 commissioner Montesino see him but I do see commissioner Hearst. Here. Commissioner Caput. Commission alternate Schifrin. Commissioner Koenig. Here. Commissioner McPherson. Here. Commissioner Peterson. Here. Commissioner Norcut. Here. Commissioner rocket. Here. Okay and I don't see commissioner friend or is alternate yet. You do have a quorum. Okay, thank you. So we will now move on to oral communications. Oral communications is a time for members of the public to address the commission on items within the jurisdiction of the commission that are not already on the agenda. The commission will listen to all communications and in compliance with state law will not take action on items that are not on the agenda today. So I will go ahead and begin calling on chair Brown. Could you clarify for the public when it when is it appropriate for them to speak on the question of whether they want the rail to stay or not to stay should it be before we go in a closed session or here during our communication but not both times let them know what you think they should do. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Rod can I was thinking about that. I forgot. So thanks for catching that. Yes. So we do have an item on our closed session agenda related to the real line which we have received significant communication about and there will be an opportunity to speak to the commission before that before we go into closed session. So again or all communications will be for items that are not on either our open or closed session agenda. And with that I will open up to all communications and we will do 2 minutes. For or those statements. Okay. Let's see I first up I see Jack Brown. Good morning commissioners and thank you for serving on the RTC. My name is Jack Brown and I'm a 10 year resident of Santa Cruz County. On December 14th. Yes. Greenway committee delivered 16,213 signatures the Greenway initiative of the county clerk. The signatures are collected by 170 volunteers who intended farmers markets across the county when door to door and every supervisor of district did in numeral tabling events and grocery and retail stores and public venues attended running and bike races walks public art shows and other community events. We are confident that we have far exceeded the minimum requirement of 11,919 signatures to put the Greenway initiative on the June ballot. The signature total of 16,213 is the most signatures collected on any issue in the history of Santa Cruz County. It's the public's desire to provide its input on the question of the Greenway initiative. But also that it wants his issue settled once and for all. Thank you for your service to the community. I know that you also want to listen to a broader group and the same people who come to this meeting each month. I learned collecting signatures of the broader community strongly supports Greenway and wants it done now in the next few years. We collected over 10,000 signatures in 2018 and now over 16,000 with very little overlap. So you can be assured that over 23,000 voters already know those who oppose Greenway tried unsuccessfully to stop people from voting. By contrast, the community has spoken loud and clear to express its constitutional right to vote. We look forward to the vote in June and a decisive resolution on this issue. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brown. So next up is Judy Giddelson. Hi, good morning, commissioners. I'm Judy Giddelson. I'm a Watsonville resident and I hope the Regional Transportation Commission continues to improve the tracks as indicated in measure D and I loved the TIG M demonstration train would love to see it return and appreciate all your work to make us a climate sensitive to the climate crisis and move us toward zero emission transportation. Thank you. And is there a way you can post what the closed session item is that regards that is in relation to the train? Thank you. Have a good day. Thank you, Ms. Giddelson. Yes, so the the closed session item is posted as an agenda item on at the end of our agenda and we I'm not sure if we'll have a report out today just to clarify that for our our last speaker. Mr. Mattis, will there be a report out following the closed session? Yeah, we may have a report out with regards to direction, but there would not staff is not recommending at the moment any action that would cause the commencement of litigation at this point. Thank you. So stay tuned for report appropriate reporting out from from our closed session. Okay, next up we have Mr. Scott. Very Scott. Well, good morning, Commissioner Brown and commissioners. I'm calling just to thank everyone that's involved in taking care of that that fencing problem on the rail bridge going over the highway. I know my app us community is super excited about that. And more broadly, I'm I'm excited by measure D and I reflect upon how diverse the investments for that 2016 measure were and and remain. You know, I looked I think there were 17 counties that year that had transportation sales tax measures and I looked at most of them and most of them were like 85% for roads and highways that might have they might have to or 5% for you know, bike paths or pedestrian improvements but by and large fully car related. And our our measure D was so nicely balanced with 25% going to rail and trail and and a good share going to public transit for Metro. And so I remain encouraged by the fact that our measure D funding permits provides 17% for the coastal rail trail which is a rail and trail project and 8% for rail maintenance and further study. So I'm just encouraged whenever I read what our budget projections are that so much money is being dedicated to both of those projects which together are going to make such a huge difference for transportation future. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Scott and Mr. Colligan, Bud Colligan, you are up next. Welcome. And you are. Thank you chair Brown and good morning commissioners. My name is bud Colligan and I'm 25 year resident of Santa Cruz County. I want to take this time this morning to talk about the available public money and our ability as a community to fund our important priorities. So much of the rail trail debate has unfolded with little discussion of money. Any train needs a one half cent sales tax to provide local funds for operations and matching for any federal or state grants. Watsonville is at its maximum sales tax rate of 9.75% without a state exemption to increase it more. The city council of Santa Cruz recently tried to increase its sales tax unsuccessfully and there are rumors that the county wishes to increase its sales tax to close gaps in the general fund budget. Also to the statutory limit. Let's be honest. This county and the cities within it don't have any spare change lying around and the voters are in no mood to tax themselves more all the while we have unfunded needs for repairing our roads, buying the bankrupt Watsonville hospital, covering unfunded pension liabilities, creating shelter for the unhoused, building more affordable housing, ensuring all kids have reliable internet access at home during the ongoing pandemic and covering unforeseen health care costs, creating more good jobs and doing the things in transportation that are feasible feasible and actionable with measure defunds. Thank you for being prudent and wise with taxpayer resources and moving us forward in the right direction. Thank you, Mr. Colligan. Buzz Anderson, it is your turn to speak. Well, hi, my name is Buzz Anderson. I'm the fourth generation Santa Cruz native. There continue to be letters to the editor and social media posts and rhetoric about the trail and train as if nothing happened in 2021. So let's kind of take a review. In January, the Watsonville City Council unanimously rejected a propane distribution facility on the rail line advocated by board members of Fort. In April, the RTC votes that the train business plan is financially infeasible. In June, the RTC votes to improve the approve the evaluation of the interim trail in the segment 12 EIR and also to include an interim trail analysis for the Capitola Tressel. In July, the county council provides an impartial summary of the Greenway initiative. In September, the RTC issues rail banking questions and answers and facts that states that rail banking is possible on the rail corridor and should be pursued regardless of the planned use of the corridor. In November, the RTC staff rejects unsolicited rail proposal from TIGM and roaring camp. And in December, Greenway submit 16,213 signatures to the county clerk to place the Greenway initiative on the ballot, the most ever collected in the history of Santa Cruz County. These are facts. There is a stubborn resistance from some people to recognize reality. At some point when decisions are made, this body needs to move on. What we are debating now is what kind of trail we want. An ultra-expensive compromise trail with detours onto unsafe streets that does lasting environmental damage and provides almost no trail to serve Watsonville or Greenway to be built with no new taxes using existing rail vetted infrastructure, serving over two million people per year from all districts and preserving the environmental integrity of the corridor. The voters will now decide that this commission can help. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We will, seeing no other hands up, we will now move on to our next item. Are there any additions or deletions to today's agenda? There is just a replacement page for item 13 and a handout item 18, both of which are posted to our website. Thank you, Director Preston. Okay, so we will now move on to our consent agenda. All items appearing on the consent agenda today are considered to be minor or non-controversial and will be acted upon in one motion. If no member of the RTC or the public wishes to pull that item for discussion and place it on the regular agenda. Members of the commission may raise questions, seek clarification or add directions to consent items without removing the item from the consent agenda, as long as there are no objections. So I will ask commissioners if you have items that you'd like to pull or if you have questions or statements you'd like to make about items on our consent agenda Okay, hearing none, I will take it. I have one item that I'd like to make a comment on when the time comes, but I'll take it out to the public for comment, and we will start with Brian Trail Now. You have two minutes. Hi, this is Brian Peoples from Trail Now. Thank you for taking my comment. I don't want to comment on item number nine, the pilot project for utilizing GOAT for controlling vegetation on the Santa Cruz Coastal Corridor. You know, actually I, 15 years ago, had a property in the Santa Cruz Mountains that I used GOATs for, and there was mixed results. GOATs actually don't eat everything, and the GOAT supplier had to bring in additional food. So at the end of the day, my comment is that you're going to need to do mechanical controls, and really at the ideal state is that we actually start using the Santa Cruz Coastal Corridor for transportation, active transportation, and begin using this piece of property. It's been sitting there for 10 years. We all know, as we've owned it, and the fact that we have to have a GOAT curve go and control this valuable piece of property is somewhat embarrassing in the sense of letting this property sit there for 10 years and not using it. If we were using it, we wouldn't need GOATs to come in and control the excess growth. In some sections, it really is overgrown. So if we really focus, you know, I won't go on and on about it, but in general, you're going to have to do mechanical cutting over. Thank you. That's all. Thank you. David V.B., Mr. Van Brink, you're up. Good morning. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, great. Yes, I also wanted you to speak briefly on item number nine. I won't presume to claim any higher technical knowledge of this topic, but I did want to request that you please post pictures of the GOATs when the time comes. That's all. Thank you. Mr. Van Brink. Okay, next up we have Todd Marco. Thank you. I may have missed my opportunity to make a general comment, so if that's the case, you can, you know, just reset this, but otherwise just... Mr. Marco, we did just complete oral communications, which was general comment for items that are not on our agenda today. So we are asking now for public comment about items on our consent agenda. Understood. Sorry, I raised my hand too late. That's okay. Thank you. Please do send us an email with your message and we'll have an opportunity at our next meeting for oral communications. Thank you. Okay, I see no other hands up from the public, so I'll bring it back. Move approval of the consent agenda. Second. Okay, I hear a motion by Commissioner Rotkin and second, I think I heard Commissioner Schifrin's voice. Yes. Okay. Sorry, Commissioner Caput. We'll get you next time. I think you also tried to second that. I just wanted to make a quick comment before we take a vote about the item 9 regarding the use of goats for vegetation management along the rail line. I just want to say a big thank you to our staff for exploring this. This item is coming to us following a discussion last year about the use of chemicals for weed abatement on the rail line and concerns from members of the community as well as commissioners and I just really want to appreciate the responsiveness and the effectiveness of the staff in finding us this option. It is one tool in the toolkit for integrated pest management and so and I think that we in my experience at least it's been very successful and I worked in agriculture. We were able to use goats and with much success. So again, recognizing that this is one piece and one tool in the toolkit. I'm just really thrilled to see this happening and moving towards less toxic alternatives. I hope this can become a model for other public agencies in our region and with that I will ask for a roll call vote on the consent agenda. Before I start that, I do want to note that I did not call on Commissioner Tim Govans at the beginning. So he is present and I know that Commissioner Eduardo Montesino has also joined us. So Commissioner Bertrand? I agree. Commissioner Brown? I. Commissioner Johnson? I. Commissioner Montesino? Yes. Commissioner Caput? I. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin? I. Commissioner Alternate Quinn? Yes. Commissioner Koenig? I. Commissioner McPherson? I. Commissioner Peterson? I. Commissioner Northcat? Yes. Commissioner Rockin? I. That's unanimous. Thank you. We now have an opportunity for Commissioner Reports, Oral Reports. Any members of the commission want to speak? I see Mr. Rockin. Commissioner Rockin, you have your hand up. Thank you. I would like to add, have an item on the next RTC agenda to discuss the possibility of the RTC placing a ballot measure on the June election concerning the possible the issue about rail and trail issues. I don't want to debate that. It's the public's not been notified of this discussion today, so I'm not going to get into the substance of it. Something like to have the item added on the agenda. My concern is that the Greenway measure may not give us a clear indication of exactly what people's views are. There's some, I think it's in some ways a confusing measure. I don't want to argue that, you know, it's a bad measure, a good measure, whatever, but I think it would be very helpful to this commission to have a clear statement from the public about their views about the future for rail and trail on this quarter. And I'd like that item to add for a full discussion at our next regular meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Rock and Commissioner Caput. Yeah, I agree with Mike on that. I think it would be a good idea. So I don't think it needs two people to put it on the agenda. Just needs one, right? Yeah, again, I'm not proposing we discuss its merits at this point. People may think it's a terrible idea. We'll talk about it at our next meeting. Okay. Okay, thank you. Just to make sure that we are clear about the process for making this move for the public and for commissioners, could we get some clarity on the process? Can we just go ahead and make that request and make sure it's on our next agenda? Or should we be taking action? Madam Chair, I'm looking at the commission's bylaws very quickly now. So if the commission could give me a couple of minutes to do that, I'll look at that and respond back to that issue. Okay, thank you. I will take the opportunity to say I agree. I appreciate the intention and am also supportive of putting that item on our agenda for public for discussion in the public with the public. So, Commissioner Bertrand. Thank you, Chair. I just want to remark about the very thoughtful letters, emails that we got from the public, and I appreciate their participation in this decision-making process that we're embarking on. Thank you. Okay, so we have a recommendation on the floor, not a formal motion. And while our council, while Mr. Mattis is looking at the bylaws, should we go ahead and start in on the director's report? Yeah, Madam Chair, I would recommend you do that and just table the issue for a few minutes. Then I'll respond back to the commission that you can consider. Okay, so we will return to that item after our director's report. Mr. Preston, you're up. Chair Brown, fellow commissioners and members of the public. I have a few informational items today starting with an update on the 2021 Consolidated Grant Cycle, following the commission's direction at our last meeting to increase funding to the county pavement projects by $2 million, maintain at least $300,000 for the Highway One project, and maintain funding for city projects, as recommended by staff and committees. Staff programed the balance of funds to the San Lorenzo Valley School Complex circulation and access study. There's an item on today's board agenda regarding that. Ecology action youth bike pedestrian education program, leaving a balance of $325,000 program to Highway One. RTC will work with Santa Cruz Metro and Community Bridges Lapline to identify and promote future grant opportunities for their best replacements. I have an update on the public meeting for a Soquel Drive improvement project. As you're aware, RTC secured $107.2 million grant for three projects that are part of a larger Watsonville to Santa Cruz multi-modal corridor plan, including bus on shoulders, auxiliary lanes, and bicycle and pedestrian over-crossings on two Highway One projects, Soquel Drive Avenue to 41st Avenue and Bay Port of the State Park Drive. In addition to the Highway One improvements, the grant included funding for a 5.6-mile-long Complete Streets project on Soquel Drive from La Fonda Drive to State Park Drive. This is a multi-modal project with the goal of encouraging safe walking, biking, and transit prioritization. The county of Santa Cruz Public Works Department is leading development of this Soquel Drive project and is seeking public input as part of two virtual public meetings. There will be a virtual meeting on January 20th. A flyer in the virtual meetings is attached to my written report. I have an update on the rail line storm damage repair railroad bridge fencing project. The last of RTC's 2017 storm damage repair projects known as Site 7 is scheduled to start construction next week. The work for Site 7 consists of removal and replacement of a portion of the railroad bridge railing over Highway One between State Park Drive and Rio del Mar Boulevard, which was damaged when a tree fell onto the bridge. To safely perform the work, the contractor Grand Rock Construction will need to completely close the freeway at night between State Park Drive and Rio del Mar with traffic being detoured onto Soquel Drive. Work is scheduled to take place over three nights, Tuesday next week, January 18th through Thursday, January 20th. Northbound lanes will be closed between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. Southbound lanes will be closed between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. I have an announcement on the coastal rail trail segment 7 phase 1. Each year Caltrans highlights the best of its work and the work of its partners through the annual Caltrans Excellence in Transportation Awards program. Caltrans received entries from Caltrans districts and programs, public agencies. If I could interject, Commissioner Quinn, I'm sorry. I just got a I heard a message saying that the recording had stopped. Yuseni, can you confirm or confirm that we're still recording? I just heard the same thing. Mr. Mattis, I will check in and see what happened. I'm not sure my comments merit any legacy recording in progress. Thank you for getting that fence finally fixed. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Commissioner Quinn. And I hear that the recording is now back on. Thank you for that. Okay, we will quickly take it up. Commissioner Schifrin go with you and then we'll go out to the public. I just wanted to add to the director's report since it seems to have gotten overlooked that the California Coastal Commission approved the consistency determination for the rail trail segment 5 from Wilder Ranch to Davenport with changing the condition that would have made the project impossible. So it's a very, very important decision and a very important step forward for this project, which hopefully will be seeing additional progress over the next few months. Thank you, Commissioner Schifrin. Commissioner Johnson. Thank you, Chair. So I guess congratulations are in order for fixing a portion of the rail line. Is my understanding that this is from the damaged under storms from 2017? Is that correct? That is correct. So again, I guess congratulations are in order, but it's been five years that tells you a little bit something about how onerous it is to kind of wait for federal dollars and the promise that they're going to be there for catastrophic events. Again, congratulations, but they should be, I guess, in quotation marks because it's been a long time. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. I want to do a quick time check here. We do have a public hearing scheduled for 9.30, which I'd like to get started at the time. We have one member of the public who would like to speak on the director's report, so I will call on Brian Peeples, trail now, and then we'll do a little rejiggering of the agenda to accommodate the public hearing. Thank you. I'll be quick. I appreciate the time. I want to concur Commissioner Quinn's and Commissioner Johnson's comments about the rail repair. Both of those are very poignant, but I do want to comment about the award from Caltrans for the segment 7 phase 1 trail. You know, first of all, I want to recognize our local staff, the public works for work that they're doing because it's hard work and appreciate that. But I would question what the criteria is for that award because the first week that it opened up, we had somebody crash their bike because of the danger, the narrowness and the configuration of it, hitting the fence and breaking their wrist. This was an experience bicyclist that we know, I know. So the configuration of that trail, segment 7 is actually very unsafe. There's a curb that people fall. And actually the cost of the project was three times over budget. And that portion of the trail was supposed to be the least expensive. And so when we're talking about highlighting a great success of the trail, that one really wasn't that successful when you look at the safety of it and the configuration and the cost. So I'm hopeful that we don't pat ourselves on the back saying that this is a great example of the trail because it really is. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. So we are at 933 and I'd like to just make a quick just like literally 20 seconds. Go for it. I just want to have a counterpoint to the comments made by Mr. Peoples. I used that trail two or three times a week. It's a completely safe and wonderful experience riding along it. And that's the experience of most of the people using it. And the fact that an outside agency looks at it and makes a judgment that it's one of the best projects in the state, I think here's a little more weight in the views of one of our members of the public in Santa Cruz. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Rock and I was resisting my inclination to respond. But yes, I too had positive experiences and I have talked with many, many users as well who have. So I want to move on to our public hearing now. We still have a response under item 17 to determine how we will proceed with putting an item on our February agenda. Mr. Mattis, do you have a I do. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I appreciate the commissions allowing me the time to look back through the rules and regulations. There is not a minimum requirement of the number of commissioners to put a place and item on the agenda. So if there's a request to place an item on the agenda, it can be placed unless that request was overwritten by the majority of the commission. Okay. Given that information, do any commissioners have any additional comments? If not, we will go ahead and get that placed on our next agenda. All right. All right. So we Mr. Govins, if it's all right with you to return to the CalTrans report after we hold our public hearing so we can get that going. That would be great. And I am going to ask our staff, this is the public hearing on the draft 2045 Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Plan item 20 on our agenda for those who are watching. And we will begin with a staff report. And I believe Amy Naranjo is up. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Just verifying. Can you see the presentation on the screen? Yes. Great. Okay. Well, good morning again, members of the Commission and members of the public. My name is Amy Naranjo. And I am a transportation planner for the RTC. And today's item requires no action of the board. The purpose today is solely for public hearing to gather feedback from the public on the draft release of the 2045 Regional Transportation Plan. So prior to the public hearing, I'd like to provide a brief overview of the RTC development process and then share some highlights of the plan for those who are joining us for the first time today. So the RTC is a state mandated long range transportation plan that the RTC is responsible for developing and implementing for Santa Cruz County. The plan is updated every four years and targets federal, state, and local resources for transportation investments. The 2045 RTC is basically constrained and is a minor update to the work that was done for the 2040 RTC. The Regional Transportation Plan includes three major components, a policy element, a financial element, and an action element. The policy element defines the transportation goals, policies, and performance targets for the Santa Cruz County and guides transportation funding decisions and project prioritization. These have been developed using a triple bottom line approach with a focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, system preservation, safety, and improving access and equity to ensure that the transportation system works for all users and most throughout our community. The goals of the 2040 RTC were revised from the 2040 RTC so that they shift the function away from forecasting towards monitoring your realtime. The financial element estimates how much transportation revenues will be available for the county over the next 25 years. The revenue forecasts that we have so far are based on 2020 financial data and estimate over $5 billion in revenues that are reasonably anticipated to be available from local, state, and federal sources, including measure D funds. Most of the revenues are highly restricted and are dedicated for certain projects, and we estimate that 46% of the funds are coming from local sources. And then a quick clarification as well is that the RTC really has only discussed an over about 4% of these funds in the total plan. The next element is the action element, and this identifies the complete list of transportation needs in the county through a list of programs and projects that are needed to operate, maintain, and improve the transportation system. More than 650 projects have been identified in the RTC and with an estimated cost of $9.7 billion over the next 25 years. And projects that are on the constraining list include projects that have dedicated funding, all the projects that have been already programmed, and then projects that have been prioritized for discretionary funding and or semi-flexible funding. You can see on the screen here that in the project list that we have listed in appendix E, they have, there's 360 projects that are fully constrained, meaning they have full funding, 150 projects that are partially constrained, and then 290 projects on the list where there's no funding identified. Here we go. The project list also includes various types of projects and programs, such as improvements to highways and local roads, new bike and pedestrian facilities, improved transit service, goods movement, and transportation demand management programs, just to name a few. You can, again, you can look in the appendix E of the draft plan that has a complete list of all of the projects. The next item here is the California Environmental Quality Act. The RTC is subject to CEQA and the EIR for this RTP, as well as the RTP for Monterey County and San Benito County, have been merged with the EIR for the 2045 metropolitan transportation plan and the sustainable community strategy prepared by AMBAG. The RTC has been coordinating with AMBAG on the development of this MTP over the last couple of years and we've been identifying financial constraints and transportation projects for the county for inclusion in the MTP as well. Let's see, and then also the EIR analyzes a range of impact resulting from future development and improvements to the regional transportation network. And the EIR is available to review at AMBAG's website at www.ambag.org. The next step, the public comment period for both the RTP and EIR is currently in progress and the deadline for that for comments to be submitted is Monday, January 31st. AMBAG hosted a EIR public workshop yesterday at their board meeting and they have three more virtual workshops coming up in the beginning throughout January and that's on January 19th, 24th, and 27th and all of those workshops are starting at 6 p.m. and members of the public can join any one of those workshops in your packet today. There is an attachment with a flyer and you can use that flyer to get the link to register for a specific workshop that you're interested in. And then the following step is that staff will then once the public comment period closes, staff will begin responding to comments and incorporating any changes that we've received from feedback and we'll incorporate that into the final 2045 RTP. And then lastly, the adoption of the final 2045 RTP is scheduled for June 2022 at the RTC meeting. So with that being said, I'm happy to go ahead and begin the public hearing unless there's any comments from the board. But here I'll have on the screen here other ways to stay involved with reviewing our project website at scrtc.org slash 2045 RTP. Members of the public can also join our mailing list to receive updates on the status of the RTP as we move forward towards the final as well as they can provide input, sending emails, or you can mail us comments. And I'll close my presentation. Go ahead. I have a comment. I'll wait to be called on. Thank you, Mr. Anho. Commissioner Ratkin. My only comment is that the language that we're using to describe the difference between the projects that have funding available and those that are still without adequate or complete funding is completely counterintuitive and confusing to the public. This was raised at earlier meetings and I really think unless we're required by some state law to use that particular language and even then I'd go to the legislature or whoever made that happen and get them to change it because when you say, you know, these projects are constrained or not constrained, it's exactly the opposite of what anybody would believe when they hear that language. We're calling projects that are funded and ready, you know, going to go be able to move forward constrained projects and the ones that are without funding and unlikely to happen without some additional outside funding unconstrained and that's ridiculous. So I would really ask our staff to seriously consider finding them just more intuitive and obvious way to describe the difference between those two kinds of projects in those two situations. Thank you very much. Thank you, Commissioner Ratkin. It looks like Commissioner Peterson, you are up. Thank you so much. This is a question that I raised last night at our AMBAG meeting when we were also looking at our transportation plan. And so I'm hoping that this is something that staff can clarify for myself and other members of the commission and also members of the public that have asked me this as well. What is required for a project to be moved from the unconstrained to constrained project list? Okay, thank you, Commissioner Peterson for the question. If we could get a response to that question and then perhaps something about the language, the requirements around the language that we use as well. That'd be great. Yeah, absolutely. So you asked what qualifies for the project to move from the unconstrained to the constrained list. And typically it's where funding has been identified or there's a reasonable expectation that this project can be completed within this timeframe or have full funding within the timeframe. And then we also have the option that if funding has not been identified for a project at this current time, we do revise the RTP project list every four years and then when funding has been identified, it can then be added to the constrained project list. And then as far as the comment, as far as updating the language, we can definitely make some clarifications in our language in the draft report that clarifies between unconstrained and constrained projects. Thank you, really appreciate that. If I could say it's not a matter of just clarifying what it means. I want the language, I would not propose that we actually change the language because now it tells you, if you read it carefully, you can see what they mean. The problem is why are they have those labels? They're just again, a constrained project is one that we're going to do and unconstrained projects one we're not going to do and that makes no sense. Okay, I do see that Director Preston and our deputy director, Mr. Mendez, have comments. So I'll start with you, Mr. Preston. So with regards to Mike's question, unconstrained and constrained, we're using the adjective with the wrong object. It's not the project, it's the funding. The funding is either constrained or the funding is unconstrained. So with a constrained funding, we have a limited amount of funding to disperse to all of the projects. Unconstrained funding means there's no constraints on funding. Let's assume we can do everything. And that's why the unconstrained list includes more projects and projects that may not have funding available. The process of trying to divvy up the money is challenging. First they go through a forecast of what they think can reasonably be brought in. And in doing that forecast, they also have to look at if there are requirements on that funding that it can only be used for transit, it can only be used for highways. So to help answer Commissioner Peterson's question, it's identifying the funding and ensuring that the funding can be used for that particular project. Right now there's some projects that we could move to the constrained list, but we would have to find another project to move onto the unconstrained list and offset the funding. So there's a limited amount of funding. Sometimes the funding is limited to where it can go, but this analysis was done on us in an early stage in the development of the RTP coming up with the $5 billion. And then that was applied to the individual projects that we listed as a county. And whatever couldn't fit on the constrained list, then it could be on the unconstrained funding list. And I think Louise probably can have more for this too. Thank you. Mr. Mendez. Yes. Mr. Preston certainly addressed the questions very well. Just a couple of minor things to add. In terms of the adjectives of constrained and unconstrained, that is what everybody uses statewide. And so to kind of try to change that, it might be a challenge, but Mr. Preston did correctly state why it is that we use the constrained and constrained because we're looking at it in terms of the funding, not the projects themselves. And then also with regards to the projects on the constrained or unconstrained list, I think there might be some, it is an exercise as Mr. Preston said as to what projects could potentially be fit in with the funding that's identified to be available. But if a project is on the constrained list, it doesn't necessarily mean that actually will get built within that time period in the RTP because there are many, many other things that come into play as to whether a project actually comes to fruition. And also if a project is in the unconstrained list, it also does not mean that it will not be pursued or that it will not be funded and implemented. So there are many examples of projects that were on the unconstrained list, but funding opportunities come from those projects. And so they actually do move forward and do get implemented. Thank you to staff for those clarifications. So Commissioner Peterson, does that answer your question? It does. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Great. And then with respect to the terminology, the use of terminology, I think we'll have to do some brainstorming about how to make that clarification and Commissioner Rock. And if you'd like to bring something to ask the state to change the terminology, I'm certainly open to putting that on our agenda as well. But if we can. That is not my request. Okay. Okay. But if we could try to, you know, use some language in the agenda reports that help to clarify that, I think it would be great. It's thrown me off some times too, and I'm just getting used to it. But I know the public would appreciate or I imagine the public would appreciate that clarity. Okay. So it looks like we are ready to open up to the public here. And I see three hands up. If you are here and you'd like to talk about our 2045 regional transportation plan, please do raise your hands and be prepared when your name is called or your number. And we will give two minutes for comment on this item. We'll start with Brian trail now. Hi, Brian from trail now. Thank you for taking the time. First of all, I concur with Commissioner Rockins comments about constraint and unconstrained that it is confusing. And I really like to try to whenever I Mr. Rockin and I are on the same page, I like to recognize that not very common. But anyways, no, I do agree with that. But I do have a specific question about the estimates. Within the detail estimates, you have segment seven days to at $11 million. That doesn't seem accurate when you look at the cost associated with phase one segment 70. Phase two has significant earth moving work being done, building huge retaining walls, destroying heritage trees. So there's a lot of work associated with it. And when we see the cost of the Manresa storm damage doubling in costs, shouldn't it be when you're putting a plan together, should you not have more realistic numbers in your calculations? Why? Why do we only have you $11 million for segment seven a phase two, which is from Bay to the wharf. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. I will in an effort to try to get questions answered efficiently here. I'm going to just keep notes on questions that arise and see if we can get those answered at the end of the public hearing so that people can can continue to to provide their input and we'll revisit. So next up I see Joni Steele and you are muted. Ms. Steele, if you are calling from your phone, you would press star six or you need otherwise need to unmute yourself to be able for us to hear you. Okay, I think we'll move forward and can return to Ms. Steele if you are able to unmute in the future here. Mark Mercedes Miller here next. Greetings, Chair Brown and commissioners. My name is Mark Mercedes Miller. I'm here today representing the San Cruz County friends of the rail and rail. I want to thank you and your staff for assembling this massive document. I will make some brief comments today, but please know Fort will be submitting additional written comments. The 2045 goals, targets and policies cited in Appendix C of the draft RTP provide an excellent overview of our hopes for a more energy efficient and less congested future. They include state mandates to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation sources to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Global warming is already drastically changing our local and worldwide climate in ways that will cause immense turmoil and suffering in the coming years. Locally, we are intimately familiar with multi-year droughts, horrific wildfires and eroding shorelines. The science is irrefutable. Greenhouse gas emissions are the primary cause of global warming and locally transportation is the biggest contributor. So while the RTP goals are laudable, the draft RTP itself does not rise to the occasion. In fact, the plan does not anywhere make the link between its extensive project lists and how these projects will achieve the plan's goals. In conclusion, Fort strongly encourages the commission to recommit to its identified goals, targets and policies and to prioritize a list of projects that will actually achieve those goals. Our health and well-being and that of all our descendants truly depends on your choices today. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mercedes Miller. Rebecca Downing, you are up. Thank you. Good morning. Both the executive summary and strategy section state quote, this plan is required to analyze where people are going and how they want to get there in order to build a transportation network that addresses the mobility and accessibility needs of the region, unquote. And then it continues to note associated strategies, including focusing on growth and transit corridors and offering more travel choices and increased efficiencies in the current transportation system. These strategies address where people are going, but not how they want to get there. I have asked at your previous meetings to conduct more comprehensive outreach to determine both where and how residents wish to travel. If this work has been done throughout our region, it should be included in the plan. If not, I ask you to request inclusion and reporting of its work in the 2045 plan so it reflects the desires of those who will be affected by its projects. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Downing. Todd Marco, your turn. Hi, thanks. I'm executive director for Nicina Rio Gateway, a new nonprofit with a mission to promote and improve the parks and pathways in Aptos. Aptos is a unique and special location in our county. It is positioned roughly midway between the cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville, and the newly redeveloped Aptos Village serves as an incredible gateway to our spectacular redwood forest and expansive coastline. It is also a critically important location for regional transportation. It currently functions as a pinch point or bottleneck, often referred to as the Aptos Strangler. Our county's three main transportation corridors all converge near Aptos Village. Here in Aptos, we are an unincorporated community. As such, we lack basic accommodations like sidewalks and bike lanes that are common in incorporated areas. With support from RTC and partner agencies, there is an opportunity to transform Aptos from a transportation choke point to a transportation hub. The conversions of Highway 1, Soco Drive, and the rail corridor present incredible potential to improve safety and access throughout our community. Substantial improvements for active transportation in Aptos would greatly improve recreational, economic, and health benefits throughout our community. I ask that the priorities and importance of transportation improvements through Aptos be appropriately reflected in the 2045 Regional Transportation Plan. Thanks. Hey, thank you, Mr. Marco. I will now call on Equity Transit. Hi. Thank you, Chair Sandy Brown. I've lived in Santa Cruz since the 1990s, and I'm an avid cyclist and past youth biking coach. Equity Transit supports the award-winning coastal rail trail as approved, and we are excited about our trail that is in progress now. I'd like to also appreciate the RTC staff for its incredible work on the pedestrian bike overpasses being developed at Chanticleer and Mar Vista and the new vehicle bridge across the Capitol Avenue. And having safe, car-free passage across the freeway will encourage and enhance our community's ability to safely access work and shopping without having to drive. Equity Transit appreciates the RTC staff incredible work on segment five of the rail trail recently approved by the California Coastal Commission to be built on the ocean side of the tracks from Wilder to Davenport. That work the RTC staff did in applying for grants for segment five was fantastic, resulting in fast-tracking, opening the segment of the trail, which for many of us who bike regularly to Davenport are excited to not have to risk our lives riding side-by-side with the Mack trucks along Highway 1. And also congratulations on segment seven rail trail Caltrans Excellence in Transportation Award. You've been doing a lot of work on the trail, we appreciate it. Equity Transit is in opposition to the widening of Highway 1 from State Park Drive from Freedom Boulevard, which has been placed on the list for funding, and would like to see it removed from funding. This project would require huge sums of money, which we simply do not have, as has been said by the executive staff, whenever mentioning funding for public rail transit to be shunted away from prioritizing our public rail. The RTC's very own studies, including the TCAA, have shown that money should be prioritized into supporting and expanding robust public transit systems, including electric light rail and e-buses, not spent on widening highways further, which will cause future monies to go shunting towards improvements. Connecting cities across the state of California via the state rail plan is key in mitigating in our environmental crisis, and we hope that Highway 1 widening between State Park and Freedom Boulevard will be removed as part of the triple bottom line of equity, environment, and the economy. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ms. Faulkner. Next up, we have Sally for Rail and Trail. Hi, am I unmuted? You are. Yay, okay. So like other people, I just really appreciate what the RTC has done with this very long and complicated document. I see you have a lot of balls in the air, a lot of things to balance. Regarding the specific project list, we specifically note that many pages of that draft plan include references to statewide sustainability, transit, rail plans, policies. Our own rail public transit project on the RTC-owned coastal rail line is highlighted only in as much as, this is a quote, on the financially unconstrained list of projects due to a lack of identified and likelihood of available funding to the region for a passenger rail project, end quote. Now, most of the projects on the draft RTP do not have their actual funding sources identified during the project development stage, and our rail transit project in particular actually has over 60% of the estimated high-end capital cost identified as likely. This is unlike any of the Highway 1 widening projects and most other projects for that matter, and this is due to the heavy and extensive analysis that's been done over the past decades. I feel like this document demonstrates the tenacity of car-centric fossil fuel-fed paradigm. We can plan for highways with no idea how it's going to be paid for, but public rail transit, oh, that requires a much higher threshold of certainty. Please reflect carefully on the double standard that's being applied to these different projects and align the projects as Mr. Miller and Ms. Faulkner said with the goals. If the goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then as much money as possible needs to be put to those projects that would do it and away from projects that would increase car use. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Barry Scott. Okay, thank you. And, boy, thank you, Sally, for pointing out how rail transit has funding identified, more funding identified, potential funding than highways. I want to congratulate the RTC for their successful presentation before the Postal Commission for the Northern segment. It's interesting to point out that it was the, in part, the fact that the rail line is active and not rail banked, that they decided to keep the trail on the coastal side and drop what was conditioned for. For the RTP, I want to ask that attention be paid to regional plans and so that we are understanding what our long-range plans for AMBAG or for the state as regards rail infrastructure, as well as Measure D allocations, which, after all, that was put to a public vote and supported by 67 percent of the voters, that we would be spending money on rail maintenance, planning, and on the coastal rail trail. And I think it's important when we talk about what's constrained and what's unconstrained. When our funding agencies look at what our plans are and they don't see a commitment toward a particular project, that doesn't really communicate much hope to them. Our chances of qualifying for funding are going to be higher where we demonstrate a commitment toward pursuing that project. And to that end, I hope we will show more dedication to public transit, to rail transit, and less to highways. We're going to say. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Diane D, you are up. Okay, I hope you can hear me. We can. Thank you. I think it's important to realize that this county really needs an energy efficient transit system. Most residents and visitors would support that. They want energy efficiency and reduction of greenhouse gases. They want less congestion. They want improvements in transportation that will be available to everyone, not just people who can ride bikes or walk. And I want to point out that I want to pose a question. How will the projects that are listed in the draft plan help with reducing greenhouse gases? How will due to the fact that their transportation is the biggest contributor to the climate crisis? What are we doing in planning and funding and finding funds available to make a reduction in greenhouse gases for all of these projects? I think our plan should demonstrate a commitment to that in every aspect of the plan. I want you, the commissioners, and all of our elected officials to think of the future of our county. Think of the future residents and visitors to our county and how they want to get around. How all of them can get around equitably. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Jack Brown, you're up. Hi, just a quick comment. I kind of appreciate what Diane B was just saying about equity and also about reducing greenhouse gases. I think that we have to look at any of these solutions here being equitable. It has to include the entire county and one of the big issues with a lot of the rail advocates here just saying that that's equitable. It's not accounting for many of the communities throughout the county that can't access a rail solution. And if we look at a rail solution with the scalability of it, what we've already seen in the UCIS and the TCAA, the ridership numbers show that it would have a very minimal impact on traffic in the county. And also with now having trains going across nearly three dozen intersections of 2,100 traffic interruptions a day. We have 60 trains a day that will actually contribute more to greenhouse gas. So I think we have to look a little bit better. I think the campaign for sustainable transportation was really leaning more towards real bus on shoulder rather than bus on auxiliary lane. And I tend to agree with them. And really hoping that there would be more emphasis in this plan to do that more than having an auxiliary lane type work and to dedicate any highly one expansion to public transit. So I just wanted to put those extra comments out there. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I see more hands coming up. So we will keep moving through here. Ryan Sarnataro, you're up. Yes. The RTC studied the kind of traffic there would be on a rail line. And it came in at about 6,000 trips a day. You've got 100,000 on the freeway. So it would seem that your priority as far as improving transportation is going to be on the freeway. The idea that a train will actually operate on that line is at this point becoming so far fetched that what the RTC really needs to do is to stop any funding whatsoever that is train oriented. That is, I believe the RTC has spent a good $10 million on train only improvements to the line over the course of the last 10 years. And that money really could have been used for something a lot better. And so getting some clarity about the long-term future of transportation in Santa Cruz County is very important. And I think that part of that clarity has to do with eliminating from our menu of choices options that have such a long tail chance of success and provide so little utility and equity in the community that they really don't deserve any more funding. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sarnataro. Sean Shrum. I'm getting that right. You are up next. I'd like to remind everyone that Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz's own own community Mr. Shrum, you're breaking up. We're having a just wanted to let you know we're having a hard time hearing you. So I'm not sure if it's a signal issue, but I just want to make sure your comments are heard. So letting you know. Thank you. Yeah, if you don't mind setting the clock power outage. Can you all hear me now? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I wanted to remind everyone, as far as funding goes, how fortunate we are to have Anna Estu as our congressional representative. She's helped secure $5,147 million specifically for Caltrain, for crossings and bridges, electrifying their buses, roads and other infrastructure. Now, she has a call every week, and if you email or call her office, she will respond personally. So there's no chance for anybody to lie about this or about funding. That's all. Thank you, Mr. Shrum. Madam Chair? Yes. I just want to, with the redistricting, and I agree with the recent speaker about Anna Estu's success with providing funding for us, but she's no longer will no longer be our congressional representative. It will be Jimmy Panetta in Santa Cruz County. So I want to appreciate Shirley and I've worked well with a Congresswoman Estu, but Jimmy Panetta will be our congress member when the redistricting is finalized for the next election. Thank you, Commissioner. Sad, but true. McPherson, yes, sad, but true. That was going through my mind as you were speaking, as Mr. Shrum was speaking. For now, we can continue to celebrate the achievements and what the work she's done with our community. Let's see. I don't see any other hands up and this is time for a public hearing. So before I bring it back, I just want to do a last call. And in particular, I wanted to see Joni Steele. I see you're still on and you did have your hand up. So I wanted to just give you a chance if you were still intending to speak before we bring it back. And Commissioner Rock, and I've got you. I'll call on you first. I am not hearing from Ms. Steele. So Commissioner Rockin. Yeah, very briefly. Ryan Sartano made the comment that we had spent, I'll take his estimate, I don't know that it's accurate, but something like $10 million on improving rail over the next of the past 10 years. It should be noted that we're not repairing the rail with those funds. We're repairing the underlying bridges and culverts and washouts that's improvement work that would be important for both the trail and the rail. Doesn't matter what side you are on that dispute. So it's a miss kind of misleading to suggest that we've been throwing money into a train as opposed to improving the corridor. So some kind of transportation could be carried on some point worth making. I think thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Hurst. Yes, thank you. I think it's really important to have a good plan and have a flexible plan as well. A plan that actually gets people moving and gets goods moving as well. You know, every time that you can load a freight car with containers, it helps the supply chain and alleviates some of the backup at ports and manufacturers and warehouses and takes semis off the road. We all see a lot of semis on the road. And so there is a way to get semis off the road. It's been proven historically. And so we're glad to see that there's a plan, but the plan needs to be more encompassing to move freight as well as people. And Watsonville has been the center of freight in the past. It's certainly the hub of transportation with Highway 1, Highway 152, and Highway 129. So it's important to fix the freeway, but let's also invest in our rail infrastructure. You don't have far to go across the river to see the massive rail yard in Pajaro Junction and the importance of the passenger service that does flow through Pajaro. So I say, let's get a plan. Let's get a plan that gets everybody moving and really remember who needs to be moved and what needs to be moved. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Shifrin. Who's short? Well, 1.1 question. You didn't, Madam Chair, you didn't close the public hearing. So I think procedurally it would be probably a good idea to do that. I had a question for staff that came out of the Coastal Commission's consideration of the segment 5. And it came out that the RTP would be revised to include a project, a long-term project for the, for the Davenport Beach area. And I wonder if that's been included in the plan and whether that would have any effect on the EIR. Okay. Thank you. Yes, I'll take this opportunity to, I was just thinking as folks were talking that I had not officially closed the public hearing portion and I will, so I'll go ahead and do that. And I think it was actually 10-15 when we moved back over to commissioners. Could we, is somebody from staff Amy Ms. Naranjo or Mr. Preston able to respond to Commissioner Shifrin? I see Ms. Blake-Slee has turned on her camera and maybe that's you. Good morning, commissioners. Yes, we're working on adding that project to the regional transportation plan. You should see it in the final draft version that will be presented to the public. I would have to get back to you if it has an impact on the overall environmental document, but it would be considered in the revision for the final EIR. Thank you. Commissioner Quinn. Thank you, Chair and President. I found the comments very interesting. And as a new commissioner, it's really helpful to hear from the public and look at these plans. What I'd like to encourage us is use the data to help guide these really difficult decisions. I think someone earlier made the very clear point that we don't have infinite dollars, we had limited dollars. To Commissioner Rockins point about building or restoring the rail right of way is the same whether or not you do a train. It's actually not true as Ms. Christensen reported in the excellent report on the Capitola Bridge. There really are significant expenditure differences as to what your standards are for restoring the infrastructure, whether you do it for trail or freight or for passenger. And I think those kinds of data driven analytics need to be factored to our decision. And then the final thing is, you know, we seem to be embracing the concept that the train would significantly reduce the traffic on Highway 1. And my recollection of the RTC studies is the numbers is somewhat south of 5%. But if someone could confirm that number for me, I'd be grateful just so we have a frame of reference when we're talking about how the train would mitigate Highway 1. Thank you, Mr. Commissioner Quinn. Is there someone on staff who'd like to speak directly to that question regarding the study and of projected use for the different modalities? Mr. Preston. Sure, I can give it a try. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, Commissioner Quinn, but it was, there's been a couple studies where we've looked at ridership. The 2015 feasibility study, I think, projected around 5,000 riders per day. And the transit corridor alternatives analysis, I think, was in the 7,000 range. And that would be boardings. So if you're looking at round trips, you'd divide that in half. And then Highway 1 traffic is about 100,000 cars a day. So in terms of percentages, I think you would be fairly accurate. And so, I mean, I think the global climate is a huge issue we want to factor. We do have finite resources in reducing Highway 1 traffic 2 to 3% in a county that represents 1% of the population in a state that represents 10% of the population of the country. I mean, not to be dogmatic, but I think we need to be, make the biggest impact we can and be mindful of how we do that. We also have them factored in how much the bottleneck on Highway 1 actually makes each car traffic much less efficient than it could be. Okay. So I don't see any other Commissioners hands up. And I do want to keep us moving. If we could just, I heard one of the questions that came up at the beginning or one of the statements was related to cost estimates for particular segments of the rail line. And my understanding is that cost estimates kind of with any project transportation and other projects are based on the best information that staff has available at the time. And, you know, so and those do change cost overruns happen. And we know that construction costs are significantly increasing, sort of sometimes wildly. And so that that can be a challenging challenge to, you know, create those those projections. But I don't know if staff wants to say anything more about how you. It was specifically 7B. I think the person was commenting. Yeah, sure. Yes, it was. So it was the second segment 7B and mentioned Manresa as well as, you know, and other segments that had costs that had higher costs. So yeah, if you could just speak to how you go about making those projections and give the public a little bit more info. Thanks. Right. So in getting the project costs, we work, we work with the project sponsors to get the information for your specific project. And the project sponsors are the ones who are developing their cost estimates and providing us the best information they have at the time it's given. And so during this time between the draft RTP and the final RTP, we put out a call again to project sponsors if they do have updated costs to send us that information so that by the time we get to the final draft, we are putting forward the best numbers possible. And so I will check again to see if there's any updates on that specific project. But I haven't received any updates from project sponsors on that project. I have for other projects. And so as we move forward with the final draft, and I'll make I'll make some updates on what projects have been updated. Thank you, Ms. Naranjo. And and yeah, give this is a project this particular segment that was highlighted is in the city of Santa Cruz. And I am aware that our Public Works staff is, you know, is closely close in touch with on this and and we'll we'll keep you posted as well. Appreciate that. Okay, I think we have, we are now we've closed the public hearing portion we've heard from commissioners are there any other commissioners who want to weigh in before we move on or back rather to item 19 our Caltrans report just a reminder to everybody this was an information item we have a public hearing no action to be taken. So we can move on without any motions and give Mr. Govans the floor. Thank you chair members of the board and public not not a lot of announcements today. I did want to echo the, the excellence and transportation award. It was for multimodal and you know connecting it so I think that that's very, very nice to get that statewide recognition for the local work that was done. Other announcements, there's been a lot of information coming out on the budget side. The governor has released his budget earlier this week. There's still a long way to go before that becomes this adapted state budget in June. But for transportation, there's voting very well. Additional funding and especially together with the federal infrastructure bill that was recently passed. It it does bode well. And the emphasis at both the state and federal level have been for new alternative or not new but increased alternative modes. So that we get away from some of the just pure car centric. It all there's also emphasis in both the state and federal for increasing safety. And lastly, both have specific funding for zevs or zero mission vehicles. So looking at the electrification of some of the fleets out there and how we can get charging at various places will be a continued emphasis. Also included in the governor's budget was renewed funding for the clean California program. And I just wanted to put a reminder out there. I'm pretty sure all of the member agencies, your staffs have been working on various project submittals. But for the clean California grants for local roads, those are due February 1. And there's been some workshops and explanations of what type of projects qualify for that. This is the winter, even though we might not be able to tell it this week last month. I think we all noticed again, in this county, we're fairly fortunate that some of the burn scars were not as affected. The storm came a little bit more southerly than we had anticipated. The Big Sur area did once again, get get hit with a lot of rain. And we had some temporary closures there. Everything is now open with just some temporary daytime closures that might last up to an hour or traffic. But other than that, the entire route in the entire district is open. And lastly, in your packet are various project updates. I won't go over any in specific but would be happy to answer any questions on anything I have mentioned or other questions the board members may ask. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Govans. Are there commissioners who have questions about the CalTrans report and or the the written report that has the list of projects. I see. Yes, any of us part has a hand up. Yes. Chair Brown, we received a call in our office this morning, right before we started the meeting from a community member who was hoping to make a comment on this particular item, but does not have access to our computer and her phone. The carrier that she has or the program that she's in doesn't allow her to dial 800 numbers. So I do have her comment and I wondered if you how you wanted to handle this request. If you thank you for that. If you have it available and are willing to read it for the commission, that would be great. Okay. So I do not have the community members name that the community member did not want to give us their name. So they said, please provide a written response to Supervisor McPherson and the SECRTC regarding the 2 following issues involving safety of our neighborhood and equity in our treatment by CalTrans District 5. CalTrans rejected our request for restrictive fencing along Highway 1 South on ramp to curtail the drug dealing on 17 North and Highway 1 South on ramp which bleeds into our neighborhood. The first request was please forward the traffic safety engineering report regarding the Plymouth Street median and the dangers of what is called parallel fences to Supervisor McPherson. I contacted CalTrans employees and told them that they needed a gate about 1.5 years ago which was installed on March 7, 2021. CalTrans trucks crews now have no problem performing maintenance and tree work in this area. A restrictive fence along the top would have no impact on their duties. The recommendations I received from CHP and PD advocating for restrictive fancy work from boots and boots on the ground, not admins. As the officers noted, the solution to the mania at River and Nine was solved with the fence. Regarding the responses about the lack of drug evidence as hilarious, ask the PD and the CHP who helped clean out Pharmacy Island on 17 North. The second request, how are you going to make my neighbors and my family feel safe now? When are you going to do something to make our neighborhood safer? One month, three months, six months. Who is going to do it? Who will make the plan? Who do we talk to if you won't do it? There's a lot more detail and I will put that in our comments at our next month's correspondence log. Thank you, Ms. Parra. Mr. Govins, did you want to respond to that right now? Yeah, let me give a very short response now and then I would ask if we could receive that comment in writing. Email it over to us so we can get it in. I believe I'm aware of it. That was a fairly lengthy comment and I don't think I captured everything so I don't want to try and address it verbally. But we were contacted by a member of the public and then looked into some things and responded. It sounds like our response was not what they were looking for. So I will take the information that you have received. We will follow up again. And I heard Mr. Supervisor McPherson's office reference so we will touch base with them as well. Great, thank you. Okay, I see, Ms. Commissioner McPherson, you have your hand up. I wanted to just, is it okay Commissioner Hurst if Commissioner McPherson responds since it's about this one? Okay, great. Thanks. Yeah, thank you, Lou. Let me go ahead. Thank you. I am familiar with this. We have received this and we've been in communication. I know it's in the not passing the buck, but it's in the Caltrans right away and the CHP is the enforcer of these types of issues. We have looked into it. We have communicated with Mr. Govans. And as usual, because we get great response and clarity from Caltrans and I appreciate that. And I know it will be the same on this one. So thank you for your response. I don't think it's correct for me to try to respond at this point, but we'll be in communication with Mr. Govans and Caltrans and we'll discuss this issue further. Thank you. All right, Commissioner Hurst, thank you for your patience. You're out. Thank you. Patience is a virtue and we all try to be more virtuous. I want to thank Mr. Govans for his work on the right-of-way is particularly litter cleanup in South County along Highway 1, Highway 129 and Highway 152. Also, the landscape improvements that are planned within the city limits of Watsonville particularly, but all along the right-of-way there's some shrubber replacement and some other landscape improvements that are much needed. So that leaves us to some fence repairs. The fence that is adjacent to the strewn slew Highway 1, it's often cut and transients are sometimes encamped along those and I'm sure the transient encampments are an issue everywhere and I appreciate Caltrans's cooperation and help in making sure we have a secure, clean, and attractive environment. That's it for me. Thanks. Thank you. Commissioner Hurst, did you want to get a response right now or were you, it sounds like a comment for now. It's a question, when will we see landscape improvements, fencing, repair, and more litter cleanup, but we want to express our appreciation for all that has been done and look forward to more. Thank you. I will get back to you on exact details on the landscape. As you know, there is some in the works to still be coming. Fencing repair, especially near encampments, is very hard to keep on track of. Sometimes it's been cut the same afternoon that we had repaired it in the morning, but I will bring that location to my crew's attention again. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Govins, for the report and answering questions. We are, let's see, I guess I should ask if any members of the public have any comments or questions for our Caltrans representative and I do not see any hands up. I will move us along then to item 21. This is the San Lorenzo Valley Schools Complex Circulation Project, an MOU with local and state agencies, and Breonna Goodman, and Sarah Christensen, our transportation planner and engineer, senior transportation engineer, are up. Not sure who wants to start. Ms. Goodman, I see her. Good morning, commissioners. Can I have the slides put up, please? Thank you. Good morning, commissioners, Breonna Goodman of your staff, and lead on implementation of the Highway 9 SLB Complete Streets corridor plan. Next slide, please. Since its acceptance in 2019, there has been significant progress in implementing the SLB plan, primarily through collaboration with Caltrans on Caltrans and RTC-funded efforts listed on the slide, as well as Caltrans-led installation of the rapid flashing beacons at five SLB crosswalks funded by an HCEV grant secured by RTC. RTC has also secured support from congressional, while I guess former congressional, representative Anna Eshu for funding nearly three million dollars. She's not gone yet. She's still your representative. Not gone yet. For funding nearly three million dollars of Complete Streets elements in Boulder Creek, but unfortunately, all appropriations and earmarks were cut from the final federal infrastructure bill. Next slide, please. Collectively, improving safety and facilities for all modes around the SLB elementary, middle, and high schools in Fulton, which I will refer to collectively as the SLB schools complex, are the highest priority projects for SLB community members. After many years of discussion, this MOU and its contribution to the SLB schools complex circulation and access study would create real headway towards addressing the concerns on this section of the Highway 9 corridor. Next slide, please. Lack of dedicated pedestrian or bicycle facilities connecting the SLB schools complex to nearby neighborhoods has been a concern of the SLB community for many years, in particular, connection of the schools to Fulton in the south. Caltrans is working to provide such facilities through their safety project, which is currently in the project approval and environmental document phase. Next slide, please. The partnership formalized by this MOU and its subsequent collaborative work with the five agency team would build on the Caltrans project to deliver improvements for all modes along an additional 1.1 miles of Highway 9, as well as improve internal circulation on the SLB schools campus and enhance metro transit stop facilities that serve the campus. Next slide, please. The SLB's complex circulation and access study will gather data, develop preliminary engineering schematics, conduct a traffic analysis, and conduct the feasibility and needs assessment for improving multimodal system performance along Highway 9 in Fulton and within the complex. A request for proposals has been issued and staff will return with a recommendation to award a contract in the spring. Next slide, please. And thank you. Thank you, Ms. Goodman. Ms. Christensen, did you have anything to add before we go to questions and comments? No, Brianna, you did a great job. This has been a collaborative effort between five agencies and we're continuing to collaborate constantly with the school district. We're actually going to the school district next week to make a similar presentation. And this type of unique project, it really takes resources from all parties and collaboration from all parties and so far it's been successful as we have negotiated this MOU successfully with the five parties and recommending today the approval of this MOU to the commission. It really reflects the collaborative effort that we've been working on over the past several years on this corridor. So thank you, Chair Brown. Thank you. Great work. I know that level of coordination can be challenging and I really appreciate everything you've done. Commissioner McPherson. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. I really want to express and repeat my deep thanks to the RTC staff, especially Brianna Goodman and Sarah Christensen, the Center for the Valley Schools, Superintendent Chris Chairmeyer, and it's going school board, metro, San Lorenzo Valley citizen transportation advocates. They've been working on this for years to get to this milestone. As was mentioned, the traffic congestion in front of the combined SLV school campus on Highway 9 has been a problem for decades really. It's like a parking lot in the morning and afternoon there and the circulation on campus has not helped in terms of the efficiency of the safety. So it's critical that we get the cooperative effort with the San Lorenzo Valley School District. In their bond measure that they have recently, traffic improvements on that campus that serves everyone from kindergarten through high school was mentioned. And whenever I've talked to residents about traffic issues in my nine years as county supervisor, the traffic congestion and the lack of sustainable transportation options for the kids on and around the campus are their primary concerns. The cooperative planning process can be overstated, but it's going to allow the public transportation agency to develop a master plan and improve the campus circulation entering and leaving the campus on Highway 9 and making sure that the metro bus stop is positioned appropriately for better traffic flow. This had a specific allocation measure D. It was addressed in this monetary stipend was included in that. I just want to thank the commission and the voters that approve measure D for this. And this is a critical measure. We had one fatality there is I know everybody has a couple years ago that they're aware with and aware of and I'm really excited to see this moving along and again want to thank all of the 5 agencies that have been involved in this. This is not an easy task and they're each and every one of them are to be congratulated for their input in their efforts and making this become a reality. So thank you very much for getting us to this point. And and I'll I'll add my my thanks to come commissioner McPherson for all of your work to you know facilitate and participate in that coordinated effort. And I you know it looks like things are really moving in a very positive direction. So appreciate want to appreciate you as well. Are there other commissioners who wanted to ask any questions before we take it out to the public. Okay, I'm taking it out to the public. I do not see any hands up. And I see one hand up. So miss Brian largae your turn. Mr. Brian. Yes, Brian largae here I live in Felton and I just wanted to express my gratitude to the regional transportation commission. The school district and other partners Caltrans and the board of supervisors for the support of this project. We have about 20,000 vehicle trips a day going past the tri campus. This campus has 3 schools on it almost 2000 students and regularly as supervisor McPherson mentioned substantial traffic jams. So we have rush hour traffic backed up as all these students are coming and going. It makes it really hard and dangerous to walk or bike to school. Which is in part one of the solutions to the traffic problem. A lot of people drive their kids to school because it's not safe for the kids to walk or bike. And so we have even more vehicles getting into that mess. At any rate, this is the kind of regional problem and complex interagency problem that the regional transportation commission is so well suited to help solve. And as a member of the community, I just want to express our gratitude to the leadership and the staff working on this. Thanks very much. Thank you. Hey, we'll now return to the commission for action. I'd like to move the recommended actions, please. I'll second those. Okay, we have a motion by Commissioner McPherson and a second by Commissioner Rotkin. I don't see any hands up for comments. So we'll call for a roll call vote on this item. Commissioner Bertrand? I approve. Commissioner Brown? I. Commissioner Johnson? I. Commissioner Montecino? Yes. Commission Alternate Hernandez? Yes. Commission Alternate Schifrin? I. Commission Alternate Quinn? Yes. Commissioner Koenig? I. Commissioner McPherson? I. Commissioner Peterson? I. Commissioner Rotkin? I. And Commissioner Alternate Pegler? I. That's unanimous. Okay. We'll now move on to Item 22. This is a construction contract award for Phase 1 of the Coastal Erosion Repair at Manresa on the Santa Cruz Ranch Rail Corridor. And Sarah Christensen will provide a staff report. Thank you, Chair Brown. My name is Sarah Christensen of your staff here today to recommend wrote the award of a construction contract for the first phase of a Coastal Erosion effort out near Manresa State Beach along the branch line. I did prepare a short PowerPoint. So I'm going to share that on my screen now. Can I get some thumbs up if you could hear me? Or if you could see the, okay, great. Thank you very much. So in, we'll give a little background about this project. Here's a project location map which shows the Phase 1 project denoted by the yellow arrow. This is near the Manresa State Beach parking lot is shown to the right of the screen and the La Selva Trestle which was constructed in 2012 is shown towards the left of the screen. I gave a presentation back in August to the commission about this area. This is a multi-phase multi-year effort that we're looking at. There's significant erosion and challenges that we have at this area of the branch line. The first phase of which is being addressed by this construction contract. It's the most critical Coastal Erosion of the area. Followed closely by the Phase 2 project which is the repair of a failed drainage cross culvert to the north. And then of course the remaining Coastal Erosion will be addressed in future phases as resources become available. So just a little background. In December of 2019, staff observed the erosion originally as part of a preventative maintenance inspection. We do those minimum of twice a year just to monitor some of the critical areas and note any additional repairs that are needed. In January 2020, we had a contractor go out and install temporary soil cover. That's a temporary measure to stop the erosion so that we have enough time to design and construct the permanent repair. In June 2020, we started the design of this project using an on-call engineering consultant rail pros. And back in August, as I mentioned, the RTC adopted the plans and specs of the project and that's when I showed the map of the corridor and in Google Earth and giving kind of a tour of the area. In December, the project was advertised. We opened vids last week, which I'll get further into. Here's a picture of the temporary soil cover. This is basically sandbags and plastic cover and that stops the erosion from happening by basically any kind of rain or drainage flowing over it would be protected by the plastic cover. The scope of this project is to install a retaining wall. The wall is about 70 feet long with a varied height. The maximum height is about 10 feet tall. The project also includes a chain link fence about 1,300 feet long. The reason for the chain link fence is because of the foot traffic that's experienced down here. A lot of times, folks will try to traverse the steep coastal bluff and the foot traffic really does a number on the erosion and it kind of speeds up the erosion of the bluff. And so this chain link fence is really a preservation measure to hopefully delay the need to repair the remaining erosion out there. We are regrading the inland side ditch. The drainage system out there is not flowing very well. It's contributing to the erosion problems that we have. And so the project includes about 1,000 feet of ditch regrading and unclogging of a drainage culvert that's under the existing access driveway. And that's going to help reestablish the drainage system out there. Here's a photo of the sanding water in the ditch to the right. So you could see the bluff is on the left and the ditch is on the right. So this is going to be addressed by the repair as well. So the engineer's estimate for this project was $320,600 and that was based on historic unit prices. We opened bids last week and we received two bids. The lowest bid was $634,100. The other bid was close to that, a little bit higher. But it's a good sign when your bids are close because that means there's usually not any variances or mistakes in the bids. So that's a good sign. The bad news is the bid prices were much higher than the engineer's estimate due to various reasons. There's been recent increases in material costs, which I'm sure you're aware of. Just with everything going on in the world and in the country, supply chain challenges remain. And then what we heard from contractors who we reached out to and asked, why didn't you bid on this project? They're all very busy and there's a lack of availability of contractor resources. And when contractors are busy, that usually makes bid prices higher. So the recommendation today, although the prices came in much higher than the estimate, we are recommending moving forward with awarding the construction contract. Due to the critical nature, we want to have this construction done this year. The other option is repackaging and re-advertising this project, which would take several months. And there's no guarantee that the the bid prices would be any lower or any different than what we received last week. So staff's recommending accepting the bids that we received and authorizing the executive director to execute a construction contract with Cal West Construction. We've included a 10% contingency for a total contract allotment of $697,500. And that concludes my presentation. And hand it back to you, Chair Brown. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Christensen. Are there members of the commission who have questions? Commissioner Rock, can I see your hands? Just a brief comment. Robert Quinn's earlier comment. Yes, there are certainly situations where there's a difference in price between upgrading or repairing damage to the corridor, if it's going to be a rail project rather than a pedestrian. But this is a classic example of one that's required. Just look at the picture we just saw. You can't have a trail if that thing erodes another three feet or something. We're dead. So it's obviously a good project for maintaining this corridor for any kind of transportation use. That's my only comment. And I want to support that when we get to the issue of action part of the item. Commissioner Rock, I was having similar thoughts. Okay, Commissioner Bertrands. Thank you, Chair. So the report designated a couple of causes for erosion. One was drainage and the other was foot traffic. And then there's natural erosion on the shoreline as we experience here in Capitola, of course. So I was just wondering, what is the natural erosion rate this fix? You said it's going to be a permanent fix. So I was just wondering how long will the fix last? What's your estimate? And how much erosion was probably caused by drainage foot traffic? So those are sort of three questions. Thank you. So that's a really good question. We anticipate this, this is a pretty big investment for this area. And I would say that this new repair would last at least 30 years, if not longer. But the answer is it depends, right? It always depends on various factors. If we properly maintain our ditches in the drainage, that's obviously going to prolong the facility life. And the fencing is really important because of the foot traffic. What we saw when this got critical was it kind of created some benching down the cliff. And so we saw an increased input topic when it became critical. And so that was that was the reason for the heavy duty orange fencing around it to try to prevent people from walking down it. So it all depends. I mean, this is not just, you know, we fix it and we walk away and we're good for 50 years. This is the kind of area that we're going to need to monitor constantly. We're going to need to make sure the fence is continuous and maintain the fence. That's obviously an investment, but we feel that it's an important investment that's going to cost a lot less than something structural. So that's our that's somewhat of our maintenance strategy out here. And Guy, I see your hand up. Do you want to add any more to that? Yeah, I mean, I looked at this site pretty closely and we have just recently gone to the coastal commission to discuss a similar situation with coastal erosion up further north on the Davenport project, but they're very different projects. At Davenport, the waves are actually undermining the embankment. This is more of a drainage problem. And I do think that the the foot traffic often causes part of the drainage problem. So proper drainage and elimination of the foot traffic should provide that this wall be able to serve its full service life, which actually would be closer to 50 or 100 years. So I don't, you know, if we continue to maintain this, we will. I want to mention that both all of all three commissioners that spoke on on this were correct Commissioner Quinn, Commissioner Rockin and Chair Brown. We do need to do something here regardless of whether we are building a trail or a rail or whatnot, but this wall was designed to withstand freight loads. So it is a more substantial wall than you would need to if you did not have freight loads there. What the incremental difference is, it's hard to say we didn't design it just for pedestrian use, but we, you know, there is a difference between how we are approaching this with freight rail on that. Thank you very much for those responses. Yes, thank you. Commissioner Hurst. Well, thank you. This is a classic example of the need for preventative maintenance. You know, these conditions just didn't occur overnight. They've been going on for quite some time and had preventative maintenance taken place earlier on in the circumstances, it might not be quite the high level expense today. So I would just use this as an example for other locations and this one as well of the need for observation, preventative maintenance, and buying the bullet when it comes out here. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Rockin. I would also add, you know, thanks to our staff. I went out there with a number of other commissioners to look at this site. And what's the good news is that there's an alternative way for pedestrians to get down to the beach that's not that far away. This is kind of like when people on hiking trails, you know, in the Sierra sort of, you know, cut across instead of staying on the switchbacks, you know, cut across and they create erosion problems. And it's just a small inconvenience for people to do something that won't destroy their own ability to get down to the beach in the future. So it would be a more of a dilemma of putting this fence meant people couldn't get to the beach. But it's not a problem at all to move a little bit further over and walk down on the existing, you know, a path that won't cause this kind of erosion. Thank you. Commissioner Bertrand. Yeah. Is there any planting and such to help with potential erosion so that it's even more permanent than 50 years? Sometimes that is a good solution is to install what we call jute netting and seeding. But that's really typical for flatter slopes. This is a really steep, almost sheer cliff in some areas. And so, you know, vegetation wasn't the right solution. We do look at lower cost slope stabilization solutions along our corridor where we do have erosion elsewhere. But retaining wall was really the best solution here. And it's going to provide for a much longer life also than planting wood as well. No, I fully support the retaining. I was just thinking vegetation and other areas that might be appropriate would also help. Thank you. Commissioner Quinn. Oh, thank you, Chairperson. Back in September, I volunteered to contact the Surfrider organization to see if they'd collaborate on putting signage here. And I reached out twice. I got a response from the Surfrider UCLA chapter but did not win the favor of a response from the local chapter. So maybe a letter from the RTC itself rather than an individual like myself would get more traction. It would be nice to get those surfers who are a big part of the traffic to take them and race the trail. It's a great idea. That would be that's a really good idea. And we are still, we haven't forgotten about that comment and we are still interested in installing those signage as a follow up to this construction project. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good idea. Okay, we will go out to the public now for comments. Brian, trail now. You're up. Yeah, thanks. That's Brian from Trail Now. Thank you. You know, the cost escalation is a great example of what we talked about on the RTP. Really need to reevaluate the overall cost impact on your overall transportation plans. One of the specific questions I would ask is, is this design also going to accommodate 60 passenger trains a day traveling 50 miles an hour through that area? Would that accommodate that? If it's for freight, does it also accommodate passenger trains? I think I understand that RTC staff didn't do a gap analysis in the way of the differential between a simple trail versus freight train. Definitely a better dollar that a simple trail is significantly less in cost and overall. And then the other thing is, is it's really frustrating when we're spending almost a million dollars just to maintain this dirt plot, essentially this dirt plot. We need to start looking for investing and making the coastal trail open. And then finally, the question is, are you going to pull the tracks up as part of the work? It wasn't clear in the detailed project scope. And if you are pulling up the tracks, maybe you shouldn't put them back in. We got a cost estimate as part of the project to pull the tracks and put in an interim trail, simple gravel trail. The actual recycle value of the ties and rails was four million dollars. That was about a year and a half ago. We've had multiple bid. It's probably six million, maybe eight million now. So we have basically a gold mine sitting there with these old tracks and ties that we're not using. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Pupils. David, VB, you're up. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes. This looks great. And yes, of course, everything's expensive now, but it's always better to do repairs sooner than later. So thank you for taking care of our valuable asset. In addition to the fence, as others have mentioned, I hope there's appropriate signage and quality paths to encourage foot traffic to avoid this more sensitive route. And happily commissioners, Rothkin and Quinn touched on that as well. And perhaps in the future, there could be beautification of the fence. It could be a decorative opportunity. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Well, thank you very much. And I'm encouraged to know that repairs are being done. And I'm encouraged that repairs are being done to a freight standard as they as I think they should be. I'd like to take a moment to talk quickly about ridership. I think those who read all the details for all the studies know that that actual reliable ridership numbers have never been conducted. And that could be part of the business plan to Mr. Quinn's observation about traffic congestion reduction from rail transit. You know, does anyone ever ask how much traffic is reduced from metro traffic congestion for automobiles is not the point of public transit projects. Finally, about the repairs being done to a freight standard, that is perfect. That's what we need. We need strong reinforced rail infrastructure, even if we never use freight. Because there it's going to be a time when we have a flood, a fire, an earthquake, a tsunami or a combination of these things. And you know that the highway is not going to work. It's going to be the first thing to go down, even if it has extra lanes. It's going to be dead and still. And I hope we don't see it anytime soon, but there's going to be a time when we can use this rail line for emergency evacuations, recovery and so forth. And I beg everyone, even if you're not a fan of rail, invest in this rail line, keep it up to freight standards. And then we'll have the strongest, most robust and safest infrastructure network that we could possibly ask for. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. I do not see any other hands up from the public, so I will bring it back to the commission. I move the staff recommendation. Second. Okay, we have a motion by Commissioner Schiffer and second by Commissioner Rotkin. Can we take a roll call vote, please? Well, I just before I didn't see any hands up. So I'm going to assume that means no comments. Yeah. Okay, got it. Okay, go for it. Roll call vote, please. Commissioner Bertrand. Commissioner Schock, are you there? You're on mute, Commissioner Bertrand. I pushed the space bar, I thought it worked. Okay, I approve. Commissioner Brown? I. Commissioner Johnson? I. Commissioner Montecino? Yes. Commissioner Alternate Hernandez? Yes. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin? I. Commissioner Alternate Quinn? Yes. Commissioner Koenig? I. Commissioner McPherson? I. Commissioner Peterson? I. Commissioner Alternate Pagler? I. Commissioner Rotkin? I. That's unanimous. Okay, thank you. We will now move on to item 23. This is a review of items to be discussed in closed session. And that would be Mr. Mattis. Thank you, Madam Chair. The commission will be going into closed session on the item of conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation. There is a possibility there would be a report out of closed session today. Thank you. Okay. Madam Chair? Yes. Commissioner Rotkin. Yeah, Ken, I know we are not required to disclose the issue that we're talking about, but I want to ask Steve, is it possible to tell people, give people some idea of the topic that is under discussion? With the, if that's the desire of the council, I can provide just a brief topic. I wouldn't recommend that you go beyond the topic. No, I just meant literally the topic. I mean, not, not any discretion of what their choices are or anything else, but literally what are we talking about? I mean, if it's, I'll leave it to the chair to judge whether that's an appropriate thing for us to share with the public, but I, you know, it's helpful to tell people something about what we're talking about. I think everybody knows. I think so. I just think it's a formality. I think it's probably just people some notice about what's about to happen and they, because then they have a right to comment or before we go into the session if they're going to, right? I think that's a good idea. I was going to make the comment that based on our written communications, it appears that there are many members of the public who are aware of the item, have different interpretations of what that item is. So, I, it would be nice to just have a quick explanation. Great. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm happy to do that. So, that the item today is a closed session that allows the commission to consider the initiation of litigation. A litigation does include administrative hearings before administrative bodies. The commission item today would be the consideration of, well, I would say the further the consideration of the potential of an adverse abandonment action involving the Felton line. And beyond that, I would suggest that commission, as the commission has received the prior confidential communication on this, that it is not, the public should not assume that a decision will be made today with regards to this issue. The commission does have the ability to discuss issues associated with it, but there shouldn't be an assumption that a decision will be made today and to be very clear, nor is the commission foreclosed for making a decision today. It could also be disclosed that the staff's not necessarily recommended that we do so. Well, I wouldn't, I appreciate the comment was made, but that information is part of a confidential memo to the commission and the commission needs to decide collectively whether they want to authorize release of additional information. Thank you, Mr. Mattis. So we will discuss the substance and process around this item. When we move into closed session, before that, I will open it up to a meeting attendees who would like to address us before we go into closed session. And Brian from Trail Now is up first. Thank you, Brian from Trail Now. You know, a little history here. A decade ago, we were speaking with former supervisor, Ellen Prairie, about prior to the purchase of the corridor. You know, there was three things I remember from the discussion. One was, we were on the same page with supervisor about wiring this property because it's such a valuable piece of transportation infrastructure for our community. We were on board with her on that. The second one, we were actually on board as well, where she said the viability of a train is not practical. 60 trains a day speeding through our neighborhoods is very dangerous and it's not a viable economic solution for our community. And supervisor, Ellen Prairie, said that. She publicly said it that she just wanted to acquire the property because of that and continuous keep the property. The third one, I was actually shocked and I was actually surprised. And I didn't believe her, but it turns out to have occurred. She said train people will prevent the building of the trail. This was 10 years ago before we bought it. She said, train people will stop us from building the trail. I was shocked and I didn't believe her, but evidently that's what has occurred. And it's really shocking because Santa Cruz is such an environmentally awareness type of community. And it's so shocking that we're stopping a world class Santa Cruz Coastal Trail from being built because of this train people. And I didn't make up that term. She did. It was the first time I ever heard it. Train people are preventing us from doing this. So my point here is do you need to enable staff to negotiate with the train people and make it so that our community property can be open up so we can use it? It's been sitting there for 10 years. We're spending millions of dollars. Please enable staff, legal counsel to pursue and be successful on opening up the Santa Cruz Coastal Trail now. Thank you. I'll just remind folks that I didn't want to cut you off, Mr. Peoples. This is an item, our closed session item is about potential adverse abandonment of the Felton line. I understand there's an indirect connection, but if we could try to keep the comments directed to what we will be considering, recognizing there is a broader set of considerations, that would be great. Ms. Praxel, you're up next. Thank you, Madam Chair and commissioners. I want to first remind the commissioners of what the first couple sentences of the Brown Act says, quote, the people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people in delegating authority do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over instruments they have created, unquote. This is a reminder that while there may be very specific circumstances in which a governmental body may have the authority to go into closed session, it should use that authority very judiciously in full consideration of the public's interest. Thank you for disclosing that this session is likely about filing an adverse abandonment of the Felton section of the line. And many of us feel very strongly that any such decision needs to be made in open session. I want to ask the commissioners to consider the years of study, the workshops, the public hearings that have been held on the use of our rail corridor, and ask you to carefully consider whether you think it is within the intent of the Brown Act to act to finally make a decision about a portion of that corridor behind closed doors. Even if you have the legal right to make that decision in closed session, do you really think it meets the general intent of the law? Public discussion about the corridor is very heated right now, and there are many claims of false and misleading information. I ask you to bring that deliberation and decision into the light of an open meeting and use that opportunity to inform the public, clarify any public misinformation, and hear their opinions. Any decisions on this made in closed session will eventually be known and remembered by your constituents and would definitely diminish the public's confidence in your actions. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Praxel. Equity Transits, you're up. Thank you, Chair. Equity Transit understands that the executive RTC staff may be seeking adverse abandonment out of the Felton branch line during closed door sessions, and is opposed to adverse abandonment of any section of our branch line for numerous reasons involving environment, equity, and economics. But especially in light of the extensive community involvement seeking to protect our publicly owned Santa Cruz branch line for zero emissions light rail passenger use, these discussions must remain public. It's important to remember that the voting majority of this county voted for Proposition 116, the Clean Air and Transportation Improvement Act, which allowed us in 2012 to purchase the Santa Cruz branch line specifically for developing passenger rail. And many of us, by the way, in response to Brian, are both heavy users of the trail as cyclists and support rail. Numerous studies, including the TCAA, have been conducted by the RTC, clearly showing prioritization for light rail and trail as the best addition for transit along the entire North South Transit corridor, not highway widening. Rail transit ridership statistics from past years are irrelevant today. Increasingly, people are becoming aware of the importance of moving towards using public rail transit. And this information is supported by the state rail plan connecting cities across the state of California. But the critical work done here is making its way slowly down to smaller communities like Santa Cruz County, who have local groups keen on keeping us stuck in traffic on highways. The RTC was certainly in line with these global actions until 2021 when pressure from wealthy powerful anti-public transit groups like Greenway managed to place two of their leaders, Manu Koenig and Rob Quinn, onto the RTC and Manu onto the board of supervisors. At the recent UN climate change conferences in Glasgow, global leaders were clear that preserving the future for living organisms on this planet, the consensus is clear, highway widening must stop. And our future is dependent on prioritizing and building robust and equitable zero carbon transportation systems. Thank you so much. Thank you. Judy Gettleson, your turn. Yeah, I'm Judy Gettleson, a Watsonville resident. And I work with people with developmental disabilities and people with special needs. And I just want to say that I echo the sentiments that this is a public issue and wasn't just a question to the RTC wasn't the majority of the active voters support electric passenger rail and didn't they define a locally preferred alternative as passenger rail. So I think that while you are presenting this as a useful solution, I think it's really cutting off a large part of South County. And I think it's cutting off public transportation, which is a really good thing for a lot of people. I'm not saying don't do the trail. I'm saying don't tear out the tracks. And any action taken in that direction is putting the climate in jeopardy and putting the area in jeopardy and not looking toward our grandchildren. So commissioners, please use your best sense in this. And it's a public issue. And I believe the public has already voted in that they do prefer the train as a locally preferred alternative. I appreciate your efforts and hope you keep the people in mind that we'll be using the public transportation. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Gettleson. Sally for rail and trail, you are up next. Hi, I want to just thank Mr. Rottkin for bringing up this issue of the way closed sessions are described being perhaps accurate, but not informative. And that connects to what Ms. Praxel said about the intent of the Brown Act. When we have closed sessions that are labeled so generally as to be useless, it is not, and then we, you know, the public is invited to speak, it's not, it kind of makes a mockery of the intent of the Brown Act. And I really appreciate the commission giving direction to their council to be more specific. And I hope that that will be done in agendas, written agendas in the future, so that people who are looking to see, is this a meeting I need to attend? What's going to be discussed? No. It's not an, if the agendas listings are so general as to be useless, it does not really inform the public as to what's going on. And I won't repeat everything people said, you know, people know I want rail and trail both, you know, you've got over 200 emails that say the same thing. It's, you know, that's really not the point at this moment, it is an issue of process. And in answer to, and as a continuation of that, I'd just like to ask that people be, could you be very specific about exactly how and when we can hear the report out after closed session? Thank you. Thank you. Mr., let's see, David, the VB, Mr. Van Brink, you're up. Good, good morning still. So yes, it was implied at the beginning of this meeting that one of the closed session items touches on rail abandonment. And I figured that the rumors we've gotten were maybe not quite accurate. But did I hear correctly that you're considering acting against the Felton line against roaring camp? That's a bold move with some interesting optics, roaring camp is quite popular. They're very good community members. It's an interesting battle plan to be sure it's obvious what the strategy there is. Please keep it in public. Come on, don't be sneaky. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Scott, you're up. Thank you. I was waiting for the button to pop up. I sure really sincerely want to thank Mike Roth and my superhero for the day for bringing this up. I don't know of anyone that had any idea that the Felton line was about to be, well, attacked this way. An adverse abandonment is typically done against the will of a railroad. An adverse abandonment of the Felton line seems mindless and strategic. I look forward to finding out what kinds of reasons there are to be going after the Felton line. But more than ever, I am sure this needs to be done in public with great detail, a lot of input, and I think roaring camp, its employees, residents and voters of the county need to know what this is about. I can see no reason. I can't imagine why you would do an adverse abandonment against roaring camp except to use this motion in a threatening manner. I'm so sad, but again, I'm really grateful to Mike and I'm confident that most of the commissioners will not be supportive of this kind of thing. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Todd Marco, you're up. Hi, thanks. I've spent a substantial amount of time in recent weeks and months, arguably much too much time trying to deeply understand the challenges facing the RTC and the community regarding our rail corridor. I deeply sympathize with the challenging position that RTC finds itself in. Much remains unclear, but there does seem to be substantial common ground here, believe it or not. The vast majority of people seem supportive of a trail, and the vast majority of people seem to agree that improvements are needed for the local public transportation. Ultimately, these two priorities have come into conflict on the rail corridor, resulting in substantial divisiveness. I'd like to encourage the RTC to appropriately satisfy the community's needs for trail and transit, not just on the rail corridor and regardless of potential rail transit development. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bryn Young, you are next. Great. Thank you. First, I want to thank the RTC for, in general, the fact on rail banking in general. At the end of the September RTC meeting, Commissioner Rodkin noted that you won't know about your easement liability until you wind up in court. So I'm assuming that the right process to relieve Santa Cruz County from this liability is rail banking. And I'm just offering as a comment that to the degree a stranded line is preventing from rail banking to relieve the county from the potentially large liabilities it would have from easements from taking lawsuits. It may end up being a particularly good thing for whether it's trail or trail and rail. Either way, there's easement liability. And either way, I think adverse abandonment might be something that actually would provide for both sides, something that can be to the community's advantage. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, the hands are coming up. I'm moving up. So keep going here. Ryan, Sanataro, your turn. Yeah, I submitted a short comment prior to the meeting. And what that comment was was that the issue around rail banking is simply a liability issue. It's not an issue that determines the disposition of the corridor as much as I have my own position on what position, how I'd like to see it done. And I think that looked at from that point of view, the RTC has a fiscal responsibility to our whole community to protect us as much as possible from whatever easement lawsuits might happen. And the means to do that is rail banking. And at some future point, and hopefully a very close future point, we're going to be going into the final discussion about what to do with the corridor. Brian, people's happened to mention that the bids that went out for the fix in the previous segment did not include an option for a trail only fix. And again, that's the idea that money is slipping away in the pursuit of an option that could very well be absolutely impossible for the county to go and complete. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Colligan, you're up. Thank you, Chair Brown and commissioners. I think, as Ryan just said, it is completely clear what this commission should do with regard to this to rail banking. I believe that Lawrence Kaplan forwarded you the lawsuit from about 50 property owners in Sonoma County who have sued the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit District Smart. It's a 93 page suit. You all have it. And I think you should read it very carefully. Because in it, those plaintiffs argue that the trail that was being built when the corridor was not rail banked by smart is in violation of their easements. These kinds of takings lawsuits occur all over the country. And it is in the best interests of the county and the taxpayers of the county to rail bank the quarter. I would also like to just say quickly to Mr. Rockins comments that it appears that certain commissioners are violating their responsibility as commissioners in disclosing information in closed session. This is not the first time, but it appears to be a direct line of communication between certain commissioners and folks outside of closed sessions. And so we can talk about the Brown Act and open transparency, which I support. What I don't support is particular commissioners leaking information to certain interest groups in this county. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Colligan. I believe we have completed public comments. And we, I'm seeing hands go up from commissioners, so we'll give an opportunity for that before we move into closed session. Commissioner Hearst, your turn. Thank you. Well, I'm a little surprised to hear all about this because it's not very transparent. And I think if we're going to have good policy, good policy always needs to be developed in the light of the day and have adequate public input and announcements and, you know, do some background work on this and to hear about abandonment. I think abandonment is a bad policy no matter what, but to have it done in closed session outside of public purview and folks don't know anything about it, that's almost deceptive. And so I think that the commission needs to be very careful in how they proceed with these actions and make sure that the public is adequately informed. And even if you make bad decisions, do them in the light of day and not hide behind the closed doors of closed session on these major policy type issues. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Hearst. Commissioner McPherson, you are muted. Yeah. Okay. My comments are short and sweet. Listen, general public, no decisions have been made of any type in closed session on this subject. It's not what we do. It's not what we should do and it's not what we're going to do. So I think we ought to make it really clear that no decisions have been made in closed session. This issue will be discussed openly. I can guarantee that because none of these commissioners would allow it to happen one way or the other without open discussion. Thank you, Commissioner McPherson. You took the words out of my mouth there. I'll save my comments for until other commissioners have a chance to weigh in. I see Commissioner Hernandez, you have your hand up. Well, I'll be short and brief, too. I just want to echo the comments that Lowell Hearst made and Bruce McPherson as well. I think that such a big decision like this, I think really should be brought out in the public and that it be vetted out with public discourse with public participation and not be done, you know, behind closed doors. So that's it. That's all my comments short. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Johnson. I just find it interesting that when people are threatened and they feel like things aren't going their way, just how quickly with such a lacquerty that they want to delegitimize the process. Now, I've been on this commission for many, many years. We've had many, many closed sessions and I would ask our counsel, are we doing something wrong here by going into closed session? We do it routinely, but please let me know if something wrong is going on that's illegitimate here so we can have the people that are trying to delegitimize the process can at least hear it. So help me out. Help me understand. Madam Chair, if I may, the commission is fully authorized to go into closed session to consider the item today. The government code specifically allows for this type of closed session and the commission would report out of closed session any direction that is given, including if it is the desire of the commission to direct that there be additional further public discussion of this issue. So right there, I guess I'm hearing that what we're doing is right, that what we're doing is proper, and we're not subverting the process in any way. And that I'm surprised by some of the commissioners that would go to the lengths that they really are going to make this look like it's a thing quote behind closed doors. It offends me really. Lowell, I'm surprised. Commissioner Ratkin. First of all, I strongly support the Brown Act and it does have two elements to it or more than two, but two main elements. One of which is that there are certain things that need to be discussed in closed session without getting to any details about this. If you're talking about potential lawsuits or administrative procedures that involve issues about what are your likely prospects for success, what the cost would be to carry out the activity, and so forth. It's important for commissioners to get that information in a closed session. You don't want to disclose to the people you might end up being sued by or suing whatever the general issues you're talking about. It makes it impossible to have negotiations with or on some level to sort of decide you don't want to disclose to the people you're going to find yourselves in court against knowing exactly what your own assessment of the likelihood of your success is. I also strongly support the part of the Brown Act that says people are not supposed to disclose what happens in closed sessions. I heard from member of the public that we were having a discussion about possible adverse abandonment. I didn't hear about it from the staff or anybody else. I don't know how that person found it. It certainly wasn't for me. I've been on public office now for over 31 or two years and never disclose anything from closed sessions. I think it's very difficult when it happens. The fact that someone disclosed that then started these rumors going, which has now led people, that's what led me to sort of argue. We have to sort of clarify what we're doing because the public all of a sudden are up in arms about what have been, I think, as everybody suggested here, not a major decision made in a closed session, but just gathering information that, as commissioners, we need to know about our legal prospects in a particular issue. But once it became a rumor was out that we're about to make that kind of a decision, then I felt really compelled to sort of like, now we need, I don't know how it got out there, but now we need to at least disclose something about what it is we're talking about again. But it's, to me, it's really critical that people not disclose things from closed sessions, that Randy's right, that there's things you need. It's not only legal, but it's necessary to be able to meet in closed session and gather information that wouldn't want to be disclosing to the people you're going to find yourself battling in a legal situation. So we're potentially battling in a legal situation. And that's true in a lot of the kinds of decisions we make. So I think there are reasons to do some things in closed session, not to make major decisions about policy. And I don't, we'll find out, but I don't think there's members of this board that are inclined towards making a major decision about adverse abandonment or whatever we're talking about or anything else in the closed session. We'll gather information that will be useful to us. They will then have to come out in public. And one of the things we'll have to figure out in the closed session is what parts of that information that we get is important for the public to understand. Some of it may not be. It may be technical legal issues that are not critical. But there may be things that we find out that we think are important to disclose to the public. So they understand what we're weighing in the balance here. But that's to be decided, I think, in some level. So I think, I don't think our staff's done anything wrong. I assume a staff or not that people would disclose this, but I don't even know. I didn't even know the information and I didn't know what the literal issue was in their closed session till I got the memo, which was a couple days ago. Not, this has been out there for at least about two weeks or something that people been jumping up and down about it. And I don't know how they found out that that was a topic in closed session. Thank you. So I'd like to just take a moment to respond to the questions and concerns that I have heard raised in three areas related to the Brown Act. One is closed session discussions and what's appropriate or not appropriate or allowable. Within closed session also communications about the nature of the agenda item itself to make the public aware. And then the question about closed session confidentiality. And I guess I'll start with the closed session confidentiality. I'll just remind I agree with the statements that have been made about commissioners maintaining that confidentiality, not sharing information out of closed session. And I would just remind everyone that there are other actors involved in these conversations who are not public officials who are not commissioners who have, you know, may have conversations as well. So, you know, there's there's going to be speculation about what and who says what. But I just want to remind folks of that. Secondly, in terms of the the question about what how then how we describe what will be heard in closed session. There are obviously concerns with for about confidentiality when it comes to legal matters, property negotiations, etc. And I also do recognize that to the extent that we can provide some additional information or substance to help the public understand that is a good idea. Thank you, Commissioner Rockin for bringing this up today. And as chair, I will I will commit myself to kind of double checking those and and checking with our staff and legal counsel to make sure that we provide enough information that we're allowed to provide so we can hopefully begin to dispel some of the or, you know, kind of cut off some of the speculation that, you know, inevitably arises when things are very unclear and there are then rumors get started, etc. So I'll commit to that. And then on the first item I mentioned, I'll end there and say, you know, I absolutely am committed as a public servant to doing the public's business in public. And I don't want to speak for other commissioners, but you've heard from at least some and I've talked with others. I don't believe this commission will make the decision of that. This kind of import in a closed session. I believe that there are items that we are required to handle in closed session and you've heard some of the reasons why I won't repeat those. And then there are items that we are allowed to discuss in closed session. And and I have been as a city council member and, you know, public servant very much committed to ensuring that discussions that we are able to have in public meetings are put on the public agenda. I will continue to advocate for that. And this is no exception. We will continue this conversation at most likely at a future meeting. And with that, seeing no other commission comments, I'll now close the meeting and move us into closed session. And if anybody, I just want to say for commissioners, you have a separate link for that. So we'll jump off this line and then hop on the other zoom. I know some commissioners have had issues accessing that information. So if you don't have the link, please do let staff know so we can get you on and we can get moving pretty quickly. But I'll give us five minutes here for a quick bio break and transition. Before you do that, chair, I think it may be good to hear from the attorney about reporting out what they'll be a report out and not adjourning the meeting if they're and for closing the possibility of report out if there is something so. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah, I was sort of operating on an assumption. And so we should get here a little bit more about that. And we may reopen depending on what happens. Mr. Mattis. Thank you, Madam Chair. So the commission assuming there's any kind of reportable direction which could be anticipated today, then the commission would make that out in public on this zoom at the end of the closed session. The closed session will be dictated by the length of time it takes for the commission to receive information and have its own internal discussion. So but we will come back to this zoom and we'll report out any reportable actions at the end of the closed session. If I might interject for a second. Chair Brown, we lose this feed at 1230. So there's a possibility that if the closed session is not finished at that time that we will not be able to report out on this zoom call. And so I'm asked in our attorney if whether we could report out via a quick report that we could post to our website. So we could do that if it's possible to extend the zoom guy that would be better if we cannot do that just so that the public can actually see the report out and they have to create a separate zoom and just identify that zoom ID on the RTC website. I don't if we have this zoom through if we have this zoom through 1245. I'm not I think there's a reasonable chance we will make that time period at 1230. I'm sorry. Well for I we got it until 1245. 1245. Okay. Yeah. So could we say if for some reason we are not able to report out on the zoom because we do lose the the zoom feed and that is not in the RTC's control that we would just post a link to the website so people could log back on right if if they're wanting to hear back. Great. Great. So then we'll we'll close the open session portion of the meeting and move into closed session. See you all in a few minutes. Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here. Hi Sandy. Whenever you're ready we're ready to go. Okay. So I'll just turn it over to Mr. Mattis to give a report out from closed session. Thank you Madam Chair. So the Commission just concluded the closed session on the item listed on the agenda. The Commission by a 10 to 2 vote directed staff to place an open session and a closed session item on the agenda at the next meeting. The open session item would involve the consideration of issues associated with a potential adverse abandonment action. The closed session direction was provided to the staff to report back with the appropriate closed session information. The Commission also requested that staff provide certain information prior to that meeting and that information will be included both in where relevant in the staff report for the open session and as appropriate in any closed session confidential communication. Madam Chair that is the report out of closed session. Thank you Mr. Mattis and I believe with that we are now officially adjourned. Thank you everyone. Thank you all for your patience who've been waiting for us to get back. Thank you to people who are waiting for us. See you next time. Take care. Everybody take care.