 Okay. So, I will call the November 4th, 2021 meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission to order. It is 901. And we will start with a roll call. Commissioner Bertrand. Present. Commissioner Brown. Here. Commission alternate shift friend. Here. Commissioner alternate hers. I'm here. Commissioner cap it. Here. Commissioner Johnson. Here. Commissioner friend. Don't see. When are friends alternates here. Oh, commissioner alternate Quinn. Oh, I guess not. Commissioner conic. Here. Commissioner McPherson. Commissioner Peterson. Present. Commissioner North cat. Here. And commissioner alternate Pegler. Here. It looks like we just, we just got commissioner Montesino here, so I'll take off commissioner first. Okay. All right. So we will now move on to oral communications. At this time, any member of the public may address the commission. On any item within the jurisdiction of the commission that is not already on the agenda. The commission will listen to all communications. In compliance with state law, it's worth remembering that. We will not take any action on these items today. Speakers are. We'll be given two minutes actually two minutes for all communications today. I think we may have a few folks who want to speak to us. So let's go ahead and do two minutes for oral communications. Sorry about that. Yes. That's okay. We're give us a just one second here to get it all set up. Okay. Again, this is going to be for items not on our agenda. We do have an item at item number 19, which is intended for discussion of the TIGM. Proposal. And so I just want to make sure that that folks know that that is on our agenda for later. And I just want to make sure that that is on our agenda for later. So if you're a demonstration or things like that. You can talk about those during oral communications, but we will specifically be talking about that proposal. During our regular business. So please. You reserve your, your oral communications for items, not on our agenda. And we will begin. Now I'm looking at participants. I see. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Any, would you mind? Sure. Judy. Thank you. So Judy, you're up. Good morning commissioners. I've read you my train poems and now I have road. I was a yes before and now I'm sold. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The train being here. It's a win, win, win. You can hear the train going. No one has heard of it. The train was wow. It was quiet and pleasant. The views were beyond. I just wish the train was still here. That the train wasn't gone. California designed and manufactured. What's not to like. You are the guys who can install the first spike. This can be done with the light without fear, a few years to build 350 million. It's relatively cheap. And the future is here. the public will love you, the county will shine, the earth will be happy, the children will ride wine. I wanna ride, I wanna ride zero emissions, zero emissions, zero emissions. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Kari Pico and then Becky Russmore. I have a PowerPoint presentation. Yesenia, can you bring it up? Yes. Thank you. I'm gonna be very short. It's to the point, I've always said this for the last, since I've been involved, no public subsidies for private for-profit businesses. Next slide, please. No reply. Did I click it? I can't seem to, there it is. Just give me one second, Kari. You can just click the, oh, there we go. So from the 2011 plan, the current plan for the Santa Cruz County, Santa Cruz branch rail line is to establish recreational rail service. Recreational rail service is designed to be self-sustaining and not require public subsidy. And there's a source for you. Next slide. There you go. Those are the subsidies. The first two, you've done $9 million under Iowa Pacific, $13.5 million under Progressive. These numbers come from the RTC fiscal audits that are published online. And unfortunately for the 2022 or 21, actually I used up to 22. Those are only budgets because you haven't published your fiscal audits. If you do the Davenport to Santa Cruz, that's 15.3 million. That comes from the UCIS study. And if you do a class one upgrade all the way between Santa Cruz and Watsonville, that's another $47 million. My point is, this is for for-profit private businesses. It is not for the public use. Please stop subsidizing for-profit businesses. Thank you. Kaki Resport, Kaki, you're on mute. Thank you. Okay, here we go. Good morning. Let me see. I don't know how to make myself visible. So I guess I won't worry about that. So thank you and I appreciate your time and I appreciate all the work that the RTC is putting into thinking about our public rail corridor. I'm just gonna remind you a few things that your own staff studies have shown that using the corridor for public transit is the best option for its use and that the best option studied by your staff is for some sort of light rail passenger service. I wanna make sure that we keep that in mind and that we make sure that the plan that is already in place provides for rail, pedestrian and bicycle transit. I think it's really important that we keep our options open and do not pave over the existing rail line. As you probably know, there's no community in the entire country that has done rail banking and gone back to putting in light rail. We've seen that this is the best option for our community. I think we need to go forward with it. I took the bus from Aptos to Watsonville last week, took me an hour and 15 minutes on the express from Cabrio College. That is not a viable option. So we need to make sure that we have an affordable option. We're now looking at affordable options. We need to make sure that those are important. This important not only for equity matter in our community, but for the economic development. The studies have shown that it would do that and also for our environment. We've got COP26 going on right now showing us that we have to do much, much more if we don't wanna have a climate catastrophe. And so I really hope that the RTC is not swayed by people with money and uses their best thinking to go forward. Thank you so much. Next, we have equity and environment then Mark Johansson. Good morning. My name's Lonnie Faulkner and I deeply appreciate the Regional Transportation Commission and Guy Preston for providing the license to run the Coast Futura light rail demo. The event was incredibly successful with large numbers of the community showing up in hopes of getting a ticket after initial tickets were reserved within a few short hours. And on the last day of the event, a stormy 40 plus mile per hour winds and rain increased, more people kept coming to ride the train and every ride was full to capacity. Many more people have since expressed their desire to have more demos and more importantly, so many of us wanna see regular public rail service in the near future that can eventually extend all the way to Watsonville. This demo was an important step towards honoring the 1990s Santa Cruz majority vote in favor of Proposition 116 which allowed us to purchase the Santa Cruz branch line and I quote from the acquisition contract for the purpose of preserving the rail corridor for future multimodal uses, including continuation of existing freight and recreational rail service, end quote. Using funds acquired through the Clean Air and Transportation Improvement Act, designating funds primarily for passenger rail capital projects. Our community's significant efforts to bring passenger rail to this county have been commended by the state of California and are in line with CAPTI which indicates connecting cities across the state of California by a rail and transit network is a top priority for mitigating climate change. Our community has long awaited passenger rail service between Santa Cruz and Watsonville which would eventually connect us to the state rail network including Monterey currently developing their rail system in a phased approach. Thanks again to the RTC and Guy Preston for helping us move forward with this important step in bringing a robust, equitable and environmentally smart rail transit to our community. Thank you. Mark Johansson, then Saldeen Sale. Good morning. My name is Mark Johansson and I'm the resident of Aptos and I'm here representing TIGAM on the recent demonstration of the streetcar on the Santa Cruz branch line. TIGAM would like to thank commission and staff for allowing us to demonstrate our clean air battery operated hydrogen fuel cell tram during the Coast for True Event on the Santa Cruz branch line. The demonstration was extremely successful. Tickets for both locations were fully booked within four hours for Santa Cruz and within six hours for Watsonville. Then over the seven dates we carried slightly more than 1,900 passengers between Watsonville and the Harkinsloo and between the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and a Capitol Overlook. From the passengers on board to the operations, ground and flyers crew there was not a single major incident. And the public response by those observing the streetcar along the route was overwhelmingly supportive with many stopping desk questions and give comments regarding the continuation of this type of service. The entire Coast for True crew truly appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Hey, we have Saldeen Sale and then David Public Transit. Good morning, commissioners. My name is Saldeen Sale, County resident for over 50 years. I'm an enthusiastic supporter of light rail transit alongside our rail trail. The recent demonstrations of the TIGM battery fuel cell streetcar provided compelling evidence of new technology that disproves the notion that rail transit means loud, dirty, expensive, locomotive driven trains. The fact that our rail line accommodated a clean, quiet electric streetcar over a two week period with only minimal tune up work on the line suggests we're closer than one might think to being able to begin limited range service. It seems to me that a self-powered light rail tram carrying passengers, bikes and wheelchairs between Capitola and Santa Cruz or Davenport would be a powerful generator of public support for further expansion. I find it regrettable that we're again widening our freeway while our unused rail corridor begs the addition of clean electric streetcars alongside the rail trail. Far better in my opinion would be investments in bringing the tracks back up to full operational status incrementally if necessary. Fully funding and constructing the entire rail system before beginning any service can't be the only approach. All parts of our transit system will inevitably grow over time. Why not recognize this now and seriously look at beginning light rail with something smaller initially. I want both rail trail and light rail transit as soon as possible. For now, I urge the commission to direct staff to put maximum effort into expanding our rail trail. And I don't know if you know, but the... Oh, you're okay. For initial implementation of self-powered multi-unit electric streetcars as the backbone of our evolving public transit system. Thank you. David, public transit and then Katie Freeman. Hello, can you hear me all right? Yes. Hi, I'm David Van Brink and yes, I do love public transit. Good morning commissioners and RTC members. Sorry, I'm gonna talk about that thing. I know you work on other important things too. So first of all, thank you all for facilitating the light rail demo. We hope there can be more things like that in the future to help excite and visionize the public. So, word gets around. I heard that some RTC staff were displeased by the Coast's future representation and I can't imagine why. I mean, I hate it when I see my profession in the movies totally misrepresented. I hope we can still see the bigger picture though. Members of the public had an experience fully suggestive of the preferred alternative in all relevant respects. And yes, the Coast's future had narrated a rather optimistic implementation scenario, but the takeaway is that the public understands the experience and the premise and they support it. That's what they're going to remember. We already know the public supports rail. We knew it in 1990 with Prop 116. We knew it in 2011 when we purchased the branch line and we know it today. It's reflected in the preferred alternative. So please take the big picture. Public transit, rail transit is a winner. The public likes it. You know, you're covered. You can and should move forward. Thanks. Katie Freeman and then Tina Andrade. Andrade. Andrade. Hi, I'd like to thank the RTC, Roaring Camp, TIGM, the community supporters and volunteers that came out to provide the opportunity for the public to see the demonstration of the Coast's future. I was able to ride on the Watsonville leg of the excursion and it was really incredible. There was a lot of positive support that I found on the ride that I took and experiencing the technology in person of the rail car and seeing the possibilities that were available in the near future for our county was just incredible. I'm excited to see this type of public transit come to our county to connect North County and South County and provide clean and equitable transportation to all of us. Thank you again for the RTC and I hope you continue to explore this possibility with all of your energy. Thank you. Tina, Andrietta, and then Miles. Tina, you're muted. Tina, we can't hear you. You're on mute. Should we come back to Tina? Sure. Okay. Next is Miles. Good morning. I want to thank you for your work and all that you do. And I want to thank you for allowing the Coast Futura demo. My wife granddaughters and I loved it. We are looking forward to more options and eventually a real local train. Bike paths are good things. I hope to see a nice one alongside our beautiful electric train. As a conservationist, I am disheartened by any plan to remove the tracks. The human and material capital that created this incredible structure has real blessed and valued. Rail banking is turning a built resource into junk that will never be used as well as it is now, even if it's recycled. Please do not throw away all that beautiful wood, ballast, steel, and the ongoing benefits of all the labor and industry that created it. I've been hiking along those tracks for over 30 years from Davenport to Watsonville, with never all at once, of course. I'm getting older and look forward to a time when I may not be able to walk as well, when I can get on a train and go to the places I love, but I am not wanting to have the train for me. I'm not wanting the train for all the tourist solvers it will bring into our communities. I want the train for all the people who will use it as an alternative to cars to get to work, visit family and friends, and go shopping. Thank you. Please pursue the rail trail with all your energies. Thank you. Lawrence Kaplan. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Good, thank you. This is regarding the TIGM proposal. I've been to Disneyland. Lawrence, Lawrence, I'm sorry to interrupt, but we do have the TIGM proposal on our regular business agenda. It's item 19. So if you wanna speak specifically to that proposal, that would be the time. Thank you, then I'll wait. Thanks. Anne Kaplan. Just hit. Anne, you're on mute. There you go. Good morning. And I'm sorry, I will need to wait until item 19 is approached as well. Okay, Sally Arnold. Hi, am I unmuted? Can you hear me? Yes, Sally. Okay, great. So I wanted to also thank the commission and the staff for their support of the Coast Future demo, granting the license for this demonstration allowed the county to see one example of what future rail transit could look like. I also wanna thank Roaring Camp and TIGM who worked closely on pulling off this important community event. The demonstration had 68 runs, taking almost 2000 passengers, over 400 miles over two weekends and over a hundred community volunteers worked to help make this event a success. The demonstration just grew in popularity over the two weekends as more and more people saw the streetcar move quietly through their neighborhoods alongside the rail trail. They came to the boarding area so they could ride themselves. And to everybody's surprise, that very last stormy Sunday was the most fully booked, longest waiting lines of all. The demonstration also provided a proof of concept of what car free commuting could look like, which is an important step in our discussions about transportation equity for the commuters who are getting to work by car right now. Implementation of a zero emission streetcar such as the Coast Futura could enable, would help us fight against climate change since it can be recharged with clean energy sourced from our local central coast community energy. And if you've been looking at social media, you may have seen some of the great quotes, I'm gonna just share a couple. Over the last couple of days, we've been able to ride and watch the demo train cruise, the boardwalk and Capitola and back. We were incredibly pressed with the passion, education, good energy and overall community building vibe that the leaders of Coast Futura displayed. That's by Capitola resident Joe Downey. Aaron Bistron of Santa Cruz shared on Instagram, what an amazing way to see Santa Cruz, pretty stoked to see some alternative clean energy transportation. Anyway, I just wanna thank the staff and the commissioners for helping to make this happen. And I hope we see more similar demonstrations soon with other vehicles. Hi, I'm Kelly and then Jack Brown. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you, commissioners. I wanna thank commission and staff for granting the license to run the Coast Futura demo. Two weekends ago and then we came before that, open Watsonville and Santa Cruz. It was a delight to see all the people that came out to come and ride and see what it would look like to run trains. And I wanna point out something about in the future of public transit and our ability to do it, is to do a cost comparison. If people wanna talk about justice rail corridor and they're not talking about the highway, the estimated cost for a single-need freeway interchange at 41st Avenue was about $100 million. Just one interchange and that's just for private vehicles, right? Public transit helps us go much further per dollar than private vehicles will. It's a big cost for the people that have to drive through it all. And it's a big cost to the RTZ. So I hope you look to what's gonna scale, what's gonna help us be able to develop appropriately because we're gonna have to do housing. The state's gonna require it. And the big question that you should all be thinking about is do we want people coming in by car or do we want them coming in by rail? Because people are gonna keep coming. So we should accommodate them with a rail line that connects us back to the state rail plan. And the cost us a lot less money than expanding the highway, adding new interchanges. Thank you. Mr. Jack Brown and then Michael Wohl. Hi, I wanted to talk about the Coast Future demonstration. I just wanted to remind everyone that neither the RTC nor the city of Watsonville sponsored this event. This was a private event that was just licensed by the RTC. As far as the quick sellout, that was more of a fake demand by limiting the number of pre-reserved items and requiring people to put in their credit card numbers to reserve a spot. There was actually quite a few requests by friends of the rail trail to get people to start joining because there were a lot of empty trains in the afternoon. So a bit of false demand and publicity stunts going on around this. A couple of other things that we saw was some group of people who were opposed to the demonstration showed up to see Supervisor Koenig give a presentation after they left. The Fort members that were actually directors of Fort actually were assaulting and verbally abusing people that were opposed to the public event and forced them off the property. It was very uncivil behavior at that point. But I think what we need to understand here is that what was demonstrated is not reality. In 16 years of TIGM's existence, they've only done 10 implementations of that. Seven of them have already been scrapped and their record of operating speeds and iterations have been significantly just a fraction of what would be required for public transit in Santa Cruz. So we can do better than this, guys. Let's really look into bus on shoulder and making a greenway out of what is an unused corridor that's just been held hostage for far too long. Appreciate it. We'll have more comments during agenda item 19. Thank you. Michael Wolbe and Sean. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, so I'd just like to thank you guys for allowing the Coast Futura event to happen. I'm a student at UCSC and an avid transit writer as all of us are at UCSC. We make up the large majority of transit riders in the county. And after doing a lot of community outreach to UCSC over the past few months, it is overwhelming. There's an overwhelming interest in rail transit for students because we ride transit more than anyone else in this county and have a very limited scope of the county that we live in and pay taxes in and go to school in. So having seen a train going down that corridor for a lot of students was kind of this reality check that, wow, this really could happen a lot sooner if there was political will. And I just hope that people see this demonstration and see like, yeah, this could happen sooner if the political will was there. Aside from that, I volunteered at Coast Futura for about eight hours at 41st Avenue and the community response was overwhelmingly positive just seeing residents of various backgrounds and age groups come around and see the train and just be really excited to see a train on our corridor was kind of amazing. And yeah, it was overwhelmingly positive. So I hope you guys can take this and get this done because we're not, the climate crisis is happening now. Students can't get around this county if they're not on the bus line and let's like build a better transportation system. Thank you. Sean and then Robert Arco. Good morning. I'm going to read a letter from Foster Anderson. He's the executive director and founder of shared adventures. I was able to ride in Watsonville and Santa Cruz and I felt even more confident about the light rail streetcar because of its zero footprint, generating its own energy using solar panels and state of the art batteries down below. I was amazed at how quiet it was inside and given proper tracks, the light rail can exceed speeds up to 50 miles an hour. The best part was how happy everyone on the train was and for people with special needs like myself using my power wheelchair, transportation is limited and the train can open up to meet a huge need for more accessible transportation. Foster Anderson, worried about Foster. Foster wasn't born, wasn't born here. He grew up on the East coast. After a devastating motorcycle accident, he chose Santa Cruz to move to and develop his nonprofit shared adventures. It's the most networked, well-connected and I'd say popular local nonprofit that works for the benefits of the disabled community. During the pandemic, it's only received even, it's received more recognition and awards than it usually does because of its success. He's been running this 30 years and I don't think anybody is as well connected to the disabled community. Being his organization ended up more or less being the default for the county for about 20 years. I don't think anybody else is as well connected with the disabled and special needs community. And another thing he liked about these cars is that each one can take two wheelchairs and lash them down to the deck. Thank you. Robert Arco and Jessica Evans. Good morning, commissioners. Thanks for your work providing the license and your collaboration with Roaring Camp, Railroads, TIGM and the many volunteers made coast for shore demonstration happen in Watsonville and Santa Cruz. This proof of concept brought to life the vision for the rail and trail was initiated 20 years ago and showed the community that modern clean transportation is viable, complimenting the plan trail. We hope you can move beyond your current paralysis and proceed with the business plan for your preferred alternative of light rail and trail on the corridor. Please find a way to move forward incrementally, just like the trail plan, step by step and let's strive to do something meaningful to transform our transportation solution into an equitable, scalable systemic solution and most important to positively impact climate change. Thank you. Jessica Evans and then Michael St. Good morning, commissioners. Thank you so much for allowing us public comment period. I'd just like to say thank you to the commissioners for approving the demonstration. It was really a great community event. And I'd also like to say thank you to the RTC staff because I know it wasn't easy to get these tracks up to the point where they could be permitted and a lot of people had to work on that project. And it was really wonderful. It was really wonderful for the community to be able to see the possibilities and to see an example of a kind of vehicle that is in the Transit Corridor Alternatives Analysis preferred vehicle that that study came out with at the end. So clean and quiet and electric vehicles that's what's called for. And despite various PR campaigns saying, diesel and steam locomotives rampaging through our neighborhoods, it's like this was a way to clear the air literally of the rhetoric and just let people see what the study was talking about and what the alternative was actually chosen in the study. So I would just again, I'm just here to say thank you and also to ask the commission to consider scheduling regular demonstrations as the various different vehicles that were identified as possibilities for our rail corridor. I'd like to see more of the public loved it. There's a huge amount of volunteers came out to make it happen. So that was pretty amazing to see the upwelling of support and I just wanted to see more of the same. Thank you so much. Michael St. and then Tina Andrietta. Good morning commissioners. Michael St. was campaigned for sustainable transportation and also an Aptos resident. Primarily campaign for sustainable transportation has not formed a consensus on what would be best for this corridor but as an Aptos residents, I've always remained somewhat neutral. But after taking the trip on the TIG-M something really struck home with me. Basically I'm a senior, 70 years old and still in relatively good health and I'm capable of course, riding a bike at those distances presently but it just kept running over and over in my head that eventually time will catch up. We have a lot of seniors in the county and I personally would like something like this on that corridor so I can continue to at least move my older body in those directions without having to ride a bike or even walk that far. So I'm somewhat becoming very supportive of some type of transportation on that corridor. Whether it's the TIG-M or not, doesn't matter a whole lot. I did like the size. It didn't seem overwhelming or too extreme for that size of a corridor. Also like to comment on a comment by someone who said they took the bus from Cabrillo down to Watsonville hour 15 minutes. Even with the new Oxlain projects and that hybrid bus on shoulder system or bus rapid transit, whatever you wanna call it that is still gonna be an issue in the future. You will not increase or release the congestion in the future if you're gonna combine a bus with cars in that lane. Thank you for your time. Seena Andriada and then Ryan Sarnataro. Hear me? Yes. Finally, thank you. I volunteered and there were so many volunteers that came out but I really wanna thank the RTC for licensing the demo but I really want us to talk about equity and Watsonville. Within 48 hours, the Spanish speaking news channel had 46,000 views and currently they have 48,700 views, over 600 likes, almost 300 shares. The comments are positive. 80% of the Boardwalk's employees live in Watsonville and I really think we need to keep the option open. We need to have a public rail transit on the corridor and I really urge everyone not to forget Watsonville and during these conversations it's what I'm seeing, it's these small little areas and pockets of people living possibly like an Aptos or Live Oak but no one's talking about Watsonville. We can't forget them. And as I stated, currently there's over 48,700 views. Thank you. Ryan then Barry Scott. Ryan, you're on mute. Okay, hello. Yes, sorry about the delay there. I actually wanted to get on the little TIG M but it was not able to and I did watch it come down the tracks and boy did it look cute and I watched it from 41st Street and boy did I see a lot of motorists stopped and rather unhappy. And the idea that that would happen to people 60 times a day along multiple major roads in our County is really something that I think the Transportation Commission needs to take a look at. A lot of the comments here are devoid of context. They don't have all the relevant details. What will it really cost the public to be able to put the rail corridor in the condition that's required for this thing to run? How much will it cost going up and down? Will there be some kind of concessions that are required in terms of real estate in order for the TIG M project to actually make a profit? The idea that the freeway expansion is not something that can facilitate transit when right now the major way that public transit operates is to go up and down the freeway to Watsonville at least for the long distance. I think these kinds of misconceptions need to be addressed by the RTC. I do understand that already the RTC is not in favor of this particular project. But I think that better information in the hands of the public is going to make this discussion actually move beyond how cute and how enjoyable it would be to have something like this compared to how practical it is to actually implement it and what it will cost. Barry Scott and then Lawrence Kaplan. Okay, thank you. You have better information before the public. That's exactly what we experienced and I'm so happy. This goes out to Judy Giddelson and to the RTC briefly. Thank you, Judy's poem was magnificent. A great way to start today. I wanna thank the RTC for permitting this demonstration. That's what an RTC should do. This is the first time in 25 years that we've had a demonstration of a modern rail vehicle. Back then in 1996, there were three one day presentations provided, those happened to be diesel powered. The passengers we had included commissioners, Caltrans folks, TAMC, mayors of King City, Carmel, other mayors. And what did we learn? We learned a lot. We got to test one of the six vehicles mentioned in the TCAA business plan. One of six, TIGM. We learned that our local railroad, Roaring Camp, wants to make this happen. We learned that we can use parts of the rail line today. We learned that we can offer regular all day transit between two cities today. How do we know this? Because it happened. Hourly departures over several days between Santa Cruz and Capitola were provided by this demonstration. We should be thinking about a phased implementation starting as soon as possible, including that Capitola to the Boardwalk Stretch. So I thank you. I thank the commission. Please do the repairs that are needed and funded under measure D. And to commissioners, please revisit and pass the rail transit business plan. Thank you. Lawrence Kaplan and Anne Kaplan. If I could just quickly jump in here, Yosannia. Lawrence and Anne, if you are still signed up to talk about the TIGM proposal, item 19, that again is gonna be later. If you've changed your mind and you wanna make an oral communication that's separate from that, now is the time. Otherwise, I think we wanna go on to Rebecca Downing. It looks like that Lawrence and Anne both lowered their hands and then re-raised them. But if you do wanna speak now, go for it, Lawrence. Can you hear me? Yeah. Good, thank you. This constant, unremitting, countywide debate on rail versus trail, and by that I mean trail with expanded subsidized metro service is like a person in love. In this case, in love with trains and undoubtedly with the financial rewards that will flow to select developers. Are we going to turn our county into Disneyland when expanded equitable bus transportation for the whole length of the branch line is put on the back burner? And when a world-class trail is blocked for 5% of illusory net profits, is that what we're doing here? This rail obsession is all emotion, no logic, no financial sense, except for very few. And that is why we need the RTC to exercise sound unbiased judgment. That took me one minute and three seconds. Thank you. Dan Kaplan and then Rebecca. Good morning. I want, first of all, I want to thank the members of the RTC for your great effort and time and making clear headed and careful evaluations of the various transit proposals. I know social, I believe social equity is a major focus in any kind of transit plan. And that is completely disregarded by the TIGM plan where no service is proposed to Watsonville. An enhanced metro service could be realized without major infrastructure expenditure. And the statements that have been made in this oral communication illustrates the need for an enhanced metro service. Riders complaining about lengthy, lengthy waits, lengthy rides, perhaps because there's not adequate service at this point in time. A true zero carbon footprint would be a pedestrian bike path which could be used by all residents free of charge. A rail system is for the few who can afford fare. A ped bike path and trail is for everyone. Thank you for your time. Rebecca Downey. Yes, can you hear me? Yes. Great, good morning. I have a couple of things to say. The first is I think all these comments about the TIGM should wait until the agenda item, 19, because they're distracting from other comments people want to make that are not related to that. Which is my comment, which I believe the RTC needs more attention focused on the maintenance of this corridor before adding any new type of transit, including the planned trails. I'm talking specifically about drainage, clearing of brush, removal of trees. I live on North Avenue and the neighbors here, we've been trying to get some help along the rail line to clear the brush because it's been a fire hazard. I realize now it's rain. So maybe this is the good time to take care of that. Union Pacific used to clear the brush away and the last contractor that you used did not. They just left it and they dumped some of it into the drainage that is behind North Avenue. So I've already written to the RTC about this and I hope that you're all listening today and can maybe take a look at that. The other thing is regarding maintenance is also safety. I believe that the current sections of the trail that have a fence on both sides is too narrow for everybody. It looks kind of dangerous, especially if you have a cyclist going quickly in one direction and maybe some pedestrians with strollers and dog on the other side. And also I'd just like to share that I've been on the West side quite a bit recently. And what I've noticed myself personally is that the crossing, I have witnessed both pedestrians and cyclists zooming across the street and refusing or not knowing to stop. So I think it's important that you look at that. Thank you. Commissioner Brown, I don't see any other hands. Thank you, Yesenia. So thank you all for your comments during oral communications. I wanna make a quick statement here because I recognize that mentioning TIGM and kind of conflating the Coast Future Demonstration because TIGM was one of the sponsors and the provider of the vehicle that these are getting kind of inevitably conflated. So, and I recognize that that could be distracting with respect to the broader issues that people have been raising before us today. So having said that, and I will remind folks when we get to item 19, please reserve your comments for the specifics of the TIGM proposal. We've talked about the demonstration. People have been talking about their hopes and dreams for the rail the right of way and what is to be done there. And so I just wanna make sure we stay focused and don't just use that as an opportunity to say the same thing in our upcoming general business. So thank you for being here to make comments and we are now gonna move on to our consent. Actually, we have additions or deletions to the agenda before we move on. And I'm sorry, Commissioner Brown, it looks like Commissioner Caput has his hand up. Yeah, I see your hand up. Just checking on changes to the agenda. Commissioner Caput, please go ahead. Okay, well, I thought this would be a good time, but you're waiting for item number 19. But quickly I'll just say I was at the train rail demonstration on a couple of weeks ago here in Watsonville and it was a beautiful event. Lowell was there, I was there with my whole family. And- Commissioner Caput? Yeah, I'm sorry. No, no, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to let you know that you also have an opportunity when commissioners update the commission in the public. So you can talk about it then as well. Thanks. Okay, that's fine. And well, anything, I guess it's related to 19 also, but if you look in the dictionary for definitions, equitable was brought up by people in the public there. Three words basically would define equitable. That would be rail, trail, and Watsonville. That's equitable. Disadvantaged neighborhood, if you looked it up in the dictionary, you only need one word to define disadvantaged neighborhood. And that's Watsonville, California, Watsonville, one word. So that's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Okay, so deletions, additions or deletions to the agenda? Yes, thank you, Chair Brown. There are no deletions, but there are two handouts for items 16 and 19 and they are both posted on our website. Thank you. Okay, we will now move on to our consent agenda. All items appearing on the consent agenda are considered to be minor or non-controversial, will be acted upon in one motion, if no member of the RTC or public wishes to pull any of those items for discussion, in which case they would move to the regular agenda. You members of the commission can raise questions or ask for clarification, add direction to consent items without removing them. And so I will ask commissioners, do you have, are there items you'd like to remove from our consent agenda? This is items four through 14 on our agenda today. Would anyone like to remove an item and or does anyone have a question from the commission? Okay, seeing none, I will then ask if members of the public have, Commissioner Bertrand, did you wanna, okay, sorry, quick hand up there. Okay, so members of the public, any comments on items that are on our consent agenda? These are again, items four through 14. Okay. Move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion to approve the minute or the consent agenda. I'm sorry, Chair Brown. I did wanna go back and I'm slow on the mute button. I apologize. On item 10, the full COVID-19 vaccination or a weekly negative test result. I just had a question as to why the taxpayer should have to pay someone to get a negative test result on the taxpayer's hour, rather than why the employee shouldn't be securing that test result on their own time as a condition for showing up for work. Madam Chair, if I may, that there's a state law requirement that if the agency is gonna require that there be testing for individuals who may not be vaccinated, that the employer is actually required to pay for that. And so can I make an asterisk then, if that's a significant number of people or time we arrange for at work testing to be available? Mr. Chair. So I could address that question. I might, Chair Brown. Please. Subray to all of our employees, we have about 20. All of our employees are vaccinated, one employee declined to stay. So there would only be one employee where this would affect RTC. Thanks, Guy. Okay. So we now have a motion by Commissioner Rocken. Second by, I don't know quite who's about there first. Schifrin, thank you. I heard a few voices. Okay, so we have a motion and a second and we'll take a roll call vote on approval of consent, the consent agenda. Commissioner Bertrand. I agree. Commissioner Brown. I. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin. I. Commissioner Johnson. I. Commissioner Montecino. I. Commissioner Caput. I. Commissioner Alternate Quinn. Approve. Commissioner Koenig. I. Commissioner McPherson. I. Commissioner Peterson. I. Commissioner Northcott. I. Commissioner Rotkin. Commissioner Rotkin. He's on mute. And before we move forward, Commissioner Brown, I just want to note that Commissioner Scott Ease is present and I didn't call his name during roll call. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. Good to see you, Mr. Ease. Okay. Moving along onto our regular agenda. Item 15 is commissioner reports. These are oral reports from members of the commission on anything you'd like to update your colleagues and the public related to transportation in Santa Cruz County. Commissioner Peterson. Thank you. And I believe this would be the appropriate time for me to speak on this matter, but please feel free to stop me if I'm incorrect on that front. I've been on this board for approximately, excuse me, this commission for approximately eight or nine months now. And whenever I join a new body such as this, I typically take some time to listen more than I speak because I learn more from listening than I do from speaking. And with this board, I've spent significantly longer period of time with very little comment due to the complexity of the issues and the sheer volume of historical documentation, historical knowledge and actions that I needed to bring myself up to speed on. I'm coming to the point now where I'm prepared to engage much more vocally than I have to date, beginning with the comments that I'd like to share now and then later in the agenda on another item. What I want to address today is that recently we received a number of emails, I believe in response to a letter to the editor suggesting that our colleague commissioner, Rod can be removed from the RTC commission for his support of the recent real demonstration. And while Mike and I have not always agreed on this particular issue as demonstrated by our voting history, I feel the need to address this disappointing recommendation that he be removed from our commission. As I mentioned, Mike and I have not always seen eye to eye on votes pertaining to this rail, the trail debate. However, I've walked sections of the track with Mike, I've chatted with him about these issues on several occasions and I've always found him to be a thoughtful decision maker that cast his votes based on the facts laid before him, as I believe all on this board work to do. I wanna point out that Mike and I both sit on this board as representatives of Metro and that it was Mike himself that recommended that I be appointed to the RTC. I wanna take this moment to thank Mike for his service, not only on this board, but the Metro board and throughout our community over the years. And I wanna encourage my fellow RTC commissioners to reach out to each other and find ways to communicate our support of issues where we can find common ground, especially as the dialogue outside of this body from both sides grows continually more divisive. So I just felt a need to share that with the emails that we received. It really struck a chord with me and I felt the need to thank Mike for his service and encourage us all to find ways that we can find common ground and work together as we move forward. Thank you. Thank you for that, Commissioner Peterson. Are there others who'd like to comment? Okay, so yeah, I- I'm sorry, Commissioner Rockin has his hand up. Commissioner Rockin, there you are. Probably in my briefest comment ever, I wanna thank. Thank Kristen for her comments. That's it, thank you. Okay. So yeah, I too want to take a moment to say I wanna thank Commissioner Peterson for speaking up here. I agree completely with the comments and I just will use the opportunity to make a more general comment about the, what I consider to be increasingly personalized attacks going on within our debate. We are here to discuss policy and programming and as Commissioner Peterson said, weigh our decisions based upon the evidence before us. And so I hope that members of the public, as commissioners, we've been making our best efforts to work together even when we disagree and I hope we can continue to do that. And I would just ask members of the public to also think about that the way that your comments, affect the folks who are on this body, trying to represent the public and work in the public interest. That is what we are all trying to do, although we may come to different conclusions. So thank you for opening up the space to talk about that. And we will now move on to our next item, which is our director's report and Mr. Preston, that is you. Thank you Chair Brown and commissioners. First I wanna welcome Commissioner Ulpa Northcut. Commissioner Northcut was recently, recently appointed the Santa Cruz Metro by the Watsonville City Council and then subsequently appointed to the RTC by Metro. This is Commissioner Northcut's first RTP meeting. So welcome to Commissioner Northcut. I have a few announcements. RTC has officially completed its move to the University Center building located at 1101 Pacific Avenue Suite 250. We are still unpacking boxes and settling into our new home. We are working on adding technology to allow for hybrid committee meetings to be held in our new conference rooms. Staff will be transitioning from nearly full-time remote schedules to new hybrid schedules over the next two months. We have maintained normal productivity throughout the pandemic and are excited to be welcoming in the new normal as we move towards the beginning of the new year. I'd like to let you know that we're sad to be losing a member of our staff. Fernanda Pena is moving on from the RTC. Fernanda originally was hired as an administrative assistant. She was responsible for coordination of these RTC meetings and agenda package for quite some time. She was interested in planning work and switch roles to become a planning technician. She was a big help to me in drafting the inaugural measure D strategic implementation plan. She was actively assisting in the Scots Creek restoration project, the regional conservation investment study and providing contract management support to many of our project managers. Fernanda, she's very adaptable. She's got positive energy and the quality of her work will be missed. She moved here from Brazil as a young child and it's gonna be moving back for a period of time for eventually coming back to the United States. I'd like to also announce that RTC just hired a new administrative assistant. Cindy Convisser joined RTC's administrative team on November 1st. Ms. Convisser has worked preparing technical documents, proposals and contracts in the private sector for 14 years and has served as a volunteer for community organizations here in Santa Cruz. She received her AS in business and a certificate in accounting at Cabrera College in 2006. So welcome Cindy to the RTC. I would like to provide an update on one of our other programs, the Santa Cruz County Go Santa Cruz County program. Since launching in October of 2019 with downtown Santa Cruz employees, more than 2,200 commuters have registered for Go Santa Cruz County. Participants have logged over 150,000 alternative commute miles and by doing so have reduced CO2 emissions by more than 50 tons. The Go Santa Cruz County program offers incentives to help employees throughout the county choose options other than driving a loan to get to work. These include gift cards, rewards for logging smart commute trips, active transportation and bike safety training, carpool and van pool, ride matching and emergency ride home reimbursement. Downtown Santa Cruz employees are also eligible for additional benefits including free bus passes, bike locker cards and downtown dollars that have access to a number of ecology action benefits including zero interest bus loans up to $1,500, free one-to-one bike commute consultations and free two-week long bike e-bike test rides for a limited time. Downtown employees enrolled in the Go Santa Cruz County platform can apply for a $200 e-bike rebate or $400 rebate for low income individuals. Go Santa Cruz County, Go Santa Cruz expanded countywide become Go Santa Cruz County in mid 2021 and anyone who lives or works in Santa Cruz County is now eligible to participate in the program. Employers can also use the Go Santa Cruz County platform for their own commute programs. Interested employers can reach out to staff for more information by emailing info at cruise511.org. Staff are currently exploring opportunities to offer more robust incentives and commute challenges for participants working outside of downtown Santa Cruz. Visit GoSantaCruiseCounty.org to sign up and start earning rewards for choosing a sustainable commute. And that concludes my report. Thank you, Director Preston. Are there questions for Mr. Preston? Commissioner Bertrand. Well, thank you, Chair. I was wondering, guy, is there a chance for a, I guess an introduction to the new quarters or is there going to be like an opening party or some other way for us to get acquainted with the new digs? Thank you. Right now, anything like that's scheduled we're transitioning back to the office. When we think it's appropriate to do so I'll make such an announcement but I think that would be a good idea. Okay, we'll take it out to the public for any questions or comments on the director's report. Seeing none, we'll move on to item 17, the Caltrans reports, Mr. Eads, you're up. All right, good morning, Madam Chair and members of the commission. Again, Scott Eads here for Caltrans. I have a few project updates and then one thing to share about a grant application or grant opportunity. So first we have talked about the Santa Cruz 17 wildlife crossing projects. Just wanted to provide a super quick update that the start of that project in terms of construction has been delayed until February 1st, 2022. So we will be beginning construction and coordinating with others on groundbreaking ceremony on that as well and some other announcements. Second thing I wanted to update on is the California Transportation Commission recently allocated $960 million at its recent meeting. That included one shot funded project which is managed through Caltrans. The project is on route one and it will replace and upgrade existing corrugated metal pipe culverts with reinforced concrete pipe culverts. Projects is located near Davenport from north of Swanson Road to south of Waddle Creek. It's about $9 million in total costs and we expect construction will also begin in February for that project. And we also anticipate that there will be some one-way traffic control involved with flaggers. So more information to come on that as construction gets closer. And then just as a reminder there's lots of other information about other projects in the state highway system in your packet that we include in every meeting. And then finally just wanted to conclude with Clean California. We've talked about this in the past as well. There has been a new application workshop added for Thursday, November 18th from 10 a.m. to noon. And this is specific to the local grant program. As a reminder, there's nearly $300 million available statewide. This is from the general fund. It's not from transportation dollars. So it's not diminishing other funding sources and the local grant program is specifically focused to local jurisdictions to be able to apply for those funds. So I'll post a link in the chat if that works on that grant program for more information. That concludes my report. Thank you. Happy to take any questions. Thank you. Madam Chair. Yes. Yeah, this is commissioner McPherson and I've got to press him, I think you know. But anyway, have we made any application on that Clean California or what is our idea? If it's going to be what November 18th, it's going to be discussed. Could you clarify if we have done anything or if we're going to do anything on that? I think that's a question to me. Yes. Yes. The other Mr. Preston. Yes. We are looking into it specifically for the rail quarter, which is the only property that RTC owns. I don't know if the county or cities are planning to apply separately, but we're having a hard time really feeling, figuring out whether or not an application will qualify under the guidelines. So we haven't completely ruled it out, but you have to really look at the details to kind of realize whether or not it's going to work. And there's a high chance probability that we'll actually be able to receive grant funds. And if I may, through the chair, clarify that the applications, the call for projects will begin in December and the applications I think are due in late January or early February. So there is some time still, but yeah, definitely pay attention to the application criteria, may, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, any other questions from commissioners? All right, we'll take it out to the public for any comments or questions from meeting attendees about the Caltrans report. Seeing none, we will move on to our next item, which is item 18. This is a report on assembly bill 361, making findings for virtual and hybrid meetings and the format of our meetings moving forward. And that will be Mr. Mendez, our deputy director, I believe. Hello, Mr. Mendez. You're on. Good morning, Madam Chair, and good morning commissioners. As you know, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our governor issued a state of emergency in March of 2020 and also issued a number of executive orders suspending some of the Brown Act requirements for public agency meetings to allow public agencies to hold the meetings virtually and ensure that the business of government would continue through the pandemic. And those executive orders expired in September 30th of 2021. However, the legislature did approve assembly bill 361 and the governor signed it into law, which allows the possibility to continue meetings in a virtual format or a hybrid format if that's desired by public agencies. In order to be, and the first meetings, the first meeting that the RTC held on the AB 361 was you made at the last month. In order to continue meetings that are either virtual meetings or hybrid meetings, the RTC must make certain findings as required by AB 361. And those findings are that the RTC is reconsidered, the circumstances of the COVID-19 state of emergency were just still in place. And also that the state of emergency continues to directly impact the ability of the members of the RTC's committees and staff and the public to participate in person safely. And also the state or local officials continue to impose or recommend measures to promote social distancing. So that's what this, so this item is before you so that you can make such findings. And so you can continue to hold meetings virtually if you desire or the meetings can also be hybrid meetings, which would include some components of virtual meetings. It is possible to hold hybrid meetings at the County Board of Supervisors Chambers. County Board of Supervisors has been holding heavy meetings for some time now. However, the County Board of Supervisors set up for only up to five board members. And this commission has 12 board members and with Mr. Eads of Caltrans that makes it 13 board members. So couldn't accommodate all of the commissioners in person at the County Board of Supervisors Chambers. Now maximally could accommodate for a hybrid meeting is five board members. At this point, we're not aware that any of the city council chambers are available for hybrid meetings, but that may come eventually. Also, anyone participating in person at those hybrid meetings would be required to wear masks. So that would be members of the commission and staff as well as members of the public who might attend in person. It is expected that the commission does do hybrid meetings. Most individuals will continue to participate virtually and staff would have to find out from commissioners who are interested in participating in person to ensure that no more than five commissioners would be at a meeting in person. And also, even though there is a suspension of some of the Brown Act requirements so that either hybrid or virtual meetings can be held, there are still requirements in place to ensure that the public and that they can be open meetings that the public can participate and so on, et cetera. So the commission will still continue to do advance notification and posting of agendas to be similar to ours in advance. Accommodations need to be made for the public to be able to access and participate the meetings and accommodations need to be made to make sure the public can address the meeting. Members of the commission directly on any matters that are under the purview of the RTC. And also, if for some reason, there is an interruption in the service, the internet service, something that makes it impossible for the meeting to be broadcast or for members of the public to be able to participate in the meeting, then meetings must be put on hold until such issues are resolved to make sure that the meeting can continue completely open and that the public can participate accordingly. So with that, staff does recommend that the RTC find that the RTC has reconsidered circumstances in the current COVID-19 state of emergency. The state of emergency continues to directly impact the ability of the members of the RTC, its committees, its staff and the public to meet safely in person and state and local officials continue to impose and recommend measures to promote social distancing. And it also, it is the intent that for committee meetings, those will continue to be held virtually because those are held in conference rooms which are not equipped to allow for hybrid meetings. And also members of committees have expressed concern regarding safety with meetings that might include some people in person and would prefer to continue to meet virtually. That concludes my staff report. Thank you, Mr. Mendez. So we have received the report. Are there questions from commissioners about how we will be proceeding? I wanna leave an opportunity for questions right now and then ask for public input and then bring it back if folks wanna talk about how you'd like to proceed after that. So questions. Yeah, Madam Chair, again, I appreciate that. And I think that this is the way we should proceed. I wanna let folks know that the County Board of Supervisors wrote a letter to the CPUC saying that this system, if you will call it that, of power shutoffs that occurred continuously is just not acceptable for safety and other reasons. We got a very pointed and very strong responsibility from the chair of the California Public Utilities Commission saying she and the commission is very concerned about it and they are going to have monthly reports from PG&E about that whole system. So it wasn't light-hearted by any means for response and I was very appreciative for immediate response and really the seriousness that the PUC is taking this situation that we've experienced particularly up in the San Lorenzo Valley and the Moore Mountain was serious, but PUC is very much engaged in seeing this corrected or having a better system of response being put in place by PG&E. Thank you, Commissioner McPherson. Okay, Commissioner Hernandez. And then Commissioner Rock, can I got you next? You know, I was gonna ask folks that are on the supervisors about the advantages of hybrid and virtual. I guess I just kind of heard right now some of the comments. I was thinking about internet connectivity for some of the people that live either in places that don't have good connections, but also what was just brought up about power shutoffs and the PG&E issues is another concern. So, you know, I'm leaning towards the hybrid, I guess it might be a better option over just the 100% virtual for folks that actually need to come in and have both better internet access and have power too when they have power shutoffs. So, just my comment, but I had a question, but I was just answered by some of the comments right now. But if anybody else has comments to it about the advantages and disadvantages. Thank you, Commissioner Hernandez. Commissioner Rockin, did you have your hand up? Okay, I thought I saw it. Okay, I think that's the sunshine. It looks like a hand from over here. Commissioner Bertrand, you're up. And you were on mute, sorry. Yeah, I gotta get used to this. Power outage around the county is very concerning to me. And so some people might be able to get reception because your computers are working and others may not. So the prior comment may make some sense. My question to staff is, do we have backup power in case there's a shutoff of power? If we were able to broadcast when that was the situation, maybe that might be acceptable. Just a question for Guy. I can go ahead and try to respond if that's okay. We do have backup power for the computers that we have in our office, that only allows power for a short period of time. However, when these meetings are being broadcast, it's not just the equipment in our office, because we're using community TV for the service. So they're using their equipment and systems. So I expect they do have backup power as well to make sure that their systems can continue to be in place for a period of time, but depending on how much power might be out, I don't know how long they could continue to have a meeting. So a reference to your answer, that's a good point. So the meeting is dispersed everywhere. PG&E often gives us a notice that there might be a shutdown. Is there a possibility that we could send out a notice to the public ahead of time that our TC meeting may be suspended instead of further data in the future? I suppose one possibility is that if we are aware that there could be a power shutdown during a commission meeting, I mean, it's something that could be communicated when the meeting begins potentially, so people know. I don't know if we would know what's sufficient time in advance to put something on our agenda potentially. So it might depend on when we're aware what the commission could potentially do to notify members of the public. Yeah, I realize there's a lot of uncertainty, but at least have some sort of procedure so that the public interest can be accommodated. Commissioner Brown, may I add something to Luisa's answer? So we would receive a notice for the RTC office, but we're not receiving notices for the county office, which is where we would be holding our commission meeting. So we would need to coordinate with the county if they receive notices. Commissioner Rockin, go for it. Yeah, so I think the issue here is that whether or not we're going to have power outages, it's number one unlikely as the remaining season moves in. So we have some time to try and think about this in terms of that particular issue. I also think instead of just figuring out how can we let people know when we've been shut down, we should be more proactive and send a formal letter to PG&E. The city of Sanacris doesn't get shot off very often. We don't have the same kind of fire risk that they have up in the San Lorenzo Valley and other places. So I think we can be reasonably secure. If we help PG&E, when you make these shutoffs, they're selected, they pick areas and stuff and they can decide which areas they're gonna shut down. It's not perfectly tailored to decide where the line's gonna be drawn or something, but I think we should have a formal request from our, I don't think it takes a vote to do it, but our staff should formally let PG&E know when our meetings are and that we'd like to make sure that they make a special effort, not to shut the power off, not just to us, but to the community television site or all the other places in the urban area here where, and I think that's probably more useful in some way than sort of after the fact, trying to figure out how we can scramble around to let people know that we've lost the power. And I don't think it's gonna be a certain, frankly, I don't see the power again shut off here a lot in the wintertime, more likely shut off because the telephone pole falls down or some, because the power line falls down then because they're worried about fire risk and that whole problem that we're confronting. My view is that for now, the hybrid meeting is just as problematic as having the meetings totally virtually and some of our customers may not be able to get to us, that's an issue when people in the Santa Rosa Valley, as Bruce pointed out, may not be able to access to me, but I don't know that there's anything better than a virtual meeting where we do our best to make sure that at least the projection power of the our ability to broadcast what we're doing or narrowcast what we're doing, it's really what we need to keep secure on some level. This was specifically just questions, but I mean, my general sense is that at this point, we should direct staff to look for the opportunities for transition towards virtual or eventually open meeting in-person meetings, but for the time being that the virtual meetings are as bad as effective as we can be given the concerns people have about safety and all the other issues and the inadequacy of any of the rooms that might be available to us. Those are my views, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Rocken. I see Commissioner Schifrin and then Commissioner Randy Johnson. I just wanted to very quickly, if we're moving into the comment portion before, if this is not questions, I'd like to just ask if there are members of the public who want to speak and then we can come back and deliberate and kind of decide if anybody wants to make a motion that reflects additional or different recommendations from that in the staff report. So is that okay? I can agree. If it's a request, if it's a comment, I just like to wait for one moment and just make sure. Anybody, are there members of the public who would like to comment on this item before the commission takes action? I see one hand up that is equity and environment. I believe that is Ms. Faulkner. I just want to clarify, because I've been in and out that this is some voting for or speaking about remote and in-person meetings. Is that correct? Correct. Awesome. So yes, I am absolutely in favor of at least remote, if not both for so many of us in the community. It's an equity issue. It's already hard enough to make it to the meetings for those of us who work or have various other obligations as well. And so I am definitely for many reasons, especially around the equity piece in favor of at least having a hybrid. The hybrid of course is nice because it offers that in-person touch when you get a chance to meet people, but then having the Zoom capabilities allows the public to actually participate in the public process. And I feel very strongly that remote should actually be a format required in all meetings that involve the public. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, Gina Cole, you're up next. Good morning. I too would like to reiterate Ms. Faulkner's comments as a member of the Watsonville City of Watsonville Planning Commission. I made that request at our meeting this week because I feel like we were losing people that we had gained by having remote meetings. I believe that hybrid is definitely the way to go in that post-pandemic things change and it doesn't have to go back to exactly the way that it was. So if public meetings at all have the capacity and the capability for sharing to a broader community, I would encourage you to continue doing what you're doing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, I see more hands going up. So I'll call on Kyle Kelly next. Thank you. So I just want to say as a parent of three kids, it's been really useful to be able to come to virtual meetings because I can easily put things in between while I'm working with my toddler or going to work myself. And I think especially for the Transportation Commission which stretches the county, it leads to having more if it's only in-person, it leads to people that already live close to Santa Cruz like where I do to be able to just go directly to where the meetings are held. Whereas if anybody is further out in the county, they have much less easy access to be able to comment on items for the public. So big support for making sure that we do at least hybrid meetings and virtual meetings have been great. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, Jack Brown, you're next. I just wanted to say how wonderful it is that I am in complete agreement with Alani Faulkner and Kyle, usually we're on opposite ends of the spectrum, but the only way I've really been able to get involved with the RTC meetings live is because of the virtual aspect of it as I'm a working adult and commute. And it was very challenging to have to take a day off or otherwise, if I've really wanted to be involved, this makes it much easier and also shows a way that we can sort of beat the commute mentality of not necessarily having to be in a place where we can relieve traffic by using technology in one sense. So I'm really glad that it's being considered as a hybrid or even virtual. And I'm hoping that through time we can find more common points on both sides. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Jessica Evans, you're up. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you for considering the option of going to hybrid meetings instead of going back to in-person. I will say that it's an incredible privilege to be a person who doesn't have to work in Santa Cruz and I just have had many, many long trips to these meetings and not everyone has the capacity to do that. And most people, the great majority of people who would like to participate don't have the capacity to take like half a day and that you all know it requires to attend one of these meetings in person. So please continue to have the hybrid. And some people can't deal with the technology. So hybrid is really important because it's the most accessible and the most equitable for everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I don't see any more hands up from the public. So I'll bring it back. Commissioner Schifrin, you're next. Yes, thank you. I think it's important to have hybrid meetings. The concern about PG&E and internet access isn't so much from my perspective, a concern about whether we'll be able to broadcast but whether people in rural areas will be able to receive those broadcasts. And I think we've had a good deal of experience with poor internet service in a number of the rural areas. I know certainly in the third district, this has been a problem. And what that means is that residents of those areas are really unable to participate. And I think it might be a little bit cumbersome to have a hybrid meetings where we can only have four members at the board meeting, but there should be a process of signing up in advance. I know I would prefer coming in person and seeing people who are telling me what they think I should do. And so I think it's really important to have hybrid meetings so that there are members of our community who for reasons outside of their control can participate in our meetings while allowing for people who for a whole variety of reasons can't or don't want to or unable to come to a board meeting to be still be able to participate virtually. Thank you. Okay. If it's appropriate, I would make a motion to move forward to the next step to move forward with setting up hybrid meetings. I'll second it. Okay. So we have a motion on the floor to. I assume the motion includes the findings necessary to be able to carry this out that Louise told us about. Absolutely. Okay. So motion and a second on the floor to recommend the recommendations in the staff report and to move towards hybrid meetings. Now I just want to make sure I'm tracking. Commissioner Johnson, you had a comment. Did you want to make that now? Yeah. Just quick, I completely agree with Mike Rotkin in terms of the facility of hybrid meetings. You know, we've had 18 months of these types of meetings with no real interruptions. So I don't really want to borrow trouble that all of a sudden we're going to have interruptions for no apparent reason. Sure, fire, storms, those are all possible. And with respect to hybrid in-person, sure if it works out for the commission and for our staff, having just four people. And also we kind of address this, I think with our city council informally, we are coming into the flu season, you know, so in-person stuff, maybe wait till spring to kind of just really, really pursue that. But it sounds like we're moving in the right direction. So thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner Johnson. Okay. Let me clarify if I could that my motion was to move towards hybrid meetings as soon as possible. Thank you. Mike, I gotcha just once at Commissioner Hurst or I don't know, are you commissioner alternate right now or council member Hurst? I guess, okay. So, Mr. Hurst, commissioner Hurst, you're up. Yes, thank you very much. I too support the good efforts to promote the remote access. You know, in the often forgotten parts of Watsonville, it's a real struggle to be able to make some of these in-person meetings, although I prefer the in-person meetings, this does give more equity and access and that's what we're looking for in Watsonville is equity and access. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Rackin. You know, the problem we're trying to solve, I think mainly is not whether we can meet as a commission dependent upon the things, but whether people can attend our meetings and participate members of the public. And so what we really need is not, I mean, it's fine to have five members rotate as they suggest through the meeting, but the real thing what we need is a room somewhere with a microphone and a camera that or a computer attached to a camera that allow members of the public who are probably faced often with both problems, they have bad internet connections where they are generally power outages are more likely to occur there. And so as long as the hybrid model really is in question of having an audience space where people can come who think that their power is likely to go out or they've been warned that it's going to go out. And so they can participate by coming with enough social distancing between them with a large enough room. It's not the dias that's important for us. It's more important that there be a place where 30 people or 40 people from the public who don't wanna or cannot attend remotely are able to come in person and still, you know, intermix as you call on people from the public by being in a public room somewhere. So I think we should consider that when we're looking at how we might develop a hybrid model. And as I understand the motion, it's not that it happened next tomorrow but that the staff begin thinking about how we would develop a hybrid model. And I hope they'll take my comments into account when they do that. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Schifrin. Yeah, I just, I agree with Mike that there needs to be a room but the board of supervisors has been holding hybrid meetings for months. The board of supervisors chambers have successfully been set up to have hybrid meetings. And I think, as the staff report said, somehow only four members of the body can be there but there may be five. I've seen it, you've seen it since five. So, you know, there could be five commissioners who attended and there are protocols that the county uses which I think the commission could use as well. And as far as I know, the hybrid meetings have been working in that there are members of the public who really wanna be able to look at a commissioner in the eye as well as members of the public who really have problems with their internet access. And we have had technical problems where people haven't been able to get on for one reason or another. It's taken forever. We go back and forth. And so it's not like the virtual meetings are universally applauded. I think that option has to be there. It's critical, it's critical now and it may be critical even beyond the pandemic given the nature of our county. But I think hybrid meetings have real benefits both for constituents and I think for commissioners as well to really be able to see some of the people who are concerned about what we're doing. And so, I don't think it should be difficult to have community TV, I think, is set up at the county to be able to televised board meetings. And I just think that the difference will be only five of us can be there at any one meeting, but that's no different from where two or three board members go to a board meeting and some people come in person and some people phone in. I don't know if commissioner McPherson would like to comment on the board's hybrid approach or not, but he certainly has lived with it. Just briefly, it's worked very well. People who want to come can do so. They're required, there's some protocols, required masks and so forth. It's worked very well. And I think consumer advisor Cronig would agree. It's a great option available to the general public. So I think it meets both the needs. People want to stay home and view it. That's fine. If they want to come to the board chamber, that's fine too. We do not usually have more than maybe a half a dozen at the most probably, but it's worked well, I believe. And I, Supervisor Cronig. And how auspicious, Commissioner Cronig, you are up next. That you can weigh in on that or other matters. Definitely, I just wanted to echo that and also share my support for hybrid meetings. I think it's ultimately where we need to be as a commission, really for all public meetings. And I can confidently say that we've seen the maximum amount of participation through the hybrid format with both a number of in-person comments for supervisors meeting, as well as quite a few online as well. And also comment that I don't think that there's, there's no advantage to being in the chambers versus virtual for even for board members, or in this case, commission members themselves really both can participate equally. So it's where we need to be, as Commissioner Schifrin mentioned, Community Television has been a fantastic partner in making the technology side of things work. For now we'll be limited to five members, five commissioners in the chambers. And that's mostly just because of the partitions on the dais that were installed for safety. But you know, hopefully as we move to less restrictions, as we get the pandemic greater under control and those partitions come down, ultimately be able to accommodate as many people as want to be in the board chambers. So I'm definitely supportive of having hybrid meetings as soon as possible. Thank you, Commissioner Koenig. Okay, I don't see any more hands up. So I will just really quickly make a comment. And then I think we have a, we have a motion and a second on the floor. Yeah, I'll just say, you know, I think that, you know, I concur with what's been expressed here by my colleagues about really having an interest in maximum accessibility for the public. And that, you know, we can, we're finding ways to do that and that a hybrid model is most likely to achieve that goal of making the commission and our deliberations accessible to people remotely, people who want to come into the meeting room. And I also want to recognize that this does present, you know, a higher level of coordination and logistics for our staff. And I know that having heard from the staff at the city as we're moving through this as well, the city of Santa Cruz, you know, that's important to recognize. And so I'm fully in support of moving in this direction and also want to make sure that as soon as possible, you know, is expressed fully to the staff and that you, you know, work in this direction. And I know you already are. And when folks are ready, when you're ready that you have commissioners who are ready to get back in the chambers and so I'll, with that, call for a vote. So before I start, Commissioner Hurst did step in for Commissioner Montesino. Thank you. Commissioner Bertrand. I agree. Commissioner Brown. I. Commissioner Johnson. Right. Commissioner Alternate Hurst. I. Commission Alternate Hernandez. Yes. Commission Alternate Schifrin. I. Commission Alternate Quinn. Yes. Commissioner Koenig. I. Commissioner McPherson. I. Commissioner Peterson. I. Commissioner Northcott. I. Commissioner Rotkin. I. And that's unanimous. Okay, Mr. Mendez. Yes, Madam Chair. Just want to add that it is the intent of staff to have an item like this for you at every meeting because it is a requirement of every 361 that you make these findings. This, the law says every 30 days or meetings sometimes are actually that side of the 30 day timeframe that at every meeting is an item for these findings will be before you as long as it is, you know the intended desire of the commission to continue with hybrid meetings, which is what you would like. And it'll, the item will be on your consent agenda going forward to space that will need to be on the regular agenda. And also I just want to add that in addition to all the other amazing work that you said about her and her staff have been doing to make sure that we move to a new office and everything goes as well as possible and have our computer systems in place to work accordingly and everything. She's also been doing an amazing job of coming up to speed on how to make sure that we can do hybrid meetings and you know and learning from the county on how they conduct their meetings and so on so that we can do that as successfully as possible for the commission. So it is the intent of staff to have hybrid meetings going forward. And huge, huge thank you for that. Commissioner Schifrin. Yes, I want to ask our attorney a question. I was under the impression that it would be possible for the commission to designate the executive director to make that 30 day designation, particularly since the commission doesn't meet every 30 days and meets once a month. And so there'll be times when we're not able to do it within that time period. My understanding is that by a vote of the commission it is possible to designate a commissioner, a staff member to file that, make that whatever needs to be done within every 30 days. Is that correct? So I'll report back to the commission on that. That is not consistent with how I've seen other agencies do it and I believe the statute does talk about the legislative body making the findings. And, but it is a, the point Louise raises and that you raise commissioner is significant because there are a number of commissions that don't actually meet every 30 days. Some meet once a month, which creates greater than 30 day differential. And some meet less frequently than that. And so I do anticipate that there will be some further direction from the state to address that issue because it's at the moment creating a need for a number of special meetings with agencies and that is, you know, it's problematic and not very efficient. But I will look into that issue. I just not have not experienced that with other agencies today. I'm aware of one and I would ask that you, maybe we get a report at our next meeting on that. Absolutely. I'll advise the commission before then. Thank you. Okay. Thanks everyone. Just waiting to see if anybody else is going to chime in. Okay. I think we're moving on now to item 19. And that is a report on this, the item is titled report on the unsolicited rail proposal from TIGM and roaring camp. We have materials in our packet related to this item and our director, executive director, Mr. Preston will give us an oral report. Thank you, Chair Brown, commissioners and member of the public. As Chair Brown mentioned, this report is regarding the consideration of an unsolicited recreational passenger and freight route proposal by TIGM and roaring camp with a staff recommendation not to pursue this unsolicited public private partnership proposal or any other potential P3 proposal for passenger rail service at this time. Around the commencement of our transit corridor alternatives analysis or TCAA, which was a study to determine the best potential transit option for the branch line. An innovative rolling stock manufacturer called TIGM gave a presentation on the right light weight trolley and its hydrogen fuel cell technology at an RTC meeting. December 2019, the commission authorized a temporary license for a demonstration contingent upon the inclusion of a demonstration in Watsonville. Was understood that the demonstration would be to provide an opportunity for the community to see the advancements of a new rail technology being studied in the TCAA and not an endorsement to enter into an operational agreement. The demonstration took place last month. I personally had the opportunity to ride in Watsonville. TIGM makes a very nice product, which certainly demonstrates the advancement and clean energy technology and its applicability to the transportation sector. But that is really not the issue here today. I am glad that the community got the opportunity to see this technology and how it may be applicable to future decisions on the rail line. On September 1st of this year, TIGM and Roaring Camp submitted an unsolicited proposal focused on using TIGM cars for recreational rail service between Capitola and Davenport with Roaring Camp providing freight rail service. The TIGM Roaring Camp concept proposal was an offer to design, build, partially finance and deliver recreational rail service from Capitola to Davenport while maintaining freight service on the line. RTC's recently completed TCAA report selected battery operated electric passenger rail as the locally preferred alternative for potential transit on the branch line for service between Bajaro Junction and Santa Cruz. The TCAA analyzed the performance and appropriateness of different classifications of electric rail vehicles including heavier all-electric FRA compliant commuter trains and all-electric light rail trains. The report deferred making any decision on a rail vehicle classification, light commuter trolley due to the rapid pace of technological advancements in the electric rail industry. The vision however was clear, a modern and reliable all-electric commuter service between Bajaro and Santa Cruz without the use of overhead electric lines. The TCAA considered all-electric trolleys including the TIGM trolley. The trolleys are generally slower vehicles and are not suited for longer commutes. Nonetheless, RTC did not wanna exclude any potential electric rolling stock and deferred any decision on rolling stock to a more appropriate time. Building and operating a new passenger rail system is not a money-making proposition. We're talking about public transportation which is a highly subsidized venture. The TCAA and associated draft business plan estimated the capital costs for the locally preferred alternative be about $470 million for the initial build. Once constructed, the draft business plan estimated 25 million per year would be needed for operations and maintenance or O&M. In addition to public subsidization of the initial build, the TCAA's draft business plan concluded that ticket prices would also need to be subsidized to make them affordable to the people that we are here to serve. The TCAA draft business plan estimated that it would take approximately 14 years to implement commuter rail for the full line. This is the time estimated to be needed to secure funding, complete an environmental document, acquire any needed right-of-way, design and build the system, complete testing and commissioning and starting the actual operations of a new commuter passenger rail service. Based on that schedule and assumptions, RTC estimates service could begin in about 2035 if that would be dependent upon funding. Let's talk a little bit about P3s or public-private partnerships. P3s are long-term contractual agreements formed between a public agency and a private entity that allows for greater private sector participation in the delivery and financing of transportation projects. With P3s, the private sector may take on the risks and rewards of financing, constructing, operating and or maintaining a transportation facility in exchange for the right to future revenues or payments for a specified period. P3s may expand the capacity of a government to finance infrastructure projects, potentially reducing project costs, transferring project risks and improving the cost effectiveness of long-term maintenance. However, P3s are complex transactions with notable trade-offs that require substantial review, due diligence and technical expertise to manage effectively. Staff is not proposing a complete rejection of the P3 concept. In fact, it had discussed P3s in the draft TCA business plan. Staff is not recommending the negotiation of a P3 passenger rail project, whether it be commuter or recreational at this time. Let's talk a little bit about the actual unsolicited proposal we received. There were two components. The unsolicited rail proposal includes freight service by Roaring Camp. Roaring Camp would initially serve existing customers in Watsonville, which they are currently doing under separate agreement with St. Paul in Pacific who is our freight operator at the time right now. The proposal includes a plan to maintain the track to class one standards that would allow 15 miles per hour for passengers and 10 mile per hour for freight rail. However, the proposal states that structural damage that is not normal wear and tear, such as acts of God's or pre-existing conditions shall be funded by the RTC. RTC estimates that the cost the RTC for those initial repairs would be about 50 to $65 million. The estimate is mainly due to bridge repairs, but also includes coastal erosion, drainage repairs, signal repairs and track, pie and ballast work that have been identified over the past several years due to our inspections. Also, due to the age and condition of major assets on the line as well as the unknowns associated with the proposal's exclusions, such as natural disasters, acts of God, the additional annual maintenance and rehabilitation costs could also be substantial. Now let's talk about the TIGM component. TIGM proposes to use its heritage style trolleys for recreational rail service between just Capitola and Davenport. It did not include any passenger service for Watsonville. As mentioned in the previous section of this report, the proposal assumes RTC will pay for and complete initial repairs and upgrades to the track. TIGM proposes investing $26 million for additional track remediation on approximately 17.5 miles between Capitola and Davenport, including installing at least one passing siding, eight passenger stations in an operation and maintenance facility at unspecified locations. TIGM assumed 50-minute headways, that's the frequency how often a train actually goes by, at average speeds of 30 miles per hour for 15 hours a day of operations. The proposal states that there is no subsidy by the public sector in their model and presents it as a profit-making venture where they can sell ticket and raise the ticket prices regularly. The cash flow model ignores an initial required investment of 50 to 65 million by the RTC in any other annual maintenance costs beyond normal wear and tear, which wouldn't be borne by the RTC. TIGM's 18-year cash flow model for their investment in revenue assumed they could start building the system immediately without consideration of the time needed to make the required initial structural repairs and track upgrades that TIGM proposes that RTC finance. TIGM neglects the requirement for environmental compliance and project approval, even though they will introduce a new passenger rail system with impacts that have never been evaluated. It also ignores the time needed to negotiate a new agreement with the RTC. They assume they could immediately start upgrading track signals, building stations, acquiring right-of-way, building a passing siding, building a painting right-of-way for an operation and maintenance facility, completing testing and commissioning and obtaining all regulatory approvals in two short years. TIGM claims that its approach will save the county many years of efforts and hundreds of millions of dollars, but their proposal for recreational rail is quite different than RTC's locally preferred alternative or commuter rail. As for their technology, the locally preferred alternative assumed electric vehicle is similar to TIGM and concluded that the major infrastructure and costs associated with the various electric rail classifications would actually be very similar. Although the TIGM and Roaring Camp demonstration on the rail line was an educational opportunity to learn about recent advancements in rail technology, it really did not provide any information that would make commuter rail easier or less expensive to implement. The TCAA vision of transit on the Santa Cruz branch line is fast, reliable electric rail service from Pajaro Junction to Natural Bridges. The procurement of rolling stock is not needed until a few years prior to testing and commissioning the vehicle on the completed track after at least an initial operating segment is fully funded. Most public agencies prefer and require an open and competitive process for the procurement of rolling stock after clearly defining and funding a rail transit project. If the project was to advance through the environmental process, it could be appropriate to consider a P3 arrangement at that time with the possibility of a concession type of a relationship for operations and maintenance. Funding for a commuter rail project has always been that project's biggest risk. Chapter eight of the draft transit corridor alternative analysis business plan documented those risks. Although there is significant state and federal funding available for rail transit, those funds are part of competitive programs that come with guidelines and usually require a minimum local requirement of 20 to 50%. Also funding programs also often limit the funds to different components of the project such as construction. Once construction constructed, there are less opportunities for state and federal funds to help subsidize the operation and maintenance costs. Therefore, local funds are absolutely needed to advance the early phases, provide the necessary leveraging requirements to secure the funding to build the project and then to subsidize operations and maintenance even in a potential P3 arrangement. Although there are different mechanisms to generate local revenue, an approximate 30-year half-cent county-wide sales tax would be needed to leverage the remaining state and federal funding needed to implement the TCAs, locally preferred alternative and then help subsidize operations and maintenance. There are other funding mechanisms that's just trying to give you an idea of the scale. A viable P3 relationship requires clear support for a well-defined project, including a strong commitment of public funds. Our potential Mutarell project defined by the TCA study but the project has not gone through environmental review. Until we have advanced an environmental document and secure the necessary local funding component required to leverage state and federal grant program, the P3 relationship is not really viable for commuter passenger rail. RTC is very active on the rail line targeted by this proposal or the section of the rail line targeted by this proposal north of the boardwalk. Segment seven, phase two of the coastal rail trial between Bay, California and the boardwalk will be starting construction next year. We are also getting very close to having full construction clearance on the north coast rail trial segment five with a construction start date dependent on a request to advance the federal funding. Once those rail sections are completed there could be opportunities for recreational rail proposals but I would not recommend doing so now in order to avoid potential conflicts with the construction of the rail trail. You should also be aware that the sections from Antonelli Pond to Davenport are out of service including two bridges and a section of the rail line that is underwater. South of the San Lorenzo River Bridge we are advancing three EIRs for the coastal rail trail segments nine through 12 from the San Lorenzo River to Rio de Mar with plans to submit funding grant applications next year. These sections are some of the narrowest sections of right-of-way with many challenging environmental features. There are sections where track will need to be relocated to fit the trail and the entire width of the rail right-of-way would be needed for construction. A recreational service in this area would conflict with potential rail trail construction and is not recommended at this time. Therefore, RTC staff does not recommend pursuing this unsolicited proposal or pursuing any other potential P3 proposal for passenger rail service at this time. Staff seeks commissioner and public input regarding this unsolicited proposal but no action is requested. This completes my report and I hand the microphone back to you Chair Brown for commissioner questions. Thank you, Mr. Preston. Okay, so we have now heard a report from our director and I will open up for questions from commissioners based again on the following protocol. We will ask questions right now then we will take it out to the public for comment. I already see the hands going up. So I think folks have lots to say but we'll ask questions first then go out to public, come back for commissioner comments and deliberations and emotion. If folks are willing to go that route just to hopefully to streamline. Okay, I see commissioner Bertrand, you are up first. Yeah, a simple question about the Roaring Camp operation in Watsonville since this is part of the proposal. How long has this arrangement been going on and do we have any reports from either progressive or Roaring Camp as to the operation success or lack of success revenue, a potential to keep the tracks running as required by the TCA agreement. So this trip has been going on for a few months now. Progressive rail still has their contract with RTC. We don't have a contract with Roaring Camp. When they entered into this agreement they did not share a copy of it with us. They chose not to. It's within their right to have somebody else contract the freight rail service. I haven't heard any complaints about it. I know rail service is down, but I do think some of the decreases may be a result of supply shortages. But I do know that progressive rail, has asked for relief on the ACL and they feel as if it's untenable agreement. Okay, Madam Chair, just one more question. In reading TIGAM's proposal, they mentioned that they were going to do welding of some of the track. I just wanted to know, is this something that is possible with the current track? Cause I thought it wasn't. And if there's any comments about that, it's a technical question. We may not be able to get the answer right now. There does require us to do upgrades on the track first. And then I believe the additional upgrades that they would like to do are in fact feasible. But like I said right now, we're going to be going under construction and various sections that they've proposed on. And I wouldn't recommend trying to compromise these locations. Some of the locations, as I mentioned, the track does need to be moved for the trail. So it wouldn't be advisable to be doing any sort of repairs on sections of the track where we're looking at actually relocating the track to accommodate the trail. No, I understand that director. It's just the issue of welding these current tracks. And I didn't think that was something that is feasible because of the nature of the rail stock itself. And so I'm just trying to get an idea that says possible. As far as it is, sir. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Hurst. Thank you very much. My question is, how can we maintain freight operations in Watsonville and how can we promote that? I know that there's a lot of questions regarding passenger transportation on the line, but right now our business corridor and it's got lots of potential. There have been shortages and that's affected the kind of transportation blockages that occur. But COVID and the seasonal aspects of this hopefully will change seasons and that freight can build back up again and resume. But I just wanna make sure that there's a mechanism in place that potential shippers along the corridor at least in Watsonville can get their product in and out. That's the question. So we have that mechanism in place right now. We have an ACL agreement with Progressive Rail. They're the common carrier and they're meeting their obligation to be the common carrier by providing freight service on reasonable demand. They've subcontracted to Roaring Camp and Roaring Camp is assisting them. So right now we don't have an issue with that. I believe Progressive Rail is also still helping to market the line to continue to find new customers to keep it viable there in Watsonville. Thank you. I think we have a tremendous potential yet to be built out there and so I appreciate the response. Commissioner Ratkin. I just wanted to clarify, Sandy at the end of your comment you said you'll bring it back for our deliberation and action. I believe that our executive director said that there's no, and it says on the agenda no actions required at this point. So I believe we should have full discussion about this but if we in fact agree with the director director's comments, which I do, not everybody else may not, I don't know, but if we agree with it, we could simply not take an action at the end of the discussion and this proposal would simply drop away at the time being because that's again, his recommendation is that this is not the right time to improve this. It doesn't require that we turn it down or reject it or we're on the other hand, accept it or we could just simply have a discussion about what we think and then end that conversation. Am I correct in that understanding? That's my question. You are correct, Commissioner Rocken. Thank you for the clarification or reminder. It's just sort of force of habit. Sure, no, we would all do that, I'm sure. So yeah, absolutely. So let's just get the questions completed here and we'll take it out to the public and then we can make comments if for commissioners who are interested before we close the item. Thank you. Okay, I had seeing no further questions I will open it up for public comment. I wanna remind members of the public that these are comments directly related to the TIG Roaring Camp proposal to operate a excursion service on the line as a public private partnership. We are not discussing whether or not to have a rail service or to not have rail service on the line and our feelings about that, there are plenty of other agenda items where that comes up and oral communications, of course. So please limit your comments specifically to this proposal and we will start with Trink Praxel. Thank you, Chair and members of the commission. I am not necessarily advocating for this particular proposal from TIGM but the director's staff report on this raises some issues for me that I think need, I'd like to speak to. He has made statements in this report that there's insufficient funding for any rail project and that a half set county sales tech would be essential to obtain state and federal funding for any rail project. This argument is fully inconsistent with the approach to other RTC led projects and with development of any major transportation project. No transportation project has its entire package of project funding identified at the outset. For example, the newly added multi-million dollar Highway One project between State Park Drive and Freedom has measured the Highway Program funding approved has only measured the Highway Program funding approved so far. So the draft TCA business plan identified a great majority of likely funding sources for electric rail transfer, which is actually the exception, not the rule for major transportation projects. So to assume that a half set sales practice required is incorrect at this point until the draft plan is revised to address accurate cost assumptions for the modern self-propelled streetcars. We do not know if a local share is required, how much that local share would be and how it will be combined for the options we must pursue. So I urge the commission to direct staff to begin to work on updating the draft business plan to make accurate cost assumptions for an ultra light rail and to begin to explore grant funding and different funding mechanisms to meet the requirements of those grant applications. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next up, I see Mark Macidi-Miller. Your turn and you're on mute. Good morning. Greetings, Chair Brown and listeners. I'm Mark Macidi-Miller, a professional civil engineer and 38 year resident of Santa Cruz. I'm here to follow up on my email sent to y'all yesterday. You know, the one email you read with such keen interest. Seriously, because there are substantial problems with the staff report, I do hope you take the time to carefully consider my written comments. Our current transportation system is a mess. People are suffering from our choked roadways. The planet is moaning and many local businesses are having a tough time retaining workers and attracting customers. Multiple studies have conclusively demonstrated that adding passenger rail will provide significant benefits to our community, especially to the majority of Latinx residents of Watsonville, who earn just half the per capita income of the majority white residents of Capitola, Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley. Instead of simply bashing the recent unsolicited joint proposal from Tigem and Roaring Camp, it would have been helpful to take advantage of the decades of real world experience operating a railroad right here in our county and to more carefully explore how an interim use of the rail line would benefit residents and visitors, reduce traffic, help local businesses and move our community toward a more sustainable, more equitable future. Please focus your energy and our tax dollars on figuring out how we can implement rail transit sooner rather than not at all. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I'll now call on Mark Johanison. Good morning, my name is Mark Johanison. I'm an attorney and a resident of Aftos and I'm representing Tigem. So Tigem is interested in moving forward now and continuing the dialogue with the RTC and with Progressive Rail in hopes of introducing excursion passenger service on the rail line under the current ACL. We would like to explore the possibility of seasonal passenger excursions in both Santa Cruz and Watsonville using the routes traveled during the demonstration and operations at both ends of the county would be a positive first step. As infrastructure issues are resolved, the service could extend further connecting the entire line between Watsonville and Santa Cruz. While our previous concept proposals took a bigger view that included commuter service between Watsonville and Santa Cruz, our most recent concept focuses on the excursion passenger service that could be implemented sooner. I wish to clarify to the commissioners that Tigem is not asking for a vote on our concept proposal, but we are requesting a continued dialogue with RTC to discuss possibilities. I'd also like to clarify a staff comment in the last paragraph on page 196 of the report which states the unsolicited proposal of our Federal Service Transportation Board approval of the termination of the existing ACL agreement with STPR, which refers to Progress Rail. We want to point out that neither STP approval nor termination of the existing ACL would be necessary if a proposed excursion service aligns with section 2.4 of the ACL, which is Transportation Service and other third party licenses phase two. Progressive Rail's proposal to the RTC named a third party, American Heritage Trail, to handle the passenger portion as requested in the original RP included in the current ACL. So thank you for the opportunity to comment and we'd be happy to answer any of your questions going forward. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next up is Judy Giddelson. Hi, I think this is a tremendous opportunity and it needs to be taken advantage of and I'm disappointed in the RTC saying it's an unsolicited ask. Thank God for TIGM coming up and saying this is our proposal. The recreational use would get people used to the tracks. We've got the tracks. The tracks need to be the priority. TIGM is an amazing company that's shown us that zero emissions are possible right here and to squander this in the middle of a global climate crisis and to not utilize what is in front of us is you're not doing your job. Your job is to provide transportation. This recreational train could be seen as a beginning to get people onto the tracks. It could be a way to fundraise for the future trail, the train line and the tracks have to be the priority. They're in place and I love the trail but the tracks are what our assets are. Is there a way that both could be done? Could you put out to bid? Could you ask other vendors to please come up with a solution? TIGM has offered their expertise. They are a California company. This can build our economy and put low, it can put light rail in here immediately. It is not an asset to be squandered and I think you people should rethink what your position is before you let this one go. It may not come back again and it is a great opportunity for us and I live in Watsonville. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next up we have Kyle Kelly. Good morning. Thank you, Chair Brown, members of the commission and RTC staff. I was really glad to hear some clarifying comments from Executive Director Preston because I was alarmed at the staff report. On page 19 one, the report says RTC staff does not recommend pursuing this unsolicited public-private partnership proposal or any other potential public-private partnership proposal for passenger rail service. The missing piece there is it's not saying at this time which is not establishing that there's work to be done, ongoing EIRs, just kind of a blanket statement that ends up removing the possibility of being able to do a public-private partnership. This blanket rejection of any P3 seems to lack nuance or willingness to consider options and is concerning if we truly share the goal of implementing passenger rail service on our line. Public-private partnerships are the foundation of any thriving community. All communities need both a strong business sector and highly functioning local governments and intergovernmental agencies and they need to work together. Local business councils, chambers of commerce, public-private partnerships such as the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership are founded on public-private collaborative principles. Numerous affordable housing projects and our local communities are the result of successful public-private partnerships. In fact, nearly all transportation projects can be seen as public-private partnerships. Airplanes owned and operated by private individuals and businesses use public airports and airspace. Car extracts and other vehicles are privately owned and use public roads. Transportation projects are largely, if not entirely, funded by the tax dollars paid by residents and businesses making virtually all transportation projects P3s. It seems very short-sighted that the RTC would consider recommendation refusing to consider any P3 proposal now or in the future. So at the very least what I'd like to see is the staff recommendation revised to append at this time. Thank you. Thank you. Jessica Evans, your turn. Thank you, commissioners. Are you able to hear me? Yes. Great. So I'm actually right now taking on behalf of Friends of the Rail and Trail. So Friends of the Rail and Trail supports continuing construction of the coastal rail trail alongside the tracks as a top priority and we appreciate Mr. Preston's focus on protecting that process and on continuing to expedite and move forward with trail planning and construction. We fully support prioritizing continued trail construction and any rail service planning and construction needs to be coordinated with the ongoing trail planning and construction. With that said, we would respectfully remind you that as part of the purchase agreement for the corridor, the administration coordination and license agreement to the line list excursion service as our prime minister operator, this is to move forward with rail transit. Given that the RTC is required to institute recreational service as part of the terms of the purchase of the corridor to proceed towards public transportation service. Board requests that the commission direct staff to develop a proposal for phase development of electric rail transit on the Santa Cruz branch line. This fuller evaluation of the potential for phase implementation of rail transit could then be used to update the draft business plan. The Tegum and Ryan Camp railroads proposal offers RTC an opportunity to sit down and engage with knowledgeable business people on the passenger rail industry. Please continue to consider this. Please consider a phase implementation such as is suggested by this proposal because we want to evaluate all the options we'd like to see RTC staff continue with rail planning as they do this really important trail building work. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. Next up, equity and environment. Thank you. You RTC and executive director Preston, Mr. Preston, I do really appreciate your clarifications. That was very helpful. Bringing rail service to this community is an important priority, which we voters supported in the majority with Proposition 116. And I agree with Trink who earlier stated that a half a cent sales tax is not necessarily a given. We are still awaiting approval of the TCAA business plan that would allow the RTC to seek federal, state and grant funding and clarify costs of repairs and various rail options. This needs to be approved by the RTC so we can move forward with determining real costs and seeking funding. The recent rail demo made clear that some form of rail service is feasible in segments along our branch line and our community's goal is to implement rail service that extends all the way to Watsonville. Given that currently there are a number of bridges and segments of the rail that require significant repairs, it seems wise to consider implementing service in phases or segments along the line that could serve the portions of the public sooner. And with considerations too, as Mr. Preston stated, environmental review and other considerations that might be discussed, it seems wise that we look further at this. Implementation of rail in phases on our county-owned rail line seems far wiser, more economical environmentally sound versus waiting decades for an all or nothing implementation of rail. I'm relieved to hear the public-private partnerships would not be summarily dismissed by the staff. We know that PPPs are used extensively in our communities to serve very important roles that improve and amplify our community resources. Caltrain is a large-scale example of a PPP, but in our own community, the Santa Cruz Warriors, Santa Cruz Fiber Optics and many other cogent examples are available. So a PPP with a rail company such as TIGAM could be a win-win and potentially allow service sooner rather than later. Thank you. Bob Burlage, you are up next and you are still muted. Yep, there you go. Yes, thank you, Chair Brown and fellow commission members. This is Bob Burlage representing the Creek Lumber Company. I wanna respect Chair Brown's request to stick to this item, but because of the staff report and some comments in there, we feel necessary to comment. The Creek Lumber Company has been receiving freight by rail in Watsonville for 50 years and that's without interruption. It's very important to us to be able to get that freight to remain competitive. In the staff report on this item, on attachment, one as a graph, it gives us a visual impression that a rail freight by rail is down, which is true, but as an executive director, President pointed out, it's a temporary thing it really has to do with COVID restrictions nationwide. And there's a very serious supply chain problem nationwide. We definitely believe that's going to stop. Next staff report discussed interacting with potential carriers, but didn't name them and it would be good to know who those were so that the freight recipients in Watsonville have an opportunity to interact with that process. And lastly, rail banking, we have serious concerns about rail banking on the existing lines within Watsonville concerns that we'd lose the protections associated with the Federal Transportation Board Authority and that's it. That rail line is very important to our company and we hope that that's retained. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Berlage. We have next up Joe from Trail Now. Joe, you are muted. So if you could unmute yourself. Hey, Joe, we're not hearing you so I'm going to go ahead and move along to the next speakers. We have Jean Brocklebank and or Michael Lewis and you are also muted. There you go. Thanks. Good morning, commissioners. Thank you. Somebody referred to this commission earlier as being somehow or other paralyzed. I think they said paralysis. My feeling is the commission is doing due diligence by reviewing information and making an informed decision. I don't think you're paralyzed at all. I'm an active environmentalist and have been for 50 years, 40 of those years here in Santa Cruz County. I'm grateful for the excellent, informative, full report given by Executive Director Preston on the recreational train proposed by TIG. I was especially interested to hear Mr. Preston's comment about TIG ignoring the environmental review that is required for all construction and use of our rail corridor. I urge the commission to at a minimum make a motion and have a vote to accept the staff report, not just shelve it. This is done in many other jurisdictions, a formal vote to accept this excellent report. And I'm hoping that the commission will do that. Gee, I have a few seconds. What else do I wanna say? As an environmentalist, I'm really troubled by the comments about what we're going to do or not do in the rail corridor as being either an environmental benefit or an environmental cost. I am an environmentalist and I am very, very much in favor of the Yes Greenway proposal for the use of the corridor. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next up, Jack Brown. Thank you, Chair Brown and commissioners. I just wanted to applaud Guy Preston for a very honest and thorough report. Public-private partnerships are not a bad thing, as many have mentioned, but this one was just off the chart bad. We are looking at a company that is basically a staff of 25, which is about the same as you'll see at a local Starbucks. It's been around 16 years if it has only produced 10 vehicles. The thing that was most shocking to me though is that on their website, if you go to their About page, you'll see that they show nine implementations. They don't really describe them, but they show nine points on the map. Studying those, what I assume are implementations, two are proof of concepts. One for the San Diego Zoo and one in Las Vegas, so they don't exist anymore. One was just flat out canceled in Cabo San Lucas for one of the trolleys they were proposing was to be used between Davenport and Capitola. And three have been dismantled in San Antonio, Texas at a resort which was taken out completely, no word, Dubai, Gone, and Zuhai. I don't really think that they were the ones that implemented that one, but due to a lot of costs and safety constraints or issues that was removed as well. So they only really have three implementations and none of them at the speeds, the distances, or the hours of operation that are required here. The one in Los Angeles at the Grove goes eight miles an hour for two-tenths of a mile, eight hours a day. Aruba, five miles per hour, 1.2 miles, eight hours a day. And Doha, which kind of resemble the demonstrator that ran on natural gas, non-hydrogen, four miles per hour, 1.3 miles for eight hours a day. So I'm glad that we're rejecting this and thank you for your time. Okay, thank you. Next up, Brad. Well, this is Brad Wilson with Agron Bioenergy in Watsonville. And I just wanted to make a few comments. I appreciate what the commission is doing. And we are just very thankful that we're able to get our products as needed into Watsonville from other various parts of the country and back out of there as well. So what we do is market biodiesel, man. Oh, it looks like Brad cut out on us. We'll see if Mr. Wilson comes back, maybe we can get him back in the queue. Next up, Tina Andrietta. Good morning. Hello, Anne's is a public-private partnership. Multiple studies have showed that rail trail is the preferred, well, it's the TCAA and all the other studies we've done. And I understand that the Santa Cruz County's weighted population spends approximately $1 billion a year on vehicle maintenance, insurance, gas, maintenance for roads and streets. And I don't see that this would be a problem implementing either with TIGM or with another light rail service bringing light rail to our communities. I wanna bring a point out that this year that the Regional Transportation Commission's fiscal year 2020 and 2021, their final report stated nearly one third of Santa Cruz County residents, notably children, the elderly and disabled and low-income individuals and families who cannot afford to drive a car do not live in South County. The vast majority, low income, their minority population living in the southeastern part of the county and around the city of Watsonville. And much of their employment is located in and around the city of Santa Cruz, the demographics, geography, availability of jobs and desirability of Santa Cruz County as a place to call home and visit significantly impact travel in Santa Cruz County and creates a variety of challenges. I'm asking that the RTC continue moving forward and implement rail trail along the 32-mile coastal rail trail. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Barry Scott. Thank you very much. Like Trink earlier, I wanted to address some of the statements made in the narrative related to this item and especially hope that our newer alternates and commissioners will pay attention to or review the TCAA business plan, which seems to include information that is maybe conflicts with what was said in the narrative. This one of the things is estimating the capital cost to 465 million for light rail is premature because we haven't pursued the business plan to find out what the lower cost options are. So it's disappointing to see that. Why would the RTC continue to use worst case cost estimates when more affordable options exist? Another, it's been spoken to before, staff does not recommend pursuing this unsolicited. Well, this unsolicited public-private partnership, that may be fine, but hopefully you wouldn't take public-private partnership possibilities off the table as they are included in the TCAA business plan as a potential form of governance. As others have said, a lot of transportation projects, including all airlines are public-private partnerships. So let's make sure we keep that on the table. Let's not take anything off the table. I hope, and I'm kind of disappointed this year in what seems to have been a change in direction of the RTC that went from supporting rail transit with trail to suddenly putting the brakes on. We've spent measure D funds on two studies that increasingly include that rail transit is what we need to do. And all of a sudden in April, we've reached a 6-6 tie. How disappointing. We need to come back to the business plan. We need to engage any company interested in providing any kind of service here. So I hope that nobody, that no action is taken on this item, that may be asked again for more information if you have questions. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Sally Arnold. Hi, am I unmuted? You are. Okay, great. Well, I just wanna say that I don't really wanna speak about the specifics of this particular proposal or this particular provider, but more about some of the generalizations that were made in the staff report. I'm actually very relieved to hear in Mr. Preston's verbal comments that he really clarified that he's not blanketly rejecting all P3s, you know, a lot of the whole presentation felt a little more nuanced than as I read the written version. So that was really heartening. And I was also interested to hear his points about, you know, we need to finish trail construction on those areas before we can implement rail and that there was a lot of things that needed to happen before we can implement rail on those sections. And those points are well taken. And I wonder if perhaps while we're doing that trail construction between Capitola and Davenport, just continued conversations could happen with this provider who's obviously very interested in serving our community and other providers and work could be done as was alluded to in previous speakers about getting more information about funding, drilling down on some of the details of what's needed so that when the trail is completed we will be in a good position to then implement some kind of, you know, passenger rail, maybe sort of excursion for, you know, tourist excursion for the time being as is required by the ACL. And we'd be in good shape to do that at that point. I really just would hate to see us make sweeping generalizations about we never will do a phased implementation or we're never gonna do a P3 or, you know, there's like a lot of possibilities here. And I hope that the commissioners will continue to talk with various providers about what those things might look like in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next up, David Van Brink. Hello. Hi. So if this were a live meeting I would just be giving a thumbs up from the back of the auditorium. But in this format I'll ritualistically and formally state, you know, thank you Executive Director Preston for your clarifying remarks about the P3 proposal and why maybe the timing isn't right at this time. That position makes great sense for now and the upcoming trail construction is super exciting. So thanks. Thank you. Hey, Brad, you're up. I believe this is you, Mr. Wilson. Sorry, we lost you. You're up. Yes, am I working this time? You are. Okay, well, you just want me to start from scratch. I don't know how much you heard. Yeah, you broke up pretty quickly. So if you could just start over. Sure, sure. Sure. So I'm the president of Agron Bioenergy out of Watsonville and so we market biodiesel. And I know, you know, a lot of people hear the word diesel and they think, oh, it's a bad thing, petroleum. That's not what we are. We're blended with diesel. And actually right now there's a product called renewable diesel that we're blending with and it's and it's 100% from waste products from animal fat, used cooking oil, and those types of things. So we, and I'll agree with Bob, our volume by rail has been down the last year or so and it never has picked up to what we know it can. We've actually just recently shipped a couple of rail cars there and then we're going to be bringing in about six more rail cars next week. And I really think it could be, you know, eight to 12 rail cars a month pretty easy and it could be double that, you know, by quarters two and three of next year. You know, and there may be even a possibility where we would need more of a rail spur at the facility. So great things going on with the commission. I appreciate it. Keep your support please for where, what built the track and that's industry and it's needed Watsonville needs it and the whole state needs it, we need more industry. And for those environmentalists out there that are going for, you know, no emissions, I agree with you, no emissions, but to think everything's gonna switch to electrics overnight is ridiculous. And we're here to bridge that gap. We're here now, it's very good for health. Mr. Wilson, I think you've broken up again. And we are, your time is running short. I think you made as many points when you were listening. Yeah, I think you did. So I, we're gonna move on and Sean, you are up. Thank you. I'm wondering if the commission remembers the vision Santa Cruz County meetings. Staff was chosen and chosen and paid for training. There were months of meetings all across the county and in every single one of the vision Santa Cruz County meetings, transportation was the top priority. Even when people working together in workshops at the meetings were asked to think outside the box and aside, you know, something other than the trafficking congestion and pollution. Traffic was then noted as the top negative trend in the county. Transportation was a higher concern to county residents in crime, housing, illegal drug use, homelessness, accessibility, educational opportunities, employment opportunities, support for farmworking families and those working in tourism. Pick one, Davenport, I think, I think one train every 50 minutes or 60 minutes would do fine for them because their concerns are infrastructure and support for local businesses. They feel cut off from the rest of North County and rail was brought up specifically in these meetings. And along with protected bike lanes and responsibility and protection of the coastal lands, they're looking for their area to be cared for by the county and to have the infrastructure for tourism and to protect their local businesses. Those are their top concerns in those meetings. Okay, thank you. With that, it looks like we have completed public comment for attendees who were wishing to speak. And so we'll bring it back to the commission for comments and discussion and not deliberation and action as I was reminded. Commissioner McPherson, you're up first. Oh, yeah, thank you. And I appreciate all the comments. And I want to thank TIGM and Warren Camp for coming up with both with proactive proposals. I wrote the light rail demonstration. It was quiet and it was pleasant. And a great deal of thanks to the RTC staff for both this proposal and the private proposal on the partnership. I think the staff report reflects relevant issues associated with moving forward. And I know we're not taking any kind of action today, but with a private public partnership, when it becomes financially feasible, and I want to reiterate, I'm going to focus on finances. I'm highly supportive and always have been of making sure we preserve the option of implementing passenger rail. But we also need to ensure that the freight service through Wattsville remains viable to serve the businesses that depend on it so greatly. And of course, Warren Camp needs the access to the publicly owned rail corridor for its excursion passenger rail service. But the bottom line is we are limited to move forward with passenger rail unless it makes financial sense. And that includes the service proposed in this new pitch from TIGM and its partners. We gotta realize we don't have 50 to $65 million to repair the existing damage on the line that would be required for any kind of service to be implemented of any sort. And funding for passenger rail from federal and state resources requires a match of anywhere from 25 to 50%. And of an estimated $470 million, the TCAA estimated that would be required to build rail service and we don't have that either. So unless we're really able or willing to divert a large percentage of our discussion or discretionary funds going to other transportation services outside of bike and pedestrian or bus and automobile or we pass another ballot measure, we really don't have the local funds needed to move forward at this time. I think everybody agrees with that. And when we passed the voters pass measure D they specified where the money would go and 8% of it was approved to repair and maintain the rail line, which amounts to less than $2 million a year, 1.6. That's not nearly enough to provide the funds needed to do the required repairs to accept the TIGM proposal or provide the local match for federal and state grants for the TCAA preferred alternative. So we need to honor our measure D commitments and deliver on all those of the transportation projects that we did promise. And it's a balanced project that benefit a wide cross section of the community. And I said, I also do not believe another ballot measure provide funds for rail that's going to pass anytime soon. Many of our agencies are up to their limit of what they could have to operate a passenger rail service at $25 million a year that's been estimated. And state legislation, I believe, would need to pass to address the problem. But I do believe we should continue to look for funding to repair the rail corridor and upgrade segments that can be used for the community sooner than later. But the bottom line is right now and in the foreseeable future, we can only afford to preserve the option of passenger rail, ensure the freight service to Watsonville and make sure that Roaring Camp can continue its operations on the public part of the line. Again, I do appreciate all the input that has been made to this, but we've got to be realistic of what we can do because if we say that we can do a lot with the passenger rail service immediately, it's a false promise and a story. Thank you, Commissioner McPherson. I will now turn the floor over to you, Commissioner Hurst. Well, thank you very much, Chair. Commissioner McPherson's absolutely right in his support for rail in Watsonville and freight. And we've heard from the community and many needs that are out there for public transportation. I really enjoyed reading the concept proposal. I thought it was pretty interesting and futuristically focused. I certainly enjoyed writing on the TIG experimental demonstration as well, and it was a demonstration and seeing is believing. I was fortunate to go along with Supervisor Manu and I was sitting right behind him and kind of giving him some lay of the land as to some of the businesses where we're going by in Watsonville and some of their freight needs as well. And he got to see the beautiful view of the slew and the white pelicans. And even though he's expressed some reservations about it, I could tell he was having a good time that day. In fact, he had such a good time, he stayed in Watsonville and had lunch at Jalisco that day. And that's the kind of support we really need in Watsonville is business support and opportunities to show visitors all the assets that we have. Today may not be the day to approve this concept, but I think the concept still needs a consideration. And I would ask for more information on this because I think that is a wave of the future. We saw the future a little bit. Seeing is believing. And hey, our job is to move forward and get the community moving. Let's move forward together and have some more study on this, see what kind of federal and state grants we might be able to acquire. And fix the bad spots that need to be fixed. And hey, let's get moving and please don't leave South County out of this mix. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hey, commissioner Schifrin, your turn. I thought there were a couple of people ahead of me, but I'm more than happy to go if you choose me. Well, I'm just- Does anybody feel insulted that they're being passed over? Yeah, sorry. I'm going by the order that the hands are up in my participants' feed. So if you're raising your hand-hand, I may have passed over you. So just make sure you really do that wave if you wanna get my attention that way. Thanks. Okay, thank you. I wanna thank Tegan for their proposal. And I also wanna thank Steph for their comments. I also wanna appreciate the comments by Commissioner McPherson about the long-term commitment to pass into rail, because I've been concerned about recent actions of the commission that might give the impression that the commission is drifting away from its commitment to preserve the rail line for public transportation in the future. Some of the- As commissioners know, there are proposals before the commission that if implemented would require the ripping up of the tracks. I'm also aware that some commissioners would like to see passenger rail service on the line the day after tomorrow. And there are certainly members of the public who support both positions. We've heard from them regularly. But as you know, at this time, the commission doesn't have the legal authority to rail bank, which could lead to the removal of the tracks. And it doesn't have the ability as Commissioner McPherson reiterated and the staff report makes clear to finance passenger rail service at this time. I think it is important. And I appreciate Commissioner McPherson referring to this to remember that Measure D was a compromise that required the support by a wide range of interests and in order for it to pretty narrowly pass. The commission has supported passenger rail service as part of Measure D and subsequently through the unified current study and the TCAA where public transit on the line was the preferred alternative. I agree with staff that the TIGM and Roaring Cam proposal is not supportable at this time. Staff has raised many valid concerns about its feasibility. And I support the staff recommendation to take no action on the proposal. Nothing though prevents the proponents of the proposal from submitting a revised response to what the staff or the concerns that staff raised because they're pretty overwhelming and I think they were very relevant. So if the proponents of the proposal think that somehow it is possible to do what they're proposing to do in light of the concerns that staff has raised nothing prevents them from doing it. I may, while I disagree with some of the general comments in the staff report I think many of the concerns raised with the proposal are valid. Given the phase two rehabilitation works still needed on the tracks given costs I agree that it's premature to move forward with any rail proposal at this time. Moreover, if the commission reaches the point where it makes sense to consider a proposal as the executive director says there needs to be an RFP and the process needs to be an open one. We shouldn't just be responding or approving one proposal. To conclude then I support the staff recommendation but wanna thank the proponents of the proposal for seeking a path to provide other transit on this critical corridor and providing a vision for the future. And I hope that there will be possible interrail rail projects in the not too distant future. Thank you. You're welcome Sandy. Thank you. Commissioner Hernandez, your turn. Well, first off I wanna echo some of the comments that were made about Frey. Some of the folks that spoke earlier are some of our biggest employers here in town. And I know that some of them employ beyond Watsonville in North County, Santa Cruz within Santa Cruz city limits as well. So, I think that it's imperative that we maintain in Frey but also that we look into if there's a, you know, I'm not sure if Frey was overlooked in the report or downplayed or not but it's important that we look at a possible uptake in Frey as this pandemic plays out. And hopefully we can get back to pre-pandemic levels in the near future and maybe even, you know, surpass them in the future as well. So, I just wanted to ask if there's a, if we're looking for that in terms of being ready for Frey to surpass pre-pandemic levels in the near future if that's in the works. In terms of the public passenger rail and the TIGM, you know, I hope that we stay open and continue to at least look for new funding sources, revenue sources, funding mechanisms so that we can look for public passenger rail in the near future and then that pretty much concludes my comments. Thank you, Commissioner Hernandez. Commissioner Bertrand, your turn. Thank you, Chair. I ask questions about the servicing of the rail service in Watsonville. It's been a major concern of mine since Progressive first came to us with their enthusiasm to provide viable commercial service in Watsonville. And so I'm still asking the questions because I'm a little more concerned now when I read Progressive saying that they want to back out of the agreement and they wanted to find, according to the letter, someone that was a little bit more familiar with the territory here. And so I hope that we have better communication with Progressive about what's happening with Watsonville in terms of commercial service and with big trees also, even though it's a private agreement with them and Progressive. I think we need to do a lot more to make sure this commercial service is provided. It does the provision of jobs for Watsonville as we found out from the biodiesel company they imagine and hope for increased business. I did my MBA report, business report on biofuel and I think it is an important option. I think the president understands that it's a bridge technology and it's also quite clean in many respects. So that's just one example and then providing lumber service to our local lumber provider. There's probably many other options for a company that is truly focused on Watsonville. And wants to provide that commercial service. I also would like to reiterate with the comments on the financial issues. Several commissioners talk about this. Bruce was the lead off on this. And I think having the money provides the possibility. Right now we clearly do not have to provide the possibilities to improve our line, to rebuild the trestles, put embankments in place. I mean, there's a whole slew of things that we all are aware of. And so the possibility of the line being used as Tigem is talking about, it's just not there. And to that end, it shows to me that they haven't done their homework. They do not understand what our rail can provide. Our rail corridor can provide at this time. It's sort of to me harkens back to when progressive first came here. And they were full of enthusiasm. They were talking about the sunlight special and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, I am very happy that we have an executive director here who is going step by step, providing what he can with the resources he can. We're going ahead with the trail starting up the north and coming down south. There's different segments get in the planning stage. This is the kind of approach that we need to support. And this is the kind of approach that will in the future provide possibilities for a rail service that could provide the movement of people. But we're not there yet. When we get there, I want that process to be an open-ended process where different providers of the service can be given in equal sense that they are going to be considered properly. And to that extent, I am glad that Tigem came here because the public now has a sense of what this may mean. So a corridor service with that kind of electric option, I think has some viability. But the public now has a chance to say, do I want to pay an extra sales tax to make that work well in Santa Cruz County? So those are the, my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Koenig. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to start by sharing a little bit of my own experience. I did have the opportunity to ride the trolley in Watsonville with commissioners Hearst and Capit is certainly a beautiful area down there. And I thought, yes, the vehicle itself was quite beautiful as well. But what it highlighted for me was really just what poor shape our tracks are in. You know, the vehicle is not able to go more than 10 miles an hour. It was a very slow ride and it really rocked back and forth quite a bit. And you could hear the kachunk of those non-welded tracks. So, you know, when our executive director talks about the 50 to $60 million that would be needed just in repairs to the tracks, even to have a basic operations for this tourist excursion train, it's very real. And it was palpable in the demonstration. I didn't actually get a chance to ride the trolley in the Live Oak area, but in some ways it was useful not to because I got the experience of not being a rider. First, I'll say that my office did receive several emails from folks, particularly who live right near some of those intersections about the incessant dinging. I saw one very amusing or maybe not so amusing ring doorbell recording of the trolley going by for about 10 seconds and then about two and a half minutes of dinging at the intersection and everyone being quite confused about that. So there's definitely some folks who are very frustrated by that development. And then, you know, folks always want to talk about how this is going to reduce traffic, but my experience was quite actually the opposite. On 7th Avenue, the cars were quite backed up every time the trolley passed and seemed to increase traffic. And finally, it's interesting just trying to walk around my house. It was walking in the Schwann Lake area between 7th Avenue and a lot of the folks who were trying to walk along the corridor there either couldn't or had to jump out of the way as the trolley went by. So, you know, again, the staff report acknowledges that the area between Capitol and Santa Cruz where this proposal was for is one of our narrowest sections of the right of way. I personally don't believe that rail and trail is possible. It seems to be a, it's actually a fiction when you look at the physical constraints of the area. And if anything, this demonstration really just reinforced the staff. It was interesting, wasn't it? Any demonstration? Commissioner Koenig. Done that. Sorry, I know, you lost me there for a second. We did, I wasn't sure if it was me or you, but I think, yeah, so if there was a question right there at the end, if you could restate that. No question. I was just saying, it's interesting that, you know, the reason the operator did a demonstration in the Watsonville area was that it requested this commission a couple of years ago. I wonder if they actually would have if we hadn't requested that because of course the proposal doesn't, doesn't propose to connect the two areas. So, you know, this idea that somehow a tourist train is going to get us to passenger rail, we've seen two operators come in with that proposal and it hasn't worked, right? I mean, Commissioner Bertrand just mentioned the Sunshine Special Proposals that Progressive came in talking about. We had IO Pacific that ran the train to Christmastown. Neither of those tourist excursion trains ever developed into passenger rail service. And of course doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. There's no reason we should expect a new operator who if anything has less experience, right? I mean, some of the public mentioned this operator hasn't run on tracks more than two miles or more than 10 miles an hour with some of their cars. There's no reason to believe that they would be able, they would be able to turn it around and actually produce public transit out of this little excursion train. So, you know, I'll just finish by saying, you know, we do have a public transit system. It's Metro. It even runs to Davenport today. And really the challenges we face at Metro are that it's underfunded and doesn't have enough frequency. Why would we want to move forward with any kind of rail project demonstration or otherwise that makes the same mistakes. If anything, we should be consolidating our investments on Metro, getting the frequency, getting adequate investment and making that public transit system work. So thank you also staff again for their very clear report on this. Really appreciate the facts that we all have to move forward with. Thank you. So Commissioner Peterson, you are next. Thank you. A lot of my thoughts on this have already been mentioned. So I'll just echo that I agree with the reasons previously expressed about why there's no purpose for a boat today and why it's not feasible to expect that we will have this kind of rail transit or rail transit in the foreseeable future. I also want to echo what Commissioner Schifrin said about the need for an RFP. If we were to do something like this that we can't just take an unsolicited proposal and move forward with it, even if we thought it was a good idea because RFPs are put in place so that anyone who may be able to provide such a service would have an opportunity to show us that they could do so and at what cost, et cetera. And I think that's also important to consider. And then finally also echoing what Commissioner Supervisor Koenig mentioned about the condition of the tracks. While I was on, I did have an opportunity to ride the trolley and during the time that I was on it, there was one of the staff members from TIGM sitting directly in front of me and the person that was with me, we had a discussion about why it was only going 10 miles an hour. And he asked me, can it go faster than this? And I said, yes, my understanding is it can go up to 50, but it's not right now for the sake of the demo. And the staff member turned around and said, yes, because of the condition of the tracks, we can't go any faster than this right now. So I think that those are all really important points that were already made. That being said, I did ride the trolley. I found it to be an interesting experience in a nice little vehicle that I would liken to the experience of riding something like a monorail at a theme park or another entertaining experience. And as mentioned, implementation of something like this would be exactly that. It would be an entertaining tourist excursion and not a means of connecting North and South County via commuter transit and acknowledging this issue of transportation equity. This in and of itself would not solve that problem or address it really in any way. With that being said, I again want to appreciate staff, the staff report all the time that staff puts into this. I know that they're the experts in this field. And director Preston also for taking the time to go over the staff report with us and his oral reports at each of these items on the agenda. I appreciate that you all take the time to create these detailed reports that continue to educate me and other commissioners in our efforts to make the best public policy decisions we can with the information available to us. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Quinn, you are up next. Thank you, everyone's hoping I'm last. Thank you, Chairman Brown and Mr. Preston. That was a great report. I too rode the train and it was fun. But I'd like to make a suggestion that we don't reconsider proposals as commissioner Peterson said, there needs to be an RFP because the train ride was fun. It meant none of the prerequisites and it created a lot of dialogue that consumed a lot of our time. And I would suggest that going forward before we entertain any proposals, we have clear criteria that need to be met as a prerequisite. With no barriers to submitting a proposal, I think we open ourselves to further chanceful proposals and we really should have robust criteria, financial, trail condition, chronology that need to be met before we entertain any further conversation. I'm sure Mr. Preston has numerous other issues on his desk that are incredibly relevant to this county's transportation needs. And frankly, this conversation about the train almost pushes everything else off the docket. So I would like to see us bring more dialogue to these more discipline to these conversations in the future so we can address other pressing issues that I'm sure Mr. Preston would appreciate. Thank you. Commissioner Rockin. Thank you. I wanna appreciate executive director Preston's oral comments. As I think Bruce said at the beginning and Andy Schifrin mentioned as well, the emphasis that this proposal was not timely. It was not in response to an appropriate public process which would be an RFP of some sort. It needs to also follow our ability to actually entertain something like passenger rail service. And this is not a passenger rail service proposal that's in front of us. I agree with Robert that I don't wanna have our staff feel that they need to get involved in detailed negotiations, further negotiations with TIGAM or other proposers that come in at this point. But I do wanna appreciate some stuff that came up in director Preston's comments. First of all, people are often saying, well, the rail may be as possible 50 years from now, 20 years from now. I wanna point out that director Preston suggested that something like 14 years, that he wasn't promising at 14 years, but that a time, a future scale of about 14 years for thinking about actually implementing passenger services of possibility. And what that suggests to me is that our pathway forward is working on the trail segments that we're working on, which is appropriate. But also we need to define where it's appropriate for realignment of the rail. There are a couple of places where the rail curvature is too tight, fine at 10 miles an hour, but it wouldn't work at 30 or 50. There actually may be some places where we need some additional right of way to make this actually work. If we're gonna have rail and trail in some of these segments, that's why I would have appreciated having passed the plan for us to sort of look at where we're going with this, but that's not the discussion that's in front of us today. My view is that this demonstration was very helpful. It suggested the kind of technology we have, I hope it will end for all time, the discussions where people are suggesting what we're proposing here is some kind of a freight train and locomotives scale 15 minutes service, to give you an idea of what this might look like in the future. That itself is very, very helpful. I also think that moving this process forward, there may be some opportunities for something like an inter-colonial service. If we fix the bridges and so forth, which is a lot of money, but we don't know that the total cost in the end will be $50 million, you could probably bring this up to class two service level, which would be 30 miles an hour. The train that I rode on, the little trolley, went from Santa Cruz to Capitola faster than you could drive it in a car, at 10 miles an hour. And it was a totally smooth and quiet ride. Everybody appreciated that. And I saw most people on the side waving and enjoying the service, but it was clear that there are places where right now it's tight between the rail and where there'd be room for the recreational trail and a bike and pedestrian trail. So I do think we should be moving forward, looking at issues of where the rail needs and realignment within the corridor to be most effective, that we should be thinking about how we can look for additional funding sources. It would be, I think, crazy to go out to the public and ask them for a half-cent sales tax or even a quarter-cent or an eight-cent sales tax without some idea of what kind of federal and state money is actually available to us. I mean, we all think there's something out there, but is it enough to really imagine that we could have a match that would make it happen? And it's a little premature to think that it's gonna take a 20 to 50% match because that's the assumption now when there's not much money available, but that's gonna change already within the federal infrastructure bill and the state rail plan. So I think the idea of making clear that when we talk about interim trail, it's interim trail for the most part in places where it does not prohibit the future development of rail that we make clear to the public we are committed to having rail, as Bruce McPherson said, passenger rail. And again, if that's 14 years off, I'm sorry, the people that want it tomorrow afternoon, you have to deal with the scale of the project that we're talking about. And if we were to have meaningful passenger rail service from Watsonville to Santa Cruz and back in 14 years, I would be delirious. I think that that's a reasonable timeframe. I think people should sort of, we're too used to thinking you can go get whatever you want off the shelf in the supermarket today. You have to plan things, you have environmental clearances, construction work that needs to happen. And there's a lot of work to be done here, but the idea, I really appreciated the way Director Preston made his comments orally. I liked them better than some ways than the written report, which kind of implied we would never have a P3. And as many people said, both who are in favor of rail against it even, you know, we're not ruling out all P3s in the future. It's just, it's not appropriate now. It's not a process that we could possibly incur with. So I think taking no action at this point, if we try and take an action of motion about it, we'd have to start amending the heck out of it to be clear about what we want to be in the motion and out of the motion. I pray my colleagues do not do that. That we basically, you know, don't approve this, drop it at this point with no action and that our staff not be expected to have detailed conversations with anybody about this level of service before we understand how we're gonna repair the capital costs here, the bridges, the culverts, the other kinds of things along the line. Those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Rodkin. I see Commissioner Johnson, Randy Johnson has a hand up. Go for it. I do, Chair. Thank you very much. First of all, I wanna echo what people are saying about staff in particular, or our executive director, which is an excellent report. I mean, obviously this is a person who has extensive experience on these types of projects and made, if those who are willing to objectively listen, made some pretty sobering comments and actually cautionary tale, I think, in terms of what the true prospects are for passenger rail, and notwithstanding the optimism shared by some of the proponents. You know, for me, it gives me no pleasure to kind of throw, you know, and I'm sure it's the same for Guy, to throw cold water on all the aspects of, many of the aspects of passenger rail from timing to expense and so forth. But it is a reality. And Bruce McPherson encapsulated it very, very well in terms of, hey, being open to these sorts of things. But one of the problems, you know, we have, you know, in the vision part of this, the, if you remember, the triple bottom line is environment, it's economy, but it's social equity. But those are three legs, and I think we have to, let's be realistic, we have to add a fourth leg, and that's financial, okay, what is financially feasible. And that gets ignored a lot. So, you know, again, this is very sobering in many, many ways, and you can talk about grant funding and so forth, but the executive director mentioned a very compelling word, and that's competitive. You know, it's not like you sign up and all of a sudden, if you get in line first, you're gonna get grant funds from either state or federal, notwithstanding any sort of infrastructure bill. What happens is that they compare you to the needs of other entities within the state. And, you know, how would Santa Cruz County stack up? My feeling is probably not very well. So, moving forward, if people want to think that, you know, that passenger rail and TIG and everything was a view of the future, maybe it is, but I think objectively speaking, it showed a lot more of the deficiencies than the possibilities. Thank you, Chair. Okay. I believe that all commissioners have had an opportunity to say their piece, at least for now. Actually, I see Commissioner North at your, I just saw your camera go back on so I don't wanna leave you out if you do, okay. Recognizing this is your first meeting and so I understand, but I did wanna give you a chance to jump in. So, I just wanna say a couple of things very, very quickly. I will just say that I agree and appreciate the comments that Commissioner McPherson made, and then we're followed up on by Commissioner Schifrin and Commissioner Rodkin about the interest in preserving the tracks and the interest in a long term and not closing off the possibility for a passenger rail service. When this, any item related to the use of the rail corridor comes onto our agenda, people, proponents and opponents latch on to what they wanna see in the documentation to prove that rail is either never gonna be feasible and not never gonna happen or we could start tomorrow or that we can get this going sooner. And I appreciate that and I appreciate, I wanna say I appreciate Tigham and Roaring Camp proposed putting this forward to us because I think it's a bold move. It was in conjunction with the demonstration, which I also participated in and enjoyed. I actually could picture myself sitting on a trolley like that and getting some work done and finishing up my reading as I head towards the Capitol City Council chambers for an RTC meeting. So, I had a different kind of perspective on what this could mean just based on my own experience. And we all had that and I think that it certainly did provide us, some tactile material sense of what that could be like. And I look forward to those continuing conversations in the future and I appreciated, so it was a bold move, I guess I'll just say for Tigham and Roaring Camp to put this out there knowing the kinds of conversations that are elicited by discussion of what's gonna happen with our rail line. And I do hope that those conversations can continue into the future. I appreciated, Director Preston, your laying out what some of the significant challenges are, giving us what I would say is a realistic view of what can be done now, what are the other factors we need to take into consideration and I look forward to those conversations moving forward as well. I am gonna just leave it there and say that I too am prepared to take no action. And that doesn't mean, at least for myself, that I am rejecting the idea that some kind of commuter transit service could along, using the model that we saw potentially even could be forthcoming, it is a little bit different than freight carrier or another kind of larger diesel-based service. I mean, this is a different technology with different costs and so let's take that seriously moving forward. Okay, that was a little longer than I wanted, but I will close my comments there and I believe that we are with that unless anyone has final words. We are going to Commissioner Rockin final words, just a little. No, I was going, no, no, no. Okay, I'm sorry, I do like to make sure everyone, sometimes when I close, somebody says, no, I didn't get my hand up. So just making sure and we will move on to our next item, which is next meetings. And that would be the next RTC meeting scheduled for Thursday, December 2nd, 2021 at 9 a.m., a location to be determined, at least partially virtual based upon our conversation today. Good job everybody in the meeting, thank you. And with that, we are adjourned. Thank you.