 Good morning. Welcome to the April 24th 2020 Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District meeting. First of all I want to let you know the meeting is being recorded and I want to begin by having having our board secretary Gina Pye please call the roll. Gina we can't hear you. Not very well. Okay. Now we can Director Bautorf? I have to unmute them individually so. Oh we can unmute ourselves. Okay. Raise your hand. Yeah. If you can unmute individually that would be best. We'll get to have this. Okay. Director Bautorf I saw him earlier. He can't unmute himself if the master muted. Yes he can. I just did it. I'm really okay. Okay. Well I see Director Bautorf is there. Director Bautorf? He's unmuted. Okay. I'm unmuted and I'm here. Thank you. Director Kaufman-Gamesh. Present. Director Gonzalez. Present. Director Leopold. Here. Director Linde. Director Matthews. Here. Director McPherson. Here. Director Myers. Here. Thank you. Director Pegler. I'm here. Director Ralfwell. Here. Director Rotkin. Here. Expecio Director Henderson. Here. Expecio Director Northcutt. We have quorum. Director Lin and Expecio Director Northcutt are absent. Thank you for that. We're now going to confirm the staff that are online and if the staff could respond with that they're here as well that would be good. Alec Clifford. Julie Sherman. We're going to have Alex the you can tell us the rest of the folks were expecting on the call. John Ergo is here. Is that John Ergo? And Gina Pines. Great. I haven't seen Sarah. Okay before I'm going to read something here. Before we move on to the first order of business I want to thank everyone for being flexible about joining this meeting by phone or computer this morning. I'm trying a new way of conducting our business and appreciating your patience as we move from item to item. Let me stumble around a bit here but we'll get to it. Since their item I'll be asking board members if they have any comments or questions and if there are questions we'll call on each individual board member. After the discussion portion we'll ask for if there are any public comments before taking a we're going to vote by taking roll call votes by the way not simply taking eyes and nays because we have no other way to know how we're doing. If you're not speaking please mute your phone and we may do that for you. We'll see how that's going to work. And we're going to move on now to agenda item number three which is we're going to recess our general meeting to a committee that's made up of some of the members of our board. This is a body that exists in case we ever need to float a bond or do some kind of financial action that the board is not allowed legally to do directly but we have a group that basically acts on our behalf that's made up of a rotating group of board members and so we're going to turn this meeting we're going to recess our general meeting and turn this over to the Santa Cruz Civic Improvement Corporation meeting and Ed Bodorff is going to run that meeting. And Mr. Chair just for the record I would point out if you're going to join. Thank you. Thank you. Great thank you. I'm going to go ahead and call to order to the Santa Cruz Improvement Corporation meeting and can we begin with a roll call please. Director Bodorff. Here. Dr. Leopold. Dr. McPherson. Here. Dr. Gonzalez. Here. Dr. Kaufman-Gomez. We have form. Thank you. First order of business is a consideration of an appointing director Kaufman-Gomez to serve as the SCCIC board officer. Is there a motion to take that action? I move approval. This is John Leopold. I'll second it. Second. Thank you. Thank you. Can we have a roll call vote on that item? Roll call vote. Director Bodorff. Aye. Director Leopold. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Kaufman-Gomez. Yes. And Director Gonzalez. Aye. Motion is passed. Thank you. At this time would we have any oral or written communications to the board? No. We have none. Thank you. Are there any additions and deletions to the agenda? No. No. Okay. At this time I'd like to go to item approve of the prior year minutes. Is there a motion to approve the prior year minutes? I move approval of the prior year minutes. John Leopold. Second. Thank you. Do I have a second? I'll second. I believe that's Kaufman-Gomez with a second. So we have a motion and a second. Can I have a roll call vote on that item? Yes. Director Bodorff. Aye. Director Leopold. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Kaufman-Gomez. Yes. Director Gonzalez. Aye. Motion is passed unanimously. Thank you. Our next item is the acceptance of financial statements for fiscal year 2019. And do I have a presentation from Angela on this? No, sir. Just the statement that's in the... We just have the statements. So at this point I'll entertain the motion to entertain the financial statements. I'll also move. That motion is to accept it. Also a motion to accept the financial statements of 2019. Also move. Second. McPherson second. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Is there any comment from the public on this item? Seeing none we'll move on to a roll call vote. Can we please have a roll call vote? Director Bodorff. Aye. Director Leopold. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Kaufman-Gomez. Yes. Director Gonzalez. Aye. May I just confirm that the motion was Director Kaufman-Gomez and the second was Director McPherson. Correct. Correct. Thank you. Motion is passed. Thank you all for your patience and will adjourn this meeting and return back to the regular scheduled Board of Directors meeting. Thank you. Okay. Just a moment. All right. Next. Let me ask if this is an opportunity for... We're reconvening the meeting of the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District for April 24, 2020. We're now going to ask if there are any members of the public that would like to make general comments about transit issues that are not on this morning's agenda. Do we have a way of knowing who is online from the public? We've got 41 participants. Can you see... Gina. Let me see if I've got anybody here. But there are no hands raised. No comments. No chats. Okay. Thank you. Then we'll close oral communication. We'll ask if any of the labor organizations have comments for this morning that are on items not on our agenda. One question from James Sandoval. James, please speak up. He's muted. There it goes. Unmuted. James, you're free to go. All right. Can you guys hear me? Yes. All right. Sorry. It's all in the end of me. So good to see all of you guys. This is rather interesting. So first I want to start off by saying our drivers... I just want to give recognition to our drivers with the challenges that they're facing right now. Risking their lives and their family lives by coming to work. They're dedicated to their job. They're dedicated to this community. And I hope them showing up to work every day speaks to their level of commitment. I also want to give recognition to Alex, Ciro, Anna, the rest of Metro's Management Team. They have stepped up. I know you all received an email from me early on. And I do want to clear that up. Things I've gotten a lot better since. The communications there, the dialogues there, we're working together. Our drivers feel safe. I mean, as safe as they can feel. We got a lot of things like the driver area partitions, masks, gloves, you name it. And everyone appreciates it. And I just really hope we continue to work together because that's what it's going to take to get through this. I do also want to mention too that we had a former driver here that retired just four years ago that passed away from the coronavirus. We can't say if he got it while working, but he was driving up at UCSC when this happened. And it instilled a lot of fear with our drivers. Despite their fear, they're still continuing to come show up because they're committed to moving this public for the essential workers. I also want to speak to the new legislation with the CARES Act with the money. I know there's flexibility to use it. I'm just hoping that the intention of that is to help maintain staff. I know we're bleeding money as a transit agency and the future is really shaky for us. I just hope that the least we can do for these drivers or anyone here with staff that Metro is to try to maintain them as long as possible so we continue to get a paycheck to feed our families. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you very much, James. Anyone else from the labor organizations? No one else. Seeing that I passed over to this, but are there any board members that have general comments they'd like to make to us this morning or items not on our agenda? None. Okay. Do we have any written communications from the MAC this morning, the Metro Advisory Committee? No, sir. Okay. That brings us to our consent agenda. This is an item on which we put a number of items together and take a single action on all of them. These are generally considered to be items that are likely to be not controversial, but it's possible for board members to pull those items off the agenda and discuss them if there are questions or concerns that we would like to address. Members of the public will have an opportunity right now to let us know if there's any item on that consent agenda they would like the board to discuss further. So I'm going to wait just a moment here to see if we have anyone from the public I'd like or the unions who would like to comment on consent agenda items. I don't see any hands. I don't see any as well. Thank you very much. So now we are back to the consent agenda. Let me ask board members if there are any I would like to pull from the consent agenda for further discussion. I don't see any. All right. I've walked a motion to approve the consent agenda. Move approval. Is that Donald Lynn? Yes. John Leopold seconds. Cynthia I have a quick question on I think it's 10-4. Speak a little louder Cynthia. Okay. I have a question on 10-4 which is the revised capital budget and it does mention earlier that the parent cruise grant is not going through. So the question is how does that affect our capital budget and then obviously the capital budget in the past from the original one increased by about well over 10 million dollars. So and we're in such a new world. I guess that's the point. Subject of major revision. Do we simply acknowledge that here? Yeah. So two questions there. I'll go after the first one which is the parent cruise. You might recall that we were not able to get a basically a shovel ready package in time for the current year's cycle of a bus and bus facility grant. Yeah. So we're working we're still expending dollars over the next year preparing for a shovel ready project that we'll submit for the bus and bus facilities grant next year. So still on our list still hopeful to happen but that's where we're at with that one and then I'll let Angela answer the question. I'm not familiar with where you're referring to about. Well just from the we've had several revisions of the capital budget and it went from 20,000 to 30 million to 33 million. Right. So it's a combination of we receive more grants than we had back in June and then we've also added our local match to those grants. If you look at the detail portion 10401 if you go to 10401 you'll see where we show you the type of money we've added and which capital project that that money went to. And we've done that on a consistent basis because obviously back in June we didn't know exactly what we're going to be doing and what kind of money is coming in and we never put forward anything that we don't have the money in the bank. So those adjustments we've gotten around $10 million between the grants and the local match that we've had to put forward. Yes you are correct. We are looking at the projects that we're going to be going forward with because it is grant money versus operating money and the ones that we could delay to future depending on what's going on. Yeah. And then this is for Alex to back on the paracruz. My recollection is that we had to ultimate them on the lease. Is that being extended or is the urgency factor still there? It's still there. It expires next year. Our assumption is that he may not renew or obviously we still would like to control our own destiny but no matter what it would take an extension in order to stay there. What we don't know is what the impact of the current COVID crisis and the economic recovery will be on all of that as as closer to the expert. Exactly. Thank you. Anything else on the consent agenda in terms of comments before we take our vote? Okay nothing got pulled. We had some comments and questions. Now we'd like we have a motion to approve I believe. Am I right? Motion to approve the consent agenda. I think you have a motion Lynn second Leopold on the table. It's already there Bruce. I think we have a motion. Oh excuse me. Can we now take a roll call vote on that motion to approve the consent agenda? Gina it's very hard to hear you. She's going to turn her mic on. Her mic's not on. Hi. Gina we can't hear you. Your mic's not on. Director Bautouf. Now we hear you. Thank you. Hi. Thank you Ed for the third time. Director Kaufman Gomez. Trina your mic's not on either. Yes Alex or somebody clear all the mics for the roll call. Just clear them all. Director Gonzalez. I. Director Leopold. I. Director Lynn. Director Matthews. That me. Matthews. Yes. Director McPherson. I. Dr. Myers. I. Dr. Pigler. I. Dr. Rothwell. I. Dr. Rodkin. I. Motion passes unanimous. Thank you very much. Our next item. I'm sure I got this right. I believe we are on item number 11 now am I correct? Correct. This is the presentation of Employee Longevity Awards. I'm for some fortune under these conditions we're not going to have someone present in the room to receive our gratitude for their long time service to this district. I'm going to read something. And can I have Ryan's full name? I don't have that in front of me. Ryan McDonald. Thank you. Ryan was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California. He holds a special place in his heart for the natural beauty and wonder of Santa Cruz. With 15 years invested in the parts department for Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District, Ryan believes in the local community and wants to see it thrive. He works hard to ensure that local citizens have affordable and dependable publication. As a teenager and young adult, Ryan himself utilized the public transportation system in Santa Cruz and saw it as a wonderful asset to gain independence. He's enjoyed offering this service to new generations and to provide safe and dependable rides to all. Starting out as a parts materials clerk, Ryan put in over a decade of service to become the lead. Over the years, he took managerial classes for supervisors and metro sponsored career ladder trainings to further his position. In early January of this year, Ryan took on the interim supervisory role of the parts department and is currently enjoying this new challenge. Let me ask if there are any director comments at this point. Are there any public comments at this point? Thank you. I want to thank Ryan. Here's the service and obviously this district is the people that work here and do the actual service for the public and we appreciate Ryan's long-term contribution to this district and to this community. We're now on item number 12, which is the introduction to graduating class and CEO Clifford will introduce Anna Marie Govea who will introduce the class. Okay. And with that Anna Marie, are you on the line? Should we see pictures of our new class of operators, legal service workers and mechanics? Okay. Okay, we're missing management or having a hard time getting online, but you have before you or you had before you the pictures of our graduating class of bus operators. I believe we have one VSW in there, which is a person who services our buses and then also a mechanic in that group. So we would welcome them to board and I know they would have liked the opportunity to be here in person as they normally would be. Are there any comments from board members about the new class? Any comments from the public about the new class of employees? Seeing none, next we're going to have the introduction of John Derigo Metro's new planning development director and I Alex Clifford will make this presentation. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair, directors. I'll just read a brief file about John and then ask John if he would like to make a couple. But I'd like you to join me in welcoming John as our new planning and development director. He replaces Barrow Emerson, who are some tough shoes to fill as you all know. Over the past two years, John has taken on progressively responsible roles as a transportation planner and project manager at multiple levels of government in the San Francisco Bay area. Immediately prior to joining Metro, John spent seven years with AC Transit where he helped lead planning and outreach for the agency's Measure BB service expansion plan and served as a project manager on key initiatives including Dunbarton Express Board of Improvements, the publication of design guidelines for managing bus and bike roadway interactions, and the development of a mobile fare payment pilot. John is also known for launching AC Transit Flex service in 2016, one of the first agency-operated microtransit projects in the country. John has master degrees in city planning and transportation engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, a BA in environmental analysis from Pomona College. Prior to his transportation career, John worked as a community organizer on environmental campaigns in Philadelphia, Nebraska, and Utah. Originally from New York, John has been visiting his aunt, uncle, and cousins in Santa Cruz for 35 years and is excited to return with his wife, Mariana, and six-month-old son, Luca. With that, I'd like to ask John if he'd like to say a couple of words, Mr. Chair, with your permission, of course. Yes, please go ahead, John. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for that introduction. Good morning, board chair, members, staff, and public. I'm excited to be here. These certainly weren't the circumstances under which I expected to arrive at Santa Cruz Metro, but I knew from my background research that this organization is very well managed, and I learned quickly upon my arrival that even though Barrow left a very big role to fill, my team here is exceptional and have been firing on all cylinders. When I joined AC Transit, the organization was still reeling from the effects of the Great Recession, and in two or three years, we had worked to pass a countywide measure that funded the first service expansion in over a decade, and I learned that whether in upswings or downturns, this job is always about making the most of very limited resources in order to provide the best possible service to our customers and to the community at large. There's opportunity in every crisis to paraphrase Winston Churchill adage, and I really look forward to working with all of you to do everything I can to help Metro weather this current storm and come out stronger on the other end, so thank you, and I'm excited to be here. Thank you, John. On behalf of the board, welcome to the district, and we're looking forward to working with you closely. Hopefully, at some point, maybe actually a person. Are there any comments from board members about this decision hiring decision? Yes, please, Cynthia. No, just welcome. Just again, so eager to meet in person. Anything else from the board? Any member of the public have a comment about this item? I don't see any hands. Moving on. Welcome again. Chair Rotkin. Yes. Ex officio director Northcat has joined the meeting. Welcome. Glad to see you. Actually, I see your name. I guess you're here by phone. There she is. We're moving to item 14. This is the CEO's report. Alex, you're on. Sure, Mr. Chair. Thank you, directors. Just briefly on the new employees part, we have, we've had a temp here for a while helping us out, and he came up against his maximum hours as a temp. So we've, during this crisis period, we need a little bit of extra assistance in our IT department, and he's learned so much while he's been here as a temp. So Mariano Bernal has been brought on board as a provisional employee. He will be with us anywhere from six months to a maximum of two years in that role. Well, first of all, Rivera Vasquez facilities maintenance manager, maintenance worker, too. Motion and Juan Serrano is the motion to paratransit supervisor. And then, of course, you just met John. Continuing on under the CEO report, I'm happy in some respects to report that two of the three free fair legislations moved to next year. So they haven't gone away permanently, but they're still out there, but moved to next year's. The one which is the college free college pass, AB 2176 Holden has not moved to next year, and he's still trying to move forward. We still have a lot of concerns with that, even though he has made some concessions in the language, but at the end of the day, the way it is written, in which it sort of includes those who have existing programs, it doesn't protect us enough because right after the legislation were to be adopted, if it were adopted, you could have both the community college and UCSD students put forward to remove their programs. So they think it's for the advantage of a free program. So it's still not written well to alleviate the concerns that we have with the continued. I'm not sure if it'll continue too far into the process because the chair of the assembly and the Senate are trying to narrow the kinds of things that they'll deal with this year, probably predominantly, if not entirely COVID related, and that one is not. Also, given the uncertainty of the future right now, we've taken a page out of our 2014-2015 timeframe, which we had the fiscal crisis, the fiscal cliff, the re-initiated weekly leadership meetings to begin the process of trying to sort out what this impending fiscal crisis looks like and to try to get a jump on it so that you're not faced with what you were faced with back in 2014 and 15. As was mentioned earlier, the CARES Act does appear to provide this agency about $20 million in 5307 and 5311, but we should not think of that as a panacea. We should think of it at best case as a bridge, and the length of that bridge we don't know at this time due to a number of factors. It's too early to determine what we must do in order to ultimately keep our expenses in line with our revenues. What we call our economy-based revenues, which are typically sales tax dollar-based and also state revenues, which are TDA, which are sales tax and fuel tax, we won't know. They lag at least two months, and we may not have a clear understanding of what's going on right now in the way of sales tax until August or September this year. Obviously, that makes it very difficult to try to put a mitigation plan in place with all of that uncertainty. Just as an example, if we lose 50% of our economy-based revenues, concentrating just on the TDA and the sales tax, that would be about a $20 million a year loss right there alone. We don't know when fares will return to normal. That is the collection of fares. We hope that that will happen as soon as we get past the shelter in place and the social distancing, but we don't know when that will end. Then we also don't know when UCSC and Cabrillo will return to in-person classes and what that will look like for the level of service that they're willing to purchase. This week, we also found out that the city is wanting to renegotiate the contract that they have with us that doesn't expire for a considerable amount of time on the EcoPass. That could have a revenue impact on us also. Bottom line, if you take a page out of Angela's previous slide that she's shown you before of a brick foundation, we're standing on a brick foundation, but day by day, those bricks are being ripped out from underneath us and it's becoming more and more unstable. All of that, again, to emphasize one more time, makes it that much more difficult to try to figure out the path forward. We're trying to navigate that as best as possible and hopeful that the management team will be able to help guide us through this. Mr. Chair, that concludes my CEO updates. Thank you very much, Alex. Are there any comments from board members? Seeing none, are there any comments from members of the public? Okay, then we'll then move on to item number 15. This is a discussion of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and there are several action items that we need to take in response to this and I'll ask Alex Clifford to please introduce this. So, Mr. Chair, Director's item 15 is divided into three reports and we'll start off with the first one, which is fifth ding A. Angela Akin, our CFO will present that item and then I'll come back to present fifth ding B and C. Good morning. Good morning. So, usually when we do a declaration of fiscal emergency, we kind of have to- It's hard to hear you. You have to be closer to the mic. It's hard to hear you. All right. Is that good? That's perfect. Thank you. But usually when we do fiscal emergency, we usually have some numbers that go with it. This time, as Alex was alluding to, our numbers are changing daily. To do the fiscal emergency, we have to declare it through the board and this time we're declaring it because of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Mass transit is considered an essential service and so we've continued to provide the public with the best service that we can at the time with our available resources. But we have, as we've all been talking about, substantially reduced the service that we have provided in the past. So, normally when we do a reduction in service, we have to have a CEQA environmental impact study done. But because of the statutory exemptions, we do not have to do that this time because we are declaring a fiscal emergency. Just want to read this here, fiscal emergency when applied to public-owned transit agency means that the agency is projected to have negative working capital within one year from the date the agency makes the finding. And that's exactly what we've done. All the numbers that my staff have crunched and accumulated has come up with a major negative within a year on our capital income or our income at all. As Alex kind of alluded to, if you do a quick number of our information today, just to throw out some numbers as of right this minute, we have about $40 million that comes in every year from passenger revenues. That's from Highway 17, as well as local fares. And in eight months of normal revenue, we were doing fine. But if we lose that, because now we're doing three fares for the last four months, that's a million three just in those four months. Then you go to the sales tax piece. The sales tax piece is 68% of our revenue. That's about $39 million. Again, the first six months were okay, but we already saw sales tax. Sales tax were January. The receipts for sales tax in January were down by $200,000 before this all started. We just got February's numbers yesterday, and it was down $400,000 again before all of this happened. And that's a 20 odd percent reduction in our sales tax related revenues already. So if that continues, the $20 million from the CARES Act, that'll be gone in less than 10 months. So just want to kind of put all that in perspective that we're going to do our best to keep everything going to the that we can, but we're losing, we're bleeding revenue quite fast. So that's why we need to go back and do this fiscal emergency. So I'm asking the board to make that finding and move forward. Thank you, Angela. This is a public hearing, and this is an opportunity for members of the public to comment on our intention to pass a approval, a declaration of fiscal emergency. Are there any comments from the public? Gina says, see none. See none. The public hearing is now closed, and we have a staff recommendation. You want to present this to us in any more detail than you already have. That's about the only detail I have right now. I'm sure it'll be tomorrow. I just wanted to make sure you had a chance to fully explain whatever you want to. So the public hearing is adjourned, and we are now going to take action on this item. We'll take them, each of these three items individually as well. So I have a roll. Let me get a motion first. To approve fiscal emergency. Dan Rothwell moves that. Oh, second. All right. He didn't catch that. Who was that? Second. Donna? Donna Meyers. Thank you. Motion to second. Do we have a roll call, please? Yes. I have a motion from Rothwell, a second from Meyers. Roll call. Director Botthorpe? All right. Director Kaufman-Gomez? Yes. Director Gonzales? Aye. Dr. Leopold? Aye. Dr. Lind? Aye. Director Matthews? Aye. Director McPherson? You get me? Yes. Yes. Director Meyers? Aye. Director Pegler? Aye. Dr. Rothwell? Aye. Dr. Rothwell? Aye. See unanimous. So we got passed, but Bonnie Moore had a question which I'd be happy to have us try and respond to. Question was, how will this situation we're in now affect our labor agreements? I guess that's a question to Alex to start. I think the answer is there's nothing that we can say about that at this point. We have a table agreement in place and they will continue to be in place. I can't hear you. So the answer was we don't, at this point there's no intention to do anything other than follow the labor agreements that we have. If at some point that became infeasible or not possible or something, we would obviously have to discuss that in public and have full discussion, but there are no current plans to do anything to alter any of the existing labor agreements. Chair, I just wanted to make a comment. Yes, John. It's always difficult to take these kind of votes and recognition of the difficult financial situation that we're in. As someone who's been on the board for a while and having gone through a couple of near-death experiences with Metro, I know that what works best is us all working together, working with our employees and working with the public to protect our critical services and figure out ways that we can save some money. So we look for the long-term viability of the agency. And I'm confident with the leadership we have both in our management and in our respective unions that we can pull together with this board to come up with a plan to get us through these difficult times that we, that none of us have great experience on. But I'm confident given what we've already been through that we can do this again. Thanks, John. And for those who didn't see it, Bonnie Moore responded thanking the board for our work here. And thank John specifically for his comments, I think. We are now moving on to item number 15B. This is a request for board ratification of actions taken to address the COVID-19 crisis. And I'll turn that back over to Alex again to start. Thank you, Mr. Chair, directors. And Mr. Chair, with your permission, I'm going to go into a great amount of detail. That might be a little bit of a lengthy report, but I think it probably is no more important issue than what we've been faced with during this COVID crisis. That'd be okay. I'll cover a considerable amount of detail. If there's any way to be a little closer to the mic, Alex, who would help. I'm not liking our new microphone. We might go back to the other microphone. It worked better. Okay, so I will go through 15B and attachments. As you can see from that report, and as you are all aware, in mid-March, we had our first shelter in place order, which came from the county. It was through March 31st initially and then extended through May 3rd. And then the governor, Governor Newsom, was not too far behind with his shelter in place, which came in March 19th of 2020. His was until further notice. As you know from the orders, transit is identified as essential infrastructure. And so we are obligated to do the best we can do to try to maintain some level of service for the public so that they can gain their essential travel to get to places like the grocery store, concrete, etc. And those that work with the infrastructure need to get to people. You also know that the governor Q orders that gave you relief from the Brown Act and allowed meetings like this to take place without the public actually physically in the room. And but they are able to participate through this process that you have today. And that we are really thankful for. But as you know, leading up to last month's meeting, we were still trying to learn as much as we could about what all of that meant. And so we ultimately in conference with the chair decided to cancel last month's meeting. Now all of that meant that a lot of things had to take place to react to this pandemic crisis. And if we were going to try to go to the board for all of the items that we normally would, we might have been having board meetings nearly every day, which I think is pretty impossible. So in an effort to protect metro employees, the writing public and metro assets, I engaged in a number of actions that otherwise would have brought to you in a normal non COVID environment or approval. And those actions are listed in 15v3, but I'm not going to cover those right with this particular report. I'm going to go to the attachment and cover them within the context of the chronology of events because I think it's important for you to know what the employees and the management team of this organization have been engaged in going all the way back to January or actually February of this year. So now I'm on to your attachment 15b. And as you know, we don't need the slides. There they go. Those slides will come after this part of the report. So on January 2020, the first case of COVID in the United States was confirmed in the state of Washington. On February 3rd, the Metro Safety and Risk Department was tasked with researching corona disinfectants that have been nightly disinfecting our buses and sort of taking a page out of way back in 2005 when we had the avian flu. At that time I was at LAMTA and we used disinfectant nightly in order to treat our buses. So we brought that same philosophy here. On February 26th, we did identify that product that we needed to purchase. The safety and risk department started working with maintenance and the operations to develop a procedure to disinfect buses and to identify appropriate personal protection equipment or what you hear commonly today as PPE. On March 2nd, we had completed that process. As you can imagine, introducing a new product takes a little time to figure out how to properly apply it, properly dilute it and protect our employees. So on March 2nd, we started disinfecting the inside of the paratransit vehicles. And then on March 3rd, we started disinfecting buses each night, particularly focusing on what we call high touch surfaces, stanchions, seat backs, hand straps, those kinds of things. Then on March 5th, that turned out to be a very big day for us. So there were a number of activities that happened there. We started ordering large quantities of hand sanitizers and disinfecting wipes. As you know from no doubt your agencies, sourcing these kinds of things have been very difficult to do. But Greg in our purchasing department has just been a trooper and extremely resourceful and able to get us product that we needed. We started working with Dominican Hospital. They approached us because they needed to set up triage tents in their parking lot. They were displacing a considerable amount of parking, employee parking, and they asked if they could use our SoCal parking ride lot, which is right next door, the one that we've had locked up for a considerable amount of time now while we work towards a new paratransit facility there. So by March 24th, we had completed negotiation. Thank you, Julie, for your help on that contract. We completed that, got that all signed off, and incidentally we're not charging them for the use of that. We just wanted to facilitate an agreement that made it clear that they have access to it, unlimited access. They have keys to it, and they can use it as needed until this COVID crisis is over. So that was a nice partnership that we started on March 5th. Continuing on with March 5th, we started developing our bus interior cards to educate our customers on COVID prevention. Our custodial staff started vigorously disinfecting metro facilities every night. We notified bus operators and paratransit drivers that they could wear face masks if they so chose, but the CDC at that time was not recommending it. So whenever an operator, paratransit driver said, I want to wear a face mask, we would say that's fine, but why don't you just read the CDC website first so that you're aware of what they're recommending. Continuing on, we started researching what are called disinfecting foggers. We learned from some other transit properties across the nation that that's the one way to disinfect buses at night and do so a little bit more efficiently and quicker. First COVID prevention CDC document was sent to all metro employees on that date, and then in anticipation of potential future reimbursement, we created Christina who's in the room here created an accounting code so that we could capture everything possible that was COVID related in case future funding was reliant on us being very specific about that. We also got contact from the Region 9 FTA administrator as surveying us about what we were doing to protect the public and our employees and we responded on that date to that. And then also on March 5th, we started to receive quantities of one ounce refillable bottles. This is an idea that Siro had to get the one ounce refillable hand sanitizer bottles and give them to all bus operators so they can use it throughout the day. And then when they come in or before they go out on their shift the next day, we would have larger containers at the dispatch window for them to refill those bottles so they've been able to have hand sanitizer on their person since March 5th. So that was a lot that occurred on March 5th. And of course at that time we didn't know that two days later on March 7th Santa Cruz would announce its first coronavirus case. Then just a day later on March 8th, we had an incident with a temp employee at Pacific Station that speculated that she might have been around somebody who might have been around somebody who might have been around somebody who had COVID. And so we had an abundance of caution, we called the management team in, invoked the emergency operations center that Sunday, talked about what we should do. We had already sent the employees home that worked there and we decided we would continue to keep them home through Monday while we made arrangements for a disinfecting company to come in and completely disinfect Pacific Station from head to toe. And then those employees went back to work on Tuesday as we had hoped they would be. March 9th, we initiated daily management COVID meetings. So coming out of that weekend activity, we then initiated daily management meetings, management meets every day. Initially it was in this room and then as things progress, we went to this exact same Zoom type format. And those meetings typically go up to about two hours every day running through department by department. What do we know? What do we learn? What new things have popped up? What other things can we do for our employees to help protect them? What are the employees asking for? So communicating all kinds of information and keeping, again, Greg really busy in ordering things for us to respond to COVID. On March 9th, we also posted to all safety bulletin boards company-wide. The county agency's interim guidance on social distancing and interim workplace guidance. On the 10th, UCSC announced that in-person classes will end effective March 11th. Then on March 11th, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Continuing on to the backside of that sheet on March 11th, bilingual COVID prevention card, car cards, those are the cards that you'll see along the sort of the ceiling inside of a bus, both sides. Those were installed on all buses, focusing at the transit centers, focusing on COVID prevention. Also on the 11th, I authorized additional temp employees to be hired in the way of VSWs, vehicle service workers, because the workload of keeping a bus clean in its normal non-COVID environment, plus trying to do a very vigorous disinfecting of those buses at night, required us to bring some additional personnel on. We have since augmented that with four more vehicle service workers that just this week, we launched at the four transit centers. And what their job is that each time a bus comes into the transit center, they jump on board with their bucket of disinfectant and rag and they quickly roll through the bus. So the bus each night gets disinfected, then it goes out there the next day for a little while. Then as it goes through the transit centers, it gets disinfected by these personnel at the transit centers. And then again, that night it'll get disinfected again. So we've been pretty darn thorough there. On the 12th, Governor Newsom issued executive order directing that large gatherings of 250 or more be canceled. And of course, we all know how that has evolved into now virtually nobody is in a room together, or if you are, you're at least six feet of social distancing. On the 12th, the public schools announced closure. At that time, it was going to be from March 16th through the 20th. And of course, we know they've extended that. And then on the 13th, we finally decided what disinfectant foggers, well, the disinfectant foggers that we did decide on did arrive. So now we start into a process of trying to deploy the disinfectant foggers, which similar to the deployment of the disinfectant, we needed for our safety and risk department to analyze how to properly fog buses at night. And most importantly, how to protect our VSWs with the right PPE. So on the 13th, hand sanitizer dispensers were installed at Pacific Station in Watsonville Transit Center for public use. At that time, we still had the Transit Center lobbies open. And we started sanitizing our non revenue vehicles. So we covered the revenue vehicles before this, but now it was time to move on to the non revenue vehicles. On the 15th, some non management employees started telecommuting from home five days a week. Also on the 15th, I authorized that any employee in the agency over the age of 65 or self identifies as at risk or having childcare problems could use their sick leave or their annual leave, however they would like to use it. If they just if they felt they needed to not come to work, they could use their leaves and we would not charge them with occurrences or progressive discipline or anything else. So we waved off on all of our normal processes for unscheduled absences and just said, Hey, if you're not comfortable in coming to work, you know, feel free to use your your leaves and just tell us, you know, what what what the issue here is. And so we did have some employees take advantage of that. On the March 16th, the county health agency issued a shelter in place order until midnight, April 7th, 2020. And then on March 16th, we initiated weekly conference calls with the SEIU and smart leadership. So each week, we all get on a on a conference called jointly, we don't do it separately. And again, receive feedback from the union directly on what things are working well, what things are not working well. On the 16th, managers were also provided the opportunity to do some telecommuting a few days a week. And then on the 17 remaining non management employees who could start telecommuting five days a week. On the 17th, in an effort to reduce the number of hours of potential exposure, paratransit drivers started on what we call an A, B and C rotation with the drivers working one day and then having two days off on district pay. So they didn't lose any money and they were all able to reduce the number of hours of potential exposure to the public. The next day on the 18th, we terminated our school term service. So we brought service down just a little bit. And then also on the 18th, the president signed the family's first coronavirus response act effective April 1 through December 31, 2020, which opened up opportunities for those employees qualifying under that criteria to be able to take up to 12 weeks off. In some cases, depending on which part of the criteria they qualified for, in some cases that would be fully paid. On the 19th, Governor Newsom issued his executive order directing residents to shelter in place until further notice. And then on the 23rd, all metro service changed to the weekend service levels seven days a week. This included social distancing to protect the bus operators and the closure of the two transit center lobbies until further notice. We also discontinued the collection of fares until further notice at that point. And that was March 23rd on the 26th. In an effort to reduce the number of hours of potential exposures, the bus operators started on their version of the group, which is the A and B group rotation with one group working two weeks and the other group on call at home for two weeks with district pay. So it significantly reduced their potential exposure. And that continues to this to this date. On the 27th, we put in place a modified Route 4 service because when we went to weekend only service since Route 4 didn't operate on the weekend, Route 4 terminated service completely. But we learned that in doing so, we were not servicing a critical infrastructure, which was the county Emeline complex. So we worked with the county, put back some service so that we could continue the essential needs of essential travel to that facility. On to the 27th, the president signed the CARES Act, which we talked about earlier will provide us around $20 million. And then on the 30th, Metro further notified customers of additional service changes that limited rides to one ride on the same bus in one direction. We were now because of the free fares and counting all kinds of problems with joy riders and they would just choose to ride the bus all day. So we needed to say, you know, you get to the end of the line, you cannot reboard that bus. You can stay there and wait for the next bus, but you can't reboard that bus. And we also started to make our initial attempts to identify essential travel. On the 31st of March, the county agency issued an extension of the shelter in place order through May 3rd. And then in April, April 2nd, in an effort to further protect all employees, we issued a letter to all employees concerning essential travel and self-quarantine requirements that if they're traveling on a plane or a train, if they're traveling outside their county of residence other than to come to work, prior to doing so, they need to have a conversation with the human resources department because the nature of that travel may cause us to have them self-quarantine for up to 14 days before we let them come back to work. A rather stringent policy that I put in place, but 100% to protect our own employees if we can only protect our employees the eight hours or so that they're here at work, but there's a lot of other hours they're not here at work that they're responsible for protecting themselves from COVID. And if they're traveling on planes and going somewhere across the United States or even out of country, we want to know, we want to assess it. And if we think that they should self-quarantine to protect fellow employees, then we will so implement that. And employees, since that date, have been very good about contacting the HR department. April 6th, we started installing at all Metro facilities banners, which you'll see in a few moments saying all Santa Cruz Metro dedicated employees are frontline heroes delivering essential services. Sort of going to the point that James Sandoval mentioned earlier about the importance of our employees coming to work in the face of a COVID pandemic. April 9th, Metro implemented additional service changes to Highway 17 service operating a further reduced schedule. At that point, we were basically carrying 12 people a day over the hill and back, and that just did not warrant the level of service that we had. We also put bus capacity limits on the buses, which limited it to five to 12 passengers per bus, depending on the size of the bus that we're operating. And at that point, we were strongly recommending that customers wear their face masks. That's April 9th. April 10th, we received UCSC notification that in-person classes are suspended through the summer session, and we still don't know with any certainty if they're coming back in the fall, which makes planning service and budgets real challenging. And then effective today, actually last night, effective today, we put out another notification telling our customers that in order to ride our bus, they must have face coverings per the order issued yesterday and effective midnight tonight from the county health officer. So we're enforcing that, and if people do not have a face covering, a face mask, they will not be allowed to ride. We also notified our customers that upcoming Memorial Day on May 25th, we would normally run only one part of our service, and that would be Highway 17. We will not be running Highway 17 on Memorial Day. And then we further reinforced that due to the fact that we're trying our best to enforce essential travel, and we are running into some complications where, say, at a terminal, we have more people that want to board than we have capacity under our capacity limited buses. If people have some sort of documentation to show us that they're going to an essential workplace or doctor's appointment, that will help us try to decide who can have priority seating. Now, the last part of my presentation has to do with the slides. If we could bring the slides up and we'll just rotate through those. So the first one you'll see is one of the ones that we hit early on, which is notifying our customers of rear door boarding and that we're not requiring fare right now. Next slide, please. This was our car cards that we put in our buses. I forget the date, but I mentioned that in the chronology of events. Next slide. Another slide that we copied from several agencies across the nation, just adding a tiny bit of levity to the whole discussion, but at the end of the day, if it's not an essential trip, you shouldn't even be at our transit center reading this particular sign. Next slide. One of the weeks in that chronology of events that I went through had to do with reinforcing the message that we can only keep you safe during the hours that you're here at work and you're responsible for yourself those other hours. Just to remind people that sheltering in place is not a vacation. You need to literally shelter in place, as inconvenient as it can be. So this particular slide we actually stole from Monterey Health Agency, gave it to our graphics person and put our logo on it. Actually, we didn't steal it. We got their permission to use it. Next slide, please. So obviously, social distancing, this is using the CDC's fliers and slides. Next slide. CDC information. Again, commonly seen information. Next slide. Same. Next slide. Same. Next slide. Next slide. This is the markers that we put at the transit centers in order to help our customers queue up for the bus and to maintain their six feet of social distancing. That's it. All our transit centers. Next slide. Elevators. We also made note of the fact that our elevators need to be restricted to no more than two people. Next slide. Again, reinforcing this popped up everywhere on buses and all of our transit centers reinforcing the six foot of social distancing. Boarding, lighting and on the bus. Next slide. Customer alert has been revised numerous times, including last night. It maintains the chronology of events because all of the things we have done are still in place and then typically adds to it. So there's another one on our website now that has an updated version as of last night. And we do get that information out via our Facebook and also our Gov delivery so that customers can be aware to go read this. Next slide. So this is another project that we've been working on. Various transit agencies across the nation have come up with different versions of it, but it's basically a clear shower curtain. It goes to that social distancing again to try to protect our bus operators even further because not all of our buses, as a matter of fact, 75% of our buses are incapable of having the rear door actuated by the bus operator, which means still on 75% of our fleet, the customers must board from the front door. And so we wanted to further protect our operators and these have been initially launched about a week, week and a half ago. We were waiting on some additional parts which came in and they'll continue to be installed on buses over the next couple of weeks. So Eddie and team have done a great job with coming up with this concept. What happens is when the bus operator pulls up to the stop, they close the curtain while people are boarding and then after the customers have boarded and they're ready to embark on their journey, the bus operator then opens this clear curtain and continues on safely. I did want to note too that we added additional money to our security contract to have additional security officers help us with the essential travel enforcement and also in enforcing that customers can only bring on a bus what they can carry on their lap. That has been a bit challenging for us and so we had to expand our security in order to do some of that too. Next slide. So this was added about a week ago to our website. We now have a tab. If you go to the homepage on our website, there's a tab labeled coronavirus. If you click on that, there are a number of resource materials there including a letter which we will update periodically just helping the customers understand what we are doing as an agency to help keep them and our employees safe. Next slide. Next slide. That was page 2. Capacity, all buses now are marked. Now keep in mind we went through every series of bus. We measured what we would have to do in order to capacity limit those and create six feet of social distancing and each bus was rated so each bus has a sign like this. Next slide. Next slide. We also purchased a number of advertising advertisements to put on our advertising slots on our buses. We purchased this and they have been installed on our buses. Next slide. This goes hand in hand with the slide two slides ago. This is what it looks like inside a bus today. So our safety and risk director Rufus has worked with Eddie and team and they've measured and cordoned off seats for customers to sit in and not sit in so that we can create that six foot of social distancing. Next slide. And this is just a Facebook post that was recently put up and we continue to update Facebook and Twitter on a pretty regular basis as time permits. Next slide. And of course all Santa Cruz Metro dedicated employees are frontline heroes delivering essential services. We purchased these banners. Thank you Angela for your hard work on that. She was able to do that rather quickly and these were installed at all metro facilities. I believe those five five of these were posted one at each metro facility. Chair that concludes item 15B. Would you like me to pause and answer any questions before we go on to see? Yes. So are there questions from board members first? Trina. Not very new. You're still muted Trina. Yes. Well now we hear you. Okay. Keeps getting popped. You mentioned that you needed to hire extra security because people boarding the bus are bringing more than just a laptop or something that they can just carry on their person. How is that working? I mean do you have security with a driver or how does that working in terms of limiting what the passengers are bringing with using security? Good questions. Well the bus operators have been empowered to to address that issue and if someone so let's say they're not at a terminal they're not at a transit center they're out on the line somewhere and they encounter that. If the bus driver asks somebody to not board a bus because they have too many things and they do not comply that bus operator will radio dispatch and then dispatch may send a supervisor there they may send our mobile security guard there to help address the situation and if it's bad enough we might just call the police to go address the situation. Within the terminals and the transit centers the security guards are stationed there at Watsonville and at Pacific Station. They're doing a great job of enforcing that. We've had some brushes with some members of the public who have been very argumentative and insistent about that and we're holding fast on it. If they cannot carry it in their lap we will not let them board the bus. And they're still able to take a bike because the bike is loaded on the back on the outside of the bus so that's not a limited for anybody that's using a bike on top of the bus right? That is correct. Thank you. And then I think John Leopold. I appreciate all the work that's been done to help protect our employees. I really appreciate the willingness of Alex the staff to work with the constituent union leaders. You know what the first couple days of this were it was hard to figure out what was the right thing to do. I know I had a lot of conversations with Alex. I thought he did a good job in trying to balance a lot of interests and deal with the situation that quickly evolved. And I appreciate all the efforts and the continue efforts that have gone on. I just had one question. With the social distancing requirements in the buses are there many instances where we're leaving anybody behind? There are a number of instances where we are doing that. Yes. And so if that's not at the transit center what happens when that goes on? Right. So the operator will pass by a stop if that operator is at capacity and there's somebody waiting at a stop the operator will pass by that stop. One of the things that I posted in the last week or two both Facebook and on our website was just an explanation of that for the customers and just asking them to not be upset when we have to pass them by. Unfortunately it just means that the bus is full. The operator is not doing it because they're just being mean to the person. They're at capacity and I'm just asking the customers not to be upset at our bus operators. Some folks have suggested that we should pull up to the stop and inform them that we're full. We're not asking the operators to do that because I think it's fraught with problems including some of our troublesome folks that will once you open that door they'll just dive right on to that bus. Right. And but is it a couple people a day? Is it a couple people a week? I mean what's what does the pass by look like? Well keep in mind ridership is down between 95 and 97 percent. Yeah sure. Overall ridership in general is not that high but yes I think I would just characterize it as several times a day. Yeah I just think that these are people hopefully you're going to essential work and you know to the extent that that they're doing essential travel it's it's it's hard to see that bus go by especially on a weekend schedule where the bus won't come by again for another hour at least. Yeah and John some of our I'm just going to say joy riders ones people that just want to ride the ball fall day now that it's free have become pretty clever. I mean they say oh yeah I'm going to an essential job or I'm going to a pharmacy. What about a doctor's appointment right they're invoking that it can keep things which is why we went to the next level of saying you know hey hey folks you can help us out if you can if you can produce something that shows that your your job or a doctor's appointment show us your cell phone something like that we'll give you priority seating. So we're trying our best without being discriminatory. Yeah it is a challenge because the free fare does bring unfortunately some interesting characters onto the bus. Yeah no and you and I've talked about this I appreciate all the efforts and just the I've also heard from drivers about the concern. I think you know this is going to be a constantly evolving policy whenever we start changing the shelter in place order and more and more people are are out. It's going to it's going to challenge us to figure out how to best meet the needs of the of the transit public. And John I want to double back to your first statement. I didn't give enough kudos in in the analogy I just gave you know I want to give a lot of kudos and credit to the SCIU for working with us through this to figure out how we can put people on alternate work schedules do telecommuting they'll get productivity and manage the critical business forward pay our bills. They've done a fantastic job and I want to give kudos to James you know when we first put the A and B together he brought everybody together and literally like in one weekend got this new bid out. He did something extremely unusual where each person had five minutes to bid. I mean that's really unusual five minutes to bit. Boom done move on to the next. Got that done so that we could put what's currently in place and he's working with Anna Marie and the ops team on the next interim bid which will go into effect this next Thursday that further helps us to save a few dollars. So kudos to both the unions for an outstanding job. Here here thank you. Thanks a lot. My hair is followed by Alton Northcott. Donna. Thanks Mike. I just had a couple of questions a little bit following up on John's questions. He asked my main questions regarding to leaving leaving passengers and just looking forward as we change some of how we may approach this Alex I'm just curious I know you have to be responding to you know these different directives coming from state and federal government. I'm just curious how do you how are you going to handle that kind of planning work and how do we are you finding that our social media is the best outlet to get the information out. Is there any other methods that we're using so that people understand these new these new aspects to write you know to potential writing and getting getting where they need to during this during this period. So I'm just curious especially if we are leaving leaving people how do we keep folks up to date as much as possible so that they're successful in getting to their jobs if you know they are needed or their appointments and just a little if you could just comment a little bit not only on the present but a little bit on your ideas in the future and then I just also just want to thank you your staff the management team and all our drivers and everyone obviously this has been just something that none of us have ever experienced before and I'm very impressed by all the work across all all aspects of the Metro in terms of the attention that you're providing to try to keep our our staff safe but also have our buses be safe for people to travel in and so I just want to extend my thanks and appreciation to everyone's work and if you could just comment a little bit Mike excuse me not Mike I'm looking at Mike so if you could comment just a little bit Alex on how you're forecasting these changes and what you're finding to be the best way to communicate to our riders right passengers what we've been doing is is also going to be the path forward you know not everybody is on Facebook right and that's super small percentage of our population but it's a tool not everybody's on twitter but it's a tool and what we can do is even though for example twitter is character limited we can get a simple message out and say hey click on this link or go to our website where you can find many more resources on this topic so we're trying to drive everybody to the website to the greatest extent possible we're also trying to drive everybody to go delivery and we've been on that mission for as long as I've been here and probably predating me trying to get our customers to just take that simple action of going online and signing up for gov delivery because that's that's our best way to get information in their hand really quickly in addition to that zero has developed a really nice bilingual flyer that he's updated I think at least three or four times in the last several weeks as things evolve he goes in and updates that and then he delivers it to the security guards and also we place those on all the buses so anybody riding a bus anybody going to a transit center can read this in English or Spanish and understand what's going on even even that simple point about why we're passing you up at the at the bus stop because we're capacity limited and and so when he makes the next generation of that he delivers them and he pulls back the old generation so there's no confusion and and that's that's probably and then the security guards are also helping us at the transit centers getting those out too okay great I really appreciate that we're making that bilingual effort to reach all to reach everyone and that was one of my questions follow up was just are we able to reach are we able to reach our passengers and our users in a way that you know helps them understand all the various changes as well so it sounds like we're on that the only thing I would offer potentially is the city said had very good luck with a number of PSAs that we've published on social media we've done those in Spanish and English and just bringing different aspects very short PSAs around specific topics we published those on our Facebook page they seem to get picked up and we've been getting millions of users off of those so maybe something in the future we those are literally just filmed sometimes just with a cell phone and and put up on up on our Facebook page so we have had good luck with that with that kind of outreach as well so thank you for all your work thanks not I'm sure you're speaking for all of us before I call it all to you're looking your upper right hand corner of your screen you see you have a choice of choosing a gallery view so you don't have to just look in my face you'll see like you're more in a meeting you'll see all of our little places so I recommend that as a way of not looking at my face all so next to all of it go ahead and then after that I really I too want to thank you Alex for all the good work and I want to thank all of our drivers because they have been very very professional courteous and then just authentic in their workload and I know this is stressful times for a lot of people concerning the communications that you've been giving us I want to thank you for that because it has allowed us to communicate out to our students in a weekly timeframe so when you give us information we can make different decisions and judgment calls for the operations at Cabrillo so that's been very very helpful I want to thank you for that and because a lot of our students don't necessarily have social media access they use Cabrillo for a lot we're learning that Cabrillo was almost a hub for a lot of resources and because we're closed down that means the impact is greater so we've been able to communicate using the email for our students who don't necessarily have social media so it's because of your updates that we're able to get ahead of those messages for our students and I also wanted to we have been working on using the CARES fund to cover our summer contracts because we're going to be online exclusively for the summer as well and because the Metro is still providing the service to students we can justify that money going to cover that contract and so that's been a very big help for us to be able to keep our community relationships ahead of the game and our students served we have had students who have had to use the bus and they weren't sure if coming to Cabrillo pick up equipment and things like that were essential because we were doing loaner programs for technology and so our bus drivers were able to communicate that yes they can ride to Cabrillo we've only had two students who have been passed up that have reported being passed up but we were able to say this is the reason why and they were totally understanding and knew the weekend bus schedule so they were able to get back out there and wait for the next bus so it's been very very helpful and I'm hoping that you know in times where we're less stressed that we continue these kind of humane efforts and I just want to thank you all for your work with the employees as well as the community because I think that's one of the biggest lessons we're learning is that we all matter so thank you thank you thank you those comments really yeah again reiterate everything I'd like to thank the the unions the staff and everybody that's involved this pandemic has really put us into a whirlwind and I but I think the metro is handling it well and I think everybody in the staff is handling it well I have three questions two to our concerns uh the first concern is if we have a family that boards the bus and it's uh and there are small children um are they required to be separated from the mother and take their own seats you know I I don't I haven't thought through that question Ciro's online I'm gonna ask Ciro because I saw I noticed a picture on the bus and you know we only had we had the four seats separated nobody could sit good question yeah Ciro can you unmute or do I need to unmute you and then another question for concerned meanwhile he gets hooked up there is uh if there's an individual that has food that's been given to them to carry on it's two bags and they can't carry it on their lap are they not allowed to get on the bus technically no but the operator has discretion on addressing that issue and I know for fact a lot of people who have used the bus have been able to get on with a limited amount of groceries I think I think you need to get a sense of the scale of the problem we were facing people are basically get on the bus with a shopping cart with the stuff way too much to get on the bus with and yeah I know that that part I understand but I'm not my concern is if we're being too rigorous we need to be careful the bus drivers have some discretion here I think they're being reasonable about having a force then that's what I've released we're trying to get Ciro's audio up and running for some work we're waiting on that and then when Ciro's getting hooked up my last question is I know we started our app for the bus route timing you know that our bus is going to arrive at this bus stop at this time is there any way any part of that application that can be said this bus is not full and it's going to go buy these bus bus stops yeah so we don't have that app up and running we're when COVID hit we were still aggressively working through the challenges of implementing that AVL system on on a fleet of varying age buses and then COVID hit and that has slowed things down if not stopped it completely until this this is over so we don't have that tool the AVL tool you know we looked at trying to place the bus out of service when that occurs but that had all kinds of technology problems too so we just could not come up with a way to notify a customer standing at a stop while we're passing them by which is why I embarked on this campaign of using the various media sources to try to educate people about that topic so so then the AVL app is not up and running no we're not up and running yet no Ciro's on now Ciro the question was if you didn't hear it what if it's a mother and two children uh how are we handling that uh under capacity limitations Ciro are you on I'm not sure he is but are the children required to see it separately I don't think Ciro's actually on yeah some of he's he's I'm gonna go ran and Freeman to all writes we will not separate a mother from I assume it's going to say her children does okay or father or father or parent or guard guardian mother that's traditional I suppose but not necessary all right thank you Brandon and did you get your other question answered Aurelio yes if people look in the chat they can see the whole statement from Brandon okay anyone else with a question Cynthia Matthews comment I want to reinforce Donna's suggestion for using the little video PSA clips we're using those a lot with the city and if Metro would do one and just share it with all the city the county the schools the social service agencies they can all put that up the entities that might be speaking to the riders of the buses so I just it's it's pretty easy to do I just want to reiterate that um also just an observation the term joy riding I understand 100 percent what you mean by that but that could be really found offensive if it gets out there in public so I don't have a substitute for that but I just I just pointed that um and the response from everyone has been so spectacular over such a profound situation in such a short period of time it's really it's very impressive so those are just a couple of suggestions thank you Cicero is still trying to get on are there any other questions or comments I don't see any right I will add I think in the public health officers directed so I don't have it in front of me that there is something that the social distance doesn't have to be maintained between members of the same family you're correct about that yeah yeah that's that's correct so that's a common sense application I think the issue was when the bus has been all taped off and as a practical matter how are they going to let the kids sit and maybe if they're small kids they can slip under their yellow tape or something but even even when they're I remember that image the tape is over the block a row of block seats but then there's a sign on one seat and one seat that's open so okay so Alex has taken a whole bunch of actions here or the the management staff have taken a number of actions in the unions as well working on that but those normally would have come to us before they if we were not in a crisis they would have come to us as a sort of policy issues to open up a new way of doing something that's not possible we're being asked basically to ratify those decisions after the fact as we make it our best attempt at least to have a queer public process and be transparent about how these things are all taking place so I'm looking for a motion to basically support or authorize the actions that have been taken under this emergency kind of condition so I have something this is John Leopold I'll make that second the seconding Cynthia's motion we have a motion for 15 B and C both of them no 15 B only just B we're doing we're having a little big deal so are there any members of the public given that that motion's now on the floor are there any members of the public or the unions for that matter who would like to comment on our authorizing these decisions after the fact those of course could be reversed or changed if the if we fill this them out they were inappropriate or whatever I I don't feel that at all but I want to make sure that options open to the board any concerns issues any member of the public want to comment on that last genie to look over a list of public yep I don't see anything okay Dan did you have a comment no no it's late when you rustle a paper or something all of a sudden you get highlighted like you're ready I just I'll just not my head do we have a roll call vote please and Mike give another comment Cynthia yeah would it be appropriate to say that we understand that this is a fluid situation and other directions may be needed I think that is if that's that you're the maker of the motion that could be friendly if it's agreed to by you I think was John Leopold our second on that motion and I see that Bonnie Moore would like to make some better comment perhaps before we vote so we'll wait a moment Bonnie and she's typing this out I'm not going to open my chat to see the comment of Bonnie's that I see is entirely appropriate okay that's great so in that case so we'll have the roll call then please for this motion so director Matthews your friendly amendment is you understand the fluidity of the situation and that additional actions may be necessary in the period between now and our upcoming ordinance thank you and we we acknowledge that these actions are temporary in order to address the serious situation thank you okay I have a motion from director Leopold a second from Matthews and the roll call around actually motion by Matthews second by Leopold oh sorry got it not that it matters but let's get it right it does okay director Bautour all right director Kaufman Gomez yes director Gonzales hi director Leopold hi director Lind hi director Matthews hi director McPherson director Myers hi director Peglin hi did I hear an aye hi thank you director Rothwell director Rotkin aye motion pass unanimous thank you very much for that um we'll now move on to our next item that is item 15c it's a request for board authorization for the CEO to act as the authorized agent for receiving state and or federal emergency assistance funds one could say that's just a no-brainer we should just have an ocean in second but we'll briefly about it first I would agree with that comment chair director I agree with that comment you you periodically authorize me to be your agent and this is a similar type of a situation we're looking at the FEMA program for example what we may be able to charge some of our expenses to we're not 100% if we're going to do that or how we would do that we want to be very careful in using that program but should we go down that route you would you would authorize me to submit an application for reimbursement okay are did you want to have one to move make any additional comments there one about anything you want to add to you want to show you we'll let you look at one to move how about that uh good morning chair person morning I think uh chair person board members staff and guests uh as Alex already explained we have been spending a lot of money on our COVID-19 related response so most of some of this expense might be eligible for FEMA reimbursement and so this authorized issue would give us some kind of revenue so that we can at least get some funding for our response to this COVID-19 response so I would like to ask to the board to designate uh Alex as a notarized agent to receive the state and federal money as required by the California office of emergency service thanks so much thank you Wanda let me ask uh any board members have any comments on this matter I see none John definitely does not have a comment are there members of the public who'd like to comment on this authorization apparently not welcome a motion to move the recommended actions motion by Donald Myers or you get a really on next to the next motion any any other comments questions okay can we have a roll call vote please I have a motion by Dr. Leopold and the second by Dr. Myers correct and the roll call is Dr. Bontore all right Dr. Kaufman Gomez yes Dr. Gonzalez aye Dr. Leopold aye Dr. Linde aye Dr. Matthews aye Dr. McPherson aye Dr. Myers aye Dr. Leopold upside Dr. or Dr. Pegler aye Director Roswell aye Director Rutkin aye motion passes unanimously thank you Gina um we're done with that I'm going to move on to item number 16 this is uh the fiscal year 21-22 preliminary operating budget um I'll just say something briefly before Angela comes on we all understand that this budget is a place holding budget in effect that allows us to apply it for our funding from other agencies um at this point we all know that it's not a real budget in a sense that it's very unlikely that this would be the budget we'll operate on during the next year but we do need to have a budget in place to be able to make our claims for funding and other purposes um and it gives us some idea where we sort of add at the beginning of this process which also will help us in making any claims for monies that we've lost and revenues and so forth and those kinds of issues based on what we were anticipating before this all happened so I'll turn this over to Angela. Well you took my spiel so there you go, I'm sorry. This budget was put together at the beginning of February and uh it's what we thought was going to happen for the next 12 to 18 months but uh as we all know the world kind of came undone over the last six months six weeks and um I already gave you the numbers um you know if we have a 50 percent reduction in sales tax it's about 20 million already we only have four months left of this fiscal year so we're going to limp through between now and June but for the coming fiscal year 21 um all bets are off we're not going to know what our sales tax numbers are um if I already have a 20 odd percent reduction from February sales I can only imagine what March and April and probably May are going to look like. Um first of all today you might see some sales tax coming back in in June and July but we're really not going to know what we're going to have going forward until this fall which is unfortunate um you know we still have federal money coming in uh we do not have the fairs coming in at this time um we have four things of our revenue that is sales tax based or fuel tax based people are not driving like they used to so that revenue is coming down and because sales tax driven revenues are about 70 percent of our revenue that comes in it's a it's a big hit I just don't know what it's going to be right now um we're having discussions about a deficit budget come June um not so sure we can do that because of some outside things like having a balanced budget for our TDA claim but we're doing some research I know the whole time I've been here we've never had a budget that wasn't balanced in some way but um we're doing some research to see if that's something that can be put forward we do want the public to know what um what our situation is to the best of our knowledge but we also need to follow um the rules to put the budget forward thanks um just before I go any further Lynn let me thank uh Ian Barry that's BERY from Community Television who's doing a lot of the technical stuff behind the scenes here we're being able to have this meeting this morning um I think it's kind of a key role and we should recognize this this help because without it I think we wouldn't be online as effectively as we have been um we've now heard the report on where we're at in terms of this uh proposed budget are there any comments from board members about this proposal Cynthia Matthews yeah um I'm totally supportive I would like to add when it comes to time for motion that we add language the effect we um adopt the attached budgets et cetera understanding that this budget will be subject to substantial review and revision due to the anticipated but unpredictable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic just just to put it out of motion fair enough I'll make it a motion if I can ask advice by Cynthia I'll second that motion but any further comments from board members any members of the public want to comment on this proposed budget which we again is a place holding budget then can we have a roll call vote please on the motion that's on the floor made by Cynthia seconded by me okay sorry that's right motion by Matthews seconded by Rotkin roll call Dr. Bautorf aye Dr. Kaufman Gomez yes Dr. Gonzalez aye Dr. Leopold aye Dr. Lin aye Dr. Matthews aye Dr. McPherson aye Dr. Myers aye Dr. Pegler aye Dr. Ralph well aye Dr. Rotkin aye the motion is unanimous thank you I don't be coming back today normally due to our budget there probably won't be too much change to it um but just that's our normal process that we go through is that in May we would normally come back to you with our budget this one should have been adopted in March but because we didn't have a meeting we moved it to April and then we'll go forward from there to June thank you thanks for that clarification we're next on the item number 17 this is an update on pacific station by Alex thank you Mr. Chair and I should point out that the zero is now in the room here if you still would like to hear from him he he abandoned his technical difficulties over jks and ran and ran back here um would you like to hear from him or if you'd like to add any comments uh zero the the issue that people raised was uh how we're going to handle a situation where say a family gets on the bus together um they're not required to socially distance and it would allow you know more people on the bus if the three or two or three or four people could sit together in those seats and not have to be six feet apart from each other and make sure one family would take the whole bus sometimes yes excuse me um basically I mean we're not going to leave anybody that has those kind of dependencies out there I mean there's going to be some provisions made uh the basically it's left to the operator's discretion I mean clearly our training their training has led at our purposes to transport people and you're not going to leave a mother with some children uh laying by the wayside because they can't fit on the bus due to our capacity limitations I mean there's a way of social distancing in in a manner I mean the family together really uh already have that established so they can sit within two seats maybe one person on the lap maybe across from each other it's it's workable and what I'm trying to say so um the the social distancing that we've established is because we've a free ride has created a situation in which a lot of people are wanting to use the bus as kind of a rolling shelter in a way and as a result they carry a lot of items they carry a lot of things with them and they're just going back and forth same bus our rule is you can't take the same bus unless it's a different route so that bus may arrive at the transit center they'll alight the curtain changes maybe it was a 71 now it changes to a 69 w they're allowed back on the bus to go back a different route but if it's the same bus with the same curtain 71 returning back they're not allowed to go back on that same bus if it's the same person that got off security is monitoring that and as is the operator the operator will uh seek assistance if necessary from security when that those types of situations arise it's been working out for the most part at each point where an operator passes someone by because they're full they do radioed into dispatch but dispatch is aware of the situation and basically it's just a matter of waiting for the next bus to assume the route our mobile units patrol units from the first alarm are assisting greatly in uh ensuring that people are not taking advantage while they're on route not at the transit center but on route so they're responding to calls from the operators and such when necessary thanks for that further clarification we appreciate it sure sorry i'm on 17 this is uh alex is going to talk to us about the civic station update i had a question i'm sorry go ahead dan there you go i just wanted if you had any incidences of where you passed up somebody because it was full and then they waited for an hour and then you passed them up again because it was full i have not had any reports of that as of yet um okay it may be happening but i'm not aware of it it could happen okay i think because dispatch knows of the situation at least we have some communication about that perhaps if that were to occur yeah not guaranteed but very best to the best to the best of our knowledge yes i mean that that answer your question okay item 17 alex it's an oral update on civic station what's going on yeah just quickly on this i just want you to know that over the last month and a half uh bonnie lips come from the city and i have continued to work on the mo you um i'm happy to report that i think it was late last week we worked through our final issues and the meeting of the mines so i guess the only caveat i have on this is when i've been working on modifications to the mou i work directly with our council julie and her her sub council um to make sure that we flesh it through the council um unfortunately bonnie hasn't done the same thing so what she's got to do now is take what we've negotiated and go to the city attorney um so the the asterisk is this i mean that city attorney could come back with further changes now that i wish we would have talked about through the process and uh now we've got to engage in more negotiation if he or she doesn't come back with anything substantial which is what my hope is then what we've negotiated should just come back to you for agreement at your next board meeting in may so that's where we're at with that thanks for i think everybody appreciates that progress on this issue because it's we've been trying to move forward for quite a while and glad that we're making some progress there any other comments from board members about that report any members of the public want to comment on that okay that's an oral report that's not require any board action our final uh open board uh item is to julie sherman our council tell us what's going to go on in closed session and offer the public an opportunity to comment on whatever items are coming before us julie i'm mute off okay everybody can hear me yes okay so there are two items listed it's a performance evaluation for the ceo and the second item i have just received word from metro's workers compensation attorney marie saying that item is not ready to go so that item is going to be pulled okay so we'll just be having the one item and there will not be a report out there will not be any board action after the closed session thank you very much for that let me uh before we are closed down this public session since we won't be coming back to it let me ask that the staff give a clear instruction to all board members how they get on to the closed session item this won't be open to the public in fact many of our staff are not welcome at this point we've heard from alex earlier alex would you like an opportunity to address the closed session before we send you out of the room um no just to add one other uh layer to what you said i think our ex-officials are not allowed to participate in that too i believe that's correct thank you for that clarification so for their game is that all each of you each of the board members the non people who are regular board members have uh an email that tells them you can go click on it on a url to basically take you to the closed session uh do you understand that properly yes is that correct uh i i want to make sure i can find this right now move your screen to the side and get back to your email you find an email address i mean an email item it comes from ian becker read i believe sent this out i got one from i got one from ian barry he's from um community tv mic i think he might that was the most recent one we got was from ian barry back up back i got us into here but i think ian barry gets us into the closed session yeah we would we would have gotten it this morning yeah i don't see that on mine is it any different than the one we were said earlier by uh yeah what what i'm going to do if if you don't mind is we'll go ahead and end this session those board members julie and alex that can and think they have a link into the closed sessions if we don't see a board members there then i will ask ian to send you a new invite how's that sound it sounds like a problem so we're we're going to slow we might keep people a while to get online so i'm going to get get on back online as quickly as you can but it may we may be up to five or six maybe even ten minutes if necessary get everybody back on make sure we're ready to go in a closed session uh mic mic i just want you to know that i said earlier that i have a phone call at 11 o'clock and if it's done quickly i will get back to the closed session thank you and then mic if you will announce the meeting and then adjourn this meeting is that correct julie i'm sorry i didn't hear that i said if you will announce the next meeting in may yes thank you and then julie we can adjourn this meeting and not come back is that correct no no we have to recess into closed session we have to come back at least you know mic and me so i can do my report out and then we adjourn so you got the board members are going to go into your closed session and then you're going to come back in here but i'm going to ask alex to let me know when you're ready to come back into the public session so that i can come and record that portion right but just for the public you know members of the board and the public know we don't expect any substance to that it's just going to report out there's nothing to report but that's a legal requirement of the brown act so basically once we finish the closed session there'll be no need for unless something extraordinary happens in closed session there'll be no need to come out and and report back that's not our plan anything that comes out of the closed session that requires action will be going on to our next board meeting okay so you all are going to go out of here and try to get in a closed session and if you don't right okay right i'm going to log off here as are the rest of you okay