 to call the Convenience of Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District Board Metro to order April 27th 2018 Please call the roll Director Baltar here director Chase here Director Kaufman Gomez Director Dutra here director Hagen Director Leopold Director Lynn here Director Matthews Director McPherson here Director Rothwell here Director Rottgen here Ex-Officio Director Thomas Ex-Officio Director McKeith So we have him Thank you We have a forum like to announce that we have Carlos Landeverra here who will be able to speak with the Spanish Lagrange Interpretation for us Carlos if you'd like to say a few words please Good morning, Buenos dias director Carlos Landeverra here For the people who prefer Spanish or need the translation of Spanish I'm going to speak Spanish Thank you Thank you This meeting is being televised by Community Television Thank you very much Santa Cruz County Channel 26 And our technician is Mr. Lynn Denton She'll be done for Item number four Comments from the Board of Directors Any Board of Directors comments on any items that are not on the agenda? Okay Go to Well communications to the Board of Directors Do we have any communications to the Board of Directors that needs to be recognized? From the public From the public So good for items not on the agenda Fine Moving right along Written communications from Mac Are there any written communications? Nope, no we're not seeing Very good Item number seven Labor organization communications Any communications from Labor? Good morning Good morning I'd like to report to you that we have resolved several agreements Through the informal discussions even though some issues are still Pending but I'm I have to tell you that A lot of these issues are going back again to lack of communication and due process We're notifying employees of changes and not being prepared to change the policies And we are still going through Going to an arbitration on a case because stubbornness got annoying And spending lots of money on large fees and soon an arbitrator management Management has to provide due process to our public I can go back to going back Saying the same thing and repeating myself once again We're a small agency and we need to communicate better So we don't have these pending issues Thank you Thank you Are there any other comments from Labor organizations? Okay Is there any additional documentation to support any of the existing items? You have item nine We have attachment Rick Longinati's March 28th letter in which he presented to the board at the March 23rd meeting Was left out of the packet as a result It's page 908 has been added today Okay We'll move on to the consent agenda Any board member or member of the public have questions on any of the items on the six items on the consent agenda? Yes Not really specifically but I don't know where else to put it I see Larry, Taylor and the audience I'm wondering if somewhere here we could get a report on the UCSC fee increase I know there's a MAC UCSC representative I don't know where else to put that Maybe if we could just have an update on that We probably have to do that next Just the status report is a little bit There's maybe Alex who could fold that in to your report Yeah I can definitely do that You'll have an updated report But it's pending and it's a big deal Very good Any other board member have some comments on the consent agenda and any member of the audience? Moved approval of the consent agenda Second Moved and seconded for the consent agenda All those in favor? Opposed? Approved unanimously Now we have a couple of presentations for Employee Longevity Awards For Noah Bassier Is Noah here? Hi Yeah come on Let's see Do you want me to? Yeah Hello Yeah we're going to have that Board member present you with a proclamation here at the moment But go ahead have your say Oh yeah thank you It's been a pleasure working for Paracruz past ten years Knowing that I've helped my community Knowing that a lot of the people that I drive Wouldn't make it out if I weren't there to pick them up Sometimes I'm the only person that they see the whole week So knowing that I can help people live their life with dignity that everybody deserves Is a very rewarding experience Like Dr. Seuss says The world may be one person But to one person you may be the world So thank you very much Thank you We'd like to have a brief presentation to you Or do you have it? No no it's the black one with the ten With your left hand Yes we were You know we might mention That's not That's not Okay we'll get to you I want to say how many How many does it come It's in the mail The proclamations in the mail I'd like to just ask 70 or 80,000 trips we have For pair crews a year How much is that? 75,000 plus It's a tremendous service that we provide Director would you like to say something? No I have been one of the It's on I have been one of the lucky ones That Noah has come to take And get me where I need to go The final of the places are It's rather difficult for me to get to And I really do want to thank you and all For the many times you have come to my house To pick me up and take me where I need to go Yeah thank you Thanks Thank you for your whole team as well I'm one of the ones that Has opened the world to me Very good very good Okay We'll go to item number 11 But we have another employee retirement That Russell Thomas is not here Is that correct? He's not here Okay so we want to thank him For his years of service as well Item number 12 the CEO Oral Report Mr. Clifford Okay Why don't I start off with The UCSC fee increase I'd like to ask you Larry If you'd step up to the mic Or just let us know how that's going And then I have a couple other items I'd like to cover So I'll keep this brief The fee measure is on the ballot Voting will take place May 13th through No excuse me 17th through the 23rd We've got a terrifically Energized group of student leaders That began outreach yesterday I saw it on social media Facebook also in the Corey Plaza And I brought this along to show you T-shirts that they'll be wearing This is very much Also be using as much of our campaign measure A version of this with the slug Without the sign of being installed On the articulated buses tomorrow Right? Absolutely right So those will be in service Through the campus for the rest of the work And people buy those T-shirts Mike, we didn't make enough of them These are more for the students Who are actually doing the campaigning I think we've only got a few dozen of these And I don't know There's only a few of the right Explorers size that you and I might want Give it to the students They're out there doing the work There will be pins, stickers And other kinds of things like this They're computer students Where can people get stickers Like to pass out to students? They're going to be distributed by the folks Who are tabling both in Corey Plaza How did the dining halls We hope to do some pop-up events At bus stops Great So we'll be out and about And look for the T-shirts And those folks will probably have materials Thank you Thank you Is Christie your main comment? Yes, Christie has done his meeting this Thank you Thanks, Larry And before I go on Gina, we have Noah Noah, can you show the plaque It will be the picture And the pin, the lovely lapel pin You know, why don't we get a picture of Noah with Norm? I mean, that was just such a swing Yeah, yeah, that would be great Let's take a second Noah, come on up here Get in front of the TV Cameras in general This is the real deal here I've got cameras Is that? It's a TV camera We'll find them No, no, take care of you You can have the best of you I'm sharing the best of you How about that? I'll take a picture Yeah Yeah, sorry Get in right Very close Very close There we go Cheers This is good Thank you Thank you Okay, we can move on our feet and fix things real quick Thank you We should spend the whole morning just celebrating Noah Yeah All right Moving on to a couple of other items As you all are aware I believe you received an email from Gina recently about the university's conference and we'll keep reminding you about that between now and then the conference running from June 23rd through the 26th We'd like to encourage you if you have time to participate in the reception and we'll keep you posted on timing and location of all of that and the opening session and then I think Donna has committed to being there to help us with the opening session as representative of Scots Valley So we appreciate that And next I'd like to just show you the PSA This is Gina This is something that Barrow has been working on and it will show up on various channels Comcast channels It's only 15 seconds Don't blink Okay Isaac You guys have noticed IT It worked earlier We tested it Go up to the playback chain It's a technical term Playback? Yeah And go into play Santa Cruz Metro is proud to add two new trips during the morning commute of the Highway 17 Express Service One to San Jose and one to Santa Cruz So get out of your car Read, relax and work on the bus For more information and to take our survey visit scmtd.com One more time? Sure Now you're just showing up Santa Cruz Metro is proud to add two new trips during the morning commute of the Highway 17 Express Service One to San Jose and one to Santa Cruz So get out of your car Read, relax and work on the bus For more information and to take our survey visit scmtd.com Okay, just a couple of other quick updates Statewide on the legislation we are closely tracking AB 3124 which is Bloom It's moving through committees That is a bill that will make it legal legal to have three-position bike racks on 60-foot buses That's important to properties across the state who want to have bike racks on their articulated buses And certainly important to us with our pilot project So in order to stay compliant we've only been able to put compliant with the current law we've only been able to put two positions on those 60-footers SCA 6 Weiner is in suspension right now That's one that would allow special taxes by a vote of 55% If 100% of the money goes to transportation transportation programs and projects Unfortunately that's in suspense but we'll see what happens with that And then SB 1434 Lieva, I think I'm pronouncing that right is a CTA sponsored bill that would direct the CPUC to establish new rates for transportation properties that are using electricity for propulsion So we're trying through the CTA to try to mitigate down the rates as we move into increasingly into an environment in which electric buses will be mandated And then two federal issues that have sort of popped into the discussion Nothing in writing yet but they popped into the discussion since our team returned from Washington and that is that there is talk about a so-called rescission bill So you might remember that there was all of this great enthusiasm about what they call plusing up some of the fast act monies we were getting some additional up $200,000 in additional formula money and some additional money for us to compete against You might recall that when the omnibus bill was presented to the president actually the day before he said I'm going to veto it the day of he signed it but he says don't ever bring something like this to me again And I guess the Republicans have kind of taken heart to that and have now been talking at least about this notion of a rescission bill in which they would attempt to rescind all of those nice little plus ups that occurred So let's hope that never makes it on the paper but I just want you to be aware that that's happening And then also additional talk that has surfaced in the last week about the next reauthorization the fast act is to be reauthored in about two years There's some discussion about tacking on an additional two years to that and postponing the next reauthorization out yet further that could be good that could be bad we'll see what happens I think what they're struggling with at a federal level right now is the fact that today now they need to be talking about the next reauthorization to get ready to figure out how to fund it and I think they're just not ready to have that conversation So I think Mr. Chair that concludes my presentation Okay, that was was that 12 and 13? It works Just No that's the world You guys get a talk about the BC Okay that's my segue into your trip to Washington DC I'll start with that Okay So we took a trip to Washington DC to lobby for basically for more transit money for our local transit districts as well as for transit in the country as a whole Ed and Jimmy and myself and Alex and these trips are interesting because you had people we talked to people in Congress in both the Senate and the House or their staff we went at a period when the Congress was not in session so we ended up talking to staff people that's not always a bad thing let's talk to the top person or something but the staff people who were in charge of transit for that member of Congress often know more about the issues who actually are the ones putting together the position for the actual legislator so it's not always a trip to talk to those people and we had very good conversations with those folks I would summarize the situation in terms of transit funding nationally just by saying everybody said the gas tax is not working it's not the way to go to the future we have to have an alternative to it and everybody said we're not ready for the alternative to it and I think that was there's not an exception to that situation so people are talking about miles traveled or something that comes with when you buy the vehicle as part of the sales cost of it as a tax on top of it then or something but nobody's ready to actually make that happen Oregon's gone through and others are trying to put this together but they're not ready to do it at the level of that state and California's talking about it but it's just not happening so it's at least people were rational you don't know what you're going to get when you go to DC and they were rational they had a sense of what the problems were what have to be addressed but they weren't ready to do it everybody realizes they have to start talking about the reauthorization that Alex Clifford just talked about but nobody yet again what we're going to do when we're going to do that nobody's really there it was hard to lobby at that level but the other thing you're doing when you go to Washington is trying to get particularly from our local California local legislators but even the legislators throughout California to get them to become aware of this district and its needs so when we went to talk to the legislators Jimmy would typically start off explaining our district where we are what our issues are our problems we definitely made the major message that our problem is we have to replace something between 60 and 62 buses now it's 59 and 61 or whatever but something like 60 new buses and we explained that we're a district that has pretty we're doing pretty well as far as our resources compared to most districts around the country half-send sales tax from 1978 most of the half-send sales tax from 1978 plus we got measure D money coming in we're doing self-help work and yet we're in desperate trouble I mean you have 60 and 100 buses needed to be replaced and the buses are some of them way past the 14-year lifetime that they're supposed to you know be replaced at for the the 12-year thing that actually is a rational life for a bus but the 14 that the Congress mandated our buses are way beyond that causing problems and we talked about the bus fires we had last year so as if a district like ours is in trouble transit is in trouble in the United States so that was our message when we went and talked to people the we talked to people in administration as well the FTA and the Department of Transportation the only thing people will add to my comments here but the one interesting and useful meeting that we had there was with the secretary of not secretary that the administrator for the federal transit administration and it's very gently and politely he says you know we'd like when the president or the administration is talking about transportation we'd like to see some mention of transit and buses and the the administrator just jumped on it it's like in the legislation and in the discussions we'd like to see more discussion of transit and buses it's in there it was like a shock because he hadn't been like you know nasty or like pressing it's just a kind of a last-minute throwaway comment as we were finished our presentation about our needs so that was kind of a shock and so we quickly backpedaling trying to explain what you know we're not trying to like cause a fight here it makes something happen what useful came out of that meeting was their willingness to be flexible and that's the term they use when it comes to how we apply the money we got for over the whole electric bus as most of you know that electric bus that we the model we tried to work very well didn't have sufficient power to keep up with traffic and so it really wasn't meeting the specifications that we had bid and so we're not sure we're ready to get an electric bus and we said well we got this award this grant for these buses over the hill and could we possibly change those back into CNG or even clean diesel buses and so they said well they read us the legislation they said the legislation says have to be they're supposed to be for zero emission vehicles but they're willing to have them be for ones that are better than a certain percentage better than the average performance of buses in the United States and the question we had we don't know the answer to it yet I don't think is are the buses that if we buy one of these clean diesel buses in California that meet car requirements that buses in California would those meet the specifications to actually transfer the funds could we transfer those funds over and buy one of these clean diesel buses and the answer was we'll be flexible about it we need to know it has to meet the requirements of the act it has to be if everybody in the United States buying a clean diesel bus has the same diesel bus then no we're not going to be money for that but if meeting the California specifications means the buses we would buy would be better than the average bus in the United States that's now being produced they would be going to seriously consider transferring the funds over people at the very top that would be making these decisions and it was from everybody there the people who are the career employees that are sort of make the real decisions here as well as the Trump's appointment to the position that's making that talk to us so I think it was a productive visit for us I think we've got a good sense of what's going on we're definitely on the agenda of a lot of Congress members and Senators the ones from California in terms of the stuff that we need to be able to turn the administration has not made transit an important part of their infrastructure considerations thank you very much thank you very much did you any other comments Jimmy Dutra or Ed well thank you Mike for the description of our trek you know these trips are really they're really impactful because over the last two years we've been able to bring home about five million dollars worth of resources to start replacing our aging fleet and as many people know we've had incidents of our buses burning and these are just issues that we've tried to take to our federal government and bring back the resources that we're able to do we've been very successful over the last two years we've been able to bring back grants that are going to be really helpful towards us and towards replacing the buses that we need to and as Mike said we had a lot of really deep conversations about the future of the funding for Metro and for the programs that we have been so accustomed to receiving the funds and with an administration who is not the kindest towards transportation so St. Alex yelled at by the Trump administration it's kind of funny we enjoy it but I never thought I'd see that but what he was saying was true because we definitely have a president who probably has never ridden public transportation and so he doesn't really have the desire to put the funding in there for it so to have us there and the voices to have our voices on Capitol Hill really advocating to our representatives and to the administration is important because you know we are a small district and we're impacted and we're we just went through a very you know difficult time trying to come out of a fiscal deficit and unfortunately things like Capitol projects and our buses were put on sidelines and those are things that we're going to have to start addressing for many reasons and I do have to say you know this trip was very we there a lot came out of it and one of the biggest things that we're going to hopefully come out of it is the fact that our electric buses are just not performing to standards over highway 17 and if we're going to be able to use those funds to in other areas to replace you know maybe some other buses or looking to other types of modes of transportation for clean energy for our buses to get over the hills then that's going to be a big plus and that was a really good conversation we did have with the administration part of our trip so but everybody's kind of on the same page Republicans and Democrats when we talk about you know tax questions when we talk about taxing and how are we going to move forward and getting the funding for this and people are really hesitant to tax people any further on both sides and we and I think we do he did hear a consensus that people do want to see a fair share of people paying their fair share so you know a lot of people have been you know have cars that are economically friendly and some other versus you know people who just have regular gas driven cars but everyone drives on the road and everyone has people on both sides of the aisle believe that we need to figure out what we're going to do in our next steps to you know start getting the funding because we just can't always keep on increasing the gas tax so but with that said you know I always I look forward to these trips I am always extremely exhausted when we're finished it's really a run around from the beginning of the day to the very end it's it's nonstop and we do it for we it's from the moment we hit the ground we're having meetings and we're meeting with people and we're really making good time out of our visit to to DC and I'm looking forward to these grants that we'll be doing this year and hopefully we'll have some good news about what we can do with the funding that we currently have for the $3 million grant and yeah so and anything else? Yeah real quick I don't need to repeat what both of you said this is my first trip I went in replacement of director McPherson and obviously my clout wasn't as good as his to schedule a bunch of high level meetings but I'm sure they'll make it back next year my take away from this trip was is that our CEO really presented himself well to the agencies we met with and he was respected in those agencies and that reflected good on us and I think our team made a good presentation about our needs like Jimmy said right on D.C. right now is unstable so nobody knows what we're going but I think the one take away I has is that when we expect our concern about the unwillingness to spend the grants on the electric buses because the technology is not where it's at I think we appreciated that we weren't being frivolous and we really wanted to make a good decision and I think that just a good reflection on us and gives us credibility so thanks for the trip yeah I might just I'm not being on this trip as I have been before but I want to say a trip that really helped a lot is to see the actions that this district is taking lean on its budget but maintain them the unions foregoing some of the wage increases to maintain as much many buses and employees as we can our efforts and passing measure D all that combination it's registered with you guys are doing something to try to help yourself and we're more apt to help you so I want to thank everybody who was involved over these recent years into at least allowing us we've had to consolidate some things but for allowing us to maintain our service and for the voters who passed measure D that was really significant and I know it registered with those folks back in D.C. and it has and state capital as well so it's a good report and we'll keep moving on and upward yes sir so Mike was talking about clean diesel what is that? it sounds like an oxymoron I heard the term clean coal which doesn't really exist right clean diesel actually our buses now that are way cleaner than actually CNG buses and they meet car departments in California they're more expensive than the ones we've had that wouldn't be our first choice we'd like to meet to electric that's where we're going we're mandated to do that in California by 2040 but in the meantime as an interim if you're trying to sort of make sure you keep service on the road as you buy electric buses and fill in some either CNG or clean diesel buses so we probably will end up doing that and the issue comes down to literally which is a cleaner bus the CNG bus or the clean diesel and if they just rebuild them and change the way that they operate they're not zero emission that's for sure so they're not competing with electric but they are competing with CNG and more to the point they do meet the car requirements in California which are very strict requirements and the diesel buses we have now do not you know so it's a very different bus what's the difference in cost between the natural gas and fuel sure so here Chief Operations Officer basically the cost difference is about 700,000 per bus and there's a lot of what they call out-of-treatment which the new one it's 700,000 versus 550 or 60 yeah differences it's 575 for CNG and it's about 700,000 oh yeah because the difference is not that's not a difference yeah they've got to cost a million 40 700,000 different my eyebrows are one but anyway yeah they use a lot of after treatment processes like the admonia injection and such to burn the after exhaust and they actually just run a lot cleaner the certification basically compared to a CNG you're looking at about how much less output of carbon monoxide from the diesel than we are from a CNG bus and basically it's because of the heat factor that compressed natural gas has it's less than diesel so you have to use more compressed natural gas in order to get the power that you get out of the equivalent amount of diesel what about particulates particulates are down almost to just another thing really I brought with me a little chart here so you've got two testing processes one is the federal testing program and the other one is a supplemental emissions testing process and basically the federal one is the linear more linear than the supplemental and for the NOX ratings on certified diesel versus a certified CNG CNG is set at around 0.03 and diesel is 0.07 where it starts getting a little more significant is that your carbon monoxide it's for a certified CNG is 6.4 versus 0.6 so your emissions for particulates is much less on a diesel map than it goes in the past and it's much less than for a certified CNG engine we've already spoken to the air resource board in California and they pretty much indicated to us that we're good to go if we want to go top of the clean diesel map also there's also technology that in the new phase which probably will be what we purchase the diesel engine that's coming out is even cleaner the more they have that I'm trying to get a lot more information associated with that particular engine type but the regulations that California has are much stricter than the reclamation so in essence we are paying more for the diesel engines that we put into performance here in California than anyone else in the other of the United States so that in and of itself puts us aside or in a different category than all the others if you have one sheet paper of that I'd like to see that or I think it'd be good for each director to get it and somehow let us well if we when we get into this purchase if we have these new diesels it'd be very good for us to have an explanation of what we're doing absolutely I do caution you there's a lot of acronyms and so you'll kind of have to maybe maybe just give it a cover just a basic yeah okay all right included glossary I put together just feedback wow but anyway I'll put a glossary if you have the acronyms director Kaufman go miss I don't think I want to touch it again how is that you I don't we all turn those off yes that's right nope see you tears I can scream how's that sound yeah let's talk about that what is the difference in maintenance costs between we have the CNG if we're going to go with the clean diesel versus an electric bus because even though we buy the merchandise what are we doing with that what do we know about the cost factor well with the after treatment there's a little bit more of a cost because you have to replenish certain gases certain liquids and such that treat the emissions but from a long-term perspective diesels on average will let you pop 500,000 miles between your CNGs are running this maybe 120,000 40,000 miles they're running much hotter they're more they're equivalent to a gasoline engine they've got spark plugs they've got coils they've got so they run hotter they run dener and as a result that's how we get the emissions down the diesel engine basically is more of a the air gets compressed very very highly and that's your ignition point the diesel has sprayed in we've reached a level of compression that's what it unites so it's a much more thoroughly burning type of engine the issue is that it runs less hotter than compressed natural gas engine so you get more of an injecting object because you have so you're looking at you're looking at two overhauls versus one really at the same time it's right approximately Dr. Bracken when the district made its decision to move to CNG there there's no question that the CNG buses produced less greenhouse gases and way less particular matter than the diesel stated that's just technology's change and now that's not true and we are actually our buses from pre-1978 buses that were running the Gillings diesel buses are doing much better than the CNG buses as far as maintenance issues go I mean that's just for the reason you just said they run 125,000 miles on that one where they have to be fixed up versus it's going to go 300,000 it makes quite a bit of difference in terms of maintenance costs so at the time we made the decision it was the right decision given the technology we had in front of us looking back on it now we would have been better off probably just stuck everybody at the time thought CNG is obviously going to be better than diesel and working in the right direction and it turns out not to be the case but nobody could have possibly done that director yes you know to talk about these electric buses I had a discussion with Alex this week and this thing to my right I have a battery in there that's over 780 dollars that's a new by a great new battery the only problem is it's supposed to last five and a half years this thing's dead that's only two years old why? because I use it more I read one article that they said that the average battery for wheelchairs is new it's supposed to have average five years with you I had a footnote down there many of the people who use these chairs are dead before five years I said wait a minute I don't want to be part of that what did you say about it? which is dead the battery or you realistically this thing and I talk about is the same problem that the administration is facing with the electric buses my use of this thing is comparable to 17 I get faster flat in town than I ever did before and it goes longer while I use it when I charge it every night already just coming up from here down to Watsonville by this morning and from MetroCenter to here I've already lost a quarter of my strength with this battery that means if I go home in the same way I'm below half of the length of the charge with this battery I can only imagine the thought of a 17 bus with the batteries we have now getting over there having this charge to get back okay what happens when you get over there with one of those things and it's late in the afternoon you have to have somebody in that car to go over and get that driver because you leave the bus there and it costs and the situation with these electric buses until the technology arrives where we can use them for the main situation of the 17 runs it's senseless it really is senseless but the Elon Musk is going to save us well I'm sorry our CEO is going to save us in this situation good pressure yeah thank you any other comments on the DC I might just as a spinoff not speaking of DC and not advocating per se but there's we have an election here in the state too and there's one issue that's related to transportation that's important to us I'm not advocating for it but I just want it's prop 69 that in essence would if it is passed with the yes vote it would mean that transportation funds that are allocated to transportation would stay there which the state has a habit of robbing from it I think some people are confused about it and that's why I'd just like to say if you want transportation dollars to save for transportation a yes vote maybe that's well do what you will but for transportation you can't spend any transit just your money to support it I want to be careful about it I'll put it that way but for transportation purposes a yes vote but a very good vote for it just because I think there is some confusion with the general public on that but that's a state ballot measure and the June ballot and people will start voting before we meet again I think so okay we will that which you need to go to 14 to receive an update and provide the CEO direction on California Air Resources for CARB pose zero emissions regulation very good thank you Mr. Chair I think the last discussion was a really good segue into this topic and you explored some parts of it that we did not include in this report going back to the administrator by the way the administrator was acting administrator and fortunately her permanent replacement has been named since her return so I might be back I don't know longer so if you're on her enemies this doesn't matter that's right well remember who appoints the new one too alright moving on to this item so this item I know is a heavy item and every once in a while I have to bring you a really heavy lofty item and this is this is one of those hopefully you have a chance to read the item and get caught up on what's been going on and of course I've been keeping you informed ever since the ICT integrated clean transportation initiative was proposed in draft back in December and I had to initially respond and then in January informed the board about what that was what was going on there and what the initial response was since then and actually prior to that I've been an active member of the California Transportation Association Electrification Committee which is dealing with this proposed initiative ICT and trying to come up with ways to make it more acceptable to us in the industry transportation industry across the state and so throughout this report I've brought you up to speed on the ICT I've given you the current status of those discussions and proposed changes that CTA is hoping to put forth it is a fast moving target these meetings keep popping up very spontaneously lately I had to make some trips to Sacramento as I will have to do again now this next Friday because we now have a meeting with CARB to talk about the potential proposal from CTA so we're trying to do everything we can before the board actually puts forth a regulation which is anticipated to be as soon as possible June so a lot of work between now and June needs to be done so what I would do is in assuming that you were able to get through all of that stuff that I provided you I would turn you now to page 14.5 and if we can if we can focus on those four bullet points which are really the direction that I seek from you today one of course is that that you concur that I should continue to participate in the CTA electrification committee and represent us and two and gentle to that that you understand the differences that we're proposing through the counter proposal of the CTA and that you see that those are consistent with where we would like to go that is not rushing into this technology giving us a little bit more time not arguing about the 2040 deadline we've agreed with CARB 2040 finite it's really about the steps in between how you get there and it's about whether the technology is ready today or will become increasingly ready as we get through the years as Norm talked about what he experienced what he experiences on his wheelchair is what is being experienced with the transit properties that are using electric buses under pilot projects today those buses you can spend a lot of money and you can build infrastructure to charge those buses throughout the day which is not the way we've been proposing to run our system we'd like to run our system charge overnight and run all day but the technology is not there yet the industry thinks it will get there and I would propose that we take advantage of sort of slowing our pace down just a little bit and if the first threshold at which you have to start buying say 25% electric buses isn't till 23% at this point what I'm proposing is that we possibly wait that long before we place our next order as you know we already have a grant as Jimmy is excruciatingly aware we've had a grant to buy an electric bus to run as a circulator in Watsonville and that's been two years and we still don't have it and we won't have that probably until next year sometime it takes a while to get these buses and we need to get them here we haven't been rushing because we need to sort out the specification we need to sort out the infrastructure to charge them and then we need to get them here and we need to try them out and so right now we're ready on the verge of placing that order Ciro and Eddie and Erin are going to go down to LA and meet with Protera this next week and try to finalize the specification so that we can place that order and then they'll also be able to come back and have a better understanding of when those four buses will be here we need to get them here we need to get that electrical infrastructure in place before they get here and then we need to have some time to operate them and see how they do in our particular area what we do know from the experiences of Foothill and from San Joaquin and now from BTA is that on an overnight charge in an operating environment they're probably going in the range of 120 to 150 miles before needing to be recharged we have runs as high as 300 miles and again we would like buses that we can charge all night run all day and run all day on any one of our routes but the product is not ready to go yet for that so we need some time and what CTA is working on is consistent with that philosophy trying to slow things down a little bit for when that first threshold hits and then the next threshold after that we would have a short-term obligation to provide a plan to carve on how we would get to Foley Electric by 20 the 2030 milestone and the 2040 100 percent we already have a plan so once the regulation is adopted we would bring that plan back to you revised and updated and then re-submit that to carve so we're part of the way there we're one of the few agencies that has adopted a plan mapping out how we get to Foley Electric buses by 2040 so again going back to these four bullet points endorsing the proposal that as far as ZEP grant applications that we not apply for any more zero emission bus applications in the short run get our buses in now that four could become 10 just to make matters complicated we talked about the LONO grant that we have the 2.8 million dollar grant to buy three over the road coaches the board members talked about our discussion in Washington DC and we talked about really two proposals one the proposal we really would like to do is to be able to convert those zero emission over the road coaches into low emissions CARB certified diesel over the road coaches that's our goal FTA sort of bristled a little bit about that but then they came back and they said well let's look at it if you could provide us data showing that what is produced and sold in California is cleaner than what is sold in the rest of the nation we'll consider that because that is consistent with the LONO program zero has gotten the information on that it appears that is the case we'll get the hard copies of that we'll put together a proposal send it to the FTA and see what they say as a fallback the fallback is that if they say no they broach the idea that maybe what we can do is look at flipping that from zero emission over the road coaches to zero emission fixed route buses so if we did that we could probably buy more than three buses and that may take our number from four up to ten or somewhere closer to that but it's important that you know all of that because if coming out of today's meeting you say no we don't want to go back to diesel at all at this agency that gives me direction that I don't go with plan one I go with plan two at the FTA and I don't look at other ways of getting low emission diesels to run on highway 17 I would encourage you to consider the low emission diesels for highway 17 the diesel buses that you know when we when we submitted the LONO grant a couple years back the first bus BYD over the road coach had not been manufactured at that time and so we were going off of their specifications and what they represented verbally that their bus could do and it just didn't do it and finally came in it just didn't do it will it do it somewhere down the line it probably will and in 2020 MCI says they'll be producing electric buses so there'll be more competition over the road coaches but for now we have a need to try to produce a better product one that can help us market highway 17 in a better way and to pull that mountain with more power and diesels quite frankly do it diesels as was discussed earlier are carb certified they're carb compliant and you can continue through the adoption of the 100% in 2040 carb understands and agrees you can still buy carb certified diesels going back to the point that Mike made about what this agency signed up for back in 2000, 2001 he's absolutely right but that expired in 2015 and we've got it in writing from carb that we're no longer under that mandate that we we chose one of two paths back then we chose the clean fuel path we're no longer under that it expired in 2015 so carb has said if we want to buy low emissions carb certified diesel engines we can do that so we have that in writing from them and it's consistent even with the policy that they're putting forward under the ICT so what I would by all of that again your decision on diesel is an important one because the final bullet point here is that going forward started here in a month actually starting now they just announced the next round of LONO grants are being accepted applications are being accepted we would apply for low emission diesel over the road coaches through that program and not electric buses so complicated puzzle here but with all of this program and what I'm proposing is driven by whether you concur that will you'll allow diesels back into this agency and that's I really want to underscore that I don't want to hide it I want to be completely transparent you have not purchased any diesel buses since 1998 so that's a significant move Director Mathews well you have prepared us on this issue at previous meetings so and I'm usually you've prepared us for this issue coming at us in past meetings and I'm fully supportive of what you're suggesting here I'll go ahead and make a motion that we adopt recommendation if others I guess maybe you want to comment we can start with the question I'm happy to put the motion on the floor I have a couple of questions as well my first question is is CARB the final arbiter of the standards is that where it stops or does the legislature weigh in I'm trying to get at that's my understanding and because of that we've also been working through CTA to sponsor some legislation that may or may not have a chance of passing but it's used to try to help CARB understand if we really don't like the final product we will go the legislative route to try to change what their final regulation is and following on that line I have to assume that you've kept our state elections informed on this issue or not I mean is it worth moning and stone for them to have an awareness of this and excuse me yes we need to do a lot of light work in that respect CTA has been real good about communicating that information but I need to do that but it's different when we do it and as you mentioned Jimmy does it with on you know so forth I think it would be good for us in that these are the highway 17 but I'd like to we do write a letter to the legislators we do it for Santa Clara County too and the whole region and there's always this oh just say in the public's mind and ours there's a confusion and tension between the state agencies and our you know we elect the state electeds to represent our interests and often they have to make their references known to the state agencies we don't know who's there who's on that so I would just say this is going to be a big complicated issue so it's probably worth our while doing a briefing with the broader circle of the state electeds another question kind of related to that is just question to you whether or to what extent you think it's useful to outreach to advocates in our community particularly about climate action I mean we have a really active climate action community here and you know I think they're absent the deeper knowledge their instinct would be yeah cover those strict standards let's do it ASAP but if they knew a little bit more they might say you understand the goal the path etc the complexities and support this direction but sometimes the simple ideal is easier to latch on to than the path so I think if it's a matter of having support to carb or to our state electeds having just reaching out to some of these more active climate action green organizations in town could be useful agreed I will tell you at a statewide level CR Club in the various environmental groups they haven't been real friendly to the proposals that the CTA has been talking about and they have they have taken a position to date of the sooner the better don't give them more time to the sooner the better they haven't really focused on the parts of the ICT that still allow to buy diesel and CNG and I think that's pretty obvious we have to be able to continue to do that as we phase in the electrics they've just been a little overly rigid on how soon it should be implemented but then they don't operate buses we do this is a topic for further discussion but I think it's worthwhile to engage the advocates who feel passionately about these issues and I would have to assume that the district's preference is not to have a huge number of different models but chunks of models just for maintenance and parts and all that other stuff so I mean what I see us doing is getting oh you get two of these you know three of these that's complicated I have to assume down the line you want to get a dozen of something is that correct or is that it's actually very correct and so our challenge is if we're buying a larger order we go out for full-blown procurement you know you're subject to the competitive process and however that sorts itself out it does you might get Quartieri you might get BYD you might get Newflower who knows what you're going to get we do rarely will I say there's a little bit of an advantage in making those kinds of things so for example the funding that we recently received from the federal government they did the announcement the other day for the four they'll fund four CNG buses what what Aaron is working on is taking over some orders from Los Angeles County that Gila was going to provide buses for and those would be buses that we would buy through that so there's opportunities to make sure in that small purchase order that you don't have when you've got a bigger purchase okay well those were all just questions I mean the recommendations stand for themselves good point very good point Director Rockett first thank Cynthia for her comments I think it really is critical that we talk to our local communities I was happy to state level about what we're doing why we're doing it what our choices are I support the motion that's on the floor and actually put it in the wording so nobody sees that motion without the following attached to it given the district's performance problems with the actually existing electric buses and given the incredible improvements in clean air quality of diesel buses the following is being supported by us in other words people need to understand why we're making this choice if we could go out and buy an electric bus that worked even if it was just not an option for us so I think we should make really clear why we're taking this action I think we should probably set up actual needs with local environmental groups and have board members want to go meet with the staff who could answer technical questions I think too I think we should write something like this to each of the government the three or four cities in the county we have a commission on the environment that's really deep into some of the next language in my motion thank you director so I think we have a real communication challenge when you mention diesel I have to tell you that I have prejudice against diesel and it's been that way for years and years I get so tired just sitting behind diesel trucks and having a roll of my windows and turn on the air conditioner because I can't breathe I mean the stink is just horrible in fact just yesterday I was in highway one with my wife and the smell was intolerable and we had to roll up our windows but when you roll up the windows all you're doing is trapping all that in the car so when we say diesel and we say clean diesel it sounds very much like clean coal I think to a large part of the community is that is this really environmentally cognizant of what we're trying to accomplish so I think we have a big challenge in terms of trying to sell diesel because just the word diesel I think to a lot of people means pollution so I think that's one of the challenges the other one question I have is what is the comparison in terms of the cost of the fuel per mile for diesel as opposed to other fuels that we're using is it more expensive is it the same or is it less expensive so I mean we talked about maintenance being less but what about the cost in terms of the fuel per mile operating cost operating cost operating cost I think is an issue so with respect to the cost you need to understand that of course natural gas is a little less expensive than diesel fuel we're talking about a dollar 83 dollar 90 per gallon equivalent versus diesel which is about I think it's in around the range about $3 $2.85 $3 the problem is is that you need twice as much of course natural gas to get the same equivalent of energy that you do from diesel so it's a wash essentially okay where the cost savings come in with diesel is basically the maintenance aspect for it it's less of a problem for us running the diesel you've got 1998 buses that have been running and they're diesel and they're pretty much working pretty well you keep them maintained and you hold them home at the periodic rate whereas the CNGs we've just had do quite a bit more of the repair aspects and overalls than you would with diesel so you're getting twice as much everything you were saying okay I guess a term that could be used rather than referring to clean diesel would be low emission diesel and that's essentially a statement of fact that's what it is it's not none of the engines in the propulsion CNG and or diesel are clean but they're low emission and that's basically what we were trying to get to from when we started into the CNG path and we achieved it but the development and the technology that we now have with low emission diesels is equivalent almost and almost positive that the next series of diesel low emission diesels coming out that would be under the orders that we would place this cleaner than what we have now and they're already carb certified than what we have now so in this case what we what we'd be able to buy as we clean it's still going to stay well I was listening to what you were saying and having been a mechanic over the 20 somewhat years it doesn't bother me I'm sorry not really helping you I mean I'm sorry yeah like honestly I'm disappointed with the clean of the low emission diesels because they don't smell as good but that's just my love alright whatever generally exactly it's our first I guess it's better than nothing will be vice chair Jayce then Sierra would you remind us what our options are for fueling stations because I know we've the type of fuel and where we can fuel from the county. So how does that factor into our decision in terms of locations and access and things like that for each type of fuel? Well, compressed natural gas, clearly we have a full facility that takes in the liquid natural gas and compresses the compressed natural gas and that's what we've been using. The facility also has a large tank, a diesel tank. We were gonna take it out, but we didn't. So it's still there, it's still operational. And our fallback is basically flyers, which is on Encel Street, that we need to utilize their facilities and still have access to their facility. So from a localized standpoint, it's pretty accessible in all respects. Great, thank you. Director Duterte. Thank you. So I have to agree with Dr. Ruffball. I mean, when I, being behind those vehicles, it's always so intimidating to roll up your windows and the smell, even though it may smell good to you, it's super unhealthy, so. I don't know if I'm wrong. But we, in Watsonville on this thing, we have biodiesel, and for some reason, when I hear diesel, I'm like, oh, diesel. When I hear biodiesel, it's really changed kind of the way I look at, I actually don't think twice. I'm like, biodiesel, that must be good, you know? It must be green. And when you, I mean, because we have biodiesel in Watsonville, maybe we're a little bit more, you know, we've been dealing with these kind of issues a lot longer than the rest of the activities, but has. But biodiesel is made out of animal fats and plant plants and reused grease, and things that are like, you know, coming basically at a recycle, you know, they're not. So I don't know if this is how this diesel is made, if this is the same way as biodiesel is made, or if we are using biodiesel and you guys are trying to figure out what to call it when it's already called biodiesel, I'm not sure, I mean. Usually it's what they call it, the low sulfur diesel, versus what used to be used, which was not sulfur. The biodiesel is just more of an organic component that you can use. I don't know if you've ever seen drugs collecting the grease from the restaurant or anything of that nature. They convert it into, you know, combustible. The kind we use biodiesel and they just call it a day, I mean. Well, it's more expensive and I think that what's happening is you want to use what the manufacturers recommend because you have an after treatment kind of spent for two buses. And you want to make sure that the fuel that you're using is compatible with the after treatment that you're going to do, that's what gives you the low emissions. Well, you have a biodiesel plant in Watsonville, which would be super close. So I mean, that's what I'm saying is like, when it comes to cost, I think that would be cut down a lot if you use, maybe some local suppliers that are already, you know, creating low emission diesel. That's right. I mean, that's something to look into. I don't know what the manufacturer would say. I mean, but, because we wouldn't want to avoid having warranty to have that using something that's outside their realm. Right. That's something we should look into. Absolutely. So. Yes. I agree. Is that okay? Yeah. We'll definitely look into it. I have the same concern that Siri just expressed about the warranties, but if the manufacturer says it works, it will bring back to it. And I mean, and then you're gonna really cut back on having a community up in arms being you're bringing back diesel and you're like, it's a diesel, it's a plant. It's a normal plant. You know, for recycling old grease. We'll check into this. Comments from the public? Dan Stevenson and Metro employee. I just want to applaud board members that are considering diesel as an option. I actually presented a pretty good documentary on the topic of biodiesel back in 2013 or something when I was getting my 15 year award. And I don't know if anybody read it. I have more copies. But I think it would be high time to get better educated on the issue of diesel. I was not aware. I had bought the issue of biodiesel before and was told by certain people on the board that car would not allow for diesel in California. Now I'm hearing that in some cases they are. Anyway, I really, really think that there's a lot of misinformation about diesel, particularly the kind of stuff you're talking about. And I'd be happy to meet with you later and give you a copy in person of the documentary. There are whole other states that are highly dependent on and school districts. There are 100% using biodiesel in this country. Biodiesel can be 100% emission free. It can be cleaner than electric. And let me just speak to a little bit about the electric thing. The electric thing is heading towards a monopoly type of economy like some other things that have not gone well for our transportation infrastructure. And I'm concerned about that. If we start to incorporate other forms of technology like biodiesel, we will avoid that problem. When you have a monopoly type of economy, you have a dependency on that. We're seeing that with cell phones now. There's a lot of information regarding cell phones that are being suppressed, because nobody can afford to be without a cell phone now. Because we're 100% dependent on them. And I don't want to see that happen with our transit infrastructure. I really support diversity in our fleet. And I think that that's something now that we have an opportunity with CARD and with the board. Thank you, Jimmy. There's other people in Watsonville that are producing alcohol-based fuels that are essentially a type of biodiesel that are 100%. We have the capability in this county of leading the country on this because of what we have in Watsonville. We should be taking advantage of that. Thank you. What else in the public would like to speak to us on this? Bring it back to the board, Director Rock. Just a couple of comments. First in response to Dan, that in 2015, CARD had ruled out the possibility of buying a biodiesel fuel that has not changed in 2015. So you weren't given misinformation, just the reality changed in 2015 when those regulations ran out. I don't know, you don't like buying behind diesel, I don't either, but I also don't much like riding down the road behind McDonald's, and you know, fries, leftovers or whatever it is that they actually run this stuff on. You can smell that. When you have the biodiesel alternative. I think people need to keep in mind the following as we have this discussion, and I appreciate all the, I'm not trying to disagree with any of the comments that were made, but we don't find a way to get buses in the interim, not the goal of 2004, you bet, like over the next couple of decades and actually buy enough buses to keep service on the road. The alternative is either people can't get where they need to go if they're transit dependent or they get back in their cars, and that's the worst of all the options we have here, because they're not likely to get back into a Prius or a leaf or something, they're gonna get back into a car, whatever drives that car it's in, and they're gonna be a lot of those cars and buses. Even the old diesel buses do better than, all those people, all those 40 people in the bus or 60 people if they're standing would have been all driving individual cars, it would be a lot worse for the environment. So really keeping an eye on what we're trying to do here which is make public transit work for people, this is kind of a critical transition period for us, and I'm open to all of these options people have been talking about, but I don't think we can afford to just go, well, we'd rather have all electric, we have all electric than all we're gonna have as people going back in cars or not getting somewhere for the interim. Director Kaufman, go Miss. Good, this is him again, thank you. You're okay, yeah. Thank you. I'm also looking at it as a cost effective, it was a million dollars for electric, it was about 700 and some change for the biodiesel option, and then your regular diesel being about $575 or so, if the CNG is twice the amount of money mechanically to take care of maintenance, even if you're buying it at a cheaper price point, your overall cost of maintenance is gonna exceed the investment you'd need in something that is the more efficient biodiesel option as the technology is improved. My husband will get electric right now because he knows of the toxic ways even the electric component has in terms of the battery storage, so that's one reason why I don't have one of those, although I'm looking at these efficient as possible. So I think it becomes a win-win situation to be able to make sure that we advocate this as a good option because technology is far exceeded where we're at. We know that our standards in California are much higher than throughout the nation, and we do have the entrepreneurship in this county that I think could benefit us if we can make sure we get past the fine line of what the warranty reads in the vehicles that I think will be much more cost effective with the longevity for the investment. Yes, Dr. Mathew. I think fundamentally what we're talking is our desire to maintain a reliable, cost efficient service that reflects our evolving knowledge of environmentally sound technology. So I'd like to kind of tweak that opening statement because I think that's what we're getting at. We've seen it evolve a lot and it will continue to. Right, any other questions? We have a motion and a second on the floor. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. We will go to item number 15, consideration of appointment of Jason Lopez to the Metro Advisory Committee or MAC or term of office ending in December 31st, 2021. And I'd like to say as a member of the MAC Advisory Committee and I welcome many of the other committee members to comment on this. We had a tremendous application pool in this. It was really impressive and I'm sorry we couldn't have appointed each of them because they were well qualified. But Mr. Lopez is a regular writer of Highway 17. He and his wife do not own vehicles, cars. He goes over the hill four or five times a day. So, and it really feels in that respect a good void on the MAC committee. But if any other of the MAC committee members would like to comment. I thought one of the cute comments was the fact that he said, well, you get two for the price of one because my wife isn't doing the same thing. She will be putting in her comments through the MAC and Metro system. Okay. Move approval of the recommendation. Second. Yeah, motion and second for move approval. Maybe we should have any comments from the public that they might want to, I just want to let you know that we had a great pool of applicants. I want to repeat that. We encourage those who were interested to maintain their interest in Metro. We have a motion, second, yes. Just a question. Is there, can people electronically sign up to be on a mailing list, an email list? So, those members who applied and were not chosen, can they just request to be in gang agendas so they can participate? Yeah, there's a sign on what's that particular. Yeah, well, when you make the notifications you might invite them to do that. Okay. Yeah. There you go. Very well. Okay, you had another comment? I just wanted to make sure that those applicants that will receive that were being voted on today to continue to apply because we will have an evolution of new openings as it cycles through. So, we still encourage you to come back and participate and keep up to speed with what we're doing and especially on that committee and the impact that committee will have on all the decision-maker board here. Okay, a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Gary, unanimous say. We'll now go to our monthly financial report, Angela Hagan, who is now chair of the County Treasury Advisory Oversight Committee. Wow, our money saved someone. There you go. Okay, so this is for ending the month of February, the month of February, we ended up with $325,000 in favorable operating money. Operating revenues were about $640,000 to the good and our expenses were about $325,000. Year to date, we're 67% through the year, $5.00 in revenues and $4.00 in operating expenses. Details with the budget for the actuals, the page that shows, there we go. There's the variances for the revenues. So on the customer fares, we know that our ridership is a little bit down from what we had budgeted. Our sales tax is up, we have budgeted 2.5%, we brought in about 4.5% of all last year, so that's really almost $20 in sales taxes coming in. That's a combination of the operating money and the revenue sales tax that we've been getting for a few years. The ads in interest, sorry. Just a quick question, how does that line break down between those two sources? Or maybe you're going to cover it somewhere else. Do you want to go into details? See here? I did not bring that, I don't have that detail. Not critical, I'm just curious. Both sales tax, we budgeted both sales tax at a 2.5% increase. And so, sales tax to sales tax, they're both going up about 4.5%, actually, so definitely. Okay, $906,000 is our 1979 sales tax we've been getting, and about $70,000 is the measure D money that we're getting above the budget that we put forward. All right, other operating assistance, that's the UCSC RT Quest contract that we had, we did not have that budgeted, that was a new contract that we entered into this year. And then the STA, STA we should be seeing around $3.4 million of which we're leaving, running to and now for the budget, and we're going to be transferring $2.2 million through the year to the capital budget to fund equipment and buses. So, that's $670,000 is going to be transferred to the capital budget. We do not do that every month, we let it, particularly a little bit, and we transfer it every few months. Any questions on the revenue? Moving on to the expenses. So, your budget versus actual expenses, actual expenses over the purple, budget is the gold, all of them we are under budget, which is good. Here's the deltas. So, the first three columns, the two blue and the one red, those box in the middle there, if you have them all together, it's a favorable variance. There's about $261,000 difference between the regular labor and over overtime. So, we are a little over on our labor, but we are way under on fringe benefits. As it says there in the box, that's due mainly because of the medical insurance premiums and a significant lower workers' company anticipated. Services, that's professional and technical fees, there's contracts in there that we have not yet, so those expenses have not been incurred. Materials, all of the other supplies, we're starting to spend more rooming parts than was budgeted. We've been talking almost constantly about how old our equipment and our buses are and how we have to continually be care of them. So, now you're starting to see where it's affecting the budget, where the money that we had in the budget is beginning to not be enough for just that long. And then other expenses, that's the settlement cost. We always budget a month for settlement costs, hoping that we won't spend it, and so far we've been under budget on spending some of that. Any more questions on the expense side? Moving on to capital, this is the capital budget. This is our funding slide. This is the type of funding that we have for all of our different capital projects. We have a budget of about $20 million, of which we've spent $2.2 million dollars. The next slide shows you what we spent that on. So, this is the expense side of the capital. If you want to see the detail to this slide, go to 16D1, that shows you the detail to the construction-related projects, the IT projects, the revenue vehicles that we bought, and the non-review vehicles that we bought. Any questions on the budget? Director Kaplan-Gomez? Yes, thank you. Slide 16A6, it's in our packet. We have the labor, labor overtime, the fringe benefits, the services. Are you funding the fringe? Is this for our CalPERS that's found expenses and are coming out of the retirement? Yes. Okay, can we have that broken down because CalPERS is a huge hit for our agency, and I believe that it would be good for us to actually show that as how much of that impact we have in our overall budget. It's significant, and I want to make sure that we show that. Director Mathews? And heavy on our mind is, what's our projectable this year contribution to CalPERS and what's our payback for the long term? Yeah, those are two different things. Yeah. And as- That's a good question. I haven't heard it from this agency, but what's the projection of the hits going forward? That's a good question, and how would you- I hear what you said. Oh, in terms of the CalPERS payments, what are the payments for this year and what are the assessments for the debt for the debt? Would you like to have that go out like, say, three years or a couple years? Three, five, whatever. I mean, I know that's heavy on our mind right now. Well, same with the county. Yeah. Do we do that, let's say two or three year projection at least anyway? So in the current budget, we pay as we go. That's what's in our budget. We pay as we go, so as expenses are incurred, we know what we are supposed to be paying to make ourselves solvent for this year, so we pay as we go in the current operating budget. We have unfunded my ability. Yes, that's a completely different number, if that's not in your operating budget at all. That is something that takes into account every single person that's ever worked here that has ever retired here and is still, not to be more, but still alive. Yeah, yeah. And so we have an actuary early that comes through. We leave every other year every three years, and they put together an actuary, of course, and then we keep track of what those future costs are going to be, so that's why it's not getting our current budget. So I believe what you're asking me for is you would like something that tells you what are those current expenses that we put into the operating budget, and then as a completely separate thing, you want to know what the unfunded liability would be to separate things, is that correct? Yes, and is this agency not getting any assessments from CalPERS to make up their current debt? You do not do anything like that, no. We have not incurred a bond or a loan or anything like that to pay our unfunded liability down. One of the things that I've talked to you guys in previous meetings is that we have a sales tax that is into perpetuity. It's not like we have to continually go out and find new money to fund some of our ongoing expenses. If that was the case, I'd probably be playing on the floor right now, but because we have kind of that constant out there, we know we're gonna have money to fund things in the future. If something happened to this agency, we would still have that sales tax coming in to fund future costs because we would still be an entity that owed. I'll be interested in pursuing a bit offline. Okay, the differences between what I pursue, and how we're handling the city. Sure. Just a minute. Mr. Clifford. Yes, so Mr. Chair, let me just suggest that we place on an upcoming agenda board report on this. We met very recently in orientation with our new board member, Trent Kaufman, and raised a lot of questions about PERS that were researching. And as soon as all of that information comes together, I think it would be beneficial to share with everybody. And it's some of those same questions about the unfunded liability, our portion of the unfunded liability, what portion of payback is included in what PERS mandates for us on an annual basis. Let us collect all that information together. I think it would also be helpful for us to include in that report some additional information about what others are doing. The county, the cities in this county, and maybe what other transit properties they're doing. Because we're not alone in that. Do you think we have that by next month or June? I think May might be too quick. But if we can tentatively put it on for June, June the, Mike, should we get Director Rackett? When we're gathering this information, the CalPERS is going to like basically change our rates to answer one of the questions asked here. In next year, your following and so forth. So there'll be guesses or predictions about what they're going to set them after. We don't necessarily know what those are. That's a different question than the so-called unfunded liability issue in which, I'm sorry, but a very conservative view is we should somehow have in our bank enough money to pay off every retirement of every member that works here for the rest, and their beneficiaries for all time, which is absurd because no agency could do that. And it's sort of, you run around going like, oh my God, they've got this huge pit they're all going to fall into. Well, no, we're not going to fall into that. Money is raised in the future to pay those costs. So I'm very interested in the question of what we think our CalPERS responsibilities are going to be in the next, not just this next, this year, but three years out, as was being suggested here. But not, I'm going to care what that number is of what it would cost us if we closed tomorrow and had to pay off everybody's pension, which there are people out there arguing you should be doing it, and often using that figure to show billions in debt and will never get out of a hoarding. It's just ridiculous. Any other questions from the board? Are you through with your guess? Okay, we're going, keep on going. So the additional information that I just put forward to you is here. Our unemployment rate a year ago was 8.5. Today is 6.7. Our gas was down to $2.90 a year in February. Now we're up to 3.43. And our monthly ridership looks like we're a little higher than last year. We're a fixed route, and we're about the same for Cabrillo, but we're a little higher from 5.17. Can I give you the 12 months to see forward? Excuse me, on the earlier, I saw the passenger fares was down. Was that just because of the consolidation of services that we've had, we've put in place and the passenger fare revenues were down. So this is actual to actual. What I told you before is budget to actual. Two different numbers. And the next one. So the preliminary March data on the expense side only, we're looking at about $2.5 million that we should be on the positive side of our expenses. We've had quite a few open positions. That's where some of the old time comes in. Significant savings in fringe benefits, and we are not spending everything that we budgeted in the non-personnel census. So it's looking good so far. That's just our preliminary numbers. I do not have a revenue side of March yet. You will see that next month. And then going on to the non-neutral budget risk. This is something that I will bring back to you probably through November when the potential ballot measure comes through. We have the SB1 situation today is we're in $2.2 million to us. $92.2 in operating in about $985,000 in the capital side. If that repeal is passed in November, we will lose $2.7 million going into 2019. So that's a significant amount of money. $9.7, almost $1.8 in operating. And then again, around $10 million in the capital side. And that's just a small number. That's all we have. Any other questions? Any other questions from the board members? Not yet, officially. That would be on the November ballot, of course, but no, it hasn't yet. But it's moving forward quite quickly. Anticipated that it will, yeah. I just want to add an addition. The significance that we need to really keep this on the front of the burner about keeping the SB1, when the November ballot comes out, we will likely see gas prices probably closer to four. And people are going to look at that gas tank at $4 a gallon and what SB1 is costing. And they may be making their decision off of that. And we have to really emphasize every penny and how it's been spent resourcefully on anything that SB1 has paid for. So whatever we need to do to market that, to send that message out to those voters when they vote in November on whether they decide to make sure that bus is on the road or whether their gas price goes down by whatever it's gonna go down by if it were to be repealed and having those, the ruts and the holes and deferred maintenance. It's gonna be significant that we all contribute to market to save this SB1. I just remember the executive committee of the California City Association of Counties, I know we're very sensitive to that and I know the League of California Cities as well. We just voted recently on our Measure D project list and I brought up in that context but also on SB1. I think at every opportunity that we can say, this project brought to you by SB1, this service brought to you by, that's a fact, it's not telling you how to vote but to your point, I think people really have to see, oh, these revenues are delivering these services and those signs, every time there's a project or a service that should be, okay. Yeah. Just need pictures of earning buses. Yeah, earning buses, yeah. Big billboards for earning buses. Any other comments from the board? Yes, Mr. Hager. No, it isn't the marketing agent that's going to be doing some of this thing. Well, if we get one, yes, but. That was my next point. Currently, we have various managers who come together as a team to help us with some marketing efforts. We are going to do a SB1-affiliated media event. Barrow last half of May is what we're targeting right now and we would show off the three cutaways that we received and the three call reveres that we're leasing and show that as SB1-funded vehicles. We just received this week the stickers from CTA that will place on there on those buses. So when those buses are going down the street, they'll be stickers saying this was funded by SB1. Yeah, exactly. I think we need to do that in every city and the county where we're doing our project. Absolutely, and maybe if you could all ask ROTC, I mean, they're the logical one to be dealt with some kind of coordinated look and feel for that campaign. Good, good point. Yes, Director Lidd? The city of Scotts Valley just received or we just got notified that this has been awarded a million dollar grant from SB1 Local Partnership funds and that'll be for Glenwood. It's a real high visually, it'll be noticed from a high school on up to add a bike lane and it's just been an area that's been very unsafe that we're always hearing about at every meeting. So that'll be an opportunity when that's announced to be able to do the same thing. Yeah, but I think they do for, you know what I'm saying? So we put a big, four-beded sign. No, I'm serious. You know, it'll drive by it all the time. Well, safety is a really important issue. You emphasize the safety part of it. So we can kind of cut expenses but then it's also a kind of safety kind of thing. Right, this question, this is for kids and students and I'll write, it's more, any kids home more to the residents there if it's about the kids, we can cut the same thing. I'm making a note. Okay, the other question. Are you done? I'm afraid, I'm afraid to ask. I'm done with this report. Yeah, you might ask if there's any comment on it. It's just a report, we're just gonna file this so is there any comment from the public? Motion to accept. Second to motion. Oh, we have a motion to accept and a second, it's on the board. Yes. So just a comment on the pension front. We'd like to compare ourselves to the districts, not cities because your cost of the cities and the counties are a lot when you went with the sheriffs in the party departments. At public safety, you went at a bigger ratio on them and we're regular employees. So just to not put ourselves in that bucket. Okay. It's a different order, right? Yeah. Just, it's cool, you know, just kinds of districts. Thank you. Any other comments from the public? Do we have a motion to second? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It's ordered unanimously. Moving right along to item number 17, accepting file on consideration of resolution to adopt Santa Cruz Metropolitan Friends of Districts Equal Employment Opportunity Program effective January 1st, 2018 through December 31st, 2020. Good morning, Dr. Jolene Church. Jolene Church. I'm the new florist manager. This morning I'll be bringing to you our newly improved Equal Employment Opportunity Program for 2018-2020. Why is a new and improved FDA release circular in October, 2016, which greatly changed the layout and the information that's provided in this document. Of course, as an agency, it's always our goal to attract, retain and develop highly skilled talent. We do that under the guise of equal employment opportunities. And so with that, it moves beyond just fair hiring and fair promotions, effectively coaching in discipline and providing training opportunities and development for all. That is a part of this program. As you'll see, just flipping through the newly revised program, there is a new Sam Cruz Metropolitan Transit District EEO Policy Statement, that's section two. This new statement follows the new guidelines under FDA. This is the recommended template for how the policy statement should look. This is something that the board should become familiar with because this is a document the board will be trained on. This will be posted on our website and will be a part of any improvement material. This document is our guiding document for our EEO. Other significant changes within the reporting are the reporting requirement on what's called the EEO4, which not only breaks down the racial dynamics of our workforce, but also provides reporting on disciplinary actions by workgroup, as well as the training opportunities provided by workgroup. And all of these are broken down by sex and by race. And so those are new things that you have not seen in the past in an EEO report and in an EEO program, but they are requirements of the FDA. So this new program is put together in a way where there's significant monitoring and controls in place, reporting that's in place. Much of that reporting will take place between the executive level staff, the senior level staff, and myself with the CEO, making sure that we're staying on track, staying on target. We'll bring that information to the board periodically update you how we are on our hiring goals, in no way would we set a quota based on race or sex, but what we do find from the templates provided from MPA in running our under-utilization reports is that we may have a significant opportunity with different groups of people that we may want to target our recruiting efforts in those areas that we may not have reached in the past. For example, if we had a lower representation in a certain gender or specific race associated with that gender, we may reach out to various business networks, different student groups, different other employment networks so that we can specially target those plans. And so we put this program forward to you for your consideration and we ask that you approve the resolution adopting Metros-Equal for an opportunity program for January 1st, 2018 through December 31st, 2020. Any questions? If anybody thinks the exhibit A is one or two pages, go through about 121 of them and you'll get there. So it's very thorough and thank you for all done. Director Duterte. Just a quick question, what do you have in here that directly addresses the LGBTQ community when it comes to... Actually a really interesting question because it's not a specifically designated category under EEO. However, of course, it's always the most important to make sure that you're representing the diverse community that you serve. And so anytime we're out targeting our recruitment efforts, first off we go through the schools, we go through any of the training portals available through our local universities and campuses. And then through our EDD and any of our typical of resources where we would have placement and we wanna make sure that because those community members are going to be a part of those other placement groups. And so we target those first and then we reach out a network becoming a part of various groups. And that really as the new human resource manager will be one of my goals this year is really doing a lot of networking and getting involved in the community with different groups that may not have been really approached in the past to become just a good part of the community and just really learning to be a part of the community. So identifying those groups. So though they may not specifically be addressed, they would definitely be targeted within our targeted placement. I appreciate that and I appreciate you getting more involved with, there's places like the Diversity Center and I mean there's a really large LGBTQ community that reside in this county. So I think creating better relationships with that group as well as other groups is I think really important for our organization. Vice Chair Chase. Thank you for the presentation of all the detail in here. So when it's talking about in the first page the bullets of the goals for hiring for various different job groups, is that as our own internal policy that has dictated our goals there or is that because of the federal? Yeah, let me point out. You can flip to say page 18 of the EEOP, the EEOP, the proposed EEOP. Table 5.2 will show you a utilization analysis by job code. This is a standard template provided by FDA. We plug in our actual numbers for our last three years reporting period. And out of that, the algorithm provides us with areas of potential adverse impact. That does not mean that adverse impact actually exists, but it is an indicator that we may have an underutilization in that area. And so as you can see under the very first category where it says officials, that's officials and administrators, it shows percent underutilization, 3%, underutilized, yes, no, yes. Number needed to reach one. And so this specific area actually shows one Asian male is needed to reach parity. How is that determined? Well, the local available workforce is evaluated. So we look at the state workforce, how many Asian males are in the state of California. And then our typical hiring area, which for us is typically Monterey County and Santa Cruz County. So with that, what is our Asian male population? We take that from the 2010 US Census. And so with all that data in the algorithm, that's how this fits out. So the goal specifically comes from FTA's formula and then how we, the actions tied to that goal, how are we gonna reach that one Asian male? Well, we're going to target more populations where those Asian males may be in our recruitment activities. Now does that mean we're gonna hire an Asian male only? No, it means that we're going to make sure that we reach more Asian males so that with any of our recruitment material. And it's one of those numbers. Maybe we'll have more Asian males apply. And in the past, using this type of algorithm and making sure that when you're watching something and when you know what to target, you can more easily attract that. But if you don't, you just randomly post things as you always have, you don't get the results that you'd want or reach your goal. So we've definitely come up with some targeted plans based on the underutilization report. I think sometimes it's hard for the general public to understand too when you think of proportionality and you think just let's look at gender. And so reasonably thinking you'd want it roughly 50%. And so I think understanding the metrics and what is feeding into those decisions is important so that people can better wrap their brains around sort of why the hiring looks this way and why the recommendations are for very specific things. It is a minimum standard though. So I mean, I guess from my perspective is I think that the more diversity that we have and the more representative we can actually be of this community kind of to Jamie's point is I think important to us is a value of this board and of this community is to certainly strive to meet these goals and exceed those because it's a minimum federal standard. Director Matthews. Yeah. You answered some questions about the extent of difference in this form from previous ones and it's long. And I understand the metrics driving the algorithms and all that, but that one page just left out of me reading it. It seems so formula-driven and frankly weird. One Asian male is needed. Is there any other way to say it just, and in this category, three women and one Hispanic male are needed? Is there any other way to understand? Well, it's interesting because the FTA specifically wants to understand the underutilization. Yes, because how many are needed to reach parity is their specific language. And so we match their language and it was interesting putting the document together because FTA actually has a checklist to put this together and we mirrored their language throughout just to make the reviewing of the document by the FTA easier. And so we did mirror their language, but I hear what you're saying and something of note that is not mentioned here that would be really to be proud of is that to see the underutilization numbers that we do have in the various areas, we have very little underutilization and you'll see just these a few groups that we'd like to target and better point to some of our recruiting towards. However, we have a very diverse workforce and that's something to be very proud of, something that Metro can embrace is that it does have a history here looking back through the past EEOPs that we have consistently had a very diverse workforce and that's something to be proud of. Whether it says we need one age and a male or not, it is something to be very proud of, but this does point out specific groups that we may want to look at a little better. I obviously understand that you gotta do what you gotta do. And I didn't look carefully to see, maybe it's here already, but this is something more of a philosophical statement kind of along the line of what Senator Chase has suggested. This reads so bureaucratic to the point of being almost offensive and I think to the extent we do reach forward to Thursday in our workforce, to the extent we make gains and maintain that commitment, that should be reflected somewhere rather than just running the formulas. Absolutely. I hear you on that and I think that all of our recruitment outreach and any of our external customer-facing and even internal customers to our own staff, that message is softer and less bureaucratic because we do care and attracting and retaining and developing our amazing goals to have. However, if you forget that people are people, that then you lose something there. So I hear what you're saying. Mr. Thomas, if it can be incorporated in time and I do think the greater emphasis on training does, over time, contribute to building a more diverse. Mr. Clarkford, just quick clarification. The way of a plea from your CEO, we are late in submitting this. I read that, yeah. So if I could move forward with this and take these comments as guidance for the next version, would that be acceptable? Yeah, we really are late in getting this to FTA. I was just gonna ask it, if we don't have a value statement that this could actually be referred to the HR personnel committee, perhaps it's the appropriate committee for that to develop one and this could certainly go forward and then we could take that on as a charge of that committee to develop one for the district. Thank you. Dr. Rockin. I would just point out that this district is actually does amazingly well in terms of diversity issues. It wasn't always that way. I can remember when there was concern about hiring female bus drivers, you know, and we were way beyond that and people driving around Watsonville were all white and that was a problem and stuff. I mean, took that issue on. So in the end, people are raising concerns about the way this is reported out, but the reality is that the workforce in this agency actually is diverse and reflects the diversity of our community. We're not a completely diverse community in the way that we might be, but this agency is at least as diverse as the community is, and that's what I think is really kind of critical. Any other questions? Questions from the public, any? I just wanna echo my director Rockin's comments that we have a very diverse workforce and we've tried to, in our hard practice, because one of the things that we're not getting enough of is, you know, operators and these positions. And, you know, we were enticed, but we've gone to the, you know, not to the farmer's markets, just to get the word out and trying to get, you know, motivate females to apply and sometimes without a sense because, you know, they're transformative to atmosphere now, back in the 70s and 80s, it was like, I'm gonna do, you know, a man's job, you know, kind of thing, and I'm gonna get into it. And now it's, that's gone away. People, you wanna more stable and because of our shifts and people having families, it's hard and it's hard to attract because of the shifts because we, you know, function almost 24-7. So that's one of the biggest challenges and on the current status that unemployment rate is really attractive at every work everybody's trying to hire. So we're gonna have some challenges in attracting our friends. Thank you. Any other comments from the public? Okay, we'll bring us back for a residence, for acceptance. Did we? Did we accept the report? Emotion by Rotkin. Second by Matthews. All in favor? Aye. So ordered, unanimous. And maybe we can just add to that for the direction to refer the issue of a valiant state. That was certainly part of my motion. Everybody understood that. I know. Okay, we'll announce that the next meeting of the Metro Board is Friday, May 18th at 9 a.m. at the Watsonville City Council Chamber. And after nearly, well, yeah, two hours of trying to get through this short agenda