 Good morning, welcome everyone to our December Metro board meeting, our last one of the year. Boy, has it been a year. Great to see you all here. We will begin with our roll call. Director Brown, Director Downey, Director Dutra, Director Cullentary-Johnson, Director Coneg, Director Lenn, Director McPherson, Director Newsom, Director Bayquart, Director Keyrose Carter, Director Rockin, Ex-officio Director Henderson, and Ex-officio Director Northside is unable to attend. Thank you. A few announcements today when we are being broadcasted by Community Television at Santa Cruz County, and I believe we have language line services. Is Maria here? Not here yet. Maybe. So hopefully she will arrive and we'll have language line services for all communications and whenever else is needed on the agenda. I believe Margo has an announcement for us as well today. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, directors. I hope you notice we have a full house. All these bright and shiny faces are our new trees. You all can stand up so we can really get a big picture of the numbers. The other class is actually off today, but I always go in and introduce myself and talk to them and I tell them we're so happy for you guys to be here. We really need you. But I tell them we'll see them at the other end in eight to nine weeks when they come in here in their bright and shiny faces in full uniform. So thank you to you all and welcome aboard. Thank you. Thank you all for joining the Metro family. And if you stay long, a little longer for the meeting, you'll see that people here come and will at times stay when I present the longevity awards. You'll see that. So thank you for joining the family and thank you for the work you do. And thank you to Margo and the team for your work and getting all these wonderful people to be with the Metro. Okay. Okay, any board of directors comments this morning? Yeah, I have one night. I can tell you the biggest round of applause and yeah, yeah, we announced that there's going to be some free riders on Metro. For the, the agent community, it means both of them to get to one place to another. And they say what we can go free. We're all in. It's a great presentation by Michael. We'll hear about as well. But not that, but I just want to let you know that the only big community senior citizens of this county really appreciate that. It's a great move for us. Thank you. I don't know what else in the meeting. We would have a chance to say this, but I've been on this board for over 30 years. And this has been the most amazing year out of those 30. We've had good years. We've where we were one of six districts in the country and received special money because of a high level of service for a small community. But it's nothing like what we've done this year. You know this to Michael tree, you know this to our drivers to our employees. And I think to one of the best boards we've ever had, because of people who are committed to public transit and really making the system work. I just been so impressed. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for your 30 years of service in this organization. Okay. All right, we'll move on to oral and written communication we did receive some wonderful. So our language line services are here and we will have that available to anyone who should need it would you like to make an announcement. My name is Brian from language lab at the side of the program for any services. Thank you for being here Maria. Oral written communications we did receive some additional written communication after the packet was posted has been sent to all of the members and staff will respond in a timely manner so I will open up folks are here. I want to see you know, you know, just wanted to give you an update on on on recruiting and how we're processing as you see a lot of, you know, a lot of trainees were currently running three classes. We're due to hire on January another 20 people and hopefully another 20 people in February. So we're willing our way to our reimagined, you know, goals and and having all the personnel to achieve those. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all the great work. Anyone else who wishes to comment on items that are not on the agenda of related to the work of the metro. Is there anyone. The number of now this is a lot of people. How many new drivers. Margo do you have that. Kind of fluctuate. I do apologize, but it's been between the 2025 and the last month, because we do have three classes running. So currently we have three operators going into line instructor, and then we have three classes running back to that. So number does fluctuate between 2025 and really Eduardo has done an outstanding job. In a recruiting. He really has. I find it go forward to everywhere. I'm sure all of you do. But yeah, so the numbers do fluctuate a little bit, but. This is 20 to 25 correct. Nice. Good job. I'm going to continue with no one online. You want it to go. I'm sorry, but total numbers 33. Okay. Okay. All right. We'll move on to item six, which is label organization communication. on chairperson's part, local 23, representing Paracruz and fixed operators, mattress and supervisors. So you've already been introduced to them all as a group. But before I get started with my other comments, I wanna point out that some of these are bus operators, some of these are Paracruz operators, some of these are schedulers, some of these are dispatchers. I wanna give them all the opportunity to come up, introduce themselves by name in their position before they sit back down. Let's come up. One by one, name and position, please. Hi, family, my name is Moon and I am a trainee bus operator. And this is my second week of training. And I just wanna thank you to the trainers, to the whole staff, hands down, these trainers are amazing. They are so patient and at the end of the day, Robert's my trainer and he will say, you all did an amazing job, even if we, you know what. So it's family, I love everybody and I'm supposed to keep it short. I tried a lot of good day and I am very grateful to be a part of this family. Hi, my name is Brian Zemrepa. I'm a trainee bus operator. I just wanna thank you guys for letting me impact my community in a positive way. My name is Gudi and I was one and I'm a trainee bus operator and I'm happy to be here. Thank you. My name is Mark Dolby and I am a trainee bus operator and I appreciate this opportunity. Thank you. My name is Fabriela Bocovino and I'm a trainee bus operator. And I'm happy to be here with this team here. Thanks. Thank you. I'm just very proud of her numbers and I'm a trainee bus operator and I'm glad that you guys hired me and gave me an opportunity of helping the community. And thank you. My name is Darryl Sessions and I'm a trainee bus operator and I'm glad to be here. Good morning. My name is Clifford Dunford. I've been president of Santa Cruz County since 1979 and I'm currently a bus operator and trainee. Thank you. My name is David Guerrero. I think I'd like to thank you for giving me an opportunity to instruct my community in the part of this project and because we have a transportation and a whole lot of the outreach on 9 to 5 if you're going to hardship, the grant like to work with grandma, grandpa. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm a bus operator and I'm grateful for the opportunity and the job. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Jose Ramirez. I'm a trainee bus operator and thank you for the chance. I'm Steve Skipper. I'm a per cruise operator and trainee. Thank you. I'm John Wolfenden, I'm a per cruise trainee. So thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for having us this morning. Good morning everyone. Thanks for having us. My name is Cesar Rosales. I am training for scheduling and dispatch. Thank you for having us. Thank you. My name is Osvando Lasundes. I'm a trainee for a per transit operator and I'm just grateful for the opportunity. Thank you. Have a good day. I'm Nicola Zatina and I'm doing scheduling and dispatching for Periput. My name is Fuduki Haramunina and I have a dispatch schedule and hopefully served to be bus operator. It's a great chance. Thank you so much for the opportunity. My good morning. My name is Christopher Robinson. I'm a bus operator. I appreciate all the effort. Thank you so much for having us this morning. Good morning, everybody. My name is Jean-Pierre, I'm a bus operator. I've been here for four weeks and I'm excited to be here. Good morning. My name is Osvaldo Delana. I'm a trainee for the bus operator. Keep your feet down, too. Good morning. My name is Ruben Agony. I'm a training for the bus operator and I'm just a bit here and thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. My name is Rohed and I'm a bus operator trainee. So thank you for the opportunity and thank you for having us here today. Hi, my name is Joseph DiMelo. I'm a bus operator. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm excited to take in this leader. Thank you. Hello, my name is Sergio Toledo. I'm a bus operator trainee and we're part of the final class that we just got our license. So we're looking forward to serving our community after our new year's come. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Sanayana Lara and I'm a bus operator trainee and I want to say thank you on the metro personnel to give me the opportunity. So we want to continue to move on. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Jose Noma and I'm a bus operator. Thank you for the opportunity. Help to be here. Melissa didn't bring all of it, right? So I think it's important that they get to meet you. I think it's important that the community gets to meet them through Zoom or wherever they may be. But there's a purpose for this. Today, staff is going to ask you for an increase of slots for both bus operators and bus operators. Like we are making right now, we can fill those slots. So I'm also asking you to please consider those numbers to help us because if we don't have the people, we can't serve the community. And that's all that we're really looking to do. And in that vein, I want to thank each and every one of you that helped us get through the RTC last week. Your support and your dedication shows that we really do have a board that has our back and that is felt throughout the entire organization. I want to thank you for that. The last piece is, I don't know if we're still here, but I want to thank Eduardo Montesino, who has stepped up beyond anyone's expectations to try to bring these people in. And the things that he's doing, let me tell you, I've seen him get kicked out of FedEx's loading base outside their entrance. So thank you Eduardo for everything that you're doing for us. Thank you. Wait, hold on a sec. Before you go, I want to thank you and I'll see you. Thank you. Thank you for bringing new members of the Metro family here. I think it is important for us to meet the folks who are doing the work every day and what literally makes the Metro run. So thank you. Thank you. I'm going to have them all in my drivers. Thank you. Yeah. That's a tough idea to follow. All I have for you is an edition of how can we pay them that support existing agenda item. The board was sent items 12, 314 last night to review a supportive document on this item. And then we get to the next item. Thank you. We are now on Consent, which is items 8.1 to 8.13. So we'll take these items all at once, and unless there's an item pulled. So may I just pause and see if there are any questions on any items or if there are any items that our members wish to pull. Mr. Conner, please. Item 810, which is going to be higher than 2,000. I read the report and I just want to get a little bit better sense of when we'll expect their work to go out. We get higher than 2,000. And I'll start on day one. You want to spend an act of day one. I have to learn who we are and what's going on. What's the expectation for when we'll actually see the results of your marketing work? Well, if I can't know the back of the board. I have a lot of you. It's nice to be on. She wants us to watch out. Oh, sorry. So you have one of them that's funded and one that's unfunded. And the one that's funded that we're currently recruiting for. You have an intern, which is helping Danielle with it. And we have probably the best advertising firm in the nation for public transit cell tests that is ready to support. So I think it probably take about a month to get that one assistant on board. And then I think you'll see the product pretty quick as far as those two working with cell tests and feel maxed out with his company on that. In my CEO report, for example, today, you'll see a product that Celtus has been working with Danielle and that interned on in regard to phase two. And as far as the finance center since January, we're going to see a budget that's going to fill some ideas like the cost basis. And wouldn't that really will show us when value sales tax, we run out against it clear because there's been a lot of expenses, we must try to lose and other kinds of stuff. And so I understand that correctly in January because I didn't have the information in front of us now to understand that sort of total cost consequence. And it's not, it's not, it's kind of can afford it. But at some point, it becomes unaffordable without a sales tax. And they get part of these sustainable. Thank you. Any other comments or questions on consent items? Okay, let me see. I move approval. Let me just, I don't want to comment on it. Is there anyone who wishes to comment on items 8.1 to 8.15? Either in the room or online. I think we'll make this. Please. We thought there's no which item in the comments here. Good morning. Jim Rendler, I'm making comment on 8.11. My line of adjustment and just, I'm vice president for the future housing. We're partners with Eden housing and will be the developer of civic station redevelopment. I just want to express our excitement. We're honored to be part of the projects. Extremely exciting. I'm not just to bring the formal housing but also with the rebuilding, obviously, of the metro station. And I want to express gratitude to Michael and John and all the Metro team that's been great to work with everyone. We're looking forward to getting this going and then we're at this point. So thank you very much. Just happy to answer any questions. Anybody has anything? Thank you. Can you restate your name? Jim Rendler for the future housing. Great. Thank you for your time. Yeah, thank you guys. Anyone else? Okay, now I'll entertain a motion. I'll make a motion. Okay, all right. We've got Director Rendler and Director Rotkin second. And we don't need to do a roll call. Let's do a roll call. Or do you want to do a roll call? I don't know. I need to do a roll call. And you don't have to say a board member's, yeah, all in favor please signify by saying aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, intent passes. Moving on to our regular agenda, we have presentations of employee longevity awards for four of our employees. I'll read their names and see if anyone's here. And then I'm going to pass it to Larry. So that's for 15 years of service to the Metro for Nathaniel Abrego, Andrea Luskal, I'm sorry if I'm butchering your name, Robert Cross and Ruben Valdez. Any other year? I'm going to pass it to Larry. Do you know one of these employees? I do. And I wanted to read something for Andrea, you seek help. Before we start, I'm going to record him, but just so you know, two of these operators for America's both Ruben and they have now switched over in our part with the other fixed drop clocks and wasn't her. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I'll stand up to you. Sorry. Recording this because she wasn't able to be here. I'm happy to share this appreciation of Andrea Euseguil on her 15th anniversary of working at Metro. Born and raised in San Cruz, Andrea joined the Metro in December 2008 as a payroll specialist processing payroll for our fixed route operators. In April, 2014, she became an administrative assistant supporting the safety and training board here. And on October, 2015, she became Metro schedule analyst. That's when I met her as Metro was conducting its first comprehensive operational assessment or COA with the goal of cutting costs through service reductions. I was director of transportation and working at UCSC and was quite concerned about the impact of the 10% plus cut throughout serving the campus. While I obtained Chancellor Lumenthal's agreement to pay Metro about a half million dollars in additional funding to restore those cuts, Andrea got busy planning how to best schedule the new service plan with the rest of the county's program. Just to make things more interesting, UCSC decided to modify its daily class schedule at the same time. So every class change and peak transit period shifted so everything was changing at once. Andrea's knowledge of Metro systems and the use of the HASTA software led to a successful launch in fall of 2016. We then spent a lot of time monitoring the new ridership patterns with Andrea fine tuning the service schedule and driver shifts with each new quarter. We've continued to monitor ridership patterns since that time and today look forward to implementation of the latest COA. Closed by noting, she's a big fan of the 49ers but a bigger fan of her two girls, Natalia and Carlina. Andrea says the quote, getting to watch them play basketball together at Santa Cruz High brings her the greatest joy in her life. Congratulations on that and thank you for your work. Let's give her a round of applause. Let's do another round of applause for all of the employees who are here today. We do have some tickets for you all so we'll get those to you. Thank you. Thanks for doing that there. Okay, item 10 is retiree resolution appreciation for Marietta Italia. No, it's not here. It's not here. Okay. Well, thank you for your service and work with the Metro. And congratulations on your retirement. All right. You think our hands form today. It's a lot to celebrate. I love it. I'm going to add the year. We're moving on to item 11, Metro, I don't know. Oh, I'm sorry. It's a moon ride along. We do need a motion to. Okay, we got first by Director Rock and second by Director Musso. And all in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Thank you. Okay. Item 11 is Metro Advisory Committee set my annual report by Jessica DeWitt. Welcome Ms. DeWitt. Thank you. I don't see a microphone, so I hope that's it. I hope you can hear me. Good morning, board members. I'm Jessica DeWitt, the current MAC chair. The MAC committee very much appreciates the opportunity to provide you with this six-month MAC report today. Over the last six months, MAC has been very pleased to see continually increasing ridership levels as we move further and further from the pandemic period. MAC is excited to hear about the Youth Cruise Ridership Program and its significant jump in ridership levels and hope to see more on this in the future. Metro staff has been very responsive with listening to MAC, feedback on bus stop signage and shelters to discussions on the Reimagined Metro project. MAC is happy to hear that Metro continues to ramp up its presence in the community, events like the Santa Cruz County Fair. Out and about, I hear many people actually saying, I really like the new look of the bus, the Metro buses out there. It's great to see how it celebrates the Santa Cruz County area and Metro and Monterey Bay area. Finally, MAC greatly appreciates MAC staff taking the time to ride MAC with a tour of its operations facilities. So we have a better understanding of how operations at Metro work. With all the innovative programs and projects and the works at Metro, MAC truly appreciates being a part of this effort. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for your work on the MAC. And that was just a report. But are there any questions or comments? Okay. Great work. Great work. Okay. Item 12 is, who requests for a week-last vacation results for operations deputy director, operations department. Hi. Hi, good morning. My name is Monique Nafin and I'm the deputy director for Santa Cruz Metro and I'm here on behalf of our director Dr. May, who is on behalf of Access Today Nafin, who is online, but she couldn't come today. So for item 12, what we're asking the board is to approve the request for authorization of our new position for operations deputy director in operations department. When in September 2023, our operations manager for Peace Route has submitted their retirement notice. Our senior Michael Green appointed Daniel Zaragoza to supervise the work of two departments for transit and fixed route. While we did the reclassification, it did bring that time we contracted confidence associates. And this is the same vendor that we have been using in the last seven years now. This new position will perform a variety of duties, but mostly managing both departments, fixed route and para-transit. With this position, we are also updating the job descriptions of the operations manager for fixed route and para-transit and we are not funding them, but we're just updating the job description for future equipment. Also updating the job descriptions of the assistance for both departments as well. And the adoption of this report would require around 80,000 for fiscal year 24 and 188,000 for fiscal year 25. Do you guys have any questions? Thank you. What's about this classification position? Okay. We'll go out to public comments. Go in here. Brief. So I know there's been some question about unifying the two positions. I just wanted to promote my full support behind Daniel Zaragoza and let you know that he already has been proving that he can do that job. So there shouldn't be any kind of worry or discussion more than can this be done? Can it not be done? Obviously there's a fiscal cost for you to decide, but I'm just letting you know that working in operations daily, we have the staff in place to be able to pull that off. All right. I'll bring it back to the board for the completion. And for the next. Thank you. Okay. I think I saw Director Koenig and then Director McPherson seconding. All in favor? Say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. Exciting. Thank you. So we have, you didn't go too far. We have approving requests for reclassification results for marketing and communications director in the marketing department. Yes. Yes. So in March, 2023, our CEO Michael Tree requested a classification study for the position of marketing, customer service communications director who addressed the needs of a new department was created in this last fiscal year, July 1st of 2023. Under the direction of our CEO Michael Tree, this position will now plan, organize, direct and coordinate all marketing and communications programs including our working media relations and will also lead agency-wide communications and branding for the first time in the organization. So an option of the recommendations of the study will require 19,000 K for fiscal year 24 and 40,000 K for fiscal year 25. Questions from directors. All right. Let me just say, you know, what we understood in hearing from Don in the budget and finance, it definitely sounds like something will pay for itself too, very quickly. So, yeah, thank you. And already we're wondering how, as Al said, how you're doing all the work in marketing that she's doing at every, you know, every event, everything. So it made a little sense to change or to see even more work. Any public comment online? And anyone here in person? All right, I'll bring it back to the board. Thank you. Dr. Feigler, Dr. Rotkin, a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Sentions? All right. Thank you. And item 14, approve requests for reclassification results for customer experience manager in a customer service department. Yes. And so when we're asking to the board, this is my last item to approve every classification results for the customer experience manager. Also, the residents of the customer service department, the study determined the need for reclassification of the customer service manager to customer experience manager. And then the reaction of our CEO, my country, this position will plan, organize, develop and coordinate all activities of the customer service department. In addition, we'll also coordinate these new programs called the ambassador program here at Santa Cruz Metro to integrate Metro with the communities that we serve and to create a customer in its first mindset. Two, adoption of these recommendations will require 11,000 for fiscal year 24 and 29,000 for fiscal year 25. Okay. Questions on? Just have one. Yes. So the ambassador component is the newest, the new part of this. And is that driving the new title? Okay. Yes. Yeah, this is, I mean, this has been a, a job that's been on my mind a lot for recraft. And instead of it just focusing on the customer service representatives, the job will now focus on more on the customer experience and what they're experiencing and then shaping the customer service representatives to better serve the public. But I really envision this one, this job now as someone who reports directly to the CEO and the executive team. And each morning comes in and it has information on how the bus system's performing, how the riders are reacting to the bus system, if there's problems out there. This is the first person that just walks in to the executive team in the morning and says, we got a problem, we can solve it. So this one was really a customer facing position that brought in the pulse of what's going on in the system to the executive team every morning, including what we're saying that customer service representatives. So it's got a lot more me in this, in the job description and the expectation is that this person is literally out where the people are enjoying the system, hunting down problems, getting their perspective from the customer's perspective and bringing that into the team to get things fixed and, you know, enhance. And this is like a key position as you move into the remand and mentor with the wave service and your customer target really evolves to choice riders who really are using you because they want to and they have other options. This is the person that really gets us fine tuned with what they're experiencing and what their needs are. Are you gonna install any new measurements or reporting structures and that's the one that belongs? Yeah, so the ambassador component what we were really envisioning is when we moved to the temporary transit center, instead of having just a ton of security around, we envisioned working with the downtown association and having lots of ambassadors around who are trained to be super friendly, to approach folks who might be lost. You see it in their eyes in their mannerisms, right? And to help them find, you know, the bus that they're looking for and the connection that they're looking for. So that's a, that will be under the obviously the job description of this customer experience manager agencies to train the ambassadors to be present with the ambassadors and to facilitate. Yeah, it'll be great. Okay, if there's questions. Anyone else have questions or comments? Okay, we'll go to public, yeah, we'll go to public comment. Great morning. My name is CCI Ward for Alta at Student Life and Video College here in California. Great morning. I actually have a question as far as what you just mentioned or the information that you distributed. So for the ambassador project, can you give some more details as far as like how me, how I as a, or anybody in the community is gonna be, have the awareness that I can reach out to this ambassador? How do I, and another thing, the training that you mentioned, is that gonna be, are they gonna be trained to be competent to address not only specific relating to the metro system, but I mean, if you're working with people here that are, you all have our unique styles of communicating. Thank you. Thank you for those questions. So typically we don't do a question back and forth, but those are great questions. So let me see if there's anyone else who wishes to make oral communication. Then we'll respond to those questions. Anyone else? Okay, and I would like to know the responses to that too. So if you're Michael, Michael Dean. Yeah, so as I mentioned, I think we'll try and hire this position extremely quickly. And we've already set up a relationship with the Down Count Association to facilitate bringing on board ambassadors. So my expectation would be that this kind of experience manager and the team really work closely with the ambassadors to show them how the routes work, to show them how the tables, the timetables work, to polish customer service skills that would be out and about at that temporary transit center with a specific style of clothing. So you'll be able to see them very quickly and notice that there's several around. I mean, I hope that helps, but that's really the vision is to make sure that these folks are just super accommodating, that they're looking for people to help and not just waiting for someone to approach them, but actually engaged with the folks that are using the system. Thank you. Does the Down Count Association still have a host program that's generally down time working today? And how will that be embedded in this program? Is it the same tool that the people are coming for this week? Are the ambassadors different than the hosts or? I think there'll be some synergy there. Do you remember her name at the Down Count Association? Jorian. Yeah, her comment was instead of going out and just hiring a bunch of terms, why don't you work through our program, the host program, and then we'll get the right people that can be the right ambassadors for you at the temporary transit center and then you train them and so she was really facilitating finding the right folks through her program. Because at our center, there are people that are way looking for the bus route, but they're also like looking for them. There's the bookstore where they're going to have and then you have time. That's right. And the other part, you mentioned that instead of having longer security, you're not talking about them doing security, providing training and security as far as protection or that type of thing, but more of an information. There'll still be security, but you won't having them double having to be hosts or ambassadors. Security will be doing security. Yeah, that was the intention of my comment is that, I mean, Chuck's budgeted for, Chuck is at three times of security over what we have now when we implement phase two. I wanted the security to have a presence but not necessarily be the ambassadors. I wanted a whole new group to- To separate. Yeah. Presence. Yeah. Okay. I'll look for a motion. I saw there's some drowning friends. One second. One second. Director Rock in second. All in favor. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. which are going for phase one and phase two changes that are coming up. Just kind of give you an idea of the quality of work that she's doing with Celtus and Bill Maxfield. And then also, I thought as a kind of a culmination at the end of the year to have shock, maybe just take two minutes or three minutes to talk to you about really what's happened financially with the agency from a grant competitive, discretionary grant environment. And so I'm pretty excited. The overall big picture is an RTC when the commission approved the 32.4 million dollars and allowed you to fund and get into the three year pilot project, which had a space too and have that in a fair for the environment. And what's really super exciting about that is the routes are going to be really simple and easy to understand. They're going to be fast and frequent. The TSP project will get underway and the process will have priorities and intersections. And I really think at the end of 2026 when the pilots coming to a completion and hopefully there's permanence and they're moving forward from that point, I really think you'll be in the eight million right range, which is a range that you've never been in before on shot. So I'm excited about the future and it has been a heck of a fun year. I didn't want to mention that the CHP came to town and that did a random kind of impromptu inspection. They basically show up and hand you a list of buses that they want you to pull off the road, put up on the lift and they literally go through that bus, all the records pertaining to the bus of the maintenance that's been done. And they go for all the driver records to make sure that every one of the permits and every one of the licenses have been up to date throughout the inspection period. So they go backwards to make sure no one had a lapse and they gave a metro the highest rating possible for the CHP inspection for being able to have buses that were made paying appropriately and drivers that are trained appropriately and licensed appropriately. So we'll do a news release. I think we owe it to the public to tell them how to be fair with the CHP there, the agency that comes in and really every year randomly takes a look at whatever they wanna look at and issues of rating. So I'm excited about that. We just recently completed construction on one of our bus bays in the maintenance facility. And so it's a bus bay that was custom made for our kick buses, your 60 foot buses. And so that's exciting because that allows us to further maintain the larger buses. And you'll notice Eddie's not here today and he's down in San Diego with the team getting more and more of the articulated buses. So at that point during the weekend when they start arriving with those four tick buses you'll have 10 articulated buses from San Diego that they've provided to you to implement phase two and to really give them a quality service for the students. And so that's really been a big thing here is let's give the best possible service we can to the university students and the Purdue College students. So that's going along really well. I wanna highlight Margo. And you took Daniel Zaragoza who has been here about 20 years and who is just super popular with everyone at the agency for being confident and also having a personality that just allows you to feel comfortable around it. So you elevated him to a deputy level that allows him really to just take the reins like he's doing and then allows Margo then to do some other things that we don't have the capacity to do. So she's plugging holes and filling holes. And I wanna give you an example of how she's doing that. So we had a price quote for those 44 hydrogen buses. These aren't the 60 foot hydrogen buses or the 40 footers. And you had approved a contract and we really felt like we wanted to negotiate sort of the price of the buses off the price that you approved because we had a pretty good volume. And I've been trained at Harvard in negotiations and I try it for like two weeks to get that price down on this process. They're $1.47 million. It's just an astronomical cost and to buy 44 of not including buying the RTX I really felt like we would do a discount. And so I was coming up empty and Margo took a shot at it. And I don't know what the heck she did but she came back like three days later with a $28,000 discount on every bus which equates to about $1.3 million cost savings to the engine speech. So it's great, right? I mean, man, I didn't know Margo was that good. Yeah. But I have a feeling she roughed them up behind me. So I just wanted to update you that that contract that you awarded to new flyers moving forward or getting discounts were playing good, hardball with the front to give us the best pricing that they can do. And CTE is now on board. They did your zero mission bus master plan. They're the project manager, getting Messer and all of the others involved on getting your filling stations going and having it ready to go when your hydrogen buses come in. So that's working out really well. You saw your new operators. I couldn't, there's no way I could tell you how great a job Eduardo has done. That on top of being the dang mayor and doing all those major responsibilities and still doing other things at Metro, the guys everywhere. And he's even got drivers involved with the recruitments. And then I could just tell you, I don't know of any other agency in the nation that is bringing in that level of great drivers and that volume in such a short time. And Eduardo's mantra and so it is with Margo and Daniel is we don't give a damn about driving skills. We can teach you how to drive. We just want a plain driving record to know you're not reckless. But we can teach you how to drive but we can't teach you how to have great customer skills. And I think we saw today these guys are just humble, great people that want to serve as well. So my hat's off to Eduardo. It's been a fun year. With the approval of the 32.4 million in the RTC, that allowed you to get into phase two. It allowed you to fund Metro through 2026. And so the chair, Chevra has asked for an ad hoc meeting to reconvene in regard to future funding opportunities and significant ballot measures. So before your next board meeting, they will have met at least one time and we'll have some recommendations. I think coming to the board that you can talk about and consider it in that regard. But while we just close out, Danielle, you want to take on a dog and pony show about what we're up to with marketing? That sounds good. Everybody should have this package on their desk that goes through the phase one when you're not doing the marketing plan. And just to show you that we're really getting the word out to the community, I know that was a major concern of yours and of course ours. So I want you to know we're doing our part. So the first two pages shows over our organics of the media feed, which we've done in both English and Spanish. And it highlights, obviously a couple of highlights that there's more to this, that increase the strength, when it's the security of college, 15 minutes, return of 90X and route three. And then we're continuing to develop more of these banners as we get closer to launch. They'll see new ones out there as well. And then I will also email this to you guys in case you want to put any of this on your social media feed. Those are embedded here. And then we go on to page digital creative. So those are on, I think page three and four. So covering a lot of the same things, but slightly different graphics there. And then we also did a Spotify ad and few Spanish radio ads for those who are not on social media. And then of course we did print ads in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. So you'll see those examples there. And then the press banner, Paparonean and Goodtimes. And then as far as collateral, we did a fact sheet in English and Spanish, a brochure in English and Spanish on the back side. It has the map. And then of course the brochure, these are on board all of our vehicles now in addition to car parts, they're at the transit center along with posters. Eduardo has been passing them off throughout the entire community. So they're out libraries, community centers. And then headways of course. So we have English and Spanish versions of headways here. And then inside headways is a nice cheat sheet. So if you used to take a specific route and it doesn't exist anymore, it tells you which route would place that. And then of course, webbanners for natural web page. And then we have us apps that are being installed, starting last night. So those will be out in the community on our buses too, for King, Queen and Sail apps. And then the last page is just our car parts, which are also in English and Spanish. So we really use the all mediums to try to get out and submit it to the public. I don't, no, I'm hoping the other suggestions, but I'm really hoping they covered all of our basis. And so I'm open to any questions. Yeah. Well, I just promise, cause I was supposed to give her some information about the actual also things that were, that internally we're doing for the customers. So we're, since we got into the headways, we probably, you know, already, already gave it out like 5,000 headways to the community. Internally, our customers and alternative, we've got senior centers. We got to farmers market. We got to, you know, we got to all the libraries in the county. So there's packets about ever and information. So it's just a touch point, you know, physically that people can touch on, you know, that they can get their information. And we're still not done. We're still continuing that effort because I know there's a lot of fear and a lot of people. Change is difficult. So all those efforts are in their way. And they're all being done by the drivers, you know, I just organized it, but the drivers are the ones that are actually going out to the community, talking to people, you know, getting that information because they're the knowledgeable people and just touching space with it. Quite incredible, which has been produced for the last year. So thank you for your work. And, you know, it's, I follow the Metro on my social media and it's super easy to just click share. Every time I see something, I'll just, you know, a couple of times a week, I'll click share and it gets likes and then other people share and. Those are right. Yeah. Just a quick comment. In order to point this out, this I saw yesterday and it was what I was looking for where it's, what's changed. I used to ride the 68, what is it now? And I think this is going to be wonderfully helpful because this is long, a lot of detail that you need. But you just look and go, well, there's my route. Oh, it's the three or the one or the two. I can look at that. Really helpful. Great. I have a question. How is this being disseminated to PCSC and real students? I know the term is ending, but they're going to come back after this has been out. Yeah, I know Megan and her team has some information out that I've sent to the press releases to the students out there. And her and I have been meeting, I think it's monthly or five monthly now to work on more information out to students. So we're waiting for that to try to out a few more options. That's a question to Dan. I know you were thinking about having student ambassadors around campus who could help expect students. Is that in place for maybe one or four? Yeah, so we've been in point with the idea of just getting students out to transit stops for a number of reasons, but also to have just talked about what services that we have to offer, what Metro has to offer, how we can get that to partner drop in place. There's going to be a learning curve, especially since the marketing's ramping up now. And then last week in the fight this week, kind of obviously the students are focused on students. So, you know, trying to get the word out about, especially about the 10 and the 15, no longer being the 10 and the 15, but rather something else. So yeah, it's going to be ongoing and there will be a little bit of a learning curve, but we'll also learn a lot of lessons so that when phase two comes rolling around, we'll know a little more how to get that word out and get their attention. So I'll also be the learning curve of the shift of people from the civic station of the street through temporary transit center downtown. So that's a lot of learning to do. Yeah, one more. Regarding your offer of social media information for the board, would it be possible to just send us all that information because we tend to do better when you send it versus for the rest? Oh yeah, I'm going to send you this and then all of the links for all of it are embedded. So that'll be good. And then regarding Pacific Station, we're taking clue of the temporary site map for riverfront and that sort of. Very good, thank you. I know that in UCSC it's difficult to get the campus to send messages to the faculty, but the faculty definitely are unhappy with the students going to get the class and they don't know what else to be on or whatever. So I would just pressure on the administration to get an announcement out to the faculty that they can read in their class, you know, a relational thing. You can reach every student by having faculty members get those things and they have the self interest in reading that out to their class. I mean, it won't happen easily because they think faculty are busy and so forth, but faculty really need to have that information so they can tell their students how to get the class on time. Why don't you read that to your class? Oh. I don't know. I don't know where I'm at. Good suggestion. Other comments or questions? Okay. What was it mentioned? I think one of the stuff when we saw the news on the bus crash at UCSC is just, oh, we can make sure, and there's been a couple of comments that it was a UCSC bus, but just if there's any way people don't have concerns that it's a metro safety issue. So I don't know what we can do on that, but if I come up. Yeah, I did reach out to KSBW and they have stopped using the Metro V-roll footage and they did apologize for using it. Okay. Okay. So before I end my CEO report, we did have Chuck with just some comments that you wanted to share. So Chuck, feel free to come up and send us some comments. Okay. So actually, I think this is actually good for celebration. So I had to talk about some really, really good stuff. So I'm gonna run through basically all the awards that we received in money and grants and it's basically since Michael came aboard, which is like 24 months ish. And these are, I'm only gonna go through those that are one time. So, you know, there's stuff that we get reoccurring every year, but this is really one time. So these are grants associated with buying buses. So this is a piece. Not only have we received the VW grant piece we went after that, and that's about $25 million. Oh, we got the TURSA piece, another $13 million. We got the mega grant ASIC, and that's about another $8 million. And then we got the LONO grant, and that was another $18.2 million. It's $64 million that we got to buy buses to go. And that's just the bus side of the house. You add in the HVIT, the rebates we get, that never goes all the way up to $76.7 million. Now, as part of eating these grants that we're getting, we went after stuff that was on bus, but bus related. So with the TURSA, we got the Hydrogen Fueling Station for $8.6 million. We got money for the Watsonville Housing and BiCub that's another $8.5 million. We got the Bus Rapid Enhancements of $5.1 million, Maintenance Facility Upgrade of another $1.5 million, and about another $2 million for like Workforce Development Project Management. You know, all in all they have right there, that's another $25 million. That came from the TURSA grant that we got. And then, thankful for the RTC last week, we got another $32.4 million that helps us for phase one and phase two. As part of the LONO grant, we met another 2.1 for Hydrogen Station and Workforce Development. We also got the REIT 2.0, which is $2 million for the Watsonville Transit Center. We also were able to score $9 million for the bus tarmac. You know, the money won't come directly to us. This is to help build lots of, or the pack station and a few others. That in total added up to $71.8 million. So all in all, just to kind of give you a concept, this is $48.5 million over the last 18 to 24 months of one-time monies for buying buses and infrastructure. This is two years, two years worth of money that we spend operationally, just to run this agency that we received. And this is, you know, as we kind of go around and we're eyeballs wide open saying and stuff, this is, you know, a ton of money that we are receiving. How much was it? Pretty good again. I think you read it wrong. $148.5 million. You just said $48 million. I'm sorry. $148.5 million. So like I said, that's two years worth of operating just this agency alone, worth of money that we've been able to pull it. So I think it was unbelievable. It's good for you. Talk to me. Send us stuff. I was trying to, yeah. So nobody would do math because I was telling you. Yeah, I just wanted to. We caught the $100 million loss. Yeah, we're in shock. Take that. We'll be here tomorrow. Yes, you will. Yeah. So $150 million, this does not include, we've actually applied for more grants and we're just waiting on stuff to come back. And if we end up receiving those grants, this number is going to be 9,000. That's incredible. Thank you. And when you get a grant and you're applying for more, does that help that we got what we have? Or what do you think in the big picture? Do they say, hey, you've got a lot. Don't do what you do with what you have. Or do they say, hey, you're on the move and we want to do more? I mean, is there a general? I mean, here's my take on it as a fact that, and this is like talking to Juan and doing everybody else. Once you receive it, if you really show performance and you're actually doing something, they're willing to give you more money and more money. It's when you take a grant and you just sit. And then they're like, well, spending the money, then why don't we want to give you any more money? Right. And that's it. We're moving, we're making changes. You see it moving forward with the hydrogen buses. We're moving forward with buses in general. We're already starting to do the infrastructure. We've got a pack station. It's basically almost shuttle ready here in February that's going to go. So we're actually doing stuff. But that helps a lot. And hence we have some cookies and some fun food. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Great, thank you Chad. You have a question. Yeah, I have people who remember when we announced that we were going to have 557 hydrogen buses. There were some people in the community representing the industry, and also me and everybody else, right? Well, it's not really green because when you make the hydrogen electricity and water, it's floating into hydrogen and oxygen. If that electricity is coming from the fossil fuels then really it's not really green. It's kind of a big green. But then thankfully a week later, the vital administration announces they're going to put hydrogen. The station has to create not just the fuel but to create the hydrogen. It's terrible to where we're going to be doing it. And I wonder if you can tell us any more about what progress, where's that going to be as opposed to us? Is it really a fuel truck driving from our station? Do we know any of that stuff yet? Or is that still up in the air? I think mostly it's up in the air. The award was 1.2 billion. Yeah, impressive number. And then the state had actually matched that. And so there's been a lot of money there. And I think there was a concept of designing that green hydrogen production facility. But there was also the concept of taking multiple hydrogen green hydrogen facilities, bringing them in under one umbrella. So there were multiple ways of approaching it that they were fine tuning with the federal government. So I'm anticipating that the CEO will come out in early 2024 and say, this is exactly how the feds and arches are going to move forward together. Is that something that really? Yeah, their goal was to go from where the market is now to $5 a kilogramma and then to even take it to two and the one if they could in the long term. So. And I remember you peppered by the, it's not really, why did the institution have that? And the beauty is, I think you're doing your part here locally because the local impact is those buses have no template. Okay. I just want to make a couple of comments before we adjourn. I had the opportunity recently to put it all in one breath. Everything that's happened over the last year at the Metro and it's pretty incredible. So I'm going to do that here. Youth cruise free one ride at a time, re-imagined Metro and now the wave services, which created how many jobs? I don't know. 33 so far, 33 bus driving jobs, 64 jobs. You know, setting the stage for 128 units of affordable housing and a new transit center, 148.5 million, I know over the last 18 months, 57 hydrogen buses, the largest purchase in North America. I mean, this is incredible. And this is all so we can improve our transit system so we can contribute to community wellbeing. And every single person in this room and so many others who aren't in this room had a hand in that. So I just want to acknowledge everyone's accomplishments. I want to thank our leadership. I want to thank you, Michael, for everything you've done. I'm looking forward to next year and what we can accomplish in next year and see the fruits of this labor in our community and just super, super excited. So with that, I want to wish you all a happy holidays. I think that there were a few who were invited to be able to find an op-ed just to expose an op-ed. That's a great idea. I'd love to work on that. And so it's, certainly it's, it's enormous, but just to say this is done and this is what it's gonna mean. From board members, yeah. I think it's a tune. Who's interested? Okay, all right. Well, a lot of us, so maybe we'll work with you. I'll send it. Thank you for that suggestion. We'll send a follow-up email and get a group of us and maybe the whole board to put together an op-ed and turn off that mic. Less than before. Yeah. Less than before. All right, let's do it again. Less than before. I'm going to do that. Great, good job. So with that, happy holidays. Thank you. Are we gonna call it? We do this one a lot. Matt Ferrell? Okay, well, let me wish you all a happy holidays and I hope you have the opportunity to celebrate in whatever ways you celebrate with your friends and family and we'll take this comment from Matt Ferrell and then we'll see each other on January 26th. And it's up there. Eric, can you hear me if you can give Matt the ability to speak? I just wanted to say, as representing friends of the round trail, of course, and I just wanna say that we appreciate the leadership that's been shown in the last two years, both at the transit district and regional transportation commission to address the regional transportation needs of the county, especially starting to focus on its transit needs. There's been a history of distance between those two agencies and I think it's been a disservice to our community. Lastly, I just wanna say that Fort appreciates the open door that Michael Tree has had for talking about the challenges that face us and focusing on opportunities to collaborate. We appreciate the district support for allocating some funding in the coming year for the rail concept study and we look forward to working together to build an equitable and comprehensive solution to our transit needs. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ferrell. Thank you for your service with Fort. Okay, like that, we will adjourn. Happy holidays, everyone. Thank you.