 We're being watched in her already. Okay, all right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Santa Cruz Metro April. It's a pause for a moment. What, what are we in? It's the end of April, April meeting. So welcome everyone. I would like to invite Curtis to please do the safety announcement. Good morning, everybody. Curtis Moses, Safety and Security and Risk Management Director. In the event of the emergency, we have two meetings of egress for this particular facility. You'll exit out either one of these two doors and meet in the park a lot where Donner and I will take a headcount of those that attended the meeting. In the event of a medical emergency, I'm first day trained and in the lobby, basically there's a defibrillator and I'll be the one that'll contact first responders. That concludes my safety contact today. Thank you. Thank you. All right, to ask Donner to please call you. Director Brown here. Director Downing. Here. Director Dutra. Here. Yeah. Yeah. Director Coney. Here. And Director Lind is absent today. Director McPherson. Here. Director Newsom. Present. Director Pinkler. Here. Director P.R.S. Carter. Here. Director Rockin. Here. Exofficio Director Henderson. Here. And Exofficio Director Nornton. And we have form. Oh, thank you. Thank you all for being here. So just a couple of announcements. Today's meeting is being broadcast by Community Television of Santa Cruz County. And we are supposed to have an interpreter. So if you are there online, if you can identify yourself. Hey, not. Like we don't. Okay. You do not have an interpreter for today. So apologies for that. Next time. All right. I'll invite any board of directors who would wish to make a comment. Okay. It's been a perfect time to talk about the. Grant was received or is there actually on the agenda? I know that our CEO is going to speak to in his report. But please. Okay. I can wait a minute. All right. So we'll move on to oral communications. So this is your opportunity for those that are here or virtually to speak on items that are not on the agenda. Are there anyone who'd like to make oral communication? Yeah. Online. Hi, this is Brian. Is that my cue? Yes. Yes. Hi, this is Brian Peoples from Trail Now. Congratulations, Santa Cruz Metro on the new grant funds for the new e-buses. What a great win for Metro and our community. Guy Preston's first term is the RTC Executive Director. He recommended to the RTC board to Interim Coastal Trail Planning based on his expertise in transportation projects and systems. Mr. Preston understands the laws associated with rail banking, serving the publicly owned property as a transportation resource. When Mr. Preston recommended the Interim Trail years ago, I felt so bad for him because of the false claims made by Roaring Camp, Ms. Clark and other train advocates. They falsely claim that their beach train would close more humiliating was watching the RTC board not support Mr. Preston in listening to the false claims against Mr. Preston. These false claims carried over to measure the elections resulting in a distorted message on the community's desires for the coastal corridor. The fact is the public did not vote to move forward with the train on the corridor. We believe more accurate election results is the landslide victory defeat of former supervisor John Leopold who was a big train advocate. Approval of Measure L where Capitola residents supported using the Capitola Tressel for a trail and 2016 Measure D sales tax for widening Highway 1, investing in Metro and building the coastal trail. Mr. Preston has offered to walk the corridor with RTC members to help inform them of the best approach to build the trail. Some have accepted his invitation walked and heard of his personal recommendations. If you have not walked the corridor with Mr. Preston, please do and listen to his expertise. We find it frustrating and sad that RTC board members put false claims by private company over transit experts. Those of you who believe Measure D was a message to build the train. Well, you got your $8 million study coming. Those who believe that the public wants to preserve the corridor, that's what rail banking is. Just like thousands of other core communities across the country have done. We do not need to keep the old tracks to preserve it for future transit as stated by Mr. Preston. We asked Metro RTC members to listen to Mr. Preston's recommendations and not be deceived by private interests on how the best to use the corridor. We need to open the coastal corridor as a transportation resource today. And that can only be done effectively by moving forward with the interim coastal trail. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments. Anyone else online? I can be transient. Okay. Oh, and let me just take a moment to say we do have an interpreter online. Mr. Hussar Joseph is online. So if anyone needs Spanish interpretation, please let us know. Yes. And then you can have an announcement in Spanish. If you make that announcement. Thank you. Okay. Can you hear me now? One moment, Lonnie. We're gonna just ask Mr. Hussar Joseph if he can make the announcement that he's available for Spanish interpretation. Maybe we'll have, I believe, transit make there. Yes. Oh, is it there? Yeah. Mr. Joseph, if you can just announce that you are available for Spanish interpretation in Spanish. Mr. Joseph, can you hear us? We've already unmuted you. Okay. Let's move on to equity transits public comment and see if we can get this working after that. Okay. Please equity transit. Good morning. This is Lonnie Faulkner with equity transit and on behalf of equity transit and our community members we represent and our priority to protect our environment we extend a deep appreciation to Michael Tree and his visionary leadership, Wanda Moose grant writing, Commissioner Calentari Johnson's leadership and the work of the entire Metro team on the amazing TERSP grants one towards making more robust our public transit systems and begin to provide affordable housing for our Metro workforce. We do deeply appreciate all the work that your entire team has done and congratulate you on these efforts. Thank you. Hello. Hi, my name is Jonathan Gorn. I'm a UCSC student. I just wanna express the fact that I believe there needs to be more service to campus. The number 15 leaving at 915 on Tuesdays and Thursdays about three or four times now that skipped like three or four stops just cause the bus is full and that means there's students that can't get to campus and a lot of students depend on the bus to get to campus. So thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Any others? Oh, we can't get into. Okay. All right. Okay. Looks like there are no more communication and unfortunately can't get Mr. Joseph's microphone working. So suppose that we have Spanish interpretation if needed, we'll try to make that work. All right. Moving on to labor organization communication. Good morning. My name is Jordan Vasconas and I'm the SGHF president for SGA 521. Part of my job as my executive role is to unfortunately relay some potentially negative stuff like here around the agency. And so today I just wanted to mention that there are some retention problems that we have with employees, both new employees and existing employees. And while some departments have made efforts to address this problem, I can say that I wish some of the other departments took more of an initiative to reach out to me to try to come up with some sort of resolution to say we're taking problems. And so while we do have contract negotiations coming up and we're gonna be pitching language to help kind of address moving forward, I still think that there are problems that need to be solved in the short term. And so I asked for if any board members want to reach out to me to get more details on this, please reach out. But the negativity aside, I just want to say that the contract negotiations look to be positive so far. And I'm excited to go into that next week on Tuesday. And then besides that, I'm just really happy to see the deployment of the flexible devices of ICS project. So I work directly with that as does my director Isaac. And so I'm really happy to be rolling out new technology on buses that will have a direct impact to the customers out in the fields. All right, thank you. Thank you so much. Good morning, everyone. James Sanibel here, general chairperson of smart local 23 who represents the bus and fare trans drivers here at Metro. And I echo some of the same concerns with Jordan from SCIU, our sisters brothers from SCIU about the retention problems. As I mentioned at the last meeting, we did have an opportunity with this contract negotiations to help address some of this retention problems. And I will say many of our members are waiting to see what this contract is going to be like before they make the decision whether they're going to move on or even retire. So this contract is a really big deal. And I'm hoping that we could secure a deal that would help solidify more recruitment and retention. And on a positive note as well, I do want to say that so far we've been moving along extremely smooth. We've had maybe five sessions so far and we're almost done with all the non-economic stuff. We're about to get into the economic stuff. And we have about six meetings scheduled. So it looks like we're both sides are really looking to try to get a deal done. And I do want to thank Michael. He was there for the first meeting where we started setting up the ground rules. He expressed his interest and his positive attitude for getting a deal done too. He gave the authority to the bargaining team that he has to make this deal. And things have been running way smoother than the 2019 negotiations that we had. So I just want to make sure that every board member knows it's going really well. And also with the event, the funny thing is too at the event that we had with the grants and the funding that we got, you know, seeing some of you there too, it feels like we haven't seen each other in a while and we want to know what's going on. But I just got to say that speaks to how we've been dealing with stuff at Metro. We don't need to come to you for every single problem now. It'd be still cool to, you know, meet and catch up after a while, but that's to speaking to the leadership that we've had right now with Michael Tree and his management team. Every bump that we've had on the road, we've been able to address it at the lowest level. So I'm extremely excited. And I mean, you know, looking forward to the new contract that we reached. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sandoval. That's a quick question. Can you remind me or anybody else who's wondering the positions that both SEIU and SMART represent the current status of the contract whether it expires and should there not be an extension, would it go in status quo? What's the, what are the possibilities? What roads can we go down here? Does anybody, did we speak to those things or is that too much of a piece to address right now? Hi, good morning. Don, for me, HR director. So our current contracts expire June 30th of this year. We're all very positive that we will have an agreement right in and a new contract starting on July 1st. If not, what happened before is the contract extended out like a couple of weeks when we went late. But we don't anticipate that happening. We just be, you know, making a deal and closing everything on time. As far as the representation, if you guys want to tell it or I can tell it. Sure. You want to say, okay, do you have questions about the contractor? No, I just kind of trying to get some details around. Like how? Yeah, yeah, okay. So our union support with the 23 represents all the bus drivers and all the paratrend drivers or actually I would say all of staff at Paracruz and SCIU pretty much represents all of the rest of the staff and mechanics, please. Thank you. Thank you guys. Three subunits. I'm just saying different groups. It's all one union that they actually have. Some of you guys represent different parts of the other departments other than the drivers and their mechanical mechanics because I've been administrating this number of persons. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the question. All right, we're going to move on to Consent Agenda and that's items 9.1, 9.10. Are there any items on Consent that mission board members have questions on or that want to be pulled? So I'll go out to public comment on Consent, 9.1 to 9.10. Anyone online? Okay, then I'll move on to the board. Thank you. I think I got Mike and Kristen and we'll call them up. Yes. Director Brown. Aye. Director Downey. Aye. Director Dutra. Aye. Director Collins-Barre Johnson. Aye. Director Coney. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Newsom. Aye. Director Pigler. Aye. Director Kieros Carter. Aye. And Director Rockett. Aye. And the motion passes. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to our regular agenda, item 10 is our longevity award. We have one longevity award this year. Excuse me today. And that is Mr. Noah Vesor for 15 years of his service. So thank you. We'll move on to the agenda. We'll move on to the agenda and the agenda. Yeah, we're getting our translation. Okay. So thank you Mr. Noah Vesor for your years of service. I believe he's not able to attend either online or in person, but let's give him a round of applause. Item 11 is presentation of safety certificate of achievement for third quarter ending March 31st. Mr. Curtis Moses. Yeah, good morning. Just want to kind of bring to, especially with the new board members at the federal transit agency requires that transit agencies around the country require that basically safety departments recognize and promote safety throughout a transit agency. And I'm pleased to announce that this quarter, the department of customer service has received this quarters safety award for safety promotion. This department on a consistent basis are what we consider frontline employees. These employees every day look out for the transit agencies, the public writers and as well as our employees. There's no point in time during the day that they don't reach out to the safety department regarding any particular hazards or any type of safety concerns, whether it be the public, they contact me directly and we look into basically mitigating for everybody that is of concern, including the transit agency. So once again, for this quarter, the department is led by Rena and that's who we recognize for this quarter for the safety promotion. Thank you. Moving on to item 12 and that is consideration of adoption of the California Uniform Public Construction Cost Accounting Act and introduction of the informal bidding board minutes. Mr. Urban. Thank you. Yes, so this looks really complicated and it is a bit complicated, but the whole point of it is to help procurement staff simplify matters for small value public work contracts. So under Metro's enabling legislation, any public works contract over $10,000, you have to go through a really complicated sealed bid process. A lot of law and case law comes in to evaluating those bids and you have traditionally had trouble getting bids for low value contracts because the sealed bid process is super complicated, it's sophisticated and there are a lot of forms to fill out and if you make a mistake, if it's a material mistake under the law, you have to reject that bid. And so for smaller companies who are bidding on a $20,000 project, it's a lot of work for that company to go through. So you often have trouble with incomplete bids, no bids, you have to rebid, you have to reject bids. So for several years now, I've had this on the list of things to help Metro do and we've done this for a bunch of agencies. And by issue coming, I'm gonna call it CUPCA so we don't have to use the entire name of the act. By becoming subject to CUPCA, you have this zero to $60,000 threshold where you can just pick up the phone and get quotes. You don't have to do a complicated sealed bid process and under the law, that's like a hundred percent fine. So I think in comparison things that that's gonna be really helpful for these small value public works projects. And then in between $60,000 and $200,000, there are different processes that apply. It's a little bit more formal but it's not that super formal process until you hit $200,000 and over that'd be the process that you're used to today which is a competitive sealed bid process. So in order to become subject to CUPCA, if the board agrees that this is a good thing for the agency, I'm asking you to adopt a resolution to become subject to CUPCA. We said that to the state. We have to introduce by title only an ordinance so we just have to read that title. And then we would schedule a public hearing and a second reading of the ordinance. I will present the full ordinance at that time for adoption. And that this public hearing and adoption of the ordinance would happen at the main meeting. We would publish a notice of the public hearing in the newspaper and a couple places around and public holding boards. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. So we'll get more into details when we see the actual, just in general terms, you take a bit out of the phone I'm gonna do X for $20,000. What's the, what are the legal ramifications of the time performance? Or how do you, you know, suppose that it's got two parts to it and one is dependent, which typically happens. You know, we want you to do this, but then you want the options to do this DNC. And the person you come into DNC and they don't deliver on the level, you've already got the hook to, you're already paying them for part one and part two they can't do and you need them to do it. Those kinds of questions, how do those get resolved if it's all going to X dollars over the telephone phone? Yeah, a couple ways. I mean, number one, there'd be a scope of work that staff would have and we would have a contract. And in that contract, we would include this is, you know, what you're gonna do and this is how much we're gonna pay you. You're gonna still have to pay prevailing wages. You still have to comply with a lot, you know, labor code requirements. And if it's something staff was worried about you could get a performance bond, you know, that's another 1% on to the price, approximately that would be passed to the agency. But, you know, you'll have your contractual provisions. So you're agreeing on a worldly price we're gonna give us $20,000 or $90,000. Then you just before you actually give them any money there's gonna be a contract that actually has specific incentive about what's what you're performing for them. That's what gets violated that they don't deliver on the same level. Yeah. That answers my question. Thank you. Imagine this. Yeah, we'll come do that job for $20,000 so you can make sure it's like. And I am kind of simplified a little bit but you can email the scope of services. You know, we need the security gate replaced. We need this wall painted. This is what the, you know, sort of blue scope like being in menu and parking it out. Any questions? Okay, take it out for a public comment. No. Okay, I'll bring it back for motion. Gotcha. Okay, we got a motion and a second by Hitler and second by Rockins. We'll do roll public. Director Brown. Aye. Director Downey. Aye. Director Dutra. Aye. Director Collin Terry Johnson. Aye. Director Connick. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Newsom. Aye. Director Pagler. Aye. Director Kyrus Carter. Aye. Director Raffn. Aye. Any motion passes. Thank you, right? So we'll see that in May, the next meeting. Okay, moving on to item 13, CEO report. Wow, that's quick. Prepare to last month before I open. I was a rookie then. I'm done it now. All right, well, I, you know, it's been a really busy month and I've got kind of a little laundry list here. Just things that have happened. So if you don't mind, I'll kind of cruise through them and give you some updates on some projects when we get the end talk about the big award announcement, which has been pretty exciting. I wanted to let the board know that we have six new operators this week who have gotten their license through the DMV. So getting close, probably just more line training and then they'll be out on the road. And we also have 22 new operators entering the new class. It'll be starting in May. So we're about 22 down. So with those two classes, you know, I imagine some will fall out, but with those two classes, we get the bulk of our COVID level of operators back. And even more exciting to me, obviously it's, you know, with that class of 22 will have to be fully stacked on operating the contract there with UCSC and making sure that when the students come back in the fall, they've got full service, full pre-COVID level service and also 10 RTIF classes to help with that service. So I think that's a big deal. And certainly wanted to recognize, you know, Don and her team with marketing, with Margo and the trainers for just working day and night. I mean, the goal was to be fully staffed by the end of the calendar year. I think we're gonna do that. Don and Mike for doing something you had mentioned, I might have a... Yes, I just wanted to reiterate. So as Michael said, we have 22 new operators, you know, getting ready to start May. And I wanna say thank you to the unions because they did a lot of help for us. Brandon, I think in one day went to like 15 or 16 places in one day and put up flyers for us instead. So I know that they're doing a lot of talking with their members and their members are out talking to people. And I'm, you know, the higher on bonus and their referral bonus, I'm sure all of that's helping. But, you know, sometimes we get siloed in our areas like a while under S.H.R. and I'm marketing and I'm this. But when we come together and we hear others' ideas, you know, they had a lot to offer to us when we were doing our flyers and our hiring cards and things that maybe we don't think of. You do something for 20 years and you think you know it all, right? And then somebody else has another idea. I'm like, well, why don't we change this? Or, you know, they gave us a lot of ideas of how to reward something on a flyer or a catching, you know, a catchphrase or a catch word. And can you come up with this so that we can, you know, this will be useful to talk to somebody that actually has driving experience as opposed to somebody that doesn't have any experience. So all of these things that we don't think about. So thank you. I know you guys have been a tremendous help for us. So thank you very much. So a couple of days after the last board meeting we had the one right at the time kickoff event, the formal event. And those of you who attended, it was fun. It was a great time to talk about the environment and it was a great time to talk about Metro and we had on display five of the six buses that have been wrapped with, you know, wildlife and the landscape. So I just wanted to remind folks that that's been kicked off. And the event, the vendors provided $40,000 to the two nonprofits, the Sanctuary and also the Bay of Life fund. So that was a really nice token from our vendors. And since we have about $80,000 from vendors that they're looking forward to providing to the Sanctuary and the Bay of Life. So that project has some momentum. The other piece of that was just riders getting the phone app and being able to log their trips and being able to measure D and RTC to have a rewards program where they were contributing. And so we've kicked that off and I'll start reporting on that next month, how the reaction has been. And we have a big campaign coming up with UCSC with students to get them on board meeting with their student body president and others up on campus to keep that up and get going. Interestingly enough, if you take Mass Transit Magazine it's the premier magazine for public transit. I know you all have on the United States. But we're the cover story in April. It should be out, it's April, May actually. So it should be out probably within a week. You'll see the whale tail bus with the ocean in the background and then there's a really nice story in there on polls of the agency and how it's coming forward and putting COVID in the rearview mirror. So I'll make sure y'all get a link sent out and get a hard copy Daniel. So I've got a lot of extra copies coming. And I just wanted to note, one of the contracts extensions that you approved today was Marty Lang's legal contract for workers' comp and as you may have noticed in the staff report she committed 5% of her contract value to be donated to the organization. So that project is just, you know what? It's kind of cutting edge and I'm really grateful for Julie and her guidance on how to do that the right way. And she's played a big part in that and just good things are coming with that project. I won't mention much about the labor negotiations because we've talked about them a couple of times today but from my vantage point they're going well and I'm looking to be involved in the economic packages as they're discussed. So I just characterize them. I think James is right and the other sort of spoke and I just perceived us getting a contract was before they expire. I wanted to mention to you that CalAC which is the California Association for Coordinating Transportation. It's the largest transit association in California as far as member-wise. They had their spring conference a couple of weeks ago and they recognized Metro for all of the things that had been done during the rain and the flooding events about the rescue with the YMCA kids and their staff about the rescue from various homes. I think we did 39 on the first rescue and 29 in residence on the second rescue about the, you know, what has become 372 free bus passes for folks that have been stuck at the fairgrounds and getting them some mobility while they've been there. You know, the list goes on that the union, you know, smart and their leadership in getting blankets and diapers and, you know, just critical items to the fairgrounds literally tonight as people were showing up. So long story short, in their awards assembly with a couple hundred people in the room they presented our agency the above and beyond award which was really a surprise for us. We didn't know it was coming and so I wanted to make sure that you saw that and again, just a hat's off to everybody. It's quite a big part in being a good community partner. Just a couple more things here. During the month we had the groundbreaking for the bus on shoulder project and that was a fantastic groundbreaking. I think good things are to come out of that project for Metro and for multimodal transportation in that highway one corridor. So it was fantastic to be there. And I know a board member spoke and I keep going and spoke and others were speaking there. So that's exciting to get that project kicked off and just a recognition that RTC has been pretty progressive. Every time we have asked for a cycle two or a cycle three grant added up congested corridor program they have also asked for zero emission buses. So I had that last grant award. We also received a couple of zero emission buses that were packaged. I got just a couple of other things. Stay with me. So the 10 RTC buses is going really well. Eddie and maintenance and Margo have just worked magic with San Diego as well as Wanda and saying that up. So they're still coming. They'll come early in October where we can basically package them, restrive them and get everything set up in them. So I'm excited for that. That's going to be game changing on the routes serving the university. And then the CAT-AVL system is about 94% complete. So you're going to see that complete. And what that allows you to do obviously from a customer point of view is going to the transit app and see your bus in real time. Instead of just a schedule you're going to see everything happening in real time and then it'll allow you to see how how many people are on the bus whether it's full, whether it's about half full whether there's two on the bus. And one of the things we work with transit app on is your ability app for your ride to grade the ride. You see it on Uber or whatnot. You can have five stars up there and you can choose how you felt the ride went. It's a new feature that we have worked with transit app on to have. And so that will be really valuable information. And last but not least, the APC project which is your automated passenger counter project. So above the doors you'll have sensors and they will count the passengers for accuracy and then also your NTD reporting. All the hardware's in for that and they've begun getting the hardware installed so by probably 60 days or so that will also be up and going with your automated vehicle location package that it's just about done. So a lot of good things happening. Your website's under redesigned from Seltos which is the contract that led out a few months ago. And I did have, I don't know if any of you noticed that Scotts Valley received a $1.6 million brand and that is to improve basically the stormwater drainage on the Metro Transit Center there in Scotts Valley. So we've got porous concrete there and this will allow them to finish the project where water that comes on as a surface goes into a holding tank underneath and then into the groundwater. And also if it runs off it goes into swales which then allow it to settle and go into the holding ponds. But when the project's totally completed it'll allow on average year the savings of eight to 10 million gallons of water that will go into the stormwater system based on what the Scotts Valley, the city of Scotts Valley has done at that transit center. So great project and congratulations to Scotts Valley and their team. So the big news, right? During the month was the transit inner city capital rail program. And Wanda Mu and John really work around the clock on this and we put together a great team to put this package together. It's got diverse partners in it. It had a lot of support, 28 letters of supports. It had, it featured separate layer putting the full core press writing letters corresponding with CalSTA, which was rating and making the awards on the grant. It had Mayor Montesino communicating with Under Secretary Tulipson. It had, as provides for me, I think Hernandez talking about the disadvantage community and the housing in the grant with CalSTA and elected officials. And then Director Coney actually went to Sacramento and sat down with Under Secretary Tulipson and talked about the project. So it was like a beautifully orchestrated application. And so the long story short, I just wanted to go kind of line by line on what it is exactly you receive. So you received 12 buses that are hydrogen that as a compliment to that part of the grant package we brought in 15 hydrogen buses that were already funded through various other programs as a match. So in total, you'll order 27 buses that are hydrogen offered this application. So that's about a third of your fleet. And interestingly enough, that'll take your total if we've received what's coming up in the near future, which is a LONO application that we've submitted for 12 additional hydrogen buses. That would take your total hydrogen bus count to 39 and probably be the largest fleet in the nation of hydrogen buses. So that grant went in just a week or two ago and we'll know in June. Again, we're trying to orchestrate that grant really well so that we have a good chance to have asked for these buses in prior grant cycles. So you have been moving up in line to get that grant award. So back to the TIRSA grant. So there's 27 buses basically kind of tied into that grant that are hydrogen. They fully funded a hydrogen fuel station at $11 million and that comes with also the upgrade on the maintenance facility to be able to work on a hydrogen bus safely. And it also includes your workforce development. So getting all of your maintenance team trained, there's about $700,000 in the grant for that to take place. A couple of other things. The Watsonville Transit Center was a huge winner in the grant, eight and a half million dollars to the redevelopment of that transit center with our partners that redevelopment would also include the 60 affordable housing units. That was a big deal with the Department of Housing who actually had a table and gradient grant. And as you saw Deputy Secretary for Housing came in on the grant award and wanted to be there. And then we just had a couple of other things that I felt were a particular interest to the board perhaps. And that was that this grant included the funding to put the little boxes on the buses and the time is seen software so that you can get on a bus with your credit card or your debit card and simply tap and sit down. And it would also include a date pass accumulator, week pass accumulator if you wanted it and the bus pass accumulator. So if you wrote the bus a couple of times by tapping your credit card, it would reach a date pass accumulator amount plus just say it's $4. And so each and every time for the rest of the day that you tap on the box with your credit card it doesn't charge you. It recognizes that you've reached the accumulator amount. So that's gonna be really convenient for folks. It's gonna be really good for speeding up boarding. Those of you who've been on the bus it's pretty frustrating to watch people talking around for change and whatnot. And then the last thing that John and Wanda packaged into this grant with our engineering teams is on the SoCal, on the SoCal board where they packaged in some bus stop enhancements. So new bus stops with real plan technology. So when you walk up to the stop and see how many minutes more until the next bus gets there and also some platform boarding so that the bus doesn't need to pull into a pullout, get stuck. It literally just pulls over just in here and passengers board out of a platform and that's good. So the county has been really helpful in working with us on that vision and supporting that vision. So in all year, we had a $38.6 million grant award. It's the highest by far of any small operator in the state. Most of the small operator were right around the $5, $6 million reward. Very comparable to the big agencies like BTA that got 46 right in that neighborhood. So it was an amazing grant award. The grant actually scored the highest in the governor's office and in the department of housing's office and it just rocketed at the top with Cal State as well. Getting those results. I just thought, you know what? Give yourself a hand. That is an amazing job. Probably the most positive, sit your word board up where you're kidding me. Come on, I keep calling. If you, if you said, and we can comment really gold stars to the top. I think the comparison of two of them and particularly the foresight in working with the Bay of Life and the modern Bay Sanctuary and putting this forward and really addressing environmental protection along with public transportation is phenomenal. I, the positive public comments we're all getting because of this foresight that Metro had is phenomenal. And then the storm response and to the employees and the bus drivers and everybody else. Boy, you put two steps forward, five steps forward and really addressing a crisis and it was very identifiable. And so we had great foresight and great response and well over the things we've done before but this is really tremendous. Congratulations to everybody in the staff and to this board too for letting you do it, I guess but I think you're gonna do it anyway. So, but thank you very much. I agree with this comments and don't worry to send it to the Monday but you have two questions. Well, we have the fueling capacity for these hydrogen buses in place when we get them and we will send you a bag. You said it may include somebody to actually get the fueling facility put together but is the timeline of the situation The buses may come in. Some of them may come in just a hair early. We actually, those 12 buses that were fully funded from other funding sources, there was like that nine, they're rid with nine different funding sources that added up to them. We actually put them into queue with the manufacturer a couple of months ago. So they're actually already in the queue. And so these 12 that just got awarded to the tourism will be on a different queue, so to speak, a different timeline. The first set of buses may arrive like 30 days before but the timing is pretty darn close. The other question, given all the new automatic electronics stuff about the game and bus, ride counter and so forth, the drivers still have to push it, but every time, for example, you see a system gets some work from that contract or there's some automatic, it's like recognizing your cars, but it's that part of it that you still have to do. You know, for now, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, John, but for now, I mean, there are no, for now it's still manual, but it will be a very reconciliation process, right? Between what's manual and what the automation counters. I'm not complaining about it. I understand that I just was curious how it's included that feature. And that would have to be some, your student parts in the vicinity of something that your pocket or whatever, they were not quite very different. Yeah, I think we'll take a look at it because you can look at the on-off by-stop. And so you can really start to dial in. It would be the student that would get on in a place that wasn't on the campus you'd need to identify as a student, still that technology has a capacity to do. But with that, hopefully with that technology, we're able to do boardings and alightings from both doors on buses to speed up boarding and alightings because we'll have good after-accounts coming from the EC system. Thank you. Another question or comments, yeah. Thank you for your report. A lot of good stuff in there. I really appreciate the whole credit card system that's coming in. I was just in New York over the weekend until I wasn't there on Monday. And when I was getting on the subway, all I had to do is use my credit card. And then after the 12th ride, it was free for the rest of the week. So I was going to come back and be like, well, why can't we do something like that? And here we are, you know? It's like, and I thought that it's really great that we're moving along with the rest of the country. I wrote my stops before you even talked about them. You know, we have a lot of the old bus stops up there still. So it sounds like I'd like to be part of that conversation when we move forward. I think that maybe the North County, South County have a little bit different views. I think we're probably okay with like more digital if that was something we could, you know, advertising. I know this conversation happened a while ago and some people didn't want the digital, but you know, the city of Watson will be just passed. We're doing a big investment in our community. And something that we did do is we're putting up two huge digital screens. One is you enter the city and then one is gonna be placed somewhere else, you know, talking about events and other kinds of stuff. So, and a lot of cities are doing that now. So that's something that I think that we can, that we would probably be agreeable to down in South County, but definitely we'll be upgrading those bus stops because some of them are the, so the old wooden from the 1970s or whenever you were built. So that's, so I'd like to be part of that conversation or I'm sure everybody, you know, like the conversation will do it. Buses, this is great. I know this is something that we, you know, I've been on some of this since 2014 and we've seen a lot of blankings, you know, trying to get to this point today. We just said this, the city of Watsonville as well. We're now in a positive place where we can be doing these great things, getting these great things. And so that's really exciting to see that, the infrastructure that's being improved. Maybe a further conversation on, you know, services, kind of like, I'd like to know more about like what's the future of the 91X or if there's no future for it, what does that look like? Getting our, you know, our community to, you know, to the north part, especially at Cabrillo. If that's ever gonna happen again. But finally, and I'm looking, my position here is also to report back when I hear back from the city of Watsonville and the community members that are in there. So, you know, a lot of times it's not my position, but in this situation, we are really excited about the money that's coming to the Watsonville Transit Center. And a lot of people have been really speaking positive about it. I think people had a concern wondering why it was not in Watsonville when it made more like it was at the Santa Cruz Metro Center. Even if you read the articles from the papers, it looked like it was going towards that center and then the Watsonville Transit Center. And this was really something that, you know, should be highlighting in our community. So I don't know if there's something special we could do to, you know, come down to Watsonville. I know some of you would be nice to get me down there and do something, you know, with our community members, maybe get some of our, you know, stakeholders and people like that involved because the ceremony didn't seem like it was like, oh, well, here in Watsonville, it's gonna be half a million. But it wasn't reported that way. Those of us, if I didn't know, I just read the paper, it would have looked like it was going to the Santa Cruz Transit Center, which I also do support. So, but, you know, Watsonville is important. So I don't know how, who made that decision in the future. And I think that it'd be nice to highlight Watsonville and in Watsonville, especially since we just had the floods. I mean, this is a community that's been really ravaged just in Pajaro and Watsonville. So it'd be nice to get us down there. That's it. Just add on to the kudos. It's kind of like Christmas in April. But I also wanted to flag thank you for the news clips piece, because in addition to the S-Transit article, there are numerous other interesting articles in there. I encourage people to take the time to go through them and read them if you're interested, it's useful. Thank you. Whoever put them together. Being a daughter. Thank you. Yes. Thanks for the great report. A few questions. First, I'm building off of Director Beatriz. I just have a question to note. A little more specificity on that. Is that going to be, I know we're going to play Breakground, the county on Soquel Drive, between what? Harbor High School there and State Park this summer. So is it just going to be the digital displays on shelters in that area? And then the in lane bus boardings like South of State Park, are we going to throw that into the next argument, or what? I guess, so that's important. We're going to, through the re-imagined metro process and our other Soquel Rapids, we'll identify the corridor, but it'll be some combination of, like the freedom to airport in Watsonville and Aptos, ESO Co, and then Capitol 11 Mall, and Capitol 11 Road, a few centers. So the grant funded 38 bus stop improvements. The county project on Soquel is largely retaining and restricting, it's not curb, it works on the sidewalk, it's public. It's chunk of sidewalk improvements. You know, curb, it's two chunk of sidewalk improvements, but not a lot of work around the bus stops. So we'll come in after with the boarding platforms on top of the loop. With the AVL automatic vehicle locators, license that are going in, we'll also be able to send that to information to Google so that if you look at your ride on Google Maps, it's a bus coming, I've been resounding, yes. I'm just constantly not getting ready. GTFSRT is a thing. So multiple ways to win, 60,000, are you okay? And final question is who actually owns the Scots Valley Metro Center? Is that us as an agency or is it the city of Scots Valley? So it's a two and a half acre parcel. And my understanding is the city owns portion of it, but the majority of the parcel is owned by Metro. There's some kind of a joint ownership there with the parcel. So I haven't drilled down far enough to find out what the percentages are or how all that got put into place, but they do want to make our joint ownership of that parcel with us. I just ask you to demand some success in putting housing at stations. I know Scots Valley is kind of where we're going to meet their re-enactors if it might be worth looking into more. Thanks. Thank you. There's, I know, Dr. Brown has comments. I have one more question passed. Someone said, I can't remember, is that the housing was going to be for Metro workforce? Is that something that we're guaranteeing earlier in the meetings? What are the, I've heard already heard that. Bonnie's. Bonnie's. Yeah. It's, the grant that went in categorized it as the proposal housing. And I think our thought was to get with Nick and our partner on it and start working more with the city on the details. It has three bedrooms, two bedrooms, one bedroom is a mix and that's 60 housing units. Long story short, we'll come back and I think we have a discussion. I like that idea around that. You know, to get out there. So I know this has been a conversation when a lot of housing does come up because I'm always like, teachers need to get housing. They, you know, we've had this conversation. They get, they don't make enough and then they make too much for, you know, so they're in a really weird position. But I know that we brought a couple new developments into Watsonville where we were able to allocate a certain amount to farm workers. So if we're able to do that, I'm wondering if this, this is something that I'd like to, you know, explore. And I, it was for some reason I forgot to answer the previous question. Basically last Friday, Cal State called and said, we want to have a media event. And we're writing the train to Deergon and then writing your route 17. We won't have time to go all the way into Watsonville. So, because we got to get back to the VTA media event. So it was kind of their, their shot, their call. And what we really did is set up a public input and invite the media to their, what was really kind of their, their media then to announce the awards. But I agree that would have been a great spot, Watsonville. But we can do the next question. Yeah, yeah. And then the last thing was with the Caddy at Yale system, since there was some interest in that, I just want to make mention that Isaac and his team were smarter than us to work with the vendor. And every one of those buses will have Wi-Fi on it for passengers. So I know that's a big deal. Board member Kiddos Carter had mentioned that Watsonville was some of the residents there. Wi-Fi was a big deal and it was tough yet. So no one that each of these buses has Wi-Fi on it, they'll put up some opportunities there. Thank you. I just want to echo, I think what's already been shared here today that the CEO report really a testament to what an impressive agency Metro is. I am proud to tell people that I'm on this board. And I think that that is to credit to CEO Michael Tree, to our staff, to our drivers. Really made this all happen. Congratulations. Again, I'm just so impressed by how exceptional this agency is. I'm sitting currently on 13 different boards, commissions or committees and all doing really good work. Metro is one of the boards that I know that every time I come to this meeting, there's something great that has happened since the last meeting. So again, just congratulations for all of these successes. Thank you. And I'll pick up that thread. I'll say a couple words as well. First of all, the grant writers as you said it was John and Wanda Mu. Just want to acknowledge your work. It's really difficult to articulate the need and also show that we are ready to meet the need with the appropriate resources. I know personally how difficult it is to articulate that. So congratulations and thank you for your work on that grant. And as Director Brown said, your entire report, this acknowledgement, the grant award, the being on the front page of the magazine, it is a testament to your leadership, to the leadership of the board and the vision and to the work that all the staff members at Metro are doing every day. So we have become relevant and we have become a significant member and partner of the community. And when I came into this board two years ago, I don't know that I could have said that with the confidence that I'm saying it now, that people are noticing us, people are talking about us and they're intrigued and interested. So thank you everyone for the work. And I think that that's maybe the end of our meeting. Unless there's any other, oh no, I'm sorry. We go to oral communication or public comment for CEO report. Is there anyone online? No, is there anyone here? Okay, well, I think with that is the end of our meeting. So our next meeting is Friday, May 19th. So you're doing Friday, May 19th here at the Metro admin offices. And we will see you in a month. We'll see what happens in the next month because about half of the last four weeks. So thanks everyone. Thanks for being here.