thank you. Hey, Commissioner Schifrin. Thank you. I just wanted to thank Caltrans for their work on the Highway 17 underpass project. This is, it's been a long time coming, but it's a very complex project that required, I think, a real commitment from Caltrans as well as the other funders to make it happen. And it was, there may be other projects like this in the state, but it was a pretty unique project when it was first discussed. And I appreciate my express appreciation for Caltrans for hanging in there for leading the way and hopefully in the near future completing that project. I think it's an important and worthwhile project. Thanks. Commissioner Rock, can I see your hand? Yes. First of all, I just, I second Andy's comments on the wildlife underpass. I think all of us will be supportive of that project. And it's really great that it's going to get done. I had a question for Scott about the first item, which is also, was commented on by Bruce McPherson. Is it the meeting that's coming up, where you say it's in a draft form and there's still time for comment on it? Is it realistic to think that we could go to this meeting or send information that might, in any, I mean, is it completely out of the possibility that Highway 1 should be considered a one of these regional corridors on some level? It seems to me like a lot of the traffic on Highway 1 is through traffic going from north to south to south to north and not from our local community. Or is this really money that's be for a larger Highway, like Highway 101? And we shouldn't waste our time trying to like comment on it. Could you give me some idea of, you know, how realistic it would be for us to try and tap into this process? Commissioner Rocking through the chair, I'll say that the district advocates for Santa Cruz 17, especially in Santa Cruz 1 as well, when this cycle comes around for updating this plan. The plan has historically always focused on these large inter-regional corridors that really carry a significant amount of goods movement and freight. And so it just, the criteria that they're using has just not ever put either one of those routes up on the forefront because you're competing against some really significant corridors that move a lot of goods and they're thinking about goods movement to other states. I will also say that it is a multimodal focus. So it's, even though they're focusing on high-rate corridors broadly, it also is considering rail movements, even bike-ped movement on a regional basis, and then even aviation. So it's pretty broadly focused. But again, the criteria just hasn't really hit the mark in terms of Santa Cruz 17 and 9. I'm sorry, Santa Cruz 17 and 1. But you certainly can continue to make sure the headquarters hears your thoughts and concerns. And so there's an opportunity to comment. It's in draft form. It certainly doesn't hurt to submit comments, is my perspective. It seems to me we might consider all of these to staff. But if nothing else, if it's multimodal, no bicycle rider goes down one, at least if there are any, they're crazy, goes down one-on-one. The bicycle riders, the recreational bicycles, bicycle riders going across down the state and stuff are riding on Highway 1 and they're coming down the Santa Cruz. So it's at least worthy of consideration if not this year and in future years to at least push a little bit on this question and see if there are not some money available for improvements of a variety of kinds. I see that Mr. Preston has his hand up. I suspect he has some insights here as well, your thoughts. Yeah, I just wanted to reassure Commissioner Rockin that staff has been pushing very hard in going to all of these meetings and supporting that 1 and 17 be added. I was fortunate up in Sonoma to work on Highway 101 and the ITIP funding is extremely important for inter-regional routes, especially Highway 17 because it stretches between two different regions, the Bay Area and the Monterey Bay Region. Those are the routes that often get neglected and it's hard to find the funding to put on there. We have to talk to Santa Clara County to try to figure out how best to make improvements on that route. The most likely thing that can be done on Highway 17 is access control, try to make that route a lot more safe. I had this issue in Sonoma. We had the Marin Sonoma Narrows between Marin and Sonoma County and neither agency SCTA or TAM could generate the funding to make the improvements there. So the ITIP funds were extremely important and what you see on Highway 17 is people moving between regions. And so when the state is trying to be strategic and address these concerns and the local agencies can't do so, it makes the ITIP extremely important and I'm going to continue to advocate for both Highway 1 and Highway 17 to be added to the strategic plan. Thanks, that response to my concern. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Preston. Mr. Mendez, it looks like you may want to weigh in here as well. Certainly, thank you, Chair. I do want to say that quite a few years ago, Caltrans actually did programs on funds to Highway 17 for potential truck climbing lane from the ITIP program. So certainly Caltrans does advocate for projects in Santa Cruz County and I know 17 is certainly a priority and that project was determined to not be feasible at that point in time. But as Director Preston mentioned, certainly perhaps something that will help with the access management on Highway 17 would be helpful. But also, I do have a question for Mr. Eads. Since the ITSP is multimodal, does it also include strategic routes for other modes of transportation, not just highway modes or how are the other modes of transportation included in the program? I'll respond to that, Madam Chair. If you look in the plan, they definitely highlight rail corridors. Again, they'll highlight a highway, but then they'll show bands around the highway, recognizing that in some cases you have the main highway, typically a freeway, but then there's a local road system that is critical to the movement as well. Again, it can be a broader definition in terms of the types of movements, but if you're talking about freight and interregional travel, primarily it's on the highway or the rail line. And so again, oftentimes you have a highway with like 101, for instance, we have parallel railways in most of that. So that would encompass the railways as well and the freight movement associated with the railways and passenger movement as well. Bikeways are characterized mostly in terms of if the interregional travels, some of these highways have traditionally divided communities or caused problems in terms of access for bicycles and pedestrians. And so there's a recognition of that in the plan and the goal to rectify that with projects. And then more broadly with bikeway movement, interreginally, it's pretty, it's limited. And I don't think that that's the focus of the funding in terms of ITIP. We're probably not going to see like regional bikeways funded through the ITIP. But that's speculation on my part, not to say that they couldn't in combination with other stuff. So hopefully that answers your question. Council Member Hurst, I see you're here with your hand up. Go ahead. Thank you very much. I was really glad to hear the Caltrans report and the focus on rail and avionics aviation as well. Watsonville Airport is a critical hub for a lot of transit. And we know that we're under the control of Caltrans avionics in many ways. And so we appreciate that recognition and cooperation. Same way with the rail. Hamsy is doing great things in Monterey County just across the river in Pajaro. There's another wonderful opportunity for us as well. I'm really glad to also hear the cleanup efforts along state highways. Watsonville has bisected by Highway 152 and 129. All critical links and regional and what I would call strategic transit providers and infrastructure. So anything we can do to clean up those state highways, particularly where they run through urbanized areas is much appreciated. And I want to thank Mr. Ides for his report. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hurst. I'll add my appreciation for that initiative. I think that those of us who do have urban areas where the highway comes through the town have really, really tried to manage the challenges that we have with waste on the highways and certainly around encampments. So really appreciate the investment and the support that Caltrans is going to provide. I see that. Any other questions from or comments from commissioners? I don't see hands up. So take it out to the public. I see Mr. Bernaza, you have a comment. Yes, I do. I'm looking at the June release by Caltrans about sustainable transportation projects. And it says that Caltrans will award 35 million in state and federal funds to cities, counties, tribes, and transit agencies throughout California today to improve the state's transportation network. The grant money will be used to plan sustainable transportation projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve state highway systems, enhance access to safe walkways and bikeways, and increase natural disaster preparedness. Now there's three of those that could apply to a coastal trail. So my question is, if we rail back, rail bank, and start investigating a temporary coastal trail, can we expect to get some help from Caltrans? Thank you. Happy to respond to that, Madam Chair, if you'd like. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. So the sustainable grant notification I believe was related specifically to the transportation planning grants. And those were, that's a statewide grant effort managed in District 5 for District 5 submittals. District 5 received 13 applications, five were awarded. And several of those actually I could have highlighted earlier relate to Santa Cruz. One is the AMBAG updated their travel demand model. And then a Santa Cruz regional VMT mitigation program was awarded also for nearly 400,000. So that's, and that's through the county of Santa Cruz. And then SBCAG submitted something that is for the all of District 5, and that's the Central Coast Zero Mission Vehicle Strategy. So it's a focus on zero mission vehicle charging infrastructure and planning for that. And then Santa Cruz Metro transit districts received funding for a Watson Santa Cruz intercity transit speed and reliability study for nearly 300,000. And then TAMC was rewarded a safe routes to school planning grant for nearly 700, 650,000 or around 650,000. So those are all the focus of these are planning grants to identify and study needs. And then not necessarily not typically funding projects, but studies that will lead to identification and prioritization for projects. And then subsequent, you know, that then you would look to other funding sources to ultimately projects for hopefully that answers question. Well, I would assume that if we start looking at a temporary coastal trail, that that's planning. So would that be something that Caltrans would look at? It's a competitive grant program and the criteria are identified. The submittals are evaluated against that criteria. And so there was a bunch that were 169, for instance, 169 applicants were submitted statewide 59 were awarded. So every grant cycle, it depends on what the competition is and how it fits the criteria. So I can't guarantee that it would be depends on how it's packaged and how competitive it is. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Eads. We have another member of the public, Fort Zoom host. All right, Fort Zoom host, you are up. Good morning. This is Faina Siegel. I apologize for the wrong name there. I just wanted to make a comment on all of those great sustainability funds and the way the state is reallocating transportation funding seems to me like we may be underestimated. The amount of sustainable zero emission transport we could get out of our rail corridor, the amount that you save by putting electric rail on that line of GHG emissions is actually pretty large and much larger than any trees that might have to be removed to add a trail to that plan. And although I love the trail, I have to point out it's not transportation and we don't have to remove any trees to use our rail line. Thanks so much. All right. Thank you, Ms. Siegel. Nobody else? Okay. So we'll move on then to project updates from the city of Scotts Valley. I believe Athena Chung is going to give that report. I can. Is that work? Yes, we see it. Okay, cool. So hello, everybody. My name is Athena. I'm with the city of Scotts Valley Public Works and I have a few updates on what you've been doing. So first off, we have, we recently completed the blue bonnet sidewalk. We've been missing a little chunk of sidewalk there for some time. We finally got it filled this last year. And now there's sidewalks that go up and down both sides of the street, which is convenient for middle schoolers that like to walk there and all the residents there that walk. And we've also done slightly less recently a year or two ago, we widened and resurfaced Glenwood Drive from K Street, which is the parking lot by the high school up to the city limits. Here's a before and after, basically restriped, widened, added a dedicated bike lane on the northbound side going up. And there's also been an addition of a bike lane on the southbound side where the road widens out a little bit by the Glenwood Preserve. And we've restriped the crosswalks and added a little bit of green treatment closer towards the high school. We've recently completed our active transportation plan earlier this year. It was approved by city council in March. And it's a guiding document to help us improve walking and biking in Scotts Valley. And we have a couple of upcoming projects. One of them is whispering pines. There's a lot of root issues up there. We have some and we'll be adding shadows. And it's a little, it looks small on the map here, but it's actually not insignificant amount of root work up there. And we also have Bean Creek. It's in poor shape. It'll be done in two phases. Phase one is from Blue Bonnet Lane to Redwood Way. And it's scheduled tentatively for 2022, we think. And it'll be a complete road rehab. You can see some kind of, not, not in great shape. You don't want to drive with that. And we have, we'll be restriping, resourcing and adding shadows. And we have Janice Way is also on the docket sometime in the future. We'll be repaving it from El Pueblo to the end of the street at the cul-sac. And that's it for Scotts Valley project updates. Any questions? Thank you, Ms. Chung. I see Commissioner Rockin has a hand up. I just have a quick comment. I really want to appreciate the work that's being done on the bicycle paths and the improvement of even being Creek where it's not a bicycle path per se, but as a person who rides a bicycle up there recreationally and stuff, it's a beautiful bicycle, you know, places to ride your bike up there. And it'd be nice to have them a little safer than they've been. And I appreciate the money that's been put by the city and to making those safer for not just for your own residents, but for other people throughout the county. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner McPherson. Yeah, I just want to second their comments by Commissioner Rockin. And just thank again, these projects are being mostly done because of Measure D. And to thank the voters, don't forget, without that, we probably wouldn't be doing these things. So I appreciate that very much. But thank Scotts Valley for moving ahead with some alternative transportation models that are going to be very much used by the people of Scotts Valley and about like Mr. Rodkin. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Anybody else from the commission want to make a comment or ask a question? Okay, hearing none, we'll take it out to the public. If there are any comments or questions for Miss Chung about Scotts Valley projects. Don't see any hands up, Commissioner Brown. Okay, thank you. Then we will move along. We are now on agenda item. All right, just lost my spot for a moment. Agenda item 27, no 28. We are on to this. This item refers to adoption of plans and specifications and engineer estimates for the phase one Manresa coastal erosion repair project. And we will have a report from Sarah Christensen on this. Thank you, Chair Brown. I'm Sarah Christensen of your staff. The item today has two resolutions, one to adopt the plan specifications and details for this infrastructure repair project, the phase one Manresa coastal erosion repair. We also have a request to authorize an amendment with the designer rail pros to provide design services during construction of this project. So just an introduction, we own the RTC owns the branch line 32 miles from Watsonville to Santa Cruz to Davenport, excuse me. There's a Measure D program that's 8% of Measure D that funds the preservation of the branch line for future transportation use. So for this project, staff observed some coastal erosion back at the end of 2019 as part of one of the preventative maintenance inspections that we perform regularly along the line. We heard an on-call engineering consultant rail pros to prepare the plans, specifications and details for this project so that we can put it out for bid and get this repair completed. Originally this project included three walls, but we ended up taking a phased approach and the reason for that is because of the significant cost. It was about $2 million to do the whole project and so what we are doing now is our approach is to address the most critical erosion along this bluff and we're continuing to develop the remaining repairs as and goes on as funding for construction will be available. So the proposed amendment to the rail pros contract is to provide design services during construction. It's important to keep your designer on under contract during construction in case there's design related issues that come up. Then the other ask is the adoption of the plans and specs for the repair. That's actually required for all capital projects that have a value in engineers estimate greater than $200,000 per the RTC procurement policy and the engineers estimate for this project is $320,600. And just a quick moment I'd like to take you guys on a tour in Google Earth if that's possible. We're going to see if this works. I'm going to share my screen. Okay, can I get some thumbs up if you guys could see my screen? Awesome. Okay, so just to orient you guys to the location up at the top of the screen. Can you give me a thumbs up if you could see the white hand? Okay, cool. We see it. Great, thank you. At the top of the screen you could see Highway 1, obviously regional route that we're all familiar with. This is the San Andreas interchange and so San Andreas Road takes you down all the way to Manresa State Beach. So just zooming in here the branch line is the general alignment is shown by that big bold blue line just to show you where our branch line goes. The line goes over San Andreas Road. We have a bridge that goes over San Andreas and then it continues north and kind of hugs this bluff, the coastal bluff right here right along Manresa State Beach and then another notable investment that we've made in the future. This is the location of the La Selva Trestle. This was the major investment that was made by the commission just after we purchased the branch line and that was completed in I believe 2015. So just to give you an idea of the investment that have already been made in this area. So here's the you know Manresa parking lot and the branch line. The location of the Phase 1 coastal erosion is right where the cursor is here. I'm just going to zoom on in here and you could see it in Google Earth. There's this kind of ravine that's been carved out into the cliff and this has been caused by a combination of poor drainage as well as pedestrian foot traffic actually. So the project will repair this bluff area right at this immediate critical location. It's also going to regrade the ditch on the inland side to fix the drainage essentially and so this will really be a good project to preserve this coastal bluff and then the pedestrian foot traffic. It really reaps havoc on our infrastructure out here so what I've actually observed when I'm in the field is is folks mainly surfers will park in this neighborhood up here and they'll run down this private driveway and they'll just you know they beeline for the waves. The shortest route possible and they'll walk down the cliff. There's coastal access just to the south as well as to the north of this area but they typically just take the you know the the most direct path whether it's you know legal or or not. So that's really been challenging for us here along this bluff and this area I wanted to highlight because we have a few other projects underway that are being developed and I mentioned the future phases of this coastal erosion. The original project included a replacement of this retaining wall here. You could see it it's it's not in great shape it's failing but it's not yet critical like it is here at the phase one project so we are going to phase this coastal erosion repair to to move forward when when construction funding is is more available. One other thing that we observed while we were out developing this original project is that there are many drainage facilities along the branch line over the 32 miles there's something like 100 cross culverts and one of those cross culverts so it's basically a drainage pipe that goes under the rail line. This pipe here we observed a failure of this pipe so this you could see the end of the pipe here where the you know the the water comes out of the end of the pipe and then there's a drainage inlet or a great carrier you could barely see it in google but essentially this whole neighborhood is draining into this cross culvert and then the water wants to make its way to the Pacific Ocean and so that's how it gets there. Now the problem with this area is that we have a collapsed culvert and if we let it remain in its current state it could it could become you know a major washout or a critical issue for us and so we're trying to take a proactive approach to get this going. I have a procurement that's active right now to select a new on-call engineering consultant that we are planning to bring to the commission in September for approval and that intent of that contract will be you know first priority will be to prepare the plans and specs for this specific repair. So just wanted to give you guys an update this is a an area of the line it's it's beautiful great views but it's it's obviously having some infrastructure challenges out there so with that I am available to answer whatever questions that you have and I'm going to stop sharing my screen. Thank you Ms. Christensen that was a very helpful update. I see folks raising their hands I believe that Mr. Quinn, Commissioner Quinn you have a question and then we'll go with Commissioner Rockin. Thank you Madam Chair this is my first question on the commission so I hope it's a good one. I'm extremely familiar with that area of the trail I love to walk on it despite the fact it's not designed for walking and my question is a technical one when we give the engineers and the teams direction to make repairs such as these are we doing it in the framework of a train as future use as a trail as future use or both and the reason I ask is that some of the design we do will will fail in the future if we don't give the appropriate direction for instance that bridge over the Salva Creek is a beautiful bridge it is not safe for pedestrians I know it's not designed for pedestrians but there are pedestrians on it all the time the area where there's erosion is an area that if we don't plan for pedestrians we will continue to have erosion problems surfers will walk down the trail determine where the best wave is and make the way down the shore so if we don't give our engineers good designs instructions that they get go we will end up with products that aren't commensurate with the use that the public will take. Thank you Commissioner alternate Quinn welcome I I'd like to remind you that this is an active freight line this is an active freight railroad and for that reason we have the engineering standards of such we you know obviously recognizing that there are future plans for multi-use trail as well we have incorporated that into the design parameters for this project so did that answer your question it's really it's really a heavy load that we're designing for it's heavy freight locomotives and any use besides that whether it's a multi-use trail or or light rail will be much lighter than that and so this is really considered a pretty permanent long-term coastal erosion repair and that's been our approach out here definitely want to preserve this coastline this bluff you know our line is really supposed to be for future transportation use and we we want to have a long life of whatever facility that we're building out there so we've we've taken that into consideration definitely I appreciate that answer I think more specifically if we ignore the fact that there's going to be pedestrians on that trail legally or otherwise we're opening ourselves to future further pedestrian erosion trails down to the beach agreed guy do you want to add something yeah we we are um aware that if if we don't do anything about the pedestrian use it is going to continue um since we are building a wall there the wall itself will have a fencing on top of it to prevent anyone from falling off we're looking at extending that fencing as much as possible and providing direction to the nearest coastal access to try to come prevent the ongoing problem. Appreciate it. Thank you I see Commissioner Ratkin. So my comments follow Roberts I this wouldn't be the first time that people would do things that are not only not good for the environment or other people but for even for themselves and the guys and comments sort of addressed part of what I was going to ask about it so there'll be a fence along there that would at least not make it easy that doesn't mean that people won't climb over it as they do in West Cliff and other places but it seems to me that we need to do something to stop that traffic down that hillside is is there I mean I look the other alternative and I'm trying to be sensitive to this if it's the way a lot of people are getting somewhere is a stairs possible or something other kind of we thought about those kinds of issues I don't know again this does this has little to do with the fight about whether it should be a trail or a train or whatever but really about how you deal with people you know creating erosion by walking down a hillside they should not be walking down in their own in terms of their own safety and everybody else's as well as the millions of dollars it costs to fix the problem once they create it so that's a question really about the staff about to what extent we're looking at is there an alternative way to encourage people to go another way or to build a stairs right there if it's part of the project I don't know what would possibly I've been there it's a beautiful place to walk it says steep place I don't know how you could build stairs down it but people are walking down the hillside now so it's you know maybe feasible I don't know that's a yeah we go ahead Sarah well um the part of the project as Guy mentioned was to um include some signage to direct folks to the appropriate access there is access down to the beach both north and south of this area and so that's our plan for now we don't recommend building stairs at this time because it would in a way encourage pedestrians to essentially trespass on the property which is federally regulated railroad and I you know just off my opinion is if we're you know building a trail at this location that trail project could very well provide the the access that that would be more formal and more appropriate at that time but at this time we don't really want to encourage people to trespass we observe it we don't necessarily enforce it at this time because it's out of service in this location so that's that's kind of why we have the plans in the way that they are right now we're proposing a low cost solution which is fencing that's going to require some maintenance over time and you know a longer term investment may be warranted here to provide a more direct access but um that's for future projects to evaluate and develop I don't know how effective would be we might consider some educational work with various surfing organizations to let people know what the consequences of what they're doing is I don't know how effective will be but it's worth an attempt and to suggest that there's again reason this is not just like oh we'll be a nasty and blocking people's way somewhere we're trying to protect a coast that you know it's going to cause problems for them as well as everybody else that collapses again and I like that line Commissioner Rodkin we thought about how best to provide signage and you know and it's done in an educational sort of way you know please help prevent coastal erosion use designated access points with you know direction to where those are community policing is really the best way of you know trying to convince people that you know this is an important resource for the county and we don't want to you know lose it because somebody doesn't want to you know walk a few hundred feet down the line to do an appropriate access point so we'll do that and if there are groups that we can reach out to we will do so as well we really do want to preserve the rail line and continue to have it for future generations. Thank you in response to my concerns. Hey I see Commissioner Bertrand and then Commissioner Quinn you're up next for the follow-up. Commissioner Bertrand you're on mute. Well thank you chair miss a question for Sarah of course are the neighbors concerned at all and you know the issue brought up is that they're going down a driveway which is private property have you involved the neighbors at all and maybe their concerns and how they've viewed the issue thank you. Sure the gentleman who's driveway that is we've been in contact with him he's actually very very supportive of this project he is you know his home is the last building or facility I guess on the coastal side of the railroad corridor and the bluffs have kind of over time eroded and you know it's pretty fascinating his we've had long conversations about this area because you know this home has been in his family for you know 100 years or so and you know it's just it's continuing to erode and it's going to continue to be a problem and we've talked to him about fencing and he's very supportive of that and he thinks that that's really the only real solution at this time to preserve the the bluff so he's he's very much in support of this project praying from the same challenges that we are and he's done quite a bit to his own property to deter you know pedestrians and surfers and whatnot to go to the formal access there is formal access in this area it's just people don't always you know follow the rules so he's taken his own measures to discourage um folks from eroding his bluff and he suggested that we do the same so um he's been really supportive thank you sir sure um commissioner quinn yeah not not to over script it but a number of the surfing organizations have weighed in on the various aspects of this this would be a nice place to collaborate with the surf rider foundation and their shore protection initiative so i think getting a sign from them might be more effective than getting a sign from us good suggestion arvin thank you yeah that's a great suggestion i think that it certainly will be um better understood or or consider contemplated if it came from the surfing community um so great idea thank you uh i see that we have two attendees who are waiting to speak on this item uh and brian peoples you are up hey thanks this brian from trail now first of all i want to recognize sarah's work she's been doing phenomenal work very lucky to have her engineering experiences so appreciate that so whatever i say sarah don't take personal anyways um great illustration it really illustrates what we've been arguing that you're basically designing and spending money on a freight on higher requirements for this corridor and your freight operator has already given you notice that he's abandoned because there is no freight so you're going off spending millions on sustaining this corridor and you don't even have a freight operation you're you're saying so it's it's kind of frustrating it's dysfunctional it'd be a dysfunctional organization when you're doing that kind of strategic approach um and then when you look at the the visual you know it's right next to the pacific ocean there's no chance that you would meet the requirement the state sea level rising requirements or any type of train going through here the state would levy a huge requirements on you our community could never afford it so it's very frustrating that you're putting out engineering requirements to sustain heavy load requirements when you don't have heavy load and what that does is it pulls resources away and again i'll bring up matt chato coming here begging for more money matt's doing great work matt does great work for the county so when you do heavy engineering and all these requirements and you you're basically band-aiding this so and then finally um yeah the the surfers are going down that section of the blood remaining you can't have them go down the rail it's against the law so anyways that's my two cents over okay i am gonna take it back to uh commissioner rodkin and then mr auto i'll i'll call on you next just a brief comment to point out to brian and others that if you rail bank this corridor you're required to maintain the infrastructure for the future possibility of rail freight rail and so even if you hate rail and don't want to have ever have freight everyone on this or do anything else even a greenway proposal says that we should rail bank this and rail banking requires preservation of the infrastructure so you'd have to build this for freight standard even if you throw away the train and never plan for a train as long as the idea is and don't want to buy it as as greenway has been pointing out um and i assume brian's organization trail now as well that's not a choice that we have and people should be aware of that thank you thank you commissioner rodkin uh okay uh mr auto you are up yeah can you hear me now yes great thanks um thank you sarah for the information on the report um excellent um graphics there with uh google earth very um creative and effective way to communicate what's what's happening there on the la selva bluffs just a couple comments questions just to kind of clarify and confirm so there's the the project at hand is that one section just north of that uh driveway and that's what's in scope um and the project that is being pursued and then the other items the kind of link the area north of that where the wall is deteriorating but not as bad as the one section that's a future project and then the culvert the drainage that is also a future project and on those two future projects kind of the timing and funding and all of that is um is not known is there at least a thought or a guideline on timing or priority or urgency around those other projects and thanks again for uh for your help here hey um well we'll go ahead since we're doing doing pretty well on time uh miss christensen if you have uh response to that go ahead please sure um as i mentioned um the strategy out here is really to address the most critical um areas first so um are addressing this um phase one while kind of on the the southern end of the area that i showed first um and we actually just found out about this culvert um as we were developing the project we were out in the field um having a field walk with the designer when we saw um essentially a sinkhole on the inland side of the tracks that um is a sign of of uh culvert collapsing and so that culvert collapse repair it's essentially replacing the culvert that is at the top of the list in terms of um of priority at this point and um we procured on-call consultants for engineering and construction management back in 2018 and it was a three-year list and now we're re-upping our on-call and so we'll have a brand new consultant um designer um to recommend a contract for in september and as i mentioned in my presentation we'll be getting them going immediately on this repair in hopes that we could get an expedited um plan set packaged together and get this going in 2022 construction so that's that's kind of the plan right now and the the wall uh remaining wall we're going to monitor and um continue to um check it every time we're out there and make sure it's not failing and and if it appears to be more critical um then we'll get that going again we have about a 60 design on the remaining walls and so we would just have to pick that up off the shelf and um get it from 60 to final and then um advertise for construction bid so um more to come where we'll be coming back to the commission uh quite a bit to um for the various actions needed to repair the infrastructure out there so um hopefully that answered the question sufficiently thank you i see uh that um sally arnold i believe it has your hand raised go for it thank you hi sally arnold and um i just want to um thank miss christian christensen for planning you know all the work that going into planning to preserve this precious resource and i sure hope we get the rest of the money to complete the rest of the project so those parts don't also become critical um and i appreciate uh commissioner rotkins clarification about um the need to uh always uh plan the infrastructure for the uh freight capabilities and i'm hoping that uh whether you know those sometimes this gets drawn as if it is rail or trail and nobody is suggesting that there's people who only want trail and there's people who want rail and trail and whether you are trail only or or want both kinds of transportation available i hope we can all agree to support that this the important projects that are involved in preserving the right of way because we all want to use this right of way we just happen to disagree sometimes on the best way to use it so i hope we can all uh get behind uh the work that uh miss christensen and the rest of the staff are doing here to preserve uh what is really a precious resource for our community and this is a particularly tricky spot and thank you for your work on it you okay uh i don't see any more members of the public who are waiting all right we'll bring i move the resolution second i can there's two resolutions i believe actually yeah so you're moving around i'm moving both i'm moving both resolutions andy shifrin seconded the motion to approve the staff recommendation thank you commissioner shifrin all right commissioner Bertrand hi great real quick i see i see that um um commissioner caput has his hand up did you want to say something before we take a vote mr caput you're on you're on mute mr caput you're on mute we can hear you i was giving second the motion because uh maybe that's on this thank you how to move fast here to a second all right um so we'll uh take a vote uh on this item commissioner Bertrand i agree commissioner brown hi commissioner johnson hi commissioner montecino yes commission uh commissioner caput hi commission alternate shifrin hi commission alternate quinn yes commissioner conic hi mr mcpherson hi commissioner peterson hi mr rotkin hi and commission alternate kevin tarry johnson hi that's unanimous that item houses unanimously uh and we will move on now to item 29 uh we have a um the request to add two positions at entry level junior transportation engineer and assistant transportation engineer these are two full-time equivalent position permanent positions within the agency and we have a report from mr preston on this thank you chair brown and commissioners and thank you sir for the wonderful preamble for my report today requesting um additional engineering assistance um staff recommends that the rtc approved resolution authorizing the addition of uh new job descriptions for an entry-level junior transportation engineer position and an assistant transportation engineer position and then addition of two fde permanent positions within the expanded transportation engineering series updates to rtc salary schedule and an amendment uh to the fiscal year 21 22 budget i'm a little background um the rtc completed an organizational assessment in february of this year which indicated that rtc is under staff that present for achieving uh several functions essential functions excuse me including the rail line maintenance and contract management um the organizational assessment identified an immediate need for rtc to add engineering staff to oversee rail line maintenance and to address resources uh for other capital projects um ownership of the branch uh rail line warrants full-time dedicated staff uh to serve the various needs the rtc uses consultant support when specialist expertise is needed or when a specific project workload uh demands a short-term need which requires oversight management by rtc staff uh the organizational assessment identified challenges rtc has faced with using consultants related to scoping process skills or lack of time invested by rtc staff in the consulting uh effort we actually have to manage these contracts and and provide them clear direction on what we want them to do uh since preservation and maintenance of the santa cruz branch rail line is a long-term need of the rtc regardless of its use uh staff recommends adding full-time equivalent positions to staff its needs rather than using the services of consultants doing so will result in improved performance from due to resources being local and dedicated to the needs of the branch rail line uh dedicated staff will result in more timely responses to inquiries by the community and local jurisdictions regarding issues along the corridor rtc needs additional staff dedicated to managing the various consultants under the uh contract to support the engineering construction and capital project delivery needs uh dedicated in-house staff staff will be more effective at developing and implementing a capital improvement strategy staff recommends adding two fte positions within the engineering series to address this problem while reducing the workload of the engineering project management consultant over time the proposed uh engineering fte's will address a number of challenges in clearing clearing contract management oversight of construction by others preventative maintenance so staff recommends making changes to the engineering class to add two new classifications doing so will provide a class with continuous sequential positions from entry level through the senior level uh we recommend uh budgeting to um fte's um to uh to address the challenges described previously and reducing the work of our project management consultant uh since the engineering market is impacted staff plans on advertising the two positions uh within the class not designating exactly which two we will hire which will provide the maximum flexibility and selecting the best candidates for the anticipated work based on the quality and experience of the applicants the proposed two fte positions will require updates to the fiscal year 21 22 budget and will result in more cost-effective approach to serving the needs of branch line um some additional uh background regarding the oa we've been um management's been working really closely with staff and the coalition of rtc employees to ensure that there's a universal understanding of the need and any effect on existing employees including the roles that they are currently serving within the agency rtc staff and management um have committed to submitting revisions to the job descriptions for the positions within the transportation planner series at an upcoming rtc meeting to better align with the work currently being performed by planners so in summary staff recommends adding two fte positions within the engineering series to better meet the needs of the rtc um with that i'll hand it back over to you chair brown thank you mr preston uh i see uh commissioner johnson has his hand up thank you chair so um i would i was just wondering you know you mentioned the fact that these are dedicated to the rail trail line if you will corridor um is it possible that they could also you know we just heard from the the county that the needs of roads and maintenance and so forth are very pervasive i'm hopeful that at least this person can either work on things aside from that um the corridor just just to help out or if they can will their efforts free up time um and efforts uh from other engineers save for sarah christensen and others um guy so we were very broad with the job description although we identified the need primarily on the rail line as driving the need for these two positions um we're a pretty tight group um and you know we're small and nimble and we have to um consider a lot of needs not just on the rail line so the job description you know does allow for these positions to be used on on other projects including the highway and roads and whatnot um so so short answer yes we could use these positions elsewhere it is going to be of significant help to both sarah and i um i've been out um on the rail line quite a bit with sarah trying to address concerns um you know not just the concerns on the the coastal bluffs above memory sub-beach but there's um there's concerns you know throughout the rail line there's various different locations where we have sinkholes and coastal erosion um and um and so i see these positions um freeing up sarah so she could take um a more um uh broad approach to looking at a strategy of how we can maintain this entire corridor um as well as address uh freeing up her time to work more on the highway one uh uh program um there's there's quite a bit of benefit to adding these positions and having them done in a house um so i hope that answers your question commissioner donson thank you it does okay commissioner bertrand muted yaw i'm trying to unmute sorry um yeah i actually ran these concerns and um like to also comment uh with a follow-up question on your statement guy that you want to be able to uh depend on staff a little bit more rather than going out to consultants i think that's um really good to hear um i suspect that you'll be expecting um cost benefits which i'd like you to comment on and the other thing i sort of get the impression you're trying to develop a more capable and a complete engineering staff to handle the problems that you've inherited and soon your job and um if you comment on those two questions i'd appreciate thank you so yes we've um we've experienced uh some some inefficiencies by our consultants um you know you can you can it's interesting because um commissioner queen kind of brought it up earlier you know if if you just hire on engineers and don't direct them exactly as to what you want them to do you may not get the work product that you expected and we've seen that happen on the branch rail line where we've set off consultants even our project management consultants to manage other consultants but they're not fully familiar with all of these issues or they they miss different pieces of things throughout um it's one of the reasons uh it almost resulted in in the segments the site seven um uh contract bid that we uh that that you guys just authorized earlier today to not be awardable today we uh the the project management consultants didn't follow directions and the the bid package had to be re-advertised yet a second actually a third time um to ensure that we got um proper bids um and that the contract could be awarded and we'll avoid those sorts of mishaps we're still going to need quite a bit of on call engineering we're still going to use consultants to actually draw the plans and specs and stamp those but having engineers to do that sort of oversight is critical to ensure that we actually get the product that we're looking for um I think it's going to provide a lot more efficiencies on the rail line mission of return and if I could just add sorry I have my hand up um so right now we have about um equivalent of a half of an FTE of a consultant dedicated to the rail preservation program um by so the reason we're proposing the two positions is because there's this um need for two position analysis and determined um two positions you know two FTEs is really um needed and for us to ramp up our consultant um to that level would be a significant cost we're actually um by proposing um in-house staff cutting that cost in half um so there is significant savings um and then also there's the benefit of having our own um in-house staff who are located within the county who are able to respond to events that happen um quickly you know we're from coming usually from over the hill and paying for their travel there's just there's a number of benefits here in terms of cost um as well as improving the quality of uh responsiveness and uh really addressing the needs uh of the rail corridor so thank you thank you sir thank you uh let's see we have uh one member of the public who'd like to speak uh brian peoples you hi this brian from trail now as an engineer absolutely support this and let me give you an example um commissioner rockton commented that or that segment by man reese and we needed to engineer it and build it according to the freight and that's not true actually um because freight a freight train is two tons and it goes five miles an hour so you're designing that for a freight but if we're really thinking we're going to have a passenger train which is 200 tons traveling 45 miles an hour 60 a day the engineering is totally different okay so you going off and doing the man reese designed for a freight is totally not meeting your specific future requirements so we shouldn't have the politicians making that we should have the engineers determining what do we need it today so if we go and design it for a trail today significantly less requirements you can get it done then one day if you have money and you convince the public to put in 60 trains a day 200 tons traveling 45 miles an hour again so you're going off and doing engineering for that man research section that doesn't even meet your train requirements so that's a great reason why you do need to hire these engineers you need to rely on the engineers to help guide you and sarah is doing phenomenal work and we definitely need to give her more help thank you very much okay um mr auto you are up next he thought oh i'm not hearing you even though you're not muted but you're not hearing me now yes yes sorry about that um just a quick comment with regards to one of the items that i see on this agenda item is the changing or the scoping or of some of the titles there's a associate transportation engineer i guess in kind of my experience when you see associate that usually is a less senior position but what's being advocated here is is the opposite i guess seems like that's going to be a little bit different than what i see you know elsewhere and potentially is going to be you know a bit confusing to others but um anyway i don't know if there's a comment on on that or what i might be missing thanks there someone uh miss christensen or mr preston would do like comment on that i've seen it both ways um caltrans has the associate or traditionally have the associate level higher associate transportation engineer higher than the transportation engineer and so that's the model we ultimately went off of but if we debated it back and forth um i think the house and engineer myself um and looking at the job descriptions um i think uh the nomenclature that we use is appropriate thank you um so commissioner quinn thank you uh madam chair i wanted to follow up on a comment that supervisor konig made earlier in the meeting and i hate to backpedal but but as a new member of this commission would be extremely helpful to have a rtc certified fact sheet to help guide some of these comments for instance when we're talking about the engineering specification required to fix the erosion at man risa are we giving the engineers the mandate for a pedestrian trail a freight train or a passenger train and i think if we knew the facts of rail banking which i don't as to whether or not we need to preserve the right of way or the right of way as if preparing for passenger rail that's going to give the engineers a significantly different scope of work and so i i think understanding what scope of work we're asking for and and having new commissioners like me educated on the facts of rail banking because i'm i'm certainly getting a lot of opinions would would be a useful navigation point going forward thank you uh any immediate response to that comment i think that's a good idea so there's um you know when we're talking we're going back now to the man risa project and the retaining wall there um that project um is being done as part of preservation of the existing rail line and the existing rail line is being done i think he's afraid or at least is required to be at this time and that's what that wall is being designed for um when i raise a point of order we've already acted on that item what's before us is uh whether to hire these two new staff people um i would like to just see if we could act on that item rather than going back in time thank you uh commissioner shifrin uh so yeah let's let's go ahead and do that i um i think we have another comment from mr barry scott yeah i'll say i'll take it out to mr scott uh right now and um so barry you're up thank you uh i just want to to say how grateful i am and i'm sure others are that we have staff to help miss christensen and others uh do a tremendous amount of work that you guys have you know the county owns a an active rail line now it's pretty it's big news not used to being a rail line owner and maintainer i also want to say as you um well two things one is when when the director and others prepare a statement regarding rail banking please be sure to include the the irreparable damage that's done potentially if we remove parts of the track and and then would have to start all over we would need to rebuild the trail we'd need to restore the track we need to go out and get permissions all over again as if we're building rail from scratch and that is likely to be just impossible to do so i think we've been doing the right thing all along by keeping this rail line active and building the trail parallel to it when it comes to doing things like washout repairs and so forth i hate to hear people say let's do it the cheap way let's just do it to support a trail we don't need to support freight or or rail service because after all we're going to tie vote no you know what we if we want to do this well and my goodness this region is wealthy the state is wealthy there are funds if we would just go after them uh to do it right and if we're going to do our next generations our future generations uh the service that we need to do then we need to do the repairs to the best of our abilities and that that's going to include probably freight capacity freight capable at the very least it needs to be passenger rail capable repairs and i hope we don't do anything less thank you so much thank you mr scott i just want to remind everybody we are uh now talking about the hiring of two engineers which i know are really that's related to uh some of these questions that are being raised but that is the item on our agenda at the moment there's the motion here's the motion on the staff report in favor of it that you're looking for to end this conversation thank you thank you okay we have a motion by commissioner rockin and a second from commissioner cappitz uh so we'll take a roll call vote now commissioner burtrane i agree commissioner brown hi commissioner johnson hey commissioner montecino yes commissioner cap it hi commission alternate shifrin hi commissioner alternate quinn yes commissioner koneg hi commissioner Mcverson hi commissioner peterson hi commissioner rockin hi and commission alternate Calentari Johnson. Hi. Okay, so that passes unanimously. Thank you all. And thanks to staff for bringing this forward. I think it's going to be a real improvement to have local engineers who are working in, you know, closer collaboration and communication with our current engineering staff and hopefully a relief for Ms. Christensen to get a little support. So we are now moving on to we'll be moving into closed session. And so first a review of items to be discussed in closed session. I am Mr. Mattis. Are you here? Yes, you are. Can you give us a quick review? Thanks, Madam Chair. The item in closed session today is labor negotiations related to the executive director. The commission will go into closed session. Then we will come back out into open session for a report on that as well as consideration of item 33. And I would just know that Ms. Paras and all the commissioners the closed session zoom in by this morning. So you should have an email. Thank you. So before we do that, I do want to give members of the public a an opportunity to speak to us on this item. And I do see that Mr. Peoples has his hand up. Thank you, Brian, from Trail Now. I just wanted to comment that Executive Director Guy Preston has been doing phenomenal work, in my opinion. He's very disciplined in his approach. He's done great work in the sense of leading this organization. So whatever needs to be to continue to have Mr. Preston lead this organization, I think is a good step forward. And so I appreciate his work. Thank you. Thank you. So we will now go into closed session. And as Ms. Paras suggested, there is a separate link for that that you should have all received. And so we'll sign off here and be back after our closed session. Thanks, everybody. Could we have like a five minute break? Sure. Yeah, let's take a five minute break. Is that enough? Is that sufficient break time? Okay. That will reconvene at 205-ish in closed session. Thanks. Yeah. Why don't we go ahead and get started reconvene our open session? It's 301, excuse me, 301 where I am. It's 1201. And we will have now a report out on closed session from Mr. Mattis. Thank you, Madam Chair. The Commission met in closed session. They provided direction to staff. There's no reportable action from the closed session. And we can move on to item 33. All right. Thank you. So item 33 is consideration of a resolution to amend the employment agreement between the Santa Cruz County RTC and Guy Preston, our Executive Director. And we did have a conversation in closed session and are prepared to take action today. I will open it up to any commissioners who want to share something that you want to make sure the public hears. Most of us, I think, are prepared to move forward. But I want to give people an opportunity for discussion. Steve? Yeah, Madam Chair, if I may, I would recommend that I make a staff report before anyone comment on this. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And then hear from the public before we make our comment. Absolutely. Yes. I was just letting commissioners know, remind them of what we just said about, you know, holding forth. So go ahead and go for it. Thank you, Madam Chair. So the item on the agenda today is the consideration of a contract amendment for the Executive Director, Mr. Preston. Mr. Preston's original contract was entered into in 2018, and it expires at the end of 2021. It was a three year contract. The commission has considered the potential for an extension of the contract. Mr. Preston has requested an extension of the contract as well, too. And the commission has before it today a contract amendment at the First Amendment to his Employment Agreement that would accomplish two things. First, it would extend the term of his contract for another four years. So it would extend it for four years beyond December 31, 2021. And it would establish four additional salary steps within the contract similar to his existing contract. And it would provide for a 5% differential in compensation for each of those steps. As the commission is aware, Mr. Preston's contract provides that he goes through an annual review process. And the contract also provides that if his review is better than satisfactory, which they have been in the past, that he is therefore then entitled to get the additional salary that is identified at the next step. So today's action would be to approve the contract amendment. It would establish the four additional steps again at a 5% differential for each step from his current compensation. That would result in Mr. Preston's compensation as of December 3rd, which is his anniversary date, increasing to an annualized amount of $253,148 per year. And then the additional steps, the additional three steps would come in depending upon the four steps. Well, four steps, but the first one starts with December 1. That's it. So it's one plus the following three years for the four-year contract extension. And so with that, you should also point out that he would get COLA increases if the entire agency receives COLA's. That's correct. His current contract does provide that Mr. Preston is entitled to COLA adjustments when they are provided to the organization as a whole. And so with that, Madam Chair, I'm happy to answer any questions. The action today, if the commission desires to take it, would be to approve the resolution, approving the First Amendment to his contract. And that would authorize the amendment to the contract as well as the step increase that would take effect as of December 1 of this year. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions from the commission. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mattis. I'll take questions from commissioners and then just give the public an opportunity to speak up before we take a final vote. So Commissioner Bertrand. Yeah, I don't have a question, but I'd just like to thank the subcommittee of the chair and the vice chair in contributing to this report. I appreciate their findings and support them. Thank you. Okay. I do not see anyone in attendance with a raised hand, so we will... I think Commissioner Caput. Go, yes, back to Commissioner Caput. I was trying to raise my hand there. It didn't work. Okay. Thank you. We're going to vote on this now. We're going to have a vote by each commissioner. Is that correct? Roll call is required for Zoom meetings. Okay. So I'll explain my position. Guy Preston is doing a great job. He's a good man. He's very honest. And this is not an evaluation. This is a salary increase on the contract. And if my brother was in Guy's position, I would not vote for a step increase of 5% plus 3% COLA. Again, this is separate from an evaluation. We're talking about taxpayer money. We're talking about a responsibility that we have on spending it. This is not the private sector. If we had a balance sheet, we were working on profit and loss and everything like that. That would be a whole different thing and I'd give Guy a raise. But we're talking about our responsibility with taxpayer money. And we just have come off of the county of Santa Cruz of 7.5% furloughs for everybody and 10% furlough for department heads. And also supervisors. A furlough was a cut in pay. So what I'm getting at is we actually went backwards. We didn't take a raise. We actually did not. We lost money. But RTC did not have to go through that. Also, when we're talking about this, this isn't major league baseball. I said that in the closed session. We can't get into bidding wars and using always comparisons and saying, well, somebody in a county of 1 million is getting more than somebody in a county of 270,000 people, which is Santa Cruz County. Comparisons is a dangerous area to go into. So anyway, I'm just explaining again, if it was my brother in Guy's position, I would vote no on the proposal that we're going to vote on. And that is my whole concern, my whole job as far as trying to represent taxpayers. And they pay for everything we have. They're paying for everything. So we have to be very careful. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Caput. I want to just take a step back here really quickly and just remind us that we generally try to use the format of commissioner questions and then go out to the public for comments and then come back. We've started with commissioner comments. But I do see members of the public who have their hands raised. So if we don't have questions from commissioners, I'd like to just take care of those and then come back around to anybody who wants to comment before we take a final vote. So with that, I am going to call on, I believe it's, I love transit, Mr. Van Brink. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Hi. I just wanted to thank a guy for all of his hard work and I'm glad that you want to stick around. And I know that I pipe up on one of the more contentious issues making all of your work more entertaining. But thank you for all that you do. That's all. Thanks. Thank you. It appears. Oh, there we go. We have the phone number 432 0002 has your you have your hand up. So you can unmute yourself and make your comment. It may not be a phone number, but it's the number 432 0002. Right. Yeah, I see your mute button is on if you if you hit star nine, you can unmute yourself. Well, I suggest we move forward. If the member of the public can unmute themselves, maybe they'll figure it out as we do as we go forward. I don't know if there's anybody else from the public who wants to speak or whether it's back to the commission. Sandy, do you see that muted Sandy? Excuse me. So yeah, we're back to the commission. I'm if we can't get the member of the public unmuted, so I'll bring it back around. I see commissioner Schiffer and you have your hand up. Yes, I don't want to take a lot of time. We did have a long conversation in closed session. I would move the recommend the recommendation that the commission approved the resolution authorizing a First Amendment to the employment agreement between the RTC and guide Preston extending the employment agreement by four years and adding four additional salary steps to the salary schedule with 5% increase between each step to be implemented as set forth in the employment agreement with this change to step D effective as of December 3 2021. Andy, can I ask you to make a couple of brief comments along the lines of your thoughts about this matter? Just very brief. Well, if somebody seconds the motion, I was going to I'll second your motion. That's fine. There are a number of reasons why I support the recommendation and make this motion. The Plan the Transportation Commission has changed fundamentally over the last decade or so as it become not just a planning agency, but an operating agency, a project oriented agency. And we're very fortunate having an executive director I think who takes a very take is very much assertive in his attempts to bring projects to fruition to get grant funding to support those projects, whether it's expansion of the highway improvements, the rail trail, or in terms of dealing with some of the studies that have been very, very controversial, which is my which is my second real reason that this is not an easy time to be the executive director of the Transportation Commission is very there is very controversial. I think it's an indication of the quality of the executive director that participants on both sides of this very, very controversial issue who seem to agree on very little else agree that we have a good executive director and we need to keep him. And so to just really some those that summarize my comments and why I think it's important to approve the recommendation from the subcommittee. Thank you. Call the question. So we will now take over all call vote on the motion and the second to adopt this resolution and change the salary schedule. So yes, Ms. Para, I think that's you. Thanks. Commissioner Bertrand. I agree. Commissioner Brown. I. Commissioner Montecino. Yes. Yes. Commissioner Caput. You're muted. Great. You're still muted. Yeah. No. Commission alternate Schifrin. I. Commission alternate Quinn. Yes. Commissioner Koenig. I. Commissioner McPherson. I. Commissioner Peterson. I. Commissioner Rockin. I. And Commission alternate Calentari Johnson. I. Okay. So there's one now. That motion passes and with that, we have our final agenda item next meeting. That will be the first. Do you have the date? September 2nd. Thank you. The first Thursday, September 2nd. See you then. Don't be on Zoom. All right. See you then. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Good job at sharing Sandy. Good job. Thank you. Good job. Good job. Thank you, Melissa, for all your work. We'll see you next month. Thank you so much for your patience. Okay. Bye.