 good morning and happy new year to everyone we are convening the meeting of the County Transportation Commission on January 16th 1920 at 9 o'clock please call the roll 2020 yes Commissioner Lowe Commissioner Bertrand Commissioner Brown Commissioner Johnson Commissioner Kaufman-Gomis President Commissioner Caput Commissioner Schifrin Commissioner Alternate Mulherr Commissioner Leopold Commissioner McPherson Commissioner Alternate Lin Commissioner Gonzales and Commissioner Watkin. Very good welcome to everyone we will now open for the number two item on the agenda for oral communications anyone that would like to address us on issues that are not on the agenda for three talk to us for three minutes about their concerns welcome how do I do for that are we press it all right you're gonna make me work we now have two hours two minutes and 30 seconds new chair you're not that mean to me all right hi Brian people's executive director of trail now the photo that's showing up there is Zach friend opening up the Valencia Road it was closed for months a few years ago and the main point we're trying to emphasize here is that was a key transportation connector what a transportation connector is is it's that vital road that connects neighborhoods or pathways that is basically the shortest distance to those neighborhoods and they're key Valencia Road is a great example of it and when one of those key transportation corridors are shut down it changes the whole dynamics of traffic in the region everybody had to go down so Cal Highway one my wife who's a kindergarten teacher there had to go all the way around so it really impacts the regional transportation issue and that's a great example of a key transportation corridor the Santa Cruz Coastal Trail is the same thing it's a key transportation corridor unfortunately most people don't realize it because they're not using it but when they do they'll realize the value because the study showed 15,000 people a day would be using that corridor compared to of course the train which was less than 2,000 a day so most important thing about where we're at with the Santa Cruz Coastal Trail is it's closed and it's basically are closed for exclusive government usage in the future and that's where we're frustrated a little bit in the sense that this key transportation corridor is needs to be open as soon as possible and we believe that it will change our dynamics now unfortunately Zach's not here and we want to point out that Zach actually and he'll probably get mad for me for saying this but he quit this organization essentially quit it because of his his philosophies of financial Zach's a great supervisor he's very disciplined in financials he's very good at public policy because he understands what will work and what does not granted he lives 500 feet from the railroad and so if we think about it if we think about the efforts that this organization is doing in the way of the investments and planning you have one of the most well-known supervisors who doesn't support a train 60 trains a day and the reason he really doesn't accept it is because it will shut down Aptos Village every 15 minutes if we have a train going through there there's no train station in the village so we're asking for us to begin using this key transportation corridor and think about why Zach friend is not on the board and he's quit thank you good morning commissioners I represent I'm Grace Voss and I represent the Santa Cruz County Cycling Club and I'm speaking this morning on the need to retain the bicycle lane in Aptos Village on the north side of the road and it's there for the safety of bicyclists that are traveling westbound every other Tuesday the Santa Cruz County Cycling Club has an organized ride that leaves from Rancho Del Mar shopping center and usually we head out through the village and into the South County to ride the rural roads which are beautiful and then we come back and we use that side of Aptos Village the north side and that bike lane so we want to retain that bike lane not surrender it for a sidewalk which is what the county has proposed and it's there now we need it it's true we do have to merge with traffic right before the bridge but before the bridge it gives us an extra element of safety and what our county needs is more bicycle lanes not not eliminating bike lanes thank you I would like you guys to look at the screens this is like reading fast for because I don't have very much time here's my question is a 11 million dollar 1.2 mile segment 18 rail rail trail wise next oh I get the click okay so we need to know that the MBS ST was rerouted on because they couldn't get across the Watsonville slew or the Harkins slew or even run along the slew Galligan slew was rerouted on to San Andreas onto West Beach those are at 45 miles per hour so it's a bike only route so it comes along San Andreas and heads up West Beach into Watsonville so here's what the map looks like you're going along Watsonville West Beach and instead of heading straight into Watsonville they're going to reroute it on to Lee Road onto the the rail corridor and that is it will be a bicycle only trail okay it will not be a pedestrian trail but there are better paths that already exist please look at this map very closely the proposed trail is about 400 feet from a walking trail and about 300 feet from an existing bike lane what bike lane is on West Beach I take it quite a bit I've taken the slew paths they're very pleasant they are now just leave it that this is what the Watsonville slew trail really looks like on the right our neighbor is the back of neighbor houses so it integrates neighborhoods why spend 10.8 million dollars on an unneeded bike path when you have both a trail on one side and a bike path on the other and let me explain to you here are your cost based on the estimate of the one the the Aloni Parkway to the Watsonville slew the easiest part the one point 1500 feet this is where this 10.8 million dollars comes from I use your numbers not mine this is what the view is going to look like if you build the rail trail okay you will have a trail but you're going to be looking at the backside of industrial stuff instead of the beautiful Watsonville slew worse you're gonna have to add two million dollars more because this doesn't include the cost of road crossings or and that's going to be contaminated a complicated with contaminated ground hazardous material removal and you still don't own two parcels between Lee Road and Aloni Road okay is there a better way to spend money yes there is you could use fifty thousand dollars instead to just protect the bike lanes on West Beach I'm not going to tell you it's the prettiest bike lane in the world but it is better than the rail corridor you spend less than fifty thousand that's the deluxe month you can spend half a million to improve pedestrian paths this is actually the Watsonville slew trail as well let's keep Watsonville trail attractive put money into improvement not displacement by the way this is a view from one of those Watsonville slew trails in that area and then Watsonville has beautiful trails today and then lastly did you know that ten point eight million dollars can buy a new highway lane thank you thank you thank you mr. Caput yeah real quick you know something that makes sense maybe we shouldn't go and look at it I don't know if you looked at that particular spot where he's talking about they're very close the existing trail and the one we're proposing so maybe somebody from RTC can go down there and look at it I just went down and looked at it about two days ago because I got the phone call well I'm you know the commission would they like to have us they the staff review this it should be be fine they don't think we take that much time to do okay then come back next month and then let us know or give us an opinion of what your thoughts are on it I would like to be okay the city of Watsonville has already done the investment in the work on that in the segments and why some of the cost came up as a result of that so city of Watsonville has already approved this project and has started the work on this this part of the segment you're talking about the ten point of the ten million dollar we're talking about the segment that's between Walker and Lee okay but I mean we if we could look at it it's they're not even a block away from each other what he's talking about and what we're proposing might save some money is what I'm getting on maybe yes yes sir I just want to chime in on that a little bit you know it sometimes we visualize things and it for simplicity and for economic reasons but if it happens that a pedestrian's hit on West Beach Street because we didn't give him an access on a path or a bicyclist has hit on West Beach Street give an alternate route for them to be on a safe route without no vehicles being close to them I'd rather go that way then have to worry about that somebody got killed on West Beach Street because there was more traffic there and there wasn't a is there a bike trail right now on West Beach there's a bike path this is a story but I raise a point of order yes sir communications it's not on the agenda for discussion I'm just gonna do a simple project if the Commission wants to have it on the next agenda I think that would be the appropriate time to talk about it but this isn't right I get I just okay I just want somebody to look at it okay as I asked our staff to do okay report back to us next week or next month mr. Helmer I Jim Helmer 1 0 8 8 5 Alba Road been lemon I'm here to ask that we pay closer attention to Assembly Bill 2363 this is the zero fatalities task force that was established by law through Assemblymember Friedman and signed into law by the Governor the California Transportation State Transportation Agency has been holding public hearings for almost a year now their report to the Assembly is due this month in their October meeting in Sacramento there was very strong preference or a strong indication that changes in the law that could be made that would allow state engineers to use prima facie 25 mile per hour speed limits on state highways in business districts whereas they cannot now but local engineers can so I'm asking that RTC monitor the bill and provide you with a formal update so that we can take a position as a commission to support more friendly ways to establish speed limits on local streets and state highways thanks anybody else would like to address us in oral communications okay we've go to is our numbers item number three any additions or deletions to the consent or regular agendas so there is a handout for items 14 16 and 18 should be on everybody's desk okay we'll move to the consent agenda item number 4 through 9 is there are there any questions about the consent agenda anybody want to move the consent move the consent agenda moved and seconded the anybody from the public would like to address us on issues on the consent agenda okay was moved by shifrin seconded by Leopold all those in favor I closed so ordered unanimously okay we'll go to the item number seven the or excuse me the budget and expense there's no consent items there the on the regular agenda the commissioner reports any commissioners have any or reports that they would like to Mr. Rutkin I just want people to know that the Democratic Women's Club of Santa Cruz County is holding a forum on the rail corridor on February 8th that'll be after our next meeting on the 6th but I thought I'd give people advance notice about it we're gonna have presentation by the RTC and Friends of the rail trail about planning in the corridor where we're at in the progress of actually constructing both the bicycle and pedestrian path and where we are in the planning for the mass transit piece of it so that's just open to the public and for people to get more information about what we're up to in that on that corridor thank you location oh sorry it's at the police community room in Santa Cruz which is 155 Center Street near Laurel Center Laura Cross from Loudon Nelson Community Center and it's at 10 o'clock in the morning the doors open at 9 30 but the program will begin at 10 o'clock on the 8th of February thank you. I just wanted to make a clarification on the consent agenda it included items 4 through 14 not I'm sorry I said no I didn't I I'm sorry I had the one page okay you're right that's items so the consent agenda was I'm 4 through 14 okay. Can I make a comment real quick on that? Sure. Hi Brian people's executives might go on to correct you it's not Friends of Rail Trail it's Friends of Rail and Trail rail and trail not Friends of Rail Trail. Thank you for the courage. Okay thank you. Okay any other comments from Laurel reports from commissioners the director's board Mr. Preston. Yeah thank you commissioners and members of the public. Okay to reconsider that item just for the room to consider that item and you can make a comment on the item on which item is it? When we find out. They were in the original ocean. I don't care if a comment is made I'm happy to. Well if they are already part of the original motion and I'll be just never mind. Just go ahead and make your comment. I'll leave it to the chair. Thank you. On item 7 I appreciate the efforts of RTC staff to do these project initiation documents on Highway 9 but I do have a concern on the complete corridor study that there were a multitude of recommendations on Highway 9 corridor study that dealt with the adjoining streets that that approach the highway so I would like to see more progress with the RTC and County Public Works to program some improvements or some further actions on the adjoining streets. Secondly we've waited far too long for basic operational and maintenance improvements on Highway 9. Caltrans continues to defer basic requests and refer them to this corridor study process. We're not getting good improvements or maintenance efforts particularly in the area of lane narrowing, ponding in the walkways, basic signal timing adjustments, ADA improvements. It's all being brushed under under the the guise of the corridor study and that's all I have on item 7. On item 8, this five crosswalk improvements in Salarons of Valley on Highway 9, we received this grant in December of 2018. It's now 14 months later and there's been no action. It was originally going to be designed by RTC. Then I was told to County. Now we're referring it back to Caltrans who issued the grant in the first place. I think it's really sad that it takes 14 months to do basic solar crosswalk flashers and secondly these flashers only cost $6,000 for a pair of them. Their installation can be completed quickly. We have $250,000 that is now being referred to the SHOP program and I think we can do far more than five crosswalks with a quarter million. So I want to make sure that we watch that budget closely and not just spend of the limit on five locations but get as many locations improved on Highway 9 as we can. Thank you. I didn't anybody else I don't think we missed anybody else on the oral communications or consent agenda. Yeah, we got the numbers right. I appreciate that. Okay, we'll move on now to the director's report item number 16. Thank you, Chair McPherson, commissioners and members of the public and happy new year to you all. Looking forward to a great 2020. One of the things I've been working on is trying to solidify my staffing. I had several vacancies at the RTC. I'm pleased to announce today that Amanda Moreno to fill the remaining vacant transportation planner position. Amanda graduated with a bachelor's of science, double major in planning, public policy and management and environmental studies with a minor in earth science from the University of Oregon. Since her graduation she has been working as a transportation coordinator at the Lane County Transit District in Eugene, Oregon where she worked on congestion mitigation program to target neighborhoods to address barriers to choosing transportation options. Amanda has experience working with GIS and conducting environmental studies. We expect that Amanda will work well with various RTC committees as well as RTC's traffic demand management program. Amanda is expected to start work on Monday, February 2nd. I'm also pleased to announce that RTC has appointed Jason Thompson into a permanent transportation planning technician position. Jason started working at RTC in June 2019 as a provisional transportation planning technician. Jason graduated in 2016 from Cal Poly with a bachelor's of science degree in forestry and natural resource management. His experience working with utility companies and vegetation control has been very useful on the Santa Cruz branch rail line. Jason has also gained experience working on the regional conservation investment study and traffic demand management. Jason will continue working on maintenance on the railway as well as assisting transportation planners in various assignments. Finally, I am pleased to announce that the RTC has appointed Fernanda Peeney into a permanent transportation planning technician position. Fernanda commenced working at RTC in November 2017 as an administrative assistant three. Fernanda has a bachelor's of arts in philosophy from the University of Maryland. While working at RTC, Fernanda has attended classes at San Jose State University as a candidate for a master in public administration. In July 2019, I appointed Fernanda to a provisional transportation planning technician position and immediately assigned her to assist me with the preparation of the inaugural Measure D implementation plan, the draft of which was released last month and that item is on today's agenda. Fernanda is expected to assist transportation planners in various functions with a focus on programming, contract management and legislative issues. With Fernanda's appointment to the transportation planning technician position, RTC has an opening for an administrative assistant for which we are currently recruiting. I have a couple announcements on MBSST projects. Segment 7, phase 1 of the coastal rail trail will be breaking ground soon. To celebrate this milestone, ecology action and friends of the rail and trail will be hosting a groundbreaking celebration on January 25th from 1 to 3 at Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery. All members of the community are invited and I said it correctly, although it's written incorrectly, the name of friends of rail and trail. The City of Watsonville opened construction bids on a portion of Segment 18 between Aloni Parkway and Watsonville Slough Trail on December 17th, 2019. Staff is expected to make a recommendation on awarding a construction contract to the apparent low bidder at their next City Council meeting on January 21st, 2020, and my understanding is that the bids did come in under the engineer's estimate and there is sufficient funds to award this contract. I have a couple, a short update on Highway 1 projects. RTC staff continues to work on the delivery of the Highway 1 bus on-shoulder auxiliary lane projects. These projects are consistent with the direction of the State towards multimodal Highway projects as they include bicycle over-crossings and will promote transit use with bus on-shoulders components. The projects have been very popular with the California Transportation Commission staff and are expected to compete well for the next cycle of Senate Bill 1 solutions to congested corridor program funding. Last week or actually this week on Monday I was at the CalCOG meeting in Sacramento and this project was brought up as an example of how a highway project can self-mitigate for the transportation impacts that they do have because of the transit elements and that is what makes this project so popular with the California Transportation Commission because we are facing a climate emergency and it is very important that we implement our projects in a way that consider mitigation for the traffic impacts with such elements as active transportation and transit with the bus on-shoulders components. The first project from 41st Avenue to Soquel Avenue is in final design and will be ready for construction pending grant funds in 2021. Staff has started working on environmental clearance of the second project from State Park to Bay Porter and has interviewed and ranked firms to perform environmental clearance for the third project from Freedom to State Park. Staff expects to provide a recommendation for a construction contract for the Freedom to State Park project as early as the February RTC meeting. Environmental clearance on these two projects will allow these two projects to also compete for SB 1 funding that those would be in the subsequent round in 2022. The TIGM trolley demonstration is going to be postponed. In December, the RTC approved a temporary license agreement with TIGM for demonstration of a passenger rail trolley vehicle. The demonstration was being planned to begin on February 14, 2020. TIGM has been working on approvals by the Federal Railroad Administration and the California Public Utilities Commission and has determined that it may not be able to secure approvals in time for a demonstration in February. Therefore, TIGM has notified RTC staff that it will need to postpone the demonstration to allow sufficient time to obtain all approvals and also to prepare a more comprehensive marketing plan as requested by the Commission at our December 2019 meeting. Due to the desire to ensure that there are no potential conflicts between Santa Cruz Big Trees and Pacific Railroad trains to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk on the proposed trolley demonstration, the next window for a potential demonstration is October 2020. An October 2020 demonstration will give TIGM and the RTC sufficient time to advertise and prepare for this event. Staff will keep the RTC informed, will return as appropriate with proposed revisions to the license and details for the trolley demonstration. We are proceeding with the track repairs. We did get approval for that. We are just not rushing through trying to get them done in January. It looks like it may be February, depending on whether as to when we will get those repairs done. Next month, and this is not in my written report, but I wanted to let you know we are working on our legislative agenda. Something came up during public comment regarding the prom officious speed limit, and I wanted to ensure you that that has been in our legislative agenda. It has just not been called out in terms of AB 2363, because the bill number keeps changing, and we wanted to focus on the issue and not the bill number and get it messed up. So that was in our legislative agenda, and we plan to continue to keep it in our legislative agenda and monitor the bill moving forward and make sure that the authors know that the bill has the RTC's support. There are various items regarding Highway 9 on today's consent agenda, which you just approved, which has shown a very good working relationship with Caltrans in trying to get Highway 9 improvements done. There was a letter from Eileen Lowe, which she may address in her director's report. There have been some minor issues that I've been bringing up with Caltrans, such as the ponding issue on Highway 9. I addressed that issue as soon as it was brought to my attention, actually submitted a ticket through the Caltrans system, and then also reached out to Caltrans folks in San Luis Obispo. They came up with a very quick design and informed me that they would complete that work within two months. I emailed them again last night because the two months has passed, but I do know that they plan on addressing that situation, and maybe Eileen has more information. That concludes my director's report. Thank you very much, and congratulations on filling the positions very much needed for full time. Any questions from the commissioners? Mr. Gomez. Thank you. With the timing of the repairs of the tracks and the postponement for the demonstration, would it be feasible to see that there would be a demonstration available in Watsonville? The issue regarding the demonstration in Watsonville was never really an issue regarding timing. It was the issue about conflicts with progressive rail and the operations for freight down in that area, so I don't think that additional time would necessarily take those conflicts away. And can we do something to work with them to allow a demonstration? If that's a, I mean, because, for example, if they're going to be doing anything else besides just the freight, they're going to still have to figure out how to remedy different things that are on the tracks. Is this something that we can work up so that we can actually have the availability of having this demonstration in Watsonville as well? I understand your interest in it, and I can certainly bring it up again with both TIGM and Progressive Rail to see if there's any opportunities to provide a greater scope for the demonstration. And then I just have one last question. That has to do with this new bill that's being put together. Can you send us or make sure that we have and we can update also our council that have this interest on the speed, the language of that particular bill and how it could impact or benefit the communities that would like to see something available to them for changes for their speed limits? Absolutely. Thank you. Any other questions from board members? This is a non-action. I have any comments from the public? Okay, we will move to item number 17, the Caltans Report, Ms. Smo. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Happy New Year, everyone. I'd like to first let you know that Caltans is still accepting comments on the California Freight Mobility Plan until the end of this month. This is an important document for the State as freight is a cornerstone to our economy. It's also important that we're protecting multimodal mobility, protecting environmental stewardship, protecting and enhancing healthy communities, protecting safety and resiliency for all Californians and being mindful and responsible stewards of our assets. This, as I said, this plan is available for review until the end of the month and the policies set forward are expected to help guide future decisions on investments that will support freight in accordance with those goals. Last week, Governor Newsom signed Executive Order N-23-20 to fight homelessness throughout the State. He's directed various State agencies to take on additional roles, and that includes Caltrans. We will be working, or we are, the State is working on an action plan for this, and Caltrans' role is kind of two-part. One is helping assist in the leasing of property that's adjacent to highway facilities, so in some cases this may include State right-of-way, other times it may be adjacent to State right-of-way, but we have expertise in terms of lease agreements and things like that, and then it will also involve how we work with our local partners on transitioning for folks that into safer shelter. Your member agencies should expect to hear directly from Caltrans in the coming weeks in terms of how we can better work in partnership to address this crisis. You have a project update in your, the standard update that you have in your agenda packet there, and I would just like to note that on project number 19, which is one of the, which is our pedestrian enhancement project that I know there's great interest in, mentions that we would go to construction in February, but it looks like that's going to be April, and that it's in due to the additional locations that we've added. We're bringing in that Highway Safety Improvement Program funding that the RTC provided to us. We're adding those five locations for Highway 9. It is impacting the schedule, but we expect construction to get underway in April, and April should be, so I'll just transition now into the Highway 9 update. Maybe I'll pause for a moment and ask you if there's any questions on the first bits. Sorry, April date as in reference to the five pedestrian crossings that the member of the public talked about? If you have the project update there, the little table, project 19 is a crosswalk and pedestrian safety enhancement project. It has, it's dealing with four highways in Santa Cruz, but there are locations in Monterey County on Highway 68 and 183. It's an extensive, it's an extensive project. I don't have the total number of locations for the whole contract. It's under a million dollars. We are bringing in the Highway Safety Improvement Program funding to include the other five locations. So it's an extensive, a number of locations, yes. Yes. I have a question on the 152. So this has been on the books for such a long time, and now we've added Highway 9. Is Highway 9 project going to be prioritized over 152? I mean, I hope not. I mean, I know it's important Highway 9 and their crossing, but this is an important crossing for us and we've been pushing for this for now, it's going on two years. And so, I mean, we're looking now at April to start construction. And so are we actually looking further out for the city of Watsonville now? Usually the contractor has discretion in terms of the order of work. We did make a request that the 152 location, and I believe there's another one in the city of Salinas, that are very high priority. We've made commitments in both locations. Hopefully that priority is being passed along to the contractor in terms of order of work. That's what we did make that request, be reflected in the contract documents. Ms. Brown? Thanks for the report. With respect to the governor's executive order, you mentioned that Caltrans would be working on a plan and that would include potential lease agreements with local jurisdictions. I'm wondering if that also includes potentially on transfers. I know that it's listed in the executive order that that was a possibility. Transfers between jurisdictions. So is that part of the consideration as well? And then secondly, what is the timing? I know this is new. So as far as you know, what kind of timeline are you expecting at Caltrans to move through this process? I'll take the second question first. The draft action plan is just being formulated. So I can't really be very specific. Of course, it's been given top priority. So there's an urgency to this. That's the best I can say on that. We have had conversations, for example, with the city of Santa Cruz already, prior to the executive order for some housing and some interest in some property at the near the Highway 1-9 intersection. I think that will be proceeding. I can't give a timeframe, but those are the kinds of things that we'll be working all the jurisdictions on. Mr. Caput? Thank you. And on 9 of 18, that's Highway 152, Corleadus Creek, east of Beverly to Hula Head and College Road. If the money was there, if the money comes in for the completion of this, the earliest that the project could take place is spring of 2022. Because at one time, the money was a problem. But if the money came in, that could be actually started earlier, or as part of that plan being that they have to look at it and they have to come up with a schematic in order to start it. Pretty sure, Caput. The project number 18 is fully programmed in the shop. It's in the project approval and environmental document phase currently, and it's anticipated for construction in 2022, the spring, as you pointed out. That's our best estimate. There is no funding gap that we know of at this time. Right. And how's the money looking as far as this project? It's programmed, so it's committed. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions from commissioners? Okay. Don't go on to the Highway 9 portion. Okay. All right. I'll address first the maintenance issue that has come up in a couple of conversations already, the ponding there near Graham Hill. So on Highway 9, you're talking about? Highway 9 in Graham Hill Road, there was a concern about some ponding. And there's some drainage work that's also been incorporated into another contract that has multiple locations. The first location was on Highway 17, and we've made a request that this particular ponding location be addressed next, and so it's scheduled to occur, to be going to construction next week. And then in your packet also is a letter that your executive director alluded to dated January 7th, and we gave a fairly comprehensive evaluation of the project initiation type activities on Highway 9 that are underway. I want to thank you for your approval of the cooperative agreement for the complete streets, PID, the big one that we've been talking about, that will take on all the recommendations that were identified in the corridor study and evaluate what are the scope and schedule of improvements that could come out of that and timing of that. As you see, there are several projects and the diagram in the back kind of helps schematically show what's what. So the cooperative agreement you just approved is for that corridor-wide PID, then we have several Caltrans other shop projects also being scoped. One of them is a striping job, and that is basically to widen out the stripe from four inches to six inches. You're probably familiar with seeing that in other parts of the state, because especially in the nighttime, or rainy days, the striping is much more prominent and you feel much more confident driving around with brighter stripes. So that's what the striping job will entail. The other two in the black there are referred to as the pavement PIDs for pavement preservation at the lower end and the higher end of the corridor respectively. Those will be kicking off soon. And then the third one and the one of maybe greatest interest is that near Felton-Gramhill area, the shop safety PID. We expect to have that completed in April. We're looking at what type of improvements we can make for pedestrian safety specifically for walking and bicycling. And so that one we'll be wrapping up in a few months and in the same time frame as what we mentioned for the pedestrian enhancements project the construction will also start in April of 2020. I don't know what the timing location will be for construction of Highway 9 but that contract will begin in April. All right, any questions on Highway 9? I just want to comment. Highway 9, we've been discussing this for a long time. I have found Caltrans to be cooperative in trying to work this out as quickly as we can. It's a special situation when you have your main street as a state highway in your community and the mountains. This is going to be a tremendous benefit to the people of Santa Rosa Valley. And I really appreciate it. Because it's in my district but also just the persistence and following through with what you were going to say we're going to do and it's very much appreciated. So thank you very much. I appreciate all the work that's being done in this county and it's very impressive when we're driving through. Just to maybe share a note with your counterparts in Santa Clara County. It would be helpful if they knew or had comments from this county of work that they need to do on their side of the 17 and the striping. I've gone over 8 o'clock at night in the weather and the striping it's very difficult. So if they hear from us that our commuters that are going over that hill for the safety on that side some of those items could be brought to their attention for working through with our partners in the community. Because it's been I think it's pretty dangerous when we it's very impressive of what we're doing on our end. And we also need to see that South Santa Clara County does their part also to make sure that our commuters are safe. And I do happen to know I'm glad you brought that up Commissioner Gomez as in District 4 they have recently undergone an evaluation of certain improvements that they can make in a short term. And I'll be sure to follow up with that information because I know that they've got stuff in the hopper as it were. Thanks. The questions from commissioners question from the public. Morning commissioners chair. Just wanted to go back a few months and ask Caltrans if there's any update on the grant 515310 program which is basically exchanging diesel paratransit vehicles for electric. And just trying to get an idea of what the difference in price would be here. There's options and things available out there especially through in Bard because they are going to be offering incentive programs for paratransit in their incentive program. So just keeping trying to stay on top of this. Regretfully I don't have an answer for you today. I elevated asking the question to get more clarification but it's still top of mind. Is there anyone that I can personally just talk to instead of constantly coming up here and putting in time here? I could maybe just communicate back and forth if they get an answer. I'm just concerned mainly with the cost difference because I was going to use my visits to Monterey Bay Community Power which I attend consistently to possibly grant this difference between what funding you have versus what it takes to get the electric vehicle. So it just need a number basically. I'm in communication with the Deputy Director of Planning and Model Programs at Caltrans hopefully here back by the end of the week and I mean I could certainly share contact information with you. Okay and I'll give you a card afterwards. That'd be good. All right thank you. Any other comments from the public? Okay thank you again. We will move to item number 18. Let's see it is, well do we have to we have to wait for 10 minutes. We'll go down to item number 19, City of Santa Cruz Public Works Department Report. Thank you for being here and we're going to put you ahead of schedule. So how's that? That's great. Thank you. No Chair, Commissioners, Chris Snyder, Assistant Director, City of Santa Cruz. So I have a brief power point to explain the status of where we are with several projects that are funded through the Regional Transportation Commission and with local funds. The projects are State Highway 1 and 9 intersection improvements, River and Water Street pavement rehabilitation, the sanctuary scenic trails within the city and partially into the county and then also Pacific Avenue sidewalk in the beach area. So where are we with 1 and 9? Currently the environmental review and design are complete. We've been working closely with Caltrans to finish up the process. We're in the acquisition right now and applying for permits. Construction is estimated at 7.7 million and it's a combination of STIP, RSTP, Exchange and local funding. We've already spent local funding on the design and the right-of-way acquisition. We've also, as I mean told you, we've met with Caltrans on acquisition of additional Caltrans right-of-way for a mixed-use project in the future. We are required to award a construction contract by July. So we're under the gun to get this project really happening. If we award in July, then likely construction would start in the fall of 2020. Next slide, please. River and Water Streets partially funded by RSTP Exchange. We've awarded a contract to MCM as well as the Lobos construction for the handicap ramps and that project will be starting in March with the access ramp replacements. And so that's River Street from Water Street to Petrero, which is just short of the 1-9 intersection so that we're not overlapping with that project and having to tear out things that were just constructed. And then also Water Street from Ocean to Brantza 40. Next slide. So on the rail trail projects, my apologies for the bottom part, not reading too well. So the Trestle Trail project, obviously, you know, is complete. It's been a very successful project. It's an award-winning project. So we've currently won three awards for it. We're in the running for another one. So anyway, we'll present that information in a later date. Segment 7, Phase 1, has been awarded to Granite Rock Construction and that project starts on Tuesday, weather permitting. But anyway, it's been a long haul. But we've resolved all the final cleanup, contaminated soil issues, et cetera. We work closely with Granite Rock on that and the County Environmental Health and the project's really ready to go. It runs through approximately at the end of the summer. Construction award was $6.2 million, and so it's $4.1 million of State and Federal funding, including the earmark, $1.1 million RTC Measure D, and $1 million of the City Measure D. There have been other funding parts for the design, the permitting, et cetera, including funds from our local supporters like Ford. Segment 7, Phase 2, we've just applied for a construction grant through Prop 68, and so we've had a visit from CTC staff and that visit went well. So we're optimistic that we will have a project or we'll be funding a project in the near future. Segments 8 and 9, which is from Beach Street and the Beach Area, out to 17th. This is a joint project with the County of Santa Cruz and we have funding for environmental review and design and that project or hiring the consultants to start that work will be happening this spring. We've already been coordinating with RTC staff and the County on the project. We're getting ready to submit the preliminary information to Caltrans to start the process. That's it on this slide. And then Pacific Avenue, which is the most recently funded project. And if you look on that slide to the right, you'll see people walking in the street. And that's been happening for a very long time. Anyway, we're intending to build a sidewalk there, improve the drainage, and extend the bike lane. And that project's currently under design. It's funded with RSDP exchange and city measure D funds. And we hope to be out to bid this summer and award a contract in the fall after the tourist season's over or mostly over. And that concludes my brief presentation. If you have any questions, you know, these are not all the transportation projects we're working on. These are solely the ones that come through the RTC. We have about $2 million worth of grant funding for active transportation. One contract's been awarded for a million to do all kinds of crossing improvements, pedestrian crossing improvements. We're doing a variety of other projects. Very good. Thank you. Ms. Schifrin. Yeah. Thank you. Very helpful report. The Highway 1, Highway 9 project, I thought I heard you mention that it needed a permit. Who needs to give a permit to that project? U.S. and state Fish and Wildlife Army Corps of Engineers, which we have that permit now, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board. Environmental Regulatory Agency. Yes. Yes. And they, I assume, are aware of the city's deadline in terms of starting construction. Yes. They tend to wait till the last minute. Thank you. Ms. Leopold. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. There's some great work going on there, and congratulations on the awards for the first part of the trail. Very excited to know that we're going to start construction on the next segment there. I'm particularly interested in segment nine, this joint project with the county. You talked about hiring a consultant in the spring, and when do you think the design work, how long do you think that will take? I think it will take at least a year. Complicated project. You know, there's water crossings that are involved, et cetera. So about a year, possibly longer. Environmental first year and then design usually typically starts about halfway through that process, because we'll need to know some of the details. Yeah, well, I appreciate the city taking on this joint project, and I think it'll be a huge benefit. Segment nine was one of the highest rated segments of need when we did the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail report. So I'm really excited about that one being. Yeah. And we want to thank the Land Trust, because they are providing the local match of 1.5 million. So it's a huge benefit. I'm not sure we'd be this far if we didn't have that contribution. You're here. Very good. Thank you. Yes, Ms. Gomez. Yes, thank you. It's very impressive. We come to Santa Cruz, so we don't always hear what the projects are until we have this RTC meeting. And that particular project of the nine one, you're over a bridge. Can you give us a little idea on how the impact of traffic? Is there a diversion of traffic? Is there going to be closure? Is the partial open? Just so we have some idea of what else, when it comes to construction, we're going to be looking at for traffic delays. Right. So we're working, it's a state highway intersection, so we're closely with Caltrans. A lot of the work's going to have to take place at night to minimize impacts to the traveling public. And we don't yet have all the staging plans, so I can't report to you exactly what's going to be closed. There will be some lane closures, but again, most of that's going to occur at night, so have minimal impact on the public. Okay. Thank you. Show you the rest. Are there questions? Any questions from the public? Okay. Now the hour of 10 o'clock. Oh, I'm looking at my watch. Okay. I'm looking at that one. Your watch is the official watch. I have a comment. On the last five minutes. Okay. Go ahead. You have to give me a little time there. Brian Fiddle's executive. I think you had him left in. So I just got a text from my wife, who's a kindergarten teacher at Valencia Elementary. And it's really funny she sent me the text and there's a book that they're teaching the kids to read. And it says that today the cars we're riding will have a driver. But in the future, they will have no driver. So I found that really interesting that in kindergarten, I guess they're kind of giving them a heads up that they're probably never going to get their driver's license. Okay. So anyways, maybe kill you some time. Thank you. You know, I think we'll just wait for three minutes to be. Yeah. Just take a three-minute break. Okay. I'll reconvene the meeting of the Regional Transportation Commission. Hour of 10 o'clock. We'll have a public hearing on the draft 2020 Measure D Strategic Implementation Plan. Mr. Preston. Thank you, Chair McPherson. And thanks to the Commission for moving the Measure D ordinance to the ballot in 2016. Thank you also to the public for approving Measure D with two-thirds of the vote. As part of the Measure D ordinance, the RTC was made the Measure D authority. And as part of the ordinance, the RTC is required to allocate administer and oversee the expenditure of all measure revenue which are not directly allocated by formula annually to other jurisdictions through an implementation plan, which it will update at least every five years following a public hearing. Today's item is to have that public hearing and to also receive public comment and see how we want to move forward with the plan. Approximately 53 percent of the expenditure plan is not directly allocated by formula to other entities which include the following regional projects and programs. It's the entire highway corridor, the San Lorenzo Valley Highway 9 corridor which is part of the neighborhood investment category, the Highway 17 wildlife crossing which is also part of the neighborhood investment category. The entire active transportation or coastal rail trail investment category and the rail corridor. As stated in the ordinance, the purposes of the implementation plan are to define the scope, cost, and delivery schedule of each regional project or program, detailed revenue projections, and possible financing tools needed to deliver the expenditure plan within 30 years promised to the voters and describe the risks, critical issues, and opportunities that the authority should address to expeditiously deliver the expenditure plan. Each year the regional projects come forward with an annual report which consists also of a five-year plan of projects. That has been done three times already. So the expenditure, the Measure D inaugural implementation plan feeds off of those three already approved years worth of five-year plans to build what is the short-term vision of Measure D. It also looks at a longer-term 30-year forecast. We produced the first 30-year cash flow model, basically taking those five-year plans and putting them into the model and seeing how we are doing fiscally as we move forward. A central theme of the Measure D inaugural implementation plan is leveraging. I'm very pleased that Chris Snyder got to go in front of me today because we saw several of their projects and we saw really what it takes to get a transportation project delivered, and that is multiple fund sources. The Measure D ordinance itself was very much put together with the concept of leveraging that we should look for other fund sources and try to use Measure D in a strategic way to leverage additional funds and maximize the amount of improvements that can be delivered to the community. The cash flow model is shown in the Measure D expenditure plan in Chapter 5. You'll see that all of the ending balances are positive. We looked at each program individually and we also looked collectively as to what it would take to make sure that each program can live within its own means. One of the things that we did notice is there is an instance with a project, and that's the Highway 17 Wildlife Crossing, there's an opportunity to get that project delivered within the next several years, but that project will not have all of its funding that is expected over 30 years, which is $5 million in the year that would go to construction. That particular project we looked at whether or not an inner program loan could be administered between the Highway Program, which has additional capacity at this time, and the Highway 17 project, and we found that it could. We also put together a series of policies which are shown in Chapter 4 of the Strategic Implementation Plan. We discussed longer-term financing, and we actually did take a look at whether or not it would be appropriate to try to bring additional money to the table now, and we found that we really have enough funding in the early years. The early years of a sales tax measure, you're accumulating money, you're developing your projects, you're going through the non-capital expenditure side where you're doing environmental documents, you're doing initial design. The big expenditures haven't come yet. We also found that something pretty substantial had happened since Measure D passed, and that was SB1 was passed by the State Senate, which brought significant transportation funding and opportunities to leverage Measure D. We considered that, and we considered what the requirements to apply for those grants would be, and in many cases it is that you have environmental clearance. The more environmental documents that we have, the more projects that we can apply for State funding grants are. This putting together the policies, we very much put together programming methodology based on what is going to help us leverage the most additional funds using Measure D in a way that we can provide environmental clearance and leverage funds as quickly as possible. Bringing back the discussion on this plan really focusing on the first five years, this plan is not expected to show every last improvement that's going to be delivered over the 30 years. We're focusing more on the short term because it doesn't make particular sense to try to figure out how you're going to spend your money in year 27. We show the first five years, we also show significant programming capacity beyond what we're showing in this initial plan. If you look at the cash flow model and you look at the last year, you'll see $407 million will be available for future programming of regional investments. Each year we will come back with a new five-year plan and program one additional year, and we will ultimately come back at least every five years to update the strategic plan. We can amend the strategic plan at any time, it is a planning level document, it does not require CEQA clearance. The draft SIP therefore only includes fact sheets in Chapter 6 for projects and program investments that are included in Measure D five-year regional plans or proposed in the Measure D five-year regional plans. Most of these items have been brought forward to you before and approved for you before for programming purposes. The only exception is the Freedom to State Park Highway 1 auxiliary lane bus on shoulder project. That was discussed at the last RTC meeting and this commission directed me to move forward with a request for proposals which I have done. That is the only amended five-year plan and that is a replacement page of several replacement pages that were provided as an attachment to this staff report to show clearly that this would be an amendment to that five-year programming plan. All the other ones have already been, all the other actions and programming has already taken place by this commission. With that, this plan was released to the public on Friday, December 20th. I recommend that we move forward with a public hearing on this plan so we can receive public comment and that I also recommend that this board consider this public comment and provide me with any directions as to whether or not you would like to see any amendments to this plan. We have received several comments from the public. This plan went out to thousands of interested parties through our email efforts. It also was published in the newspapers. We've received comments supporting various projects. We've received comments that other projects that you've already approved programming for should not have been funded. We did receive one comment regarding the Freedom to State Park Auxiliary Bus Lane project that it's not included in the expenditure plan and that this plan should be amended to be able to move forward with funding for that plan, for that project. We are taking that very seriously and under consideration and if we decide that we should take any additional action, we can come back on February 6th and take that action. There is a provision in the ordinance itself to allow for an amendment to the expenditure plan but we have not determined whether one is necessary or prudent at this time. With that, I recommend that you open the public hearing, receive public comment and provide me with future additional direction in terms of finalizing the inaugural Measure D Strategic Implementation Plan. Thank you. Vice President, Mr. Johnson. Are you entertaining questions right now? Yeah. Okay, I'll open it to the board and then go to the public. All right. Thank you for that report. Also, thank you for the, which I thought was a very good draft or 2020 Strategic Implementation Plan. You and your staff did. I thought it was very comprehensive and enlightening. So talk a little bit about eschewing pay-as-you-go versus bonding. I mean, what goes into that calculus in terms of why you might want one versus the other? So right now, we're moving forward with primarily a pay-as-you-go philosophy, the one exception being the inner program loan, but that's still pretty much pay-as-you-go because it's internal within the programs itself. Bonding, with bonding, you have to pay debt service. Debt service obviously takes away buying capacity for your projects, but it also could potentially allow your projects to move forward quickly. If you wait 30 years to acquire enough money to build a project, you could put yourself in a situation where the project costs inflates faster than the sales tax money receives additional growth based on both inflation, things cost more, and real growth, which would be there's more citizens in Santa Cruz, so they're buying more goods. So you have to balance those two things in your consideration as to whether you want to bond. The wild card in all of this is the grants and the grant opportunities. And when we apply for SB1 funding, they look on at not only the value of your project, but how much local support that project is bringing to the table too. So if we bring $0 in Measure D and ask for a $50 million grant, we could get funded, or they could say, well, we really think you should put some money in this project. They could say we think, you know, and it's real hard to get exact numbers of how much you should put. If you should put 5%, 10%, 20%, half, or all of the money. So if you could bond off of the sales tax measure and bring the money forward early, and it allows you to put, let's say, $10 million for a $50 million project and you get a $40 million grant, then you consider that interest that you're paying back as, well, I got $40 million for a $10 million investment. I'm paying $3 million in interest. I saved this much in escalated cost. That interest could be well worth it in terms of leveraging additional grant opportunities. What we looked at right now was, I don't see a need to finance for at least another two years. And so I've kind of, and I mentioned this in my staff report, I see us coming with an update to the strategic plan and that kind of corresponds with the next cycle of grant funding so we can make that decision at that time. Does it make sense to issue bonds so we have money to help leverage additional grant funds to move the projects forward sooner? And that would essentially be the decision that would be made in a couple years. So I guess what I'm hearing is that you have to be nimble and be able to adapt as things move forward and take advantage of leveraging outside funds. And if you need the bond or get money, then you would do so. You're nice enough to thank the people who voted for this project, or I guess Measure D in 2016, for the voters. But you might also consider thanking them for their patience because I think tactically and with what people see is an important component politically and otherwise to see that progress is happening. And I'm not really sure that people have seen much progress, at least on the outside. I know internally, studies, EIRs and so forth, but that kind of leads me to my next question. It's a little bit difficult to kind of estimate just how much all these, and in this draft or in this allocation, there's a lot of projects and I see some pretty big numbers. So from 1,000 feet, what is the total bill for all the projects that are listed in here? And what are the opportunities and chances of us getting enough money to pay for them? I know that there's a wildcard with, you mentioned grants and outside funding and so forth, but it seems like there's a lot of projects with huge costs. What are we going to do? There are a lot of projects with some huge costs and it's hard to put an exact number on what we could buy with Measure D. Measure D itself is going to bring in, we projected in this implementation plan over $760 million. You know, if we leverage that and get three to one, four to one, five to one, we could be looking at several billion dollars worth of improvements being delivered to the community over the 30-year time period. With respect to, you know, you haven't seen a lot of progress yet, that's understandable and I understand the voters' patience can wear thin really quickly and some of the comments that I received, too, were how come I'm not seeing more things on the street yet? We had that same debate in Sonoma County when their sales tax measure passed and it really goes to something I said earlier and that it takes several years to get a project construction ready and that's when those big billion dollar price tags start to come in. So if you look at the cash flow model that was shown in Chapter 5 of the Ordinance and you look at the ending cash balances, you'll see that we're spending a lot of money on planning studies and then you'll see that money starts to accumulate later. The key is that in three, four, five years we start to deliver those capital projects and then you'll start seeing the money go down. So we started showing, not in the first plan because there wasn't enough data on it, but the same issue came up and they asked me to include ending cash balances to show where we're at because everybody kind of came out of the woods saying, we have all these projects we want to deliver and then we were accumulating money. Our goal is not to accumulate money in these accounts, it's to spend them and deliver projects and so I'm very focused on trying to put them in the best position, but it is going to take a little bit of patience in the early years to try to get these projects construction ready and then to accumulate enough money to match grants or then going back to your prior question, possibly using financing tools to advance them even quicker. Can I ask one last question? Okay. So you mentioned leveraging and three, four, five to one. With your experience in Sonoma and that's one of I think the great reasons why you're in the position that you are because of your experience, are those real? I mean being able to access those things as a self-help county? As a self-help county in Sonoma, we leveraged at a ratio of five to one. Really? Five on the highway program, yeah. That was a quick question, that was great, I like that. That was in my presentation when I applied for this job. Yeah, we're so dependent then that shows it for the matching funds, the federal government going to do, what's the state going to do? They've already done what they're going to do probably with SB1, but the FAST Act, I don't know, it's up in the air of exactly what that's going to be, so how much is available is still very much up in the air. I will say and thanks, this is maybe a little off the subject, but we just found out that there's a time extension for our storm damage projects that's going to really help the county and the cities, and we're very appreciative of the state of California for, or the state representatives getting that through the federal government. Congress, Ms. Linde. And one of the things, I saw the outreach with various resources, social media, hard paper copies that press and things like that, but I'm wondering about signing to your major, the funds at work or some of those, and some of those projects might help also for people that not really aware where those funds are coming, so sometimes that can help the patients, and maybe have that support with their next act as it may come up. We have in all of our cooperative agreements with local jurisdictions that receive Measure D funds a requirement that they provide signage that Measure D funds are being used, and we are going to continue to make sure that the public is aware when Measure D funds are being used on transportation improvements that this is where they came from, and this is why you're seeing the improvements getting actually delivered. Mr. Leopold. Thank you. Thank you for putting together this plan. I think it makes sense to look at a five-year plan, especially as we really pivot from being simply a planning agency to a project delivery agency, and to me, I see Measure D already at work. All of our jurisdictions have gotten money out on road projects. I see the buses go by that have Measure D stickers on it, and I see the lift line bands go by with Measure D. So these big projects, projects that the Transportation Commission is responsible for, that's a new thing for us to have really big projects to get it done. I like the way this, the detail of information in here. The strategy of leveraging the funds and using your experience in another county to have some faith that some of this might work. I was also interested in the fact that our Unified Corridor Study can be used as a document to allow us to access some of the state congestion money, because that seems to be key part of the strategy. So we could all debate, or there has been some debate as to the merit of what we came to, but the fact that we have a document that's now ready for us to leverage more money means that the money we spent there is going to leverage tens of millions of dollars on the highway, on the railcourt, and other projects. I think it's also, along that same line, thinking about those state congested corridors money is linking up the highway and the trail, the rail trail, together as a way of moving projects along, that we have this innovation already on the highway with the bus on shoulder, which I think, as you mentioned, makes us very competitive using the rail trail as another way to show that we're trying to create safety and another mode of transportation on our main corridor that is parallel to the highway makes some sense and will help us get these projects done. It's no surprise to me that projects are more expensive than they were in 2012. We see that at the county, the projects that five, seven years ago were cost something and now cost 40 percent more. It isn't because the county is doing a bad job bidding, it's because there's a lot of people out there with resources. The cost of materials have gone up and the competition for contractors has increased. We're going to see price escalation over time, and I think that this plan that you have will also help us be able to assimilate those increases, especially if we can leverage grant dollars. I also like the borrowing from ourselves. It's a lot less complicated than borrowing from somebody else and probably a lot less expensive. And it makes sense that one hand is helping the other hand, but no project would ever be short because of it. So I appreciate the effort that went into this. I think that we're going to find over time as we have to do the environmental permitting for any of these projects that there'll be additional costs. I think that your experience in having done this in Sonoma County tells me that you're aware of those things that are not obvious to maybe someone like me or other members of the commission, but I think by using this strategy, updating it regularly, we'll be able to see pretty quickly whether we're on the right path or not. I mean, there will be a cycle coming up within the next year to 18 months that we'll be able to see whether this strategy is something that's going to yield the kind of results. So I look forward to that and I look forward to continue updates of the strategic plan. Bertrand. Oh, okay, it's working. I appreciate your strategic approach to financing. I really do. And to echo John's comment, the fact that this is going to be a living document and that you're going to be updating and responding to conditions as they occur in time in the future, I think is excellent. But I also like to congratulate you, in one sense, for responding to public input and concern for extra lanes after State Park Drive. And I appreciate you doing that. It's not often the case that people are willing to say in public that this is a viable issue that needs to be addressed. So I look forward to your presentation and to it. Thanks. Ms. Gomez. I think also we're ahead of the curve with this strategic plan because I don't think all agencies are forward thinking that far on how to leverage and how to have something that's an elevator pitch when it comes to showing what we're ready to do to ask for the funds and doing the leverage. And I think that that's a very, very good solid approach, especially when we're dealing with federal and getting the connections made and saying we've got a plan and here it is. And again, in a few minutes time overall, I mean, it's a comprehensive plan. But to have it summarized to this level that it's easy to take to legislators and easy to take to the funding sources and easy to show that it's, or it simplifies, I wouldn't say it's easy, but it's more of a simplification approach of saying we're ready to go. Let us know when you can cut the check on these projects. I think that shows that there's a lot more motivation and we're ready on that when we place those asks for that leverage. And I don't think that that's always an approach that other agencies take. Some of them are just way out there and not so prepared and having the control and the vision. And I think that that's very beneficial for this community to have this plan out there to use as an elevator pitch and flip it open and say we're ready for this if you can go ahead and fund that. And because we already have delays, I mean you know that the environmental part of it, we're doing all of the homework for that so that that doesn't hang things up when we go and place those asks. So I'm very impressed with this strategic plan and it's an evolution. And I just think that that will really help us in the long run when we're leveraging. We're going to always have a wish list of projects and we're never going to have everything satisfied completely down because there's always going to be that evolution of the next project that we need to have that we didn't know we needed. Any other questions from the board at this point? Okay, I'll open it to for public comment on the strategic plan. Anybody would like to speak to us? Everybody's still waking up. Happy New Year, everyone. I'm Ray Cancino, CEO of Community Bridges. All right, so just wanted to thank everybody, especially the staff, for helping us kind of move through this first five years and everything that this Measure D has allowed us to do. And this last year, we were able to basically leverage Measure D to bring in additional dollars close to a half a million dollars through CARB and implemented the first fleet of two vehicles of electric, all electric vehicles transporting seniors across our community. It's an incredible opportunity to do so. We've now been in our new location public facility that is also supported by Measure D up in Watsonville. And for the first time ever, we have a permanent location for our transportation services. And we're currently waiting for the city of Watsonville to help us out to complete our full plan of our planning and drainage. And so once that goes in, we'll have full operations by the end of the year. These dollars have been tremendous in the ability to basically sustain and also grow our transportation service here in our community. And we're just so happy to have the resources and the ability to do that. That's also the reason why in our first five-year plan, we've really concentrated on facilities and construction because the cost of construction keeps escalating and growing. We were able to find a project that was actually less than our original thought of what it would cost us. And that was just a lucky chance of us coordinating with a landowner that understood the value of community and understood what this would mean for our community. So thank you to the owner that sold us that property. I just wanted to share that we're continuously growing. We're seeing growth in our transportation services. And we're continuously trying to let our community know that the service is available. So this is one of those opportunities to remind everyone that LiftLine is available for everyone. And you can apply online at communitybridges.org. And hopefully you'll be able to provide free medical services for those in need in our community, maintaining their place of independence and safety in our community and providing door-to-door service to those most in need. So thank you. And thanks for all your help. Thank you for your services. Good morning, commissioners. I'm Rick Longinati with the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. And first I want to thank the staff for reopening a consideration of the next batch of Uxury Relay in South of State Park Drive that are not in the Measure D expenditure plan. I think it's really important to voters to encourage trust that bodies are not going to spend money on things that weren't in the expenditure plan. And $100 million is not a small amount of money. So sneaking that in and pretending it's part of the voter mandate just wouldn't have integrity. So thank you for that. It extends to the next time that voters vote on something, if they lose trust in government, they're more likely to vote no. And I passed out a sheet, and I hope it got all the way around. On the one side, it says what the Highway 1 alternative says about the TSM alternative. And the TSM is a combination of auxiliary relays from Santa Cruz all the way down to Freedom Boulevard, plus ramp metering and some other things. And I don't know that everybody's really noticed this. So the Caltrans report said there would be insignificant congestion relief, and you can read the details there. There'd be no improvement in the rate of accidents on account of these auxiliary relays. And even the report that you have before you today says incorrectly that auxiliary relays are going to improve safety on the highway, but that's not what Caltrans found. And it would increase greenhouse gas emissions. We have more cars on the highway, 25% increase. So for your 25% increase in greenhouse gas emissions, you get insignificant congestion relief. And so that's why I want to encourage you to just re-evaluate the whole auxiliary relaying project. I think it jeopardizes our chances for grants from the state, the solutions for congested corridors program. The last round granted about one out of three applicants. It's a competitive grant system. And they have guidelines that include effectiveness. If you have a project that's not going to reduce congestion, you're not going to score highly in this round. So it jeopardizes the other projects that are going to be included in that grant application. Thank you for considering. Mr. Chair, can I ask a question? Yes, Mr. Rock. Let me ask you a, I don't believe it's a reasonable question. We'll see what you think. You just talked about the importance of sort of keeping trust with the voters and sort of letting them know what we're up to and so forth. I know you think, believe that the auxiliary lanes are not helpful and in fact, dangerous in terms of- I'm just quoting Caltrans. I understand your source and everything else. What about the fact that the voters voted for a measure that included those auxiliary lanes? Again, that was a package deal with a bunch of stuff in it. Some of us liked parts of it and didn't like others. A lot of people swallowed hard and said, okay, the overall thing is good enough for this community that I can live with it. What does it mean to the voters that even if you're absolutely correct, they believe they were going to get that and whether you think Caltrans is right, they have a different view. Isn't there a problem with them holding faith with them on this question? That's my question. Thank you for that question. It's really a difficult one. I think that the voters were voting for congestive relief. And if you recall before Measure D got a name, this body approved an over $100,000 expenditure of mailers to all voters in the county saying, this package is going to relieve congestion on Highway 1. And that became Measure D and what they were referring to is auxiliary lanes. So that was a disingenuous piece of mail because Caltrans said it wasn't going to relieve congestion. So we have a problem. Now the voters believe what you told them. And now you're saying, well, now we have to honor the voters' opinion. At some point, that vicious cycle has to get interrupted by somebody with integrity to say to the voters, I think what you really want is congestive relief and these auxiliary lanes are not going to do it. But we do have something that will help, which is the bus on the shoulder, which does not need auxiliary lanes. There's a myth going on that we have to build auxiliary lanes in order to have bus on shoulder. There's no other place in the country that has bus on shoulder that runs it in auxiliary lanes. It's always a lane dedicated to buses. So that's what I think somebody's going to need to tell the voters at some point. Thank you, Mike. Did you get Michael St with Campaign for Sustainable Transportation? I did owe pretty much everything what Rick Longinati said. Also to add to those comments, there's been people on the commission and also other people in other areas of politics that have said to me, they know the ox lanes are not going to work. And that's all, more I'll say, Rick made it very clear how we feel at Campaign. I don't want to just reiterate, I want to thank Mr. Preston here and also Jock for mentioning that you're going to take the time to look at this section of 25B in the measure D to give you the proper guidelines to actually shift money. It takes care of a lot of issues that may come up that hopefully things don't go to litigation, which we don't like and which you guys don't like either. And so it's just a very easy way just to really get past this and then move on with whatever you have to do with your funds. I looked at the replacement page and out of the $29 million that's going to be spent in the next four to five years, half of that, about $14 million, was going to go for the project that is not even in the measure D. And I thought that was a little bit disingenuous. Basically as a taxpayer, I'm concerned using our moneys without going out through this proper procedure of measure D to find requirements for shifting the funds. There's also another section 26, I have to read to you because I can't remember things as well as they usually have been able to. It's called maintenance of effort. It basically says the entities receiving measure revenues, which would be the RTC, shall maintain their existing commitment of discretionary local transportation related expenditures for transportation purpose pursuant or in accordance to this ordinance. So there's a couple areas that actually say you need to take some time to figure this out and really follow the procedures. We don't agree with what you're doing with the Oxlain project, but we would just like you to follow what we voted for. Thank you. I have a quick question for you. How's Jack doing? Oh, Jack's doing pretty well. As you all know, he had some prostate issues with cancer. He's still working with Sierra Club and on the transportation thing, and I did give him the message that you'd like to talk to Annette, but health-wise, he's doing very well. Thank you. Thanks, thanks a lot. Good morning, commissioners. David Date from Los Alamos Beach. I, we just celebrated holidays at our house, and I was thinking my daughter's 10, and she's at the age where she doesn't really believe in Santa Claus. We never really spoke about it, just kind of this untold thing. And I was thinking at a very young age, she realized that there were limits to what she could ask from Santa Claus. She couldn't ask for, you know, a four-wheel drive RC car. She couldn't ask for these things because we couldn't afford them, but we didn't need to explain that to her. She understood that. When I look at this report, especially in sections on the rail trail, we realize that we have $8 million secured for segments eight and nine. We need $26 million to complete that section. Segments 10 through 12, we have $4 million secured. We need $62 million to complete that. So when I look at these numbers, I realize this isn't really a plan. No one knows where this money's going to come from, and time after time, every month we show up and we vote these things through when there's no feasibility finding. A plan suggests that we know how we're going to do it, and there's no money here. So we need to reconsider the whole thing. So please consider that in your vote, and maybe we can send this back to staff and come back with something that works for everybody. Thank you. Ryan Sanataro from Live Oak. There is a promise in this, in Measure D, that the rail corridor would be used. However, the whole idea that rail could actually be afforded with the kind of funds that Measure D had, was always impossible. And at some point, it really needs to be communicated to the public that it is rail or trail, or rail or paved surface. And that in the meantime, people are just going to see the same rusty, unused place where their children or themselves could go and actually have some level of safe movement throughout this otherwise relatively unsafe city in terms of bicycles. So I don't have anything specific for you. I would say that there is a silent majority out there that would like to see something done. And I do think that there's a disconnect between things like telling Big Tree Lumber that they're going to get some sort of freight service and what it actually takes to make that happen. So nothing else to say. We've been through this battle quite a bit over the last couple of years. And so far, what the record is, is the rusty rails that you see. Thanks. That is scheduled on the right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Brian Peoples, Executive Director of Trail Now. We supported Measure D. We were big supporters and we commend the staff on good report plan. We created this matrix to give an overall cost of the entire rail corridor segments one through 20. And we can see a lot of gaps in not only in having actual plan, but having the money to fund all of it. We believe that it's important to have, this shows that there is no way of having a continuous trail. It's not possible. And we want the RTC to look at maybe some short term solutions because as we discussed early on during the oral communications, key transportation connectors are very important. And that's what the Santa Cruz Coastal Trail is. So what we're offering up is a platform trail concept which will meet that short term requirement. It's a prefab engineered system that we've been discussing with Progressive Rail to partner with them on this concept. What we're offering up, we're offering actually to pay for it, is a working, a private public relationship. We've actually been talking to the PUC. We've also actually had the attorney who represents Progressive Rail on national issues. And what we're proposing is possible and viable and it meets all the legal requirements. So again, what we're looking for is a short term solution that we believe will enable us to start using the rail corridor today as an alternative to the cars. We really need to open that up. This solution will not require the removal of the tracks. It will allow us to keep the tracks, manage the tracks, and it supports your long-term plans. We're not pulling the tracks up. You come along, you put your trail in alongside of it. You shift the tracks over. We're still partnering with them. We're paying for it. Really, this is the compromise. Compromise, thank you. The compromise for all of us. We've been battling it. This is the compromise. Not only is it, we're not asking for the money. We're offering it up and it will save you a lot of money on maintaining that corridor. So we're hopeful that you do look at short-term solutions and you do support Progressive Rail's partnership with us. They're in on it with us. They're trying to make a business out of the freight operations. Their CEO had to come back. The bank required him to come back because they're a short-line operation. It's difficult business. Thank you very much. The staff take down the last person's presentation. Ask him if you could take it off of the view. Another person speaking on some other topic. Thank you. Hi, I'm Brian Larga, a resident of Felton. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today, commissioners and staff. It's an honor to be here and I can't say enough how much I respect your service to the community and the public. The path you've chosen is not an easy one and yet it is the best way to make the world a better place, as far as I can tell. And I want to thank you for all your hard work on that. The reason I'm here today is in regard to the relatively small portion of the Measure D funds related to Highway 9 in the San Lorenzo Valley. This is non-controversial. I don't know that anyone opposes anything we're trying to do there and it's all a matter of how do we make it work, how do we make it work for the community, for Caltrans is the owner of the right-of-way and the Highway 9 facilities, and how do we make it feasible, given the extremely challenging technical situation that we have there in a narrow canyon lined by schools and homes and with a 20,000 vehicle per day corridor running through the middle of it. I want to simply say I encourage you to step on the gas, let's keep moving, keep pushing things forward. The Measure D expenditure plan is a bit concerning in that the period it covers, I think by the end of it, we'll be eight years into Measure D and yet so that's almost a third of the duration of Measure D but we will only have spent 10% of the funds for the Highway 9 corridor and that's concerning in that the issues are fairly urgent. There's been fatalities along the corridor related to pedestrian and bicyclists. The school district will not have a bike to school day because it's too unsafe and there's an opportunity here to move things forward and I urge you to move things forward as quickly as possible and accelerate things to the extent feasible. Related to this, though somewhat distinct is that the allocation for funding for the Highway 9 corridor is odd and that it is a fixed sum, as described, it's a $10 million fixed sum whereas all of the other allocations are a percentage of total revenues. The implication of this is that one of the calendars for portioning funding to the Highway 9 corridor splits out those $10 million evenly over 30 years. 30 years out a dollar will be worth about 50 cents as a result of inflation. The implication of not having a percentage allocation for Highway 9 means that about $3 million of the 10 will erode away due to inflation. In contrast, all of the other allocations are a percentage amount so I urge you to reconsider how that allocation is made. Thank you very much. Good morning, commissioners. I'm Sally Arnold, board chair of Friends and the Rail Trail. We are pleased to see a plan for implementation of the Measure D projects, especially, of course, the rail and trail. We understand people's frustrations about how slow things are. I was thinking about it as I was listening to the discussion of how, I don't know about your house, but at my house there is no project too small to not require at least three trips to the hardware store. I mean, it's just the way building things and fixing things goes and on this grander scale, it's particularly frustrating but we understand that that's how it happens. We've noticed that the cost estimates for many of the projects in all the categories are significantly higher than their previous estimates and we understand that that's how things go sometimes. We are very excited, of course, that actually there's going to be another segment of the trail breaking ground this month and as Mr. Preston already mentioned to you, we really invite everybody to come to the groundbreaking party on the 25th over by the railroad tracks at the Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery. So we can celebrate some progress happening. And it was very heartened to hear Mr. Preston explaining the complex funding system and ways in which small amounts of money can be leveraged for larger amounts of money and that the idea that it takes a while to get every project in the chute but we're now entering that period of time when things are going to be built and that's very exciting. We do have a concern that in the rail corridor analysis of options, the project fact sheet that's page 89 and 90, it says the RTC will likely need to secure additional grant funds for feasibility and environmental work and our understanding was that Major D explicitly provides funds for feasibility and environmental design of passenger rail transit as well as funds to maintain the rail line in a functional condition. So Major D funds are meant to cover the project development work in order to make the project's construction ready and thus potentially available for those state and federal funds. So we were concerned about that and then in light of some other cost overruns that we've discussed, we're wondering that the plan to add a new project to Major D, those ox lanes past State Park Drive to Freedom, seems to us that adds an additional burden to Major D and maybe it's already oversubscribed and so we would like you to just consider that as you're making plans for what you're going to spend this Major D money on and thank you all for your support for getting all these important transportation projects happening in our county. Anyone else would like to speak to some of the public? No, I don't see any others that want to speak to us. I'll bring it back to the commission for further discussion, Mr. Schifrin. I just wanted to remind the commission that the staff recommendation is that we not take action today, that we really hear from the public and have this come back at our next meeting to take action on it. So I would suggest that people who testified, who had suggestions or proposals, maybe submit them in writing so that they could be evaluated by staff and that maybe staff respond at the next, some of the public comments and suggestions that were made. But that we sort of try to encourage them to do so. You know, sort of encourage ourselves to hold our comments till next time. I have to hear them a second time. Thank you, Mr. Schifrin. Okay, Mr. Rodkin, not Mr. Johnson. Some of the people commenting from the public might not have been here earlier in the meeting when our Executive Director explained his experience in Sonoma County where he was able to get five-to-one matching for transportation projects. I'm going to point out, of course, you can't guarantee that that success will be transferred here. But it's worth noting that that happened before SB 1 even was in place. So the comments, there are several of them and in writing as well in the submissions that we have an unrealistic plan here because it's not fully funded because there's these huge gaps. And these are big numbers. They're huge. We're talking millions and millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars. So I understand people's questioning the issue of how realistic is our plan to get this to leverage these funds. But I do think, given that we do have a comment from our Executive Director that doesn't seem out of place at all, and it's not just Pi in the sky but based on his actual experience working in another county, that people who think that this is unrealistic need to do something more to persuade us that we're just like idiots flying into the future with no idea where we're going because I'm feeling pretty confident that we've got a plan that could work well. There's no guarantees. You're taking certain kinds of risks. But the alternative being that we would have a transportation plan that doesn't meet the needs of this county doesn't seem very attractive when there's at least realistic basis for hoping that it's going to work well. So I wanted to respond to those comments rather than pretend like we're ignoring them or didn't hear them or something. We've heard them over and over again. But I think the onus is on the people making those comments suggest why we're being unrealistic about this when we have every reason to think it's a very realistic approach to where we're going. Thank you. I appreciate Randy asking the question that got that answer. I'd like to mention I think it is good we're going to hear more next month on this, but measure D passed in November of 2016. It wasn't until just a little less than a half year later that SB 1 passed. So how we can make that mix and match to the biggest benefit of for the motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, and Santa Cruz County, we had to look at that too. That was new. We weren't sure that SB 1. As a matter of fact, that was a years-long struggle up in Sacramento. So we're trying to see how we can mix and match and leverage, as was mentioned, as best we can with something that wasn't in place when the voters passed measure D. So I think that has something to do with the way we're looking at this at this point this year compared to November of 2016. Any other comments, Mr. Caput? Are we going to vote on this? No, we're not going to vote today on it. We're just going to receive this implementation plan. We're going to discuss it and make it, presumably, a decision next month on how to proceed. Yeah, we don't need a motion on this at this point. I would make a motion to continue. I would make a motion to continue. Next staff to return with a response to some of the comments that were raised. Second. Okay. What I'm getting at here is we have a resolution in front of us, right? Not on this, would you know? No, no, we do not. Next month, we're going to move to the next one. So it was moved by Schifrin, seconded by Gonzales. Okay. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye. That's a order. And thank you for the input again from the public. Very important for us to consider. Item number 20, the Transit Corridor Alternative Analysis Communications and Stakeholder Involvement Plan. Shannon Munes. Good morning, commissioners. Shannon Munes and the communication specialist on your staff. So I'm here today to ask you to provide input on and approve the Transit Corridor Alternatives Analysis, Communications, Stakeholder, and Involvement Plan. In November 2019, the RTC in partnership with Metro and the HDR Consultant Team began work to identify future options for high capacity public transit on the Santa Cruz County branch rail line through the Transit Corridor Alternatives Analysis. To ensure that to the greatest extent possible, interagency consultation and public participation is an integral part of this process, we developed a communications and stakeholder involvement plan. This plan will guide our outreach process and it lays out the engagement strategy at each milestone of the project. It also identifies target audiences for us to do outreach to, as well as outreach objectives, strategies, and tactics. So there are three key technical milestones where outreach will be done to the public to ensure awareness, education, and input is sought at the right times. Okay, so these are the three milestones that we will be doing robust outreach around. Milestone one, the goals, screening criteria, performance measures, and initial alternatives. At this milestone, we'll gather input on the initial universe of alternatives that are going to be looked at. We'll also get input on the draft screening criteria and performance measures that will be used. Milestone two, the screened alternatives. At this point, we will share the alternative screening process results and highlight the narrowed down alternatives. So from the first milestone, the list will be narrowed down and we'll gather input on that short list of alternatives to be considered. At milestone three, the preferred analysis results and locally preferred alternative. That milestone will highlight the analysis process that we used on the short list of alternatives, share performance measure results, and then seek input on the locally preferred alternative that we had narrowed down to. So for each milestone, we have four tiers of outreach that we'll be doing. So milestone one, we'll start with tier one will be outreach to our agency partners. That includes the alternatives analysis ad hoc committee which is made up of three members of your commission and three members of the Metro board, our RTC advisory committees, and our partner agencies. So for this outreach, we'll be doing presentations at scheduled meetings for all of those organizations. And then tier two will be outreach to our stakeholder groups. And these are community organizations, business organizations, different types of organizations around the community that we will be doing focus groups with. We broke this down into two groups, the stakeholder groups. Group one will be doing focus groups with representatives from our Spanish speaking advocacy groups, faith-based organizations, human services organizations, and low income and minority groups. And then our focus group two will consist of representatives from business associations, chambers, major employers throughout the county, advocacy groups for bike, ped, youth, elderly, disabled, and environmental, educational and healthcare institutes, and then neighborhood groups. And for these focus group meetings, we will have meetings in Watsonville and Santa Cruz. And then that would take us to tier three which will be outreach to the general public. At this point we'll be hosting open house meetings in both Santa Cruz and Watsonville. We'll be doing very robust online outreach via social media, email, our website, as well as newspaper, bus, radio ads, maybe tabling at events with flyers and fact sheets. Just a lot of outreach for people that can't come to those open houses to make sure that we're getting the word out that this is the opportunity to provide input. And then that would take us to tier four, RTC and Metro. At this point we would take all of the input we received to the Metro Board to receive their input. And then back here to you all to receive your input and approval. So that's milestone one. Milestone two, very similar to milestone one. We would start with our agency partners and presentations at their meetings. Our stakeholder groups, at this point with the stakeholder groups, we would reach out to those representatives that came to the focus group meetings via email and provide them the opportunity and everything they need to provide us input via email. For the general public outreach at this stage, we will have a public hearing at an RTC meeting and then again do very robust online outreach and outreach through ads, tabling and things like that. And then again RTC and Metro, we would take the information we get at that milestone to Metro to receive input and then to you all for input and approval. And then milestone three, again very similar. We would start with our agency partners, move to the stakeholder groups and reach out via email again to the stakeholder groups at this point. For the general public for milestone three, we would again host two open houses, one in Watsonville and one in Santa Cruz and then do the robust online outreach ads, all of those things to get people that can't come to those open houses aware that we are taking input at this point. And then again we would end with bringing all of that back to Metro to receive input and then to you all for your input and approval. So in December we brought this plan to the Alternatives Analysis Ad Hoc Committee and received input from them. And today we're here seeking your input and approval on the plan. So I'm happy to answer any questions that you have on the plan at this time. Ms. Gomez. Thank you. I guess I have some things lined up for you. I'm not hearing anything about schools. And basically we're looking at some of this as being a generational kind of a project. So I'd like to see that we're engaging either UCSC, Cabrillo College, PVUSD. Okay so the stakeholder groups, the focus group two would consist of educational institutions and we have a list of all of the school districts. We'll reach out to all of them, the colleges, university. So that is part of the stakeholder focus group two list. Yes. And City Council of course is the bodies that you're going to be coming and presenting to so that's also another media form for the information. Yes we will, it's not exactly in the plan but our plan is to come to all of the City Councils and present as well. So that is something we do have on the agenda to do. The other thing and it wasn't specific up here is the like a farmers market, we have it at Cabrillo, we have it downtown Watsonville. Will we have tables that will be at that, those venues or when we have things that are social events down in our communities? Yes. So we table at a lot of events throughout the year just aside from this, we will continue to do that and when we have outreach opportunities we do look for other places that we can table. So we will be looking at all types of those events but in any given year we table, I don't know, 15 to 20 events throughout the year and so if we do have something specific we're doing outreach for we will look for other opportunities to enhance that. And my last question is timeline, what are we looking at in the next 30, 60, 90 days or when we're looking at return results? So milestone one will begin outreach in February. We do have dates nailed down, I think they're pretty solid, the dates in February for the outreach but we're looking at February 5th for focus group meetings and then the 11th and 12th for the open houses but we should have that nailed down I would think. Specifically I just and maybe it's just taken for granted but just to target some agencies that serve the disabled community, I'd just like to have them included in each of these groups, I didn't know that. I think it should be specifically identified that we want to have them aware of this too. Yes, we do have that as part of the focus groups. Focus group two, we're specifically going to target advocacy groups for elderly and disabled. Focus group one, we'll be doing human services organizations and things like that. So we do have a very robust list of those organizations that we will be reaching out and inviting them to our focus groups. Very good, any other questions from the... Well, I would just say that as a member of this ad hoc group, the outreach was something that we talked about at some length and the importance of doing it well to make sure it's reflective of the community. So I appreciate the comments, we'll take that all back too. Any other questions from the board? Any questions from the public? Thank you. Hi, Sally Arnold, friends of the rail and trail. We've been looking very closely at this because of course we're very eager to be part of this discussion and I'm really excited to hear some dates come out. That was my main concern when I read the document. It seems so general and we need plenty of notice. If the public is going to participate meaningfully, we need to have plenty of notice of public events. If you really want to engage the community, there needs to be lots of lead time both for online input and in-person participation. Sometimes input is solicited in a really short time window or a public event is announced only a few days before the event and doesn't really allow time for the public to participate. So we hope that we'll get more specific dates or even just months. I mean, I understand that maybe they haven't reserved the room for their event on February 11th yet so they're not sure or whatever, but even just some months, some clue as to when these things are happening so that we can plan and the more specific the calendar, the more useful it's going to be and you'll get more actual meaningful participation. Thank you. Monopkonig, tenant for First District Supervisor and I ran a polling and survey research company for nine years. I did not see anything on this outreach schedule that would be statistically representative. It's not representative of the general community to just hold a workshop, which maybe some people can attend in the evening, maybe some people can't. It's not representative of the community to put out a online survey to the people who already receive email from this group. So if you really want a representative survey, you've got to be talking about phone polling or door-to-door outreach polling. The other thing is how are you going to use this information? One of the largest surveys that I saw in the Unified Corridor study showed very clearly that the majority of people do not want to train and they want to trail. And yet there was no discussion anywhere in the Unified Corridor study of how you were actually listening to the public and how that would influence the choices that you ultimately made. So this entire schedule is useless unless you are very explicit about how it's going to impact the results. And finally, are you going to ask about funding? We know, yes, sure, five to one funding, matching funds great. We don't have funding today locally for passenger rail service. We look to Sonoma and Marin counties. They have to pass a new sales tax in order to fund the smart train. Are you going to actually ask the public, if they have any appetite, to fund a local sales tax measure or parcel tax measure that would fund rail or that would fund even improved metro service or bus service? These are the questions you've got to ask if you want an effective public outreach. Without them, this is just a joke. Thank you. Michael St. Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. Quick question. I saw that this was going to be put out to Watsonville and Santa Cruz. Is it Santa Cruz County or the city of Santa Cruz? Is there anything going to be done outreach-wise in mid-county? Because, okay, good. There's my answer. Thank you. Good morning, commissioners. My name's Mark Maceti-Miller. Happy new decade. Here we are, rocking and rolling. I'm excited about the alternatives analysis and I'm curious about where the friends of the rail and trail might be. Are they part of a stakeholder focus group or a member of the general public? Hopefully we're part of a focus group. And I noticed in the scoping of the RFP that was sent out to the consultants back a few months ago, milestone outreach plan dates shall be integrated into the task one schedule deliverables. When I read that, I said, okay, they're going to come out with a plan for public outreach and we're going to have dates assigned to it so we can prepare. There's a lot of people in the community that are interested in this project and a two-week notice just isn't adequate. So I hope that you can ask your staff for some specific dates for these public outreach events and those times when it's going to be coming back to the commission. So those are my comments. Thank you. Other comments from the public? Okay, bring it back to you. Further discussion? Yes, Mr. Schifrin. Yes, I was on the alternative analysis task force and the contract does have dates in it and I think maybe it was an oversight not to put dates or at least expected dates into the staff report if they're not there. I agree that it's important that as much prior notices is given to the public so that members of the public can't participate and I think that's certainly been the intention all along. So I appreciate the comments being made and I think maybe the staff working on it and the consultants could maybe be a little bit more informative about getting the timeline out. Some of it is going to be a little have to be a little flexible because the ability to move to step to milestone two depends on the outcome of milestone one and how much time the commission needs the transit board needs and what the results of the input are. I did want to respond to a couple of comments about how that input is going to be used and the notion that the input during the corridor study was ignored. I mean we've got I remember getting huge amounts of information from the consultants and from our staff about what various members of the public were saying and what the kind of participation the responses to the participation. There are people that didn't like what the commission ultimately did but that doesn't mean that the commission didn't consider a huge amount of input from a wide variety of participants in the process and I think that's the intention here. This is a very extensive public outreach plan and what it's going to do and I assume that it will the result the way it's going to work is the same way it worked with the Unified Corridor Study that the commission and the transit board will get information about what comes out of the online the online comments the stakeholder meetings the public meetings will get plenty of information about where people are coming from. So I think it's incorrect to assert that one the commission didn't take input seriously when it looked at the Unified when it considered the Unified Corridor Study or that this current process is a joke in terms of the attempt by the commission to hear from the public and give lots of opportunities for public input. The other thing that I think is important to mention is this notion of the financing obviously we don't know where the you know what the proposed alternative is going to be or alternatives are going to be and you know we had this whole discussion about in the previous item about the leveraging of funding but one of the things that's been a critical component of the contract with this consultant is that what comes back is a feasibility analysis and what this commission and the transit board are looking for are financially feasible alternatives that are also acceptable to the public. So the idea that this is all a pie and the sky exercise and futility is really counter to what the whole purpose of the alternative analysis is all about. It's to get the commission and the transit board working together to seek an option for transit on the rail corridor that is financially feasible. How that's going to work what it's going to be there's no way to know now that's what this process is going to end up with but I think it's important to emphasize that the goal and the objective of it all is to come up with a feasible option for the two bodies to consider. Leopold. Thank you. I support the comments made by my colleague Mr. Schifrin. I think he hit the nail on the head. I note the irony that from a speaker who asks us to do an alternative analysis along with the Metro now criticizing us for doing that very alternative analysis and then criticizing us for not having done what the people asked us to. That just shows you that there's a moving of goalposts that happens a lot with transportation discussions and you have to be clear that not getting what you want is not it doesn't mean that we didn't listen. It means that we looked at all the information and made a decision. We're going to look at all the information here working with our partner at the transit district to ultimately make the best decision for what we want to see is for high capacity transit on the corridor. It will be useful we haven't committed to a mode of transportation and we're doing this outreach. I think the RTC staff has increasingly done a better job of doing outreach. Now we've gone out our RTP several years back was a lot of public input. The Measure D campaign was a lot of input. The unified corridor study. And when you go to a meeting and there's 50 to 75 people there that's pretty good showing for a meeting. And if you're reaching out to all these different groups of which I mentioned we have talked with the staff to ensure that actually happens to reach the diverse community we're going to make an honest effort to incorporate those voices within the choices that we make here. So I appreciate the work of the staff and I appreciate the work on the ad hoc committee to keep oversight about this and report back to the board as often as possible. Yes, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Chair. So I think you kind of make the point of the speaker in some ways though, Mr. Leopold from the standpoint that there are 50 to 75 people at a meeting but there are 275,000 people in the county. So as much as the outreach is good intentions and I think a lot of the information that comes out of it is most helpful. There's a certain amount of insider where kind of the same people show up with their preconceived notions of trying to implement their ideas versus actually getting a full spectrum of what people really feel. And I think it is fair from the standpoint that a lot of people and if you look at Measure D moving Santa Cruz County forward there were a lot of expectations and the feeling among and with respect to where's the money going to come from a lot of people felt that a half cent sales tax back in 2016 was going to be enough to do all the things in this big five, six, seven point of bucket I guess there were five buckets that was going to get accomplished. And so asking the people if they're prepared with respect in this particular case for a train which is not tens of millions or scores of millions it's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions. And I think people have a right to know and at least be asked the question if it's one thing to say this is what we want but the other question out there is this what we want to pay for and are we willing to pay for it? So I'm kind of in the middle I appreciate the fact that this is a very comprehensive outreach but at the same time I'm willing to listen to people that say look we need something more extensive that reflects the true feelings and at least an outreach that reaches more people rather than the 50 or 75 that you describe. To be clear I wasn't suggesting that we would only reach to 50 or 75 but when you hold public meetings and a lot of people come out there's not a room big enough for 275,000 people and if we look at public outreach there's no illusion that we're reaching 275,000 people we are trying to reach lots of people who are interested in this subject and there's no doubt that people come to this with their own preconceived notions but we're trying to reach into the community and provide good information to solicit input and we have to get public agencies should always be committed to doing that and I appreciate the work that the staff is doing to try to go out and make that happen. Mr. Rotkin So I'm going to speak for a moment as a professional that does research on the public opinion the idea that if you simply do a survey and ask everybody out there you know through whatever means you reach them in the survey a phone call or a knock on their door gives you better information than the kind of outreach plan that we have here is very deeply mistaken. People need to be informed in order to give you an opinion about various kinds of things and the studies that we're doing and the process of doing this in which we get closer and closer to what really might be possible allows people to give you feedback. At some point some people are not going to get engaged they're going to sit back and wait to see what happens. The people that care about this that have any strong views about it one way or the other are being given many many opportunities here in a variety of ways to respond to us about what their concerns are. I'm sure we'll be getting letters to the editor in addition to anything we do that come in in terms of what's supposed to happen but somehow the idea that we're not reaching people if we don't ask them each each of the 200 some of our children below the age of responding but at each of these you know like over 100,000 people that we'd like to hear from are going to get back to us with informed opinion that would actually allow us to make a better decision I think is deeply misguided. Bergeron. So I appreciate the difference between those who show up at public meetings in a sense they're the most active they may be the most informed but also recognize that if we're going to pay for things we need to get a broader sense of what the community feels about a particular issue and as you just said Mike it's our duty to inform the public and when we reach out to the public based on that information I think it's our duty also to get a representative sample of the people who live in this community. Thanks. You have the questions from I'd move to staff recommendation on this item. Second. By Schifrin, second by Brown. And let me just emphasize that what the goal here with this study is to come up with a feasible financially feasible alternative that's acceptable to both the transit district and this commission and you know all of our meetings are in public the outreach has has a number of meetings both at this body the transit district and as well as the city councils so the general public at large is going to have certainly through press releases and reportage knowledge of what's going on and I think this at least in my experience this commission definitely gets to hear from members of the public on all different sides of it and I think you know ultimately if there is a if there is an alternative that can be done within existing financial resources it won't be necessary to go back to the public and ask for more money if that isn't feasible then we're going to get a representative sample because we're going to have to get a two-thirds vote for any additional funding for some kind of a project it's just premature to jump to that at this time I think what we're trying to do here at least from my perspective is carry out a good faith effort to look at alternatives hear from the public the interested public and give lots of opportunities for the members of the public and those with specific concerns to weigh in on this process and then come up with hopefully a couple of a few alternatives and then ultimately I know one alternative that both these the transit district and the commission can feel that they want to pursue in terms of following the unanimous decision of the commission on unified corridor study which was to allow high to allow transit on the rail corridor that was a decision that was made okay um Mr. Johnson just real quick I wanted to know uh chair we never assigned a price tag to this study do we know how much it's going to cost the alternatives analysis what we're talking about here yes um we did uh provide that information when we approved the contract I believe the consultant contract was in the neighborhood of mid-sixes 660,000 somewhere around there and then staff costs and additional expenses were a few hundred thousand dollars so it was just under a million dollars for the alternative analysis study when you include all the costs I would just uh to to add in my colleagues remarked which I thought were very well stated we are looking at a triple bottle line and it's not just finances we are looking at the economics it's impact on the environment and it's impact on equity in our county that is what we committed to when the RFP that we sent out and that's how we're going to judge it the economics will be important but we're looking at these other measures as well to make sure that the community needs are met Mr. Bertrand um thank you Mr. Schifrin I appreciate your comments and the laying out the sequence of events I think is very important so thank you very much okay we have a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed so ordered okay so you all know I mean unanimously oh unanimously yeah okay the next RTC meeting is scheduled for Thursday February 6th at 9 a.m. at the Watsonville city council chamber this meeting is adjourned