 Commissioner Gonzalez, we're ready to start. Good morning everyone. Welcome to the Santa Cruz County Region Transportation Commission meeting. It's Thursday, April 1st, 2021, it's 9 a.m. And before we do roll call, I wanna just set some ground rules as we're gonna proceed because we expect a lot of folks that are gonna wanna speak today. So with that said, I am gonna allow only two minutes for public comments on items not in the agenda and then we will proceed with a one minute comments on items on the agenda with no slides or presentations allowed. I will allow for a two minute comments from the commissioners on agenda items. Then we will go into a motion and discussion for further conversation on agenda items. And with that, could we have roll call please? Just a quick minute. Alice from Community TV, I don't see that the attendees have been let in. If we can please do that. ASAP, thank you. Commissioner Bertrand. Present. Commissioner Brown. Here. Commissioner Johnson. Here. Commissioner Montecino. Here. Commissioner Caput. I see that he is on. Commission alternate Schifrin. Here. Commission alternate Mulher. Here. Commissioner Koenig. Here. Commissioner McPherson. Here. Commissioner Peterson. Here. Commissioner Gonzales. Here. Commissioner Rotkin. Okay, well I do see alternate Peggler so you may need to be stepping in for Commissioner Rotkin. Thank you. Thank you. So is Commissioner Peggler stepping in for Commissioner Rotkin? I have a parent, yes. Okay, thank you. Thank you, commissioners. We're gonna go ahead and continue on with oral communications from the public. Is there any oral communications from the public? This is allowing two minutes for oral communications. Okay, we'll go ahead and get started with Mr. Vernasa than Mr. Pico. It was better the way it was. Mr. Vernasa. Unmute. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Good morning. As you know, the board of education for the county appointed me as chair of the aviation advisory committee and we're working for putting into all high schools in the county and aviation related skill program, which is on its way. There are now 475 high schools in the United States. This one's on its way. Faharl Valley School District, we're giving as asked us to send them a plan to get it started by the fall. We're gonna do that. Other high schools are interested. We're gonna work with them on that. I'm gonna send the staff a copy of what I'm sending to the Faharl Valley District to get next week. And totally for the county, we're gonna ask you for some money, less than 100,000 total, which compared to the 14 million that you might spend on a future plan is peanuts. And this gives direct response, direct help to kids that can have a career in three years when the aviation industry is back on its feet. So I'd like a motion from the second and fourth and the second from the second and fourth supervisors to instruct the staff to come back at the next meeting with a recommendation on what I'm suggesting. Thank you. Thank you Ben. Okay, it looks like Mr. Pico may have put his hand down. Mr. Barry Scott. Yes, good morning. I'm, this is Barry Scott in Aptos, California. And I'm calling to thank the staff for their tremendous work over the years, but especially leading up to today's very important day. And I'm encouraged and I hope everyone else is by our new administration. I think he's called the Amtrak Joe and our new secretary of energy and our new secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg. And I just wanna share this quote from Pete Buttigieg US Department of Transportation. You should not have to own a car to prosper in this country. And these are powerful words. And we know this has been made, this has been realized in other nations and other communities. And Santa Cruz is a progressive community and we stand poised to be able to do this kind of combination of projects in an all of the above manner. So I encourage everyone to keep that quote in mind. We have four years of hopefully greater funding for all of the different projects we wanna do. And again, you should not have to own a car and prosper in this country. Thank you. Mr. Pico. I need the presentation put up. Thank you very much. Do you have that? Can I have it up? Okay, first of all, I'd like to tell Ms. Cora when it's three minutes and not two minutes for the first talking points unless the rules have been changed and I've not heard that before. But this one we'll be sure. Let's talk about the real issue which is fear of taking out the tracks. As I've spoken with different commissioners, there's one reason after another why we have to go with the train, why we have traffic, why we have this. But let's go back. What are the pros and cons of removing the tracks? Every other topic that comes up, traffic, business plan, progressive, it's noise and obfuscation. Next slide, please. I've talked about what I call the WACCO issues related to the train because when I say WACCO, the train cost is astronomical cost, trail cost is astronomical. The highway one traffic is information is what do they call it, fake news or misrepresented by the RTC. And there's a whole bunch of other things that I've talked about. I don't have time to really talk about it. I don't expect you to read them all. I don't have time, but I just want you to know we've hit all these issues at least. Next slide. Is this not on an item on our agenda? No, it's not. So if all the issues don't make sense, there is a reason, fear of missing out. I've talked to many commissioners and they say we can't remove the tracks for a trail because it's too hard to put a train in later. So let's face the elephant in the room. Why can't we remove the tracks? Is there a study or just an opinion? Has the RTC done a risk management assessment or is there a more cost effective approach? Do you really think future commissioners won't be able to handle such a decision in 30 to 80 years if a train is ever needed? So how much will you have county taxpayers pay in the meantime for a $500 million trail and a $1.2 billion train which cannot be built with our present financial infrastructure? Thank you. Mr. Chair, point of order. Are we gonna hear from everybody twice on this issue? We're gonna have a couple of hours of testimony when the item comes out. I thought that that was not an item on the agenda and the way he presented it. So I'm sorry. Three minutes only. No, you're in charge. Three minutes only. I'll tell the comments and we're gonna go ahead and proceed. Thank you, Commissioner, for bringing that item up. Jean Brockelbank, Jean, you're on mute. There you go. Good morning, commissioners. I've been a member of the county's Mobile and Manufactured Home Commission for over 17 years, appointed by three different supervisors of the first district. I currently serve as vice chair. On March 25th, I emailed the RTC with a concern for mobile home residents. And I know that Deputy Director Mendez saw it. It included a picture of the county's GIS map and I assumed that I could go ahead and share that, my own screen today, but apparently that's not true. Am I correct? I can't share that. That is correct. Okay. Well, my email had the picture of the encroachment on two parcel boundaries, one for Castle Mobile Estates Mobile Home Park, south of the corridor, and one on Gold Star Mobile Home Park, which is north of the corridor. These two rent-controlled parks are both investor-owned. The residents own their homes and rent the space upon which the home is located. It is the responsibility of the park owner along with California HCD to approve installation of manufactured homes with attention to property lines. If the boundaries on the county's GIS map are correct, it appears that mistakes have been made. The property owner of each park is the only one who can currently receive correspondence from RTC staff or any county staff. This must be rectified, of course, because it is the residents, not the property owner, who will experience the most impacts of the proposed development, including those created as encroachment is resolved. Some of these homes are over the corridor boundary line. This important matter has been placed on the agenda of the Mobile and Manufactured Home Commission May 20 meeting. And my thought is that perhaps RTC staff can address the matter at the time. So we will put the RTC staff in contact with our commission staff and we look forward to hearing from them. Thank you. Heather, Troy. Yes, hello. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, Heather. Go ahead. I also have a video presentation. Estenny, are you able to play that after I speak? I can probably try and do it right now. I'm just gonna talk real quick and then play the video. So my husband, Ted Lorak, had a passionate dream, advocating for a coastal trail accessible to all as an environmental friendly and healthy transportation alternative connecting Davenport to Watsonville. On his way home from enjoying a bike ride on a beautiful day, he died on our streets within 50 feet of his dream trail. This was a tragic death on our roads after a hitting a then unmarked large medium with many visible signs on the curb from other vehicles also crashing into the spot. If he had been on the coastal bike trail, this would never have happened. Please don't be foolish and use the power of the money allocated to direct all funds to a coastal bike trail that will provide a safe transportation alternative for everyone to enjoy that connects our families, our communities while highlighting our world famous coastline. This video is presented in Ted's honor. He would want his legacy to be the force that educates, inspires and motivates you, our public servants to not waste our money. And please show the video. Thank you. Sorry, man, let's stay with you two minutes for the video. Yes. Is it, what's the timekeeper? This is a six minute video, so. Yeah, please stop the video. You need to proceed. Mr. Brian Peoples. Hi, this is Brian from Trail Now. I just wanted to recognize our loss of Ted Lorick. He was a friend, very sad. We knew him as Ted Love. He was a great guy, fun guy, smart guy. I remember the first time I met Ted, he was the kind of guy that he loved life. He lived actually to have fun. And so I was really sad that he died. Anyways, people don't know that Ted actually was the first one who recognized the washout at Harkins Slope. Ted sent me some photos of the washout. It was like, oh my gosh, what's that? A lot of people asked me if the coastal trail existed would Ted have died? And my response is, I don't think so. And the reason is, is because we're dead died, he was going really fast downhill on the road. And parallel to that is the coastal corridor, which is flat. And so, you know, Ted was going on an e-bike and he's going downhill very fast. And that's actually one of the mitigations that the coastal trail will benefit our community is we don't have to go fast down these steep hills. I always get worried that kids are gonna be flying down there. When we have the coastal trail, it'll be flat and a great resource. So it's very sad what has happened. And I just wanted to recognize Ted as a great contributor to our cause. Thank you. Mr. Chair, point of order. Every one of our speakers is talking about the coastal rail trail issue, which is on our agenda. I assume that they don't, I really would, I really encourage you, again, it's your decision, but I would really encourage you to limit these things. What is on our agenda is business plan for the coastal rail trail. So as far as I hope that they don't speak on the business plan, part of the coastal rail trail, otherwise I will permit some of us to speak. Right. Mr. Commissioner Gonzalez, there are no other speakers. Thank you. We're gonna go ahead and we're gonna proceed with the next item, which is any additions or deletions to consent or regular agendas, we should have received the handouts for page 10, 20 and 21. That correct? That's correct, Chair. Those are the only additions or those handouts. Okay. We're gonna go ahead and proceed with the consent agenda items. I'd like to just briefly make a comment on item, on information and items on item 16B. And I'd like to thank all those involved in getting this successful grant for the Barbara Valley High School Bridge safety. And it's gonna bring a lot of safety factors for the city of Watsonville. So I just wanna really say thanks to RTC, thanks to the College of Action, and thanks to Felipe Hernandez and all those other people that are involved that I may not be aware of. Thank you for your support and all your hard work. We do have a member of the community who'd like to speak on the consent agenda. But item what do you like to speak upon? Mr. Peoples. Yeah, hi, this is Brian from TrailNet. I'd like to comment on item number nine on the Aptos Parade Street. I think it's important just for the public to know some of the details of that. I actually had consulted with the private owner. They came to us asking for guidance. We actually referred them to some attorneys. So what happened on that was the private owner was being required to close their access to their area in order to open up Parade Street. And the RTC told them that the RTC owned the property where the railroad was because the RTC heard from or learned from their title company that they own. Well, the title company for the private owner actually showed that, no, it's an easement. And so it's not RTC's fault. It's actually the fault of the RTC's title company that told the RTC, they own the property. They didn't own, it's an easement. So my only point here is- Thank you, Mr. Peoples. I'm not done. I'm only allowing a minute for comments. Well, you're showing, my suggestion is that you have tax payers pay. Just to remind the public that anything that's on the agenda items, the agenda I'm allowing a minute for comments as we proceed forward and no slides or presentations. Thank you. Chair, I- Go ahead. Coming on the consent agenda, thank you. I just want to call the commission's attention to item number 10, which is $678,000 for environmental mitigation required for the auxiliary lane project. This is happening right in the first district from Soquel Drive to 41st Avenue. And there are required mitigation plantings for trees being removed as part of that highway project. And I just wanted to direct a question to Executive Director Preston. Has this kind of mitigation work been costed out for cost estimates of the trail yet? No, we have not gotten to that level. We're still working on environmental documents at which point we'll be doing an inventory of what the potential mitigation needs are on those individual projects. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for that. Again, just wanted to point out, this is a better part of a million dollars being spent on 1.3 miles for the highway project. And if we can imagine spending, I think millions of dollars on required mitigation plantings on the trail. That's all, thank you. Thank you. I'd like to move the consent agenda. I'm sorry, we have one more comment from the public. We didn't finish the public comment. Mr. Michael Sate. Mr. Michael Sate. You have one minute. What item would you like to speak upon? Okay, number 15. Thank you, Chair Gonzalez. I don't have time to do my talk, so I'm just gonna summarize. This is about the letter to UCSC on the Long Range Development Plan and the EIR that the director sent out to Erica Carpenter. Basically, it states a lot of things that I was surprised to hear about. And Mr. Preston that he says it's critical that we be consistent with environmental stewardship and long-term sustainability. He also supports, or the RTC does, transportation demand management and only infrastructure to increase, not to increase roadway capacity for automobiles. So basically, I have other suggestions in here that it's nice that he mentions these things. But for me, that letter, his comments to the UCSC EIR is basically a little bit hypocritical since we now have an oxalene print project that does none of the above. Thank you. Those were the last public comment, Commissioner Gonzalez. Hey, we had a motion. I'll move it again. I'll move the consent agenda. There's Andy Schifrin. You have a motion? Yes, sir, sir. We have a second body. Commissioner Bertrand. Mr. Tonic or Bertrand? Patrick. Yeah. Did I hear it? No. Do you need the second? Commissioner Bertrand. Okay. We have a real call. Yes. Commissioner Bertrand. Oh, I agree. Commissioner Brown. Aye. Commissioner Johnson. Aye. Commissioner Montecino. Commissioner Hurst. Commissioner Alternate Hurst. I think you're stepping in for Commissioner Montecino. Yes. Yes. Commissioner Caput. Yes. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Mulher. Aye. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner McPherson. Aye. Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Gonzalez. Aye. And Commissioner Rockin. Aye. Thank you. We're gonna go ahead and proceed with the regular agenda item, item 17, commission reports. I'd like to give a quick report on the legislative conference that we and Commissioner Cassandi Brown attended. It was the first time I'd ever done a Zoom one. It was interesting, but well informed. We really worked together as a group and we really promoted that the state needs to continue to support us on our highway projects for our safety, especially our safety projects on our highways and not just support all the bean air projects. And with that also, I attended the, I was able to speak with Chad Edison from the CalSTAT and advocate for the support and hopefully funding of the environmental and conceptual drawings of the business plan for the rail corridor. And so with that, I will pass it on that any other fellow commissioners to have any other reports. Thank you. Seeing none, hearing none. Jack has his hand up. Jack, you have a report. I can't see everybody, so I apologize. No, that's okay. It's on, I'm trying to use the participant window. So thank you very much for calling on me. I think I have two minutes. I won't take that long. I was having a great conversation with the capitol's new BAC member and Michael was the member for a long time. He's now in the second place. And so one of the items we talked about was a concern that I've had for a long time and that is bicycle safety. A lot of people are having accidents in Santa Cruz. My wife was on a Zoom group recently when talking about a 13 year old girl that died. And it was someone in the group that was relating a story about a friend of hers. And I had heard that story through multiple other people. And I think that maybe chair and executive director, that'd be a good idea to have the back address this issue. We do wanna get protective bikeways, but one of the main causes for right now, it seems to me at least, is people on their phones. And they're just not paying attention to what's on the road in front of them and people are getting killed. And so I just put that out there. I did talk to a staff person. I don't know if it's appropriate, but I'd like to put that out there because people are dying in Santa Cruz. One of the efforts of the RTC is to provide safe bikeways for our children going to school, which is very important. And any other communities for pleasure are going to work. So I'm putting that out there for consideration. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner. Is there any fellow commissioners that have any reports? Seeing none, I'm gonna go ahead and move on to item number 18, the director's report and oral reports from my executive director, Guy Preston. Thank you, Chair Gonzalez, commissioners and members of the public. I have several items to report on today. I'm starting first with CAPDI, the California State Transportation Agency or CalSTA has released its draft climate action plan for transportation infrastructure or CAPDI. CAPDI proposes to modify how some existing state transportation funds are invested with an increased focus on climate change, public health, safety and equity. CalSTA is soliciting comments on the document through May 4th and expects to complete a final document no later than July 15th of this year. According to CalSTA, the state will continue to focus on the SB1 fix it first approach to maintaining the state's highways, roads and bridges. However, under CAPDI, we're feasible and within existing state funding program structures, the state will prioritize sustainable infrastructure projects that align with its climate, health and social equity goals for discretionary transportation funds. Some have expressed concerns that CAPDI would make it harder to secure funding for highway projects and other locally identified priorities while focusing more funding on transit, rail, zero admission vehicles and active transportation projects. RTC's priorities are more in line with CAPDI than most agencies and RTC explained to legislators how our multimodal project priorities fit well within the goals and framework of the plan. I have, most of you have probably seen that yesterday, President Joe Biden released his proposed infrastructure bill dubbed the American Jobs Act, a roughly $2 trillion plan for improving the nation's infrastructure and shifting to greener energy over the next eight years. For transportation, the plan includes $621 billion for roads, bridges, public transit, rail, ports, waterways, airports and electric vehicles and surface of improving air quality, reducing congestion and limiting greenhouse gas emissions. His proposal calls for allocating $115 billion to modernize 20,000 miles of highways, roads and main streets and $20 billion to improve road safety for all users. $85 billion is proposed to modernize existing transit and help agencies expand their systems to meet demand. This essentially doubles federal funding for public transit. $80 billion is directed to repair Amtrak's Northeast Corridor line between Boston and Washington DC, also known as the Biden line, as he relied on it for decades to get home from Delaware as well as to connect to more cities. $25 billion is proposed for airports, $17 billion for inland waterways, ports and ferries. To accelerate the shift to electric vehicles, the proposal includes accelerating $175 billion investment in electric vehicle market. It includes giving consumers rebates and tax incentives to buy American-made electric vehicles and establishing grant and incentive programs to build the nation's network of 500,000 charging stations by 2030. It would also replace 50,000 diesel transit vehicles and electrify at least 20% of school buses. Biden's plan to pay for his proposal by raising corporate taxes and eliminating tax breaks for fossil fuels has created opposition. Both President Obama and Trump were not successful in passing infrastructure bills in passage of the Biden proposal is not certain. I have an update regarding potential federal appropriation in the earmarks. In anticipation of new federal legislation, RTC has been working with CalSTA, Caltrans and local jurisdictions on possible federal earmark and appropriation requests. These funding mechanisms have not been permitted since 2010, but appear to be a possibility under the Democratic-controlled Senate and House. Appropriations come from the House and are generally less than a million dollars. Earmarks can be of higher values. We expect there to be considerable competition for these types of funding. Oversight is expected to be stricter than in years past with more emphasis on non-controversial projects with well-defined delivery schedules and funding plans. Staff has been working with the staff of federal legislators to determine interests and potential RTC project requests. CalSTA and Caltrans are coordinating how they will prioritize and determine the state's support for any requests. For regional projects, RTC staff believe that the Highway 9 Complete Streets Program, the Highway 1 Scotts Creek Bridge Replacement and the Coastal Rail Trail would be good candidates for potential federal appropriations for earmarks. I have an update on the Highway 9, San Lorenzo Valley Complete Street PID community meeting. The evening of Wednesday, April 28th, CalSTA and partnership with RTC and the offices of Supervisor McPherson will be hosting a virtual community information meeting to update the greater San Lorenzo Valley community on the progress of the Highway 9, San Lorenzo Valley Complete Streets Project initiation document. There will also be time after the presentation for the community to ask questions of the PID team about the project. Meeting details including start time and link to participant aid will be posted to the RTC SLB plan page website. Notices will also be sent out via RTC's e-news list and social media platforms. Commissioner Gonzales commented on this earlier, but on March 21st, the California Transportation Commission adopted its cycle five active transportation program. As part of the program, the city of Watsonville was awarded an $11.7 million grant for the safer access to Pajaro Valley High School and Beyond Project. Construction is to begin in 2022. Also as part of the program, the city of Santa Cruz was awarded a $9 million grant for construction of the Coastal Rail Trail segment seven phase two. The project will create a tenth of a mile of paved multi-use path from Bay California streets to Pacific Avenue with construction expected to begin in the fall. The adopted program included 41 projects from a statewide pool of 454 applications, demonstrating the competitiveness of the ATP and the quality of Santa Cruz's projects and the city's application. Press releases containing more information about the two projects are included in item 16 of today's agenda. My last announcement is regarding bike to work month and that is forthcoming Santa Cruz bike to work month officially kicks off May 1st and goes through May 31st. There will be a month long bike challenge full of fun with weekly themes and prizes, new safe bike route, facilitated rides happening throughout the month, virtual workshops, new pop-up infrastructure and more. Ecology action will be launching the campaign in mid-April and I'll act to be start May 1st. That concludes my report. Thank you, Executive Director. Is there any questions for the Executive Director's report in the commission? Seeing none hands on the participants panel with screens, I'll move it to the public. Is there any questions from the public on the Executive Director's report? I do not see any hands up, Commissioner Gonzales. Okay, we're gonna go ahead and then we'll proceed on to item 19, the CalTrans report, Santa Cruz County projects updates. Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the commission. Again, Scott Eads here, Deputy District Director for Transportation Planning and Local Assistance in District Five. I have a few items to share and thank you Executive Director Preston for going over many of the funding items. Those are important and I was going to touch on those but it'll reduce my report. So first I just wanted to highlight that we completed a project on Santa Cruz 17 between Scotts Valley and the Santa Clara County line is about six miles in length and it improved guardrail, pavement, provided more visible lane markings, widened the roadway shoulders and improved local street and driveway connections. Granite construction was the contractor. It was about $19 million in total cost and that was partially funded through SB-1 and it's good to have that done. It's an important improvement. Second, I wanted to highlight the California Transportation Plan 2050 was released early last month. The plan is a long range vision for California and a roadmap to improve mobility and accessibility statewide while reducing greenhouse gases. An important theme as you're hearing and the comprehensive plan does not focus on individual projects or budgets. Instead it examines wide ranging policies and strategies to address our longer term needs. So by 2050, we expect that the state will have an estimated 45 million residents and the need for a sustainable network of mobility options providing ability for those folks to have access to jobs, education, healthcare and other services. And a big part of the goal as I mentioned is to reduce GHD emissions to 80% below the 1990 levels by 2050. The top priorities for the plan are safety, climate, equity, accessibility, quality of life, public health, economy, environment and infrastructure. And the plan aims to continue expansion of safe walking and bicycle opportunities as well as an effective and interconnected transit and rail network. And with that, I'll conclude my report. Happy to take any questions. Thank you. Is there any questions for Scott from the question? Seeing none, is there any from the public that'd like to have questions in the report from the CalTrans? There are no hands up from the public. Okay. We're gonna go ahead and we'll proceed on with item 20, consideration of commissioners requests to remove district one bicycle advisory committee. Members, just a reminder, it is a one minute comment for the public comment and two minutes for the commissioners. Is a member of staff gonna present anything on this or should I simply give background? Yes, the commissioning colleague, Thomas Travers. He's on. He's going to do a short presentation on this, presenting the staff report. Commuted. Thank you. Can you hear me now? Yes. Yes. All right. Thanks, Chair Gonzales. We did, as mentioned earlier, we created a digital handout with four or five public comments on this item. And I think we've received two more since then. So I'll try to go through the staff report as quickly as I can. So I'm Tommy Travers. I'm the primary staff to the committee. The RTC's rules and regulations include bylaws for the committees. The bicycle advisory committee has seats that correspond to each Supervisorial district and each city. The bylaws state that each of the cities and each member of the Board of Supervisors are encouraged to nominate members. Seats for the bicycle committee are for three year terms. Sorry, each seat has a primary or voting and an alternate representative serving the same term. As the new district one County Supervisor, Commissioner Koenig notified staff that he wishes to nominate new primary and alternate members to the committee representing district one for the RTC's consideration. To be able to nominate new committee members for consideration, Commissioner Koenig has requested that the existing representatives to the bicycle committee for district one be removed. The attached to the staff report, the bylaws state at his discretion, the commission may review and change committee appointments at any time. Therefore, staff submits this report to the RTC to consider Commissioner Koenig's request to remove the current district one representatives. They are Grace Voss as the primary and Monica Strauss as the alternate. They're currently serving fixed three year terms which will expire in March, 2022. RTC staff is not aware that a representative of any committee has been removed in the past or that there's been a request made in the past. The committee bylaws do not include a process or potential removal of a representative. However, the bylaws do state that vacancies are to be filled in the same manner as the original appointments were made. They also state the four membership appointments filled by members of the public, which is what we have all the members are. Commission staff shall advertise the opening on the commission website and in other manners as to notify the public of the membership opportunity. The usual RTC process for filling public positions on an RTC committee includes first public outreach then sharing the applications that are received with the respective commissioner followed by submitting the commissioner's nomination to the corresponding committee or their consideration and potential recommendation to the RTC then recommending the appointment to the RTC. Typically there is not significant competition if any for public seats on the RTC committees and the nominations made by commissioners tend to be recommended for appointment by the commission. Staff recommends that the RTC consider the request to remove the district one primary and alternate members of the committee to allow nominations of new members. This concludes my report. Thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna go to the public first here. I'm gonna open it up to the public comments. Is there any public like to comment on this item? Ms. Grace Foss. You have one minute Grace. You're on mute Grace. Good morning RTC commissioners. First of all, I would like to remain on the Bicycle Advisory Committee and I welcome the opportunity to talk with commissioner Koenig about bicycle improvements in general and the rail trails future in particular. Hopefully we may find common ground regarding the needs of live oak. I am familiar with bike safety efforts past and future in live oak. I applaud the commissioners plans for pop-up bike lanes and I have seen firsthand lands for the bike pad over crossing on highway one at Chanticleer scheduled to be built in the next two years. I would like to discuss the rail trail segments through live oak with the commissioner who campaigned for the rail trail. Secondly, I have been a bicycle advocate ever since I advised the bike club at Sunnyvale High School years ago where I taught English and sponsored the school newspaper. Now that I retired, I ride my bike frequently and I edit the bike club's newsletter, which informs 450 bike club members of any and all RTC sponsored bike safety programs. On March 3rd, I heard the new US secretary of transportation. Thank you for your time. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much. We have Gina called then Barry Scott. Go ahead Gina. We may have lost her. So go ahead Barry Scott and then if she comes back I will go ahead and call her again. Go ahead Barry, one minute. Yeah, thank you. I was surprised to see this item on the agenda. I have followed the work of both of these these members of the committee and you couldn't find two more highly qualified individuals to serve on this committee. So it's really quite surprising. I understand this is an unprecedented request that a supervisor will ask to remove anyone, especially without cause. So I hope we don't see the commissioners said a dangerous precedent of permitting replacement before a term is completed without cause. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Gina Cole, then Jessica Evans. Go ahead Gina. Gina, are you unmuted? Okay, Jessica Evans. Who's next? Jessica Evans. Jessica, go ahead Jessica. Yeah, one minute. Hi guys, I just unmuted. So I just wanted to say that I've been a member of Bikes-Hennekers County since it was People Power a really long time ago. Grace Voss has been around longer than I have. She's been doing great work in our community and it's also challenging to get women into positions of leadership anywhere in American politics, maybe politics all over the world. And having women advocate for bikes and safety is really important because women and kids' needs have been ignored in that space for a very long time. And we're only now starting to gain some advocacy where we create actual safe spaces that women and kids feel comfortable using for bicycleing. And I'm just super disappointed to see someone so qualified and so well respected be summarily just like kicked out the door. I think it's really, really disappointing and frankly offensive. That's all I have to say. Thank you, Jessica. Is Sally Arnold, then Jeneca? Sally Arnold, you have one minute. Hi, I'm Sally Arnold and I serve as an alternate on the BIC and I just want to speak in support of both Grace Voss and Yannick Strauss. Their leadership in the cycling community is well known and their participation on the BIC is thoughtful and informed and professional. I see no reason to remove either of them before their terms are up and I'm puzzled as to why this would be considered. What's the rush? What's the emergency? What is the problem? Just please let these two exemplary women serve out the remainder of their terms as every other appointee has been allowed to. And I think, and I just want to echo to the points that Jessica made. I wasn't prepared to make those, but she's really right. Cycling for women is different than cycling for men. We had different experiences on the road and she's right. We need to be strong in the cycling and BIC. Thank you. Thank you, Sally Arnold. Yannicka and then Brian Peoples. Yannicka, you have one minute. Good morning. My name is Yannick Strauss and I'm the District One Alternate on the Bicycle Advisory Committee. I'm here this morning to please ask you to deny Commissioner Koenig's request to remove the current District One representatives prior to the end of our term in March, 2022. I volunteered to be on the Bicycle Advisory Committee to serve my community. And with my background in bicycle advocacy, my education and urban planning, and my experience as a transportation professional, I believe my voice on the committee is valuable and necessary. I'm concerned I'm being targeted for my view on a single issue. In reality, the Bicycle Advisory Committee provides input on many bike-related issues. The rail corridor is just one. Over the years, I've provided input that I believe has made a positive impact for current and future Live Oak residents in Santa Cruz County as a whole, including my advocacy and support of protected bike lanes on Soke Health Drive, my work toward implementing a pop-up protected bike lane on 17th Avenue, and my input in the Santa Cruz County Active Transportation Plan. No matter my differences with... Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Brian Peoples, then Michael St. Hi, this is Brian from Trail Now. Absolutely support Supervisor Koenig's request. Of course, he gets to make that decision. The people on the bike committee need to represent his views, and his view is a trail, not a train. And the bike committee right now is putting a train over a trail. Anyone who is on a bike committee advocating not building the coastal trail with the removal of tracks is really not an advocate for bicycles. We've seen that. So he absolutely should have the right to place the people who believe in his view on the bike committee. That is what his right is. And he was voted in because of that specific issue. Don Leopold was removed from office because of that issue. And so if you don't allow him to have that, you're not following the public's vote. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Badkulligan and then Michael St. Yes, good. Can you hear me? Yes, good morning commissioners. I want to support Supervisor Koenig in terms of other comments that were made. There are many women that are qualified to hold this position. And I'm sure Manu is well acquainted with many of them. This is a bicycle committee, not a train committee. And the current positions that are held are by people who are advocating for a train. And Supervisor Koenig, as Mr. People said, made it very clear what his objectives were and the voters, 57% of the voters supported him. So I hope that you would follow the wishes of the voters and not the train lobby. Thank you. Thank you, bed. Mr. St, then Mr. Bennett. Mr. St, you have a floor. One minute. Thank you, Chair. I would like to ask you to deny a commissioner Koenig's request and I also support all the positive comments towards the present bicycle committee members. And I'm going to leave it at that. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. St. Okay, Gina, I believe you are now on. Gina, you're recommended you have one minute. You're on mute. You have to do star nine to unmute on the phone. Is she there? I think she's trying to unmute. So Mr. Bennett. Mr. Bennett, you have one minute. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Good morning. My name is Peter Bennett and I am actually a colleague of Yonica Strauss who is the alternate on this committee. And I'm also speaking to encourage you to deny the request and just vouching in her favor. We work together in San Jose, California, building protected bike lanes and protected intersections. And she has an eye for bikeway design and has really helped us move forward with some of the most innovative stuff happening in this region. So I encourage you to come to San Jose and take a look at the stuff we've done together here. And that does include work where there is transit and bicycle facilities working together. So that's something that I've worked with her on and I know she really has the best interests of her community in mind and has been wonderful to work with. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Bennett. Okay, Gina, it looks like you're ready now. Gina, you have one minute. Is she there? Okay, Mr. Ryan Sanatero. Sanataro. Mr. Sanataro, you have one minute. So it recognizes you. Yes, in terms of playing politics with the members of the bicycle committee based on their view of whether a train should be part of a trail, I wanna point out that William Menchin who was a longtime advocate of the bike trail was not renewed for his position on the committee, probably because his views were that a train was not compatible with a bicycle use in the county. So I do wanna say that I support the right of the current members to be removed from that committee. Thank you. Bryn, Brian, Bryn, sorry if I mispronounce your name. Yes, that's Bryn. Thank you. You have one minute. Thank you. Good morning, commissioners. I'm just, we'd like to second the comments of Mr. Peoples and Mr. Collagens in support Supervisor Koenig's request. While the current members may be quite capable, they're not in line with the views of the supervisor who was duly elected, just as a new administration gets to put the people that are gonna support his agenda that he was elected on. I would support Supervisor Koenig's right to have people that are supportive of what he ran on. So that's it for me. I just wanted to again second Mr. Peoples, Mr. Collagens and hopefully you will support Supervisor Koenig's request. Thank you. Thank you. Jeremiah Daniels. Jeremiah, you have one minute. Hi, thanks. I just wanna say this is a shameful tactic by Supervisor Koenig. This is unprecedented in so many ways. People are saying that, you know, he deserves his representations, his foot soldiers under him. This is ridiculous. There are rules of order. There are processes for this. It's all laid out. And this is clearly underhanded political tactics by a underhanded politician. There are no more hands up commissioners Gonzalez. Gina Cole still. I just got one more hand up and Gina Cole unfortunately is having IT issues, but I do have two more hands up now. Mr. William Menchin. Menchin. Menchin, Chair recognizes you have one minute. Yes, thank you. I also wanted to support Commissioner Koenig's right to remove someone from the committee because to pretend that there isn't, that this whole process isn't political, would be quite honestly dishonest. I spent 16 years predominantly as an alternate under Peter Scott and when there was an opportunity, for instance, for me to be elevated to the primary position I was actually passed over and remain sort of the perpetual alternate. I don't think it has anything to do with the qualifications of the two people that are being removed. And I would agree that they are fully qualified and do represent, do have, you know, professional integrity. My issue is that both of them really have put a train over a building a better trail. And I think that it's quite honest. I think that Mr. Peeples put it quite succinctly, which is that somebody on that committee really should first and foremost be an advocate of bicycling and building a better trail, not keeping rails. Thank you very much, Mr. Menchin. Young? Young? Mr. Young, Chair recognizes you. Are you there, Mr. Young? You have to unmute yourself. Oh, okay. All right. You hear me now? Yes, you have one minute. My name, I'm her husband. I'm Bob Seuss. And I am the president of our condo association with 54 units and very close to people right here on Park Avenue. And most of us here at this 54 unit voted for Commissioner Tonig for that reason, because we do not wanna train coming by here every 30 minutes. And we don't want the views that are along the ocean, which is one of the best attributes of this entire and everybody in the unit can see, 54 units can see the bay and many others. There's several of the buildings. And so we are fully in support that Commissioner Tonig we support him a hundred percent. And that's all I'll say. Thank you, Mr. Young. There are no more hands up, Commissioner Gonzalez. No more hands from the public. Seeing no more hands from the public. Can we bring it back to the commissioners? Is there any fellow commissioners that like to make a comment on this item on the agenda? First, if you want to. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I wanna start by thanking Ms. Voss and Ms. Strauss for serving on the Bicycle Advisory Committee. There's no doubt that they have served their community well and are deeply committed to the role. I guess one of my concerns in general around their involvement in this committee is that as we heard there, one was the former executive director of Bikes Santa Cruz County. We heard from a number of folks from Bikes Santa Cruz County today. This is a fantastic organization that does a lot of good work in our community, but they also are the recipient of an annual award for some of their work from the Regional Transportation Commission. And one of the committee objectives for the Bicycle Advisory Committee is to be an advocate for the cycling community. That occasionally means speaking truth to power. And this, the RTC for many years in our former executive director was a very adamantly pro-train. He said rail banking essentially didn't exist when we now know that's not the case. And so I think that as an organization, Bikes Santa Cruz County, by nature, had to try to align itself a little bit more with some of the, you know, perhaps sometimes not so hidden views of staff in the past. And so I think that ultimately that is to some extent clouds the ability of these commissioners to make fair and objective decisions that are in the best interest of the voters. And to that extent, again, in the recent election, voters expressed a strong desire for new representation, both in the first district seat, which I won by 14 points over 4,000 votes. And I believe that new representation extends to committees like this. Just some background information. I just completed 40 new appointments to county commissions. And, you know, also as we heard, this is an urgent issue. We've heard about two deaths today, the state office of traffic safety pointed out that, or you know, ranks Santa Cruz County third worst among 58 counties in terms of bike safety. And so I really think that, you know, the voters deserve new representation on this committee. And that this is an urgent issue to address. Thank you, Mr. Commissioner Coyne. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to make a comment on this agenda item. You know, this is unprecedented in the sense that normally, just example for me, I, when I first originally started as a city councilman, I took over for somebody that left office at midterm. I didn't replace anybody, even though they had a political difference with me. And the reason I didn't do that was because the importance of the participants commitment to the community, they do this voluntarily, they don't get paid, it is an advisory committee, it has no political pool. And a lot of those committees that were with me, I allowed them to term out. And I think that's the respectable thing to do, is to allow somebody that's committed themselves to the community to finish their term because they are volunteering, they are committing their time. And unfortunately, sometimes we do have to understand that we don't always see eye to eye, but we do agree with one thing, that we kind of work for the best of the community overall. And when this motion is made forward, I will not be supporting this because I don't think it's right and I don't think it's necessary. Thank you. Is there any other fellow commissioners that'd like to make a comment on this? Go ahead, Commissioner Rockins. When these current terms expire, Mano has an absolute right to appoint people that shares point of view, no matter how wonderful the people are that they are now, but it's completely unprecedented to replace people in midterm. In fact, so much is that a precedent that sometimes you have people who are difficult to work with on a commission, which is not the case here. And you sort of suffer with them till the end of their terms, unless it's completely outrageous. And in the history of the RTC, there's never been a midterm replacement like this. So I'm not gonna vote for this. I think it's really inappropriate when Mano makes his appointments, when the term runs, is nominated. Again, this is not an individual appointment. There are situations where people have individual appointments, not just nominations, in which case they do have the legal right on the cities and the county to do that. At RTC, these are commission appointments based on a nomination. I'll be happy to support Mano's nomination, whatever it is at the end of this term, but this is not the time to do this. It's inappropriate and I'm certainly gonna be voting against it. Thank you. Commissioner Gonzales, you have Commissioner Hearst, Bertrand and Mr. Schifrin with their hands up. We're gonna go ahead and order it, Commissioner Hearst. Well, thank you very much. Yes, it's been spoken here by the public that this is a disappointing move and I understand the motivation behind it, but volunteers are hard to find and good volunteers are even harder to find. So let's go with the commitment that's on the table now and let's let these folks continue until their terms are up. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Next, Commissioner Bertrand. Yes. Yeah, this is hard to speak to because like as Lowell just mentioned, volunteers are hard to get. Capitola was hard to get our representative on the back and then it took a while working with staff. Thank you, Tommy, to get another person to volunteer. So, I recognize the importance of volunteers, this community of ours and any other community depends on volunteers to be part of the larger effort to basically govern. It's very important. You know, I was thinking about this a little bit and ever since I saw it on the agenda and just like to read something that was in the newspaper, the head of the EPA, Mr. Regan, basically sacked a bunch of people from the Trump era because of how they view EPA issues. So, 40 people on the advisory, two advisory groups are out the door and it has nothing to do with how good they are. It's basically the agenda of our new president who wants to push EPA issues and he feels that there could be better members of the advisory groups to represent moving ahead on how the current president believes the EPA should move. Being that said, I've been on a committee here in Capitola and some really replaced, I didn't even know that I was being replaced until the meeting came up and I wasn't even informed. Yeah, it did hurt me. I felt I was a good volunteer on this particular group, but I guess I did not follow the political wishes of the person who had appointed me and I respected that and that person in particular were still friends and it has nothing to do with how we view each other personally. Thank you, commissioner. Is that the only time? Okay, thank you. Thank you. Commissioner and alternate shifrin. The chair recognizes and shifrin commissioner. Okay. I'm muted, Andy. Okay, sorry. My concerns are really procedural. It seems important that the commission and follow its bylaws, its rules and regulations. If these were, if the appointments to the bicycle committee and the elderly and handicap committee were individual appointments, then I would agree the appointing person commissioner would have the right to remove appointees at any time. That's not what our bylaws are. The first district includes parts of the city of Santa Cruz and includes parts of Capitola. The appointees are appointees of the commission as a whole. And if the, you know, I think it's unfortunate that the debate over whether the tracks should be ripped up or not is getting acted out in terms of individuals who are trying to serve their community. But I think really if the commission majority wants to allow individual commissioners to remove commissioners or appoint commissioners at will, we should change our bylaws. We should send a recommendation to the budget administration and personnel committee to consider changing the bylaws to give individual commissioners the ability to appoint the commission, the members of the advisory body. That's the reasonable thing to do, to put us all in the position of having to vote to remove two people who have served that length. And everyone agrees have done a good job simply because they don't follow the position of the person who represents the first district on the board of supervisors. This seems to me a really unfortunate precedent, a bad precedent. And as I say, if we want to make these appointments by individuals, let's change the bylaws to do that. And that's what the board of supervisors has done. If we want to do it, let's do it. Let's not misuse the process that we have. Thank you, commissioner. Commissioner Caput. Commissioner Caput. Thank you, you can hear me right. Yes. Yes, commissioner Caput. I personally, I agree with a lot of the comments, but I think supervisor Koenig basically has the right to do this. And I'm not sure on the bylaws, whether or not we have to give him permission to do it. I'm a big advocate for the train connecting Davenport all the way down to Pajaro. I like the train, okay? But I respect the right of supervisor Koenig to have the ability to put people in there that he feels would represent his district better. And I'm not, each commission that we have appointees on have different rules and bylaws. And I know with the RTC, we have probably a different set of rules, but my belief was on most commissions, that's at the discretion of the supervisor to appoint people that he wants to work with. So I, even though I don't maybe agree with what might be coming down as far as advocacy for a trail only rather than a train and a trail, I do respect the right of supervisor Koenig to be able to put on there whoever he chooses. It's, I think Aurelio you kind of mentioned in a little bit too, but it becomes political, but that's the field that we're dealing with. So anyway, I'd be careful to picking my battles, but I support the right of supervisor Koenig with whoever he wants to on the- Thank you, Mr. Cabot. And I'm not sure question of- Your time is, your time is done. Next question. I just want to ask the question does, according to the bylaws, do we have to give him permission to do this or can he do this on his own? It's our choice as a commission collectively to decide who's on these committees based on the nomination when there's an open seat is what the bylaws says. I'm sorry, this morning power bylaws, huh? Yeah, this is not a county supervisors appointment. RTC's commissions. Any other fellow commissioner? Commissioner Johnson. Thank you, Chair. So everything that Greg Caput just said I completely agree with. So I'll keep my comment short in terms of, supervisor Koenig represents a district that district overwhelmingly agreed with his views to have somebody who completely disagrees with his views on a pretty influential committee is kind of untenable. I mean, he owes it to his constituents to choose the people that voted the way that he believes. We've already heard from Jacques Bertrand about EPA and replacing 40 people, U.S. attorneys that happens because it's a change in administration, a change of views. And so I would have to support supervisor Koenig. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Peterson. Commissioner Peterson. Thank you. A lot of what I have to say on this matter has already been said, so I'll try to keep my comments brief. I appreciate commissioner Caput, supervisors Caput's comments about, regardless of our views on a train or a trail, that those of us on this commission have a decision to make as an entire body on whether or not to remove someone from any individual committee. And that being said, I also believe that supervisor Koenig has the, the right to request that the commissioners on, excuse me, the representatives to this committee are in line with his views as the supervisor and also can support what those who voted him into office are also supportive of. And so with that, I'm gonna go ahead and express that I will be supporting this motion. Thank you, commissioner. Commissioner McPherson, did you have your hand up? Yes, I do. I'd like to thank Ms. Voss and Strauss for their service, but I'll be supporting commissioner Koenig's request because I believe that elected officials should have the discretion to nominate committee advisors that reflect their policy priorities in their own districts. And if we need to change the bylaws later to clarify that, so be it that I will be supporting the request by the commissioners. Thank you, commissioner. Commissioner Mulher. Commissioner Mulher. Mulher. Mulher. You're muted. Thank you very much. Much needed. So we talk a lot about the bylaws today, which is good. According to the bylaws at our discretion, as a commission, we can review and change appointments of committees at any time. So I agree, it's a collective decision by the body, but I also believe that elections have consequences and if a newly elected commissioner would like to appoint his own people to the committees, I think that the commission should defer to that commissioner and I will also be supporting commissioner Koenig's request. Thank you for those comments. Commissioner Brown, did you want to speak? I saw you put your hand up and then down. Yeah, I'm just trying to move this along. I just wanted to say I'll, I can't support this today. And this is really a procedural question. It has nothing to do with whether or not I think that commissioner Koenig has the right to select folks to represent his politics and his views on this body. But this is just not, this is unprecedented. And I just feel, I have their commissioner, there are committee members for the city of Santa Cruz who I don't agree with on everything as well. And I just, I just trust them to put in the work and be dedicated community members and volunteer their time to try to make our bike system, bike ped system in our county safer and more robust. So I'm gonna, I can't support this today but I absolutely will support commissioner Koenig's appointments when the terms are up. Thank you, commissioner. I don't look commissioners. I don't see any other hands. I believe so. I don't see any of the hands. Do I hear a motion? Chair, I'll move to remove the first district by supply advisory committee members and initiate a new nomination process. Second. I did. Commissioner Mulherrn. Commissioner Mulherrn, second it. We have rope, please. Commissioner Bertrand. Aye. Commissioner Brown. No. Commissioner Johnson. Aye. Commissioner Montesino. No. Commissioner Caput. Aye. Commission alternate Schifrin. No. Commission alternate Mulherrn. Aye. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner McPherson. Aye. Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Gonzalez. No. Commissioner Rotkin. No. We have seven yeses. I would move that we refer the process in the bylaws for appointing members to advisory committees to the budget administration personnel committee for considering amending the rules of the commission to allow for individual appointments. Second. We have a motion on the table and a second. I rock it. I rock it. Is there any discussion on this? Let's take a vote. I'll just take a vote. I have a procedural question. Is this agendized? I mean, all you're doing today with this motion is directing the consideration of the item. So it is not agendized today, but you can provide direction to staff on an agenda. Yeah. Say it again. I said it's not agendized, but the Brown Act allows the commission to direct staff to place something on another agenda on another commission. And so commissioner Schifrin's motion is appropriate at this time. Thank you, council. Can I have a roll call, please? Commissioner Bertrand? Aye. Commissioner Brown? Aye. Commissioner Johnson? Aye. Commissioner Montesino? Aye. Commissioner Caput? Aye. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin? Aye. Commissioner Alternate Mulhern? Aye. Commissioner Koenig? Aye. Commissioner McPherson? Aye. Commissioner Gonzales? Aye. And commissioner Rockins? Aye. Thank you. We're gonna go ahead and proceed on to item number 21, the Transit Corridor Alternative Analysis and Rail Network Integration to Study the Business Plan for Electric Passenger Rail on the Santa Cruz Ranch Rail Line. Ginger, I don't want to hack your name here. Hi, Carl. Is any of the staff report? Thank you, chair. I'll wait for the PowerPoint to come up before I get started. And just a reminder to the public and to the commission, we're gonna allow one minute for public comment on this item and two minutes for the commissioners' comments, and then we'll go into the discussion to allow more conversation. Thank you. Chair Jones? Mr. Chair, point of order. Yes. I'd like to move that we overrule your decision, not on the one minute for the public, but that the commissioners on this important item need as much time, I hope everybody would be reasonable, but not be limited to two minutes. That's my motion to overrule you. I'd argue that we shouldn't debate it, we should just vote it up or down, but I'd like to overrule you on this question, and people understand the choice we're making, I think. I'll second that. Okay. It's just on the time for the commissioners, not going to go to the public. What time would you recommend? I'd leave it open-ended until commissioners to try and be brief, but it's a critically important decision. We should not be limited in our ability to debate the issue. I didn't want commissioners to ramble on for half an hour. No, I understand your point, and I think people should be guided by your sense about that, and you could remind people they're taking too long, et cetera, but I don't think they should be limited strictly to two minutes. That's my motion. I have a motion on the table in a second. And again, I'd rather debate it hugely. Again, it's not unreasonable what you're proposing, but I just think it'd be better for us, our public process. We should move just quickly to a vote on the issue. I'm allowing it. Again, we have a motion on the table in a second. You're allowing commissioners to speak freely, but within a time constraint at the same time, and allowing the chair to interrupt. Is that correct? That's it. Okay. Can I have a real call? Chair Gonzalez, I'm sorry to interrupt. Before we move on to this vote, I just want to make it a note that I was not called to vote on the last vote, and I just want to make sure that it's in the record that I'm voting aye on the recommendation to move us, to ask staff to come back with information about individual appointments. I apologize for the interruption, but I wasn't called to vote on that one. And so I want to make sure that it's in the record that I am voting aye on that. My apologies, Commissioner Peterson. No worries, thank you. Thank you for being that up for our attention, Commissioner, it's been noted. So we're back to a motion to not restrict the time limits on the commissioner to speak on this item, on the agenda, but to allow the chair to interrupt if they're taking too long. And I'll call the question for a real call vote. Real call, please. Commissioner Bertrand. I agree. Commissioner Brown. Aye. Commissioner Johnson. Aye. Commissioner Montecino. Aye. Commissioner Caput. Aye. Commissioner Schifrin. Aye. Commissioner Mulhern. Aye. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner McPherson. Aye. Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Gonzales. Aye. Commissioner Rockin. Aye. Okay, with that, we're gonna go ahead and we'll proceed with the staff report. Good morning, Chair, commissioners and members of the public. I'm Ginger Dicar, Senior Transportation Planner on RTC staff. The item before you today is the business plan for electric passenger rail on the Santa Cruz Branch rail line, which is the final component of the transit corridor alternatives analysis and rail network integration study. The staff recommendation is to review and provide input on the business plan, adopt a resolution accepting the business plan as a guide for implementing electric passenger rail on the Santa Cruz Branch rail line and to direct staff to seek federal under state funding to complete the preliminary engineering and environmental documentation for electric passenger rail. There are numerous members of the project team here today to present information as well as answer questions. I'll provide a brief overview of the project then hand off to Steve Decker, who's the project manager from HDR, who will be presenting the business plan and Pam Yonkin also from HDR who will discuss the cash flow analysis. Next slide, please. At the February 4th RTC meeting, the RTC accepted the transit corridor alternatives analysis and rail network integration study, which selects electric passenger rail as the locally preferred alternative for the Santa Cruz Branch rail line. The alternatives analysis evaluated various transit alternatives to identify a locally preferred alternative that provides the greatest benefit to Santa Cruz County residents, businesses and visitors in terms of the triple bottom line goals of improving economy, equity and the environment. The draft business plan is presented today to serve as a guiding document for funding and implementation of electric passenger rail. The plan includes the characteristics of electric passenger rail, information on governance options for how passenger rail on the Santa Cruz Branch rail line could be administered, provides the detail of the cost estimates for both capital costs and operations and maintenance that were brought together for the main report. It discusses the implementation steps for the project and provides potential revenue sources, federal, state and local. It also presents a cash flow model for funding the project that includes a risk identification section. I do wanted to make sure the commission realizes that both the governance discussion and the steps for implementation of the locally preferred alternative are needed to meet the requirements of the Caltrans grant for the rail network integration study. With that, I'll hand off now to Steve Decker of HDR to discuss the details of the business plan. Thank you, Ginger. Everybody hear me? Yes. Great. The business plan, the last component of the alternatives analysis in rail network integration study, we of course, you know, tacked on to the various alternatives analysis phases, oops, previous slide. And this just provides the characteristics of the electric passenger rail that has been suggested to move forward on the branch line right of way. You've seen this before electric passenger rail, as we go through the next component of the work, the preliminary design and environmental analysis, that mode, that the vehicle, the technology will be clarified in that component. We're looking at 30 to 60 miles per hour on the line, depending on the configuration and the technology, 11 to 15 stations with level platform boarding, that provides easy access to passengers. This will be electric. So we're looking at current technology and of course, emerging technology, including hydrogen fuel style. And we show a few examples later and battery as well and other future technology as well. So we'll have to work with federal railroad administration, federal transit administration for a variety of issues as well as with Caltrans on vehicle types. We need to comply. Service frequencies are anticipated to be 30 to 60 minutes depending on the time of day and the weekday service will be from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. So that's just a general summary of the service. Next slide. In terms of the vehicle types, we identified these in the business plan. These are all electric or hydrogen cell. As you see, there's no third rail, which is often used to power electric trains. There's no catenary or above. Well, you'll see one on the side here, but that's at a station. So I'll try to walk through these. On the top left is a hydrogen cell train. Looks like a light rail vehicle. Mainly these are in operation in Germany and Austria. The middle top called Aero is being considered. It's a hydrogen cell train being considered in Redlands for commuter rail. And that's down in San Bernardino County. The top left or the top right, sorry, is a battery electric train in Japan, operating in Japan. Then moving over to the bottom left, we have a battery electric train looking like a light rail vehicle that operates in China. The middle bottom is a battery electric system, a Siemens train operating in Austria. And then on the bottom right, that's the TIG hydrogen fill cell, I believe operating in Qatar. So those are some examples, and obviously these are gonna emerge as we get through the next component of the analysis. Next slide, please. In terms of the implementation process, we've gone through the alternatives analysis, the rail network integration study analysis. These components follow the project delivery, project implementation cycle. And these components, there are six components that follow with the first component being preliminary engineering and environmental documentation. The cost estimates were based on our value engineering and detailed cost estimates developed in the alternatives analysis study. And these are plus or minus, obviously, but these are our estimates. So that preliminary engineering environmental documentation can start at any moment. It's based on, of course, availability of funding, et cetera, but this provides the opportunity to get into detail in the right of way, understanding infrastructure, the rail line, structures, all those things, really refining where the stations are, how it works with the entire system, those kinds of things. Once that's completed and that's about 30% design preliminary engineering component two, this information feeds into component two to get to final design and the permitting process, which would be 100% design. And then that leads into right of way acquisition needs. And right now we haven't identified any there. That would, those acquisition needs would be determined when we get into final design and permitting. That would then lead to construction, including construction management of the service. And then once we get pretty far along there, we'll get into vehicle procurement and component five and then testing and commissioning would be a big component of number six in terms of the annual operations maintenance. So the testing and commissioning would actually occur of the service probably in the first year then compared to the other years of the O&M operations and maintenance. Next slide please. So as I discussed in component one, we did and in the business plan, we did provide some detail in terms of different steps associated with component one preliminary engineering, this 30% engineering in the full environmental documentation. The first step is an initial conceptual design and refinement of the operating plan from the alternatives analysis. And this will get us to about 10%. This is where we really evaluate structures, rail curvatures, potential train speeds, how this would work with the stations. That would be, those are critical and we haven't gotten through that process yet. That's part of the engineering design process. From that, we'll go to step 1.2 to identify any critical issues related to design, maybe the railroad needs some significant improvements and that's where those will be determined based on those issues. And Ginger also mentioned the governance strategy. This is where we'll work with RTC, Caltrans and others to define that strategy and how to run and operate the system in step 1.2. Then that will lead into the final conceptual design which is about 20% design and a refined operating plan and all these include refined estimates of ridership and costs and all those kinds of things. And then we'll flow into the environmental analysis and documentation and we'll get to a 30% preliminary design. And these, the culmination here will feed into the next component, number two. And we will also look at identify vehicle types, technologies in this step as well. Next slide, please. So in terms of governance options, as Ginger mentioned, how, what is the structured strategy to run and operate the system? And there are different models as you can see here. We won't get into a lot of detail here but the governance options really are what entity will be running and operating the system be responsible for policy, coordination of services, funding and procurement of vehicles of other rail infrastructure needs, you know, operating and maintaining the system as well as marketing the service, providing a variety of other things associated with running this service. In terms of common operational or strategies here in California, joint powers authorities, there are several here that are separate entities that are created to specifically run passenger rail and other types of services. There are some common ones here in California including the low sand corridor up and down the coast, CalTrain or SAMTrans, there's a joint powers authority to run CalTrain, capital corridor, those are some examples. Joint ventures are also entities that are created from maybe two cities or multiple agencies to run and operate a system slightly different than joint powers authorities. There are no real common examples here in California, there's some in Texas and Virginia and a few other places that we can use as a guide. In terms of special purpose, these are regional transit authorities or districts. There are examples here and elsewhere, they are common in California, the smart corridor, for example, up in Marin is an example of a special purpose RTA or RTD. There are also examples of counties or municipalities running the transit service. Our work in San Bernardino with the Redlands is an example of the San Bernardino, I think the association of governments running that service. That is not common in California but it does happen in California and elsewhere. And then the state transit, the state DOT or transit agency can run and operate typically more rural, smaller systems and there really are no examples of that in California but there are elsewhere. And these are the kinds of governance strategies we'll be exploring when we get to that stage or that component. Can I ask a question if the transit district metro current existing metro transit district were appointed or however you decided to run this thing, which of these is that described as? That would probably be- It's not really a joint powers authority, it's a separate standalone agency. That would probably be more the county or municipal transit agency, that model. Yeah. In terms of, oh, go ahead. Presentation to Anthony, we can ask questions. Thank you. Well, talking about risks here, these risks are not unusual for a project like this. They're common with just about every type of project that we come across or we want to implement or agencies want to implement in California and elsewhere. Certainly funding is a risk. In this case, compatibility with future freight recreational services and trails is going to be a big issue and need to really address that. Stakeholder and public support of course is a risk that needs to be mitigated and addressed and that's sort of the intent of all these risks to identify strategies to mitigate and address the risks. Certainly the organizational development, how this works with RTC Metro and a joint powers authority or other governance strategy delivering the project. So there are a lot of potential risks here but these are not uncommon on a project like this throughout California and elsewhere. With that said, I'll turn this back over while I'll turn this over to Pam to talk about cash flow. Thanks, Steve. So this first slide that we're looking at, you'll see presents a cash flow model. It's for 25 years and we have it starting in fiscal year 2020 but it could really be any start year and the flow would generally be similar. If you're having trouble seeing this on the screen, by the way, take a look at pages seven seven dash five of the draft business plan and there should be a clear copy for you. Just to kind of orient you, the fiscal years are across the top and then revenues and expenses are listed along the side. I mentioned the first year of analysis is FY 2020 but this is just a guiding document. So this is one scenario for how this could come to fruition. Four years are estimated to complete preliminary design and environmental review and then three years are estimated for design permitting in right of way with six years of construction and procurement of vehicles and then the remaining 11 years is for O&M. If you look along the first column, you'll see this variety of potential funding sources that would support the capital component of this project. There's federal, there's the capital investment grant 5309 which is an FDA program. There's also some discretionary grant options such as build and with the new administration's focus on rail which I know Guy mentioned earlier, this project is pretty consistent with what we'd expect them to be looking for and interested in funding. You'll go down under the state sources, you'll see there's a variety of them. You'll note that we are assuming SB1 state rail assistance funding that would cover 17.1 million. That's component one of the project. So that's the preliminary engineering and environmental. Where RTC is already working with the Cal Trans Division of Rail and Mass Transportation on the possibility of fully funding the projects preliminary engineering and environmental documentation with state funding sources. And those could include the state rail assistance program or some Cal Trans planning funding. And the funds don't require matching funds which is a good element of that funding source. Cal Trans is very supportive of the program and the project and they understand the many benefits that could bring to Santa Cruz. So that's a reasonably valid assumption to make. It's got larger regional implications too for the central coast and to the state. Just a little bit on the capital investment grant which is the largest element of the cash flow for the federal funding piece. You only have to apply once to enter the capital investment grant program. And once an agency has developed initial planning and engineering to document the project's definition and develop a preliminary capital cost estimate, you send a letter to FTA and you enter the project development phase. Once FTA approves that, the project is in the pipeline and you start moving forward the activities that you need to complete during each component. RTC has to document the FTA that the funds needed to complete the project development activities. So those early on activities are committed. And once FTA approves the request to enter project development, all project related costs incurred are eligible for reimbursement. So it's a really nice program for a project of this kind. If you wanted to switch, I can talk a little bit about O&M. So this is similarly structured with the years across the top and then the sources of funds down the left-hand side. The amount of revenue from Fairbox Recovery which you'll notice is a line item about two thirds of the way down. We assumed $4.50 per boarding but this decision would be determined during future components of the project. The unidentified amounts could come from local sources possibly a sales tax or other local source of funds but I do wanna point out that there are federal operations and maintenance funding sources available too to help support this project. I wanna switch to the last slide. So this is just a graphic of what we've just presented in a tabular form. Funding required is along the Y-axis. Biscuit years are across the horizontal axis and what the graph is attempting to show is the anticipated funding for different components of the project. So green is the funding that we've identified. So that would be those sources that we've identified in the previous tables and then blue is the unidentified funding. And it's worth noting that the bulk of the funding that will be required is needed during construction and vehicle procurement. And right now we're assuming that the vehicles will be procured in fiscal year 3132 which explains the jump in the visual. That could vary as we get a little bit more information and timing but that's what we're assuming and understand to be reasonable right now. And then the last element of it is operations maintenance and that is obviously needed once the project is operational. And with that, I think I will pass it back to Ginger. Thank you Pam. I just wanna wrap up the presentation by outlining the benefits of completing environmental review. Along with environmental review, 30% of the engineering design will be completed which will help to answer community questions about the project in more detail than has been if we've been able to do to date. Suggestation and siding locations, any right of way needs, service headways and span, vehicle types, integration with local metro services as well as any impacts that are identified through environmental analysis. A 30% of preliminary design will also provide a more accurate cost estimate for the project. And another important reason for moving forward with preliminary engineering and environmental review is that there are now currently four different future potential uses of the Santa Cruz branch rail line right of way. We have freight rail, recreational rail, passenger rail transit and the trail in coordination of these four uses now will help to avoid the risk of increased cost and delay with the trail projects and the rail transit project in the future. Many funding programs require environmental review to be completed prior to funding the project. The completing environmental review will allow RTC to be ready when funds become available from federal or state sources. And it's highly likely that additional funding sources for transit will become available at the federal and state level in the coming years to combat climate change. The completion of environmental review in a timely manner would allow Santa Cruz County to compete for available funds for the next component of the project. A dedicated transit facility is the type of project that will attract the state and federal funds. Another reason is that the measure D rail corridor funds are currently being used to reserve the rail corridor infrastructure with many competing needs. The sooner passenger rail moves into the construction component of the project, the sooner the funds from outside funding programs can be used to replace and rehabilitate the infrastructure for passenger rail. Allowing more of the measure D funds to go towards preservation of the infrastructure after service has begun. And taking this next step towards designing and analyzing the impacts of electric passenger rail in the Santa Cruz branch rail line, the RTC will be working towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and providing an equitable option for travel for Santa Cruz County residents, students and visitors. The importance of moving passenger rail project on the branch line cannot be overemphasized. There is no other corridor in Santa Cruz County present that readily provides this opportunity to significantly improve transit travel times. Rail transit will provide a fast, safe and accessible option for travel for both residents and visitors and will improve quality of life here in Santa Cruz County. With CalTrans, CalSTA and California Transportation Commission wanting to see this project implemented and with the Biden administration's $2 trillion plan to fund infrastructure, now is a good time to seek funds for environmental review. With that, I finalized, this is the presentation today on the business plan. There are numerous members of the project team at the meeting today to answer questions. On the HDR team, besides Steve Decker and Pam Yonkins who presented today, we have Buzz Berger from HDR as well, from Metro, we have John Ergo and from RTC staff, Executive Director Guy Preston, Deputy Director Luis Mendez, Rachel Morricone and Breonna Goodman. Shannon Simons is also in attendance from CalChance Division of Rail and Mass Transportation and but she does have to leave at 1130 this morning. So with that, I'm happy to take comments and answer questions. Thank you. Thank you, Ginger, for that presentation. Thank you for all your work and thank you for this time together. I'm gonna bring it back to the commission for questions. Only questions, please. Is there any commissioner that has any questions? I see Jack Beltran. Jack, has your hand raised? Yeah, thank you very much, Chair. Just have a few questions. If the rail line, proposed rail line is gonna be a commuter line, how can you support 30 to 60-minute headways when my version of commuter lines usually have like five to 10-minute headways, especially when you have large population densities? It requires short headways to meet the commuter requirements. Would you comment on that, please? I'd be happy to. RTC has the ability to determine the headways that are most appropriate for our community. I don't know of any set requirements for headways in order to get certain types of funding. I don't know if there's Steve from HDR or Shannon Simons has other information based on that, but I do see this as something we can create the system that works best for our community. Thank you, Ginger. The main reason why I brought that comment up is because headway means you're gonna have people waiting at a station 30 to 60 minutes before the train arrives. That does not present a very good way to provide commuter options that really want to, if they left from Watsonville to Santa Cruz, the train will still be waiting, they'll still be waiting for a train before it gets there. So thank you for your answer. The other question I have is, how did the group determine or what was the process and what data did they use to figure out how many people would be on the train to support the fare that is anticipated? What data was actually used? And is this public available data? Thank you. Let's see, so the fare assumptions right now are just based on an assumption. Obviously the fares would have to be determined in the future once the governing body is brought on board. That assumption was just used for determining the potential fare revenue that would be available from ridership. But this is another piece of the puzzle that still needs to be solved to determine how best to provide an equitable option for our community. And that would be decided in a future phase. Thank you, Ginger, for your answer. But my question was mostly focused on how many people would be riding the trains. In former and previous studies, there's been numbers. And we're sort of basing our fare take based on those numbers. Yes, you're right, we're gonna adjust it accordingly. But there must have been some studies to try to figure out. Caltrans does give daily data on how many people go from where to where. And is this some data that you've used? I'm trying to get a clearer idea of how the ridership has been established. Thank you. Let me add, we have a lot of good analysis the fare and peers did on the ridership numbers for the study, but I'm happy to hand it over to Steve from HDR and he can provide some details there. Right, thank you, Ginger. RTC has a travel demand forecasting model that is pretty fairly sophisticated, that is based on real data, real travel demand for all modes. And that data set is used for a lot of different types of studies, including the previous unified quarter study, including this study. This study was supplemented with significant cell phone data called spreatlight data that really identifies a significant level of origin and destination for riders, potential riders. So that data was built into the ridership model. So the ridership is based on what people actually do and it's validated to that level. And then we're forecasting out based on what's happening in the county with land use and socioeconomic growth, population and deployment, those kinds of things. So that tool was used to support the ridership analysis in this study. Okay, thank you very much, Steve. Is this a peer reviewed model just like the AMBAG model is? AMBAG model is based, they use it for state projections. It's definitely accepted by Sacramento. Is this a standalone or is this peer reviewed? Thank you. Go ahead, Ginger. The Santa Cruz County model has not gone through the federal peer review process that I think you're referring to. The AMBAG model has a number of years in New York. That's what I want to know. Okay. I appreciate it. But I will say it was based on the AMBAG model that was peer reviewed anyway. I know initially AMBAG had some input. I have another comment or question if I may chair. Question, your last question. And then I have another question. Thank you. The right away issue is not going to be a zero cost issue. So what are you basing that on? I think there's a lot of right away issues. I think it was referred to earlier in one of the public comments. The right of way, obviously we want to try to, any station locations or siding locations, we're really trying to work within our right of way that we have right now. That would be the easiest and most straightforward. We have discussed that there may at some of those stations we may need to acquire right of way. It's really an unknown at this point. And that's what we're working towards is to try to stay within our right of way as much as possible. Thank you, Ginger. I think most of the answers to the questions have basically said there's a lot of unknowns and I really appreciate your forthrightness. Thank you, commissioner. Commissioner Peterson and then commissioner Randy Johnson. Thank you. Commissioner Bertrand already asked the question I had about the right of way acquisitions and why it's determined to be zero cost at this point. So I'll skip that question. I also had a question in the section regarding regulatory compliance, the regulatory compliance analysis. It mentions 10 different federal, state and local agencies but one of them that I don't see mentioned in the report is the coastal commission. And so I'm wondering if there's been any consideration of the work that would have to be done with the coastal commission for addressing issues like coastal access points that may be inaccessible once retaining walls and other kinds of barriers are put up. Has there been any work into that? So that's obviously we could add the coastal commission to that list there. It was just a list of possible agencies to be considered. The coastal commission did provide a letter of support. I believe it was in the February meeting for the rail, electric passenger rail and the Santa Cruz branch rail line. You know, they see this as providing access to the coast which is one of their missions. Again, a lot of these details would need to be figured out in order to make sure that the coastal commission's mission is being moved forward by providing this access and not limiting the access. Thank you. Is that all the questions you have, commissioner? That's all for me. Yes, thank you. Commissioner Johnson. Thank you, chair. So post COVID-19, there's been a new paradigm in terms of people who travel versus what we're doing right now. Did you take into consideration that new paradigm when you thought about the amount of number of people I should say and demand for any form of transportation whether it be cars, bus or rail or bicycling for that matter? The ridership numbers that were based that were determined with the transit card alternatives analysis were based primarily on the pre-COVID numbers. You know, things were changing rapidly with COVID. There was not a lot of information as far as what the ridership would be post COVID world. So the ridership is based on a pre-COVID world. It's such an unknown what's gonna happen in the future but I think in the last few months we're seeing the people are getting back into their various different activities that they've been stopped from doing in the last year. Are you seeing that? You may be seeing that but is that justified by the facts and data? I mean, we're all here and there's a bunch of us I see on my screen who are not traveling today including probably CalTrans representative. I think who is from San Luis Obispo, right? So is it fair to say that demand probably isn't go up but most likely we'll go down? Is that a fair statement? I think it's fair to say that the future is unknown and that we're planning for a horizon of 10 to 15 years out and it's hard to say what's going to happen. Hard to say what's going to happen. Thank you for those. If I could add to that, Mr. Johnson, most agencies including the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area Metropolitan Planning Organization they have decided to go pre-COVID and then to define post-COVID in terms of pre-COVID existing conditions analysis for their studies and then compiling and obtaining as much information and future data and this research on what COVID did across all modes and is impacting all modes including travel demand to build in into the process. So the research has some research has shown where we're getting close to same levels of say traffic and out traffic movements but there has not been a lot of data about use of facilities, use of transit or where people are coming from or going to those kinds of research things that would be very helpful but the information just has not and research has not been conducted yet. So we will, in this process, we will revise the and refine the ridership estimates working with federal agencies to make sure that it lines up with COVID in other post-COVID situations. So are you saying that with schools, majority of schools still being out with people zooming like crazy that we're now approaching pre-COVID levels of transportation? I just, I find that hard to believe but I'll leave it at that. Well, I have seen that some research or some evidence of that. I have not, I really don't know what the research really says though but I've seen that kind of tally recently. Thank you. Is there any other commissioner that'd like to ask a question, staff? Thanks for the presentation. I have Commissioner Coney. Yeah, a few questions. Thank you, chair. On page four dash one of the report, it's, I'm curious why it's assumed that train sets are not required to be FRA compliant and that positive train control is not needed. My understanding of these are some new federal safety standards that basically ensure a train will break if something happens to the operator or if something is on the tracks and train needs to stop suddenly. My understanding was that they were required on all passenger rail moving forward. I'm just curious why this plan says that we wouldn't need to implement that safety measure. So right now there's two options that we evaluated. It's an FRA compliant vehicle and a non FRA compliant vehicle. Obviously the FRA compliant would require the positive train control but my understanding is there's other types of communications and control that's needed when you don't have the FRA compliant vehicle. Well, let me pass that over to Steve Decker. He also has other staff to support him if he needs it. Right, I think it depends on the vehicle type. So usually FRA compliant vehicles are commuter rail trains, light rail trains fall under federal transit administration. And there are equivalent positive train control or equivalents to that in terms of safety for light rail trains. Maybe Shannon and or Buzz from HDR can add to that. Yeah, Steve. There are two essentially different worlds. One is Steve related is the commuter rail world which is governed by the FRA or regulated by the FRA. And then the light rail transit world and that would involve a firm temporal separation between intermixing of types of equipment. Say freight trains running on the branch and the transit vehicles running on the branch. And if you can achieve that time separation in a very positive way, then the FRA regulations which include PTC would not apply and that the operations on the branch would be handled under FTA and CPUC guidelines with a transit vehicle that would not have to be FRA compliant. Got it. So if we are not running freight then we don't need the positive train control. Thank you. Yeah, that's fine. Thank you for the clarification. I wanted to return to the ridership question a little bit. I understand that ridership is uncertain. I will add that with Metro we're still seeing ridership down to 85%. You know, regardless of trying to figure out what ridership will or will not be has a break-even point for ridership been determined? You know, the point at which assuming some kind of local sales tax, you know, we would have enough, in addition to that we would have enough fair revenue, fair box recovery to actually pay for the operation of the train. We have not completed any kind of break-even. That would have to be, we'd have to have an understanding of what any kind of local source of funds would be contributing in order to come up with that. Okay, yeah, I mean, in a risk analysis I would assume we would want some sense of how many people are gonna have to use it to break-even and then ultimately what the likelihood of achieving that number is. So that was something that I would really have expected to be included in this plan. Can you clarify the need and estimated cost for the replacement of the capital of Tressel to provide passenger rail? Sorry, could you repeat that and repeat a little? Sure, yeah, the plan makes reference to the 24 Tressels and bridges across the rail line. And of course the capital of Tressel is possibly the most iconic. Can you clarify the need ultimately to replace the existing historic Tressel and some of the costs that would be involved in that? I think that's the question for HDR team. I don't wanna see if you wanna leave that or if I'll pass it off to Buzz. Yeah, Buzz knows this quarter incredibly well. We did go through a cost estimation process where we had very new information about the structures and we use that to identify need here. Obviously there's gonna be some more engineering associated with the actual infrastructure of the rail line in preliminary engineering, but Buzz, you could probably speak to this. I know we did cost out a series of new potential Tressels in our cost estimates or new structures in our cost estimates. Is this something, well, Buzz, is this something you have specifics on? I am looking for that exact number now. I can answer the first part of your question, which is that in almost any scenario, the capitol at Tressel would be replaced or upgraded because of its current condition with the timber approaches and the wrought iron main span. The cost of that would be several million dollars and I'm switching to spreadsheet now trying to find that exact number. And I'm afraid that's something that we would have to get back to you on with an exact number there. I have this spreadsheet open. The capitol at Tressel is actually three, it's five bridges in total. There's two concrete bridges. There's a wrought iron section that goes over Soquel Creek. Then there's a large timber Tressel section and a shorter timber Tressel section. So the two concrete sections are fine. The wrought iron section in the middle, the cost estimate was a four and a half million for capital only. The longer Tressel section was 3.65 million or capital only and then the shorter Tressel on the west side of the wrought iron bridge was about 880,000. Now that's capital only. That's before the 50% contingency was applied and it's before support cost is added in. So you're looking at at least 20 million for that structure and that's just a structure for rail. It's not for rail and trail. All right, great. Thank you for that clarification. I know a lot of my colleagues probably have questions as well. So I'll just finish with one last one. Vicksham, did you clarify is there any reason we have to pass a resolution today what the proposed resolution accomplishes? We do have a requirement to meet the rail network integration study grant to have an approved or an accepted parts of this business plan, which includes the governance section as well as the implementation steps. The requirement, we need to meet that by June 30th of this year to be able to hand over that deliverable. Thank you. That's all my questions. Thank you, commissioner, commissioner. Sandy Brown, you had your hand up. My questions were answered. Thanks. Thank you. Is there any other commissioners that like to ask questions and staff? The none. I have a question for clarification. On this environmental, there was all good questions from the commissioners. My question is the environmental documentation of the EIR since there is a multiple transportation corridor, I guess I'd like to say, you know, going from electric rail to trail only, within the EIR cover all of those requirements. And also if the the trestles they were, they were spoken about, if a trail only was built, these trestles would, would they still have to be refurbished and reconstructed? So they could either be obviously for rail use, but also obviously just for a trail use because if anything is rail bank, there is a requirement to maintain the rail line accessible to freight services in the future. So will these bridges would still be required to meet the mandate required? I can start with answering the first question as far as the environmental review would be looking at the rail transit portion of utilizing this rail corridor. That's what it would be focused on. You know, we've just completed the alternatives analysis. So we have been able to kind of think about what our project description is and the alternatives that would be evaluated by eliminating the bus rapid transit alternative. But as far as your other question regarding the structures, I think I'd like to pass that on to executive director, Greg Preston. So we kind of looked at this corridor as, you know, what is it going to take to upgrade it for a reliable transit service? And we really didn't want to put a transit service into place where we had several bridges that were near the end of their life and would have a high probability of needing to be replaced after we start service. If we were to do that, we take the risk of having that the new transit service out of service for a while and possibly detours higher costs to construct if we replace it later, because we'd have to, you know, continue to operate the service, shoot, lie around. So we really were kind of looking at what bridges would need to be replaced, but we were doing so only with the context of this is a transit project. The trail costs are not included in this analysis. The trail projects are moving forward separately adjacent to the rail line. Most of the timber trestles that we have out there, pretty much all of the timber trestles you see out there, they're not able to be retrofit to cantilever a bridge off to the side. I think that's kind of where the questions are getting at. We could refurbish those trestles for trail only. I think that's what your question was. There would be some costs associated with them. I don't think we would have to continue to maintain them to the degree that they could maintain, you know, hold a freight load at any time. We would not be allowed to remove those trestles if the line was to be rail banked. So they could be upgraded further later if we needed to reactivate the line back into service, which I think is what your question is. So you could use those trestles for trail only, but there would likely be the need for some rehabilitation costs, but it wouldn't be as high for our trail only as it would be for a rail project. And then, you know, the trail project would assume a separate bridge adjacent to many of those timber trestles. I hope that answers your question. If not, I'm willing to talk and provide more detail. We, you did in some, in a fashion, because I mean, it's important to understand that these trestles will still have, money will still have to be invested in these trestles. And it doesn't make sense to invest money that if we're in the future, we're going to want to run a rail that they're not up to par and have to reinvest in them. Is there any other further questions from the commission? CNN, I'm going to go ahead and move this and move it out to the public for public comment. And first of all, before I open it up to public, I want to acknowledge all the emails that were sent to us. I stopped about around over 300 answering. So I do appreciate everybody that's reached out and made contact with us. So we're going to go and proceed with the comment now. We'll start with Ms. Segal, then Ms. Rose. Ms. Summer Rose, so Ms. Segal first. Thank you, commissioners. My name is Dana Segal. I'm the current board chair of Friends of the Rail and Trail. We're really excited to see this business plan come and the opportunities it gives us to build something better for the future. We have the opportunity to have a world-class public transportation system in this county, which would include a world-class trail for active transportation and electric clean light rail. Every study done has shown that rail transit has the greatest benefit to equity, the environment and the economy. The state and federal government is prioritizing these measurements for funding projects. FORE is ready to work with the RTC and Metro to ensure we can make the rail trail project and expanded Metro service of reality in Santa Cruz County. Let's take this next step. We have everything to gain. Let's invest in environmentally friendly, equitable, public, health improving transportation system here. Thank you. Commissioner Gonzales, can you clarify if we're giving members of the public two minutes or one minute? I mean, that's what he said. Two minutes? He said one. Okay, one. One minute. I was muted. Sorry about that. Yeah, I established it in one minute, so we're going to keep it to one minute. Thank you. Let's see if we can jump aboard it. Okay, Ms. Summer Rose and then Mr. Mark McCity-Meller. Maybe muted. Ms. Summer Rose, you're... Okay. Now you can hear me? Yes. Thanks. Really appreciate the opportunity to talk and be here. And my biggest concern is the length of time it's going to take to build the rail when we have people dying and people getting into accidents like all the time on bicycles and just even walking safely in Santa Cruz with so much more traffic coming into Santa Cruz, Silicon Valley all working remotely now. A lot of people don't even need transportation for say right now. So my biggest concern is it's going to take too long to build the actual safe path for people to bike and people to walk if we have to also include the rail. If there's some way to do the path first to make it safe for pedestrians first, that might make me be a little more open to a rail also. But then they came, you know, COVID and there's all these different types of diseases maybe coming down the road or strains of COVID. I think people are going to be wanting autonomous cars. So it concerns me also riding in cars with people when we're dealing with pandemic type stuff. So those are my comments and I'm really appreciate it. Time, thank you so much. Thank you. Mr. Mark, Ms. City Miller, then Brian Peoples. Mr. Mark, Chair recognizes you. muted. You muted Mr. Mark, you didn't mute yourself. Here you go. Good morning, commissioners. My name is Mark, Ms. City Miller. I'm a 38 year resident of Santa Cruz and a professional engineer with decades of experience. I urge you to accept the business plan and direct staff to seek funding for the next step. Please remember, this is about solving a transportation issue that helps commuters stuck in traffic for hours every day. This is about enabling our county to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce wildfires, droughts and other adverse impacts of global warming. This is about aligning local efforts with state and federal efforts to address harmful inequities in our transportation system. When President Biden released his proposed infrastructure bill yesterday, he said, if we act now in 50 years, people are going to look back and say, this is the moment America won the future. I pray that 50 years from now, people will look back and say, this is the moment Santa Cruz County won the future. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mr. Mr. Peoples, then Christina Watson. I recognize Mr. Peoples. Hi, thank you. This is Brian. Can you illustrate or show my slide? The slide that's being shown is the Metro budget that was presented at the Metro Board last Friday. And you can see Metro has a major deficit forecasted. And then when you look at the current budget of Metro, it's $50 million a year in operating costs. So you're asking our community to fund $25 million a year for a single transit line. That's 50% of Metro's budget. And well, by the way, they're going into a major deficit. Also operating budget, you can't get that from grants. You have to get it from local funding. So I please deny moving forward with rail and build the Santa Cruz Coastal Trail now. Thank you. Ms. Christina Watson, then Mr. Van Brink. Can you hear me now? Yes, I'm Christina Watson. I'm a Principal Transportation Planner with the Transportation Agency for Monterey County. And I just wanted to speak in support of TMC's support of the proposed project of Electric Passenger Rail on the Santa Cruz branch line. And I want to testify as to the intensive staff coordination that's been going on between our two counties to implement rail service connecting at Pajaro. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Van Brink, then Jessica Evans. The Chair recognizes Mr. Van Brink. Hello, am I on the air? Good morning. Yes. So how? We lost you, Mr. Van Brink. Hello. As we all know in public and civic engagement, people are often activated for negative reasons. They hear about something changing and they're worried it's a bad change. They don't build that hotel, don't build that roundabout. The rail and trail project, both components are tremendously popular across all demographics. And this is the unusual part. Citizens are weighing in positively on this project. People are taking time to write and speak and to say, we support the project. We think you've done a great job so far. Please continue forward. That amount of explicit support is quite unusual. It's an enviable position. You guys are doing the right thing. In closing, I support your project and I think you've done a great job so far. Obviously choosing to do this thing is not easy. It is hard, but please continue forward. Please approve your most excellent and professional staff's recommendation. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Van Brink. Jessica Evans, then Matt Ferrell. They're recognized as Jessica Evans. Hi, commission. Thank you so much. I just wanted to say that I feel there's, we have a lot to gain by accepting this business plan and we really don't have anything to lose at this point. On page 53 of the plan, it says the RTC staff is working with Caltrans Division of Rail and Mass Transportation on the possibility of fully funding the preliminary engineering and environmental documentation with state funds and federal funds. So basically the next step, the preliminary design that is gonna answer so many of the questions that I heard the commissioners asking is free. We don't have to pay for that. They're Caltrans is offering to pay for that for us. And I think it would be unconsciousable to turn that down. Our local tax money went into SB1 and this is an opportunity to bring some of that tax money back here to our county to improve transportation, to get the really clear big picture of what we would need to do next in order to proceed forward. Thank you. Mr. Matt Ferrell, then Judy Gettleson. Mr. Chair recognizes Mr. Ferrell. Good morning commissioners. I wanna thank staff for its work on the business plan and celebrate the good news that the plan brings forward. It shows on page 55 in the cost chart that 55 to 58% of operation and construction funding should be reasonably available from existing federal and state funds with the support of Governor Newsom from his executive order and the advocacy of Pete Gouda as transportation secretary and President Biden's well-known support for passenger rail. There's a strong indications that they will be part of our transportation future. The Bill Green Infrastructure and Job Acts provides $500 billion to electrify public transit and modernize railroad and bridge infrastructure. The Public Transit Capital Investment Relief Act of 2021 would improve the federal chair. Thank you. Ms. Judy Gettleson, then Stephen Woodside. Chair recognizes Ms. Gettleson. Is she there? She unmuted. Judy Gettleson, there you go. Good morning commissioners. I'm Judy Gettleson and I'm speaking today in favor of the staff recommendation. I'm a Watsonville resident and I've taught art to hundreds of people with special needs for over 20 years. I know people with special needs are often reliant on public transportation. The Group Day programs frequently spend hours traveling on public transportation exploring. Passenger rail would tremendously expand their world, allow freedom for themselves, accompanying staff and their teachers. People can relax while traveling on passenger rail. For the special needs population, the passenger rail in our area would be awesome for commuting safely and for pleasure. I urge you to follow staff recommendations, accept the business plan, seek state and federal money for the next steps and keep maintaining the tracks. This is the moment, as people have said, an opportunity to build passenger rail now to modernize our area and to protect our environment. The supportive and enthusiastic current administration, Joe Biden and transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg will see you. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Chair. Woodson. Mr. Stephen Woodside and then Craig C. You're on mute, Mr. Woodside. This is Mr. Woodson. Okay, I hope you can hear me now. I'm a fourth generation Capitolan. My ancestors came by rail to Camp Capitola in the 19th century. And I've spent the last more than 45 years as a public lawyer, much of it, working on passenger rail projects around the greater Bay Area. I was once a strong supporter of passenger rail here in Santa Cruz, but as I testified before your body in January of 2019, I've changed my mind. I feel even more strongly today for two reasons among many that I can tell you about. I wrote the measure for SMART that the voter 73% of Sonoma voters approved in 2008. In 2020, only 49% approved its extension. Secondly, I think the idea of others' fundingness is simply unreasonable. The population base of Santa Cruz, $70,000, simply won't compete with the $2 million in Santa Clara or the $8 million in the greater Bay Area. Please don't approve this. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Woodson. Mr. Craig C., then Diana D. Chair recognizes Mr. Craig C. Yes, can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. So I'm a district to citizen and I'm not in favor of this, several reasons. If you look at the actual benefits that are cited, compare this to the baseline or compare this to bus on shoulder, the benefits are negligible. I know people have an emotional view of that, but they really are negligible. And the cost is just extreme. The way I like to look at it is if you look at the fully loaded round-trip cost of a commute from Watsonville to Santa Cruz, that's over $100. Now, maybe that's coming from federal money, some of it, but that's still an extraordinary, extraordinary expense, $100 for a round-trip trip. That's a daily commute cost. Secondly, if you look at this in pre-studies over the last six years, the cost of this rail program has doubled since then, but inflation is only about up less than 10%. And they expect the revenues to be able to match the expenses. It just won't happen. This does not make sense, unfortunately. Thank you. Diana D. and then Jeanette Geary. Here recognizes Diana D. Are you unmuted, Diana? Diana, are you there? Yes, can you hear me now? Yes. Yeah, one minute. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's fine. Go ahead, all right. I'm in favor of the staff recommendation. And I want to remind the commissioners that over the years, Santa Cruz County has been very successful in winning state and federal funding from multimodal transportation projects. Some examples, more than 70% of the project cost was granted by the California Transportation Commission for the Watsonville to Santa Cruz multimodal corridor program. More than 80% of the construction cost was granted by the same commission for segment seven, phase two of the rail trail in Santa Cruz. And third, more than 74% of the project cost was granted by the same commission for construction of the new pedestrian bike bridge to Pajaro Valley High School in Watsonville. I'm confident that once you approve this business plan, the staff of the RCT and other local agencies will continue to bring our tax dollars home to make both the trail and rail a reality. Thank you. Jeanette Gary, then Buzz Anderson. Chair recognizes Jeanette Gary. Good morning, this is Jeanette. Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, perfect. Well, and I'm only here for a very short time, but I would like to go on record as recording roaring camp, supporting the RTC staff recommendations. It was a very detailed plan and I'm sure they put a lot of work in it. And again, roaring camp would like to support the staff recommendations. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thanks for being brief. Buzz Anderson, then Jason Smith. Hi. We have a public transportation system already in place. Metro has been around for a long time, but services are being regularly cut, creating a downward spiral in which present and future bus customers lose their mobility. Lower income people rely on buses. They are the ones who suffer when neighborhood bus stops are removed and frequencies are reduced. Where is the social equity in this reality? The RTC should be investing more money, time and energy into improving Metro. Instead, they've been pouring millions into promoting a train and flawed rail trail that is unfunded and will never perform up to its unrealistic reverie. We as a community should be striving to make one transit system work well before making any attempt to build another. Too much staff time and money has been spent on a nonsensical train since the RTC promised to get people moving with Measure D. Imagine spending the same time and money on Metro. We wouldn't be cutting routes and laying off drivers and forcing our most vulnerable residents to sacrifice their ability to get essential services. The way forward is to promote our current Metro system. Thank you, Mr. Anderson. We have time. Jason Smith, then Jack Brown. I recognize is Jason Smith. You. Hello. I'm a 34 year resident of Santa Cruz County I've lived in Capitola for the last 10 years and I'm in favor. I am opposed to building a rail line along the current rail corridor. I walked up and down that corridor. I don't like the impact it would make. I don't think it'd be effective system. I don't think it's gonna get people out of their cars. In my opinion, if you're going to connect North and South County of the rail line, better place to put the run it would be along the highway one corridor or down the middle or underground. There's already a transportation corridor in that particular section. But right now that the old rail line runs through the boardwalk, which gets very crowded in the summertime. It goes across a bunch of street crossings. You can only do one single track in most places with no path along it. You're gonna have to invest in a lot of bridge repair and it goes in certain sections gets close to a roading cliff side. So I opposed the rail because I don't like the corridor. I'm not necessarily opposed to rail transit per se. All right, I'm out of time. Thank you. Mr. Smith. Jack Brown, then Emily Traxel. Do you recognize Mr. Jack Brown? I'm sorry. Yeah, Jack Brown. Yes. All right, yeah. Mr. Brown, are you there? Mr. Brown, you need to unmute yourself. Hello, can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, sorry about that. My name is Jack Brown. I'm speaking as a resident of Aptos. The RTC's actions have shown a bias towards a vehicle provider, upstart manufacturer TIG-M based out of an industrial park in Batsworth, California. TIG-M claims to have millions of miles and 20 years of experience, but this is mostly with a single mall attraction where their trolleys travel 200 yards back and forth at slow speed. There are only two operational projects or cruise ship trolleys in a rubon, a one mile loop and a two mile loop in Doha cutter, which is listed as a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle in the business plan on page two dash nine when in fact the Doha vehicle is running on liquefied natural gas and solar generators. The fact is TIG-M has no demonstrable experience with commuter rail. They have yet to implement a system that would run at speeds, volumes, or frequencies required here. They have no implementation experience with virtual coupling and most critically, no experience with positive train controls or other anti-collision technology for operating on a single track. And all of these vehicles are no bigger than a bus and this is where the RTC really needs to focus. Emily Trexel, then Johanna Lighthill. Sure, I recognize this Emily Trexel. We have one minute. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, go. Okay. So I've heard over and over again the comment that it's a, we'll reduce commute, this is a commute train. But we know from the February meeting that it was estimated to reduce highway one commute by maybe 3%. Okay, a 3% reduction in highway one commute, which is next to no reduction. And that was a pre-COVID projection. Post-COVID we heard is unsure. There's a reason why reference in the beginning these trains, we've talked about Qatar, China, Texas. Not common in California is the key. It's for big cities, huge populations. Not connecting tiny cities in the second smallest county in California where no infrastructure is in place once you even get there without a car. If it doesn't help commute, what is it helping for the cost? This all started about highway one, but now it's not about highway one. It's more about commissioners leaving their legacy with the train that's not gonna help the commute. It's not gonna reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Add that to how it destroys the coastline, views, added dangers of a train and the cost to all of us for what we're actually getting. The public has to support that cost. And we won't even have stops. Most of the cities who are supporting it. Okay, and I've heard a lot about unidentified revenue and that sounds like a fiction novel more than reality. Thank you for your comments. Johanna Lighthill and then Paula Bradley. Chair recognizes Johanna Lighthill. Hi there, thank you. My name is Johanna Lighthill and I'm a county resident. And today is a big day, marks a day when you and all of your predecessors on the commission can finally assure the community and the CTC that you have fulfilled your obligation to explore every option of rail service on the corridor. Congratulations. You performed your due diligence from the 2003 Capitola recreational trolley proposal the 2010 proposal for the dinner train to Davenport trying to keep freight alive all over the years. The rail feasibility study, Unified Corridor study and finally this TCAA where the data supports bus transit. This business plan serves as a final confirmation of the infeasibility of rail in our county. Your vote today can mark the end of our rail pursuit. Thank you for your service and commitment to people and not just projects, thank you. Paula Bradley, then Paul Roberts. Chair recognizes Paula Bradley. Good morning, my name is Paula Bradley and I'm a district one in Capitola resident. Please vote yes on the business plan. Santa Cruz County needs a future thinking comprehensive transportation solution. Failure to approve the business plan puts the future of the tracks in question which in turn risk delaying the trail construction. Do not send the trail plans back to the drawing board and stop further trail progress. This choice could delay the trail eight years or more and would cost County taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. A yes vote allows us to find an affordable transportation solution that provides the greatest benefit to Santa Cruz County residents. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Bradley. Paul Roberts, then Mark Johaninson. Chair recognizes Paul Roberts. Hello, this is Paul Roberts. I live in Aptos and I've lived in the Bay Area a lot of my working life. I commuted on Bard for a while. I followed SMART because I lived in Marin and worked in Sonoma County. I just don't think the Santa Cruz County has a population to either fund the capital costs or the ongoing operational costs. I also don't think that the population density in Santa Cruz County supports the ridership or the and the job destination density doesn't support that either. In my comparison of the costs then going through SMART, I just don't see that the costs either the capital or operating costs are realistic. They seem about a factor too low at least. I also don't think that a majority of the Santa Cruz County people can afford this or would vote to afford this. I think this should be put up to a vote if they can afford to fund this project. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Roberts. Mark Johaninson, then Kyle Kelly. Chair recognizes Mark Johaninson. Very good morning, commissioners. My name is Mark Johaninson. I'm an attorney and a resident of Aptos and a representative for TIGAM. The draft business plan properly identifies that partnering with the private sector in the delivery of a light rail system has a capability to significantly reducing project costs, accelerating delivery of rail transit on Santa Cruz branch line to a matter of several years and it would allow the RTC to partner with the private sector in or all of some of the components of the project including environmental review, design, construction, finance, operation, and maintenance. And a public private partnership can also allow the RTC to utilize the private sector's expertise in building and operating a communal rail project. So by approving staff's recommendations, you are not committing to any particular rail solution including the concept presented by TIGAM and Roaring Camp for passenger service between Santa Cruz and Watsonville and freight service in Watsonville which can be delivered and operated at a fraction of their hypothetical costs using the draft business plan. And there's no fiscal impact for approving this next step. So approving staff. Congratulations for your time. Mr. Kyle Kelly, then Bud Colligan. Chair recognizes Mr. Kyle Kelly. Kelly. Okay, thank you very much. Can you hear me right now? Yes, yes, you can. Okay, cool. Hey, so I just want to say it's great to hear so many people demanding more transit and complete streets. So beyond rail, it sounds like people want to fund the buses, make sure that we have complete streets that connect our neighborhoods and probably the most important thing for everyone to think about is that when Ambeg comes up, given recent legislation, our municipalities are going to be required to build a lot more housing unlike the last rena cycle. This is your chance to get ahead of it and to put in the rail because it's not just about transporting the current people that live here. There's going to be a lot more people living here and you want to get them on the rail as much as possible and away from cars. This is your chance to be the leaders and for people to be so delighted that you approved it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Kelly. Mr. Bud Colligan, then Brynn. Can I recognize Mr. Bud Colligan? Mr. Bud Colligan. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, yes. Many people promoting a train mentioned social equity. So I want to talk about it a little bit. Nine of the 11 proposed train stations and 88% of the ridership are in North and Mid County. Study after study show that affluent residents ride trains. The average rider of the smart trains earns $97,000 per year. A regressive sales tax will pay for the train. So low-income residents will pay a disproportionate share. Bears will be unaffordable for low-income residents. Three times bus fares. The Watsonville train station is not near most residents of Watsonville. The stations in North and Mid County aren't near the major employers. All of the above is why ridership is forecasted to be so low. And the train plan will ensure that there is no trail providing safe beach access to residents of Watsonville. Let's get real. You spent 10 years pursuing something that is infeasible, unbuildable, and unfundable. Please vote no on the TCA business plan. And then David Dait. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good afternoon now. Thank you very much. I am also urging you to vote no on the business proposal. It's worth looking very closely the two most widely cited examples for Santa Cruz County, Sprinter in San Diego and Smart in Sonoma. They too had plans that grants would cover capital costs and that ridership would cover a large portion of operational costs. According to the US Department of Transportation, Sprinter came in more than 50% over on cost estimates and is massively underperforming on ridership. Smart is a financial catastrophe. It requiring a local tax addition of just two years off the start of operations, a tax initiative that failed. Voters turned against it. Santa Cruz County is noted has a much lower population density. And my question is what makes this RTC think they can avoid these catastrophic mistakes of this example cited most widely for us? And then finally, I just wanna point out that the plan has this P3 proposal private partnership. That's a financing, not a funding proposal with a very poor track record in most of California that I urge you to also look at. David Date, then Rebecca Donning. Chair recognizes David Date. Hello commissioners, my name is David Date. I'm calling on behalf of my friend Ted Love who died two months ago in a bike accident right in front of Seascape. You know, we had Steven Woodside call. This is the second time I've heard his public comment against the train proposal. And he's one of the leading experts in implementing and planning rail in the country. If this commission listened to the experts and rail banked this trail and realized that this is financially infeasible, there's little doubt in my life that Ted would be alive today. I'm incredibly infuriated about this and shame on all of you for letting this persist as long as it has. We need a trail now. Rebecca Donning, then Keith Otto. They're recognized as Rebecca Donning. Good morning commissioners. You can hear me? Yes. Great. My name's Rebecca Donning. I live in C-Cliff. I ask you to follow the goals of AMBAG to learn where we all wanna go and how we wanna get there and then build that system before committing to rail. I urge the commission to accept this business plan and use it only after maximizing our existing infrastructure through equitable investing in a robust and expanded MetroBus network, a connected county-wide system of bike paths and trails and installation of long neglected pedestrian safety measures. So we may realistically choose to leave our cars at home. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Donning. Keith Otto, then Enda Brennan. Chair Organizers, Mr. Keith Otto. Can you hear me now? Yes, Mr. Otto. Soundcheck, can you hear me now? Yes. Oh, thank you. So a train is not a fit for Santa Cruz County. Consider county public works during a discussion of local road maintenance issues. Told the commission, let's take care of what we already have rather than create new stuff that we're not sure how we're gonna fund. SC Metro is projecting budget deficits in the coming years. Nine months ago, one commissioner told the public that passenger rail is funded by Measure D, which of course is not the case. I hope you all read the Lookout Santa Cruz article last week, RTC director describes the local sales tax or equivalent needed to fund a train. So the ask today is for $17 million. That may seem okay, but let's look ahead at what's coming. If we continue with the train, we'll be in way over our heads financially. Look at SMART, look at California High Speed Rail. It is not free. Let's be good stewards of public funds. Please vote no on this business plan. And I'll add, I find this very limited public and commission discussion to be a disgrace. Thank you, Mr. Otto. And Brennan, then Jeremiah Daniels. Can you hear me? Yes. I'm a 33 year resident of Santa Cruz County and also started off supporting the initial acquisition of the right of way many years ago. I currently serve as the city of Santa Cruz a downtown commissioner, one of the missioners and I'm also a county wide commissioner on the seniors commission. If William Praxmire was still around, this proposal for this rail trail would be a prime candidate for the Golden Police Award, which some of us may remember. One of the awards was given to a study that spent $103,000 deciding whether sunfish acted more aggressively after drinking tequila or whether they acted more aggressively drinking after gin. And I think that I don't know what the results of that study were, but I do know we can spend a ton of money and go nowhere with this project. Please reject it. Thank you, Mr. Jeremiah Daniels, then Josh Stevens. Chair, I recognize Jeremiah Daniels. Thank you commissioners. I'm a 13 year resident and I plan to live here for much longer. Asking about breaking even on public benefit initiative indicates a real gross misunderstanding of what your role is and how civilization works. We invest in community for a non-monetary reward investing in equitable and accessible transit is breaking even moving forward with responsible public transportation options to address greenhouse gas emissions is breaking even connecting our segregated county is breaking even. Equitable is more than just a dollar issue. The trail is already being built and I used it regularly. It's wonderful. Thank you so much for that progress. All of the public commentators saying otherwise either you're not paying attention or you're intentionally being misleading. The current metro system will be greatly improved by creating a network of options, including rail. Most places in the world have one rail and the bridges will need to have worked on them regardless. So moving forward is really the only way to do it. I urge you to accept the business plan that has been supported by the Sierra Club of Harrow Valley Climate Action, Caltrans, Roaring Camp, Ecology Action and many, many others. Thank you, Mr. Daniels. Josh Stevens, Deb Bennett, Williamson. Chair Organisms, Josh Stephensons. Josh, you're on mute but there you go. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay, so the TIGM partnership is public private. We have precedent for doing this. Look at Brightline and their service in Florida. Look at their expansions from Southern California to Vegas. There should be no objections to us giving such a prospect the shot. Santa Cruz's tourist base, housing keeps building up. Our streets will not be able to handle this. Our local transit has failed to accommodate these needs, little service in Capitola State and local parks where both visit. No matter where we go, I urge commissioners to consider tourism transit to our parks and recreational locations, regional basis and a yes vote on this plan you have in front of me today. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Stevens. Bennett Williamson, then Barry Scott. Chair Organisms, Bennett Williamson. Thank you commissioners for your leadership on this. And I'm calling today in support of this plan and urging you to vote yes on accepting this. I wanna echo what Kyle Kelly said. I think this is a really intrinsic connection to housing in our area, which we know is the status quo is not gonna work. And this is really a fantastic opportunity to make a system that is really gonna benefit BIPOC and working class communities, especially in South County who we have not heard a lot from. So I do want you to keep those communities in mind and thank you for your service. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Barry Scott, then William Manchin. Chair Organisms, Mr. Barry Scott. Wow, thank you. You know, the business plan includes a lot of goodness we didn't see in earlier plans. New, lighter and more affordable technologies are described in alternative funding plans like a public-private partnership R2. And wow, TAMC and the Coastal Commission, CalTrans Ecology Action, and others have explicitly endorsed this business plan. Our RTC should follow that leadership and continue the process of identifying opportunities. That's all this is. Not a commitment to build. Let's remember that the rail line will work with Metro to create a network that will serve thousands more people than Metro alone and serve South County with greater equity while connecting to the regional and state network. To any commissioners who are considering a no vote because concerns around costs and ridership, if we want to authentically confirm or dispel concerns around these issues, the business plan will provide the information needed to find out with certainty, vote yes to getting the answers, vote yes to this business plan. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. William and Sheen, then Gina Cole. Yes, I'd like to urge a no vote to the TCAA business plan. I think the plan should be mothballed and I believe that you should take the $17 million that would be otherwise spent on the first phase and pay back the 1.16, proposition 1.16 funds and end that discussion once and for all and pursue essentially a policy that is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You need to apply the 80-20 rule and look at where the options, where the possibilities are for reducing dramatically greenhouse gas emissions within the county and that's by addressing all of the connectors along the freeway corridor that are currently the places where people go today. Carrillo, starting in Watsonville, Central County, Carrillo College, Dominican Hospital, downtown Santa Cruz, CCSC, all of those things should be accessible by electrified bus system that's part of a integrated bus rapid transit system. All of the future highway repairs should be integrated to make the best of the future standing on the highway. Thank you. Gina Cole. Chair recognizes Gina Cole. You can meet yourself, Gina. Gina, are you there? I think we lost her. Gina, it looks like you're unmuted. Commissioners? Yes. Go ahead, Gina. One minute. Commissioners, please support the staff recommended business plan. Whether we choose to believe it or not, good things take time and anything worth having takes hard work, dedication and patience. We are a society that expects instant gratification, instant results. We are rarely willing or able to wait for anything these days. Our community members, the RTC staff and many RTC commissioners do understand delayed gratification. Staff has been putting in the hard work and the dedication to develop a solid business plan that addresses equity, economy and environment that will get us to the end goal of providing an active transportation trail and a public transportation rail system. The project is worth the work, worth the dedication, worth the wait. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Cohn. That was the last of the public with their hands up. Oh, wait, we have one more. We have a few more. Ms. Sally Arnold. Chair recognizes Ms. Sally Arnold. Good morning. I wanna say that as hard as it is to stick to one minute, I support the chair's efforts to try to keep us brief and I will do my best. People everywhere are beginning to understand the incredible value of robust rail network to improve mobility and improve equity and flight climate change and California gets it and they're building a statewide rail network in accordance with the state rail plan and they're going to give, and this will give everybody the opportunity to get around the state sustainably without a car and Amtrak Joe and Secretary Pete Buttigieg get it and as somebody else quoted him earlier, you shouldn't have to own a car to prosper in this country no matter what kind of community you're living in. And according to the independent survey by FM3, 74% of the voters in Santa Cruz County get it in support, moving forward with zero emission light rail along the corridor. The rail opponents just don't get it. A new day is dawning in our country and in our state and in our nation and let's get it done. Please move forward to accept the business plan direct staff to seek the funding for the next step in the process. That's all you need to do today. It's not a deeper commitment. Thank you. We have climate healers and Ryan Senatero. Chair recognizes the climate healers. Hi, yes. You can hear me okay? Yes. Wonderful. Yeah, my name is Cynthia Hirsch. I've been in Santa Cruz for 25 years. My mom graduated from Simble High School, like kind of been around a while and it's such a small town that Santa Cruz is. I think of rail is just kind of really over the top. It's like, you know, like a skyscraper in downtown or something like that. The fact that we don't have, I mean, I have kids, they can't even ride bicycles because there's so many hills. I really feel like going from one side of town to the other side just with a path, even going down to Davenport or I guess up to Davenport down to Watsonville on a path we need to get healthier as a species. They say the number one problem these days is that we're sedentary. So just having another vehicle for us to sit in and just be lazy Americans as we typically tend to be. No, we need to get out in nature. We need something as beautiful. Technology is totally assaulting us from all directions of having yet another technological advancement that instead of just being a beautiful goal. We lost you. After. Thank you for your time. Oh no. Ryan Sarnatero. Chair recognizes Mr. Ryan Sarnatero. Yes, one of the things that you commissioners are responsible for is thinking about the future. And if you look at what the future is going to look like the future has to do with flexibility. Just like we're on a Zoom call now, there's the kind of transportation that's going to be required in the future is not one that is fixed to a rail but one that is flexible point to point and turning that rail corridor into a dual lane transportation corridor able to accommodate both the slow walkers and electrified vehicles, be they bicycles or two-seaters or whatever, that's really what you should be thinking about. And you should also be thinking about the environmental impact of this because over time the loss of what would be a beautiful nature corridor and instead a wall lined trail is just not very palatable. Thank you for your time. Bruce Sawhill, then Gawley. Chair recognizes Mr. Bruce. Hello, Chair commissioners, this is Bruce Sawhill. I urge you to accept the business plan. You've already paid for it. This does not give you any binding commitment to spend any more money. And you've already accepted the results of the study nine to three in a previous meeting. So in my mind this should be a formal procedure and nothing more. I would also like to congratulate you on your excellent acquisition of ATP funds. Good job on getting another segment of the rail trail funded as well as the pedestrian bike bridge in Watsonville. We've gotten 10X of our per capita share of ATP funds and this kind of fundraising skill is going to be important in the future. So congratulations and thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sawhill. Gawley. Chair recognizes Mr. Gawley. Gawley, ready? You need to unmute yourself. There you go. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. I'm not a salad, I'm just smoking something. Hey, let's party. Yeah, one minute. Let's party. I'm losing 50s, big old bitties. Hey. Dump them. Yep. Coin of order, please. Here you go. Okay, we have Yahya. They're recognizing Amy. No, it was Yahya. Yahya, she disappeared on me. Yeah, she disappeared. Yahya, she disappeared. There she is. Nope. You have the right to speak. Are you there? I think they're done. Yeah. Climate healers, they spoke once already. Yes, that is correct. They spoke once already. Yeah, but I got cut off. I understood. I heard that I got cut off. So I was just trying to conclude and say that, the environmental impact also that we don't know and then the fact of the money that we don't know, it's like this idea that we're gonna definitely get funded by something else. We can't look at what's unrealistic. We have to be more concrete about what's available to us today, what we can do today and what's necessary. If almost 1,000 people on bicycles alone got hit, I'm sure other people, I don't know the numbers of pedestrians that have gotten hit and the traffic is just insane. There's more insane drivers on the road, I'll say also, especially those coming over from this little crime valley. So having a safe place that we can ride our bikes, I'm gonna be a new mother, have a place for me just beyond my stroller with the baby is gonna be really important. And trains are just, you know, again, the environmental impact, we need a place where it's just peaceful and quiet and nature rich. I'm done with technology. We need like a safe, clear, that's well over a minute. Yes, thank you. Okay, appreciate it. Now you have to try to close up. Okay, the other calls were spam. And so I think we don't have any more hands up. Okay. All right, at this time, I'd like to bring it back to the commissioners for comments and hang on a minute, folks. Let me get back to the, is there any commissioners that'd like to make a comment? Mike Rotkin has his hand up. Mr. Rotkin, commissioner Rotkin. Having been the one that undermined the chair's attempt to get us done in two minutes, I'm gonna try and be very brief. Basically, I think at this point, we should accept this plan, not adopt it, not make some, as people pointed out, some absolute commitment to the following through and building the total capital project and everything else. We don't know enough. The question of whether there's funding available is a very open question for it over estimates, how easy it will be to get all this money. Greenway certainly underestimates the possibility of getting this kind of funding. We need to do some serious investigation of what's possible here. I do not believe we should spend a bunch of local money at the next steps here until we have some idea that we have real partners in the federal government and the state. State has a rail plan that's quite serious and has lots of funding in it that's not available to the transit district. That's not available for other kinds of solutions. There's rail start money at the federal level that can only be spent on rail. There'll probably be other kinds of support in the future. But again, we don't know the answer to that question. We need to investigate it. It would be a tragic mistake to end the possibility of an alternative rail solution here for all time into the future. If we made the decision right now to sort of tear up the tracks, make a recreational park, this is one thing I'm quite confident of. I don't know that I'm right about lots of stuff, but I don't have any doubt that once we tear up those tracks and make a recreational park out of this corridor, we will never get it back for public transit. That may be a decision we have to make. I'm not gonna say that, unlike some others, I'm not absolutely committed to rail. We might decide there is not funding. If we take $17 million of state funds, get a 30% design, make this project clear what the costs are and so forth. And our costs here include 50% contingency. We understand we don't have full information. But in the end, we'd be making a tragic mistake to tear up tracks and end for, not just for the near future, but for all time in the future, the possibility of the only possible corridor for additional transit in our county. So again, I wanna be very clear. I might see myself in a few years here deciding, look, the money is just not available. The state promises a rail plan, but they're not funding. The federal government thinks they can have a whole deal of $3 trillion on capital kinds of projects and stuff. They may not be able to deliver that and may fall apart for a variety of reasons. So I can see myself deciding in the end, we're gonna give it up. We're gonna go back to simply building a trail here. That would be a useful thing to do. I don't wanna spend forever hoping we can get money in some way. I'm a realist and a pragmatist about these kinds of things. But I think it's premature to make a decision to end transit possibilities on this corridor. So I'm in favor of accepting this plan, seeking funding to clarify what funding is available at the state and federal level. And that's how I think we should move forward. I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Beltran. And then Commissioner Cavett. Thank you very much, Chair. Yeah, I was really surprised. First of all, Chair, how many minutes do we have? Is this sort of up to discretion or I just wanna make sure? Try and be brief, but there's no limit. That was our motion. Yeah, I'll follow Michael's lead. So I was really surprised that Steve is a national expert on transportation. And as you know, he's definitely a transit person, but he came to us and said that this is not a feasible project. Many people have said this in various other ways, about if you have the ability to consider someone who's a national expert, I would consider that a very important piece of input. So it gets back to affordability. We just do not have the density of people who earn high enough income to be able to take enough money off of what they normally spend and save to support a rail system, period. We just don't. We have aspirations to do it. Now, you know, the rail trail, the rail is, you know, we bought an antique. That rail system had its heyday, perhaps when it was moving redwood up to San Francisco or fish, and you know, it's sort of degraded ever since. And the last little burp it had was moving cement. And you know, when I was campaigning in Capitola, I talked to a lot of people who remember bombly that train that went through town once a week or something. You know, it was not a high frequency train track use at all. So I'm trying to figure, so for our little antique, you know, Steve got me thinking, Steve Decker, he said, you know, he's referencing the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Well, a spokesperson for that recently, Randy Rentscher, he talked about what kind of projects would be funded. He said, money could flow to seismic retrofit of the Golden Gate Bridge. You know, our Persian capital is not the Golden Gate Bridge. I'll tell you that right now. And extending the BART service through downtown San Jose, much needed to move people. This is a high density area and it needs to move people to get them off the freeway. Okay, and work to electrify the Caltrans system. I took Caltrans system. I worked 30 plus years in semiconductor in a seat. I had to go from San Francisco to San Jose, Sunnyvale. I rode my bike to the Caltrans in San Francisco, took Caltrans down and walked the last mile and a half to get to my place of employment. I love the train, but they want to electrify it. Now, the reason why they want to electrify is to reduce costs. If you're aware of the whole system on Caltrans, it's sort of a joint arrangement in that area of the world. And extend the line to downtown San Francisco. So these are a few of the high level projects in areas where there's millions of people, they have a compulsory need for this kind of money. We don't, not for our antique rail line. Also, I might mention, when a lot of these big things were funded like in the Bay Area, they had people like Mineta to push them. We don't have a Mineta. We have a great representative, but he needs many more years to get that oomph, to get money in any case of funding from the federal government. And that's going to also carry over to the state because people listen to the people who have oomph. So when I listened to everyone that's talked in a positive way, what we could do, right now, RTC, we've already approved moving ahead on many improvements of Highway 1. Rail, excuse me, bus on shoulder is one of them. And one of the last speakers talked about was, we have the metro system, now we're going to have bus on shoulder, we need to improve our metro. Improve our metro, it's a cost effective way to move people in mass, very cheap, and it's flexible. Flexibility is something you will not get with the rail line. The other thing that I really have a problem with is accepting a study that is based on techniques, approaches to analyzing data that's not peer reviewed. I really have a problem with that. We should be doing like Ambeg does, you have a peer reviewed way to look at data so that the results can be accepted across the nation and accepted by people who look at it for funding. We don't have that here. We have a study that I don't know what it's based on. You know, there's some, I just don't know. It's just not peer reviewed, not federally accepted. And I think that's a major flaw for this. And I'm not going to vote for this thing. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is how we're going to follow. Commissioner Caput, Commissioner Montecino, Commissioner McPherson, and I see Scott Eden. Is that the count trends? Yes, it is. And then Andy Schiffer, and then Manu. Did we all get that? Great, Caput, Montecino, McPherson, Scott, Andy, and then Manu. Go ahead, Mr. Caput. Thanks a lot, Chairman Convost. Yeah, I pretty much agree. I'll make it real short. I agree with Commissioner Rodkin. We got to look at this real close. I'm all for rail connecting Potterville, Watsonville to Santa Cruz, which will connect us to the whole state of California, basically, for having the rail. And I just want to make it clear, whatever is good for one section of the county may not be good for our South County, which is Watsonville. I don't want to lose the opportunity of having an electric train or whatever connecting us with all of the other trains and rails in California. So I think we need to look at it real close. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Caput. Commissioner Montecino. Yeah, I'm going to keep my comments brief, but is it an appropriate time to make the motions to accept the staff recommendation? If you want to make a motion. I'd like to make a motion to move staff recommendation. I'm in full support. I know we didn't hear a lot of public comment from South County residents, but from my community, we're in full support of this endeavor to keep our options open. Thank you. I'll second that. I'll second the motion. We have a motion to second. We're going to give you a comment, so I'm going to second, of course, Mr. McPherson. Chair recognizes Mr. McPherson. Bruce, you're muted. Bruce, muted. Still muted. I can't, I can't promise to be short, but I'll try to get there. I supported doing this TCA study because we needed to fulfill our obligation under measure D to investigate and compare the trail options for the rail corridor. And we needed the better answers. And I think the business plan is especially the last chapter of this. I want to, once again, I think we should all appreciate Deep Decker and Pamela Duncan and Ginger Dicar of the staffs and the consultants and the staffs. They've done what we asked them to do. And I think the public need to be clear on that. They were directed to do this. And I really think they did a great job of this. But as I've said many times before, I think it's good public policy to preserve the option of public transit along the corridor. But we have a responsibility to be fiscally prudent at the same time and spend our limited time and resources on projects that are feasible. And I think are needed now to get this community moving. I not only question the financial feasibility of moving forward with passenger rail right now, I'm concerned about the myriad of legal and physical challenges that are serious obstacles getting to passenger rail built. We're all concerned about mitigating the congestion on highway one, but this plan reflects that a transit option along the corridor will not substantially have a positive impact on that. I do appreciate the staff outlying the clear set of choices for the commission on this item. But the choices that I'm unable to support at this time because of the challenges identified and the big questions that are still unanswered what's already been mentioned. I'll continue to support the plan improvements for rail trail through the north of the San Lorenzo Bridge to Davenport, as well as freight service to Watsonville. As long as we've shown that be financially feasible. But the part of the rail corridor between Lee Road and the San Lorenzo Bridge to the north has serious obstacles and costs associated with moving forward blindly. And I think we really do not know the cost of that with passenger rail, no matter what the cost in terms of money and time. I really do care about both of those things of cost and time that we will spend on this if we continue my no vote today on this item does not mean I'm not open to new information or a different set of more feasible circumstances coming forward regarding the affordable use of the corridor, but the opposite of true. It would be great if our divided community and the callers today were not evenly divided but closely divided to talk to one another and focus on a realistic use of the rail corridor. I think if we were to start to scratch to design a transit option next to the rail taking the current politics out of the discussion what would we design for instance? I, until now both sides on this issue have been so busy arguing the numbers that we have not been able to really talk about all of the obstacles and challenges that really laid before us if we continue to move forward and build into passenger rails without seriously questioning what it will take to build and operate it. I say so, I say that without irony because when I talked to the extreme sides of this issue I actually see some agreement. I think both sides agree to preserving the option of public transit along the corridor is good for the community. But both sides agree on preserving the freight service to Watsonville. I think we should really focus on that. And many people on both sides but not all agree that the north of Santa Rosa Bridge to that Davenport and it should continue to build a trail along the existing rail line. So I encourage more dialogue regarding what is the best way to preserve the public transit option and build a usable trail sooner than later between Lee Road and Santa Rosa Bridge. But I can't support this at this point. I think there's just too many unknowns and I don't think that I think we're gonna be running into a lot more problems than have been identified to date and more costly in the same time. So I'll be voting no on this recommendation. Thank you, Commissioner McPherson. Scott? Hi, thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the board. As your Caltrans representative, we are quite close to what's happening at the state and federal level. And I can tell you that we're seeing a significant shift in terms of how we're focusing resources on other modes of transportation and away from our traditional toolbox which would have been highway widening or other things that are more vehicular related. And so I'm looking ahead. What we're seeing is a shift in not only the priorities but also the dollars that follow. And so there's a lot here on the horizon in terms of the ability to fund capital as well as operational costs at the state and federal level. Again, it's happening quickly and we don't know exactly what the rules of the road are yet in terms of those funding shifts, but they are occurring. And we had a DRMT division of rail and mass transit representative with us a little bit earlier but she had to leave. But I just also want to emphasize that DRMT is have been working with the staff at SCRTC and do feel quite hopeful about a funding path for being able to fund the next phase of the project if this board chooses to proceed substantially in terms of being able to help make that next step feasible. Thank you. And we Caltrans and DRMT do support moving the project forward. Thank you. Mr. Commissioner Alternate Andy Schifrin Schifrin. You got it. Thank you. I certainly agree and I think the business plan makes it abundantly clear that at this point any kind of passenger rail service is not feasible. 44% of the cost of both operation and capital is unidentified. Unlike many other people, I don't feel I have a crystal ball that will tell me what's gonna happen when the pandemic is gonna happen, what's gonna happen in 25 years from now in terms of the feasibility of rail service or other potentials on the rail line. My concern is not losing the option should it turn out to be feasible in the future. And we don't know. I certainly don't think it makes sense to go forward with any particular rail, passenger rail service at this time. My willingness to support the staff recommendation in terms of environmental review and applying for funds for environmental review and design is based on the fact that if in fact, as kind of indicated by the Caltrans representative and the possibilities in the federal infrastructure bill, it would become feasible to be able to meet those unidentified costs. We'd be in better shape to do that if we had those, that other information available. But I think at this point, if I understand what we really, all that's really before us is accepting a business plan at the end of a process that every commissioner I think has pretty much maybe with one or two no votes along the way supported. We supported, we have reviewed the RFP, we approved the scope of services. There was no demand for a peer review by any commissioners at the time when the scope of services were approved. And we had consultants who were considered by our staff and were approved as knowledgeable about these matters. The fact that another expert shows up at our meeting and says, well, no, none of this is ever gonna be feasible. Well, we have a lot of information in front of us that says, well, it's not feasible now, but it's certainly, there's a potential that it could be feasible in the future. I wanted to respond also to the notion that this is an antique rail line. In the 1950s, there was a suntan special that brought people from the city of Watsonville. I mean, from San Jose to Santa Cruz County Boardwalk it was a pretty active rail line at that point. There were complaints about it being a little bit too active with some rowdy customers along the way, but it was an important option until the car just sort of made it impossible when Highway 17 was widened. It served a lot of functions. It doesn't have much of a function now, although, you know, there is a user, the big rowing camp, big trees does use it. And so I think it's important to keep them in mind as we sort of look at what the future may hold. My sense is this is, we're looking into the future without a crystal ball. And when you do that, it seems to me it makes sense to keep your options open. The final thing I wanna say is in response to people who have talked about the danger and the lack of safety on the current speed system and use that as a way of arguing for ripping up the tracks. In my view, we're trying to build the trail. We're trying to make it safer. We are building a trail. We've got a segment done. We're trying to get funding for other segments and bring them about. We're trying to get options that will allow people who ride their bike to get off the road. I think it's, from my perspective, disingenuous to argue that by ripping up the tracks, there's gonna be a trail for everyone sooner. In fact, in my view, it will delay it extensively. There's too many steps that we have to go through before that could be possible even if the commission wanted it to be. We're moving on with a number of segments. And I think I wish the people who challenge the commission on everything that we wanna do would really get behind and support the implementation of those segments so that we could increase the safety of bike riders in this county. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Alternate and the Schiffner. Commissioner Cunning and then Commissioner Patrick Mahon. Here are you. And then Commissioner Christian Peterson and then Commissioner Brown. Thank you, Chair. I also wanna begin by thanking staff for dutifully executing what this commission has asked them to do. And I wanna be very clear as well that our community cannot afford this rail plan. Our existing public transit system Metro is looking at a $10 million structural deficit over the next five years. That's per year. Our county roads have a pavement index of an F and an ongoing budget shortfall. That means we are falling further and further behind every year. We're missing 70% of the money to build the trail as proposed through Live Oak. And so I do take, I would wanna counter Commissioner Schiffner's point that we're building the trail. We can't build the trail through key segments with the proposed plan. Moreover, we haven't even identified the money to maintain the trail once it is built. That's gonna be a whole nother set of problems. So I think this rail plan is really a grass is greener approach. This idea that instead of maintaining and improving our existing 600 miles of roads and public transit system, somehow dumping millions of dollars into a train will yield a better results. No fiscal impact. That was mentioned by a number of the public speakers today. No fiscal impact of pursuing a $17 million environmental review. RTC staff time cost $150 an hour to do anything. There is a very real cost to continuing to study a train. And there are most importantly, there is the cost of our time and our attention to things that will get our community moving. I think just because we can get money from the state doesn't mean we should waste it. State money and federal money is still taxpayer money. It's still our money. There will be plenty of opportunities to get state and federal money for projects we all agree will work. Just look at the recent $100 million we received for the multimodal bus highway bike project on Soquel Drive and Highway One. It's always easier to spend money than to do work, but it's not the right thing to do. So I do wanna say one thing about the technology involved here. I do think the project is technologically antiquated. This is like if your daughter came to you and said she couldn't get Netflix to load on her phone and you responded by going to rummage around in the basement for a VHS player. It's just a waste of time and it fails to address the real transportation needs in our community, the real commute patterns. So it's time to build a trail. Let's focus on building what we all agree we want, building it through Live Oak across the Capitola Tresol. It's going to require the space where the tracks are. We need to use the Harbor Tresol, the Rodeo Gulch Tresol, the Capitola Tresol, the La Selva Tresol and all the other existing bridges. I want our staff's time to be dedicated to finding funding to reduce the huge number of deaths and injuries we see on our roads each year to building the best possible trail, to dedicating and finding funding for safe routes to school. We need to put this to a public vote as soon as possible. And I think today we draw in a line in the sand that not another tax dollar should be spent on a train until the people vote. I will not be supporting the staff recommendations. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner. Commissioner Patrick. Thank you, chair. I appreciate that. I'll be as brief as I can, but I have been waiting for this meeting now for four years. In 2017, when the initial draft of the unified corridor study came out and it indicated that all of the transit money that was going to come into this county would be required to support rail transit. And I brought this to the attention of metro staff and they were surprised that money that they were intending to rely on for their projects was going to be, was assumed to be diverted to rail transit. So I worked with Barrow Emerson at the transit district and we shifted the staff recommendation instead of being rail transit on the corridor to pursue an alternatives analysis of the best public transit use of the corridor. My goal for that was just to get a clearer understanding of what the costs were actually going to be and what kind of timeline this would at all be feasible. What I didn't anticipate though was how feasibility was going to be defined. So what we've seen over the course of the past three rail studies, the passenger rail feasibility study, the UCIS and now the TCAA is that every time the staff interpretation or the consultants interpretation of the available data is that all these projects are feasible if a series of impossible conditions are met. Now it's that if part that is continually forgotten and that everyone focuses on the feasibility part. And so we talk about the feasibility, the feasibility but it's more accurate to say that this project is infeasible unless it's not feasible if it's infeasible unless. And I've heard a lot of people talk about, well now the funding argument has been rebutted by saying, well there are all these future opportunities that may be developing that we could hopefully tap for this project. For a first word all of these funding sources actually to manifest to the tune of some 200 to $300 million in capital costs plus some 12 to $13 million in annual operating and maintenance costs. If someone were to invent those funding sources we would still have to compete to get those funding sources. So that's an extra level of uncertainty. So not only do these things not exist but we would still have to compete for them with jurisdictions that have higher population densities and all of the other factors that make us not as competitive as even jurisdictions within the state of California. I did hear someone also mentioned that well we've gotten all this money to build, let's for example the solutions for congested corridors program money that we got that was some 90 odd million dollars to do multimodal improvements between Watsonville and Santa Cruz. The reason that we were able to compete with that was because we had a unified corridor plan and not a lot of jurisdictions had that. So we were in a special category of applicants for that one round of grants. So that the next round of grant making will everybody will have a corridor plan and so everybody's gonna be competing. We won't be as effective in our competition with larger jurisdictions with higher population densities. That's a fact. So we're assuming that someone's gonna make a new grant program that we're going to somehow compete well against and then we will secure the money. People are also talking about the Biden infrastructure plan and let's drive the stake through the heart of that right now. The executive branch's budget wish lists still have to make it through Congress and I'm sure that everyone's aware that we have a very divided Congress. If his infrastructure plan loses three votes in the House of Representatives, it won't pass and it still requires all the senators in the Senate to buy on to it. So it's by no means is this ever, is this a fate of complete? They're the Biden, Buttigieg transportation gurus are gonna find a way to pay for our rail infrastructure. That's magical thinking. I'm sorry, it's magical thinking and we cannot be running a government agency based on magical thinking. And in fact, well, I don't wanna talk about the actual cost of the line. I know that it's expensive and everything's expensive. We're spending $100 million on highway one and all the multimodal developments that we're gonna be putting in there. It's a lot of money. Transportation projects are very, very expensive. My real issue is the opportunity cost of pursuing rail. It means that we're not talking about other things that we could be implementing right now with money that we already have. Well, first of all, we could build a trail right now because the salvage cost is the salvage returns for our rail infrastructure would be sufficient to build an interim trail. So just by pulling up the rails and selling the steel we could build it right now. But we're also already working on making our bus transit system more competitive against single occupancy vehicles which I'm assuming is the whole goal of our adding this new mode of transit is to get people out of single occupancy vehicles. We have our bus on shoulder auxiliary lane project which I realize isn't really a penetrating solution to our issues here. We're also gonna be building though the transit signal prioritization on Soquel Drive between Dominican and State Park which will give buses a further advantage over single occupancy vehicles. But neither of those are even combined a complete solution. The complete solution would be some kind of dedicated bus lane on Soquel. Now the importance of building a bus rapid transit project where people actually are is that people need to get to work, they need to get to school, they need to handle all of their business somehow outside of a single occupancy vehicle while using the existing transit network that we have and maybe investing in it somehow or fostering and promoting more development in our bus transit rather than talking about trains we could feasibly accomplish our environmental, our equity and our economic goals in the short term not 25 years from now. And regarding the free money from the state to do our environmental report I am very concerned about the inevitability of administrative policy making. And by that I mean a plan has a way of becoming a project. Once you start an administrative policy making process in a certain direction it develops a inertia and over the course of time like we see now we invest millions and millions and millions of dollars in studies to keep pushing this incrementally further. So our passenger rail feasibility study said it was feasible pushed us a little bit further. The UCIS pushed us a little further and now this TCAA is saying well now you need to spend $17 million to do the environmental to find out what this project is really gonna be. No, we shouldn't be spending any more money on rail we should be devoting all of our efforts to support Metro's efforts to enhance and improve their network to serve their customers the people who are actually using transit right now who can't get from A to B sometimes to C. So I will not be supporting the motion at least as it is today. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner, commissioner Peterson. Thank you. I wanna start by thanking everyone in the public for their public comments both at today's meeting and through the high volume of emails that have come in over the past three or four days. A lot of them were form letters but quite a lot of them were also personal emails with or phone calls or voice mails with stories that people wanted to share about their time in the county, their experiences and that kind of input is always so welcome and appreciated. I'd like to apologize to those who I wasn't able to respond back to directly. As like I said, it was a very high volume and difficult to get through responding to all the voice mails and emails. But again, I am grateful for that input. I'll try to keep my comments short because most of what I would say has already been said so I'll just reiterate briefly. I have serious concerns about the financial feasibility as it's laid out in this business plan as well as the concerns over litigation and the price of litigation as well as the unknowns. There's a lot of unknowns that we don't have answers for at this time. Additionally, as commissioner Mohan just pointed out there's the opportunity cost and the need to address equity issues now and not necessarily 15 years or more depending on how long this project may be delayed because of the unknown aspects of when we might be able to receive funding. So again, I'm gonna try to keep this as brief as possible but for the reasons that I've just listed and those that others among us have just noted I will not be supporting the motion as it stands today. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner Brown. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I also wanna thank the members of the public who have been communicating with us consistently during my four years on the RTC and who have shown up today and written to us. I appreciate your level of interest and engagement in these questions. We are fortunate to have a very active and engaged community. So in the interest of time I'm not gonna give a swan song speech here but just want to focus back our attention onto the idea that this is a business plan. It's telling us something that we to some extent already knew around costs that it is not financially feasible at this time to build and operate a rail line. But I don't think that was what anybody was expecting to see in moving forward with a plan like this and mapping out a way forward to better understand what the future might hold. The idea that there are so many unknowns that we should not look any further to me just doesn't make sense. And I wanna just highlight two members the public who and many members of the public said similar things but one Ms. Cole's point about us being a society of instant gratification and the idea that if we just stop talking about the train or studying or looking for ways that we might finance alternative transportation on the scale that might be appropriate somewhere down the road that we're displacing funding and energy for all these other projects. These are not fungible funding sources. So thinking about the future and positioning ourselves for a possible future where there's a significant influx of funding maybe it will happen, maybe it won't. Again, the crystal ball I don't have one I don't care to look for one. I think that right now for us to accept this business plan with the information that was available at this time and to continue to position ourselves for the future rather than foreclosing that possibility is something that we ought to really embrace. And so there's plenty more I could say and but I said I wasn't gonna do a swan song speech I'll leave it there. I'm gonna be supporting the motion. Thank you, Commissioner Brown. I'm gonna close it up. I'm just gonna inform to the public that- Chair, I wanted to speak. Oh, I didn't see you Randy Johnson. I didn't see you and I apologize about that. Go ahead, Commissioner Johnson. Thank you, Chair. First of all, I think just some reflection I think instant gratification we've been waiting 10 years so far and not another 15 or 20. That's been pretty patient. I just wanted to say that again, thanks to all concerned in terms of spending time on this issue. But in some ways that's kind of the problem to Patrick Mulhern's point, this project pretty much sucks the oxygen out of all public discussion on other things that are so necessary for a transportation commission to focus on. You know, even the earlier debate about commission where we decided to allow somebody to choose their commissioner and appointee was almost a proxy vote on the subject that we're talking about right now. My feeling is that equity, environment, economy, all these things that are so important to people in terms of meeting those goals is something that we can do with what we have right now without trying to reinvent more complicated solutions. Our bus system, our transit system is well positioned if it's enhanced, if roads are enhanced, you know, to the point that people talked about, you know, the needs of the transportation in this county are so huge. You know, every time one of the people responsible for transportation in our cities and our county, they're always talking about how bad our roads are. Yet we spend very, very little in remediating those particular needs. I just wanna say that I appreciate the attempt in bringing forward a business plan and kind of talking about it and studying it. But what struck me about this, the business plan and the recommendations and the conclusions were the number of risks. You guys remember the one slide where there was the bubble and it said the risk and risk identification mitigation, funding, compatibility with the freight and trail, stakeholder support, we have project delivery, organizational development, technology, right there you have so many red flags that doesn't give anybody pause on why this was so infeasible. Then, you know, I said in the past, those who ignore history or condemn to repeat it, we have history, okay? It's a high-speed rail, smart, you know. First of all, Michael Rockin, thank you for allowing us to speak a little bit more than two minutes. I hope you don't regret it if I'm carrying on too much. But one of the things you said, and I respect you, but one of the things you said in 2016 is that if we build it, they will come. But history says that's not really true. All you have to do is look at the smart train. And I looked at some of the ballot language, which they said seven to 10,000 people would write it. I think the average is more like 2,900 and they got up to 5,400 one day, but that's when they gave it away at no cost and people were eligible to write free. So I just think, you know, we have to pay attention to, you know, the red flags that are out there. So when I hear about the risks, the unknowns, the conjecture, kind of the wishful thinking, is there any, I guess, surprise that people that pay attention to the people's money and the risk associated with moving forward that someone like me would vote no. So as you can probably tell, I'm a no vote and hope I didn't go too much past two minutes. Thank you. It's reasonable in time. Thank you. Is there any other commissioner that'd like to comment before I comment and close? You know, just let the inform the public that I'd close the comments to the public on this. We do have a motion and a second on it for the approval of the staff recommendation. My comments on this, you know, I've lived here 52 years in this area, approximately 40 of those years driving on these roads. And I've seen the infrastructure not grow at all. I've seen no growth attitude in this community, in this county. We're lack housing. We lack places for employment, you know, we lack mobility because there is a no cost. It's too expensive to expand Highway 1. But yet, you know, we did a multimodal project we qualified because we had a trans transit corridor project online. If we didn't have that, we probably wouldn't have qualified for that $107 million project. So we wouldn't have bus on shoulders. We wouldn't have had a sequinized lighting sequences for SoCal. So all that money, we would have lost all that money and we would have still stayed in the same position of wishing that we would have been able to qualify for funding. And you know, so you see all these things and you see here all the community members rejecting to some of these things and supporting some of them in a sense. And it's unfortunate that a lot of these commissions are unwilling to move forward on this. And we're not spending money. We're asking the staff to go out and look for money to do this environmental impact report on this rail trail. At once they do find funding for it, then we should be moving forward with it. But by rejecting this, and again, it's like the old cliche highway one where we wanted to widen it years ago. We didn't do it years ago. It kind of cost us like maybe one third the cost and we would have approved it. And so I see this happening the same thing with this rail corridor, this transit corridor. We lose the transit corridor because we start moving forward on this. We have to remember we have an ACL agreement still with a railroad company that still has not given up its rights to it. And there's a 10-year agreement. So those rails aren't gonna be moved in 10 years. And it's not gonna cost us nothing to move this plan forward as staff's recommendation. And if the state does step forward, then we're gonna benefit from it because we're gonna be one step closer to that process. But if we do go and it does get rejected, then we're gonna go back to ground zero again. And we're gonna be doing the whole process again. And for those that are the wishful thinkers of the trail only, that means we'll have to go back all over again, restart a whole new process. And those that say that let's take it out to the voters. Well, if you take it out to the voters, these are on really the numbers. You know, they wanted to run out with this proposal. They want to do a 30% of conceptual drawing that's gonna be really closer to the more reality of the numbers than what's being put forth now because it's a 55% consensual plan on it. So, you know, it's kind of ridiculous what these fellow commissioners are suggesting that we stop at this point since we have invested so much money and so much time already into this to not allow this to move forward and set ourselves up as a count for the future possibilities. You know, you folks have to think about this correctly. So anyways, I'm gonna be supporting the staff recommendation because I think it's the best thing for the overall for the community. But like alternate commissioner and commissioner, I don't have a crystal ball, but I do know one thing that this county's population growth is gonna grow. People from around the world are gonna come here. And especially the dreamers like Bud have of this world-renowned trail. It's gonna be people from around the world. There's gonna be vehicle miles traveled. There's gonna be people parking in the Selva neighborhoods to travel on those trail, on that trail to walk it, to bike it. They are gonna be parking in your neighborhood because Watsonville really doesn't have a trail that goes to their neighborhoods. So, you know, there is still gonna be an impact. There is only a trail to Cavatola, Selva, Aptos in that corridor. You're not gonna be free. It's not just gonna be your kids or your mom or your dad walking that trail. It's gonna be people from around the world, tourists. Tourists that come to this within this county and do impact in our community. So we really need to think about the overall picture. And so I'll leave it at that and I'll call for roll call. Commissioner Rockin. Hi. Commissioner Gonzales. Hi. Commissioner Peterson. No. Commissioner McPherson. Universe. No, no. Commissioner Koenig. No. Commissioner Alternate Mulhern. No. Commission Alternate Schifrin. Aye. Commissioner Caput. Aye. Commissioner Montesino. Commissioner Johnson. No. Commissioner Brown. Aye. Commissioner Bertrand. No. I vote. I'd like to make a motion that we sort of split the recommendations here. There are really two recommendations in the staff report. One is to accept the business plan. The other is to direct staff to move forward and try to seek the funds. I think it would be a mistake to not accept the business plan. The consultants gave us what we asked for. Whether we want to move forward or not, simply accepting the plan is completing the contract and recognizing the reality that we have the plan unless somebody wants to send it back for more work. I don't think it's worth delaying this any longer. So I'd make a motion that we just approve the... Accept. The language you want to accept, Andy, not approve. Pardon me? The language should say accept, not approve. Sorry, I make a motion that we accept... Well, actually, if I could finish my... That we approve the first two staff recommendations that we accept the business plan and pass a resolution accepting the business plan. Second that motion. That's right. Yeah, I know. I'm trying to... I have a motion. I have a motion. And you... Okay. Where? Where? To any form of a location? From... Yeah, to any people. From time to time. Can you hear me? I'm going now. I just wanted to have Mr. Preston make it clear. This is asking us to complete the study and grant requirements, but it will not result in doing anything more than that on the project now. Is that correct? I could be okay with that if that's the case. So the resolution has several recitals, and the second to last recital states that the business plan provides a guiding document for funding the implementation of electric passenger rail on the Santa Cruz branch rail line and does not commit to a definitive course of action for project implementation. So I think with that recital in there and with the motion on the table right now, I think it could accomplish that. I was also asked, or I heard mentioned by the maker of the motion, Commissioner Schifrin, about possible modifications to the plan. If the plan itself does provide certain information on implementation and the way we presented it with the cash flow model, we were very specific with respect to the fiscal years and what would be done in each fiscal year. That's shown in chapter seven and it starts with fiscal year 21, 22, commencing on July 1st of this year. I would propose that if the commission does not wish to move forward with this, that the plan itself be amended so those fiscal years be removed and be replaced by year one, year two to show the conceptual nature of the plan so that the acceptance of the plan is just accepting the concept, meeting the requirements of our grants and no other further action would be needed. I'd accept those changes to the motion which would remove those specific dates. And my understanding is that all we would be doing is accepting the plan and completing the contract. That's fine with the second as well. I can be okay with that. This is not committing us to anything else in the future. I had, I mean, I had Commissioner Comontacino wanting me to speak. Are you still with us, Commissioner? No, that's a negative. Okay, we have a motion and a second on the table. There's an other. Commissioner Johnson wanted to say something I think Commissioner Peterson as well. Thank you, Chair. So it just strikes me this is kind of seat of the pants again without having a full staff report on all the implications of such a motion. And why do we do that? In other words, you lose at something and then we wanna reestablish the guidelines and move the goalposts again because this quote sounds reasonable. No, I don't think it's wise for us to do this by the seat of our pants. And just all of a sudden say, no, we're gonna do this, this and this. We had a vote on the resolution, okay, pass. I'm sorry about that, but that's just the reality. In two weeks or a month or something, you can come back and make your points, have a staff report, fully explore the implications because right now we don't know what they are. The executive director has given his opinion on what would be involved and what it would mean. And I respect the guy. But at the same time, I wanna see in front of me what those implications really are. And you can only do that through reading and maybe talking with your constituents and so forth. So I can't vote for this. Mr. Chair. Yes, Mr. Chair. I can understand Mr. Johnson's concerns. Two guy pressing, if we delay this vote that is or this motion till next month, would that have an adverse impact and having us complete the obligations of our contract? Can we wait and get and do what is proposed now if need be, is what I'm asking. I'm gonna defer to Ginger on what the deadlines are to have the commission accept the plan and complete the work associated with the grant. I wanna remind the commission that this again was never, the business plan is not a requirement for anything, but there were certain steps in there that were included in our grant for the network integration study that we would like to complete so that we don't need to come back to the commission that if there is no action desired by the board, we can just accept this plan, put it on the shelf and decide what we wanna do with the corridor at another time. So it seems to me like you could move forward today, otherwise we would definitely need to come back and have a whole nother item on this and Ginger, I'll let you respond to us to whether or not we would meet our deadline requirements for the network integration grant. Thank you, guys, Executive Director Preston. Yes, for the grant requirements, the deliverables are due on June 30th of this year. So there is time to defer to another future meeting in the next month or two. Could I ask Guy a question about related to that? What additional information could you provide next month that the commission hasn't already seen? We've had X number of hours this morning and now this afternoon, hearing from the public, hearing from commissioners, hearing from consultants about what's in the plan, the business plan and is there anything else that you can tell us that's going to, I can't agree that just accept it now and not have to go through another four hours of testimony next month for no other, when there's no purpose to it, when we already have all the information that we're gonna get, it just doesn't seem reasonable to me. So Guy, is there something else that you could bring to the commission beyond what has already been presented? I don't think there was a request for any additional information. The only change being made would be to change fiscal year 21-22 to year one, et cetera. So that could be, of course, shown in writing, a revised plan that shows that, but that could be posted to our website afterwards. That's the only change proposed. So that would be the only additional information I could actually provide would be the actual changes in hand. And we can approve those today. Mr. Chair. That's correct. Randy, let me make a personal appeal. You've won this thing. You've stopped the staff, but if this vote means the staff is not authorized to spend additional time working on looking for funding sources and all this kind of stuff, please don't subject us to another four hours of hearing over something that's going nowhere. I don't think, Chair, I don't think it's gonna be another four hours. If you don't think that everybody in Ford and everybody on the other side is gonna show up at the next meeting that this is still on the table, you don't understand this county. And I think you do understand this county. Right. I've been on this RTC for 21 years. I may, I don't know. But I think just having something that is, we've heard from Ginger that there's not gonna be a delay in any sort of repercussions from this. And if it is so non-controversial, put it on the consent agenda, but at least let us read about it and make an informed decision. That's the only thing. I just don't like, after something's been decided, all of a sudden there's now a followup in terms of, well, can we just do this and just do that? Okay, but I just don't know where the ramifications are. I'm gonna bring this back to, we have a motion on the table and a second on that. I can do that. Right? We're commenting. We're commenting. I understand. I understand. I've got a feedback coming back for some help. I have a question, I really am. Courted, hang on. Just a question. Hang on, hang on. What was the whole, yeah. All right, six, six, six, six. So does that, it was six to six? A tie vote is a fail vote, Greg. So it failed. That's correct. So, hang on, we have a motion and a second and we were looking for an amendment for verbiage. Is that correct? No, that was accepted into the motion. By the maker and the second. Second, right? Yeah. I don't think, I would be recognized. Am I recognized? Yes. I think I call the question. I think people are clear what's in front of us and hopefully people will disagree with Randy about whether it's helpful just to put this off. No, I actually have a technical question. Mike, I have a technical question. Hey, Adam, and I haven't finished with everybody. I wanted to come back to the commission, other commissioners. Okay. On the motion that's on the table now. Commissioner alternate metric. Thank you, Chair. Just quickly to staff. I recall at the beginning of Ginger's presentation that there were two features of the business plan that were required to be approved according to the CalTrans grant money that we had. I believe we had to accept the governance model and the implementation plan, but not necessarily the entire business plan. Could you clarify that for me? And also how much money are we talking about and is CalTrans saying they want us to pay it back if we don't accept this today? Is it like $100,000 or is it like $1.7 million? Like how much money are we talking about having to pay CalTrans back if we don't accept this? So are you correct, Commissioner Mohan, that it is there are two sections that are required in the scope of work to meet the grant requirements that to have accepted by the commission. They are the governance discussion, which is in section three. And then the next is the next steps for implementation. I think we could potentially state that those are provided in section five, although section five does not provide any kind of timeframe or you break it out on a 25 year basis. As far as the, if we did not meet that obligation, I believe it would be the full grant. If we don't meet the grant requirements, we would have to pay back $100,000. Commissioner, do you have any other questions? Oh, no, thank you both very much. Commissioner Christian Peterson. Thank you. I just want to make sure that I'm understanding what I'm voting on. So in the recommendations number two, it says to adopt a resolution accepting the business plan for electric passenger rail as a guide for implementation. But the guy for implementation doesn't include this seeking federal and state funding for engineering. And that's something that if we're not including in this motion, I think that's where I'm getting a little bit confused if someone could clarify that for me, I'd appreciate it. I'd be happy as far as I understand it as a guide, it doesn't necessarily direct staff to do anything else. But as far as if that's a concern, I'd be happy to have that part of the resolution taken out and the recommendation to just adopt a resolution accepting the business plan for the electric passenger rail on the line and just end there. It seems to me that most of the testimony wasn't really about whether the information in the business plan was wrong. It was like, what should we do with it? Should we go forward or should we not go forward? Well, a majority of the commission doesn't wanna go forward at this point, but at least let's get this step taken so that we have a completed document. And as Sky says, it will be put on the shelf and then some future commission can decide what the next steps, if any, are going to be. But we'll be done with this contract and we'll be done with this particular document. So if it's acceptable to the second and if it responds to Commissioner Peterson's concerns, I'm willing to amend the motion to end the recommendation to the resolution, take out as a guide for implementation and to delete that section of the resolution that talks about it being a guide for implementation. It's fine with the second. Okay, we have a approval for the second. So then again, we're just complaining, grant compliance. Exactly. The commissioner Peterson, was that answered for you? Or do you want to? Yes, it was, thank you. Commissioner Beltran. Yeah, to the point of trying to understand the implications of Andy's motion with all the changes, I still would prefer to see a staff report, have some time, the staff generates some recommendations based on thinking about this a little bit further, just got thrown at me. I haven't even had a chance to think about it. What are the implications of this particular vote? I see where you're trying to go, you're trying to meet the requirements of the grant, I understand that. And we're trying to take off the guide to moving forward but let's think about a little bit. Come back with a staff report. I think that's a mature way to go about it. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner. Commissioner Manu. Thank you, chair. I want to offer a substitute motion to accept the portions of the business plan that meet the minimal requirements of the state grant and complete the consultant contract. Yeah, that's the motion. I'll second that. McPherson, did you second that? Yeah, I think Patrick Miller did, but yes. What do you want? Okay, commissioner, I'll turn to Patrick Miller and recognize the second. I want to bring that up to the question right now. Yeah, I have a question about what the implication of this motion is in terms of the rest of the business plan. Is that going to come back? Is it not going to come back? What does it mean about further actions by the commission on this issue? I was sort of hoping that based on the previous vote, the commission would just accept the plan and that would be it for the time being. I kind of resent the idea that it's more mature to delay after all the information that the commission has received in all the testimony that commission has received about the business plan. I'm not sure what more we can get, but what then if this motion, the substitute motion would pass, what then is the implication for further action on the rest of the business plan? Point of order. Point of order. I'd like to ask our council, I didn't think we accepted substitute motions. I thought we act on clear the motion on the floor before as another motion is put forward if it fails. You can consider a substitute motion would take precedence over the motion that's on the floor. Okay, thank you. Yeah, we went through this once already. All right, thank you. So there any comments from other commissioners on the substitute motion? I would just say that I don't support it because I'd like to have a final vote on the business plan and be able to move on. I'll just point out to commissioner Schifrin that I believe this accomplishes that because we would be meeting the minimal requirements of the state grant as explicitly stated and considering the consultant contract. So it would not be needed to review and the business plan, the other future date. With that being said, my understanding, I guess this would also not direct staff to move forward with the federal state fund competing in preliminary engineering or environmental documentation. Correct. And it also sort of leaves in limbo the entire analysis that we've just paid $100,000 to get. And that would the substitute motion would do. Okay, can we have a comment? All right, I have a comment. All right, I have a comment. Commissioner Schifrin, you know. Hello? Commissioner Schifrin. Commissioner Schifrin. Yeah, I will not be supporting this substitute motion. I think commissioner Schifrin is on the right track for, that's all my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Brown and then commissioner Ruckin. Yeah, I just wanted to ask a procedural question. Are we supposed to vote on whether or not to accept the substitute motion before we vote? That's my understanding on the procedural role. First we'll be voting on the substitutional motion. Or we're just voting on the substance of the motion, not whether or not to. Correct. Okay, thank you. We'll be voting in a second for the substitute motion so you would vote on that motion itself. Yeah, we have a second on the substitutional motion already. Commissioner Ruckin. I hope people vote no on this. Come back to Andy's motion as amended, which basically gets what every, the people who don't want us to spend any more money or staff time or anything else, we can look at the train, put it as Guy Preston put it, put it on the shelf. That's what you're going to get. I think it would be good to close this chapter if that's what people want to do. And at least we're split vote on that's what it would be. I don't think there's some scheme going on here to try and slip this back in or something. In effect, the split vote means that those that hope we would go after the 17 million and move ahead and everything else have been defeated in this motion for lack of an honest tie vote. And I think that would make a lot more sense to truly be done with this and not leave it hanging in limbo whether we, again, as Andy pointed out, people didn't object to this. The study that was done here, the business plan, the objection was that we don't want to have more staff time, do work on it, have the train just inevitably move forward. So I think it just makes sense in a clean way to close this up. So please vote no on this substitute motion. Go back to the main motion, which accomplishes what the opponents of the initial motion that tied mode on stuff that's going after. Thank you, Commissioner Rackett. I'm gonna go ahead and just call the question on this substitute motion. Can we have a roll call, please? Commissioner Bertrand. Aye. Commissioner Brown. Commissioner Brown. No. No. Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Johnson. Aye. Commissioner Montesino. Commissioner Montesino. No. Commissioner Caput. Hold on. Oh, there we go. No. Commissioner Alternate Schiffrin. No. Commissioner Alternate Mulherr. Yes. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner McPherson. Aye. Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Gonzales. No. Commissioner Rotkin. No. So it fails. I vote. Correct. I'll go back to the original motion on the table. All the question. Roll call, please. Commissioner Bertrand. No. No. Commissioner Montesino. Commissioner Montesino. Yes. Commissioner Brown. Aye. Commissioner Johnson. No. Commissioner Caput. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Schiffrin. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Mulherr. No. Commissioner Koenig. No. Commissioner McPherson. No. Commissioner Peterson. No. Commissioner Gonzales. Yes. Commissioner Rotkin. Aye. Let's go back again. Mr. Chair. Yes, commissioner. Thank you very much. My comments were based on the concept that I'd like some time to think about things. And, you know, with the impact of our vote, I think waiting to the next meeting is a reasonable way to go. It's the only choice we have at this point. Yeah, I totally agree, Mike. And, you know, and I think you and I are in agreement on this. We want to have enough time to think about the implications of this vote. I think it's imperative that we do that. And for me, it's a mature thing, at least for me. I mean, I know I need time to think about things. I thought about these, this whole meeting for the last two weeks. I mean, it's just been impossible, all the calls and stuff. I think every single one of us has been in this position. All of us are very engaged in this particular committee and the people that have talked to us and sent emails. So my motion is to bring this back with the amendments, et cetera, that we're trying to consider to the next meeting and have a staff report. I want to understand the implications, whether it's going to be paying off our 100,000, whether it's going to be allowing staff to do something more or not allowing staff to do something more. I want to see clearly what that is. And that's my motion. So your motion is to bring the entire recommendations? No, not the entire recommendation. We need to figure out what to do. Some people want to just carve out part and not carve out part. And I don't quite understand. I think what I'm understanding is the only way we can do that is to bring back the whole recommendations for our next meeting. Practical observation. When you've got a split vote, the only thing you can do is bring it back to the next meeting and bring the whole ball of wax back to the next meeting because nothing passed here. That's what tie votes do. Look at our bylaws. When you have a tie vote and Robert Schultz of order and the rules that we use, which I forget the name of now, Rosenberg's rules of order. When you have a tie vote, it comes back to the next meeting for further discussion. You have a tie vote. You can't do anything. Nothing else can happen. Yeah. I don't know. I disagree. I mean, I indicated I could go along with the initial motion by Andy, but yeah, obviously it's the message of the image that was gonna be coming out of this. If we went ahead with it, I think we can wait till next month. Let's just do it. And if we go through another four hour debate, that's our problem. I think we can do this very simply next month. I think that's the way we should go. So I don't think it takes, I don't believe it takes the motion to do that. If we do nothing, what I'm saying is it'll come back at our next meeting because we didn't finish it. That's what we do. I think as a chairman to learn something here, I think we should direct staff to bring this back onto the agenda for our next meeting. Thank you. And a clear report about, excuse me, Mr. Chair, if I may suggest a clear report about if we take out certain sections of what the motion was, as you suggested, God-Parrison, in terms of the time scale, you know, a variety of options that we could consider when we eventually make a motion. Yeah, well, right now the direction is to have staff come back to this on the agenda for next month. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The whole thing though, the whole thing will be back. Well, really, you can do that by consensus without calling for a roll call vote on this. Yeah, all right. I don't see everybody. I guess you see any of it does. Can we raise our hands? Bring it back. I just a quick question, Araleo. What was the vote on the last motion we had? Six on everything. Six on everything. Six on everything. Just so it failed, okay. Yeah, everything failed. Six. Mr. Chairman, if I may, just so that the staff is clear with what they are bringing back, I don't think that just a hand raise is sufficient to bring the entire item back because you really are talking about two different things. You either bring the entire item back or potentially you could bring back the implications of Commissioner Schifrin's motion. No, I think we're a bit to guy, but I think we need to be clear about what you're asking staff to do. I think at this point, we need to bring the whole thing back. That allow also public to further comment and allow also commissioners to further investigate and get questions answered that they may need to be answered. So I'd like to direct staff to bring the whole agenda item back on our next commissioners meeting. I can't support that. I mean, we've already, like you say, spent four or four and a half hours discussing this. Wait a minute, wait a minute. You were the person that said you wanted to bring it back. This was initially just an adjunct. That's the whole thing. No, well, let's vote on that then because I don't think the commission supports that. I think it's the only fair thing for the public. The public has spoken. And so we on the whole thing, right? We're talking about what Andy Schifrin discussed and what Mike Rockins seconded and what I think Jacques Bertrand wants a staff report for the full implication. So to come back with something we just decided with a, we haven't decided anything. Everything's failed, but nothing's been decided. And I think it's fair for the public to have the opportunity again to speak. Let's vote on it. Because a commission have not been able to make a decision on that. Okay. Let me make a motion that we continue this item to the next meeting and direct staff to come back. And direct staff to come back with a response to the questions raised by the commissioners related to the business plan. Commissioner alternate. Can you repeat that? Cause you were stepped on over. I'm sorry that we continue this item to the next meeting and direct staff to return with the answers to responses to the questions that were raised. By commissioners regarding the, the business plan. Second. We have a motion in the second. I'm going to call. Commissioner Bertrand. Commissioner Bertrand. Commissioner Brown. Hi. Commissioner Johnson. No. Commissioner Montesino. Aye. Commissioner Caput. Aye. Commissioner Johnson. No. Commissioner Montesino. Aye. Commissioner Caput. Aye. Commissioner Grasen. Aye. Commissioner DeNugget. Aye. Principals. Aye. Commissioner McPherson. Aye. Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Gonzales. Aye. Commissioner Ripken. Aye. Thank you to commissioners we're not done with our meeting we have other items we get through this number of the vote please we will we will move on there and our next item on the on the agenda. I think the vote was 10 to one was it or 11 to one I've. Commissioner Tapper to ask for the vote. That is correct what you said commissioner Schifrin. What was it. 11 to 11 to one. We're going to go ahead and move on to item 22 fiscal year 2021 22 proposed budget. Staff report. Good afternoon commissioners I'm tracing your finance and budget for the RTC presented to the commission today is the fiscal year 2021 22 budget reflecting updated projections for transportation development act and measure D revenues. For the act, the county auditor provides the RTC with TDA revenue projections. In addition to the county projections hinder lighters along as provides the RTC with regional market information sales tax trends and revenue projections. The economic outlook is positive with the assumption there will be no further setbacks caused by subsequent outbreak surges marketplace for facilitator activity for online sales transactions continues to smooth the impact of the pandemic on the hardest hit business categories, which are restaurants and hotels and fuel and service stations. Other categories have failed better than expected with statewide tax dollars expected to return to fiscal year 2018 19 levels by the end of this fiscal year. However, this does not mean that all business sectors have returned to their private levels taxes from online sales resulting from the implementation of AB 147 and enhanced by the pandemic are part of that mix and make up some of the benefits from other business segments. The proposed fiscal year 21 22 budget is balanced and includes the funding to meet funding reserves and the RTC state and federally mandated responsibilities as well as continue the RTC priority transportation projects and programs. The RTC and administration personnel committee and staff recommend that the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission adopt the attached resolution, approving the proposed fiscal year 21 22 RTC budget as shown on exhibit a of attachment one, except the measure D revenue forecast for fiscal years 2021 and 21 22 provided by Kendra Lager DeLomas just attachment three, except the 30 year revenue projection which incorporates the HDL forecast for fiscal year 2021 and 21 22. I'm happy to take any questions. I did cut my staff report short because I know that we've been having very long meeting so please, if you have any questions, let me thank you. We'll take questions. Commissioner Watkin. Do I understand correctly this is basically a revenue projections for our budget it's not the complete budget which will eventually be passed later in the year do I have that correctly. Okay, well, straight me out. The fiscal year 21 22 budget that we adopt we adopted in its entirety but its main purpose is to provide the TDA allocations and revisions for the local jurisdictions to prepare their fiscal year budgets which come generally in June. I read through this carefully I don't see much on expenditures. Any other commissioners I'd like to ask a question. Or no hands up. No, no commissioners to have a motion to accept. I'd move the staff recommendation. Second. Second. Second. Second. Commissioner Rock and second it. We need to offer the public an opportunity to comment on this. Yeah, thank you. I do not see any hands up from the public. Oh, there goes one hand. Second here. Let me. We've exhausted the public. No, we have one hand. Give me one second. Mr. Barry Scott. That's right. Some of us are inexhaustible. Thank you. On this matter, I want to point out again that measure D includes funding for study as well as renovation of our rail line infrastructure and I'm, I'm grateful for all the work that has been done to wash out repaired new signals and crossings and Naptas village, et cetera, and a lot of other work. And I encourage you to follow that 30 year measure D plan and continue to keep our valuable rail line in working condition. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. I do not see any other hands up. Can we call the question. Commissioner Bertrand. Hi. Mr. Montesima. Hi. Commissioner Brown. Commissioner Johnson. Hi. Commissioner Caput. Hi. Commission alternate shifrin. Hi. Commission alternate Mulher. Hi. Commissioner Koenig. Hi. Commissioner McPherson. Hi. Commissioner Peterson. Hi. Commissioner Gonzalez. Hi. And Commissioner Rockin. Hi. Passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you commissioners. We're going to move on to item 23 review of items to discuss in closed session. Mr. Chairman, there's one item today regarding real property negotiations regarding the branch line. Given the lateness of the hour, if the commission would prefer we could add that to your next agenda. As the closed session, I think it's going to be the amount, the same amount of time for the next meeting. I don't think it's going to be any shorter. So how do you feel, how are you commissioners feel? You want to proceed on up to you. I think, I think next week, next month's going to be shorter. I mean, we're going to have to make it clear that we're voting on the. The business. But. I think we have delay until next month. Okay. So we move that we continue this item to the next, the closed section session item to our next meeting. Okay. I have a clarification purposes. We could take this up and have a TPW this month. I hope we want to get to it sooner. We may, this may be the only item on that TPW. Is there any reason why we should. We should include it on TPW. Why we should have a special meeting just on this item. It would be helpful to get guidance from the commission. It just doesn't have to happen today. It could happen in two weeks. I think guys raising, we could do it at TPW or at your next meeting. So if you're concerned that the next meeting may go long, you may want to consider putting it on the TPW agenda. I prefer to put it on next, the next meeting agenda. Okay. And then that's regular meeting myself, but. I guess I'll look for consensus on this. I'd rather not have an extra meeting to go to, you know, I'm not planning to go to the TPW meeting. So. Then just have it on the next agenda item. Next month. Thank you. Does anybody start starting with say, Jack, if not, that's what we should do. Okay. The closed session item on the next month's agenda item. Seeing none. Okay, I was growing my motion since it looks like it's happening by consensus. Yeah. Thank you. With that. And our. Good job of charity. Thank you. Thank you, Jerry. Good job. Thank you. I'm going to start with the next meeting. Our next meeting. RTC next meeting is getting this from a sixth. At 9 a.m. That'd be teleconference. And I hope to be certainly be done with teleconferencing. I'm not a zoom person. So. Let me also thank, let me also thank all of my colleagues here for the tone of our meeting, even though we strongly disagree that these issues. I think people will respect each other and I don't take that for granted these days in America. Yeah, my respect to everybody. We all have. This is how we get things done in this country. All right. Thank you guys.