 I will call this meeting of the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District Board of Directors to order on May 20th, 2022. And can we have a roll call, please? Director Brown. Present. Director Downey. Present. Director Dutra. Here. Director Dutra. Here. Director Connary-Joneson. Present. Director Koanay. Here is absent. Director Winn. Here. Director MacPerson. I'm not seeing him. Okay, I'm going to pass. Director Patter. Here. Director Parker. Here. Director Oken. There. Director Patterson, Director Haydn. Here. Director Parker. Here. Director Rockin. Director Ericksoficio, Director Henderson. Here. And Exofficio, Director Northup. Okay. And we do have form. Okay. Well, thank you. Maybe we'll see people come on as time progresses. Any announcements? Just today's meeting is being broadcast by community TV. Thank you, Donna. All right. Any comments from our board of directors? I have one. Please go ahead, Rebecca. Thank you. If you'll recall earlier this year, we received a letter and petition from the La Selva Beach community asking for the return of both para Cruz and root 55 to their neighborhood, which was cut off, I believe in 2016. Because this neighborhood is a bit too far from the closest fixed root in seascape, it does not currently qualify for para Cruz service. Supervisor Friend posted a La Selva Beach community zoom meeting last month, which on Ergo to review the situation and the possibility of returning Metro service to the neighborhood. John described the challenges Metro currently faces with the shortage of operators and he explained that when staffing levels improved, it may be possible to extend para Cruz service back to La Selva Beach. And the return of the fixed root service would also require bus operator staffing levels to increase. And there was discussion about the possibility of adjusting work 55 to return service there in the future. Both supervisor friend and the meeting attendees were grateful for John's time and his clear communication of the intricacies involved in service design and implementation. Because we're in a new normal of an extremely short staff of operators and will be for the foreseeable future, I think there should be thresholds, if not already established for the return of services for our communities that have had theirs removed. La Selva is a small community, but it has been completely isolated from transit for several years. And while we will always need more operators, that should be a point when services restored in a system established to do so. Supervisor friend requested our board consider this and direct staff to look into establishing threshold criteria. We're returning services to La Selva and other communities. I'm new to Metro, so if a system of restoration of services already exists, let's use it to help neighborhoods get their Metro back. This relates to an article published yesterday in the Economist where travel now is described less like an asterisk or in our county like an hourglass. And more like a spider web because people are choosing to work more often from home and take fewer often shorter trips along routes moving to the side as well as in and out of metropolitan areas. And while we will always need reliable service in and between Santa Cruz and Watsonville, planning for coverage in the San Lorenzo Valley, Capitola, Aptos, and beyond, must also be included in our transit web, especially once the bus on shoulder lanes are established. Finally, I wanted to thank Michael for your presentation yesterday in the Zoom room. Your descriptions of your previous work showed some ideas we can certainly implement here. And I look forward to live music on the bus one day. Thank you. Thank you, Director Downing. Any other comments or? Mr. Chair, do you see me or hear me now? I do. I do see you. And I see that Director Rotkin has joined us as well. And also all those here as well. Oh yes, thank you. I see her now. All right. Oral and written communications to the board. I know that we've had three items in the packet. Donna just sent an additional message that by email. We received, I think this morning. Yes. And also last night. Very good. And I'm looking to the public. I see some attendees, but I don't see any. Hands up if we have any other communications from the public. There is a hand up in the public. And there we go. I will call on Tate. Tate, can you hear us? Can you hear me now? Yes. There you go. Hi. I'm really new with this meeting. So just want to let you know that. I sent an email at the last minute. So I apologize for that. But I just want to say that. I want to congratulate you for letting one of the bus routes route 17 operate every day, including holidays, the one that provides service from Santa Cruz to San Jose. I am, I also want to let you know that I'm a little concerned about a couple of things. One, the delay going on in the freeway sometimes, which I hope there could be improvement. Like I don't know, maybe a bus only lane or something that would prevent any further delays. And two, I've noticed a lot of bus trips have been getting canceled due to short amount of bus drivers. So what I'm just trying to say is I'm hoping there could be a way like whenever the hiring starts, I hope there could be a way to give people more time to like look for people who could apply for jobs as bus drivers, because I'm doing everything I can to spread the word out to other people to get jobs as bus drivers so that this cancellation can possibly stop for good. And I know it's been going on since the pandemic of coronavirus. So I just want to let you know that that's all. So that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, take. Thank you for your comments and we appreciate that. I think we go on to the next item. I don't see any other hands. And so we're on to labor organization communications. Do we have our labor folks here today and anything they care to say? I see Brandon. Brandon Freeman, would you like to talk? Take the hand down as well, probably. Right now, Brandon. There we go. There we are. Good morning, Brandon Freeman, senior vice chair for smart YouTube 23. As you know, I usually refrain from speaking too much publicly. Unfortunately, when I do it seems as though it's under some kind of controversy. However, today, I'm pleased to say that mostly what I have to say is going to be positive. I don't know if you're aware or not, but for the last week or two, James has been enjoying a much needed meeting. He's been working on a lot of acting as the chair for our union on a day-to-day basis while our new CEO, Michael Tree, has been getting adjusted to his new role here at Metro. I've had the absolute pleasure of spending more time with him these last couple of weeks than I was ever allowed by his predecessor. My first impression of Michael was simply, wow, he's human. There was no ego or chest puffing and he was at our operations building before he had even officially started working. He's a genuine guy who tells you like it is, but it comes off more like a caring uncle or a family member than any kind of authoritarian figure. In just the last couple of weeks, Michael has found time to answer any and all questions that I have and has visited operations and met with several of our drivers. He's shown me that he's focused on recruitment and retention to a degree that far surpasses the lip service that I'm used to from that office. I'm scheduling to adjusting pay scales for new operations. It's clear to me that Michael has a firm understanding what daily life is like for us under operators, especially under the current shortage. It has a genuine interest in improving our daily work lives from commodities at the operations building to our schedules, taking into consideration the fact that the majority of us commute from South County or beyond daily. Just the buzz that Michael has generated with these actions and these conversations has already come to an end. We're finally seeing a positive morale trend. Many people have cautioned me that, hey, take your time. This could just be a honeymoon period and we're going to wear off, but I honestly don't believe that that's the case. Michael strikes me as someone who's true to who he is. I don't imagine that his attitude or willingness to work with us will change. So I wanted to thank everyone involved in the recruitment and hiring process for picking us up. I appreciate that you listened to our concerns as a union and as operators and really brought us someone who has new fresh ideas and a great willingness to work with all of us. Changing up gear slightly. I do want to publicly acknowledge and thank Don for the work that she has done and all of the meetings that we have had to make all of the details of some of these changes come to life. I'm sure you guys know about or are going to be able to talk about that. I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud of the work that you've done and raised a little bit to attract new operators. As well as talking with me and including me on some of the new promotional materials that we'll be putting out to help with that recruitment process. So I wanted to give a big shout out to Don for working with me on that even though on one of the days she had to come in and meet with me with actually her birthday. So I'm very proud of the work that she has done. I'm very proud of the work that she has done. Not quite as sunshine and roses as the first couple of things. The protero buses. So I know there's a big conversation that's revolving around hydrogen versus battery electric and we have a mandate approaching. We need to go to an electric fleet. However, the experience that we have had as operators with the protero buses really kind of came to me fairly quickly. But there is no other area that you can check a positive box on these buses. They are, for whatever reason, most likely weight reduction reasons, they're very, very rattly. They're very rickety. And it is not uncommon to have hand stanchions, to have visors, to have screws falling off these buses under normal operation. I know that our shop and our maintenance division has done everything that they can when these issues are being discussed. So we've had a lot of conversations with the operators, securing the screws, changing the screws, making sure they're the right ones. But the problems persist. It is not uncommon for us to go out into the yard to check these buses out and have them just be completely unresponsive and not even be able to open the doors to get into them to check them out. I'm hoping that while we are under pressure to move to electric, we are also paying a very high price. And I don't think that we're getting necessarily the quality that we deserve for the price that we are paying with Protera. We have buses that are 24 years old that were made in 1998 by New Flyer and they feel and drive more premium than our brand new electric buses. So I'm hoping that the range discussion does not eclipse and make us forget about the fact that the comfort of both our operators and our operators is the reliability of these buses are just as important as moving to a new propulsion system. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments, Brandon. I see a hand from Jordan Baskin. Best columnist. Jordan, would you like to speak? There you are. Hello, everyone. I just want to echo what Brandon was saying. Working with Michael so far has been an incredible time. And I think it's been a great time. And his attitude is so positive and his willingness to kind of meet everybody and make the necessary changes to kind of improve morale and what not. It's been just absolutely great. I just want to give a lot of credit and respect to Michael and for all the board members that appointed him. So thank you very much. Thank you, Jordan. And so with that, I think I'll move on to the Metro advisory committee written communications. Donna, do we have anything? Other than the minutes, I think not. Sorry, there are none. Okay, thank you. And I believe there are no additional documentation being distributed to the board. That's correct. There are none. Very good. So with that, we reached the consent agenda. And I'd ask if there are any items in the consent agenda that the director would like pulled for discussion. Or a motion to approve. We ask the public and then I'll be happy to make the motion. Thank you, Mike. Any comment from the public. On items from the consent agenda. I'll then move. See, I will move the approval of the consent agenda. Second. We have a motion from Rockin. The second was Donna Lynn. Thank you. Let's have a roll call vote on that item. Director Brown. Aye. Director Downey. Aye. Director Dutra. Aye. Director Lin. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Pagler. Aye. Director Parker. Not here. All right. No, I'm here. She's here. I saw her. Thank you. All right. And then director Rockin. Aye. And the motion passes. Thank you. All right. And with that, we'll move into the regular agenda. And the first item is a presentation of an employee 10 year longevity award to dilly brubek. And I have a nice lengthy piece to read about. to read about Deli. She is a human resource technician and administrative assistant in operations. This May will mark 10 years that Deli has been working for Santa Cruz Metro. Deli worked in human resources until a few months ago when she decided to start a fresh chapter at Metro by moving to operations to serve as the administrative assistant. She has brought a great sense of liveliness, attention to detail and vision for the future to the work here involving our bus operators and transit supervisors. Most recently, she assisted with the annual Transit Worker Appreciation Day here at Metro, planning and arranging all the events, food and catering equipment. One of Deli's talents we most love is how she really knows and appreciates the people with whom she works. She began her career at Metro working in human resources as a human resource technician and spent the last 10 years in that field. Many of Metro's employees have Deli to thank for finding them their jobs here. She was prepared for this work by her previous employment working for Volt Services. And before that, she lived in the Los Angeles area and worked as a casting agent for Universal Studios Television Department. So when Deli says you have star quality, you better believe it. Deli grew up with her brother and sister here in Santa Cruz and they all live nearby with their families with whom she is very close. She also has standing Tuesday taco nights with her daughter Kira and her partner Kali. She enjoys her family get-togethers, her kitten Harlem baking and all that Santa Cruz has to offer and we all enjoy Deli. So appreciations, thank you for your efforts. 10 years of service, let's get another 10 at least. And with that, we'll go to item 11, approval of formal ratification of a labor agreement extension between Smart Union Local 23 fixed route for the period of July 1st through June 30th, 2023. Good morning, everyone, Don Cremé, HR director. If it's okay with you, I'd like to go through 11, 12 and 13. That's perfect. Okay, perfect. So as you know, we were due to negotiate this coming end of the contract which was June. So we were due to start negotiating here pretty shortly. As you know, with COVID and everything else, contentious over the last couple of years, it just didn't feel right to sit down and go through negotiations. And especially when we have a new CEO coming on board, we wanted to kind of start fresh and everybody kind of engage and start fresh. So we decided to work with the unions and negotiate a percentage to roll over the contract for one year. The unions both agreed to that. So we are proposing that we increase wages by 3.5% and do a one-time payout of $1,500 for each, all three unions. And so we are asking for you to approve that today. Very good. Questions from the board? Any comments from the public? Do I see a motion from the board? I will move approval of these three contracts. Okay. I see a motion from Rockin, second from McPherson. And we're voting on all three. Yeah, that's the motion. Very good. Donna, when you're ready for roll call. Unmute. Sorry. There you go. Director Brown. Aye. Director Downey. Aye. Director Dutra. Aye. Director Lin. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Pagler. Aye. Director Parker. Aye. And Director Rockin. Aye. And the motion passes. Very good. Thank you to everyone for your hard work on moving this through. I'm happy that we've crossed this threshold. Item 14, district ballot for Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency. I think Chuck is going to present on this item. Yeah, I'm going to go over this. So I'm going to give you a little brief background and then go through it. I actually have Kim and Mark on here in case any really detailed questions come up. But let me tell you what this is. So down in Watsonville, we got this Pajaro River and they've secured enough funding to, I'll just say fix and enhance the levee that keeps the town from flooding or majority of the town from flooding and I'd like to say a hundred year flood. As part of that, there's an ongoing maintenance that we need to do every single year to maintain this levee in place. So as part of that, they are asking that we vote on whether we are going to do and have those people that are in floodplains pay an assessment, annual assessment, or do we say no and effectively they don't end up going down this path of fixing the levee and then of course there's issues there. So a little bit of a background here are we own two properties in Watsonville. We own the transit center, but we also own the property next to it. And in the property next to the transit center, it is actually leased to the city of Watsonville on a 99 year lease at a dollar per year. And what they did was they Watsonville then sub lease that to Housing Corporation, Mid Peninsula Housing Coalition to develop 46 low income units as well as a childcare center. And it was built back in 2000 and I think five or six is when it was actually completed. And as part of that process, we've kind of kept the hands off on that property. However, with the levee, the levee we have to vote on either yes, we go ahead with the maintenance or no because we own the land still. So effectively we are the voters on behalf of the city of Watsonville as well as this Via Del Mar is really the development that sits on our land. To give you an idea of the assessment, the assessment is based off of the square footage of the property that could flood. Our transit center being kind of smaller is only $571 a year. However, the assessment on the Via Del Mar is $2,271 a year. And this is low income and the bill would be paid by the city of Watsonville and how they handle it. I'm not sure exactly. But it is our recommendation that the board gives approval to our GMCO Michael Tree to vote affirmative or yes to move forward with this assessment so that we continue this, keep that levy in great shape. And then if we experience a flood, it stays, it doesn't come over our levy and flood. Most of Watsonville as well as our transit center and Via Del Mar. Hopefully I did that. If you have more detailed questions, I think Kim and Mark can help out a little bit better than I can. Thank you, Chuck. comments, questions from the board? Well, I was going to lift Timmy or already say something but I know that Zach Friend and Greg Capit have worked diligently on this part of the levy thing. This has been 50 years in the making. It's gonna be moving forward for a vote. And hopefully it'll be passed by the voters but it's a much needed improvement that needs to be done on the levy. It's hard to believe we're gonna have another rainstorm that will cause a flood these days but it's out there. And so I strongly urge that we support this recommendation. Thank you, Bruce. Director Parker. Thank you. Yes, I agree 100% with Supervisor McPherson. We have been working for 50 plus years, almost my entire lifetime. My family's been through many floods here and it's not only to protect the city of Watsonville but the township of Paro and all the agricultural land that we have surrounding the Paro floodplain. So yes, I'm glad the city of, excuse my voice, I took my students to international games yesterday and I was one of their greatest cheer honors but I've lost a lot of it. But so I have to say that this is something we'll never be able to get funding for in this way again. The state of California, the federal government through our representatives have brought us monies to finish this project in a way that we never dreamed possible. And now that it's here, all we have to do is maintain it. And so that's the last step. And once that last step happens then Army Corps of Engineers and everything keeps moving forward. So yes, this is very important to South County and especially to Paro and Watsonville. Thank you. Thank you, Director Parker. Director Tutra. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I just wanna say also, thank you to Congressman Panetta who has worked really hard on this project. We are really sad we're gonna be losing him as our congressman and we're gonna be sad. We're gonna be cut out of the rest of the county. But he's worked hard for our community and this is just one of the projects that he really helped change once he got elected. I know we've been working on this for what, 50 years, well before I was even born. So the fact that it's actually come to fruition is really exciting for our community. The levy is along one of the most vulnerable parts of our community which is our adult villages and also into places where people live on a limited income. So it's important that we make sure that we protect them and as you heard earlier, this building that we have is for low-income families and people so we need to make sure that they feel safe in their building. This is something that I definitely support. I'm excited that it's happening in my lifetime. I always say there's things I'll probably never see in my lifetime but this is what I get to see. So this is great for our community and I look forward to it moving forward and I'm really, really hopeful that the rest of the voters who are voting on it now will support their part in it as well. Thank you. Thank you, Director Dutra. Any other comment? Do I see a motion? I'll move if we approve. I'll defer to someone else if they'd rather do it. I'll move the motion. Thank you. I'll second the motion. Jimmy, just name. All right. We have a motion from Director Dutra, second from Rotkin. That's too bad. I'd really love to second it. I'll remove my second. Thank you very much. I'd like to second that. And could I add to the please ask as a friendly amendment that we publicize our approval of this perhaps an issue of press release that we've voted to, if our vote goes away, I think it will, that we have voted to approve this that might help get some of the other voters in Watsonville to join as well. I'd agree with that. That's a great idea actually too because not only are we playing our part but farmers are also gonna be paying their part and I'm a homeowner. So I think good publicity would actually maybe encourage people to do it. All right, do you know when the last day to vote is? No, I don't have that down. They're voting now, I think. They're voting now. We've had the ballots for a few weeks. Yeah. Through the chair, I can provide an answer for that. Thank you, Mark. Sure, please do, Mark. Yeah, thank you. The last day to vote is June 8th. So we will be holding a public hearing as required by Prop 218 on the evening of June 8th in the city council chambers in Watsonville and voters in either mailing their ballots, they can either deliver them to the Power Regional Flood Management Agency Office at 701 Ocean Street or they can hand deliver them to that meeting up to the close of that public meeting. Very good, thank you. Thank you. All right, we have a motion. Can I ask a second? I just want to ask a quick question. Is the Pajaro community also voting in Monterey County? Well, Mark can tell you more specific. Everybody who is in the assessment district, which is not the whole city of Watsonville, it's limited to those people that would have damages from flooding directly. Is that correct, Mark? Yeah, through the chair, yes. So what we've done is we've modeled where floodwaters would go if we were not able to properly maintain the levee system. And that includes much of the city of Watsonville, although not entirely all of Watsonville, it also includes the town of Pajaro. So it's both sides of the river, it's the entire flood plain of the Pajaro River and Salsa Puedes and Corleos Creek up to approximately the Green Valley Road area. And that's why there's a JPA that has been created, and they're the ones sending out the assessment votes and they're in charge of that. Yes. Thank you. Thanks for the clarification. But let me interrupt it. Can I also, while we have a moment here, I do ocean kayaking and river kayaking, and I'm amazed that the Pajaro River is a beautiful place to kayak, and you can enter it through a public park in Watsonville next to the treatment plant there. And on Beach Street, or wherever Beach Street becomes when it gets towards town. And I'm amazed that there's no, I never see anybody else out there. I mean, it's an amazing recreational resource. And so I'm just surprised that people haven't taken advantage of it because it's just beautiful and a wonderful place to go paddling. And I've gone at six or seven times now. And I've literally never, one day I saw a personal paddleboard, but one time and all those times have been out there. So that's a beautiful river. And people should take advantage of the fact that it's right there in the middle of the community. I just wanted to make that public statement about it. Very good, Mike. All right, maybe are we ready to vote? Donna? Director Brown. Aye. Director Downing. Aye. Director Dutra. Aye. Director Land. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Pagler. Aye. And Director Parker. Yes. And Director Rockin. Aye. And we, the motion passes. Very good. Thank you for that. And thank you, Mark, for your additional information. All right, we are on to item 15. This is the operating budgets for fiscal year 23 and 24. And I believe that's another item from Chuck. All right, so first I want to just say that right now, Metro is opening up the comment period for the approval of FY23 Santa Cruz Metro budget. A public hearing will take place on June 24th. That's our board meeting for the final adoption of FY23 operating capital budget for Metro. So I may not want to make that official. Now I'm going to kind of go through if we want to pull up the slides. Minister, are you able to pull those up? Here we go, we see it. All right, so why don't we move, go ahead and flip to the next page. So just a high level summary, I'm just going to quickly rock you through the FY23 operate draft operating budget. We're calling it draft because it's not a finally, it's not the official budget until we vote and the end of June. I'm going to run through the FY23-24 operating budget pieces, the two-year piece of it. Talk about a few little risks, a little bit of the capital and then some additional information. And then of course on June 24th, we're going to vote to approve this as is. So if we want to skip two pages, but one more. So the way the, but right there you go. So right now comparing FY22 budget versus FY23 budget, we've almost certainly balanced the FY23 budget. We're at $329,000, a slightly over, which is actually really good news. We're primarily flat on our operating revenues. And then of course our costs are up, but we have some offsets down in our non-operating revenues. And I'll explain this on the next few slides. So if we move to the next slide, so what we're assuming on our operating revenues side is that our passenger fares are about 5% budget versus budget. The big increases are a fixed route of 186 in our paratransit, which is almost at pre-COVID levels, which is actually really good news. Where we are kind of a misses the fact that our Highway 17 remains kind of below our FY22 budget. And to be clear, the budget that we have in here, we assumed we were back to fully operating. So that didn't happen because COVID just continued and continued and continued, but so everything I'm talking about for the budget, assume that we're already back at pre-COVID levels. So and FY17 still remains low. And like I said, as companies start to kind of come back into service, hopefully people will start moving or back to in-person business, hopefully people will start taking the buses, but like I said, we see that as a lot more of a long-term impact and that's why it's much lower. Our special transit fares are driven pretty much by our contracts. So between 22 to 23, we're about $72,000 lower. And that's because we actually have reduced service, which is in the contract for Cabrillo College, which is about 165K below. If we move to the next slide. So visually our operating expenses, as you can see from 22 to 23, is primarily driven by the first three green bars. It's labor, overtime and fringe. Overtime is relatively flat, but our labor and fringe is up. And that's really driven by our, not necessarily the number of people that we've added to the services, roughly the same, it's three more, but it really has to do with our wage increases that we're putting in, which is the three and a half. It's also includes the step in longevity increases too, as well. So what about that, on the labor, are we're assuming that we have all our drivers positions filled in this budget, even though we're way down. And in fact, so if we're successful in getting a lot more drivers back, this would be accurate. But if we don't, then in fact, these numbers will be, we won't be spending as much as we otherwise had anticipated here. We'll probably have more overtime. That's exactly, you're right. That's exactly it. Our labor and fringe will go down, but our overtime will go dramatically up if we end up going the opposite way or we don't have enough drivers. That's hope that doesn't happen, but there we are. Thanks. Yeah. And then the rest is non-personnel. So overall, it's all, it's about a $4.3 million increase. So if we go to the next slide, just to kind of, there we go. So on the personnel side is about 2.5 million and that 4.3 labor is about 1.4. That includes the $3.5 million increase that we expect as well as the $1,500 one-time payout and then contractual step in longevity increase. That's what I mentioned before. We do have six incremental positions, three bus drivers, one paratransit and account in a provisional two-year IT project coordinator. The fixed route bus drivers and paratransit are all going to be covered by measure D. We do expect kind of like an overtime increase and then of course medical expenses because CPI is about 5.6 and that may even go up depending on how healthcare companies view COVID and all the claims that have come in over the last couple of years. We won't know that until probably January of, January of February of next year. On the non-personnel side, which is the remaining 1.8 million. That's primarily we have $1 million for our South County planning. So this is the study of our South County which is actually good news. And the remaining piece of about the 800,000 is really driven by all the inflation associated around the fuel on the vehicles as well as the utilities associated with electricity and that's really driving the remaining portion of non-personnel cost increase. So if we move to the next slide. On our non-operating expense. So this is, I'll just say, this is really our revenue and expenses that are not really necessarily associated with bus driving. So this is from our budget of 40.7, we're actually going up to 55.8 million which is actually good news. That's more money in our pocket. 4.5 million of it is driven by our sales tax and major D. And then our federal and state grants are actually up by $6.2 million which is actually another good news story. We are gonna take our FTA 5307 and STIC which we usually use on operating. And here's the reason why we're gonna move that to capital. And we need that because we are gonna be buying a lot of buses and we need matching funds and we need that funding in our pocket. In return this year, we're gonna finally do it so we don't have to talk about this all year long. We are actually gonna budget for what we expect to get in our era, our COVID relief grants. Right now it's 15.9. If we don't get the bus drivers and we don't have the fringe, that number will come down. So what savings you may see on the labor and fringe, you'll also see the offset sitting here in the sense we won't get the COVID. It doesn't mean the money goes away, it just gets pushed to the next year. And like I said, that's ARPA money. So right now we have a budget at 15.9 and then everything else is flat. So if you move to the next slide, this will give you a little bit more perspective. So our sales tax right now for major D is up about $4.5 million. And like I said, it's 17% over the budget. We know that, we've talked about it all year long that our sales tax has really been kind of blowing out our budget, but we're also looking at, you know, this dark hole of where is all this inflation going and it's gonna create a recession or exactly what's what. So we're somewhat conservative on the 17%, but we feel confident that's actually a pretty good number. On the COVID relief grants, like I said, we've moved the $15.8 million of the ARPA funding into the budget. On the offset, we're taking 11.2 million of our 5307 grants out, that's 11.2 million. And we're moving that to capital. So our total and state federal grants actually increase, actually decreased by 5 million or 25.5%. And that's just because of the way we're doing the math here. On our non-operating expense, our UAL and sales tax bond is basically only about a 7K decrease budget to budget, but had we not done the bond itself, our pension UAL would have been 6.3, but it's really gonna be 4.5 now because we did the actual financing. So we're gonna save 1.8 million just by doing the bond repayment or the bond, the bond for the pension. So that's actually good news. Even though year over year it looks like it's flat. So if we move to the next slide and then we have some transfers. So this is money that we move from the bottom line after the fact that we move. So one thing we move money into our capital and bus replacement fund. This is the $3 million. There's already money put in there and here's the residual amount. It's 3 million or a little bit more, but this is our bus replacement. We were holding back $2 million for UAL and OPEP because we still haven't touched the OPEP piece of it. So we still have the $2 million in there. We're looking at the ERP system of about $2 million and then additional money because we're gonna be aggressive. We have a lot of capital coming up for grant matching of about $2.5 million. Did you explain briefly to the public what the ERP system is that we're getting for 2 million? Sure. So the ERP system is a replacement of our accounting system, our finance system, our procurement system, our HR system and our payroll system. So all of these systems don't talk and they are very antiquated. We're talking about early 2000s. So we're even having problems doing, we can't do wire transfers and ACH transfers. So we need a system that will talk among each of the different pieces so that when something changes in one place it changes correctly in another place and we don't have this non-intermediate related information. I know it's back office, people don't like to spend money on it, but I think after two decades, I think it's probably a good thing that we kind of at least upgrade now. So we're back up into the 21st century and then we could talk about it in 10 years again if we need to revisit this solution. Thank you. And if I may add, it will also give us much more robust reporting capabilities. That's one of the deficiencies that we're faced with right now. So that's a really big plus for this system. Move on to the next slide. And these are the changes that I just talked about. What we're looking to do is the fund a mobility training coordinator and defund the accessibility coordinator. We're looking to fund a marketing assistant and defund a customer service coordinator. So that's kind of a one for one. We're adding an accountant three and then a two year provisional IT project coordinator. So this person's gonna work on the ERP. They're gonna coordinate this across all the groups across all of back office support here as well as some operational folks too as well. And then three bus drivers and one pair of cruise van driver. We've added that in and like I said, it's gonna be covered by major D. I'm gonna move to the next slide. All right, so 2324 operating budget. I'm gonna go fairly quick. This is, I'm gonna move to the next slide. So I'm just gonna speak on this slide right now. We are talking about our operating revenues are gonna slightly go up. There's not a whole lot of change here. We're not gonna expect to get our passenger fares back up to a hundred percent year over year. Like I said, we're gradually coming out of COVID. It's gonna take a little bit of time to kind of get there. Our special transit fares are based on contractual amounts. So that's fairly fixed. And that's the reason why we have a 2% increase. On our operating expense, this only includes longevity and steps. This does not include any type of pay raises or so forth. So it's only a 1.9% overall increase, but that's partly because we haven't put those in. Like I said, when we get into contracting, later in 2023 and sit down with the unions, that may change, but right now, that's why it's kind of relatively flat. On the non-operating expense, and I wanna point this out, on the third line nest is COVID relief grants, $15.8 million, and then it says 2.7. That would be an FY24, if we draw down the whole $15.9 million in our budget, as the budget indicated. In 23, the remaining portion of ARPA, this is all the remaining COVID relief grant funding, will be pulled down to 24, and that's about $2.8 million. And then it goes away. There's no more. We live on sales tax, major D, federal grants, and anything else that we may get, but there's no more of this COVID relief funding out there. And then at the bottom line, even with the things I just talked about and all the different changes, I'm sorry, by the way, in 24, we are not moving over, at least in this view, any of the 5307 or stick money, the capital. That only comes in 23, not in 24. And right now, the bottom line is slightly positive with $518,000. If we wanna move to the next slide, I'm not gonna go through it because I just kind of mentioned each of the different pieces. So I'm just gonna page through the next slide, excuse me, in the next slide. And then these are the risks. I'll just quickly kind of cover a couple of them. So we put in a lot of the risks associated with it. A lot of it's around COVID-19. We don't know where our affairs are gonna go and what's gonna happen in the future. And it could go up, could go down based off ridership and based off the current status of COVID-19. Contracts could be adjusted at the different colleges. Then of course, we always have our federal or state type of appropriations that could come in there and make changes too as well. And then of course, economic, we don't know what the recession's gonna bring. And then there's fires, floods, earthquakes that could have impacts on our service. We move to the next slide. And then on the expense right now, like I said, we use CNG electric as well as diesel engines, failures could be issues, fuel costs, I mean, that's a wild card right now. We're not sure where that's gonna go. Medical insurance, we won't know in January to see what the price is. And if a lot of people are going to the hospital with COVID and insurance is covering a lot of that, I wouldn't be surprised 5.6 may even be too low that it comes up. As we're doing renewals of contracts, prices of products, prices of services are all going up. So they may even be way beyond what we currently have right now, our aging fleet, maintenance costs, and so forth. And then of course, overtime costs due to shortage of drivers. We don't wanna burn out our drivers. So go ahead. So in the past, we had a big crisis with workers' comp insurance which we fixed and we're doing really well for the last couple of years. I just wanted to ask if there's, how are we doing in terms of workers' comp? Or are we staying fair, doing a good job of controlling the things that lead to workers' compensation claims? Yeah, I'm gonna let Curtis answer that question or Dawn. It's sort of a financial issue about like how much we're paying out in workers' comp. I guess Dawn probably would know that. So what I can say with our workers comp that has changed tremendously with Curtis coming aboard is what we're doing now is when we see repetitive injuries happening like in the same department or same group of people or just doing the same repetitive job, we're getting Curtis involved in the beginning. And so what he'll do is he'll go over and do a complete assessment of the area to find out is it something in the way that the employee was actually doing it or do we need to change something in our process? So we have been able to get control over a lot of the claims. We're pulling video, things like that. So we can see exactly how somebody fell or somebody twisted their back or whatever it is that their injury is. And then Curtis will write up a report and I'll let him talk further on that. But my point is getting Curtis involved in the beginning has tremendously helped our claims go down. Yeah, just want to also kind of piggyback as well. The agency we've also had professional contractors come out and do ergonomics and as well as other type of environmental potential hazards to avoid future claims to the transit agencies. Thank you. Thanks to both of you. That's it for me. Okay, let's move on to the next slide. All right, now we're gonna do FY23 capital budget. Move on to the next slide. So right now we're proposing at this point in time our FY23 budget will be 15.8 million and the total portfolio of 13.8. Of that 15.8, the big pieces here are revenue vehicle replacements. So this is actually seven buses that are CNG and our vehicle electrification is four electric proterras, which I know we had a discussion earlier about that. That's what's sitting in the budget right now for the 15.8. And in our FY24 plan, which I'll explain, our construction related projects is the Pacific Station redevelopment. It's our portion of that project. This primarily drives that higher number because we have $4 million set aside for that. Our revenue vehicle replacement can include still some, that starts to include, I'm sorry, that includes four CNG Arctic buses that is in that value. And then, and that's 14.1. And like I said, the whole remaining portfolio spend is 13.8 at this point in time. I'd like to call the public's attention to the, in our packet, the beginning is a letter exchange between Pauline Sales and myself about why we're still buying CNG buses, although we are committed to becoming a completely electric fleet. And rather than talk about it here, I just refer people to that exchange, which explains that it has to do with financial capability and we just can't afford to replace all our buses instantly with electric. But we do have a plan to be all electric ahead of the state requirement that we'd be so. Yeah. Okay, we wanna move on to the next slide. Just some of the capital breakdown here. How we're spending that 33.8 million for that whole portfolio, approximately 44% is coming from federal grants from the FTA, where our operating capital reserve fund is funding about 23% of this. Our transfers from our operating budget like measure D is about another 6.3. And then the remaining portion comes from various other little grants and so forth in programs. So more than half is coming from, or 70% of it is coming from federal grants in our operating capital reserve, which is like our matching piece of a portion of it. Move on to the next slide, please. Keep going one more. I'm not gonna go through all of these, they are here, just to save a little bit of time, but these are different support activities that we're listing. It doesn't mean we're limited to this. It doesn't mean that we can't expand upon this, but as of today, we're looking at different things to do, such as the Santa Cruz County Fair, Stop the Bus, Earth Day events, and so forth of that nature. And as we come out of COVID, this list may even get bigger because we can actually get out there in the field more so than we would have in the past. Move to the next slide. And the next few slides are membership of things for each of the different areas. So this is already in the budget, this is just detailing out membership things for the actual agency to become, to keep the membership in an app of about $40,000. And so for CTA, and the different things you can look through. If you have any questions on this, feel free to reach out, but I'm not gonna go through all of these different items, but I wanna give you an idea of what's there. Move to the next slide. And then here's next pieces for human resources, which is more labor related, and then risk and then purchasing as well. And then the next slide after that are totals. So fleet maintenance too, FY23 is about $101,000, and FY24 goes up slightly to $103,000 due to inflation. And those are memberships, move on to the next slide. And then these are just estimated right now that doesn't mean that this is, we're locked in, but possible board member travel, if it goes to that, we have an annual conference for APTA up in Seattle in October, and then the legislative conference in March of next year, indeed, Washington, D.C. Possible CTA meetings too, one in November, which is still TBD, and then another one in May for legislative, and then still TBD. But just to kind of, and it could change, it could grow, it could get a bit less, but at least kind of give you an idea. And we move to the next slide. And then this is our employee incentive award. So as part of the budget, this is already in, this just breaks out the different pieces. So you can see employee picnic and holiday, district service award, transit private appreciation day, employee appreciation events. By the way, this has been really nothing here over the last year and a half, because we've been in COVID lockdown. So by doing this, this is, we're coming out of this COVID lockdown and if we can get people together like this, this is great news. So I can't really show you 22 to 23 because you'll see nothing going to something in 23. But we did this before COVID and now we're coming out of COVID and this is a good thing. And then of course, a lot of awards too as well. We move to the next slide. And then lastly, the budget, we're gonna come in June and if anybody has any comments, please you got 30 days plus to come with those comments and then hopefully at the end of June, we'll have this approved and move forward. And that's it. Very good. Thank you, Chuck. That was very complete. Questions, comments from the board. I had a quick question about the incentive for employees. Is that also include employee referral bonuses that the program that is being developed right now for recruitment? This, that's, I'll say in that slide you saw does not include the incentive for employees for getting people here. This is only like normal stuff that takes place, but it doesn't mean we can't have it elsewhere in our budget. Thank you. Director Lin. Well, I wanna thank the thank Chuck and your team because this has just been outstanding work and under difficult circumstances and particularly the savings on the unfunded pension liability. I mean, almost 2 million. And that's you guys doing that research, acting quickly, because I've heard some agencies wishing they would have pursued, you know, the bonds, you know, wish they to take the action that you did in diversely investing and protecting us and saving us, like I said, almost 2 million. So, but if you didn't, if we hadn't moved when you did, that opportunity wouldn't be there. So really wanna commend you for that work. Thank you, Donna. Any other comments? Director McPherson. Yeah, I did know what Donald said. How about the reserve account? We, I don't know, I was going, trying to get through the numbers. Where are we or where can we be realistically? You mean our reserve buckets and so forth? Right. So we're gonna actually present that at the next meeting. Okay. And June, we're working through it right now. Okay. But we're good for now. Thank you. Very good. Any other questions, comments? Do we have a motion? We're gonna ask the public if they have any comments. Oh, thank you, Mike. I'm looking to the public and I don't see any hands yet. Give it just a couple of moments. I'm seeing none. I'll move that we publish this budget for purpose of getting public input before our final budget decision in June. Second. Excuse me, just to clarify, all you're being asked to do is to adopt the resolution to set the public hearing. Exactly. That's the motion. Thanks. Thank you. So motion Rock and Seconds, McPherson. Maybe have a roll call vote. Okay. Director Brown. Aye. Director Downing. Aye. Director Dutra. Aye. Director Lin. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Pangler. Aye. Director Parker. Aye. And Director Rockin. Aye. And the motion passes. Very good. Thank you all. Item 16, consideration of approving authorization and funding for a capital planning and grants programs manager. I think this is Dawn's item. Yes, good morning again. I'm Dawn Permay, HR director. I would like to talk to the board and ask you to approve the funding of a capital planning and grants program manager. This would be a reclassification from our current grants analyst position. We currently do have an employee in our grants analyst position. His name is Wanda Mooming-Asu. Sorry, please forgive my voice. He has been employed by Metro since October, 2018. And during his employment with Metro, he has received special training in capital planning and grants program management, grant writing, budget and revenue projects, federal and state and local laws and regulations affecting Metro's capital planning and compliance with grants programs and legislative and policy analysis techniques related to advocating for Metro's priority policy positions. He's also received training in specialized software applications, platforms and systems such as grants.gov, transit award management system, national transit database, health smart and blackout. But during the last two years, Mr. Mooming-Asu has taken on tremendous responsibilities that have increased his position. So we sat down with the director of planning and we worked with an outside vendor, Coffin Associates to rewrite the job description and get it to where it truly, truly listed his current duties and not what his old position had said. So during that reclassification study was done, a new job description was written that better fit his duties. We did meet with the unions and the union as an agreement with our new job description that we met with. Wanda Mo, he's in agreement with it. So today we're asking for you to allow us to proceed with the reclassification into this position. We would not, what we would do is move the funding from the current grants analyst position into this program manager position. So there would be a difference in that, but it is not an addition. It's just we're moving it over and reclassifying it. Very good. Questions, comments from the board? I'll just say that I think Wanda has done a wonderful job for us in terms of the grant program that we have at the district. And definitely not only is the job changed, but as someone who's doing the job well and actually getting us the money, which is the bottom line for us. I think this is definitely a wise move on our part and everything we can do to keep them doing the work he does for us is important. So pending comments from the public, I'm happy to move this. All right, I'm looking to the public. Any comments from the public? We have a small public today, only eight folks, but I see no hands. So let's bring it back to the board. I'll move approval of the recommendation staff. Second. The motion rock and second was director Lynn. I'm sorry, I didn't. Yes. Okay, thank you. All right, roll call vote please. Hey, director Brown. Aye. Director Downey. Aye. Director Dutra. Aye. Director Lynn. You're muted, Donna. Aye. Thank you. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Pagler. Aye. Director Parker. Aye. And director Rockin. Aye. And the motion passes. Very good. Thank you. And thank you one to move for all your work. All right. Item 17, oral report from our CEO. All right, good morning everyone. It's great to be here. Great to be on board. I started on April 25th and then immediately had to take a few days off for my wife's 50th birthday. We kind of had some prearranged plans, but went to see an Eagles concert. So, but I was quickly back in the saddle and it's been a great couple of weeks. I, you know, my overall impression, I'll just say right off the bat, I'm really excited to be here, excited because you have great employees. You have great service. I mean, my initial impressions are just really positive. I did wanna just make mention of some of the visits that I have, you know, had a chance to do. Met with several board members and looking forward to meeting with the rest of you. Those have been really great one-on-ones and just, you know, it's fun to see your excitement for all the things that you are working on and things that you think are important moving forward. Had a chance to sit down with Senator Laird in Sacramento and spend about 45 minutes with him. He's a fantastic man and I just really view him as being pivotal in working with the agency moving forward, especially with some of the massive amounts of funding coming out of Sacramento with the TIRSA and other programs. Also had the opportunity to sit down and meet with Congressman Panetta and we talked about the upcoming grant application that we'll submit. We'll actually submit that grant next week. It's for 20 hydrogen buses, a hydrogen fueling facility and some money for maintenance to be able to maintain the hydrogen fleet. That is a $40 million grant and so it will provide you your first entry into hydrogen zero emission buses. It was the, you know, it was a trajectory that Alex had been working on with staff and so I was pleased to work with Wandomu to get that grant ready to go for next week. I'll have more to say on that in just a few minutes but also had the opportunity to sit down for an afternoon and talk to Guy Preston and so very impressed there with him and with RTC and look forward to working with him. And you know, I've just got a lot of other meet and greets coming up. So if there's some folks in particular that you think I ought to meet with, I'd love to hear that. I've met, for example, with the Capitola city manager and the economic development director to talk about what's going on in Capitola and that was a very enjoyable meeting. So with that, there's just a couple of items I think are potentially on your mind, maybe top of mind because you've been talking about them fairly frequently in your previous board meetings. We've got the governor's proposal, as you'll recall, he has proposed to provide vehicle owners $400 for each vehicle they own up to two vehicles and in exchange for that or coinciding with that, his offer was to fund public transit to create a fair free environment for riders for a three month period. And so just a quick report that's a, it's evolving into a grant program where transit and rail agencies would apply for that money. It looks like the bill's moving forward anticipating that it could be approved by the legislature as early as June and then Metro in return to take advantage would as well as all transit agencies would need to begin providing that fair free service no later than August of 2022. And then we would be reimbursed as soon as November of 2022 for that three month period. So the proposal really is to allocate to transit agencies in an amount that is proportional to Metro's percentage of overall transit fare revenues in the fiscal year 20. So it kind of gives you an idea. I'm working with Wandomoo. We think that we'll be made whole as we move forward and provide that three month fair free experience should that proposal move forward and be approved by the legislature. And then finally, AB 1919, I think you've had some discussions in the past. That is the proposed legislation to go fair free on transit for persons 25 years of age and under. And I think it's fair to say that it's a nice concept but it was really lacking in the bill in regard to implementation and funding and how that the mechanics would work. That bill recently had some major amendments to it. And we're still looking at the amendments but I think the gist of it is that it is turned into a grant program. So it's not a program that will obligate transit agencies to participate. And there's identified in the amended bill, 115 million towards that grant program, which is really a small amount of money when you consider statewide. And it's not even identified where that funding would come from. So we'll keep you posted on that bill. I think it's got a long ways to go with lots of amendments. The current position from the California Transit Association was a no and they've been working with the author and others to try and create amendments that would work for transit. So I'm sure you might have questions on that and we do have one to move here but I did have just a couple of other things to kind of conclude my report. I think you're familiar and have been accustomed to receiving a report from the agency on COVID. And with COVID, if you have three positives in a 14 day rolling period, you enter what's called a minor outbreak per Cal OSHA. And at the beginning of May, we had three positives within a 14 day period and entered into a minor outbreak over in the operations building. So that required that the operators return to or operations personnel return to wearing masks while in that building. Things have gone well since and we actually exit out of that minor outbreak period today. So I just want to give the board a heads up. I think things are moving along without too much disruption from the COVID perspective and our employees having COVID. And I know that our Curtis has been all over this as far as enforcement and just keeping us at a minimum with that minor outbreak. I just, there were just a few other things I thought perhaps would be important to talk about as I've listened to board members and I've listened really closely to operators and maintenance folks and this executive and senior leadership team and really kind of begun to dove in. It just is, it goes without saying that the number one priority on my plate for sure is to get operators on board. And I think we'll talk more about that later on the agenda but just as a preview to that, Don took a quick snapshot of the last 12 months and you've had three operators leaving the agency on average for every one operator that has been hired and retained. So it's a kind of a sobering thought. I think the bottom line is your operators are providing a lot of service on the street right now for the number of operators that we have. And I'm worried about operator fatigue and just burnout. And obviously there's a lot of overtime there and when you have a collision, so to speak of a payday on a weekend or going into a weekend and a holiday on that weekend and good weather, it's tough for operators to come in after working a full 40 during the week and provide that over time on the weekend. And I think we saw that on Mother's Day weekend where we dropped 28 trips over the weekend just with operator shortage. So I think the board, I'll continue to talk about the current service level that we are providing versus the number of operators that we have on the street. But I just think my number one priority is to get more folks on board and get them trained and out on the road so that we can provide that higher level of service. I think two other things, well, just one other thing on my mind that I'll share and then I'll step down for the day. But I really feel like coming up in the near future and I've heard this from a few board members but really it's kind of solidified in my mind, I think, and I hope we could anticipate perhaps having a strategic workshop for the board, maybe an offsite session. I think there's a lot to talk about. You've got battery electric buses in your fleet, you've got a potential hydrogen project around the corner. I think it'd be nice to decompress those two topics and to talk more about the technologies of each of those technologies and the pros and the cons and where your staff recommendation lies. I think it's really important to talk about some of these technology projects like your AVL and your APC project and we've got a potential South County O&M facility that staff is working on the concept there. I think it'd be great to have a lengthy discussion on that as well as your planned para-cruise facility. And there's other projects and I guess in the overall scheme of things, I think it'll be important to talk about those projects as they relate to your budget and you've heard Chuck say that at your next meeting, he's gonna show you a glimpse of what your reserves look like and all of those projects basically have either local matches or or greater from local funding sources to complete them. So with that said, I just wanna leave the note that I'm really excited to be here and with the staff you have, there's gonna be great things that continue to happen around the agency. Thank you, Michael. Questions or comments from the board? Michael, Rockin. So first of all, I'll just note that there's also, in addition to the assembly bill that Michael True mentioned, there's also a Senate bill has to do with youth, free youth passes and that's under consideration and we need to track those in some level. What's good about these is unlike once last year, this would be the state paying for this, not mandating that we pay for it, which is an impossibility for us. And so we need to keep, one of the issues has to do with how you get paid back, I mean, is if you provide free service for a pass, when does the state give you the money? If it's gonna happen at all and whether we might wanna apply for that. Because I think in general, getting young people used to riding a bus is a great idea and so I'm in support of the concept. Question is how, as Michael had said, how does it actually work in a detailed way so that we don't end up being shorted by the process? Related to that, the issue of the three month free service the state's looking at, I wonder if we have, this is a question, I wonder if we have in place procedures or how we're gonna handle the problem that often happens with free service, which is people who are not really looking for transit service, but looking for a place to spend the day inside of a bus. And that's been a problem in the past when we had free service days, drivers have reported that problem. We obviously don't want that to be the only driver or the only consideration, but it is a concern when somebody kind of camps out on the bus for the day and they're not trying to go anywhere, they're going around in a circle, they eventually get off where they got on after riding around all day and taking up a seat and often bringing a lot of stuff with them in the process. So I'm not asking if you have an answer to that now, but whether we have a process to begin thinking about that before we implement that kind of service. I think it's a good point, Mike. I, for board member Rock, and I, we operated fair free in Missoula and that also has a shelter less or a homeless issue in the community. And then obviously during COVID, many transit agencies throughout operated fair free. So I think the long story short is that it does require more attention from your supervisory staff and from others at the agency that you normally wouldn't have and some policies. So, you know, I'll take a look at staff has already begun discussion on this three month period of fair free and how to work with that with policy. So I'll report back to the board on that. Thank you. And the other question I had was, is there anything that you can share with us about what current plans might be to try and deal with the driver shortage? I know you've been thinking about this and beginning to talk to people about what might be possible including bringing up the bottom pay. I don't know that we have a plan ready to go or something but the concern is that, you know, we're just, it's happening and are we do, what are we doing to respond to it out? How seriously are we taking this issue in terms of actually coming up with some way of changing the situation? Cause just asking again is not going to do the trick. Obviously we've been, our HR staffs have been doing a great job of doing outreach but it's just not getting us the drivers we need. Yeah. You know, I think a short answer for that would be that we've kind of got a multi-prong approach going. We've been talking about the wage, that introductory wage. We've looked at the marketing material to make sure that we're making some adjustments to the marketing materials. We've been talking internally about a referral bonus that's fairly substantial to really get the drivers motivated and others to go out and talk to people who are like-minded, right? Who would potentially be a great referral to the agency. We've been spending a lot of time talking with smart about the importance of schedules and creating a livable schedule, especially for these entry-level drivers who often are coming in off of a commute and then the expectation is to work a pretty difficult split shift. So we've been talking about how we can create schedules that are, you know, more straight aides or something similar. And then we've been talking about with operators. I've been having some discussions about just how to make the area in the operations center function better for them so that as operators come in, you know, there's some things to do if there happens to be a split shift that needs to be worked maybe a fitness center and some other minor upgrades that really wouldn't be difficult to implement. So just moving towards becoming even more kind of a choice employer in Santa Cruz County. We haven't been talking about any major expenses. I mean, these are all things that can be done very quickly and I think would have a pretty positive impact on folks taking a look at becoming an operator. Thank you. Yeah. Director Lind. Yes, you know, with, we've had trouble with Scottsdale Police Department and city employees recruiting as well. And I think every all the industry has but the referral bonuses did seem to help when we had officers out there recruiting friends we've been able to pick up officers from other agencies or in the academy from those bonuses. So I'm glad to hear you're looking at that. It can help. And just another thing I was up in Sacramento last week with a city leaders summit and we met with in fact had a 45 minute meeting with John Laird and met with other senators, assemblymen and talk. And I did use that time to bring up some of the concerns for the assembly bill and Senate bills that would affect Metro and talked a little bit about the programs we have in place working partnerships with UCS in Cabrillo and just tried to ask them to look further, look closer. There was actually several took notes didn't really know a lot about either of the bills but they did take notes, gave me cards to follow up on. So hopefully in addition to advocating for funding locally I was able to get some information about Metro concerns as well. Very good. Thank you, Director Linde. Anyone else not seeing any hands? I think that may be. Maybe the public. Right. Thank you, Mike. And to the public, our small audience, anyone have a question or comment here? Seeing no hands. So I think, oh, Dan, Director Henderson. Hi everyone. This question is a little bit out of left field but it has come up recently and I've talked to John Ergo a little bit about it but I wanted to put it out there on folks radar to see if it's possible. And I don't know if it is but if we have an archive of headways, the digital version of headways or some way to put online past schedules, past service levels of different routes for folks reference. Obviously at UCSC we use it for maybe other purposes in the general public would use but it's difficult for me to find what was in like 2018 and those types of things. And I do refer to the headways, the digital version headways on the web pretty often but there's no archive. So I don't know if something like that exists or if it's even possible but I wanted to throw it out there to see if somebody can chew on it and think about how an archive can be made available with past service levels. Yeah, I think we can pick a look at that. Thank you. I know out of left field but I want to throw it out. Dan, I hate to tell you but I think I had a box of all these old headways for many years up above your office at one time. I think we threw it away. They weren't digital. Right, thank you though. I appreciate your consideration. Anyone else? And I'm checking the public one more time. I'm seeing no hands. So I believe I will announce our next meeting on Friday, June 24th at 9 a.m. and we're about to go into closed session. I will ask, yes, please, Julie, go ahead. We do have one labor negotiation section and all of the board members and essential staff should have received an invitation. Just let Donna know if you did not receive one. And I believe that came out just this morning. Correct. Thank you, Julie. All right, and with that, I believe we will go to closed session. Very good. And with that, I'll close the meeting at, oh, I'm having East Coast time. What is that, 1104, I think. Yeah, it is. All right. All right, have a great day, everyone. Thank you. Take care, everyone.