 We're going to go ahead and get started with the Santa Cruz metropolitan transit district metro board of directors meeting for November 15th. Can we begin with a roll call, please? Dr. Bautorf. Here. Dr. Kaufman-Gomez. Present. Dr. Gonzalez. Present. Dr. Leopold. Dr. Lind. Here. Dr. Matthews. Here. Dr. Myers. Here. Dr. McPherson. Here. Dr. Pagler. Here. Dr. Rothwell. Here. Dr. Rotkin. Here. Expecial Director Northcutt. Expecial Director Preston. Leoporm. Thank you. Today we have Mindy Esqueda with us to introduce our Spanish interpreters. Mindy, could you say a few words for us, please? Para interpretación en español, obtengo un aparato de la mesa junto a la caseta de interpretación. Prendalo y para interpretación en español, pongo lo en el canal cero. Gracias. Thank you. And today's meeting is being broadcast by community television. And our Technician Day, Gina, is who? Lynn Dutton. Lynn Dutton, okay. Thanks, Lynn, for being here. Right now is the time for a board of director comments. Any comments from members of the board? Seeing none, we'll move on to oral communication. This is time for the public to address us on any item that is not on the agenda. If you'd like to come up and say something, now is the time. Welcome. Hi. My name is Monica McGuire. I live in Corralita Snap in Santa Cruz, 22 years. And I would like to just ask that you take a very strong look, not just at 5G, but at our local experts who can assist you in understanding what's important about it. I'm very bothered that the trend has continued, that all the buses have Wi-Fi and electromagnetic frequencies. I'm a health coach. My husband is an MD with an electrical engineering degree and a bioengineering master's. And we both have studied extensively the truth that these are very, very negative for all humans, especially anyone with a compromised immune system. So anyone who's in any way ill, especially with a grave illness, all children, all pregnant women, all elders, we all have tremendous troubles. And we have, of course, a very high concentration of sensitive people here in Santa Cruz County. So it's very important that you take a look and see we've been purposely confused on thinking that maybe there's a question of whether or not EMFs are bad for us. They are 100% clearly targeted as something that we should have a precautionary principle to be very careful about what we expose ourselves to. And we are seeing everyone with extreme neurological problems. It's the number one killer of women over 50 now, neurological problems. We have more and more reason to ask you please take a look and decide that we don't need to keep going forward with the extreme amount of EMFs in our lives. And certainly when we're traveling is an important time. So again, I'm Monica McGuire. My husband is Dr. Carl Merritt. I'm happy to give our phone numbers. The clinic that we work at is 831-662-8421, Tree of Health. And we are doing our very best to assist every government organization here in Santa Cruz County with what we are doing our best to join in worldwide, nationwide to assure people this is a serious problem we really need to address. So please feel free to be in touch with us. We would really be happy to help you adjust everything as needed. Thank you so much. Marilyn Garrett, first do no harm. Buses should be safe places for riders to enter and be transported in. I've been here many times about the documented dangers of wireless microwave radiation and not only the cell phones but the new system that it's put in on automatic vehicle location. I talked to Isaac Hawley about how that works and my detection meter of radiation shows an increase. It's a painful experience to ride the buses. Maybe this is a way to undermine the public transportation system of the metro by seemingly to benefit the public but you're harming the public. I mean, it's actually very well substantiated. The automatic vehicle location and who really needs that? It's important to get microwaves so you know exactly where the bus is on the route. It might be a popular thing. I was told by Isaac Hawley that the devices in the bus transmit with the 4G antennas like a long Freedom Boulevard so that people can see on their mobile devices where the bus is. That it costs about one and a half million dollars. That's a waste of taxpayer money and it's harmful. This is not new information for you. It's really puzzling and disturbing to me. When people know something is harmful and they proceed and make it worse, that really borders on the criminal to me. I just, it's unconscionable. And this information goes back. I took a book off the shelf. The Zapping of America by Paul Brodeur, 1977. And just here in the beginning, microwave radiation can blind you, affect your behavior, cause genetic damage, even kill you. The risks have been hidden from you by the Pentagon, the State Department, and the electronics industry. With this book, the microwave cover-up is ended. When I read the headways in Alex Clifford's article in the beginning, this reads like a Verizon advertisement. You are promoting devices that are known to cause cancer and other adverse health effects. This needs to be removed from the buses, health and safety is first, also for the drivers who have this exposed to them constantly. Thank you. Anyone else like to address the board today? Oh, Becky, you coming up? Okay. When it was coming years last month, I talked to a neighbor by any who said that he would like the three bus to be every hour instead of every two hours. And also on the issue of cell phones and stuff, I just want to say that yesterday in our commission on disabilities meeting, we had a presentation from the emergency operations team in Santa Cruz County, and they said that the best way to get information is through a cell phone. And so I almost think that you should expand and even put lipo on the buses instead of contracting. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Becky. Anyone else like to address the commission? Okay. We're going to go ahead and close our public communication. Any written communications from the MAC? No. Any labor organizations? Any labor organizations want to address this today? I see shaking heads. Everybody's happy? Thank you for being here. Happy enough. Happy enough. We're in Watsonville. Don't push it. You have to be happy in Watsonville. Okay. Okay. Additional documentation? Yes, we have two items. Okay. Mr. Chair, you have several items there. One related to CEO report. You have a couple of board reports that we delivered to you late. We apologize for that. But we could not get them done in a timely fashion for you, but you have them there before you today. They're both on consent calendar. Okay. Thank you for that. Okay. That brings us to our consent agenda. These are items we normally deal with all in one motion. Is there any board directors like to pull anything? Director Mathews. I have a few questions. If it's appropriate, I can ask them. I think they can be answered quickly without being pulled. I will use your judgment to say they can be answered quickly. So go ahead. Okay. 9-08, which is the contract for a bus yard sweeper. It wasn't clear from the staff report. Is that a replacement? Is it a new need? Is it a kind of an opportunity that arose? My concern is whittling away at capital funds. It just wasn't justified. So that's all I wanted was. Let's get some in depth answers to that. I think it can be done quickly. Sure. Equipment used. Into the microphone, please. Okay. It is a new equipment that will be used to scrub the JKs building, transit centers, all the lanes. So basically it's also to come in compliance with stormwater prevention so we don't get no high readings and all that. So it's basically new equipment. Okay. I think in the future that just the justification would be appropriate. It's in the current capital budget. It's no add. Okay. Thanks. Let's see. I had a question on the 9-12, which is appointments to the MAC. And on the application of Joseph Martinez, the question is are you aware of any conflicts of interest that would prevent you from serving on MAC if appointed? And he says yes. So I just wondered what that's about. Okay. Please do. We were talking to Joey and said, Joey, this, Joey has been on the MAC. I understand that. I read some time. Yeah. And so we said, your application, when we compared the two, you have yes here and you have no there, what's changed? And he goes, oh, no, no, I have no conflicts. Okay. So it was purely a typo on his part. Alrighty. And then I saw the 9-14 and 9-15, which are approval of authorizations for new positions. There was no information and we just now got it. And so I'm a little reluctant to do that absent any additional information. Would you like to pull that item? Maybe pull it and just have a discussion. So I think it's probably good to have a little clarification. So we'll pull 9-14, 9-15 because they're making me dealt with together. Okay. So that'll be one item and we're going to move that. Let's see where I'll place that. It's going to be right after Pacific Station. Okay. So 20A is 9-14 and 9-15. And then I know we do have 9-10, which is, no, no, that's not the one 9-9 is the capital projects and updated tenure plan. I know at Capital Committee, Ed, you had wanted to have some further discussion on that. I actually had a conversation with the CEO and got some clarification. Give it on it. And I'm comfortable with it being on the consent agenda. Okay. Thank you. If it's okay with you? I just wanted to clarify. I got clarification. Thank you. So thank you. So we're good with anybody else on the consent agenda. Any other items? We got a lot of really good applications for the MAC membership and I just wanted to welcome the two members and also just encourage us to keep reaching out to fill these seats. I know we had, I think it was the Carrillo seat that we wanted to make sure that we had representation. So we should keep those appointments, you know, in mind and advertise as much as possible so we can continue to get a good list of candidates. That's a good point. Thanks for bringing that up. Because some of those are designated spots and we weren't able to fill them and we would like to keep that balance. So thank you for that comment. Aurelio. Just a quick question on 9-5 on the Paracruise operations. I noticed that we increased a little bit in ridership. And my question is that could we identify it between the areas of increased usage between north and south where it's been less and more? Daniel. Daniel, do you have a possible answer on that? If not, we can do some analysis and let you know. You've got to come all the way up, Daniel. Good morning. We can give you a report on ridership as it is now. We don't take ridership and the report from the different areas of the county, but we can have that for you on the next report if you wish. And Mr. Chair, I wanted to just point you to a new part of that that Daniel, let me just find it real quick. So if you would look at attachment G, Daniel just added a really nice new table that he'll include in quarterly reports, giving you some idea of where our high volume destinations are. That might help a little bit of that, but we can still do some more analysis. I think we're going to celebrate that ridership is up and if we can identify it, that would be great. Yeah, no problem. We could have that for you. I think we have a few more questions on the statistics. So since we have the Paracruz and there is Lifeline, do we know if we're moving them over to Paracruz and that's why our ridership is up? Or is this overall, I mean, because I don't know that you're checking with Lifeline Count because it's not within the purview of our agency, but we just, I just have a question generally of are we transporting the same clients and they're reducing or are they keeping steady and because to me it's a duplicate of services when we're providing it and Lifeline is as well. So I just think that we should at least check in with them and see, you know, where they're tracking for their volume because if they're reducing their volume and we're taking it on, then we're not really increasing ridership overall. We're just moving from which vehicle to transport them is more convenient for the client. And so I just would like to know a little bit more, maybe just to check in with them when we're getting the numbers. And I did have another question on the stats that we're here and it had to do with restricted conditional. Can you explain what restricted conditional is? Yes. If there's someone that has an injury per se, they break their leg, they can apply for the service and they would have restricted access for, they would be able to go to all of their doctor's appointments and to physical therapy and that's basically what it, what that is. So basically temporary. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Director McPherson, you had a comment? I think Director Coffman Gomez has a comment about Lifeline and so forth because in Measure D there was an increased allocation for that and so it would be interesting to see if there is any changes in that. So I'd just like to second that concern as well. Go ahead, Zero. Zero. I'm the Chief Operations Officer. I just wanted to kind of comment on the Lifeline versus Paratransit. Lifeline is predicated on income level. So the persons that qualify for Lifeline service have to meet a certain income threshold and whereas Paratransit does not have that. Okay. So that's the difference. Essentially if we try to start tracking what they're, what they're transporting versus what we're transporting, it's going to be somewhat of a complicated issue because of our inquiries into income levels and such of persons and the, how it's, how it's being tracked for them. Dr. Rodkin. I should also note that the Lifeline only takes people to certain kinds of services, health services and food and basic, basic human needs, but people can take Paratransit into anything they'd like to take it to. That they need in their life. We're a complementary service to fixed route. That's essentially what it is. We take the bus stop to the person. Great. Director Gonzales, did you have any further questions? I know you got, you brought this up and everybody's got them. I know, I just wondering maybe we should have just pulled the item to have it further. Well, I just want to make sure that I didn't cut you off. No, no, that's fine. I just wanted to make sure that maybe we just want to pull it if there's any further questions so we can continue on. I believe we're okay with it. I have one last quick comment. Oh no, Dr. Rodkin. Not a question. I just want to note that are within the ready window performance since last year has improved dramatically. If you look at at least the two months we're looking at here from something like 81% to 90% and 81 to 95% for a different month, that's huge because for this service to be useful to people, it's got to come when you expect it's going to be there and we're doing much, much better and we should note that. So what I take from this is I think we're okay with what you said but if we can get some feedback about what part of the county there was an increase that caused this, that would be wonderful. Ed? Okay. Ed, over here. Oh, go ahead. I too found the stats interesting but I kind of don't know what to make with them. You know, it's their quarterly stats and they are interesting but I don't know at what point there's a time for presentation. This is a really major trend we're seeing or you know some really significant variations that kind of lead us into operational decisions. These are interesting. So maybe the new year we can have a at some point. Let's go ahead and give direction to the CEO to put this on an agenda item for the next meeting and elaborate on it because there's obviously a lot of questions. We can have a discussion on an open item and we can weigh in from the public and just let's just talk about para-cruise and where it's at, where it's going and how we're diversifying. How about that? Yeah, and what we're learning, et cetera. We can make it an item we can talk about. Obviously, there was a lot of dialogue there. Okay, with that any other items on the consent agenda? Okay, anybody from the public like to comment on any items on the consent agenda? Move approval. Seeing none, we got a motion for approval by Rotkin. Second by McPherson. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That carries unanimously with the exception of 14 and 15 which we're going to have as an open item, one item. That takes us to the regular agenda and we're going to begin with our presentation of longevity awards and I believe you have two in front of you. We're going to do two. Two people are here so I'll let you go ahead with that and I'll. Okay, so we have 20-year longevity awards which is significant. Think about having worked here for that long for a number of different people and I believe Uriel Mendoza is here. Is that correct? Great. So you'll come up. Let me just read. Mr. Mendoza came to Metro in 1999 after working for 20 years harvesting lettuce for the same company. It's obviously the same loyalty and dedication that he's applied to his service at Metro. Uriel is always happy, friendly and engaging with his coworkers and the public and when he's not driving for Metro he performs as a musician and recently he performed for Watsonville's Open Streets Day. He's currently a contestant on the Spanish TV show Tengo Talento, Mucho Talento. Congratulations on that as well as your service for this district. Thank you. I don't think that I'm going to win but I still have competition. We're hoping that you do. And oh, oh it's my. This is your time. This is your time. This is my time. I always wanted to, can you, anybody do me a favor? It will sound different if anybody on that side will read this. I just would like to share something with you. Yeah, please. You mind if I read it? Oh, it will sound better. Okay. Yeah. This is the kind of work we do out there. This is, this is Mr. This is, this is a letter to Mr. Mendoza says, I would like to take this opportunity to commend your performance exhibited on Thursday, September 14th, 2006. A group of approximately 20 delegates from the California Transit Insurance Pool, California TIP, were attending a conference at Seascape. Metro provided transportation to an offsite function and you were selected to operate the coach. I was very impressed with your professional appearance and composure while we discussed the details of this activity. The following day, Friday, September 21st, 2006, I attended the Cal TIP training session. As I awaited the training session to begin, 10 of the persons that were transported to you the previous evening approached me and expressed their admiration regarding your driving skills, a high degree of customer service you provided to the delegates and the professionalism you demonstrated transporting them to and from the event. As one of the delegates mentioned, I have never been on a bus anywhere in the U.S. in which the ride was comfortable. I felt safe and the level of professionalism was so evident as with our driver last night. Thank you so much. We had a wonderful experience. On behalf of Metro, thank you and please accept this accommodation for your exemplary performance and the positive experience provided to the Cal TIP delegates, Sian Cyril Gweyer. And I'm sure that this is probably the way Mr. Mendoza does his job every day, but I'm going to let him finish. This is your time, not my time. My time. Well, there's no, there's nothing that you can do . No, there's nothing I can say because words, I can say anything, but if you come and ride my bus, I don't have to say anything you will be doing the talking for me. You are welcome to ride the bus. They don't ride for free, right? No. Okay. Just identify yourselves and then we go from there. I don't know. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I hope to be here. I'm taking care of my mom. People ask me, when are you going to retire? But I can tell you something. If she lives 20 more years, I have to work 20 more years. So as long as she stays alive, I have no choice. I have to keep driving. Thank you. And I don't know what else to say other than thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And thank you. There we go. Okay. Also working for the Metro for 20 years. It's Mark Saunders who came here in November of 1999. He's showing great observance of attendance and working hours at Metro and his onboard evaluators all comment on his excellent mastery of his vehicle step up to the plate whenever he's needed. He has a very, very strong work ethic, and we appreciate his service to the district for the past 20 years. Thank you. So Ariel and I were in the same class for training. He's Ernie, I'm burnt. So I'm a little more real as the grouchy side. But I just want to say that this is a really hard job, and it's like they made big honors about Cal Ripken working however many years for the Orioles. I don't know, but it's like what I said then was, yeah, but he only has to work nine months a year, three days a week, four days a week most. And that's only two, three hours at a time. We're working eight hours a day, five days a week. I work a lot of overtime, so I'm working a lot of seven-day weeks. It's a lot of work, but I've been happy for the opportunity that this job has given me. I've been able to buy a house, I have two fairly new cars, and I've met a lot of interesting people and seen a lot of interesting things. So thank you very much. Thank you. We're going to go down now, OK? OK, great job. I'm not here. And I believe they're not here this morning, but we also want to recognize Mario Espinosa and Gilberto Lima's for 35 years of service to the district. And Martin Gilbert, Mark Krovet's for 20 years of service. So we want to thank them as well, even though they did not come for the presentation this morning. Thank you. OK. We've got some directors that are going to be leaving, so I just want to move the schedule around a little bit just to make sure we get to discuss some items that are here. So if you can bear with me, we're going to jump around the schedule. I'd like to jump ahead to item 19, which is the City of Santa Cruz Downtown Bus Pass Oral Presentation, Barrel Emerson. Good morning, Chair, board members, staff, and public. And I'm going to give my time to Claire Fleisler from the city to talk a little bit about the program. It's early days. So Claire, please hop up. Good morning, Chair, board. I am Claire Fleisler, Transportation Planner for the City of Santa Cruz. Gina is handing out something for you all right now about the overall program that we're going to talk about. But I'm here today to talk about the role of our expanded Go Santa Cruz program and specifically our partnership with Metro and the role that the transit passes for all 4,000 downtown employees play in that. I have notes, which I usually don't have, but we have so many things going on that I want to make sure I don't miss any highlights right now. So the Go Santa Cruz program overall is really, really neat. As many of you know, we have a parking issue in downtown. We have 4,000-plus employees, and we also have customers that come downtown to shop at our small local businesses. And we have a conflict between the number of parking spaces we have and the number of people that want to come downtown. In order to address that, we have been investing in alternative transportation for decades in the City of Santa Cruz and regionally. This has led to an enviable 58% drive alone rate, which is almost 20% below the national average of 76.4%. Knowing that all of you come from various jurisdictions in our community, I took the liberty of pulling everyone else's drive alone rate last night. So the City of Santa Cruz is at 58%. Here in Watsonville, it's 71. In Capitola, it's 74.3. In Scots Valley, 79.4. And in the county, it's a whole 69.2. So despite having the lowest drive alone rate in the county, we know that we are committed to doing more. In the City of Santa Cruz, our goal is to get our drive alone rate to 50% or below. And what we're doing to achieve those goals is expanding upon our Transportation Alternatives Program, which we call in the City of Santa Cruz, Go Santa Cruz. As of October 1, we officially launched this expanded program. It offers for all 4,000-plus downtown employees free transit passes, free bike locker cards that are preloaded with $20, discounted jump memberships, carpool incentives, rewards for using alternative modes if you log your trips, commute information in carpool ride matching, as well as bike safety trainings and workshops to help people learn with the education and encouragement component there. This is paid for by parking user fees. So it's not general funds supported. In the City of Santa Cruz, we're very fortunate to have a downtown parking district. As you know, when you come downtown, you pay for parking. And paying for parking does a lot of good things. One of them being funds this program. As you may have realized last year, we raised parking fees about $0.50 per hour at all meters, lots, garages, and we raised parking permit fees. And part of that increase in funding goes directly to fund this program, which is funded to the tune of $585,000 in year one. So since October 1, when we officially expanded this program, we're starting to get a little data in so far. We have given out 98 bike locker cards. We've had 165 discounted jump memberships claimed, 36 people have claimed carpool incentives for logging their trips. And then specific to transit, which is the interesting stuff that I'm sure you guys are interested in as being on the metro board, during the month of October, we gave out 433 transit passes. Of those 97 unique passes were used in October for a total of 1,166 trips. The most common routes that were taken were the 3535A, which were 12.4% of all trips, the 69ANW combined for 23.3% of trips, and the 71, at 26.5% of trips. As we hoped for in not launching this program until the beginning of October, the UCSC routes did not see a high number of trips. And our goal there was to make sure that students are already provided with free transit passes. And we wanted to keep the data as clean as possible, hoping that students would still use their student transit pass, downtown employees would use a Go Santa Cruz pass so that we could really evaluate the benefits of the program looking forward. So indications are good that students are still using their transit passes per your ridership numbers and that downtown employees who are non-students are using Go Santa Cruz passes. A few big things to note, as I did say, the full program is funded by the parking district, which is an enterprise fund in the city of Santa Cruz and is paid for. People who are not parking are benefited by people who are parking. So the people who are parking are paying for those to not drive. The brochures that were handed out to you by Gina just a moment ago include a ton of information. I know that many of you have constituents that even if you don't represent the city of Santa Cruz or live in the city of Santa Cruz, many of you have constituents who do work in downtown Santa Cruz. So if you do get any questions, please feel free to share that information with them. And additionally, for more information, you can visit cityofsanta Cruz dot com slash go Santa Cruz. And that's the conclusion of my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions and if you have about the program. Thanks, Claire. Any questions? Mr. Chair, I really want to commend the parking district and the city of Santa Cruz too for getting behind this. I think it would be proper if we would write them a letter and just say how much we appreciate that. I think that having carpooling is probably the most immediate thing. It is the most immediate thing we can do to reduce congestion throughout this county. And these widening highways or a rail line or whatever, it's going to be years away. But this we can do today and tomorrow. And I appreciate the people who are taking advantage of it. I think it's a win-win situation for everyone. And I think it's important to know that as far as I think in the numbers that you gave, I heard the highest percentage increase or, I don't know how it was put, was 35, 35A. And that would be from the Santa Rosa Valley. So go fifth district. See ya. Was that a plug? That was a plug, wasn't it? Yeah, okay. You're here. Director Coffman Gomez. Yes, one of the comments were, we may not be familiar with the numbers and the locations. So thank you for 35, 35. I'll clarify that for you. So sorry, Director McPherson. Number three is 35, 35A, which comes from the San Lorenzo Valley into downtown Santa Cruz. Number two is the 69AW, which goes from Watsonville to Cabrero-Captol Mall and into downtown Santa Cruz, two different routings there. And number one is the Route 71, which goes from Watsonville to Santa Cruz down the Soquel corridor. It roughly mimics the ridership you see on the rest of the system. I think that's still true, yeah. And then are we doing this particular promotion on our buses now so that we can let people know that this is a program that's out there? Because obviously Watsonville may be working in Santa Cruz and gets this, but may not necessarily be using it. But whatever we could do to promote this on the south end because we're the ones getting to the north end and we wanna be able to promote this ridership from our community here. So let's see what we could do about getting things in sponsorship here locally in Watsonville for this program as well. Yeah, I can follow up on that with the Metro team. We're really fortunate that we also have a marketing contract funded through this. So we have the ability to put out marketing collateral, English, Spanish, and more of it's going up in downtown Santa Cruz, but we also have the ability, we're happy to put it on board buses, at transit centers, et cetera. Happy to do any of that. And I've also had the RTC approach me to try and find a location for the ridership or the share rides. And if we can get that identified and have that location it would be really good to be able to put this as part of that hub. All for a park and ride facility, is that correct? Right, we're working to try and identify a location over on the airport area and this would be really helpful to sort of collaborate what that could be in terms of the ride share and also the bus services there as well. Once we get that a little further developed out there if we can get something secured through RTC on that. Absolutely, thank you. Okay, Dr. Myers. I have a couple questions. Am I on? I think I'm on. Just on the target of the 4,000 employees downtown, are those both part-time and full-time employees or primarily full-time? It's both part-time and full-time employees. And to kind of flesh this out, we know that in downtown about 50% of our workforce is retail and restaurant workers, which we think of as more shiftwork, less regular hours. So building regular commute patterns is more challenging and the other 15% is more of your 9 to 5 that you would think of. Okay, and are we able to, as we reach out to the employers, I think one of the unique things that Claire and her team have been doing is actually visiting all of our employers in downtown. So not only is it handing these out, but there's a personal visit made to each employer trying to really make that personal connection so people can have their questions answered right away. And I think that's been really successful so far. But I guess that leads to my question of how do we learn more about where people are living and coming into Santa Cruz from? Is that part of the data we can collect in the types of things that we're doing with the past? So great question. One of the mandatory elements, which you'll see in the brochure, is that in order to get these benefits, we require you to sign up with our online commute management platform, which we partnered with the RTC on. In downtown Santa Cruz, the Go Santa Cruz program is the pilot of that and there'll be a countywide expansion launching in spring. So when people sign up for that, that is where they have to give their name, email address, contact information, home address, work address. And through that, we can survey via that platform so we can see if people do populate their home address, we can see where that is. But we can also send out subsequent surveys. Because we also have an incentives budget here, we can offer prizes for completing that survey, which leads to overall higher rates of response. And we've seen really good results from that so far. As a baseline, we did two downtown employee commute surveys. So we know that the majority of employees in downtown do live within a five mile radius, which we think of as pretty feasible for taking alternatives, but we'll continue to get a better depth of data with the more people we sign up. And one of the things I didn't mention is of those 4,000 employees, we've signed up about 18% of them, over 740 so far to the program. Great, thank you for all your work. Any other comments? Director Mathews. Can we just get your stats? Oh, my stats again. Yeah, yeah, so. I mean just the combi distributed, they were great. And as always, you just fly through it. Fly through, yeah, I talk a little fast. Usually I get told you have this much time. So we have about 4,000 downtown employees. We've signed up 740 of those for this program and we continue to do targeted and proactive outreach. Of the benefits that we have, 433 transit passes have been claimed. So that's just over 10% of our downtown workforce. 98 bike locker cards have been claimed. 165 jump benefits have been claimed and the carpool incentives are a little bit different. You log 10 trips and then you get $10 in downtown dollars. So people are carpooling and logging those trips but we don't have the same type of metric there. Overall, our goal, we're at 740 right now. We wanna get to 1,000 by the end of the year of so 25% of downtown employees enrolled in the program. That helps us get towards the each one teach one where we are going out and we're doing this targeted outreach where when you get a bus pass or when you get a bike locker card, me or my colleague Joanna goes out and physically delivers that to your workplace. Typically we don't deliver it to the person who is requesting it. We deliver it to whoever is at the front desk or whoever is working at that time, leading to another opportunity for engagement, another person to connect with and usually by the time I get back to my office, that person is then signed up and I'm going right back to that office as soon as I get back. So the numbers so far are looking really good. We are pleased with the speed of our launch and we continue to see even though we did a lot of promotion in the first two weeks or so that those numbers continue to increase week over week over week over week, which we're tracking over time. Thank you for that presentation, Claire. If you could, oh, Director Northcote, you have a question, go ahead. I do have a question about your emergency ride home. Yes. What's the success rate of that? Because that's one of the things that we are actually in communications with about Ecobreel for our students who are using the bus and need to do kind of quick trips around town. So ER, emergency ride home, oftentimes abbreviated to ERH, is typically not used for quick trips around town. Something that could be a good filler for that would be a zip car on campus or a car show membership, et cetera. Emergency ride home is something that we have in place which is essentially a safety net. So if you take alternative modes to get to work, if you take the bus, if you ride a bike, if you walk, if you carpool, and something happens. Your kid gets sick. Your carpool buddy's kid gets sick. A pipe burst at your house. Something that is a qualified emergency comes up and you need to get home quickly and you don't have the ability, desire, or you're going somewhere that maybe the bus doesn't run. You can take a qualified transportation service. You can take a taxi, you can take the bus, you can take Uber, you can take Lyft. And subsequent to that, you submit VR platform for reimbursement of that ride. ERH programs are typically very underutilized. Most people don't use them, but it makes people feel a lot more confident in choosing to use alternative modes to get to work, knowing that the option is available, especially for people that do have children and want to be able to respond if something does come up. Thank you. Great presentation. We do a couple of things for me, or just one, actually. If you can just get a copy of the statistics to Barrow and then he can distribute it to us, we'll take care of the distribution. And... I made those last day, so I don't give it to him. I don't think it's going to be that many pages or it's going to Gina now, that's fine. And Mr. Clifford, if you could do a letter was recommended to the City of Santa Cruz, commending them on this program, whatever's on that list, that would be a great downtown association. So thank you for that presentation, appreciate that. Okay, we're going to jump around again. I'd like to go to item 14, which is a consideration for resolution to establish the Board of Directors' meeting schedule locations for 2020. So... Or do you want to ask for public comment on that last item? That was a presentation, let's go back. Is there anyone that would like to come? I'm sorry, that was a presentation, my mistake of comment on that item, welcome. I wasn't sure whether it was something to ask for, so I'm deeply appreciate it. Yeah, sure. I really want to underline as well, I've been in Santa Cruz 22 years, the whole time looking forward to the promised bike lanes. And I really don't like hearing that this kind of a program is the best thing to lift the burden off of Highway 1 because it's completely clear to me, having studied the issue being an avid bicyclist, we would clear Highway 1 by an extreme amount if we had bike lanes. I know that's not particularly something in your purview today, but I do want to say that over and over, I've visited all of the places that have bike lanes and I'm horrified at how badly we are behind on that. It doesn't fit with the image of Santa Cruz and every single aspect of this subject needs to keep being looked at, I'm a health coach, our health would be so greatly improved as well, but please don't say this is the fastest way, the bicycles are definitely the fastest way, I just wish we were on it better, thank you. Thank you for that comment. Anyone else like to address us on this topic? Welcome. Hi, Jessica Evans from the, I live in the city of Santa Cruz. I just wanted to say how pleased and excited I am that the Go Santa Cruz program is so successful that this is super innovative and I think that with the climate emergency, it's gonna be incredibly important to support transit in Santa Cruz County overall and I also really appreciate Trina Kauffman-Gomez' comment about doing marketing to the city of Watsonville and to the South County residents and I think that that's really important and I just wanted to say I'm happy to see that the people who are directing the program feel like it's successful, it feels a little bit under the radar so I'm curious and interested to know what this sort of big launch in the spring is about and what that's gonna look like so thank you very much for that presentation and I'm happy about it and I hope we do more of this kind of program. Thank you for those comments. Anyone else like to speak on this subject? Okay, we'll go ahead and close that presentation now and move to item 14. This is Resolution of Staff is Board of Director meeting schedule, Mr. Clifford. Mr. Chair, as you recall at our last agenda, I proposed alternate meeting schedule, there was some discussion about whether that would fit into the calendar of all of the board members. The board members asked for some additional analysis, Gina has gone to great lengths to provide you with some additional analysis here which would include Exhibit A which is our current program meeting on the fourth Friday of the month for the board meetings in the second Friday of the month for committee meetings. Then we move on to Exhibit B which looks at moving it to third Friday board meetings and first Friday committees. Exhibit C looks at a fourth Wednesday concept with second Wednesday's being committees and Exhibit D looks at the third Wednesday concept with first Wednesday's being committees. So we've come up, I think, with the other versions that you wanted us to look at. I realize this is a really complicated topic because everybody's calendar is different. So if you'd like to take a little time to talk about it and see if there is an alternate schedule that you can land on, if not, no heartburn here, just keeping it like it is today, fourth Friday's, first, second Friday's committees. Anybody like to crack the seal? Oh, Director Lynn. I would just say Wednesdays are an issue for me but any of the Fridays are okay. I'm good with any Friday. Dr. Matthews. Ditto to that. Same here with me, but the only thing I didn't like, the comment I didn't like was that the board meetings be all held at Vernon. I know the schedule shows that- They're not all held at Vernon. But the CEO made a comment that they all be at Vernon. Oh, no, I think that's incorrect. I think we're trying to do one at each agency- As it is? One at each agency and then the rest at Vernon. I just wanted to make sure that because what I read and what I've seen didn't jive, so I just wanted to clarify it. Director Gonzalez, Capitola wouldn't stand for that. Okay, just so you know, okay. Okay, so what I hear is that Wednesdays are out and Fridays are totally flexible. So does it behoove us to change from our existing two and four to one and three or- Alex, you're being able to attend conferences would help changing to the other Friday, right? No, actually the Wednesdays would have been- Yeah. The greater help. So either Friday wouldn't help you. Which Friday? I mean, if you were still trying to angle towards helping out there, I would just leave it the way it is today on fourth and seconds. Okay, seeing that Wednesdays are out and Fridays don't matter, rather than rock the boat, I'd look for a motion to just leave it as it is. I'll move the status quo. Yeah, okay, a motion from Rodkin, the second was Kauffman Gomez. But I'm gonna open up to the public. Anybody in the public like to weigh in on the meeting schedule? Okay, back to us. So- Call the question. No other comments? All in favor of leaving it as it is. Aye. Opposed? Alex and Gina, thank you for your efforts. And we're gonna leave it as it is. Go ahead. I made this comment when it came up last month and I would make it again now. We might wanna have people look at your schedules. We're not gonna change it this year, but since probably the committees that Alex serves on in terms of representing this district in its interest at the national and state level, it might be helpful if people think about which of those organizations you belong to that are meeting on Wednesday might be able to change. Maybe it's not, that's not going anywhere, but at least I thought I'd ask that people sort of think ahead whether they might be changeable in the next year so that next year we'd have a different situation, but that's just a thought. We may have to drop other commissions. Okay, one more work. So to clarify, 14A, exhibit A1 is what we voted and approved. Thank you for that clarification. 14A, exhibit 1, the same schedule we've had for eternity will remain. Okay. So we're gonna, I'm glad we dealt with that. So that's how far, Jen. So let's see where I've got here next. We're gonna get back on track. What I've got is we're gonna go back in order now to item 11, which is a resolution for Karen Blight. Is Karen here? Okay, I'm just gonna go ahead and read the resolution just to make sure we enter the record. And this is a resolution, appreciation for the service of Karen Blight as administrative assistant for the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District. And I'll briefly go through this as whereas the public transportation service requirements competent dedicated workforce. And whereas this member Karen worked for the customer service department from July 30th, 2008 to November 15th, 2019. Karen Blight provided Metro dedicated service and commitment during this time. Karen Blight served Metro with distinction. The service provided by Karen Blight result in reliable quality public transportation being available in most times were difficult. During the time of Miss Blight service, Metro improved existing, built, new bus operation facilities, converted the fleet to CNG propulsion systems, developed accessible bus stops, improved ridership, responded to adverse economic conditions, assumed quiet operational responsibilities for the Highway 17 Express and the Amtrak Connector Service. Whereas the quality of life in Santa Cruz improved dramatically by the exemplary service of Karen Blight. Now therefore be resolved that upon her retirement as administrative assistant, the Board of Directors of Metro does hereby commend her efforts in advancing public transportation for Santa Cruz County and express sincere appreciation on behalf of itself, the Metro staff and all the residents of Santa Cruz County. Do I have a motion to adopt this resolution? Motion by Rodkin. Second. Second by Kaufman Gomez. Any comment from the public on Karen Blight? Bringing it back all in favor. Aye. Opposed? Motion resolution carries unanimously. Thank you. Okay. CEO. We're gonna good jump now to the CEO or report. Mr. Clifford. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Directors, I have a number of reports for you today. Starting off with December board and committee meetings, I'd like to announce that unless you have a burning desire to meet in committees and board meeting in December that we have been able to successfully adjust our board agenda items so that you can go dark in December, if you would like. So unless I hear any cry for meetings in December, we'll plan to go dark. Everybody has such a fire. Let me know, cause it'll help us put it out. Do we need to take an action on that? I don't think so. Is there anybody that is in need of having a meeting in December? I see no objection. So your recommendation is... Claire, I'm buoyant enough to assume that that would be the case. And kudos to our staff for working really hard. In order to go dark in December, it takes at least two months in advance planning in order to move items up to your November calendar. And we had some difficulty doing that. As you saw, we had some late drop of items there at your diocese today. And then to analyze other items that could be pushed to January. So kudos to the staff for pulling that off for you. We appreciate it. Can you give me the date of that January meeting just so I can make it in the end? I'm gonna change my announcement from December 13th to January 24th. Thank you. At Vernon, okay. All right, go ahead, Mr. Christopher. Second on the list is our new hires and promotions. In our fleet maintenance department, we had Jerry Ayala Magana, who is a new hire as a vehicle service worker. Some very tough jobs, maintaining our vehicles at night when they come in, cleaning them up, working all night, and sometimes the weather is not very cooperative. So these folks really, really work hard. So thank you for Jerry coming aboard with us. In the customer service area, we had Maria Padilla, who is a promotion from a customer service representative to a senior customer service representative. So a little bit more of a leadership role in that department. And then in fleet, we had Michael Thorn, a lead mechanic being promoted from a mechanic too. Jose Valtiera in operations is promoted from a bus operator to a transit supervisor. So that's exciting. And then finally, we have one, Gastelum in facilities being promoted from a custodial service worker one to a custodial service worker two. So as usual, we always take a great deal of pride in our internal promotions and it's great succession planning and we're happy to keep our employees with us that much longer by promoting up through the ranks. So congratulations to all of those folks. Okay, next on my list is, Gina, if you wouldn't mind putting that slide up, zero emission bus slide. We've had a lot of talk lately about zero emission buses and I've listened to board members from time to time talk in other forums about how we're moving towards zero emission buses. So I thought today I would just give you a quick overview of what we sort of at a staff level and also based on some of your actions. See as the lay of the land as we move forward towards zero emission buses. As the board might recall, in 2017, you got ahead of the California Air Resources Board, what we call CARB and adopted your own policy to move towards zero emission buses by 2040. So without even knowing what the state was gonna do, you made a commitment, you said we wanna go towards zero emission buses. We think the timing is about right. Well, but then interestingly enough, in April of 2018, I came to you and I said, we've ordered some buses, but please direct me not to buy any more electric buses for a while. So why was that the case? That was the case because this is new for us. We don't have electric buses. This is different propulsion technology. There are different costs associated with electricity versus diesel and compressed natural gas. There are problems with range on zero emission buses. Today, most of the experiences are around 120 mile range, whereas in our system, in order to avoid sub-fleets, you don't really wanna carve out sub-fleets and say these buses can only run on certain runs. You really want all of your buses to be able to run on all of your runs, especially in a yard like ours where our buses are just jam-packed in. You don't have the ability to say that bus parked in that spot over there only goes on these runs. You can't do that in our yard. We're too compressed. So all of that means that we really need buses that can go the total distance of our longest runs from shortest to longest, our longest being a little over 300 miles. Right then and there that tells you that the current technology is not at a place where we can run a bus anywhere on our system. And what that means is that if you wanted to do that, you'd have to invest millions and millions of more dollars in putting in route rechargers, all of our transit centers on our routes at various layover locations, we would have to spend big dollars putting in route. As I've advised you since the beginning of this journey down towards electric buses, I've said, let's try to go with the model that's charge all night, run all day. That model needs buses with longer ranges. If you change that model, then we have to start investing millions for in route recharging. So then in 2018, and also by the way, at that time in April of 2018, we had cobbled together enough money through various grants, particularly LC Top Program at the state, to buy our first four electric buses. So we've placed that order. Then late 2018, CARB puts together the ICT and across that top line, you can see, and by the way, you have a copy of this at your diocese, you see for us as a small transit agency, our first mandate comes in 2026, January 2026. Everything we issue a purchase order for thereafter, at some point, they too will have to go away at 14 years or as much as 20 years if you extend the life. So our buses, our electric buses, as you see now, sort of looking at the lower part of this diagram, our buses, the four zero emission buses are scheduled to be here in the first quarter of next year. And as you know, if you drive by our Judy K. Suza operations facility, our lot, a portion of our lot has been torn up so that we can put in the electric infrastructure to charge those. It's always been our goal to get that done before the buses arrive so that when they arrive, we can plug them in and run them, kind of a novel concept, but that's what we're working towards. So we're on schedule for that to occur. We're also buying Protera's newest bus. It's not in service today. It's at a place called Altoona where it's being tested so that it can be allowed to go in service. That's a federal requirement. And that bus should pass Altoona somewhere towards the end of this year and be available for us next year. That is what we call the Protera 660. It is their newest, their longest range bus. That, putting that deal together, required that we use some additional amount of our own capital because the grants that we got envisioned that we would buy the current longest range bus. And of course, our goal again to charge all night run all day, we wanna buy the longest range buses. That bus is a 660. It's supposed to go more than the 120, 150 miles. We don't know what that means. We'll see what that means. I mean, they will tell you what they think it means, but when it comes to electric buses, really nothing that the electric manufacturers have represented about their product has come true. They all perform less than what they represent because they use perfect world Altoona type testing, no headwinds, everything running flat, maybe a tailwind. And so when they run it on those kinds of perfect conditions, they get mileage like 300, 400 miles range. That isn't how that bus is gonna perform when it gets here. It's not how they perform historically. So the goal here is that those buses come here and between 2020 and 2026, when our first mandate kicks in, we will take those buses and learn a lot about them. We'll run them everywhere we can. We'll learn about propulsion. We'll learn how to maintain them. But per year directive in April of 2018, we will avoid buying additional buses with one minor caveat, but we'll avoid buying additional buses until we get through that process of testing it. And it could be that between 2020 and 2026, it could be that we learn a lot and we really like these things and the innovation of battery energy density range in a bus continues to improve through the process of innovation. And it could be that maybe before 2026, I come to you and say, wow, things have really evolved and we should start going for grants again. So I wanna leave that door open. Now, the one caveat is, as you recall, in 2016, we got a federal LONO grant for three electric over-the-road coaches that we envisioned running on Highway 17. So we were gonna introduce electricity to Highway 17 and we were gonna introduce over-the-road coaches to Highway 17. And so we did that in partnership with BYD and when BYD's first prototype came out a couple of years later, we tested it and it did not do well at all. It didn't meet our two minimum criteria. Two minimum criteria being that it needs to have enough horsepower to keep up with traffic and try to get close to minimum speeds. And it needs to do two round trips before needing to be recharged. It failed in that endeavor. We broke our partnership with BYD. We went to the federal government and we said, hey, will you allow us to keep this grant? We realized that we can't deliver and we don't wanna just spend the money because it's there to be spent and buy an inferior product that we'll be embarrassed by. We said, can we keep the money and we think there's gonna be some other products coming in a few years. And we were really pleased that the FDA said, you can keep the money, just keep us informed. So that was pretty exciting. So we have that money, that's the caveat. So if electric buses are where we wanna go and MCI and VanHool and others produce a good product, we can possibly switch over to that and I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about that in the coming days. In addition to all of that, two years ago, if you had said, asked me, what about hydrogen fuel cell? That's also zero emission. I would have said, no, I don't think so. Very expensive, really sort of new and evolving cutting edge technology. As a small agency, we shouldn't get involved in cutting edge technology. That has evolved tremendously. AC Transit here in Northern California has been experimenting with it for years and it's getting better and better and better. OCTA, Orange County Transportation Authority down south has purchased hydrogen fuel cell buses. They're experimenting with it and Sunline Transit out in the desert. So that technology is evolving to the point where our staff is saying, let's take a look at hydrogen fuel cell. Why would we do that? Well, we don't know what's gonna happen with ranges of battery electric buses and in addition to that, we're trying to visualize how we would put 98 charging stations in our yard for a full build out of battery electric. Hydrogen fuel cell won't require individual charging stations. So we're under space constraints. That means that if we stay with battery electric, we're gonna have to put overhead canopies in and charge from the top instead of from pedestals next to buses. It gets really complicated. And so our COO and our head of our maintenance, Eddie, would like to take a little time to investigate hydrogen fuel cell. So over the next two years, what we propose to do is spend a lot of time looking at what's happening at those other agencies and get to know hydrogen fuel cell because one of the nice things about hydrogen fuel cell is it gets more range than battery electrics. So it can help us in that particular challenge that we're having. And then in two years, if that outcome is really favorable, we will come to you and say that we'd like to go for a federal LONO grant and try to obtain some number of hydrogen fuel cells and maybe run them side by side with our battery electrics and try to learn what works best for this agency. The prevailing thinking across the nation right now is that not all battery, not all hydrogen fuel cells, some mix is probably what's gonna work for transit agencies that may change. That wouldn't have been the answer two or three years ago. It may not be the answer two or three years from now, but we need to stay in touch with that. So we'll get our buses. Between now and 2026, we'll keep experimenting with the batteries, we'll investigate hydrogen fuel cell for a couple of years and maybe come to you and ask for permission to go for a grant there. And then along this journey, we will keep buying compressed natural gas buses. We have the ability to do that all the way through 2026 and we will continue to buy those. They're a lot less expensive. As you know, we have to replace a lot of our buses and by continuing to buy as many compressed natural gas buses as we can, we buy us extra time to watch what happens in this market. Again, if things get better with battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell, we can accelerate our purchases at any given time, but if it doesn't continue to evolve and if hydrogen fuel cell doesn't turn out to be the real good thing for us, we'll have bought enough time to allow the market to continue to innovate and Proteras and BYDs and others to build a better product before we dive in with two feet. So that's an overview of the plan and I just wanted to show you some additional pictures if we can. Did we put the pictures up of, there you go. So yesterday or this week, I was down in Monterey at the CTA fall conference and as a part of their expo, they had buses displayed and this is the MCI electric over-the-road coach bus. Just produced this bus and it's a pretty exciting piece of equipment. It has your ADA wheelchair boarding on a lower tier that is ramp boarding as opposed to over-the-road coaches that use a lift and it takes a great deal of time to put a wheelchair onto the lift, lift it up, board the bus, put the lift back together, it slows your service down. This is a ramp boarding concept, zero emission, 100% zero emission and so MCI is now, this is their first bus and we have arrangements for this bus to come here on the 19th of November and we're gonna do with this bus what we did with the BYD bus. We're gonna load it up with people in sandbags, try to emulate a full load and see how it performs on Highway 17. If it performs well on our two criteria, the horsepower to keep up with traffic and can make two round trips before it needs a recharge, then we'll probably come to you and say, let's go to the federal government, ask them to release the hold on our low-no money and let us buy three of these for Highway 17. So that's getting a little aggressive and looking forward, a little overly optimistic. We need to see how it performs and on the night tanks, we'll have a pretty good idea of that. So that concludes the part of my presentation about zero emission buses. You know what, before you get into the weeds, I think we have a lot of questions, so let's start with Director Rodkin. Can you give us a kind of ballpark description of what infrastructure needs that hydrogen fuel cell buses have? In other words, what would we have to put on the ground in order to fuel them? Yeah, there's different concepts for that. You can have a trailer of tanks brought in that you fuel off of and then they're in a rotation every so many days or weeks or whatever. They bring in another flatbed trailer of tanks. You can take and build a facility much like what we have today with our CNG to take delivery of hydrogen on some regular basis and fuel those tanks much like we do with LNG today. The third concept, which is becoming increasingly popular, is to build your own generation facility where you take, for example, natural gas and convert it into hydrogen and fuel your own tanks, again a system much like what we have except you have the equipment to actually generate your own hydrogen on site. So we don't know what that looks like over the next two years, we'll get a better idea. And our phase one entry, if we were to go hydrogen fuel cell might look different than say, once you get to 10 buses, 10 buses in greater might be something completely different. In other words, you may just take your delivery on a flatbed trailer at first and then grow from there. And could you send us, all the board members, some kind of an article that just talks generally about hydrogen fuel cells and how they work so we could become, I'm not well informed about it as a tank. I got the basic concept of how it works, but I'd like to know more. And rather than just going and Google it, it'd be nice if you would send us what you think is a good article about how it all works. Director McPherson. Yeah, first of all, I want to thank you for your thorough explanation. And I was as a member of the team that went back to DC and we got three of the electric buses, I thought bingo, we've hit the jackpot, we're all in. That was a nickel slot machine and had dollars gonna be needed in the future. So I just want to say that the approach that you've taken of what we have and what works and doesn't work, and for us to get a pass by the federal government, so to speak, to keep the grant money, you don't know how big that is. That was huge. We could have lost that. But again, I think it just spells out the importance of us going back to DC and being acquainted with some of those folks to say we're on track, we want to do what's right and we are and there's a lot of options available. And I appreciate the thorough explanation that you have given us. We're gonna be a changing district or fleet, we're gonna be a changing fleet in our district. And then it's complicated by what the state kind of throws at us in the middle of all this. You have to do this much faster. So I think we're on track to get it all done in the right way and I just want to thank you and everybody in the staff for letting us know what the options are and that it could be or couldn't be. But I feel really comfortable that we're gonna be on the right track to getting environmental friendly bus operation as much or as best of anybody in the state of California and this country and I think that you've really done a great job in getting us there, thank you. Well, and kudos to the board too, because remember this agency back in 2002 when CARB had its first clean air initiative, this agency was one of the few in the state that made an all-in commitment to compress natural gas buses while other agencies kept their diesels. Director Mathews, you have a comment? This was very helpful, really simple pulling together of mandates and what we've got and where we're going and all the changing landscape. I seem to recall that the CNG requires maintenance on a faster schedule than some of the others. Is that correct? So there'll be a more expensive maintenance connected with that. That's just part of the transition. I mean, obviously there are a lot of balances. It's a technology that continues to evolve. It's never really been perfected. When you run compressed natural gas, you run at much higher temperatures than you do with diesel and so that has its consequences on engines. Just to give you some idea of how it keeps evolving, one of the most common problems is because it runs so hot, we tend to blow pistons. And so as that has evolved, now Cummins is producing a higher quality piston that we're converting those engines over to. I think it's a steel piston. If we played with it for another couple of decades, it probably would get even better. But there's just not enough volume. It's not like the diesel industry where the engine manufacturers are not just dependent on transit buses because we're so small, they're producing engines for all these big rigs running all over the nation. And so when something doesn't work right, that's important to them. They spend a lot of money to fix it. We're just this little area and compressed natural gas and they kind of try to do some things, but they don't spend as much energy as they should. And as a result, it does cost us more to maintain them. Not that it's a reason not to go that way, obviously, but probably our maintenance budget has to accommodate that when we project out, yeah. It does. And many are optimistic. I know CARB was really optimistic that when you look at the life cycle of a bus, the overall maintenance of that is gonna be far less than a combustion engine because you won't have a combustion engine. Time will tell. There's not enough experience with electric buses to know that for sure. Any other questions or comments? Okay. Continue. Okay, sure. And kind of in the vein of what we were talking about with your agenda, I do wanna let you know that I've been elected to the CalAC Board by my peers across the state. CalAC, if you will, is a sort of a different version of CTA. CalAC tends to focus more on rural and small properties of which we are both, actually. And so the nice thing about CalAC is it brings some added focus to the small properties whereas CTA is dealing with small, medium, large and rail across the state. So CalAC is a great organization for us to belong to and I'm happy to be a part of that. In addition to that, as you know, I've been for a number of years a member of the Executive Committee of CTA. They've reelected my peers, have reelected me to that in the last month. And then our new chair of APTA, Norea Fernandez, who is the CEO of VTA over the Hill, has appointed me to the APTA Finance Committee. So just taking on some additional sort of national and local roles. Tell the public what APTA stands for. American Public Transportation Agency, I think it is association, thank you. See, you just get into the acronyms and abbreviations and you forget what they mean. So that's exciting. We'll continue, Santa Cruz will continue to be represented on state and national and local levels. And so I'm happy that you're allowing me to continue to do those kinds of things on behalf of our community. Just wrapping up some other minor items. As you know, I've kept you informed about the federal FY20 budget process. I brought a concern to you about the Rastankowski test that could result in funding for next year being reduced by 12%. That would be as much as a million dollar impact to us. That because the Highway Trust Fund can't prove that it's funded for five years looking forward. I'm happy to report that at least for now under the continuing resolution, they have agreed under Jones-McSally Amendment 1141 to set aside the Rastankowski for the continuing resolution. Now it still could come back and haunt us, but at least for now for the continuing resolution which goes through November, that risk is not there. So we have the continuing resolution, that continuing resolution expires. Let me just figure that out. November 21st, and we, sort of the talk in DC is that there'll be another continuing resolution because of everything going on in DC right now. As you well know, nobody is focused on the budget and certainly the president is not. And the president in usual fashion is trying to leverage whatever requires his signature into other things. And so there's some of that going on in the backdrop. The prevailing thought is that there'll probably be another continuing resolution taking us into mid-December and then maybe Congress and the president at that time will be ready to address the FY20 budget. So I'll keep you informed on that, but everything else is sort of status quo about the plus ups. There still has to be a reconciliation between the Senate and the House because their versions are slightly different, but both versions are good for us. And then finally, our representative, Panetta, reached out to us several months back wanting to do something in the electric bus area. And I talked to him at length about the high cost of electric buses versus the compressed natural buses that we buy today, $750,000 versus a million, that's pretty significant. He took a great deal of interest in that and he has written a bill. He's cleared this through the ways and means, by the way, but he's written a bill that would provide a 10% credit for purchasing zero emission buses. So that, if HVIP can get fully funded here in the state, there's a credit there. If this passes, there'll be a 10% credit. It begins to help us really bridge that gap between the cost of compressed natural gas and battery electric or even hydrogen fuel cell buses. So if you see Congressman Panetta, please give him a pat on the back. Thank you for his support. It's obviously, it still has to pass. It still has to get the president's signature, but that's exciting that he's putting that bill out. We have a formal letter from the board thanking him. I think we should. Can we do that by just consensus and not need a motion? I'll just take care of it, sure. And then finally, today is Barrow's last day with us. Barrow is retiring, I think, as you all know. It has been really good for us to have Barrow at this agency over the last, I think, four, four and a half years. He has brought with him an enormous background of experience from different properties, including the private sector over his career. And while here, you might recall that just as soon as he signed on the dotted line to come to work for us, we threw at him a pretty major structural deficit. And all the work that had to be done through a comprehensive operational analysis to guide us to a place that would hopefully keep the agency as intact as possible, keep as much of our service out there as possible, reduce the risk of potential layoffs. And he very smartly took us through that process. And as you know, that and a number of other things got us to a place where we zeroed out our structural deficit, decreased our service, I think somewhere in the range of 12%-ish, didn't lose as much ridership as we could have, did a really good job shepherding us through that. In addition to that, as you know, Barrow took us through our very first strategic business plan. You now have a strategic business plan, and he took us through that carefully. And adding a couple of other things that he has done, this agency didn't have a capital improvement plan. We sort of flew by the seat of our pants when it came to looking at how to invest capital. We now have a 10-year outlook that looks at what we need to do to stay in it, to get to a state of good repair and then stay in a state of good repair. And that is a very sizable challenge of over 200 million, but at least we have it down on paper now. And when we get capital money, like what we just did in the capital committee this last week, we go to that plan now and say, here's our highest priorities. This is where we should put the money. And the highest priorities have some thought behind them, as opposed to the way that the business used to be done. And then finally, we had never had a plan for the bus replacement. Remember, we talked about the 62 bus replacement plan. Barrow carefully took us through a process with his team members to identify, working with maintenance and a lot of other folks, what our needs are, how you plan for the replacement of equipment, what pieces need to be replaced, where does electric buses come into the equation? What number of buses do we need to rehabilitate and extend the life of the buses? And we now have a plan that lays all of that out and says, hey, if we follow this plan, even if we're not successful in state and federal grants, we should be at a place of a state of good repair somewhere around 2024. That's pretty remarkable. And we no longer talk about the 62 buses. Now it's under 30 buses in order to get to a state of good repair. So Barrow has done much for us in a very short period of time. And I hope you'll join with me in thanking him for all that he has done for this agency in his short time here. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chair, that concludes my remarks. Any questions for the team? Director Rothwell. I just want to add that I'm happy for Barrow and I'm sad for us. I have on a couple of occasions commented on how articulate his reports have been over the time that I've been on the Metro. And I applaud him for that, aside from the fact that the long list that you just gave of all of his accomplishments, his presentations I think have been outstanding. And I've always appreciated that. I'm sorry to see him leave, but I'm happy for him personally. Having retired myself, I know retirement is fun. Okay, I wish him the best. Comments, questions? Director McPherson. I can't overemphasize the value that Barrow has brought to this agency. In his tenure here, it's been remarkable. It's been not only a turnaround, but to give us a good, clear vision of where we are and where we need to go. And we needed his expertise to get us there. And also I want to say I can't overemphasize the value of our CEO, Mr. Clifford, being on the state and federal agencies, on some finance committees. The value of that, of being on state and federal agency and having a voice in the room that makes some nationwide, statewide decision is invaluable to this agency. So congratulations, and I'm really happy to see that we have that representation. Rock. Without repeating things people have said, I just want to emphasize the wonderful job that Barrow did for us when we were forced to downsize by 12%. And actually was originally looking at 25%. Became 12%, which Alex deserves some credit as well. But what Barrow was able to do was work with the public in that process. We don't have adequate data about exactly where people are going on our buses, which is one of the reasons the AVI system is something we're interested in investing in. And without really good data, he was still able to basically craft, lead the group effort of the staff to craft a plan that got us to a point that really had the pretty minimal impact given how substantial the cut in dollars was on the way the public gets around the county on our buses. And there are lots of tensions in that process. People want this and they want that and we don't have enough money to cover all of it. And his ability to work with the public and get back to them and respond. I've had so many positive comments from people who started off just angry. You know, you're taking my bus away or I'm going from one hour to two hour service or whatever it was, who when they went and talked to Barrow began to understand what we were up against and had to deal with it. And that is not an easy job. So in addition to the job he does internally for us and planning, his ability to work with the public and help them understand why we do what we do and how it works is really incomparable. It's just been excellent work for us. Dr. Lin. Well, Ditto to several things that have already been said and I too don't want to repeat, but just I you've you're leaving some big shoes to be filled and I appreciate the work. And even I've had the same thing where someone has been upset about a route that's not that's been cut or services that they feel should be provided. And I've been able to forward those complaints or concerns to Barrow and he's responded and also kept me in the loop. And I just really think there's so many things that we have to be thankful for his service to Metro and during some particularly difficult times. So I wanna add my thanks and amen to the things that have already been shared. So I won't go through that but I agree with everything that has been said. So and thank you, Alex too. I mean the partnership that two of you've had has been really beneficial for us and I'm sure it'll be a transition for you as well. So thank you. Dr. Nuska. I've only had the opportunity to work with Barrow for a little while, but I am always so excited to get the call from him, even when it's bad news. And I'm just very thankful for that calming personality that he has the characteristics that he brings. But in listening to that long list of things that you all have been able to accomplish and as a default have had to endure, I wanna thank those of you who have been able to serve for 20 and 35 and 15 years in this organization as you went through all of these changes and you make it seem so easy and you don't take it out on the rest of us which I'm always appreciative of. And just to know that this kind of work is going behind the scenes, it is just a great honor to be able to serve in any capacity with the Metro. And so I just want to, on behalf of Cabrillo, just thank you for your service, your commitment to the organization and for those of you who have served as the drivers and the mechanics and the employment agencies and all those things that you do, I just, I really appreciate knowing this and being able to represent Metro in that capacity. Any other comments? Dr. Matthews. Briefly, I came in on the Metro Board after the worst was over. I, the really, really tough couple of years which was Barrow's trial by fire. So it's hard for me to appreciate probably how radically things have changed but even coming in where I have, it's really important to me, whether it's Metro or City Council or any of our other agencies that we serve on, having some kind of a roadmap for the future. And we all know that things will evolve for a whole lot of reasons but to have some sense of what priorities and conditions are and trends going into the future is just so essential. So I really appreciate that we've got that in place in a whole lot of different ways and it gives a lot more assurance that we have some sense of where we need to be going. So thank you. Great, any other comments? Mr. Gonzales. I'm just gonna keep my real quick. I just met Mr. Barrow this year. So thank you for helping me out with a mural. I was really hoping to have it done for you before you left but it will be completed this year. Thanks. Okay, I get the last word. So I pretty much started with Barrow and so all I've ever known is Barrow being in that position and I think what strikes me about this organization, this Metro family as I was told when I started was in this organization, there's just certain people that you just go to when you need something and there's a lot of you. Okay, there's a lot of you. So I mean, right now we're focusing on Barrow but I mean, I think even with the bus drivers, you know that there's, you know, if you've got a problem, there's one guy you go talk to there's a guy that always is even keeled or will motivate you or make you feel better about what to do. And I know that for me, in this organization, there's whether it's, it's kind of like in a family, there's a big brother, big sister. There's always a couple of people that I knew that if I had a problem or a question I could call and they would not make me feel like I didn't know anything, they would help me along. And Barrow, you're one of those guys. Okay, I know that we struggled. Everybody mentioned everything we went through. And I think the most important thing of all the things you accomplished was as Mike touched on is that, you know, when we got the feedback from citizens groups that you would go meet with, there's always a positive thing. And that's hard to do. It's hard from this side to go out there to convey what you want to do and have it well received. And whatever ability you had to, you know, whether it's a great listener or a diplomat or whatever it was, you made it work. So I want to thank you for how you dealt with the public and I think that's your biggest tribute. So for all of us, just one more round of applause for Barrow. Thank you. Okay, we're going to go to item 13. Gives. This is, Barrow, we're going to talk about you some more. He's leaving, but he's not leaving. Yeah, it's consideration of authorizing. The temporary appointment of Barrow is a special planning development director of Mr. Clifford. I'm sorry, I did it again. Let's go, we're going to go back on public comment on the CEO's report, because there was a lot of things that were in that report. New technology and we are often presented with an image of something new is great or this technology is great. And when the evidence shows otherwise that it's toxic, I mean, do you remember nuclear power plants advertised as safe, clean, so cheap you couldn't monitor the cost? Look what we've got now. Microwave radiation technology, this new technology, is biologically harmful. You do not have an informed consent from everyone getting on the bus and all the bus drivers that they are exposed 24-7 to wireless microwave radiation from various sources from the bus company. I'm sorry and there's secondhand radiation like secondhand smoke. I'm so old that I remember when there was smoking everywhere in vehicles in the stores and it's a similar toxic thing. So I've spoken to Mr. Clifford from at earlier presentation, this disregard of the facts and the damage being caused while patting on the back is appalling to me. And I do know at least of one bus driver who has been impacted and is very worried about this new automatic vehicle location and she has a detection meter. So do any of you ride the bus? I mean, I ride the bus but I'm trying to avoid it because it's a painful microwave experience. So I'm sorry, you wanted feedback? It says right in here in the headways and here are some of the ads for these toxic cell phones to use. We need real health and we need truth and we need harm to be removed. So I'm sorry, that's my view, very, very discouraging. Thank you. Thank you. Monica McGuire again. I really ask that you take heed to this woman's health that you have watched degrade if you watched her over the years. She's jokes about being elderly but she actually is not that old. We are all prematurely aging from the enormous toxins in our environment and EMFs are in that category, there is no doubt. It really is something that a lot of people say Marilyn goes everywhere and we really need to acknowledge her as a heroine going everywhere to repeat something that is an important cry for everyone's health. It is something that's been marginalized far too long. It's been lied about far too long. We've been told it is questionable whether these electromagnetic frequencies are harmful to us. There are more 27 year olds with diseases and problems that usually hit people at 55 or later than ever before in history by far, so to far long shot, you can look up the statistics, we can help, I'd be happy to give you the statistics as my husband continues to do these presentations because it's very real and being misled for decades has harmed us. The number of people not able to conceive or birth children has risen dramatically. All of this is very much a part of the electromagnetic frequency story. Marilyn's been right all along. Single voices are often misunderstood or not attended to. Another piece in the CEO report that I was curious about because I've heard from a number of people over the years in Santa Cruz is that the compressed natural gas is delivered via fossil fuel vehicles. Is that still correct? It is. So and apparently from the area of Michigan, it comes at an extreme distance to get here. So that's very bothersome and I understand that that might not have been clear when you all voted on that, but that we are still using compressed natural gas which is polluting the environment by the way that it gets delivered here is very disturbing and most people don't know that as far as I've asked since I first learned it years ago. There are many, many things that are important to acknowledge. This is difficult, these kinds of decisions. But again, the pieces that I understand having looked into pod cars from the time that I got here and a number of other really great ideas, the transit corridor being used for small electric vehicles so that you don't have the problem of too large a vehicle in the extreme expense and the ability to have them come and go and have anybody use that transit corridor immediately is such an obvious, better choice to those of us with just the common sense questions. You need to wrap up, please. I hear you, I thank you. I just ask that you really address all of these more for us. Thank you. Thank you. And otherwise I understand and appreciate it's not easy work. I just appreciate that you're hearing us. Thank you. Jessica Evans again. I also wanted to appreciate Barrow. He came and spoke with the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation with some other staff members and it was really wonderful to have those gentlemen come and speak to us. Really appreciated getting to have that insight and also appreciate the presentation from Mr. Clifford today. And I wanted to ask, I saw in the agenda I was looking for the materials related to his presentation. I saw that it was marked as an oral presentation only. I'm not that fast of a note taker. And so I was looking for that presentation when I probably should have been taking notes. And so I would request from Mr. Clifford going forward, please, or even today, if there's any possibility that those, that your presentation notes could be made available as a appendix or whatever to make those available to the public because we are interested. We are engaged. We are excited about the possibility of hydrogen electric vehicles. I'm hoping that there will be a demonstration of a little rail vehicle that's a hydrogen electric that has a 20-hour service life. I'm hoping maybe in the spring that'll happen. I know that the RTC is considering that. I know that that technology is evolving rapidly and that it doesn't necessarily have to come from carbon fuel sources. I mean, you can use electricity to make hydrogen and then you can fill that hydrogen tank and use that hydrogen to fuel your electric motor and recharge your battery on your vehicle. So there's possibilities for vehicles that wouldn't require the transportation of carbon fuel, which we know you've got to get the fuel there somehow. So yeah, just those are my comments. We're excited about, I'm excited about this technology. And I really would like to have access to those notes. Thank you. Let me also remind you that we are covered by Community Television, and they archive the videos that they show so that you could watch it again, take notes at that point, and at least for this today's meeting. And did those go on the internet? Or do I have to figure out when it's going to be aired? You'd have to ask them. I'm not sure how they do it currently. But I do know that you can go and access those. Somehow. There's a way to get them. I've done it. I just don't remember how it was I got. Going back a year to look at a meeting and watch it again, you can do that. OK, thank you so much. Thank you. Any comments from the public? Morning. Good morning, Brandon. So just real quick on Barrow, we have very much enjoyed working with Barrow all the way through. I personally very much appreciate his demeanor and everything that he brings to the table and rolling it into your next topic. Anything that keeps Barrow here even a minute longer, we strongly endorse. Thank you. With that, we'll go ahead and close the public comment and go on to item 13. Mr. Clifford. Mr. Chair, Directors, I'll tag team with our counsel on this one. Just in brief, we thought we had the best laid plans. Barrow gave us plenty of notice on when he was going to be retiring. We initiated a new recruitment process using a search firm nationwide search. Well, early in the process, had a number of candidates to interview. Here I sit today, I have not found a replacement for Barrow. And as you know, that's a difficult thing to do anyway. We are interviewing again today. We will see how that turns out. We may interview again after the new year if that doesn't turn out. But either way, we could use Barrow for succession planning. And once we get his replacement to board, we'd like to have him come back and help to transfer knowledge as much as possible over a relatively short period of time. That's the purpose of this item. And I think Julie's going to tell you about the legal parts of it. So Barrow will be a retired annuitant. Under PERS rules, there's a 180 day waiting period for him to be employed again by a PERS public agency. However, there is an exception when you have a particular expertise that an agency needs for a short period of time. But in order to utilize that exception, the board has to make certain findings. It's all spelled out in statutes. The language that you have in your resolution is basically taken right from those statutes. It has to be exactly worded the way that we have it. And if you have any questions about that, I might be to answer those. Any questions? No, go ahead. And it's not about the wording. Defer to you on that. But is the plan just to roll over? Are you taking a trip? I mean, I'm just curious kind of functionally what's going on. Yeah, so Barrow would, in theory, be available to us sometime after the new year. He has some obvious travel plans. That was an innocent question. Yes, sometime after the new year, we have a slot there where it looks like it would be available. Any other questions? Anyone from the public like to weigh in on this item? Seeing none, I bring it back for action. Move approval of recommendation. Motion by Rodkin. Second was? Second. Second by Gonzalez. There's a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. So we'll see you soon, Barrow. You can't get away with it. All right, it takes us to item 15. Don't bait that hook yet, you know? Approve recommendation, approve revisions of the bylaw of Santa Cruz Metro District Board of Directors, our attorney, Julie. Yes, and if you'd like, you can do 15 and 16 together. I would like. Great. So you may recall, we amended the district's enabling legislation, pursuant to Assembly Bill 1089, which will be effective January 1st. So we're a little bit ahead of where we would, normally would have done this in December, but since we thought we wouldn't have a meeting, I got it ready for today. However, I'd made clear that they're effective. You know, the changes will be effective January 1st, 2020. So the bylaw changes are basically that those clarifications that, you know, when your existing term ends at your appointing agency, you can remain on this board. You remember we've had some issues where we had some vacancies because the next appointment hadn't come through yet. So we have solved that issue. And then there's also a clarification made about board member compensation. You have the ability to increase compensation. No one has indicated you wanna do that. You're sticking with what you have today, but the legislature has allowed you to change that if you'd like. That's basically the changes to the bylaws. I also just made a minor change that, you know, in your bylaws, you state you meet the 4th Friday and I just put a sentence in there that you can change that if you like by resolution. I didn't know what was gonna happen earlier in the meeting. That way you won't have to amend your bylaws if you decide you wanna change your meetings. That's it for the bylaws. Any questions on the bylaws? Questions? Dr. Rodkin. This pertains actually to both of these items. Is there some reason we have to have both the clean copy and the red line? Cause I can't imagine anybody does anything other than read the red line, which shows you what the changes are. Otherwise you're reading through like, you know, 30 pages and you're not sure what's new or different matters. There's no legal reason. Well, then we shouldn't do that because they're, you know, we're filling up a book here with like 50 pages of duplicated stuff that doesn't, and I can't imagine anybody wants to read the clean one without looking at the red lines. I would keep the red line and get rid of the other one. Up to you guys. Yeah, and I don't know, Director Leopold. So maybe people can add that to whatever other motion we have. He has had some statements in the past where he has wanted to see the red line in addition to the clean version. I don't know if he would be happy if he just had the red line, but staff could check with him. I would hold off on that. It seems simple on the surface, but if we did something that went against somebody who has a habit, I don't see that as critical to do right now. It's a great suggestion. I wouldn't have a problem, but maybe a staff can check with Director Leopold and see if there's a problem with that. Does anyone else have a problem with that? Not a problem, but what if? What if we just had a copy available to, I mean, if one person wants to have both or if there's a copy available, if someone wants to see both rather than printing all of those? I think we're trying to commit to saving a tree. So I appreciate the recommendation. Why don't you check with Director Leopold and if that is not an issue, do you don't need a direction from us? No one else has a concern with that? Okay, so follow up on that. Okay, so the next item is also related to AB 1089 and what we wanted to do for Metro's contracts and procurement department was bring your procurement rules sort of up to modern times. You know, you actually never changed your enabling legislation since it was adopted by the legislature, so it was kind of fun for me to be able to look at it and look at my other clients and see what they have and see what would benefit Metro. And one thing all of my clients have other than Metro previously is the ability to use best value legislation for when you're buying stuff. And it's sort of this antiquated rule that you have to go with the low bidder and it has to do with government corruption and graft and stuff going back to the 19th century. And nowadays, it's just a different procurement environment you just don't want to pay low bid for every type of thing that you buy because there might be services in the procurement mixed in, there's technology. You don't always want to pay the lowest price. You're not getting the best thing all the time if you pay the lowest price. So anyway, long story short, you now have best value legislation. If it's the type of thing that really should be low bid, then procurement staff will still be doing low bid. You know, so it's not a way to game it. You know, if you're buying something that's, it's a widget, a widget is a widget is a widget, you want the lowest price. But if there's some more complex type of arrangement, procurement, now they have the flexibility. So I think they're gonna really appreciate that. Otherwise, I just updated, you know, position titles and things that were outdated. Clean up. Yep. Okay, any questions? Any questions from the public on this topic? I'm either one of these two topics. Good morning, Joan. I just want to say that I'm thankful to Julie for making these updates to the procurement policy. I think it'll be very helpful streamline things a bit for us and give us more flexibility. So thank you. One thing I just would suggest is not updating the title for purchasing and special projects director because... Sorry, didn't hear the last thing you were saying. Purchasing manager in this version is being updated to purchasing and special projects director. I don't think we should make that update because now we are reverting back to that purchasing manager title. That's a good comment. I got a thumbs up over there, Julie. Yeah, so that whole thing came out after I'd already made these changes. That was the late additions to your... So we'll go back to the original for that position title. Both of you are clear on that. And so whatever we recommend is okay, great. So anybody else from the public? I'll bring it back for a motion. Approval? Second. I'll just use approval and motion and McPherson with a second to include the language that was just mutually agreed upon. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Those two motions carry unanimously. That was for 15 and 16, just so we're all clear. Okay, this takes us to item 17, consideration of changes to the reserve fund policy. Angela. Morning. So this is an item that went to the finance committee last week. What we're asking for here is to make some administrative changes, and also to change one of our revenue buckets of operations sustainability reserve target from two months to three months. Right now, all of our reserves are fully funded. There's not a single bucket that is not full. If you do change this from two months to three months, that makes that balance to be about $3.7 million that we're going to gradually put money into. I'm not asking for it to be put in directly today, or anytime in the next few months, but it's going to be gradually put in like we have with the rest of the reserves. If you want me to walk through the policy, I can. The changed pages are 17.5. That's where you see the administrative pieces. And then within the attachments, it's on 17A pages two through four. Okay, any questions for Angela? Looks good. Thank you. It's another place where I look at the red line only. I was going to advocate for both, and let me tell you why. Okay. This is a public document where everybody, including our staff, has an ability to go back to and find the policy at any time. So if you put the red line in, that's great, it shows you the changes. But if you had the one that's not red line, they also have the opportunity for the actual policy. So that's my two cents on that one. All right, I'm sorry, I didn't follow it. What would be the problem with us all getting in the 50 people that get packets and having just the red line and when we're done, we produce a clean copy, obviously. No issue. That's still under consideration based on feedback, polls issues or whatever is still out there. Commissioner Cochran, go ahead. Yes. With the addition to go from the two to the three months, what are you looking at in terms of a timeline to fill that bucket for that extra month? That's up to the board. What we normally do is we go through our process of year-end closeout. So every year we come to you and show you what our reserves buckets are looking at. And we also talk about the carryover. We had a discussion about the carryover funds that Barrow presented to the Finance Committee and also to the Capital Committee about what we wanted to do with the carryovers for 2019. And we have now dedicated those to additional projects. So that would be, when you have carryover, you have a plethora of things that you could use it on because it's called, you know, there's no strings to that money. You can use it for anything, capital as well as operating. So this would be one thing, one of the buckets that money could go into. You can fund a capital project. You can fund ongoing operating expenses. You can fund any expense that we need or liability that we need to pay down. Would those generally be one-time funds? They are always one-time funds. They are never reoccurring. Thank you. Any other questions? Anybody from the public like to weigh in on item 17? Seeing none, I'll bring it back for action. Move approval. I'll second the motion. Motion by Rodkin, second by Kaufman Gomez. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. It takes us to item 18. Angela, stay there. Consideration accepting finance budget and audits recommendations regarding pension, UAL and OPEBS. Go ahead. So back in May of 19, we came to you and gave you a thorough presentation on our two liabilities that we have for retirement. The first one is our pension liability, which is the retirement pension piece. And then the second one is what we call the OPEB, but in layman terms, it's retiring medical expense. And so I went through a presentation. I'm happy to do that today if you'd like, but in the essence of time here, if you want to just see what I have in the report here, we basically have a $62 million pension liability right now that account does accrue interest. We are making additional payments to that every year now. We used to make it every month. Now we make it once a year towards that unfunded liability. We saved about $150,000 this year by doing that. If we continue to do that, we will make some progress towards it, but we do need to make more progress towards it. The second one that we have is the retiree medical piece. That is about $114,000. That's one that we, it's a true liability. Just like we have a mortgage outstanding for about $114,000. Million, right? Million, sorry, $114 million. Making sure. I said that for the record. It's $114 million. A little difference. Absolutely. So we do have to come up with a plan to pay that off. The $62 million towards the pension, we don't want to pay off. We want to pay it down to about 80%, because that's something that fluctuates with who our retirees are, how old they are, when they retire, how long they live. There's all kinds of things that go into that. So my recommendation for the board today and that we presented to the finance committee is number one, we have the $2 million that we've already budgeted into our 2020 budget right now. So that $2 million is sitting there right now waiting for us to do something with at the end of the fiscal year. By the time we get to the end of the fiscal year in about seven, eight months, what I would like to have in place is an actuarial who has gone through our pension costs and our retiree medical costs along with who our current employees are, who our retirees are, which by the way, we have more retirees than we have employees right now, and come up with a plan on how we can completely pay off our OPEB or our retiree medical liability and then make progress towards paying down our retiree pension liability. In addition to just the actuarial going through its process, we also want to set off to the side here something called an irrevocable trust. And what that irrevocable trust does is it's board action that says we're gonna put X amount of dollars into this every month, every year, whenever. There can be all kinds of different timelines to put money into this. And then that money accrues interest for us, and then we make pay. We only have to have this address. It's a big elephant in the room, so thank you for that. How annually or how frequently, I'm sure it's maybe just once a year that we're hearing from the CalPERS on what their rate of return is. When do those reports come in? And maybe in summary, in the process of doing this, that we could just see what they came in versus what their, I mean, 7% is their goal number, but I don't know how far off they really are because I don't know how realistic that rate of return is and when do we get the reports from them on that? I'm not clear on exactly what you're asking for. Are you asking for what our actual rate will be going forward as we get that every year? Are you asking how much CalPERS thinks they're getting as a return on their investments? Well, I believe that their goal is 7% on the return, and I don't know how realistic that is because based on that is how much our debt is that we are obligated to pay in. So there's some reports that they provide us with, and maybe that could be summarized in some way when we go and do this process and see how much of an impact it's had on what debt we have to be paying in because they're not doing as well or performing as well or maybe they're performing better than anticipated. I don't know where to gauge where we're going with this particular debt on how it's increasing and how we're managing it. We can put that into the report when we come back with the actual rate. That'll be good. Historically, CalPERS has not had real reliable information on how they invest. Exactly, but something, at least a benchmark of some sort, I haven't been pleased with their side of reporting and transparency anyway, but we know we need to be and making sure that we're committing to the promise that we've made with all of our employees, and this is the hindsight. They're no longer providing a service to us, but we are still obligated quite some time out after they've retired and want to make sure that that money is available to them for those resources. Okay, any other questions? Anybody from the public like to what information? Is this when PERS annually reports is that what you're looking at? So, Christina, one of my staff that put all this information together, she just provided me with something for fiscal year 19, which was this past year. Their guesstimate at that time, return on investment was 6.7 for CalPERS. As close as they've ever gotten. And still once a year on a regular basis, don't they send out a report once a year? Once a year, yeah. Okay. All right, well, seven percent is close. All right, thank you. Anybody from the public like to weigh in on this? Seeing that, I'll bring it back for action. Approval? Approval by the director Matthews. I'll second the motion. Second by Kaufman Gomez. All in favor? Aye. Oppose? That motion carries unanimously. Takes us to item 20. Pacific Station, oral update. Barrow Emerson, as you walk to the podium, this is probably gonna be the last presentation you'll ever make. So, we're gonna expect miraculous composure here. Composure. Real quickly on this item as I reported to both capital and finance. Three points. First of all, thank you very much for your approval of item nine dash nine. That's a real personal feeling of accomplishment for Alex and I to have climbed out of the hole. You heard the speech and I'm not making it here at the last two committees. From where we were four years ago to being able to allocate a few million dollars to projects that have been at the top of that list for four years. So, thank you very much for that. So, Pacific Station update. Number one, that four million dollar commitment is now real. Number two, we are reviewing a draft MU created, developed by city staff in conjunction with us. There'll be a little negotiation back and forth as there always is. But the big picture, February 2021, about 14 months from now, together, city, metro, and a private development partner will submit an application to the state of California for probably 10 to 15 million dollars to make the dream happen. So, we're on a path now and we really thank you for today. So, that's my update on Pacific Station. Happy to take any questions, but however I would like to beg the chair's short indulgence for three quick comments. Absolutely. Shorter than I usually do. You can have more than three quick comments. I'm not gonna overdo it. Okay. But as always, Dan, you're making my mother's smile somewhere. So, thank you for that. But 42 years ago on January 3rd, we started as an intern at the city of Long Beach. 42 years and 14 jobs. This has been remarkably rewarding. So, I just have two other comments. I really wanna thank Alex for trusting me with the responsibility of helping metro along its journey. Thank you. To everyone else, the board and all my staff, peers, I'd just like to say I'm happy to have been able to help. So, thanks a lot. Thank you. Yeah. So, there were no questions on Pacific Station. I assume there was a question. Yeah, my only question is, do we know whether we failed the governor veto to bill that would have given the city of Santa Cruz back its redevelopment money we've sort of been holding onto since they closed the redevelopment process in California. Is there any hope left that we could still get? Cause that money could be part of this project or is that over from what you understand? That is not a nail in the coffin of affordable housing in the city of Santa Cruz. We're building our affordable housing trust fund. Bonnie wrote us a memo, cause this question has also come up on the library mixed use project. Has that killed everything? All of our projects in the pipeline. So, I could get a comment from her if you'd like and just have it shared with the rest of the board. Does that sync up with what you were saying? Yes, it does. The good news, not the good news about that topic, but the good news in all the early proformas that Bonnie economic development director at the city and our team have been putting together, never counted on that money. So the concept has put together now as a combination of four or five streams of money, including Metro's capital money, but that was never assumed. But as we've all noted, we can't put enough pieces to get to the potential price tag, which is only conceptual now. So if that were ever to come back into play, it would help and it would make our application look better, but so far, it was not including that. Any other questions? Anyone from the public like to comment on Pacific Station? Okay, there's no action necessary there. It's just a presentation. So takes us to item 21, which is a resolution celebrating Perakoo's 15th anniversary. Mr. Clifford. Mr. Jared. I'm sorry, Angela's waving. Yeah. Oh, I'm telling you to correct. I got my know you're 28. It's right, Alex, hold on. This is the two items consideration. This is going back to, what do you mean, 14, 9.14, 9.15. Consideration, approving authorization of a funding manager position and authorization of funding a project manager, Angela. Oh, what, you want me to go through them? Did you want me to answer questions? Well, it was pulled to be an open item. So if there's a presentation, I would say go ahead and make your presentation on what you're doing and then that might answer the questions right there. So if we take these both together. So as you all know, Erin left the end of August and I was given the task of taking over purchasing. And so now I- Lower the mic a little bit. I spent the month of September reviewing the purchasing department and the project management pieces of the purchasing department as well as the parts piece of the purchasing department. And through that month of evaluation, I figured out that we actually need a separate purchasing manager for purchasing in the parts area and a separate project manager to do the project management of the agency. It's not just purchasing, it's of the agency. In the course of doing all this, we brought in a temporary purchasing manager. She's awesome. And she's been keeping these RFPs and IFPs going and keeping the agency going down the path along with Julie to purchase things as we need. On the project management side, as we dug into it, I always had a feeling in the back of my head that we had a ton of projects out there that we just weren't getting our heads around. And we came up with, think about 19 pages worth of projects over the past month of things that we have money for in the capital budget. We, as of today, have more money to fund projects that we had outstanding there from the carryover money and some of the other grant money. And then we also have some ongoing projects that we are waiting on grant funding like the buses and things like that, that we never had someone who was in charge of making sure that everybody knew what was going on with the projects, making sure all the meetings happened with the vendors and with purchasing and with all the department heads that were responsible for all that. So this project manager job is a full-time job. I used to be a project manager many, many years ago. And it's a full-time job. You are working with everybody in the whole agency and that's what this position will be doing. But we also need a project, a purchasing manager. On the monetary side, we had a purchasing and special projects director. So I have that pot of money. We also had a provisional administrative specialist I think was the title in the purchasing area. I'm taking those two positions and using that money plus a little bit more that I know I got savings within purchasing already to pay for these two positions. So I'm taking two positions and I'm keeping two. Yeah, I mean, this makes sense. Thank you. I think one of the reasons I wanted to ask about it is just thinking about some of the city operations. That's my frame of reference. For many, many projects, there's an internal project manager in one department or the other. But sometimes a project is so big that we retain an external independent project manager. So some of the things I think that the Metro has in its future may be of that level. So I guess the simple question is, do you anticipate that there would be occasions when a separate project manager would be needed for a great big project? It's just that balance. Internal or external? Are you talking about an external one? Yeah. So we do use external ones now. I'll give you an example of the buses, the electric bus project that we have going on right now. So we're working with outside project CTE. And our internal project manager is the person that's coordinating all the meetings between the outside vendor, project manager, and the buses, and Ciro, and Freddie, and Eddie, and everybody else within Metro to keep that project going as well as the purchasing side, the finance side. This is a person that's going to make sure everybody comes together, knows what the schedule is, knows where the project stands, the status, the money, timeline, the whole nine yards. And in my experience, often the project manager for a big project is the interface between the architect and the contractor, or the designer and contractor, and I was really pleased we're going to the best value. That may solve some of that problem, but I guess my main concern was that the sole responsibility for some of the larger, more complex projects wouldn't fall exclusively on one person. The coordination of that, that person is not going to know the construction of a building or the maintenance, how to put fire egress together, but that person's going to get all the right people in the room and working together to make that project happen. That's what this project manager will be doing. Directors, just as a quick point of reference, you might recall in the GDK-SUSA facility we brought in Hill International. So we envision there will be projects in our future where we'll bring in something like that. We would still need somebody internally, sort of in a contract management role to oversee them. I'm sure that we're getting what we pay for. Any other questions? Anybody from the public like to weigh in on these two positions? I'll bring it back before we do it. I just want to say I know that we had a recent a capital meeting just a couple of days ago, and I know that we put a lot of money into contingency, another big project. So I think the timing of this is probably going to work out that this person will probably be put to immediate use as a project manager. So I think this is a good thing. So with that, I'm looking for a motion. Move approval. Motion by Rodkin, second by Matthews. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Angela. Okay, now we're back to item 21, which is a resolution celebrating Paracruze 15th anniversary, Mr. Clifford. I'm going to punt to Daniel from Paracruze. Okay. Well, thank you for the resolution. You know, November 1st, 2004, that was our first day of service, and I was lucky enough to be there. It was an exciting day for everybody, but we were nervous. We wanted to provide the best service possible, but we were committed and motivated because we knew we were a part of something that was going to change people's lives. It was going to give, you know, the senior and disabled community the independence to travel to wherever they wanted, not just doctor's appointments, but they would be able to go to school, to work, to the movies, to restaurants, to church, anything they wanted to do. So, we knew we were a part of that, and we were happy to do it, and we were really motivated to do it. And a lot has changed in 15 years, you know. When I was a driver, we carried a map in our back pocket to find locations. We worked off of a paper schedule, and we had a pen filling out all our schedules. Now we have GPSs. We have mobile data computers in the vans. We have cameras. Soon, we're going to have automated scheduling and dispatching software. So a lot has changed, but the one thing that hasn't changed in all these years is a commitment to provide the best service possible to the community so people can continue to live independent lives. So, on behalf of everybody at Paracruz, I want to thank you for having this resolution to celebrate the 15 years of Paracruz. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. I just want to read the other comment here. It says, be it resolved by the board of directors of Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District, the board of directors hereby celebrates the 15th anniversary of Paracruz and recognizes the compliments of the Paracruz staff in reaffirming the principles of equity and inclusion in their performance of the highest levels of accessible services for our customers. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. Thank you. And anybody from the public like to comment on this? Any none? I'll bring it back. Motion by Rodkin. Second. Second by McPherson. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries unanimously. And with that brings us to the announcement of our next meeting, which now will be January 24th, 2020 at the Metro offices on Vernon Street. And with that, we are adjourned. Thank you.