 All right. Good morning everyone. It's September 24th, 2021, just after 9 a.m. and you're joining us in the regular meeting of the Santa Cruz Metro. I'm supervisor Bruce MacPherson, Vice Chair of Metro that is filling in for Donald in chair who is at a League of California cities conference and is in a meeting as we speak. So we will carry on. Please call the role. Okay. Director Dutra. Okay. Director Conterry Johnson. President. Director Knig. Here. Director Linus Amson. Director MacPherson. Here. Director Myers. Director Pagler. Here. Director Peterson. Here. Here. Director Rothwell. Here. Director Rotkin. You're muted, Mike. Oh, Mike, you're muted. That's hard to believe. Here. Sorry. Exofficio Henderson. He just said a birthday. You're muted, Dan. Here. And Exofficio Northcut. Here. And did we have any other board? I don't think we had any other board members. No. Okay. We do have. We do have a quorum. Is Director Dutra on? I know he didn't answer. Is he? Okay. We'll move on. We'll just like to mention that today's meeting is being broadcast by Community Television of Santa Cruz County. We thank them for their joining us. We'll go to next item number four, Board of Directors comments. Any comments from the Board of Directors? Seeing none, do we have any oral or written communications to the Board of Director? No written communications have been received. Okay. Item number six, Labor Organization Communication. Anything from Labor Organizations? Mr. Chair, I think we have somebody in the attendees. Oh, Donna Myers is in the attendees has her hand up. Okay. Board of Directors comments. Is there a way to let Donna Myers in as a panelist instead of in the? I'm in now. Thank you. Sorry. I'm late. Please let me. Yeah, I'm sorry. I, yeah, I was stuck. So I'm here. Thank you. It's understood. Do you have any comments going back to on the agenda? Do you any direct comments? I do not, Chair. Thank you. Okay. We're a labor organization communication, I believe. Is there anything from Labor? You don't see any hands there? Can I can I ask how many people are in the non member or non participant group? It's a lot of people. There's seven in there and several of them are employed. Actually, I think all of them are employees. I wonder if it's possible to have them show, you know, shown or entered or something into the group, or is that a technical problem? Just seems like, you know, it's public meeting. We could see them and their reactions to things and stuff. I don't know if we have a policy about this. Mike, do you have a participants logo down at the bottom of your screen? I do. And both I see that you that I'll show their names. Thank you. You can toggle between two pat howl, one is analyst and one is attendees. I see it now. Thank you very much. Sure. Okay. Does anybody you've satisfied Mike? I don't think anybody has a comment. So early on and the Metro advisory, the Mac written communication, anything from nothing? Okay. Okay. We have any additional documentation to support the agenda? There is none. Okay. We will move to the consent agenda items nine one through nine 10. Is there any comments from the board? No seeing no comments from the board on the consent agenda. Anybody in the public would like to address us on an item that's on the consent agenda items nine one through nine 10. Nobody move approval of the consent agenda. Very good. Rotkin and Pagler. All the role please to approve the consent agenda. Oh, wait, is there I asked about public comment. Okay, go ahead. Okay. Okay. For rope call. Okay. Director do you still not here? Okay. Director Conantary Johnson? I. Director Conant? I. Director McPherson? I. Director Myers? I. Director Pigler? I. Director Peterson? I. Director Rothwell? I. Director Rotkin? I. Okay. We have motion passed. Motion passed unanimously. Okay. We will go to item number 10 on the regular agenda first item on the regular agenda. We want to we have a resolution of appreciation for a Martin Gilbert or Marty Gilbert also knows Marty has he's been a devoted hardworking employee Marty has been a pleasure to work with especially when he was there was a demand for extra help he always stepped up to cover and never had a passenger complaint never you could always count on him as an easygoing personality with a great sense of humor and even at the end of today behind the wheel. Marty always went out of his way to accommodate his regular passengers by making them their connections with them and their to get to their destination safely. He has enjoyed traveling his vacation hopes and he wants to do much more relaxing as he can in his retirement. He expressed he has a great he's had a great career with Metro is grateful to be able to require to retire in this community in in his wife are looking forward to traveling even more so thank you Marty for your tremendous service to Metro Santa Cruz Metro for so many years. We do appreciate it. The resolution I do believe needs a motion. We'll move it's approval. I'll second. Okay all the roll please. I'm sorry who made the motion. I can make the motion. Okay and the second was Larry. I made one. Okay all right and actually it's okay. It doesn't matter. Oh I'm sorry. There's no self-esteem involved in that. It's the internet actually. All right. There it is. Thank you. Roll call. Director Colantari Johnson. Hi. Director Koenig. Hi. Director McPherson. Hi. Director Myers. Hi. Director Pagler. Hi. Director Peterson. Hi. Director Rothwell. Hi. And Director Rockin. Hi. Thank you. Thank you. Motion passed. And thank you again Marty Gilbert. Item number 11 is consideration of approving the authorization to engage a municipal advisor bond council and bond underwriter to move forward with the issuance of a pension or obligation bond. Chuck Farmer our chief financial officer I believe will present that item on our agenda. Yeah thank you. Can we pull up the presentation. I think it's slide 44. All right so what I want to do is I want to talk to you about you know one of the things that came on is we have a physical cliff coming up you know in 2027 give or take depending on the nature of how we do you know financially over the next few years and one of the things we want to do is kind of leverage down any outstanding problems that we have that you know mitigate risk as well as hopefully bring down payments so we have less money going out and two of the big items that I've actually been in discussions in the last two finance an audit committee meetings over the last two months is talking about pension and OPEPS. So this is our pension plan and the fact that we're underfunded as well as not being funded at all in our OPEPS plan. So if you go to the next slide so I'm just going to go quickly through the pension piece as well as our recommendation and what we're going to try to do going forward. So let's go to the next slide. So right here we analyzed our look at pension and our post-employment benefits and our pension our total pension value right now as of today is 192 million of which 128 million is funded and we have about 64 million dollars that's not funded. On our OPEPS we don't pre-fund so we pay as you go so that's basically we're paying every single year as we pop through. So if we want to go to the next slide we looked at this between pension and OPEP and one of the things we try to do is one mitigate the risk and then two look at it from a standpoint of what where we could save the most amount of money and quickly first. So by going through and comparing between pension and OPEP OPEP is pay as you go. So regardless of what healthcare goes up or down we only pay for that in year. There's no penalties or interest or anything associated with future payments we only pay like I said as you go. However on the pension it's a different story in the pension CalPERS runs a projection of what we need to fund pension for all the employees today that are retired as well as employees today who are currently active and they look they forecast that in the future as to what we're going to end up paying and then they say well we're going to discount that back based on what we expect we're going to return every year which in this case is seven percent and they say okay here's what you need today so that's that full amount 192 million dollars and currently we have a hole we're short 64 million so CalPERS looks at that 64 million dollars and says well if you don't have 64 million we can't earn the seven percent that we need so we're going to charge you that seven percent so each year we get charged seven percent on that outstanding balance because we have to make up for what they should have been returning on their their funding so this year we're going to pay 5.1 million dollars because we're not we don't have that money in there to pay so if we so when you kind of look at pension 5.1 and you look at OPEBS whatever the health care whatever health care we use for that year whether it's retired for the retirees that's what we pay so if health care goes up then we pay a little bit more of health care goes down which it never does we pay a little bit less but we that's a pay as you go we're not penalized for the future so we're focused right now the cover of the pension portion only right now because that's the biggest impact we can make and we'll cover OPEBS at a future point in time once we get a little bit of experience behind what we're doing in pension so if we flip to the next slide so as part of this process before you go on can I ask the question sure it's not going to affect in the end my support of what you're proposing because I heard about it in our finance committee but it's a philosophical question that you can help me understand when when CalPERS charges us this interest and penalty for not having totally paid our pension obligations into the future that's as you said on the assumption that if that's as if everybody that works for us right now retired tomorrow or today and we had to like give them a pension boom like in other words we shut down business and all the other members of the CalPERS system the CalPERS system did the same thing so I'm not asking you to defend this or in any way but could you explain what's the logic of why we would since that's not going to happen people are not going to don't you the entire CalPERS industry you know people subscribing to CalPERS are not going to shut their business down tomorrow and leave what what's the rash what what rational do they give for basically they're maybe it's a way for them to cover their current costs you know other than by their investments or setting rates on what it actually caused to pay people out this year what's the logic of asking all of us to put money give them money for bill they're not going to have to they'll pay it someday but then the meanwhile they'll be getting more money every year the more stuff will come in what's the logic of asking all of us to pay into a future for a bill that's never really going to happen in that way what do they argue what's their what's their rationale for sucking that money out of our you know direct service so so let me um i i need to correct you a little bit so oh please that 192 million is what you need in today to pay future obligations of pension so for example like me if i have to read if i'm going to retire in 15 years based off of their piece they take that in consideration that i retire in 15 years it's not that everybody retires today it's that it's people who retire in the future so based on their longevity retirement age and so forth of that nature they take it and then they say okay all right this is how much i'm going to pay for chop in the future how much do i need to have at the point in time when they draw it down and then they discount that back seven percent assuming that this is how much money we need today so if we are to like freeze the pension and say that's it we're no longer going to you know count more years of service towards anybody we're going to freeze it today we need to earn seven percent every single year and then chuck retires now we can start paying them and we're still returning money you know seven percent and then i go all the way to when i die when i stop taking pension so as part of it that 64 million that's sitting out there that's not funded right now so calpers looks at that 64 million and says well we should have 64 million in there and we should be earning seven percent so that when the when as people start to retire we can use that money to start paying them if we don't have we're not paying the seven percent on that 64 million dollars then ultimately that 64 million is actually going to start growing in the future and become bigger because we're not paying it so when people start retire we're going to have to come out with their own money part of i'll have to say the majority the reason why we're sitting in this whole of 64 million is because of the investments that were made in the past by calpers and because calpers is almost he had to say it's kind of like shielded in the fact that they make investment policy decisions they invest in regardless of how the market comes out we are on the hook for their returns the difference between the seven percent they were expecting and what actually happens exactly so if they outperform that's great that benefits us but if they underperform then ultimately we're on the hook to make up that gap and that 64 million really kind of started to really show up when we had the housing crisis in 2008 when everything tanked they actually had negative returns and all the balances that we had in there went the opposite direction when effectively we should have been getting seven percent and that kind of whole amount they're paying it's not the whole amount that they need right now to pay you when you retire in 15 years they need to be earning the seven percent on that total larger principal and that's the issue that's going on here that's exactly it so the 192 we're actually going to pay out a lot more than 192 because we're getting seven percent on that every single year right thank you that's very helpful I appreciate it you know Mike thanks for asking the question on this convoluted system that is very difficult to understand and we have little responsibility for it directly but it is what it is we just have to work with it the best we can and I know you know that too no and I appreciate getting that response it's I like to understand that we're that it's not like we're just paying I mean the failures of the investment are not necessarily even CalPERS fault I mean that the market goes up and down and they make their best attempt to do you know I'm let's not have a discussion today about whether CalPERS is doing a great investment job it's just that that's the reality what's going on they're projecting seven and they don't always make their seven yeah yeah Mr. Farmer if we if we don't if CalPERS doesn't make that seven percent we get penalized for we have to make up for that difference that's correct right and where you see the difference is going it's going into that 64 million it'll go up if they miss it if they achieve over it then that 64 million will come down but even if they make their seven percent we're still going to be paying interest and penalties on the 64 million that we're not not covered right okay so um as part of this we went through different alternatives so if we go to the next slide because we want to see how can we go about fixing this 64 million dollar gap and not paying these interest so if we move to the next slide so we looked at you know adding additional discretionary payments into our pension plan this is above and beyond what we're currently playing today we looked at a section 115 trust we looked at of course pension obligation bonds we looked at uh a CalPERS fresh start program and then also looking at leveraging assets that we have here that we fully own and possibly going out and leasing them and then taking that money to pay down so that created a whole bunch of problems because of uh the money we're receiving federal government so five kind of came off but we wanted to let you know that we looked at so if we move to the next slide so what we okay so all right so right now our recommendation after kind of going through this process we looked at different returns and so forth we're looking at a pension obligation bond so um this uh agency actually did one-year notes back in mid uh 1980s up to like the early 1990s to cover in-year cash flow problems and they were after about three million dollars so we actually have done somewhat of a bond it was just a one-year note um so in this case you know this is not something new but it's been a long long time since we've done something um so we're looking to do is basically cover the full outstanding balance now asking for the full outstanding balance and actually getting approved to kind of go forward with a bond at that amount you know it's questionable right now because we still have to go through a whole bunch of other hoops and hurdles but at least that's what we're going to try to shoot for we're going to try to shoot to cover everything um and at the same point too the the goal here is to um reduce our liability or our discount rate or or interest rate which is basically right now CalPERS was at 7% they're now at 6.8 and in November they're going to possibly reduce that to 6.5 so to kind of give you an idea if the discount rate this is where I talked about you know future payments discounted back because they expect to return 7% if they reduce that number that's 64 million is going to go up because we'll need more money today because they're going to earn less money in the future so that 64 million will grow if that discount rate goes down so we're on the hook to cover even more money all right so based on this and based on talking to a bunch of experts right now very very conservatively we are estimating a pension bond of about three and a quarter percent that is basically 3.75 percent lower than what we're paying at seven percent um so if we move to the next slide the big thing here is the advantage is lower interest rate of 3.25 and it also as part of the pension bond we get flat payments so for 15 years we'll pay the exact same amount of money regardless of what happens out in the market whether we go to a recession or expansion those bond payments will be exactly the same for 15 years very easy cash flow very easy to manage you know the big disadvantage here too we're going to take that money and we're going to stick it into our pension and it kind of goes back to our earlier discussion um if we put that money into PLBs they're going to expect to return whether it's 6.8 percent or 6.5 percent with whatever it ends up being if they return less we'll have to make again have to dig ourselves out a hole but the hole will go from zero to whatever that hole is so it could be five hundred thousand dollars likewise if it goes the other way we could be overfunded in our pension so that has its own little give or take issues if we continue down a path of being overfunded so like I said that's one of those things where you know we got a we're still kind of on the hook for that so if we go to the next slide so now I'm going to talk about just the financial so you kind of get an idea of why we picked it this is the payment curve that we're going to pay today if we do nothing so right now starting the blue the 5.1 million dollars is going to raise by 2031 to 6.9 million this assumes that they are returning 7 percent you know so if it's below 7 percent it's going to go higher this this curve at the same point this also is based off of current retirees and employees today or actually in this case at the end of of 2019 so as we get new employees on if we expand you know operations this curve is going to continually to grow and grow farther so it's going to get worse so as you can see how big it is so if we go with the bond flip to the next slide the blue is basically if we did a 3.25 bond we would be paying just over 5 million dollars for 15 years effectively lower than what we'll pay over the next 15 years if we stay our current rate so we have that savings the red dotted line is basically the pump the way we would pay today and the blue would be the bond the yellow shaded portion above the blue bars as well as over to the future years is all pure savings in that savings right now is estimated about 36.9 million dollars that we would have to pay so if we go to the next slide let's show you the dollars so right now we currently have like I said the 64 million dollars we have to still pay that back if nothing changes there's still that 64 million gap that we have to pay the real key is how much of the interest on top of that do we have to pay under the current scenario right now assuming seven percent we're going to pay another 54 million dollars in payments for a total of 118 million under the bond we're only going to pay 17 million or 81 million dollars that's where we save 37 million dollars and just to kind of give you an idea about how conservative these conservative these numbers are so Santa Cruz County just went out with 124 million dollar bond um like a month ago and they got 2.4 percent interest I'm doing this on 3.25 so I'm not saying we're going to get to 2.4 but 3.25 is very well in that realm of being very conservative so that savings going to actually increase even more the sooner and faster react we react to doing this and at the same point I if you watched the news this week I think it was eight out of the 16 federal reserve members voted to accelerate the interest rate increase from 2023 into 2022 so when they start to signal that that means interest rates are going to go up and interest rates go up means our bond interest rates go up and we want to get there sooner than later to get this thing out the door so if we go to the next slide so here's what I'm asking is basically looking as a process goes forward is is pull together a municipal advisor so this is a person sec qualified and they're the person who walks us through the process a bond council as well as an underwriter and the underwriters the last in the process they're the actually the arbitrator between buying the bond and then the people are the they're the people who actually go and sell the bonds for us and they're the middle person we have to draft and reduce review some legal documents we also have to do some research on the STC IC and how that plays in a pact with the agency here and what we can and can't do um we got a draft preliminary official statement so this is the bond itself what we're doing we need to go to the ratings agency that's the biggest key we go there they're going to give us our ratings and what we can actually go out with the bond once we get the ratings then we'll come back to board for final approval on and I'm going to use the word estimated rate we will not know the rate until we actually go out to market because you know the market always is moving but we're going to be pretty pretty close at that point in time and then of course the bond size you know is it going to be 64 million 50 million what what that number is and then the structure of it and then after that we're going to actually go out and price the bonds out in the market then we'll get the exact back and then we'll take the proceeds and pay off the pension so do I move to the next slide okay so this is what actually I'm going to skip over these you can read through them but flip to the next one there's two more slides and go one more okay so when I'm requesting in order to kind of move forward with the bond if we are in agreement that we want to save this 36.9 million or whatever the number is it's really the approval to to civil a team for this bond bond placement this would be going out and hiring a municipal advisor first and then a bond council and we have to do some of the legal work behind it and then ultimately hiring an underwriter so that we can start pulling all this together all the costs associated with these three would be rolled into our issuance of our proceeds from the bond when we actually go to market so think of it as kind of like a mortgage it's we're rolling their costs into the cost of going out there and getting the funding or the bond proceeds so this is what I'm asking to move forward and like said this not asking to go out with a bond this is asking to go through the process of figuring out exactly what we can and can do and then get the bond out there at the market as soon as possible and I'm trying to push it as fast as I can because I worry about interest rates and and a lot of talk about interest rates going up so is that complete your presentation yeah I believe so yes very understandable one thank you under the circumstances of the subject we're talking about is as clear as I can see and many of our local governing agencies have faced this same issue and you've gone ahead with a similar proposal to what you have presented are there any questions from the board about the bond the recommended action are there any questions from the public Donna do you see anything there Alex no I'm not seeing anything okay if there are no further questions I'm going to mention that director Peterson from Capitola has to go on a real work related item so she's going to be not going to be here but she said wanted me to acknowledge that she was supportive of this recommended action anyway so please call the roll or excuse me drive a motion yeah I'll be happy to move this let me just say that you're always at risk when you say something's a no-brainer but this is about as close as it comes in terms of like you know otherwise we're just throwing money into a hole and then they get nothing from it that really benefits us so even though it means you'll have to you know pay make these bond payments and that comes out of our general fund ultimately I mean our general you know revenues uh we're saving so much money in this over the next several years that it's it would be really silly not to do it if it's a possibility so I'll move approval of this recommendation from staff very good and I'd like to second this is Shepard County Terry Johnson and I'd also just like to thank Chuck and the team for all the work to getting us this to this place thank you very well said yeah thanks Chuck as I said this is as clear as clear an explanation as I can remember we have good one at the county too though so please call the roll okay um hi but Anna I think you're you have to talk into the computer we can hardly hear you oh okay director McPherson hi and director Myers hi and director Pegler hi and director Peterson is absent and director Rothwell yes and director Rockin hi thank you motion passed thank you very much again mr farmer thank you very much we wrote item number 12 committee assignments uh that was recommended by our chair Donna Lynn who I as I mentioned she's not here today do we just have the various committee assignments any questions from the board on those do we uh any input from the public this is for the next for next year uh mr chair if I could interject uh yeah so so uh you you have um with with the resignation of councilmember Aurelio um you have seats that have become vacant that Aurelio was filling on behalf of Metro and so you have to start the process again much like you do at the beginning of the year in order to fill those two seats and that's what this item does and then the suggestions for those seats will come back to you next month and you would act upon that and Julie would you correct anything that I said that was wrong that's all correct so and to be clear is this um Aurelio the Watsonville seat as well as well the two Watsonville seats then is that what we're talking about this is just the committee or the metro assignments I got it okay the city of Watsonville will still take action on who their replacement will be to our board that's a separate item okay now this this does need action today then we're not we're not approving the actual people we're still doing the process by which eventually Donna will make a nomination list and others can make another slate if they don't like what she proposes just like we do at the beginning of the year so all we're doing is saying yes let's start the process of figuring out how we're going to do figure out who's going to take over the committee assignments that Aurelio Gonzalez used to have very good yeah that's very well said um does this require a motion then okay uh entertain a motion or any public comment that I asked for that already don't I don't see any I'll move that we begin this process okay thanks Mike do I have a second I'll second it please call the roll all right director um commentary hi director Tony hi director mccasey hi director Myers hi director pager hi director Peterson oh absolutely director Rockwell hi and director rockin hi that's unanimously thank you we'll go item number 13 uh all reports from our CEO and a COVID-19 update thank you mr chair directors um I'll have a again like last month a fairly lengthy report a lot has happened in the last 30 days there are things happening in the coming 30 days and then of course a sizable discussion about what's going on at the federal level which is always exciting in its own its own novel all by itself um at one point here I'll I'll ask good uh general counsel Julie if she'll step in to talk a little bit about some recent state legislation and then I'll come back from that and wrap up my report I'd like to start off with our new hires we did hire a mechanic one James silent binder and a vehicle service worker Abigail Lazaro so welcome aboard to those two new employees and then I'd like to talk a little bit about our experience with COVID so since you last met we've had no new COVID positive cases actually we have we've not had any new COVID positive cases since September 10th to be more accurate um we have had two presumptive positives those are not clear cut positives um and at that point in time that did trigger a Cal OSHA outbreak and a Cal OSHA outbreak is having three positives at a work location in a 14 consecutive day period of time um however those because they were presumptive positives they did retest both of those came back as negative so we were able to actually reverse or retract within 48 hours our OSHA outbreak situation so that went away thankfully uh and thankfully our employees did not have COVID um relative to vaccination rates most metro departments are over 85 vaccination rate with the exception of purchasing the mechanics the facilities maintenance group and operations our agency-wide average percentage right now is just shy of 83% and that is up from the 75% that I reported last month so the numbers are going in the right direction uh relative to mandatory vaccinations uh last month we implemented a hybrid mandatory vaccination directive very much similar to what the county of Santa Cruz did in which all vaccinated employees must submit to weak unvaccinated employees must submit to weekly onsite COVID testing and must provide metro a copy of their health care card let me just pause and double check because sometimes I have issues with the audio on this is the audio coming through okay here you find good to hear good to hear it's a good day yeah okay continuing on so to date all employees have cooperated with the directive all unvaccinated employees cooperated with the directive with the exception of two unvaccinated bus operators one has refused multiple attempts by metro to secure a copy of his health care card and the other has refused multiple attempts by metro to get him to take the weekly COVID test now again these are two unvaccinated employees so both employees are being processed for discipline as per mo u article 16-01 grounds for discipline and discharge blatant insubordination uh valencia labs program that is the program that we use for our onsite testing um our our and they've been providing us us the kits if you will since about december of last year and we had pending bills of over a hundred and fifteen thousand dollars for those tests and i'm happy to report that since last month margo has had a conversation with them uh as and chuck participated in that and we were able to negotiate for that entire hundred and fifteen thousand dollars to go away they're going to retract those invoices and instead we provide them all of the health care cards copies of the health care cards for all employees who are tested going back to december of last year they will build the insurance company for uh those tests and they then assume all the risk if the insurance company does not pay there is no cost to our employees for that so that's good news it'll save us a good chunk of money so thank you margo and chuck for your hard work on that so going forward staff is currently reviewing a new mandatory vaccination policy which if implemented will be similar to the san francisco model or similar to the monoray selenus model that is unvaccinated employees will be given a certain amount of time to provide proof of full vaccination anyone not in compliance will be subject to this blend up to an including termination um again we're still looking at that reviewing that uh contemplating language associated with that but once we come to the conclusion that that's what we should do we'll of course reach out to the unions and inform them and they'll let us know what they think about that um next the governor so moving away from uh covid the governor assigned assembly bill ab 361 that's uh assemblyman revas bill which will allow the metro board and its standing committees to continue to meet via teleconference rather than in person at the october regular board meeting metro general counsel julie Sherman will provide the board a resolution for the board to consider that will allow the board and its standing committees to continue virtual meetings at this point i'd like to pause and just ask julie if she wouldn't mind commenting sure thanks alex um yeah by now you've probably all been inundated with alerts about ab 361 i i know i get something seems like every five minutes from a client or an entity telling me about this bill um it essentially you know because those teleconference requirements of the brown act were suspended by the governor under his executive orders those expire on september 30th and so this bill is essentially carrying on that suspension only it was adopted by the legislature and it was urgency legislation so it went into effect immediately um for our purposes that means october first it becomes you know effective to us because we already have the executive orders that take us through september 30th and so if the board wants to keep meeting virtually there's a bunch of requirements in that have to do with public comment and public participation but you all are already meeting those requirements um yeah there's certain things you have to put on the agenda about how the public can submit comments you're doing all of that and i will just continue to monitor and make sure that you're in compliance with ab 361's requirements and the big change well the one thing to know is that ab 361 is only going to be valid as long as there's the state declaration of an emergency when that is lifted ab 361 will no longer be valid um it also sunsets in 2024 which kind of gives you a sort of preview of that that likely the state of emergency is going to be here for a longer time um you know obviously we're doing pretty well in the bay area but in other parts of the state there's areas that are not doing well and since it's a statewide emergency you know the thinking is that it'll be there for a while but once it's lifted you can no longer have virtual meetings without complying with the teleconference requirements that we all remember and and love so much you know you need to welcome people into your home and all of that stuff um so you you're pretty much going to continue you know if that's what the board decides with the same procedures that are in place now and the big difference is you'll have to make certain findings every month and and it's basically you know the board saying there's the state of emergency you know there's there's local guidance on social distancing and we're going to continue to meet you know through these virtual meetings and you have to make those findings every 30 days so every meeting you have every regular meeting it can just be on the consent calendar and I'll make sure that it it complies with you know the findings have to be specific and I'll draft those and then you just keep doing that as long as as you want to and as long as a b361 is still valid and with that I'm happy to answer any questions thank you I I think um first of all I'd like to have an additional direction to uh write a letter to someone and uh leave us thanking him for this bill um and my my general feeling is uh we're just doing fine and teleconference I know there's uh I think we've gotten used to it the public has um and nothing else we save some miles traveled from Watsonville to Santa Cruz uh I think it's a real positive thing for our agency but uh we'll come to that decision or later but we could just have some additional direction to thank Simon Revis for his bill maybe 361 Bruce let me ask Julie is it illegal for us to just to do that on the basis of consent in other words Bruce asked is anybody opposed to that and we move on or do we have to actually have a vote I I think if you're just giving staff direction and you know it's not on the agenda to take formal action on on that so if you just want to have you know Bruce give staff direction and no one's opposed to that that's fine so Bruce why don't you just ask if anybody is opposed and then go ahead and do that because I think it's a good idea very good anybody opposed to that uh to the right uh Simon Revis uh thanking him for this uh legislation I don't think we see any around say any from do we see any from the public I don't think so and yeah we'll be happy to do that good okay um Mr. Chair is it okay to continue on yes please do okay uh so continue on on august 27th uh in the afternoon this was uh actually the same day as your last board meeting we had several of our staff members had a virtual meeting with FTA region nine administrator Ray Tellis uh and his staff concerning Metro's request relative to our 26th thing federal LONO grant um Mr. Tellis expressed his support for our proposal that the FTA allow Metro to use the grant to purchase three maybe even four pro terra battery electric buses for our highway 17 service now you might recall that uh we received the 2016 grant award uh based on an application for highway 17 that would buy three um battery electric over the road coaches however since the award of that grant uh no bus manufacturer has been able to step up and provide a vehicle that will meet all of our needs in the over the road coach realm and therefore we modified our request so that we can meet all of the requirements of the 2016 with the exception of the over the road coach requirement instead it would be a 40 foot uh bus it would be one of the buses we now own or a bus like what we own now today which is the pro terra 40 foot and as we talked about before that bus has been tested by eddie and the team and they feel very good about its performance on highway 17 so the next step is certainly that was a that was the most important step was getting our region nine administrator to agree with our ask he was enthusiastic about it now he reaches out to washington dc to see if he can convince them to make that slight modification so that's pending we'll keep our fingers crossed uh we'd like to place that order again that that's report seat bus instead of a what 60 seat bus is that right if i or yeah i think it's somewhere in that same area margo is that about right yes that's correct it also doesn't have the um luggage you know underneath kind of provisions that are over the road coaches have it probably doesn't have tables where people can at their seats either which the over the coach over the road coaches have yeah it's still i have i assume it still would have wi-fi which is critical with so many people taking that commute yeah yeah and and we'll experiment we'll we'll explore things like you know charging ports for electronic devices so those are all yet to be explored okay good okay and then moving on the fta is currently reviewing our drawdowns of federal covid assistance that's the cares act the carissa and the arpa um this is a federal requirement um they're not picking on us it's a federal requirement anybody who's drawing down those monies must go through this audit and that process will take approximately three months to conclude um last month we talked about our our synchromatics contractor for automatic automated vehicle location and our smartphone application and we have issued them a notice of default uh synchromatics is metro's provider of the automated vehicle location system so the 30 days notice to cure has expired and the our it director isaac holly and our general counsel are reviewing the work accomplished by synchromatics over the last 30 days uh to determine to determine what the next steps are so i'll be able to tell you more next month about where we're going with them turning to good news of course we had the ribbon-cutting ceremony um relative to metro's new zero emission service known as the watsonville circulator um that was september 7th it was a highly successful event our speakers were chair donna lin director dutra mark hollandbeck from pro terra and congressman panetta and of course the circulator went into service on september 16th on september 8th metro we should give daniel uh credit for a wonderful event that really was well organized and well attended really was went off without a hitch it was really great thank you for that thank you mike that's uh yes she did a fabulous job thank you and a couple of more things we're going to talk about that she's done here recently uh to include on september 8th we staffed a booth at the chamber of commerce business expo um john and daniel and and some customer service staff covered the hours of staffing for that booth um we also were able to take our pro terra bus to that event which was pretty cool and then uh unexpected but really cool uh john and daniel were able to um be interviewed by the ksco uh team at their booth live on the radio um it was an extraordinary interview they talked about the watsonville circulator and hydrogen fuel cell buses but what was extraordinary is the amount of time that they were able to be on the radio i think i think they may have been on for up to 15 minutes so we got a lot of airtime great great um and then we this past week we displayed our pro terra bus and para cruise vehicle at the county fair in watsonville that was the 15th through the 19th we took that opportunity to distribute information about the new circulator watsonville circulator and we provided the people with information about various metro recruitments including the current bus operator recruitment and the new sign-on bonus and then hr will have a booth at the access to employment job fair which will be held at the coconut grove on october 13th from five p.m to seven p.m we'll be focusing on the bus operator recruitment as well as other current openings uh moving on to other topics uh you recall for several months now we've had the temporary reduction in fare and of course that ended on september 5th thanks we're back to normal fares um and kudos to danielle and rina they got our new online square store up and running so if you go on our website and you look at purchasing fair media uh it is vastly improved it is very professional looking and that went online september 16th i would encourage you to go online and take a peek at that um as we look forward to that journey to recover mes metro's customer service windows at pacific station and the watsonville transit center uh opened full-time starting september 16th Monday through friday from 8 a.m to 5 p.m they're closed for lunch and breaks but this is a big improvement over where we've been for the last several months with very limited customer service hours and then today metro is staffing a table at pacific station for downtown day which uh welcomes back students to ucsc so another another little event that we learned about at the last minute but danielle and team were able to put something together so that we could be there uh and then metro's recruitment television commercial uh that the danielle and the marketing department have been working on is in the process of being finalized it'll be broadcasted on comcast on english and spanish channels beginning in october uh there'll be three different topics here the first commercial will be the uh hiring of bus operators and the hiring bonus or sign-on bonus the second will be highlighting other vacant recruitment uh vacants for vacancies and the third will be encouraging ridership uh people to come back to the bus and our splash pass and the watsonville circulator so uh if you're a comcast customer watch in uh october for those commercials alex can i ask you are there we're i seem being covered by media here what is that bonus and what's the initial um salary if you have a ballpark figure for us we have a great benefit system but what's the actual initial salary for a bus driver and what's that bonus and i'm gonna ask don to chime in sorry i was trying to grab my folder and unmute at the same time um so the starting um the starting rate for a bus operator is sorry let me get my readers 1997 and then after they finish their um probation and get fully qualified it's 500 um and then after probation it's another 1500 and then after they work their first year approximately 280 uh 2080 hours then they receive another um 2000 so it's a total of four thousand dollars great and and this job require i mean at least to be considered for this job requires basically a high school degree and a clean driving license and a drug test and a drug test and a um background check a clean drug test a clean drug test yeah obviously we of course heavily screened for customer service absolutely we can teach somebody to drive a bus we cannot teach somebody to be kind and considerate and you know taking care of the public so so yes our number one skill that we look for is customer service thank you i think that's helpful and hopefully some of the media might report that information yeah i just like to say thank you to our bus drivers because we get great compliments uh comments from people about how kind and courteous they are there's some really trying to turn conditions over this last year and a half especially so uh i think it'd be great just to say how much this board really appreciates their courtesy that they've exhibited over the years over this last year and a half in particular is really well received and much appreciated i'm chair if i can add to that i was on a um on a call with um our clinic that actually handles all of our drug testing um and now handles our workers comp um occupational injuries and the manager that manages all three locations throughout santa claire i'm sorry santa criss county um voiced how um how much she loved our bus operators and how being in that clinic is you know she from patients and things that come in she got all kinds of um feedback about our bus drivers and how great they are great thank you mr chair before i continue i think you have uh dan henderson with the santa don can you remind me what the hourly rate warrior us operators are post probation post probation is uh 2255 that's that's a month i'm sorry you know what i was looking at the wrong year so it's 2375 after probation 2375 an hour 2375 after after once they become fully qualified thank you and then i think there's another hey bump uh right at about one year out right um after one year 25 26 they moved to step three and then i'll just give you the the the top step eight is 3306 i continue sure uh so really exciting news for us this week the fta finally underscore finally issued the long overdue 53 39 b bus and bus facilities notice of funding opportunity what is sometimes referred to as a nofo and um that we've been expecting actually since march so it has taken them forever to get this done but it is issued and of course we've been preparing for months to apply for this grant in hopes of winning a grant that will build our new paratransit facility the program that they put out is a 409 million dollar competitive grant program um what's also exciting is that that reflects 125 million dollar plus up from last year the applications are due by november 19th and john and wandamoon team have been working hard to get ready for this and they've taken the extra time to continue to refine that grant package so we'll make that deadline and then we'll keep our fingers crossed and hope we get the award i do want to give a shout out to the bus coalition as you know we are a member of the bus coalition i'm actually i'm actually a board member on the bus coalition um but we can attribute the credit for that plus up entirely to the bus coalition they worked hard and tirelessly uh and they did a great job so thank you to the bus coalition last week eddie benson and i attended a three day zero emission bus conference in denver so we learned a lot about the current state of of both battery electric and fuel cell bus technology in general fuel cell technology is significantly improved over prior conferences uh it's getting a lot more traction these days and more and more agencies are talking about fuel cell in the future and less battery in the future uh so it's good that we're participating in these types of conferences and staying abreast of whatever the current technology movement happens to be now out of that conference eddie came away excited about some things that we learned there about pilot projects and and the ability to fuel a small fleet say three to five buses so we're going to explore trying to find some space on our facility where we can bring in this newer fueling technology and uh if we can do that then next year in the 2022 low no grant cycle will apply for a pilot funding for the fueling and maybe three to five buses so stay tuned and um we hope to be able to apply for the grant next year all right the next part is is the update on the federal fast act and reauthorization and the infrastructure bill this is the latest and greatest from our our federal advocate chris gilio so i'm just going to read you what he provided it's very thorough and it updates the information i provided you last month so her a promise that speaker polosi made was a group of house moderate democrats last month the house leadership continues to plan a vote next week on the bipartisan infrastructure plan that was approved by the senate on august 10th the bill includes approximately 1.2 trillion for traditional underscore traditional infrastructure such as transportation water broadband and electrical grid improvements house leaders are working to schedule a vote next week at the same time on the 3.5 trillion human infrastructure bill several house committees approved various portions of that bill in the last few weeks and just last night released legislative text of the 2400 age bill that must be real interesting reading those are great things to read at night yeah especially if you have insomnia exactly so the human infrastructure bill includes a variety of items not ordinarily associated with traditional infrastructure such as child care and elder care subsidies affordable housing construction job training and expanded family and medical leave the house proposal would also offset the spending with tax increases on wealthy individuals and corporations while both infrastructure bills are likely to pass the house if they are taken up at the same time the human infrastructure bill does not yet have the necessary support from all 50 senate democrats to pass if house leaders do not bring the human infrastructure bill to the floor at the same time as the traditional infrastructure bill a group of house progressive democrats are threatening to vote against that traditional infrastructure bill however there is a chance that enough house republicans could vote for the traditional infrastructure bill to offset the democrat opposition to pass the bill in the house but is far from certain that house GOP leaders would want to provide democrats a win while the fate of the human infrastructure bill is still uncertain and likely faces more negotiation between the house senate and the white house even if it were to pass the house next week the state of traditional infrastructure bill is a little more clear the traditional infrastructure bill passes the house next week unamended it will go to the president who would likely sign the bill into law so that one that one could get itself separate separated from the human infrastructure bill and could make it to the president's desk passage of the traditional infrastructure bill is also important because it includes a five-year reauthorization of the federal highway transit and rail programs which expire october 1st meanwhile the house this week passed a continuing resolution or what we sometimes refer to as a cr which keeps the government running in the absence of congressionally approved budget the new fiscal year begins october 1st and congress is not close to finalizing the budget the cr approved by the house would keep the government running through december 3rd there's always a however however the cr will need republican votes in the senate to become law but it is not likely the cr will get the 10 gop votes needed because the cr also includes an increase in the debt limit something republican leaders have said they will not help democrats with next week uh is expected to be a bit of a crazy week up on capitol hill with the infrastructure the budget the debt limits the cliffs all happening next week so stay tuned on the california front you know bringing all of this to closure here the first year of the 21 22 legislative biennium ended september 10th legislators have returned to their districts until early january when the second year of the session begins the governor has until october 10th to sign or veto bills that are on his desk including ab for a ting maledara's which metro supports and which would require that special districts like metro be considered for any future funds appropriated to help local communities build in resiliency against public safety power shutoffs joshua metros california legislative advocate has conveyed to the governor metro's support for that bill and mr chair and directors that concludes my presentation thank you um any comments from the board thanks we probably know more about what's going on in washington than anybody else in san joseph yeah thank you for that thorough report appreciated uh any questions from the or any other questions but for comments from the board members any comments from the public don't say any okay um that concludes our regular agenda um i was hoping to get this thing done in an hour but it's almost an hour and 15 minutes we gave it a go anyway so that's good thank you bruce that was great okay uh we will um the next meeting of the san joseph metro is october 22nd 2021 at 9 a.m it'll be i'm sure by teleconference uh with that this meeting mr chair i'm sorry before you adjourn yeah i just wanted to make one one other announcement uh under next meetings we are having a special meeting on friday october 8th at 9 a.m at the c cliff in uh 7500 old dominion court in eptos uh as well as the regular board and directors meeting on friday october 22nd so at this point we are having because this is a workshop we're striving to have as many of the board members in attendance as possible in person we do understand that there may be board members that would like to choose to not participate in person but virtually um we're going to be able to accommodate that along with public participation virtually so that's all being handled by isaac and john um but we're we we think because of the nature of the workshop um and our consultant degrees to the extent that we can have in person i think that's really uh more beneficial yeah you two and i thought the we haven't had a workshop for a little while now but boy it was invaluable before especially when we were in financial doldrums no fault of the district itself or the uh metro itself but um i think we really got our plan of attack where we're going to be going in the future and where we are so it's a vital conference i hope that one way that we're the other uh in person or uh teleconference all board members will be able to attend that on october uh eight it starts at nine is it is it nine or is it eight it's at nine a.m nine a.m and uh this is the first of two workshops you'll have another one the second friday of november that then brings us to the revisions uh and updates of our our strategic our business strategic plan okay thank you for mentioning that very important i hope we see all members of the metro board participating um any other comments in my rush to adjourn i'm is there any other comments okay this meeting is adjourned we will meet october eight in that workshop uh but the next regular meeting will be uh friday october 22nd at nine a.m have a good day have a good weekend everybody and stay safe thank you bruce nice job everybody nice job at sharing bruce thank you yes bye