 Okay. Good morning everyone. Good morning. Welcome to our August 25th Metro Board meeting. I will call a meeting to order and ask where we'll call. Director Brown here. Director Downey here. Director Dutra. Director Cullin-Terry Johnson. President. Director Coney. Here. Director Lynn. Here. Director McPherson. Here. Director Newsom into absent today. Director Paytler. Here. Director Keros Herner is absent today. Director Rock. Here. Ex officio Director Kerson is absent today. Ex officio Director North. Okay. Thank you and we have more. Wonderful. Thank you. Just a couple of announcements that today's meeting is being broadcast by community television and language line services is providing Spanish interpretation. That'll go to the board to see if there are any. No, we can't answer this Spanish. Oh, thank you. I'm just zooming along. Could you please provide that announcement in Spanish? My name is Hector and if anyone needs Spanish interpretation on the agenda today, please at the board chair know so that we can assist you. My name is Hector. Thank you for being here. Hector. Okay. Any comments from board members? Any announcements? All right. So I'll note that there is oral written communication that was sent to the board. There were five items in our packet received another written communication via email yesterday afternoon. And Mr. John Ergo will respond to that and send the response to the board. Right. Labor organization. Sorry. I am. Thank you. Director Watkin. It's a bit of a morning. It's foggy and it's heavy and not like that heavy but it's foggy and heavy. So thank you for helping me clear the fog. Any oral communications here in person. Thank you. Thank you Brian. People from the trail now. Nice to be present here. Like facilities. So it's good. You know, I'm not here necessarily on a friendly note. I'm here to make actually complaint about the Metro board and the representation representatives for the regional transportation commission. Guy Preston announces retirement at the last meeting and we consider that actually him quitting. And I'll talk to you about the rationale but give you some background of why we believe at the ballot what we're saying is quit. And it's quitting because of the policies of the board members on the RTC. I personally have been involved in transportation for over 25 years not involved with regional Santa Cruz regional transportation mission 25 years ago. And as most of all, you know that I'm actively involved. We have a network of friends. I get a lot of information from them. Actually, they're very good friends with Guy who goes to dinner with. So we have very insightful information. In our communication, you'll see a specific call out by Andy Schiffer about his personal discussions with Guy. That's not public information. That gives you an information that we have insight that Guy's not pleased. He loved that job. He loved the job. He's very frustrated. He's very eco-friendly. He lives in Seabright. He wants the trail built and he's very frustrated that it's not being built. And the ultimate trail is stopping the trails from being built. We need to vote for the interim trail. Guy has expressed that personal to his friends, to RCT members. He wants the trail built and he's frustrated. And he doesn't want a record that's going to materialize. And that trail doesn't get built. Only 1.2 miles have been built over the decade. And that section that they're building right now costs more than widening the highway. Building a 12-foot mile trail, 12-foot wide trail that costs more than widening the highway. You know there's something wrong. And you're actually destroying clear-cutting more trees. Guy is very upset. He's expressed to his friends about the clear-cutting of trees for the ultimate trail. We need the interim trail. That's the solution. And if we vote for it, you never know. Guy might come back. You might find that he might come back. I'm just saying I'm not giving any guarantee. But I wish that you would all start opening the coastal trail and stop holding it hostage. We need that open. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Anyone else wish to speak? Who's here in person? Do you have anyone online? Okay, we'll bring it back to the board. Yes. I just want to say that I think Mr. Biden people's comments is one that's completely inappropriate. He has every right to express his views about what we ought to be doing, what the RTC ought to be doing in other rooms. We don't typically respond to everything that people say or all the information. He's completely inappropriate for hitting the boards in the mouth of somebody else. Guy Preston has every opportunity, has had and has every opportunity to express what his views are about this issue. The Commission actually mostly carries out the recommendations that he makes to us. And in this case, the recommendations have been in the ultimate trail that we consider the two options. We won't be thought as best. It's a little too convenient that the views, the secret views held by Guy Preston correspond perfectly with what Brian People says at every meeting that he comes to. So I just want to put that on the record. I don't think it's appropriate for him to put words in Guy Preston's mouth. Like Guy Preston speak for itself, but Brian People speak for itself. It's quite welcome to do that. We accepted it in the task removal. The future zone is about these matters, but I feel quite strong. It's just really, really inappropriate. Thank you. Thank you, Director Rothken. Other announcements or comments by directors? Okay. So let's go to labor organization communication. Okay. All right, then we'll move on to any additional documentation to support the agenda of the environment. Now we are on consent. Those are items 8.1 to 8.12. Are there questions or comments, or are there any items that directors wish to pull? Okay. The others? Okay. So let me, let's then take 8.1 through 8.12 with the exception of 8.6. Is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak on items 8.1 through 8.12 with the exception of 8.6? Anyone online? Okay. Are they 8.6? Sorry. Let's move 8.1 through 8.12. Second. It's motion to approve the remaining items. Did you move it? Seconded. Seconded. Okay. Do we do a roll call? Okay. Director Brown? Aye. Director Downey? Aye. Director Prollentary Johnson? Aye. Director Koenig? Aye. Director Lin? Aye. Director Miesfereson? Aye. Director Fakert? Aye. Director Rotkin? Aye. And the motion passes. Thank you. Now we'll go to 8.6. I'm sorry, we're going to raise a question. Since we're no longer, we have nobody on the board who's attending remotely, are we not able to go back to simply voice votes on these matters rather than roll calls? Okay. And would that be in our sense, generally? You can do that. You only have to do roll calls when there's somebody on 8.6 then. Okay. So 8.6 is about the answer to the service. I have two things. First of all, I want to know through our services in terms of live and the rating and the time that people expect the fair transit ban to show up. Part of our goal is to have 90% within that. And when you're outside of it, sometimes it's about 30 seconds or a minute, not necessarily sure half an hour later or something. We do really, really well. We somewhere between three of the worst last three years at one point, but mostly 98, 99% within that window. That's fantastic. I noted when I was reading through the agenda item that the limits by month are up this year from last year. And you compare, this is on page 8.6.1. You don't need to see it. It shows that we have an increase of riders this April, this year over last year, May, this year over May last year, June, this year over last year, which is great. But it also shows that this year, the number of riders and fair transit is going down from April to May to June. And I was wondering to ask why that is the case? What's going on there? If anybody gave us an insight into that because it's a concern. We're out of COVID. COVID is still around, but it's generally seen less impact on it and sort of getting back to normal. And those numbers seem to be going down rather than up. I found it surprising. Thank you. Is that it? Good morning. Margo Ross, COO for Santa Cruz Metro. Daniel can probably answer that question better than me. He's on the line. Oh, there we go. Good morning, everyone. So I didn't get the whole question because my computer is going off and on. But if you could repeat that, I would be happy to answer that for you. I'll come to the main question. It looks like the number of people riding parent transit is going down between April and May, between May and June this year. And I was wondering why that is the case? Actually, it is going up. Historically, we do a bulk of rides to the stroke center at Cabrillo. So when Cabrillo is on vacation, our rides go down quite a bit during that time. So that might be the reason that you see lower ride amounts for May and June. It appears on 8.6 point Y. Maybe if you could send us some information about that after the meeting, that would be over. Absolutely. Otherwise, we'd approve it in a second. Did you look at the June from last year to this year? Yeah, yeah. But June you said was coming down? I don't know. What's happened is, if you compare April 22 to April 23, it goes up by almost 1,000 rides. It was almost 1,000 rides up from May 22 to May 23 and up about 100 rides, not as many, but still goes up from June 22 to June 23. But then I looked at the next one. I was confused at first about how they could even be going down. But then I realized it's comparing these different things. But for this year, if you look at what are the rides comparing April to May to June, they go down each one. And did last year do the same thing? So there's something going on. Maybe the Cabrillo thing. I don't think in summer things change. It's like student ridership. Yeah. This year it went from about 7,000 in April, 6,800 in May, 6,200 in June. So you can see that pattern. Last year, it went about 5,700 in April, 5,600 in May, 5,750 in June. Also, if I can add, you do do school rides as well. So that may contribute to the decrease also, along with the Cabrillo College. That sounds like Daniel will give us some. So Daniel, that that's the case or not? Actually, you scored his numbers and gave you 5,700. Great. Thank you, Margo. Thank you, Danielle. Thanks for the question. Director McPherson. I want to assess this on the 8489 UCF SC ridership. It says, you know, the bullet point says, Q4 ridership decreased 14.9%. It looks like increased. Am I reading something wrong on that chart? I think you're reading it correctly. I saw the same. It appears it should say increased by 14.9. You might just check. And I think elsewhere in one of the items, it shows it as an increase in other texts. Okay. It's pointing that out. Okay. Let me see if there are any comments on 8.6 folks who are here in person and online. No. Okay. Now I'll bring it back to the board. I think so. Yes. Okay. So all in favor. All right. Any abstentions? Any noes? Okay. Thank you. All right. We are on our regular agenda. Item nine is presentation of employee longevity for Mr. Wesley Gild who has been here with the Metro for 10 years. And I believe this is Mr. Gild here, not here. So let's just take a moment to thank you for your service to the Metro and all your work. Any other comments from directors? Okay. And we have a few retirees here on item 10. Peg Fletcher, Harlan Glatt, Andrew Kearney, Paul Lennon, and Maricela Mendoza. We have their resolutions. And our board packet is any of you here or online? Director Ratkin. Okay. Any other comments or questions by board members? Okay. All in favor. Say aye. I think I heard a unanimous, but any abstentions or any noes? Okay. Thank you for your years of service. We're on item 11, oral report on hydrogen technology in the marketplace for public transit and the alliance for renewable clean hydrogen energy systems. Please, Mr. Undermoth. Good morning. Good morning, board members, staff, guests. We have today to provide oral report on hydrogen technology in the marketplace and also on the alliance of renewable clean energy hydrogen energy system, which is it's called ARCHIS. As you know, this board of food metros is the rollout plan back in January. And we submitted our rollout plan to CARB, California Air Resource Board in March and it was approved. So now this is our rollout plan suggested that we are suggested that based on route analysis and the available energy. Majority of our fleet to be hydrogen-porputing masses. And still we do have a materiality class at our fleet. This is given our high vulnerability to nitro-exhauster and strongest topography we have in this county. And also those classes, those hydro-differentiated buses were able to achieve roughly over 300 miles. And with hydro-differentiated bus, metro connect list, the internal combustion system, on the basis of wild demand ratio. Over the last five, six months, we received roughly 20.4 million from FTA in the grant. And another 38 million, so 8.6 million from FISA. And 4.8 million from Federal Highway. And three more million from FTA. So we are really in a good position. Which is roughly seven passes in the coming months. We bring those proposals up to this 40 in the coming months. This is, this is going to be, we hope this is going to be, the largest acquisition of fuel-sale buses in the nation. We invited here two experts, Jamie Levitt, Director of West Coast Operations of CTE. We also invited Scott Brandt, CEO of ARCHES, an Associate Vice Provost for Research and Innovation at the University of California, Office of the President to provide or report on those technologies. And ARCHES, we really support ARCHES, ARCHES, Public and Private Partnership to create a sustainable statewide clean hydrogen, having California in beyond. Then based on local renewable resource to produce hydrogen. Mr. Levitt has more than 29 years experience working in transit industry in more than 24 years in working on hydrogen fuel technology. Please welcome Mr. Levitt. Thank you very much. I had to negotiate 80-80 coming down here during the war. And I, every day I take my bicycle to work. So it's been a sacrifice, but worth it. Thank you very much for letting me come and present. And as one of them said, I really come from a transit background. I was 11 years at San Francisco Munich, 15 years at AC Transit, where I was the Director of Environmental Technology and started their fuel cell program. So Michael really wanted me to present to you some background of where the technology is and how that fits with your efforts and why you are leaders, but you're leaders at the right time. So I will go through these slides and first what I'd like to give you a bit of background of our organization, CTE. I left AC Transit 10 years ago to join this nonprofit. We are an organization of about 65 people. We have over 30 years of portfolio of zero mission projects of over $1 billion. Presently we have about 150 projects valued at over $365 million. And we have a national presence. My office is in Berkeley. Our main office is in Atlanta. We have members of our organization, many large companies that are involved in hydrogen and battery electorate. We don't just do fuel cells. We're also actively involved with the deployment of battery electorate vehicles. You can see in this slide here, just an overview. We're very active in California because there's a lot of money in California you probably are aware over $24 billion has been raised through the cap and trade program. And so even our governor's focus and the state legislature, there are many projects happening here, but also across the country. I mean, as the saying goes, what happens in California goes elsewhere. We're now the fourth largest GDP. We exceed Germany in terms of gross domestic product. Our organization is quite involved in a lot of projects. I don't expect you to read all, we'll go through all these different projects, but not only buses, but we're very involved in truck deployments. We actually have a very exciting project out of the Port of Oakland with Hyundai with Class 8 fuel cell trucks. And those zero emission fuel cell trucks will eventually be bringing fuel to your destination. We need zero emission well to wheel, not just part of the trip, but all of the trip. But I highlighted three key projects and activities with AC Transit, SAM Transit, Foothill. And the reason I highlighted those is that those are organizations, like yours, transit agencies, that have really now made a commitment as you are potentially making next month to fuel cell technology. AC Transit, which I previously mentioned, I helped start that program, but it's grown phenomenally well. In their initial transition plan, that's zero emission, which is required by the CARB Innovative Clean Transit regulation, they assume 30% of their 650 bus fleet would be fuel cell and 70% would be battery. Their recent plan that was published this last year has reversed that. 70% fuel cell, 30%. They are also a member of ARCHES, which Scott Grant will give you some more background and exciting opportunities that you will realize with the ARCHES program. SAM Transit, another example, they have a fleet of over 300 buses. We're actively working with them. They started with battery electric. There will probably be, as with all of you, a mix of battery and fuel cell. It's not one versus the other. It's a combination, depending on the duty cycle and what your requirements are. But in the case of SAM Transit, they were focused entirely on battery electric and they are now making a shift to fuel cell. They have purchased 10 buses. We're setting up an interim fueling station at their north division north of the San Francisco airport. And we're working on a plan to convert the entire north-based division of 150 to 200 buses to fuel cell. In the case of Foothill Transit, they were one of the leaders in battery electric deployment. They're still moving in that direction. But we just finished, I'll have a photo to show you a bit later, installing a on a 40 by 60 foot footprint, which you have real estate issues here and those are challenges. But on a 40 by 60 foot footprint, we will be able to fill 100 buses in their fleet. And they have recently placed the largest order of 33 fuel cell buses. Those buses have been delivered, they're in service as we speak over the last several months and they're ordering another 19 from another supplier. So I wanted to emphasize these because you're not only leaders, but you're in the wave of everyone else that's moving in this direction. And I would compliment you in terms of your vision and the light. This is just to give you an idea of the big class eight truck project that's zero emission that CTE is managing. These are the first 10 trucks leaving Korea now in operation from the Port of Oakland out into the Central Valley. And so we're very excited about the prospects for long haul trucking, regional trucking and the light that will benefit all of our communities. In case you're not fully aware of how fuel cell works, it is not a battery. It does not store energy. It utilizes onboard stored hydrogen and through the fuel cell as a chemical reaction creates electric power up to several hundred kilowatts. In the case of the buses, it's a hundred kilowatt system. And the buses use batteries as well to recapture regenerative braking energy. But the only emission out of the exhaust is vapor. Of course, where does the hydrogen come from? And we'll touch on that. Archers will give you the approach that the state is actively taking to get you green hydrogen, which means a hundred percent renewable with a carbon intensity of zero. At a price that's affordable. So in the case of the operation of the fuel cell, it does not combust the fuel. It's a chemical reaction. It's very quiet and the like. What are the advantages of fuel cell buses? There are here are four identified advantages. One is this extended range as Wanda Mu spoke to. Two is a reduction in the weight of the vehicle. So that you can maximize the weight, the number of passengers on the vehicle. The third key factor is the speed by which you can refuel the vehicles. So you're not changing from your current operating environment. There's no question. Batteries are more efficient than fuel cells. Batteries are somewhere around 85 to 90 percent efficient. A fuel cell is around 60. We're seeing now upwards of 65 percent. But it's operational efficiency. So you're not burdened necessarily by the time and the location of where you recharge your vehicles. We can refuel them with fuel cell with hydrogen and hydrogen stations in about six to 10 minutes, similar to CNG and to diesel. And as Wanda Mu said, the ability to one to one replace your existing fleet. Now, what isn't here and what is really critical and you especially here in Santa Cruz, but all of us in California is resiliency. What happens when the grid goes out? We all know that buses are an important resource to move people who are in need of transport. So people at hospitals or senior centers, if there were serious earthquake here in Santa Cruz and you had to move people to San Jose or elsewhere on available roads, fuel cells can be continually operated on. You can refuel them with hydrogen. So that is the other key advantage. But there are infrastructure challenges and I'll quickly go through the five key aspects of this. This is not the most innovative acronym. But if it works, it's parsing out these these five key challenges. The first is price. And it is very expensive hydrogen right now. Although for transit in bulk quantity, it's about nine to $13 per kilogram. A kilogram of hydrogen, it's about equivalent to a gallon of diesel fuel. But the fuel cell buses get at least two times better fuel economy. So you get an advantage with the efficiency. However, it's still too expensive. And Scott will speak to what arches is going to do what the state of California is going to do to drive that price down for green hydrogen. Secondly, the area of footprint, you don't have a lot of real estate here. So the ability to locate the infrastructure on your available land is a challenge, whether it's battery or fuel cell. But as I said previously, on a 40 by 60 foot footprint at a foothill transit, which also has limited real estate, we're going to be able to fill 100 buses and we have a plan to add another 100 to be able to fuel 200 buses at that site. A third, our three aspects are renewability, the renewable aspect of your fuel. I mentioned resiliency and redundancy. You have to pull your buses out every day at AMP to move people from A to B. So you have to have your fuel. You have to have that access. So redundancy is important that your equipment can continually operate. As I mentioned already, the speed of fueling. So it doesn't change what your current operating conditions are. And E is entry level startup. It does cost more to start up a hydrogen program. But as we will show on this slide here, which is conceptual, but it is proving in practice. For small fleet, the effort and the cost to initiate a battery electric program and a charging system is a lot easier than with fuel cells. But as your fleet expands, that's where the curves cross. And where that exactly happens, some argue it's much earlier than what we show here. But inevitably they will cross and with larger fleet applications, hydrogen has those benefits that I mentioned earlier, operationally of value. I wanted to show this. I won't go through all the detail, but just to understand, there are three categories of variables in the specification of the vehicle, the fuel cell power rating, the battery energy storage on the bus, and the hydrogen energy storage. And there's various aspects of that. But the modes that this technology is being applied to, in rail, there's a fuel cell train is being set up in the San Bernardino. There's a plan for valley link from Livermore, Pleasanton, over to the central valley to do a fuel cell train. Coaches are being looked at. Caltrans is interested in a fuel cell coach because they can give it, the fuel cell can give that coach free axle vehicle the range and the speed. And we know you've had challenges with battery electric testing over the 17 to San Jose. Fuel cells are a key aspect. That's why Caltrans has funded Humboldt Transit Authority with over $8 billion to develop a prototype that you would eventually be able to take advantage of. That's not ready yet, but it's certainly developing. And then buses, there are essentially right now only two OEMs in the United States that meet by America, new flyer for 40 and 60 foot buses. That's in the mix of what you, if you approve next month, that's what would be in the mix for your application, being able to serve UC Santa Cruz from downtown Santa Cruz. El Dorado makes a 40 foot fuel cell bus. Killing is not yet there, but as their Vice President for Marketing, Bill Fay has made it clear, it's not a question of if, it's a question of when. They're a little bit, taking a bit more cautious approach, but they are definitely moving in that direction. I wanted to just show you this, there are many fuel cell suppliers and they're different options with both coaches and buses. So the market is there potentially, it's not just technology readiness, but it's manufacturing readiness. And then on the fuel side, there are at least 11 potential station providers. If you move forward to build a hydrogen fueling station, there's a limit of actual fuel suppliers, air liquead, air products, Liddy are the three main ones. Point of power is also they're building a facility near Fresno that will use wastewater and electrolysis to make green hydrogen, which likely could be a source for Santa Cruz. Arches is really the key and Scott will speak to that. There we go, oops, sorry. So this just gives you a few of the different stations that we have been engaged with, it was Orange County, Sunline Transit actually uses electrolysis for their fueling. We have a project in Illinois that also is using electrolysis. The Fertile Transit just opened, that's a very large station to support 100 buses. And of course AC Transit has several stations and they're planning to double that number and expand from where they are now. And you can see here worldwide, fuel cell technology is growing and we're looking at over 1,300 fuel cell buses to date that are playing out mostly in Asia. And then lastly, I think I missed there. So this is the Arches Program which is a 1,000 bus initiative with 13 agencies and in both Southern and Northern California and you are one of those 13 agencies if you continue to move on that track. I also listed a few others that are not in the Arches mix but they will all benefit from what is happening here in California. In fact, the whole industry across the United States is going to benefit from what we are doing here. And with that, I will conclude and give Scott time to really talk about Arches and what the important meaning of that is for your future as well. So thank you for your time. I may have gone a few minutes over but I will certainly be available if you have questions afterward. And Scott? I'll answer that. Yeah. All right. Thank you. So I have a few slides as well. All right. Well, thank you so much for giving me a chance to talk to you as well in a few minutes. I'm Scott Quidd in addition to being especially vice president for research and innovation at UC office of the president and interim Arches COO. I say interim because we're still building up our infrastructure. I don't actually get paid for that yet. But I'm also a professor at UC Santa Cruz where I've been for 24 years. I'm in fact, my daughter just graduated from Kirby High School right around the corner from here. So I'm a longtime Santa Cruz resident. And I'm really, really pleased to have the opportunity to talk to you today about Arches. So if we could bring up my slides. We have those queued up. I'm here at my cursor. All right. Well, while we bring those up, I'll just tell you. So I've been working on Arches now for almost two years. And really, really excited to tell you about it. So this is a project that we've been doing really for the good of the state. So Arches operates as a nonprofit. Technically it's a LLC, but all of the partners in it are nonprofits. And so it operates as a nonprofit. We're doing it because we think it's the right thing for the state of California and its residents. So our mission is really to bring hydrogen energy to the state of California, clean, green hydrogen energy exclusively. And to help develop a clean hydrogen market and economy in California. The partners are the University of California, the state of California, through the governor's office of business and economic development, the state building construction trades, council of California, which is a coalition of 157 unions statewide. And then the renewables 100 policy institute, which is a NGO devoted to renewable energy. So those are the four key partners in the Arches organization itself. And then we have a network of municipal and industry partners who are involved in actually developing the projects. There'll be some contractors under Arches to implement the projects themselves, but not actually partners in the organization itself. So Arches itself will administer the funds that comes through us, but we won't implement the projects. Our partners will implement the projects. So we'll administer and oversee the program. We'll implement certain portions of the program that are distributed in statewide. For instance, managing community benefits, managing workforce development, things like that that really are cross-cutting across all projects. But then our partners will be managing their own projects themselves. For example, if you're doing fuel cell buses, you will do that. We won't do that for you, but we'll administer the funds and help you with certain aspects of the projects and connecting you with other partners for the pieces that we could help you with that. So if we could bring the slides up, that would be helpful. So where we're at in the process right now is we have applied to the Department of Energy for a $1.25 billion grant. In addition, we have roughly $2 billion in matching funds committed from the State of California and then an additional $10. something billion in matching funds from various municipalities and industry partners rounding out about a $13 billion funding package in total. We have 39 project partners in total, constituting hydrogen production, hydrogen use, and hydrogen transportation and storage. Very little storage, it's mostly transportation. Our goal is to do production and off-take well-matched over the course of the project, so we don't have to store very much. Most of the storage is sort of buffering storage in transit. A little bit of storage on site and some of the larger off-takers, again just sort of buffering capacity. And we're going from about, there we go, 30 metric tons per day at the beginning to 515 metric tons per day at the end of the project. And that's the sort of high level goal. Okay, if we could go to the, oh, I got the controls here. Okay, so this is our high level goal. We want to create a market and ecosystem, as I said. Our goal is really to support the State in using fully renewable resources to fully decarbonize the regional economy, starting of course with the State of California. But our goal is to create something that can extend beyond California into the larger region. Ultimately, part of the U.E.'s goal is to interconnect these hubs that they're sponsoring to reach the whole nation. And we're prioritizing environmental justice, equity, economic leadership, workforce involvement. And we're ultimately using market viability because if it's not, it's going to create a viable market this won't take off and become self-sustaining. I mentioned it's really a partnership between industry, IRN, and our DOE national labs, the State of California labor and the communities that we're working with and in. And really it is fundamentally a partnership, an unprecedented partnership. The State is actually a partner in the Arches organization itself as is labor. And that's really unprecedented. When we went to present to the DOE earlier this month, they were really stunned that we had labor as a full partner in the organization itself. We brought the national head of the building and construction trades organization with us in the room to present to them that apparently that's never happened before. They were shocked. We really just, they're a partner in every aspect of this from the very beginning. And in fact, the head of the AFL-CIO offered to come too. We felt that was a little bit much. In fact, they also asked when they should walk the proposal into the White House. We said, okay, that's cool. That seems a little extreme. But in any case, really, this is a true partnership at all levels. The principles that we've had from day one are as follows. We felt that this really had to be statewide. Initially, there were a number of different proposal efforts. When you put a billion dollars on the table, there are a lot of people that want to play. And there were many different proposal efforts, but we really felt for this to work and serve the state. It had to be a statewide proposal that brought everybody together. And so we worked really, really hard to bring everyone to the table and have one proposal that served the entire state. And Jamie, to attest to this, it was an interesting process to get everybody working together on one proposal. And I traveled the entire state work meeting with people all over the place to get everyone together. We also made sure that it's a clean, green hydrogen only. We're committed to using renewable resources period, nothing else. And then it has to be stakeholder and community engagement. We held dozens of meetings with committee groups around the state to ensure that we talk to people, we talk to community groups, we talk to individuals, and make sure that we heard from people, we listen and that we are engaged. And we have over 50 teams and groups that have signed on, to be supporters of archers that talk with us. We have community representatives that are reaching out into communities to make sure that we're hearing from people and talking to them and making sure that their voices are part of the process. And we have seats on the board for community representatives. We have a seat for tribal nations. We have a seat for community representatives. We have a seat for cities and local governments to make sure that their voices stay and that their participation is guaranteed throughout. We also wanted to make sure that everything we do is equity and justice center. That's a key principle for us. It's a thing for California. It's also required by the Department of Energy, but this is California. And anything that we're doing in California has to make sure that those things remain central to what we do. And that what we're doing is aligned with state interests. The VOE has its goals. California has our goals as well. And so we have to overlay those on anything that we're doing. And that's part of why we got the state of California in this apartment as well. Because both because we need them to help support this and we need the state's funds to match and because we want to make sure that as we're going forward, we're really doing this in a way that will support California's long-term goals. And we need to be solution oriented. The Department of Energy has aggressive financial goals. And one of them is to ultimately get hydrogen down to $2 per kilogram in the production stage so that the production costs are $2 per kilogram of produced hydrogen. But right now we can't do that. And so that's going to require that we're not just focused on infrastructure development, but they're also focused on solutions. We have to have technical solutions. We have to have market solutions. We have to have community solutions that make this viable for people in those communities. We have to be thinking about ways to make this work. And we have to have objective and unbiased governance. We have to make sure that all parties are represented at the table. And that is a key principle from the very start. And in addition, we have to make sure that we're approaching this from all dimensions. This is not just a technical problem. It's a social problem. It's a market problem. Every aspect of this has to be considered as we're going forward. And we've kept that as a key principle of everything that we're doing. Finally, it has to be connected. Again, it's not just a technical problem. It's a social problem. It's an economic problem. It's a supply chain problem. We have to be connected with governments. We have to be connected with the utilities. We have to be connected with the communities. And then we have to be connected with the other hubs as we go forward. And finally, there is an aspect of this within the dealings that's all about risk. We have to actually deliver. And when we're working with our business partners, when we're working with the state and local governments, when we're working with the municipalities, we have to make sure that we actually deliver what we're saying we're going to deliver. And so those are our principles. So what are our goals? Establish an exemplary removal between Hydrogen Hub in California by 2030. Kickstart commercial viability to Hydrogen, focusing on the hardest to decarbonize sectors. These are the sectors that were identified in the 2045 scoping plan for California. And this is a critical point. In that scoping plan, they identified a plan to get to the zero carbon economy in California by 2045. And what they found was we could get somewhere between 80% and 90% of the way there with electrification and battery electric. But what they found was there's about 10% to 20% of the economy that we can't solve with battery electric. And key areas were sports power and heavy duty transportation that we just can't solve with battery electric. And Hydrogen was identified in that plan as a key solution for those. And so that's what we're focused on. And also, additionally, heavy industry, aviation, maritime agriculture, other areas where Hydrogen can be a key solution and provide really good results. Those are harder. So sports power and transportation are where we can immediately have an impact. Heavy industry, ammunition, maritime, and agriculture are a little bit further down the road. So we're focused in the short term on these three immediate sectors. Additionally, we want to ramp production up from 30 metric tons per day, which we could do now, to 500 plus metric tons per day by 2030. We want to produce measurable benefits for California communities with robust monitoring and strong accountability, and developers and workforce for California, and a roadmap for developing a workforce for the nation. And then, of course, help California and the nation meet the carbon neutrality goals. So what's special about ARCHES, this was part of our argument for the DOE. We're ready to go. We've got infrastructure in place, and we've got plans to build more. So we've got infrastructure readiness. We have early and diverse off-tank. We're ready. Other places aren't so ready, but California is already using hydrogen in many places. And we're ready to build up that off-tank right now. We have a really diverse integrated team of players ready to ramp up in terms of production, in terms of consumption, in terms of transportation of hydrogen. We selected 39 projects as part of ARCHES, which is much more than any other state. I mean, California is big and diverse. We know that already. But in terms of its hydrogen economy, it's incredible. They said that our proposal was by far the most diverse and complete. And we've been working on it for almost two years already. Where others are proposing what they're going to do, they said we're already doing it, which was fantastic. So what do we have? We have a network of 39 projects ready to go almost tomorrow. And then we have another 31 projects that we didn't propose for funding from the book, which we could have actually included, that are also ready to go. They will probably be getting funding from other sources, possibly state funding, as part of the larger ARCHES network. And then 400 plus OEMs, technology providers and suppliers that are kind of part of the larger ARCHES network of organizations and companies. And so we actually have a set of working groups that are working with us to write white papers, sort of helping define the ARCHES roadmap for California, actively working with us. We have 400 or so, maybe more than 400 at this point, organizations actively participating with us and writing those white papers. And the governor recently put out a memo playing out part of his plan and explicitly called out those white papers as part of his strategy. So what does ARCHES look like? Well, we have renewable feedstock consisting of solar power, wind generation, hydroelectric and biogenic sources, such as municipal waste, moody biomass or wastewater. Those are feeding into electrolytic production. So any source of, you know, renewable electricity to go into electrical, electrolytic production. So water plus any source of electricity from renewable sources. I don't know if you guys remember this, but I remember in grade school, we would take a nine-hole battery and two wires and stick it in water and then you'd get bubbles coming up. Basically what you're doing is using electricity to crack the H2O of the water into H2O and O. And the H2O is hydrogen. And so that's what you can do. That's what the hydrogen is, using renewable sources of electricity to crack the water into hydrogen and oxygen. And then you can capture that hydrogen and basically bottle it up and now you've taken your renewable source of electricity and converted water into hydrogen. And you can also use any source of stuff like moody biomass. So if they're doing things like in the forest, clearing up all of the, you know, dangerous biomass in the forest is the risk of causing wildfires and clearing out some of that mass. They could use that mass then to do biohydrogen production. And at the same time, they could do carbon capture. As they're using that biomass to produce hydrogen, they can do carbon capture. So in fact, it's not zero, our production is not going to be zero carbon. It's actually negative. It's carbon negative overall because of this carbon capture that they're doing with the biomass hydrogen production. So then we've got a distribution infrastructure that it's some pipelines and some trucking with a little bit of storage on site for some of the big users. But most of our storage is sort of in transit in the pipelines and in the trucks. And for now, it takes time to build the pipelines. So for now, there's some trucking and pipelines. Over time, we're going to build more and more pipelines and there's less trucking. And then our end views, which is, as I said, our heavy duty transportation and transit and ports and the ports, it's drainage. So short haul trucking and then the port operations themselves, the various sorts of vehicles there. So, oh, I see we're covering up one of the words there. But one of the key things about this is that we really want to help the communities that are impacted by a function and no comment, et cetera. And so we deliberately cited these in communities that are heavily impacted present. And that's one of the requirements of the Federal Justice 40 Initiative. And this program is part of that initiative which requires that certain programs are required to help disadvantaged communities. And in that Justice 40 Initiative, 40% of the rather poorly defined benefits of those programs must flow in a disadvantaged community. So we're allowed to define the benefits. But there's a database that shows disadvantaged communities and it's very broadly defined. It can influence no income, no rates of health insurance, high incidence of various illnesses such as cancer or lung disease, et cetera. So we looked at that. We also have Cal and viral screen in California that has similar kinds of data. And we looked at our artist sites and that includes port areas and our transportation corridors in the middle of the state and low income areas, et cetera. And we actually have cited and chose that's one of the ways that we chose which projects to include. And we're focused around the LA Long Beach area, North Bay area, surface subarea, and then the transportation corridor up and down the middle. Our off taken end use is clustered around the North Bay area and the LA Long Beach area. And then a lot of our production and transportation is up and down the transportation corridors in the middle and that maps correlates very closely with the disadvantaged communities in this state. And in particular, there's a lot of pollution in those areas that also in this low income areas in this state. It's also areas with high incidences of lung cancer and various cancers, lung disease, et cetera. And then we did some analysis of what the economic benefits would be. And first of all, we looked at what the air quality benefits would be. And we're transitioning to hydrogen has tremendous value in terms of reduction in air pollution. And then there's some tools that the federal government developed to look at what the economic value of those reductions in air pollution are. And so we did some calculation. And it includes things like production in hospital visits, reduction in bronchitis, reduction in lung cancer, reduction in asthma, reduction in then insurance costs, lost work days, premature deaths, all of those things. And what we calculated was that based on the air quality improvements from all of the funded, newly funded arches projects, the actual economic value of the reduction in air pollution from just the DOE funded portion is about $3 billion a year. That's extraordinary. We're talking about $13 billion worth of projects producing $3 billion a year in economic value just from the reduction in air pollution. That's not counting what it's going to be injected in the economy directly in terms of jobs, for example. It's going to be our estimate that's 200 to 400,000 jobs per year produced from the projects themselves plus $3 billion a year to improve health benefits. So we think the project just pays for itself. Forget about all the other benefits. For certain people, I think in our government they only care about the money. So this is the argument for that. Firstly, I grew up with asthma. I used to end up in the hospital as a kid at least once a year. That's where the one that speaks to me is the health benefits. But in any case, we also have just at the bottom, $380 million for community benefits and workforce development community directly. And that one, that one's a mix of new ones. So I mentioned that we have organized labor directly involved. We're also working with BC and the CSU system to develop workforce development programs at every level. So we're working on training programs for labor. This is things like, excuse me, mechanics and pipe fitters and electricians for the trades level. We're also working with CSU and UC on high level training programs location and above to make sure that we have the workforce for California to do all of the jobs that we're going to need. And we have community benefits. We're going to work directly with the communities at each of these sites to make sure that they are getting what they need out of these programs. Both in terms of mitigation for the impacts that the projects have and then also direct benefits that they need, as well as monitoring so that we make sure that they don't impact negatively on the projects. So that's that's my presentation for you today. But there was one more piece. I need to talk about the cost. I mentioned $2 per kilogram. I knew there was going to be a question. So let me address that. $2 per kilogram at the production sites. Our target overall, we did significant analysis and modeling what that means delivered costs. And our delivered cost target is $5 per kilogram at the pump at the towards the end of the project. There will be, I think, not substantive. The only word is incentives. Is that right? Incentives to make sure that we can hit by the end of the project, $5 per kilogram delivered cost. And the goal is to make sure that this is cheaper than diesel and other fuels delivered costs at the end. And we're committed to that. And we're working at the state and the DOE to make sure that we can make this cost effective for the end users. And that's one of the things the DOE needs because that's what's necessary to make sure that this is actually effective. And the goal is, the office of the governor that will work freelance is the zero emission vehicle need for the state. That's their goal. That's the DOE's goal. That's our goal. We have to make sure that this actually works for everybody. Otherwise, we're committed to that as a target. Thank you so much, Mr. Bratt, Mr. Levine. Yes, please. Two things I wanted to mention. Number one, you are part of the tier one. Scott mentioned these several tiers. The thousand bus initiative is tier one. Secondly, because he's the COO who had nothing to do with Santa Cruz being part of this effort. It was your general manager who called me and said, we've heard about this. Can we be involved in this? And it led to that. But Scott had nothing to do with it. It's actually a pleasant surprise. So we're waiting for your questions. Thank you both for the very informative presentation and for the work that you do. It's really great to be a partnership with you. I have some questions myself, but first I'll turn it over to my colleagues, Dr. Koenig and then Dr. Rotkip. All right. Thank you. Very great presentation. I gave a transit town hall the other day and talked about all these great hydrogen buses that we were ordering. The first question that came up from the public was, well, it wasn't a Hindenburg hydrogen runs since it didn't be an influence because of hydrogen. So I figured technology's got to come a ways and be safer, but can you describe how and why? First of all, we thought the Hindenburg story which was in the 30s is forgotten, but it wasn't free surfacing. And by the way, hydrogen goes up it accelerates without being under pressure at 40 miles an hour. So when that fire happened, it was ignited by the Germans use the metallic based paint to cover the dirigible and static electricity ignited. It wasn't ignited by hydrogen and all the scenes of the fire dropping below from the material that was on fire was not hydrogen was going up. But the more important question is the safety of hydrogen. And look, it's a fuel. It's explosive just like C&G that you have on site and other vehicle fuel technologies. But we have virtually had no issues of the AC transit has millions of miles carrying many millions of passengers. But worldwide, I showed that slide of hydrogen deployments worldwide. And hydrogen as a resource is used in industrial applications. But at the end of the day, things do happen, right? I mean, we can look at C&G fires, diesel fires, battery electric fires. The bottom line is it's a lot safer than the devil that we know and the devil that we're accustomed to we're driving around presently. So we don't see a real issue. You do have to plan for it. And I will say this, I was the AC transit when I built the program and we did have a fire there at the station in Emoryville. And that station did exactly as it was designed to do. There was really no impact on any of the equipment or any of the workers or individuals three months after that fire. We're seeing no damage to the station. There was fire at a gasoline station up in Martinez where everything got torched and destroyed. There's no carbon in hydrogen. So the heat doesn't dissipate outwards that can create other problems. So I mean, yes, we're not proposing any blinks. And the Titanic was above it. So we're not we're not. I mean, so is it is it fair to say that, like they said, at least, you know, it's no more favorable than that to have. And it has different properties. It has a wider what they call a wider range where it can ignite but it needs oxygen to make that possible. And it expands in an open air environment. It's actually a lot safer. CNG still is much heavier and it can stay low. And yeah. And so you can have problems with ignition. Liquid hydrogen doesn't require there's no toxic aspects to hydrogen. So it doesn't pool and it can't create a environmental problem like the other fields can. I agree. A couple other questions. You mentioned target of two dollars. Are you excited in for a kilogram five dollars by the end of the project? You're planning with that end of the project? We're shooting for well, we're shooting for 2030 to get everything operational and then we'll run it with the DOE funds for a couple of years. So somewhere in that time for 2020. And we also know that as you expand your fleet, you need help with this. I mean, your biggest challenge is not the capital side necessary because you get a lot of FDA money. It's the operational costs and Michael doesn't want a whole fleet of buses that costs them three, four times more in fuel costs. So we're looking with the governor's office on how to reduce that price in the initial stages as the volumes grow and the price to market demand drops over time. You talked a little bit about production of hydrogen and the opportunities for bio hydrogen certainly have enough extra fuel or fuel management that we're doing for us. Can you explain a little bit more how that process works? I'm not an expert enough in the process but we have companies that are actively doing it that will be doing more. So that's exactly the point. They say they have plenty of feedstock. You can use the eucalyptus out. You can use the eucalyptus out. You can use the eucalyptus out. You can use the eucalyptus out. You can use the eucalyptus out. You can use the eucalyptus out. You can use the eucalyptus out. You can use the eucalyptus out. Okay, the last question also related to production. One of the most exciting and encouraging articles I read recently was in nature about the fact that the planet actually produces hydrogen. We've kind of literally been aware of I think when water sinks down it's a part of the core and I think it's olivine turns into certainty. And is there any exploration for like sources of natural hydrogen in California or does that factor at all into your plan? I haven't heard about that. That's kind of like fusion. It's out there it's not practical right now and honestly the most practical affordable source of hydrogen is reforming natural gas or biogas. That's not now there's still a significant reduction in well to wheel greenhouse gas emissions upwards of 40 to 50 percent. But it's not ultimately where we have to be. I mean we can't we can't transfer what we currently are using that is causing damage to the planet with something that is still not going to solve the planet's problems. So but the fuel cell is agnostic to where the fuel comes from. So as we can get to greener solutions which is what arches is focused on it doesn't require technology adjustment with your vehicles. You can take advantage of that advantage of that cleaner greener source as time goes on. There are actually it's worth mentioning too there are lots of research projects looking at lots of promising technologies. We're focused on things that we think are highly likely to work in the time frame of the DOE project. And they specifically said they don't want to fund research they want to fund things that are they're all about no risk. They want to make this happen. They want to make sure it works. There is a lot of promising research out there. And in fact Jamie mentioned the efficiency of the fuel cells. He's talking about fuel cells that exist right now. There is laboratory research on fuel cells that are getting much higher efficiency than the 65% or so that he mentioned. I think that there's research on fuel cells that are getting the AES right now. But you can't buy those yet. But by the time by the time the project is done I wouldn't be surprised that we're seeing efficiencies of AES. And the ARCHES program which was very impressive to the Department of Energy has carefully evaluated with suppliers in the process of being able to really deliver on this green sourcing and much of it from solar and wind using available water resources you know here in California we're drought state but for instance that plug power project is using wastewater from Fresno and we do have there is a lot of water that doesn't get utilized properly. So all that's being factored into project or program much bigger than a project a program that will deliver the ultimate goals that we're all seeing. All right thanks I appreciate the message that we are leaders but not alone by any means. Not by any means. I'll go to Director Rotkin and then back to you Director. I said he needed the hand of the question. That's it. Oh that's it. Okay Director McPherson. I'm just sort of impressed I think that you're giving a realistic time what some of these things have been thrown out there and energy and it's an inclusive procedure that you're going through is very very impressive. That's what I I think it sounds like this could be a done on your timeline that you put out there which is questionable otherwise but there's one couple of phrases that are two terms you use as an objective and unbiased and if you could do that at this political atmosphere that we have in the next few days my hat's off to me. I have to comment on this I think it was mentioned by a Wandomo I've been working on field cell technology for 24 years now I have gone through four cycles of oh within five years it's going to be commercial but and that was the expectation early on but the reality is we are at a tipping point now and we can see like AC transit which has now 30 field cell buses and they're getting 80 to 85 uptime which is what the target is in transit and they're working reliably and the drivers love them I mean the public loves their mission but the drivers like them and the technicians like them then we're there we're getting there there's still improvements to be made we still have challenges on the hydrogen side but it is evolving very quickly and we're at that tipping point and as I said these other transit agencies are really taking this on and you are indeed leaders in this effort but not alone it is one of the reasons that the university is involved because we don't really have a dog in this fight we win if the statement and if the people of California win otherwise we certainly want to get the university to cover neutrality but it's for the same reason that you all want to get there and the people of California win and we don't we don't win in any other way we certainly don't have any profit moment it was interesting that the DOE asked us a strange question they asked us lots of questions about viability but one of the questions they asked us was how can a non-profit do this how can a non-profit be effective we don't really understand and we said how can a for-profit do this that was kind of our response you know we said we have no incentive other than to be effective and make this work you know we we don't understand how a for-profit can be trusted to do it two comments or questions the first we've all been aware the potential for reduced maintenance costs as we move toward whether it's fuel cell or battery but we really haven't seen anything in those figures I wonder Jamie have you come across anything of that that's a good question Anne-Rail's tracking carefully AC Transit now and they put out a report with Stanford University that's every six months they're about and they are tracking labor costs it's still not where we want it to be electric vehicles electric components have long life to them they're a lot simpler than an internal combustion engine and you add a fuel cell and a hydrogen storage there's more and hydrogen storage is pretty straightforward the long life not a lot of maintenance on that the fuel cells are proving to also be very durable and the light but the expectation is that will be less costly on a maintenance standpoint but with any new technology once you you're you're training your staff there's a lot of labor that goes into training and understanding and we just had a meeting yesterday with what's happening the the new buses that you will get if you move forward are utilizing another generation of fuel cells from Ballard called the FC Moog and it's a lot less spaghetti in there if you have a five cent part but it takes you know to replace but it takes three hours to get everything detached and get in there that doesn't work for your maintenance operation so that's all being addressed so we are getting there the curves are going in the right direction the second thing I wanted to mention was I was happy to see your biogas biogeneric kinds of sources for hydrogen and the old colleague of ours Wendell Brause used to bring up the concept of biogas collection from feedlots in the central valley as we are capturing what is otherwise a methane source for global warming let's grab that gas and it appears from the charts or the images you showed that that could be part of a combination of carbon sequestration breaking the hydrogen out even if it's a natural gas source of methane and that's where you get the negative C.I. at a desk off reference right although I will tell you there are some groups out there that want and there may be some good health reasons for this to reduce our dairy intake and consumption of meat and that probably is something we put in the long term but you can't expect everyone to change overnight so solar and wind are really still very important key production components to hydrogen and greenways yeah we don't currently have any feedlot based production in our network specifically because of community opposition and hand down just more quickly in support of this notion that it's difficult to repair even if the parts cheap that you're trying to get in there so there's a difference check out what's happening in Tesla where the even design these cars can be fixed and just assume they're like in a last not a new problem and a simple little thing like fixing a headlight cracking windshield $4,000 to fix the windshield ah and you know because it has such a cameras in there and other details it's not designed to be taken apart offline they can tell you a number of other stores I'm glad I don't have a Tesla other questions or comments by directors okay well thank you both so much you know we've been celebrating the grant awards that we've been getting and the hydrogen buses that are coming our way and to see that we are this fractal of this larger constellation an important factor it just it puts it really into perspective and the context has been really helpful so thank you again for being here and the work that you do and for the partnership and let me thank you for a really great staff we uh you know CTE several of my colleagues are working with Michael and and Wanda Moon and Margo and you have some really good people here and we're looking forward because CTE is going to be under contract with Arches to support this effort as it plays out and we're involved in some other things as well but we really like working with Santa Cruz it's it's great we're happy thank you thank you for acknowledging the staff and the drivers that we said are looking forward I have a class B license I've driven all this but I can respect that fully absolutely thanks so much for the chance to talk with you thank you thank you goodbye hey wonderful all right oh we have a comment I almost forgot um okay is there anyone here I would like to make a comment and then we'll go to also comment online Ryan if you can hear me I'm other issues okay thank you here okay Bever oh am I ready to speak yes thank you this is Beverly Desho I'm the president of the electric vehicle association of the central coast and um I have been working with and educating people we introduced the central coast region to electric vehicles um first I want to say that we are a network of 100 chapters across the country many of whom are engineers and um tech people central coast Silicon Valley San Diego Los Angeles Sacramento San Francisco Marin Sonoma all of the engineers in those places and across the country say absolutely no to hydrogen it is a ridiculous waste of energy what it takes oh and also Mark Jacobson civil and environmental engineer of um Stanford says absolutely no it's a complete waste of energy anything that's said about the improvements from um solar wind jobs neighborhood clean all of that can be done with the electric vehicles that are already here everything that the hydrogen industry talks about is always in the future there is no green hydrogen that is scalable none it is from 95 percent natural gas natural gas has an 80 to 100 times heating capacity of co2 here's how it goes in making hydrogen hydrogen has there has to be some fuel source which turns the hydrogen into breaks down cracks the H2O and converts it to hydrogen then it goes it also has to make the fuel cell it has to compress it or freeze it to ship it it is going across our roads and is highly explosive then it turns it's turned the energy is turned back into electric to run the battery that it ultimately runs on it can go directly right now electric school electric buses can run directly on electricity our 3CE has a goal of 60 percent renewable by 2025 100 percent renewable by 2030 and the vehicles will be running on wind and solar they will be directly um running on the electricity they don't need to go through this whole other step that is cost prohibitive and always in the future it's never here it's always going to be 50 years of saying it's almost here and it's not it's not here please I urge you to please not go for these hydrogen buses they are wasting our time we are in a climate emergency we don't have the time thank you thank you Mr. So your time is up thank you for your comments any other yes we have Brandon Freeman on the line great good morning can you hear me okay good morning yes we can sorry I'm not there in person today I'm a little sidetracked but I just wanted to say you know I have a lot of support for hydrogen and that wasn't my initial position when we started getting into electric buses but what really started changing my mind with this was our ability to respond in disaster situations I was the first metro employee on the scene to the CZU fires and I used a hybrid electric bus to start the evacuations there and in that situation we're having to travel from Boulder Creek to the Watsonville fairgrounds and back those models will add up really really quick and when we're in the evacuation zone and we lost access to the yard I don't know how we would have been able to get that done if we had a fully battery electric fleet because we would have had nowhere to charge it even if we could figure out the logistics of how we would physically charge an entire fleet of our buses with our very limited footprint that we have available to us it wouldn't be practical in any way shape or form to have any kind of secondary system that would allow us to charge those buses and keep them on the road for something as necessary as evacuations I can't really speak to I'm not educated enough to speak to the different types of efficiencies and logistics and things like that with the fuel cell or what the history is on its delays but what I do know is in a working stance and on the ground if it hits the fan we need something that we can reliably refuel and get back on the road as quickly as possible and that does not seem to be a battery electric bus to me it does take quite a long time for it to charge and you need a specific charger and some of these battery electric buses can be very very finicky on how it is that they charge I mean even now we have certain chargers that are 100% functional for certain types of buses and non-functionals for other types of buses having that kind of instability in the electric charging system is not something that we can afford to have with hydrogen that wouldn't be the same type of issue so just want to let you guys know that I do fully support our purchase of these hydrogen electric vehicles I've driven them I've traveled to Illinois to drive new flyers I guess I guess new flyers would probably prefer to call it a prototype model of their articulated bus it does everything that I would expect it to do it handles well the public will like it the drivers will like it and most importantly we can rely on them in the same capacity that we rely on our fleet today thank you thank you for your comments Mr. Freeman and thank you for the work that you do during times of emergency anyone else online okay I think with that we will move to our next item which is CEO oral report got a little bit of a tough fact to follow I think I'll be brief you know I do have like maybe seven or eight full of points though things are going well now obviously August was a month where I think we're just all covering each other while folks are out on vacation but since you've last met as a board and your board meeting we were awarded that low note grant from the federal government for 20.4 million dollars for hydrogen buses and once we had the celebratory event and bouncing that down on Watsonville it was kind of a again it was kind of quickly arranged event and it really circled around Congressman Panetta and the Congresswoman law friend and their schedules they both wanted to be there so we we had a real quick event but I think everybody had a good time this last week the California Transportation Commission fully allocated the 38 million dollars that you are awarded in the first grant cycle so you've got the room light out to purchase the buses that were associated with the Tourism Grant the hydrogen station which by the way got environmental clearance by the county this week and then your workforce development and also your upgrades to your maintenance facility to maintain the hydrogen buses so that's good news it's a green light we've got a task force team that's just working on that every day making sure that we meet the timelines especially with the fueling station to make sure we're ready to go with that and the workforce development and so on when those buses come in I think that's all just a precursor and certainly today's presentation on hydrogen is to review where we're at in the industry with hydrogen and arches that you've been hearing about precursor for next month next month on your agenda will be a contract a new flyer for 57 hydrogen buses and of course as mentioned that will be the largest single purchase of a hydrogen bus of hydrogen buses in the nation so it's kind of an event that's capturing a lot of attention back in DC and it's capturing attention in Sacramento so we're trying to arrange to have some visits there to help celebrate with the board on that purchase I do want to highlight one thing I mean Wandomu is our you know I've mentioned before he's Houdini I like to call him Houdini but it's giving money and normally you get a you go after like a 20% match or a 50% match right when you're going for a grant and that's pretty much the case so Wandomu has put together a portfolio funding for those 57 buses and I just wanted to highlight out of the $89 million that you'll be approved for those hydrogen buses next month 1.1% came from local sources not everything else was federal state and so you know you got a great team and Wandomu was probably being and putting that together I think everybody would love to have Wandomu on that team I do want to mention that we're still working with a partnership on the Central Coast Community Energy and we'll have in October hopefully an agreement that will bring to the board where they will purchase a battery electric bus and we still want to keep a mix in our fleet and so we've been able to put together a partnership there with a charger and so on and they're excited to get into that those partnerships they're looking forward to perhaps doing something with Salas de Pisco doing something that moderates minus transit but we're they were really wanting to get it they're put in the door and so Wandomu spent a lot of time with them as they give an arrangement that will work for them and work for us I just have just a couple more things the new website so we're constructing a brand new website and it's gorgeous it's functional long story short we're hoping to introduce it in the springtime so we had kind of rumored that we were working on any websites in your budget and just wanted to let you know we continue to work on that we have just completed a triennial audit which in the public transit world is the big audit it's where they look at three years of anything they want to look at and they get deep and they have a full team that comes in and just literally says here's what we want to see and then they take a deep dive on it and we receive the results of the audit this past week Chuck has led the team our internal team in that audit and I told Chuck this is a big, big deal because when prospective employees are looking at it to join an agency it's the first thing they'll do is they'll look at your triennial because it's what the team's like how together they are with getting things done and when the FDA is looking at things and especially when they're looking at partnerships with us they go to the triennial they see if we have our app together so these audit results came back and they only found two things in the triennial audit who are extremely minor and one of them will probably just fall off to where we just have one finding I've been in the transit business for 30 years now and I've had a couple of audits with only one finding but you hardly ever see those in the nation especially in the Bay Area and so I just wanted to acknowledge that I'll be on your agenda in September and you'll get that triennial audit and the results but your team just knocked it out of the park and it just shows it on a day in and day out you know day in and day out there if they're doing things the right way and I'd be certainly obviously remiss if I didn't mention that next month will also be an important month for you because it's going to be a big board meeting because we'll have Jared Walker and Associates back with the planning effort and again we're looking for transformational change with Metro to keep the bus system to allow it to be more fast frequent direct convenient maybe we're just we're trying to do something significant in a way that will ignite your ridership be exciting for the community something where you can say well this community does have a real class system and so we'll be bringing to you both short and long-term changes that we envision with the bus system next month and for that we have a special board meeting right after this one just to be able to tee up a public hearing on that day so that the public can comment on what we bring to you and then last but not least man you got like we all have a minute right so I got to tell you something it was it was my turn to answer the phones at Metro for customer service after five o'clock and so over the last couple of weeks I've answered all of the you know if you called Metro to talk about that the fixed route where's my bus whatever you got me and generally I let him leave a voice message you know I call him right back and that gives me a chance to get the information and you gather and you can have the conversation so this one lady left me a voice message and halfway because you know you've hired over 40 drivers in the past year and that's that's amazing end of itself but our mantra or goes mantra is I'm hiring for personality you train on everything else but personality is the most important piece of this whole equation and so I got this voice message for this lady I'll play it it's like a minute long but it's it's worth kind of as you might I just wanted to do some acknowledgement to a driver a bus driver that I was I had the pleasure of being on this bus his number was 687 I think he was driving 638 bus that's right he was so respectful calm he had excellent driving skills handled an unforeseen problem with ease he was knowledgeable to handle the unexpected the mutual event came up that's where this connects he had coolness and sensitivity to all the passengers if some were concerned about being late and all that he stayed focused and brought us safely and cheerfully to the metro so I just really really wanted to question him and I just wanted to call and acknowledge his skills as a bus driver all right my name is Francis Paine and you have my number but she's an asset thank you thank you so that's I mean that's what Margo's really striving for with Annamarie and you've got three-brained trainers you've got a whole slew 10 supervisors that are out there but that's what really gets your ridership jumping when you adjust your routes and then we keep focused on people that are helpful and that when a when a detour an emergency or whatever comes up that calm full collect and make things happen so we're the way to end your day that's a good job that's great that's great I'm glad that I'm not going to be answering the phones as of next week but now if you haven't answered any questions it's a good morning back now thanks thank you yeah that was that was a great thank you for sharing that recording just demonstrates everything that goes into having that person make that call like the web of what everyone has done and contributed to that driver being that asset for our organization in our community um thank director Brown had a question and I'll go over here thank you has that driver been identified and acknowledged this is Miguel Malvinado and today's just stay off and you but uh I'll bring in the next board would you like to say this item awesome thank you I have to say I've agreed this to work for a transit district for the general manager answers the phone for the public but you have to reply or even you know anything really think about the organizations that you did part of their large field and the general manager you know they may even the best you know they managed the agency to do the job we're supposed to do but do a job like answering the phone for the public because not every call that comes is like that one you know so I just want to appreciate Michael and the job that he does for us thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you the other questions comments on the CEO or report okay I don't think we take public comment on this do we no okay and so with that our next regular meeting is Friday September 22nd and as you just heard it's a big meeting so hopefully everyone can make it to that don't leave because we are going to adjourn and then we are going to go into a special meeting all right that's what we're doing now we're adjourning and um I will open our our special meeting section all this meeting's a order and we just have we'll do our roll call we have one item on this so Director Brown here Director Downey Director commentary Johnson President Director Cohnen here Director Lynn here Director Ms. Berson here Director Pagler here Director Brackett here and Ex officio Director Narcaz here and we have court okay thank you all right so with our one item is to consider a resolution calling a public hearing on Friday September 22nd during our 9 a.m. regulate regular Metro board meeting which will be held at the Santa Cruz City Council chambers on 809 Center Street in Santa Cruz regarding the reimagined Metro service proposal and Mr. John Argo do you want to step up and say a couple words about that thank you I'd like to take it too if you prefer if you prefer the up here okay so yeah this super simple but Metro has a public hearing policy that requires when the board is contemplating certain actions primarily changes substantive changes to services and fares that you have a public hearing a formal public hearing you all are obviously getting a lot of public comments already on this proposal however you do need to hold the public hearing and so all you're doing today is calling that public hearing you're not submitting any action and then you'll have a public comment period from the time that you call this public hearing today all the way through the public hearing when you have the public hearing in September any questions by board members or comments yes I have one I'm assuming that we will have a presentation the public will be able to comment on of an actual service plan by by that date we've seen alternatives a and b and heard discussion in the spark meetings of some hybrid possibly arriving so there's work to be done over the next four weeks leading to that and I would offer as a director if there's any need for staff to have assistance participation from from a director I'd be happy to volunteer to join you in that those four weeks and and on leading up to that and I would join you as well director piglet yeah what he said I agree a spark meeting brought up a lot of interesting additional steps and additional actions that Larry and I felt that needed attention so I think it'd be important that we all help try to get that word out and mark it you know just to get the information to invite people to participate so that it's not just so few that we're already hearing from but we get a wider contribution or input from the community so we can all probably share our own ways and help get that word out but hopefully Metro is doing something more to get to publicize that that'd be good you asked the public to leave a comment on our plans to make this meeting is that it's a quarter of a minute yeah do we take public comments on this is that what you're asking yeah yeah take public comment and I'll get hauling in here I'll call it I'm calling you hearing not the the content out of here today but this time I wouldn't hear this good idea yeah I will do that momentarily but it sounds like I call that there are a couple of us here that are offering to maybe form an ad hoc there's a committee of directors to plan and prep for this public hearing and I heard Dr. Downing Dr. Pleger myself the end director went I'm sorry I'm not pushing all into me on the committee but if there's any you can call about coming in soon thank you thank you okay and I think with that we'll see if there's any one in the public that wants to speak about the public hearing holding the public hearing and anyone here okay okay great I'm moving the rest of the issue that's in five or six seconds right all in favor say aye okay any abstentions or nays okay that's unanimous and with that we will adjourn so let's see you in a month thank you