 So I'll wait for your meeting for February 2020, and we'll begin the roll call when you see it. Dr. Bosworth, Dr. Halpernillian, Dr. Ndallin, Dr. Lin, Dr. Matthews, Dr. Myers, Dr. Peterson, Dr. Penguin, Dr. Rockwell, Dr. Rockin, So the first item on our agenda is approving new officers and meeting representatives to the board. We have in front of us a set of nominations from our chair, Ed Rockwell. And at this point, no one else has submitted an alternative slate for all these things. The floor is still open for potential nominations. That's not to encourage them, but you have the right to date them. Everybody would like to nominate themselves or someone else. Do you want to do another presentation? You had a red light. My previous meeting, that's how it worked. So are we at this point working on a roll call? Yes, we're right on the slate, and unless somebody wants to name something on that slate, then I'll accept the motion to do so. Well, I would like to just suggest and make the motion appropriate and rary to be a capital project on the day we don't have three members on the other side. That's great. That's not a problem for me. Thank you for that. Any other suggestions for changes? So that's a motion to send you? Yes, that's a motion, and I'm really going to remind you of this slide. That's a good question here. Any other comments? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed? If they would unanimously, now the speakers can do board chair. He put the ground up. So now you have the case. We've got some announcements. First of all, about announcements. This is a message from Spanish. We have the speakers from India. We have the speakers from India. We have the speakers from India. We're on TV television. We're being broadcast this morning on TV television. And that mission is thanks to you there. We appreciate it publicly. We'll see what we're up to. Sorry, I just got these. Next we have either any comments from the board of directors? I don't know if I like this. This is an opportunity for members of the public to give us comments on issues related to transit, but not on this morning's agenda. Are there any other communications? Next we have labor communications. Labor organizations. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. My name is Solia Martinez. I'm from the International Organizer for FDA. As I said before, I was going to try to come at each board meeting and talk to you about what's going on at National. I'm allowed to be here because we were able to offer 12,000 workers strike at Santa Clara. So I'm allowed to be here and not at the pick-and-line. So anyway, I think things are moving in a little bit of a better, positive relationship with Metro. One of my concerns still is that some of the managers continue to make those things around attendee notices and stuff like that. They don't know whether they have to give it to us or not, which creates an issue. But I had offered to HR don that SCIU is going to pay for lunch so that we can have a meeting with all the managers and all of our leaders so that we can figure out how to communicate better, have better labor relations, and how do we work together? Maybe you can just give me a call and we can talk about it or stuff like that. I think it works really well at the county and other areas of the city also. We have that kind of relationship and it would be nice to establish that with the managers so that we have better labor relations. So I haven't heard that from John whether we can move forward with that or not, but that would be something really good. The other reason why we're here is because of the rules and regulations. I heard that there was some communication about the job descriptions and the salaries. We're okay with the changes regarding Alex approving the job descriptions because we have a meeting cover process and also agreement process that we can go through anytime a job description has changed. Metro is obligated to notify the union and we have that process. What we're not okay is that he be responsible of approving the salaries because under the circulate letter of CalPERS, it does say that a governing board must approve any salaries in order for it to be pensionable. So I'll give you a copy with Gina so that you guys can read it and so that change can't happen. We wouldn't be able to agree because it doesn't have our first pension and stuff like that. So I'll leave this to you guys so you guys can read that. I think there's nothing else regarding this. Thank you very much. So yeah, we raised concerns about the rules and rights at the last meeting and it was because section one and number four and section six contradict each other and the sense that they both say that the HR and the board of directors establishes positions and by definition of established from an email that I got from and the HR director here is that established means create or approve new positions and so she did provide clarification on number six and I want to read it for record purposes. The human resource department shall establish non-employed classifications. Section six is speaking of reclassification and wage studies not the actual creation of new positions and then I ask her does established mean creating positions? Who has the authority to create new positions? Please provide clarity for these two sections. The two sections are different. For our conversation only the board has the authority to approve new positions and given that these two sections are contradicting each other and the intent of Metro is the board shall establish positions that should be more clear because emails that assure the union and the minutes from this meeting are going to be long gone before in the next 20, 30 years if you look at the last time this has been updated it's been since 1987 so this is going to go past everyone here and we need to make sure that this document is very clear that the board is the only one that creates new positions and I also wanted to provide an update on Calvary Direct Pay the other issue we got up at the last board meeting colleagues and Don have assured us that we will need a negotiated card to then implementing that process so thank you. Good morning board members I have some concerns regarding the Direct Pay it's not on the agenda today but I did want to bring it up we're still waiting on some clarification from Metro on where they want to move forward or how they want to move forward with Direct Pay so if they can get back to us and let us know on how we're going to move forward with that. Thank you. Chair I just wanted to get clarification because I think we talked about some of these issues in our personnel committee last Friday and my understanding is that new positions would be approved by the board changes in the job description would not necessarily come to the board and the salary schedules would still be approved by the board. That's correct. So the way I understand the concerns that were just raised is I think that we thought sought to address those and if there isn't we can talk afterwards but we had discussion during the committee meeting about those very issues. So this is your game two of them over and first of all if there's a process for changing job descriptions and basically we don't need to see every one of those changes in every job description that would be done by the staff like Alex and his staff and if in fact there's not agreement about that the labor organizations have a way to get to the board over the later they have it that they're unhappy with what's happening I don't think it should be so I'd like the way it's been written that it's not automatically that every one of these job changes comes to us so it comes to us that there's a disagreement can't be resolved at a lower level as far as the other issues concerned there's no question that under state law in other ways that the board has to approve any salary changes that can't be done by staff and we also have the absolute authority they will not create new job positions in this agency without the board nor that they're creating new job positions so I think that's very clear this has been before it's now twice at the board and twice at our committees and I think it's time to move ahead with it there's absolute assurance that what the legal organizations are concerned about that they're not going to have a problem with it because nobody on this board believes that somehow the staff or the staff members don't believe that they have the right to make either approval of changes in salary or brand new positions that the board hasn't approved so I would recommend we leave it on the consent agenda and approve it that's my recommendation for the new course to do other ones the other ones sorry it's your first day it's your first day I'll catch up I think we are additional documentation is there any additional documentation? I'd like to say a few things that are available at the back of the room and look in person online and the accomplishments in the year are going to be we have an audit that's going to be different it's going to be different but it's not going to be different for you and me next we come to the consent agenda this is a matter in which we will pass a simulation and we'll submit one on board one to the board one to the board we will I guess 901 to 916 and so if anyone wants four I need some consent I don't want to pull but I have a quick question okay and it has to do with 915 which is the video technology that contracts to complete that installation I'm just curious what the experience has been I mean I'm totally supported this but maybe perhaps in the work or the comments or reports you could just alluded to that if you don't need to pull it he has to leave early so I don't need to do it I guess the chair director the experience has been good now this this particular item just adds funds to provide another 916 cameras on our bus fleet the remainder of the plate we won't be adding cameras to because they will transition as we replace a lot of buses in the next couple of years many of the incidents that we've wanted a full video for we've not been able to because a portion happened on buses and cameras so we need to get that process completed but it has been good for us there have been several instances where there was a customer complaint for example that Jeff presented the exchange with the operator in a certain way and we were able to go to the video which also included the audio and actually determined that the operator had to do a very professional manner of video that itself will sore us in protecting us against potential lawsuits down the road where say there's a passenger fall we'll capture that video in case that person ends up filing a suit against us we'll have videos showing what really happened so it's been very good it isn't that time consuming because I know there was anxiety and some parts when we started but it sounds like there was a big risk problem associated empty contract okay, thank you item 906 which is the operations status report we understand we had some issues and maybe Daniel was on that in terms of the latest because in particular I think good morning directors operations manager and characters yes, we did with the changes initially the first few days we had a few hiccups of course we're transitioning to a brand new software it has a different way of operating we've been adjusting it the first week was really rough it had a way of looking at things where Ecolane wants to be as productive as it can with a ride so it's looking more at sort of like a fixed route system so if somebody is going from Watson or the Santa Cruz it's picking up and dropping off along the way so people weren't used to that the windows changed we used to have windows in 15-minute increments now the software tells us where the windows start so a window could be at 9.43 instead of 9.45 people weren't used to that we've been working with Ecolane every single day actually yesterday I was on the phone with him we've been fixing all these issues and since that first week we've gotten a few complaints but they're actually complaints that no matter what operating system we would have had trapeze Ecolane whatever it might have been we would have been late we've had issues like Valentine's Day where we only have 13 operators for a 40 we need a 24 for that day so it's been an ongoing issue we've been fixing the issues I ran the numbers for this meeting just to compare last month we were at 95.5% on-time performance since Ecolane we've been at 94 so it's actually just 1.5% which is still low but I'm sure next month we'll be up to normal we've been working the staff has been on it we've been Ecolane's been really helpful and as we've been getting the report the customer service reports we've been responding and trying to educate the people on how Ecolane works it's a lot different than what Trapeze did because Trapeze everything was manual so this is automated the computer decides the times the pickups so it's way different and I think as people get educated on how the system works we'll see a huge improvement sure just one question how are we communicating with our customers about this we have been in contact we're trying to explain what's going on how it works so that they understand it a little bit better people aren't very happy with if they're writing from let's say Watsonville to Santa Cruz they weren't used to us stopping and picking up other people along the way we were sort of like a taxi service where we would pick up a couple of people drop off a couple of people in the same vicinity now what it's doing is picking up and dropping off along the way but we've been talking to people we're getting them to their appointments on time so I think there's been a huge improvement the first week was was horrible it was really bad thank you I don't know if they understand about who is there in their life today well it's just a different a different way of using it they still call the same way we give them the time we pick them up within that window so it hasn't changed that much I believe next month we're going to have an app that the person will be able to go to that and look at where their ride is possibly even book a ride in the future on it so it'll be sort of like an Uber app where they can go and say where's my ride and it'll show them where we're at real time for a lotion for the consent I would move the consent second all those who could say hi hi all those opposed here's your analysis our next item is the presentation of the authority longevity awards we have an award for William Dove who was recognizing president January he just said no he recognized me already that's what I'm trying to say so I'll start with the other side and first I'll start with the information also I'm not wishing to speak this morning one of Guerrero's vehicle service people who've been working with us for 10 years and recognized as a service however I believe we need to mark this maybe here and if you'd like to appreciate it you must make any comments we may not it's not it's not it's not it's here good morning everyone how's everybody's doing well my name is my name is and I'll start working here Guerrero right yeah 20,000 many years ago right so it's very very long long time yes too to calculate how many years right find out I didn't want to get up and start counting like what I can use it to count those years you know I start with my fingers then finish with my toes right 20 years so who could remember those years when you turn 25, 30 and then those days when you called the body parts for the right name so you call for example you used to call right knee left knee 20 years later you call it the good one and the bad that's what I want to see that's what I want to see here in the metro lately I see me every morning kind of like I want to see people laughing I want to see people more empathy and then at the end of the day everybody we're going to go down there it's not about it's not about who's got the power it's not about who's got the more money it's not about I'm the one who's called chat even the the war is more creature in the planet it's very important for the living of all the people and I take this time yes to remind those kind of things because I grow in one area where it's freedom like hell I mean you look in the village and you say there's your land you can go side to side no restrictions nobody gets mad and these days, oh my goodness we need to work it out a little, a hard empathy because at the end of the day it's not my business it's everybody's business I mean I've seen so many things happy can I tell a little story about what happened in Metro when we had the old building yes? so we had the old building right there and we had the watcher and I was working one of the bus and that time that was the I don't remember the last manager that was a Ryan or Brian Brian so that guy that was Guy, he was all over the place and I'm going to talk a little serious stuff but I'm going to talk to one of the drivers so he came out from the dispatch and he was screaming because they reported somebody was down down there he reported and says anybody know CPR so I stopped doing my job and said I know CPR so we went down there it was probably too late it was too late we went over there, we find the person and passed and my mind I said why are we going to do it we need people around and this person gone I'm not talking about these people's fault and then at the day that's what I say we need to have empathy for the people and work it together and help each other and smile every day like the way you guys do a couple of minutes I'll go everybody so I'm happy to work here I'll keep my pride for the rest of my life to me I had a hard personality no matter what people change they will not change me the way I'm thinking nobody will right now I'm sorry for this most of the people especially young generations that are involved with the media and those kind of things and most of the time we don't focus on our lives we just go over there and get the phone we go to the media and we get the phones and families over there over there when I grow up we set it out on the table when my mom, my brother, my sister and she says she's the one who started the food and we set it out and talk and got a nice conversation about whatever issues calm and relax I hope I take too much time for this I need to work it out for me it's a real pleasure to work with a lot of people here I had a bunch of friends around here and I'm going to miss them I'll check out from here but I still want to come back I miss John, John O'Donnell Tom Sticco for example to mention John Spacey those guys my God, my respect he's going to tell me a little bit about John Spacey I don't know if you remember John Spacey he used to with me when I would take my breakfast and the way I raised even if I don't have nothing if people around used to offer that's the way I raised and I was and then he came and I said hey John, I had a pair you want a pair or mango, whatever you want he says now already you do a lot of work you need the food for the energy for the energy and I say no I like to share, don't worry about it and I was very clear not because I offered you this I'm going to be asking for favors I'm a very professional person if it doesn't matter if I talk with you very friendly or something like that when it comes to the situation there's nothing to do with that we can still talk very nice as a friend, as a human being and we can still be responsible and what do you need to do it's a lot easier than that I believe more encouragement than punishment thank you thank you while you're taking your picture I just wanted to say RBSW's vehicle service workers are those kind of organizations I don't know if you know about the shifts that they work, they work 6pm to 2am shift when they're coming on duty most of the folks for example are already gone home they work through the night they work in all kinds of summertime heat in the wintertime cold and wet and their job is to process those buses as they come in off the runs to get them cleaned if they don't do their job right then the bus operators come in the next day and they find equipment in good clean shape that probably is their day if they're driving a bus they're not happy with if they don't do their job right our customers have to suffer to a bus that isn't clean we don't get those kinds of complaints because RBSW's do their job and they don't get recognized enough for the work they do through those inclement weather and the hours in which most of us are probably asleep at home they do a great job and I just want to say Ramundo participated actively in our recent all hands meeting he represents the BSDSE as well he says he's very important thanks so much thank you okay excuse me we do have Kudo he's here so Ramundo we're recognizing we're recognizing 20 years of service he wants to say good morning yes I appreciate everybody who's here what is it? 20 years I have a lot of experiences here what's going to happen in my life in my family he's had a lot of experiences that he's had here in his family two of them work here my daughter my daughter my daughter in the office Christian from Paracluse two of them are also working thank you he says he's very appreciative to be here and have this job and it's been a very good experience he wants to share a little story that he's had in the last few years thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you then he couldn't come on the bus and had an application he got back on a bus he said, where are you from? he said, your boss his brother We have two retirements this morning, and I'm going to give them a little bit of advice. I'm going to give them a little bit of advice, and I'm going to give them a little bit of Let's do this. We have two retirements this morning, and I'm going to give them a little bit of advice. One's for Jeffrey Zinkner, who I believe is not here, and also for Dan Stevens, who has this year served this district for a very long time. They've put in some comments. I'd like to invite him out to make these comments. I'd like to invite him out to make these comments. Thank you very much. Those are two my necks to follow. I'll keep it short. I just fastened the last few days and I'm a little bit tired. I said that four score and 20 years ago, actually, was one year and 20 years ago. I started working for Metro, and my time is slow. It's not as decent as I feel today, but a lot of things have changed. I remember back in 1998 when I started, we actually had a government that respected the Constitution, for example. We had a Senate that was interested in passing legislation. We had a Justice Department that was interested in law and order. We didn't have cyber attacks from foreign countries in our elections. A lot's changed since then. It's good that I'm retired because it gives me an opportunity. Oh, also, one thing I didn't have back then is I didn't have attention. So thank you very much. And it gives me opportunities to volunteer work and to help get the vote out. I'm volunteering for the elections office and I'm doing that because I take the threats to our democracy very seriously. So I hope all of you take your right to vote very seriously and what you need to do to keep democracy growing. And essentially, kind of now, just like that. Thank you. Thank you. Second by Bruce. I just want to say about Dan. You've been here quite a while, and I've been here as well. Like many of our employees, he hasn't simply, he's done his job. He's done a great job of doing his job. But he also is someone who's interested in the overall role of the district and it shows to their customers and kind of an active citizen of the district. I appreciate that. I want to thank him for that. In addition to the actual job, specific job he's hired to do and did well. Thanks again for your service. Thank you. Thank you. So I have a motion. Second by the resolutions. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Whereas you now. Thank you, Jonathan. You're in trouble with that. We now have a formal presentation from Veronica. I'll see you in a match here. I'll see how my aim is. Hey, that's too bad. Hopefully the next time I'm out here, it won't be a doggy. That would be nice. Well, good morning, everyone, board members. I'm Veronica Elsie and I'm the chair of the Metro advisory committee. This is actually supposed to be our December report. As it happens, we did hold new elections in November and I am still in the chair in 2020. So if you look at my face again, next year you will have a different chair. As our bylaws say that one can be chair. Two consecutive one-year terms and then you have to take a year off. So next year you'll have somebody else. But this is a great committee and I want to start by giving a shout out to our two new members, James Von Handy and Jessica Dewitt. We're really happy to have them. And for the last really several years in a row now on this committee, we have never had more than one person missing at a meeting. So our attendance has just been spectacular. The participation at the meetings is good. Everybody gets involved in the discussions. We cover a lot of different things. And you have a committee here that really, really wants to function as an advisory committee. The couple of little things that we are running into is according to our bylaws, we meet quarterly and it's the third Wednesday of whatever month we choose. And in November we chose for 2020 to meet in February, so that was the 19th. April, that would be on the 15th. August, that would be on the 19th. And then we picked October on the 21st. We often do November, but we're trying to dance around the board schedule and you guys keep canceling your December meetings. And so we also try to schedule it so that the third Wednesday gives us a week before your meeting so that if we do want to send you any kind of communications, we can get them into the office by Thursday so that they make it into your packets. So we were kind of batting things around a little bit at our last meeting about maybe in future amendments of the bylaws, we might want to say the Wednesday a week before the board meeting because you have some months where you haven't been doing the fourth Friday, you've been doing the third Friday. So that cuts it a little close for us. And since we are only quarterly, that we really want to make sure we cover the issues and have the ability to get information to you if we feel like we need to. So that might be something to just take a look at when you're looking at our bylaws and yours. The other thing that sometimes happens since we are quarterly, if an item gets tabled, we had a couple of members that want to have some interesting discussions about alternative fuels. And that poor item just got tabled again. And so the problem is when something gets tabled, this tabled for three months. And so we're trying to be really careful to make sure that any of our questions don't get outdated. And so we're having to work very carefully to balance that and stay up to date and pay attention to your current issues. We are looking forward to your extra staff coming on so that your marketing and customer service gets separated out from your planning and development so that we can go back to getting some of the documentation that we're used to getting in our meeting packets. Things like the quarterly ridership reports that we haven't seen for a little while as part of our packets and just some of the written background information so that people could look through those ahead of time and be able to ask more intelligent questions during the meeting and stay on time because we fit a lot into our two hours. Can we do that on time? So I think those are just things that you may want to just think about when you're looking at kind of the bylaws and how we're set up because this is really a committee that is a very strong commitment towards improving Metro and keeping up with what Metro is doing. And in that regard, some of the issues that we have really talked about a lot over the past several months are from the marketing standpoint. The committee is very concerned about the marketing and outreach that comes out about your passenger code of conduct and we understand that's been a little bit delayed until your extra staff comes on but it's very important to the committee as to how this is presented to the public and that it communicates Metro's intent to use this so that the drivers have a backup and the public doesn't get the idea that you're trying to punish certain groups so we're very interested in being involved in kind of helping with that. We've seen a lot of discussion even so far at today's board meeting about all the various apps that are coming out. One of the things that the committee has asked about is, you know, we hope that we don't get to the point where in order to ride a bus you can choose one of six or seven different apps and you do this one if you want to get the parking permit in Scott's Valley, you do this one you equalize parent transit, this other one from Synchromatics if you want to find what your bus is located and another one if you want to book here so the committee is really stressing in our comments at the meetings that we hope that there might be some way to combine things so that there's a Metro app and you can do all the various things on one app but it's not too confusing for your writers and we're also been very pleased to be able to get some presentation and make comments about all the things that Metro is considering what can be done with on-demand transportation and some of the other options to counter a little bit of the Uber and Lyft and how we're going to get our writers from point A to point B when there are some areas that have lost some service and we've had some interesting discussion about fares and we've been informed about some of the legislation coming up about making transit free for some people or cheaper for some people and so we're just very interested in how it goes for people that really want to switch to transit or be able to afford transit or keep going we also talk a lot about some of those service areas and are trying to stay on top of new developments in the county so things like the changes that may be coming out at the capital mall and the transit center out there and new employment locations like the potential of Kaiser and the Enterprise Center and various things that are coming up so we really want to stress the need to provide us with the updates in a manner that we can really provide you with good information users do talk to us when they find out that we're out there which is how it came up about the fares because everybody's been getting on the buses going hey guys it's free in Philadelphia, Kansas City what are you doing? so we bring it back to the committee and we really had some good discussions about it so our next meeting will be on April 15th the public is welcome to attend our meetings right now because of the construction at the Metro Pacific Station we are actually meeting here at 110 Vernon Street so our agendas are online public is welcome it's a great committee and we hope that the board will take some of our items to heart and maybe look at the bylaws and have some discussions with us about how to make us more efficient and more useful to you thank you any questions? you're welcome, thank you for the chance to speak with you and I'll see you in six months actually, less than that thank you next we have the leaders Chair and Directors just three things that I wanted to report on one, as a result of the FDA moving up the deadline for the fight shots because the submittal of the bus and bus facilities grant this year we're not going to be able to apply for a pair of transit bus and bus facilities grant this year we'll have to move it to next year we thank the FDA for whatever reason wants to move everything up earlier this year so they can accelerate the awards probably before November but that's what we've been told so we will do the best we can do to react to that as we know from prior meetings with the administrator at the FDA they rarely ever do two or seven years of bus facilities grant for the same agency and therefore we'll hold off this year we won't apply for a bus and bus facilities grant this year for other things in hopes of preserving our ability to win that grant next year in terms of building that chair so 2021 is the target of that and then as we usually talk about this time of the year you noticed around I've got a question just on that can you just give us a quick snapshot where we are with the contract that's related to this I think I might pump that over to Sarah maybe just give us a quick update where are we sure morning Sarah Gearing chief officer in reference to the question most we have been working with SQUIP and we are at a point where now many of the environmental requirements need to come into fruition and investigation of how that land is a portion for the construction process SQIP we've been in communication with SQIP they have been coordinating with some various other subcontractors that we're going to be looking into in providing those reports it's pretty extensive we have a riparian there's some issues with the elevation it seems to be lower than the Soquel avenue so there's a question of pumping stations that will need to be put in in order to bring sewage and such up to the appropriate levels and all of those aspects need to be looked at there's also some concerns about permitting and how that's going to be carrying out there's city and also county concerns about that so basically we're kind of putting together all of the pieces so we can get our process moving forward from a permitting standpoint and getting closer to a shovel ready project that was really my point there's a lot to be done and I would appreciate any additional updates on where we are what we do at the presentation and just so you know one of the important milestones is to make sure that they're adjacent to that that they support what we're doing so Jamie is working with the supervisor they hold office to try to find an opportunity to have a public meeting and we'll do that soon because that's important if we find out there's going to be major opposition we can drop back and think about what we're going to do and how people will send a lot of money can you ask a question about me what is the amount of work that we're going to do that is that certainly will come out of this analysis that's with the number we're doing for us so we don't have a big fix yet on what that number is do you have any estimation of the work you need to do well the environmental report came back at approximately $138,000 just for those reports there that doesn't include any of the other aspects that we're looking at for an overall general view of what's going to be required to even begin our secret summits and such the overall project could be $67 million we have to narrow that down I would like to mention that we're referring to the applied work what about money exactly you may recall a couple of months ago the board dedicated funding as the local match for this project so we would probably be in a range of a 45% match depending on what that final number comes down and then that's part of the strategy is to try to make us really competitive at the federal level but the federal money how much are we looking to pay they don't know because they don't know the cost $3-4 million depends on that kind of money that's not a reason you may elaborate a little further we are going to be contracting for a general contractor that comes in and we've used the entire project as we're planning to go forward with and they'll come back with an estimate of what's going to be required for the analysis that they're going to be conducting that will give us kind of a ballpark with what we're going to do again as we're estimating $6-7 maybe $8 because of the different funding stations and such that work that it's close to our perian and we can't be putting more attention to that so if we're looking for the good in all of this the good is we'll have a little extra time to try to really make this a little quality next thing you notice around the room manually the exercise soon after the new year will be poised at all levels in the organization we come together in this room we spend a little bit of time asking them to try to fill the walls up with sticky notes you have the outcome of the sticky note exercise before you in which we have them identify all the accomplishments throughout the year when we're accomplishment too small things like we have X number of preparements we have Y number of invoices things that we just don't always think of from day to day but it's important to remind you to remind me that our employees at all levels in this organization have a lot going on in addition to some of the higher level things that we're working on trying to build a new facility by bus it's fixed ends so it's a good opportunity before you start the new year and you lump on all the new things that we're going to do in the new year to just take a quick pause and say what we accomplished in a heck of a lot of last year so kudos to all of our employees at all levels in your organization and then we also go through a little exercise where they go off in groups and they kind of think about if they were the CEO if they were the board what would they do what would they want to prioritize in the coming year and you have a little bit of that ambition before you also about what they thought and it is interesting how much in alignment with employees that the agency is going to work towards so that's what's interesting to look at so that's around you that you have a good work out in front of you and then finally I'd like to ask one movie to come up to the mic and just talk about a successful grant application that you just got noticed about Good morning, two percent board members talking to us I'd like to give you a brief a brief step out one of the grants we received from Kotlin in February Mitra has received a description grant award in February from 5379A the amount of 1.3 million to replace 2998 2998 these are the fuel buses with 2CMG buses and this award will help achieve mutual number one captain improvement of all of the places in Kotlin also the buses I would like to give this grace to the board because the board came up with the strategy of bus replacement which dedicated 3 million dollars to this captain so we used that as a local match to win this grant and this would help us to provide funding and stability to also the required local match to replace our production staff will continue to seek grant application and captain improvement project good job finally finally before we move on I'll take a round of applause Mr. Chairman I'd like to acknowledge that Nathan was promoted on February 6th to administrative specialist he was a former part of this materialist so congratulations to Nathan thank you Bruce I have made this comment on February 5th I just wanted to mention that on February 18th and 19th a real Rodriguez and I with the guy who presided the chair of the executive director of transportation commission with the chair of this year to discuss the five county highway needs, freight needs from Santa Barbara to Santa Cruz that was the focus of the discussion was highway 1 which doesn't really include Santa Cruz county until it ties in somewhat on freight issues in particular I want to let you know that we did always put in not a little we put a big mention about our bus on shoulder program they're very excited about it and I just wanted to know that from another agency the regional transportation committee commission and representation there that the bus on shoulder remains high profile on the close discussions even though it's not metro in particular it is metro in particular RTC in general they know what we're trying to do we've got a good word next was back to you on the next item which is the federal, state federal with the same agenda this because you do have our representatives from the state and federal peers the plan is similar to the one presented in prior years it's adjusted for whatever the little new changes are for the coming year of course we continue to advocate for new state funding and to avoid unfunded mandates we continue to represent you on the PDA in the past and perform task force we're looking at trying to do anything we can do at a state level to reduce the impact of the costs of implementing electric vehicles and of course a big topic this year with the expiration of the FASTAC would be its reauthorization or something to form that later in the past year we had success with the legislation that we sponsored through Assemblyman's Stone that was AB 1089 that made some free amendments to our enabling legislation and then CTA and others were successful with AB 784 which provided the portion of the state's sales tax being exempt from our purchases and exempts through admission buses and the savings of about $30,000 to $40,000 so Congress natural gas bus brand new 750,000 electric buses over a million dollars obviously can't even like that really helps so we take them and we're thankful for that legislation and we're talking about the FASTAC we're also excited we've been working very closely with Congressman Panetta and I think Chris will talk about this in a little while but he is sponsoring legislation that would create a 10% tax credit to the manufacturers for admission buses of course because of the way the IRS rules work that has to be accredited and not to us but of course we hope to very strongly assert with the manufacturers that they should pass that 10% on behalf of us hence the reason why it was being created and then if you move on to page 14-6 I'll just point out continue to represent this agency on a number of different in a number of organizations CTA after bus coalitions CTA CalAC TDA reform and of course the zebra or zero emission bus resource alliance so we have our fingers into a lot of things and some of those organizations I played a greater leadership role so I'm able to help try to move our agenda as much as possible and then if you jump over to our attachment B you'll see the state legislative agenda which lays out pretty similarly prior years what we are working on many of those things carry over goals from prior years new this year is the resiliency as you know from our PG&E outages where in the last one we were out for a little over two days two and a half days this is a big issue we're being told by the state 100% electric by 2040 and we have to deal with PG&E outages of multi-day outages how do we deal with that if we were 100% electric fleet a couple of months ago when we had a two and a half day outage we would have been dead in the water at least on the compressed natural gas side we were able to still compress gas and fill our buses so that the facility has a backup generator but we don't have the room to provide enough backup generators to backup PG&E to charge 100% of electricity this is a big issue being talked about at all levels we need to continue to stay vigilant and monitor that and then of course on the federal level as Chris will know that talk about FASTAC and our board committee will again in a month or so the federal government should consider when they look at reauthorization including using FASTAC levels for baselines or not using FASTAC levels as a baseline but using the plus up levels plus up over baseline as our new baseline for becoming reauthorization more money is the key we need to see if we can bring on a little bit more money so Mr. Chair and directors that concludes the report and I will anxiously await our report from our Mr. Chairman I want to make that general comment everybody who works in this district knows that we are hugely dependent on the state and federal governments for support we also depend also on our residents of our community who support us with Measure D and other kinds of sales tax issues but the reality is the riders of our bus system are paying about more than 18% of the cost of the bus ride and the remainder of that has to come from somewhere else and so we would be in really big trouble if we didn't have good representation at the state and federal level and thankfully we were very well represented by organizations that actually lobby for us this is the positive sense of lobbying letting people in D.C. and Sacramento know what our needs are and help them understand what our needs are and how we can make the system work better for the people who live in this community so I really appreciate the work that they do and we'll start at the state level so I really appreciate it it's obvious there and does a fantastic job for us sorry, we should also approve Alexis we begin with our motion I'm going to say hi all those of you who say hi hi, all those of those thank you Mr. Chair and Board Members, I'm Josh Shaw with Shaw Area Intuition Helter & Land your state advocacy team in Sacramento want to congratulate our member Rocking on ascending to the chair this morning, getting the recognition you've been long overdue I know you're fighting your way through the reins of leadership here I think I actually just called me an ant-bold your CEO is Clifford just talked about some of the highlights in your legislative program that you just adopted on the state level he named a couple of things he named the programs to Metro and back in our firm we've got a lot of people who are working for you and other transit agencies I'm pleased to bring this morning Michael Pimentel my colleague at the firm who has been over the last several years jumping right into our public transit practice growing more responsible in terms of taking on the duties and some of the advocacy pieces of any different transit system that we represent in your world the unfunded mandates that Alex talked about we're going to get into a little bit in Sacramento and particularly on the transit electrification movement Michael is literally the tip of our firms, the speeder for that effort he's been with us many years next week celebrates his fifth anniversary at our firm so pleased to bring Michael this morning he and I are going to kind of tag team a presentation for you where we're going to talk about key legislation and really in three different categories several bills that have to do with that fare-free transit and we're calling it fare-free there would be no fares under this and transit is free of course and we'll get into the nuances there I'll touch a little bit on the latest funding seen in Sacramento, no bad news so that's like some years in the past and then Michael will back clean up on the electrification piece and get into some of those details I do want to know before Michael gets into some of the bills one of them that's in your program that you just adopted is supporting the expansion of the right for transit agencies to work with the state to find ways on your highways to run buses bus on shoulder of course seven years ago we were on the tip of the iceberg for you passing the original bill with Assemblymember Mark Stone that authorized this district in partnership Monterey to do that and you are making progress on that the statewide groups trying to replicate that in legislation so that's just a highlight and what we're going to talk about I'll jump into legislation here we are about two months into the start of the second year of the oops I don't have that missing slide there Jean this must be the old presentation that's alright no problem we're 60 days into the second year of a two year legislative session the 2019-2020 session a lot of work was done last year Alex mentioned some of the things we were able to accomplish for you including working with Julie and Alex and your own sponsored legislation about 2,600 bills were introduced last year last Friday a week ago tonight was the deadline for legislators who want to introduce new rounded bills in this upcoming 2020 session about 2,200 bills came through the floodgates most of them Friday night so this last week Michael and I in our firm have been parsing through stacks of bills we think we have a pretty good handle I can't swear there's something that we haven't seen yet I don't think there is mostly there's not a variety of bills that have direct impact on public transit the themes in Sacramento this year are the continued focus on housing and affordability particularly on the low income side of housing but also the missing middle the challenges faced by the unhoused and the challenges of service providing agencies like yours and your cities and your counties that you all represent in terms of the growing numbers of unhoused in California the environment of course continuing California's leadership on addressing climate change there is an interesting intersection recently in the last couple years between California's social justice social equity policy push as it plays out in the Sacramento capital and the more mundane usually mundane transportation and transit policy and that's my segue to the fair free bills that Michael will talk about specifically there's been a movement in the last several years to decriminalize a variety of activities that state local governments otherwise have statues on the books and the folks in the social equity world are particularly looking at other sectors to kind of turn to and in transit world they're looking at fairs not only from an equity perspective lowering the cost but also if your agency is going after folks who didn't pay their fair or evaded their fair there's an enforcement outcome sometimes implied so there is a movement to get rid of that and make the option more affordable for more people so that's the segue to five different bills that Michael will talk about three of which are these fair free transit bills Thank you Josh and I'm Michael single voices now we've got chorus we've got three bills that have been introduced this year that are looking to make transit free for a variety of populations the primary one has been AB 1350 by assembly members Lorraine Gonzalez out of San Diego to require that transit be free for persons under the age of 18 we've seen additional bills that would make transit free for folks that are over 65 as well as for students at the UC the CSU the California Community College systems now at this point in time we've heard from a number of transit agencies including from Santa Cruz Metro about what this can do to your operational budgets we understand that for Santa Cruz Metro the potential shortfall with fairs were to be waived for any segment of the population to be close to $10 million and from our knowledge of experiences during the Great Recession we know that when Santa Cruz Metro was facing a $6 million shortfall that led to some severe service cuts layoffs for dozens of their employees and those are the things that we want to avoid and so we've been working with transit agencies across the state to really assess the impacts of these bills and what we're hearing of course are they're the obvious first order impacts we're going to lose fair revenues that's going to lead to the types of service impacts I noted just a second ago but then there are the second order impacts that we are very concerned about of course increased trans ridership that would come from reduced fairs free fairs however it does lead to increased operational pressures you might have to put more into this but if we were to retain the level of comfortability for the folks that are traveling on your buses we have seen that that may lead to the need to hire new operators all those things would come with added costs which the state is not currently proposing to fund and this is concerning of course because the legislator who has introduced the primary bill and is a hugely powerful legislator in Sacramento she chairs the assembly appropriations committee which director McPherson should know very well is one of the key committees in the legislature for getting those to governor of course we also have a new governor in place and while governor Brown had similar measures to what's before you today governor Newsom doesn't have quite the track record on these issues and of course he's shown greater simply for some of these measures that may have a fiscal impact on what wages and so again we're looking to assess the impact statewide with that we're trying to then better understand what our messaging will be, what our strategy will be for prevailing on the legislature that is generally receptive to these types of bills worth noting is that 1350 is currently in the senate when it moved out of the assembly it passed out with 69 yes votes, 0 no votes so that's just an indication of the level of support we're trying to figure out how best to address the concerns that we've seen and hopefully get the legislature to approach these these bills in a way that is more understanding of the impacts that would accrue to local agencies so I'm going to highlight that sure I'll explain now that these legislators have any idea of what they're doing is taking service away from the very people that their people are helping between a half and two-thirds of our writers are UCS and students that bill alone would take between a half and two-thirds of our Fairbots contributions out of our system if you add any of that to people who are under 18 and then the other 12 people who were over 65 65 we would end up kind of service to young people, senior citizens and students if any of these things pass and all of them pass which is dead I mean they have some idea that's the kind of you said we'd need more secondary that should be more drivers we'd need more of this all the fewer of all of this it's not more the system would actually not be going to the places people need to go anymore and so I don't do they have any sense that that's going it's another 10 consequence I know they do well we've had people come to us before and say all the young people should buy and say yeah we could do that and then young people couldn't get a bus where they want to go do they get that at all we understand the implications for the transit agencies that serve their districts we are starting now though to message around this issue to really highlight what those impacts are so that as we move into the second house we're in the senate we do anticipate that the adults be heard in the senate transportation committee come June we're working to make sure that folks in the senate better understand what those impacts are conversations with folks in the senate transportation committee that they the committee staff are very receptive to the argument presented they understand what the long term implications will be for transit service and the state and so we're hoping to have some success there with the assembly the bill was already in motion it's a two year bill meaning that we're revisiting it here in the second year of the legislative session but the wins were in the sales it's going to move forward and in fact there were some legislative deadlines that almost necessitated that the bill move forward into the senate without much debate or discussion the senate will be where the real action happens the conversations happen with key members of those committees to make sure that the bills are scaled back or addressed in a way that is going to be appropriate for being cognizant of all the concerns all the implications of all of our transit agencies have so let me get this clear this is an unfunded mandate that's right so what are they thinking how could they possibly expect us to operate a system where it's unfunded so what we've heard from laurenna gazales again the legislator who was introduced 1350 is that she does intend to come back with revisions to the bill that will speak to a funding component and the relevant anecdote here is that her husband supervisor haith and pleasure from san yago happens to be the chair of san yago at t.s. she has made it absolutely clear that she's heard of these concerns and understand that funding needs to follow but I think what's concerning is that the level of funding that would be required to actuate these bills is so large that no legislature no legislator would rightly be able to capture that amount of funding and so I think that's where our messaging is going to have to focus is even if they were to give us an additional $25 million that's going to be far short of what we're going to need to actually implement a bill like this and that would hopefully get legislators across the spectrum to reconsider these bills what can you help you prepare for this we've already started to collect that information from members and thank you Alex for being very responsive to our request we've got on estimates of the fiscal impact as well as for the top 40 longest agencies across the state and then we've also gathered information about operational and legal implications of these bills and so those are the things that we're trying to collate to that's Jane that can be understood by folks in the legislature so we're working on it but we're now just needing to transition into having those conversations in the senate with the key legislators let's see me jump in too Hi, Jane the acting planning director and I just wanted to follow up on that we did put together some preliminary data for our partners at the state level and what we found was that our whole, if all three bills were passed it would be about $6 million of revenue so you know multiplied across the state it is somewhat insurmountable loss of revenue that has to be addressed in some fashion we're going to go forward with any of these bills but I just wanted to put some context on what we're talking about because $6 million is not an amount of revenue that we can just absorb in terms of loss thank you just to finish out whatever you have that's going to use your friends more it would hurt for us just to get this I'm not really sure maybe it already is I don't mean to pile on first of all we are very fortunate to have the office of Jeff Shaw this is very highly respected up there if these pass you can kiss Metro Goodbye period, end of story this is the one place they have done this I used my one of my guests though careful but the unfunded band-aids I just had a we're not alone in this though CSAC, California State Publications counties we had we had a $2 billion unfunded band-aids counties and the brown covered about a million and two of that but there's still 800 million outstanding and so CSAC we're not alone in this that the legislators have of doing you know say pass this bill and how great it is but I didn't give you the money for it unfunded band-aids it's a huge problem and yes we should have a voice of what that means to us in particular we'll come back to that sure thank you Mr. Chair I just wanted to note one of the things that you all might love in this space is the impact on ADA or transit service that seem we are trying to focus on better understand because of course we know that service is the most expensive that you all provide we want to make sure that when we go over in the judicious way it's not open up the floodgains and make this a situation where for many reasons as you said if these bills were to move forward we've got to find a way to address all the implications that exist from these bills so I'm going to highlight can you please bear a little bit of the question that's being at this point yes so I'm going to highlight several other bills the first is a bust on the shoulder and so this is a bill that is being carried by California transit association with the support of a number of transit agencies across the state and I want to acknowledge that the work that Santa Cruz has done on bust on shoulder has really served to prime the pump for this bill folks are saying that there's viability to the concept they're saying that there can be agreement between CalTrans district and transit agency this type of project viable here in the state and so this bill has luckily been taken up by the chair of the senate transportation committee Jim meld and worth noting when previous versions of this bill were introduced he was actually a legislator who stopped those versions of the bill so I want to say thank you to Alex and his team for doing the good work to really lay the foundation for us to pursue this and so in terms of what specifically this bill would do it would create a new pilot program it wouldn't touch Santa Cruz metro's existing legislative authority and this new program would authorize up to four new corridors sorry up to eight new corridors in the state to operate bust on shoulder or would be designated in northern California or would be designated in southern California we are taking a corridor specific approach because we recognize that in parts of the state all the transit agencies will use the same corridor so we want to make sure that transit agencies collectively can experience the benefits of this type of approach and so the bill was just introduced as a spot film meaning that it's a placeholder bill a substance of the bill will be introduced in probably short of three weeks and then will be off to the races and hope to have great success with this bill got a number of co-authors from across the state so I think the wins are on sales for this approach so again thank you Santa Cruz metro team for all the work that you've done to advance this concept next I do want to highlight a new bill by assembly member that is looking to expand the type of pre procurement negotiations that happen between transit agencies management and labor a few years ago the state put into place new requirements that transit management consult their labor representatives to address issues like operator assaults and to address issues of blind spots on transit buses when the bill was first introduced years ago they were looking to do was to mandate that transit agencies include barriers on all their vehicles and we happened to work with them with a collection of transit agencies from the state to walk that back to make it a consultation with their labor representatives to see what if anything can be done in this area to address those concerns they're looking to expand that statute to also include the question of automation and as transit agencies are looking at new technologies that may lead to automation to potential job losses of state legislatures interested in requiring that same type of consultation want to be very turbulent there's no form of requirement that's built into the bill but rather it's just a conversation that would have to happen between management and labor to understand what implications of any new technology would be on the labor workforce. So Mr. Chair the next slide you've got is about funding and there's a lot of details there because several of the funding programs can pinch on or have to do with transit agencies accessing funds to deal with the electrification trend which Michael will back clean up on I'm going to frankly skip those in the name of time and I'll just note in the governor's proposed budget for the upcoming year 2020-2021 the revenue figures behind his proposed budget for transit suggest that the state transit assistance program the very usually very predictable formula-based program that goes out to all transit agencies that you did your share continues to be increasing slightly in the upcoming year but we would again note the Senate bill one from 2017 more than double this program you can see on the chart there about 805 million dollars statewide and your share would go up slightly because of the increase. Others funding sources that we want to talk about really do get to helping you reduce the cost of buying electric buses or putting in the charging infrastructure as you're in the middle of doing right now and I will let Michael and then we will be happy to answer any questions start off the conversation about budgetary and regulatory actions just acknowledging that the California Resources Board in December 2018 adopted a new rule to require transit agencies to transition to battery electric or hydrogen and physical technologies by 24 and we understand from all of our conversations with the Santa Cruz Metro team as well as transit agencies across the state that one of the the cheap barriers to making that transition reality is costs and it comes down to capital costs and operations costs and so forth but we wanted to highlight a few of the things that we're doing on behalf of your agency to address some of those costs in particular so Josh noted that the Governor's budget does have some money for zero ocean buses he's offered $150 million in one type funding to offset the incremental costs of these buses we want to see that funding level increase we've worked with partners at the state level to better understand what the demand is for funding it's about $250 million in here and so the specific asset that we're advancing is $250 million but ongoing and ongoing because we understand that procurement takes multiple years and you can't go about making procurement decisions not knowing if funding is going to be there and so we're looking at something that would be an ongoing appropriation for multiple years we're looking at three to five as a way of providing some certainty to transit agencies the funding will be there when needed and we also know that operating costs given the rate structures that exist today are unfavorable to transit agencies that are transitioning to battery electric technology in particular and so we've worked with the CPUC the California Public Utilities Commission to get on their radar the need for transit specific rain design and that's an idea that they are very receptive to they've opened up a new proceeding but they want to look at exactly that and so through through Santa Cruz Metro through the broader transit agency network we are looking to advance a very specific rate design that will lower the cost of operating battery electric buses and hopefully make a proposition that I think many of you have been presented with these buses are cheaper to operate actually come true and so I do want to highlight a few other things that we are working on in the regulatory space and we heard earlier today about PG&E and the fact that now they've got their public safety powered shutoffs and what that does to folks that need to operate battery electric buses and so we've been working with the California Public Utilities Commission again to really emphasize the importance of resiliency and the need to consider how best to include transit agencies in the list of priority customers that they that they regulate so to give you a clear example hospitals often have priority as customers because of the critical function that they play we want to see transit agencies brought to that same level because we know that often times when shutoffs happen on the side of things like wildfires blood slides into that nature and we need to make sure that transit agencies that have a core function of emergency response are able to carry out that function and so again there's receptivity to this idea but it's going to be something that plays out over the next year before we know exactly what we want and this is the goal and then finally I've mentioned operating costs while we're working on the utility rate and the state does have a program called the low carbon fuel state which provides credits to transit agencies to offset some of the costs for their electricity that has been difficult for a lot of transit agencies to take advantage of because there's administrative overhead that's associated with it that often comes at a higher cost than the amount of money you claim in credits and so we're posing to the state that they should create a state run clearing house whereby they track the credits and they sub-allocate to the transit agencies and they take on the administrative costs and so that is an idea that is still in its infancy but we've had a number of really good conversations with folks in the governor's administration they recognize the benefit of it and for them I think it's just a matter of this has not been a concern that has been real because a lot of transit agencies weren't migrating to battery electric technologies now that we are there's interest Thanks Mike so Mr. Chair, just to wrap up clearly you had board members who expressed concerns about the fare-free bills and others who may want to talk about it we'll talk with you all day we wanted to daylight those bills for you today of course we'll take your CEOs lead, jewelies lead, boards lead we were hoping to get feedback and continue to work with your agency Jamie has given us the stats that she mentioned to you and we'll continue to work with Alex to figure out frankly what is the exact best way to message this so it wasn't on the agenda today for action but presumably shortly after we continue and then finalize our analysis with your staff Alex will be coming back and talking about the position of course you can act whenever you want as I understand it but our hope was to have a little bit more time to parse through these issues both technically in terms of operational impact on you but frankly the deep politics that Michael referenced that are in Sacramento and try to thread our way through that kind of ditto in the call rate bill relative to the labor consultation we want to continue to work on that but some shoulder bill is embedded in your state legislative program adopted just before we came up so probably automatically Metro may have the position on that but we'll follow up with Alex on that at this point happy to answer some questions you have thank you the red light on is when it's on sorry so the questions are where is a League of Cities conversation about the classes start and then just drop in and ask for the elected officials when it comes down to community council levels what is time I would like to just second that because our cities so much of our future planning to be so so and so I guess the question is to what extent are you currently engaged with the League of Cities and we will engagement on this be helpful so relative to the two associations representing the municipalities the bills, the fair free bills are on their radar screen when we get back to our office next week in Sacramento we're actually convening a caucus of all the transportation lobbyists including the lobbyists from CISAC and the lobbyists from the league and we will put even more square it's on their radar screen but we'll move it hopefully to the middle of their radar and ask for some help through their organizations from cities and counties of course many cities operate as municipal function transit systems so we're all in this together we'll be on the front line with the education potential impact after we get more data from transit agencies around the state so we're that's it too I can't say that they have positions yet they don't but we're going to bring that to them first and then to work with us on responding in the legislature the second part of the question I apologize it's appropriate to engage that's right so very soon each of the three bills on the fair free that Michael mentioned are on slightly different tracks the one for the young folks is as he said on a fast track but it probably won't be heard for another month or so so that's that period of finalizing our analysis making sure our messaging is as strong as possible and picking out the right position is it straight opposed, is it opposing less amended and there would be specific you know asks that we might make under that opposing less amended so we want to make sure to give you the best advice we need a couple more minutes to do that as we finish the processing but it's not hey you know don't do anything for six months we will be back and working with Alex if not back here through your staff with an affirmative suggestion probably within a month well we have our lobbyists obviously counties and cities and we've been talking with them but if it's helpful Alex could give you our direct contact for the jurisdictional here that could be very helpful but we'll pull that lever if we find that it's going too slow at this other situation and it's also helpful it is a lot of times that they respond and ask so last minute that we don't want to have it we don't want to just assume that it's going to tell us that this is what we do because we feel that by the time that they probably ask council for information it's almost to the very edge of it but can I be able to be more proactive than them even though there's a lot of other influence that they have with other council members that are here so when they hear from the lead they want to respond but this is something that sounds to be more urgent than waiting for the lead to tell the council to respond understood, thank you I think it'll also be helpful to think about not just bringing us with our hair on fire didn't cause the people that the constituents themselves to bring as many as the kids and parents or school students from UCSC you might go and talk to these folks and explain what they think you're helping us do to my service and that might be much more effective even though the people from the agencies that they're able to come in that's a good strategy and Mr. Chair we've seen at least one of the authors of one of the bills when it was presented in committee had advocates in certain districts on their side advocating for the bill so a counterbalance would be very important UCSC students can get this very quickly they're pre-handled there are riders and we would be cutting back on that even last time we didn't want to do that 12% cuts and try to hold it you can't do that we have a 12% cut we let it go to 25% we ended up doing that 12.5% and we cut in our service where we had a $6 million full rent but that's because we got that $6 million down to a much lower number we had to cut the whole thing by cutting routes and that's what we're talking about a quarter of our service and that's going to hit very quickly Mr. Chair I'd just like to expand on what you just said turned back the clock five years ago when we were faced with $6.2 million special deficit we said at the outset that if we can't figure this out we'll have to cut a third of our service and lay off a third of our bus drivers that was going to be at least 44 bus drivers laid off we resolved that issue through a combination of efforts we found some efficiencies the union postponed pay raises but the huge remaining gap was reached by two things two major new funding sources and SB1 and we were able to get through that crisis balance our budget no more structural deficit and a balanced budget if these three bills pass in their current state not only will we have to cut at least a third absent replacement revenues we have to cut a third to a half this is not a skies falling this is not an exaggeration this is at least a third to a half of our service lay off at least that many as we threatened before the third bus drivers not to mention the consequences of the upside of all of this the upside of all of this is more riders that's probably in part their goal but more riders less service requires to impact your buses they're overloaded because you just lost all the revenue especially this type of service it is a huge downward spiral that would not be able to be covered these three bills have to be stopped these are people that must not have ever sat on a transit board like you to try to put together a budget and understand how you deliver service with up to 20% or so and you can compare a lot from the rest of it all from budgets of the other questions or comments I just the item after yours we're going to adopt a amendment for a pre-care program for the legally blind and we do that because we can afford it we've worked at it for some time I don't know how many other transit districts do this but I think it would be nice to mention this and if there are others that are doing this we do what we can or have that would be a good selling point as well by the way this board member part of our development of messaging that will advantage you and our advocacy for Metro is collecting stories like that and saying to key legislators who will be voting on these bills transit agencies are already doing what they can to help certain of your writing demographics where you've got the finances where the policy may sense locally and not to commit the governor's administration for early on some of his staff state-wide if there was some kind of problem locally you could be tailored to address some local problem but they already understand the data on how many steep discounted fairs there are for school kids how many agencies are actually providing some free fairs for certain of their writers so we will keep telling those positive stories to try to push back against this view of there's a need to do this with a broad broad-strel yeah just a quick question about the senate transportation committee to your knowledge do any of the senators or your staff are they subject matter experts like a lot of the folks here and Metro are about being on the ground boots on the ground operations of these does that exist in that committee or it does in a number of ways there are a lot of through the assembly the senate transportation committee to stop and where we want to hone the exact way to deal with these impending challenges and then one other question I know you touched on it what's the worst case scenario of timeline in your mind about any of these things so just technically the answer is August 31st is the last day for legislators to move bills through the process and to the governor they adjourn for the year the class the current 2020 class is done as of August 31st the governor would have until the end of September to act on any of these bills and as currently crafted anyway there's no time delay they would go into effect January 1, 2021 there's a number of folks talking about possible amendments not the least of which is if somehow some version of any of these bills went through putting off the due date the practical effect you can write a bill right now that says this won't take effect until five years from now not that it makes the cost impact any better but anticipation those are the kinds of detailed conversations that will take place behind the scenes with the senate transportation committee thank you folks we appreciate you down here good morning Jamie Ackman acting director of planning marketing communication I don't know I'm so sorry I was jumping the gun no please do the federal stuff I got a power point if you just you can just go through it Jamie if you want we can do it that way thanks very much for having me today good news no free fair bills in DC right now as of today so good night everyone just wanted to chat about a few things going on in Washington DC that I thought you might be interested in and here's kind of a short list of what's going on budget is always sort of an ongoing thing and then of course fast act reauthorization an issue with the 2020 census we have and then wanted to talk about sort of the things that Metro is doing that are special in Washington DC just like Josh and Michael talking about how you guys kind of punch above your weight in Sacramento do the same thing in Washington DC so the FY 2020 DOT budget was approved at the end of last year with the entire federal budget and as Congress has done for the last couple of years they rejected some pretty deep recommended cuts to lots of programs at DOT and and so we've got for this current year small increases in the formula program about two percent and then the what they call the plus ups over the fast act authorized levels back in 2017 the fast act authorized levels for a lot of the bus facilities programs these those sorts of things and so those were kind of set in stone because their highway trust fund funded Congress actually chose to add more money to this general fund money outside of the highway trust fund to those programs so so that's the very goofy congressional staff parlance of a plus up over those levels we're in year two of the stick program getting two percent of the section 5307 federal formula program that was when we started this program way back when in 2006 it was one percent been sort of growing it ever since and then again this is a kind of another goofy deal that Congress is a part of the 2020 budget had to waive what they call the Ross and Kowski test and this is kind of a warning here folks because what the Ross and Kowski test is it's named after a chair a former chair of the House Ways and Means Committee from the 80s who basically put it into law that if the highway trust fund was not collecting enough to keep the authorized funding levels going that there's an automatic across the board cut and right now the revenues into the highway trust fund are not matching what we're trying to spend on those programs and so if Congress had not waived that Ross and Kowski test we'd have had a 12 percent across the board cut to all those programs so and so that's kind of you know again sort of a warning as we go forward this that the highway trust fund solvency continues to be a problem for us FY 2021 budget you know just as soon as the 2020 budget ends you start the 2021 season and the first shot across the bow shortly after the State of the Union the President will send his proposed budget up to Congress the President did this year and again for I guess the fourth year in a row it was pretty austere had lots of reductions as you can see overall a 19 percent reduction to the DOT budget on the good end he did not propose any cuts to those fast act authorized levels that Congress baked into the budget in 2015 so that was a good thing but he instead sort of chose the President sort of chose those all fund programs those funds those programs at DOT that are funded outside the highway trust fund so capital investment grants program which is bus rapid transit light rail streetcar projects that was essentially he would like to phase that program out and end it same thing with long distance Amtrak and passenger rail programs we think you know Congress has rejected on a bipartisan process that the White House has made or proposed and we expect that Congress will do that again this year probably go through that process this summer fast act reauthorization the fast act I can't even remember what the goofy acronym for fast act is but FAST stands for something Josh probably and back in 2015 you know Congress they've got to like do a little acronym for everything you know it's tiring whereas at the state like everybody knows the legislation by their number you know like I hear Josh take off and Michael they take off the SP5 and they know I have no idea what these bill numbers are that's a different story fast act was authorized in 2015 and you know essentially authorized you know kind of small increases to highway and transit programs over that five year period from 15 to 20 and as we talked about before revenues into that trust fund are lagging and so what they had to do was they had they stole some money from the Federal Reserve last time around something like $70 billion from some account that somebody in Congress found at the Federal Reserve they had a and that's not there anymore you know that's so Congress is going to have to come up with something we're estimating that they're going to need at least $100 billion in additional revenues just to fund the programs at their current levels again because of those revenues into the trust fund so not sure where we're going to find that but that's sort of the big the big kahuna in all of these discussions technically the fast act expires in September of this year I wouldn't expect it to be fully authorized this year it's an election year again needing those extra revenues you're going to have to talk about gas tax increases and things like that I don't think people are going to want to touch that in an election year so we'll probably see some sort of extension at least into 2021 along with the discussions of the fast act House Democrats and the White House I'll talk about that in a little bit recently decided to make their own sort of pitches on infrastructure if you remember last year there was for a split second we thought there was going to be a bipartisan agreement on infrastructure the President, the Speaker of the House we're going to talk about $2 billion and then the next day nothing you know it's gone the White House and the Speaker the White House basically said well we can talk about this $2 trillion package but you have to stop investigating me and so that's where that's where things kind of ended so now the House Democrats are still kind of they're trying to push along I don't have a lot of I don't have a lot of faith that this is going to be enacted this year because we're not working bipartisan here but the House Democrats have introduced some guidelines for what they think is kind of a five-year infrastructure package and there's a transportation component of it, there's an energy component of it there's a telecom component of it broadband water infrastructure part of it but the transportation part of it talks about putting an additional $50 billion over that fast act baseline for programs over the next five years $40 billion for rail over the next five years lots of talk about clean energy and incentives and programs for green stuff the other interesting one is the House Democrats and they haven't put any legislative language behind it but they're talking about local control over investments which is really interesting in that you know DOT likes to give money to states you know there's only 50 of them and they can just sort of you know distribute it that way it looks like at least the House Democrats would like to do something different with regard to that and then improving kind of financing mechanisms and we've talked about some of these programs in the past loan programs like TIFIA back in the 2009 Recovery Act from the Obama administration they created these build America bonds which were taxable bonds that local governments could issue and then get or rebate from thinking about sort of bringing those back under an infrastructure package yeah and then there was another problem too in that the rebates to the local governments were subject to the federal sequester when we were under this sort of budget control act and so every year you know the rebate you got a little haircut on that so yeah it wasn't exactly the success that they were hoping so hoping that you can improve it the White House budget in addition to those sort of cuts did have kind of a broad outline of what they wanted to do with an infrastructure bill the transportation portion of it was pretty highway heavy and it matches a senate highway bill that was introduced last year as far as funding levels for it and then you can see in addition to sort of the current programs that were funding this infrastructure plan that the White House floated talking about 60 billion for what they would call mega projects which I think multi-state, multi-region, gigantic big numbers a freight program, a bridge program rural America has been a real focus for DOT over the last few years the secretary of transportation's husband happens to be a senator from Kentucky and she believes that rural America has been left behind with regard to transportation funding and so that's another focus there and then the only real transit aspect of the White House proposal that was in any real that provided anything close to specifics was this state of good repair sprint program which they were kind of talking about flooding the you know and I think this 20 billion was like a one-year thing kind of flooding the zone with lots of money for transit agencies to up their state of good repair but again not a lot of detail on that. So as I said before with FAST Act and infrastructure the bipartisan discussions with Democrats in Congress and the White House have broken down we would expect the House and Senate to try to move some proposals this year I don't again I don't think that they're going to happen because we talk about this election year kind of making the calendar really tight somebody was telling me the other day Capitol Hill and if you know if you don't have something ready to move by July 4 you know forget about it until after the election sort of thing so that's coming up pretty soon. So but you know with with regard to all of this the you know the biggest barrier to you know finishing this thing you know up is this it's money we need to figure out a way to fund these programs and whether it be a gas tax increase or looking at this vehicle miles traveled where you put the black box on the car and you pay by that having electric vehicles some sort of a fee on electric vehicles those are the sorts of things that Congress is looking at they're not very far ahead on it you know there's not a lot I don't think there's a lot of data that's available to and and as a result we've got you know the gas tax and an election year makes it hard to raise the gas tax. Some Senate Republicans I'm sorry yeah 30 but it's been about 30 years so there's some talk even some Republicans in the Senate were talking about well we might be able to buy into indexing it for inflation I mean that you know a lot of our problems could have been solved if back when they raised the gas tax last they indexed it but they didn't they didn't go that far but so that's that's going to be the big discussion you know how to how to fund this stuff so this year you guys know that the Census Bureau is doing their their decennial count and there is some concern that we have with regard to what happens after the census is done every 10 years the Census Bureau tries to reclassify what they call their urbanized areas and it's basically a map making exercise you know where the Census Bureau say here's an urban area this is rural and they create these urbanized areas the only federal programs that we can find that actually use that urbanized area classification to distribute funding is FTA formula funds and so as you guys probably know Santa Cruz metro serves a couple of UZAs urbanized areas all of them are under population of 200,000 the Santa Cruz the Watsonville and in 2010 the Census Bureau tried to combine some of you may remember this the Watsonville Santa Cruz and Salinas urbanized areas into one larger urbanized area what that would have done is would have exceeded the population of metro service area above 200,000 that do two things it prevents us from being able to use federal funding on operations and we don't qualify for the stick program that we created and benefit so much from about $200,000 now on the other hand going over 200,000 the formula program for transit agencies over 200,000 does take into consideration ridership numbers which the formula under 200,000 does not which is the reason we created the stick so there might be a little bump up in formula funding with regard to that but I think we would rather you know at least talking to the CEO and other Congressmen far and others in Congress sort of yelled very loudly at the Census Bureau don't redo these urbanized areas they stood down but I imagine that there's going to be talk about trying to do it again and hopefully Congress will be able to fight this but that's something we're watching very closely and I know it's kind of a weird little situation but we would not want to fall below yes ma'am it is and we're not alone I think you know we have friends and I think that you know I've heard from I've been sort of trying to put what I don't want to do is I don't want to go over to the Census Bureau and say hey you're going to redo UZAs and then have them say oh we didn't think about that maybe we'll do that but in talking to sort of folks on Capitol Hill they seem to feel that that the Census Bureau and you know this is 10 years ago so maybe not everybody is there but they seem to think they were surprised at the blowback that they got over the reclassification and so they're thinking again given that there's really not a huge impact on reclassifying it's simply again like I talked about it was a map making exercise that they're going to hold off and that some members of Congress have sort of gone to the Census and said hey you know we prefer you not do this so that's you know Congressman Panetta's aware of all of this Congresswoman Eshoo is aware of all of this and they're keeping an eye on this as well sure sure okay so that's Census and then the last thing I just you know again wanted to talk about how Metro is making an impact on in Washington DC so a little over a year ago I believe the CEO was in town for an APTA legislative committee meeting we went up and we met with Congressman Panetta's new staff that handles tax issues the Congressman was appointed to the really powerful House Ways and Means Committee which has jurisdiction over tax issues and talked about most of what we talked about was the alternative fuels tax credit which as you know we get about $600,000 a year from now Debbie and Congress has trouble extending that tax credit every year so we're talking about that but we're also talking about electric buses and Alex was talking about the plan well we would love to have our fleet be all electric as soon as possible but financial constraints we're kind of layering Alex talks about layering the bus purchases between CNG and electric because of the delta between the cost of an electric bus and a CNG bus and so later on in the year we get a call from some office saying the House Ways and Means Committee is putting together a green energy package love to try to do something that could help with that and so what he has come up with in conversations with us you know we of course asked for the moon or a fundable tax credit that we could get for the purchase of an electric bus staff and other members of the Ways and Means Committee kind of a lot of push and pull and what we came down with was his proposal to provide manufacturers a 10% tax credit for the production of electric buses and again sort of the strong like Alex was mentioning earlier the strong implication is that that 10% is passed on to the purchases so again like I said that's and that's something that that a lot of folks got included in this big green energy package and folks are supportive of it we're also looking to increase the stick program from that 2% of the 5307 formula program to 3% it sounds like a small increase but it's but you know the dollars add up it's that program is well funded so 3% of that I think right now we're at somewhere around 80 million dollars for that pot of stick money so it would increase and we do very well with that and so congressman Panetta again as a leader and introducing legislation to increase that we hope that that will be part of the fast act reauthorization bill that's ultimately approved they we don't seem to be getting any pushback on that so that's increased funding for us there and then after you know which of course is sort of the you know kind of the major in Washington DC advocate for transit agencies and they've got a long and winding process to come up with their principles for reauthorization and we've been trying to be as involved in that as possible so that they don't forget sort of these you know these small agencies that again punch above their weight and recognizing and I think we've done a good job their principles for instance the stick program was sort of a bugaboo with APTA for a long time because they thought oh well it's taking away money from larger agencies and we've got it into their the increase for stick into their legislative proposal now so it's among some of our good victories so I think that was all I had I'm happy to answer any questions that you guys had hopefully some of this made sense I think we're looking at 2021 for the major stuff for a budget and FY 21 budget they have to do that and so they will eventually do that but I think sort of the big policy changes and funding discussions will probably have to wait until until 2021 you know yeah yeah yeah you can never tell but I will say that we continue to while nothing's going to happen probably in 2020 it's important to continue to work with these you know the committee they're drafting legislation now we want to be in on the ground floor to make sure that nothing's going to hurt us and hopefully will help us so it'll be it'll be a busy year it'll just be frustrating because Congress will kind of shut down sometime this summer right right right yep yep right looking forward to seeing you alright thanks very much so as you know in January we brought a brief update on the free fair program in its first few months of existence and all indications were that things continue to run smoothly the committee had asked that we continue to solicit feedback from customers who would be interested in this policy or who are currently using the access pass and we have continued to do that we have not received any complaints about this pass we have received some questions from customers who maybe didn't quite understand the target group for it we've received questions from bus operators who see ways that it can operate more efficiently and we really appreciate that feedback but overall I would say it continues to be a pretty smooth success and we continue to see incrementally small numbers of new applications rolling in I would say on the average of two to three a month for customers who are eligible for the program however we are bringing to you just a few updates to the program there were some edits that needed to be done just to clean up the policy language make sure it accurately reflected exactly how we were going about allocating these cards and some of these edits were also recommended by plaintiff council who had an opportunity to review this and provide feedback so with that I opened any questions you might have about the policy I don't know if our legal counsel wanted to add anything regarding the discussions with the plaintiffs counsel on this subject that's accurate if a person presents as obviously visually impaired in some way the bus operator has the latitude to make the decision to just allow them on regardless of whether they have this pass this pass is really more for the protection of the customer who may not present is visually impaired but is visually impaired and wants to make sure that they can get their free access card in order to ride with all the benefits that that entails yes that's right that's right we're trying to make this we want this to be friendly not just for the community but for our bus operators because obviously they don't want to reject anyone who has the right to ride so they want to make sure they're being very careful about the way that they accept these passes we haven't had a huge number of activities around the Pacific Station project in the last month or so right around the holidays we submitted our draft comments on an MOU with the city they have spent we had a meeting with them to review those comments earlier this month and just yesterday the city sent back their edits to our comments so we haven't had a chance to look at those edits and review them with our general counsel and I expect that we'll have a more fulsome update on this process next month at the committee meetings and board meetings we'll have a discussion about about advancing the MOU has been frustratingly slow and different versions may not import and we expect to work that out but I do want to strongly urge that making significant progress on the MOU, scheduling meetings and resolving issues it's really critical I mean at some point we're coming to a push the button on the stage on this and my opinion is that there's so much potential for the Pacific Station but we really need to get the MOU in place and start talking about the specifics so I'm just going to say that openly it's not a sign of a legitimate committee to have a committee but it's just always while we're still talking but just live in there I really think we need to get very simple to have a committee and if you see the report hopefully we have city people here to speak in real time to the committee members and not just keep hunting while we're back to the committee yeah any other comments from you I believe the public want to comment I believe they actually think on this they have an update on the project next we're on to the view of our ideas in the closed session one personal matter one personal matter does anybody want to comment on this then we are adjourned or actually recessed to our closed session