 We can call the meeting and so we will call the Santa Cruz Metro Transit District Board of Directors meeting to get to order for August 27th and start with a roll call. Director Guzman. Here. We know Director Gonzalez is going to be absent. Director Calantari-Johnson. Here, good morning. Good morning. Director Koenig. Here. Director Lin. Here. Director McPherson. Here. Director Myers. Oh, she let us know she's going to be 15 or 20 minutes late. Director Pegler. Here. Director Peterson. Here. Director Oswell. Here. Director Rotkin. Here. Here. We have quorum. Thank you. And today's meeting is being broadcast by community TV of Santa Cruz County. And we thank them. And do we have any board of directors comments? Okay. Don't see any hands. And oral and written communications to the board. We have, I know the VTA letter. I don't know. Is there anything else? In the packet. There was also the letter from Mr. Saba. Yep. And so when you get to additional documentation, I'll announce something else. Okay. Madam sheriff. I just wanted to point out real quick. If this is the appropriate section. I think Mr. Saba is in attendance and I believe you wanted to make some comments. I don't know if this would be the place. And I thank you for that. Heads up. So we will ask Mr. Saba if he'd like to. Comment to the board. This would be the opportunity to do that. And we do have his letter here. Tina, is he coming in? I don't see us. I don't see his picture anymore. I don't see anybody from the public here. Yes, there we go. I'm ready. Do you want me to say it now? Yes. We have a three minute limit Mr. Saba on our public comments. Okay. Good morning to everyone. Good morning. My name is Ahmed Saba and I am the owner of the metro market located in the main lobby of the Pacific station. I have been in retail cells in Santa Cruz County since 1989 and have operated in metro locations since 2008. During that time, it has been my pleasure to serve the retail needs of the community and the metro ridership. And I have always considered myself part of the metro family. Like many other retailers, the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted my business. Due to the fact that the Pacific station lobby was closed in March of 2020, I was forced to shut down my business due to the metro lobby closure. Otherwise, I would remain open just like everybody else. After a long negotiation, I was permitted to put temporary partation and to reopen in mid-September 2020. But the store could only be accessed by customer through the Pacific entrance. This significantly reduces my overall sales. On June 15, a second door was opened and my customers were able to access the store through both Pacific Avenue and the other door that lead to the bathrooms. My sales jumped almost double or maybe at least between 35% to 50% of its failure sales. But this didn't last too long. Without any period of notice, the metro decided to construct the permanent partation and the lobby which restrict customers access to my business to the Pacific Avenue entrance only. I have expressed my concern about the impact of these restrictions will have on my business but have not received a satisfactory response. I now appeal to this board. I believe that I have acted in good faith and honor in both the spirit and the letter of my contract with the metro transit. But I believe that the new restrictions of access to my business is unreasonable. As I said in my contract with the metro transit section 5.2.6 rules and regulations common area tenants will have a non-exclusive right in the common area for pedestrian, ingress, egress and accesses. In my opinion, the new construction work is putting hardship on my ability to continue to serve the metro transit ridership and ask the board to consider the removal of this partation as soon as possible. Otherwise I will not be able to continue with my business. And since we already have two doors, one to the bathrooms and one to the Pacific Avenue there's only a small piece if we can do just a little hallway in between those two doors that will remove the whole problem. I'm not asking for the whole lobby. I'm just asking for a little access to connect between the Pacific Avenue and to the other door that lead to the buses. That's all I have and thank you very much for everyone. And is there anyone else from the public any comments from the board? Yes, I'd like to comment. First of all, I'm not speaking for the board. Let me make that clear. This is my individual opinion. It would take the board as a whole to take any kind of action. We don't get to do things as individual board members. I've looked, I read the letter carefully. I went out and looked at the situation. I don't think there's any question that we have here. I think that's real and true and you're not making that up. However, I think the public health question for us is what's paramount and the importance for the district of the difficult decision for us to close the lobby, I think was the correct one. And I understand that the staff have offered a number of things to try and somewhat, it won't totally fix the problem, but somewhat mitigate the issue that's there. That includes an offer to discuss possible sharing of costs for a much better signage, not to stay signed, signage that would direct people from the aisle where they're waiting for the buses to around to the Pacific Station opening side. I don't think that our opening, our lobby or in some way creating a new public space inside is a very smart move for us. I also understand that they're looking at the possibility of having a better sign for the store itself. Again, I'm not negotiating for the district. They would at least be willing to talk about sharing the cost of a better sign and trying to improve that. I also think frankly given the conditions that were under if there haven't happened already, some discussions about the rent obligations and so forth and I understand that your business is being harmed by the situation and I think we need to be responsible landlords in that situation. Frankly, as one individual board member, I don't think that opening up a new pathway from the bus aisle side of the metro building is a smart move for us as a district. I think we have to really go out of our way to be at least part of the solution and not cause of the problem in terms of the spread of COVID. So those are my thoughts about this question. Thank you, Director Rod. Anyone else would like to comment on this matter? Well, this is director first. I think that we we we we we we we we we have made a response and some offers that I think would be helpful. I agree. We can't take action on this today. It's not, I don't think I agree that we should work with him as much as we can, but our offers to date have not been received by Mr. Sava. I mean, not approved by Mr. Sava, but I would like to continue negotiations, but I think what we have offered is a fair offer under the circumstances. Thank you, Director McPherson. Mr. Clifford, was there also an offer of an additional sign? Did we read? That might help direct them to him. Yeah, we made some, I think, pretty generous offers in the way of wayfinding and maybe I should just first say, we are extremely empathetic to what Mr. Sava is going through. This pandemic has affected everybody in the community business and otherwise in far reaching ways. And as he correctly pointed out, we had to shut the transit center down back in March when the pandemic first hit while we regrouped and tried to understand what we could and couldn't do in the way of having businesses open. We later, as we described in the letter that you've received from me, we later worked with him to open the lobby, or I'm sorry to open the door from Pacific Avenue into his business while blocking off the lobby. At that time, the arrangement was that he had to pay for the chain link fence and the tarp, you know, kind of this ugly thing that we put up to block people off. And in my letter, I also indicated that we were willing to reimburse him for that expense and upon reflection, we think we should have paid for that as opposed to him paying for that. But all in all, we worked together to get his business open as fast as we possibly could while still keeping the restrooms locked down. And as you know, we only recently reopened them. So one of the things I did was to ask Danielle, our marketing and communications director to discuss with Mr. Saba things that we could do that we could assist in jointly fund in the way of wayfinding and signage which included, you know, in the glass door area by the back entrance where you come in to go to the restrooms, we could put something on that glass for example that says metro market with an arrow pointing in the direction. As you round the corner of the building, we offered a glass case display case that could be second step in wayfinding that could say metro market in an arrow pointing that way. And then as you enter the metro, the transit center to go to the metro market, there is an extremely small metro market signage that is probably terribly ineffective and we offered to possibly put a larger sign on the fascia more prominent and jointly fund that new sign that would give him a more prominent identification. We offered to work with him on his a frame sign that he has out front, we think it's not very professional looking and that it could be improved including increased in size. We've offered so much and his position to date has been I don't want to talk about that, I want to go to the board and try to get them to tell you to tear down the walls. So those offers, I want to say those offers continue to remain on the table and I'm hopeful after today Mr. Sabo will reach out and re-engage us in a positive conversation. We do really want to see him survive, he's been a very good tenant for us. Thank you. I just share throughout the county and throughout the nation we know how businesses have just been devastated through this time and that we're all I'm all sympathetic and trying to balance safety and still be able to offer some resources where we can. I appreciate the offers that are still in place. Anyone else from the board want to have any questions or comments on this? It's not something we can take action on so next we would, if not, we will move to the next public comment I believe it is. I'm sorry, Director Lin, can I just say that the letter that Alex Clifford is referring to is included or will be included under additional documentation. That's his third letter to Mr. Sabo so that will be included in the minutes. All right, thank you. And so both letters will be part of the this week's meeting. All right, well then we thank you Mr. Sabo for joining us. We'll move to the next matter would be any other comments from the public or any other written or oral communications to the board. And I don't see any hands. Okay. And then next would be labor organization communication. And I see Brandon Freeman Yes. Brandon, go ahead, Brandon Freeman, labor communications we're are you unmuted? I still see his hand, but there it is. Okay, are we good now? Yes, we do. All right, I plugged in an alternate source here. So just a couple of things that I wanted to talk about. First of all, across our entire union, we just wanted to give some thanks to Margo Ross and Marie Govea and Curtis Moses all have been extremely good at communicating with us through a variety of issues. We've definitely seen a major uptick in our communication with them over the last couple of months on a various issues, especially surrounding different COVID things that are coming into place such as testing and whatnot. I do want to say on the issue that Mr. Sabo brought up. The barriers have been an issue of concern for us as well for a different reason. We did have Mr. Sabo look on some safety concerns that we had about egress and a possible emergency type situation such as an active shooter or a fire. They're only being one way in and one way out on both of those sides. The answer to that was basically the area behind the store, which is a industrial type alleyway with air conditioning and dumpsters and whatnot and two locked gates on both sides would be an appropriate area to shelter in those situations without going too much back and forth. We disagree that that is safe for anyone who is using that area whether it be public or employee. So we just wanted to add that on with the option of a hallway would give us access to leave the building in an alternate way as well in case there is some kind of emergency situation. So, yeah, just really wanted to talk about the communication. It's been great. You know, we've always had a great relationship with HR very open back and forth has always been good there and it's really nice to have that come up across the board with safety and here in operations as well. And that's all I have for you. Thank you. All right. Anyone else any other comments from Union and thank you, Brandon. All right. The next would be additional documentation which we have Metro advisory committee. If they have any comments, I moved. I missed. So, yes, anything from Metro advisory committee from communications. Nothing I'm aware of. I don't see any hands either. Okay, then we would move to any and the additional documentation as Jean has mentioned. These letters have been included in our packet of information. See you Clifford and any comments or anything from the board on that. All right. We'll move to consent agenda. Anyone have any items on the consent agenda that they want pulled if not any members of the public perhaps first. And if any members from the public want to pull out any items to discuss those. Second. And was that motion by McPherson. Yes, second by Rockin. Okay. And roll call vote. Motion is to accept the consent agenda as presented. Motion by director McPherson and second by Rockin. The roll call is Dr. Dutcha. Yes. Yes. Dr. Coney. Hi. Dr. Lynn. Hi. Dr. McPherson. Hi. Is Dr. Myers present yet? No. Dr. Pegler. Hi. Dr. Peterson. Hi. Dr. Roswell. Thank you. All right. Our first regular agenda item is Employee Longevity Award and I have the honor to present Les back. I don't acknowledge his 25 years of service and I'd like to share the information that we'll get about that. Les is a true professional on the job. He's thoughtful and generous co-worker and will always make sure that all the passengers get to their destination by communication with operators. Prior to becoming a bus operator he was working for Metro as a security officer assigned to downtown Santa Cruz. Les began looking out for Metro and for our writing committee for more than 25 years. His many years of experience make him a valuable employee and an excellent role model and I appreciate Les giving him a round of applause. I wish we could do it in person for 25 years. Thank you. All right. Any comments from board on that or public? On our valued Les back? All right. Thank you. Next. All right. Next. I have a question of graduating operator class and No, no, no, no, no, no. Retail resolution of appreciation for John Otto. You have a script on that Donna? I do not. Let me read that then. John Otto has been a part of Metro at many levels throughout his career as a bus operator. He held positions in the union, he was a bus operator to make sure that service was covered. He enjoyed coming to work every day. You could always count on having an interesting conversation with John, especially if it involved the San Francisco giants or jazz. He will enjoy his retirement in beautiful Santa Cruz and continue to enjoy his love of baseball and jazz. We want to appreciate his many years of service for us in his retirement and I'll move the resolution and a round of applause. All right. Motion by Rodkins second by Peckler and a round of applause for John as well. Please. All right. And I can't believe I missed his file was as a fellow giants fan and jazz. All right. So we need a roll call on the resolution motion. Resolution is to accept Mr. Otto's retirement resolution as presented and the roll call is Director Dutra. Yes. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. I'm sorry I neglected to mention that the motion was made by Director Rock. Thank you. Okay. And next we have the presentation of the graduating operated class. Nope. No. I haven't an old agenda apparently. You're using the draft agenda. The next agenda item is the presentation on the year-to-date key performance indicators for Q4 as of June 30th. And that's a PowerPoint presentation that I think that either Chuck or Christina are gonna chat about. All right. So, which of you, Christina, I see Chuck is ready to present on that. And I will look for the, I will update my agenda as you do that. Oh, it's Christina is gonna present. I'm sorry. All right. Christina. Thanks, Dana. Gina, I'm assuming we will have the PowerPoint presentation shortly. Yeah. Can you guys pull that up first, please? It's adjourned to item number 12. You should have the PowerPoint. There we go. They didn't go through all that. We didn't pull that. Yeah. Go past that. We didn't go past that. We didn't pull that. So, go past that to 12. There. Keep going. Go, go, go, go. There we go. Past. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. Good morning, everybody, madam chair, board members, public staff. So, these are our KPIs, key performance indicators for Q4. And what you'll see in front of us is the whole year, because there are 21, as well as comparison between 19 and 20. If we could go to the next page, please. So, the overview of our presentations is always, we'll start with our financial performance and then our productivity or ridership, risk and safety, reliability, and operations and dependability. Next slide, please. Our system fare box recovery ratio for Q4 remains stable. Average between 11, 12%. Pretty much the overview of the year, as you can see, we start pretty low. We resume fare box collection in June and actually early July and our fare box recovery quickly recovered, picked up in October. As you can see, we had 15% recovery, significantly lower targets and average from prior years. Then you went down and now it's average between 11 and 12%. We are cautiously optimistic here as our ridership, it's increasing, we see that. And hopefully if we maintain our costs relatively low, our fare box will increase slightly in the next couple of months. Next question on this, just probably to Alex, but, I don't want to presume that the federal government has the FDA understands the situation clearly as although they should, but are we at any risk because our fare box recovery has dropped, sort of as everybody else's as I'm sure, down to 11 or 12% when it's been typically 22, 23% or something like that. They typically, a lot of grants and other kinds of stuff we get depend upon, at least in the past, when things were more normal, 20% recovery rate more, the national average or something like that. Are there any issues there or have they obviously understood the situation and were in no trouble? Yeah, we, Mike, it's a really good question and we believe we are in really good shape. I would just add to what Christina said, remember too during this, I think it is during this period of time, we also had the half fare and free fare which stays in place until the September bid goes into place. We did have one to move, take a look at your question. Several months ago, less, I think less worried about federal, although I wanted to double check that there was no impact on the stick and on the state side, no impact on the TDA. There is one measure that is impacted by the so-called fare box recovery on the state side, but because that interpretation in law is not limited to what fares are put in the fare box and it includes all kinds of other revenue including our dedicated half-cent sales tax in Measure D. We have never been in trouble, nor are we at any risk right now of jeopardizing that funding source. So we're at a good place still today and that's what has allowed us to look at things like the free fares that we did last year and then the half and free that we're doing this year. Thank you. Alex, this is Bruce. Is our reduction or where we are now about, well, half of what our typical fare box revenue is, is there a comparison with other districts? Are we about the same box, so to speak? You know, it's difficult to compare districts because there's a wide variety of fare reduction and free fare programs across the board. And then as it relates to ridership, a lot of transit agencies have recovered a little bit quicker than we have. And what distinguishes us from most of those is that 60% of our ridership is the UCSC and Cabrillo students and of course they haven't been there to ride and we haven't received for a prolonged period of time the revenues from UCSC. So they're very different in those ways. But you know, if you look at our non-student ridership, it is slowly rising and that rises consistent from what I'm seeing elsewhere. Okay, thank you. Any other questions on the fare box? I mean, one thing I could just point out is that this is our system-wide fare box recovery. We keep separate track of highway 17 as well as local. For highway 17, actually for the last for Q4, we are approaching 20%, which it's significant increase from the beginning of the year, but this is the system fare box recovery as a whole in the average there, it's 12. Thank you. Next slide please. Okay, so this is our fixed route and commuter cost but revenue service hours. As you can see, our costs are still significantly high but getting normalized to some extent. The reason there is the reduction in revenue service hours and as that number increases over the next couple of months, hopefully our cost will decline a little bit. Costs are usually pretty fixed for us as you can see the difference between 19 and 11, it's very little. And we anticipate that trend to continue. Next slide please. Veracruz cost per trip, essentially the same picture here as well. Our trips are increasing in Q4. I think we had the highest trip for a whole year. And as you can see, the cost are declining slightly as a result of that. Any questions about the cost per revenue service hours? Okay, next slide please. And with that, we go to the presentations of productivity and ridership with our planning departments if they're available. Yep, thanks, Christina. Thank you, John. So these two set of graphs shows productivity as measured by total ridership per hour and total ridership. The blue line is fiscal year 21 and you can see that through most of the year it was fairly flat except through but started to increase a bit in April, May and June that coincided with our reduced fare program but also with a greater reopening of the economy in Santa Cruz and California at large. You can also see that ridership increased more percentage-wise than productivity. And that's because we added quite a bit more revenue service hours in the summer. Next slide please. Did you, did the slide event? Okay, there you go. Breaking the ridership down by segment, UCSC on the left, there's basically been no ridership, not a lot of student activity on campus, not much to talk about there and a similar story with Cabrillo. But again, we're optimistic that that will start to change in September. Next slide. And Highway 17, as Christina mentioned has been getting to pick up in the fourth quarter and on through till today. We're not quite sure how that's gonna return. We expected a greater return of activity as offices and more people return to work. We don't really expect that to happen in the fall now but there should be more student activity. Next slide. Throughout the pandemic, local ridership has been the strongest. Again, the blue line is fiscal year 21 and we're approaching about 50% of pre-COVID levels of ridership. So that's pretty encouraging. Again, you see a pretty big increase starting in April but also before in February to March, the free and reduced fare program started in April. So it's not totally related to that. Next slide, please. And productivity by route. I think what's interesting here is that our UCSC routes, the R&D routes there, the 1918, 16, 10, 20 are still some of our most productive routes even though there aren't many students using them. So it just goes to show that there was quite a bit of local use on those routes beyond just the student use. And then our major trunk routes, the 69W69A are continuing to be the most productive. Next slide, please. That's it. Pass it on to risk management and safety, Curtis. Okay, thank you, John. Good morning, everyone. This KPI is illustrating the past three years of the accidents for the agency. As you can see, each one of the categories continuously to improve over the years. Also some of the contributing factors for that was also the pandemic. However, in 2021, as you can see, there has been quite significant drops in the different categories that we are illustrating on the KPI. The one is the fixed objects is the one that is noticeably higher. With that, we are basically looking and gathering data on to basically how we can mitigate those particular accidents. We've looked at training programs. We're looking at also reviewing videos and passing out comments. Safety now also is attending the Accident Review Board to also provide comments there as well. And as well as adding additional engineering controls to prevent the fixed objects from occurring. Next slide. Could I go back one more? Sure. You mentioned that safety is attending the Accident Review Board. Was that not happening before? Well, what brings to additional is additional security and training that I have. So I brought it to order. Great idea. I was thinking that it seems like that's a lot. You mentioned that be logical for you to be a part of that so you could know and learn what from the causes, how you might be able to work with other employees to make changes. So thank you. Thank you. No, that's good to hear. OK. Next slide. Also, we kind of break down where some of the passenger incidents are occurring. And this is what this KPI is showing, alighting, boarding, and as well as onboard for the past three years. We looked at the videos and basically our analysis from the safety department is we're saying roughly between 70% and 90% of the incidents that occur are no contributing factors to the operators. We've seen that the buses are pretty much staying still. And based upon the video review, we're seeing that the majority of the incident are occurring from overly intoxicated potential passengers that sometimes they fall, whether outside the bus or approaching the bus or sometimes on the bus that we see these occurrences occurring. I guess we should be driving to the bus, not driving. Yes, thank you. It's a contributing factor with the fare and our good quality of service. So they're attracted to riding the bus. Thank you. Thank you, Curtis. And our next presentation is reliability with fleet maintenance. And we'll have Eddie Benson. Good morning, everyone. Morning. The chart we have before us is the main distance between chargeable road calls. And for fixed route, our miles in fixed route are increasing. And our chargeable road calls are varying by one to two chargeable road calls while our miles have increased. So in chargeable road calls in April was 15. And chargeable road calls in May 10. And then we went back up again by two chargeables in June. So again, whereas we review all of these, we kind of put these, we take in consideration what we need to put on our PMs and how we need to look at PMs and check the quality of our PMs as they're going out to do. Any questions for Big Trump? Thank you, Eddie. Moving on. Highway 17 is about the same. We see our mileage increasing. And our chargeable road calls was three for the quarter. And that was in April. And no additional chargeable road calls for May and June. We can go to the next slide, Eddie. I don't think he's going. Oh, it's not me. OK, thank you. So this is the fixed route. And I mean, one more, maybe. OK, next slide. Oh, there it is. Next slide, Paris. One more slide. One more slide, guys. There we go. There it goes. There we go. OK. And Paris, while our miles has decreased, our chargeable road calls remain at this point. Zero chargeable road calls between our main distance traveled. With that being said, I'll take any questions you may have. Are there any questions from board members? And I can't, Gina, I can't see hands, so. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Eddie. Thank you, Eddie. Next category, it's dependability. Next slide, please. OK, and that is for Parisians. Margo has her hand up. So I think, Margo, if you are new, you should be able to talk. Guys, Margo came in on the public link. Can you let her in the chat? Margo Ross, there we go. Hello, everybody. Sorry about that. I, for some reason, I cannot get in my personal log on. So dependability, as you can see for the month of. Gina, we've got a. I know I'm sorry. This is set up coming through the public link. It shows the time or so. I'm sorry, guys, I'm community TV. Can we go back to the reliability slide? And we won't use the timer for Margo. She's actually a Metro staff member. Sorry, it's confusing because of the way she came in. Hey, we're learning to get back to the slideshow. Sorry, Margo. OK, here we go. So dependability, we had. Cancelations in the month of April centered around Easter. And bring break operators took time off for that, unfortunately, so that's where the majority of our cancellations are moving forward. We have not had a lot of cancellations. And when we do their spread out through the county. And again, usually that when we do see an increase in cancellations, it's due to major holidays or incidents that involve kids being off from school. Next slide, please. Dependability, as you guys can see, the pass ups have been reduced greatly due to the open capacity on all of our buses, except Highway 17. We're still at 18 there. But overall, the pass ups that we saw last year have gone down considerably. Does anyone have any questions? I'm assuming. Sorry. Well, no, go ahead, Mike. I just I assume that the Highway 17 is not being fixed because VTA across the hill has its limits and because of Santa Clara County decisions that we don't have control over, is that correct? That's correct. They're still at 18. And that was my question. So, OK. We are in communication with them. And as soon as something changes, they will let us know. Great. Unless you have any other questions, this is the end of our KPI presentations for Q4, fiscal 21. Thank you, Christina. Are we doing a motion to accept this or is it happening just spiking without action? It's just an acceptance file, so there are no motions necessary. Just for informational purposes. Thanks. Excellent report. Next, we have the consideration for authorizing and funding two parts and inventory clerk, two parts and inventory clerk positions. And that's Sharma. Excuse me, Director Linde, I don't see any hands for any public comments on that KPI report. Thanks for the reminder. And yes, I do want to offer that opportunity if anyone did want to comment on the KPI report. All right. Thanks, Gina. So then next, we'll move to the authorizing of funding for the two positions. Chuck. Hi, everybody. Yeah, so I'm coming to request two new, brand new parts and inventory clerks. So as of being new here, I've been evaluating the organization specifically areas under myself. And one of them happens to be parts and inventory department. We have three people now, right now, and they're staffed currently just to cover Monday through Friday during kind of core business time to four o'clock in the afternoon. It's also ideally the most busy time, because that's when we actually receive the shipments in, have to put in an inventory, and so forth. So there's a lot of legwork. What we don't cover are evening shifts till Monday through Friday, as well as weekends. So in talking with the parts and personnel clerk that are currently there, along with people who actually use our parts and inventory, going in there and getting parts, and then also kind of going external to the agency and looking at other peer organizations and really kind of getting what is the most current way of what everybody's doing, it really kind of came back to understand that what we're looking at here is we cover our area just during those core hours, the rest of the time, if people need parts or inventory, they go back and select it off the shelf, and then of course they ride out a ticket and then go back and use it. That becomes very inefficient. It takes them away from their work, and at the same point too, we wanna put inventory controls in place to make sure that we have the right counts, the right ordering times, the right amounts, and so forth. So in order to kind of be current practices of what other organizations are doing, what I'm requesting is two more so that we can cover that evening shift as well as minimally cover the weekend shift so that these people can pull the parts and work orders and deliver it to, for example, the mechanics on a timely basis so that they don't have to get up, go back and search for a part, which there's 3,400 different parts back there, and they need to find where it's located in order to pull it. And sometimes it takes minutes and tens of minutes away from what they're doing. So this also puts efficiency into the effort so they can focus on fixing the buses and they get the parts timely from the inventory. And it keeps us in control on the inventory side of knowing what's on the shelf and what needs to be reordered and when it needs to be reordered and so forth. So that's why I'm requesting that if we can add two more to cover all shifts that we do, I'd appreciate it. Okay, thank you. I just see a question by Director Rodkin. Sure, this should be obvious to me, but I assume our mechanics that are working evenings and weekends those are the people that are going back there to pull the parts when they need them for repairing buses. Is that the situation? That's correct. And we also have facilities, people too as well because they're- Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Pending public input, I'm prepared to support this. And yes, and anyone from the public wish to comment or have a question, I see a hand. Jean-Jefrius, Joan-Jefrius, sorry. Joan. Okay, hi, can you guys hear me? Yes. Okay, great. All right, hi. So I am kind of connected with this department a bit because this department falls under the purchasing umbrella. And I can just say that we have been short staffed, I know for a bit of time, for example, last year when Greg Willis was our manager, he unfortunately got pulled down to the parts department many, many, many times because of them needing that help. And, you know, as the reasons that Chuck mentioned, you know, to maintain control over our inventory and not have to do these big reconciliations all the time to try and make everything balanced. You know, I think this, he pretty clearly discovered that other agencies have those controls in place. And we are unique in that we do not. And we allow right now anybody to go in there and get what they think they need versus other agencies that do have more control, much more control over the process. So, you know, it's not just because I am in the union and it would be great to have these two new positions, but for all of these additional reasons that you guys are learning about now, we really are strongly supporting this idea of having two additional parts clerks. And that's it. Thank you for considering this. Thank you, Joan. Yeah, and a good point as far as I can imagine what it does to tracking inventory if you have employees need to just search for parts and pull them as they need them. So, yeah, both things make total sense to me. Any board members have further questions? And no other hands from the public. I'll move the motion. I'll second. Motion by Jimmy Dutres, second by Larry Peckler. We have a roll call vote. Okay, a motion to approve two parts and inventory positions. Motion by director Dutres and second by director Peckler. Roll call is director Dutres. Yes. Dr. Collin Tar-Johnson. Aye. Dr. Koenig. Aye. Dr. Lin. Aye. Dr. McPherson. Aye. The director Peckler. Aye. Dr. Peterson. Aye. Dr. Rothwell. Aye. Dr. Ratkin. Aye. Motion passed unanimously by those present. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, and next would be Exceptional File Mental Writership Reports for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 21. And that's John Yergo and Planning and Development Director. John. Thanks, good morning again. So this item is usually on consent, but we wanted to talk about it in a little bit more detail. Now that we're entering the fifth quarter of COVID, the way this report is usually organized is we only look back to the previous year, and that's now become a less useful comparison. You'll see throughout this report through your reference, we've increased ridership by an astounding percent compared to the fourth quarter of FY20, but there's lots of caveats that were still pretty far down below FY19 ridership. So overall, FY21 Q4 total ridership increased 138% or about 176,000 rides compared to FY20, which is the first quarter of COVID, as I refer to it, but we're still 78% down or over a million rides compared to FY19 fourth quarter ridership. Non-student ridership increased 113% or 136,000 rides in the quarter. And we're again, approaching about half of 50% of pre-COVID ridership in non-student ridership compared to FY19 Q4. Highway 17 increased 281%, sounds great. We're still 76% below FY19 Q4 ridership. UCSC ridership increased an astounding 640% or about 38,000 rides, but is still 94% of pre-COVID levels. Again, we expect that number to really turn around beginning at September. So far, we're still preparing for pretty much a full return of UCSC activity and service to the campus. And the last category that we track, Cabrera College ridership increased 140% in the fourth quarter of FY21, about 1,000 rides total in the quarter, but it's still 97% down compared to FY19 Q4. So I think you'll see as we bring this report quarterly going forward, we'll continue this comparison to FY20 and FY19. At some point, we'll kind of reset to a new normal, a new level, maybe FY19 isn't quite the comparison that we always go back to, but I think we expect that to continue that trend through the next three quarters. Overall productivity, ridership per revenue hour has not been increasing as much as total ridership. And again, that's because, percentage-wise, and that's because we're trying to add back as much service as we can, even though the ridership doesn't necessarily support that as a rationale for adding service, the strategy throughout the past 15 months has been to put back the service so that it's there when people are ready to come back to it. That's been a sound strategy, but the productivity is still around eight, an average eight passengers per revenue hour, which is, if we're looking back to pre-COVID times, it's about half of what it was pre-COVID. We highlighted a bit of this during the KPI discussion, but just taking a moment to talk about some particular routes, the weekday route with the highest ridership is the 69A, which is an inner city route that operates between Santa Cruz and Watsonville, serving Capitola Road. The weekend route with the highest ridership is 69W, which also operates between Santa Cruz and Watsonville. The weekday route with the lowest ridership is route 41, which serves Body Dune. We did add an extra trip on that route to serve school service, to serve school trips this last bid. And the weekend route with the lowest ridership is route 79, serving Watsonville. So that's pretty much the report. We usually don't have this on the regular agenda, but again, we want it to highlight, just bring up where we are in terms of ridership and highlight that we're gonna be talking about this in a different way going forward, not just looking one year back, but the previous two. So if you happen to take any questions or comments on where we are with ridership currently. Any board members have, I have a question. I'm thinking Body Dune might be because of losing so many homes in that area, just I would think that that area was hit so hard with the CSU fires that that may be part of what the drop in ridership is there. We do definitely see a decrease after the fires, unfortunately, but that route is fairly school-focused as well, and with remote learning carrying on through most of last year, we do expect ridership to return in the fall. It's only two trips a day. Thank you. And Shabra, I see a hand up. Thank you. Yeah, I wanted to ask about Body Dune and your thoughts on why there was a decrease. And then when you mentioned, first of all, thank you for the report, it was really insightful, but when you talk about the school increasing the number of times the buses are going up for school, is that for Body Dune or for Davenport? It's for both. So routes 40, 41, and 42 are the three rural routes we have towards that area. And they all, well, the 40 and 41 serve, the 40 serves Davenport, 42 also, and the 41 serves Body Dune. And we did add an extra trip to match bell times in high schools. Well, I guess it's mostly for students that live there that are commuting to Santa Cruz High and others to attend school. So once there are more in-person classes, which did begin, we expect to see more ridership on those routes. Thank you. Thank you. And a question from Director Dutra. Thank you. Couple of questions. One is I heard, and correct me if I'm wrong, maybe the Cabrillo rep could answer this, but Cabrillo is only gonna be back 50% in person. Is that true? What is the percentage? Because I think that will definitely impact our ridership to the Cabrillo campus. And I think, and then also kind of maybe an update on UCSC, how's that ridership? What are we projecting? Is that gonna be back in full service? I mean, there's just a couple of our bigger accounts that we are bigger ridership that we have. So it's important to our sustainability. Yeah. So I'll start with UCSC. What we understand is that on-campus residential activity is pretty much at 100%. There'll be 10,000 on-campus residents. So pretty close to pre-COVID levels. There'll be a mix of in-person and remote learning, but 80% of registered students, we understand are living within Santa Cruz County. So that suggests to us that 80% of enrolled students will be commuting to campus some or most of the time. We're, in terms of the UCSC contract, they've pretty much committed to returning to pre-COVID levels of that contract. And so we're working to put back as much service as we can to UCSC. On the Cabrillo side, I'm not exactly sure percentage-wise the breakdown of in-person versus remote learning. The contract is about, I wanna say, 50% less or so than it was pre-COVID. And so we're not restoring the full 91X. It's pretty much the one service that's not coming back to full pre-COVID levels this fall. I think Dan Rothwell's on here. Maybe he could answer it too, but I- Yeah, I'm on the board at Cabrillo. Currently, it's being reported by the president that we expect 60% in-person at Cabrillo College. And I also wondered when is UCSC really starting? I thought they started in October. 23rd of September is the first day of class. Okay, so we can't really expect much to happen without in September then, can we? No, in October is usually the busiest month for Metro. In October, then we should expect something to happen at UCSC. Yeah, that's right. The fall service change starts February, that's sorry, September 16th. And so that's when the UCSC service will start up again, but we don't expect the ridership really to return until a week or two after. And one of the other variables of course is, and this is something that's come up on our board meetings, is if we get a COVID outbreak, then all bets are off. And so there's going to be quarantines and we're going to go back to online learning and so forth. So I don't know that we can project very much in terms of the next quarter, how that ridership's likely to be in terms of UCSC and Cabrillo, it's going to be very, very variable. So all of you are thinking about going back online, because I know that I mean the school district won't do that. I mean, kids are going to stay in school. I mean, the way it's working and once someone tests positive, then they're removed, the other kids have to have, they get tested, even if they're around the kid and they test negative, they have the choice to stay in school. So they don't have to immediately quarantine. So. It's just come up in our discussions at Cabrillo. What would we do if there was an outbreak, for instance, in a class? Would we then just quarantine the entire class? Would we go back to online learning? And that's up in the air. Oh, well, the school district, you know, if that happens, if you test negative, if you're in a classroom and there's people that have tested positive, if you test negative, you're allowed to stay in the class. So, same with teachers. That's for Watsonville, right? Watsonville district. So it sounds like real may be different. No, that's what I'm saying. I'm telling him to consider, like, there's maybe another option they can consider. I'm not saying that any decision has been made on that. I'm just saying we don't know what's gonna happen if we have an outbreak. I've talked to the president about this over breakfast and it's like, well, we'll address it if it happens and when it happens. So there's all kinds of options. Yeah. I wanna do a selfless plug too. I forgot to say at the beginning, for ridership, we have our new electric bus and we're cutting the ribbon in Watsonville on September 7th. So I'd love it if all my colleagues, if all of you guys were there to help us introduce our first electric bus, it'll be at the Watsonville station at 11 a.m., I believe. That's correct. Love a name. Director Rodkin. First of all, I'll be down there, Jimmy. I'm looking forward to it for some electric buses and services. But I don't wanna get in the weeds, but just to get an idea of how this works at UCSC, they're planning to bring back, as I say, 80% or even more than that of the classes. But first of all, even if nothing changes, you have situations like in my class, I have guest speakers and a couple of them don't really wanna come on campus. So I might, even though mine's in classroom class, I might have a couple of Zoom meetings during the quarter. And so we should temper our expectations of how much is gonna be restored at UCSC. And the other thing that's very real here is even for the elementary schools, I mean, the current plan is, if you test negative, you can stay in the classroom. But if this thing breaks out again in a way that it might, all bets might be off. And so we might find ourselves, it's horrible to contemplate it, but going back to a situation where we can't have in-person classes because things are just raging out of control. And that is very much a possibility here. And we shouldn't make any presumption about the level which it's gonna return. I think our expectations are reasonable, but they could change overnight given the stuff that's going on right now. Thank you. Any other comments? Just make sure I'm looking at both screens. Oh, I do see one, glad I checked. Director Henderson, I'm sorry. Thank you. I just, obviously I can't speak for Cabrillo or any of the unified school districts in the area or any of the schools other than USC, but I just want to put on the record that we should caution about, I guess, guessing or... Assuming. Making a prediction about what would happen with an outbreak, UCSC does have a vaccine mandate and it'll be based on best practices for public health approach to the virus and to the situation, whether or not quarantine will be necessary. So if there's an outbreak, the hope is that the vaccine would prevent and not necessarily make mass quarantining needed. So I just want to caution about saying that about UCSC that that's what would happen. So I want to put that on the record that wouldn't necessarily happen. So I just want to put that on the record. Thank you, Dan. Any other comments? Looking for hands here? All right, okay. Well, thank you. That was, I appreciate you adding this in for a little extra discussion, John. Good, good report. Thank you. Next is our CEO oral report on and COVID update. So... Thank you, Madam Chair and directors. I have a very lengthy report for you today. I apologize in advance for that, but keep in mind, we have not met in 60 days. So a lot has happened that I need to cover and there is a number of things happening in the coming 30 days that I also need to cover along with what is going on at the federal government. That's a big question. So I'll just start off with new hires and promotions. And we have Jaren West, who is a promotion by qualifications to senior database administrator. Sean Witt is a new hire in facilities maintenance worker two. Katrina Gibbs is a scheduler dispatcher, new hire. Norma Chavez-Reyes, paratransit operator, new hire. Veronica Hoover, paratransit operator, new hire. Virginia Vaquero KC, administrative supervisor, that's a promotion. And then we have our current recently started class of three bus operators. And I'll talk about that a little bit later. Robert Foster, Terry Johnson, and Dwayne Davis. So we're glad to have them here. Moving on to, oh, Madam Chair, also by the way, given the content today, if you or the directors want to stop me at any point, that's fine. If you want to save questions for the end, that's also fine, whatever you choose. Thank you. In the way of COVID, unfortunately we broke our streak of no COVID positives. We were clear going back to March 15th, but August was not so kind to us. We had two employees as positive in August and there is still a third pending that could potentially be counted in that month. So we're sad to see that happen again on the bright side. If there is a bright side in any of this, if you look at the county health website, the seven day average is on the decline. That is some good news and gives us some optimism that we're on the downside of this latest bump. As you look at our department and vaccination rates, all of our departments are at 85% or greater with the exception of purchasing, mechanics, facilities, maintenance, and bus operators. Our agency, if you take everybody combined, agency vaccination rate is at right at 75%, which as you know is up slightly from two months ago. So that's positive to see that there are employees rethinking getting a vaccination. And I do understand there are a handful of employees that are in the process of the journey to full vaccination. They've had their first and they're waiting to have their second. On the topic of mandatory vaccinations. So we've been monitoring this very carefully. It's not just been a local topic. It's been a national topic, not just public agencies, but private sector. And up until recently, we were leaning towards the San Francisco model, which applies to San Francisco Muni bus operators, rather large agency, which would have said everyone must mandatory be vaccinated by 10 weeks after the first vaccination is approved by the FDA. And as we know, the FDA has approved Pfizer this week. So the clock would start ticking at that point. And then there would be some pretty potentially dramatic consequences of not being fully vaccinated, which would include up to and including termination. There would be provisions for exceptions like religious and doctors. And we were heavily leaning that way. And then we saw what occurred this week at the county. So we've decided for the time being that we'll replicate what the county adopted on August 25th, which is a mandatory vaccination policy in which all unvaccinated employees must be COVID tested weekly. So we are doing that. I welcome your feedback on that. We think that's something we should do right now to kind of watch what's going on, especially given that the seven day moving average is down. And we do want to monitor the data and I'll come back to that in a minute. In the way of COVID testing, we continue the onsite COVID testing that we've been doing since December of last year. We signed up with the state Valencia Labs program and that we did that when we hit the so-called OSHA outbreak condition, which is three COVID positives in a 14 day span. And you are considered an outbreak requiring all employees in that department to test until such time as you go 30 days without a COVID positive. We passed out of that earlier this year, but we continued the program and allowed employees on a volunteer basis to participate in weekly COVID testing. And we were really pleased to see that a significant number of employees over at bus ops continued to be tested. Now that program does not come without a price and from the initiation in December through July, we've received invoices totaling $109,000 for that program. We are exploring in the week to come. I think it's next week or the week that follows in a meeting with the state and with Valencia Labs, we're exploring their alternate option that may be available to us in which we provide them the employee health cards and they build the insurance company. So we're investigating going that route in order to reduce the cost of the onsite COVID testing. And then in closing on that topic, going forward, we will continue to monitor Metro vaccination rates, the Santa Cruz County and Metro positivity rates, the number of asymptomatic cases at Metro, the impact of the COVID variants on Metro and Santa Cruz County and COVID breakthroughs and consider further adjustments to this program. But for the time being, we're implementing what the county has. And again, I welcome your feedback. If I'm going in the wrong direction, I sure would like to know so that I can make a course adjustment. Ellen? Yes. I just saw something yesterday about some companies billing, but I know there's some issues on whether it's a negotiable billing the employees that aren't vaccinated for additional insurance costs because of the anticipated cost if they were to become positive with COVID. I saw that approach, but I did see in that news report that there was a negotiable item, that there's some concerns with that approach. But it's just something I saw is one more approach to watch, I think. Yes, and Madam Chair, I think what you're referring to is the news coverage of Delta Airlines mandating that anybody unvaccinated will contribute an additional $200 to their medical care costs because the impacts of those in their organization who have caught COVID on their healthcare costs have been extraordinary. So we'll monitor that. I mean, at this point, I wouldn't take anything off the table for the future. Again, it all depends on those factors I just discussed. And as we have always in the past, we will continue in the future to let the data and the science drive us to what is the best solution. Thank you. And Director Henderson had a hand up. Thanks, hi, Alex. Just to clarify, is the trajectory that you just referred to is that going to mandate drivers, operators to be vaccinated within 10 weeks of the Pfizer approval approval? Did I catch that right? No, we abandoned that thought for now and are replicating what the county did this week, which is everyone must be vaccinated. If you are not, then you must be subject to weekly COVID testing. Poppy, and then that's effective immediately. How much lead time are you giving folks? How much lead time are you giving folks to come into compliance? It is immediate. Oh, so go get your shot today or yesterday, basically. Or we've already established our, well, way back in December, we established our on-site testing. So we're sort of good at that now. And it just means that more people will be tested weekly. So if there's, sorry, I'm just trying to follow the bouncing ball. So you've adopted what the county has in place. So that means that you need to get vaccinated or file for or request an exemption, medical or religious. And if you are granted that, then you need to be tested on a regular basis. Do I have that right? Sorry if I'm not. No, no, that's okay. And I understand the confusion because I led with a discussion about the San Francisco model, which is the really super strict model. Under this that the county adopted in replicating that there is no exemption. You are either vaccinated or you get tested every week. If you migrate to mandatory vaccinations or you could be terminated, then you have the entry of those two potential exemptions. Got it. Okay, so it is completely up to the employee, whether or not they choose to get the vaccine or to get tested regularly. Sure, and if you're unvaccinated today and you start that journey, you'll be, along that journey, you'll be tested every week until you get your first vaccination. Then you got to go something like three weeks and get your second, then you got to go three or four weeks till you're considered fully vaccinated. So it's a journey, but it's better to start that today so that they can get out of this weekly testing. All right, thank you. Yeah, I'm just wondering if the weekly testing is often enough. I mean, presumably you could get tested, find it as negative, catch COVID the next day. And then for the whole week, you would be spreading, potentially spreading the disease. This doesn't seem like it's often enough. Director, that's an extremely important observation and the examples are far and wide out there. There are twice a week testing and I would say the majority of what I've read about are weekly testing. Again, I think what I would side with is, let's keep monitoring the data and the science. We could get to that as a potential next step. Director Rodzkin. I approve of the way you're handling this Alex at this point. I do wanna say that it would be very helpful to us as we try and recover ridership to be able to say to our riders, all of our bus drivers are vaccinated or 95% of them are whatever it would be with the religious exemptions. People have a lot more confidence I think in riding the bus if they were to know that rather than 75% means there's a one in four chance that your driver is not vaccinated. Yeah, Mike, I can't agree more. I am just baffled by what is occurring in that particular department and I hope they begin to progressively rethink that approach and increase their numbers. I mean, it would be helpful, I think to have discussions with the union, not again about the mandatory issues much as like, what discussions, what kind of incentives, what do we need to do to try and get people to understand that it's not just for their own safety and health, but for their colleagues and the general public that this really is a significant issue for this district and they ought to really, I know you've already been working on it, but what we could do to ask, again, I don't think we can impose that as we can eventually impose it if we have to, but be better if we can work out some cooperative program of the unions to figure out what would be a way to, what's holding people up? Why are they not getting this? Maybe we need some focus groups or something to get an idea of what the issues are and tailor our programs to that information. It'd be worth spending some time and money to find that out, I think. Mike, there's two significant things that we know. One, there is some percentage of the population, let's just not talk about necessarily our employees, but the population in general, that did not trust vaccines until they were approved by the FDA. Now we have Pfizer approved by the FDA. So a certain percentage of the outstanding population will now begin that process. We know that to be factual. The other part of it, no matter what we do, and we try hard and we circulate CDC educational information, the other part of it is the so-called quote, anti-vaxxers and they get their information from a variety of areas and they have their own personal philosophies and they are very difficult to move. Right. Well, again, if it comes to it, we may end up with a mandatory program, but I think for the time being the way you're approaching, it makes sense to me at least. Director Callentary-Johnston. Thank you. Yeah, I had similar comments of what more can we do to partner with unions and partner with our public health partners at the county to just increase awareness and knowledge of the importance of the vaccines. And the other question that I had is, how are we communicating this new direction with our employees? So I'm going to turn to Curtis. Curtis, if you'll jump in and talk about what you've done. Sure. We've issued a memo to all our staff and as well as email that includes the four departments that we have noticed that are under the 85%. We've also have talked and discussed with the unions prior to issuing the notice. And they're 100% pretty much on board with the path that we're currently heading. Right, it seems like it's another opportunity. As we communicate that we're heading in this direction, sounds like we've communicated to also communicate the importance of vaccinations. Thank you. And Director, I do want to give credit where credit's due. I think SMART leadership has really been on board with encouraging their membership. Just like in our case, there's only so much they can do too. But everything that I've seen and heard from their leadership is right on point that they're encouraging their members to get on board. Thank you. Yeah, in my mind, I want to say something too. The SEIU, which is the bulk of our union membership, probably 22 over 2,500 employees, they received this, they're receptive of it. It gave them an option. We have in the county, Carlos Palacios, our CEO, said about 85% and there's someone counted that have an answer. Probably 90% of our employees or SEIU have been vaccinated. Yeah, your numbers. I'm envious of your numbers at the county. You all are doing a great job. Madam, Mrs. Handa. Yeah, I had Alex. I'm trying to call on him, Director Rockin. I just needed a break between Director Koenig. Yeah, thank you, Chair. And Alex, I just wanted to add, of course, some support of the direction. I voted for the vaccine mandate with the testing option. We consider it at the county. Glad to hear that you're moving towards the billing insurance for the testing. That's our belief that at the county as well, that we'll be able to bill insurance for all those costs. So it'll be effectively no cost for either the county or employees, which is great. But at the end of the day, vaccine mandates ultimately reinforce vaccines as a social norm and keep employees safe. So it's the right direction. Also, I'll just add, we're at the county going to reevaluate the policy after 45 days to see what kind of uptake there is with this mandate with the testing option and then consider whether we'd want to go to the strict mandate that you described that now with San Francisco, Santa Clara, and Monterey counties have implemented. And if there is any legal challenge to that, we might also see that emerge in that time period as well. So we'll have a little bit more information in that time. But again, yeah, supportive of the direction. Thank you. And Director, I think that's a good opportunity to just reinforce again, we're not taking the San Francisco model off the table. We're just postponing a decision on that pending the outcome of the current approach. Well, I appreciate that, that the county is also looking at the possibility of things don't turn around. And Don, coming. Hi, I just wanted to tag team on what Curtis was talking about with our memos that we're sending out. We've also sent out and we plan to continue to send out information on the vaccine that CDC provides. So for example, we sent out like a little cartoon sketch of a conversation between co-workers of, are you going to get the vaccine? Well, I don't know, I heard this. You know what I mean? It's kind of like a little fun cartoon thing. There's also like facts and myths, a fact sheet of facts and myths that we're providing. So each time CDC releases something new and as we get more into the vaccine and more approvals and things, we will continue to send that out just so that if there are people that are maybe on the fence but a little worried or not knowing, they're listening to all of these different people but we're going to send out the actual science data. So I just wanted to add that so that you knew that information was going out to the employees as well. No thanks. It's like the idea of the little cartoons keeping a light but getting facts. Also more likely if they're going to look at those than some of the things that might be more dry. So good idea. All right. If it would be okay to continue, I was looking for exactly that kind of feedback and I appreciate that. And also, of course, if the board feels at any point that or if even if I am contemplating another more restrictive policy that I bring it back to the board as an action similar to what the county did, I'm happy to do that. So. And just to add in that Scott's Valley is also given direction and looking at a similar policy. The discussion was for other would be one week or every testing once or twice a week. So I'm not sure where we landed but we're in the process of policy as well. Right here. Okay, continuing on. You may have heard that the TSA recently extended their federal mandate, which was to expire in September in which it requires by order that anybody on a bus, anybody at a transit center wear a face covering or face mask. And the new extension now goes through January 18th of 2022. So by more face coverings we'll keep supplying them on the buses. And this will continue for a while. We're still on track to restart in person board meetings and committee meetings in October. We're also monitoring legislation that might extend the governor's emergency temporary waiver the Brown act. For example, a new urgency clause that's been added to Revis AB 361. That language if passed and if signed by the governor would be in effect until January 1, 2024. And would allow the board to continue teleconference board meetings provided the governor has declared a state of emergency. And you determined by a majority vote that meeting in person would present imminent risks to health and safety of those in attendance. There's probably I understand some other nuances to that that may impact its ability to be implemented but we're monitoring all of that carefully and I'll give you reports on that in the future. Really don't expect much to take place on that before September 14th. Now, moving on to some FTA information. We're having a phone conversation later today with FTA region nine and with the FTA region night administrator. We're seeking their support to purchase three possibly four zero emission pro-terra 660s just like what we have using our 2016 Lono grant award. The new buses would operate exclusively on the highway 17 service. If region nine agrees with us and we hope they will then they'll then make the case to Washington FTA Washington DC and we'll anxiously await that answer. Also, we were notified yesterday that the FTA will be reviewing our drawdowns of the COVID assistance. Now that's cares and Carissa the first two. So several months ago the FTA announced that they will begin supplemental oversight activities with respect to federal COVID relief funding for recipients not scheduled for a triennial or state management review this year. Of course, our next one is anticipated to be an FY 23. So we're in the queue to be audited. I'll let you know when that comes to a closure and what the findings are. We believe we've been following the FTA guidance on all of this to the letter. Some bad news dealing with our automatic vehicle location system. We have issued synchromatics, a notice of default. You might recall that Metro contracted for the automatic vehicle location system which included a smartphone customer facing predictive of rival app. In our letter, we tell synchromatics that they failed in a number of areas to include failure to complete the scope of work within the time period stated in specification section of the RFP. On November 29, 2018, Santa Cruz Metro entered into contract with synchromatics for the purchase and installation of the intelligent transportation system. The project kickoff was January 28th of 2019. According to synchromatics schedule, the date for acceptance of the system was to be October 31st, 2020. So they're nearly a year off of that date. And even if you give them some credit for whatever, however COVID might have impacted them, their failure to deliver on time is just unacceptable. Also, and maybe equally if not more important, their failure to perform in the provisions of the contract, which include the entire synchromatic system back in what they call the back end has gone down a number of times, rendering the systems on all buses inoperable. The automated stop enunciation system often fails and the operator in order to be ADA compliant, the operator then has to verbally announce all stops. But when that failure occurs, it also impacts the backup EA system, making it difficult for the operator to be heard at the back of the bus. The mobile data terminals frequently become unresponsive and require rebooting. The interface of the head sign frequently fails, causing the head signs to display the incorrect route, causing our riders to have confusion. I wanna say jokingly, Isaac once had hair on the top of his head, but this program has probably caused him to lose it all. He's at wit's end. I support him in what he is doing and we'll see what happens. Synchromatics has followed up with a letter saying that they're gonna throw sort of their A-team at this and try to resolve it. I would like nothing better than for them to resolve it, but I think if Isaac and I looked at it right now today, we're concerned about whether or not they can resolve it and have the capability to resolve it. They have some technology issues. So more to follow on that is that evolves. Moving on, Metro's partner Danielle actually led this program, has partnered with Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce on an application and received $1,000 award from the Coalition for Clean Air for promotional materials related to the October 6th Clean Air Day. On that day, we will also offer free fairs to encourage people to ride the bus instead of other methods. As mentioned earlier, the ribbon cutting ceremony for Metro's new zero emission service on the new Watsonville circulator will be September 7th and the new circulator starts in service on September 16th. Turning to the Chamber of Commerce Business Expo, every year when they have that expo, we take a booth there. We will have a booth there on September 8th and we will also have our Crotero Zero Emission Bus there on September 8th. Then turning to the County Fair, Metro will extend route 79 service to the County Fair in Watsonville, September 15th through the 19th. And we will also display the zero emission bus and a para-cruise van and we'll have our usual spot up on the hill in the same area as the public safety displays are. Continuing on, our newest class of bus operators has three students, as I mentioned before. That is ineffective. We cannot catch up with classes of three students. We need 10 to 12 students in each class in order to try to fill our vacancies. We anticipate at this point, we'll need to run at least two more back-to-back classes after this. So with that, and in an effort to attract more applicants, our Human Resources Department, working in collaboration with the Marketing Department has initiated for the new recruitment, the new recruitment that we're just now starting for the next class, a sign-on bonus. This is consistent with a common practice that is beginning to develop across the nation as all transit agencies in varying degrees are struggling trying to fill their bus operator vacancies. The program will provide $500 after training, $500 once the applicant completes probation, which is 120 days after becoming fully qualified. And a final payment of $2,000 once the applicant has completed 2,080 actual work hours after probation. This recruitment is currently underway. In addition to that, HR in collaboration with the Marketing Department has developed a radio spot that will run August 30th through October 7th to try to really put an all-out effort into filling a class, hopefully 12 people in the next round. Moving on. On that point before you move on. Sure, sure. I understand that the new drivers are likely to have shifts that are not most people's favorite, which is the evening shifts, weekends, things like that. Nonetheless, I continue to be baffled that we can't find 12 people in the county that these jobs pay incredibly well and that even more than that, the benefit system is incredible compared to the jobs that are available elsewhere and with a high school degree and a clean driving record. So I'm always amazed that we don't manage to fill these classes there. I mean, I know that there's a shortage of flavor generally and so forth, but I think certainly in terms of the county competitive job here, in terms of being a sales clerk or the other kinds of things that people are ending up doing. And so I'm sort of amazed that we can't fill these classes. I know everybody's making their best effort to do outreach and I'm not faulting anybody for it, but I just have to express my being astounded that they were not able to attract people, given what we're paying for this job. Sure, well, and that's an important point in sort of selling the benefits of the benefits is what the HR department is really putting an extra spotlight on. But I should point out that we do get a number of other applicants. We did get more than three applicants, but we only accepted three people in this last round. And that's because we heavily screen for customer service skills, right? We feel we can teach anybody to drive, but it's more difficult to teach someone to have good customer service skills. And we lose the overwhelming majority of our applicants in that screening process. That makes sense. I'm not in favor of just getting anybody to drive. So we're not that desperate. I mean, people, I think the good will of the public towards our drivers and their love with which they're appreciated by the local community is something we don't wanna lose. Yeah, the answer really is in growing the pool. That's the answer. Dr. Henderson. Hi, thanks, Alex. Can we go back to the GMV Synchromatics? I'm sorry, I had to step away briefly and I cut the tail end of the conversation. Sure. Did GMV indicate or has there been discussion of a timeline as to when the A team, so to speak, needs to have this completed? Or otherwise, you guys are just gonna move on. Anything like that. Even from a 30 day notice, 30 day notice to cure. So they have 30 days notice to get all of their ducks in a row or else Metro's moving on. That's correct. And I should elaborate on that just a little bit. This does not come as a surprise to them. Isaac has given them notice after notice after notice about their issues and that we could be getting close to a notice of default. They've had ample opportunity in the months that have passed to bring the A team in. Okay. And just when did that clock start? Sorry for missing that piece. I believe about two weeks ago, is that right, Isaac? That is correct. Just to give you a sense of, I think it's really better to look at it as what's the deadline? September 17th. It's a Friday. Okay, thank you. Okay, continue on. Okay, in the area of grants as a result of your action today, we are submitting a FTA persistent poverty program grant. We're requesting $850,000 with $150,000 local match. It is designed to be scalable. If we get that full funding request, we can do all of the design and the work on that project, the I should say the South County Zero Emissions Bus Division project up to 90%. If the FTA has numerous applicants they wanna make awards to and they have to reduce the allocation, our project is scalable. Our goal is to get at least 30% design so that we can have the South County bus division, what you call shelf ready so that we can go after federal and state money to actually build, well acquire land and build that division. So this is a second grant application seeking money to do the same thing. We've already submitted a raise, a federal raise grant. So we're optimistic between the two programs we'll get an award and hopefully start that journey towards South County Zero Emissions Bus Division. It's really exciting times for us. Also in the grants area relative to the Metro and City, state AHSC grant application for Pacific Station Rebuild. We received a letter about two weeks ago notifying us that the project has met the threshold of eligibility requirements. Now that seems really, really wonderful but it just means that they've accepted our grant application and we didn't fail the first test. There are two other phases the project must meet with the third phase being an evaluation of the material facts and possible award but still good news we're still in the mix. Turning to the fall bid just talking a little bit more about some of the things we talked about today. We mentioned the Watsonville circulator starting service on September 16th that'll serve Freedom Boulevard, Freedom Center, Green Valley Road and Main Street in both directions every 60 minutes. In the way of restoration of UCSC school term service with the anticipated return of the students to in-person classes in the fall, Metro is restoring service on routes 15 and 22, increasing service on routes 19 and the new route 18 which serves Mission Boulevard. In addition, with today's board approval we are gonna move to lease four articulated buses to add additional capacity on the busiest UCSC routes. Buses on all fixed routes with the exception of Highway 17 service are no longer capacity constrained. So hopefully we'll be able to react to the morning peak loads of folks going from off campus to on campus. On Highway 17 we'll continue to run a weekend level of service 16 round trips per day, seven days a week and it's scheduled and it continues to be scheduled to meet Amtrak and Caltrain service hourly. In addition, there'll be no direct service to San Jose State University. Connecting customers, however, can transfer to one of several VTA routes which run very frequently out of Deirdre on with future commute patterns still uncertain staff will continue to evaluate ridership throughout the fall to make a determination for the winter level of service. And then I've got a number of items I wanna cover under the Federal Fast Acre Authorization. Hey Alex, before you move on. Infrastructure, sure. And also note that Dan has had his hand up before I did so if he wants to go first. Thanks, Mike. Alex, sorry, looking at you a lot today. So passenger restriction or capacity restrictions is a matter that's kind of top of mind right now at UCSC. And also as it relates not only just to Metro but also campus transit. So my question is since we've gone or since Metro has gone away from capacity restrictions, my understanding was that meant 100% capacity pre-COVID levels. But we saw recently that a lot of people but we saw recently some signage in some of the buses that indicate that there's a authorized personnel only section at the front of buses that I think are, I'm not sure if they're enforced by the drivers or if that's something that's required. I'm just trying to understand that a little bit more and what the rationale is behind that. Is that to maintain a six foot distancing? Is that the six foot distancing thing? Some might say that there's not a lot of strong science behind that anymore. It's about masking and vaccinations and that type of thing rather than six foot social distance. But I just want wondering more about that. And if that is in fact something that is gonna be on all buses, because that could, I mean, that's gonna be top of mind for a lot of our students and wondering why there's gonna be potentially room at the front of the bus, but yet they might not be able to get on it. So I just want to be able to answer questions as they come up. Right, so the one piece of strong recommendation from both the CDC and the state is that we always try to protect the bus operator by six foot of social distance. So that's why we have and we continue to try to keep passengers out of that securement area at the front of the bus. Now we are also moving to actually put a permanent line on the ground that makes it clear where that six foot boundary is and that may potentially open up some additional capacity in that securement area when there is no wheelchair or wheelchairs in that area. But we are going to continue to strongly enforce that six foot of distancing between customers and the bus operator. Does that answer all the questions or was there another one in there? No, I mean, that explains the rationale and kind of the objective. Yeah. So my question was about the route 18. You said Mission Boulevard, but I assume that Mission Street in Santa Cruz, unless I got that wrong on the 18. I'm gonna let John jump in on that. John wrote the note. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And I wonder if you could send us a map of the, I saw that bus the other day and I'm wondering what 18 never heard of that before. So I'd like to know where it goes. I might want to use it. Sounds like it goes right through my neighborhood or close to it. It goes Mission to Western and moves to campus. But yeah, we can send the link to the map that's on our website at the route. Thank you. Okay, Madam Chair, continuing on to federal FASTAC reauthorization and infrastructure bill. There has been a lot of news on this in the last 30 days. So starting off with on August 10th, the Senate approved what is being called the bipartisan infrastructure framework that is a $1.2 trillion plan that includes funding for surface transportation, water resources, infrastructure broadband expansion and electricity grid improvements. The Senate bill was negotiated by a bipartisan group of about 20 senators along with the White House with the goal of enacting a bill that could not be blocked by a Senate filibuster. So at least 10 Republicans had to vote for the bill in order to stop the filibuster in a 50-50 Senate. Eventually 19 GOP senators voted for it along with 50 Democrats. The bill includes about 550 billion with a B in new quote, new funding. That is funding above what was expected to be spent in those areas over the next five years. The five-year $383 billion reauthorization of existing highway rail and transit programs, but we fondly know as the FASTAC, is included in the bill, but is not considered in the so-called new money. So it's considered the reauthorization plus whatever growth they had in that. About half of the 550 billion in new funding is directed to programs at DOT, although about 21 billion would go to the FTA specifically. Of the 21 billion in again, quote, new funding, spending available to the FTA, it is likely that about five billion of that could be accessed by metros with competitive low and no emissions program. Most of the remainder of the funds would go to the fixed highway program, so it wouldn't qualify. Now, some good news. There's been some language circulating in this about the low and no program and possibly dedicating 25% of that funding to low grant awards, low emission grant awards. Why do I focus on that? Well, for the past couple of years, the low no program has decided to ignore the low part of it and only make awards to no emission grant awards, zero emission buses, hydrogen fuel cell buses. We have argued in support of the concept that there is a transition that has to occur on this journey to be 100% electric, which means along this journey, we still need to buy low emission vehicles like what we operate today, CNG buses. So if that language makes it into the final bill, we're happy because we can still go after discretionary grant awards and buy some low emission CNG buses. So however, Metro would receive increases to federal transit formula programs through the FASTAC Reauthorization Bill, which essentially provide increases of about 36% for most transit programs over five years. So what does that mean to Metro? So currently Metro receives, for example, $4.6 million from the 5307 formula program. We would expect that average to average up to about 6.6 million. So up about $2 million and that's not including the stick. So if this bill goes through in its current state, that's good news for us. And that would occur over the five year of the bill, this would be 44% increase in 5307 funding for us. Then the authorization section of the bill also includes an increase in the small transit intensive cities program, which we call the stick program. It would go from two to 3% and our allocation just very preliminarily, this could change, but very preliminarily, it looks like we would go from a 2.76 million to a 4.5 or about 1.74 million more per year, assuming that we continued to hit all 10 of the current 12 factors that we're hitting today. So that could be good news in the current bill if it goes through. The Senate bill would also increase the FTA bus and bus facilities program, formula, competitive and the LONO program by 36% each of the five years with LONO getting an additional $1.05 billion in the program. So that's really good news, especially given what I said about the low side of that. The bill would increase the DOT raise competitive grant program from $1 billion to $1.5 billion. And as I mentioned earlier, we're applying for a raise grant. The combination of infrastructure, transportation, reauthorization bill is not as bold as either the president's initial proposal nor the reauthorization approved by the house this past summer. The house bill, for example, if it would have been the bill the Senate adopted would have provided 56% increase in section 5307 as opposed to 36% in the Senate. So, and in the bus facilities program it would have provided 173% over five years. So it was a very bold approach, but that's not what's on the table right now. As a result of the delicate partisan balance of the Senate is unlikely that the house and Senate will take the traditional route of negotiating the two bills and reconciling differences. House Democrats will probably have to swallow hard and vote for the Senate bill in order to get anything. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio is expected to get, to try to get your marks that were included in the house reauthorization bill at the end of the Senate plan, but that will be difficult to do and it's sort of deemed to be a long shot that that attempt could work. Approximately 2.3 million of metro bus and paratransit vans, replacement vans were in the house bill. So of course we'd like the house bill because it had airmarks whereas the Senate bill does not. So this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to hold a house vote on the Senate plan by September 22nd or 27th. If it is approved unchanged, it would be sent to the president for his signature. It is the hope of the White House and most congressional Democrats that another 3.5 trillion in human, quote, human infrastructure plan can be crafted this month and taken up in the White House at the same time as the Senate's hard infrastructure plan. The plan is not expected to receive any Republican votes and would be considered under what is known as a budget reconciliation rules, reconciliation rules, which prevents filibusters in the Senate. This procedure is rare, but was used to enact the 2021 American Rescue Plan and the 2017 tax bill in the recent years. The human infrastructure bill is expected to include items such as affordable housing, construction, free community college, expanded resources for home healthcare, for seniors, tax credits for low-income families and childcare subsidies. It could include additional transportation spending, but it's unlikely the president... Well, it's not likely to happen because the president reportedly told the Senate Republicans that he would not use the reconciliation process to add items to the human infrastructure bill that he could not get in the hard infrastructure bill. In closing, it's doubtful that all 50 Senate Democrats will support the human infrastructure plan at that price, which may make it difficult to bring that plan to the floor this month. Madam Chair, directors, that concludes a rather lengthy report and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Alex. Actually, a lot of good information there. So any questions from board members? And I see a hand from director Callister Johnson. Callister Johnson, sorry. I've got your first name better than your last. I'm sorry. It's a long one. It's Callentary Johnson. Thank you for that report, Alex. That was a lot of great information. I'm wondering if you have that written up, would it be possible to send a summary? Yes, I can. And I do want to give credit where credit is due. Our federal lobbyist Chris really worked over the last week in helping to get me updated on this information, but happy to send it to the board. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? And if I don't have any from the board, are there any from the public? I see a hand from Brandon Foreman. Freeman, sorry, Brandon, Brandon Freeman. Yeah, that was a lot of good. I just wanted to let you guys know that as far as our COVID vaccination goes after Pfizer was approved and with the upcoming availability of a shot from the Safeway program here, we have been hearing a lot of chatter about people who were previously resistant to the vaccine, possibly switching their position. So I just kind of want to let you guys know that, you know, at the union, we are cautiously optimistic that those numbers are going to rise after it's been approved. We don't know that for sure. Obviously the proof is going to be on whether or not they do it, but we are hoping that those numbers do go up. The communication with trying to get that happening. I mean, Metro has been working with us. We've been working with them. We talk about it quite a bit. I know that there was some discussion about getting us involved. I assure you we've been involved for quite a while now, several months. Smart is fully behind trying to get this to move forward. We definitely see it as safety. We also wanted to thank management and their decision of giving us more of an option with the testing. We're hoping that that is an incentive for some people who are unvaccinated to look at it and say, well, maybe I don't want to deal with testing every week. Maybe that will allow some more people to move towards a little bit of an incentive there to get vaccinated. And then I also just wanted to assure Director Henderson the authorized area that you were talking about that was previously closed for the wheelchair securement in its entirety. The line that CEO Clifford was talking about would only move from the front of the wheel well to the back of the wheel well. So it would only really be a difference of about four people who are unvaccinated to look at it. And that's what I'm really looking forward to. And that's what I'm really looking forward to. And that's what I'm really looking forward to. And I just wanted to add up. And then obviously, you know, I want to thank Isaac for all of the hours and hours and hours that he has spent by himself and with me and with us and the data collection and everything that we've had to do with. Synchromatics and. Yeah, I, I hope that they could get it done, but I, I have to say we're not very optimistic on their own. I really do appreciate the amount of time and effort that's going into these things with COVID with synchromatics with all of these things. And I just wanted to make sure that it's known that Metro and us, we're working good, we're working good together. And I appreciate everyone involved in everything that we've done to keep our people safe. To keep our service on the road to take care of our community. And I'm hoping that pretty soon here we're going to be moving into a much better time. I want to take any more time than that. But again, thank you for everyone who's been working with us on all of these different issues. Thank you, Brandon. Appreciate all your work and your support as well. We also, I also see a hand by from Holly. Oh, you're muted. Sorry, can you hear me now? Yes. Okay. I'm Holly Alcorn, the SCA vice president and SCI. You would like to thank the board, the CEO and the CFO for working together and improving the recruitment of the two additional parts department employees. And we just believe this will greatly improve the inventory control and efficiencies in that department. So we just wanted to extend our thank you for that today. Thank you. Any other hands from the public before I go back to director Rod, can I see your hand? Okay. Thank you, Brandon. Thank you, Holly. Director Rodkin. I just wanted to add another thanks to Brandon and to the smart leadership for the role they're playing. And I do appreciate, you know, hearing that there's already cooperation and it's going well. It's absolutely critical, I think, and it makes a big difference that it's not just management, good things. This is a good idea that the people that, you know, clearly represent the interests of the bus drivers and they're stepping up and trying to help us work on this process. We don't take it for granted and we do appreciate it. I'm sure I'm speaking for other members of the board on this. Thank you, Mike. And I don't. Oh, yes, Alex. Yeah, I just want to say one other thing. Brandon was a bit humble there, but Brandon has put in an enormous amount of hours. Acting as an emissary or ambassador between the bus operators and Isaac and his department on this synchromatics and we really value that kind of help and participation that he's given us. Thank you. Yes, I agree. There is applause there. So if I may. Yes. Who am I? Isaac Holly. I just like to thank Brandon as well. We work really well together. He is technically very adept and highly confident. So I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. And I think that's highly confident. So I feel fortunate to have worked with him throughout this. Right. Great. Nice to see that partnership. Okay. If there are no. Other comments, then we'll, we will be going to a closed session. And Julie, you want to. Yeah, sure. We have one labor negotiation matter. And I do not anticipate any reportable action following the closed session. Great. And everyone here that's going to that have that link. If you don't let us know. Okay. It looks like. I see head nodding. So okay. Well, we will adjourn. Yes. Okay. So we will have a public comment before we go to close session. Yes, we will. Okay. So is there anyone from the public want to comment on this? I. I don't see any hands. Okay. Thanks Alex. So we will adjourn on this meeting to close session. The next meeting will be Friday, September 24th. Okay. So, you know, planning teleconference and less of notified differently. Thank you everyone. See you enough in a minute. So you're going to just reconvene and then I'll do my report out. Okay. So I am reconvening our. Metro. Okay. And then after a closed session. Great. And I have no report out from the closed session. So we can adjourn. Great. After all those weird things. If this ever happens again, Gina. I think the question was to log out of zoom completely and then Bye bye. Have a good weekend.