 Thank you all. We're going to begin by squaring in a new director so we can get our council to come up and Mr. Larry Hagler, I think that's a good question. Thank you. Larry Bagler. Do you solemnly swear? Do you solemnly swear more? I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Against all enemies born in domestic, I will bear truth, faith, and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California. That I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter. Thank you. Welcome back Larry. We expect big things. Okay, we'll continue with the roll call. Dr. Baltimore. Here. Dr. Copeland-Gometh. Present. Dr. Gonzales. Present. Dr. Leopold. Dr. Lynn. Here. Dr. Matthews. Here. Dr. Meyers. Dr. McPherson. Here. Dr. Pater. Here. Dr. Rothra. Here. Dr. Rutkin. Here. Dr. Norquette. Dr. Preston. Thank you. We'll begin. I'd like to introduce Carlos Landeverry. We'll come up and give a Spanish interpretation. Carlos, you can see him. He's normally Langley. Thank you. We'll continue on to the next big announcement. Today's meeting is being broadcast by Canadian television of Santa Cruz and our technician today is Mr. Lynn Dutton. This time any board of director comments? Seeing none. Any oral or written communications to the board? Hang on a second, Brian. Go ahead. We had a written communication. Hi. Hang on Brian. Just a comment real quick. There's a written communication that came from Joint Central Silicon Valley and the campaign for sustainable transportation. So it's not the one here, but it's the hill. Could we have our staff respond? Make sure that our staff respond. It's asking for good information. Our staff, I really need to do it now. If our staff will respond, I'd be great. Okay. That's all. Yeah, another. Go ahead. On that same topic, if we could just copy up a little bit of the responses. Okay, now we'll continue with oral communication. This is for the first three minutes. Hi, this is Brian Peoples from executive director of trail now. My day job, I'm actually work for Lockheed Martin. I've been a lot of careers environmental engineer facilities manager right now. I manage the engineering processes for the Lockheed. And the unique thing about Lockheed Martin is there are systems engineering work and company and what systems engineering is taking. The bulk of the subsystems and making a complete plan. And I want to talk that that's kind of what transportation is as well. Let me explain. Here in Santa Cruz, we have three corridors. Highway one, Soquel and the coastal corridor. Each of them need to be open for an effective transit system. Right now with highway one, you have thorough way. You want much maximum thorough way. Soquel, you want the light system synchronized to improve flow. Right now from the study of the unified corridor study, the coastal corridor, the rail line, five times more users would use that 15,000 versus a train. 800 per hour would use that. If you equate that to a single highway lane, a single highway lane moves 2000 people an hour. So if you move 800 people an hour on the coastal corridor, that's essentially opens up the freeway for our transit services. We really need to open up the coastal corridor decision by this organization and the regional transportation commission to give that property to a non local private organization to run a essentially amusement park ride training line for a decade that was reducing our capacity by a third. There is a misconception that we need more transit for our disadvantaged. Actually the disadvantage that people who need to use that corridor are losing out. Elderly public transit, we need to allow the coastal corridor to be open today. I was actually at the California Transportation Commission on March 13. And their response to this agency and the regional transportation is what are you guys doing? Why it's been 20 years that the coastal corridor has sat as a vacant lot. They question this local agency's leadership on giving that property to a train operator to run amusement parks. And that pulls money away from our needed transit. So I want to educate you all to understand what's going on. They're spending millions on keeping that corridor closed. Thank you. I'm going to start by telling Gareth, retired school teacher, part of wireless radiation alert network, any of that. Over there, walking slowly up here because I have a strained ankle. But before I did this about 70 weeks ago, I was regularly riding the bus. And I like to support public transportation, but it really needs to be safe in terms of not giving microwave. It's with everybody on their wireless devices emitting microwave radiation. It's like everybody's smoking on the bus, which they used to do decades ago, right? Secondhand smoke, secondhand radiation, both users and non-users are harmed. In 2011, the World Health Organization labeled this type of radiation as a possible carcinogen in the same category as lead, DDT, benzene, etc. So it's like involuntary exposure. I have this detector of microwave radiation and there's a sound component too. So it's very revealing. People on their cell phones or certain areas, it gives different levels of reading. We shouldn't have any of this exposure. On buses, the bus enclosed metal places becomes like a microwave radiation. So it's even more intense. Symptoms include neurological symptoms. I have tremors that my health provider thinks are related to teaching in Watsonville, Katrina, next to fields of pesticides. But I also read that the microwave radiation has similar effects on the neurological system. Symptoms people experience are headaches, sleeping disorders, fatigue. And I have a paper here I'll pass out to one of the public health warning cards. And on the back it tells you safer things to use. But these are the facts. And more recently the National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institute of Health, a $25 million study of rads exposed to cell phone radiations, increased brain tumors and heart tumors. On the bus, I like to see what we don't have smoking, we don't have cell phone use. It's very well documented and to pretend there's no problem when that evidence is otherwise, we do to our own harm. And so I will pass these out. And also I want to pronounce firefighters, the International Association of Firefighters. Marilyn, you need to wrap up. They call for a home to having antennas on their buildings where they sleep, their firehouses, because of the symptoms of being in the brain fog. Thank you Marilyn. You're welcome. Thank you. Anyway, thank you. Pass these out. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? My name is Elise Kaspe and I am a bus rider. The bus is my main mode of transportation under the walking and I take the bus all over the East Bay when I need to go there. I live in Santa Cruz in downtown. In 2016 I formed the group called the Bus Riders Association of Santa Cruz. It was just a grassroots attempt to protect our bus routes. They were being slashed by the new CEO, Alex Clifford, who had come on a couple of years before. The first thing that got my attention about Mr. Clifford's reign as CEO was the paratransit, that is the people who had the least ability to walk. The greatest numbers and amounts of mobility issues, people might be in wheelchairs or walking with walkers, their services started to get cut. And so I started to pay attention because I am a political activist and environmentalist. I have great hopes for the public transit systems of this country to meet the problems of climate change. And I am also a labor activist and very interested in that. And that's mainly what I'm here to address today. What I began to see after 2016, after many of our routes were heavily cut, such as Route 3, which I take to go to my bank over at the Safeway off Mission Street and other services out there. I began to see that many times drivers were arriving late with the bus and I started asking the drivers why that was because service had always been fairly prompt. And they started telling me they were going from having just worked one route to needing to get on another bus a totally different route. I heard this repeatedly again and again and again. And so I just want to say that I think one of the problems that we're facing here with the bus company is that the new management is diminishing the bus company in every way. There is an attack on our labor base of the bus drivers. And I feel that this has been extremely cynical in recent days when I've heard about a letter that Mr. Clifford wrote being placed directly on the buses. That essentially blames the bus drivers for taking too much sick time and that's why there are service disruptions. I just want to say that this is the most, as I said, it's mean-spirited and cynical. It went right onto the buses and although I didn't see it, it could have really promoted a very kind of negative view of the bus drivers. I really hope that this metro board will start to look into the privatization move, the incredibly large salaries that management is making, and compare that to the drivers that they have been working for a great deal of hours. Very little pay. Thank you very much. If you'd like to speak, you can go ahead and line up at the back there where we know there's going to be welcome. Thank you. Excuse me. My name is Rachel Spaulding and I'm just going to speak generally about the EMF on radiation. Verizon has proposed to erect over 80 new cell facilities in Santa Cruz County. Local officials have admitted that the telecom industry plans to install more than 40 small cell antennas per square mile in our community in front of our homes in all of our neighborhoods. With the collusion of federal, state, and local government, telecom corporations are permitted to violate our health and safety with ever-increasing levels of microwave radiation called EMF. Thousands of existing US cell towers violate federal emission limits, some by as much as 600%. Thousands of peer-reviewed studies by scientists independent of the industry conclusively prove serious long-term health effects from current exposures to wireless technologies, especially for children. These include cancer, neurological disorders, ADHD, ADD, heart disease, DNA damage, diabetes, headaches, and so on. New generation technology 4G and 5G is exponentially more harmful as it uses shorter microwaves and differently pulsed frequencies. Please join your neighbors in resisting this cell tower rollout. It is up to us to protect ourselves, our children, and our environment. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? If there are no other speakers? Yeah. Seeing none, we're going to go ahead and respond to two comments from people. Go ahead. First, Mr. Peoples, Verizon Peoples, certainly has the right to express his views about how we should use the cursebook corridor. That's his free speech right, and we all respect his right to say that. What he doesn't have the right to do is misrepresent what happens, the facts, about what happened at the meeting. We have the full support of the John Floyd Transportation Commission. You know, I'm speaking here not so much about the transit industry because we don't control that decision of RTC. The Regional Transportation Commission does. But at that meeting, they made it very clear that they appreciate the fact that we're going to have a transit option on that corridor, and it's not going to simply be a pedestrian path or a recreational path. And the reason that they're speaking so long to get something done on that corridor is not because nobody cares about it, but because we have no funding to do anything. The only reason we have any funding right now for actually building the path that he wants, and he's not exactly the path he wants, but a pedestrian path is a private group. The Land Trust and the Senate, whose county donated money to actually pay for the work that's being done, plus the money we got from Measure D. So it's simply not accurate that the Transportation Commission is upset with us about what's going on over there. And the question of PMF, the cell tower issues, unfortunately, I think there's a serious concern to be addressed here. It's not that this is trivial or that people are, you know, strange or crazy. I think we should be concerned about some of these impacts because I think they have not been adequately studied. Unfortunately, however, the federal government has made it very clear it's in federal law that local government has absolutely no control over any impacts of environmental or health impacts of this radiation. So people need to talk to their federal representatives about that problem. The transit district doesn't control that. The city governments don't control it. The county doesn't control it. Nor does, in fact, the state of California control it. It's a federal issue and people that have these very valid concerns are erased and strongly there. It's a waste of time to weigh it up with us. Even if we were persuaded that we shouldn't have Wi-Fi on our buses, which I think is not in general view, we wouldn't have the legal right to not do it because of the health concerns. Thank you. We'll move on to read communications from the map. Okay, at this time, labor organization communications. James. Good morning. James Eddle, the general chef for some smart transportation in local country. I represent the hard-working drivers at Metro and Lifeline in Santa Cruz County. I want to speak on the newsletter that was recently put up by our CEO, Alex Clifford, regarding service disruptions and placing the blame on drivers using their protective leaves. Alex failed to highlight or mention in that letter that Metro has many employees here working 10 to 15 hours a day every day of the week to help with service. The huge factor in service disruptions is Metro's inability to recruit and retain employees. For example, we lost five out of the six drivers in this last class, and now we're down to just one. At the moment, we're trying to recruit another 12 operators, and this is proof that we're under staff. Maybe it's because at In-N-Out Burger, the starting pay is $16.50, and ours is still $15.67. That's a problem. Another factor for service disruptions is we have operators willing to work extra, but Metro runs out of buses. Our operators are responding well to the need of covering service by staying longer or coming in earlier. Our drivers should be commended for being so overworked yet still willing to help keep the public moving. Our operators have long showed a commitment and desire to provide a high level of service to our community. Let's not forget that just a few years ago, we surrendered our cost of living for four years and volunteered our time at Cabrillo to help Metro get a contract to reduce service gusts. The letter Alex put out placing blame for the lack of service on sick and protected leave of bus operators does not take into account the burnout factor of the many operators who work so much over time and sacrifice their personal life and family time to provide a level of service unmatched in the area. These drivers are so burnt out they need to take the right to leaves. If the drivers are using their protected leaves, they need that time off and shouldn't be working because anything that can impair the driver's ability can jeopardize the safety of the public. In the letter, the CEO and I quote, to encourage our bus operators to consider help bridge any gaps and coverage by accepting overtime. This shows a disconnect between management and reality. Management shows again not to acknowledge that our operators are working seven days a week. This public letter highlighting only those drivers who were on some type of leave while intentionally failing to recognize any of the many operators who worked their legal maximum limitations as drivers, we understand our commitment to the public and we take it very seriously. This is not only a job for us, it is who we are. Metro is one organization with one goal, the outstanding care and transportation of our community. This organization should be working towards that goal and everything we do rather than looking for scapegoats to avoid the issues that currently keep us short of our goals. SMART Local 23 is honored to serve this community as we have in the last 53 years and we look forward to working with Metro management on these issues to continue providing talk to your service to our community. And by the way, the letters I'm referring to were distributed on all our buses by management and the passengers are reading this letter with the finger pointed at our drivers for the reason they are late to work or missed their doctor's appointments. Given that assaults on bus operators have increased across the nation, we don't need letters like this distributed to the public on the bus that could cause a conflict between the bus operators and the passengers. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Bonnie Moore and I'm an employee still here at Santa Cruz Metro and I'm also an international union representative that's assigned to this local as well. And I just wanted to come forward at this time because it's a problem. It's a problem when management points the finger at any individual employee of this company as far as the service failures. You have service failures with delayed buses as well as absenteeism and people are allowed to be absent and they're allowed to be sick and that should be taken care of, that should be respected, not put out into the public arena to point the finger at an employee that may be off for whatever reason that they are off. If there was an issue with the tenants at their transit district it would have been a much better process for management to work cooperatively at any partnership with the union in order to discuss in dialogue about why things like this do occur. Most of the time there are different issues that come up, whether it's a holiday time or it's an actual sick time, but to accuse people of being abusive and point the finger at them and put them in harm's way at the public arena is not a good practice. It isn't a good practice for this transit district. This district has been around for a really long time and to violate that respect and responsibility towards your own employees is a violation of every driver across this country. Assaults are up nationally. Federal government is looking at assaults on bus operators specifically and for our agency to disrespect our employees the way that they have is a real problem. We're going into negotiations coming up. Why would you want to set a tone that was in conflict with your own employees as we're moving forward? We should be moving forward as a partnership, not as a disrespectful agency. This agency has known that your drivers are some of the best drivers in this country. We have a tremendous reputation out there and it is an ill situation when management conflicts with the employees to the level that they did and that they put them in such harm's way in our community and the public. When responsibility is across the board, it's across the board. Whether it's the inability to hire or inability to maintain a level of drivers that's necessary for this company to operate properly, those are issues. They all need to be addressed, but you don't put an employee in harm's way ever. That's a true violation. You don't threaten a union about speaking in reference to an issue that's come up that puts our operators and our drivers in ill's way. That's disrespectful and it is not appropriate as a management moving forward with a group of people that need to be able to work together. And I thank you for your time and Larry, nice to see you again. Welcome back here and welcome to the other folks that haven't seen you in a while. Thank you. Good morning. I'm Nate Abrego, a unit representative at Paracruz. Ladies and gentlemen of the board, concerned members of the community, my brothers and sisters, who have taken time out of their busy schedules and turned down over time to be here today. I want to thank every one of you for being here because you understand the commitment it takes to provide this service, this vital service for our community. I want to make it clear that across the board and every department of this company, we have been understaffed. My coworkers and I have worked tirelessly seven days a week, 10 to 15 hour days, selflessly sacrificing time away from our friends and our family to ensure that our commitment, to ensure that our community can make it to work on time, can make it to their doctors appointment on time so that they can go out with their families and enjoy a day at the beach. Which brings me to my next point. We are a family here at the Metro. Multiple generations have worked for this company, grandparents, parents, their children. My father has worked here. Now I'm working here. James' grandfather retired from working here. Now he's here working. Aunt and uncle, nephews and nieces. This has become a company for families to come and make a living in this community. And a place to blame solely on drivers and to insult their work ethic for taking the deserved leave, the earned leave. It not only offends our current drivers, but it offends multiple generations of families, the sacrifices that they've made, the families that are sitting at home, waiting, waiting for the drivers to come home so they can at least tuck them in the bed because they haven't had the time to take them to the park or take them out to the beach. It's not right. It's not right. But we do it. We do it for the community because we're proud to serve. Because we want our community to thrive. We want our neighbors to thrive. Thank you. Good morning everybody. Johnny Lopez probably serving the community for five years. I don't have much time. I'm not even going to take three minutes. So I've got to get back to work in about 10, 15 minutes. And I'm truly offended by the letter amongst all my brothers and sisters that I've talked to. We are pretty upset about it. And when I get on the bus today, it's just like any other day. Smile on my face. Follow the brothers and sisters. And I'm just going to keep moving on. So I've got to get back to work. Anyone else like to speak on this topic? Going once? Okay. Thank you for your comments. I appreciate it. And for showing up today. Okay. Any additional documents? Documentation supporting agenda items. No. Okay. It brings us to our consent agenda. These are items we normally deal with all in one motion. Is there anybody from the board who would like to pull in from your consent agenda? Yeah. Sure. And for our fiscal year 19 proposal project. What's the item number? 10-9. 10-9. Okay. Go ahead. We have attachment A and attachment B. So are we approving both attachments? Or just attachment B? Okay. Sorry. At the capital campaign committee. I have some questions too. The difference between attachment A and attachment B are quite significant. Gee, do we want to pull this? I think maybe we could pull it for a quick summary of the difference. As I was satisfied with the explanation of the capital campaign. But it is confusing. Yeah. No, you can give a brief explanation of that. I might have to give a brief explanation that that's insufficient and we'll pull the item and we'll deal with it later. But I'm going to have him give a brief explanation. In the name of brevity. First of all, the initial attachment A was an allocation from the federal government that was made on day X. As it is every year, we allocated our projects over 450,000 about four or five months later. The federal, excuse me, have a cold. The federal government up their allocation for the year. So attachment B is the larger sum, 596,000, and we reallocated projects to a larger list. So the first list A is sort of irrelevant because they replaced it with a larger funding amount. I really didn't answer your concerns. No, no. Okay, we're going to go ahead and pull this item and we'll bring it up. I'll take this. No, I'm going to move it down. We're going to do it. We'll make it 18A. We're all going to be here for that. So any other items? I'm going to be, I don't know how fast it's going to move along. Oh, that's right. You're going to be leaving. Okay. Then I'm going to, we're going to move it up to 12A after the CEO's report. And I'll just say, Barrow in preparation. As you well know, quite a few items dropped off of A and there were new items on B. And I think just a quick review of... No, we'll be prepared to give us a little in-depth. Okay, I'll give you a little while to do that. So with that, any other items on the consent agenda that would like to be pulled? Not to pull, but just a quick comment. Sure. I found the 10-2, the minutes of the Metro Advisory Committee were really interesting and it was clear there was some, it really was really good engagement from that committee, good comments for the observations and recommendations. I think it goes without saying that everything we get from the MAC has always been very insightful. So that's a great comment. No, it's great for you to acknowledge that they do hard work on that committee. Okay, so anybody from the public like to pull anything on the consent agenda? Seena? No, I would. I would. Marilyn, which I haven't heard you looking at today. Come on up, no, come on up. I think it's 10-07 regarding the... to be sure it's 10-07 regarding the surveillance cameras on the buzz and being able to install more, I want to tell you, as a citizen in a supposed democracy and somebody wrote a book called Surveillance Capitalism I feel like it is very anti-democratic and intimidating to be on surveilled everywhere we go all the time. And I also wonder about the electromagnetic frequencies from these devices on the bus. There's big money in these surveillance cameras. I think, you know, people reported when there was an accident or a crime before without spending those two million dollars. Excuse me, no, you've asked to pull the item and then I... Oh, I just wanted to comment. Just make a brief comment. Go ahead and comment. And I wonder, I take the 71 bus, which goes from Watsonville through Aftos as your own descent group. There are a lot of people of Mexican descent who ride the bus. And I wonder if that's decreased, I think, with what's going on with immigration and with the Trump administration and people being rounded up who are Mexican descent. I think this is additional intimidation that's unnecessary, that's a waste of money, big money for the surveillance corporations. And I am very appalled and opposed to having this with our... in our public buses. That's my comment. I'm just going to attempt to address that really quickly. The introduction of cameras on the bus. I will stand and be corrected if I'm wrong on this, but it's something that not only management, the board and I think the bus drivers all appreciate. We've had a series of recent accidents, which every one of those accidents has vindicated and validated that the bus drivers were not in air and the activities that happened on the bus, I think this affords the bus drivers protection and the board is unanimous on the having these cameras on the bus and management and I believe this is something that this company all benefits from. So with that, any other public want to pull it out? Yes ma'am. And then you're just now addressing the cameras. Please wait. Are you asking if we can pull it from the consent into the public agenda? No, you can make a comment. As a political activist, I am extremely concerned about being watched by the cameras on the bus. I think we all know that in 2016 the buses were the site where I was able to speak to the public about the issues. The fact that the cameras went in after that it's just interesting. I'm not saying that there was a direct correlation. I also just want to say that I'm not sure that the so-called crime or the incidents on the buses justified the expenditures for the cameras. I want to remind the company and the public that there are places in Santa Cruz that are no longer serviced by the bus, especially in the mountains, poorer areas, and actually under the 1964 Civil Rights Act I understand that the company is possibly vulnerable to being sued under that act for removing some of those bus routes. Those people have no transportation service if they don't have a car in many of these areas. So to spend that money, that amount of money which I've heard is quite high I can't even remember the figure it's millions I believe but it is a lot of money. For a service that is potentially unnecessary what my question is is it really protecting the drivers or is it more about trying to police behavior in a way that's targeting bus riders, poor people, people who might have challenges for example mental illness challenges and was it really, really necessary at a time when every single $10,000 say for a driver's pay or to get more buses or to get more vans was it really justified to get that system. Now on the positive side that the union made sure or I think it was the union made sure that if they did look into the photographic record of the cameras that it would be in a discreet way but my concern again is to echo the previous speaker is just that this is another way to kind of monitor civilian behavior and in a time when we have very few places where we can have any free speech at all for example the quarry at the university to have a table there a community member needs to pay hundreds of dollars just to have a table there so I just wanted to say I'm concerned about some of the other factors that go along with surveillance on the bus thank you. I'm going to say first of all I've been a member of the ACLU since I was 12 years old our policy with these cameras on the buses includes that we don't sort of just randomly look through and look through issues like what people are seeing on the bus or whatever we inspect these after an accident or there's been some incident where somebody a passenger is attacking another passenger or attacking a bus driver and they really argue the safety of the drivers and the other passengers on the bus and in fact they save a first of all the cost is not the millions it's not the millions for these cameras but the reality is that they actually save us millions of dollars because I'm sure everybody in this audience understands what happens when a public agency gets sued by a individual when there's been an accident the jury feels a deep sympathy for the poor person that got hurt or whatever and they feel like we have a deep pocket we can afford to pay a price so if there's any ambiguity about who caused the accident we're going to end up paying and the public's going to end up paying for that and these cameras would save us we had a recent accident details of that one but it was a recent accident where clearly the bus was virtually stopped and somebody rear-ended the bus and the camera shows that as the cameras actually show that really plainly and when you go to court and the jury sees that gosh, this poor person in the car got hurt, in fact, was killed in this one accident but was the bus responsible can the bus company pay for her family's needs or something and so I take a little bit of time to point this out the cameras don't cost us money they save us money, a lot of money because these suits are rampant in the public sector and having a mix of difference and our policy in response to civil liberties concerns is not that the pictures where people up to the gentleman surveying the public is to respond to accidents and incidents where we need to protect ourselves and our drivers from the false claims that people make against the district as a group of remainder and consent agenda absent motion by a right second by a comparison question for the excessive movie 10.09 has been moved all in favor opposed the majority of the consent counter carries okay I'll take us to our regular agenda a longevity award for Juan Gallegos Belmari is he oh, there he is we have okay our chair is going to deliver the actual plaque so this is an award for Juan Gallegos Belmari 15 year metro employee paratransit operator he was hired by the metro in 2004 as a vehicle service worker in 2012 Juan became a paratransit operator in his free time which now a lot of you are working for this district for sure he enjoys soccer playing the drums and spending time with his family Juan has been happily married for 17 years and he has four children three boys and a girl we are here I want to say thank you to the four members managers and thank you for operations thank you for supporting me and helping me in the moments you need help so it's been a long journey and I'm happy and I'm proud of this company it's a good company nothing is perfect but it's a good company and I'm very proud and happy and thank you everybody thank you my brothers and sisters here representatives and thank you for everything and thank you Ciro, thank you Daniel for supporting me and thank you everybody I'm happy in 15 years I'm getting almost happy we have the CEO report Mr. Clever thank you Mr. Chair, directors number of items I'll cover as quickly as I can and as usual we talk about new hires and promotions as you saw on some previous items we have Matt Marquez who was hired on as a provisional employee helping in the planning department and Jason Burns who you met last month as a provisional administrative specialist helping us move some projects along where we have capital money new hires Jamie Jones administrative specialist and a promotion by qualification that Daniel Zanteno apologize for messing that up promoted from mechanic one to mechanic two so always good to see internal promotions those are exciting for us I'd like to also point out that we have completed our recruitment for the HR director and I'm happy to introduce you to somebody I think you already know Don Permanon has been with Metro for about a year as the deputy HR director and she has 20 years of HR experience in the private industry she started in high tech computer industry spent some time in the staffing industry and then 14 years at last company wholesale plumbing industry manager she holds a bachelor degree in business administration with extra studies and human resources she's mostly proud of being the mom of three sons who are currently attending college it's always exciting to see the kids go off to college Cal State East Bay San Jose State University Indiana's College interesting side note she's from the Bay Area originally San Jose born and raised and also has a couple of years as a child here in San Cruz so Don did very well in a nationwide competition for the HR director and through that process we found out we had a highly qualified candidate right here in our own backyard congratulations Don a couple other things I'd like to more than a few other things I'd like to talk about the touch of truck is here in Scott's Valley at Sky Park this Sunday and as usual we still have a bus there so we always like to display and it's a great event for people to bring their family their young children and they get to experience all kinds of interesting vehicles including our own bus our marketing manager actually marketing director recruitment has been completed we have hired an individual who will be here starting work on May 13th such an export meeting will introduce her and point out that we've been notified by Cabrillo College that as a result of enrollment being down they will have to decrease the contribution towards the services they have historically purchased while we're still working with them on that it looks like at this point that it is about $200,000 a year reduction in service that's unfortunate because that will lead to us having to decrease two bus operator equivalents of service on that particular line that we purchased as you recall back when we did the company's operational analysis on the good news side we did hear from the FTA in the last week about our drug and alcohol audit and I'm happy to report that the Federal Transit Administration has found the Metro to currently be in compliance with the federally mandated drug and alcohol testing so yay and kudos to Don to get us through that successfully and then on the heels of that we received another notification from the FTA although this was expected they are letting us know that this is the year of the Triennial Review as you know every three years the FTA comes in and goes through our records extensively to make sure we're in compliance with all of their guidelines and rules that because we've received federal funding so we have a package that actually we started on months ago that is due to them on May 9th and then sometime later this year around summer time or soon thereafter they will be on the property for an extended period of time going through the Triennial Review and then last we have an impending deadline May 15th for a federal low no grant and we are submitting a $1 million grant for a fast charger at Watson Village so our first vehicle that arrives from Protera early next year zero emission bus is scheduled to be on a circulator route to be finalized and completed and put into service early next year in Watsonville and if we are able to secure this grant we may be able to keep that electric bus in service more as a result of doing some fast charging at the Watsonville Transit Center so if we are able to secure this grant you never know we want a low no grant in 26th thing maybe we'll do it again Mr. Chair the directors that concludes my report and I'm happy to answer any questions Any questions Director Myers Could we just get a brief update on the EcoPASS program specific to that coming online for Downtown Townsend City Council of Santa Cruz has approved the funding for that program and as usual devil's in the detail and girls working on the details I'll make this pretty quick we're currently working with City of Santa Cruz staff we're basically going to the logistics and the contracts that we'll bring to both our board and the City Council that formalize the arrangement of us providing them slightly more than 4,000 annual bus passes to the approximately 4,000 who work in the specific parking district one in Downtown for that the City of Santa Cruz will pay us approximately $311,000 during the year a one-year pilot project directed by the City Council we will monitor the use the volume of use, what routes to use what times of days, nights, etc and at the end of the first year the City will decide how to go forward from a staff perspective we suggest this is probably don't hold me to this a fall kickoff and that makes some logic of the time of year students coming back to UCSC etc so it's all a go it's all going to be good and again the reminder is this is a follow on from a model that happens in a number of big American cities so it's all good I have a quick question once we where the buses are purchasing what allows to know where every bus is who gets on and off and where to get on and off how will we give the same information about where people are going to these passes before that system is in place because I don't think a higher survey is going to work very accurately great question and I don't want to bore everybody with the detail but let me ask what Director Rotkin was referring to the fact that as we all know we're about to acquire automatic vehicle location system which is your phone tells you where your bus is at any time however we are not purchasing yet because of its cost the automatic passenger counting feature so let me set that aside so that AVL system will be in place by late fall which will tell metro internally how well its timing trips between each stop I may be allowing 8 minutes today for a trip between point A and point B but after we get hundreds and hundreds of examples of the real time of its 9 or 10 minutes we'll reset the schedule the more important thing to the public is starting at 2 or 3 months later once we prove the data works that's when people will go to the phone and go I'm looking for route 71 and I'm at bus stop number 1107 oh it'll be here in 4 minutes so setting that all aside coming back to the original question to the city is a smart card that when people get on the bus they won't happen that registers what route it was on what trip it was on it time stamps it but since there's not an off to match it so basically what the city will learn is wow 400 boardings yesterday on route 71 200 boardings on route blah blah blah it's by day just timing wise on the contract is that you're looking for fall that we'll come back to no no we hope to get to our two bodies June possibly and I'm talking about the bus pass not the ABA project but between the mechanics of buying the product from the vendor loading the technology we're hoping to have staff for the October start but your coincidence and your question we just had a long working session two days ago any other questions to see you okay I just want to make one closing comment for Don just wanted to acknowledge that etiquette is good for any organization to have someone work up to the organization and promote within I think that's great for you and we all know the board knows that you've been doing the majority of the lift for the past year and I appreciate your efforts and this is a good reward for that so congratulations okay I am 12A before we really what I'll have to do is if you have a specific question for Barrow that might help him to explain because he did try to give you a review and that didn't get to what you wanted so who didn't give him your question yeah my concern is of course there's a various items that were dropped from attachment A and then other items that were attached to item B and it is an example of projects on a business copy machine that no longer is on item B and also with a pair of goods the MDC seems to have been dropped also from attachment B I was just wondering excuse me and I'll apologize if I get any of the singular exact things wrong Director Mathews and I went through a spreadsheet the other day and had it down to the dollar but let me basically explain using your two examples and might I reference also a bit of supporting information that relates to this on item 10-5 there is a spreadsheet 10-5 C.3 you don't particularly need to go to that but that is an ongoing update and summary of the capital problems so every time there are changes there are pluses and minuses and that's kind of a reference point to the direct question in this federal process where they give us an estimate before a year hey you're going to get about $450,000 we throw together a set of projects based on our unfunded capitalists we go to it and try to match up the most important things to excuse me during the back and forth with the federal government on reviewing the projects we proposed we occasionally find out that a particular project is not eligible for this type of funding and in this case item 2 the financial software and item 6 the business pocket machine just didn't happen to be eligible it's kind of a common back and forth year and year out so those were taken off of this and we approached funding those issues from other sources on number 7 for example the furniture and number 8 the Perikus MDCs there were things that we needed relatively immediately and we went ahead and funded them with other sources of money because they were sort of a right now thing so when we were informed of the revised updated to the result of the SPA plus a program we then had a longer list and a bunch of capacity available so we went back to our unfunded capitalists and built a larger list and the most positive and interesting thing on the whole list I'm assuming most people picked up on attachment B was also there was 124,000 plus for bus stop improvements that's through the efforts of our maintenance director and relationships in BTA where they now are able to provide us about 60 shelters that we can add to our system but we have a lot of reversion to cause so basically between the few minuses and a few pluses we grew the whole program by $146,000 any other questions on this topic Kara okay motion and a second all in favor motion carries unanimously okay I have 13 consideration of operating the CO to expand the date of closure of the SoCal Park and Ride lot Mr. Quinn as Mr. Chair Director says you might recall late last year I brought an item to close the SoCal Park and Ride lot and at the end of the year there was a considerable discussion at the Board about that and there were some folks in the audience who used that lot express it they used that lot to Banpool to Moss Landing and to Monterey and so the Board had great discussion about what to do and at the end of the discussion opted to extend the closure through 31st and to have me ask the RTC if they would be willing to help since they coordinate Carpool's Banpools if they would be willing to help find a location for these folks to relocate to so I did in fact do that and the RTC took up the challenge we did provide the RTC with all the information we had about knowledge of alternate locations in which Park and Ride facilities were available legitimate Caltrans Park and Ride keep in mind SoCal Park and Ride is not a Caltrans Park and Ride that is a lot that we metro own so we pointed the RTC to that to those facilities then as the end of March neared Guy Preston contacted me Executive Director of RTC and said hey can we have a little bit more time we're still working with these folks to try to find an alternate location and so what I did is since the timing wasn't right to get this to you in March administratively I extended the deadline one month so that I could get this report to you and ask you to concur with what I've already done and then to extend it an additional 30 days through the end of May and then at that time the closure of that Park and Ride a lot of presentation Any questions? I have no problem extending the deadline and what RTC is finding alternate possibilities for its carpooling lots but I do have a couple questions one is the whole issue of providing security for a lot that's no longer actively used I think there's always concern about unoccupied unused unsecured property and that certainly will have some expense attached to it it's my understanding also that that law has been used without authority or formal agreement by Dominican hospital employees and to my mind it might be worth exploring some kind of an arrangement for a time limited short term agreement with the Dominican even if all they did was provide the make an arrangement, make it $1 a year some really nominal amount to let them use that parking in return for providing security for it because I see the possibility of having unauthorized uses that we don't really want to have there so I would just put that out as something to explore pretty actively like your reaction to that but I do see the danger of just an empty lot sitting there without active security to your first point that you're absolutely correct and as the board may recall that late last year when I made that initial presentation I had a number of pictures that I showed of illegal activity happening on how difficult that is for us to manage that particular facility so certainly closing it down will eliminate that problem because we have a gate there already we would just padlock that gate I will tell you that I spent well over a year of my working career that I'll never get the hours back working with Dominican to try to figure out how to do a deal on that property and it just failed at the end of the day they park there and they continue to park there why not keep parking there why pay us because we don't have an enforcement arm so we've tried that endeavor I get your point it's nuanced in that maybe you do something cheaper but if you recall and in exchange for security but if you recall my presentation from late last year it was we really want to get this lot closed and remove any dependence on the lot because we'd like to go through this process of giving it serious consideration for a future home for our paracruise we have searched high and low across this county particularly the mid-county area for a location to relocate paracruise to we lease facilities at a great cost they are horrible facilities the manager the leasing company doesn't take good care of it and we're under threat that they will not renew the lease when it comes to do in a couple of years we must have a place to relocate paracruise to we're going to be in trouble and so we've looked everywhere Sero has looked at anything from land in the mid-county region that we've built on to other facilities that could accommodate us and we just can't find anything and the SoCal parking lot the parking red lot being mid-county is a great location you're going to have a discussion about that later we're not even asking you to commit to that today but we do need to to preserve it until we get through that process if I could continue that I totally understand that and I'm extremely supportive of the potential for that lot for the paratransit that seems totally logical maybe give it one more shot it's closing you're not going to have it that might be another incentive to assume some responsibility other than that I certainly favor assuming control of it but I once again am concerned with the security and certainly even if it's got a gate across it it is going to need some security I think we know that so let's give it one more shot for active use it doesn't proceed then budget for security any other questions anybody from the public like to talk on this topic bring it back for a discussion motion by Rod second by Lin I just want to make a comment this item has come before us before and the first time was in favor of closing it immediately this lot has become a nuisance for this organization and I do know that we have future plans and it is a great location should we decide to utilize it for Paris I know that Mr. Clifford has made great attempts to try to negotiate with Dominican has been unwilling and I feel that I appreciate the director Matthews comments but I think the best thing we do at this point is gain control of this lot allow the people of their car in another 60 days I believe the RTC does have alternatives for them it isn't an answer maybe not their primary choice but I think we need to recapture this lot secure it, close the gate and then following that the gate closure may lead to negotiations with Dominican I think trying to negotiate without closing it always puts them into position to use it for free so I'm thinking the direction by the CDO is to close it recapture it and deal with it then Director Lin? Well and I think a perfect case and point is our own metro lot in Scotts Valley years ago neighbors began parking there and then high tech buses and when we reached a point of having difficulty I know as a council member I was getting letters from the homeowners how dare you stop letting us park there there was never that in there when they bought there CCNR said you have this many this number of parking but through the years entitlement attitudes got them really upset at the city and metro so if I think we need to be sure that we that it's clear that this is not a parking lot and the longer we take the more difficult it is I wonder if the maker of the motion would just accept the addition that we plan realistically for security of the lot and remain open to future short term arrangements I have a second everybody's friendly with that all in favor I opposed the motion carries unanimously thank you for the report I accept to record federal legislation and current legislative issues during the Washington DC I will preface this I was fortunate to attend with the CEO we went back to Washington DC for two days to continue our effort to lobby for any kind of money we could find any grants available to help us buy buses I am going to let director Rodkin detail important of what we did back there. I won't make it that detail. I just have a couple of general points to make. First of all, when we go to D.C., we're basically lobbying for two things. More money in the transit system of the United States in general. So, like, we're trying to get to Congress to end up appropriating more money for public transit buses, particularly buses, because there's battles going on between rail and buses and large districts and small and so forth. Second part is for our own district to get money for grants. So, we talked to both Congress, representatives of both the House and the Senate, but also to the administration because they're often the ones in charge of going out to various grants. So, I'm going to start by just saying what the general points that we're lobbying for, so you understand. We argued for an increase to bus and bus facilities. We want to basically increase it by $702 million nationally. Which would mean a fair amount of money back to us as one of the districts in the country. We also argued for an infrastructure package. That would help us with things like Pacific Station and a bunch of other kinds of issues going on. And we're there for a $7.42 billion infrastructure bill. President Trump, when he first got elected, he promised he was going to focus on infrastructure. We're trying to basically push that that actually happened in a real way that would affect public transportation. We also are concerned because in 2020, the current authorization for any funding from the federal government for buses, capital money for any project, it runs out. It has to be renewed. In the past, the question is whether they're going to come up with a new bill, which is usually going to be some five-year bills. It's not required, but that's the way it's worked historically. Versus just extending the last one year by year and you hope to get a new bill in that actually has more money in it and sort of looks to the future and have that happen. So we were trying to press them on the following question. 2020 is not that far away. And the reality is in an election year, nobody's going to want to raise taxes, gas taxes, or something to try and pay for this package in some way. So we want them to act now, not good. We have about a six-month window here, honestly, before the election. You can know the election's already happening. But maybe for six months people might be willing to do something. But after that, the advice we got from both Congress and the administration was, if you wait for another six months and it doesn't happen then, it's probably not going to happen until after the election because the reality is, you know, both sides. I mean, anything that one side of it do, the other side would disagree with and both sides made that really clear. It was a level of cynicism, I think, not the people from the members of Congress or their representatives, their staff. You know, that basically, you know, if President Trump liked something, the Democrats would definitely like not let it happen and vice and versa. So I think in this case it's dysfunctional at some level. And whereas it used to be a bipartisan issue, public transportation, it's not anymore in Washington, D.C. It's still more than almost anything else, but it's still not really bipartisan. And there's going to be this kind of in-fighting going on about it. We also lobbied at the alternative fuel tax that we currently receive that it should be extended. We have a problem now in that we're already one year behind. They're supposed to give us the money, you know, in a given year and in fact they don't get it done until the year following. So we're now just getting our money from the year before. And we'd like to have that made permanent, not just as kind of a sort of a very shaky ground right now. We lobbied that that should be being more permanent. We also argued that the small trans-contensive tier that we're part of, the STIC program, that it's now, it's 2% of the bus and bus facility funding that goes to that, we'd like to have that raised to 3%. This district benefits from that because Santa Cruz meets six of the six criteria that are available for getting the funding, which means we get quite a bit of money. Lots of them meets five of those six criteria. So we get a lot of money out of that particular thing. We've got a very favorable response from almost everybody we talk to. If the overall budget is funded, then most people thought that raising that to 3%. It's a incentive program. What it does, instead of just getting, you know, bus money based on your population, it's based on how much service you provide. So we're in a situation where because we provide a lot of public transit services in the small community, we benefit from that. That's against the community that runs buses in a mind of five, five days a week. And there are many communities that do that, but we get more money than us because they have more population than we do. So that's the kind of issues we're lobbying about. When we talked to the administration, we talked about our particular needs for buses. So I'm going to just say some general comments about the lobbying effort that we're involved in. First of all, we had a really good team. We worked together in making these presentations. First of all, we had really good lobbyists in Washington, D.C. who set up these meetings. So in two days, we saw, I don't know, 15 different groups of individuals talking to them at both the administration and after, run across Washington, D.C. back and forth that literally sometimes riding in, sometimes taking a bus or a cab or something to get there because it's too far to walk and may need an appointment that are almost back to back. Our team really worked well together in making a presentation about who we are as a district. And one of the things that happens on these lobbying trips is you put yourself on the radar of the administration officials. They know that we exist. They know what our concerns are. And we're often a really good example of what transit needs are in this country because we're a relatively well-funded district for a small community, given all of the sales taxes that we've got locally and things like that. So if we're having problems, then we are having problems financially. Everybody in the country that's trying to run a bus system is having problems. So we had a good story to tell the people in Washington, D.C. And our team, I think, did a good job in making that presentation. Alex was particularly good on the detailed facts. When you get into the question of administration, they want to know, well, you know, can we use this number? Like somewhere between 50 and 60 buses have to be replaced. They want to know exactly how many buses, and they want to know when you need them and what's your strategy. And our strategy for laying out how we're going to move towards non-fossil-to-use buses, towards electric buses, we have to mesh that with the fact that we can't afford to simply buy electric buses starting tomorrow or we wouldn't have enough buses to run our service. So we've got a very complicated strategy in how we're going to purchase buses and get federal funding support for that. And I think we did a good job of explaining that to people, and they seemed to respond to it. I do want to say, I told the story, I think it was last year or the year before about the Trump administration when we went there and it was totally dysfunctional. They didn't have any, you know, appointees had not been filled in. And the people, the whole transit industry seemed to be run by some guy who had been in President Trump's campaign in New Hampshire and knew nothing about public transit. This time, I guess you might put it this way to be funny about it, but I think the Trump administration is slowly being captured by what somebody might call the deep state or something because they're beginning to actually do their jobs and trying to figure out in the FDA and federal transit administration, you know, how do you actually get the money out there? How do you, Congress has authorized funding? How do you actually get it out there where the people can benefit from it? That was not the experience that we had two years ago in last year. This year, they seem to be starting to actually do the job like any normal administration would taking the money they've been given and actually sending it out so it can be put to use for the public. That was sort of noticeable. People were still a little cynical and still pessimistic about the likelihood that we're going to get a renewal of the public transit funding, but they were not depressed like they were last year. I mean, the Democratic representatives in the House at least feel like they're doing something now whereas before it was like, oh, can we do this like this? It's hopeless. So I felt like there was a little more optimism that we could actually get some funding. We got a very good response from the administration about our particular grants. They reassured us that we, they're not going to take back the money for the over-the-hill buses. They didn't work, and we tried to be tested out. They didn't work for us. They had the right to just take the money back and made it clear they're going to give us more time to get the electric bus that actually will go over the hill and come back with a charge and not be stuck somewhere in the middle of the summit or something without the ability to move. And pretty much, we also met with the Act of the American Public Transit Association. It's a group we pay to help lobby for us for transit. It's a small amount, actually, but they, we met with them and again, with them, we're trying to lobby about the importance of small districts like us and having to make sure that the lobby message is based on the Congress is not just in benefit of big cities or rail service, things like that. So I think this was a very effective trip. I think it makes a difference for us to go there. I think these people know in Washington D.C. they know about Santa Cruz, which is not insignificant. And as many of you may know, we were the ones that actually started that intensive tier out of Santa Cruz and got others to join us in the process. So for a small district, we make a difference in D.C. and I think that's worth seeing and making note of. So I appreciated the team I work with and I think we did a good job and I think we did a good job of representing this transit district and our passengers and our employees. Director Person, may I have anything? Yeah, I think you said about just the, you know, the importance of doing this consistently was very clear too, they say. You guys care and we've been successful and I guess to put it another way, we have been very successful if we have, if we have not been consistent in going back there and giving them our consistent message of what our needs are, our chances of getting anything are zero. I mean, if not zero, it's certainly close to it. So it's absolutely essential. It's two very busy days to another as Director Rocken said. I'm very very capable about the differences of what we need, the capital needs, the operational needs. They know Santa Cruz metro is on it and we have identified our needs very clearly. Believe me, it's a thin pickings from this administration. Now it seems to be losing up a little for public transit as Director Locke Rocken said, but I'm not overconfident but I think we have as good a chance as anybody of any district of our size to get some and to fill, have them help fill the needs that we have upon us. So I appreciate the team and the effort we've done. I think it's been a very effective journey for the board visit to Washington, DC. Well said. Okay, that's just an oral report. Take this to our next item which is item 15. This is a 10 year fiscal 20 to 29 strategic business plan update. Beryl. The morning chair, board members, staff and public. We will try to keep this relatively succinct. Long range bus replacement plan. Staff request that the board receive this update on the progress on this program as a background at the start of FY18 as Mr. Clifford and I had drummed into everybody's head 62 of our 103 buses were beyond their use for life and the most important thing about this is it resulted in a lack of reliability of vehicles and significant extra maintenance costs and this is really important. It gets lost into minutiae. If you've ever owned an old car like I do, you waste a lot of money taking care of old vehicles and through a number of strategies Metro will have reduced this number of 62 obsolete buses. Excuse me, girl. Are you on item 15 or 16? You're up here three times in a row. I'm kind of sick. I understand. Let me start. Thank you. The capital committee at their 419 meeting has forwarded to the board the staff recommendation for approval of Metro's initial strategic plan the previous version of which was approved by the board on January 25th pending some modifications to wordings of the sum of the key strategic initiatives including a couple requested by Director Leopold and Matthews. If you'll see Attachment B, the red line version that includes their recommend and changes along with some administrative one, the staff recommendation you do improve. Subsequent to that board Metro has added a five year implementation plan for all of these initiatives which is Attachment C. The strategic plan priorities, the seven priorities you established at your work session last October and these key tactical initiatives that the management team built off of those seven priorities. These all together provide priorities for the use of limited financial and staff resources. In support of this focus it is recommended that in the future all staff reports include a strategic plan element section. This has become pretty common in public agencies. The five year implementation plan, Attachment C is not a commitment of funding but rather an identification of future funding needed to advance these various initiatives including what was the source of these estimates. As you know we've always maintained a ten year funded capital list which is Attachment D so we pulled things in the next five years off of that list as well as our service expansion priorities as are identified in Attachment E which was part of my annual report to the board last August on our future service improvement priorities if we're ever allowed funding. So I think that speaks enough to that topic so this was here for your approval. Any questions? Anyone from the public would like to weigh in on the ten year strategic plan? Seeing none I don't know if I have a comment. I just want to say I'm quite impressed by the job that our staff did in taking we had a retreat where this sort of started thinking about what are our priorities and start with safety as it first came to others and often they are competing and you don't want to if you have a million priorities you had no priorities so you've got to really boil it down and decide what do you really care about. It was I think a difficult decision but I think the board worked well on that then the management went out to the various employees of the district and asked them for feedback about this so it's been a process that's tried to engage the entire agency in deciding what these priorities are and how they're going to work and I think they've done a really good job of actually operationalizing some big general goals and turning them into what we want to do, what we want to fund to make it really happen. So I'll move to be approved this to be the recommendation staffer. Motion by Roger. Second by McPherson. A comment from the CEO. Yes, thank you Mr. Chair. Just want to acknowledge that this is our first strategic plan. Thank you Barrow to guiding us through this Barrow head experience in the same plan as Sam Trance so we tapped that experience. I think we would all agree it's probably not perfect, it's our first staff at it and as you know we will bring this back on an annual basis, minimally on an annual basis to update and revise it and then once our marketing director comes aboard we'll see if that person can take this and package it into a nice looking document. That's a great plan. Yeah, I just wanted to, this is absolutely essential that we do this to give the public an idea of what our top priorities are. We've done this in the county for the first time as well in Santa Cruz County Government. It's a tool that we really need and if we hear that people want changes there are a difference in priorities we're open to it. I think this has been a great process that has let the board really get a focus on it with input from the community. I'm really glad we have this, I think it's going to really point us in the right direction the direction that the people want to go. Thank you. Yes, I've been over this until now. The more you go over it, the more you see. So just a couple of questions. It's a really impressive document and obviously what we're shooting for is good repair and maintaining service. I do have a question and we brought this up in some of our discussions. Is it worth stating in terms of service planning that the priority is improving frequency of service rather than the coverage? It's implied in a lot of our discussions. Are you looking someplace specifically? There's a reference and I'm trying to find it in my notes here to identify the Route 35, Route 68 and Watsonville circulator has priorities, but again simply stated, that's 15.3. If I can direct you maybe on page 15c2 to 3a, I think we try to capture that idea. Yeah, and here's 15b3 it's g at the very top in response to countywide decisions, et cetera, develop plans along the following corridors. So perhaps just I'm asking the question and inserting there that the priority is continuing to be frequency of service on the strongest transit corridors. Actually if I could direct you, I'm just trying to catch up page b2 3b. Yeah, I guess that does Yeah. Increase the resources committed to ridership generating versus coverage oriented. And I appreciate that because that was the theme that Jared Walker helped us bring out. And as a very quick primer, I would in the same breath as frequency always say span of service. And that is there. Right, span of frequency until 5 p.m. does you know good if the bus stops at 5 p.m. So we have to find that balance between span of the day and frequency. So thank you very much for highlighting that. On that first page 5b1 and you talk about reinvesting in bricks. Bricks of the company with quotes around it. What are we thinking about for that? That sorry for using a bit of cliche there, but you might remember a graphic and bricks of a company is just a cliche trying to summarize. We feel and I think there was some wording and other part here where the management team feels that there's a need for a bit of time of consolidation of so many features of metro before we grow. If we grow and I might defer to Mr. Clifford on this but you can't outstep your capacity to do what you do. So getting our vehicles better, getting our staffing right, getting our technology caught up before we run forward. It's a tough balance. So I took that to mean capital improvements, operations technology. Maybe we could just put those words in here. When we talk about the right below that, the fair restructuring and talks about a potential increase. I know we've had this discussion previously. There is always the tradeoff between increase at least that's my understanding and decreased ridership and we would assume that there would be a pretty thorough study of those that tradeoff before we go forward. If you remember we started down this path a year or so ago and we took a time out due to SB1 Prop 6 but we had pointed out in our initial briefings that like any business model price goes up, purchase goes down and you look at where those XYI axes cross and that will be the hard decisions for us when we get to that point. Price goes up 25 cents you lose some number of riders. Is that the right or wrong thing to do? Great. I got a few. Right now it's on you. Go ahead. Let's see. As you go on, if you're thinking of actually impending this in some way would you, as you finish each point maybe suggest when you're just trying to raise some more. Those two like that. I forgot to redefine the bricks and I was going to ask the motion when she was done I was going to say but I bear with you taking the notes. Right and I will of course check back in formally to see that I got it because we really appreciate you all being interested in this. I've only got two minor changes so far. And some of them are just clarifications so don't need to change anything. I'm going to jump to 5B5 I think. 15, 15B5 excuse me. Oh, 15B4 and we talked the same good repair in the first one and we talked about the 62 buses and I think that number is now 53. And I think as this thing evolves over time let's use the number that's real. I think that's important for honesty to the public. So, good for us. 53. It is the number. Yeah. So, on 15B5 and the discussion of Pacific Station there's some confusion in my mind about this. I'm not money available. This mentions 2 million and then we talk later on about designating a million years a certain number of years. There's also as I understand it some earmarks so I would personally like greater clarity on what is the funding available for the Pacific Station. And also I think there's a sentence in B on page 15B5 section B subject to the results of studies currently underway the current condition of the structure may require Metro to invest more than 2 million in the near future toward rehab or the facility that should be willed. I mean, we know it's going to cost more than 2 million to do anything there. But it may still accurately define it. Yeah. I realize this document was produced for January. I know it's older before we did those studies. So I will bring everything up to date. Maybe that's the direction to give to bring that section up to what we now know but can leave it that general. I would also suggest that we add a statement that resolution of the Pacific Station for facility improvements since it is the largest passenger service facility. Mr. Chair, can I suggest that we bring this back to committee one more time? I think this would be well advised to bring it back to committee. I don't think we need any words. This section? Well, if there's changes in the document, I would rather see it done as a committee level than brought back to us. You know I'm fine with that. I apologize because we did go through it. All right, that's great. Then I'll change my motion. That's kind of my, just in my comments I do have some others. So with that I'll look forward to it. Director Rockett has withdrawn his motion and the second has been withdrawn. I don't think the motion that we redirect this to the committee would prefer to work but it's still appreciating the work that the staff has done to get it to this point. Absolutely. And is there a second on that? Yes. I think the staff's work and the necessity for this and the fact that it's a bit of a moving target right now. So, that's the tone in which my comment is. I think that's the appropriate action to take at this point. I think, especially in like just some recent estimates that have been received that we didn't have until last this month. We're just pointing out this was January so we knew there was a good change. I think we all appreciate this as a living document and for my sake I'm just going to have trouble getting out of my head that if you have a thousand priorities you have no priorities. So, we'll take a motion on this all in favor? Aye. That motion carries and that's a good decision there. All right Brown, now we can move to item 16 and rewind the video and start with bust replacement plan. No, 62 is now 53. Thank you. But the important thing about getting from 62 to 53 is by the start of the next fiscal year only a few months from now we're going to have that number down to 34. So, Metro all parts of Metro have made amazing contributions to that solution and we'll go into those details. The most important strategy that has allowed us to achieve this in reducing this number has been the board approval two years ago of a commitment of $3 million annually in our capital funding to a bust replacement fund which allows Metro to refurbish and rehabilitate older buses lease by and or buy new buses and most importantly and to provide funding for local matches to support grant applications for replacement buses as it was referred to earlier by Director Rockin. New funding for Major D and SB-1 created the revenue which allowed Metro to even create this bus replacement fund. You'll note in attachment A that this plan reduces the number of obsolete buses to zero in the year 2024 before that number unfortunately climbs back into the 30s and subsequent years as there are currently lots of buses that are the appropriate age but they're moving towards that 14-year mark themselves and over the next four years that probably occurs. Again, relative to local match and I can't emphasize this enough on attachment A page 16A3 first of all a reminder of the attachment we start with a pretty bar chart which everybody can appreciate look at that we got to zero and then it goes back up we all get that. The next page is the details it looks like a baseball scorecard every inning top of the inning bottom of the inning and it is matched in page 3 of that attachment that financially and the most important thing I want to take your attention to is the last row at the bottom with the light blue numbers. The whole intent is to have enough money every year to go after grants and locally match them and the competition around the country doesn't mean you offer 10% matches anymore. You'll be laughed and your thing will be rejected. You got a match 50 and 100% we did it two years ago we got four buses we asked for nine we said 100% they gave us four we matched them 100% that's how tough a game it is so back to my point if metro is not successful with a grant application these funds let's say one year we take the 2.5 million we've got and we put it up and we don't win we roll it into next year and we say okay we're going to ask for more buses or a higher match percentage we understand that if you don't win it for a couple of years you may have to go out and buy a couple or four or five buses cash because we've got to chase this obsolescence issue so this plan takes into account the requirement by car to start purchasing zero emission buses in 2026 you'll notice our assumptions about the price of buses moving from 700,000 to a million at that point. It's important to ask for the federal government to keep the bus for two years longer and even have more maintenance costs and so that was a pretty cynical move where it's not like buses are now lasting two years longer than they used to because they don't want to pay the funding so we end up paying it. I think that's really unfortunate and I do think that just as a way to comment I think that the strategy we have to replace in our buses is a good plan here for making our biggest single issue is the lack of an adequate number of buses to provide our service. Thank you. Okay I'll take us to item 17 and then we'll move on to action relative to Pacific Station Barrow. I will defer to Mr. I will defer to Mr. Clifford following our item at the capital committee a couple weeks ago. Mr. Chair, directors as you know and as you read in the report this has been an interesting and long process to try to figure out what the future of Pacific Station is actually going back in excess of and when I first came aboard there was a process going on with a company called Group 4 to look at a transit oriented development that might have in its vision a bus tarmac on a lower level of a structure up to say seven stories above it there would be a combination of retail and office and housing and parking structure and at the conclusion of that process that became way too cost prohibitive there was no way for Metro to even envision coming up with their share of that particular project so then as you're familiar we continued in partnership with the city to discuss this and in committees you've had many many committee meetings on this particular topic trying to figure out how to move forward and then in more recent times we've become a little bit time constrained because the city has a fairly major redevelopment project we think will occur from sort of our boundary or property line all the way to Laurel so if something's going to happen the time might be right for that to happen some sort of joint use joint development type of concept the committee will recall and I'll mention it so the board understands there came a point recently when I said time out we need to get some data because if we're going to talk to the city we're going to investigate some sort of rebuilding redevelopment type concept we really need to know what we have there and what the cost would be to take care of the existing facility as you're well aware that facility leaks badly we've had to spend a lot of money on it you've dedicated additional money to it that we haven't spent yet because we're continuing to patch that facility but all of that told us not too long ago that we'd better look at this and figure out what's wrong with that facility and how much it costs to fix it so the board and the committee indulged me, allowed me to put out a contract to have it thoroughly evaluated from head to toe the existing facility that took time it took time for us to get it back to the committee the result of that the deep dive into the facility revealed that if we want to rehabilitate it in kind that is sort of tear everything down to the studs repair what needs to be repaired bring electrical plumbing up to code replace the badly linking windows, replace the roof that's a $5.6 million proposition and if we want to tear it down completely then rebuild it basically on existing foundation and footings not reorienting anything at this particular point but just tearing it down to the ground and rebuilding it that study revealed that's about a $12.5 million cost so based on that we took all of that information to the committee and I think this would be the appropriate time to turn over the rest of the presentation to the committee chair Mr. Walter I'll go ahead and start off on this it came to the capital committee and it became apparent that the damage was far more than we had anticipated and brought in the conversation that moving towards the possibility of a of a new Pacific station especially in light of an arrangement of the city of Santa Cruz being motivated to deliver a project and what I believe is a fundamental belief by our new governor that tying together housing and transportation something that might be successful capturing some additional funds and also some input from ANBAG was there with some other programs I can't remember the enactment for now for that fund but it did seem like the timing was really good that we might be successful and our priority we might be prioritized in that effort so with that the capital committee made the recommendation that we'd like to direct the CEO to engage in a conversation with the state of Santa Cruz and seriously negotiate to build a new Pacific station so all the other committee members were in there I was just up in Sacramento earlier this week listening to the governor some of his presentations and one of the things he is focused on very highly is housing and homelessness and initially he had mentioned that nobody in the state to begin with meeting their housing needs according to the state included they want to build 180 to 200 units a year they are only building about 80,000 a year I said 80 to 100,000 and so initially there was suggestion that if you don't meet your local housing needs as we say that you should from the state we might take away some of your transportation funding well that blew up in everybody's face and the governor has since and the administration has since rethought that that is the right way to go he does want to target some communities who are not living up or are far short and don't even want to get engaged in the housing issue and their general long range it is encouraging to me that it appears the administration is not going to punish transportation if you don't meet your housing needs in your community or throughout the state of California so I think that is an important point to make it was a scary proposal 60 days ago Matthew, is that your way? yes some members of the committee are aware but I just want to make the point for the public that in addition to the city there is some superb potential partners for this Santa Cruz Community Health Centers and Gendys Community Health Clinic are very interested in coming in at that location these are two highly credible proven local organizations and they are very excited they too have told us that there is funding in their world in the healthcare world projects that are co-located are very close to transit and close to affordable housing so the feeling in the committee and it has been in the city that the stars may be lining up in terms of fiscal resources to actually achieve an ambitious and amazing project that improves the metro base that provides affordable and workforce housing that improves the entire stretch downtown and yet provides the circulation the Metro and City co-funded a project that confirmed that so I wanted to add that as part of why this looks particularly promising right now any questions of the other commission? just a couple of questions and I think we are already addressed this but one thing would just be to make sure we have sort of the financial in terms of grants and sources and future revenues needed so we maybe build out a performer so we can sort of get that full picture I think that would be important just for the public to understand both the opportunity and the mechanisms that we will use to bring hopefully this project to fruition so that's a lot of state funding as well as different sources so just to sort of update a little bit on the numbers on that I just want to thank the capital committee for moving this forward it's very exciting and as a council member I just would like to reiterate that housing is one of our number one it is our number one goal and our strategic plan we are greatly in need for our community and I know I speak as one council member but I think that is one place we're all united and this certainly is an amazing opportunity for us so I think we will very much look forward to working with Metro on this and bringing the project it's our priority for the county the entire county Any other questions? Oh I'm sorry go ahead A brand new facility obviously we have to be in the interest of the students of UCS I've heard many desires for a cleaner safer newer facility that students can use especially if housing is included this would also directly address many other concerns for UCS students a personal concern that I have is that if we were to as you said tear it down to the studs what would service look like during that time obviously we can't be running buses at the same volume through a facility that's in the middle of what seems like a massive renovation so I just want to make sure that moving forward with this the many many many students that are on the station as well as community members will still be able to experience the bus duty that they expect That's a great question Bus service would absolutely be different and for a synopsis of that how about the city will expand on that Yeah, I think it's an excellent question and it's part of irrespective of whether we tear down the studs or we completely tear it down and reconfigure it and build something new along the journey we have to figure out how we keep bus operations going and there are no large lots anywhere nearby the downtown we can just say oh we'll just relocate over there and things happen so that it's an excellent question we don't have an answer it is part of what we have to yet figure out and Mr. Sheriff I can just go one step further Absolutely because we have so many of our bus operators in the audience today and they've always had an interest in this topic and they've always been well represented in discussions Metro has always approached this from the perspective of making sure that not only in whatever we do we replace what we have but we take into consideration future growth and that we always remember that our bus operators need a place to take a break and we need to have restroom facilities available and those kinds of things are important just as they are today they will be in whatever we do in the future and part of what I didn't talk about is in between that group forest study and this new idea that we have we went through an exercise that Barrow and the City worked on to get a couple of studies to see if reconfiguring a tarmac would even work here there was some expressed ideas that maybe we should just disperse no we don't need a transit hub we should just disperse our operations throughout the downtown it was a good question it was worthy of answering bus hub works there was some notion that does everything need to come into the downtown period, right? and so the study revealed that based on the way our operations work and the nature of our county that this was the best way to operate bus service in San Cruz County so it reinforced that the hub was the right way to go then we had to turn to the tarmac how many spaces and we wanted to make sure minimally we had what we need I think Barrow is 25 is the number that we have and so sort of at 30,000, 20,000 foot level we've designed something that could facilitate commercial retail industrial housing along Pacific Avenue and a 25 bay tarmac and associated facilities on the backside up front but that now needs to be taken down to the thousand foot level and we've got to figure out when you start tweaking property lines and allocating the right amount for the commercial retail can it be done and that's part of this next step too so there's a lot of work to be done but at least to the 30,000, 50,000 level I'm very optimistic I think as a team is thank you for the question and the explanation I think everybody needed to hear that I was curious if we have an estimate in terms of how long this disruption would likely take if we do tarmac I think we'll figure that out I will always throw out two years as likely the time frame from the moment we turn the first shovel till we're cutting a ribbon it's extensive one other follow-up question I'm page 17.6 there's some discussion around some of the funding and I just reached out to our staff just in terms of knowing how we're going to put all this together it's complicated with many grant sources and I did get clarification there's a statement that regarding the PTMISEA funds those not being able to be assigned to the city and I believe that I believe we would want to remedy that I'm not sure that our staff is completely in alignment with that statement so I just like to request that some of these details obviously get worked out as we move forward to work on the project so we can kind of see where those resources are going any other questions I'm going to open up to the public and to the city if anybody wants to make a comment on this topic hi again my name is Elise Gaspi and I'm really happy to be able to comment on this and I'm glad I was here to be able to hear what's being said about the Pacific Station in the future I just want to highlight a couple of things at a discussion I was at the other night at the Resource Center for Non-Violence a well-informed person in the community used to teach at Gabriel College Dennis Attler was saying that in Santa Cruz something like 60 to 80% of the people here are working class people, people whose lives are very much being impacted by the increasing gentrification of Santa Cruz which is just kind of a normal thing I think that's happening because of Silicon Valley being over the hill and land values what they are and rising costs of housing I just want to emphasize that although affordable housing is valuable that we need inclusionary housing in these development plans we have this measure O that requires a certain amount of inclusional in our developments and that's continually being lessened and lessened and it seems to be part of a complicated funding kind of configuration of where the money is going to come from but I think at some point we need our government bodies to really protect the working people who have lived here for a long time people who are also poor, who are hanging on here and there's nobody else that's going to be really able to do this for us so I would say affordable housing is great low income housing or even very low income housing needs to be really factored in the other thing that I want to just ask the board to please help us with is if we consider our bus hub and I'm not sure if the hub is the Pacific station when you refer to a hub or you're referring to the Pacific station but I would like for the board to please consider that this is a public comment and there are some really amazing things being done here on the west coast in terms of public comments that include environmental design and landscape architecture, beautiful inclusionary spaces that are quite active in Portland and the name of the landscape architect there is Mark Lakeman. I would love it and I would really urge you to look at his presentations. He's doing some very important public works design in San Francisco his father is also in urban design and he is just amazing for what he can bring together so I'm hoping that you will look and last would you please include the public as much as possible not in what is usually done decisions already made to promote them and sell them to the public but please along the way would you please present to the public and get input thank you. My name is Connie Lipscomb I'm director of Santa Cruz and I'm really excited to briefly speak today and just to appreciate the comments made during the stack forward and by Mr. Clifford we're really excited to partner with Metro on this project we hope we're able to move forward as Mr. Clifford mentioned this project has been a long time in the planning analysis and we are at that point where it is critical timing we are moving forward in the downtown we've assembled some adjacent parcels we have at a time when the downtown has been improved for over 700 units of housing in the downtown this project has the potential to bring over 100 units of affordable housing in the downtown we've lined up some various funding sources we believe we are in a good position to apply for the affordable community affordable housing sustainable communities grant coming up with round five and I want to acknowledge chair for setting up a meeting for us with Heather Adkinson from AmBag that was really helpful from a timing perspective of moving forward so we feel like the timing is right in addition to the housing that will be in downtown that's going to dramatically increase I believe the ridership for Metro so we're at the point where we really feel like we need to invest overall in our downtown for the long-term sustainability of our downtown the riders of Metro in the downtown believe a new facility with pedestrian enhancements will really help downtown will help and improve the ridership in addition to that as director Matthews mentioned we have a partnership that we've been working with with Santa Cruz community health center and the scientists provide low cost comprehensive dental care and health care for individuals and children in our community not just Santa Cruz but the whole Santa Cruz County so we're really excited by our partners that we have in this project and just feel like this is a great project for our community and we hope you support it. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. Anyone else from the public? I'll bring it back or especially in the motion. That's right. There are other comments there are other comments I'll be happy to refer to but I'm prepared to move and we'll now move that we direct our CEO out to negotiate with the city over the whole issue of how this can get developed and to appreciate the report. Motion by Rockins second by the first in hand of comments. Okay all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously and I wish the CEO of the city of Santa Cruz the best of luck carry on. Okay next item is item 18 consideration of contractor land use and development services with consulting Daniel Good morning directors Daniel Zaragoza Operations Manager of Directors So this morning I'm here to request approval from the Board of Directors on the concept of potentially relocating the Paracurs Operations Facility to a new facility at the Soquel Park and Ride on Paul Sweet Road Currently this Park and Ride is underutilized and it is owned by Metro and it could be potentially the future home therapies Currently our facility on Research Park Drive is costing the district approximately $200,000 a year it has more office space than what we need and this is due to the merger from the Paracurs reservation is for the customer service department and we don't have enough parking for our fleet at the current facility so when we renewed this current lease it was handed by the owner of the property that he might not renew the lease when this lease expires in 2021 so at the April 19 capital project standing committee meeting the committee approved and proposed contract for land use and development service consulting services with SWIFT consulting services for a potential operations facility at the Park and Ride the services of the land use development consultant will be used to determine if the project for the potential Paracurs administrative office and vehicle parking is feasible for the process and risk associated with permitting and to assist the development of a rough order of magnitude cost estimate by analyzing construction options such as stick built portables and modular buildings should we proceed with the consultant contract the initial cost shouldn't exceed $10,000 and it would be paid out of the fiscal year 19 administrative administrative operating budget the cost is within the CEO's authority at this time staff is requesting approval from the board of directors on the concept of potentially relocating the Paracurs operations facility to a new facility at the Sotel Park and Ride and to proceed with preliminary analysis this again was an item that came to the capital committee this is an exciting proposal I have been to the facility Paracurs it's an inverse facility means that there's not enough room for the parking and they need they have millions for three quarters of the building that they occupied for office space so the one good thing that this sweet property operates offers for us is the complete abundance of the ability to park our existing fleet and any expanding fleet and this is I guess considered the options as was mentioned for what kind of buildings would be the most appropriate to put on that site but this would be a great location for Paracurs to operate because of this Mid County location and I think that we owe it to this organization to at least look at what's potentially out there and what we could possibly do. Any questions for Dr. Rutkin? I appreciate why this is not going out to bid it's under $10,000 we'll save a lot of money if I'm not going to do a formal bid for the process for consultants. Could you tell something about the SWIFT consultant years and who are these people and what are they going to be of course? I cannot. Erin can. So we have with Weber Hayes and Associates Pat Hoven for probably about 20 years on our civic station project and we started talking Pat about this project and he recommended SWIFT. They're a local land use development company that knows the county very well and they'll be able to walk us through the beginning phases here. So it actually was a recommendation from Pat. Is this Jonathan SWIFT? Yeah. Do you have Hamilton? Yeah. They're independent now. But it's Jonathan SWIFT's company. I'm not sure how to use them yet but like I said. The city has a lot of experience working with them. Great. If you could just comment. I'm totally supportive of this. Just a couple questions. Will this contract I understand it explores the permitting process and it talks about a rough order of magnitude cost for a new facility both construction options. Does it also include the cost of bringing it to a fully functional state which would include bringing in any utilities that might be necessary maybe resurfacing a lot. And I realize it's all really rough order of magnitude. Sure. It's a little early for that. We're going to try to get as much cost estimating done as possible. But really the early stages are going to be biological investigation, geological so we need to see if it's feasible to use the land first and that's really what SWIFT will help us with. As we get through those phases, if everything's a go, then we start looking at the environmental then any IR that will also start the initial design and planning tasks. Which as Daniel mentioned is going to be what's our approach? Are we going to build something? Are we going to use prefab modular? As we get to that stage we'll be able to give you better cost estimates. But is that included in the work scope for this? It's not necessarily his responsibility but he's going to guide us and help us get there. It's going to be a team effort. We might need to bring somebody else and help us with cost estimating once we get a little further. I understand there are two different things just as it's described here that's a little unclear because it says the staff wishes to retain the consultant service to assess the potential project feasibility and process and risk associated with permitting and then it says further to assist in obtaining rev order magnitude It sounds like that's not actually part of this contract. He's going to help us get there. It's not his sole responsibility now. But working with others part of this contract will be the report that's the goal of the first phase. It's for this purpose it's a relatively modest contract. I just wanted to get clear on what we would expect. And timeline for this? We're hoping to get started but I mean for cleaning this is the very first step so I can jump in on that Aaron. So our goal is to get through this very preliminary look go back to the capital committee and if the information is positive then we'll have to figure out what the next contract looks like whether we can tag on to this one or we have to go out to competitive bid at that time and get to the next level of investigation. Ultimately what we want to do is by this time next year have that process completed sufficient to a level in which we can go after a bus and bus facilities grant. So if we go through all these different steps and this board keeps concurring it looks good we want to keep committing to this we want to keep looking at it we want to get it ready and then we get to a stage where you say yeah that looks like it's a good project let's do it and then we'd like that to be by this time next year so we could go after a grant to fund it. Okay and then I do not have a note of where I saw this but somewhere I think in the capital budget I saw 12 million dollars for the paratransit facility and yeah so I think it's probably in this sheet and we were putting together the capital program we just threw a number out there that it's a meaningless number we think this thing will come in way a lot especially especially that was from the unfunded capital list it was based on other buildings that we had completed in the metro project just to say we may be able to use that. I think we'll come in way you know I think our rough stab at it was something like half of the cost of JKS but we didn't even need half of that so it'll be a lot less it's really dependent on stick bill prefab modular where that falls. So you're talking about the current lease possibly being pulled or not renewed after two years. Are we going to run into a problem here where all of a sudden they don't give us a renewal and we haven't completed the project to move? We sure hope not. Potentially. But I mean it seems like it's really really close. What do we do? We have a backup plan and we don't have to finish. And they do follow. I want to see if you know if I can answer that. So staying with my two-year horizon turning the first shovel to ribbon cutting and this process alone taking another year to get it ready for a grant assuming we get an award for a grant. That's three years right there and you can already quickly do the math for one year past the expiration of our lease. So first line of defense is that if we've got a grant, we've turned a shovel, we're making progress to try to get the landlord to extend at the additional year. That's first line of defense. Second line of defense is that we have the possibility at least in the short run of relocating it back towards the Vernon area. So as you may or may not know, we own a little house on some property adjacent to the maintenance facility. We're looking at ways right now to find funding to demolish that structure and create sort of a tarmac there. It's not a long-term, it's not even a medium-term solution, but it could get us by for a year. I think they have a higher and better use for that property and isn't there some hydroponics adjacent to it that needs more space? Yeah, they're right next door to us. There's a better crop. Less working intensive. Going to the real ones. I did a parking issue there. We're actually parking in the empty shop area inside the building because there's just not enough parking. For the record, I didn't say what they're growing. Okay, any other questions? Anyone? Oh, that's good. Anyone for the public to come up? I just wanted to make a few comments on I'm excited about to hear you guys discuss it and just to see the sense of urgency and I just wanted to say a couple things about that facility that I've been working there for 10 years and throughout the years the issues have been the same and we probably should have been out of there quite a while ago. There's walking in the facility, just walking in the front door, the first thing you can notice is the trails leading to the different areas of the office where you can see it's gotten years and years and years of use and no matter how much we clean, no matter how many deep cleanings they make of that car those trails are there. And added to that a few years ago we had a pretty severe mold problem that took a long time with the limo to actually get it fixed and it wasn't just in our section of the building it was throughout throughout the building partly because of leaky roofs and partly because of plumbing issues and it seems like we got all the blame because we're bottom end everything rolls downhill and we're downhill from everything. Just last year a tree fell on one of our vans and it took them almost a week to finally take down the tree and so added to the parking issues we lost three spaces that we could clear parking and the parking issues the plastic company across the way from us they have tons of temp workers and they all park there and it's not only created more parking problems for us it's also the drivers the workers who are parking there are now competing with parking spots with some bad drivers and there's been my car has taken several hits and I'm just parked there and it's them getting coming in and out and forcing their way in and it's caused more cost on the workers who work in that building and Daniel can attest to this once a year or several times a year any time we have it from rain there's the lake that back corner there it fills up and that takes seven parking spaces away from us and I just wanted to add to that and just to thankful of the the experience and the sense of urgency you guys have to find a thank you for the visuals okay anybody else like to comment on that really bring it back I'm sorry I'll see you right away okay I just wanted to really I'm asking questions but since I don't think I can ask questions I'm just going to kind of blob the questions over there my understanding of Jonathan Swift consulting services is that they have been a long time consulting firm and development firm here in Santa Cruz and I heard I can say something to the effect of they don't want to put out bids on this project because it'll help financially quite a bit again I just want to urge this board to understand that we are at a time when every single land development project especially projects about transportation and the public needs we have an opportunity for tremendous creative potential and a landscape architect and developers such as Mark Simon who has done just incredible work in Portland at over 300 intersections throughout the Portland community and he also designed the public comments there it's the kind of landscape architect and developer that I hope that our city and this board are going to consider nothing wrong that I know of with Jonathan Swift consulting but I just want to say that the design of public spaces like this can just make a huge difference in the tone and attitude the functionality and the sustainability the artistic and creative sense of a place and I hope that this decision to use the Jonathan Swift consulting firm has been one where you considered and really went out of your way to look into other very creative firms and just also say that I am a little concerned and sorry that I am sort of perennially somewhat maybe suspicious it's even okay where to use here and I apologize for that in the sense that it's not always pleasant but I get suspicious when the same developer is used over and over and over again in the city and I feel that our city could be extremely creative if you were to consider other kind of environmental design and creative, sustainable architects and landscape architects who exist out there so I just hope that this hasn't just been one of those decisions because that's who you know and this person in firm can do a good job because this is a tremendous opportunity that could really create a vibrant city space even though it is a transportation space thank you very much I would like to bring it back we're not hiring someone to develop this project we're doing research that actually requires knowledge of the local community so hiring a local firm is both cheaper and probably better for us in terms of the outcome and the fact that it's under $10,000 in terms of the project this is not the same as hiring someone to design the landscape or the shape of the building or any of these kinds of issues so I will move the staff from the digital all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously before I get to the next item I have one additional director's comment and the director has a comment this is just an announcement tomorrow morning, Saturday at 10 o'clock at the police community room in Santa Cruz our CEO and general manager Alex Clifford and Guy Preston from the RTC will be giving a public talk on transportation in Santa Cruz County it's present reality and future possibilities so I will invite the public to participate it's free and open to the public it will be 10 o'clock tomorrow morning and that's at the intersection of Laurel and Center Streets in downtown Santa Cruz I want to thank Alex for doing it and to the public with benefit from hearing from these two directors of the two most critical transportation agencies what's our future look like in public transportation thank you I'll go to I'll just throw in here Alex gave his annual presentation on the state of the system or what official name is to the Santa Cruz City Council at its meeting this week and it was really informative and for those members who don't regularly come to metro meetings I think it gave a really good idea of accomplishments and challenges so thank you great, we'll meet tomorrow okay I have a view of items in closed sessions Mr. Pfeffer just to update on labor negotiations the board will not be taking any reportable action today is there any more in the public to address any item in closed sessions seeing none we'll have the closed session in this building so we'll ask you to go ahead and work your way out thank you