 The carpoolers from Watsonville having arrived we're about ready to start our meeting so third bid it would be seated be great right start earlier okay I will call the June 23rd 2018 board meeting of a Santa cruise metropolitan transit district to order please call the roll director botter here director Chase here director Coughlin go man present here director Hagen here director Leopold thank you director Lynn here director Matthews here director McPherson here director off well here director Rotkin he just had surgeries a knee surgery I think so he won't be here today thank you ex-officio director Thomas we'd like to make a few announcements Carlos Landevera is with us here to be available to those who need some Spanish language assistance you might just make a few comments please placer good morning Buenos Dias directors Carlos Landeverry your interpreter para las personas que necesiten o prefieren el español voy a estar en la parte de atrás thank you that's about the extent of my Spanish right there thank you but you know anybody that needs his assistance please feel free to contact him and also this meeting is being televised by community television Santa cruise County channel 26 and our technician is mr. Lynn Dutton now we will go forward to board of directors comments any board director have any comments all right move on to any communications to the board of directors anybody have any communications to the board of directors he written comments from the Mac sir hi my place on a Mac chair thank you for let me speak today and first of all I'd like to thank the Senate Cruz Metro staff for doing an amazing job of what they've done with the budget that they have to deal with and managing with what they're managing first I'd like to start off with I've been a bus rider for now about six years now and I find it very easily difficult I guess easy part is I mean I could get to any place I need to get to for two dollars Watsonville and back for four the difficulty comes into for me at least as some of the transfer timings especially with the 35 and 35 a sometimes we're just missing by a few seconds and it could be painful especially if you want to try to get home in a timing manner it could be hour and a half for me but the good points are looking into possibly expanding the bike share program which I think would be a great asset to the Metro and then also adding intelligent transportation system or AVS a vehicle locator system it's not necessarily the frequency of the buses but if we add the AVL that would definitely help in the transportation needs and then the other thing was I was really excited to hear about the Metro's plan for the downtown parking to add the Metro passes for the employees downtown but then I was listening to the downtown meeting on Tuesday about the garage and then the response that I was hearing back from was that it was a nice package but it didn't take care of early times and the late times so maybe the Metro can work with the county and maybe other cities to make it more like I have an earlier bus routes or later like an all-nighter like they do in San Francisco to San Jose and then and then my own personal note is I work in Scots Valley at the Enterprise Technology Center and the nearest bus stop is near as that Kaiser so that's like a 15 minutes walk so we have about four or five of us that do make that trek back and forth and not to throw data at you but there's about 500 of us that UCSC and then which is half the building and the other half is probably another 500 and then with active sports maybe we're talking a thousand to fifteen under cars so anything to be done to add a closer bus stop to for me also add that positive appeal because I'm trying to get co-workers to embrace more of the buses and the sustainable transportation and it's a little bit difficult when oh the bus stop is way over here and then you got to worry about the transfer timing so anything for that that could be done that would be really helpful so okay I did have we did have you in item 18 to oh or similar annual report is that it or you might be coming back to us too I don't sure but no that was it I thought I thought a little bit ahead of the time I'm sorry that's all right it's you know it's good if you're ahead of time that's very good thank you Mike thank you very much Michael thank you for your for your work on the Mac I know that you follow lots of transportation issues and really think about how they interact with our our transit system and I just appreciate your thoughtfulness in and looking at all those issues and but particularly your work on in transit thank you hey other comments coming from the Mac labor organization communications good morning my name is Olivia Martinez I am the SCU representative for Metro and I have this following statement I'm requesting this morning that the HR manager and in CFO be removed as the acting managers of the CSRs and they return to their duties SCU feels that the general manager's decision to appoint them as acting managers is unfair to them and the organization it's impacting the workers and labor relations we believe it was short-sighted to hire the risk manager over a customer service manager given the problems we are dealing with we need a full-time customer service manager with strong customer service skills that can turn around many years of bad management the CSR department has been through many different transitions over the last four years and the transitions have not been done smoothly or in a professional manner both the CFO and HR manager are already overstretched and expected to take on this additional department and turn everything around in a full-shoot months which is creating an impact to our members the general manager is creating timelines and requests that are creating unnecessary pressures and conflicts for example last-minute decisions are being made which creates communication problems the need of training and support for CSRs is not being met and management is violating the MOU articles I had to ask the general manager a year ago to hire Nicole Young many of you guys know her she's really well known in the community and has expertise to help with customer service I have yet to see him hire her in a personal note as a woman and as a feminist and I do feel that having these two women be pull stretch so thinly to do so much and it's creating all of these issues for us I think there's some gender inequality issues that need to be looked at please consider our request on another note we are asking the Metro to upload the salaries of its managers on the website the same as it has done for a UTU and SEI employees this is important for transparency when CalPERS or anyone needs to find this information it is difficult and time consuming to have to search through all of the board agendas to find the specific information they may need only non-management pay tables are posted on Metro's website management pay tables are not noticed are noticeably absent from Metro website it is imperative that we have paid transparency for all employees equally at Metro and back has a link dedicated to AB 2040 to address the requirements for local agency to disclose the compensation of their employees on the website if they have a web's presence in the spirit of governmental disclosure and transparency we can expect when can we expect management salary tables to be posted on Metro's website let's say by June 30th 2018 lastly our members are concerned with the SEI class and comm study SEI Metro sign a side agreement which stated that the study would be completed by December 2018 it has yet to even be started SEI members gave up a lot including any COLA increase in 2018 with the agreement that this study would be completed this year thank you thank you good morning board of directors staff I'm Eduardo Montesino representing the bus operators and paratransit folks do want to remind Metro that they have an obligation to come to the negotiating table again for the articulated bus so stated as a pilot program that's what it is pilot program is done we learned there was a it was a good program but in order to continue we need to negotiate again so thank you very much thank you good morning board members Michael Michael Rios representing PSA out of the SEI you so I just want to add on a little to the end of Olivia's speech about the class and comp now I just want to remind you all that we did give up a cost savings of two hundred and thirteen thousand dollars during our negotiations and now all we're asking is just have the class and comp study done by December 30th 2018 like Olivia said I don't believe that it has been started yet so it's a little concerning so you know our members are concerned and we're hope in hope that we can get that done thank you hi Joan Jeffries SEA president and I just want to echo what Mike said that we are concerned about that I believe there may be some issues with the vendor that has been doing the management class and comp and we don't know how that's going to impact the SEA portion but it obviously has delayed it and we are we are concerned you thank you any other communications from labor hey we will move on to item number eight if there's any additional documentation to support existing agenda items anything okay we will move to the Consent Agenda oh we can't hear her is there yeah maybe get the sorry flip it's good for you you get double time see that's great yeah go ahead thank you my name is really bad I'm here this morning not only as a commission on disability but also as a resident of independent square I'm here for two reasons first to let you know that the residents of independent square are grateful that the route 79 is now serving Crestview the Crestview area but also means losing the service to Bahadur that was provided to them I'm asking you to please reinstate the service even if it's only every other hour the second reason is as a commissioner as I previously mentioned that you should be expecting a letter from the Commission on disabilities I'm here to present this letter to you I'm I am aware that there has been changes made reasoning which I'm not too happy about but Watsonville transit information booth open to serve the people of Watsonville these early closures have a negative impact effects on two people members of the Watson disability community that who have worked who work in the Monterey area and live in the Watsonville and who live in Watsonville who are unable to take care of their metro related business needs like purchasing Perak's tickets I have asked these two members of the community to write a letter to you to let you know how it has impacted them makes me sad that they didn't want to because they believe that you don't care or would listen to their concerns I can't blame them our little transit center may not sell a lot of tickets like the Santa Cruz station Watsonville may not be a tourist attraction but we have our events where many people come to Watsonville people of Watsonville are grateful that they no longer have to travel to Santa Cruz to take care of their transit needs I'm asking you today to make the service you provide a bit better to the Watsonville residents and a disabled community and to promote the Watsonville transit center a bit better thank you thank you thank you for your reference thank you good morning directors can you hear me yeah thank you first my apologies and then who I am and why I'm here my apologies after years of going to meetings I keep waiting for the queue of oral communications and I didn't realize that the queue was communications to the board of directors so I I missed my queue and so I'm I'm sorry to have coming at this later time but I would I used to call an oral communication to share I'm John Doherty I'm here to give some background to Felipe de Leon's comments Felipe and I serve as the co-chairs on the Santa Cruz County Commission on disabilities also I served at Metro currently is the accessible services coordinator and I have also had the pleasure of closing the information booth at the Santa Cruz Metro for over eight years as a customer service representative I'm here today just to bring out some changes to your attention and you know question the direction that that's going in last year I think last June when there was the ribbon cutting ceremony at the Watsonville Transit Center the Pawaronian covered the event and their coverage included this quote these quotes director Jimmy Dutra said that not only will the Transit Center have its first customer service booth in 16 years but it's also the first time that it is a full-time position we are pleased to bring this customer service to southern Santa Cruz County the Watsonville Transit Center provides a dry safe and comfortable place for riders and residents to wait for the bus it's not going to stop with this he said well when those words were spoken there were two shifts two customer service representatives there there were two workstations the posted hours were eight to five for our public in Watsonville today we have one customer service person one workstation and the likelihood that the booth will be closed at least an hour and a half if not more during that eight to five span because that single employee has breaks and an hour lunch to account for um I'm not convinced that this is the direction we should be going in for our residents for our customers in Watsonville thank you for letting me share this information thank you I think we should put oral communications to the board of directors from now on in the agenda that probably be the best place any other comments here we don't have we will move on to the consent agenda anybody want to pull any items or is there any anybody from the public that would like to pull a consent item anybody from the board I would move the consent agenda we've been seconded the consent agenda be approved all those in favor I do have a few longevity of the longevity awards but I understand I do not think these individuals are here but I would like to announce them and we can we will give them their plaques later first of all was Karen blight who has been here for 10 years item number 10 and then Seraphine Ruiz who has been here for 20 years are either Seraphine or Karen here well we thank you for your total 30 years of service to Metro it's very much appreciated and then we have some retiree resolutions item number 11 Steven Marcus 1999 to 2018 20 years Steven's not here Sharon to line I think I pronounced that correctly 1996 to 2018 Sharon here no but we want to thank them very much for their services to for Metro and to the general public we will give them their plaques their awards and sort of certificates a little later let's see we excuse me oh excuse me oh yes okay we will move on to item number 12 the oral report from the CEO Alex Clifford thank you mr. Chair directors for brief items for you first of all I'd like to introduce our new manager of safety and risk Shanova Rudick Shanova you want to come up and be introduced and I'll just give you a little bit of background about Shanova he was born at Dominican Hospital and raised in Santa Cruz County he's married with two school age children in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District Santa Cruz he's been a Santa Cruz County paramedic for 15 years ten of which he was a supervisor for AMR he has as associate of science and occupational safety and health from Columbia Southern University and his bachelor's degree and occupational safety and health from Columbia Southern University an associate safety and health manager certification from the Institute of Safety and Health Management and then most recently he was the safety manager and DOT expert for a large motor coach carrier in San Jose so I hope you will agree we found someone with quite the credentials to fill this position and the local welcome we'd we welcome you to make a few comments thank you board and thank you mr. Clifford I'm very proud to be here born and raised in this county love this county have some kids in this county don't plan on leaving anytime soon and an honor to be here I hope to serve the county as I have in the past and in a new position here at Metro and I honestly thank you very much thank you thank you very very much welcome aboard okay and then as we have started recently I like on my monthly report to talk about new hires and promotions so just ever so briefly we hired Mary I think it's pronounced galette as a customer service representative we just met and then in the way of promotions we have Luke Lucas iriguchi who's gone from a facility's maintenance worker to I'm sorry from a facility's maintenance workers one to a facility's maintenance worker two so always exciting when we have an internal promotions another internal promotion I'm pleased to announce that Daniel Zaragoza has gone through the process of being interviewed along with others to replace April and has prevailed in taking over that position as the paratransit superintendent and again another internal promotion Daniel has done a wonderful job for many years and then we also everybody knows Daniel he does an outstanding job for us and as he did very well in in this process so congratulations Daniel also equal kudos to Leo Pena Leo I think is in the room to Leo Leo goes from transit supervisor to the safety and training coordinator you heard earlier in the agenda that Sharon toline has retired Leo has competed to take over that position so and he's been sort of an understudy I think for Sharon over the last several months and really good good effort and thank you for what you've done and as I understand he did very well too in the the process of sort of competition to to to become the person to fill this position so thank you Leo for job well done and a couple other things I want to cover as we have talked about for several months the Apti universities conference is here it's it you know people will start registering tomorrow and I think all of the formal types of events will start occurring on Sunday and let me just ask Barrow if he would just come up and give a quick plug for that and then I'll go on to the last item that we have thank you Alex chair board staff and public our just real quickly the focus for us as he said is Sunday as his traditional these conferences on Sunday from 945 until noon will be the local show Donald Lynn will and welcome as the host city Bruce and Alex will be involved UCSC student Alice Malmberg will be involved and then Larry and I and Zach from Cabrillo will do the local story as is traditionally things and we look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the reception that evening which is being hosted by Gilligan Maritor so we're looking forward to letting all these other entities from around the country see us and hear our story because it's one of the more interesting ones in the college transit relationship business so thanks for everybody's support in the last few months getting together and the weather is supposedly good Sunday that's right okay thank you Barrow and then just digressing and I have a mission here so we have Maritza Mendoza another internal promotion from paratransit dispatcher to admin supervisor of ops Maritza understand is in the room sorry Maritza for not having you on that original but we got you just in time thank you for being here and then finally Gina's gonna put up three very quick videos this is video coverage this is coverage on television of our measure D and SB1 media event we got really good coverage I need to stall because she's running across here must have heard her name I'm gonna fill some dead air for a few moments but as you recall and I don't know if you saw on television but KSBW did a great segment they split it up into a five o'clock hour and a six o'clock hour some redundancy of the two but some additional information added in the six o'clock hour and then KION I thought just did an outstanding job probably the best of all of the coverage and so with that you know are you ready is it not connected to the microphone maybe it was earlier well Santa Cruz Metro has 98 buses total but they say 62 of those that need to be replaced today they showed us a three we're all good at reading lips that will replace some of those older that was our practice need replacing and today Metro rolled out 18 pieces of new equipment okay I went actually King George's live in Santa Cruz tonight with how this is all funded and when we might see more well Santa Cruz Metro has 98 buses total but they say 62 of those that need to be replaced today they showed us a three of the new clean air buses that will replace some of those older ones along with 12 vans and three pair cruise transit vans this was all funded through Senate bill one also known as the gas tax and measure D a Santa Cruz County sales tax passed in 2016 now there are talks of repealing Senate bill one but Metro employees say that would be a big setback I will struggle with finding the money to replace equipment and I will be running equipment over and over equipment which unfortunately will break down will make our service less dependable and we'll be able to do the things that we do with this agency and we promise the customers we will deliver to them which is on time service provides an average of five million trips for people a year they say 80% of those riders do not have any other means of transportation and coming up at six all have when they're expected to roll out more new buses along with when they're going to roll out the fully electric buses it will be the first fully electric bus in the county like in Santa Cruz Ashley King at KIO and use channel 546 county Metro system getting a revamp thanks to funding for measure D and Senate bill one they're adding more than a dozen new buses and vans cow is Ashley King gives us a look at the new resources and I ride the bus all the time you realize that we didn't have to have a car and that we could get around by bus today 18 new vans and clean air buses were rolled out to replace some of the other equipment because Santa Cruz County Metro says they provide an average of five million trips a year 80% of those people do not have a different their own mode of transportation so they're dependent on Metro service some of the buses being used date back to 1998 making them 20 years old and the normal buses lifespan is only 12 years more than half of the buses in the fleet here in Santa Cruz need to be replaced or updated but I'm told without SB 1 funding that money would be very hard to find Senate bill one better known as the gas tax along with measure D a Santa Cruz County sales tax passed in 2016 make getting new equipment possible now there's talk of repealing SB 1 well it's not officially on the November ballot yet many have expressed their dislike of it Metro says taking that away would be a big setback I will struggle with finding the money to replace equipment and I will be running older equipment older and older equipment which unfortunately will break down will make our service less dependable and we won't be able to do the things that we do at this agency and we promise the customers we will deliver to them which is on time service Metro employees say they will be getting six more clean air buses in four electric buses in early 2019 the California Air Resources Board wants Metro to be 100% electric by 2040 in Santa Cruz actually came to KION News Channel 5 46 a long way a new set of wheels are on the streets in Santa Cruz the transportation in San Ville 18 new buses and bands to replace its aging fleet six million dollars for the new fleet came from voter approved measure D and state Senate bill one approved by Governor Brown in 2017 so when you think about a fleet of 98 and 62 buses being well past their useful life that's important to us to pay attention to because when those buses age they contend to break down more frequently and as buses break down more frequently then we are not delivering the service that we promise the customers and your bosses are also more environmentally friendly and come with lower emissions so mr. Chair certainly we have Josh our state legislative lobbyist here with us today and he'll talk a little bit more about what's going on with the SB1 challenge but good coverage that we had and hopefully that process of beginning to educate the voters of Santa Cruz County about the importance of SB1 to this agency and are in the impact of that on our ability to purchase equipment in the coming years we can't buy all of those 60 plus buses in one year it's going to take many years to do that and we need those kinds of dedicated resources like SB1 and measure D provide questions board just a quick one and a quick answer is fine for right now I'm just curious to know the status of the studies about Pacific Station and delivery model Barry do you want to give a real brief presentation on that and then you have an item on your agenda to relative to that right in the consent agenda you approve the contract with the second of the two studies so real quickly we're about halfway through the first one which was the strategic look at how we deliver service downtown that should be done late July so we'll be seeing you in committees and board in August or so and this second one is preparing a bunch of alternative concept layouts of the current station with the adjacent city properties and that should hit about three or four weeks out after the first one so through the August September timeframe we'll have the results of both products thanks I just wanted general timeline yeah thank you the other comments board we'll move on to that's that your report's completed then mr. Clifford yes sir okay we have a now presentation oral presentation of Santa Cruz class 33 graduates of leadership Santa Cruz it's a tremendous program that's been going on for 33 years and it's been really well received I'm glad that we are able to have some of our employees that participate in that yeah we thank you mr. Jarrah we are we are lucky to have this program here in Santa Cruz County and fortunate to have the ability to identify up to three people each year to participate in that program there's a little bit of an exchange that we do we use our buses to help guide the the particular class to various venues around the county so it's a nice trade-off I'd like to introduce reintroduce Leo Pena and also Pete Rasmussen Pete I think I saw Pete in the audience they are our recent graduates from class 33 and I would welcome either of both of them to say something about the program and the value congratulations and thank you for participating I yeah I'd like to thank Metro for giving us the opportunity to participate in leadership Santa Cruz County it was a very rich experience getting to learn about the history and the institutions the community organizations a lot of them I had never heard of but there's a wealth of community organizations in this county and a lot of unique experiences you know it's an interesting program when one month you're touring underneath the boardwalk and later you're on the inside of a jail cell so thank you morning board Leo Pena I just want to thank you guys for giving me the opportunity to be in this leadership program it was a great program learned a lot gave me great this overall perspective of what goes on in the county and thank you for giving me the opportunity thank you very much thank you for dedicating the time big commitment of time and we're again grateful to have these folks that are willing to to also volunteer to be a part of the program I'd like to just make a quick comment sure I'm so pleased that Metro invests in its employees on a regular basis in sending them to leadership because I think the two of you who participated you've worked here a long time you think you know the community and you're in that program you learn so much it really enriches how Metro connects to the community and is represented in that whole leadership cohort it's it's just it's a wonderful program and it's terrific that the public entities are involved as well as private nonprofit it's a tremendous program it's great to have and they can spread the word to it's you never knew how little you knew about Santa Cruz County to you participated I think so congratulations and thank you and I'm glad we're continuing that and and then just a couple of the quick notes I do want to put a shout out for Pete who just returned from Los Angeles on a three-day seminar about bus rapid transit so we'll be we'll be working him over over the next coming months to find out what he learned and how we can apply that here at Metro so Pete thank you too for spending three days down there in the smog ridden Los Angeles sorry about that so finally just to introduce our class 34 and that'll be Jolene Church our HR manager Gina pie and Freddy Roka is Freddy here okay so Freddie so those three will be our next class and and you're from now they'll be here to tell you what they learned I'm glad we're continuing that effort thank you very much okay and now we will have an introduction of new operators and I think I'd like to introduce a new grandpa our CEO Mr. Alex Clifford we start calling you Clifford everybody who knows me knows I'm rejecting the term grandpa going in favor of the Italian version which is no no my daughter just doesn't want him to learn no no so fast okay do we do have some new operators is that correct sir old Geary chief operations officer it's a pleasure to introduce the new operator class that's been moving right along they had their version of night driving which I'm sure was a challenge to everyone here and I'd like to thank Leo and yet for taking on this class and moving it forward in the direction that we want to be very pleased with the results and I'll let Leo introduce them and they can introduce themselves thank you or good morning board again yeah got a new class I've been working hard just started night driving this week we're gonna continue next week and yeah they're doing well I'll let them introduce themselves to you guys so yeah here's a new thank you to say a few words thank you very much welcome hi my name is Miguel Cabrera it's nice to see you all and I thank you for the opportunity to work for Senators Metro thank you good morning my name is Jorge Gallegos thank you for giving us the opportunity to work for this county and great community thank you hello my name is Jerry Chavez I'm excited to serve the Santa Cruz County thank you morning board I'm Adrienne Jimenez jumping from paracruz over to fix her out and I'm very happy in honor to work for such a great company thank you morning my name is Michael Richards and I just want to thank you and everyone for giving me the opportunity and I look forward to being of service to the community thank you very much and congratulations to all you are the eyes and ears of our district so the Metro district so we thank you for your service and congratulations Mr. Chair could we take a quick picture of the new class with the chair and vice chair you want down there come on guys we politicians always take advantage of a photo op so thank you very much for that now we will move on to the state legislative update by Josh Shaw welcome Josh it's good to see you again and thank you it's been an interesting year I'm sure in Sacramento it has thank you Mr. Chair and members of the board Joshua Shaw president of Shaw Yoder Antwy pleased to represent Metro in the state halls of the Capitol in Sacramento has been an interesting year no no Clifford excuse me CEO Clifford has asked some of the major recent developments as well as ongoing developments and frankly the news clips that we just saw really lay out two of the key things I was going to talk about and we'll get into some details on Senate Bill 1 and the imminent threat to that landmark transportation funding as well as the upcoming we think mandate for all transit agencies to move to zero mission buses but to set the stage for you real quick the legislature in Sacramento is finishing up its biennium this year they will adjourn on August 31st that will be the second year of the two-year 2017-2018 session they really in two weeks go on a summer break of about a month so we're six months into what is effectively a seven month working session that means bills introduced this year have to have left their house of origin Senate bills need to be over into the assembly by now assembly bills need to be over into the Senate by now or they're dead for the year some bills died last year the governor's acted on a few bills but of the 5,500 plus bills that have been introduced so far about a thousand or so are still alive and moving so there will be a sprint in other words in August when they come back from their summer recess to get the work done and put to bed for the rest of the year just a couple notes about this recent primary election on June 5th voters did approve Proposition 69 a measure put on the ballot by the legislature last year we talked in April last time I was here last year about the passage of Senate bill one which you just saw some news coverage on concurrent with that bill the legislature put on the ballot a constitutional amendment to protect those funds as well as some additional transit funds that have been kind of constitutionally loose for a few years and now those were all overwhelmingly protected by the voters who passed Prop 69 by 80% plus margin also if note the state Senate did lose its supermajority in terms of Democratic members when Senator Josh Newman from Orange County was recalled on that same day ostensibly because of his vote on Senate bill one he was one of 27 senators that voted for the landmark transportation measure but nonetheless his voters did recall him let me turn to the state budget last Thursday folks the legislature sent to the governor the 2018-2019 state budget not much in new transportation news which is actually a good thing because we're trying to concentrate in in Sacramento and through our stakeholder allies preservation of Senate bill one but the underlying revenue projections in the governor's budget show a combination of existing consumption patterns and tax rates on the the fuels and items that support public transit funding are up even since his January budget proposal in January we got the first look at the budget they passed it last week his the governor's projections are updated for instance the state transit assistance program which goes out by formula to all transit agencies is up about 17% from what we thought it would be in just January and the total projected 18-19 program should be about 28% higher than the current year that ends right in about eight days that's about a $770 million program statewide it used to be 200 300 million statewide that was before Senate bill one so about half that new money is Senate bill one related and I think Metro gets roughly in the new year about $3 million so that's a significant source of new and ongoing transit funding today and over this weekend the legislature will probably be finishing up its negotiations with the governor on another major spending category that helps public transit agencies the cap and trade program you remember that for several years now the Air Resources Board has been running a market-based program where polluters are capped in terms of their emissions if they can't change their processes and their emissions are going to be up here they can actually pay for the difference by contributing to this fund we call cap and trade the legislature gets to allocate about 60% of it some of it is hardwired to go to transit the low carbon transit operations program will be will be about a hundred and fourteen million dollars in 18-19 and there is a large competitive program that we can pursue for for instance new zero mission buses the transit and intercity rail capital programs which should be about 473 million in 18-19 by the way about half that amount for that big competitive program also comes from Senate bill one so if Senate bill one were to be repealed there'd be half as much money to go around for these kinds of purposes one of the discretionary programs that the legislature is looking at putting together in this final cap and trade deal which we think they'll vote on next week before they take their summer break is to help agencies like yours purchase new zero mission buses that means usually battery electric or hydrogen electric buses the Air Resources Board runs something called the hybrid and zero mission truck and bus voucher incentive project I don't know why that's such a long name but that's a program where they help reimburse public agencies for the incremental cost increase of this new zero mission technology the legislature is looking at putting in about 125 million dollars statewide that about doubles what the ARB thought they would have to work with so that would help agencies like Metro purchase new zero mission buses so let me transition into a few different points larger points about zero mission buses as the news clip said this morning we all believe that the Air Resources Board is going to mandate probably this year through its regulatory ability that all public transit agencies ultimately convert their entire bus fleet to zero mission to electricity as your CEO is talking about on the news it's hard enough right now with the existing funding to maintain our current fleet the new technology is more expensive it's not as reliable as your traditional buses and the transit folks have been making that case to the ARB and really working on a form of a regulation that acknowledges that's probably where the state's going to go ultimately but we need to do it in a way that does not threaten your budgets does not make you trade off new technology for reduced service that would be a horrible result for your citizens and in fact CEO Clifford has been front and center with a small group of transit managers from around the state who are negotiating with the top staff at the Air Resources Board on the form of this regulation we're fighting for more flexibility recognizing again that the state regulators are probably going to go in this direction in fact a couple weeks ago I had a chance to talk with Governor Brown about this developing regulation because he essentially controls the Air Resources Board appointment and while he acknowledged some of our points about the current technology is not where we want it to be it's too expensive right now it's not as reliable and he said he would work with me to work with ARB staff and making sure that they give us the flexibility we need he did tell me when we concluded our talk that you know Josh this is the way we need to go so he clearly is in favor of a mandate and I think this year the last six months of his administration he probably is going to want to see his Air Resources Board impose some regulation like this so again you're directly represented in the working group that is negotiating this in fact it's been meeting every week since mid-January so thank you for the time that Alex has been able to spend on making sure this thing does not ruin your transit service in the name of in the name of new vehicles to so so I've talked about some funding available for electric buses there is also the question of what do you pay in terms of the electricity rates the California Public Utilities Commission which obviously works with and has oversight over the investor owned utilities and other electrical companies just last month worked out a deal with the three major IOUs PG&E Southern California Edison etc where they will be bringing almost a billion dollars in new investments to the table mostly for electric charging infrastructure right now if the mandate came on tomorrow you'd have to take out all your existing fueling equipment and put in electric charging stations also expensive so there will be some new monies from the regulatory agencies including PG&E which will combined with Southern California Edison make available to transit agencies as well as school school bus operators and other heavy duty operators almost 230 million statewide about 52 million of that will be guaranteed for transit that's some advocacy work we did at the CPUC for PG&E their fleet ready program will be a grant program that they will make available and we'd like to work with your staff to make sure we understand how to put Metro front and center as you begin to experiment with zero mission buses that's on the charging side relative to what you pay for electricity some transit agencies across the state are already experimenting with zero mission buses and we're seeing that their operating costs compared to traditionally fueled buses whether diesel fuel or compressed natural gas can be 20 to 40 percent higher meaning the rate of electricity they pay to run these buses is higher than what they would have run for the same bus on natural gas or diesel fuel the CPUC also approved PG&E's commitment to introduce a new electric vehicle rate design proposal that is supposed to benefit heavy duty customers like a transit agency that's a good thing but there's no guarantee that it'll give the rate relief that we would need that's why I want to turn next to a couple of bills that are moving through the legislative process in Sacramento Senate bill 1434 was introduced by the California Transit Association to require the CPUC to require that the investor owned utilities come up with transit supportive rate designs this is actually a legislative proposal that was made by CEO Clifford and his colleague Carl Sodoric at Monterey Salinas transit a couple years ago so that bill has come to fruition it's moved out of the Senate which with a lot of support it's moving through the assembly right now and we are getting pretty good signals that that could be signed so as much as we just got some funding from PG&E we're also looking to tell the CPUC to tell the utilities you got to acknowledge that your rates can't be so high for transit agencies that they cannot put out the service that is expected with these zero emission buses I should also mention Senate bill 1119 by Senator Bell he's the chair of the Senate Transportation Committee he's got a bill that would adjust the statutes relative to the low carbon transit operations program that's the cap and trade funded program that I mentioned a minute ago that goes out since funding out by formula to all the transit agencies current law requires that transit agencies have to spend 50% of their monies on benefiting those in disadvantaged communities which is a laudable goal but for a community like this the definition of disadvantaged community is so narrow geographically there are only very few places in your operating district where you could actually spend this money and that area might already be saturated if you will or have sufficient service so this bill would loosen up the requirements a little bit add some additional kinds of communities that I think score well here in Santa Cruz and across your operating district and that bill is moving out it's out of the Senate already and moving through the assembly so that should provide some funding relief some programming relief for Santa Cruz Metro and then a bill one final bill it's already actually been signed by the governor assembly bill 3124 introduced earlier this year long story short helps transit agencies with articulated buses and you of course have been working with UC Santa Cruz for a three bus demonstration project up there on the campus those large buses with the accordion in the middle the law currently says that if you can you put a bike rack on the front of the bus and of course folks who ride bikes very popular in terms of transit service there's been a weird adverse measurement from the CHP and some communities across the state that says the most regularly available bike rack is four inches longer than state law allows so this bill extends the state law by four more inches basically retroactively grandfathering the equipment that's out there on all of our articulated transit buses anyway luckily the governor signed that bill so your demo program up at UCSC which is you know dormant for the summer recess but we'll start back up in the fall it'll be legal in terms of the bike racks that have been on those buses so that's a good thing Mr. Chair let me close with Senate bill one obviously the landmark road repair and accountability act of 2017 that we've been talking about advocating for for more than two years signed last year now funding all the programs that I've mentioned you saw the clips one of the questions that the reporter raised in the clips was will a repeal of SB one happen four months now the proponents of repealing that measure have been gathering and submitting signatures to the secretary of state last month they submitted over 960,000 signatures and again long story short last night the campaign consultant who represents the interest groups who are advocating against repeal told me that based on the rate of qualification of verification of valid signatures that frankly tonight or Monday morning we're going to learn that the repeal has qualified of course we'll let your staff know the moment that's official and you'll see it in the press but that's bad news for folks who believe there needs to be continued transit funding streets and roads funding and highway funding we think it will qualify the measure just again just to be clear would repeal if the voters voted for this repeal measure on the first Tuesday in November it would instantly repeal the revenues that have been generated and would be generated going forward by Senate bill one so that almost doubling of state transit assistance would go away all the two hundred and fifty million dollars for new zero mission buses that you can compete for would go away a campaign committee has been formed the coalition to protect local transportation improvements that group really led by the California Transit Association League of California cities California State Association of Counties the California Alliance for Jobs which represents the construction industry that works on infrastructure projects as well as the unionized labor groups that work on those projects they came together to run the yes on prop sixty nine campaign in June which again was voted on overwhelmingly they pivot instantly to become the no on repeal of SB one and next week if the Secretary of State in fact tells us that the measure has qualified they'll assign a proposition number and the campaign will will convert instantly into the no on proposition whatever it is it will probably be seventy something so a lot of work has been done already to explore in terms of opinion polling and voter research how the voters feel about repealing what the news clip called the gas tax in fact it's larger than that it's the road repair and accountability act of twenty seventeen I'll tell you very quickly and then I'm happy to answer questions that initially if you say don't you want your gas tax to go down of course a majority of folks say yeah that sounds like a good idea but we have learned through a lot of detailed focus work focus group work and opinion polling across the state that if the right message gets out the voters are less interested in doing away with this funding source if you ask questions like did you know that we can't repair the potholes in your streets did you know that transit service might shrink voters are less interested in getting rid of this money so folks like governor brown and others are hard at work making sure there will be adequate resources to get the message out of course your agency has a public agency can't tell your voters how to vote one way or the other but the clips that we just saw are literally the perfect kind of example of things I've been urging my public transit agency clients to do for quite a while now which is explained to your communities explained to the public explained to the press what the implications will be that you can do if this funding goes away here's the number of the 68 buses that we can't replace here's the service that might have to shrink or here's the service we can't expand those things you can explain quite clearly in your public role and we urge frankly all of you to continue to do that I know you all do a very good job of that here but we're going to need more of that in the next three months or the voters will face a more difficult decision than we think they need to face they need to understand the positive implications of the funding that has come online and the negative implications if that funding goes away so Mr. Chair let me conclude right there and I am happy to answer any questions about any of that material. Thank you for that very information filled report from the state I really do appreciate in your work that you do for us and I want to thank our CEO to Alice Clifford for being at the table in these discussions it's really valuable and he's got tremendous knowledge of how this works and a couple things I mean I've say something about SB1 and one form or another we all know the value of that to our local governments half of that money goes to the state half of it to local governments but I just I can't overemphasize it's a critical factor that we're it's kind of leaves us frozen we want to do some things we want to repair buses etc but until we know the outcome of that in November we would be foolish to really commit any additional resources financial resources I do want to thank you know the utility companies too for coming forward and helping us all of us address our the needs for electrical buses and so forth I do want to mention that Mr. Clifford and I met with the CEO of Monterey Bay Community Power to see how how that might apply and how that can be used to the best of our abilities as well so we're we're we're on top of it I think we just hope that the right outcome is the voters get to that I just saw a poll that LA times I think 51% were for the repeal 38% were against but no campaigning to start it and I know we're not we're not here to campaign but we it's going to be a tight vote there's no question one way or the other that's right but thank you for your efforts historically I've known you for a long time and you do you're highly respected up there and we're surely glad to have you on our team in Sacramento as our shit in Sacramento any questions from the board Mr. Leopold thank you chair thank you for the presentation I'm very interested in the bill the talking about disadvantage communities and and and sort of broadening that a little bit because that has been a big struggle in seeking funding I know we've sought funding for down in Watsonville and there's only a small section of Watsonville and we couldn't actually get it because it's just not big enough to right to to uh to qualify the status the status of that bill again and there are other things that we could be doing to be helpful with the passage of that bill appreciate the question the bill has moved out of the Senate was sponsored by a senator so the right action took place in the Senate it's just about to have its first policy committee hearing in the assembly just to to describe a little bit more detail how it works the the thought behind the investments across the cap and trade program and the combination with disadvantaged communities that most of these investments stay in place you're talking about like energy projects and and and energy conservation projects that they're physically in one place of course transit moves one bus all across could could move one bus all across the community the bill for instance in terms of the different flexibility aspects would allow newer expanded transit service that connects with transit service that serves a disadvantaged community recognizing that people aren't just traveling in this one community so those dollars would become available in terms of what you can do the agency the agency has been supporting that bill and we've been advocating in terms of our delegation making sure that they support us as well as others who are voting on it I think anything that you could do locally over the next couple weeks to if anybody runs across members of your delegation percent particularly in the assembly particularly Assemblymember Stone and or Assemblymember Caballero reminding them that this is a good bill for the reasons stated when they get back to work after the summer recess that'll be probably the final push on the bill in August and that's when we want them front of mind remembering oh yeah SB 1119 is a good bill and maybe it would be helpful for us at our I guess question is would it be helpful at our boards or councils to take a position and and let people know absolutely I could take it back to August we might be able to get that in yep we would love county support we would love individual city support again the bill will probably get to the governor in late August but he's got the month of September to act on the thousand plus bills that'll come to him so even a letter to the governor by that time if not the delegation would be helpful great well uh mr. Clifford if you could put together a fact sheet for us that that's something we can all take back to our jurisdictions the other thing I just want to say about SB 1 I know how hard we fought for to get that those resources and when the poll that was talked about you know seeing 51 percent against with a one lot one part to spiriting and one part showed that that there was we could do some things and I think the messaging is going to become very important I was also gratified to see that here in the bay the greater bay area the support was much stronger than it was in southern california and you know hopefully we're this turnout in the November election will be better for us we know this is a fairly cynical move by congressional republicans to to increase turnout for their weak candidates and it's it's a terrible thing to put the state's infrastructure at risk because the message of one party is so bad that they have to figure out ways to to goose their own members their own party members to come out we need these funding the metro needs the funding we need it for buses we need to keep on operating it's uh the state needs to step up the federal government has walked away in my opinion on on on financing transit and then all of our jurisdictions obviously use this money and the unincorporated parts of the county it's six to eight million dollars a year which makes a huge difference in us being able to meet the needs of our road system so we'll fight hard here in santa cruz and try to lock up a lot of votes not the transit district but those of us in office will work hard to to try to generate as many votes as possible here in santa cruz to help with the statewide effort appreciate that director leopold and if i might the reference that the chair and the director made to the la times poll again they just ask do you want your gas tax to go down 51 percent of people say sure when you ask follow-up questions do you want us to fill potholes do you want congestion relief on our highways and streets and roads do you want improved transit service more buses more light rail we get strongly support or or or somewhat support in the 90s the 80s the 70s depending on the question so again it's about the messaging and that'll be about i'll say the resources that the campaign has at hand and by the way governor brown very personally involved in that too he told me the other night uh he's making the calls that you would expect him to be making on things like this but it will be a campaign about ideas and and the messages are important and what you can all do as public officials is tell your community the pros and cons in terms of what would happen to this agency for instance one way or the other thank you for your work director matthews this is just a follow-up to the general subject i'm not on rtc if anyone here is anyone here on rtc yeah yeah half of you okay yeah i thought so i thought there was a good strong contingent um is rtc coordinating any county-wide fact gathering on this i mean we can do something on metro and the cities can do something on the city road but a county-wide story yes so what gina is actually we've taken that initiative on gene is in the process of trying to coordinate representation from all of the cities in the way of city manager public works directors if they have a chief information officer that person um our goal is in august or september to get them preferably no later than august to get them all into a room to talk about things about how we educate people on the importance of sp1 so as you can imagine we have you know three months of work to do we need to have messages like we just had continue all through that period of time um we've had this big break in time now since our message got out there so i think each each of those entities the cities individually in the county can we can sort of time how they get out there and talk about what the sp1 is doing for the community not the campaigning stuff yeah just educating the voters on what that the importance of that and what it is doing in watsonville and capitol scott's valley city of santa cruz and and of course the county those individual stories need to be out there for a solid three months so that's the goal august no later than september have them all in the room and talk about the strategy august is too late to do that i agree it's it's very difficult those folks together oh get started i mean that yeah i know that the county is our public information officer is is thinking about ways to tell the story in different ways through various means you know it's interesting to me that now our twitter and facebook reach is greater than the sentinel yeah and so we're we're thinking about ways in which to we can get stories out about the effect and of course i know we're all doing i'm assuming we're all doing signage about our projects all around the community and i think that will be very helpful as well we got five cities in the county and it's it's not that many jurisdictions so it's it shouldn't be rocket science to get people together mr haig one of the things mr shah you're mentioning constantly the pottles situation you might add to that sidewalks and think i'm on those sidewalks and some of them are truly destructive especially in south county i fight it consistently agreed point well taken thank you sir compliment go miss thank you uh the the senate bill 1434 can you tell us a little bit more about how the overlay would work with the cca's so that is a great question and given uh the monoray uh entity that the chair mentioned that that he and the ceo have been talking to we need to take a second look this the question of cca's explicitly has come up quite recently as i stand here today i'm not positive the cpu c according to this bill has the authority to work with cca's that's been asked of me quite recently in the last few days i'm going to go back to sacramento and talk with our folks running that bill and make sure that we've worked that in because presumably uh whether you buy your power from pgne or a cca if the state has a mandate for zero emission buses we'd want transit to get the same kind of rate relief so we think we'd want that bill to have that impact i'm not sure it does that adequately yet thank you point any other questions um thank you very much for your presentation and uh your efforts um really i i just know from experience that you're highly respected there and thank you for your in-depth knowledge of the transportation issues in the state of california and how severely they impact us and i just want to just mention to the general public i know they know but this does not have any impact on measure d that was passed by voters and thank heavens by more than two-thirds um and uh that was to have sent sales tax and uh that's safe so uh we just this is uh sp1 is a separate uh entity and so we just have to work on that thank you again i appreciate the work of all of the directors in supporting public transit thank you so much you okay now with that simplified presentation of the state issues we're going to go to the federal with uh mr chris gig the of uh capital edge oh we do have yeah we have a uh slide presentation i guess right okay so fancy thanks very much uh mr chair and directors uh josh usually comes with a slideshow and i usually come up in chat and so i have a staff person that actually knows how to use a computer and powerpoint and so i said can you put something together for me and then josh comes up in chats and i got this i can't win with that guy any thanks very much for having me uh i uh i thought i would start by talking a little bit about uh the annual trip that that some of you folks have made over the last few years to washington dc uh and i want to thank you i want to thank uh director dutra director botdorf and director rotkin uh for coming to washington this uh this april along with the ceo i think these trips are important to make uh and i think that they're effective uh so and uh but i also wanted to go a little bit through for those of you who haven't come what what we do there is this is not uh a fun and games trip uh it's more like a forced march i think that's what director botdorf referred to it as this year uh and uh and we visit as many people as we can uh in a in a short amount of time because you folks are busy uh back home so anyway uh of course we meet with with folks in our congressional delegation and and uh and a lot of times there's new staff in those new in those delegations so in educating them about the needs of santa cruz metro is always something uh that we like to do uh congressman panetta and his staff are kind of up to date on on our needs now and have been very helpful in the in the short time that he's been in congress and the two senators of course as well uh we also go to the congressional committees that have jurisdiction over transportation the appropriations committees that fund the federal transportation programs on an annual basis the authorizing committees that uh uh that do the pop the big five-year policy bills that that happen we go and we talk to them another thing that we've been doing and i think that uh mr chairman this was your idea a few years ago is kind of hit other members of the california delegation particularly those on the transportation committee uh to tell them our story and in a lot of ways they match up with the stories of those other those other districts and i think that helps to uh you know to make a united voice when we talk again about those big five-year policy bills and then of course we go to the department of transportation federal transit administration and others to to talk about their grant programs things like that of course the the sort of the main topic for us is our very long-term funding needs which i think is important because a lot of folks will come to town and they will say all right we need a million dollars for our transit facility or we need x million dollars for our buses and i think that i appreciate that your message uh is is is more nuanced than that we have these very long-term problems we have uh we have different needs uh and and here's what we're doing to address them on the local level it's not sort of the you know what some people call the tin cup uh a deal where just just give me money and trust that i'm going to use it so again i i appreciate that i appreciate your commitment to doing that and that helps me on a day-to-day basis when i talk to congressional staff about things they know that that i'm and i'm coming from someplace uh that is supported by by the board of directors so uh the other thing we do of course is we advocate for our grant applications that we put in and you know coincidence or not a few weeks after that trip we were able to secure uh some funding for for some additional buses uh from the bus and bus facilities so i will take credit for that and and i think uh i think that uh that the directors who are there should also take credit for that so uh we'll get together after on the press release uh and then and then also talking about we were able to talk about some of the issues that we're having with this you know transition to electric buses with with the folks at fta who are kind of on the ground and are uh administering these programs and and talking about the you know there are there are shades of gray with regard to this to this program and getting out uh and we we heard josh you know talk about it on the state level as well with regard to these electric buses and i think that was helpful and then another thing i kind of dragged over to this new office at the department of transportation it's a loan program called the tiffia loan program it's transportation innovative financing and infrastructure act something to that effect but anyway the way that things are going in the in the white house right now i i believe that that is going to be sort of their main avenue or vehicle for what they might call an infrastructure package it's a loan program the terms are very good we went in there and i and again i i appreciate your willingness to go in there and talk about it probably in the end it's not going to be something that works out for us but we did you know we did talk about it and actually gave some feedback to congressional committees on that and how how this loan program might not necessarily work for bus purchases and just a short description of it is essentially when they when they decide the length of that loan they talk about the the life of the asset and so if you have a a 12 to 14 year life of a bus that's not you know not completely workable and i think alec could probably talk more about that if you had questions so so again thank you again for these trips they work they they get you guys are great and get invested across and so thank you again a little bit of good news since i last talked to you with regard to the budget i mean i think that a lot of things coming out of dc right now are concerning to a lot of you but sort of underneath the surface uh we're we're doing congress is doing some decent work on on budgeting at least for the next two years earlier this year the president and congress got together to essentially pass legislation that lifted some very very tight overall spending caps for fiscal years 18 and fiscal years 19 a little bit of history i'll go back to 2011 where deficit reduction was all the rage in congress and congress passed a bill called the budget control act of 2011 and it set some very tight budget caps for 10 years from 2011 to 2021 much much lower than you know would be increases from inflation and so now we're six or seven years into that and a lot of agencies are not being able to work on it the president wanted more money for defense democrats in the senate said sure we'll give you more money for defense but you need to also raise non-defense spending in that by that same percentage so we have this bill that allows us for some for a little bit of breathing room in fy 18 and fy 19 and the result has been some increases for some programs under the transit umbrella for instance the tiger discretionary program a very popular program was tripled from 500 million dollars in fy 17 to 1.5 billion dollars in fy 18 and that was actually a program that the president had recommended eliminating so that was sort of a pretty strong rebuke to the to the president from from in a bipartisan way from congress the formula programs that we saw from the 2015 fast act which goes from 2015 to 2020 that that decides the funding levels for these formula programs pretty much stayed the same we get about a two percent increase in that but again the competitive programs like the bus and bus facilities program the low and no emissions program did receive kind of double digit percentage increases and so we've got a little more you know money to work with an fy 18 tom hiltner is going to be up late nights for the next few months all of those grant applications have come out at the same time so i feel for the guy but he does great work so we're looking forward to putting those together and another good another good news with regard to this that you may if you may have recalled our our tale of woe back in 2012 the 2012 transportation reauthorization bill called map 21 took that bus and bus facilities account and literally cut it in half it was almost a billion dollars they cut it down to below five hundred million dollars we've been fighting ever since to get that money back in a very tough budget environment and we are now finally kind of back you know and even exceeded those levels a little bit in fy 18 fy 19 so so some good news from from dc you know for for a lot of agencies it's it's been much worse so i will say that uh the way that you know the way that congress has sort of been in gridlock for the last several years we get these very compressed budget cycles where the fy 18 budget which was supposed to be approved in october of 17 wasn't approved until april of 18 but now we're already stepping into fy 19 which technically begins on october 1 of this year and again the numbers are not looking bad for transit i don't think we're going to get the you know the high you know the big increases that we got in 18 but i think we'll probably stay right around the same levels again getting those two percent bumps with regard to formula programs we've got some issues actually it's sort of a good news sort of deal now that we're up to this billion dollar level for the bus and bus facilities account sort of internally transit agencies are having a discussion about how that money is spent right now it's kind of split almost in half between formula grants and competitive grants and uh and there's and now that we're at about a billion dollars that some are some are thinking that maybe all that should go into a formula grant if we can you know at a at a very high level we can get kind of a larger allocation through the formula maybe bank that for a few years and use it for some good capital projects back when we were at 400 million dollars for this program a formula allocation would not have been big enough to do that so we encouraged you know increasing that competitive grant pot so so we'll have some discussions about that internally i think the transit community within apta and the bus coalition and others and alex has been a leader in those discussions as well so finally with f y 19 our our baby which i call it the small transit intensive cities program the stick program is scheduled to increase right now it is 1.5 percent of the larger section 5307 formula program it will increase to two percent of that which should probably increase the pot from about 68 million dollars in f y 18 to almost 90 million dollars i think if my math is right debbie will correct me if i'm wrong but i think it's 90 million in f y 19 for this program and given that santa chris metro has been very successful with this program you know receiving about two million dollars i think in 18 so maybe you know we're getting over 2.5 million dollars in 19 for this program so not insignificant with regard to that and we're going to keep fighting for a larger percentage of that pie we're hoping to eventually get to 3 million maybe in the fast act in 2020 so infrastructure and director leopold you mentioned about sort of the federal government and their and their interest or lack of interest in infrastructure i think that you know certainly you guys all know that that the discussions about an infrastructure package have slowed down the president earlier this year put out some principles that he thought he wanted in an infrastructure package they were pretty heavy on private investment he was thinking about 200 million dollars of federal investment and that's almost in existing programs it's not even new money and he thought that that would leverage about 800 million dollars or more in private investment to make that billion dollar package i don't think congress i know that congress is not going to take up that package in any form this year possibly not next year either i think that some of the some of the aspects of it are concerning on both sides of the aisle i think both sides of the aisle want some new money in this thing they want a little less a little less focus on public private partnerships and it's sort of an interesting an interesting coalition there are a lot of rural republican senators and members of congress who say boy we can't get a a p3 in our in our area it's just not you know the numbers don't don't add up and people don't want to invest there so with with some you know sort of urban transit oriented type of places who also say that that it's not necessarily a winner a lot of people say if a private industry wanted to you know get into transit they already would be it would be a moneymaker so so again congress is probably not expected to act in 18 and depending on how things go in november you know we could see something in 19 but i i i have a feeling like i see here that that what the infrastructure package is going to look like is pieces but congress is going to take individual programs that are already ready for reauthorization this year aviation programs are up for reauthorization water resources programs are up for reauthorization they'll deal with those and i would assume they'll say hey this is part of our our overall infrastructure package um and i think that uh you know with with regard to the department of transportation they are already sort of trying to use these existing programs to uh to shape uh to to match up with some of their policies so for instance we're seeing uh some smaller more widespread uh awards for some of these programs you know the the low and no emissions program a dot used to be almost you know almost a california centric program because of the mandates here but they're spreading that out more uh they're making uh more awards to rural areas rural road projects the dot secretary has said that safety in the rural areas is a priority there and so they're putting a lot of money there and they're rewarding folks who provide more a lot more than the required match and and if and if part of that over matches a private participation all the better also uh wanted to mention and i think i have mentioned that that the fast act the five-year reauthorization bill that was approved in f y 15 is going to be up again in 2020 and so hopefully some real important discussions will happen in 2019 about how we fund that bill you may recall in 2015 congress used lots of budget gimmicks some one-time infusion of funds to fully fund that program those aren't there anymore nobody knew and you know i was telling some of this the other day um something like 50 billion dollars was available in a in a in a in a rainy day fund that the federal reserve had and every committee in congress was angry at the transportation committee for finding that money you know and using it everyone's like oh i want to use that money but that's not there anymore and and the other the other one the other the other budget gimmicks on and so we're probably going to have to have a real serious conversation about a gas tax increase about on the federal level uh about using some of these other uh vehicle miles traveled uh attaching some sort of fee at the refinery level to on on on gasoline to try to get these you know funding levels up to a to a place where um their robust increases really we haven't had a significant increase in transportation funding since 2009 which was the end of the the safety lou act they called it we've essentially had flat funding since then we've had little you know increases um but it's essentially been flat so we're hopeful that we can have some real discussions about that and it's going to be hard but but hopefully right after an election everyone can kind of lock arms and say let's talk about this we're far away from our next election so and uh that was all i had for now i actually i want i did want to add two uh more things that i didn't have up on here uh one was that uh given the sales tax uh you know the the sales taxes that come in here for um for transit and for other things the supreme court decision yesterday on on online sales taxes i think will hopefully be of a help uh my understanding is what the supreme court did was it is sort of remanded to a lower court to say yes we you know that local governments can um can get online retailers out of state online retailers to collect local sales taxes but this lower court's going to kind of figure out how that all goes but i hope that you know sooner rather than later there's more revenues coming in the local level this has been a fight that we've been having for a long time uh and uh and the supreme court may even you know may even scare congress into moving on this and so so hopefully again sooner than later we'll see some increases to the local sales taxes and then finally barrow mentioned the university's conference uh i'm taking this show on the road about five miles north to the santa cruz hilton on sunday and i uh barrow asked me about a month or so ago do you have any suggestions for um for any sort of sessions at this university's conference and so i gave them some suggestions and then a couple weeks later i get a call from apta saying so i hear you're doing a session at the university's conference and uh the ceo said that's what you get when you raise your hand expect to be called on so anyway happy to do that i think it's uh i think this is going to be a great uh a great show for people coming from around the country to see all the great things that you guys are doing so happy to take any questions and thank you again for your time yeah like i said about mr shaw uh in the state level i want to thank you for your leadership and the respect that you earned in washington dc it's clear when we go back there to talk to people uh they you were at the the front you know the front of the line about being on top of transportation issues and we appreciate it very much it's been a a long and very successful relationship we have and i i'm very hopeful that uh we can improve that i guess it's just trying the battle has been just to try to stay even and hopefully we can move forward and for the i don't know this this projection of what do they want the administration wanted 80 private participation and you know when your fairback box revenue is 25 percent uh and this is ours uh you don't expect a lot of private enterprise to go in and get a 75 percent uh you know responsibility for something like that and it's an offset to that as i said in a recent clip that we had you know 80 percent of our writers don't have another mode of transportation and we provide that serve and they're just for the economy but mostly for their own needs whether it be doctor's appointments or visits of one type or another it's just absolutely essential that public transportation succeed and i hope this administration comes to realize that we need a better formula than the one that has been presented up to date but thank you again many comments from the board members yes um thank you for for coming and speaking today i know i've been on the trip for the last three years and um it's no joke when you say it's an all-day thing i mean you have us up at six a.m. and then pass i mean that's three a.m. our time and um we go to bed really late sometimes nine ten o'clock so um but it's effective and i do really see the difference between the both administrations i feel not that it was easier when the obama administration was under control but it just seemed like i mean that's when we got our first huge grant coming and um ever since it was it's kind of been really pulling teeth and you've needed alex to go and insult the trump administration to really get things done but um you know i mean it we really i'm not hopeful that this administration is going to see that how important transportation is and so that i that's why i think it's really important that we continue looking for other sources of funding because um i mean just the past you know year the the past two years had just been kind of i just noticed the difference of it's kind of almost it's i know it's a term but pulling teeth and and um i don't think that he gets it he doesn't understand the importance of you know 80 of people using um metro don't have any other forms of transportation so um i think we need to continue doing this um i you know continue going on the trips is important i i really do see we can see how we've been fruitful um you know all the new buses that we've been getting and and we're hopeful in the future for other um you know um hopefully funding that we'll be getting fingers crossed but um i want to say you know thank you and keep on pushing it and you know we just you know the the fast act i mean that seems like something that we're going to need to start working on again and i know you're you're in the trenches making going to make sure that this happens and gets renewed to a you know plan a full um number but um thank you and thanks guys for everything thank you mr leopold thank you chair uh thank you for your presentation and uh thank you for your ongoing work as someone who went on the trip last year uh i know uh what a good job you do in terms of putting us together with uh with elected officials and decision makers um and i i know that you uh have a good relationship with those uh members of congress because i have someone in at least one office who like a little uh the the uh the question i had a couple questions one is although the uh congress um passed the spending levels for 18 and 19 we still have to go through the process and we have a president who um who keeps on threatening he's going to shut the government down um you have a sense about this i mean with the the talk on the hill about this yeah i think there is a little bit of nervousness yeah i think it wasn't it wasn't long after the president signed the legislation to increase the caps that i think somebody told him you know you just you know increase the caps and and and so then he said never again i'm never again i'm gonna do this uh and so uh yeah i i think that he there is there's a lot of talk from the white house about about vetoing some of these spending bills uh and and the interesting thing it's is that it's republican you know republicans control the house in the senate they are moving these f y 19 spending bills at a pretty good clip they're kind of moving along with the idea that boy maybe we can get a budget before october one um but uh and so so it'll be interesting to see that showdown between you know republicans controlling the congress and presenting the president with with the bill and whether he wants to veto it especially given you know we we've got elections coming up so that's i think in the end cooler heads will prevail and and you know electoral concerns will prevent him from vetoing these bills but i've i've been wrong about this administration before so don't hold me to it doesn't follow the standard playbook that's for sure not at all um i guess the other question i had is um uh some predict that uh there might be a change in um the majority uh in the house um and should that happen does it make things easier or do you think it makes things harder that's a good question i you know i think it i think policy wise it it maybe makes things a little easier it may we may get back to what con people and you know people in congress call regular order yeah right where these bills are being taken up in committee and debated and then they go to the floor and they're approved and then the senate and the house get together and they reconcile the differences and so if we've got a republican senate that has you know ideas and we've got a democratically controlled house that might actually you know we might actually start negotiating again now again you know i think the president is a wild card in all of this so uh but but i think it could be a good thing yeah i mean i'm i'm just amazed at the number of pieces of legislation where one side doesn't even talk to right the democrats aren't they don't even talk to them and then the president criticizes the party says why don't why don't they come to the table they're not even they don't even get the address of the meeting right come to the table so um anyway i i think that we have a lot riding in these november elections hopefully they get the budget done before then i think that would be helpful yes and maybe after the election that it provides a small window of time to really do the the bipartisan work necessary um uh to do things like the fast act uh that's what we need uh and uh i just appreciate that our ceo insulted the the administration the people of santa cruz thank you and i just appreciate your ongoing work i i know you work hard for us so thank you for that thank you very much yeah mr bautler yeah i i just want to chime in and so support uh commissioner ducha here uh thank you for the well planned organized trip that you put on it was my first time back there and and we covered pretty much all the bases that that i think were necessary and the fact that we brought home some fruit from that trip uh i think we should all commend you and and ourselves for a great effort and just want to acknowledge to appreciate what you do thank you yes mr hagan yes i just would like to reiterate some of the things that they are saying because i'm coming from a point of view of a lot of men and women in watsonville that i've lived in for now some 55 years they're vibrant we used to be vibrant and functional it well it's hard for many of them metro is their only means of functioning in the city and i see them all the time sometimes they're in tears because they have to get there and can they well thanks to mr clifford and the staff yeah we can get there and from my perspective thank you from my heartfelt thanks to provide me and help provide me with a way of life thank you thank you for saying that and that and it means a lot you know to hear these the personal stories and i know all of them but i know director ducha when he comes he makes some passion pleas uh on behalf of his community and those who who need it so thank you very much any other comments from the board i might i don't know if um i didn't ask the public if they had any comments that it's um complicated there's it's uh very intense at state at sacramento in watson dc okay i think we're fine but thank you for your presentation and your your slides were perfect were they all right yeah right all right i'll report you want to help him yeah thank you very much thank you okay uh we will go now to a public hearing on item number 17 it's the annual budget for fiscal year 19 18 19 we have discussed this in some detail a couple times before but uh our finance manager manager angela akon will be presenting this in just one second so you've been listening to the federal pieces and the um state pieces for the last hour ish all everything that they just said is has in some way been incorporated into the budget whether it was a positive to the revenue a threat to our revenue or something else that is going into our budget over the next five years um in the interest of time i will ask the board what they would like me to do i can go over the changes just verbally of what has changed between maybe i should ask is um since your other your form of presentation has there been any um any shift of any magnitude that we should be i doesn't look like that but i mean everything is pretty much as you presented earlier is that correct a couple things have changed so we've added in um we were unable to get to our finance committee with our management comp plan numbers at the time of the that we could get the finance committee together but we felt it important to put some kind of budget number into the f y of 1920 budget so that budget number is in here it has not gone through the finance committee nor has it been approved per se but i just want to make sure you know it's a budget number it's not what we are actually going to do at this point so we did put about four hundred thousand dollars in each year for 19 and 20 on the expense side for the management comp plan for right now um we also talked about the medical plan uh last month i told you that we had preliminary numbers the day before our board meeting in may and they were somewhere between 18 and 25 percent thank goodness that's come down we're seeing about a seven percent increase so we have five in the budget right now and so um if you do it's it's only six months that it would go up for this year because those numbers won't come out till january so we have five percent in the budget right now we're anticipating about a seven percent increase so we feel comfortable with what we have in the budget on that okay and then the other revenue pieces the positive pieces we have some extra money coming in on the 5307 money that's about 40 000 a year we have extra stick money coming in that's about eighty to ninety thousand dollars a year and then in 2020 we have another seventy thousand dollars coming in on st a money so those are my big pieces um on the expense side besides the management comp plan we have two ten thousand dollar things that came through website testing that we put into the it area and then another ten thousand dollars to keep planning going with their um ridership uh surveys there we go the ridership surveys so those are the big pieces of change otherwise um everything else is as it is we have six positions in there right now that we are delaying until january because the sp1 threat that we have going on right now the day after that uh vote is taken and if it comes out as a positive for us where it is not rescinded hr is going to be very busy trying to hire six people are good best on that uh miss leopold thank you chair um i've had a chance to review this and was part of the the committee one thing that that uh in a presentation this week uh at the board of supervisors during our budget hearing was just the leveling off of the sales tax numbers and uh you know that's what they've seen um and so we have not uh our sales tax numbers as of the end of may we are eight uh six percent over last year and so we only put two and a half percent in there we have budget to budget going forward in the next year we put an eight percent increase budget to budget not actual so our budget last year to what we put in this year we've increased it by eight percent but going forward into twenty i think we've only put a three percent increase in there sure um and maybe this is a question less for you and more for mr clifford uh the the uh the fte that we would be adding um to our drivers um where do we see that driver being assuming sp1 doesn't get repealed and we can hire that driver where do we see that driver uh performing at their routes sure and i'm going to punt to mr emerson to tell us a little bit about their preliminary thoughts on that thank you and real quickly we had had this in our report back in may uh the assumed priority for the next resource we would get would be somewhere geographically in the san lorenzo valley scott's valley area and i think i told you we were looking at different approaches to scott's valley drive mike paisano mentioned the future opportunity up at borland and then the other thing is up the san lorenzo valley our frequency all among those legs up the valley is so poor it's almost unusable so that was the general vicinity well i appreciate the concerns about frequency and i do and uh to my colleagues who represent the area i don't i don't mean to detract from the needs up there but i think we do have to start planning um for uh increased frequency uh in the mid county area i mean when you look at where the density is and where we propose the density we're proposing on capitol erode 60 units of affordable housing a new 20 000 square foot health clinic a new 10 000 square foot um dental clinic on capitol erode we need service there um and uh we have got to start planning to to put that service there uh and to add a driver and um i'm not i'm not um asking in this year's uh budget but but in when we when we know what the results are from november uh which i hope will mean that the sp1 money doesn't go away all bets are off after that but assuming that that that that that does not get repealed we need to start planning for that uh that increased frequency because it's a it's the most urbanized part of the uh of the uh unincorporated area um it in all tentative purposes functions like a city the density of people living there is much greater and um and we are we are building and plan to build lots more uh along those routes and so we really need the service so uh uh um i will ask that come back in january to sort of start figuring out how we can start planning for that you know two real quick things there i really appreciated jared walker coming to town and reinforcing that because we've always had a longer list than just the thing at the top of the list but one other nuance i'd like to add because i i bored you to death two years ago with coverage span of service frequency but interestingly in the mid county area frequency is an obvious one to all of us but we actually need a bit more span of service and i don't mean midnight i'm talking about getting eight nine ten o'clock because of the economy here is not a nine to five economy so it's not it's not as dramatic or as sexy to extend the bus another two trips for another two hours but it starts to make it a viable option for those people who are trying to get to so those are on our list and i'm looking forward to that opportunity of sharing all that with you yeah i think it'll be super helpful and i look forward to continuing discussing and i know we're limited and we shouldn't take on too much until we know what this big funding source what's going to happen but we have to start planning mr hayek yes sir barrel years ago you and i conversed about the necessity even though yes i know that's minor the number of people needing it but you are you still going to maintain the idea the basic one or two service rides a week for even these very low rider areas well that will be the tough one and and i think sort of following on from jared's presentation i think we're going to start showing you the way we see is it coverage or pursuit of ridership that the various routes are trying to do and let's be clear some are there for coverage and some are chasing ridership so i'm looking forward through our strategic planning process in the fall to bring that stuff back up thank you maybe if i can just jump onto that a little bit director leopold asked if i could explore jared coming back to our community um in appreciation of the fact that not all of our board members are on the rtc and only the rtc saw his presentation and as you know his presentation challenges you uh it challenges you in a number of respects but one of his key points is geographic coverage versus frequency and and so you know this is a challenge that boards across the nation face everybody pays taxes and and there is partisan politics involved and you try to spread the service out as much as you can but it's not always the right way to run a system and everybody in the county benefits even if the bus doesn't stop in front of their house so i think there's good things that he presents that that our board should hear those members that were not uh on the rtc when he presented uh baryl's done some preliminary exploration it looks like he might be available in august which is i think as director leopold was suggesting would be a good time because likely our strategic plan workshop with the board will happen i think jena what do you think september is is what we're shooting for so if we could do that in advance it might bring um to bear in the strategic workshop some discussion about geographic coverage versus frequency and some of the things that you learned from jerry walker yeah i mean i i thought he gave a very good presentation maybe just a show of hands who saw his presentation i was the tape of it okay yeah so about half of us did yeah um but i think focusing um on on the needs of our district might be illuminating i know he's also worked with the vta and some other surrounding districts and districts throughout california right so i i would encourage that we think differently about about things we have to shift our thinking i mean clearly something is happening across the nation where ridership is decreasing and we must do something other than just stick our head in the sand miss lind and just thank you on s lv even though that's not my jurisdiction i did with uh supervisor my person assist at the senior center with the meal service and talk to some of the people that were actually walking seniors walking down highway nine to be able to get to functions and i can't even imagine how they do that and live um but their um the stories they shared made me realize how um lacking the the rider you know the the routes they're just very little services you said almost unusable because they just can't get to functions so um it wasn't i open or having that conversation and and appreciate that attention because i think they feel they're um not noticed so thank you thank you thank you um a one comment that isn't really about a financial issue i think we'll see an impact in terms of ridership as we're seeing the increase in the gas costs um as a result of sp1 so let's wait for us to really see how that flushes out and um how that does impact our ridership nonetheless i know this is a finance budget item um and my my question concern is i did send out an email uh regarding our our cal per situation and the request for us to have this uh the actuary um line item doubt so that we can really carefully monitor what's going on there on our responsibilities of of that debt obligation so if i can make sure that we have that separated out so it's very clear and um how that compares with um what i did send out that came from the state on cal perz we've added that to the collection of information that we have ongoing right now uh at your request uh you asked us to dig deeper into this and bring back a presentation um what i've indicated right now is that's probably august september probably more like september um there is a lot of information to collect to be responsive to your request and we just want to make sure we do it right on that i know um many of the jurisdictions are making that uh early payment before july uh end of july and savings of interest i'm wondering if that's something that we are looking at as well not this time i know for even scott's valley which would be smaller it it represented almost a 50 000 savings by making that early cash payment so and it has to be done i think by july 29th so on that topic do you do internal borrowing from one fund to another that's something you do if you have reserves that you're not going to need in the near future borrow short term and then pay back i do not borrow i mean no we do not borrow something we but we because we did not have our reserves funded what we've been focusing on is number one getting buses on the street and number two seeing whatever we have left to fund our reserves um and the charts that i showed you in may and they still show in june if you decide to take the residual out of fy 18 when we close out the books in octoberish um you have the option opportunity to put that money in the reserves against equipment against buses whatever you want to do with that this is a public hearing is there anybody from the public would like to address us on our school 18 19 budget seeing none yes mr leopold thank you chair i want to credit the staff for putting this together i think that the hard work that that the staff the board and the community did to help write the financial ship has paid off when you look at where we are financially where our reserves are um you know we had a goal uh just a few short years ago that in some ways seemed very difficult um that we we we had a we had a list of things that we wanted to get funding from um because we had a long term goal of uh of returning the metro to uh to a stronger financial position and through a lot of hard work difficult choices um and the support of the community we were able to do that and i think this budget reflects that and it's it's it reminds us again about sp1 that um part of that success is based is hinges on the continued support from sp1 and we're all going to be challenged in our our our uh the whole metro family and the community as a whole will be challenged to keep that funding in order for us to be successful into the future so uh i would move the recommended actions i'd ask for a report back in january to talk about the uh the the uh the needs in the mid-county how second second motion to second all those in favor hi hi post so ordered unanimously thank you very much debbie kensel and christina are the two that make all this information possible for me to talk to you guys so they're the ones behind it thank you uh item number 18 i think we've already had that we've already had that report from the the semi-annual report from the mac i don't think there's any other we've moved to uh item number 19 consider the opening of public comment period on the proposed elimination of routes 33 and 4 due to low ridership uh mr barrow emerson thank you chair board staff and public this item is to open a public comment period between now and the august 24th board meeting when we would have an actual public hearing on the staff recommendation to eliminate these two low performing routes and reallocate the operator and vehicle resources to other routes if you'll remember back two years it as was just said it's hard to remember we were sitting in june of 16 but if you remember during the coa the service analysis which concluded with the fall 16 service reduction these two routes were the least cost effective and efficient routes in the system but we wanted to give them an opportunity to thrive we've been working them we've been monitoring and it's two years later and they're just stable they are they have the audience they have and it's a really small number in terms of fixed route transit metros work very closely with director mcpherson and the san lorenzo valley school district to try to develop a stronger ridership for these two routes which really only consist of one morning and one afternoon trip for each of the two routes moving through different parts of the valley and and in reality they are primarily serving the commute to the s lv school campus so during the last two years these routes have continued to have the lowest per trip ridership in the system so staff is recommending that the resources be reallocated to currently productive routes which currently are in need of additional span of service or frequency to meet capacity needs so if the board supports the staff recommendation we will continue to provide the service all through the fall semester so even if we eliminated it will be there for one more semester which allows time for the school district in the local community to develop more appropriate transportation solutions to address this small scale need that's the extent of my presentation yeah this is a tough call I know a question for me that's but we are not a school bus uh transporter if you will uh we have been in discussions with the school district and it's just something that we we've discussed and we're giving them ample time to try to respond adequately and it's the situation that we're going to serve the most people we can with the services that we have the funds to provide that service are there any questions that might have so come back for a public hearing on in august thank you very very much um we need to motion I guess we need to send the yeah to set the public hearing for the resolution attached is probably your action yes I'm sorry yes uh apologize I'll move the public comment on this oh um it's still good morning directors um I'm John Doherty and I just wanted to share a bit of information because part of my metro work is reaching out to the senior and disability communities and I did have occasion to the seniors commission to let them know that this was in place and to share information about this agenda item so I just wanted to share first of all that um a senior commission member carol Childers was here hoping to speak to this item but she had to leave about 15 minutes ago because some neat seniors needed their lunch in the valley so she had to leave also just a couple of just a couple questions um in the past this service to south felton and lumpico has been kept active you know and also that's been a way for people to access our metro paracruise service and we've even had the paracruise you know available there even in the summer when routes didn't run so I guess my question finally is if these were cut this wouldn't this also remove a number of people from the metro paracruise service area if you're looking at alternatives for service and also um I wondered because I saw in our in the board packet while we're spending up to if I read write in the consent agenda a hundred thousand dollars to have people do on board surveys we don't necessarily have our own transit surveyor and our own kind of steady stream of data so um I mean how do we how are we able to judge ridership so to recover this how are we judging ridership with our resources and um how would this affect persons who might be served now by metro paracruise thank you is there anybody else who would maybe maybe anybody else who would like to address this from the public Mr. Clifford did you have a comment on that well I think I can have Barrow talk about how we've determined what the ridership is I believe we've done a number of checks he can comment on that um as the board is aware federal law requires us to have complimentary service to our fixed route service so if we pull back fixed route you would pull back your paratransit service because you wouldn't have a complimentary obligation at that point just very quickly and this actually ties to one of the consent items today we have interns and temps who go out and ride buses and count ons and offs and because of this pending situation we've been hitting those two routes four times or three times a year because of school so we've been monitoring it directly on through but I just wanted to tie that to another action today as you know through the CTC we've been awarded a grant to pursue AVL automatic vehicle locator which also includes automatic passenger accounting we will still need to have manual surveys done for the first few years of that it's kind of a requirement of the feds when you bring in your AVL you sort of got a calibrated by having really old people out there counting but this will move our sophistication of our planning analysis from random surveys 105 a year to 100 percent so in future years when we have an opinion about something it's going to be even stronger how many if any people will be affected by the for paratransit I don't know how to articulate that number we'll do some information gathering before this comes back to you on that thank you any other comments from the public okay we had entertain a motion to set or the resolution to set the the hearing for august second moved in second all those in favor all right my post carries unanimously now we have the monthly financial report we'll try to make this brief today all good news ready so we're going to go over the financials as as of june 30th so for the month of june I think last month I told you we had done a kind of a sweep of sta money that we had put into the capital budget and that's why it was a negative last month and it is a negative this month we do that once a quarter so every once in a while you're going to see that we are negative for the month for our revenue that's not a bad thing here's year to date we're actually in the very favorable area we're about two million dollars to the good right now through actual through um april we have our lower for on the fringe benefit side our workers comp is lower our overtime is is over but when you put all three of those together the regular overtime and the benefits it does come out to a positive number that's what you see here and on to our revenue variance this is the ridership is still a little lower than what we budgeted the boe last month decided to pay us differently so we are showing behind in april but I will tell you time we get down to june we will be more revenue that we budgeted but they changed how they are giving out their payments and that's why you're seeing behind as of april but that is not the true story for the rest of the year ads and interest are up ucs the arctic buses that's what that's 63 000 is on other operating assistance and then we have the quarterly transfers of the sta that's why our sta is over right now just get a lump sum every quarter going on to the expense side here's the budget versus actual on the expense side we have our labor like I said we're saving on labor we're over time we're spending more but when you put those first three columns together we're about five hundred thousand dollars to the good saving on that as well as the services mobile materials and other expenses settlement costs on the last hand we haven't encouraged as many settlement costs and on the services we have professional technical contracts that we haven't fully made expense yet on to the capital budget and this is our spending to date through april 30th we spent about 12 percent of the capital budget that was put into place on here's the projects that we have spent on those construction projects it projects we got new servers everybody is very happy with the new servers we have gotten a significant amount of new vehicles as well as equipment so you can see there new relief vehicles as well as we got a new lift bucket truck that's one of the new things I have on the non-revenue vehicle piece and landscaping in Watsonville that's the facility one on the bottom those are the new ones additional information the unemployment was a year ago 6.9 and in this year april it was down to 5.4 and we're seeing a continuing trend down gasoline prices were a little bit higher by about 60 cents our ridership pretty steady from last year not too much variance on the fixed route as well as the total and then on the highway 17 the high and cabrio college reflecting just about the same so if we go through may 30th this is my preliminary guess of what we're going to end up with then the end of may we are in a favorable variance of about 2.2 looking at about two million dollars at the end of april we're looking at about 2.2 at the end of may 56% of those expenses is personnel and 44% of the expenses are non-personnel and then the last thing is the non-controllable budget risk this is the same as i've been saying for many months and what um josh was saying also this is the sp1 threat that we still have out there it's around three million dollars in 19 18 we're good 19 it's going to be about three million dollars if that thing is rescinded questions from the board well miss koffman remiss yes thank you um you said the labor over time 1.15 is due to vacant positions and extended leave of absence how many leave of absence do we have a lot and do do we have any possibility of them doing some sort of modified duty for anything that could be still useful for the agency that's something that's come up um we're having discussions with hr as to something that we could put in place um we've had a couple instances where we might have been able to do that but but because we don't have a policy in place right now um but we are talking about that so there's return to work kind of philosophies i think is what you're touching on um there is a general thought um not just in our industry but i think virtually everywhere that the sooner you can get somebody back to work this the sooner they'll come back into their original position and so that's why you you try to create these transitional duty kind of opportunities hr is definitely looking at that the the question of whether it will impact overtime probably not uh unless we can get them back to work sooner and not have those vacancies because you've got it bucketed in there so if that's the case maybe separate out the ones that are on the disability versus the one other vacancies because of overtime um so if they're going to be bucketed that way i guess that's just how i look at it i may be able to do one even better we're we're working on a key performance indicator that'll give you some idea of absenteeism and the different parts of absenteeism i i think it's important for the board to see that it is really high yeah and compare and contrast with other um trans best service agencies and what what are they doing to remedy maybe this is an issue where i i don't know if it has to do with contract negotiations um and have offering some flexibility but i would certainly like to have some more conversation and presentation material about what we can do about that um that that matter here just in short the the largest contributor in my opinion is your protected leaves um protected leaves for state and federal can't do anything about that other than to make sure you're managing your programs to the law and and we're doing a great deal of work in that that area another one of those is the things that are negotiated in the contract which are the the sick leave and the annual leaves that employees have and they have you've given it to them they have a right to use it right and and then there are um other leaves that are the ones that disrupt the service in a big way which are the unplanned types of things that occur that are not necessarily protected leaves jace i appreciate director kaufman gohman's questions and i'm happy to hear that the hr department is looking at this i work at the jail and so uh we have a 24-hour day operations uh we never close so we have a lot of things related to this and have gotten creative about how to uh encourage folks to come back to work which has helped with the bottom line so i think it's great that hr is looking at that and i'm looking forward to seeing uh what comes forward any other questions for the work any other questions from the general public name uh we need a motion to accept the file i'll move to accept and file second movement seconded all those in favor aye opposed passes unanimously uh item number 21 to approve a consideration of the amended drug and alcohol testing policy and approval of the resolution regarding this action uh jolene church our human resources manager morning jolene church hr manager and today i have for you the amendment to our current drug and alcohol testing policy which um puts in our mandated changes dot to include the testing of opioids and so all of the language basically comes directly from the the mandate um revising and amending our current policy to include that testing questions questions from the uh miss kaufman gohman why why was the uh the i guess there's like a formula table on that exhibit was completely eliminated was this i mean no policies are putting this into play any longer no the yes i see what you're saying the um attachment three that has been uh emitted that you see the red lining of that's just a fact sheet and it's more a training document we we have to train all of our uh folks who are safety sensitive and so this is something that they would receive in uh part of their training documents and we didn't feel that it was necessary to be in a policy it's it's better suited in a training document and then the um the cannabis marijuana interchangeable i i didn't see a whole lot of language in there but um you know when the exhibit was removed there was very little language left on that one and my assumption is that that's it's very difficult you just can't breath wise for that kind of thing and i i don't know how that really plays out in policy if there's you know for the medicinal purposes of it um i i mean i the overall is if you're ever tested for it then you're you're put on a leave right so so these uh all of the um the drugs listed on the do t's um drug testing requirements um our language identically matches what the do t requirement is um for the various levels of testing um and um and and so we're in alignment in in all of those thank you the other questions or mr leopold thank you um it says in the document that that these change in the policies were reviewed and discussed with our constituent unions uh but it doesn't say they agreed or i mean they're not here uh or maybe they'll speak yes uh but i'm just wondering um what does that mean reviewed and sure after we do um our revisions we present a 10-day notice to each of our unions and then we schedule a sit down typically it is a um would you like to discuss or is a sit down necessary to go over any additional information here your concerns um do you need additional information and so we schedule a sit down if requested and um so we we went and we sat down with both seiu and uh with utu and went through the document and all of the changes and and got their buy in on both of these or from both of the unions i'm sorry was their concerns raised that that's what i'm trying no um same questions uh why is attachment the attachment redlined out another question was in regards to on the very back you'll see the list of safe safety sensitive job classifications by title those now match the board approved titles those were really the only the only questions because um what we presented to them was that actual regulation um when we present the the information we try to give them the law that actually changed and so we gave them that that cfr to review thank you for sharing that with me any other questions from the board any questions from the public seeing none um maintain a motion to accept i'll move this forward that can move in second all those in favor all right pose carries unanimously uh item number 22 to consider the adoption of the Santa Cruz metro's amended conflict of interest code and approval of the resolution confirming this action our general counsel julie Sherman thank you uh so every couple of years every public agency in california has to review its conflict of interest code that's that's basically what this is this was my first chance to do it as your new your new general counsel um i took the opportunity to change your code to the fppc model code um just because years had never been updated to that code it came out a few years ago it's not mandatory but the fppc you know basically strongly recommends that code it just makes the review easier for that body so i went ahead and did that and then um so that was not a substantive change but then the substantive changes which were really not all that substantive were just updating the job position titles that had come out of the class the management class study and taking titles away if positions are no longer at metro and just making sure that your list of designated positions is um you know up to date and that everybody who should be filing a form 700 is seems to be reasonable any comments from the board bruce just one yes um since it's specified um if we add new positions that are required to be covered is there a reference in the language that incorporates those automatic you know where i'm going with this or do you there should be you just reference any future changes yeah i mean we have to file a new positions form with the fppc um so we do that i don't think we have a particular oh yeah we do of course we do i forgot uh if you look in the appendix a in the um the designated positions list the very last position is consultants and new positions yep it's there good point yeah mr leopold i just want to add that as with the previous item it's really half easier to look at this with the strike through and the red and i just appreciate having that it gives us a good idea of what's changing or not yeah the one time we forgot to put it in and now i'm i'll never forget again any comments from the public entertain a motion to approve approval the recommended second seconded um all those in favor i proposed so ordered item number 23 to consider authorization of the procurement of an intelligent transportation system or it s sir isaac holly our it manager good morning still for a little bit longer so i'm very pleased to be able to present this is very exciting something i think we've all been wanting for some time and the reason it's exciting is because this is a tangible benefit to the community um that is an intelligent transportation system within that system there are multiple sub components uh the first of what is abl and that's the one we've been hearing the same refrain we want abl and the reason that's exciting is because it's a uh there's a customer facing component a where's my bus application you get a real time uh a real time sense of where's my bus arrival departure in addition to that there is data valuable data essential data that we've been hearing again and again we need this data to make better planning decisions and there's a safety component to it as well in addition to that there is an audio visual initiation system we are presently equipped with talking bus or what we've come to know is talking bus and uh it is we implemented it back in 2002 so it's high time that we replace that it's an ad a mandated component and uh lastly apc now this is what we would option into our uh into our specification we want it but there are some budgetary constraints so we want to uh we'll make that the lower priority of these three items so this would be funded from a ctc grant that was uh awarded in the on the 22nd of march in the amount of 1.4 million dollars and uh we have a local match from sta in the amount of 181 385 dollars so uh again very excited about this opportunity and I hope everybody is as well and this concludes my presentation any questions or comments thank you for your work and this is going to be a terrific addition um I've been building the spec for a long time yes right Mr Clifford has been really full and and and this funding from the ctc is actually sb1 money right I mean this has been an improvement that we've uh uh been uh eyeing for a long time but because of the cost was out of the reach so the fact that sb1 passed and there was money to to do this which is critical for our system is really we were we were eyeing the ptm ptm isca and fortunately the ctc came through yeah well I know that I know we were very pleased with the award and and everything but it's uh this is great that we're going to be moving forward very excited to work good miss Matthew and just a quick question on uh process and timeline moving forward well uh I spoke to our grants analyst uh tom hiltner um so the ctc awarded on the 22nd and then there's a final approval in late august we want to make uh it was recommended that we would start procurement in early august to get moving on this and then uh we would have an award of final funding but we're going to move on this very quickly till it actually happens okay so the overall timeline would be probably the first quarter of next year I've been it's been like torture that this is the last item because I am so excited about this I can't wait um this is a game changer and we've been asking about this and encouraging this as a board for a really long time and and I would say is the huge um part of being um part of the comprehensive operational analysis that we worked through with um mr emerson was that people really wanted to know when their bus was coming in a huge part of ridership was dependent upon um knowing when the bus would get there so I really think this is huge is a great step forward we've been hearing a lot in the city of santa cruz um even when it's not on our agenda folks keep coming and saying do everything you can for transit we want it but it's it's kind of a constant uh drumbeat so I think this is going to be a real uh important improvement to the system and overall ridership and I think we should do we should just keep the uh media and press push coverage on metro and all the things that we're doing to increase ridership and I think this is going to be a really big uh important change for us yes mr dutra I just want to comment on that as well I think that this is something that we've been waiting for for a long time and we're now welcome to the new age which is great um but I also wanted to make a comment that we should probably make some sort of you know this is sp1 money has been used in this I mean this and this is something that we can really use to our benefit to show the public that this is this money that we're getting through sp1 is is is really going to affect your lives and with that money gone could really you know be do the opposite so whatever we can do to use this project maybe in we said in august we're getting the award or it'll be that confirmed late august so maybe time you know time it correctly um you know around the election so that um we can really uh you know try to you know show the public that it is doing a lot of good for us and there's one last thing I didn't mention and there's a safety component to this um our new uh risk manager as you know is very excited about the evl component he's he's worked in other um other transportation companies and it's been a boon for a safety perspective as well thank you it's a matter of the the question being the roll out with the the clients using the service I mean we're assuming that it's just a smartphone based so those that don't have a smartphone this won't be an option available to them um it's really what I'm assuming there and then the uh the how are we promoting it to them to get their apps put on their phones so that they know that the service is available to them well there would be an outreach and it would just be mobile mobile applications there would be desktop applications in addition a lot of these systems are capable of providing text so that if a person does not have a smartphone they can still receive text information very much like our schedule by stop app that we have now if you are i've got delivery or granicus delivery system thank you i have one more thing too the other really important part of this is it's going to really in uh improve our data collection process so that we can use that for all of our decision making our budgetary decisions I mean like really we should be cheering and screaming this is really really really big deal why are we not more excited about this thank you thank you I mean there's just yes absolutely there's just so many things that are great about this that impact pretty much all of the items that we discussed today this is going to help us be more competitive for all those grants that poor tom is going to be writing I mean it's going to improve ridership it really I'm I'm just he's been making very heroic efforts yeah very appreciated okay mr hagan I'm sitting here thinking this is fabulous pull your microphone up I'm sitting here thinking yes this is fabulous but remember a lot of the riders on the buses are my age and older now we've got to do something to educate these people because you'll see they got the cell phone was sitting in front of them and you see them on that all the time and all the buses but use how they use it please have some form of education for these don't just throw it out there yeah thank you um yes mr Rothwell so we talked in a general way about how to publicize this program but do we have a specific program set up to publicize this or are we just going to talk about it in the kind of a general way and hope it happens well it would be a coordination between planning and or the team to have an outreach to and we have something in the works for doing that right now we will we will we have to there's no question about that it would be nice if we could have a marketing manager board to help us do that but the timing doesn't match as Isaac talked about if he if we get this out on the street in august and get it awarded and hopefully in the first quarter of next year have it installed that doesn't match what we did in the budget which is to hold back on the marketing manager until after november then i have to start a hiring process that takes probably several months they just don't match so we'll have to find those resources internally to put together a good plan plan um we do have that um uh we do have a contract with miller max field i always mess it up i mean just we'll use we'll use those resources again to help us get the word out he he's just done a fabulous job for us um and the price is right so we'll definitely do it will we get to see the end result of that presented here we i'd be happy to present progress reports on how we're doing i think that would be great yeah and then if i might i just i just really wanted to give some kudos to isaac well deserved he's been a very patient man um he's he's been ready and wanting to do this for quite a while a few years and he keeps coming to me and saying do we have the money and we've we've been patient he's built a spec and over the last three years he's probably had no less than what 15 or 20 vendors come to this property and present their wares and the beauty of that is it's not really about trying to become aligned with any particular vendor but just getting that information from them about what their product is what components of that product we like and don't like what's different from another vendor and then he's been able to build a spec that matches us what we need and it may not be any particular vendor it may be a vendor that has to modify what they do to meet our need so he's been patient he's done a great job um i look forward to getting this out on the street and and rewarding you with a installation yeah in addition i'd like to add i'm a member of the the cta it committee and so i'm in communication with colleagues in their experiences so i'm getting a little reference information on your experiences with different vendors and the pitfalls they may have run into i attend apt a transit tech i'm involved in apta so there is uh there's a lot of information there as well so i'm doing a lot of research math is so presumably goes out to rfq rf whatever and you have a way of building into that something about performance criteria and other entities um i think that would be more of uh i think that would be a question for procurement because they do have uh there is a boilerplate we can we can of course adjust that accordingly to uh it's not a bad thing to incorporate to the extent you legally can because i'm sure some people you know they look good on paper and yeah performance is not not so much detail erin could speak to that further if you like i i don't need it now but i to the extent you can build in something like that it's helpful to have it there as a factor yes thank you any comments from the public i would be happy to make the motion uh for the uh i know all enthusiastically second have a motion to second all those in favor aye aye so ordered okay i just want to announce two that uh thank you everybody you have copies of headways and news clips of uh recent uh weeks of uh metro activities um without any other additions uh we will have our next meeting on friday august 24th at 9 a.m at the scott's valley city council chamber in scott's valley this meeting is adjourned