 The 28th 2018 meeting of the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District order. We're in the Santa Cruz City Council chamber. We appreciate their hosting us here today. Clerk, please call the roll. Here. Thank you, Director McHale. Dr. McPherson. Here. Dr. Wachmalkin. Here. Thank you. Thank you. We will have some announcements with Carlos Landeverre to announce his Spanish language interpretation. If you would please just let the public know in Spanish. Pleasure, good morning. Buenos dias, directors. Carlos Landeverre, your interpreter. Para las personas que prefieren español, voy a estar en la parte de atrás. Thank you. Gracias. And I want to mention that today's meeting is being broadcast by Community Television of Santa Cruz County. First of all, item number four, any comments from directors? Comments, director, yes, Ms. Matt. I'll just mention that John Leopold and I, were there any others, were at a press conference yesterday on the no one six campaign. Okay. That was well attended by all the press. And where was it? What happened over in Live Oca by the Sheriff's Center, the speakers included the two of us, Supervisor Friend, Jim Hart, Cody Muley representing the Fire Fires Association, Cesar Lara, from the Labor Council, that was somewhere in front of the engineers. OE3, maybe construction labor. I know that there are many in the healthcare community. Did you mention, I don't know if you mentioned that they're concerned, you know, about access to medical care. The Sheriff, we don't have the right transportation network to get people in need. Yeah, the Sheriff made sense, made it clear that having money for road repair is actually a public safety issue. Yes. And I thought it came across very well. And, you know, the, right now we're, we should be, feel good that the last poll said 52% no, 39% yes. And so that's the right direction, but there's a lot more work to do. All right, we cannot give up and people should vote no on Prop 6. I've been personally, and I think many of you have, been going to various meetings of community groups and just informing them of that, that situation. It would mean about almost $2.5 million loss for this transit district to begin with. And then it just, I think for the whole county, it gets into double that at least and more. Way more, yeah, 15 million something, yeah, triple problem. I will mention also, Deanna Sessoms from League of California Cities was the coordinator with the statewide campaign people. And we will have yard signs, I think maybe even today for Santa Cruz County. So I will, from my own personal email, let people know where to get those. And the California State Association of Counties, which I'm a member of is also come out strongly opposed to that. And it was a strong supporter of Senate Bill 1 in the first place. So any other comments from members? Thank you for, you were in the press conference. Yeah, it's such a tragedy for this district if Prop 6 passes, we would be hurting badly. We'd be cutting routes again. I mean, that's the reality here. And jobs. Okay, we will move now to oral communications. We've heard any other different comments on a different subject from the board members? Comments from the public, any comments from the public on items that are not on the agenda? Seeing none. We have any written communications from the MAC? Okay, labor organization communications. Any comments from labor? Is she coming up? All right, moving right along. Yes. No, don't wake up. No, I want to mention that Director Rothwell is just different commission. Okay, we will have some, we'll go to the consent agenda. It might be, are there any questions on the consent agenda? It might be that, I think 9.8, we might cover in the CEO report because I think there are some issues about some one time reserve money and so forth that I think should be clarified or explained further. So I'm going to couple 9.8 with the CEO oral report, so 12.1. Any other member who'd like to pull an item? You can note there's new material on 9.5 to my grant. Yes, okay. I believe that all of the packets distributed were complete, but just in case, there they are. Thank you. Okay, very good. Thank you for that explanation. Okay, I'll have a motion to- Motion to approve the consent, unless anybody in the public has a comment. Excuse me, yes. Anybody in the public have a comment on the consent agenda? We'll approve all the consent agenda. I'll second it. All those as amended to have 9.8 become 12.1. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Now we have the good times here. The presentation of Employee Longevity Awards for Brian Lamb, Facilities Maintenance Worker for 10 years. Is Brian here? No? Okay, Dan Stevenson, Bus Operator for 20 years. All right, please. Thanks. Vice-Chair Bartorff will present you with the certificate. I'd like to thank you for, let's see, that's 20 years of service as a bus operator. Thank you very much. I'd like to have you make, if you wish, make a few comments. Well, I just really appreciate this. It's going to be a great reminder for me I'm going to put on my wall in my room to remind me to put in my dentures, grab my toupee and cane, and take my Viagra. So, I'm not as old as some of the people getting the Longevity Award today, but I'm sure I don't look as good as some of these guys that have been around for 30 years like Angel. I mean, if I can be looking that good at that point and not have to come in here with my walker, that'd be great. But I don't think I'm going to last 30 years, but thank you for this. Thank you for your great service for 20 years. Thank you. Angel J. Valdez, bus operator 30 years, excuse me, is Angel here? No, he's not here. Oh, he's tired. You OK? He's tired, yeah. OK, now we have a presentation of employee retirement awards. They're not here either. I would like to just mention then, so Leticia Calajos? Calajos? Callejas. Callejas. Callejas. Callejas. 18 years, Ellen Peterson, benefits administrator for 14 years. It's a long period of service for our employees, and we really appreciate. They've had a lot to deal with in these last few years, as we all know. And we really appreciate their efforts throughout the year. So thank you to them. I'll move the resolutions that recognize their service to the district. Second. Move to seconded. All those favor? Aye. Opposed? So ordered. Now we'll go to the CEO's oral report, Alex Clifford, our general manager. Mr. Chair, directors? Yes, several items I'd like to cover with you today. In front of you, you have a copy of a letter. Actually, these are comments that are being made on my behalf to the California Air Resources Board today in their public hearing on the new regulation that they're proposing. We've talked about that over the last nearly a year, and I've given you regular reports on that. So the comments generally reflect the same kinds of topics that we had concerns about. We also had coverage this week on KSBW. They interviewed me and they interviewed Carl Sidoric, CEO of Monterey Salinas Transit, MST South of us. Unfortunately, their headline sort of makes it sound like MST and Metro are against the regulation, which is not true. And we were very clear with them that it's not about the regulation. We're not against the regulation. There are components of the regulation that we're working hard to change because we're dealing with public funds here. And we need to make sure that this regulation recognizes that this technology is not perfected. And unfortunately, today, the California Air Resources Board staff and the environmentalists that are advocates for the staff version of this believe that this technology has been perfected at transit properties like Foothill Transit down south and San Joaquin Transit and they think that it's ready to launch full scale and it's not. In particular, the range of these buses are about 120 to 150 miles. We need to be able to charge a bus all night, put it out on runs that are out there for as many as 300 miles. And so what that tells you is it's going to take some time for battery energy technology to continue to evolve and it's evolving. But it's going to take some time for it to get to the place where we need it to be. And then there's another term that we've coined which is end of life. So batteries that can do a certain range when they are delivered new at end of life. As you approach 12 years of life of a bus have what we call battery degradation so they have less range in them. And so the term we use is we need 300 miles end of life. So our caution to the California Air Resources Board is slow down on the front end of this. We have no issues with being fully zero emission by 2040. As you know, you've taken a position. Actually, you took a position in May of 2017, nearly seven months in advance of the draft regulation. You took a position saying that you wanted to set a goal of being fully electric by 2040. As a matter of fact, in 2016, again, at least a year, year and a half in advance of that regulation, you allowed us to apply for grants. We received a low no grant from the federal government to buy three electric over the road coaches. And then in the year that followed, we received a number of grants that we cobbled together to purchase four electric proterra buses. We're still working on the specification of that and that's getting close. But this agency has shown the governor and the California Air Resources Board that it is interested. It is on board of electric buses, but we need to take it a little slow in the beginning. What our goal is per one of your previous actions also is that we want to get our four buses and then our other three for a total of seven here so that we can learn about it. They're not gonna do 300 miles. They're gonna have to be programmed on routes of 150 miles or less. But we have a lot of learning to do. Our bus operators have to learn how to use electric buses. Because depending on how heavy footed you are, you can use up the energy quicker. And our mechanics have to be trained on how to maintain a whole different propulsion technology and we have to build the electric infrastructure. So there's a lot for us to learn. We're a small property, we're dealing with the public funds and we just don't wanna make a mistake where we buy equipment that we're stuck with for 12, 14 or more years and it just won't do the job for us. So that's really where the focus of it is. We've also told CARB numerous times that the heavy vehicle incentive program HVIP, which provides up to $165,000 to offset the difference in costs between conventional technology and electric technology. We've said that you need to make that money available all the way through the program, not just for what they call early adopters. And they're trying to go in a direction that if you wait to buy buses in the year in which the mandate requires you to do it, you don't get the incentive. Well, that's just shooting yourself in the foot. And so we've been very clear about that. Those comments are being made on our behalf today. And some other points that are in there. You can read that, but they're consistent with our previous position. I'll know more later today about what kind of comments were made. The regulation now probably won't be finalized until January. They've now moved it out to January. Is there anything that we could do to explain our caution? I mean, we're at the front of the line in this. And I don't know if that would help and maybe do it in conjunction with Monterey. Well, I think we may probably should do it separately. We've already made our statement. We want to do this, but we want to be ready and do it correctly. We have, and you've had me at the table in Sacramento, and if not actually physically there on the conference calls for many months with Jack Katowski and his staff and in partnership with the CTA, the California Transit Association, really participating in a statewide effort to try to get these same themes incorporated into their program. The CARP staff sort of pats themselves on the back as saying this process worked. We made some changes to the regulation and we're ready to move on. Our position really is, what's worked is you've made some changes to some small parts of this, but there's some big parts that they haven't moved on that still need to be fixed and that's where our position has been. Director, I'd like to mention that Director Hagan is here. Director Rockin. Can you give us some idea of how they respond when you tell them about our actual real world experience with these buses? I mean, they're dealing with an abstract theory about a goal we all would love to share, but I mean, so when you tell them we got these buses, we did this, this is what happened, what did the staff of the airport say back to you? Well, I have had that conversation with them in early meetings. I was very sort of direct about asking if any of the CARP staff had ever worked at a transit property, ever had to make a budget, dealt with public funds running public transit, and the answer was no. They couldn't identify anybody associated with this process of developing this regulation who had real world experience. And that's really where I was going with the point is you should trust these many, many properties across the state who have to run a service, a heavily subsidized service, and that if we make mistakes, those dollars that we waste because mistakes are made in this electric integration will impact our customers in the way of not being able to buy new equipment on schedule and having to make budget reductions, which impact the poorest of the poor, the transit dependent. And we've tried to make that point over and over, I even close in this letter, making that point again, be careful what you impose upon us in this unfunded mandate. I don't doubt that you made the case as well as it could be made. That's not my comment. Is it just that they're getting such a sense that the goal is so important if they just press hard enough, somebody somewhere will respond, like we won't buy the bus, and then the bus companies will make their batteries better faster because of their pressure, or maybe you don't know the answer to this question, but what drives ignoring obvious evidence that there's an issue that they need to address? Yeah, well, this comes down from the governor. This has been the governor's goal. And so, carb is really doing what the governor would like to have done, fulfilling his mission of being fully electric by 2040. You just made an excellent point, which I've said to them time and time again. We need to be careful to force the original equipment manufacturers, the Proteros, the BYDs, and others, to continue to be incentivized to innovate. To spend the R&D money to improve battery energy technology, thereby improving range. When you hand them through this regulation on a gold platter, thousands of buses that must mandatorily be purchased in the coming years, what incentive do they have to continue to innovate? That's a real concern. It's not an easy question to answer. What are they thinking? Any other questions from the board? Yeah, I mean, yes, so moving on. So we've sent you, and we'll send you again, information about the Transit Board Member's Government Workshop, Governance Workshop in Washington, DC. APTA really screwed this up. They know they have. This is sort of one and done, and they'll figure it out different next year. But for now, it's happening right the week after Thanksgiving. It's a really terrible time. But if I think Mr. Dutro has indicated he would like to go, and if others would like to go, please let me know. It is a good opportunity. They're trying something new where the CEOs and the board members are there at the same time. There'll be sessions when we're together and sessions when we're not. And then there'll be some opportunity to do some lobbying on the hill if anybody's there the week after Thanksgiving. But it should be a decent session. I'm gonna go, and if you'd like to go, let me know. That's the Monday. We would fly out the Monday after Thanksgiving, and I think that's the 26th. We would be in sessions Tuesday, Wednesday. You would fly home Thursday. I have to stay for another meeting on Friday and then fly home Friday. So let me know, we'll send that out again. It's a really good opportunity to get ideas, too, to bring back, so. Yeah, it really is. It's a link to that. Mr. Lee, for this panel. I wish I would have known. I bought tickets last week that I'm returning from the east coast on Monday after Thanksgiving. I don't know whether I can change it, but it might be interesting to think that I can pull that off. Yeah, maybe we could work something out. I think we have CSEC, though, the week after Thanksgiving. That's right, in Monterey. Yeah. Okay, maybe we can work something out. And Gina's gonna go because they're gonna really have a focus on software that you can use for your board package. I know some cities like Watsonville and I think even the county are using new software packages. We still do it the old fashioned way. So we need to look at some of those concepts. She's gonna investigate that as a part of this. Next, going on to 908. Mr. Chair, you asked that that be combined with my comments. 908, I mistakenly put that on Consent Calendar. It has a really good part of it that we sort of need to celebrate. Part of it is to close out last year through, last fiscal year through June. And to show you what the outcome was. But a part of that closeout is that we had over $3 million in carryover. Not only did we manage the business well, unfortunately, we had a lot of vacancies that helped contribute to that. We don't ever want to bank on vacancies. But if you go to page 908, pages 10 and 11, I can just point you to the good news. So 908 pages 10 and 11. And what you'll see on 90810 is a chart that shows the carryover from last year of $3.951 million. And the really good news is, last year, you directed us when we closed out the budget. You said, gee, we have this deficiency across the various reserves pots. Cash flow reserves, workers comp, liability, and then your two months of operating expense reserve pot. And you said to staff, you said, come back and tell us how we're going to fill those pots. Because that's important to have appropriate reserves. We came back and we gave you a five year plan on how we were going to do that. And the good news is, because of this one year of carryover, we were able to fill all those pots in the one year. So unless you direct us to do something different, your reserve pots are now all full to 100% of board authorized levels. And we have $640,000 that we can put into the capital program to take care of capital needs, maybe use it as a local match for a grant. So really good news, and I regret putting that on the consent calendar. So I wanted to point out that things were really well. It's something with great needs everywhere. It's sometimes difficult to say why we need these reserves for emergencies or matching grants of some type or another. It's critical that we build that up as we have, I should say, in the county government as well. And I think the city could say the same, but it's really critical, Mr. Leopold. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate that you brought this to the public's attention because it was not that long ago that we sat at these very same seats wondering over an eight month process or a six month process looking at our financial situation and looking at a lot of negative numbers in the buckets. I remember the screenshot of all the buckets and they looked pretty low. I remember that, and because of work by our staff, support from the public both through the Cabrillo vote by the UCSC, by the passage of Measure D and the passage of SB1, those pieces combined have allowed us to be in this place where we're able to fill these buckets and continue to move forward in strengthening the financial foundation of Metro. So it's a real credit to the staff and everybody involved in terms of watching their cost, it's a credit to the public as well. And we should herald this because just a few years ago, it seemed insurmountable. It was a huge challenge. So this is a great day to celebrate. I might just add too that if Prop 6 passes, this could change very quickly too. So this is another one of those examples of how important it is to us. This is the most recent poll. He mentioned that 5239 was in the traffic. Any other comments? Go ahead. With this item, I do want to acknowledge our finance team, Debbie and Angela, and of course, the team that works for them. They have been vigilant in keeping this on the front burner. I mean, this is a big issue for stability of our foundation, our financial foundation. So credit, where credit is due, our finance team is fabulous. Moving on to just, oh yeah, that's right. We need a motion on the 908 if we are so moved. Second the motion. I don't know if we should probably get the motion. We should, any comments from the public? Okay, we'll move back to the board for the call for the vote. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? So ordered unanimously. Okay. Moving on, I do not have any promotions or new hires to announce other than we do have a new bus operator class starting on the 9th. That's six fixed route operators. The challenge is that we need more. We're just not getting enough qualified applications. We're getting a decent pool of applicants, but they're just not, when narrowed down, they're just not qualified. And then once you get through the interview process, we had six. We need more than that because of retirees, vacancies. And we're going to make another push so that we can do another class on the heels of this class. It's unfortunate, but we're trying hard. It's just been very difficult to recruit for positions. And it's not just there. We're having a tough time recruiting for custodians. Difficult time recruiting for vehicle service workers. So we're trying, HR is just, it's mind boggling. And HR is trying everything they can. They're trying innovative approaches, creative approaches, even posting job specs in laundry mats. I mean, we're trying different ways to get to people, to let them know that we have vacancies. And then we made a full court press at the fair recently, letting people know that we had vacancies and encouraging them to fill out applications. Good effort. Yes. Director Kaufman-Gomez. Sorry, can I ask on that effort, are you doing the Cabrillo College? Are you doing anything with a vocational, you know, the Watsonville Center who's County Adult Ed? Are we doing any outreach on that part where they're, you know, getting the basic skills together? Maybe there will be some that get out of the basic skills that would have an interest in some of these openings? We do the job fairs. And I don't know if we're doing, Don, do you know if we're doing anything with Cabrillo? Yeah, the Watsonville Adult Care and, you know, the Watsonville Center Crew's Adult Education. So that would be Dr. Billisage is the director for that program and may have some resources there. And the CET, there's a few other programs along that line that should be investigated because those are some of them getting their skills together and maybe they would fit some of the job criteria or get trained so that they can meet some of the job criteria. Any advice any of the directors have, please let us know because we want to try everything. And we're, we are also focusing on the veteran angle too. Dr. Chase? I was just going to add to that the County Office of Education operates the formerly known as regional occupational program now known as career technical education. And so that's county wide. And they probably have folks that they could send your way or do the same type of thing of training for specific skills. I appreciate that advice. And just, you know that this is consoling but in discussing this with colleagues at the recent APTA conference last week, it is a topic talked about nationwide transit properties across the nation in healthy cities and not so healthy cities are all struggling trying to recruit. So it's a challenge. Director Matthews. Yeah, RPD does a hiring bonus for referrals. Employees who refer someone who then is hired and stays is two part. I mean, I don't know if you've ever thought of that too. If it's that critical. Chat about that too, we'll add that to the list. We'll talk about anything you can help us with. Talk to the HR people, it's been helpful. Okay, great. Moving on to bus and bus facilities grant, you might recall last year, we received an award of about $2 million in the bus and bus facilities grant program. And the next round, of course we apply every year we did not get a grant this year. It was just announced this week who received grants. California actually did a little better. I'm changing my perspective. I thought the president was out to get California last year, but this year he was actually fairly generous to California. So I take back all those bad things I said. It's because he set up. Maybe he wasn't paying attention. I strayed into politics, didn't I? Comments are appreciated. So. Moving right along. Moving along. So I did have the opportunity to query the acting FTA administrator in Nashville about this topic, because the FTA has been sending mixed messages. The message a couple of years ago was that they want everything scalable. And scalable meant that if you need, in our case, 60 buses, and don't ask for 60 buses in one year. Tell us how you can scale it over multiple years and bring in the local match and get the job done. And that's been our approach, and we've had pretty good success. But their model in the last year or so has changed now. So now scalable for them means on an annual basis when you submit a grant, tell us if you're gonna submit for 10, tell us what's the minimum that you're willing to receive. Well, that's a little akin to negotiating against yourself, right? I walk on to a car lot. I want to buy a $15,000 car. I offer you 10, but then in the next sentence, I say, but I'll pay you 13. That's what they're asking us to do is to negotiate against ourself. We'll take anything we can get. But the reality is why ask for eight when they're probably gonna give us the low end and that's what they did last year. The other thing I queried the administrator on is the mixed message that's not in the statute, but the mixed message the FTA has been saying about if you receive a grant one year, you won't get it the next year. And so we and really entire APTA have been concerned about this because we've heard that that's what they're doing. And she was very direct. She said, look, here's how it works. If you got a LONO grant last year, you're not gonna get a LONO grant or a bus and bus facilities grant this year. If you got a bus and bus facilities grant last year, you may not get one this year if the program is oversubscribed. Well, guess what? The program is always oversubscribed by at least 10 fold. And so even though we wrote a really fabulous grant with an even larger overmatch, local overmatch than we did in prior years, we went up to I think 60 or 70% local match this time. It should have been one that they would salivate over, but because it's oversubscribed, we got one last year, we didn't get one this year. So we'll try again next year. I have a question. We had any luck with kind of converting the grant that we have for the over the Santa Cruz route to different buses? How's that conversation going? Yeah, so that went really well. So board members that joined us last year talked to the FTA about that. We came back, we negotiated with region nine local FTA. We have a verbal agreement. We're waiting on that happening in writing, but we have a verbal agreement that they will go with our plan, which is we get to keep the money they restrict our drawdown on the money. They'll only let us use a portion of it to build the electric charging infrastructure at our bus yard. The rest of it for the purchase of buses, they'll let us keep on hold until more manufacturers jump into the market. So we think within two years BYD, not, I'm sorry, BYD is already there. MCI and Van Hool are gonna produce zero emission over the road coaches, at which time the FTA said they'll allow us to go out for bid and we'll try again. So basically, we can't get the CNG buses, we only can do the, so they're letting us put the money on hold rather than transferred over to a different type of bus. Correct, they liked our plan B and not our plan A. Okay, they didn't like our plan A, okay. I was hearing plan B right now. I was like, well, they'll have a plan A. That's exactly it. So I'll put it in. So I'll feel more comfortable when I see that in writing, but that's what they have given us verbally. The most important thing is $3.8 million at this point is still ours. I'll keep you informed when I get that in writing. Okay, thank you, okay. And then last, at your diocese, you have kind of a neat little article that Transit Talent did, which is cool. So always nice to get a little bit of recognition. All right, thank you. That concludes my remarks. Other questions from the board? Okay, we will move to item number 13, which we have discussed briefly, an update on educating the public about the benefits of Senate Bill 1 or the tragedy of Proposition 6. I don't know how you want to put this, but Barrow Emerson is unable to be here today because of a family situation. Would you like to report on that? Yes, Mr. Chair, directors, this is just an opportunity that we are placing on your agenda for yet another month after this before the November election for you to educate the public on what the consequences are if Proposition 6 passes. And as we've talked about before, and as the Chair just indicated, it's $2.4 million minimum to us. There would be other competitive money, which would probably likely take it well over $3 million that will be lost if Proposition passes. What is that money used for today? Well, that money helps you commit $3 million a year to our capital program so that we can match state and federal grants and start attacking aggressively our backlog to replace 62 buses. And we'll talk about that in a moment. It also is used to support the existing services we have out there. So if it were to pass, you'll have to make some tough decisions about the capital program and the service we provide on the street. And I think as Director Dutra mentioned earlier, the service reductions can lead to unfortunately layoffs and that's not a good thing. So this is important to us. It will impact if it passes, it will impact the transit dependent, the poorest of the poor. This is a program that really helps us to provide the service that we provide, including replacing buses that we desperately need to replace so that our service is dependable and we do what we need to do to get people to work, to the doctor's appointments and other types of personal events. Questions from the Board? Director Ruckin. I guess I didn't want it to pass without some notice that you talked about us making a 70% match on our, in order to get federal grants. You know, for the whole history of this district, and I'm here for a lot of it, we got, you know, basically we put 20% in and got 80% from the federal government. And I don't wanna blame this one on the president actually. I think this is a question for Congress to let this stuff slide to the point. So you're 10 times over subscribed in the applications and you're forced to, instead of putting the bid in, which everybody did in the whole country, there was very little over matching. I think we're one of the first districts to even try over matching. And everybody, basically the federal government paid for 80% of the capital cost. They got out of the operation. They used to be in operations, funding that. They got out of that, it was just gonna be capital and mainly for us, that's buses, other things as well, but mainly buses. And they funded 80% of the cost of a new bus. Now they turned down an application to fund 30% of a new bus. So the cost to the local public who are paying taxes and so forth to support the public transit system really means the federal government's walking away from the support of transit almost completely. And Congress has to get the message somehow that this really matters to people in the United States that public transit's a key institution for even suburban areas. It used to be an urban issue only for bus systems, but suburban areas, small communities like Santa Cruz. And so it's really tragic that they're sort of walking away from this and we just have to increase the pressure on people in Congress to take this much more seriously. That just represents a loss of millions and millions of dollars to us. I mean, I started getting nervous, what if they give us all our grants at 30, where they're only giving us 30% of the cost of a bus? How will that affect in the long run our notion that $3 million a year will get us out of this problem at least eventually? That starts to look questionable too. What happens when people overmatch us? If everybody says they'll pay 70% of the cost of a bus, somebody's gonna offer 75 to eventually be getting $10 on a bus from the feds, it's just ridiculous. Well, that's true and one of our concerns is that the large monster properties, Golden Gate, San Francisco Munis, LAMTA have those kinds of resources. I mean, look at LAMTA, they have three or four sales tax initiatives and they're building, building, building, they have those kinds of resources that we don't have. I would just offer, Mike, that our next trip is just around the corner to DC, right? Early next year, April-ish, probably. It's time to talk about reauthorization already. And I think that's where we will focus is that it needs to not only be plused up as it has been last year and maybe this year, but they need to work from the new plus-up foundation to add additional dollars in the program. Now, hand-in-hand with that, we're nearing a potential interesting controversy with the existing authorization because even though it was fairly decent, the last year to year and a half of it was not funded, they did not identify funding sources. So it's gonna be an interesting year coming up to do that, and at the same time, talk about reauthorization. They told us to come back and ask next year, well, we will. Yeah, I think we slid into 14 maybe, but back on the Prop 6. One of the calls at the press conference yesterday was for individual agencies to get letters to the editor and so forth. So I think it'd be appropriate if someone from representing Metro put in a letter to the editor. I don't know, Mike or Bruce, if anyone wants to take that on. Maybe it'd be good if we had representatives from each end of the county or somebody to sign that. Post-sign it. Yeah, I think that would be a major op-ed, yeah. Okay. You wanna take that one on? I'll take that on, I'll take responsibility for that. Mr. Chair, I would also point out, I think at your diocese, you have a copy of the recent headways and we cleared this through Legal so that we were educating the public about the consequences of Prop 6, but this was our last effort before the election to really help people understand what it does for us. And we did reference the impact on Metro at the press conference too. I don't know if you saw the comments. Thank you. Yeah. Any comments, any other comments from the board? Any comments from the public on any of these issues? Kay, I will... Oh, the board is coming up. Oh, excuse me. Sorry, I'd never wanna miss you or see your comments, so thank you. Good morning, Board of Directors You know, we're doing great efforts, but I think we need to do more as a Metro because we were at the fair and we're driving these buses and we have a little sticker that nobody could see. And it's cognizant of us, even in education that we could probably blow that up. Everybody's doing it because having a little small sticker, you can't see it. The sticker is the one that says he is purchased with SB1 funds, yeah. Thank you. Oh, and while you're here. I know you and all the other bargaining units have a very active communication network with your members. And so if you can push out the No On 6 message. Oh yeah, we're doing it. We're doing it hardly, just to our members, but also to the family members and everybody. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments from the board? Hey, we'll move on to, I remember 14, some with these. We'll go ahead. Mr. Chair, do you want to do, or Barrow's not here. Is Ciro, are you going to? Ciro's not here. Yes. Let's see. I guess I put that. Fast meeting. I know that there's a color in the packet of stuff on the table. There's a color version of the table that goes with this item that might find easier to read. Good morning, Mr. Chair, directors. I'm here to try to explain a little bit about what's going on with this particular long range bus replacement plan. And essentially at the request of the CEO staff engaged in a year long development of this particular piece of staff report, it consists of a lot more information. But I'll give you the overview of it. And it's based on addressing our aging fleet. It's been referred to as the 62 bus replacement plan. So the team basically consisted of about six individuals. It was Ms. Erin Alvey, our Pursuing Agent, Barrow Emerson planning, Eddie Benson, our fleet manager, Freddie Rocha, our Assistant Maintenance Manager, Antonio Castillo, Maintenance Supervisor. We were all engaged in this whole process. So what we have before you, basically, is a strategic approach toward achieving a reduction in the number of age buses in Metro's fleet. The strategy overall includes new bus and slightly used bus purchases, leased to purchase programs, existing fleet bus refurbishing, which will extend the life of the buses. Hopefully by year 2022, it's anticipated that the approach will result in a balance of older and newer buses. Excuse me. I don't know if we can put this up on the screen. It could be somewhat understandable, but I think it kind of tells how we're going to go about it. Thanks. Music to our ears. That's what you asked for. Story to it. 1481. This will mention the replacement needs, decommissions, refurbishment, bus replacements, lease buses, replacement and refurbishments due. Here's the chart. Now we can flip it. Yeah, I know. Just read it as a vertical chart rather than a horizontal one. Seriously, you can read it. Not the numbers. You get the bars. You have the numbers here. We can read those. Everybody in the audience can lay down. Yeah, they seem like a great board, but they all have a bigger problem. You know, see that little, they go back where you were. You had a better way. It was that one. No, that wasn't it. Oh, you. We're on one where you had a. Hi. We do have one, actually. Oh, we got it. We have one at the board. We're all getting a lesson in PDFs today. Yeah, right. There it is. Give that man a raise. Yes. And I don't know, I'm probably sure if it might help it, the light yellow, gold, and blue, pink. We should have called a four take yellow, gold, and blue. We could just refer to those colors. Sure. So as you can see on the chart now, the upper indicates the number of buses that that is in the. Can you work on the mic, please? Thank you. So refer to the upper row in the pink. Basically, it gives you the number of buses that are scheduled replacement. So we're starting in fiscal year 17 and 18 with 62. We've had some refurbishes and we've had some new buses come in. So it's dropped in down to 57. Each of the rows following will have a reference to decommissions. And you'll see that the 57 right below it shows a minus four, those are the number of buses that were taken out of service dropping that number down. Refurbishments, you'll see that there were in fiscal year 18-5 and another in 19-2. That's what our projection is. Are the refurbishments done by our in-house staff or in mechanics? It's a mixture. Yes, there's engine overhauls and things of that nature. We usually send out because we get a warranty with the engine. But we do do in-house rebuilds for repair purposes. That gives us a little leg up when the bus is down. Bus replacements, we're looking at perhaps three that's coming in in fiscal year 19. And as you go along the column or the row, you'll see it increases, decreases, increases the number of buses that we are hoping and planning to purchase and or replace. So bus leases, again, we're looking at fiscal year 21 before we start doing another six. Replacement of refurbishments due. So basically by fiscal year 24, there's five that need to be added to that for refurbishing. Additional buses become obsolete. That's the yellow. You'll see five in 23, 11 and 24 just fluctuates as such. So then buses bought since 2018 becoming obsolete. You'll see that that stretches out over into fiscal year 30. That's when we start having like three of them that need to be replaced. Those are the buses because of what we bought the years out. That's how it begins to translate. So at the end of the fiscal year bus replacement needs, basically, you'll see where we started with 62. And that's the blue line. It drops down in fiscal year 22 and 23 to zero. That means that we've caught up with everything. We've got our refurbishments in place. We've got our new buses. And theoretically, we don't have a need for replacing anything at that point. But then it starts climbing back up. And you'll see it in the chart up above. If I get in the bus replacements, fiscal year, next, not this fiscal year, but next, 15, that's a lot. Did we buy a lot of buses 12 years ago or 15 years ago? There was a big influx on 2002. There was a lot of buses that were purchased with a big grant that came in. And so there's quite a number of buses there. The 9,800s, we still have about 18 of those that need to be replaced. So there's varying degrees. But we're working slowly through a lot of these. One of the big pushes that we're having is that of VTA. And our, Eddie has been negotiating with VTA on obtaining at least 10 diesel hybrids, right? 2014 diesel hybrids. They've got about 90,000 miles on them. They're reducing service. So they're like oversupply of buses. And they're going to be transitioning them to us if the board approves. Their board approves. We want to thank Eddie for being on top of that. And you for being on top of that one. Yes, that's great. Yeah. There's also four articulate questions. Director Leopold had a question. Well, I just, I couldn't understand. In 2020, where it talks about 15 bus replacements, you mentioned 10, if we put aside, I mean, it's a big number. And I'm just trying to figure out how we're going to pull that off. It's a combination of replacements and refurbishments overalls, extending the bus life out. So you could have an older bus and refurbish the engine and the interiors and give it another six years. But isn't the refurbishment the line above it, where it says three? Right, but in order to balance things out, I mean, we're looking at 15 there that we would like to buy, but maybe we can't afford it. So we would have to re. It's kind of a document that's living. So it changes, depending on where our finances are, what we're able to achieve, and how we're able to move forward with. It's set now to go forward in this direction, but it may change in the future. I mean, I understand that we want to put aside money each year to $3 million a year to have. I imagine we use that to outright purchase and or leverage at whatever percentage to get grants. But when I see a number like 15, I just don't know how realistic that is. So I think it seems pretty close. Eddie and Aaron might chime in, but I believe the 15 makes some assumptions about the VTA transfer of equipment. If that goes successfully this month with their board, we will bring that to you next month. That's the plan to accept the equipment if you so choose. I believe in that year, we're also getting our four pro-terras in that mix. And we also have the five gilligs that we've already ordered that are coming in. So am I right, Aaron? Did I hit on those? So that's why that number looks so large in a single year, because it's a combination of a very big transfer of equipment from VTA, five gilligs that we've already placed the order for, and up to four arrivals of our pro-terra electrics. There's a whole level of detail beneath this in spreadsheets. This is just a roll-up of that. But I want to make a point clear, and you just touched on it, director. This plan assumes that the board continues with its commitment of $3 million a year to capital. This plan does not assume anything in the way of prevailing in grant applications, which is really what's pretty awesome about this plan is that if you stay with your $3 million a year commitment, if we never receive another grant, we can be in balance by 2022. Now, between now and 2022, we talk about strategies to make those bars that start going up in 2024 come back down. But we got ourselves in balance by 2022. Every grant we win from here on in will help these bars move. So we win grants, maybe we'll get in balance in 2021. We win grants, maybe we don't start to get out of balance until 2024, 2025. So strategically, we start fixing the plan and giving ourselves some breathing room to figure out how to make 2024, 2025 never happen again. We bought ourselves some time, because we got ahead of the curve finally. But it relies, I can't underscore it enough, it relies on the board's continued commitment of $3 million for capital a year, or this plan blows up. And then just following up the lease bus question, you just explain a little bit more about what that is. So you might recall, Sarah, why don't you talk about the Paul Revere's, because that's a good example. So we had an opportunity to purchase three, we call them Paul Revere's. They're actually new flyer buses, 2016 vintage. They were purchased by a private concern over in Boston. And it was put out through a broker that the buses were being offered for $475,000 a piece, and they only had 2,000 miles on them. So as a result, one by land, two by sea, it's going outbrainer. We were told, I explained that Daniel Zaragoza, the superintendent of Paracruz, was the one that alerted me to this, because he had contacted someone at CTA and had a relationship. And they let him know, hey, this is coming down. So consequently, what ends up happening is I went over and spoke to Alex and said, hey, they got these buses for sale. He says, get on a plane and go over there and check them out. I want those buses. So I did. And they were great. I mean, brand new. They didn't even have dirt on them, really. So consequently, we negotiated a lease to purchase agreement with a broker, a broker house. And we were able to get the buses, we're paying approximately $26,000 a month for three buses. And it'll pan out for six years, but it's amortized. And we can pay it off earlier. So choose without penalty. And that's how we were able to get these newer buses. And I was just confirming with Aaron, the three that you see in FY19 is the Paul Reverez. So they drove them 2,000 miles on it? Why were they selling them? I mean, they drive them around the block and say, I don't like this. And so they sell them to us? I ask the same questions. Basically, what happened is this firm provides services, contracted services. They're like, I guess, a discovery or a firm that will do a shuttle for the airport or do a shuttle for the hospitals. That's how they were deploying them. It was explained to me that the hospital had requested 12 buses, an order of 12 buses, because they were going to increase the amount of a contract by that much. And when the owner ordered the buses, he bought all 12 of them, the hospital decided to cut it back to eight. So he had a surplus of what, four. And he was able to repurpose one. And he had these three that he wasn't doing anything with. And they were just sitting there, and they sat there for two years. So they had all the warranties and such on them. And I didn't want to add miles to them, so I had them trucked over here so we could start the warranties as cleanly as possible. Dr. Leopold, did you? Yeah, I'm just trying to track the information. Because you mentioned that the three buses, these Paul Revere buses, would be the replacement buses that we see in 2019. But that's in bus replacement, not in bus leases. So I'm just trying to figure out the lease bus situation, how that works. We have six in 2021, four in 2022. Right, the lease purchase is right. So that's why they're in the purchase line. Leases would be like the Arctic's, which we're just leasing, we're never buying those, or at least we don't plan to buy them at this point. Yeah, we'll go back and check that. It could be that it belonged in the lease, but we are proposing that anything we do in the lease be this similar type of fashion, where it's a lease purchase with a zero residual at the end of the lease, that we would own it. And so the bus replacements would be more, generally more outright purchase. That's correct. These buses would be the ones in which we would have a multi-year agreement, but at the end that's nothing. That's correct. And what happens with the leases, and sort of the reason why we don't want to do too much in that realm, is just like with the Paul Revere's, you take your $3 million down by the annual lease servicing costs. So now we have three leases, we have a little less than $3 million next year. If we lease more, we have to pull that annual lease payment out of the $3 million so we'll have a little bit less to invest in the coming year. So it's a delicately balanced plan that assumes a combination of efforts, leases, refurbishments. Refurbishment, the beauty of the refurbishment is we spend a lot less money, we buy another six, seven, eight years for that bus, we take that bus and move it out in time. It doesn't come back into the mix until a little bit later on. And then of course purchasing. And so the purchasing plan says, we'll have money to leverage against grants, but if we don't get a grant like this year, we put $1 million towards bus, bus facilities, we didn't get the grant. So we will come back and discuss either using that million to go buy a bus or rolling it into next year to be more aggressive in our leveraging. So that sort of brings me to another point. Our intent today was to introduce you to this item and Abbott referred to capital standing committee to get into a lot of these details. These are really good questions and then ask the capital committee to report back to you. That's ultimately what we're looking for, if you don't mind. Is there a continuity with the buses? Do they all look, are they look alike? I mean, we're buying, it seems like we're kind of buying Mishmash, like buying them all up. Are they, do they look alike or since they're different brands, do they? No, actually the three Paul reviewers were a new flyer. They look similar to the 35 foot 1300s, which is 2013 vintage. They're just larger, they're 40 footers. And they're painted the same colors. Same graphics. I get the graphics, but I'm just curious of the body. Doesn't matter. The body's pretty much the same. And then we just got had like what, we just released five, five of them not too long ago. This is the three Paul reviewers. And then we have no another three coming in. No. So what's the total lease? We're not proposing to lease by this plan, not proposing to lease additional buses until 2021. So we just have three lease to buys right now. That's all we're dealing with. That's correct. Okay. And then just a quick question on Aaron probably may know the answer, but when's our Watsonville electric bus coming? Because, you know, I've been sitting on this board for over three years. Watsonville electric bus is still not on order. It's in the four that we're continuing to work with Protera on. It is, again, this is, this goes back to this carb discussion we had earlier. Getting into electric buses is not just flipping a switch and saying you want to get into electric buses. This has been a very difficult thing for us to learn about. And we don't want to make a mistake. And we've had numerous meetings, including sending Sarah and a team down to LA to meet in the room with Protera, to hash out a list, a long list of questions. We've now got all the specs sorted out, but we're down to a couple of key issues. One being weight. We're buying Protera's newest and greatest bus, 600, 620, whatever it is, which allegedly goes more than 150 miles, underscore allegedly, because we won't believe it till we see it. But we are buying the one that has the most batteries and energy. But they have to answer two very important questions before we finalize that. We need to know that the axle weight will be compliant with the new state regulation. They haven't been able to answer that yet. And because it is their newest biggest bus with lots of batteries and lots of weight, we need to make sure that once we load that up, fully loaded with people sitting and standing, that we don't exceed the legal gross weight of that vehicle to operate on a street. The last thing I wanna do is buy a bus and have to post on that bus that we can only carry sitting loads. That's not- What is everyone else doing now though? I mean, I'm sure people are buying electric buses now. They're all struggling with the same questions, but nobody has the newest Protera yet. There are several orders in it, in for those, and they're all sitting in the same place we are. Will their electric buses be grandfathered in into the new regulations? The ones that currently have electric buses? I mean, I have a hard time believing that they're gonna create all the, they're gonna be like, oh, well, these electric buses, you can't, they're no longer relevant. No, the new regulation is stair stepped. So each year, you get a little bit more restrictive until you get to the final year of the regulation. So we need to make sure that the Proteras delivered next year are compliant with next year's axle weight requirement. So are we waiting for this to get to that final tier before we move with any electric buses? Cause that's kind of disheartening. We're waiting for Protera to assure us that the weight of the vehicle will be compliant. They communicated with Sarah recently that they're running the calculations and they'll get back to us soon. That's really the stumbling block right now. We're just waiting on that. I think we've sorted out all of the other specifications. Is that correct? So this dream of the Watsonville bus, how that's, we're years now. So I've been waiting years and now it's gonna be, is that what you're saying right now? Cause I was expecting it to be done. Erin's shaking her head, yes, so. Probably late next year at the earliest for that bus. It'll be before the Capitola bus. Just, just. Director Rockman. I have two questions. One, in the narrative part of the report, we talk about buses being the on their useful life for 12 years, but didn't the federal regulation change from 12 to 14 years or like how long you're supposed to hold onto a bus? It's a good question. So they're speaking out of both sides of their mouth. The regulation is still 12, minimum that you have to hold it for, but we think at some point they're gonna move it to 14 because even in the transit asset management plan, which we filed ours a week ago to be compliant, it's due October 1st. They're recommending 14 years on buses, but it's not in the reg yet. I think it will be soon. And my second question, I know it's, it will end up being counterintuitive to the public and we'll see like, what are you guys up to? But our plan is not to buy only electric buses from this day forward. Our notion is we're gonna get to 2040 with electric buses. We're gonna, you know, it's sort of one step back, two steps forward, hopefully rather than the reverse. So we start increasing the electric, the percentage of our fleet that's electric. This chart doesn't talk about the, whether these buses were purchasing our electric or CNG or diesel hybrid or whatever the heck. Is it premature to ask, could we get a chart at some point that tells us how this chart plays out to 2040 with the electric question being played into it? So in the end, you don't end up, you know, yeah, we got, we managed to get on top of the question of replacing you out of date buses, but we still haven't addressed the issue of how we're gonna be an electric fleet by 2040. Is that a premature question? No, no, it's such a chart. It's in there. Tell me about how we're gonna make it happen. It's in there. I can answer that pretty quickly, I believe. So the chart is based on the useful life of the bus, right? There's basically 94 buses behind that chart. So as those buses become obsolete, we're looking at the year to see whether we're gonna purchase CNG and it's 12 years of life, right? They have to be done by 2040. So as these age out, we're choosing CNG based on that method and then electric once we start bumping up against that. So that's in that plan. Currently beyond the electric buses, we've been discussing the four Proteras and the three over the road coaches. We don't have a plan to purchase electric buses in the next few years. So the one, a problem in that plan could be, it wouldn't necessarily be, but could be that we managed to not buy any buses that are not electric going past the, whose useful life will go past 2040, but it's possible we'd face a cliff of having to buy an awful lot of electric buses in 2039 or something, am I wrong? Okay, let me just clarify. So this goes, this is the overlap with the CARB regulation and this assumes either 2023 or 2026 implementation on CARB. CARB doesn't mandate that in any particular year you buy electric buses. What CARB says is in a particular year, if you're buying buses, a certain percentage has to be electric buses. And so part of what we have been fighting for is for Metro to be considered a small property and we should be a small property. And if we are designated a small property, then we don't have to mandatorily start buying percentages of our procurement as electrics until 2026. If we're classified as a large property, which is counterintuitive, but if we are in 2023, we have to start, if we were procuring buses in 2023, 25% would have to be electric. We took a position, we, you, the board and us, took a position that we'd like to push out the mandatory aspect of electrics as far as possible so that we can learn with our own buses that we're gonna buy and learn from the VTAs, MTAs and Munis that are diving in with two feet, what works and what doesn't work. So that's why we wanna push it out. This plan does assume that we're gonna have to buy them and this plan assumes that from 2029 forward, 100% of what you buy are electric. Nothing's gonna change in that. I'm sure Carb is gonna stick with 2029 and forward, 100% have to be electrics. But it's how we get there, those initial steps that we're wrangling over right now. Thank you, that's very helpful. If you look at FY26, that one bus in the bus replacement row, that would be electric. We're buying one bus, you've gotten a choice. If the mandate is 2026 and that, you don't have the costs behind this, but we also have the costs for these bus replacements and leases and refurbs all built in the back. And then those go up because electric buses are more expensive. So it's starting in 2026, the cost per bus will go up dramatically and the overall cost will go up for whatever number of buses we buy. But under the plan that you authorized a couple of months ago, you're allowing me to procure compressed natural gas buses right up to the last moment that we can procure those. I think the board well understood why we can't afford to just only buy electric buses at this point, given all the arguments you've made about knowing what we're doing and not wasting the public's money. But we do have a job to do in explaining this all to the public. They're gonna wanna know if you wanna be all electric, why are you buying today? Why are you buying something that's not electric? Or because we could do that, we just have to take service off the road to make it happen, which is not gonna be acceptable. Part of the plan that we've put together here also includes the fact that we have a fueling facility that has a useful life up to 2040. So a lot of things that are going on behind the scenes with this whole plan has a lot of components to this. So consequently, we kinda wanna stage everything in as we're going along, so that we don't jump into something that we're gonna regret in big time. For Director Dutra, I know that he wants his electric bus, but yesterday, yesterday. We all want him to have his bus. I hear you. I hear you. I hear you. The core factor is that we did do a trip to VTA that purchased five of these buses, and I was not pleased with the performance of those buses or the quality of workmanship that we were able to see from those buses. And the conversations that we had with Protero was, and I'll put it succinctly, if you send me something like that, I'm sending it right back. So they are looking at it from a much different perspective, and a lot of it is governed by the fact that we're small and we wanna take care of the money that we have. I mean, we don't wanna just buy something and all of a sudden end up with something we don't, it's not gonna be useful for us. I think you're gonna be pleasantly surprised. We'll hold on to the dream. Yeah. You got to kill it. So that money doesn't expire then, right? Is that what I'm saying, the grant money? There's no expiration. Yes and no. We have one, we have the LCTOP money that we have to work with the state to get an extension on. It comes up due next year. We think we will have a very good argument and good success there because the state is in control of LCTOP. The state is about ready to force us to buy electric buses and you just don't go to an electric bus lot and pick up an electric bus. So we can also show our due diligence that this last two years has been nonstop work on this program, trying to get it to a place where we can place an order. I'm gonna be honest with you, we're nervous now at least about this. This is happening on our watch and we wanna bring a product to this agency using public money that's the right product. I don't wanna bring a piece of junk. I don't wanna bring what Zero described that he saw over the hill here. I wanna bring something here that works and that we can be proud of for the next 12 to 14 years and that it's not some sort of million dollar disaster for us or in this case, four million dollars. So in summary, we're from the transit district and we're here to help but we're not so sure about everybody else. If they're really trying to help us or just keep the ball in the air, I guess, huh? Yeah? Director Lin, and then? Yeah, well, first of all, I think the strategy of learning from others, especially larger agencies, their jurisdictions that will be having a lot more experience on maintenance and working on all the kinks is a good thing. But Trina brought up something too. As far as the mechanics portion of it and how the maintenance, is that consistent from the various buses or would our staff be able to be trained and able to work on one style bus the same? How do they differ? So we're gonna have a transition period. The 10 VTA buses that are being transferred to us are hybrid diesel electrics. So that'll begin the process of the training aspect with a dual propulsion type of bus. The fact of the matter is that the bus from Protera is basically the same understructured type of componentry. You got suspension, you've got steering, you've got all of that goes on. What differs is basically the propulsion system that is specifically electric. And that is batteries and inverters and a whole number of other variable componentry that they will train on. So the training will be provided. It's part of the package. And we're not gonna allow persons that don't feel comfortable with it to just get in. They're gonna get their training, they're gonna feel good about the training and confident going forward with repairs in these buses. Taking a few at a time is also an opportunity to learn and not be overwhelmed with everyone trying to get on board at the same time, having the chance to learn and learn from other jurisdictions as well. And there is a warranty period for these buses. So constantly the manufacturer will have a responsibility for that. Dr. Hagen, would you have a question? Yes, I'm sorry. It's rather interesting to listen to all this because I live with this every day. This little machine I'm sitting on is $22,000. It's supposed to go eight and a half miles an hour. It's fine. It does for a while. But this little gizmo I'm sitting here with which is the control, is incapable of handling it. Handling the mechanism, the changes, the lifts. This little box, I can't pull it out, it's attached, is by itself $1,200. This is the third one I've had in two years. And these little items that, yeah, it's fully loaded and excellent chair, designed to fit me, all the guarantees with this chair was designed and okayed if I only weighed 150 pounds and the chair was only 120 pounds. Unfortunately, the chair is 300 pounds and I'm 200. As a result, none of this stuff is working efficiently. Instead of going 22 miles for a recharge, I'm lucky to get 12 to 13 miles. These are the same things I'm listening to every day, only on a much smaller scale. A good example. Thank you. Any other questions from the audience? Take him to Congress. Yes. I would say on the car technology that that has gotten better. So that, you know, I don't, we shouldn't just cast all aspersions. There are advances being made in the technology. You know, I drive an all electric car and I took it up to Tahoe this weekend which is the first time I took it that far and it worked really well. And so, it's a lot easier coming back from Tahoe because it's all downhill. But you feel it on the hills and that's what the big issues are. Does this need any approval? To move forward to... Okay. I mean, are we getting out to the public? Yeah, oh yeah. But did you have any other further comments, Zero? No, not unless you have a third question. Good, great questions that we have here. Any comments from the public? Just one quick comment. You know, you got a pleasure, your mechanics and how we need to invest in them because they're going to be, you know, the spearhead and all of this from there because they're going to be working from diesel to hybrids to, you know, all these components. So, you know, you got to invest in their expertise and just knowledge. That's a good point. Yes. We do have training in each of these grants. So we do have funding for quite a bit of training as we go. Thank you. Yes. Any other questions? Statements from the public? I move for approval. Second. Second. This is going to, so we're going to move this to the capital committee. Is that correct? Is that the order? And then we'll come back. Yes. Okay, we have a motion, a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? So ordered unanimously. Thank you, Cyril, for that brief explanation. Brief, yeah. Yeah, right. That was an explanation, one missed. Okay, we've voted item number 15 to approve adopting Title IX, Chapter I of the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District administrative code related to, one, revised policy regarding the use of fixed route services and transit facilities, including passenger code of conduct and service suspension exclusion, and two, a revised passenger code of conduct and service suspension exclusion policy for a pair of crews. Mr. Clifford. Sure. Thank you as chair directors. You might recall that in January of this year, we brought you the very first code of conduct for Santa Cruz Metro. And we're really proud of that. And in the process of discussion, I think it was director Leopold asked us if we had taken this to the Mac and to the E&TAC, and we were embarrassed to say that we did not. And so what you agreed upon is that you would adopt the code of conduct, but you directed us to go back to the Mac and the E&TAC and receive their input on the code of conduct, which we have done in the months since. So we've been to, I think, Mac twice and also to E&TAC, received their comments, incorporated those comments into the code of conduct. You have a red line version. You can see where the changes were made. In addition to that, staff came up with some additional things that we need. This'll be a little bit of a living document. It's our first. So I may come back to you next year with more revisions, but we wanna get it right. But you have a really good version now. And one of the things that we added is as a result of an inquiry from a movie company wanting to use one of our buses and one of our bus stops, we needed to add some language into this policy to address that. We chose to go that route. In conferring with legal, we chose to go that route as opposed to a standalone movie shoot policy. LAMTA has a standalone movie shoot policy. We're not big enough. We don't have that many requests. We figure we can just incorporate it into this and get it done. So I think it's been a good process. Thank you for pointing out our error. We have now since corrected it. And we think you have a much better policy in front of you. I have a question from the board. I have a question. I have a comment. I did have just a few. Director Matthews. What does EPAM, EPAMD mean? Oh, that's, I see if I read it. I don't know. Okay, I got it. It's segue. Yeah, essentially. Yeah. Answered my own question there. I really appreciated the additions on the red line resulting from consultation and further work. Those all made sense to me. Couple of questions. Well, typo. I had this drilled into me at such an early age. It should be lying and not laying. People lie down, hands lay eggs. I'll give you the page number. Okay. If you could. Thank you for that clarification. The elementary school teacher is very good. My father. There's a grammar class in our future. Our whole family gets grammar beat into us. And then page. I think four and five on page five. No, that wasn't it. Still on the red line version. Yeah, I'm on the red line version. Laying down. Mostly they were questions. I think the one I had now I'm not finding the page reference was just for the tracking of reporting. It's on 15 a B three. It talks about repeated incidents of suspendable conduct will also be factored into the length of suspension. I'm fully in support of this action. I know from the library system there is a way of tracking disciplinary actions across branches even. So I'm sure you'll work something out but problem individuals are problems on different routes and different buses undoubtedly. So that's just the question how to track that. So it is meaningful. But overall, I'm very supportive of this. And I think it really serves the public and the drivers really important. Does it say where it is? Under loitering section 5-08 camping laying down. Lying. I'm just reading what it says. 15 B A 12. Yeah. Not that it has to be answered in the policy per se, but it's something to think about. OK, we might as well make that correction. Any other questions from the board, the public? Thank you for bringing that to our attention. I have an entertainer motion. Or did you have a question? No, a comment before a motion. I will make a motion. I read through this carefully because if somebody is told they can't ride the bus, we're going to hear about it. And you don't want to go like, oh, who came up with that regulation or whatever. So I wanted to really understand what I would be visited with because it just takes one case to make you really feel like you've made a big, big mistake. So I read this carefully. And I really think we've done a good. We may change it, but it's a really good job for a start. And I feel quite comfortable that people who violate this policy shouldn't be riding on our buses or bothering other the remainder of our riders. So I will move approval of the new policy. Second, I just wanted to make a comment as well. I appreciate taking advantage of our advisory committee to review this. And also our employees and our labor groups, you know, those folks who have daily interaction with the public, that becomes really important to be able to talk to them about the policies that we're going to enact. And in some ways, they play a role in enforcing. I think these are good. And we will learn over the years how good or how much trouble we get in. But I also appreciate, I think when this also came, having this red line version makes a lot easier to see where some of the changes have been made. So they were good. Thank you. Oh, Mr. Hagan. This is interesting because just yesterday, riding home from Santa Cruz, we had an individual had a very severe cough all the way. Four times, the bus driver asked, ma'am, would you like to get off the bus if you're that sick? She wouldn't even bother putting her hand over her mouth that she was coughing. I got home and I literally washed all the clothes I hadn't because I was afraid God knows what's happened. I even washed down my wheelchair. The young girl sitting next to her, thought we got up and moved back to the back of the bus because she was scared. These are the type of situations that we need to deal with. And I think this was going to take care of situations like that. But again, our drivers were really, this driver is really into trying to protect all of us. Yeah, I just wanted to comment also. Some time ago, the city passed an ordinance limiting the amount of time people can spend in the parking garages. And there was objection to that. They were public spaces, et cetera. But the discussion came down to the fact that it's not just like a park. The purpose of a parking garage is for parking. And so I appreciated, right in the beginning, the clarification that the rules are to regulate conduct on metro facilities in connection with the Metro's provision of public transportation services. That's our purpose for being. And that's why we adopt these rules. So that was probably a legal suggestion. Anyway, it kind of justifies, you say, if maybe Mike, it was you that said, if we're going to restrict people's ability to ride or be in the facilities, why? And that's the why. Good. We have a motion. Any other questions? Motion is second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? It's ordered unanimously. Move on to item number 16, a proposal to approve consideration of issuing a formal request for proposals for an electronic fare payment pilot project for the Highway 17 express service. Pete Rasmussen? Yes. Good morning, Chairman and Board members. Our transportation plan. Sorry, cut you out there. As part of initial fare restructuring discussions earlier this year, the Board directed staff to explore options for new fare technology in order to address several limitations with the current fare collection system. Those limitations make fare payment inconvenient for customers and also create operational problems for Metro. Some of those limitations include currently no single-ride Highway 17 express ticket available for purchase at a Metro's TVM or customer service booth, which forces a single-ride customer to pay on board the bus with cash. The adult fare for Highway 17 express is $7, not exactly an amount that people readily have available in their wallet. And although customer service at Santa Cruz Metro Center will provide change, Metro has no customer service presence at Scotts Valley Transit Center or San Jose Dyrdon Station. So customers sometimes have to go to the store and make a purchase in order to get change. Customers who ride Metro frequently and use a period pass, such as a 31-day pass or a stored value card, such as cruise cash or cruise card, must go to a Metro Transit Center in order to add value to their card. Metro Writer's survey showed that customers would prefer an option to reload value either online or at a retail outlet in their neighborhood. Aside from the customer inconvenience, there is operational delay. Cash payment on board the bus is time consuming. At peak travel times, staff has observed boarding times for the Highway 17 express as long as 10 to 12 minutes, with most of that from feeding bills and coins into the fare box. Now I'll take a step back and provide some history. Metro's fare collection system was installed in 2011-2012. It included new fare boxes across the entire fixed route fleet as well as ticket vending machines, TVMs, at Transit Centers and Cabrillo College and print encoding machines, PEMS, for customer service to encode passes and tickets. The fare boxes themselves are expected to last through around 2023, but the TVMs and PEMS have already experienced several failures that have required extensive maintenance and or replacement. So while we're not at the point of needing an imminent replacement yet, it's wise to begin looking down the road at replacement options. As it happens, transit fare payment technology right now is in a period of rapid transition. Small to mid-sized transit agencies have relied for decades on fare boxes that receive cash and magnetic striped disposable passes that you're familiar with for our system. More recently, there have been durable plastic cards and other smart cards such as Metro's cruise cards or Bay Area's clipper cards. Within the last five years and especially accelerating this year, more than 50 transit agencies across the country have introduced mobile ticketing, the ability to purchase and display a transit ticket on a smartphone. It addresses many of the problems outlined above and is also a technology that can be deployed fairly quickly and without having to completely replace existing equipment. That makes it ideal for a pilot. With mobile ticketing, a customer would download an app to their smartphone, set up an account with a debit or credit card for payment and then purchase a single ride fare or any other ticket options. Then they would activate that ticket just prior to boarding the bus. From that point, there are several different ways that the mobile ticket can be verified. The simplest is visual verification. For that, an animated image or a word or phrase is displayed, something that's changed daily, which the operator then verifies as being the valid daily image and words. In more advanced systems, there is a piece of hardware called a validator installed on the bus and the customer holds their phone close enough for the validator to read it. Some vendors use a barcode similar to an airline boarding pass while others use technologies involving radio waves. In the RFP, we do not intend to prescribe any one particular method. We want the vendors to propose their recommended solution and the evaluation panel will then select the best proposal. Regardless of the type of system and service we select, it will provide useful information regarding customer's willingness to try new payment methods. While this RFP is for a short-term pilot and limited to the Highway 17 Express, the hope is that this is only the initial step toward a larger project that would cover the entire fixed route system and may include replacing the outdated equipment that we have now. I'd like to close by saying that staff will use that updated fare collection technology, ties in well with the Real Time Arrivals app that is part of the ITS system that was brought to the board in June. Both projects will add customer convenience and project a modern up-to-date impression of Metro. That concludes my presentation and I'll now be happy to respond to any questions. Mr. Leopold. I think this is a really good move forward. I know we've talked about it in the subcommittees. I just think in the evaluation of the systems, the idea of something that is maybe used by our neighboring transit systems should be given some weight because the idea of someone using it to go to the Highway 17 and then get to Deirdre on station and be able to use it for the next thing, there might be value in that. And I won't pretend like I know how that technology works. I just thought the idea that one day if we have a card to use a Clipper card because that Clipper card can be used then throughout the Bay Area just sort of connects us with that larger transit system that would be helpful I think to our riders. One of the avenues that we're exploring is whether we can join in on the Clipper system. And additionally, the newer technology is more flexible so we believe that that will make it easier to be able to tie in to other systems. Great, thank you. Rockin? I just want to say I commuted over to San Francisco using the Highway 17 once a week last year, every week, almost every week. And if anything, this description of the problem how long it takes to load people is an understatement. I mean, I know there are some of those times where at least 15 minutes. And the problem is I started carrying $40 and $1 bills with me because you stand in the line and people go, well, how do you pay for this? And they didn't, you know, they could, they go inside and the people at the desk tell them, well, we don't make change. Go to the store, they won't give you change unless you buy something. That was absolutely adherent in station. That's absolutely the case. But both at Santa Cruz boarding, but even more importantly, coming back the other way. It's going to be a line of people. And it's not just feeding the money into the thing. It's just not having $7 or even having 10 that you could throw $3 away with or something. And so I found myself going, if I want to get on this bus and get where I want to go on time, I need to bring $40 and $1 bills. And when people start to, because there's negotiations, what do you mean you don't have a way for me to pay for this ride or something? I walk up there, you know, I start paying for people so we could get the bus to leave. And that's not the way it's supposed to work, I don't think. So this is really, it's a serious issue. And this technology is everywhere. You can use it at movie theaters in downtown Santa Cruz. You can use it in museums in San Francisco. Show your smart, I don't even have a smart phone, but I watch these other people doing this, to show your phone. I think we want to move towards not having the drivers have to say, you know, I like that way that looks or something, but to have it where people can put it over top of something and it goes beep like at the airport or somewhere else. Because I think it's asking our drivers to do a bit much because there'll be disagreements. Drivers say that doesn't look like the right code for the day or something. So that might be a way out, it's an easy way out of it, but it'd be better to have a little, even if it costs a little more, something that people can just put their thing on a. Like an airplane. Like when you get on the airport or something like that. Rather than making that sort of a personal decision based on the drivers looking at it and thinking it's the right way to get on the bus or something. It's not an absolute comment about stuff, but our preference would be worth some money to have it not be put on the drivers to make the choice about whether it's a valid pass. For the comments, yeah. I've had people approach me as far as Scotts Valley because there's no one there and that being an issue and there's no retail, there's not even a store nearby that's quick to get to, it's a block or so away. So I think that would be really important for all the Highway 17, particularly Highway 17 riders there. The other challenge, I just sent an email a little bit ago. I've had people in Scotts Valley say they take the bus, Highway 17 and then connect and go to San Francisco, sometimes staying overnight and needing a way to be able to show their Metro customer. And I don't know a solution yet because of the no overnight parking due to the people using it for overflow that live in the area and just park vehicles there. And I'd explain, well, our intent with the no overnight is not to prohibit natural customers, but it's because of some of the other issues that are being misused. So I'm not sure as we're thinking about this if we can think of a way to have something for in a vehicle so that we can address that issue. We're coincidentally bringing you the parking ordinance next month and we'll have some of that incorporated into it. What we're gonna investigate for Scotts Valley is the possibility of a very inexpensive machine that could dispense overnight parking media that you could display on your dashboard. Perfect, yeah, something that's what I was thinking. I had no solution to give rather than right now we're not taking action yet, we're still working out the kinks, but we don't intend to prohibit a Metro customer from being able to travel to the Bay Area and stay the night and come back by bus. We wanna fix that problem. I mean, somebody could theoretically park at Scotts Valley Transit Center, go over the hill, catch an Amtrak and go away for two, three weeks on vacation and choose to leave their car there. We need to figure out a way to make that okay. Perfect, thank you. If I could interject, basically we have a mechanism in place where I've been approached with that particular situation. And the comment basically is to have them call the customer service department, identify their car, give us their license number and an understanding of how long they'll be utilizing the park and ride facility there. And that way we're not, we're not tagging them or calling it in as an abandoned vehicle, whatever, right? And we understand that they'll be there for a few nights, but one night, a few nights, whatever, okay? So that's an option right now. That gives me something to refer because I've been approached lately a few times. So thank you. Thank you, Matthews. I guess you'll want public comment, but given all the discussion here, I'm sure it's gonna last a lot longer. I was prepared to make the motion. Yeah, I was gonna ask for public comment, certainly. Anybody from the public would like to address us on this issue? Shamosa, you like that idea. Okay, we got the drivers like it, so that idea. Okay, Director Dutra. I just, I think this, you know, the age we live in, convenience is everything. So I'm glad that we're moving forward with this. And I was actually gonna make the same comment that Rocky made about the making it easy and just kind of showing it on the phone eventually. If we can look at some sort of technology that is that found, I think it just makes it easy for everybody and you really don't have to involve the bus driver and you can just go in and do that. So I think this is something that's important. And I also, I guess my question would be if you were to, you know, you just don't only ride the bus over the hill, but you're getting some sort of, you know, money put onto your car, your phone, and you're using like local routes, would you have to just go back river back to the old system, I would imagine? Or I mean, is that that, because that's where I think people might get a little bit kind of, you know, like, oh, I don't have to use it one way, do it one way when I'm going over the hill, but when I'm here, I gotta do it another way. I think it might become a little bit of a frustration. I think for right now, it's gonna be limited to the Highway 17 Express, so we'd have to figure out a way if we could. Is there a timeline for this pilot then? We're looking to put the RFP out in October and looking at beginning of January 19th. No, like how long will the pilot last for? Oh, 12 months. Okay, so then after that, then we can probably look, okay, that's fine. So, given that, I'll go ahead and move the recommended action with the understanding that staff takes into account the comments made by the members here. Sorry. Second by, okay, we have a motion to second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Adopted unanimously to go out for request for proposals. We are going to be going into closed session. Shayna, do you have any comments on that? Sure, we're gonna be going into closed session for a conference with labor negotiators pursuant to government code section 54957.6. We do not anticipate, as far as I know, any action coming out of closed session for those in the public who might wish to stay to hear an announcement. I don't know if there's anybody from the public who would like to address us on this issue before we go into closed session. Eduardo Montesino, representative of Fixed Red Bus Operator. So I encourage you to look at our proposal that staff is gonna present to you. But we also need to be more respect for each other. Yesterday's meeting with staff was not only not productive, but accusatory and insulting from claims of bad faith, bargaining to claims that measures should offer zero because of no property has a differential like this, which is incorrect because staff has information that Bakersfield Golden Empire Transit has a differential like this. So just, words, thank you. Thank you. Respect needs to go both ways though. Any other comments from the public before we go into closed session? Okay, we will recess into closed session. I don't think we'll be coming back with anything reportable. Thank you. Thank you.