 Good morning everybody. I will now call to order the regular meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission this Thursday May 4th 2023 9.02 a.m. Burke will you please call the roll. Commissioner Peterson. Here. Commissioner Brown, Sandy Brown. Here. Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Montesino. Here. Commissioner Hernandez. Present. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin. Commissioner Quinn. Commissioner Koenig. Here. Commissioner McPherson. Here. Commissioner Kristen Brown. Here. Commissioner Larry Pegler. Here. And Commissioner Rotkin. Here. Thank you. You have a quorum. Thank you. Since everyone's here I'm assuming there are no AB 2449 requests so we'll move to item 3 additions or deletions to consent or a regular agenda. Director Preston do we have any additions or deletions? All right. Thank you. We'll now proceed to item 4 oral communications. 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 communication but in compliance with state law may not take action on items that are not on the agenda because requested to state their name clearly so that it can be accurately recorded in the minutes of the meeting. And I since we do have a longer meeting today it'd be fine with me if anyone wants to speak on an item on the agenda that's later as long as you don't speak twice and you just confine your comments to that item to this morning. Anyone who wants to speak please approach the podium. Thank you. Which is located in Pleasanton. They claim to represent the RTC in least matters and working with them has been very challenging for me. They claim the power and authority to make and break leases for the RTC. As far as I've been able to tell so far no one at the RTC seems to know much about that. Most recently they shocked me with notice that in 30 days they plan to lease one half of my spaces to another party notwithstanding my lease and the existing zoning that doesn't allow parking under the Russell. We don't have time to go into detail but I wanted to make you aware of what is transpiring and also offer my opinion as one who has reviewed leases, drafted leases, negotiated leases, litigated leases for an entire career that I do not think the company is qualified or competent to do what they're doing on behalf of the RTC. And the RTC should not be granting them the authority they claim if in fact they have that authority. I've reached out to Chair Koenig and Vice Chair Brown previously and I want to thank both of them for their excellent responsiveness. I expect there may be more to this in the future but meanwhile I want to thank all of you for listening. Thank you Mr. Newman. Anyone else here in chambers that wishes to address their commission? All right, seeing none. Is there anyone online? Mr. Bryan Peoples? Yes. Are you able to share my slide? Basically the slide that we are sharing is Palm Street in the Trail. The Palm Street Access. Okay, well I'll continue to talk if you can. Hopefully you can share. Okay, hold on for a minute Mr. Peoples. Okay, while we handle technical difficulties here. No worries. It's fine if you're not able to share it. I can express it if you can't get through it. I don't want to delay the meeting too much. How about if I speak while you continue to work that just to keep the meeting rolling? You know, basically the photo that you're going to see is Palm Street and on the west side it connected to the coastal trail and it basically doesn't have that legal connection. It doesn't meet ADA requirements because the railroad tracks are preventing it. It's really unaccountable to disable the physically challenged. It really is not acceptable and it's a great opportunity for you to hear us. You can put a thumbs up. What's that? And so he's not up there. I'm there. I think we may need to come back in a few minutes. We're not quite sure why Community TV can't broadcast it here. So you want to meet it top later? Okay, well then we'll take out a five minute read fast. Well we figure out how to make sure we can hear. Why don't we just go on and come back? Yeah, we're able to do it. Yeah, I'm gonna be there in a little bit or or Mission Council for those who expect to be overcome. Is there any long items that are I think everything is actionable. So I'd be more than happy to provide the director's report during this technical period that serves the mission. Okay, so I wanted to see them with the director's report, which is item 24. Thank you, Chair Konig and commissioners. I'd like to provide a few updates first for the Association of Commuter Transportation, the 2023 International Conference. Amy Naranjo, who is a member of RTC staff, one of our planners will be attending the Association for Commuter Transportation 2023 International Conference in Seattle, Washington from July 30 through August 2. This conference presents a unique opportunity to explore innovative transportation, demand management solutions, and attend educational sections relevant to the work that the staff is conducting with cruise 511 and go Santa Cruz County. The conference is a three and a half day event that offers education, training, and networking opportunities for best practice sharing. The conference program includes sessions on various topics such as benchmarking and data gathering, marketing, TDM and a changing mobility landscape and utilizing community based outreach and engaging for traffic demand management. I have an announcement on the Santa Cruz County Regional Conservation Investment Study. This week, the RTC in coordination with the Resource Conservation District of Santa Cruz County released its final regional conservation investment strategy or RCIS, which identifies key conservation opportunities and habitat enhancements actions within the county. The RCIS can help expedite the delivery of transportation projects by facilitating regional advanced mitigation, allowing public agencies such as RTC to invest mitigation funds and receive efficient project approvals, propose conservation or enhancement actions, achieve RCIS goals. The RCIS was developed through a multi-stage process between 2020 and 2022 and builds upon prior conservation research and plans. It was developed with extensive input from the community, including local, state, and federal resource agencies and organizations, stakeholders from a variety of sectors, including representatives from conservation and transportation, technical advisors with expertise in biological systems and species in the RCIS area and the broader public. The final RCIS is available for review on the RTC website. I have an update on Highway 1 projects. On Wednesday, April 19, RCRTC hosted a groundbreaking for the Highway 1 Auxiliary Lane and Bus on Shoulder project at the site of the project's new Chanticleer Avenue Bicycle and Pedestrian Overcrossing. The event was well attended and showed strong partnership between local agencies, including the RTC, County, Santa Cruz Metro, the California Transportation Commission, and Caltrans. Thank you to RTC Chair Koenig, Vice Chair Kristen Brown, Metro General Manager Michael Tree, CTC Program Coordinator Mike Yaskott, and Caltrans Director and RTC Officio Commissioner Scott Eads for speaking at the event. Commissioners Alex Peterson and Felipe Hernandez were also in attendance. This event signaled both the groundbreaking of the SoCal 41st Avenue Project and the Watsonville to Santa Cruz multimodal corridor program, which includes improvements on three parallel corridors linking Watsonville to Santa Cruz, including Highway 1, SoCal and Freedom Drive, and the Santa Cruz branch rail line. Caltrans will be managing the construction contract with Granite Construction as our contractor. Caltrans has been a rock solid partner and collaborator on this project. The project is now out of winter suspension and regular work has commenced. Work requiring lane and or ramp closures will be limited to Sunday through Thursday evenings. Please be respectful to workers and travelers through the job site and remember to slow through the cones out. Special thanks to RTC Engineering Manager Sarah Christensen for delivering the project and Communications Director Shannon months for organizing the event. Shannon will be working on extensive messaging to South County residents. Highway 1 projects are located in Mid County. South County residents bear the brunt of the congestion impacts and we will ensure that they receive a number notification of any impacts to their daily community. Moving south from Bay of Mounds, Caltrans opened bids on the phase 2 project and they reported the state park last week. The bids will be discussed as part of item 27A on today's agenda. That was the item that was added. Moving on to phase 3. Excuse me, I lost my place. RTC and Caltrans recent release the draft environmental impact report for the proposed Highway 1 auxiliary lane and bus and shoulder project from Freedom to State Park which also includes segment 12 of the coastal rail trail. The 45-day public review and comment period on the draft EIR is open through June 2nd. The draft EIR is available for review on the RTC website. Earlier this week RTC hosted a virtual meeting and tonight RTC will host an in-person open house to provide the public with an opportunity to learn more about the draft EIR and overall environmental process, the project design and its schedule. The open house is from 6-730 at the Rio Sands Hotel. Please visit the RTC website for more information. Staff also plans to present the project at our June 1st meeting. Public comment and questions on the document from all three meetings will be recorded and included in the final EIR. I have an update on the Transit and Inner City Rail Capital Program or TCRP Awards and the State Rail Plan. On the Monday following our groundbreaking event for Highway 1, the director of the California State Transportation Agency or CalSTA boarded the Capital Corridor Commuter Train to Deirdon Station. He transferred out the Deirdon Station to the 17 bus which took him to Pacific Station in Santa Cruz. He brought with him his Deputy Under Secretary Mark Tolipson, his Chief Deputy Secretary for Rail and Transit Chad Edison and three very large checks. The state decided to make its very first announcement of this round of RCP grant awards in Santa Cruz. The largest of the awards went to the Santa Cruz Metro at $38.6 million to support the purchase of 24-0 emission hydrogen powered buses and associated fueling infrastructure to expand service frequencies on Highway 1 and 17, as well as to redevelop Metro's Watsonville Transit Center and Pacific Station in downtown Santa Cruz to include mixed use and 180 affordable housing units. Our each chair was who was also a Metro board member and county supervisors spoke at the event and noted the importance of RTC's Highway 1 program and the county's so-called drive infrastructure improvements on the reliability of zero emission bus service and the Watsonville to Santa Cruz multimodal corridor. Having a bus on shoulder facility on Highway 1 and bus transit signal prioritization on so-called drive will lead to more consistent travel times and allow for better Metro service. These factors did play a factor in how Metro was able to compete for such a large award. It also demonstrated a strong partnership between the three agencies. Stressing additional connectivity, the state provided the Transportation Agency of Monterey County with almost $2.3 million to advance the environmental phase of the Pajaro Watsonville multimodal station project, which along with the 17 bus to Deirdon is another important connection to the state rail network for the Santa Cruz zero emission passenger rail project. And speaking of that project, RTC was awarded 3.45 million for our zero emission passenger rail and rail concept report, which will refine the locally preferred alternative from earlier planning work. The concept report will involve extensive community outreach during the development of performance metrics and system planning with early engineering and ridership projections. RTC has selected a consultant to perform this work, but had only funded the first year due to limited resources. Based on prior authorization, staff plans to execute the contract and start work with the consultant as soon as audits are complete, likely this July, staff will return to the commission to amend the contract to add funding to complete the concept report after the TERSP funds have been obligated by the state. So that check, we've got to wait for obligation first. You can't cash it yet. RTC had requested $16 million to support funding fully IR, which will commence after the concept report. When I received the call to inform me of the award, Deputy Secretary Edison explained that the amount requested for the EIR exceeded the program's capacity due to the state's other high priority projects. However, Mr. Edison expressed a commitment to helping to identify future opportunities to fund our environmental document. Of note, TAMSI also did not receive their full TERSP grant request, but it is very significant that these two projects were included in the TERSP program. Provide some context. The state has released its draft 2023 state rail plan, which reaffirms its vision for an integrated statewide rail and transit network that delivers on California's ambitious yet vital economic, environmental and equity goals. Although the state rail plan is its strategic funding and programming document for rail in California, it does not have a constrained funding plan. Instead, the plan provides three planning year horizons, short term, midterm and long term. The straight rail plan identifies regional service and Santa Cruz with connections to the statewide network at Pajaro Watsonville as a midterm goal. The intent of the horizon framework is to define an approximate path in which service scale towards its long-time vision. The state rail plan does not identify funding for any specific project, but its vision combined with the TERSP funding award does provide affirmation that the state is willing to help the region fulfill the state's vision for state rails. That concludes my director's report. Thank you, Director Preston. It's certainly been a banner month for transportation in Santa Cruz County. I don't know how we have done any more this month between the groundbreaking of the bus on shoulder and auxiliary railing project on Highway 1 and this $38 million TERSP grant for Metro, which will really give us a 5% for that agency that will account for 25% approximately at the total fleet. We can really see the future of transit in this community come together. I'm very excited. I know my colleagues are as well. Are there any comments and questions from commissioners? Is there anyone in the public who wants to comment? All right, this is an information item only. And we'll consider that I've included. How are we doing on the technical challenges? You know, I don't know that I'm actually, my mic is even broadcasting within this room. So my sense is that the audio is not working within the room. That is that is correct. So the people online can hear us because of what community TV is doing back there. But they did have some audio issues this morning that they couldn't really resolve. And we thought it was resolved. So we're working on it. But at this moment, I'm going to try one last thing. If I can do something just old school with my laptop. So we really need to turn these on. So do we not need to do that based on something that community TV is doing? No, you should be turning it off. But even if you turn it on and speak right into it, it's not. Yeah. Yeah, you believe those. Okay. I'm just going to see if I can take this. Council is very can we proceed with the meeting? Including action or not? Yes, can be. This is noticed as a regular meeting with the commission in the commission agenda packet. It does anticipate that there may be technical difficulties and that the meeting will proceed even if there are difficulties. So this is not an 1824, 49 or maybe 361 where we would have to stop the meeting. Thank you. There are two other non action items. One is the government report and one is a presentation and why. Maybe we can look at the audio problem to be fixed by the time we're done with the games. I also tried and also suggested that people can do the office and maybe just ask people if they have comments not to develop. If you're going to get to see non action items and still have the reports that it goes through the year. There's a set of questions about all your comments before you go and it will usually stick to the funding. This might be the way to go. And this sounds converted. All right. Very suggestive. Altrance. Scott E. I was planning on putting that report here. So I was afraid of. All right, then let's proceed with the presentation. Hello. They're Jessica. Morning, chair and commissioners. Welcome to our slightly dysfunctional home. We're very glad to have you here and. My name is Jessica. For those who I have not met, Steve Jesper, a long time public board director here. Retired time in October. And so I've been here approximately six months. There's been a lot going on. I know we have a long meeting, so I want to quickly go over some of the transportation projects we have had going in the past year and in the community. And next. So we have a two completed project that the intention of the past year of the projects that we're going to be getting started this fall or future project that is connected to the rail trail. So it's been a lot and that we are very excited about. And next slide, please. So for completed projects, one big one that we've finished in the past year in coordination with the county of Santa Cruz is the adaptive civil integration on the 41st Avenue and partially on the so called corridor. That's been other one. They've been completely at this information. I'll transfer the past few months. We're really excited about it. It's been addressing some of the traffic congestion we've had on 41st and that was partially funded by city funds but also largely by an important frame. I know it was a big one to this one, but it's a large project that we've been really excited about. Next slide, please. In one second. Yes. So the next project that we are really excited to have completed in this past year is our clear street traffic. There's been pretty bad condition. It's a really important tree for us because it connects 41st to our library. You can see there one of the crosswalks. You can find one with it and get a small case for one of our crosswalks right there. I did some to the library. It's funded by RSTPX Fund and Energy Funds and City Funds being a small jurisdiction. So we put a lot of our funding together to use some of our greater projects. Got a lot of good comments from people who didn't buy chat on your slide to have a little successful project that includes an alternative down the street connecting Army, Fort and North Carolina Next slide, please. Another project we completed in the past year is the major road review and rehabilitation and coordination with the county of Santa Cruz. Just on local streets and roads brought in butter. Let's improve the quality of our street work. We'll measure the NSP on funds. So that was something that really happened to us. And next slide, please. Coming up this year, actually starting next week, we have a small infill sidewalk project. This is something that we're going to drive. This leads right into the Brighton State Beach. A lot of people park up here weekends and in the neighborhood. There is no sidewalk there now. There's the chairs there now. So again, with some really good input from the community and bike pack, we are able to finalize the scope of this project and get a safe pedestrian pathway across Targ Avenue down to the beach on this side. The next slide. And then our big project for this summer is our transportation goes in our capital or vehicle section. Like I said, we finished our work on the corridor. They are not a signal program. This project goes in 41st after the company line. 30th. That road isn't pretty bad. So you can definitely use some of that street and bicycle improvements. Really looking forward to using the Martin Measured DSP1 and 3D funds to get that project out of the door. And so that would be a major improvement for one of our major intersection in the 40th and 15th October appearance. And last slide. It's pretty cool to mention how excited we are about attempting the 11th being fully funded for construction. I have a really great collaboration with RTC and county staff on this. This particular project for the city is connecting our parking lot, which I believe you probably all parked up the upper parking lot this morning to Rail Trail 7-11 at all of Targ Avenue. Right now, we were trying to get out there. You would have to walk away and it's just really not the safest thing. And so we go formalizing a walkway and improving the crosswalks. They are giving people park and then sneakly on to where our monthly use travel. And that is my last slide. And thank you so much for having us here today. Thank you, Director Pellor. Other comments or questions? Thank you, commissioners. First, I just wanted to make a comment for those who aren't aware that Jessica joined our team right before the storm. How long did the amount of staff from the storm earlier, I think? Six weeks. Six weeks. Six weeks. I think it was, it was, it was. OK. Try to make a comment. It was out of your mind. It was out of your mind. Anyone in your room? Disconnect your body on your chair, chair, chair. Thank you. I apologize. All right. Yeah, I just wanted to share that for anyone who wasn't aware. Jessica, Director Cohn had been on staff for six weeks when the storm came in in January and she was just an unbelievable help in getting all of our crews out there to do the work that needed to be done. It's working around the clock. There's incredible assets to the city. So I wanted to thank you again for all that you've done in that regard. And then Jessica, for the Kennedy Drive Sidewalk Project, are there any road closures that we should be informing the public of? Thank you, Director Conner. There are comments from the public being on here in the chambers. Is there anyone online that wishes to comment on the Capitola Public Works Director report? Mr. Berry Scott. Hi, I'm just standing by for return to public comment for items not on the agenda. Great, thank you for helping confirm that we can hear the online audience. Anyone wish to comment on the director city of Capitola Directors report? Mr. St, did you want to comment on this item? No, still waiting for oral communications. Heidi, did you want to comment on this item? I think so. I apologize if it's not exactly apt, but I live on Section 11. And so you can let me know if I can go forward or not. I think that would be appropriate. Go ahead. Thank you. I live on Fan Marway and Capitola on Section 11 of the RTC Rail Trail, our backyard of butts, the property. Our properties here on Fan Mar have a particular unique circumstance relative to the RTC property in that we have a reasonable expectation of privacy and noise mitigation and security. And if you I would really hope for some of you to come and look at the way our houses are positioned in relationship to the rail. So as we go forward, I need to see more in the plan with regard to mitigation efforts for Fan Mar. Thank you. Miss Kallison. All right. Seeing no one else for comments on that item, then I will return to the top of the agenda and we will have our general public comment. Period. So I believe our mics are working now. So if you are going to speak in the dais, if you can turn those on, that would be helpful. Michael St. Mr. St. Yeah, I'm here. Am I up? We hear you. Yes. This is going to be a little awkward. I was supposed to be in order with Brett Garrett, but I'll try to, you know, make it work, I guess. Good morning, Chair Koenig and commissioners. Michael St. with CFST and Aptos Residents. I would like to use my time to support PRT as a possible option for passenger use on the rail corridor, as well as other destinations in Santa Cruz County. I understand the RTC's hesitation to put PRT and not to put it in the mix of alternatives on the corridor due to its limited usage around the world and not knowing its capabilities. Well, PRTs may soon become a viable option for public transit in medium sized cities. The issues for part PRT have been finances and unproven technology. Now that is all changing. Along comes Plenary America, which is a P3 developer, which is public part private partnership, which assumes a major share of the risk in terms of financing, construction, design planning and long term maintenance. Brett was going to be on this call as well, but he would have alluded to the increase of research and also things awarded to San Jose as well as the east Contra Costa County and San Francisco Bay Area is basically emerging as a hotbed for micro transit innovation. I also attended the San Jose City Council meeting on April 18th. They voted to approve a pre-development agreement for glideways and plenary. And this would last about one year to assess the viability of their PRT system for the airport connector from Dyrdon Station. Also in the future, a possible phase two being Stevens Creek corridor out to the ends of college. The mission of these PRTs or micro transits is to provide lowest possible cost highest through capacity up to 10,000 people per hour if needed lower lowest cost carbon footprint. My hope for the RTC is to keep an open mind concerning public transit options enable and empower our county residents to go about their daily lives in the most convenient and productive way possible and embrace technology and innovation. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. St. And it seems that your wishes have been granted. Next up, we have Brett Garrett. For those of you listening, again, we are on item four. This is oral communications. Good morning. Thank you. This is Brett Garrett. And as Mike said, personal rapid transit is coming to San Jose. Last month, the San Jose City Council unanimously voted to take the next step for building a personal rapid transit system from Derrida on station to the San Jose Maneta Airport. This transportation system will use very small vehicles from the San Francisco Bay Area Company, known as Glideways. And these are exactly the same vehicles that I have suggested for use on our rail corridor in the system that I call RailCat, short for Rail Corridor Automated Taxi with a full description at railcat.org. These vehicles are also being considered for use in East Contra Costa County, where an RFP has been issued and the agencies are likely to make a decision in July. This type of transportation system is coming closer and closer to reality right here in our area. And it can provide better transportation than a train, probably for lower cost and faster to build. Just imagine you could board a vehicle anytime, anywhere on the rail corridor and ride directly to downtown Santa Cruz or anywhere else on the system. Yes, unlike the train, this system could reach the downtown bus station in Santa Cruz and it could reach Cabrillo College directly. In some cases, the system could be more convenient than a car. It's an efficient transportation system and it's a climate solution that we need. So please, I urge you to keep paying attention to what's happening in San Jose and Contra Costa County and also take a look at the website, railcat.org, to help imagine what's possible for Santa Cruz County. And finally, I want to take a brief moment to honor the memory of Ed Porter. I'm sorry to say that he passed away last week. Ed Porter was a former member of the Santa Cruz City Council and he was a strong advocate for personal rapid transit. We will miss him. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Garen. Next up, Jean Brocklebank and Michael Lewis. Say, Sam. Hi, this is Michael Lewis. Jean is coming right now. Good morning, commissioners. Commissioner Mike Rockin had a terrific article about Metro Public and Lookout yesterday. I'm just hoping that all commissioners will read it. It's long. It's 1364 words. But I'll focus on just 160 of those words. Mike wrote that he thinks local residents understand that strong public transit is not just a service for those who ride the bus. He said it's a key issue in creating an environmentally sustainable community. Santa Cruz Metro has taken several actions recently to emphasize the key role that public transit can play in addressing environmental issues. The art, I'm an environmentalist, by the way. So Mike's column really, really grabbed me. He continued, the RTC is now committed to the first steps toward a bus on shoulder project for Highway 1 that will allow buses to move between Watsonville and Santa Cruz more rapidly than cars. In addition, Metro has created a pilot program with free rides for youth. This will help build a familiarity and commitment to public transit use among youth as they grow into adulthood. Rotkin wrote of the new buses with their iconic pictures that draw attention to and literally reflect Metro's commitment to environmental protection. He added that Metro Transit District has hired an internationally renowned transit planner to help completely redesign Metro's county transit system. Mike's take home message, well, it was this, let us focus on a safe, convenient, reasonably priced and efficient Metro bus system right on. And I'm going to add at the very end in terms of Metro, no trees need to be cut down in our urban forest to reach Metro's goals. The roadways are already there, just waiting for the buses. Let's get busy. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Brocklebank. All right, seeing no one else online or here in chambers wishing to comment, we'll proceed with the consent agenda. Any commissioners wish to pull an item from the consent agenda or are there any comments or questions on the consent agenda? Seeing none. Any public comment on the consent agenda? All right, seeing no one here in chambers or online. This was Barry Scott. Oh, sorry, go ahead Barry. Yeah, thanks very much. I want to congratulate the RTC and TAMC and Metro on those fabulous grants and the many other grants, including a mega grant that one of nine nationally came to Santa Cruz. They say we can't get grants because we're so small, but boy, we can get grants. So congratulations to all you have great grant writers. I love seeing more and more trail work completed. I'm glad the city of Santa Cruz unanimously supports the ultimate trail, but I'd like to see more work done in Watsonville. Watsonville has an incomplete segment 18 that starts at Ohlone Parkway. It needs to be completed out to Walker Street and really back to Lee Road. We need to see work done to connect the rail trail to Pajaro Valley High School and other projects down that way. So please, please think about that. Watsonville wants highway work done too, but not at the expense of rail bridges, which is why you must stay with the proposed project through Aptos and build new longer rail bridges along with new trail bridges. Over the entire corridor, these alternatives that require rail banking need to be rejected, just as the city of Santa Cruz rejected them. The UCIS and TCAA studies concluded that we need rail and trail. We're studying zero emission rail transit and we're getting big grants. So deviation from that rail with trail plan puts rail off to 2055 and 2060 and that's unacceptable. Now, what about Capitola? The directors explained that the bridges over Sotel Creek are inadequate, eventually need to be replaced. Whether for rail and trail or any other use, they're old, over a hundred years old. That center span was used when it was installed a hundred years ago. So while we're studying rail, we should include design studies for a new iconic beautiful new bridge with room for rail and for a trail on the coastal side. We can't pretend that this doesn't need to be done. Let's ask the public for input on designs since we know the bridges now, now while over a hundred years old at the end of their life must be replaced. And this way we won't be pretending that it doesn't need to be done. A rail transit plan cannot work without taking care of Capitola. They want a safe trail. The safest, the fastest way to get a good safe trail through Capitola is a new bridge. I'd love to see that happening. Thanks very much. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Now we're turning it to the commission. We have motion from commissioner Schifrin and a second from commissioner Rotkin to adopt the consent agenda. Any further discussion? Commissioner Koenig, I did note that Mr. Brian Peeples just stepped in. I'm not sure if he still wanna do the public comment. I've got a point of procedure. I think it's fine to go back to our presentation but there's a motion on the floor and we should vote on that motion and I think it's appropriate because we're all... All right, thank you. That's acceptable to the chair. So if there's no further discussion, all those in favor of adopting the consent agenda, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right, that motion passes unanimously. I will now reopen general comment period or anyone who wishes to speak. Mr. Peeples, please make sure your mic is on. How's that? Thank you. Brian Peeples trail now. I sent in a photo of Palm Street on the west side and the trail and highlighting that there's a real unequitable physical restraint we have with the community. It doesn't mean ADA requirements and we're hopeful that we can really look at that and understand how the trail we're building isn't meeting the requirements of our community and not helping us. I actually was hoping that Supervisor Cummings would be here but Andy, thank you for showing because it's in your area and I know Supervisor Cummings is really aware of not equitable conditions and that's what we have on Palm Street. Can you imagine if you lived on Palm Street and you couldn't get over to the trail because of those rails? Basically what's going on is our design of that trail is inhibiting our community from building a world-class trail. So I encourage the commission to look back and listen to Executive Director Preston's original Preston's original recommendation years ago about the interim trip. Understanding that the public wants more investments or more studies on a train, we're doing that. You got $8 million and I want us all to understand that what is the scope of work for that train vision? It's not gonna likely run along the coastal bluff because of the coastal commission. What you're gonna see, if you see in the RFP it says our horizontal and vertical realignments. What this essentially means is that train that ever comes to fruition would travel down the highway and it might even go into the city and up to the UC. So let's not restrict our trail today because we believe we're gonna have a train tomorrow. Let's look at ways we can open that trail for the disadvantaged and the disabled because we're not meeting that requirement. And that example of Palm Street is going to happen in segment nine and it happened on 10, 11 and 12. It's not being disclosed very well, but it's going to happen. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. All right, last call. Anyone who wanted to contribute to general oral communications? See one hand here from the audience. Go ahead, sir. Hey, my name is Chris O'Connell, I live in Capitola. Just wanted to also thank the Public Works Department in Capitola for their stellar work after the storms. We were there when Biden flew in and I was shocked how cleaned up the place looked and he probably doesn't think there's any problem here at all, that's how good a job is done. Anyway, I'm just under the impression that this interim trail issue shouldn't even be brought up. I think we already spent money and time voting on that, 72% overwhelming vote. I'm not sure why it keeps cropping up, but it seems like a minority position and we should be moving ahead with the plan for the rail and trail. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. O'Connell. All right, seeing no one else with their hand up or wishing to speak, we'll now proceed to our regular agenda, item 23, commissioner reports. The commissioner wish to share a report. All right, seeing none, we'll proceed. Sorry, go ahead. Commissioner Hernandez. You know, I just wanted to echo our desire in South County to pursue the segment over on Walker, the Wolf Trail project over on Walker. Of course, the project on Lee Road it connects to PV High. So PV High students have access to getting from their school from Walker as well. And also, you know, I just want to make sure that folks that are trail proponents, bicycling proponents and enthusiasts that we keep on our radar in the map, the need for trails on our Levy project that we got proposed for Oro River, make sure that it does happen. You know, sometimes engineers and some of the folks at the Army Corps of Engineers might let that slide. So we kind of make sure that we push the agenda for the trails on the river project. I know it's not related, but I just want to make sure that we keep it on our radar. Thank you, commissioner Hernandez. Any other commissioner wish to share a report? All right, seeing none, we already took item 24. The director's reports will proceed with item 25, CalTrans report. Director Eads, if you're there, go ahead. Good morning, can you hear me? Yeah. Okay, this is Kelly McLendon. I'm standing in for director Eads. I'm in a temporary role as the deputy district director for transportation planning. And I have a couple of updates and announcements. The first couple of announcements have to do with some of our projects that are happening. First, I want to announce that highway nine at the holiday slide fully reopened last week. Our crews removed the one-way temporary signal system there, as well as the concrete barriers. And we've been working at that location since January and then finally completed the opening at holiday slide. Also on highway nine, we have a current project still in the works near Glengarry Road, where we have a full closure at that location. And that full closure is anticipated to remain in effect into the middle of this month. So another couple of weeks for that one. Otherwise, other than that one location at Glengarry Road, we have a couple of remaining one-way temporary signals in place along highway nine, but there are no other full closures in Santa Cruz County. So that's great news. Moving on to a couple of general announcements, I wanted to share information about a funding opportunity from the US DOT. Last week, they announced as part of its Build America Bureau that a new program for regional infrastructure accelerators grants. And so that notice of funding opportunity went out last week, total of 34 million for transportation infrastructure at the local and regional levels. Finally, one more announcement that came out of our governor's office last week. I'm pleased to share that California last week approved the world's first regulation to phase out combustion trucks. And it's being handled through the Air Resources Board. And the regulation would phase out the sales of medium and heavy duty combustion trucks by 2036. And so added to that, it adds to some of our regulations that were previously in place concerning drage trucks near the forts that stipulate that those trucks need to be zero emissions by 2035. And it also applies to garbage trucks, local buses and other large vehicles that must be zero emission by 2039. So big news there in the world of emissions and improving air quality. That's all I have for the CalTrans report. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Are there comments or questions from commissioners? All right, seeing none. I remember the public wish to comment on the CalTrans report. Anyone here in chambers see one hand online? Go ahead, Michael Stain. Thank you, Chair Koenig. Yeah, just two quick questions on C3 of the project update. I was wondering the timeline says August 2024. I keep hearing different timelines. I think originally the RTC website said it would be completed towards the end of 25. Am I mistaken on that? And what does the August 2024 actually mean on your report? And the other thing was I thought the heavy duty trucks things was a California, as you said, project to get rid of these gas burning trucks and stuff. But I believe the federal government stepped in the Congress and basically canceled that. I think we have to go along with also the federal mandates on the trucks too. Maybe you could correct me if I'm wrong on those aspects. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Stain. All right, seeing no one else here. I wish to make a comment. Mr. Clinton, did you respond to either of those questions? I don't know on that second question about the different federal regulations. I know that there are a lot that are out there. Going back to the first question, the timeline in the report is for the begin of construction. Thank you. All right. Thank you for once again for the CalTrans report. We have already taken item 26, the presentation from the city of Capitola. So we'll proceed with item 27, which is a public hearing on 2023 unmet transit and paratransit needs list and for presentation on this item. We have transportation planner, Amanda Marino. This is a scheduled public not quite 10 o'clock. Just wondering whether quickly. Yeah, well, we'll start the item and then the public hearing and taking comments can officially start it. I mean, okay. All right, thank you. And we'll do that. We're close enough that we'll catch the majority of it. All right, go ahead. Thank you, Marino. Good morning, commissioners. My name is Amanda Marino. I'm a transportation planner for the ROTC and I also staffed the elderly and disabled transportation advisory committee. Before you today is the final draft of the 2023 unmet transit and paratransit needs list that's included as attachment one in your packet with changes since the 2022 unmet needs list shown in underline and strikeout. TDA statutes require transportation planning agencies that use TDA funds for local streets and road projects to implement a public process, including a public hearing to identify unmet transit needs of transit dependent or disadvantaged persons and determine if transit needs can be reasonably met. Although the ROTC does not allocate TDA funds to local streets and roads and therefore is not required to perform this analysis, the ROTC endeavors to solicit regular input on unmet transit and paratransit needs to provide a useful tool to assess and prioritize needs in the region as well as identify needs for future transit funding. Serving as a social services transportation advisory council per TDA statutes, the elderly and disabled transportation advisory committee regularly hears and considers unmet transit needs and paratransit needs in Santa Cruz County. Unmet transit and paratransit needs are those transportation needs which are not being met by the current public transportation system have community support and do not duplicate transit services provided publicly or privately. The unmet needs are prioritized using high, medium and low rankings. High priority items are those items that fill a gap or absence of ongoing service. Medium priority items are those that supplement existing service. Low priority items are still an unmet need but are assigned low priority because the need identified may be general in nature and requires more specific planning to identify strategies or may not address a basic needs such as transportation to medical appointments, shopping or access to other services. Within each category, there are three levels indicating to what extent the needs if addressed would advance regional transportation plan goals with one being a project that is expected to improve safety, economic vitality and cost effectiveness. The items on this list reflects input from a variety of sources including the members of the public, partner agencies and is primarily a document worked on by the elderly and disabled transportation advisory committee which includes Santa Cruz Metro, the volunteer center and the coordinated transportation services agency or consolidated transportation services agency community bridges, lifeline staff. The draft 2023 unmet transit paratransit needs list was posted to the RTC website and a notice of availability was sent to interest groups, senior living facilities, senior centers, local jurisdictions and transportation service providers in Santa Cruz County. English and Spanish ads additionally went out in the Sentinel and the Pajaronian. Public input was received using the online form available in both English and Spanish included as attachment to. Some updates to the unmet needs list from last year include removing the need to monitor the transportation network company access for all program now that the RTC is serving as a TNC access for all funding administrator. Add the need to include multi-person ride access to on-demand TNC ride share services to lower cost and carbon footprint. Support continuous funding for same day transportation to medical emergency and essential services, enhance service on Santas Village Road, enhance service on Pacific Avenue connecting the boardwalk to the town clock, create an all nighter 24 hour circular bus network providing late night and early morning bus service county wide connecting downtown areas, provide free transit rides to jurors and veterans, provide free transit rides on election days, increase bus service to libraries, public venues, public agencies and sheriff offices. The removal of the need to pursue the right turn pockets for bypass lanes for bus service and transit priority on Soco Avenue and Soquel Drive consistent with the unified corridor investment study due to the start of the construction of the project. Work with local jurisdictions to provide bus shelters, benches and increased lighting at all bus stops and connecting crosswalks and include in pavement lighting fixtures, solar LED overhead lights and in-road warning lights. Construct bus shelters at all park and ride lots in Santa Cruz County and expand transit service at the Pasa Tiempo Park and Ride Lot. You can review these updates and additional updates to the list in the RTC agenda packet or on the RTC website. This unmet needs list is not a funding recommendation and does not prioritize projects for funding that it does not provide detailed project schedules or timelines. This list is a public process used as a tool to receive public input and identify projects to be considered in the preparation of both grant applications for transit operators and to use to identify transit needs for future funding opportunities, including RTC discretionary transit funds such as state transit assistance funds, state of the good repair funds and low carbon transit operation program funds. Staff recommends that the RTC adopt the 2023 unmet transit and paratransit needs list with amendments as appropriate following a public hearing and consider unmet transit and paratransit needs as funding becomes available. Thank you. Thank you, Planner Marino. Are there comments or questions from commissioners? Commissioner Rotkin. Thank you. I want to make this as a suggestion worth looking into on that might be unintended consequences, but as I look through the list, particularly in the highly rated areas, we're already doing many of these things and it might be helpful. I mean, since the midi that we set up to work on this and the public in general, weigh in things they'd like to have happen they think are important and so forth might be helpful to have this document have after each section an update on what's, this is already being done or this will be done by February or whatever that, just because it would make it a kind of more useful document as it is now it kind of has this kind of a pie in the sky kind of quality that it's a wish list and it's not clear, you know, my God, there's so many things that need to be done. But as I said, I was impressed by how many of these things we actually have taken on and they're already funded. There's gonna be done next month or whatever. So it's a suggestion to staff to look at the possibility of doing that. Maybe there's a, maybe that's just duplicating documents or something I don't know, but I think this would be a more useful document that way. Thank you. I'm not proposing we do that. I mean, I think we should accept it now, but I think for next time we have to do this document that might be a good idea. Thank you, Commissioner Rock and Commissioner Brown. I think that's a great idea. Commissioner Rock and thank you for bringing it up. You know, as I read through these and we do this each year, we see this aspirational list, we see the need and we know that, you know, in particular due to the 2016 measure D, we have been able to make some progress in these areas. And so having some information to help us kind of see, measure where we're at as well would, I think would be very helpful in the future. Thank you for the report today. It's very thorough and really helpful. Yeah, Commissioner Johnson. Thank you, Chair. So it sounded like a thorough kind of report in terms of aspirations and where we are, but there's very little data. I mean, we don't know how many rides, we don't know how many people are using, you know, para crews and so forth. I feel indebted to the Metro, you know, my mom lived in, my mom and dad lived in Watsonville for 15 years. She passed away at 97 would ride Metro, even though we told her not to, to the mall in Capitola on her own, she was blind, but eventually he started using para crews. And so for, it was for $4 and another $2, you could go to door, especially for medical. So, but I'd like to know, you know, how many rides, you know, is anybody being neglected? How many people, you actually use this service, how many more could, just to kind of give us an idea of where the dollars are going and what needs are being met. Because right now we're just kind of getting a narrative and data is everything sometimes. Thank you, Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Quinn. I think it's a terrific list and one concrete suggestion I'd make is if we look at this from the perspective of social determinants of health, lack of access to transportation is a huge barrier to seniors in Dable getting appropriate healthcare. I would urge this group to attend or ask to be presenting at the HIP Council, the Health Improvement Council of Santa Cruz County. I think you'll get a different perspective on the barriers of adequate transportation for people securing healthcare and they may be helped prioritize some of things on the list where there's lower hanging fruit. So, and I'd be happy to make that introduction. Thank you, Commissioner Quinn. I would agree with some of the other comments made by commissioners that it is a great aspirational list, but there are, you know, for example, the very first item on general here, which is a high priority item, safe travel pass between a senior and our disabled living areas, medical facilities, educational facilities, employment locations, retail centers, entertainment venues, bus stops, and or potential future transit stations on the rail line, you know, with the SoCal Drive project that we're pursuing, we'll have 94 sidewalk improvements and ADA ramps built. So, we're making substantial progress on this list and I would agree that in the future it would be great or more informative to have a sense of where specifically we still need improvements and what kind of progress has been made so far. All right, if there are no other comments or questions from commissioners, I will officially open the public hearing. If you have a comment here in chambers, please approach the podium. I expect people to trail now. So, good work on doing that. That's the fact that this community is making an effort to look at unmet. Transit needs is the step in the right way, you know. And I wanna concur with commissioner Rotkin's suggestion that what is the tracking of the results? You know, how are we doing? We're going and we're identifying these targeted areas. How are we doing on filling that? My own experience with transit is my mom died of ALS. So, it was a progressive disease. And so she had to go to the doctor and the service here in the county was phenomenal. It was paratransit, I think it was paratransit, my cruise. She basically would schedule it and say they'd give a time, two hour window. She has time, right, so she can sit there and they take her to the Watsonville services and a two hour window that they'll pick her up. So that's a phenomenal program. And I just wanna recognize that this unmet effort, yeah, it needs more data. I think you commissioner Johnson, absolutely in the way of the factual data, factual data, you know, are we targeting the right areas? But it's a great effort. And we need to continue to promote that, to continue to build transit in our community. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. Hi, Sally Arnold. I wanna just say that one of the unmet needs is a speedy connection between North and South County that is not involved in traffic. That is, you know, time certain, regardless of what the problems are on highway one. And that is wheelchair, has increased the wheelchair capacity greater than what our current metro buses have. And at the risk of stating the obvious, the rail project that's under study, well, I think really do a lot to meet that unmet need. And I wanna thank you for the work you're doing to pursue that. Thank you, Ms. Arnold. You do have a comment you'd like to add here and you're attending in the online or in the in-person audience, please approach the podium and form a queue. Thank you. Excuse me, Barry Scott, I live in Aptos and it's good to see everybody in person here. I just wanna mention, wow. I just wanted to again congratulate staff for fabulous grant writing, but add that the potential for a transit network between Metro and the rail line is phenomenal. I remember a couple of before COVID asking Chad Edison with Caltrans at the Salinas Rail Station ribbon cutting if state rail funds could be used for bus transit if they served a rail system, and he said, yes. So that's something I think to keep in mind. It's not rail versus bus, but it's all of the above. So I thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Clerk, we're getting some feedback from the online audience if you could just make sure that everyone is muted, that'd be appreciated. Is there anyone else here in chambers? All right, then we will move to online comment for this item, which is public hearing on unmet transit and paratransit needs. Veronica Elsie. Let's see, did I manage to get unmuted? Yes, we hear you. Hi, thank you. Good morning commissioners and thank you for conducting this hearing. I'm Veronica Elsie from Santa Cruz and I currently serve as chair of your elderly and disabled transportation advisory committee. I just wanted to make a couple of comments and highlight just a couple of quick things to kind of get past and I understand some of the comments that you've made this morning. When you look at this, when you look at this list, it can get really kind of daunting going, oh, another bus route, another bus route, another bus route, okay, you know, file. And I do want to say that we do have quite a bit of discussion about what has been done. And we sat there at our meetings and tried to go through the list, is this fixed? And, you know, you notice that Amanda mentioned some of the things that we've taken off. Some of the things may be in progress, but they're not finished yet. And so we tend to kind of leave those on. But I understand the comments and it'll probably be a very interesting discussion next year, but a couple of things that I wanted to highlight real quick, just to kind of serve as a reminder of what this list, that this list is not just this project, this project, this, we want this, we want that, but it is people, it's humanity, it's quality of life. And I would like to ask you commissioners to just close your eyes for a minute and go on a little trip with me. Let's imagine it's Thanksgiving. And you get a phone call from your brother or your mother and they say, hey, why don't you come have dinner with me? You live in Santa Cruz, your brother or mother lives in Watsonville and you can't ride a bike and you wanna go have Thanksgiving dinner with your family or that friend really bad. How would you do it? This is what it means when we talk about having public transit service on holidays, late nights, weekends, you know, if you hear, oh my goodness, did you guys hear that, you know, Cheryl Crow is playing at the catalyst? Can you go to work during the day, go to that concert and then get home? This is what it means is what you can do as a person. Now imagine yourself as someone who uses a power wheelchair. You're at home late at night and you're having chest pain. You do what any of the rest of us would do. You wanna call 911. So you call 911 and the paramedics come and they wanna take you to Dominican. They cannot take your power wheelchair. Can you imagine landing in the hospital without your legs? So when we talk about expanding emergency medical service, this is what we mean is life for a person, life for a human being. And I hope that this is how you look at this list. So when you have the opportunity for any discretionary funding or if it would fit as part of every project, this is how I want you to think about it as people, quality of life and how we want our county to be. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Elsie. Next, we have Beverly. Hi, good morning. I didn't join until 10 because I thought that's when we first could. So I may have missed something. Are you hearing me? We are. Okay, good. So my name is Beverly Deschaux. I have been a volunteer with the Electric Vehicle Association for the past 16 years. And I want to represent an unmet need of the environment via the needs of the senior transportation. Currently, the para-cruise buses are run on CNG as are most of our transit buses. CNG is 75 to 90% methane. Methane has an 80 to 120 times the heating capacity of CO2. Therefore, it is worse for our environment than, well, it's bad for our environment. Currently, the buses, the para-cruise buses I've seen at my doctor's office keep the buses running while they're unloading wheelchairs. They wait with it running while the person is in their appointment for the entire time. Then they wait while the person is loading their wheelchair again, all while it's running and spewing emissions. Electric buses that Watsonville has two of already for some years now, couple, two, three years, they have no emissions while they're on. If they want to leave them on, they would have no emissions. I would like to urge that that transportation be, especially if you're going to be getting new, that it be electric, not hydrogen. I can talk to you another time about the dangers of hydrogen. I think maybe that's all I want to say now, but please, the emissions are still continuing as a person is having their appointment. Please consider, I don't know if I need to speak with Metro about this or if this is the appropriate forum for me to- Yeah, you've got several board members here, so I will communicate your feedback to the rest of Metro. Thank you for your comment. All right, I see no one else online. So I will close the public hearing and return to the commission for action. Move approval. Motion from Commissioner Rotkin, second from Commissioner Sandy Brown. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion passes unanimously. All right, we will now proceed to item 28, the Federal Lands Access Program Grant Award and Funding Agreements to Construct the North Coast Rail Trail, segment five, Wilder Ranch to Davenport and Coastal Rail Trail, Capone Coast Aries. Oh, I see. Well, 20, okay. All right, then 27A on the revised agenda. Doesn't seem that I- Okay. I see, this is 27A, approve amendments to measure the five-year program of projects and cooperative agreement with Caltrans for Highway 1, State Park, Tube Bay Porter, Auxiliary Lanes and Bus On Shoulder Project. For a part on this item, we have Senior Transportation Engineer Sarah Christian. Thank you, Chair Conig. Apologies for the late ad here. We opened bids just one week ago today. So this item is to request an amendment to the Measured Five-Year Plan for the Highway Corridors Program, as well as an amendment to the Construction Cooperative Agreement with Caltrans. And this is for the Highway 1, Bus On Shoulder and Auxiliary Lanes Project between State Park Drive and the Bay Porter Interchange. It includes replacement of the Capitola Avenue overcrossing as well as a new bicycle pedestrian overcrossing at Mar Vista. So the two actions are a program additional $4,570,000 of Measured Highway Corridors Revenues for the project and authorize the Executive Director to negotiate and execute Amendment 1 to Cooperative Agreement with Caltrans for the construction component of the project. So just a little bit of background. Staff has been working very hard to get this project out to bid since 2019 or so. We've been working on the environmental phase, the final design phase. We successfully secured Senate Bill 1 funding to fund construction of the project. So we have local partnership program funds and solutions to congestive quarters funds that were awarded to the commission back in 2020. And this was one of three projects that were awarded funds in cycle two of the grant awards. We also have State Transportation Improvement Program funds, STIP funds, and of course Measured Highway Category funds. We had programmed $10 million and that served as a local match for those grants as the funding plan for the project. So we finished final design of this project just in the fall of 2022. The engineer's estimate was 67,388,615 dollars. That was just for the bid items excluding contingencies, supplemental items and state furnished materials. We put this out to bid, well, Caltrans put it out to bid in February and we opened bids just one week ago. The low bid was 72,398,200 dollars and that was by Granite Construction Company. The second bid was even higher than that. It was about 78 million and it was by Granite Rock. We only received two bids on this project and that signifies that it's a busy time for construction and contractors are very busy and usually we see four or five bids for a project this size, but unfortunately we only saw two. The difference was a little over $5 million between the engineer's estimate and the bid price, the low bid. So that was about 7.5% higher than the engineer's estimate and that just to put things in perspective, when we awarded the phase one project just in the fall, we had taken the bid prices from that project and updated this engineer's estimate. So it's really, really recent, the most recent, the most relevant bid prices that we possibly could have had for this project and that 7.5% reflects the escalation that's happened just in the last six months. So staff and Caltrans, we recommend awarding this contract because re-advertisement would require a delay in the project. We could potentially lose a construction season and when you re-advertise, you have to go back and reduce the scope of the project, which we don't recommend doing. Additionally, there's no guarantee that bids will come in any lower. In fact, with the escalation that we're seeing, it's likely to come in higher. So we don't recommend paying more for less project, essentially. So to fill the funding gap, Caltrans and RTC staff have been working diligently over the past week to come up with a revised funding plan because there are state transportation improvement funds, dip funds on the project. There's a contingency fund that the state has called G12 and we were able to secure $692,900 of G12 dip funds to supplement the funding to help close the gap. So the remaining amount, the remaining shortfall is $4,570,000 of Measure D, Highway Corridors Program category funds that staff is recommending closing the remaining gap with. The program does have sufficient pay-as-you-go capacity, luckily, which is really good news for us. And with that, I'm gonna conclude my staff report and take any questions that you have. Thank you, senior engineer Christensen. Are there comments or questions from commissioners? Yes, commissioner Rockin. Just on the very last thing you said, that we have a pay-as-you-go capacity, that means the temporary transferring money from some other sectors or how does that work if we don't have enough in that particular fund at this point are gonna have to take it from somewhere. So the program of projects, we obviously program over five years and we didn't have to deprogram anything. We just adjust based on the schedule and it's year over year. I mean, this program brings in about six, maybe a little more, six million a year in revenue. And so with revenues maybe coming in a little bit higher over the years, we have a little bit more capacity. And so we do understand that with the phase three project, if we are delivering that project on schedule, we will need to finance. And because of all of the changes and maybe we need to finance a little bit sooner rather than a year later or six months later. And so we're just going off of the money in the bank, the cash flow, and we have enough to close the gap. So in effect, you're saying we start this project and you have reason to think there'll be no problem either with future money in a little higher as you go or perhaps you have to find a way or phases is it? This project does not require financing. The next project, the phase three project between State Park Drive and Freedom Boulevard, that one is a much larger project with much more measure defunds that we will. That works out in the phase, not equally. That's quite a shift set of. Correct, yeah. Sorry if I wasn't clear about that. If I can elaborate. I agree with you. I just want to understand like, you know. If I can elaborate, Commissioner Rodkin, we've been building reserves in the Highway 1 account because we haven't had a lot of projects and construction as of yet. The first phase project does not use a lot of measure defunding. This phase had 10 million on it. We have enough in the bank to fund this project. We do anticipate that if we were to fund the third phase of the highway program that we would need to borrow significant funding. This would increase the amount of borrowing that we would have to do for that project because we're using some of that capacity. So it does reduce our overall capacity for the highway program. We do anticipate future needs for financing or Measure D. It's not for this project specifically, but it does have an effect on how much we would need to borrow in the future. Thank you. Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Chair. So the Fed has increased the interest rates 10 times over the last 14 months. Inflation is not really going anywhere. So to rebid this really would not be a wise decision, I think to moving forward and accepting the fiscal reality. I mean, when you have fewer construction companies bidding, it's kind of an indicator that it's not gonna come down. So my recommendation would be to proceed. Thank you, Commissioner Johnson. Other comments or questions from commissioners? Being none, anyone in the public wish to comment on this item? Well, again, Mr. Peoples. All right, people, since I came down here, I thought I would comment. And, you know, first of all, I want to commend Sarah and RTC, SIP and CalSTAN health trends on the process that they went through looking at phase one and coming up with a number. And 5% higher, that, okay, seven. You know, the fact is it is what it is. And we need to widen, get that project moving forward. It's the central key backbone of what our transportation system is in the county. It's, you know, Metro uses it, we use it. So in short, we support it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. Seeing no one else here in chambers, I see one hand online. Michael St. Thank you, Chair Koenig. As you probably know, CFST doesn't really support the oxalene projects, but if you had done just bus on shoulder, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation since it's a much less expensive type project. But to get down to some specific stuff here, since the SB1 funds of 107.2 also includes improvements along. So Cal drive, I was just wondering since we have an override or projection of spending more money, are we gonna lose any of those improvements along so Cal drive? And my additional question goes all the way down to the funding summary. You've got a bid of 72,398,200 and a total of 87,422,900. What causes that difference? Is that just for a backup or a little bit of a cushion? And those are my only two questions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. St. I'm happy to respond to the first question, which is how the inflationary pressures we're seeing are impacting the County's project on so Cal drive, which is that we did have to rebid that project. We should be seeing the response to the second round of bidding, I believe at one of our next two meetings this month at the Board of Supervisors. And we did have to remove two segments of sidewalk, one in front of Arbor High there, going up the hill from La Fonda. And then the other between Robertson and Dalvin Biss in so Cal Village. So we have procured all the easements necessary for the to undertake those projects in the future, but we did have to rebid the project with those as optional because we were seeing cost overruns. And Ms. Christensen, if you want to respond to the discrepancy issue. Jordan, I would just add that each individual project has their own funding plan. And so we don't swap money between so Cal drive and highway one just to clarify. And then the difference, I think comes down to when we do the engineer's estimate and then we have a 5% contingency and then the bids come in at a higher amount. We also adjust the contingency. So that's 5% of that higher amount. And so I think that's where the difference comes in. Thank you. All right. Seeing no one else wishing to comment, I'll return to the commission for action. I'll move the staff report. Second. Motion from Commissioner Montesino. Second from Commissioner Kristen Brown. Any further discussion? Commissioner Schiffrin. Yeah, it's just the, I don't disagree with the staff recommendation. I'll put the motion. But I think it's important to recognize just how expensive these projects are. Because we hear how expensive the rail trail project is. You're at a my heart in this project, but it is expensive. It's expensive to build public infrastructure not getting any better. And the other thing I wanted to say is just someone who's been on the commission for a while looking around and I guess we remember how long it took. I think it really is incredible. One in the construction, this about to go to construction and the EIR out. I think it's a pretty amazing accomplishment for a relatively small, 50s project. I really think it's, I really want to commend projects. There's no main fee to do these, put all these complicated projects together with all the other details that we tend to be able to avoid, but they keep. Thanks, staff, for the work on this project. Just being so successful. Yeah. Great. Thank you, Commissioner Sheffrin. Mr. Montecino. Yeah, I'd like to deal with the commissioner and the report. You've done an amazing job and just like the highway is dear to my heart. Because of our community, using it professionally and using it personally on an everyday basis is going to be you know, a game changer for us and our community. You finish with Peshaves, you know, a few minutes of our time. Thank you, Commissioner Montecino. All right, we've got a motion to adopt a staff recommendation for amendments to measure D5 year program and the cooperative agreement with Caltrans for the phase two highway project. Any further discussion? Being none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion passes unanimously. We will now proceed with item 28, the federal lands access program grant award and funding agreements to construct the North Coast Rail Trail segment five from Wilder Ranch to Davenport and Coastal Rail Trail, Catoni Coast Darry's overpass connection representation. We have senior transportation planner, Grace Blakesley. Is that mic working? Thank you. I'm here to provide you an update on the North Coast Rail Trail project is including funding updates. So as you know, RTC has been working in coordination with the Central Federal Lands Program. That's a division of the Federal Highway Administration to implement the Monterey Bay Senior Sanctuary Trail segment five. We also call that the North Coast Rail Trail project. The project is a seven and a half mile multimodal bicycle and pedestrian path that will extend along the rail corridor from Wilder Ranch to Davenport in the unincorporated area of Santa Cruz County. It also includes trail connections to adjacent trail systems and federal lands. The project has been separated into phases to support project delivery. Phase one is 5.4 miles of the trail from Wilder Ranch to Yellowbank Panther Beach. So that's the southern portion of the trail. Phase two is 2.1 mile section from continuing on from Yellowbank Panther Beach to Davenport. And it also includes improving two informal parking lots, one at Davenport and one at Yellowbank Panther Beach. In this exhibit, the two projects are combined because they have the same delivery schedule and we expect to construct them together. Phase three of the project includes a trail connection to the Chitone Coast Darys National Monument by way of a bicycle and pedestrian bridge over Highway One that would land at the Yellowbank Panther Beach parking lot, the northern end of that lot and connect over to the southern trail system proposed for the Chitone Coast Darys property. And as I mentioned, there are several other connections along this corridor you can see in blue to coastal bluffs and beaches and state parks trails. On the south end of the project, the trail connects to the existing multi-use path that parallels Highway One and within Caltrans right of way and then connects into the city of Santa Cruz and on the north end of the project, the Davenport parking lot proposal also includes a crosswalk from connecting the town of Davenport to the parking lot. And that was something that was very desired by the Davenport community and we're glad that that's gonna be included. And then the segment four would continue north of segment five. So I thought I'd just share a few images with you about the existing conditions. The trail would be constructed on the coast side of the rail line and would provide one of the only American Disabilities Act accessible trails between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay that's along the coast. So that's very exciting for us. Here you can see images of where the parking lot connects at Davenport to the trail. It's very rugged, that will be improved as part of the project. You can see that alongside the rail line, oh, thanks Yosenae, alongside the rail line right now is unimproved path that's often used and that will be formalized. There's certain locations where the trail will be located in the rail cut. So below grade and other locations where the trail will be above grade and on the bluff. Next slide, here's some cross sections just to give you an idea of how the trail will look in different configurations. The southern portion of the trail is located primarily adjacent to agricultural operations and those locations will be fencing on both sides of the trail to prevent folks from leaving the trail to access the agricultural operations. The trail will be 12 feet with two foot shoulders on each side. The 12 foot portion will be paved and the two foot shoulders will be decomposed granite. Next slide, please. The problem I can continue if we can't get him. Well, I'll go ahead and continue and then I can back up and point in the information on the slide if it comes up. The project also includes seven rest areas along the trail. These are gonna include bike racks, benches, truss receptacles, recycling, as well as interpretive panels. And it'll also include, it'll also include wayfinding along the trail. So when we, I hope I can show you an image of that. I've been working closely with Shannon Munz of our staff to develop the wayfinding program and I think it's gonna be really beneficial. Oh, here's exhibits of the Davenport parking lot on the left. So the existing condition is above and then below is the proposed lot. You can see there the connection across Highway 1 to Ocean Avenue in Davenport and how the parking lot also connects down to the trail. On the right is the Yellow Bank, Panther Beach parking lot and the top is the existing conditions and below is the proposed parking lot. The Davenport parking lot will have 43 spaces and the Yellow Bank, Panther Beach, I think it's 45 spaces. Next slide. Oh, here's what I was mentioning about the Vista points and rest areas. These are some examples of the interpretive signs and the wayfinding that's proposed. Yeah. Next slide. So today I'm here to talk to you about funding for the trail. We were in December, 2022, RTC received notice that the North Coast Rail Trail Projects Phase 2 and 3 were awarded $15.5 million in funding and new funding from the Federal Lands Access Program. This is the second grant award RTC has received from the Federal Lands Access Program for the North Coast Rail Trail specifically. It is to construct that Phase 2 portion of the trail which is 2.1 miles from Panther Beach to Davenport as well as the over-crossing. I mentioned the Jutoni Coast Darries. That's a bicycle and pedestrian over-crossing of Highway 1. In addition to the recent grant award, the Central Federal Land, increased the amount of Federal Lands Access Program funding that was originally programmed for Phase 1, the Southern 5.4 miles of the project. The original grant award was $6.3 million and it was increased to $22.3 million to reflect current cost estimates. So that's an increase of $15.9 million in funding for that project. So this brings the total Federal Flat funding for the North Coast Rail Trail to about $37.7 million. In addition to the flat funding, RTC previously programmed Measure D active transportation funds and we're requesting today that RTC considering additional Measure D funds to complete the design, including design of electrical vehicle charging stations as well as staff oversight during construction and monitoring associated with permit requirements after project construction. I do wanna note that RTC is working with Energy 3C to seek grants and funding support for the design of electrical vehicle facilities and the construction of the EV charging station at Davenport. RTC must enter into a memorandum of agreement with the Central Federal Lands Flat Program to establish roles and responsibilities and to fund transfers agreements, also referred to as reimbursement agreements to allow for the distribution of funds. Next slide. So the memorandum of agreements also provided updated project cost estimates which are shown here. The proposed amended agreements also identifies the local match when it's combined with the flat funds fully fund the project. The match is varied by phase. The first phase match is required at the 3.655 million in local funding commitment. The second match is for phase two, excuse me, is 3.3 million and then for phase three is 1.3 million for a total match requirement of 8.3 million. Central Federal Land also proposes to amend the agreement for phase two design to add 150,000 in local funds for a total of 1.15 million in local funding for the design of phase two. And then they've proposed a new agreement for phase three. Next slide. I guess I'd say that actually before you can go on the next slide, but I would say to echo some of the comments before measure D funding and seed money to begin pre-construction project of pre-construction activities for projects is essential in being competitive for these grants. And in this case, the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County provided the majority of the funding to advance the phase two portion of the design alongside of phase one. And had they not done that, we would not be here today. So a big thank you and acknowledgement to the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County for their continued commitment to this project. So the majority of the permits and approvals for this project are complete, including the federal consistency approval obtained from the California Coastal Commission in December, 2022. Although RTC has advanced pre-construction work and the trails expected to be ready this year, the flat funding for construction is programmed for federal fiscal year 24-25. So we may have to wait until then RTC is working with our staff to request an advance of funds. So with approval of the staff recommendation we'll continue to work with Central Federal Lands to finalize the project design and obtain the final project approvals. And then we'll also begin work on the phase three project that Tony Co. Sterry's overpass and initiate the project design and the environmental phase. I wanted to acknowledge the work of past staff members, Ginger Dicar and Corey Coletti that prepared the first successful flap grant program and to Ginger Dicar and current staff member, Anne Banda-Marino who prepared the successful second grant award. I also wanted to thank the Bureau of Land Management staff who have been the strong supporters and the State Park staff, both landowners in the project area and to appreciate the cooperation of the farm operators in the project area for their continued coordination with RTC. Then lastly, before I conclude I want to remind members of the public that the North Coast Rail Trail is not open yet. It's still in the construction planning phase and not open to the public. Please do not enter the right of way in this area where there's active farm operations until the construction of the trail has been completed. That concludes my report. Thank you, Planner Blakesley. Are there questions or comments from members of the commission? Mr. Rockin and Commissioner Schiffen. This is going to be an iconic trail. I mean, on the planet the views from this trail are going to just be stunning. And it's a fairly long piece of the trail. And I'm wondering if you could just sort of characterize in some general way what's the availability of restrooms along this rather long track at the parking lots, for example. I don't expect in the middle of nowhere you're going to have a toilets, but I wonder about the parking lots or what's our thinking about where public sanitary facilities might be available? Thanks for asking that question. So as part of development of the Davenport parking lot there will be two bathrooms installed with flush toilets and a sink. And as part of the development of the Yellow Bank Panther Beach Project there will also be bathrooms where they will not have flush toilets or a sink. And I think another piece to add there is the addition of so many trash receptacles and recycling facilities. We have been in early discussions with the County of Santa Cruz about maintenance of those, supporting us with maintenance of those facilities through an agreement between RTC and Santa Cruz County but I think that's a huge improvement as well. Schiffen. A small question about the, one thing you said about the Davenport crosswalk but this has been a true that's coming up regularly. My understanding was that there's going to be a traffic signal as well. Is that correct? No, there's no traffic signal proposed as part of the project. It's a rapid flashing beacon that can be activated by someone crossing the roadway. It's going to be pedestrian. Oh, okay. But there is going to be a signal. It's not simply a signal. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought not a traffic signal as I was thinking a vehicle traffic signal. The other issue has to do with maintenance. You mentioned that those will be decomposed granite. And what that says to me is that there really needs to be regular maintenance because I've been using the bike trail on the university campus. And it's also has decomposed granite at the sides. And it was, and it's of course on a very steep hill. So having the growth in the middle of the bike path is a little bit on the scary side. So I think that as the, after the project is built and as the maintenance is done there should be some regular insurance that is going to be regularly. Thanks for asking that. We have developed a draft trail operations and maintenance plan for the project. It does include sweeping. I don't recall off the top of my head how often I think it's twice a month but we can look at that. We expect to bring in a proposed agreement to you in September timeframe for trail maintenance of the segment five program and can include some details about the frequency. I will have additional comments after the public but I do, as Mike says it's a very exciting project. And staff is really congratulating. Moving it through very complex process. And this is one because it's in Supervisor Cummings district that we're very aware of the details and just have complicated. So I think the concern I have a want to talk more about maybe is what needs to be done to advance the funding. I think you mentioned to me earlier today that this project started in 2001. So when did it start? Oh, sorry. Well, it started after the approval of the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail Plan in 2013 and the first grant application was submitted in 2015. It's only been in the works for eight years, 12 years but it's just an indication of how long it takes to do these projects. The fact that the project seems to be just about ready to go out to bid and the only thing that's holding it up is the funding, when the funding from the federal, under the federal flap grant is going to be available. I think it's worth talking about whether there's anything that commission can do to help encourage the advance of that funding so that it would be possible to potentially go out to bid this year instead of having to wait a year when the project is sort of sitting and ready to go. Obviously it's going to lead to these constructions. We're going to want to pursue that but I'd like to, you know, wait until. I guess I just would respond that your approval today is a key piece in being able to request the advance funds. The comments or questions from commissioners. All right, seeing none, I'll open it to public comment. Welcome back, Mr. Peeples. Thank you, Brian Peebles, trail now. First of all, we support the staff recommendation having said that this is a great example of why building the trail next to the tracks is so prohibitive or doesn't work. The costs are extremely more expensive and this was the easy section. So it's been delayed a decade. It costs essentially more than widening the highway. I mean, that's where it takes longer. So a little history on this is during the EIR we had alternatives and the alternative was to put the trail on the railroad bed which most communities across America do and it's significantly less, significantly more easier to do. But the reason it didn't is they called it historical value. The historical value, even though the railroad tracks are not on the history register or even an application, we're claiming that we got to keep those tracks from Santa Cruz to Davenport because of historical preference. So what's the result of that? We don't have a trail and it's costing us a ton of money. It's taking away from Metro. It's taking away from other areas. So we need to step back and think about it. Can you show that slide that I sent just to add? So I asked to have a slide showed which shows the second one there. So there we see the tracks and I know most of you've seen them but is that really historical value? Is that something that we need to put it back? And then what I also wanna highlight just to bring us awareness is we have the Harkins slew there. Watsonville, you're never gonna get a trail if we keep going in this direction but we can get you a trail. If you support what we want, which is an interim, we can do it. Let's do it. And it's gonna be a game changer for Watsonville, okay? So again, appreciate your time. Thank you. Very Scott Aptos. I just wanna say something real quick. I was attending the Coastal Commission hearing when the idea of armoring the bluff up in Davenport was being considered and they had originally rejected it but fortunately it was pointed out to them that the rail line there is active. An active rail line with potential uses in the future and that caused the Coastal Commission to wave, I think it might have been conditioned C or D and they are then permitting the armoring of that bluff and keeping the trail on the coastal side of the track. So I wanna thank the director for bringing that up during that commission. I thank the commission for permitting the armoring and it's just another example of the value of that rail line. Thanks. Thank you. Good morning, Chair Koenig and commissioners. My name's Matt Ferrell. I'm speaking today as the chair of the board of Friends of the Rail and Trail. I just wanna recognize that we are here where we are today because a group of people got together in 2016 and formed a partnership to pass measure D and a big part of that was the commitment of the Santa Cruz County Land Trust to help move forward the rail and the trail. So I wanna thank those partners for building the foundation that gives us what we have today. And then secondly, I wanna say this is an astounding moment for us, the fact that we are able to fund the over-crossing at Davenport and connect San Vicente Redwood Trail to the city of Santa Cruz is a huge accomplishment. Anyone who has ridden Highway 1 between Davenport and Santa Cruz understands the great improvement of quality of life and access that this will bring. Finally, I just wanna thank RTC staff who has worked so diligently on this project over the years and their engagement because I think one of the reasons we have been so successful is the ability of our staffs to work together and present a convincing and compelling argument for the quality and the quality of our projects. So thank you to everyone and thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Farrell. All right, seeing no one else here in chambers who wishes to comment, is there anyone online? I see a few folks, we'll start with Skye Murphy. Good morning, good morning, everyone. My name is Skye Murphy. I am the planning and environmental coordinator for the Bureau of Land Management Central Coast Field Office. We manage the BLM public lands in 12 counties, including Santa Cruz. I have been involved since 2004 with the discussion revolving around Chattonee Coast Aries. The BLM took ownership of the property in 2014 and we supported the initial flap grant in 2015. This property was always recognized for conservation and recreation value. It was also understood that coordination with partners and the community was necessary to meet goals for regional connectivity. I appreciate the comments from the previous gentleman with Friends of the Rail Trail. It really is a vision that has been in development for 20 years or more to have the connection with the San Vicente Redwoods and with the North Coast Rail Trail. Chattonee Coast Aries is a unit of the California Coastal National Monument and the BLM developed a resource management plan that was approved in 2021. Key components of that plan include management action to protect sensitive resources and also establishing parking areas and trailheads to provide safe public access for trail-based recreational opportunities. Many of us are aware that there's a high demand for recreation opportunity in Santa Cruz and the North Coast regularly is overcrowded and there's unsafe parking and crossing of Highway 1. So during the development of the BLM plan for Chattonee Coast Aries, there was broad support for the Highway 1 overpass at Yellow Bank Creek and Panther Gap. It will serve as the primary connection for public access to the Southern portion of the Chattonee Coast Aries unit of the California Coastal California National Monument. Eventually, the North Coast Rail Trail will also connect visitors with the Northern portion of the Chattonee Coast Aries from Davenport via Cement Plant Road and that opportunity eventually to connect with San Vicente Redwoods. It's all very exciting, needless to say we are very pleased with the FLAB grants that have been awarded to the RTC. BLM is ready to enter into the agreement that sets forth our respective responsibilities for the project to go through environmental review, design and construction. On behalf of BLM, I want to thank RTC staff and commissioners for their effort to improve public access to public lands. And if there are any questions for BLM, I may be able to adjust them now or take notes and follow up as needed. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Mr. Sartataro, Ryan, are you there? I'm here, okay. Yes, I thought a little bit of history is in order. The reason why there's a railroad track out to Davenport has nothing to do with people. It has everything to do with extractive industries from the 19th century, mining, timber. That's over for Santa Cruz. That's over for this part of California. So what utility possibly can there be to having a railroad go out to Davenport? As far as I can tell, spending tens of millions of dollars on that or even more in order to move a few people a very, you know, a short amount of distance really is not going to make any kind of economic sense. And at 12 or 20 year delay and putting in a trail in order to support that vision shows some incredible short-sightedness on the part of the management of RTC. And I think that as RTC takes a look at other parts of this monstrosity of the concept of a train, they may have to at some point come to grips with what is actually best for our environment, our community and our public pocketbook. And don't think that just because you got a grant that, you know, the deficit that that has created somewhere else has nothing to do with us in Santa Cruz. It does. It's wasted money. Thank you. Mr. Sarnataro. This is Jean Brocklebank and Michael Lewis. There you go. Hello, commissioners. Since we're talking about, well, let me preface this by saying I really appreciated staff's presentation. I appreciate all the time and effort and passion and intelligence and competence. And I would also like to say since we're talking about a rail trail, not a rail, we're talking about a rail trail, I want to support Brian people's comments. He speaks of a trail now and I agree with that. I agree that we could have a trail sooner at less dollar cost, which always equates to less environmental cost. I also want to concur with what Brian just said. I know you folks think that we're in a minority and I'm not so sure we are. I think there's a lot more people who feel as we do, but they are overwhelmed by the entire process, not only of what's going on, but attending meetings and it's difficult for them. Thank you very much. Ms. Brocklebank. All right, so anyone else online or in the chambers here, I'll turn it to the commission for action. Mr. Schiffrin. Yes, thank you. Thanks, Steph. Again, I wanted to comment on something one of the speakers said about what it's like to ride a bike from Santa Cruz to Davenport at this point. I did it once. I will not do it again. It's not a family-friendly, people-friendly way of getting there. And some places it's okay, but in a lot of places the cars are whizzing by at 70 miles an hour, it's worrisome. So I think this trail will make a real difference in the kind of recreational use of the North Coast and a real strong encouragement to people and families to ride their bikes up there. 7.5 miles or maybe longer. City, it's a beautiful ride, it's a day ride. I think it's gonna make a huge difference. I wanted to say something about the cost. It's expensive. But I did show a very quick analysis about since the cost of highways was mentioned. As we just heard, the newly-relamed project that was item of the 27A was a $72 million course, three miles, it's $24 million a mile. This is about a 51, I think, $51.4 million project. It's 7.5 miles. It's about 6.7 million a mile. So it's not cheap, but to sort of compare it to sort of make it seem like somehow it's much more expensive than the highway projects, I think, well, one, it's wrong, and two, it misses the point about what this is all about. What it's about is improving infrastructure. And in this day and age, the cost of improving infrastructure and somewhat built out or even in areas where it's not very built out is very expensive. So I think it's, this is an exciting opportunity to really improve non-automobile traffic in the county. I wanna not only thank staff, but if you remember what the slide showed about where the various funding sources were, I think the Coastal Conservancy has been, Supporter Land Trust of Santa Cruz County is putting in a significant amount of money. State Parks has been incredibly helpful and as the trail goes to a good portion of their property. So this was another really collaborative effort between both public agencies and private nonprofits, as well as the public from the community that has supported it, Coastal Commission, while it was a little challenging to get their support, they also came through and determined consistency and agreed to certain compromises that they weren't 100% happy with. So I think it's really exciting that this project is ready to go once the commission approves the staff recommendation. And I wanna ask the executive director, if there's anything we as a commission can do, try to advance the funding so that it would be available in 23, 24 rather than 24, 25. We can hope that other agencies that have funding programmed in 23, 24 don't deliver is really all we can do. We've worked very closely with the federal government prior to see if this project can be advanced. It was pushed back several years because of limited funding. We've had a very close relationship with Central Federal Lands, which is a division of the Federal Highway Administration and the funder for the FLAP grant. We're first in line. So if the funding is available, we're gonna be able to go and getting the project ready, I think is really important. A lot of people don't meet their milestones. So if they don't, I think we will see this project advanced and go out to bed this year, but there's really nothing we can do to make money be available any earlier. It's gonna be a matter of circumstances and how those other projects that were programmed earlier than us either get it advanced to construction or not over the next year. Well, thank you and I hope that you will keep us informed if there is anything that we can do. Based on staff report, I would make a motion to approve the staff recommendation. I'll second that. Question by Commissioner Schifrin, seconded by Commissioner Montecino. Any further discussion? Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Chair. I wanna thank Commissioner Schifrin for bringing up the cost per mile of different projects. I would also like to remind the number of passengers the number of people who use highway one, maybe a hundred, 110,000. I don't know how many people are gonna use this trail, but it just brings up how virtually every agenda item, the specter of trail versus rail emerges, right? And I think some of the people who kind of acknowledge the idea that this, maybe it's gonna be a beautiful ride. I'm sure it will be with the ocean just sitting there. But the efficiency and the use of transportation dollars is always on the minds of, I think, a lot of people in the public. Is this the most efficient trail? Probably not. I too read the article on Lookout. I think it was Lookout that Supervisor, Michelle Rockin did, on Metro. And to me, and one of the reasons why I've always been a little bit dubious about rail is that Metro is a cautionary tale. I mean, you can talk about all the grants, all the money that we give from Measure D to Metro, I think, but was it Measure G back in whenever? It's a half cent that every person who purchases something gives. We also give 14% from Measure D, I think it may be 14%. And yet, I think at the end of that particular conversation an article, we're gonna need more funding. Okay, that was it. I was thankful that we didn't use the phrase shameful abandonment as previously had been discussed by Commissioner Rockin on certain action that the commission had taken. But I think we have to respect efficiency, the use of transportation dollars, excuse me in general. And so I'm gonna support this, but at the same time, those are voices that ultimately have to be heard because at the end of the day, it's gonna take a pretty large tax hike to fulfill all the dreams that people have for transportation in this county. Thank you, Commissioner Johnson. All right, there's no further discussion. The motion is to adopt the staff recommendation. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? The motion passes unanimously. For a move to item 29, I'm gonna just for take a short five minute stretch break and return at 1120. Thank you. I didn't get enough. It's 1123, if we could, everyone could find their way back to their seats. All right, we'll resume the regular meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission and proceed with our second and last item on the regular agenda, which is item 29, coastal rail trail segments eight and nine, Pacific Avenue and 17th Avenue environmental review for a review report on this item, Senior Transportation Planner, Grace Blakesley. Good morning again, commissioners. Now I'm here to provide you with information about the segment eight and nine coastal rail trail environmental review. This project is being delivered in partnership between the RTC, the city of Santa Cruz and the county of Santa Cruz. With us online is city of Santa Cruz Public Works Director, Nathan Nguyen, segment nine project manager at the county of Santa Cruz, Rob Tidmore and Kate Elliott, who led development of the environmental document. Again, the coastal rail trail segment eight and nine project is one of 16 segments of the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail located along the branch line. Next slide, please. Segment eight and nine is near the center of this map and it connects to segment seven phase two to the west, which is under construction and segment 10 to the east, which is under development. Next slide, please. Segment eight and nine is a 2.2 bicycle and pedestrian system extending again along the branch line corridor from Pacific Avenue in the city to 17th Avenue in the unincorporated area of the county. Segment eight is a little over half mile from Pacific Avenue to the San Lorenzo River and includes improvements to an existing class four on street bicycle system and pedestrian sidewalk. A segment nine is composed of a new multi-use bicycle and pedestrian trail alongside the existing tracks. The purple portion shown here is the portion of segment eight that was advanced and completed in 2019. It included a multi-use trail cantilevered from the San Lorenzo Trestle. There's several key destinations along the stretch of the coastal rail trail, connections to the Beach Fats neighborhood and the Beach Boardwalk, connections to the Seabright neighborhood and the harbor, and connections to the neighborhoods along 7th Avenue, Twin Lake State Beach, Simkins Swim Center and Boys and Girls Club and Future Library. Of course, access from the trail is broader when you think about the connections provided by segments north and south of the corridor, West and East. Next slide, please. Many of the trail elements already exist on segment eight, including a dedicated bikeway and bicyclists along B Street and sidewalk facilities for pedestrians. But plan improvements include high visibility striping and service improvements for bike facilities, crosswalk and areas where there's mixed zones with pedestrians and bicyclists. Also the race curb separator between the bike lane and the vehicle traveling from Pacific Avenue to 3rd Avenue is proposed to be improved. Excuse me. And also replacement of the existing rubber divider between the trail and, or the bicycway and the on-street parking is also proposed. And there's also proposed sidewalk, installation and widening. Next slide, please. This is a rendering of the coastal rail trail near Pilkington Creek, near the Seabright neighborhood on segment nine from the San Lorenzo River trestle bridge on the west end of the segment. Segment nine continues along the inland side of the tracks until just past El Dorado Avenue where it crosses to the coast side near the eastern end of the segment near the Simkin Center. In this location, a viaduct is proposed to reduce potential impacts over this riparian area. And you'll see that type of design proposed throughout the segment where the trail crosses the riparian areas and is constructed next to the existing rail line. Next slide, please. Here's a rendering of the trail in that location where it transitions from the inland side to the coast side near Simkin Swim Center and near Twin Lakes State Beach. I'm sorry, State Park. Next slide. So moving from the beautiful images to some simple text but I wanted to provide the CEQA overview because today RTC is considering the segment eight and nine environmental review. And I thought it would be helpful to remind RTC and the public about the process. CEQA in general term CEQA provides a process through which public agencies, the public and other project proponents can evaluate a project, understand the environmental impacts and then develop measures to reduce those impacts if feasible. In doing so, the CEQA process discloses potential environmental impacts of the projects and informs decision makers and the public about any potential significant and unavoidable environmental impacts. The CEQA process also provides opportunity to prevent significant impacts where feasible where you can implement mitigation measures or to avoid or minimize impacts. If the project has significant impacts it is also a tool to explain an opportunity I'd say to explain to the public the reasons why decisions are made even if significant impacts may occur. And lastly, it's important to note that environmental review of a project is not approval of the project but it must be completed prior to decision makers determining whether or not to approve a project. Next slide, please. So the segment eight and nine project analyzed under the California Environmental Quality Act where the proposed project included what's referred to as the ultimate trail configuration where the trail will be located next to the railroad track alignment and an optional first phase or interim trail where the trail would be constructed in place of the existing railroad tracks. And those are shown here. This approach to the environmental document was presented to the commission at their TPW meeting in February, 2022 and described in greater detail. The segment eight portion of the trail that we looked at on that earlier slide would be the same alignment under both the ultimate trail configuration and the optional first phase interim trail because it is composed of the class four bicycle and pedestrian network. The majority of segment nine is within the RTC owned rail line right of way and under the ultimate trail configuration as I mentioned is located primarily on the inland side of the tracks. I wanted to explain why the interim trail is an optional first phase and it's because rail ranking would allow for real reactivation of freight when desirable by a freight operator so inherently it is a temporary condition. The ultimate trail with the interim optional phase then looks at the project and its entirety as if the project was constructed in an interim condition and then later the freight was reactivated and moved to an ultimate trail. So this proposed project really evaluates the entire project and its entirety. This approach did not, this approach does require a project approval of either alignment for segment nine and does not allow for creating some port of segment nine in an interim condition and some port a part of segment nine in an ultimate condition. The EIR would need to be amended to allow such an approval to redefine the project. Next slide, please. Okay, agency roles. The city of Santa Cruz is the lead agency for segment nine, segment eight and nine. The lead agency is the public agency who has a primary responsibility for carrying out or approving the project and is responsible for certifying the environmental impact report. As the lead agency under CEQA, the city of Santa Cruz certified segments eight and nine environmental impact report following a public hearing in March, both at their planning commission meeting as well as their city council meeting. The public review period for the draft EIR was prior to that certification and occurred in fall 2022. The regional transportation commission and the county of Santa Cruz are considered responsible agencies under CEQA and responsible agencies are public agencies which propose to carry out or approve a project for which another public agency has previously prepared an environmental impact report. As the owner of the rail line right of way, RTC does have a discretionary approval of the proposed coastal rail trail segments eight and nine project. Discretionary approval would include but is not limited to entering into a cooperative agreement with the city and or county of Santa Cruz for development of segments eight and nine, approving a right of entry agreement for construction of the trail and funding allocations to the project could also be considered a discretionary action. As a responsible agency, the RTC complies with CEQA by considering the coastal rail trail segments eight and nine EIR prepared by the city of Santa Cruz and by reaching its own conclusion on whether and how to approve the project. So today that involves the RTC considering the advocacy of the environmental impact report. And because the project has significant and unavoidable impacts making the necessary findings that there are no changes or alterations that have been made to mitigate effect but that no mitigation has been identified to reduce this impact to a less than significant level. This also evolves the Regional Transportation Commission adopting a statement of overriding considerations and find and that RTC finds that specific overriding economic, legal, social, technological or other benefits of the project outweigh the significant effects on the environment. The findings of fact that I referred to in the statement of overriding considerations provided for RTC are included as attachment three exhibit A and are for the proposed project in its entirety, the ultimate trail alignment and the optional first phase. Adoption of these findings would allow the RTC to maintain flexibility to take future discretionary actions on either the ultimate trail configuration or the optional first phase interim trail. Next slide. So since I mentioned the significant and unavoidable impacts, I wanted to point out that the environmental document identifies three significant and avoidable impacts. The proposed project with or without the optional interim trail would result in unavoidable impacts to aesthetics and biological biological resources from substantial tree removal. For aesthetics, the spaces from tree removal could improve distant views of the ocean and mountains but could also degrade local views of the scenic resources, including dense trees and vegetation along the corridor. For biological resources, the tree removal could adversely affect monarch butterfly roost habitat by removing trees that serve as a wind buffer to roost sites. The trail design was modified to the extent feasible to minimize tree removal in these locations. For example, on both the east and west sides of the Santa Cruz Harbor, the trail was redesigned as a viaduct in order to be supported on piles instead of with retaining walls. Tree removal could also interfere with local wildlife movement by reducing cover and foraging opportunities for animals that use the corridor to move between open spaces such as Arana Gulch and Twin Lakes State Beach. The optional interim trail would result in additional significant and unavoidable impact which identified in the EIR because it would move the rail line which was determined as a historical resource. The segment eight and nine environmental or cultural resource analysis identified the Santa Cruz Ranch rail line as a historical resource due to the California Department of Transportation Cultural Studies Office assumption that the entire resource was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. As part of the segment 12 project, Hal Trins completed a historic American Engineering Survey documentation of the Santa Cruz Ranch Railroad that was released on April 18th, 2023. The report determined that the rail alignment is the most contributing historic element. A portion of the alignment was chose to pass near properties owned by the founder of the Santa Cruz Railroad and the unusual layout of Aptos was determined by the shape of the railroad alignment. Elements including the ballast, the rails, the embankments and wooden railroad ties could also be considered contributing elements to the historic significance but to a lesser extent. Okay, next slide please. All right, so the RTC Coastal Rail Trail Cooperative Agreement Template defines partner agency roles and responsibilities. The details of the project alignment are also documented in the project description which is an attachment to your cooperative agreement. RTC has not entered into an agreement with partner agencies for segment eight and nine to date. City of Santa Cruz completed the, yet the City of Santa Cruz completed the environmental review phase in March 2023 when it certified the final year and took related actions identifying the ultimate trail configuration as their preferred approach. The City of Santa Cruz is now advancing final design for the ultimate trail configuration and obtained over 35 million in state active transportation funds to construct segment nine, which fully funds the project when combined with Measure D, active transportation funds, CINI and County Measure D neighborhood funds based on the 2022 cost estimates. Although the City of Santa Cruz is the lead agency under CEQA and attain the majority of funding for the segment nine project, a portion of the segment nine project is located in the County of Santa Cruz unincorporated area and the City and County are currently defining roles and responsibilities for project delivery. RTC staff expects that the City and County will request a approval of a cooperative agreement that identifies the ultimate trail configuration as the project alignment. And RTC will return to the commission when the cooperative agreement is ready for your consideration. Any changes to the project description or to the project funding plan that is included in the cooperative agreement do require an amendment that comes before the Board. Okay, timeline that steps almost done here. So this, as I mentioned, the City completed the P&A AED phase in 2023 when it certified the FDR and took actions related to advancing the ultimate trail configuration. In terms of project approvals, in March the City did make a decision on the project for approvals and this next project approval would be through the RTC expected to be in fall related to the cooperative agreement. The project will continue through final design permitting and right of way and will need to seek a right of entry from the Regional Transportation Commission as part of that phase prior to construction and is scheduled for construction 2024-2025. I think actually it should be in early 2025. Sorry about that on the slide. Next slide. So today RTC staff recommends that you adopt a resolution accepting the Coastal Rail Trail Final EAR as adequate for decision making and adopt findings of facts, statement of overriding consideration and mitigation monitor and reporting program for the project in its entirety. And that concludes my staff report. Thanks for your patience while I walk through all that. Thank you, Ms. Blaisley. Are there comments or questions from commissioners? Mr. Schifrin. Yeah, thank you very much for the staff report. This is a complex project just institutionally given the number of agencies, public agencies that are involved. And while I appreciate the staff report giving sort of the overview, I think it can be confusing to people and that's why I want to ask a question just to clarify what really is before the commission today. You did include it in the staff report but then you talked about the project itself and who has to move it and all of that. The only thing that is before us today is action on the environmental impact report. Is that correct? That's correct. And that environmental impact report based on what the commission decided last year is for the two options. But all that's before us is the environmental impact report that analyze the potential impacts of those two options. What the city of Santa Cruz has done as their city council has essentially certified the EIR and approved the ultimate trail option as a project. And it's important that it just really made clear if I have it right that these are two very separate legal options. One is the environmental document, the other is the project. And we're only being asked to consider the environmental document today at some future time we'll be dealing with the projects through perhaps these cooperative agreements. The only thing before us now is really the EIR. In the EIR, the ultimate trail was the preferred alternative but there are other options. There is the other option. The other thing, and this was a learning experience for me is that the commission is not certifying the EIR. The commission isn't really approving the EIR. In the old days, every agency that had to approve a project had to do its own EIR. And so you'd have two or three EIRs for the same project and the legislature finally in their infinite wisdom decided that that was kind of stupid. So they set up this system of responsible agencies. There are one agency is the lead agency. In this case, it's the city of Santa Cruz and then any other agency, public agencies that have to approve the projects, they're responsible agencies. They need to consider is the language, the EIR and adopt findings and statements of overarching consideration if necessary, but they essentially need to accept the EIR of the lead, once the lead agency has approved it unless they have such fundamental disagreements with it that they wanna do their own EIR. So from my point of view, if the commission having looked at the EIR based on the staff recommendation of the analysis that the EIR is adequate from at least the staff recommended point of view, the appropriate action is to approve the EIR or approve the staff recommendations to accept the EIR and to approve the findings and statement of overarching consideration. Is that sort of under, is my understanding of what really being, what we're really being asked to do today. It's not to approve, it's not to certify the EIR. That's what the lead agency has done. And it's not to take an action on the project. It's just to say we've considered the EIR and we think that it's adequate under SEQA and we'll make the necessary finding that. And that's correct. And apologies if bringing in the cooperative agreement created some confusion as staff work were often asked, how is the decision going to be made? And we've tried to walk people through the different steps in the decision-making process. So the cooperative agreement would not be considered today and would be a future action by the commission. I think it's helpful to have the overview but I think it's also important so that people aren't confused about when the commission is making what decision. Thank you very much. Commissioner Schiff and Commissioner Rockin. All in up on that same question. You made a comment that certain things might trigger a necessity of an amendment to the EIR. I wanted to understand whether there's something in the cooperative agreement which were not yet worked out in their final form that would trigger that reconsideration. I mean, it doesn't seem to me that it would but I want to understand that that's the case. Sure, so for example, the project definition in the CEQA needs to be a stable and complete project definition so people understand what is being evaluated. So in this case, we looked at the ultimate trail configuration and then also an interim trail configuration. So what is not the proposed project does not include a mixing and matching of those alignments within the one segment. If that was desirable by the project sponsor and implementing agents to RTC, we would need to make an amendment to the EIR. And if I can follow up the, we don't on that little map ahead of steps. It doesn't, and we have to get the cooperative agreement done before we have construction, I would assume. And so I'm twitted mildly. And so I'm trying to, can you give us any more information about where we're at in these cooperative agreements? Are we, what is there some expected delivery date for that to kind of be completed? We'd hope to bring that to the commission in early fall. It's really dependent on conversations between the city and the county, which I know are actively underway. And those are things like maintenance. The maintenance agreement would be separate. So it's roles and responsibilities. So there's really kind of two main references in the cooperative agreement. One is the project sponsor who's responsible for delivering the project and securing the funding. And the other is the implementing agency, which can vary by different phases of the project. So I believe the nature of the discussions are primarily on who is in the implementing agency, if it's both agencies, who is the project sponsor. And the maintenance agreement would later after the cooperative agreement. And in the interest of full disclosure, are there clear battles happening about this cooperative agreement at this point that are obvious to you that we're gonna have to resolve? I don't want all of them, because there's some one or two big things that are tying this up or making this different, or that we should anticipate are gonna be difficult. Well, it's really, I don't mean to kick it over to the city and the county and raise your hand if you wanna speak up, Nathan or Rob, but I would say that thinking about delivering a project, the city delivering a project in the county jurisdiction or the county delivering a project in the city jurisdiction, there's things that need to be worked out in terms of roles and responsibilities and liability. So I think they're working through those issues as well as responsibility for any cost overruns. Well, thankfully, these agencies have been working well together on a number of different projects, so I guess we're to be optimistic at this point that we're gonna get through this, okay? Thank you. Can I take it a step back to clarify? Are we being asked to endorse an approach behind the county that only looks at the ultimate trail option in this EIR and not the interim trail option? No, the request, the recommendation of the commission is to adopt the entire project as defined in the EIR, which is the ultimate trail configuration with an optional interim phase to provide flexibility to the commission for future discretionary action. Thank you, Commissioner Quinn and Nathan Nguyen. I saw your hand raised, did you wanna respond to some of the comments or questions? Yeah, if I may, let's jump in. Nathan Nguyen, director of public works for the city of Santa Cruz. Thank you for taking the time to review the segment nine EIR today at your guys' commission. I just wanted to chime in real quick with regards to where we're at with our cooperative agreement with the county of Santa Cruz with the RTC as well. And so we are working together still in the same direction on figuring out our roles and responsibilities with regards to implementation and sponsorship of segments eight and nine. I do feel positive that we aren't gonna be getting to an agreement as Grace mentioned sometime in the next couple of months here that we can bring back to you guys in the fall by defining those roles. But we are excited and continue to work together on developing the final plans and specs, getting mitigations in place, getting permits in place. And as again, Grace mentioned, that work is gonna take us probably another 12 to 24 months working together to get those in place for a construction launch. Hopefully in early 2025. Mr. Nguyen. The comments or questions from commissioners. All right, I've got just a few questions and comments. First, I wanna appreciate the Regional Transportation Commission staff in their approach that we're being presented with here today to provide us maximum flexibility as we move forward in an uncertain environment, environment that's uncertain in terms of, and heck we haven't even done final engineering on this project. So we could see additional cost increases or other problems arise that we're not familiar with yet. And other potential legal issues that could come up. So I think really the interim trail sort of like travel insurance, right? It gives us this other option that can be considered in case we confront a problem that we just can't get around. And so I think I really appreciate that RGC staff is moving us forward in that way and that even had something to do with looking at this as a single project with an optional phase. You know, and then I wanna highlight for people that I think it's been said really with segment five before this. I mean, the reason we're building this trail, the reason we're building it is because we love nature. Our community loves nature and values being in nature. And we recognize that when people are out in nature they're happier and healthier and it's good for the planet. If you can bike or walk to where you're going instead of getting in a car or burning gas one way or another. And yet we have an environmental impact report here that says this project is going to have a huge impact on nature. I mean 400 trees roughly, 380 trees cut down for the ultimate trail. To give you a sense of how big that is that the recent number of trees that were cut down for the phase one of the highway project it was about 70, maybe 73. And so we're looking at more than five times the number of trees being cut down and right in people's backyards in mobile home parks, low income communities. This is potentially a beautiful shady place for people to walk on a hot summer day and we could be taking that away from them with the ultimate trail design. I mean just unavoidably. Also this environmental impact report talks about the impacts to monarch butterfly habitat. Herald nesting bald eagles recited down by the harbor. And this is going to have an impact on nature. And I think that the way that the report addresses the interim trail. And it does say the interim trail will have less of an impact, right? But then goes on to consider it combined with the ultimate trail in a way I think that confuses a possibility with a certainty. We say essentially, well we could build the interim trail first then we absolutely have to build the ultimate trail. And I recognize for legal reasons that we wanna maintain that option but that's not the same thing as the certainty that would have ever come to pass. I mean, in fact, it's quite the opposite, right? I mean, what is the demand for freight service in our community? We have restored seven miles of this line in South County and we have not seen our rail partner take responsibility for that segment. We have not seen any demand in North County for freight service whatsoever. And so rather than a certainty that freight service is ever gonna return, it seems like a very small chance. There's also significant risks or uncertainty that will actually ever be able to build a passenger rail project. And first of all, there's the environmental risk. As we saw with the atmospheric river storms, we could have significant flooding in South County through the sluice. We could have just continued washouts that we can't deal with. Then there's the Manresa Bluffs which potentially environmental risk but also regulatory risk is we go in front of the Coastal Commission and we've seen that in similar situations like in Southern California, the Coastal Commission has asked that the rail line be moved 100 feet inland which may or may not be possible in LaSalle at least not with a expense that's too great to handle. So, I think that by treating it as a certainty though that we would ultimately remove the interim trail it allows us to come to these perverse and frankly inaccurate a conclusion that the ultimate trail is the best environmentally. I mean, in fact, Santa Cruz City Council basically came to that conclusion. It's just not true. I mean, a basic high school understanding of statistics. I mean, probably even a child would understand that it's better to have a 100% chance of $50 than a 1% chance of $100. I mean, that's in the same way here, the interim trail cuts down 124 trees was the ultimate trail 381 trees. That's three times more trees, 256 trees. Now to go from the interim back to the ultimate you have to cut down additional 23 trees. That's basically a factor of 10 between how much you have to absolutely will cut down for the ultimate trail and how much you more you might need to cut down if you were to go back to the ultimate. Now, save you a little math here, but basically the equivalency of those 23 trees to the 256 trees is you have to have a more than a 9% chance of, or sorry. Anyway, basically you'd have to be 90% certain that we were gonna move forward with the train for it to be better to go right to the ultimate trail. Nine out of 10. I mean, who in this room would actually bet that there's a nine out of 10 chance we're gonna move forward with the train? So if it's anything less than 90% certain that we move forward with the train in the future then actually the interim trail is the environmentally preferred alternative. And it does prevent a huge number of significant impacts that are outlined in this report. So my question is, I mean, is there any reason why this report couldn't consider the like probabilities in terms of doing one thing or another? I mean, again, I understand the legal requirement to consider that we might have to go from interim back to ultimate and it's good to have that analysis. But I feel like without understanding that that's not a certainty, it's a chance the analysis really leads to inaccurate decision-making. Questions for staff. I would say for reminder as what the CEQA process is which is disclosing the potential impacts and evaluating them. So that's what the document has done. In addition to analyzing the interim trail and you pointed out there's different parts to that and you discuss the certainty of that it does identify the potential environmental impacts just of the first part one of the interim trail as a way to provide decision-makers and public with the most information possible. So that is what it's involved in the CEQA process. I think a question about certainty and equivalency that would be considered by the decision-makers when they come to make a project approval. Guy, did you wanna answer anything else to add to it? No, I actually thought that was a very excellent answer. Disclosing the impacts is what the EIR did and as a decision-making body I think you could certainly make those considerations prior to making a discretionary decision as to move forward with the cooperative agreement for one of the trail phases versus the other. Okay, thank you. I just had a couple more questions. So there was this discussion about the historic resources, right? And the fact that in our own segment 12 analysis that we're conducting turns out that really the rails themselves would probably not be considered historic even though this particular environmental impact report before us for segments eight and nine considers them historic. And I will just point out, I mean, it's this as well because it's confined to just looking at the trail segment and not the rail segment. I mean, it's a little bit strange since in reality it's the train project that would have would require the removal of the capital or trestle replacement of other trestles through historic impacts if those were to be removed. So, I mean, the question is this environmental impact report improperly claims that the ties themselves are historic and that doing the interim trail is, has a significant impact on historic resources. Does that inaccuracy in the report open us up to any kind of legal action whether the report itself or this commission? Thanks for asking that question. So the approach that was taken in this environmental document was a conservative one and that was based on the information that was available during development of the draft EIR which was prior to the analysis being complete and how it relates to the discussion in the EIR it really comes to the portion about the environmentally superior alternative which is towards the end of the document. And so it did inform what was the environmentally superior alternative that responsible or lead agencies do not need to approve the environmentally superior alternative as identified in a CEQA document. That's where a different outcome may have occurred if the historical analysis had completed prior to the development of segment eight and nine EIR. It's in the absence of that information I think it's appropriate to take a conservative approach to disclose the potential impacts to the greatest extent possible. You wanna look at the greatest potential impacts and instead of later finding out that you'll have more impacts it's better to find out you'll be able to reduce those impacts. Answer your question. Actually the report is not open to a legal challenge because of its treatment of historical resources. I think I deferred to Steve to answer the legal question. It is important to keep in mind the timing as Grace indicated of the new information regarding what was identified as part of the segment 12 analysis. And so we don't believe that the EIR as it's presented to you today is subject to a legal challenge in part because it has actually analyzed something to a greater extent. A responsible agency does have the ability to when they approve a project. So the second phase that all of you have been talking about today they have the opportunity to include things that reduce impacts even further. And that's where that discussion could come into play when the commission is ultimately making its determination as to which approach it wants to support. Thank you. All right, I'll just conclude by saying I mean the ultimate trail, we're talking about coming into the Live Oak neighborhood, my neighborhood and cutting down 380 trees. If someone was going to come to your neighborhood and cut down 380 trees, I suspect you'd be concerned as well and would want to be dang sure that they absolutely had to do it. So hope everyone can understand at least that that's where I'm coming from. Second, I think that I do have concerns that the way I think that the environmental impact report does do some basic analysis that is helpful regardless. And I appreciate it again, the overall suggested approach of staff. I'm concerned that it's construed in such a way that it considers possibility of certainty and leads to inaccurate outcomes and actually can support poor decision-making as we saw already with Santa Cruz City Council. So I think that if we consider again that we're trying to address how certain it is that we'd ever use that to rail tracks themselves, that's what we should focus on, right? And of course it's what this agency is focused on by conducting the passenger rail EIRC and addressing some of these largest risk factors in the concept report. But I think getting that information that we actually are certain we need to remove this monarch butterfly habitat, remove this bald eagle habitat, remove this shaded walkway for low-income communities. That's what we should be focused on. So thank you. Mr. Rodkin. Just to make two points. First, so people understand the reason that they had the city of Santa Cruz as a responsible agency had to look at the ultimate trail is because if you don't do that, you're involved in what's called segmenting a project. In other words, you look at some little piece of it and then later there's other things that come up. And so you're asking me where could this possibly go and give us information about what the consequence of that would be? And for that reason, even if you think the ultimate trail is a bad idea and some later point when it's gonna come to us is you're gonna support the interim trail or think that that's the way we should be going. You don't have much choice but to support the CIR. Because if you didn't do that, believe me, you would get sued over that really quickly because people would be talking about not having done an adequate study of what the potential environmental impacts of this project in some form might take eventually when you came back to it. And again, because a lot of our easement depends upon not totally removing the possibility of freight or other sort of, even if we don't think it's gonna happen and we don't have a rail banking option that's real that I'm aware of, we don't have much choice but to approve this today. Which means that the comments that you made about the trees and the butterflies and so forth, they're not inappropriate comments or concerns but they're really more appropriate discussion at the time when we're gonna decide what project to proceed with and whether the city of Santa Cruz decides they're gonna go X and then we decide we don't like it and we're the owners of the right-of-way we have some control over that. But they're not inappropriate comments but I don't think the time means right for them because we don't have a choice but to approve the CIR I think at this point if we want any kind of a trail to happen here. I will only therefore only make a very brief comment in response to the issue of trees and butterflies because I think that discussion is better held at a later time. But since you said so much about it I thought I should at least say something. And what I would say about that is the potential for a train to address the issue of climate change for a way for this county to provide affordable housing for people at the scale that it needs to do if the state's not gonna just come in here and build boxes and pose them on us. That the impacts of climate change so overwhelm ultimately what's important when it comes to the issue of the butterflies and the trees and the two bald eagles that it can't be just said well it's just obvious what the invite you know that this is just stupid because the environmental stuff is obvious you're gonna cut down trees and that's not a good idea. And so when people pose when city of Santa Cruz is facing this on other projects and other people are as well that cutting down trees is a negative environmental thing and how can you possibly do that if you believe in the environment. Sometimes one environmental issue trumps another and I'm just gonna make a brief argument that climate change is so serious and so impactful to us in so many ways that at some point you might make a decision to do something that otherwise doesn't seem like an environmentally great thing to be doing. But that's a discussion I think we, if we're gonna have it we should be having that over the, when we get to the issue of what project to finally approve rather than whether this EIR is an adequate EIR as Andy I think pointed out at the beginning of the discussion, thank you. Thank you Commissioner Rockin. Commissioner Schifrin. I'm concerned about a couple of comments that were made about the adequacy of the EIR. The one is that the interim trail should have been the preferred alternative if the EIR was done correctly and there were a bunch of inadequacies in the EIR. The city has adopted the EIR, certified the EIR it is the EIR in effect. It is if the commission majority feels that that EIR is inadequate that there should have been other conclusions the commission has the ability to reject it and do its own EIR. There's no reason why we can't do that. I don't agree that that is the case but I think it's important to know that one the commission has that option if they really want to reject the EIR because they consider the findings inadequate but I would also point out a couple of facts. One is that the interim trail requires the removal of the tracks and measured D over 70% of the voters that they don't want to remove the tracks. So doing an EIR and trying to justify a project that's going to fly in the face of what the public wants I don't think that's what this commission wants to do and I don't think it's the appropriate thing to do. It's not the appropriate thing to do around the EIR because I think the EIR is adequate in its analysis of the impacts and based on the information back with substantial evidence in the EIR it reached a proper conclusions about the preferred alternative. I think that's what we're being asked to accept today and I think we should accept it. I wanna say one final thing about trees I think it is unfortunate to cut down trees but that trail is gonna be there for a hundred years. Trees will grow back, there'll be more trees and as Mike says that you have to have a balance. Knowing that this issue is gonna come up I looked at the very fairly quickly at the draft EIR on the segment that has segment 12 state parks to Freedom Boulevard. It's gonna cut down 1100 trees. So these projects have environmental impacts and it's just a question of are the benefits that come from those projects worth having some of those impacts? And I think just as this commission is gonna find that that EIR is adequate despite the fact that it cuts down 1100 trees and I think it's important to accept yes there are some negative impacts the interim trail would have some negative impacts as well maybe not as much but they will be significant. And so and that's what the EIR found that the impacts were significant for the interim trail and in fact because of historic impacts the ultimate trail was considered the preferred alternative. So I think it's important to keep the discussion in context what's before us today is the EIR if the commission wants to find that it's inadequate or steps that it can take to do its own EIR but I think that would be a very poor decision for the commission. One question which to this point and could the commission find that we should request additional alterations to the environmental impact report at this point by the city as opposed to conducting our own environmental impact report? No that would not be an option for the commission today. Thank you. I see a hand up over here. Okay, Commissioner Johnson. Thank you chair. I guess I just wanted to question that a train or even Metro is a true remedy for climate change. I mean, it's not a panacea. The assumption that massive numbers of people are gonna use a train as passengers is fallacious much like the argument that Metro is now the total remedy for climate change. So when you take that position, it's such a monumental position that every argument that is being made by the chair for example is diminished because we have this climate change argument and a remedy that doesn't really really meet the criteria as far as facts are concerned. People here are attuned to the threat of climate change, okay? I would ask, I would bet that even 50% of people took public transportation to get this meeting today. I would argue no, I bet 10% didn't. So you're making the assumption that people use trains and Metro and so forth but the availability of convenience so often overrides the option of public transportation. I just don't want that to all of a sudden, this is a fact that climate change is going to be rectified by trains and buses. The facts pretty much say that that's not the case. Thank you, Commissioner Quinn. Commissioner Sandy Brown. I'm gonna need to hear her. We've migrated into comments. I'm gonna try to keep those brief but I wanna start out by asking a question with a comment intro. So I am a member of the Santa Cruz City Council. We unanimously did certify this environmental impact report and support the ultimate trail configuration as the project that we wanna pursue. It is the preferred alternative in this environmental document. I am not just really, really immersed in that document but I'm familiarized myself with it enough to make that vote. And so I wanted to ask and I'll say one thing about the trees. I can't help myself. I will advocate for a four to one replacement on the trees here at this body and with the city. I already have said that at the city council. I think that we do wanna take that seriously. It's a very important climate mitigation. It's a carbon sink. I'll stop with the comments. My question is the Santa Cruz City Council certified this EIR on March 30th. Has there been an appeal? I am not aware of any appeals, Nathan. Do you have any additional information? No, in the period of statutory period of limitations has closed. And the period's over. Okay, I just wanted to clarify that for everybody here as well. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Sandy Brown. Other comments or questions from the commission? Commissioner? I just wanna thank you. I just wanna confirm with staff. I think I've been on RTC for maybe two years now. And I can't say that there's been a single agenda item related to the rail trail that doesn't kind of evolve into an entire debate about every single aspect of this project from beginning to end. And so I just wanna confirm that right now, what we are asking to do is confirm that the EIR in front of us is adequate in its preparation and the information contained therein for this commission to make any future decisions on the course of the project. And that's it. Is that correct? Yes, there is a second step there, which is adopting the findings to support the findings effect for the ultimate trail and the interim optional trails. It is, I don't wanna confuse you, but I feel like it is a second step. It's in the staff recommendation that's important. But yes, it's related to the environmental review as the action before you today. Thank you. If I can add on to that too. I mean, there's been a lot of talk about two alternatives interim versus ultimate. It was not presented in the EIR as two alternatives. It was presented as one alternative. Preferred alternative in the document that was prepared by the city was to build an ultimate trail and to have an optional interim first phase. Our findings are different than that of the cities and that we are looking to adopt findings that include the ultimate trail and the interim trail as an optional first phase. And that's the difference between how we are making findings in the cities, making findings and that allows us to maintain flexibility and that the document is adequate such that we can make decisions in the future as to the best course of action. Thank you, Director Preston. Yes, Commissioner Hernandez. So does that mean that we're gonna go through entire process going with the, with the optional, I guess, trail as opposed to the ultimate option? Yeah, because it, you know, I was thinking maybe that there'd be certain segments that it would make sense to look at the optional but not going through the whole process, going through the whole process, looking at the lens of the optional. Like only certain segments that we look at. So, you know, let me ask a little clarification with respect to that because this is a 32 mile long rail line. They were talking about just segments eight and nine, not the entire rail line. So they're gonna be separate environmental documents for the rest of the corridor. Right now, segments 10 and 11 are under environmental review by the county. They're considering both the optional interim first phase and the ultimate trail. Segment 12 project as part of the Highway 1 EIR, which has just been released is also doing the same thing. We have not started the environmental document for the rest of the segments on the rail line at this point. So with respect to that, yes, but with respect to this individual section, the way the EIR was prepared, it's pretty much one or the other. We have the flexibility with our future actions with the findings that we propose that you make today will allow you to choose one or the other and then we would have that discussion when the cooperative agreement is brought forward. Hope that answers your question. I'll follow up. I guess I used segment and that was the wrong word. Yeah, yeah, okay. Thank you, Commissioner Hernandez. All right, so no other comments or questions from commissioners? We'll open it to public comment. Hi, Brian from Trail Now. Thank you, Commissioner Koenig and Commissioner Johnson on your statements. Clarification, I appreciate that. Understand what the vote is here. So let me just give some background on the city vote. So when the city of Santa Cruz voted, city staff told them they had to vote for the ultimate trail because the grant required it, they couldn't change it. It's on the vote. Actually, one of the commissioners said that when she voted, I have to vote for this. I don't have an option. That was stated. So we contacted the CTC, the California Transportation Commission to clarify about the grant. Can it go towards the interim? They said, absolutely. They actually liked it because it was gonna save them a lot of money. And they actually said, well, that's the common process done across the United States is to do an interim trail where you rail bank it, you pull the rails up. That is the common process. So what we're doing now in segment nine, Andy, you commented about the cost. Well, the cost estimate is 30 million a mile. That is more than the highway. That's an estimate today. We're gonna see by the time they do construction, it's gonna go through the roof. One of the things that's not really highlighted here is the same thing we're gonna see with Palm Street. Remember how we have that railroad track that prevents the disabled and the physically challenged? It's going to occur. When you build a trail next to the tracks and you continue to do that, you're gonna have those barriers from those people who can't get over that. Do we really wanna create that? And that's what's gonna happen. And then finally, we really need to step back and understand are we going to be able to have a train that goes on the coastline? And honestly, when you put in fencing that blocks beach access, when the trail or the rail corridor goes 20 feet from the ocean, Mr. Pupils, doesn't work. Thank you. Anyone else here in chambers? Hi, Sally Arnold, friends of the rail and trail. So just to get back to the focus here, I encourage you to accept the EIR. We've looked carefully at it. There is substantial evidence that it's adequate. And it did find that the ultimate trail option is environmentally superior and therefore the preferred option since it had a much lower environmental impact than the interim trail option. Because the interim trail, this was alluded to in some comments, but you have to go through the hell of rail banking, which is not gonna happen. Then you have to tear up the tracks. Then you have to build a trail. Then you tear up that trail. Then you put the tracks back. Then you build another trail. By phases of construction, how could that possibly be less environmentally impactful than one phase? And in terms of the comments about like, oh, well, people will do what's convenient when they're for transportation. That is exactly right, which is why we need convenient transportation, public transportation, and which is why 74% of the county wants to see convenient public transportation. So I don't think that, I think that we can expect that our elected officials are going to do what their constituents want and that we will see transit on the tracks. And therefore going through five phases of construction and destruction don't make any sense, the EIR showed that. And that's why it's really appropriate for you to accept the EIR today. And you can find about what project you want on another day. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Arnold. All right, so anyone else here in chambers, we'll take it to online comments, starting with Ryan Sarnitaro. Yes, I think that the presentation as well as the EIR reflects a bias on the part of staff or even a blindness to the downsides of doing the ultimate trail immediately. And for instance, raising the ties to the level of a historical resource while ignoring the fact that a fence is going to be blocking access across those tracks throughout the entire length of it with a few exceptions. I mean, to me that's just not the way to do the presentation here. In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, who's talking about the amount of GHGs from the extra cement that has to go in for all the retaining walls and how much earth has to be moved, how much GHG benefit there is from leaving the trees in place rather than taking them down now and possibly only possibly cutting them down in some long-term future for the ultimate. The idea that trees grow back when the ground that the trees are on is now turned into cement or whatever it's turned into for the trail surface. The idea that 70% of the voters in this county would actually agree that this is the thing to do in that segment I think is an extrapolation that's essentially irrational. That's not what people who really care about the environment and care about greenhouse gases look at how much opposition there was to taking down 12 trees in the parking lot in the city over the farmer's market library issue. And I do wanna thank Manu for the context. The idea that you wanna look at this in terms of the odds, what's the percentage chance that the actual train with this lack of delivery of public service is going to be funded? And if that's really such a long tail event, the massive destruction that's proposed now and the destruction that you see on section seven B where now the sewage treatment plan is exposed as fumes in the neighborhood, there's noise. I'm sorry, but there's something else that needs to happen here. Ian Brocklebank and Michael Lewis. Hi, commissioners. Thank you, especially to Commissioner Koenig for really speaking about the real environmental impacts of segment nine. I appreciate that. It is scientifically not true that climate change overwhelms wildlife habitat destruction. For millennia, for thousands of thousands and thousands of years, wildlife has adapted to climate change, but they need to have habitat to live in while they're adapting. It's not also not true that 70% of voters did not say they didn't want the tracks removed for an interim trail. They were confused. They thought an interim trail meant they could never have a train. The trees will not come back in the rail corridor and the lead agency even says that they don't know where they're going to plant replacement trees. So that's absurd also. Today, I understood before I came to this meeting that the RTC resolution is to accept the EIR as a decision-making document. And part of that decision-making will belong to the RTC and it will be during the in cooperative agreement portion, the RTC can say, you know, we've decided we want to go with the optional first phase. And that's what we're going to make our cooperative agreement with you. So accepting this EIR does not endorse it. It does not approve it. It doesn't give it the high five. It just says, okay, we've got the document and now we the RTC can, because we're a responsible agency can also do some decision-making here. And the last thing is that the second part of the resolution, it changed from accept to approve the findings. And as I wrote to commissioners earlier, words have meaning, except means consent to receive. Thank you, Ms. Brocklban. Okay, I got close enough. Next up, David loves car free nature. Good afternoon. Can you hear me okay? Hi, this is David Van Brink in Santa Cruz. Sorry, I couldn't make it today to a beautiful downtown Capitola. So despite Koenig's claim that a hypothetical school child is smarter than the Santa Cruz city council and his rather speculative monologue on math and statistics, as a commissioners Schifrin, Rotkin and Brown point out that's basically irrelevant for today. Please approve the staff recommendation. We're all excited to get started here. It's going to be a lovely trail ultimately. Thanks for all the great work. Thank you, Mr. Van Brink. Joanna Lighthill. Thank you commissioners for considering my comments. I want to point out quickly that the slideshow showing earlier today is showing the ultimate trail. It looks like there may have been an error describing the trail width. The slideshow trail is 10 to 12 feet with shoulders, but the actual width is eight feet, excuse me, eight feet with a two foot shoulder. Anyway, about the EIR, just despite its length, I wanted to point out that something really big was missing and that's a reference to freight train. As you know, ours is considered as an active rail line. The RTC is currently in contract with the rail operator. The rail operator owns a freight easement 10 feet from the center of the tracks and the trail as proposed would be built to overlap to be within this freight easement. Yet the EIR does not address any potential conflicts between trail users and the railroad. The master plan did, it was impact T4 and I hope that the RTC will acknowledge this as an important consideration. That being said, I hope that you can clarify what you're voting for today. The agenda asks you to accept the EIR as adequate for decision-making and adoption of these findings would allow the RTC to maintain flexibility to take discretionary action. In your packet, however, today you'll see that by accepting the EIR and adopting the findings means that, quote, in the RTC's judgment, the benefits of the project as approved outweigh its unavoidable significant effects. Any one of these reasons is sufficient to justify approval of the project. Thus, even if a court were to conclude that not every reason is supported by substantial evidence, RTC would stand by its determination that each individual reason is sufficient, end quote. It appears that by accepting and adopting it today, you're telling your community that you've determined that the benefits of the ultimate trail justify the removal of more than half of all the trees in the corridor. That does sound like a commitment to me. So thank you for your consideration. And your important decisions. Thank you. Thank you. David Dean. Yes, thank you for your time. I would like to urge the RTC to move swiftly in accepting this environmental review and proceeding to build the rail and trail. I would like to make it known that yes, indeed, voters do care about this do oppose removing the rail. And if we, in fact, do want to move swiftly, this interim trail nonsense just makes things worse. It slows everything down. The estimates in the agenda packet show that the ultimate rail would begin, the ultimate trail would begin construction in about two years. But the interim would be put off to about four years. This isn't what the people want. They want a trail now as soon as possible. So please move swiftly and accept this report and get on with building the rail trail. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dean. All right, seeing, okay, equity transit. Hi, thank you, chair and commission. Equity transit. This is Lonnie Faulkner on behalf of equity transit or just support of this segment eight and nine EIR on behalf of countless community members that are looking forward to equal access to the beautiful Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail. People in our community who are people with disabilities are elderly that finally will have access to an ADA compliant trail of this magnitude is truly a great step for our community. So let's move forward quickly with that. Our voters voted in the majority, many whom in this community are well versed in science such as myself as a scientist in the mitigation of the removal of trees and understand the huge environmental benefit to a future possibility with rail because of the incredible large carbon reduction that we'll have with the numerous people who are very excited about the possibility of rail. So we need to keep that. Also want to point out at a recent meeting with the department of transportation and the CTC, their maps show and they're very excited to show that within 10 years we can have rail in this community if we have the leadership that stands behind that and supports the voters in terms of the majority voters of what we want in this community. And I also want to point out in terms of scientists our Sierra Club, SCCAN, that Santa Cruz Climate Action Network, Land Trust, Santa Cruz County and many other environmental organizations and environmental scientists stand behind this program, this EIR and a future with rail. Ironically, I want to point out that the proposed Greenway Trail which some of the people that are opposing the ultimate trail right now are Greenway supporters actually supported a 26 foot wide trail which would be much more destructive. So let's move forward with the ultimate trail and approve the EIR. Thank you so much. Ms. Faulkner, I see no further hands online or folks in the audience. I'm sorry, if you scroll down, maybe there's, I believe that there is one additional public comment because Jean Brocklebank and Michael Lewis share a line. Go ahead, Michael. Thank you. Can you hear me now? Yeah. I'm concerned about the comments that we just heard from Johanna Lighthill about the results of an approval of the EIR and adoption of the findings. I hope Grace can look this up real quickly and find out if that's really true, that if you accept the EIR and adopt the statement of overriding considerations that you're committing your decision to the ultimate trail only and not including the optional first phase. And if that's true, vote no. And if that is true, then I ask that you vote no on that and not tie yourself to that one particular outcome. Thank you. Thank you. All right, last speaker is Sean. Very good, sweetheart. Thank you. Hi. The former Greenway Executive Director on the commission does not have the chops to say what is correct and what is not correct in this report. And language does matter. There are people on the commission and there are alternates who will take some of this information, use the same information online and when they have meetings elsewhere. When they are misrepresenting, misquoting, it's the responsibility of the commission to correct that language while we're talking about it. And as far as the trees, do you really want how much fire prone eucalyptus and rat loving IV and other invasions do you want? A native forest is a healthy forest. UC is not working, UC is working with the Almamutsan Tribal Band to have a more natural managed land. We've heard a lot in the last few years about how management and native plant life is healthier, prevents fire and that is what's better for our butterflies, for our birds and for all the wildlife is for us to have native trees. And if anyone hasn't noticed, we live surrounded by forests. This is going through the city and as far as accessibility goes, those trees will be pulled for accessibility. The disability community needs people movers. We can't rely on the bus because increase in funding has been redirected by roads, redirected roads by the RTC. Those wheels are our legs for some of us and an open pathway, that's not enough. We have temperature sensitive conditions. Thank you. All right, seeing no further comments online or here in chambers, I'll return it to the commission for action. Mission Rodkin. I'll move the staff recommendation, including the findings. I'll only make one brief comment. I'm not sure the last speaker really wants what he asked for, which is for the commission to correct all the misinformation the public gives us in their comments. Thank you. Second. It does not. The commission retains the authority to make the determination. This resolution that is before the commission today preserves the opportunity for the commission to be able to make either choice at the time that it makes its determination. Sorry, just to clarify, the commission was by Commissioner Rodkin. I heard the first second by Commissioner Hernandez. The discussion, Commissioner Johnson. Thank you, Chair. I may be in the state of confusion. I'm not really sure, but this is confusing to me a little bit. I usually default to know when I'm unsure. That said, it's not my intention to oppose the authority and self-determination of a city like Santa Cruz because I fully respect that. But on the other hand, I'm not so sure that a decision may notwithstanding the assurances that this doesn't bind us in any way for future considerations. I'm not so sure that it doesn't lead us to some sort of road that we may not want to follow. So I'm gonna respectfully vote no on this, but again, it's not my intention to kind of disrespect the intentions and the actions of the city of Santa Cruz. It's just that I'm unsure. Thank you, Commissioner Johnson. Any other discussion? Sure. Mr. Nguyen. Hi, yes, if I may. You know, the item before you guys this afternoon is really to certify the EIR in its completeness that it's a robust environmental document that has taken into account both the ultimate trail as well as the interim trail to equal level of detail. So that's kind of the first action that Grace mentioned earlier. The second action is with regards to the findings of fact and statement of overriding considerations. Now, while the city of Santa Cruz has chosen to pursue the ultimate trail as stated in our statement of overriding considerations and findings of fact, the RTC staff has allowed you the commission more flexibility by including the interim trail as a part of that proposed project. And so today's action isn't necessarily choosing one interim or ultimate. It's really getting through the environmental phase saying that the analysis that was performed is robust and complete and that at a later subsequent date as the county and city and RTC continue to work together on a cooperative agreement that that will come back at a subsequent date. Since I don't, I'm hoping that with that today's action isn't necessarily pinning the commission down with one trail or the other. It's really more of a decision for clearing the environmental document and moving the project forward towards environmental or towards mitigations and permitting. Thank you, Mr. Wernher. Mr. Hernandez. I just wanted to say, you know, I'm supportive of staff recommendation to understand the comments made by Nathan. I have to say I am also, you know, a little uneasy like Commissioner Johnson having both options on there, but it gives me peace of mind knowing that it's found that the ultimate trail option is found to be more environmentally superior and that the city of Santa Cruz also voted on it. And so, you know, everyone knows me, right? I'm for the ultimate trail option and I'm against any rail banking. I think it's bad policy, but you know, I'm willing to support this. And I think that despite that language having the other option, I'm supportive of this. And I know what the vote is about the FEIR, so I'm supportive of it. Thank you, Commissioner Hernandez. All right, so no other comments. I'll just add that, you know, again, I appreciate that the decision before us does retain flexibility for this commission and does not identify a preferred alternative one way or another. I think one area that I'm concerned with is that the environment, and I don't really want to undertake another environmental impact report that's completely separate to this. I think that would take time and money. And I think that most of the critical elements are in the city's environmental impact report. However, as I said, I think the key question here is whether FEIR we have before us is adequate for decision making. And we've heard throughout this debate, several folks, including just here, Commissioner Hernandez, point to the fact that the ultimate trail is this environmentally superior alternative. And in my view, it depends. It depends on how certain we are that we're gonna build passenger rail or that freight rail will return. And so I'd be willing to support the staff recommendation or the motion if there was with the friendly amendment recognizing that the environmentally superior alternative depends on the likelihood that passenger rail or freight rail will return to this part of the tracks. Okay. I don't need to be personal in any way. It's just the language that we use. It's not one that would be adopted automatically. Can I ask for clarification, what you're saying is? No, I'm not suggesting that we select a preferred alternative. But the EIR is based on the assumption that the train is gonna come back. I'd simply think that we need some recognition that there's a chance, that the environmental superior alternative ultimately depends on whether or not the train comes back. But that's not what the EIR looked at. But it didn't. We did not assume that the train was gonna come back. Didn't, and that's what I think the staff was saying at some point, if the commission wanted, or if the lead agency wanted an EIR that just sort of had three options. One, the ultimate. One, the interim with an ultimate. And one for the interim only, that would be a different EIR. But can't really, you know, but since the EIR was based on the fact that the assumption that the rails would ultimately come back, that's what the EIR is based on. So, you know, to the extent that you wanna make clear that that's what the EIR is based on, I mean, it says so in the EIR. But to say that that may be wrong is sort of undermining what this EIR did. The EIR was done this way because that's what the commission wanted. And this was voted on by the commission to be wrong. But I think unanimously that there'd be two options that would be looked at, which is unusual under CEQA at the same level. One would be the ultimate. One would be an interim with the understanding of the ultimate. Understand that that's not really what it was like. But that's what the EIR is. And if you wanna add another approach, we have to redo the whole EIR to put that in. If you want another option. And, you know, silly I'll say that train has left the station. So I don't know whether it really makes sense to try to do that at this stage. And certainly that would not be a mission in the position of saying, we need a new EIR. You see what I'm, I understand. I just wanted to offer that. I mentioned earlier that in the analysis completed for the document, as Commissioner Schifrin pointed out, it was an equal level of detail for both the ultimate interim. And then also for the interim, it broke down the project into the three parts. And so the part one, and there is a discussion in the alternatives analysis that talks about part one and that it being the environmentalist would have been the environmentally superior alternative if it is the only piece of the interim trail that's implemented. Kate, are you still here? Is that correct? I think I have that correct. I'm our environmental consultant. I'm not sure she's still online, but. Hi, I guess it is. You're correct. We acknowledge that discussion for information purposes in the environmentally superior alternative section of chapter five alternatives. But it doesn't change the findings around the environmental superior if it does provide disclosed that information to decision makers and members of the public. Correct. I'll call the question. That's a big issue. We're going to compete this horse to death going back and forth. We're not going to get anywhere. The questions, you know, it's been, you know, moved in second and moved to a vote. We have to vote then if you want to call the question. Yeah, we'd have to vote to vote. I mean, I just, I think we are almost done. I mean, all I'm asking for is that we have, I'm not asking for a new EIR. I'm just saying that this commission do something to recognize that ultimately converting the interim trail back to the ultimate trail is not a certainty. And that we're going, that's precisely why we're continuing to study with the, moving forward with the passenger rail EIR to understand the feasibility of that. It has nothing to do with the CIR. I mean, you may be right and I would agree passenger rail is not a certainty, but how is that relevant to the matter before us? The matter before us is, is the CIR, are we willing to accept the CIR as adequate? You know, I think. Well, no, it's under further clarification that will ultimately lead to how people use this environmental impact report for decision-making. We have heard this environmental impact report misinterpreted multiple times. And I simply think that if we're gonna deem it adequate for decision-making, we should simply acknowledge that that conversion is a possibility, not a certainty. If no one is willing to make the amendment, fine. I'll call the question. I'm gonna put it out there. There's no further. This is a vote for SLAM done for the ultimate trail I voted against it, but this has been stated time and again, this retains flexibility and we're talking about a segment here. So I'm gonna vote for it. All right, there's no further discussion. Commissioner Quinn. Maybe it may be too late, but I do prefer Commissioner Koenig's amendment that specifies that the ultimate trail is more environmentally friendly if and only if you do the interim trail first. And if you stop at the interim trail, it is indeed more environmentally friendly. And that's been called out, but I absolutely see that this will be used in the future to say even the EIR shows that the ultimate trail is more environmentally friendly than the interim. Yep, do you wanna move that as an amendment? Yes. Okay, I'll second. I'll remove my second. I mean, after all, it would take more than two votes to pass an amendment. If anyone else wants to second the amendment. All right, seeing none, we'll call the main question, which is to adopt the staff recommendation. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? No. Three noes. So that motion passed, any abstentions? Seeing none, that motion passes with three abstentions by Quinn Johnson and Koenig. All right, then that completes our open meeting. We'll now move into closed session. Council, do we have any reportable actions coming out of closed session today? We are not anticipating any reportable actions. We do have the two closed sessions that we would convene into. All right, we're going to be taking closed session in this room. So I'd ask at this point, all members of the public to please leave the chambers. And...