 All right, it is 901 Thursday, April 21st, 2022. And I will call to order the meeting of the Transportation Policy Workshop for the Santa Cruz County Racial Transportation Commission. Burke, if you could please call the roll. Commissioner Bertrand. Present. Commissioner Sandy Brown. Here. Commissioner Johnson is not here just yet. Commissioner Alternate Little Hearst. Right here. Commissioner Caput. Commissioner Alternative Friend. Here. Commissioner Alternate Quinn. Here. Commissioner Koenig. Here. Commissioner Alternate Jenny Johnson. Here. Commissioner Kirsten Brown. Present. Commissioner Alternate Pigler. Here. And Commissioner Rockin. Here. and you have that form. Thank you. Proceed to item two, 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 communications but in compliance with state law, it may not take action on items that are not on the agenda. Speakers are requested to state their name clearly so that it can be accurately recorded in the minutes of the meeting. And members of the public will have two minutes for public comment. We'll begin with Barry Scott. Thank you very much, commissioners. And I want to thank the commission and the county and the consultants for providing, I'm losing track of workshops. Public open houses and I'm really grateful for them. There have been segments eight, nine and 10, 11 and the Bicycle Advisory Committee and the open house at Live Oak Elementary. And I really appreciate those. I have one observation that could be, you know, addressed by the county and the RTC cooperating together. So possibly you adopt some language that's consistent with the past and to provide the tables of costs for the various projects. To provide a table that clearly shows that there are only two options, two directions, which is the plan of record Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail and the phased approach that involves, that would require rail banking and involves interim trail designs. I think I wouldn't be surprised if commissioners are confused. I know the public is confused because they don't know what, that it's really two options, not, oh, we could do the interim trail and never do anything else. So I hope that some discussion will be had around a clearer presentation of the options. And I thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Are there any other members of the public that would like to grant the commission? Seeing none. Oh, there's a breath of fresh air. Thank you. Oh, we're turning to the commission and move on to item three, additions or deletions to consent or regular agendas. Sure. There are no changes for additions to the agenda. All right, thank you. We have nothing on our consent agenda today, so we'll move to, can we start rocking? No. Oh, okay. Sorry. I'll move to the regular agenda, item four, transportation funding overview, representation, we have transportation planner, Rachel Mora-Coney. Good morning commissioners. Rachel Mora-Coney of your staff. As requested at a prior commission meeting, today we were gonna give you a little refresher for some of you and possibly a lot of new information to others regarding transportation funding. And I'm gonna share some slides and hopefully not get too far into the weeds of acronyms. Let's see if this works. Are you guys seeing something that says transportation funding 101? Are you also seeing Zoom pictures of yourselves? We are. No. Oh, you are. Tonya, okay, how about now? Can you see yourselves? All right, great. Well, so transportation funding, it's a fun mix of complicated roles sometimes, changing circumstances whereby we think a certain funding source is gonna keep coming through and then legislative actions happen and things change or there's an economic downturn or new guidelines are coming out from the state or the feds. And it can be a bit of a roller coaster. There's a lot of different funding sources with lots of different acronyms and I'm hopefully gonna make it a little simpler to understand today. So as I mentioned earlier, transportation funding in California essentially is triggered through legislative actions which include actions either at the ballot box by voters or by city councils, state legislators, Congress, the governor and other legislative bodies like this one which established taxes and fees which then turn into funding programs and get combined into certain funding sources. The majority of transportation revenues that are utilized in Santa Cruz County come from fuel taxes and sales taxes and as those revenues are collected, agencies who are in charge of the different programs set rules and priorities, sometimes called program guidelines for the different funding sources and then project sponsors identify priorities and secure the funds and then finally get to implement their projects and submit invoices and get audited and then legislative bodies look at how it went and sometimes change the rules for the next cycle. In Santa Cruz County, local funds similar to other areas of the state make up the majority of funding available for transportation projects. Federal and state funds do vary from year to year depending on and their percentage changes depending on how many competitive grants might be secured but generally local funds do make up the majority of our transportation dollars. So just going a little bit deeper into all the different places that transportation funding comes from. It's truck weight fees, fuel taxes, both sales and per gallon, sales taxes like measure D and measure H in the city of Santa Cruz, legislative actions. For instance, the governor has proposed as part of the fiscal year budget to add some one-time infusion of funding for active transportation, transit and some other programs. And then there's fees at airports and DMV fees and a little bit of those DMV fees come through the commission, through the safe and freeway service patrol program and other funds go to transit and active transportation programs. And then the state also has a cap and trade program whereby pollution credits go into a plot of funds that the Air Resources Board helps direct and in our county those funds come to us in the form of low carbon transit operations program but there's also funding for transit programs that come out of that and a lot of funds that go to local agencies for non-transportation purposes as well. So as I said at the beginning, one of the challenges with transportation funding is it's not always predictable how much money there is gonna be but one thing that's definitely changed and we do see this happening is that well demands on the transportation system whether it's how many miles people are driving or how much transit or bicycle and pedestrian facilities we'd like to construct and services provide have not kept are not in line with how much gasoline per gallon is collected at the gas pumps which results in our funding going one direction while our needs going the opposite. I wanted to just share this slide also because before SB1 was passed by the legislature state legislature in 2017 the state gas tax had not been raised since the early 1990s and similarly the federal gas tax still has not been raised and when we add in inflation to that it just shows how much less we were able to do with those existing revenues. As a result, the California Transportation Commission has a road charge user task force that is looking at different options to replace the gas tax especially as vehicles become more efficient. SB1 did make some adjustments so that the gas tax was indexed but it did not actually add a huge influx of new money although it was very important. The result of these ups and downs of and dropping revenues are kind of demonstrated in the STIP program. I think this is a good example where you should say what STIP is. Sure, so the state transportation improvement program is a state program made up primarily of state and federal gas taxes and it was first established in 1998 under Senate Bill 45 which then took some of the decision making power away from the state and returned it to the regions to determine what are our highest priorities for these funding programs. And when it first started there were some pretty good amounts of both state and federal funds in the program. And then in the early 2000s it dropped significantly in 2004 and there was almost no money available to program to new projects. But then the state approved proposition 1B bonds and so there was a small influx of funding into the STIP. But then some of the rules changed and funds that used to go into the STIP like the public transportation account funds and the transportation enhancement funds that used to go into the STIP went to different programs instead the state transit assistance program and the active transportation program instead. And then we had a significant drop in gas prices and there was also a gas tax swap that happened at one point. And so all of this just resulted in this are we gonna have funds to program for major projects? No, we're not. And in 2016 it hit the negatives and the CTC had deprogrammed $750 million worth of projects because gas prices had dropped and as a result the revenues available for the STIP through the excise tax had dropped as well. And that was kind of a wake up call. And so in 2017 the legislature approved Senate bill one which brought funding back up and the CTC front loaded some of those revenues to the first year so we could program a lot of projects in the early years. Now the regional transportation commission just programmed the most recent cycle of STIP funds this past December and it was about $4 million available in STIP funds. So as I mentioned before some of the game changers were in 2016 absolutely local voters approving a sales tax here locally measured D that have sent sales tax that's available for 30 years. And the first by it was first collected exactly five years ago this month. So array anniversary date for some of those great revenues. And then as I mentioned before the state legislature approved Senate bill one and then last fall Congress finally approved reauthorization of the five year transportation federal transportation act called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which included funds not just for transportation but also for water and other infrastructure projects the funds that we deal with are focused on the transportation components of that bill. All of the different funding sources that we regularly receive are listed in our regional transportation plan or the RTP. There's over 50 funding sources that are anticipated to be reasonably available through 2045 that are listed in there. We show local funds that you know some of the specific sources that are utilized for transportation projects by cities in the county as well as by Metro and Lyft line some of the transportation partner agencies that provide transit assistance and transportation demand management programs and education programs for schools are also included in there. And then all the different state funding sources and federal funding sources are also shown in there that we think are reasonable to expect over the next 25 years. Most of those funds out of those 50 plus funding sources about 80% of them are really heavily restricted and they can only be used on certain modes or by certain agencies. So for instance, the city of Santa Cruz is measure H funds. Well, they can work out whatever agreements they want those funds can't be redirected by the regional transportation commission or the county to projects in Watsonville for instance. Airport fees, you know, stay on airports. There's a lot of funding sources through the federal transit administration as well as the local half cent for transit that can only of course be used on transit. And then there's a significant portion of state and federal funds are designated for the state highway operations and protection program, the shop which can only be used on the state highway system. So there's all this money in total in the regional transportation plan. Projected funds are about $5 billion or about $200 million a year for transportation projects. But the regional transportation plan also identifies almost $10 billion worth of needs to operate, maintain and improve our transportation system. So agencies have to make decisions on which projects they're actually gonna pursue funding for and program or budget funds for. So for local jurisdictions, it's all the local street and road funds that they received by formula or their local general funds, those decisions are made by cities and the county. Local transit funds are determined based on Metro and RTC board decisions, state highway operations protection program funds, Caltrans in the California Transportation Commissioner and the CTC make decisions on those. And then for measure D, the legislation essentially that clarifies how those funds are gonna be spent is the ordinance that was approved by voters in 2016, which included an expenditure plan outlining a formula distribution of those funds to specific projects. But then once recipient agencies receive those funds, they prepare five year plans which their boards review during public meetings and the public has opportunities to provide and put on. And then for the new infrastructure, federal infrastructure bill, the IAJA formula funds, Caltrans is still in the California state transportation agency are working with partner agencies to look at exactly how they're gonna split out some of those funds that are, have a little more discretion in California for the highway funds. Traditionally, those have been split 60% of funds going to are considered state programs and 40% going to local programs or programs like the highway safety improvement program or the active transportation program. So those are still to be determined Caltrans anticipates coming forward with more concrete recommendations in time for the final state budget in May. So moving on with more on who decides how funds are used for competitive grants, it really depends on the funding source. Sometimes it's Caltrans, sometimes it's the California Transportation Commission for federal discretionary programs. It's folks out typically in Washington DC looking at some of those big grants. Now, for all those different funding sources and about $200 million a year, the Regional Transportation Commission has discretion on about 4% of the funds are about $8 million per year and most of those come from the STIP as I mentioned before and then the Regional Surface Transportation Program block grant and some are flexible transit funds that the RTC has discretion over how to utilize those. So when it comes to taking all that money and actually funding projects, as I mentioned before, the amount of funding available is about half of what's needed. So project sponsors look at what their own goals are as well as the state and federal goals for the transportation system in general and sometimes for specific funding programs. We identify needs that includes through the Regional Transportation Plan. Cities and counties have a pavement management system, general plans, special plans like active transportation plans, the Highway 9, San Lorenzo Valley Complete Streets Program, the Caltrans Asset Management Plan, all of those plans help identify the needs and then we look at what the different possible funding sources are to utilize to meet those needs. And in doing that, we're also looking at what's prioritized in those planning efforts and the community consensus and support is definitely part of the mix there and the public has been usually involved in that earlier step to identify needs for the transportation system. And then folks can secure funds and start implementing their projects. So when agencies are applying for grants, they have a pretty long needs list or wish list of projects and they'll look closer at what the specific performance of metrics or evaluation criteria are for a specific grant program, see which of their projects might fit well into that criteria, whether it's got a focus on safety or fixing it first or filling gaps in the bicycle and pedestrian network, reducing congestion. And then they need to ensure that their project scope is competitive and will align with the criteria for that program. Project readiness is also really important. A lot of these grant programs have strict use it or lose it by a certain deadline requirements and they'll oftentimes when deciding between two projects that might be on the cusp of being awarded to award the funds to the project that can be implemented more quickly. So it's usually very important to have an environmental review done or at least well along the way and the project shovel ready, and thereby some fewer delivery risks to meeting those deadlines. And then we also consider project sponsors in general, the RTC cities, County Metro, CalTrans even, what the total cost of the project is and especially what that is in comparison to the overall funding program. So for instance, the active transportation program has about $250 million a year in funding. And so an agency is probably not gonna put forward a project that would eat up 100% of the statewide competitive funding amounts and look at scaling their project to something that seemed like it might be more competitive for those funds. And then as far as competitiveness, we also, preparing some of these applications and cost a lot of money on average in the state, preparing an active transportation program grant application tends to cost between $20,000 and $50,000 per agency for larger projects. For the Senate Bill 1 programs, it can be as high as $350,000 to $500,000. I mean, thousands of hours can go into preparing these applications during the benefit cost analysis, et cetera. So agencies will also look at, what percentage of the applications actually get funded? If it's only 5% of the funds, can we really realistically compete for those funds? And is it worth investing that the staff time and public resources into preparing that application? That's something that comes into consideration. Unfortunately for our County, especially for some of the smaller jurisdictions, it's resulted in some of them not even applying for active transportation program grants because they know that they can't meet some of the criteria and that program is so oversubscribed that you can only afford to lose 10 points on that application and still get funded. And sometimes it's even less than that. So some agencies realize that and just step away, which is, it's unfortunate. And, but that is the reality of how some of the decisions on which projects to submit application for end up being. So I was just gonna provide a little bit, I'm not gonna read through all these slides, but for all of the different modes and elements of our transportation system, there's different funding sources, the state, federal and local that are typically utilized to address those. The biggest one for local streets and roads are the state gas taxes that are distributed by formulas to cities and counties in the state. They're also called the highway user transportation account and the RMRA, which is the road maintenance and rehabilitation account funds from Senate bill one. This is testing my own acronym abilities. And then we also have, of course, measure D, about 28% of measure D revenues go to cities in the county by formula for whatever purposes they determine our priorities that are consistent with the expenditure plan approved by voters. And then of course there's local funds and then there's those special grants. And as I mentioned earlier, cities and counties decide which specific projects they're gonna implement and pursue grant funds for. For bicycle and pedestrian projects, there's also a mix of funding sources. Some of these are a little more flexible and not specifically dedicated to bike and pedestrian projects. But as I mentioned before, the biggest one in California is the active transportation program. And that resulted from combining what used to be go into a bicycle transportation account, say for us to schools grants and then the federal transportation enhancement programs. And so the California Transportation Commission and the legislature grouped those funding sources together and created this mega active transportation program. There's also occasionally some state parks bonds and water bonds like Prop 68. There's the Highway Safety Improvement Program which is a safety grant that primarily comes from the federal legislation. And then there's RTC discretionary funds and active transportation projects are also eligible for the California Transportation Commission solutions for congested corridors and local partnership program grants. And then with the new federal bill, there's two new bike ped programs. That's the Safe Streets and Roads for All Program and the Reconnecting Communities Program. And then on the California side, kind of a companion to that reconnecting communities grant program, the governor's proposed a highways to Boulevard program. I won't be surprised if these three programs if they depend on how they are in California end up getting combined into the active transportation program but that is still under discussion. One local bike and ped project that we seem to focus on a lot is the Monterey Base Sanctuary Scenic Trail Coastal Rail Trail project. And just as a quick reminder of that project that 32 miles plus side spurs is funded by a variety of different things but measure D provides 17% measure funds to the project but also cities and counties put some of their measure D funds sometimes into the trail project and other local revenues. RTC discretionary grants have been used to fund portions of the trail. Grants from the active transportation program, the Coastal Conservancy, PROC 68 and the federal lands access programs have all been secured for portions of the trail that are currently under development or construction. Back in the Sam Farr era, also he secured about $12 million worth of earmarks for this project that were utilized for both the master planning process and on segment seven in the city of Santa Cruz that was constructed. It also involves a lot of partnerships with other agencies providing either staff time or money to help implement the project. On the state highway side, we do have some measure D funds that are designated for highways, about 25% of funds but additionally, cities and the county can also utilize some of their measure D funds on highway projects in their own jurisdiction, something like the highway one and nine intersection of improving main streets that also serve as state highways but also local funds are regularly used. The city of Santa Cruz highway one and nine project also has developer fees that are providing funding to that project, for instance. And then there's a variety of different state and federal programs. And as I mentioned before, the state highway operations and protection program of Caltrans is the primary source for maintenance. More recently, complete streets on highways have started to be funded a little more frequently with funds that typically had only been utilized on state highway capital projects related to capacity or maintenance. So that is a shift. Locally our highway one project, the environmental document that was initially developed utilized a lot of the RTC's discretionary funds that was before measure D was passed by voters but the oxalines and bus on shoulders and pedestrian crossings that are planned between SoCal Avenue and Freedom Mall of our are utilizing a variety of state, local and now we're seeking some federal discretionary funds for that project. I wanted to just share a little bit more about the shop because it is about a billion dollars of that $5 billion in revenues that we anticipate being available for projects locally. Caltrans uses that funding for repairing the state highway system, improving drainage, making safety improvements if there's been demonstrated safety needs in a specific location. They're also being used to help fund the Highway 17 wildlife crossing project. And all of those projects are identified through Caltrans's transportation asset management plan and they have a pretty strict criteria on how they evaluate projects and prioritize them. Since 2020 and just this last December through a Caltrans director policy, they are integrating and required to consider integrating more bicycle and pedestrian and transit facilities into their projects or complete streets projects. Just as a reminder at every regular board meeting Caltrans does include in the packet update on all of the shop projects and some of their other capital projects that they're working on. On the transit side, the Metro have sent sales tax that was approved by voters in the late 70s as well as measure D, rider fairs and advertising provide a lot of Metro's budget, especially for ongoing operations and services, maintenance, all of that. On the state side, there's the state transit assistance, the Transportation Development Act and Senate bill one, state of good repair funds. There's also competitive grants both at the state and federal level that Caltrans, that I'm sorry, Santa Cruz Metro has been very successful at securing. Unfortunately, they're never enough to address all of the needs. On the federal level, there's some formula funds based on which portion of their services, rural or urban. And those are the 5307 and 5311 funds. Now the Regional Transportation Commission is responsible for programming some of the transit funds that come into the county. That includes the local transportation fund portion of the Transportation Development Act, which is a statewide quarter cent sales tax and it returns to source essentially back to Santa Cruz County. And about 10 million of that funding, the commission puts on transit and paratransit projects in Santa Cruz County. All those claims are reviewed by our elderly and disabled transportation advisory committee. So proposals for how transit and paratransit agencies want to use those funds go through that process. For the state transit assistance program, that is subject to TDA rules. A portion of the funds come to our county based on transit district revenues and then the other portion based on our proportional share of the statewide population. It's mostly funded from diesel sales taxes, the STA and the RTPA is like the Regional Transportation Commission are responsible for distributing those funds or selecting projects to distribute those funds. Finally, there are a couple other, the other programs that the Regional Transportation Commission has discretion over are a little bit smaller, but those include the Senate Bill 1 state of good repair program and the cap and trade LC top program that I mentioned earlier. So as far as what transit projects are funded, again, this comes out of priorities identified by operators like Metro and Lyft Line and the Volunteer Center, but they also need to be consistent with the regional goals and targets and the transit needs list, which is coming to the board next month that you're meeting next month and the Monterey Bay Area Coordinated Human Services plan also come into play on which projects should be prioritized in uses. As far as rail, the measure D 2016 measure does include 8% of the funds for the rail corridor. There are also short line operations and leases that sometimes fund rail. On the federal level, the new infrastructure bill does include a couple new programs designated for rail projects. These include the Chrissy Consolidated Rail infrastructure program, the state federal partnership program and the capital investment grant, which some folks know it as the new starts, small starts programs. And then there are a couple competitive grant programs at the federal level, like RAISE that are available for a variety of different loans, as I mentioned earlier, that's also available for active transportation projects and major local road projects, et cetera. And then at the state level, there's the transit inner city rail capital program, there's the SB1 competitive grants and the state rail assistance program. And all of this is just a very short summary of information that was provided in the TCAA, the Transit Corridor Alternatives Analysis that the board looked at a year ago. And so that document has a lot more detail in all the different funding sources. Other counties also fund rail projects through new taxes and fees and rider fares, et cetera, which is relevant to our county right now. So I'm gonna just take a few more minutes just to go into a little bit deeper on some of the RTC managed funds and then I'm gonna hand it back to you guys for any questions that you might have. So a lot of these acronyms I've mentioned earlier, but there are kind of two buckets that come through the commission. And for some of the funds, we program them in our budget them into the RTC's overall work program and budget. And then some of those funds are passed through almost immediately to local agencies for implementation. So some of the pass-through funds are things like the Transportation Development Act and state transit assistance funds that local agencies invoice us for or actually on the STA funds to Metro, those go out to them pretty quickly once they come in. Actually, they go directly through the SEO. So it's just the portion that the commission would fund to lift line that comes through the commission. For our discretionary grants, the main discretionary grants again are the STIP, the SB1 local partnership program formula, which I didn't mention earlier, but it's a small portion of the Senate Bill 1 grant funds and the Highway Improvement Program federal funds that go through the commission. And then there's those transit programs I mentioned before and the Regional Service Transportation Program. And most of those funding sources with the exception of the transit funds can be used on a wide range of projects and it's not restricted to only certain types of projects. Our process tends to, it follows what is identified in our rules and regulations, as well as state and federal rules around projects that includes, looking at project benefits and consistency with our regional transportation plan goals and policies, taking into consideration that transit fund that needs lists, going out to our committees, as well as the public for input on proposed projects. And then the commission selects or programs or budgets those projects. And we usually have a public hearing for some of the funding sources like the measure D5 year plans and the STIP, RSTP exchange and the HIP funds. And we then program those projects in what's called the regional transportation improvement program or RTIP. And then other funds just go directly into our budget and work program. Projects that have federal funds associated with them or might be capacity increase, also need to be amended into the association of Monterey Bay Area government's metropolitan transportation improvement program, which then feeds into what's called the F-STIP or the federal state improvement program. And then for the local partnership program formula funds, those SB1 funds and STIP funds, those are subject to CTC concurrence on what the RTC decides. So just as a quick refresher, measure D, it has essentially five buckets of funds for certain uses neighborhood and street projects that's all goes out to the cities and the counties with the exception of $5 million over 30 years that goes to the Highway 17 wildlife crossing and $10 million over the 30 years that goes to the San Lorenzo Valley Highway 9 corridor. And then transit funds, our Metro gets about 16% of the funds and with Lyme as a community consolidated transportation service provider receives 4% of measure D revenues. 25% of the funds are for the Highway quarter's category that is focused on Highway 1 primarily, but also trans traveler information and assistance programs like added highway patrol on Highway 17 for improving safety, freeway service patrol programs, and the post-501 program. And then the rail corridor as I mentioned before, 8% of the funds and active transportation Monterey Bay sanctuary trail coastal rail trail program. And that corridor receives 17% of measure revenues. I think I kind of covered this earlier, so I'm going to skip over that one. I'm not going to go into too much detail on the Transportation Development Act, but happy to come back to this if folks want more info. I did just want to share how the TDA funds are distributed by the Regional Transportation Commission is dictated in part by the state Transportation Development Act, but also by the Commission's rules and regulations, which set forth these formulas, which we've been utilizing, I think, since the 70s for distributing those quarter set sales tax revenues. So I also talked a little bit about the STIP before, but yes, this is one of our biggest discretionary grant programs, although in some years there is no money to program, and sometimes there's as much as $7 million to program, depending on all those fluctuating revenues that come from the California Transportation Commission's Fund Estimate. And then we have that surface transportation grant program, and I just wanted to share a little bit more about that because it is kind of confusing, because sometimes it's called STVG. Sometimes we call it the Regional Surface Transportation Program. Sometimes we call it the Regional Surface Transportation Program Exchange. The reason for all that is the amount of funding is dictated by what it says in federal law on how funds are being distributed to California. But then once they come to California, there's some fluidity on how they can be distributed, and California has a formula. And because we are a smaller county in the state, we are allowed to trade out those federal funds for state funds, which we almost always do 100% of them. So we basically wash those federal surface transportation block grant funds for state funds, which then we call the Regional Surface Transportation Program Exchange. And all of that money flows into the RTC's budget. The Caltrans writes us a check for the full amount at the end of each fiscal year, and we make the payments directly to the local jurisdictions for those funds. So yay, once the funds are secured for a project, you get to actually start implementing it. And that means doing your project initiation documents you haven't already, and engineering and environmental studies, and designing your project, and getting any right away that you might need, and then constructing your project, and then finally maintaining it. So I'm not going to go into the funding gaps. There's a lot more slides here about just that the existing revenue just doesn't cover enough. Metro's identified that they are going to need an extra $20 million a year for the next five years if they want to address all their deferred maintenance and get their system into a state of good repair. The bus fleet conversions are being mandated by the state. And for Metro to be able to do all of that by the deadlines, they would need another $200 to $350 million in the next few years to convert to zero emission buses. On the local roadside, local agencies have identified anywhere between an additional 10 and $20 million a year needed to maintain their local roads. And that includes also drain pipes and culverts and bicycle facilities and restriping, crosswalks, maintaining signal lights, all of that, replacing stop signs. And so if they were to try to get everything into a state of good repair immediately, the backlog is somewhere way above $250 million. So you don't have enough money. You end up having a few more potholes every year. And you have bus shortages if you can't replace your fleet on time or keep it maintained. And you have fewer transportation options for the community. We also are facing some growing needs. There's a need to accommodate population growth and housing needs as well as supporting the local economy. And so all those require some transportation facilities. And then we also, it's important to look at what kind of past and present inequities exist in our transportation program. This is a major focus of both Caltrans, the California State Transportation Authority, the California Transportation Commission and the Biden-Harris administration. So they are asking everyone to dig deep and look at what we might have messed up on in the past and really look closer at who's benefiting and who's being impacted by our transportation projects. And then we have a climate crisis and we need to address extreme weather, fire conditions, building our system so it's more resilient and then also addressing some of our greenhouse gas emissions. And so a lot of money is going to start going into electric vehicle charging equipment and more money is being directed to bicycle pedestrian and transit projects proportionally than had been in the past. There's always some new potential funding sources. I'm going to skip over those slides, though, because we're not talking about that today. But they do exist. The state is looking at different options for at least that gas tax. So if you want to learn more, we have an annual budget process, which I know all of our board members are very familiar with. But generally, we adopt a draft in the spring that becomes a real document, but then it's really adjusted in the fall major amendment. And then other amendments are needed. We have annual fiscal reports on our website. There's the annual internal financial statements or audits, the reports we provide to Caltrans, and then the taxpayer oversight committee for measure D looks at reports from local agencies and recipient agencies and prepares in your reports. There's also on our website the regional transportation improvement program, which kind of outlines some of the funding sources on Anne Begg's website. There's the metropolitan transportation improvement program. And then there's a lot of information on funding on the California Transportation Commission, Caltrans, and CalSDA's websites as well. So with that, I'll open it up to any questions you guys might have. Thank you, Ms. Marconi. That was an incredibly comprehensive presentation. And it's not because there's 85 slides I didn't share. Right. Hopefully, I'll be making those slides available to everyone so we can review them in greater detail. First question I have is from Commissioner Brown. Thank you. That was actually my question was, if it would be possible to have this slide deck sent out. I know a lot of this information is in the staff reports from the packet, but it's really helpful for me to put laid out in the way that you just had on the deck. So if that's possible to send out, I'd really appreciate it. Absolutely. We can post it on the website as a meeting handout. Thank you. Commissioner Brown, I think we should rock. Can you go next? Yes, first of all, thanks, Rachel. That was incredibly clear and I think very helpful. Because we're doing this because a bunch of members of the public sort of wondered, like, how does this all work? Or where's the money come from? Or have made assertions that we could get money we weren't getting or whatever. I think it might be helpful to add a couple points. I have nothing to challenge in any way in your presentation. But just people might help people understand the big picture that we're looking at. First thing to say is we have a much higher share of local funding than most communities. That's worth noting, because we've not just measured D, but earlier on, the 1978 passage of a half-cent mostly transit-oriented funding and things like that really made a difference. We also, when we had earmarks, both when Panetta was in Congress, but more importantly, when Sam Farr was there, he was on the Appropriations Committee. And we got all kinds of discretionary money out of this earmark process, which no longer exists, where a Congress member could come up with a program that was not in any way budgeted by Congress. But if it was a good enough project, Congress would vote the funds for it. And the transit district, for example, used to get a lot more funding out of that. There was money that Sam Farr was able to get for us that didn't come out of any existing program that you listed today. But just from an earmark, a special appropriation from Congress for a particular project that Farr was able to persuade others was a valuable public project of some kind. And so we were able to go a long way with that money. We have fewer buses routes than now, than we did 20 years ago, because we had that funding coming in regularly and it doesn't come in anymore. And so we say, and this cost of transit's gone up, we've been forced to cut back on some routes. So we still have a very good system for a small community compared to other communities our size, but it's not what it once was. And it needs a lot more funding if we're going to get back to that kind of position where it really provided in a better way for people's use. Another point is that local funds are used for over matching. When you apply for grants, it used to be very standard. You just would apply 20% local match and you'd get the federal money or the state money. And now in these competitive grants, you're more likely to get the grant if you match 30% of the cost or there are grants now where it's up to 50%. 90, but they just want to put in that last 10%. You just ask for a little bit of money and stuff. And so it doesn't go as far as, the local match doesn't go as far as it used to in order to be competitive. And that's just communities fighting each other for these limited grants when they're double the oversubscribed as you explained. Another thing that happened is under the Reagan, before the Reagan administration, when you applied for grants, you might be able to show the public benefit, how many people would use a system as part of your application for the grant. When this thing, when this project's done, it's gonna, for example, allow housing you'd be built around a station for a bus or for a train or something. And we'll have a lot more users when this thing gets completed. And so it's gonna serve this number of people. Once the Reagan administration said, no, you can only make an application based on the people that you would have right now before you get the money. And so it didn't allow you to be quite as visionary in the way that if we had this new project, this is how many people it would serve. It's more like this is how many people have a current need that we'll meet by doing this thing. And that doesn't benefit a community that wants to sort of be forward looking and figure out how could you reorganize or restructure your transportation system and get funding for it. Another thing that happened is that the rail money that's available, this is just a fact of politics, tends to the majority of that money, it's available, it's a huge amount of money. And if you think, well, if we got our fair share, say by based on population, we'd have a lot of money. And a number of people who've called in or spoken at our meetings before, look at all this money and why don't we get our share of it? But the reality is the majority of that money goes to either Amtrak or very large cities like Los Angeles. And we don't compete well in those processes. It doesn't mean you can't fight for it or you shouldn't apply for it. I'm not making that argument at all, but to be realistic about it, you have to understand that a lot of the rail money goes to bigger projects than we have it, including the one that we're thinking about possibly in Santa Cruz County. In 1978, you mentioned the half-cent sales tax that it's actually two quarter-cent taxes that were passed in 78. And when they first passed, all of that money went to the transit district except for the administrative costs of the RTC to process the funding. But since then, we've started funding some other projects out of that combined two quarter-cents, you know, some active transportation projects and other kinds of grants and various kinds. We still get the vast majority of it goes to transit, but there's been a slight trend down for how much of the share of that transit gets over time. I'll just say politically, that's something that concerns me. I wanna make sure that we don't see that eroded sort of the spread out to family transit will be hurt by it even further. The final thing I wanted to respond to is people have talked about, we've seen some letters to the editor and some other comments in our meetings where people go, well, why don't you, you're buying a CNG bus. We should only be buying electric buses. Well, the reality is that we, a CNG bus cost about $700,000 each bus. These numbers are staggering, you know, even after you've been familiar with them, but an electric bus costs more like $1.2 million per bus. And so the difference between those costs of buses means that if we only bought electric buses, we would not be able to buy enough buses to actually run the current routes that we run right now. So we've developed a schedule for buying, you know, both electric and CNG buses in a ratio that'll increase more and more electric over time so that we'll meet the deadlines. In fact, we'll be a little bit early for the state requirements for when we have to be all electric. But we can't get to all electric tomorrow. If we just buy electric buses, which it would make environmental sense, it makes no economic sense and we'd be in big trouble. And ironically, the transit district would have to cut its routes and wouldn't be able to serve people quite as well as we do. So that's a kind of counterintuitive, you know, why are you buying another CNG bus? It's just economically required for us to be able to keep running as we move towards this path of eventually being completely electric in our service. So again, thank you for your presentation. I think those additional comments I made, I hope we're helpful to the public in understanding that there are some constraints in the real world that we kind of confront when we come to how those funds actually or might or might not be available to us if we apply for grants and other kinds of things. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Rockin. Just one quick response. On the earmarks, they are sort of back and there were some earmarks included in the federal bill and appropriations approved recently, including for the Lee Road connection in Watsonville by Congressman. Great. Commissioner Ginny Johnson. Thank you, Chair. I want to thank Rachel and our director and entire RTC staff for this presentation. We talk about funding usually in the context of either the budget hearings annually or in the context of a project. And this is a very comprehensive, I know Rachel doesn't consider it very comprehensive, but for the consumption of the public, it's a really, really good summary of what we have to grapple with in terms of sizing and dicing what we spend money on. It's a very complicated process. I don't know anybody other than Rachel, except for maybe Mike Rockin that knows more about this. And I also appreciate Mike's additional comments. I think that adds a lot of context. I have a few questions and I'll try to keep it brief. On the Biden-Harris administration have asked us to do an evaluation of inequity on maybe some past project decisions and so forth. Can you briefly speak to what we're doing about that and what our timeframe is to do an analysis of how we meet equity better in our decision-making? All right, so on a positive note, the commission just received a planning grant from Caltrans. We just got awarded that earlier this month. And so we'll be utilizing that funding to do an assessment of our projects, establish some criteria for how to evaluate projects, re-look at those maps that have existed at the state level, like through Cal and virus screen or healthy places index it. You know, where are the locations where folks who are more vulnerable and have maybe been historically discriminated against or currently discriminated against, where they're located, looking at our senior communities or farm worker communities or I'm extremely low income or folks who are living below the poverty line. I think in Santa Cruz County, one of the challenges has always been that at the state level, they look at a census block and say, well, on average, you guys are doing pretty good there. Not recognizing the reality here where we have folks living right next to $5 million houses or $2 million houses who are also just living four people in a converted garage on that same block. And so it's not recognizing the reality on the ground here of a place that does have extremely high housing costs. So that is something that we are continually trying to refine what our regional definition of disadvantaged community is. And that will be one of the steps. As far as what the Biden and Harris administration are requiring, Caltrans also has started an equity work group that's also working through how to reevaluate projects and the California Transportation Commission has an equity roundtable group. And so everyone's kind of doing very similar work at the same time and that's all gonna hopefully converge together in the next three to six months and we're gonna be able to establish some best practices to make sure we're doing outreach to everyone, to make sure that we're really measuring what the benefits and impacts of our projects are. So that's just a little teaser on it, but we could also share the grant application and I really would like to see board members, I know it sounds like you're interested, I know the commissioner alternate and has expressed interest also and we look to you guys for guidance on how to really do some quality outreach and evaluation of projects as well. Thank you, I had two other questions and I know there's a lot of questions from the commissioner, so I'm gonna keep them brief and I hope that you can answer them briefly, but the first is before we decide to do and we don't have enough money, we have half the money we need for our long list of projects that we've identified as important and a priority for our community. So we have, and we already know that we have to do environmental clearance to be better positioned for competitive grants to actually construct those projects. I've heard that you say that, Rachel, I've heard guys say that a number of times, not always, but mostly having that EIR positions us better to be more show already. So before we even do the EIR, some of these are very expensive documents. Do we do any kind of pre-evaluation of the feasibility of maybe even getting grant money to construct a particular project? We sort of say, okay, if we devote a five million or 10 million or 20 million of our local money and we even maybe get some money outside to do that EIR, but even after the EIR, are we well positioned to actually get money to construct? Do we do any kind of check in on that? Now looking at the overall financial feasibility of a project is definitely important. And once you start a project, sometimes it's really easy to cobble together the pieces or a project can be segmented or you have sections of it that have independent utility, even if you don't receive the full funding amount that happens for local jurisdiction, sometimes where they might put in an application to repair a long segment of roadway and add a bunch of bicycle and pedestrian facilities in that, but then they only receive a portion of the funds and they just delay when the rest of that project might happen or drop it completely. For projects that the Regional Transportation Commission has been initiating or taking the lead on, absolutely that happens. Anything on the state highway system has something that's called a project initiation document or a PID. And through that PID process, you look at what are the potential risks to the project schedule, to delivery of the project, what kind of right away might you need, what could be kind of a preliminary look at what the possible environmental impacts of that project might be on the positive and negative side and then looking at what are all the different types of funding sources that might be available. The commission also has documents like the unit five quarter investment study back in the day, the MTIS, what was that? The major transportation investment study from the late 90s also that we look at, what are the range of possible funding options for a project and how realistic is it? I know for the trail project specifically, we've even looked, we've dove in on some back of the envelope type spreadsheets that I wouldn't dare subject anyone to, but like what percentage of the projects get approved for funding from this source versus that source and then let's play it out, what would be our chances of getting all of these different funding sources? So we do do some of that analysis before deciding to even take the first, dip the toes into the water and apply for grants. Great. Well, I'm not gonna even ask you my third question because you sort of answered it and there's other people that need to have some airtime. I'd appreciate the time share. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Jenny Johnson. Mr. Bertrand. Oh, thank you very much, Chair. Yeah, I think the comments of Mike and Jenny are in line with what I've been thinking about and I'd be willing to think that the public at large is very concerned about the amount of work the RTC staff puts into even initiating a grant application and the money and time to plan whether that's even worthwhile. So my question basically is, Rachel, thank you so much for this. It's a mind blowing presentation and I do not think I could keep all of those in acronyms in my mind straight at all, but I really appreciate it. Josh, when you first came on the board, you sat down next to me in our conference room and I think I went through some of these slides. I'm really impressed that you guys are able to, it is, it's a lot of information. Well, I'm more impressed that the staff is actually able to juggle them and come up with grants. I mean, that actually get funded to Santa Cruz and recently we've gotten so many. It's a very proud achievement, I think, on your part and the staff in general. But from the public standpoint, I think Mike touched on this a lot too. It's very important for the public to understand what goes on behind the scenes. And to be as it's been brought up many times by public comment that, why don't you just go after a grant and get it? The money's out there, right? It's been just approved by the feds, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't know if there's something in your presentation that deals directly with that. What first got me thinking about it was when you mentioned almost in an offhand way that we could go up to 60, 70, I think $1,000 to just prepare a grant and still not know we're gonna get it, which is mind-blowing to me. It's like playing Reno or something. You're just taking your chance. But you're making sure that it's a very reasonable chance and that's my point. So if that could be in your slide deck or maybe it is and you just didn't cover it, I think the public would appreciate it and I would too. So thanks very much again, Rachel. Thank you, Mr. Bertrand. Mr. Pegler. Rachel, I wanna echo others with a terrific presentation. I appreciate the time and energy you put into it and your recollection of the MTIS that kind of tickle a little memory in my mind. I have a simple question. In your presentation, you mentioned that gasoline revenues, tax revenues declined when the price of fuel dropped. Are we seeing similar increases now that gasoline prices have grown so high in this past year? So with Senate bill one, the state legislature modified how those are collected. So for diesel, there is still a sales tax on the diesel. And so I do anticipate there being a bump up of some of that state transit assistance funding, maybe as a result of that. But as far as the other gasoline, it's per gallon now for the most part. Thank you, that's exactly the clarification I was looking for. Thank you. Commissioner Hurst. Thank you very much, Chair and Rachel, thank you very much for explaining how the funding works and the buckets of expenses as well as the baskets of income. It occurs to me that these grants are all very important to get and we should aggressively spend time and go after the ones that are the most feasible and get the most bang for our buck. But the real bread and butter of the finances of RTC are sales, tax and fuel taxes. And so whatever we can do to support sales, taxes and fuel taxes is sort of a benefit to the RTC. And both of those are kind of dependent. When it comes to sales taxes, that relies on goods. And the goods have to get to wherever the marketplace is and they have to be into the hands of the consumers. And that all takes fuel. So there's a relationship between gas tax and sales tax and certainly consumer demand. And so I'm wondering, how do we support a cleaner environment and at the same time, try and maximize our opportunities to stimulate sales tax and take advantage of whatever bounce we get out of fuel tax? How about that one? There are many economists who probably have a better answer for you than I, but it is something that's absolutely a consideration and being able to get the goods and get folks into town centers where maybe the economic activity is access, places by transit and have bike parking when they get to those places that may spend funding. A lot of areas in the state like ours that are heavily based on a tourist economy. Also, consider prioritizing sometimes projects that maybe don't immediately benefit our residents on our transportation side, but look at ways to make sure folks can keep getting to that area. This is especially a huge issue in California in the mountain communities that just don't have the otherwise the sales tax base to support all their roads and transit needs. So those are good points, Commissioner Hearst and something that is part of the mix. I think that decision makers consider prioritizing projects as well. Well, hopefully it won't be lost on the public either. The relationship between sales taxes and fuel taxes and improvements and maintenance and the operation of transportation and throughout the region in fact. And I understand Ambag is doing a freight study very soon and so I think that there might be something we would learn out of that freight study. And I hope that we'll keep a close eye upon that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Commissioner Hearst. Other questions from members of the commission? I did have a couple of questions. Ms. Marconi, did you say that the active transportation program of the state is about 250 million in total funding? That's an annual amount. So there's the base amount of about here in $25 million. I think it is coming from different state pots of funding that used to go for the bike transportation account. And then a portion of the funds come from Senate bill one, gas taxes and cap and trade fees, I wanna say. And then through the federal government, a portion of the funding that comes to California in the form of the transportation enhancement program closing net. Then what the California Transportation Commission does is typically programs funds every other year. And so they'll group two years worth of funds. There has been a proposal in the legislature which this board has expressed support for which would double the amount of active transportation program funds or even quadruple it is the proposal by the California Transportation Commission. At least for this year, utilizing some of the additional revenue that the state has realized in the general fund. So more to come on that in May, I think. Yeah, I certainly hope that happens. And we do see more active transportation dollars. I'm just curious with, I mean, if we assume that it doesn't change though, we're looking at about 250 million for this cycle. You know, I am a little concerned if both segments eight and nine and 10 and 11 are applying at the same time for a total. I mean, the combined amount would be, I think around $80 million, right? For 250 million available. So just to clarify, they're gonna program two years of funds. So it's not just the 250. It'd be 500. Right, I mean, still considering the size of Santa Cruz County versus the state as a whole in a sense it's a highly competitive program. I mean, what are our chances of getting it? And what are our chances improved for the smaller ask? Or is it just how the program scores? And that's that. It is how the program scores. So, you know, they have very strict criteria that they utilize in a scoring rubric. And if a project cost, you know, I mean, especially when these applications can cost, you know, 50 to $100,000 for some agencies to prepare agencies end up going big or going home pretty much before they even enter the door. So the result has been that the CTC has programmed large grant awards to just a few projects sometimes. And so I think that our trail project is definitely world-class. It's considered transformative by California Transportation Commission, commissioners themselves as well as their staff. And so I think that the trail program definitely is a strong candidate last cycle. Signets eight and nine just barely missed the cutoff. And so they're tweaking their application a little bit and keeping our fingers crossed for some of that supplemental funding as well. So I think we have some really good projects, segment seven and segment 18 and Watsonville were both funded through the ATP program. That's good to hear. Yeah, and I hope that the fact that large sections of Live Oak are considered an opportunity zone because a high number of folks who are low income and struggling with rent can somehow be factored into the application as well. Mr. Sandy Brown, did you have additional questions? Actually, Rachel just answered my question. I was going to ask about the segments where we're at with the funding. So thanks. Okay, then seeing no further questions from the commission, I'll take it to the public. Any member of the public that wishes to comment on this item? Or questions. Or questions or work to solid in sale. Hi, can you hear me? We can. My family's lived here for four generations. Dean, are you still there? Looks like muted. I think you accidentally muted if we could unmute him again. We can only ask him to unmute, he has to unmute. Mr. Saleh, I think you might need to or ask to unmute. It's, yeah, we're asking to unmute. There you go. You muted again, you were unmuted there for a moment. I think, go ahead, we can hear you now. Thank you. I want to thank Rachel for her report. I am concerned the report may appear to discourage competing for federal grant funding, stating that most facilities are not considered nationally significant. This didn't just sound right to me. So I looked into the last year's massive infrastructure investment jobs act. Just one section of the 66 billion dollars for rail was illuminated. Section 22307, which Rachel mentioned, the federal state partnership for intercity passenger rail grants provides $1.5 billion a year in fiscal years 22 to 26. Projects eligible to receive grants under this section include project to replace, rehabilitate or repair infrastructure for providing intercity passenger rail service to bring such assets into state of good repair. Project to expand or establish new intercity passenger rail service. Planning, environmental studies and final design for a project or group of projects as described above. Selection criteria include anticipated private and public benefits relative to the costs of the proposed project affects on safety, reliability, transit time, greenhouse gas emissions and resilience. Anticipated positive economic and employment impacts degree to which the proposed project's business plan considers potential private sector participation in the financing construction operation of the proposed project. And whether the project serves historically under connected communities. Nowhere does it mention nationally significant as a selection criteria, but I'd argue that restoring passenger rail connectivity with the national rail network using an existing rail corridor in the county sharing a common border with the technology hub of the United States is a project of national significance. I think the language in the report is unintentionally misleading and should be removed. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Sao. I am D. Thank you for a great presentation. I wanted to comment that we really need to go after these grants for the rail trail next to the rail. I don't think that we've done enough to do that. And I do want to emphasize that our county has a population density similar to many other cities in the Bay Area. And we have also the university, our Marine sanctuary, parks, lots of international and national visitors every year. So any rail project in our county, trail and rail transit would also serve them and our lower income communities which definitely is a priority for funding grants. So I encourage you to go after these grants. It does take, certainly it costs money to go after a grant but it's worth it. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. D. Equity transit. Hi, thank you, commissioners. I just want to say, Rachel, that was a fantastic and impressive presentation. I appreciate what Jenny Johnson said about the amount of money it's expensive to do these EIR programs to go to the next step. And so I would just ask and concern that we didn't accept the Caltrans money to do the EIR for the rail. Going forward with the business plan which was of course in February of 2019 requested specifically by the California Transportation Commission. We still have yet to follow through with that. I also wanted to just speak briefly to public input and that is the county, the RTC does respond and say that public input is very important. However, whereas Highway Widening up to State Park Drive was included in the Measure D funds from State Park Drive to Freedom Boulevard, that was something that really was not brought before the public. And so I get concerned when some of these bigger issues are not brought before the public. We do have a world-class trail, but we also have been noted by many sources as having a potential world-class rail. And it's concerning that the efforts that we know the community has spoken for years on, in fact, decades of the importance of that, that we not prioritize that. And moving forward again with the EIR, the Caltrans was willing to fund. So that we can apply for grants. And I also wanna say that it's one thing to say that we're doing equity. It's another thing to say that we're actually doing it. So I just want to be more considerate and thoughtful about not putting equity as a piece on paper, but actually doing equity in our planning, which means that the people that should be at the table are at the table, including South County in Watsonville. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Faulkner. Sally for rail and trail. Thank you. And I also found the presentation very interesting and I appreciate the clarity and many of the commissioner's comments have also been very clarifying. And I get the point about you don't want to really apply for a grant, because it's expensive and time-consuming to do. If you don't really think you're gonna be competitive, that makes sense to me. And I get the point that to be competitive, one needs to be shovel-ready, and this includes having done some design and EIR work ahead of time. And then I also see Commissioner Johnson's point about maybe we need to do some pre-work before we even do the EIR thing, to really make sure. And luckily we've done a lot of that pre-work regarding the rail project with the UCIS and the TCAA. So we're well poised that way, or we were well poised until last year, but a matter of fact, April of last year, exactly a year ago, when certain members of the commission refused to proceed with the business plan and the EIR, that would have then allowed us to be shovel-ready and competitive. Now, their reasoning was, oh, well, money. And it's like, you know, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you put yourself in a position where you can't be competitive for grants, and then you claim, well, we're all competitive for grants, I think that if you just oppose the idea of rail transit, then fine, say you oppose the idea of rail transit, but don't hide behind this money question, because clearly we could make ourselves competitive if we wanted to. The community wants you to. And I hope that you will recognize that after seeing this presentation. We could be competitive if we chose to. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Arnold. Seeing no further members of the public with their hand raised, I'll return it to the commission. This is an informational item only, but if anyone has a final comment or suggestion. Mr. Frank Rachel, again, it was a great presentation. Thank you, yeah, Commissioner Brown. Yeah, I just also wanted to send a major thank you for this really thorough and legible overview. I mean, this is great. It's really helped me kind of put my own, what I know together. You know, it feels very, it's big, it's complicated, and you have, in addition to kind of the navigating the pots of funding and the matches, the timing and sequencing questions. So I just wanted to raise that. It's come up a little bit here with respect to how we get to a place of being shovel-ready or competitive. And I know that can be very frustrating, or I imagine it can be frustrating for staff when the commission isn't as clear as we perhaps could be. And so I just wanted to really appreciate all of the work you put into getting this into a form that's legible. And I hope really useful for the community. I'm glad to hear from members of the public that they found it useful. And I hope others who are out there as well are finding this helpful for them. And I do, I just wanna echo or speak to some of the comments that were made about the questions around how we get to a level of competitiveness or being shovel-ready for projects with respect to what's happening with the rail trail. I do think that that chicken and egg problem can be addressed. And I think it's gonna take political will from this commission. And I hope that we can find the will to do that to make your job easier moving forward as well. So thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Brown. Commissioner Ryanne Johnson. Thank you, Chair. So with respect to the last public comments, you know, if we just had the political will, if we were really being honest, we'd be moving forward now with grants that would be filled. And, you know, almost like magic, we would have funding, but to kind of piggyback on what originally, the, you know, Mike Rotkin said, which was very informative. He gave us kind of a historical perspective. You know, so much of the money, the grants that emerge for rail, for example, are pre-programmed. Okay, Amtrak and large cities just suck up all the money because that's where the population is. And that's where people travel. And it's proven that these embedded systems are going to take up most of the money. So in the end, we become our non-competitive in a highly competitive field. And amongst very strict criteria in terms of the rules that we're allowed to work by. So on the one hand, you can say that we're just not trying hard enough and we should just do our level best to be shovel-ready. But on the other hand, I think we have a responsibility to kind of look what, you know, what are the chances? You know, what are the odds? What are the, you know, how much money do you want to invest of our dollars that are very, very limited because we just heard of all the backlogs, whether it's Metro, whether it's our RTC of how much money we don't have. Then all of a sudden to start on a new, I guess, project list that says, hey, we can do this as long as if staff and the RTC just said, let's move forward. I don't think that's a possibility, but I just want to be convinced. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Anna Johnson. Commissioner Jenny Johnson. Yeah, thank you. I just want to make one comment and then there was a comment made by a member of the public that I think needs to be corrected. The first is that I spent the most of my professional career raising money for environmental projects and not just transportation projects, but others. So I understand the complexity of it. I have so much admiration for Rachel and our director and our other staff who I think do an excellent job of vetting the possibilities. And I have all the confidence in the world in them that if there was a possible way to position our community better to get a grant on any of our transportation projects that are on our RTIP that they would do it. They've not, certainly they're very pro-transit, very pro-sustainable transportation. And I just want to say that I, with all these complexities, they will, if there's a way they'll find a path and it can't just be political, although that is a part of it. And I would acknowledge that with Commissioner Brown, there is a very complex matrix you have to go through in order to be successful and fundraising. The comment made by the public, one of the members of the public was that the California or the Caltrans was willing to pay for an EIR on the passenger rail. That was a rumor that was circulating almost a year ago. And it was actually a comment made by a mid-level staff member of Caltrans in good faith. And once investigated by our staff, they discovered that that wasn't something that would probably be likely because there was only maybe 20, I want to say 21 or $2 million available in the entire state for that activity. And we're a very small county. And so it would be very unlikely to take 18 or $19 million of 21 and give it to a small county for that one purpose. So that had to be throttled back from the comment that was made by a Caltrans person. So that wasn't a bona fide offer is what I'm trying to say. Thank you, Chair, for the time. Appreciate it. Thank you, Commissioner Ginny Johnson. Commissioner Hurst. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. You know, I just don't want the commission or the public to forget about the impact of tourism in our community and how travel, there's lots and lots of travel in Santa Cruz County. Not all of it from commuters, not all of it from tourism. But when you combine those two together, tourism really drives an economic engine throughout Santa Cruz County. And tourism is dependent on transit and also goods and services and something to do and something to eat. And all those services require support of goods. And so goods have to get here somewhere as well. So I think that we need a view of the importance of the economic importance of tourism and what it brings to the county and its impact on supply and demand of goods and the transport of those goods and the transport of those tourism as well. And in short, we really need a business plan that looks at those items among other items and also folds in equity within that business plan. Those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Hurst. Commissioner Bertrand, you're on mute. Thank you very much. I'll be quick as soon as I'm on mute. Thank you, Rachel, again, since you first sat me down and tried to get me confused. I mean, excuse me, trying to get me aware of all the anachronisms. I think for the public and certainly for me, this has been a very sobering revelation and many respects about the difficulties that staff has to go through. And I'll repeat the fact that we do get grants and more recently we've been getting quite a few grants says to me that our staff is very well equipped to do that. I'm very impressed with the background of knowledge that you have in the available funds. This is a knowledge base that doesn't come easily. It comes because you're actively involved in trying to get those grants. You have to learn how to do the background work to actually even initiate the planning. So I'm very impressed. And I hope the public is impressed equally because as been said, we are actively working even now with our different proposals because we're trying to understand the costs that the RTC will have to entail if we're gonna even provide any kind of service on the rail corridor or any kind of improvements on Highway 1 or any kind of improvements on any number of things like bike transportation and echo bull issues that need to be addressed in this county especially. So we have the staff. I'm glad the public has had this chance to get a demonstration of how well they're informed. And so that's why I'm trying to impress this. And thank you very much again for the talk. Thank you, Commissioner Bertrand. Mr. Rodkin. I just wanted to respond briefly to a couple of comments by commissioners. My comments about rail and money going to Amtrak and so forth. I agree with Randy Johnson's final comment which is we need to look at these things realistically. I think some people overestimate how available those funds are. I'll stand by that comment, but that doesn't mean my belief is we should never reply for those funds because it's hopeless from the beginning. And some of the public comments and commissioner comments suggested maybe that was the lesson I was trying to share. I mean, the transit district of Santa Cruz County created a national bill that gives our transit district over a million dollars a year in funding for transit intensive communities. And Santa Cruz more or less wrote that bill and made it happen at the national level. And we're still on a very small number of communities that get that kind of funding. So it's not impossible to go up against those big guys and actually get some money in the right way. Again, so my argument was, people who want to make it sound like it'll be easy to get the money. It's just totally available. They're waiting and I appreciated the correction that Ginny Johnson gave, you know that that $17 million was not a program for us. It was some one person thought it might be available and turn that not to be the case. It's a competitive world. It's difficult to get those fundings, but I certainly was not implying we should never try because the big guys get it all and why bother? That was the last thing I want to argue about any of these grants. And I don't believe our staff has taken that approach. I'm not, this is not a comment suggesting our staff has not been adequate in the way that they've approached this issue. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Rock and Mr. Schifrin. Yes, thank you very much. I wasn't going to say anything because this is a pretty high level discussion of the multitude of financing sources for transportation, but since it seems impossible to have item on the commission's agenda, that doesn't end up being a debate about whether we should move forward with rail or not. I just wanted to compliment staff for their, for the excellent presentation. And I appreciate the support that commissioners have for the competent role, the competent staff that we have. My only point is to remind the commissioner that a year ago it was the commission that did not, a majority of the commission that did not support the staff recommendation to go forward with a business plan and apply for an EIR for rail funding. Maybe we would not have received it, but it was a staff recommendation to at least try. And I think members, that from members of the public is what I was hearing the urge that the commission staff continue to do that. And I think staff in following up as, try to look at, look for funding sources. But I just wanted to sort of clarify what actually happened a year ago and the role that staff played in that decision. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner Schifrin. Hey, Charlie. I just wanted to wrap it up unless there were any more commissioner comments. Sounds good. I just, I want to channel Bruce McPherson here and just recognize that had voters not approved the 2016 sales tax measure, a lot of the projects that we have identified as priorities in our community would not be moving forward. That funding source has provided us with matching grant funds, the flexibility to get projects shovel ready. And it's, I just wanted to thank everyone for their work getting that sales tax measure implemented. And so I just wanted to bring it back to that. And also I am not a gambler and a lot of times I would be the person's like, we can't go for that. But I have to say our management team is like, nope, we're going to go for it. I don't care if only 5% of the, Sarah's the main one just saying, no, we got it, we got it through our hat in the ring. And even if it costs us $300,000 for the other application, we're going to make it happen. So, and we come back with $100 million. So that was a pretty good investment there on that last SB1 grant. And hopefully we'll see similar successes coming forward and a lot of your city staff and transit district staff and county staff were really, really hard to position Santa Cruz County to take home more than maybe what some people think is our fair share, but we know we have important needs here and we'll keep trying to bring home some money. Great, thank you, Ms. Marconi for the presentation and the rousing words. With that, we'll proceed to item five, measure de-financing scenarios as a strategy to expedite delivery of highway one and coastal rail trail projects for presentation of both RTC staff and cannon public finance staff. But thank you, Chair Cunig. I'm going to take the lead on this one at least at the beginning. And I think it plays very well into our last discussion and it'll show a little bit about the nuts and bolts that go into a plan for grants and the planning that we need to do to try to figure out whether or not we can find a project. This is also an informational item. It is on the potential measure de-financing scenarios as a strategy to expedite delivery of coastal rail trail and highway one projects. I'm joined here today by key members of RTC staff including RTC's director of finance and budget, Tracy New. Project managers, Grace Blitzley and Sarah Christiansen. Of course, Rachel Marconi who leads RTC programming and David Leifer and Melissa Schink of K&N Public Finance. This team will present material and answer questions important in future decision-making. Next slide please. So measure D passed in 2016 as a half-cent transaction and use tax for transportation projects and programs. The measure D is 30 years long. The funding is not received all at one time. We receive revenue monthly. When first passed RTC projected that we would receive a total of about 17 million per year to allocate towards certain transportation improvements. Measure D requires that RTC prepare a five-year program of projects each year and an implementation plan, at least every five years for our regional projects. Our inaugural strategic implementation plan or SIP was adopted in 2020 with a plan to advance an aggressive program of projects. Although measure D is a huge boost in transportation in the region, measure D was never considered enough funding to meet all of our transportation needs or wants. Our SIP, the fourth strategy of advancing projects to position them to leverage measure D to receive grant funding. Critical to understanding measure D is to know that measure D contains a voter-approved expenditure plan which specifies how the revenue is allocated amongst five categories. Next slide please. This slide is a summary of the measure D expenditure plan. Rich went over this a little bit but I'm gonna go over it again. Most 30% of funding is directly allocated to our four cities in the county for what is known as neighborhood projects. There are car valets of $10 million for Highway 9 in the San Lorenzo Valley and $5 million for Highway 17 wildlife crossing. 20% of revenue is directly allocated to Santa Cruz Metro and Community Bridges and for bus air transit services. On the left side of the pie chart are three regional project categories. 25% of measure D revenue must be spent on highway corridors which includes improvements such as auxiliary lanes, bus on shoulder improvements, bicycle and pedestrian over crossings, transportation demand management programs and safety and congestion relief programs. 17% of measure D revenue is for active transportation improvements specifically the coastal rail trail. This category includes not only the design and construction of new coastal rail trail segments but also ongoing rail corridor property management and preventative maintenance including oversight, encroachments, drainage, vegetation control and other rail corridor needs. Funds can also be used to maintain the trail segments themselves once constructed. So there's a lot and not 17%. Finally, 8% of measure D revenues is designated for the rail corridor, reservation and analysis of options. This is the funding that we are using to preserve and maintain rail specific infrastructure such as tracks, ties and rail bridges. The funding may also be spent to analyze corridor uses including environmental and economic analysis. However, measure D revenue do not include funding for any new train or rail service. So we're pretty limited there. Today we are going to focus on active transportation and highway corridors category as we may be advancing projects in those categories faster than pay-as-you-go measure D revenue may allow. We bring this item now because there are significant and realistic grant opportunities on the horizon and applications will require a local commitment of funding. Next slide, please. There is considerable work being done to advance coastal rail trail projects. On the left side of this map and to the north segment five is fully funded. A good portion of segment seven from natural bridges to Bay, California husband constructed and phase two of segment seven from Bay, California to the war is also fully funded and the city will be opening bids later this week. On the right side of the map, the city of Watsonville has completed a portion of segment 18 between O'Lonnie Parkway and the slew trailhead and is working on advancing the remaining bookends of segment 18. South of segment 18, segments 19 to 20 will connect Watsonville to the future train station at Pajaro Junction and RTC has partnered with our neighbor to the south the transportation agency of Monterey County on a transit and inner city capital improvement program grant application to get pre-construction funding for segment 20 and the Pajaro rail station. In between, there is a significant portion of the rail trail that is being advanced between the wharf and Rio del Mar. These are segments eight, nine and 11 and 12. These five trial segments are part of three environmental impact reports that are currently under development and have been part of previous presentations to the commission and significant public outreach. I would like to thank the city of Santa Cruz who is developing the EIR for segments eight, nine and the county who is developing the EIR for segments 10 and 11. RTC is implementing the EIR for segment 12 as part of the highway project. These trial projects are primarily within the existing rail right away and do not include new passenger rail service as passenger rail service is unfunded. However, the projects seek to preserve the existing freight rail line for future use. We're not going to get into a lot of details of these trial segments today, but if you are interested, the city and county have held open houses and have posted videos and draft plans on their websites. These are long, complex and expensive projects that take a considerable amount of time to fully understand the potential impacts. As EIRs are developed, engineers have conducted surveys and designed the basic project footprints so that the environmental study work can begin. With preliminary 30% level designs, they have developed preliminary project cost estimates, but much work remains to be done so that the community can understand the potential full impacts of the project. As of now, we are preliminary designs and costs, but it is important to remember that cost is only one factor in the equation, but it will be the focus of today's presentation. With the project definition now in hand, the teams are commencing environmental studies and we'll use the results of those studies to write the draft EIRs to be released later this year. Each EIR is considering an optional interim trial phase where the commission could elect to temporarily remove the rail and use the corridor for a trail until such time that the line is needed for rail service. The phase is considered interim because to build a trial on the existing rail bed, the RTC would need to get authorization to rail bank the corridor. Rail banking is a method of preserving railroad for future use and is not the topic of today's conversation, but rail banking has been discussed with the commission previously and was determined to be potentially feasible. The teams dubbed the trial adjacent to the rail line as the ultimate trial configuration, which the commission could elect to build with or without the optional interim first phase. The term ultimate was used because a rail bank corridor must be preserved in a manner that does not preclude the future potential reactivation of rail service. And to understand the whole of the actions, the project teams are considering that with the interim trial, there is a possibility that order could be reactivated for rail service sometime in the future. It is also important to note that the projects do not propose passenger rail service. This is because passenger rail project is not funded by this time and not part of the environmental impact scope. The ultimate project designs for either retaining the tracks for freight or if the first place is implemented, potentially restoring the single track railroad without new passing sightings or station areas. Therefore, even the location of the ultimate trail may need to be revisited at a later time since passenger rail will require stations and passing sightings. I expect that the IRs will discuss the possibility of future passenger rail project in the cumulative impact section of the reports. Finally, the graphic shows a gray line with track between Rio del Mar and Watsonville. These are segments 13 through 17 of the rail trail and contain some significant engineering challenges, including the trestles at Hidden Beach, Seascape, and La Selva. They also include the eroding bluffs over Mereisa Beach and the sensitive habitat of Galligan and Harkin Sleuths. These locations are already sustaining impacts of climate change and will need to be considered carefully. The remaining segments of the trail have not yet been advanced to preliminary design and environmental review, but they are important pieces to our 32 mile program and should be considered when committing funding for the sections currently under development. Next slide. RTC staff and its partners have developed three sets of cost estimates for the three trail projects currently under environmental review, which are summarized in this table. Along the top, you will see the cost estimates from the three EIR studies. Segments eight and nine by the city. Segments 10 and 11 by the county and segment 12 by RTC in partnership with CalTrans. As you can see, the interim trail phase costs about 50% less than the ultimate trail for each segment. I am comparing lines one and two, which will be the focus of our discussion here today. Interim is a relative term. The duration is not defined because if the line is rail bank, there is not certainty as to when the line might be reactivated. Line three shows the cost of the optional first phase being built and then it moved to the ultimate location, assuming reactivation. Although I say interim is relative and it is, it would not be practical to construct an interim trail and use it for only a few years. I would expect that if the optional first phase is selected, it would need to be in place for at least 25 to 30 years to be financially reasonable to implement. Therefore, we will only discuss the first two scenarios today, the optional interim trail block phase, which is line one, and then going directly or going directly to the ultimate trail, which is line two. I understand there was some confusion on the notes of the table and the staff report regarding the capital attressal. Please note that the interim trail costs estimate line one includes funding to rehabilitate and repurpose the capital attressal. The ultimate trail costs lines two and three do not include the replacement of the capital attressal, which would be needed for passenger rail in a trail. The only way to really use that facility for both is to replace the bridge in its entirety. These are total trail costs only, irrespective of funding source. Grace and Sarah will discuss their cost estimates in more detail, including how the project teams can put together funding plans with Measure D and grant funding for either item one or scenario one or scenario two, as well as what the commission may want to consider when making its decisions. Next slide. In addition to work on the rail line, RTC has been advancing highway projects at record pace. Basis one and two of the auxiliary lane bus on shoulder, bike head, over crossing program is fully funded and will be going to construction over the next several months. However, phase three from State Park to Freedom Drive is the county's choke point, not only for the highway, but also for the development of the trail. Of all the highway projects, phase three has the most engineering challenges, but will also provide the most congestion relief, especially to South County. Phase three has been combined with segment 12 of the coastal rail trail for efficiency of both construction and for leveraging grants as part of our successful multimodal strategy of delivering the Measure D expenditure plan. Next slide. Although this table shows only the cost of highway work, you can see that there are still a difference depending on whether the optional interim trail is constructed or not. There are two existing rail bridges that obstruct the highway widening. These rail bridges will ultimately need to be replaced for rail service. In the optional interim phase, the rail bridges would be deferred and an interim trail bridge would be placed in the rail bridge locations. Sarah will speak to this more later, as the location of the rail bridges is in a very constrained area and the trail along the rail line will require the acquisition of private property. However, the rail bridges are considered a highway cost and they are included in the ultimate project, cost estimates. I am bringing this up since we will need to be discussing financing and these costs are relevant with respect to short-term Measure D capacity. Next slide. This slide shows two tables with the anticipated cost to Measure D, only for the two scenarios that I discussed earlier, based on our cash flow model analysis, which will be presented shortly. The top table represents moving forward with a potential funding scenario or an interim trail, whereas the bottom table summarizes a plan to directly implement the ultimate trail alongside the freight rail line. The interim trail funding analysis indicated that we almost have enough Measure D pay-as-you-go revenue to complete a highway and optional interim trail segments that are currently under development on their current schedules. There would, however, be a need for about $7 million worth of borrowing. The tables also show what we call future capacity. Future capacity is the revenue that we currently project that we would still earn and have available to fund other eligible program expenditures after funding these scenarios and any debt service incurred. This funding would not be available in the short term as we would be programmed to near capacity for the next five years. Future capacity would build gradually from about fiscal year 28 to the end of the sales tax measure in fiscal year 47. In the second table, the ultimate trail funding analysis shows that we would not have enough Measure D pay-as-you-go revenue to complete the ultimate trail unless we financed or borrowed money. For this second scenario, we calculated that approximately $73 million would need to be financed. Due to the higher cost of the projects and the need to pay debt service, the future capacity is notably less. But as the tables indicate, we do have the ability to finance and fund the projects currently under development. There is important information about how these scenarios were developed, which our project managers will now discuss. After that discussion, we will dive deeper into Measure D finances and our cash flow model. Then we will discuss important considerations in making decisions on programming and upcoming grant applications. With that, I will hand the microphone to Grace Flacely, who will discuss what went into the development of the scenarios for segments eight and nine and 10 and 11. Grace? Thanks, Grace Flacely, of your staff. Good morning, everyone. As I mentioned, the city of Santa Cruz is the lead on segments eight and nine, and it will develop the trail from Pacific Avenue to 17th Avenue for a length of 2.5 miles. The city of Santa Cruz is the CEQA lead and the arts working in coordination with the Regional Transportation Commission and the County of Santa Cruz. The city does plan to apply for state active transportation program cycle six funds. Rachel covered some of this in her presentation. I had noted that 650 million would be available over a four-year period, but as Rachel pointed out, some of this funding has already been programmed with the best last around 550 million. The city of Santa Cruz did apply for this program for their cycle five program and was highly competitive, but just below the grant funding award line with 87 out of 100 points. The city of Santa Cruz has been advancing the projects since then, which is expected to increase the project deliverability points received in the cycle six active transportation grant application and improve the project's overall competitiveness. Rachel also mentioned that these projects are competitive, meaning the Coastal Rail Trail Projects are competitive for the state active transportation program funds. I'm in part because it will transform the bicycle and pedestrian network in Santa Cruz County. Also, due to the extensive level of public participation and input that has gone into the project development, of course, the public was actively involved in development of the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail Master Plan and died noted the city of Santa Cruz recently held a virtual open house to obtain input on the project design plan. The project's also competitive due to its safety benefits, the greenhouse gas reduction benefits, services to disadvantaged communities and alternatives to driving and is also discussed in the prior staff report the importance of leveraging outside funding and project is able to demonstrate that it has over a 20% match in its prior and proposed grant application. The state active transportation grant program funding request from the city of Santa Cruz would fund fully fund trail construction costs if awarded. Matching funds for the grant came from Measure D local funds provided by both the city of Santa Cruz and the County of Santa Cruz for a total of $3 million. $1.5 million came from each of those local jurisdictions. There's also $2 million in Measure D regional active transportation program funds that were previously programmed by the regional transportation commission and other funding sources include funding from the land trust of Santa Cruz County and the natural resource agency and transportation development act funds. Next slide. Regarding segment eight and nine Measure D regional funds specifically, the RTC did approve to 2 million as I mentioned previously for this project. The city of Santa Cruz is requesting an additional 370,000 to cover part of the cost associated with analyzing the interim trail alignment as part of its project development. Pre-construction activities would be fully funded with the approval of the 370,000 in Measure D regional funds requested by the city. The city of Santa Cruz request for state active transportation funding and the amount of 19.9 million would fund fully fund construction of the trail next to the railroad track alignment based on cost estimates. Construction of the trail next to the railroad track could begin in 2024 if the project is fully funded. The city of Santa Cruz is not considering applying for funds for an interim trail option at this time. Next slide. So next I'd like to address segments 10 and 11 funding strategy. As you may know from guide slide or recognize from guide slide, the segment 10 and 11 would develop the coastal rail trail from 17th Avenue to State Park Drive for a length of 4.7 miles. The County of Santa Cruz is the lead on this project and for the California Environmental Quality Act, Environmental Impact Report. The project's being developed in coordination with RTC and RTC is a responsible agency under the California Environmental Quality Act for this project. Stake and 10 and 11 are also applying for state active transportation program cycle six similar to eight and nine. It is also expected to be competitive project for the state active transportation program grant funding due to its potential to increase bike and pedestrian trips and improve safety, greenhouse gases and benefits to disadvantaged communities. This is the first time segments 10 and 11 are seeking state or federal grant funding for this project. And the County is planning to use measure the regional active transportation category funding as a 20% match to the grant request. Next slide please. The regional transportation commission previously approved 4 million in measure D funds to fund preliminary design and environmental tasks for statements 10 and 11. Similar to the city of Santa Cruz, the County of Santa Cruz is requesting an additional 230,000 to cover part of the analysis related to the interim trail alignment. Preliminary design and environmental activities would be fully funded with the additional 230,000. The County of Santa Cruz is also requesting 9.8 million in measure D regional active transportation program funds to serve as a match for the cycle six program that it would fund final design and construction. If the RTC approves the County's request for the additional total 10 million in measure D regional active transportation, then the County would fully fund the pre-construction activity and have a total of 14 million in measure D regional active transportation funds to provide a 20% match of the total project costs to leverage state funding. And that would again maximize the grant points received under leveraging performance metric in the grant application. The ATP request amount for 56.2 if awarded with the 14 million dollar match would fully fund construction based on current cost estimates. Construction of the trail next to the railroad tracks could begin in 2025 if the project is fully funded. This may require financing of measure D if funding for segments 10 and 11 is committed at the same time as funding for segment 12, which will be discussed later in this presentation. Construction of the interim trail or the trail on the railroad track alignment could also begin in 2025 if the project is fully funded and rail banking occurs during this timeframe. Next slide. For RTC, there are several decision points that have borne development and construction of coastal rail trail segments 10 and 11. One is a commitment of measure D regional active transportation funds. In this case, the County is seeking the measure D funds to serve as that local match I previously discussed. RTC expects to bring a staff recommendation for a measure D five-year plan updates to you at your May 5th, 2022 meeting. Later in the project development after the County as the lead agency under California Environmental Quality Act certifies the project's environmental impact report and selects a preferred alternative. Then the RTC as a responsible agency under the California Environmental Quality Act would consider concerns with the lead agency's decision. Finally, before construction of the project, RTC would consider approval of a right of entry to the Santa Cruz branch rail line to allow the County of Santa Cruz to construct the project as contemplated in the final design by the County of Santa Cruz. Other related decisions made by the County Board of Supervisors include approval of the state active transportation program grant application, which is scheduled for the June 7th, 2022 Board of Supervisors meeting. And of course, I mentioned certification of the environmental impact report and selection of a preferred alternative, which is scheduled for spring of 2023. RTC's decisions related to the environmental impact report and the right of entry to the Santa Cruz branch rail line to construct the project would be the same for segments E-9 proposed by the City of Santa Cruz. Next slide, please. Hand it over to Sarah. Thank you. Thank you, Grace. Good morning. My name's Sarah Christensen of your staff. I manage the Watsonville to Santa Cruz multimodal corridor program of projects for the RTC. And staff has been gearing up for some funding opportunities on the horizon that could potentially fund construction of these priority projects, both within the highway corridors and the active transportation categories of Measure D. There will be a call for projects for the two Senate Bill 1 programs that we are targeting later this year, the SB1 programs only fund the construction component of these projects and local agencies are expected to invest in the pre-construction phases to get projects construction ready. The local investment also needs to include matching funds for construction component of the project and a 20% local match is considered the minimum for a competitive application. More local match makes the project more competitive, obviously. The programs are highly competitive statewide. We've been successful in the past, but these programs continue to be highly competitive with $670 million between the two programs available statewide. The package of multimodal improvements that staff has developed for this upcoming round will be highly competitive based on performance criteria that have been identified by the program because of the improvements to safety for all modes, relieving congestion, improving access, reducing vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions and advancing transportation equity by improving multimodal travel between Watsonville and Santa Cruz for the most vulnerable of our county's population. The combined Highway 1 and Coastal Rail Trail segment 12 project, so this project includes the auxiliary lanes and bus on shoulder between State Park Drive and Freedom Boulevard, as Guy mentioned in his previous slides, it was the phase three project. The costs are shown here in this table. The commission has already made a significant funding commitment to this project of over $19 million as part of past measure D programming actions. Through the development of the preliminary engineering process, the cost estimates have been further developed and the latest numbers for the ultimate trail and interim trail are shown here. Note the difference in the pre-construction costs, which is due to the need to acquire a significant amount of variety of way in order to construct the trail adjacent to the rail line in Aptos and Rio del Mar areas. So this project is distinctly different from the 10 and 11 project and the eight and nine project because this project does not propose realigning the track to make room for the trail because of all of the engineering constraints associated with this project. So this is a distinctly different approach to the delivery of this project from the other projects under development along the branch line. The construction costs vary significantly between the two scenarios as well. However, SAF has assumed that regardless of which scenario is constructed, the grant application requests should be the same. Therefore, the difference in costs will need to be funded locally by the measure D highway corridors and active transportation programs. Here's a map that shows the funding split between the two measure D programs. As Guy mentioned earlier in this presentation, the measure D expenditure plan has very specific things that programs can fund. The expenditure plan for the measure D highway corridors program includes bicycle and pedestrian over crossings. Therefore we worked with our engineering consultants to split the cost estimates between the two programs. The bicycle pedestrian over crossings in portion of the coastal rail trail needed to provide logical termini are funded by the highway corridors program. The remaining trail portion shown in purple is assumed to be funded by the measure D active transportation program. Through the remaining development of this project, there will be distinct decision points as shown in this table. The commitment for the local match needs to be made prior to the submittal of the grant applications. The commitment will be in the form of the commission adopting the five year program of projects scheduled for May 5th. Environmental document is scheduled to be complete in the spring of 2023. If successful in obtaining the grant funds, RTC would enter into a funding agreement with the California Transportation Commission and that's that master agreement milestone upon adoption of the SB1 programs in mid 2023. Once the environmental documentation is complete, the project will begin the right of way phase. This could be the acquisition of private property to construct the trail adjacent to the rail line or rail banking to construct the interim trail along the railroad track alignment. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2025. Neither of these scenarios are considered infeasible. However, the right of way component of the project signifies a delivery risk under either scenario. Now, next we'll be going over a little more detail on the measure D funding programs and cash flow model, which will be covered by Tracy Neu, our director of finance and budget and K&N public financing consultants. So over to you, Tracy. Thank you, Sarah. Good morning, commissioners. Tracy Neu of your RTC staff. The first slide is a table of actual revenues and expenditures for fiscal year 2018 through 2021. Included in the first column is April through June of 2017, which is a partial fiscal year due to the effective tax date. The original estimate for measure revenue was $17 million annually. Actual revenues are much higher at 24 million annually for fiscal year 2018, the first full fiscal year through fiscal year 2021. As of fiscal year 2021, total measure revenue is 90 million compared to the original estimate of 55 million for the same period. Next slide, please, Sarah. Thank you. The next slide demonstrates actual revenue growth from fiscal year 17 through 21, and then today's projected measure revenues over the term of the tax at $1 billion, which is double the initial revenue estimate. Measure D revenue projections are part of the cash flow model to demonstrate whether there are sufficient resources to support project delivery. The cash flow model is updated regularly with sales tax projections from our consultant, Hinderleiter Dolomis, and project costs from RTC program and project managers for the highway, active transportation and rail categories, and programming requests from local jurisdictions for the active transportation category. Funding needs are driven by specific project timelines and construction schedules. If we are not able to fund projects for these programs on a pay-as-you-go basis or through inter-program loans, the RTC may decide to use bond financing or borrowing as an alternative method of funding to accelerate project implementation. The cash flow model provides information on the potential debt capacity and to ensure that the percentage of funds are maintained over the duration of the period that the tax is imposed. Melissa Schick and David Lifer from CAND and Public Finance provided bond education at the April 7th RTC meeting and are here today to present the cash flow model with financing options for the commission to consider. Please welcome Melissa and David. Good morning, commissioners. Melissa Schick and I'm gonna be presenting the output of the cash flow model, but joined by my colleague, David Lifer, who provided your commission with an overview of bonding concepts, which is driven by the cash flow model in which we promised providing updates, updated output to the commission based on the proposed projects. This slide provides an overview of the interim trail scenario and the top graph shows both projected expenditures for both highway corridors and active transportation over the construction period. You'll see kind of in tandem expenditures are approximately 18 million at the peak where total revenues directed to both highway and active transportation fall below that peak projected expenditure. Overall, the cash flow is managed on a sub-program basis. Active transportation, it's projected that they go revenues in combination with existing cash balances maintain a positive cumulative cash balance when considering the interim trail expenditures. However, highway corridor, it's projected that there would be a deficit in fiscal 27 and fiscal 28 considering the expenditures required with interim trail. Next slide. This slide shows the implications of potential additional bonding resources or some additional other kind of borrowing and which could be an interim program loan within the measure team program to achieve positive cash balance for highway corridors. So you'll see in fiscal 27, the injection of 6.8 million of additional resources, which then addresses any projected deficit within the fiscal 27 and 28 fiscal years. Again, active transportation is projected to have positive cumulative cash balances over the construction period associated with the interim trail expenditure scenario. Next slide. This slide provides an overview of the expected expenditures, revenues, and cash balances with the interim trail scenario. As you can see, peak projected expenditures in both highway and active transportation are far greater than the interim trail scenario. Peak expenditures occur in fiscal 25 and 26 and they're closer to 30 million a year than that which was projected in the interim trail, which was closer to 18 million a year. So then the tables below show projected cash flows deficits within both highway and active transportation programs, beginning in fiscal 25 and accumulating through fiscal 29. Next slide. I provided a preview of expected bonding needs for both of these programs on the onset given the expenditure requirements of ultimate trail. We project that highway trans, or highway corridors in fiscal 25, close to 60 million of additional proceeds would be required to maintain positive cash balances and address expenditure needs within that program area. Similarly, in fiscal 25 for active transportation, additional funding requirements would be needed to address project expenditures, but at a lower level, approximately 13.5 million. And I think before moving on from this slide, it is a larger amount of bond proceeds and bonding expectation required, but you'll see in each table, the bottom row says program debt service coverage. And what we have sized the bonds to closely considers that each program has the capacity to cover its share of the debt service on the bonding. So highway would be carefully managed and budget to cover debt service on its share as would active transportation, such that other sub-program areas would not be required to fund the debt within these program areas. Next slide. So these tables should look similar to how, to guys in introduction, but mostly just to summarize that interim trail and that project expenditures really could probably largely fund that scenario with pay go and existing cash balances. Highway may need some borrowing or some outside funding sources or even an interim program loan to help with the any mismatch between revenues and expenditures. And again, and then on the ultimate trail side, you'll see that in fiscal 25, bonding requirements are much greater and total debt principle, as well as debt repayment is much larger. In each scenario, as Guy noted initially, there's room for future program capacities and ending cash within the interim trail scenario for both highway and active transportation is projected to be just under 270 million and that program capacity is reduced in the ultimate trail scenario given the greater bonding needs in that approach, but certainly there still is, it remains additional capacity for other project and programming in the future, even considering the need to repay the debt on any borrowing for the ultimate trail scenario. So with that, I will pass it back to Grace for other considerations. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So although 18 miles of the coastal rail trail are being developed, and Guy mentioned this in his introduction, there's several segments that still need to be initiated and the majority of these segments are located between Rio del Mar, La Selva and Watsonville. The costs and timing to initiate these segments will be informed by measure D funding decisions. And in addition, increased costs for existing segments could increase the impact on measure D funding allocation. Before I move on to the next slide, I also wanted to mention something about segment 18 since we hadn't presented that in today's report. And the reason is the segment 18 is not currently seeking additional funding. So you will see the previously programmed funds for segment 18 when we come to you in May as part of the five year plan update. They are not requesting additional funds so they have not been discussed today. But to give you an update, as Guy mentioned, phase one is complete and funding is programmed in the current five year plan for phase two and the city is moving forward with that project. Next slide. In addition to the coastal rail trail project development that we've been talking about and the construction costs for the projects underway, annual rail corridor maintenance, which we estimate to be about one million per year in $2022 are included in the cash flow model. Not included, however, in the cash flow model that you should consider is annual ongoing trail maintenance costs starting in fiscal year 26 and 27 and beyond that, which we estimate would be about one million per year for 18 miles of trail that would be completed at that time. Using measure D regional funding for trail maintenance would decrease the measure D regional funding available to develop and construct other coastal rail trail segments. Also not included in the cash flow analysis review today and that should be considered are the costs to rehabilitate the trail every 10 years or so and RTC is still working to develop cost estimates for this rehabilitation. Next slide, please. So we've described a few funding scenarios in the tables we've shown for construction of the ultimate trail configuration with and without financing and the interim trail optional phase with and without financing. As Guy described and other staff members have talked about both are feasible with different impacts on the cash flow model, but they and they impact in dates when segment eight through 12 could be constructed or when other segments of the coastal rail trail would begin development. I also wanted to outline a few other potential funding approaches that you could consider. One option is to limit the project funding to pay as you go, meaning like spending the revenues as you come in. This would be not incurring the debt financing costs. It could result in less competitive ATP cycle grants because only current revenues, not future would be committed as a grant match. So overall less of a grant match and it could result in postponing construction of segments 10 through 12 on their current project delivery schedule and further subjecting project construction costs to annual escalation costs. Another option would be to use less measure the regional active transportation category funds and discussed so far today as the grant match. This would mean that project sponsors, the city and county could increase the amount of funding to increase the amount of local funds to obtain a 20% match. They could submit a grant application with less than a 20% match. Of course, talking that we talked about how that affects the overall grant application score or they could consider shortening the length of trail projects proposed for funding. Another option that you could consider is increasing the amount of financing that we've discussed so far today to fund construction of segments 10 through 12 and advancing additional segments. Of course, this would increase your debt service costs if we may deliver segments 13 through 17 and possibly six and 20 earlier, you would need to start work on these so that liquid documents are complete and these projects would be eligible for financing. But it would overall advance more of the postal rail trail construction. I'm gonna hand it back to Sarah to wrap up our presentation. Thank you. Before I wrap up, I would like to touch on a few other considerations for the Highway Quarters Program. As part of this discussion to potentially finance measure D, there are considerations for the Highway Quarters Program that are similar, some of them are similar to the trail program, but it's distinctly different because these are state highways, we're not responsible for maintenance, that sort of thing. So the first consideration is potential cost overruns on projects under development and future projects within the program as well as other type of program costs paid for by the Highway Quarters Program. As you're aware, we have two projects that are gonna be advertised for construction bids soon. There's a potential for cost overruns on any project that's being advertised for construction bids due to recent times having very high escalation of construction costs. In addition, financing would reduce the capacity of the program for other future projects that are not yet under development. One of these projects that we've been considering as the next potential project along Highway 1 is the 41st Avenue and Bay Porter Interchange Area. This mile long segment of Highway 1 suffers significant operational and safety challenges and the programmatic EIR identified a solution that included combining the two interchanges into a single couplet. This would greatly improve operations, safety, and enhance the bus on shoulder facility along this mile long segment. So we definitely wanna make sure there's some capacity left to do much needed improvements along Highway 1 such as that. Also, there's other ongoing program costs, TDM, Freeway Service Patrol, Safe Fund 17, that this Highway Corridors Program will continue to fund. So the cash flow model took all of these things into consideration with the exception of the capacity for future capital projects, obviously, because we don't have costs for those yet. And the next steps include a discussion and feedback on the material that was just presented by our team, specifically on the policy for financing as a strategy to advance regional projects and input on the delivery of the projects and what projects we actually apply for grant funding opportunities, assuming the ultimate trail or the interim trail optional first phase and considering all of the information presented today. This feedback will inform the measure D5 year program projects that staff is planning to recommend for adoption at the May 5th commission meeting in just a few weeks. And that concludes our staff report and I will hand it back over to Chair Konegg for questions and discussion by the commission. Thank you to all the RTC staff and KNN staff as well for the fantastic presentation. Mr. Rockin first. Thank you. I have three questions. I'm not sure who answers each one, but I'll throw it out and staff can figure out. The first one has to do with the chart that's on page 18 that was presented that shows the expected revenues over the life of measure D. I just wanted to ask, it shows it going up every year and stuff. There's no recessions in that plan or I guess I'm asking the financial advisors on this question, is the chart meaningful given the reality of the fact that we're not gonna have growth in every year? I can't imagine there's not a recession somewhere in all those years of activity. Is that an average that's based on some assumption that includes the idea that there's recessions that we just don't know where they are now at this point or should we have confidence that the funds are gonna come in at the level that's being projected there? I can speak to that on behalf of the consultants because they do provide us with this information. They do not build in recessionary but they also don't build in other factors because the lines would go up and down and they really project more than a few years out. So in this projection right here, and I just checked in with HDL this week, they actually think this year's revenues are gonna go up based on current inflationary measures, gas taxes and all of that. And they're pretty confident with this model being built as a linear time period. And I do feel that they have taken all this consideration and they have provided this information based on what they know now and what they have experienced and how it'll end up in the end. Thank you. Following that, I'll just make a comment. You're looking for some vague direction, not a vote or something that tells you where to go, staff, where we should go with this, but it seems to me that bonding makes total sense no matter what you're in favor of here. Your amount of how much bonding changes of course, but if we really are about pushing these projects forward and then trying to provide people with this, building the trail as quickly as possible and moving ahead with things, whether we build the ultimate trail or whether we build the interim trail, that seems to me bonding is something we need to very seriously consider. So that's just one commissioner's opinion on that question. My second question I think is, I'm not maybe to Sarah or maybe to Guy, but when we're looking at segment 12 and we're talking about the interim alternative, we had some discussion before about the question of possibly building those railroad, what are now railroad bridges over the highway in the two places, whether they would be abutments for those, if we went with the interim solution, whether the abutments for the bridge would be built to a standard that would eventually allow freight and or sort of passenger service, even if the actual bridge itself is constructed in a way simply to provide adequate support for bicycles and pedestrians, is that still part of our thinking about what the interim, that's a little bit in the weeds, but whether that, is that still included in our thinking about what the interim alternative looks like as a practical reality? Yes, Mike, that engineering approach remains what we're planning on doing. Okay, so again, so people are clear on this for the, so that we don't, if we end up coming back to the ultimate, we don't have to tear out the abutments and start from scratch with a bridge project, it would simply be a different, much more expensive obviously bridge for say freight, for the carry freight than you need for the bridge that will carry pass bicycles and pedestrians. My third question, I guess is to Guy, and this is highly subjective, but my understanding, I always say this first, I've tried to, I've advocated that if we could make it around, other commissioners have as well, if we could make an agreement with roaring camp for a rail banking, that they would support rail banking with whatever, make sure that their needs are met and so forth, then a rail banking program might go through the surface transportation board because there wouldn't be opposition from whether they're freight service now, but potential freight service on the line. But given at least their current stance, which is pretty adamantly not in favor of an agreement with us, the only real alternative there is advert, ultimately adverse abandonment for the interim solution. And a lot of, again, this is speculative and you don't have an absolute answer to this, but what I'd be interested in your thoughts about whether the, whatever its virtues, the interim trail alternative is a realistic possibility given the difficulty of getting adverse abandonment through the federal surface transportation board. I mean, there's uncertainties about, whether we'll ever, as people pointed out, whether we'd ever get funding for passenger rail, I would at least ask the question and get an answer on to what extent is there just equal uncertainty or at least a lot of uncertainty about whether we can, even if we, as much as we might want an interim trail solution, whether that's even feasible given the reality of this control by the surface transportation board. Thank you, Mike, for the question. It's a good one. Certainly if there was an agreement with Roaring Camp rail banking would be a lot more feasible, but even if there is opposition by Roaring Camp, it's not infeasible. The surface transportation board is really going to look at whether or not there is enough freight rail on the line to justify the expenses of repairing and maintaining the line so that that freight could continue. We really, I mean, I've been asked several times, I think maybe even at my first commission meeting is, can't we just call it the surface camp transportation board and ask them whether they would approve rail banking or not. The only way to really find out is to move forward with it. As I just said, it would be quicker, easier or less expensive if we had an agreement with Roaring Camp, but it wouldn't be necessarily impossible if the opposition continued. It would likely be longer, more expensive and more difficult. But I believe that there are possibilities either way. If I could just ask for a slight expansion. I mean, certainly the reputation of the surface transportation board is that they really don't like stranding not only existing freight service, but potential of freight service. And so I asked you to expand a little bit more on your answer on what gives you confidence that, I mean, maybe perhaps I'm wrong in my understanding of the sort of frankly largely by rumor notion that they just don't approve these things because even non-liable freight services sort of get defended rather than leaving them stranded and hopeless forever in the future. So maybe I'm just asking to sort of expand. No, I actually think that's a good clarification and let me expand a little bit. They don't like to leave a stranded line. So the issue would be whether they would determine that the Felton line should be abandoned as well. If the Felton line was abandoned, then it wouldn't be stranded because it wouldn't be an active rail line anymore. So that's how the surface transportation board would have, would likely look at the two lines is whether or not there's enough freight on both the lines or them to be justified or whether both lines should be considered abandoned. Thank you. Thanks for your answers. Thank you, Commissioner Rodkin. And Director Noody, do you have something you wanted to add? I think you, I'm sorry. I do want to add that the chart on the BJT and Commissioner Rodkin, it shows a smoothing of the impact of an inflation or a recessionary period. It can't factor in when our house significant will be past a few years. And as we experienced with COVID, the actual far exceeded projections. And so they're really leery and that's why they smooth it out and just make it one line that goes up. Thanks. That's what I was trying to check on because it's sort of an expected average which just leaves out the ups and downs or something, right? Where we had to at least consider that it's not going to be just, you know, everything goes up from here forever without any dips or something, which it's good to know that that was not the understanding of what's being presented. I apologize, but thank you, Chair Cohnett. Thank you. Commissioner Hernandez. Yes. I had a question and I think you kind of touched on it on the presentation, but I wanted to find out if you can expand a little bit on it, but how would the auxiliary lane and bus on shoulder affect the construction or the construction costs on the bridges on Highway 1 in relation to the cost of the interim trail and the ultimate trail? And can they, if they do those projects for the highway, can we claim or can they add active transportation? Can they add the trail as part of active transportation on that project, on the highway project? So it's kind of a two-part question, you know, how that highway project can, how it relates to the cost of the interim trail and the ultimate trail, and can it be, can active transportation be added to that highway project in terms of the trail? I'll take this one. Thank you, Commissioner Hernandez. I'm bringing up the map slide that we showed. So part of the trail is actually being funded or proposing to be funded by the Measure D Highway Corridors Program Fund. So a pretty, actually a pretty significant amount because of the expenditure plan for highway corridors versus the expenditure plan for active transportation, the Bicycle Pedestrian Overcrossings, which would be the trail over crossings. There's two of them on this project. Those would be paid for by the Highway Corridors Fund Program as well as the segment of trail. You can't just build a bridge without connecting to anything. So we expanded that to the next logical point where you can actually end it if it were just a bridge that we wanted to build and looking at it from that perspective. So that's why you see from State Park Drive all the way to this little dinky road called Aptos Wharf Road, that segment of segment 12 is proposed to be funded by the Highway Corridors Measure D Program. And then similarly on the other over crossing, we had to end at Trout Gulch Road and then at the terminus to the south. So did that answer your question? Okay, great. Thanks. Thank you Commissioner Hernandez. Commissioner Picker, I'm sorry, you have another one? Yeah, one more. Commissioner Rocken brought up a point about having discussions with Roaring Camp about them accepting, I guess, my ability or responsibility of the rail banking. I remember that meeting that we had, we did suggest that we had discussions with Roaring Camp. I just wanted to ask if we had any, have we had those discussions and if we had any outcome about those discussions yet? So I've been working through Chair Brown at the moment, trying to set up a meeting with Roaring Camp, but we have not been successful in ending a date for such meeting. All right, thank you Commissioner Hernandez. Commissioner Pegler. Thank you. I think my question may be for Grace and it's back to some of the cost estimates. In your presentation, you noted that the city and the county both required some additional funding to complete their Sequa review. I think the city was 370,000, I don't know what the county amount was. That will lead to, if I've got my timeline correct, the EIR should be certified in spring of 2023. Is that correct? Correct. And so jumping to two aspects of that. Do the cost estimates for either trail option include the cost of mitigation measures identified by the EIR? And in particular, what do we know about the costs of soil remediation along the trail, along the rail corridor? Do my best to answer that. And also Rob Tidmore from the counties here and Rob, feel free to jump in if you think I leave anything out. At this stage in the cost estimating the mitigation costs are a percent of the construction costs. So that is included in the cost estimates, but it's not specific to what may come out of the project specific environmental impact report. And then secondly, related to the hazard mitigation. We've learned a lot in building fragment seven and working towards the construction of segment five about what may be required and about soil sampling and the condition of the soil on the Santa Cruz branch rail line. And that will also need to be addressed and is also included as a percentage. At this point, I don't anticipate it would be significantly different for either of the alignments because the rail corridor in itself is addressed under a remediation agreement that we have with environmental health services for the entire railroad right of way. Thank you. That's my question. You commissioner Bangler, commissioner Kristen Brown. Thank you so much. I wanted to go back executive director Preston had mentioned some confusion about the Capitola trestle in one of the tables on page five dash four. And I just want to make sure that I understand it. So I'm seeking some clarification. The note at the bottom of the chart here says that the interim trail cost estimate for segment 11 includes funding to rehabilitate and repurpose the Capitola trestle. So taking that sentence alone, that means that this chart includes the funding that it would take to essentially get rid of the tracks and have only a trail across the trestle. Is that correct? That is correct for the interim trail scenario. Right. And okay. So perfect. The next sentence says the Capitola trestle will be need to be replaced to build a trail across Soquel Creek and the village of Capitola. So I'm assuming that means that it's relating to the ultimate trail that the Capitola trestle would need to be replaced if we are going to build that trail adjacent to a rail line is that correct? That is also correct. So Capitola trestle, you can't leave our bridge off of it. It's also approximately centered in the right away. So building a separate pedestrian bridge, you know, on one side or the other isn't really feasible. So really, if you're looking at trying to create a facility that where you can have both, you're looking at replacing the structure in its entirety likely would not happen until we had a passenger rail okay. So the funding for the, you know, rehabilitation repurposing for just a trail across that that's included in the table one on page five for the funding that would be needed to replace the entire trestle should we have a trail and rail remaining there is not included in the table, correct? Right. Okay, cool. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Brown. Commissioner Shiffrin, John Meehan. Well, I thank the staff for their presentation to almost an overwhelming amount of information. But I think it's very helpful. I have a couple of questions, a few questions. One is sort of just to clarify, I think the staff mentioned this, but I think it's a very important point and it didn't come across clearly in the charts. And that is that really the commission and the city and the county with these segments are really going to have to make two decisions. One decision is on the environmental document, the EIR and the other decision is on the project. And really what we're talking about today with the financial alternatives is all about the project because the EIR really looks at the environmental impacts. But I want to be, I want staff to confirm if I'm correct that the commission can't and shouldn't make any decisions about the project itself until the environmental document is done and certified under the California Environmental Quality Act. Is that correct? You shouldn't make any decisions as to what you feel the preferred alternative is, but you could put in grant applications for either of the two alternatives. Well, I think it's important to be, one of the things that I thought I understood was that the grant applications were going to cover both and that would then allow for either the interim trail or the, it's called the ultimate trail to be done. There, it's important, there was a case called a safe power case where Los Angeles sort of made enough predecisions that supposedly weren't the final decision before the EIR was done. So I just would recommend caution to the commission about appearing to approve either one of these options before the environmental document, the EIR is completed. At least that's my understanding of sequence that it becomes a very slippery slope. If it starts to appear that the commission has approved a project before the environmental document is done. So I don't know if staff wants to correct me on that or. Well, I just wanted to say specifically that point of discussion today is also around the grant funding amount. That's a key decision that commission needs to make before grant applications are submitted is how much measure the active transportation but regional funding would be available to project sponsors to use as a grant match. That's a key piece of this decision. Additional funding for designing. Recording in progress. Which was the 370,000 plus 2 million. When they put that together with their other funding sources, they segment eight and nine and the city would have a 20% match for the ATP grant application. The County of Santa Cruz is seeking the full 20% match from measure the regional funding, some of which has already been programmed. And that was included in the cash flow model. Okay, the other concern I had was the staff, the report discussion of maintenance. I'm concerned that there seems to be a decision that the commission should be responsible for the maintenance of the rail trail. I think we need to really discuss that and look at whether that is reasonable or not. The County and the cities maintain the bike lanes within their jurisdiction. The trail, the rail trail, or the trail, whatever it is, is going to be serving residents of the various jurisdictions to the extent that the commission has to allocate its very scarce and limited measure defunding and the estimate is up to a million dollars a year for maintenance really will make it more difficult to implement the trail throughout the 20 segments. So what I'd like to ask is that requests is that we get an item on our next agenda to really discuss the responsibility for maintenance because I think it is a significant potential cost for the commission. And it's one that from my perspective, we really should consider and I would ask the representatives from the various jurisdictions as well to consider whether they really are appropriate cause for those jurisdictions to absorb. So that's my request that we have a separate discussion on sort of maintenance costs and who really should be responsible for them. We're the property owner, but as we see with eight and nine and 10, 11 and 12, the city and the county are really the project sponsors and it seems to me their constituents are really gonna be major beneficiaries of having the trail in their community. The final point that I wanted to make or question I wanted to ask, the city of Santa Cruz and has been moving forward with segment seven, but they didn't go forward with segment seven as well as one project. They've gone forward with it as phases. The San Lorenzo Bridge widening was essentially phase one, then what they call phase one, which has been built. And then there's phase two and the chart of future projects show the phase three from natural bridges to Schaefer. And I just think that given some of the, on the one hand, the cost of some of these segments and to the uncertainty around whether a freight abandonment is gonna be feasible or not, I really think staff needs to look at as part of future choices for the commission, whether it would make sense and be feasible to break down some of these other segments into phases because it may well be that it would, where we might not be successful in getting a grant for the full construction of segment eight and nine, let's say, but we could get a grant for the construction of a portion of segment nine or a portion of segment 10 that could connect to the road system as phase one of segment seven connects to the road system in the city. I just think realistically, this may be a more feasible approach to looking at moving forward. Is there a problem with the staff doing that? I wanted to check with the executive director whether this is something that could be considered as we move forward with these segments. It's certainly a possibility. Of course, you'll see smaller sections of the trial be completed and it'll take longer to complete it. It's kind of the opposite of what we provided today, which was to try to maximize and deliver what we currently have under development. But if that's the desire of the commission, it could certainly be something that is considered. Well, if it would take longer than doing the alternative, I certainly support the alternative. My concern is that given the cost and the uncertainty about some of the aspects of the alternatives we're looking at, it may take much longer to get the funding and the approvals to do them. And so I think we need to, I mean, I think the city of Santa Cruz used a very reasonable strategy by breaking their segment down into phases. And this may make sense for some of the other segments as well, not to prolong it, but in fact, to make things go faster because it's either too difficult or too expensive to get the whole segment done if we can break. And I think it will be helpful to have an EIR that's done on the entire segment as well. But that doesn't mean it's gonna be possible to implement them in their entirety. If I can, I can add a little bit more information about that specifically to segments 10-11. My name is Rob Timor. I'm the project manager for segments 10-11 from the County of Santa Cruz. So both, I think Grace and Sarah and Rachel all alluded to the fact that there's analysis done before we go after these grants to see how competitive the projects will be, where we can get maximum points. And as part of that analysis, there's a consideration, particularly for the ATP program of providing benefits to what they consider disadvantaged communities. That's a critical part of the application and it's for at least for segments 10-11, one of our biggest challenges. We have overall pretty high median incomes in our area despite the fact that there are, as we all know, pockets of poverty and areas of need embedded within, I think one of the commissioners alluded to this earlier there's very expensive homes next to people who are struggling to make ends meet. And so though the average high cost of living and the average high incomes in this area sort of obscure those numbers and it makes it difficult for our area to qualify based on the qualifications that the ATP program lays out. And in particular for 10-11, when we looked at segmenting because this is something we considered previously, the only areas that we think will be good candidates to qualify for disadvantaged community points are the western end of segment 10 where you pass through the life of community. Moving beyond that into the city of Capitola and the seaside area, there are, the incomes are just higher and there's less disadvantaged communities in that area on paper. And so when we looked at splitting it up, it reduced our ability to get points in that area and would make segment 11 in particular harder to fund. That's why it's combined as a single project. Okay, thank you. I'm glad that those kinds of options are being looked at as we move forward, we'll have to see whether they work on that. A few very minor points. One, the chart that showed future projects included segment six. There is a trail now between Shaffer Road and Wilder Range. I don't think it makes sense to keep that on the list as a project to do. Because it's just going to be duplicating a bike trail that's already there. And then the final, my final point is in talking about future highway projects, Sarah talked about Forty First Avenue Bay interchange as a choke point, but certainly the Soquel interchange is a very significant one as well. And, you know, it's, I hope that that, the fact that it wasn't mentioned me, it doesn't mean that it isn't considered important because from my perspective, especially with the next construction from Soquel to Forty First, you know, you're going to have this choke into the Soquel interchange where you have three lanes going to two for, you know, around the interchange and then back to three again. It's not a very desirable way of trying to move traffic. So thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Schifrin. Guy, Director Preston, something you want to add? Yeah, I appreciate that Laos comment, Commissioner Schifrin, but I wanted to actually address your first question because I don't think it was clearly discussed by staff with respect to submitting an application that we could either build the interim trail or the ultimate trail. I don't think that that's possible. These applications have to clearly show your funding plan and the funding plans would be very different under the interim trail and the ultimate trail. And they require us to also submit cost-benefit analysis and the costs of the two projects are different. With respect to whether or not it would be making a decision, again, I go back to my initial answer and that we can't decide on the preferred alternative before the environmental documents completed. We wouldn't be doing that by submitting an application for either the interim trail or the ultimate trail. The way we're addressed, we've strategized putting these documents together. We only have one bill to alternate and it has potential phases to it. So we wouldn't be making a determination as to the preferred alternative. We may be making, we may be putting together an application that may help guide us and whether we want to elect an optional first phase or not. And that's different than a decision as to whether or not to adopt a one preferred alternative, one potential alternative versus another that's under consideration. And just to add to that, I'm bringing up this chart again to show the timing of the local match commitment, the starting of the EIR and then the funding master agreement. So if we submit the grant application and we are successful, the funding master agreement would signify a commitment to build the project that happens after the EIR is certified. So I just wanted to provide that context as well. Thank you. Mr. Schifrin, is that all your questions? Yeah, I'll save my comment till, after everybody's done in a year from the public. All right, thank you. Commissioner Hurst. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm as excited as everyone else is here to try and dig through this mountain. Well, maybe it's a rail car, a rail load of statistics and numbers and costs. You know, it's kind of overwhelming as Commissioner Schifrin mentioned. But I think that we might have some more choices. And one of the choices that we could make is do we want to get freight off of the road? We want to get the truck traffic off of the road and ease congestion and or have it on the rail. So that hasn't had as much discussion as I think needs to be to plan out our future. You know, getting freight off of the highway onto the rail improves congestion, it improves safety, it's cost efficient and it's probably better environmental stewardship than some of the other plans. But we do need to get Santa Cruz County moving and we need to have it connected to the rest of the world as well. That's the lifeblood of Santa Cruz County as the tourist industry. I'm concerned about boxing this in with the interim, but the interim trail because it boxes out freight and we need freight one way or another. It's going to have to come into the community. And so I think we're kind of missing the picture on freight and how do we ease congestion on the corridor. And so let's look at some other choices and let's get back and revisit a business plan that actually makes sense and serves the greater needs of our community. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Harris. Commissioner Kristen Brown. Thank you, Chair. I just had a really quick follow-up question. I'll try to be brief. I had a follow-up to my original question about the Capitola Trestle and the funding sources to repurpose it, et cetera. There was a comment that we would expect an interim trail to last 20 to 25 years. Is the funding that we would anticipate to or whether if we were to move forward with the repurposing of the Capitola Trestle for a trail, would we expect that it would be that it would be able to last that 20 to 25 years without having to be replaced during that time period? I'm seeing a head nod from Sarah, okay. Yes. Okay, and then there was also a comment about a potential for up to a million dollars a year for trail maintenance. Would that include any kind of maintenance that needed to be done on the Trestle itself? Or is that just the trail sections outside of our bridges and Trestles? A million dollars a year was a very rough estimate based on I believe $50,000 a mile, which we got from the city of San Jose for the maintenance of their class one trails. It's pretty high level and I think a lot more work would need to be done to consider the costs of maintaining some of the infrastructure. I also think that the cost of maintaining the ultimate trail versus the interim trail are gonna be very different. You're dealing with a lot of infrastructure, new floating bridges and retaining walls, some of which are gonna block our ability to maintain the rail line itself and access underneath. So a lot more work needs to be done like on that. Right now, if the local jurisdictions would pick up the maintenance cost, we could focus on constructing the trail. At this time, local jurisdictions are having a hard time coming up with additional funding for maintenance as well. Got it. Thank you. Thank you, Chair, for allowing me that additional question. Welcome. Thank you, Commissioner Brown. Seeing no further questions from commissioners, I did have just a couple of myself. The first was, and I think you kind of answered this director Preston, but that that million dollars a mile, that was total estimated cost. That was not assuming any cost sharing with the local jurisdictions. That's correct. Okay. And it seemed to me in terms of the counties asked for $10 million for, I think it's 4.7 miles of trail for segments 10 and 11. My initial math and dividing $80 million total act of transportation funding by that $10 million, it's about 15% of the total amount available. And or rather 4.7 miles is 15% of the total 32 miles of trail and 15% of 80 million is 11.75 million. So that seemed roughly in line with the proportionate amount. But that didn't assume any other cost for the design work, which of course is a piece of it as well as maintenance. So I guess the question is, what would be a more accurate amount to assume, should we say, $60 million available for construction? And that is what each trail segment should get when we look at matching funds. Grace, do you want to take that one? Well, what we've looked at, I don't think I have the exact number in front of me because what we've looked at, I do want to clarify it's, we said it was annually a million dollars for 18 miles of trail for maintenance. That was our high level estimate. So if we assume that from beginning in fiscal year 2026 for another 20 years, you have your $20 million increase ask of measure D. As you said, that didn't assume any cost sharing between the city and counties, but is not an estimated in there is when the additional segments would come online. So those segments 13 through 17 and what years we would start needing to pay for maintenance of those segments. And then I did want to add that for the request from the county, it did include the cost of final design, all pre-construction costs, including final design and construction cost match. Okay, well, I think I have more clarity as to sort of what a fair share per mile is so that when we can evaluate these kinds of requests and make sure that we're not overspending on the initial segments. And then it's also interesting that, I think it was the first time we had some sense of what it would cost to acquire the additional right of way on segment 12. And I think I caught in there it'd be about $14 million is budgeted. I just wonder if you could, Ms. Christensen, if you could give any more detail on exactly where that right of way would need to be and how we got to 14 million bucks. Sure, so the cost differential is the pre-construction. So that would actually also include the difference in costs for final design. It's cheaper to design a repurposing of a bridge than it is to design a whole separate bridge. So there is some cost there, the difference between the ultimate and the optional first phase. But the cost, the right of way costs right now is estimated at about 10 million for right of way for the project, specific for the trail. And the, as I mentioned, it's the delivery approach for segment 12 is to acquire right of way because of all of the engineering constraints. The locations of which are, we have some really narrow parts of the corridor, right adjacent to the railroad bridges that go over Highway 1, highly constrained in those two areas, there's two bridges, so in each of those vicinities. And then Aptos Village, in order to fit a trail adjacent to the rail line, there's some partial kind of sliver acquisitions needed to fit the trail in there. And that could have perhaps some minor impacts such as landscaping that is removed, but other impacts could include parking removal and that sort of thing. So those are really the three main vicinities that we're talking about. So between Aptos Creek Road and Trout Gulch through the village specifically. On either end of those highway bridges. And then yes, just on the inland side of those highway bridges where our right of way is quite narrow. And that right away in that location that Sarah is mentioning, there are buildings there and the trail would impact those buildings. But you're talking about demolition of residential and commercial structures, relocation of businesses and residences. Got it, thank you. All right, seeing no further questions from the Commission, we'll open it for public comments and see a hand up from Barry Scott. Go ahead. All right, thank you for the conversation and the chance to speak to this matter. I wanted to, I added up the cost of the two scenarios for segments eight through 12 and to do it, to build a rail with trail as planned, plan of record is 150 million to do it overall with an interim trail and then restoration laders, 250 million over eight and a third miles that comes out to $12 million a mile that we would be putting off on some future generation and I just reject that. The setting aside commitment to the CTC and to roaring camp and to the community and the future of our transportation systems and given RTC's acceptance of the electric rail transit plan, the discussion today seems to minimize the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail and elevate the unlikely interim approach as if rail banking is achievable and that the highway project is more important than our commitment to public transportation. This uncertainty of rail banking sets us up for failure of both the highway project and the rail project and the trail project because rail banking is unlikely and it's the wrong thing for this community. I think the commission needs to answer questions about rail banking before it proceeds with these interim trail alternatives with any sense of certainty. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Mr. Waissaki. Hi, am I coming through? You are. Okay, thank you. So it was interesting listening, my name is Jacob Waissaki. It was interesting listening to the previous item and there was a lot of discussion about risk of actually achieving a grant. And so I think risk assessment is really important. Now in the past couple of years, I've read through every single adverse abandonment decision that the Surface Transportation Board has issued and there's some very important risks that come up with that. One is time risk. Adverse abandonment can take well over a year and potentially drag on for multiple years. So that's going to delay any kind of trail operation. Delivery risk, to be honest, I think adverse abandonment will fail. Although that's not up to me, it doesn't matter what I think, it doesn't matter what guy Preston thinks, it only matters what the Surface Transportation Board thinks. Wasteful expenditure risk. Reactivation is non-exclusive and can be granted to any freight operator that can demonstrate need and capability to provide freight service. So there's the risk. If we go with the interim trail, that some freight operator comes along in three years and wins the right to reactivate and then just rips the trail out. And I haven't seen any discussion of that risk. Grant delivery risk. Some of these grants you're talking about applying for multimodal grants. And if you rail bank, you are removing one of the modes. And so now you have reduced the probability of actually achieving the grant. And then finally, what I'm noting is all of this discussion of constructing an interim trail in 2025 implies that the RTC will choose to break the ACL or simply ignore the ACL. And I think this highlights the importance for Roaring Camp to basically not trust anything that is being stated right now and to put up their defenses. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Waisaki. Mr. David Dean. Yes, thank you for your time. I wanted to say that I'm extremely frustrated by the talk of the financial implications of the interim trail, only talking about the immediate costs and not these future costs that are part of the problem. The total costs being $250 million to do everything in this phased approach versus just doing things right from the first, the beginning, which is $76 million, that's leaving future unfunded mandate of $175 million for our kids to have to deal with. And so by pretending like we can just suddenly save money by mortgaging our future is really fiscally irresponsible. You're talking about borrowing $14 million now to do things right the first way, that seems like a whole lot more sense than having to borrow $175 million from the future. That's just, I would really appreciate it if you didn't ignore the future costs like you're doing today. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dean. David loves public transit. Good afternoon, can you hear me all right? I can. Hi, good afternoon transportation folks. This is David Van Brink. So if I was hearing correctly, if we pursue the sort of two-phased interim approach, it would basically imply keeping it that way for 25 years or more. I also heard that we're not changing the preferred alternative. Putting in a mandatory multi-decade delay really is effectively drastically scaling back the preferred alternative. It really feels like a sort of a loophole to actually change the preferred alternative. That's my only observation. Thank you. Thank you. So I have four rail and trail. Okay, sorry, the unmute button didn't come up. Yeah, well, like so many other people, I can't help but notice the sort of logical fallacy here. Oh, we're only doing one grant application for the ultimate project, but we're not going to include the costs of the ultimate project in terms of having going through the so-called phased approach, which is the interim trail. It's like, if you're claiming this is, you're only doing a grant project, a grant application for the ultimate, then you need to include the total costs of the ultimate project. I mean, I just, it boggles my mind that that could just be set aside. I don't like those numbers, I'll just ignore them. So other people have spoken to that. I also just have some just questions. As I recall in the earliest part of the presentation, they talked about how this highway widening project was going to reduce vehicle miles traveled. I would be very curious to know how that was expected to happen, particularly if the project does not include transit, you're tearing out the tracks. And I also had a question about, so if we don't widen the highway, South of State Park Drive, do we know how much it would cost to build the rail and trail project at that time? We wouldn't have to replace the existing rail bridges and so forth. We perhaps maybe wouldn't have to buy more right away. I don't know, but I think that's an important question. And also, if we do widen the highway and replace the rail bridges, would we be able to apply for rail money to do that work? Actually build those bridges correctly and therefore not having to go through all the risks of maybe rail banking, maybe not, as Mr. Weisaki pointed out already. So those are my three questions, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Arnold. According to transit. Thanks so much. I'm going to try to read my chicken scratch here. I first want to thank Commissioner Hurst for his comment about freight. We know that rail is the most energy efficient and least environmentally damaging form of transportation ever invented and moving goods by freight is highly, highly effective, efficient and environmentally wise. I give an example. It takes one gallon of fuel to move one ton of freight 500 miles. So yes, on freight and it's much safer for moving dangerous things. Regarding, I want to echo both Commissioner Schifrin and Rockin on their recommendations to approve the TCAA business plan, which was the staff recommendation, which was ignored last in 2021. And also, by the way, charged by the California Transportation Commission in the March, 2019 hearing. I also want to point out that our community has spent decades and a significant amount of money and a huge number of community meetings in favor of and in support of rail. And then in just one year, a very short period of time, as two out of 10 of the commissioners have become past representatives of Greenway, that this shift has been a rapid shift away from rail, which is something that the community supports. I want to say that the money available is money available now through federal and upcoming state resources. The grants are available. And what these Congress and other officials want to see is that we have commitment. They look to local leadership for that commitment and that seeing that rail is important to the leadership in the community. So our rail is referred to as potentially a world-class system. This is what I've heard from outside the state. There's no reason why we can't do phasing of rail, just like we're doing phasing of trail, therefore making it more affordable. And it seems like all the efforts now are towards highway widening, despite the fact that it requires matching, bonding, purchasing. Thank you, Ms. Faulkner. Robin Sayle, we can't hear you. Hadn't hit the unmute button. Here we go. Hi, there was an accident there. I didn't mean to raise my hand, but I'm enjoying this conversation. And thank you all very much for your very hard work. Okay, apologies. No worries. Thank you, Ms. Sayle. I'd see no further public comment or return it to the commission or any further discussion. Commissioner Schifrin. Thank you. We're not making a decision today, but what I'm hearing is staff is wanting to get some input. And my input is I'm not willing to support the interim going forward with grant applications for the interim alternatives. I think that the rail, the master rail trail plan calls for a trail next to a rail line without an agreement with Voring Camp, the ability to do the interim trail seems extremely infeasible to me. I'm losing the potential for rail as the executive director has indicated for 25 years by essentially ripping out the railroad tracks seems unacceptable to me given the uncertainty about financing over the next several years. And I think that we need to continue to try to move forward and implementing the segments that we can implement. And if we're gonna do that, it sounded like it's expensive. Everything we do is expensive. Highway widening is expensive. Rail trail is expensive, but we're providing a piece of infrastructure that's gonna serve the residents of the county into the decades. And so that's my input. We're gonna have to deal with this at the next meeting, I guess, in terms of giving direction to staff on buying for grants. I think the timing is a little bit unfortunate, but I think it sounds like we have to do it. So I wanted to be clear about where I'm coming from. My, finally, let me say and let only be, let me ask, if we apply for what's being called the ultimate project, which I don't really like the term because it's really the preferred alternative given the master plan that the commission and all the jurisdictions adopted, or at least the ones on the rail line, could we then, if down the road, it became feasible to do some kind of interim alternative for some or more of these segments, could we then go back to the funding agency and amend our applications or amend how we wanna use the grant? Are we really setting it in stone by approving one option or another? Well, do my best to answer that question. The benefit of the way that we put together the CIR is that you can change your mind somewhere down the line, irrespective of the application. Because both, if the EIR is certified with the optional first phase and the ultimate trail, you could find some information out later, whether it's the ability to rail bank, the ability to acquire right away, the ability to obtain funding that could change your mind and both would still be approved environmentally and we could do one or the other. Now, whether the granting agency would allow us to do something different than what we submitted, would have to be addressed with that agency. Because the ultimate trail is a bigger house, but you're getting a trail with either, your question was specific to we apply for the ultimate trail and then we decide we wanna do the interim trail. There is a good argument to be made with the granting agency that you're getting a trail either way and the interim trail would be less expensive. The benefit would be similar, if not the same. So there is the possibility that the granting agency may say, okay, yes, go ahead and build the interim trail instead of the ultimate trail. Maybe there's a proportion of the funding that they would want back or maybe they would say you can use the additional funding to do additional segments. It's hard to say, we've certainly contemplated this, as staff, as the different options that we could pursue and approaches that we could pursue, but the certainty would not happen until we actually put in the application to receive the grant and free ask the question. Okay, thank you for that somewhat ground about explanation, which the way I understood it is to say, yeah, that's a possibility. My sense is it's always easier to ask for less money than to ask for more money. So to my mind, that's another argument for going for the ultimate and seeing if we can make that work. If we can't make it work, then it's becomes feasible to do the less expensive supposedly interim alternatives, which from my mind, if a trail is there and it has to be there for 25 years to think that it's ever gonna be ripped out for a rail line seems delusional, but I know people say that's the case and maybe it could be. So anyway, thank you for your answer. I did, since you're asking for feedback, I wanted to give it today, so it would be no surprise next month, although it's probably no surprise today. Thank you, Commissioner Sheffrin. Commissioner Rock and thanks, Manu. First, I have three comments. I think we should seriously consider bonding no matter what we choose in these various options. I think bringing these projects forward to the public is something that they're asking for. I think you can do it with bonding. The fact that you might slip by with some pieces of this in the interim without doing the bonding is not a very good argument for me. The bonding, we have pretty good confidence, we can pay it back and given the rising costs of doing anything in construction, I don't think we're losing, the fact that we pay interest for bonds does it to me as a non-factor almost. It's not a, it's a factor, but it's not as important as it might otherwise appear. And so I'm a strong supporter of using bonds when you have a secure source of repayment as we do in the Measure D. Secondly, I do have this concern about the idea that some members of the public spoke to moving ahead with grant proposals when you haven't completed the EIR, I'm not against staff spending time preparing stuff, investigating issues, making stuff happen, but actually putting these grants in, I think you do face a risk that somebody will sue you for violation of CEQA and they'll be successful because you'll have appeared, even though ultimately I understand the answer that we're going after the ultimate plan, but it'll have every practical reality like choosing the alternative rather than the plan that we actually, it's our preferred option. The third one, I have a special talent when there's like two sides to an issue of picking a third and nobody supports me what I want to do, but I like the idea of, and I know it's more work, it'd be more complex, not that this isn't complex enough already, but disaggregating the question of whether the interim or the ultimate makes sense, I'm willing to consider the possibilities on segment 12 of some kind of an interim arrangement that might involve placing the trail, the bridge. I'm not supportive of that for segments 8, 9, 10, 11 at all, but I'm a possible vote for looking at that on segment 12 and I think we need to kind of like, not necessarily have to like pick the whole thing or nothing, especially if we build the bridge abutments in the way as I've mentioned before, in a way that you don't have to totally tear them out and start with a new bridge if you decide that you're gonna go to the, eventually the passenger or freight capacity. And so I think that's worthy of some consideration that we don't have to choose the whole thing, either interim or ultimate, but look at the various segments and decide where we might be willing to experiment with that. And again, I haven't decided that this is not a yes vote for me on the 12 interim, but it's certainly something I'm willing to consider and look at just as I think we did when we looked at the Capitola trestle issue. That's another one that, which is not the major thing in front of us now, but anyway, those are my views on this for staff. It's not, we're not voting on the final thing. It's just going to get some reading of where the commission's at, those are my views. Thank you. And this has really been, I think a wonderful presentation. I mean, whatever your views are on the matter, it's so much clearer what's going on here than it might have been before we had the presentation today. Thank you to staff and to our consultants. I think Mr. Rocking, Mr. Hurst. Thank you, Chairman. And I too thought we had a good discussion here. We did have a lot of numbers that we have to dig out from under, but as we move forward, let's not forget about the most vulnerable people in our community. And that's all of the community from all the way from Davenport to the Pajaro River. Let's remember those that are most disadvantaged and can't drive and their need for access to transportation. I think there's a lot of different ways that we could manipulate a trail around various narrow portions of the line. You know, I've ridden and walked on trails all over the world and some of them are pretty rough and narrow and sometimes you even have to go single file. So it may not be a world-class trail, but it'll be a world-class destination regardless. I appreciate everyone's effort here. And I just ask that we always remember the most disadvantaged and the most vulnerable people of the community and their need for access as we try and try again to get Santa Cruz moving. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hurst, Mr. Sandy Brown. Thank you. I'm gonna keep my comments very brief because others have already made comments that I agree with. I guess I would just add that my thanks for the presentation, this has been really, really helpful. And even though my head is still kind of swimming with numbers and scenarios, I feel a lot, I feel like I have a much better understanding of the implications of these different possibilities. And I'm kind of even more convinced at least at the moment after hearing the presentation and looking at the long-term potential costs to move through the different, if we were to select the interim approach and then what that's gonna cost over time and the costs that were kind of as members of the public suggest kind of the legacy of that for future generations, I am much more convinced now that I have been that we should really be moving forward with the ultimate trail proposal. And so I just, and I agree that bonding under whatever scenario, this commission, a majority of this commission ultimately determines is the best way to go, that that is a good idea. The construction costs, the increase in construction costs will likely outweigh the interest on bonding. So I mean, given what we've seen, so I think that it totally makes sense. And I'll just leave my comments there for now. And it is unfortunate timing, but I'll just say I'll look forward to the conversation at our May meeting. Thank you, Commissioner Brown. Commissioner Ginny Johnson. Here. It is unfortunate timing and I have a great deal of sympathy for staff and the tough position there in to try to get forward. All this great information that's been very helpful, I think for all of us who even understand the funding streams, it's been very clear it's added a lot of context and it's been a great conversation with the community on the reality of what we're all managing to here, which is what's the best thing for our community, what's feasible and so forth. However you land on that in terms of your opinion of the different projects, we still can only build what we can afford and what we qualify for. And that is a reality that we all have to face. I agree about bonding makes sense. If that's input, that would be helpful to the commission staff. The rates are very favorable. It demonstrates success to the community that they had faith in us to pass measure D and faith in our RTC staff to deliver great projects. So absolutely bonding is a good path no matter what one of these projects gets approved, whatever point. And then lastly, I would say that there's pros and cons to choosing any particular approach to these grants and I would actually ask the staff to come back next time with information to the commission regarding how well positioned we are based on grading criteria to likely get a interim trail grant versus a ultimate trail grant through the conduit that they're going to be applying to. There's a grading criteria, there's a framework. You all are professional fundraisers and I'm sure you've had discussions and you have opinions on how well positioned we are for each of those approaches. I would like to know what your opinion is and the pros and cons. And I know that commissioner McPherson would feel the same. Thanks for the time, I appreciate it. Thank you, commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Hernandez. Yes, okay. Really quick, I agree with commissioner Rodkin on bonding any project that we move forward with. And second, I have reservations with any rail banking because that makes our world-class rail and trail project which is a multimodal transportation project a new point because it makes us a single use of single mode project and less desirable for funding. And so I prefer the ultimate trail, the preferred alternative rail and trail. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner Hernandez. Commissioner Bertrand, you're on mute. Thank you, chair. I too am for the option of going to bonding, I'll leverage our position now so we could do the provision of projects for the public which I am ultimately here for. There was a comment that M-Bag is looking at the freight possibilities for the RTC corridor that we own. I don't know anything about this, but I'm glad they are, if they are, certainly like to know more about it. One of the main sticking points I think for many of us is if we're gonna build a corridor that is freight possible and there's no freight, what position have we put ourselves into? So that's a clear question for me because the cost is so much higher for providing freight. If we're going to do something in terms of transportation to move people, well, that's a slightly different story. The other thing that's been mentioned a couple of times that if we go to the interim trail and people say, well, we're gonna rip that out if we eventually go to the ultimate trail which at this point is the preferred scenario. Well, it seems like a lot of the work has already been done. The tracks do have to come out if we're gonna get anything that's capable of moving freight or safe enough to move people. Our tracks are woefully inadequate for those purposes. So some of that work's been done. I don't see that if a trail and interim trail is in place, that that presents much difficulty for any other development like a trail with a rail. So those are my comments. Thank you very much. Thank you. Commissioner Randy. Thank you, Chair. You know, people, I think everybody here including the public is he prays on staff for a pretty monumental and illustrative description of the financial possibilities and so forth. But I'd also like to acknowledge that the most knowledgeable person sitting here today as our executive director has experience everywhere. He's delivered and he and his staff have delivered $100 million for a project where nobody thought that could happen. So I find it a little unusual that when he's open to something like rail banking it's like political kryptonite. Nobody wants to touch it. It's all of a sudden, you know, you know, off the books and impossible. So I just find that a little bit interesting. You know, there are fallacies here that you have to address and one of them is freight. I mean, we've had three short line operators that have failed miserably with freight. Why is that? Okay, there's always something magically gonna happen in the future where freight becomes feasible and profitable and I don't think so. But some people just kind of want to cling on to that in a kind of a not very practical way. The other fallacy, of course, is there's just tons of money for rail. We've talked about that. And I think objectively right off the bat with our low population, the possibilities of us getting money for rail grants and otherwise not very reasonable. I think the whole idea of, you know, using our financial position to bond makes sense because it opens up opportunities because it shows whoever that is granting dollars that were for real. So I think I kind of joined the club on that in terms of wanting us to at least explore that possibility. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner Brandy Johnson. All right, so you know, for the member of the commission that wishes to speak, I'll just add I'm also in support of bonding in order to deliver projects sooner. And thank you to staff and our consultant for this clear-eyed report of what is possible with Metro D revenues now and in the future. So that brings us to the end of our regular agenda. We'll now move into closed session. Is there any, are there any reportable actions that will come out of closed session? I don't, there will be no, there will be no reportable actions from closed session today. Okay, thank you. Where will we find the link to go to the closed session? Yeah, right. It should be in your email. Let's make sure. I will send to you from Community Television or CTV. It's from Ian Barry, right? Ian Barry. Is from Ian Barry and I came in about 8.01 this morning. I'll be there somewhere. All right, thank you. Ms. Corwin, is there anything you want to add? I found it, thank you. As I was, I would like to speak as to this item, you know, as a member of the public. Okay, go ahead. Okay, thank you. Thank you, commissioners. So members of the public may know my voice from answering the main line of the office. You may know my name from emails thanking you for your comments. What I do at the RTC is make sure that your questions and comments get to the right staff member. I publish public comments on the web so that you all get the chance to understand your constituency and the issues that they're concerned about. I also take hazard reports and maintenance requests and basically when the public deals with the RTC, they come through me. I work downtown, I live downtown. I started at the RTC just over two years ago on a temporary contract with Santa Cruz staffing. And I told staffing that I didn't care what kind of work that I did, I just wanted to be able to ride my bike to work. And then they found me the perfect job. I'm right here down the block, I ride my bike every day. And it really was the perfect fit for all of us when shelter and place orders dropped. And I was able to come into the office to perform the essential duties while most staff work from home. And I'm here today on behalf of the community of RTC employees, so the core employees for your non-management staff to ask you to seriously consider our requests. And I, we talked, we met yesterday to talk a little bit about, you know, what our jobs at the RTC mean to us and what our membership in the SEI union means to us. And I'll just wanna talk a little bit about where our wages go by sharing some of my own spending practices. I shop local, I buy local food. I bank with a local credit union. Not one cent of my paycheck goes to a national bank or to Wall Street or Amazon. I just wanted to say that we rely on the stability of our income and the generous benefits offered by the RTC. And we've written a heartfelt memo to you to review during closed session. And I hope that what I've shared here today gives you the confidence to say yes. Thank you. Ms. Corwin. Their comments on the items on closed session. Ms. Naranjo. Great, good. Here we can hear you. Well, good afternoon, my name's Amy Naranjo and I'm a transportation planner for the RTC. I'm here today in my personal capacity, speaking on behalf of the non-management community of RTC employees and the SEIU Local 521. We're a passionate group. We're passionate about developing and delivering transportation solutions for a vibrant, sustainable and equitable community. Many of us are active members in our communities. We live in the cities of Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley, Capitola, and in Leiboch and the San Lorenzo Valley. This is our home. We're dedicated to serving our communities. We're a group of highly skilled individuals blending our expertise in policy and planning, engineering and project delivery, data modeling and analysis, and communications and outreach. Some of us are just getting started in our careers and work in entry-level and junior positions. We rely on our wages and the stability that the public employment offers. With rising costs and housing, transportation, utilities and food, it's becoming very challenging for us to simply keep up. Affordable rent is considered to be 30% of gross income. By this measure, our lowest earning staff member would probably need a 30% raise to be able to afford average rent for a studio in Santa Cruz County and an entry-level planner would need at least a 69% raise to afford a one-bedroom apartment alone. We've watched our neighbors leave this community because they could no longer afford the cost of living here. We wanna be able to continue to serve this region for years to come, but we will not allow our material needs to go and ignore. We're more experienced, more engaged, and more adaptable than ever before. And we're working more efficiently and collaboratively to deliver projects now, more than ever. We're asking that the value of our wages today begin to approach the value they had on this day a year ago. That's it, that's what we're asking for. So we really ask that you accept the proposed contract extension between the community of RTC employees, the core, and with the Regional Transportation Commission. Thank you, and I appreciate the time. Thank you, Mr. Honho. Mr. Goodman, or sorry, Ms. Goodman, Brianna. Good morning, can you hear me? I can. Good morning, commissioners. Brianna Goodman of your planning staff here on Personal Time. As my colleague Amy just mentioned, your staff have increasingly watched friends and family leave this community because they could no longer afford the cost of living here. The data show that Marin, San Francisco, Maui, and New York City are all more affordable than Santa Cruz County. I am the fourth generation resident of Santa Cruz County. My parents met at a bodega in Ben Lohman in the 70s. My grandparents met in the 50s, their senior year at Santa Cruz High. My great grandparents raised their families on Fairmount Avenue off Morrissey before the building of Highway 1 and on Paul Street Road before the building of Dominican Hospital. This is my home. I don't wanna leave. I wanna be able to continue to use my skills and expertise to serve the residents, students and visitors of Santa Cruz County for years to come. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Goodman. Mr. Goodman. Good afternoon, commissioners and the commission. Can you hear me? We can. Great. Thank you for this opportunity to speak on this item. First off, I'm relatively new to the commission. I joined in December of last year and I'm really excited to be able to use my skills and experience to help further the mission and purpose of the RTC and for the benefit of the community. And just in the short time, not even six months yet, I've had the opportunity to experience a lot of what the RTC does and a lot of what the staff does. And as you guys have heard, a lot of community members express that in your yourselves in some situations that expressed as well, the staff does an excellent job and they work really hard at delivering for the community. And we are excited to provide for the community. That's why we chose these types of jobs to serve and deliver for our community. And like others have mentioned, we just ask that the commission look at our proposal and look on what we do here for community and how management and the staff can work together to achieve a solution that works for both parties involved. We know that the needs of the staff, we present that to you, others have mentioned it, how we as the cost of living gets more expensive here in Santa Cruz, we find it harder to stay in Santa Cruz. Thank you for this time. And I'd like to note that I am a staff employee, but I'm here in my own time and lunch addressing the commission. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gabbard. Keith Raver. Hello, can you hear me? We can. Hello, my name is Keith Raver. I'm an accountant at the RTC and I'm speaking as a member of the public on my personal time. I just wanna say I really enjoy working for this agency and I appreciate the opportunity to work for the community. I grew up here and this is where I feel at home. And I think anyone who lives here knows how expensive it is and it's only getting more expensive. I just asked that you please consider our request to make working and living in this community sustainable. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Raver. Mr. Tommy Travers. Thanks, can you hear me? We're good. Good morning commissioners. My name is Tommy Travers. I'm a planner on staff here at the RTC. I'm just here on my own time to express my strong support for a meaningful cost of living increase that keeps up with the astronomical cost of renting a home in Santa Cruz County, as well as the rising inflation. Please think of the value that we all bring to this community and the difficulty of hiring and retaining highly qualified and dedicated public servants to plan fund and coordinate transportation services and infrastructure. Some people think that public employees are paid well because of their pension, but as you know, everyone hired after 2012 has a much worse pension system than in the past, and our wages are reduced every paycheck to pay for that system. And of course, we don't have stocks. We don't have employee match for a long case. We don't have quarterly or annual bonuses. RTC core employees are hourly workers. We're discouraged from working overtime, even though most of us do put in extra time on a regular basis, but we just don't request the compensation. We do that because we have responsibilities on our shoulders. We have deadlines bearing down on us. We manage contractors and we have members of the public who need our help. Thank you for hearing this out and considering what it takes for the RTC to be responsive and effective. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Travers. Our Hughes. Our Hughes. Go ahead and unmute. Hi, my name is Rachel Hughes. I'm an accounting technician working at the FCC RTC. I've been working here for one and a half years. Over this time, I've come to know and respect my coworkers for their hard work, dedication and professionalism. I'm inspired by how committed they are to their jobs and to our community. And I'm honored to be part of such a hardworking, thoughtful and professional group of people. I believe that this is not a greedy group of people. I believe that all they're asking for is the ability to continue to work hard and to live in a community that they love. And I fully support them in asking for an increase in their cost of living adjustment. And I hope that you do too. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Hughes. Ms. Blakesley. Good afternoon, commissioners. Ms. Blakesley also wanting to speak as a member of the public. I wanted to talk about competitive wages to attract new employees. As you know, we have hired some new employees recently and Amy mentioned that. We also have a recruitment underway for a transportation planner. And we do desperately need support of more staff to carry out the mission and vision of this commission. We'd like to support the strong support for the cost of living increase in order for interested candidates to contribute positively to the ROTC team to be able to live in Santa Cruz and become an effective member of our community. Thank you. Ms. Blakesley. All right, seeing no further members of the public who wish to comment on closed session, we'll move into closed session now. The next regular meeting of the Regional Transportation Commission will be May 5th at 9 a.m. Thank you. Thank you.