probably the most important thing for everyone to think about is that when Ambeg comes up, given recent legislation, our municipalities are going to be required to build a lot more housing unlike the last rena cycle. This is your chance to get ahead of it and to put in the rail because it's not just about transporting the current people that live here. There's going to be a lot more people living here and you want to get them on the rail as much as possible and away from cars. This is your chance to be the leaders and for people to be so delighted that you approved it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Kelly. Mr. Bud Colligan, then Brynn. Can I recognize Mr. Bud Colligan? Mr. Bud Colligan. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, yes. Many people promoting a train mentioned social equity. So I want to talk about it a little bit. Nine of the 11 proposed train stations and 88% of the ridership are in North and Mid County. Study after study show that affluent residents ride trains. The average rider of the smart trains earns $97,000 per year. A regressive sales tax will pay for the train. So low-income residents will pay a disproportionate share. Bears will be unaffordable for low-income residents. Three times bus fares. The Watsonville train station is not near most residents of Watsonville. The stations in North and Mid County aren't near the major employers. All of the above is why ridership is forecasted to be so low. And the train plan will ensure that there is no trail providing safe beach access to residents of Watsonville. Let's get real. You spent 10 years pursuing something that is infeasible, unbuildable, and unfundable. Please vote no on the TCA business plan. And then David Dait. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good afternoon now. Thank you very much. I am also urging you to vote no on the business proposal. It's worth looking very closely the two most widely cited examples for Santa Cruz County, Sprinter in San Diego and Smart in Sonoma. They too had plans that grants would cover capital costs and that ridership would cover a large portion of operational costs. According to the US Department of Transportation, Sprinter came in more than 50% over on cost estimates and is massively underperforming on ridership. Smart is a financial catastrophe. It requiring a local tax addition of just two years off the start of operations, a tax initiative that failed. Voters turned against it. Santa Cruz County is noted has a much lower population density. And my question is what makes this RTC think they can avoid these catastrophic mistakes of this example cited most widely for us? And then finally, I just wanna point out that the plan has this P3 proposal private partnership. That's a financing, not a funding proposal with a very poor track record in most of California that I urge you to also look at. David Date, then Rebecca Donning. Chair recognizes David Date. Hello commissioners, my name is David Date. I'm calling on behalf of my friend Ted Love who died two months ago in a bike accident right in front of Seascape. You know, we had Steven Woodside call. This is the second time I've heard his public comment against the train proposal. And he's one of the leading experts in implementing and planning rail in the country. If this commission listened to the experts and rail banked this trail and realized that this is financially infeasible, there's little doubt in my life that Ted would be alive today. I'm incredibly infuriated about this and shame on all of you for letting this persist as long as it has. We need a trail now. Rebecca Donning, then Keith Otto. They're recognized as Rebecca Donning. Good morning commissioners. You can hear me? Yes. Great. My name's Rebecca Donning. I live in C-Cliff. I ask you to follow the goals of AMBAG to learn where we all wanna go and how we wanna get there and then build that system before committing to rail. I urge the commission to accept this business plan and use it only after maximizing our existing infrastructure through equitable investing in a robust and expanded MetroBus network, a connected county-wide system of bike paths and trails and installation of long neglected pedestrian safety measures. So we may realistically choose to leave our cars at home. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Donning. Keith Otto, then Enda Brennan. Chair Organizers, Mr. Keith Otto. Can you hear me now? Yes, Mr. Otto. Soundcheck, can you hear me now? Yes. Oh, thank you. So a train is not a fit for Santa Cruz County. Consider county public works during a discussion of local road maintenance issues. Told the commission, let's take care of what we already have rather than create new stuff that we're not sure how we're gonna fund. SC Metro is projecting budget deficits in the coming years. Nine months ago, one commissioner told the public that passenger rail is funded by Measure D, which of course is not the case. I hope you all read the Lookout Santa Cruz article last week, RTC director describes the local sales tax or equivalent needed to fund a train. So the ask today is for $17 million. That may seem okay, but let's look ahead at what's coming. If we continue with the train, we'll be in way over our heads financially. Look at SMART, look at California High Speed Rail. It is not free. Let's be good stewards of public funds. Please vote no on this business plan. And I'll add, I find this very limited public and commission discussion to be a disgrace. Thank you, Mr. Otto. And Brennan, then Jeremiah Daniels. Can you hear me? Yes. I'm a 33 year resident of Santa Cruz County and also started off supporting the initial acquisition of the right of way many years ago. I currently serve as the city of Santa Cruz a downtown commissioner, one of the missioners and I'm also a county wide commissioner on the seniors commission. If William Praxmire was still around, this proposal for this rail trail would be a prime candidate for the Golden Police Award, which some of us may remember. One of the awards was given to a study that spent $103,000 deciding whether sunfish acted more aggressively after drinking tequila or whether they acted more aggressively drinking after gin. And I think that I don't know what the results of that study were, but I do know we can spend a ton of money and go nowhere with this project. Please reject it. Thank you, Mr. Jeremiah Daniels, then Josh Stevens. Chair, I recognize Jeremiah Daniels. Thank you commissioners. I'm a 13 year resident and I plan to live here for much longer. Asking about breaking even on public benefit initiative indicates a real gross misunderstanding of what your role is and how civilization works. We invest in community for a non-monetary reward investing in equitable and accessible transit is breaking even moving forward with responsible public transportation options to address greenhouse gas emissions is breaking even connecting our segregated county is breaking even. Equitable is more than just a dollar issue. The trail is already being built and I used it regularly. It's wonderful. Thank you so much for that progress. All of the public commentators saying otherwise either you're not paying attention or you're intentionally being misleading. The current metro system will be greatly improved by creating a network of options, including rail. Most places in the world have one rail and the bridges will need to have worked on them regardless. So moving forward is really the only way to do it. I urge you to accept the business plan that has been supported by the Sierra Club of Harrow Valley Climate Action, Caltrans, Roaring Camp, Ecology Action and many, many others. Thank you, Mr. Daniels. Josh Stevens, Deb Bennett, Williamson. Chair Organisms, Josh Stephensons. Josh, you're on mute but there you go. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay, so the TIGM partnership is public private. We have precedent for doing this. Look at Brightline and their service in Florida. Look at their expansions from Southern California to Vegas. There should be no objections to us giving such a prospect the shot. Santa Cruz's tourist base, housing keeps building up. Our streets will not be able to handle this. Our local transit has failed to accommodate these needs, little service in Capitola State and local parks where both visit. No matter where we go, I urge commissioners to consider tourism transit to our parks and recreational locations, regional basis and a yes vote on this plan you have in front of me today. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Stevens. Bennett Williamson, then Barry Scott. Chair Organisms, Bennett Williamson. Thank you commissioners for your leadership on this. And I'm calling today in support of this plan and urging you to vote yes on accepting this. I wanna echo what Kyle Kelly said. I think this is a really intrinsic connection to housing in our area, which we know is the status quo is not gonna work. And this is really a fantastic opportunity to make a system that is really gonna benefit BIPOC and working class communities, especially in South County who we have not heard a lot from. So I do want you to keep those communities in mind and thank you for your service. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Barry Scott, then William Manchin. Chair Organisms, Mr. Barry Scott. Wow, thank you. You know, the business plan includes a lot of goodness we didn't see in earlier plans. New, lighter and more affordable technologies are described in alternative funding plans like a public-private partnership R2. And wow, TAMC and the Coastal Commission, CalTrans Ecology Action, and others have explicitly endorsed this business plan. Our RTC should follow that leadership and continue the process of identifying opportunities. That's all this is. Not a commitment to build. Let's remember that the rail line will work with Metro to create a network that will serve thousands more people than Metro alone and serve South County with greater equity while connecting to the regional and state network. To any commissioners who are considering a no vote because concerns around costs and ridership, if we want to authentically confirm or dispel concerns around these issues, the business plan will provide the information needed to find out with certainty, vote yes to getting the answers, vote yes to this business plan. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. William and Sheen, then Gina Cole. Yes, I'd like to urge a no vote to the TCAA business plan. I think the plan should be mothballed and I believe that you should take the $17 million that would be otherwise spent on the first phase and pay back the 1.16, proposition 1.16 funds and end that discussion once and for all and pursue essentially a policy that is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You need to apply the 80-20 rule and look at where the options, where the possibilities are for reducing dramatically greenhouse gas emissions within the county and that's by addressing all of the connectors along the freeway corridor that are currently the places where people go today. Carrillo, starting in Watsonville, Central County, Carrillo College, Dominican Hospital, downtown Santa Cruz, CCSC, all of those things should be accessible by electrified bus system that's part of a integrated bus rapid transit system. All of the future highway repairs should be integrated to make the best of the future standing on the highway. Thank you. Gina Cole. Chair recognizes Gina Cole. You can meet yourself, Gina. Gina, are you there? I think we lost her. Gina, it looks like you're unmuted. Commissioners? Yes. Go ahead, Gina. One minute. Commissioners, please support the staff recommended business plan. Whether we choose to believe it or not, good things take time and anything worth having takes hard work, dedication and patience.  We are rarely willing or able to wait for anything these days. Our community members, the RTC staff and many RTC commissioners do understand delayed gratification. Staff has been putting in the hard work and the dedication to develop a solid business plan that addresses equity, economy and environment that will get us to the end goal of providing an active transportation trail and a public transportation rail system. The project is worth the work, worth the dedication, worth the wait. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Cohn. That was the last of the public with their hands up. Oh, wait, we have one more. We have a few more. Ms. Sally Arnold. Chair recognizes Ms. Sally Arnold. Good morning. I wanna say that as hard as it is to stick to one minute, I support the chair's efforts to try to keep us brief and I will do my best. People everywhere are beginning to understand the incredible value of robust rail network to improve mobility and improve equity and flight climate change and California gets it and they're building a statewide rail network in accordance with the state rail plan and they're going to give, and this will give everybody the opportunity to get around the state sustainably without a car and Amtrak Joe and Secretary Pete Buttigieg get it and as somebody else quoted him earlier, you shouldn't have to own a car to prosper in this country no matter what kind of community you're living in. And according to the independent survey by FM3, 74% of the voters in Santa Cruz County get it in support, moving forward with zero emission light rail along the corridor. The rail opponents just don't get it. A new day is dawning in our country and in our state and in our nation and let's get it done. Please move forward to accept the business plan direct staff to seek the funding for the next step in the process. That's all you need to do today. It's not a deeper commitment. Thank you. We have climate healers and Ryan Senatero. Chair recognizes the climate healers. Hi, yes. You can hear me okay? Yes. Wonderful. Yeah, my name is Cynthia Hirsch. I've been in Santa Cruz for 25 years. My mom graduated from Simble High School, like kind of been around a while and it's such a small town that Santa Cruz is. I think of rail is just kind of really over the top.  The fact that we don't have, I mean, I have kids, they can't even ride bicycles because there's so many hills. I really feel like going from one side of town to the other side just with a path, even going down to Davenport or I guess up to Davenport down to Watsonville on a path we need to get healthier as a species. They say the number one problem these days is that we're sedentary.  No, we need to get out in nature. We need something as beautiful. Technology is totally assaulting us from all directions of having yet another technological advancement that instead of just being a beautiful goal. We lost you. After. Thank you for your time. Oh no. Ryan Sarnatero. Chair recognizes Mr. Ryan Sarnatero. Yes, one of the things that you commissioners are responsible for is thinking about the future. And if you look at what the future is going to look like the future has to do with flexibility. Just like we're on a Zoom call now, there's the kind of transportation that's going to be required in the future is not one that is fixed to a rail but one that is flexible point to point and turning that rail corridor into a dual lane transportation corridor able to accommodate both the slow walkers and electrified vehicles, be they bicycles or two-seaters or whatever, that's really what you should be thinking about. And you should also be thinking about the environmental impact of this because over time the loss of what would be a beautiful nature corridor and instead a wall lined trail is just not very palatable. Thank you for your time. Bruce Sawhill, then Gawley. Chair recognizes Mr. Bruce. Hello, Chair commissioners, this is Bruce Sawhill. I urge you to accept the business plan. You've already paid for it. This does not give you any binding commitment to spend any more money. And you've already accepted the results of the study nine to three in a previous meeting. So in my mind this should be a formal procedure and nothing more. I would also like to congratulate you on your excellent acquisition of ATP funds. Good job on getting another segment of the rail trail funded as well as the pedestrian bike bridge in Watsonville. We've gotten 10X of our per capita share of ATP funds and this kind of fundraising skill is going to be important in the future. So congratulations and thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sawhill. Gawley. Chair recognizes Mr. Gawley. Gawley, ready? You need to unmute yourself. There you go. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. I'm not a salad, I'm just smoking something. Hey, let's party. Yeah, one minute. Let's party. I'm losing 50s, big old bitties. Hey. Dump them. Yep. Coin of order, please. Here you go. Okay, we have Yahya. They're recognizing Amy. No, it was Yahya. Yahya, she disappeared on me. Yeah, she disappeared. Yahya, she disappeared. There she is. Nope. You have the right to speak. Are you there? I think they're done. Yeah. Climate healers, they spoke once already. Yes, that is correct. They spoke once already. Yeah, but I got cut off. I understood. I heard that I got cut off. So I was just trying to conclude and say that, the environmental impact also that we don't know and then the fact of the money that we don't know, it's like this idea that we're gonna definitely get funded by something else. We can't look at what's unrealistic. We have to be more concrete about what's available to us today, what we can do today and what's necessary. If almost 1,000 people on bicycles alone got hit, I'm sure other people, I don't know the numbers of pedestrians that have gotten hit and the traffic is just insane. There's more insane drivers on the road, I'll say also, especially those coming over from this little crime valley. So having a safe place that we can ride our bikes, I'm gonna be a new mother, have a place for me just beyond my stroller with the baby is gonna be really important. And trains are just, you know, again, the environmental impact, we need a place where it's just peaceful and quiet and nature rich. I'm done with technology. We need like a safe, clear, that's well over a minute. Yes, thank you. Okay, appreciate it. Now you have to try to close up. Okay, the other calls were spam. And so I think we don't have any more hands up. Okay. All right, at this time, I'd like to bring it back to the commissioners for comments and hang on a minute, folks. Let me get back to the, is there any commissioners that'd like to make a comment? Mike Rotkin has his hand up. Mr. Rotkin, commissioner Rotkin. Having been the one that undermined the chair's attempt to get us done in two minutes, I'm gonna try and be very brief. Basically, I think at this point, we should accept this plan, not adopt it, not make some, as people pointed out, some absolute commitment to the following through and building the total capital project and everything else. We don't know enough. The question of whether there's funding available is a very open question for it over estimates, how easy it will be to get all this money. Greenway certainly underestimates the possibility of getting this kind of funding. We need to do some serious investigation of what's possible here. I do not believe we should spend a bunch of local money at the next steps here until we have some idea that we have real partners in the federal government and the state. State has a rail plan that's quite serious and has lots of funding in it that's not available to the transit district. That's not available for other kinds of solutions. There's rail start money at the federal level that can only be spent on rail. There'll probably be other kinds of support in the future. But again, we don't know the answer to that question. We need to investigate it. It would be a tragic mistake to end the possibility of an alternative rail solution here for all time into the future. If we made the decision right now to sort of tear up the tracks, make a recreational park, this is one thing I'm quite confident of. I don't know that I'm right about lots of stuff, but I don't have any doubt that once we tear up those tracks and make a recreational park out of this corridor, we will never get it back for public transit. That may be a decision we have to make. I'm not gonna say that, unlike some others, I'm not absolutely committed to rail. We might decide there is not funding. If we take $17 million of state funds, get a 30% design, make this project clear what the costs are and so forth. And our costs here include 50% contingency. We understand we don't have full information. But in the end, we'd be making a tragic mistake to tear up tracks and end for, not just for the near future, but for all time in the future, the possibility of the only possible corridor for additional transit in our county. So again, I wanna be very clear. I might see myself in a few years here deciding, look, the money is just not available. The state promises a rail plan, but they're not funding. The federal government thinks they can have a whole deal of $3 trillion on capital kinds of projects and stuff. They may not be able to deliver that and may fall apart for a variety of reasons. So I can see myself deciding in the end, we're gonna give it up. We're gonna go back to simply building a trail here. That would be a useful thing to do. I don't wanna spend forever hoping we can get money in some way. I'm a realist and a pragmatist about these kinds of things. But I think it's premature to make a decision to end transit possibilities on this corridor. So I'm in favor of accepting this plan, seeking funding to clarify what funding is available at the state and federal level. And that's how I think we should move forward. I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Beltran. And then Commissioner Cavett. Thank you very much, Chair. Yeah, I was really surprised. First of all, Chair, how many minutes do we have? Is this sort of up to discretion or I just wanna make sure? Try and be brief, but there's no limit. That was our motion. Yeah, I'll follow Michael's lead. So I was really surprised that Steve is a national expert on transportation. And as you know, he's definitely a transit person, but he came to us and said that this is not a feasible project. Many people have said this in various other ways, about if you have the ability to consider someone who's a national expert, I would consider that a very important piece of input. So it gets back to affordability. We just do not have the density of people who earn high enough income to be able to take enough money off of what they normally spend and save to support a rail system, period. We just don't. We have aspirations to do it.  That rail system had its heyday, perhaps when it was moving redwood up to San Francisco or fish, and you know, it's sort of degraded ever since. And the last little burp it had was moving cement. And you know, when I was campaigning in Capitola, I talked to a lot of people who remember bombly that train that went through town once a week or something. You know, it was not a high frequency train track use at all. So I'm trying to figure, so for our little antique, you know, Steve got me thinking, Steve Decker, he said, you know, he's referencing the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Well, a spokesperson for that recently, Randy Rentscher, he talked about what kind of projects would be funded. He said, money could flow to seismic retrofit of the Golden Gate Bridge. You know, our Persian capital is not the Golden Gate Bridge. I'll tell you that right now. And extending the BART service through downtown San Jose, much needed to move people. This is a high density area and it needs to move people to get them off the freeway. Okay, and work to electrify the Caltrans system. I took Caltrans system. I worked 30 plus years in semiconductor in a seat. I had to go from San Francisco to San Jose, Sunnyvale. I rode my bike to the Caltrans in San Francisco, took Caltrans down and walked the last mile and a half to get to my place of employment. I love the train, but they want to electrify it. Now, the reason why they want to electrify is to reduce costs. If you're aware of the whole system on Caltrans, it's sort of a joint arrangement in that area of the world. And extend the line to downtown San Francisco. So these are a few of the high level projects in areas where there's millions of people, they have a compulsory need for this kind of money. We don't, not for our antique rail line. Also, I might mention, when a lot of these big things were funded like in the Bay Area, they had people like Mineta to push them. We don't have a Mineta. We have a great representative, but he needs many more years to get that oomph, to get money in any case of funding from the federal government. And that's going to also carry over to the state because people listen to the people who have oomph. So when I listened to everyone that's talked in a positive way, what we could do, right now, RTC, we've already approved moving ahead on many improvements of Highway 1. Rail, excuse me, bus on shoulder is one of them. And one of the last speakers talked about was, we have the metro system, now we're going to have bus on shoulder, we need to improve our metro. Improve our metro, it's a cost effective way to move people in mass, very cheap, and it's flexible. Flexibility is something you will not get with the rail line. The other thing that I really have a problem with is accepting a study that is based on techniques, approaches to analyzing data that's not peer reviewed. I really have a problem with that. We should be doing like Ambeg does, you have a peer reviewed way to look at data so that the results can be accepted across the nation and accepted by people who look at it for funding. We don't have that here. We have a study that I don't know what it's based on. You know, there's some, I just don't know. It's just not peer reviewed, not federally accepted. And I think that's a major flaw for this. And I'm not going to vote for this thing. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is how we're going to follow. Commissioner Caput, Commissioner Montecino, Commissioner McPherson, and I see Scott Eden. Is that the count trends? Yes, it is. And then Andy Schiffer, and then Manu. Did we all get that? Great, Caput, Montecino, McPherson, Scott, Andy, and then Manu. Go ahead, Mr. Caput. Thanks a lot, Chairman Convost. Yeah, I pretty much agree. I'll make it real short. I agree with Commissioner Rodkin. We got to look at this real close. I'm all for rail connecting Potterville, Watsonville to Santa Cruz, which will connect us to the whole state of California, basically, for having the rail. And I just want to make it clear, whatever is good for one section of the county may not be good for our South County, which is Watsonville. I don't want to lose the opportunity of having an electric train or whatever connecting us with all of the other trains and rails in California. So I think we need to look at it real close. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Caput. Commissioner Montecino. Yeah, I'm going to keep my comments brief, but is it an appropriate time to make the motions to accept the staff recommendation? If you want to make a motion. I'd like to make a motion to move staff recommendation. I'm in full support. I know we didn't hear a lot of public comment from South County residents, but from my community, we're in full support of this endeavor to keep our options open. Thank you. I'll second that. I'll second the motion. We have a motion to second. We're going to give you a comment, so I'm going to second, of course, Mr. McPherson. Chair recognizes Mr. McPherson. Bruce, you're muted. Bruce, muted. Still muted. I can't, I can't promise to be short, but I'll try to get there. I supported doing this TCA study because we needed to fulfill our obligation under measure D to investigate and compare the trail options for the rail corridor. And we needed the better answers. And I think the business plan is especially the last chapter of this. I want to, once again, I think we should all appreciate Deep Decker and Pamela Duncan and Ginger Dicar of the staffs and the consultants and the staffs. They've done what we asked them to do. And I think the public need to be clear on that. They were directed to do this. And I really think they did a great job of this. But as I've said many times before, I think it's good public policy to preserve the option of public transit along the corridor. But we have a responsibility to be fiscally prudent at the same time and spend our limited time and resources on projects that are feasible. And I think are needed now to get this community moving. I not only question the financial feasibility of moving forward with passenger rail right now, I'm concerned about the myriad of legal and physical challenges that are serious obstacles getting to passenger rail built. We're all concerned about mitigating the congestion on highway one, but this plan reflects that a transit option along the corridor will not substantially have a positive impact on that. I do appreciate the staff outlying the clear set of choices for the commission on this item. But the choices that I'm unable to support at this time because of the challenges identified and the big questions that are still unanswered what's already been mentioned. I'll continue to support the plan improvements for rail trail through the north of the San Lorenzo Bridge to Davenport, as well as freight service to Watsonville. As long as we've shown that be financially feasible. But the part of the rail corridor between Lee Road and the San Lorenzo Bridge to the north has serious obstacles and costs associated with moving forward blindly. And I think we really do not know the cost of that with passenger rail, no matter what the cost in terms of money and time. I really do care about both of those things of cost and time that we will spend on this if we continue my no vote today on this item does not mean I'm not open to new information or a different set of more feasible circumstances coming forward regarding the affordable use of the corridor, but the opposite of true. It would be great if our divided community and the callers today were not evenly divided but closely divided to talk to one another and focus on a realistic use of the rail corridor. I think if we were to start to scratch to design a transit option next to the rail taking the current politics out of the discussion what would we design for instance? I, until now both sides on this issue have been so busy arguing the numbers that we have not been able to really talk about all of the obstacles and challenges that really laid before us if we continue to move forward and build into passenger rails without seriously questioning what it will take to build and operate it. I say so, I say that without irony because when I talked to the extreme sides of this issue I actually see some agreement. I think both sides agree to preserving the option of public transit along the corridor is good for the community. But both sides agree on preserving the freight service to Watsonville. I think we should really focus on that. And many people on both sides but not all agree that the north of Santa Rosa Bridge to that Davenport and it should continue to build a trail along the existing rail line. So I encourage more dialogue regarding what is the best way to preserve the public transit option and build a usable trail sooner than later between Lee Road and Santa Rosa Bridge. But I can't support this at this point. I think there's just too many unknowns and I don't think that I think we're gonna be running into a lot more problems than have been identified to date and more costly in the same time. So I'll be voting no on this recommendation. Thank you, Commissioner McPherson. Scott? Hi, thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the board. As your Caltrans representative, we are quite close to what's happening at the state and federal level. And I can tell you that we're seeing a significant shift in terms of how we're focusing resources on other modes of transportation and away from our traditional toolbox which would have been highway widening or other things that are more vehicular related. And so I'm looking ahead. What we're seeing is a shift in not only the priorities but also the dollars that follow. And so there's a lot here on the horizon in terms of the ability to fund capital as well as operational costs at the state and federal level. Again, it's happening quickly and we don't know exactly what the rules of the road are yet in terms of those funding shifts, but they are occurring. And we had a DRMT division of rail and mass transit representative with us a little bit earlier but she had to leave. But I just also want to emphasize that DRMT is have been working with the staff at SCRTC and do feel quite hopeful about a funding path for being able to fund the next phase of the project if this board chooses to proceed substantially in terms of being able to help make that next step feasible. Thank you. And we Caltrans and DRMT do support moving the project forward. Thank you. Mr. Commissioner Alternate Andy Schifrin Schifrin. You got it. Thank you. I certainly agree and I think the business plan makes it abundantly clear that at this point any kind of passenger rail service is not feasible. 44% of the cost of both operation and capital is unidentified. Unlike many other people, I don't feel I have a crystal ball that will tell me what's gonna happen when the pandemic is gonna happen, what's gonna happen in 25 years from now in terms of the feasibility of rail service or other potentials on the rail line. My concern is not losing the option should it turn out to be feasible in the future. And we don't know. I certainly don't think it makes sense to go forward with any particular rail, passenger rail service at this time. My willingness to support the staff recommendation in terms of environmental review and applying for funds for environmental review and design is based on the fact that if in fact, as kind of indicated by the Caltrans representative and the possibilities in the federal infrastructure bill, it would become feasible to be able to meet those unidentified costs. We'd be in better shape to do that if we had those, that other information available. But I think at this point, if I understand what we really, all that's really before us is accepting a business plan at the end of a process that every commissioner I think has pretty much maybe with one or two no votes along the way supported. We supported, we have reviewed the RFP, we approved the scope of services. There was no demand for a peer review by any commissioners at the time when the scope of services were approved. And we had consultants who were considered by our staff and were approved as knowledgeable about these matters. The fact that another expert shows up at our meeting and says, well, no, none of this is ever gonna be feasible. Well, we have a lot of information in front of us that says, well, it's not feasible now, but it's certainly, there's a potential that it could be feasible in the future. I wanted to respond also to the notion that this is an antique rail line. In the 1950s, there was a suntan special that brought people from the city of Watsonville. I mean, from San Jose to Santa Cruz County Boardwalk it was a pretty active rail line at that point. There were complaints about it being a little bit too active with some rowdy customers along the way, but it was an important option until the car just sort of made it impossible when Highway 17 was widened. It served a lot of functions. It doesn't have much of a function now, although, you know, there is a user, the big rowing camp, big trees does use it. And so I think it's important to keep them in mind as we sort of look at what the future may hold. My sense is this is, we're looking into the future without a crystal ball. And when you do that, it seems to me it makes sense to keep your options open. The final thing I wanna say is in response to people who have talked about the danger and the lack of safety on the current speed system and use that as a way of arguing for ripping up the tracks. In my view, we're trying to build the trail. We're trying to make it safer. We are building a trail. We've got a segment done. We're trying to get funding for other segments and bring them about. We're trying to get options that will allow people who ride their bike to get off the road. I think it's, from my perspective, disingenuous to argue that by ripping up the tracks, there's gonna be a trail for everyone sooner. In fact, in my view, it will delay it extensively. There's too many steps that we have to go through before that could be possible even if the commission wanted it to be. We're moving on with a number of segments. And I think I wish the people who challenge the commission on everything that we wanna do would really get behind and support the implementation of those segments so that we could increase the safety of bike riders in this county. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Alternate and the Schiffner. Commissioner Cunning and then Commissioner Patrick Mahon. Here are you. And then Commissioner Christian Peterson and then Commissioner Brown. Thank you, Chair. I also wanna begin by thanking staff for dutifully executing what this commission has asked them to do. And I wanna be very clear as well that our community cannot afford this rail plan. Our existing public transit system Metro is looking at a $10 million structural deficit over the next five years. That's per year. Our county roads have a pavement index of an F and an ongoing budget shortfall. That means we are falling further and further behind every year. We're missing 70% of the money to build the trail as proposed through Live Oak. And so I do take, I would wanna counter Commissioner Schiffner's point that we're building the trail. We can't build the trail through key segments with the proposed plan. Moreover, we haven't even identified the money to maintain the trail once it is built. That's gonna be a whole nother set of problems. So I think this rail plan is really a grass is greener approach. This idea that instead of maintaining and improving our existing 600 miles of roads and public transit system, somehow dumping millions of dollars into a train will yield a better results. No fiscal impact. That was mentioned by a number of the public speakers today. No fiscal impact of pursuing a $17 million environmental review. RTC staff time cost $150 an hour to do anything. There is a very real cost to continuing to study a train. And there are most importantly, there is the cost of our time and our attention to things that will get our community moving. I think just because we can get money from the state doesn't mean we should waste it. State money and federal money is still taxpayer money. It's still our money. There will be plenty of opportunities to get state and federal money for projects we all agree will work. Just look at the recent $100 million we received for the multimodal bus highway bike project on Soquel Drive and Highway One. It's always easier to spend money than to do work, but it's not the right thing to do. So I do wanna say one thing about the technology involved here. I do think the project is technologically antiquated. This is like if your daughter came to you and said she couldn't get Netflix to load on her phone and you responded by going to rummage around in the basement for a VHS player. It's just a waste of time and it fails to address the real transportation needs in our community, the real commute patterns. So it's time to build a trail. Let's focus on building what we all agree we want, building it through Live Oak across the Capitola Tresol. It's going to require the space where the tracks are. We need to use the Harbor Tresol, the Rodeo Gulch Tresol, the Capitola Tresol, the La Selva Tresol and all the other existing bridges. I want our staff's time to be dedicated to finding funding to reduce the huge number of deaths and injuries we see on our roads each year to building the best possible trail, to dedicating and finding funding for safe routes to school. We need to put this to a public vote as soon as possible. And I think today we draw in a line in the sand that not another tax dollar should be spent on a train until the people vote. I will not be supporting the staff recommendations. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner. Commissioner Patrick. Thank you, chair. I appreciate that. I'll be as brief as I can, but I have been waiting for this meeting now for four years. In 2017, when the initial draft of the unified corridor study came out and it indicated that all of the transit money that was going to come into this county would be required to support rail transit. And I brought this to the attention of metro staff and they were surprised that money that they were intending to rely on for their projects was going to be, was assumed to be diverted to rail transit. So I worked with Barrow Emerson at the transit district and we shifted the staff recommendation instead of being rail transit on the corridor to pursue an alternatives analysis of the best public transit use of the corridor. My goal for that was just to get a clearer understanding of what the costs were actually going to be and what kind of timeline this would at all be feasible. What I didn't anticipate though was how feasibility was going to be defined. So what we've seen over the course of the past three rail studies, the passenger rail feasibility study, the UCIS and now the TCAA is that every time the staff interpretation or the consultants interpretation of the available data is that all these projects are feasible if a series of impossible conditions are met. Now it's that if part that is continually forgotten and that everyone focuses on the feasibility part. And so we talk about the feasibility, the feasibility but it's more accurate to say that this project is infeasible unless it's not feasible if it's infeasible unless. And I've heard a lot of people talk about, well now the funding argument has been rebutted by saying, well there are all these future opportunities that may be developing that we could hopefully tap for this project. For a first word all of these funding sources actually to manifest to the tune of some 200 to $300 million in capital costs plus some 12 to $13 million in annual operating and maintenance costs. If someone were to invent those funding sources we would still have to compete to get those funding sources. So that's an extra level of uncertainty. So not only do these things not exist but we would still have to compete for them with jurisdictions that have higher population densities and all of the other factors that make us not as competitive as even jurisdictions within the state of California. I did hear someone also mentioned that well we've gotten all this money to build, let's for example the solutions for congested corridors program money that we got that was some 90 odd million dollars to do multimodal improvements between Watsonville and Santa Cruz. The reason that we were able to compete with that was because we had a unified corridor plan and not a lot of jurisdictions had that. So we were in a special category of applicants for that one round of grants. So that the next round of grant making will everybody will have a corridor plan and so everybody's gonna be competing. We won't be as effective in our competition with larger jurisdictions with higher population densities. That's a fact. So we're assuming that someone's gonna make a new grant program that we're going to somehow compete well against and then we will secure the money. People are also talking about the Biden infrastructure plan and let's drive the stake through the heart of that right now. The executive branch's budget wish lists still have to make it through Congress and I'm sure that everyone's aware that we have a very divided Congress. If his infrastructure plan loses three votes in the House of Representatives, it won't pass and it still requires all the senators in the Senate to buy on to it. So it's by no means is this ever, is this a fate of complete? They're the Biden, Buttigieg transportation gurus are gonna find a way to pay for our rail infrastructure. That's magical thinking. I'm sorry, it's magical thinking and we cannot be running a government agency based on magical thinking. And in fact, well, I don't wanna talk about the actual cost of the line. I know that it's expensive and everything's expensive. We're spending $100 million on highway one and all the multimodal developments that we're gonna be putting in there. It's a lot of money. Transportation projects are very, very expensive. My real issue is the opportunity cost of pursuing rail. It means that we're not talking about other things that we could be implementing right now with money that we already have. Well, first of all, we could build a trail right now because the salvage cost is the salvage returns for our rail infrastructure would be sufficient to build an interim trail. So just by pulling up the rails and selling the steel we could build it right now. But we're also already working on making our bus transit system more competitive against single occupancy vehicles which I'm assuming is the whole goal of our adding this new mode of transit is to get people out of single occupancy vehicles. We have our bus on shoulder auxiliary lane project which I realize isn't really a penetrating solution to our issues here. We're also gonna be building though the transit signal prioritization on Soquel Drive between Dominican and State Park which will give buses a further advantage over single occupancy vehicles. But neither of those are even combined a complete solution. The complete solution would be some kind of dedicated bus lane on Soquel. Now the importance of building a bus rapid transit project where people actually are is that people need to get to work, they need to get to school, they need to handle all of their business somehow outside of a single occupancy vehicle while using the existing transit network that we have and maybe investing in it somehow or fostering and promoting more development in our bus transit rather than talking about trains we could feasibly accomplish our environmental, our equity and our economic goals in the short term not 25 years from now. And regarding the free money from the state to do our environmental report I am very concerned about the inevitability of administrative policy making. And by that I mean a plan has a way of becoming a project. Once you start an administrative policy making process in a certain direction it develops a inertia and over the course of time like we see now we invest millions and millions and millions of dollars in studies to keep pushing this incrementally further. So our passenger rail feasibility study said it was feasible pushed us a little bit further. The UCIS pushed us a little further and now this TCAA is saying well now you need to spend $17 million to do the environmental to find out what this project is really gonna be. No, we shouldn't be spending any more money on rail we should be devoting all of our efforts to support Metro's efforts to enhance and improve their network to serve their customers the people who are actually using transit right now who can't get from A to B sometimes to C. So I will not be supporting the motion at least as it is today. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner, commissioner Peterson. Thank you. I wanna start by thanking everyone in the public for their public comments both at today's meeting and through the high volume of emails that have come in over the past three or four days. A lot of them were form letters but quite a lot of them were also personal emails with or phone calls or voice mails with stories that people wanted to share about their time in the county, their experiences and that kind of input is always so welcome and appreciated. I'd like to apologize to those who I wasn't able to respond back to directly. As like I said, it was a very high volume and difficult to get through responding to all the voice mails and emails. But again, I am grateful for that input. I'll try to keep my comments short because most of what I would say has already been said so I'll just reiterate briefly. I have serious concerns about the financial feasibility as it's laid out in this business plan as well as the concerns over litigation and the price of litigation as well as the unknowns. There's a lot of unknowns that we don't have answers for at this time. Additionally, as commissioner Mohan just pointed out there's the opportunity cost and the need to address equity issues now and not necessarily 15 years or more depending on how long this project may be delayed because of the unknown aspects of when we might be able to receive funding. So again, I'm gonna try to keep this as brief as possible but for the reasons that I've just listed and those that others among us have just noted I will not be supporting the motion as it stands today. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner Brown. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I also wanna thank the members of the public who have been communicating with us consistently during my four years on the RTC and who have shown up today and written to us. I appreciate your level of interest and engagement in these questions. We are fortunate to have a very active and engaged community. So in the interest of time I'm not gonna give a swan song speech here but just want to focus back our attention onto the idea that this is a business plan. It's telling us something that we to some extent already knew around costs that it is not financially feasible at this time to build and operate a rail line. But I don't think that was what anybody was expecting to see in moving forward with a plan like this and mapping out a way forward to better understand what the future might hold. The idea that there are so many unknowns that we should not look any further to me just doesn't make sense. And I wanna just highlight two members the public who and many members of the public said similar things but one Ms. Cole's point about us being a society of instant gratification and the idea that if we just stop talking about the train or studying or looking for ways that we might finance alternative transportation on the scale that might be appropriate somewhere down the road that we're displacing funding and energy for all these other projects. These are not fungible funding sources. So thinking about the future and positioning ourselves for a possible future where there's a significant influx of funding maybe it will happen, maybe it won't. Again, the crystal ball I don't have one I don't care to look for one. I think that right now for us to accept this business plan with the information that was available at this time and to continue to position ourselves for the future rather than foreclosing that possibility is something that we ought to really embrace. And so there's plenty more I could say and but I said I wasn't gonna do a swan song speech I'll leave it there. I'm gonna be supporting the motion. Thank you, Commissioner Brown. I'm gonna close it up. I'm just gonna inform to the public that- Chair, I wanted to speak. Oh, I didn't see you Randy Johnson. I didn't see you and I apologize about that. Go ahead, Commissioner Johnson. Thank you, Chair. First of all, I think just some reflection I think instant gratification we've been waiting 10 years so far and not another 15 or 20. That's been pretty patient. I just wanted to say that again, thanks to all concerned in terms of spending time on this issue. But in some ways that's kind of the problem to Patrick Mulhern's point, this project pretty much sucks the oxygen out of all public discussion on other things that are so necessary for a transportation commission to focus on. You know, even the earlier debate about commission where we decided to allow somebody to choose their commissioner and appointee was almost a proxy vote on the subject that we're talking about right now. My feeling is that equity, environment, economy, all these things that are so important to people in terms of meeting those goals is something that we can do with what we have right now without trying to reinvent more complicated solutions. Our bus system, our transit system is well positioned if it's enhanced, if roads are enhanced, you know, to the point that people talked about, you know, the needs of the transportation in this county are so huge.  Yet we spend very, very little in remediating those particular needs. I just wanna say that I appreciate the attempt in bringing forward a business plan and kind of talking about it and studying it. But what struck me about this, the business plan and the recommendations and the conclusions were the number of risks. You guys remember the one slide where there was the bubble and it said the risk and risk identification mitigation, funding, compatibility with the freight and trail, stakeholder support, we have project delivery, organizational development, technology, right there you have so many red flags that doesn't give anybody pause on why this was so infeasible. Then, you know, I said in the past, those who ignore history or condemn to repeat it, we have history, okay? It's a high-speed rail, smart, you know. First of all, Michael Rockin, thank you for allowing us to speak a little bit more than two minutes. I hope you don't regret it if I'm carrying on too much. But one of the things you said, and I respect you, but one of the things you said in 2016 is that if we build it, they will come. But history says that's not really true. All you have to do is look at the smart train. And I looked at some of the ballot language, which they said seven to 10,000 people would write it. I think the average is more like 2,900 and they got up to 5,400 one day, but that's when they gave it away at no cost and people were eligible to write free.  So when I hear about the risks, the unknowns, the conjecture, kind of the wishful thinking, is there any, I guess, surprise that people that pay attention to the people's money and the risk associated with moving forward that someone like me would vote no. So as you can probably tell, I'm a no vote and hope I didn't go too much past two minutes. Thank you. It's reasonable in time. Thank you. Is there any other commissioner that'd like to comment before I comment and close? You know, just let the inform the public that I'd close the comments to the public on this. We do have a motion and a second on it for the approval of the staff recommendation. My comments on this, you know, I've lived here 52 years in this area, approximately 40 of those years driving on these roads. And I've seen the infrastructure not grow at all. I've seen no growth attitude in this community, in this county. We're lack housing. We lack places for employment, you know, we lack mobility because there is a no cost. It's too expensive to expand Highway 1. But yet, you know, we did a multimodal project we qualified because we had a trans transit corridor project online. If we didn't have that, we probably wouldn't have qualified for that $107 million project. So we wouldn't have bus on shoulders. We wouldn't have had a sequinized lighting sequences for SoCal. So all that money, we would have lost all that money and we would have still stayed in the same position of wishing that we would have been able to qualify for funding. And you know, so you see all these things and you see here all the community members rejecting to some of these things and supporting some of them in a sense. And it's unfortunate that a lot of these commissions are unwilling to move forward on this. And we're not spending money. We're asking the staff to go out and look for money to do this environmental impact report on this rail trail. At once they do find funding for it, then we should be moving forward with it. But by rejecting this, and again, it's like the old cliche highway one where we wanted to widen it years ago. We didn't do it years ago. It kind of cost us like maybe one third the cost and we would have approved it. And so I see this happening the same thing with this rail corridor, this transit corridor. We lose the transit corridor because we start moving forward on this. We have to remember we have an ACL agreement still with a railroad company that still has not given up its rights to it. And there's a 10-year agreement. So those rails aren't gonna be moved in 10 years. And it's not gonna cost us nothing to move this plan forward as staff's recommendation. And if the state does step forward, then we're gonna benefit from it because we're gonna be one step closer to that process. But if we do go and it does get rejected, then we're gonna go back to ground zero again. And we're gonna be doing the whole process again. And for those that are the wishful thinkers of the trail only, that means we'll have to go back all over again, restart a whole new process. And those that say that let's take it out to the voters. Well, if you take it out to the voters, these are on really the numbers. You know, they wanted to run out with this proposal. They want to do a 30% of conceptual drawing that's gonna be really closer to the more reality of the numbers than what's being put forth now because it's a 55% consensual plan on it. So, you know, it's kind of ridiculous what these fellow commissioners are suggesting that we stop at this point since we have invested so much money and so much time already into this to not allow this to move forward and set ourselves up as a count for the future possibilities. You know, you folks have to think about this correctly. So anyways, I'm gonna be supporting the staff recommendation because I think it's the best thing for the overall for the community. But like alternate commissioner and commissioner, I don't have a crystal ball, but I do know one thing that this county's population growth is gonna grow. People from around the world are gonna come here. And especially the dreamers like Bud have of this world-renowned trail. It's gonna be people from around the world. There's gonna be vehicle miles traveled. There's gonna be people parking in the Selva neighborhoods to travel on those trail, on that trail to walk it, to bike it. They are gonna be parking in your neighborhood because Watsonville really doesn't have a trail that goes to their neighborhoods. So, you know, there is still gonna be an impact. There is only a trail to Cavatola, Selva, Aptos in that corridor.   It's gonna be people from around the world, tourists. Tourists that come to this within this county and do impact in our community. So we really need to think about the overall picture. And so I'll leave it at that and I'll call for roll call. Commissioner Rockin. Hi. Commissioner Gonzales. Hi. Commissioner Peterson. No. Commissioner McPherson. Universe. No, no. Commissioner Koenig. No. Commissioner Alternate Mulhern. No. Commission Alternate Schifrin. Aye. Commissioner Caput. Aye. Commissioner Montesino. Commissioner Johnson. No. Commissioner Brown. Aye. Commissioner Bertrand. No. I vote. I'd like to make a motion that we sort of split the recommendations here. There are really two recommendations in the staff report. One is to accept the business plan. The other is to direct staff to move forward and try to seek the funds. I think it would be a mistake to not accept the business plan. The consultants gave us what we asked for. Whether we want to move forward or not, simply accepting the plan is completing the contract and recognizing the reality that we have the plan unless somebody wants to send it back for more work. I don't think it's worth delaying this any longer. So I'd make a motion that we just approve the... Accept. The language you want to accept, Andy, not approve. Pardon me? The language should say accept, not approve. Sorry, I make a motion that we accept... Well, actually, if I could finish my... That we approve the first two staff recommendations that we accept the business plan and pass a resolution accepting the business plan. Second that motion. That's right. Yeah, I know. I'm trying to... I have a motion. I have a motion. And you... Okay. Where? Where? To any form of a location? From... Yeah, to any people. From time to time. Can you hear me? I'm going now. I just wanted to have Mr. Preston make it clear. This is asking us to complete the study and grant requirements, but it will not result in doing anything more than that on the project now. Is that correct? I could be okay with that if that's the case. So the resolution has several recitals, and the second to last recital states that the business plan provides a guiding document for funding the implementation of electric passenger rail on the Santa Cruz branch rail line and does not commit to a definitive course of action for project implementation. So I think with that recital in there and with the motion on the table right now, I think it could accomplish that. I was also asked, or I heard mentioned by the maker of the motion, Commissioner Schifrin, about possible modifications to the plan. If the plan itself does provide certain information on implementation and the way we presented it with the cash flow model, we were very specific with respect to the fiscal years and what would be done in each fiscal year. That's shown in chapter seven and it starts with fiscal year 21, 22, commencing on July 1st of this year. I would propose that if the commission does not wish to move forward with this, that the plan itself be amended so those fiscal years be removed and be replaced by year one, year two to show the conceptual nature of the plan so that the acceptance of the plan is just accepting the concept, meeting the requirements of our grants and no other further action would be needed. I'd accept those changes to the motion which would remove those specific dates. And my understanding is that all we would be doing is accepting the plan and completing the contract. That's fine with the second as well. I can be okay with that. This is not committing us to anything else in the future. I had, I mean, I had Commissioner Comontacino wanting me to speak. Are you still with us, Commissioner? No, that's a negative. Okay, we have a motion and a second on the table. There's an other. Commissioner Johnson wanted to say something I think Commissioner Peterson as well. Thank you, Chair. So it just strikes me this is kind of seat of the pants again without having a full staff report on all the implications of such a motion. And why do we do that? In other words, you lose at something and then we wanna reestablish the guidelines and move the goalposts again because this quote sounds reasonable. No, I don't think it's wise for us to do this by the seat of our pants. And just all of a sudden say, no, we're gonna do this, this and this. We had a vote on the resolution, okay, pass. I'm sorry about that, but that's just the reality. In two weeks or a month or something, you can come back and make your points, have a staff report, fully explore the implications because right now we don't know what they are. The executive director has given his opinion on what would be involved and what it would mean. And I respect the guy. But at the same time, I wanna see in front of me what those implications really are. And you can only do that through reading and maybe talking with your constituents and so forth. So I can't vote for this. Mr. Chair. Yes, Mr. Chair. I can understand Mr. Johnson's concerns. Two guy pressing, if we delay this vote that is or this motion till next month, would that have an adverse impact and having us complete the obligations of our contract? Can we wait and get and do what is proposed now if need be, is what I'm asking. I'm gonna defer to Ginger on what the deadlines are to have the commission accept the plan and complete the work associated with the grant. I wanna remind the commission that this again was never, the business plan is not a requirement for anything, but there were certain steps in there that were included in our grant for the network integration study that we would like to complete so that we don't need to come back to the commission that if there is no action desired by the board, we can just accept this plan, put it on the shelf and decide what we wanna do with the corridor at another time. So it seems to me like you could move forward today, otherwise we would definitely need to come back and have a whole nother item on this and Ginger, I'll let you respond to us to whether or not we would meet our deadline requirements for the network integration grant. Thank you, guys, Executive Director Preston. Yes, for the grant requirements, the deliverables are due on June 30th of this year. So there is time to defer to another future meeting in the next month or two. Could I ask Guy a question about related to that? What additional information could you provide next month that the commission hasn't already seen? We've had X number of hours this morning and now this afternoon, hearing from the public, hearing from commissioners, hearing from consultants about what's in the plan, the business plan and is there anything else that you can tell us that's going to, I can't agree that just accept it now and not have to go through another four hours of testimony next month for no other, when there's no purpose to it, when we already have all the information that we're gonna get, it just doesn't seem reasonable to me. So Guy, is there something else that you could bring to the commission beyond what has already been presented? I don't think there was a request for any additional information. The only change being made would be to change fiscal year 21-22 to year one, et cetera. So that could be, of course, shown in writing, a revised plan that shows that, but that could be posted to our website afterwards. That's the only change proposed. So that would be the only additional information I could actually provide would be the actual changes in hand. And we can approve those today. Mr. Chair. That's correct. Randy, let me make a personal appeal. You've won this thing. You've stopped the staff, but if this vote means the staff is not authorized to spend additional time working on looking for funding sources and all this kind of stuff, please don't subject us to another four hours of hearing over something that's going nowhere. I don't think, Chair, I don't think it's gonna be another four hours. If you don't think that everybody in Ford and everybody on the other side is gonna show up at the next meeting that this is still on the table, you don't understand this county. And I think you do understand this county. Right. I've been on this RTC for 21 years. I may, I don't know. But I think just having something that is, we've heard from Ginger that there's not gonna be a delay in any sort of repercussions from this. And if it is so non-controversial, put it on the consent agenda, but at least let us read about it and make an informed decision. That's the only thing. I just don't like, after something's been decided, all of a sudden there's now a followup in terms of, well, can we just do this and just do that? Okay, but I just don't know where the ramifications are. I'm gonna bring this back to, we have a motion on the table and a second on that. I can do that. Right? We're commenting. We're commenting. I understand. I understand. I've got a feedback coming back for some help. I have a question, I really am. Courted, hang on. Just a question. Hang on, hang on. What was the whole, yeah. All right, six, six, six, six. So does that, it was six to six? A tie vote is a fail vote, Greg. So it failed. That's correct. So, hang on, we have a motion and a second and we were looking for an amendment for verbiage. Is that correct? No, that was accepted into the motion. By the maker and the second. Second, right? Yeah. I don't think, I would be recognized. Am I recognized? Yes. I think I call the question. I think people are clear what's in front of us and hopefully people will disagree with Randy about whether it's helpful just to put this off. No, I actually have a technical question. Mike, I have a technical question. Hey, Adam, and I haven't finished with everybody. I wanted to come back to the commission, other commissioners. Okay. On the motion that's on the table now. Commissioner alternate metric. Thank you, Chair. Just quickly to staff. I recall at the beginning of Ginger's presentation that there were two features of the business plan that were required to be approved according to the CalTrans grant money that we had. I believe we had to accept the governance model and the implementation plan, but not necessarily the entire business plan. Could you clarify that for me? And also how much money are we talking about and is CalTrans saying they want us to pay it back if we don't accept this today? Is it like $100,000 or is it like $1.7 million? Like how much money are we talking about having to pay CalTrans back if we don't accept this? So are you correct, Commissioner Mohan, that it is there are two sections that are required in the scope of work to meet the grant requirements that to have accepted by the commission. They are the governance discussion, which is in section three. And then the next is the next steps for implementation. I think we could potentially state that those are provided in section five, although section five does not provide any kind of timeframe or you break it out on a 25 year basis. As far as the, if we did not meet that obligation, I believe it would be the full grant. If we don't meet the grant requirements, we would have to pay back $100,000. Commissioner, do you have any other questions? Oh, no, thank you both very much. Commissioner Christian Peterson. Thank you. I just want to make sure that I'm understanding what I'm voting on. So in the recommendations number two, it says to adopt a resolution accepting the business plan for electric passenger rail as a guide for implementation. But the guy for implementation doesn't include this seeking federal and state funding for engineering. And that's something that if we're not including in this motion, I think that's where I'm getting a little bit confused if someone could clarify that for me, I'd appreciate it. I'd be happy as far as I understand it as a guide, it doesn't necessarily direct staff to do anything else. But as far as if that's a concern, I'd be happy to have that part of the resolution taken out and the recommendation to just adopt a resolution accepting the business plan for the electric passenger rail on the line and just end there. It seems to me that most of the testimony wasn't really about whether the information in the business plan was wrong. It was like, what should we do with it? Should we go forward or should we not go forward? Well, a majority of the commission doesn't wanna go forward at this point, but at least let's get this step taken so that we have a completed document. And as Sky says, it will be put on the shelf and then some future commission can decide what the next steps, if any, are going to be. But we'll be done with this contract and we'll be done with this particular document. So if it's acceptable to the second and if it responds to Commissioner Peterson's concerns, I'm willing to amend the motion to end the recommendation to the resolution, take out as a guide for implementation and to delete that section of the resolution that talks about it being a guide for implementation. It's fine with the second. Okay, we have a approval for the second. So then again, we're just complaining, grant compliance. Exactly. The commissioner Peterson, was that answered for you? Or do you want to? Yes, it was, thank you. Commissioner Beltran. Yeah, to the point of trying to understand the implications of Andy's motion with all the changes, I still would prefer to see a staff report, have some time, the staff generates some recommendations based on thinking about this a little bit further, just got thrown at me. I haven't even had a chance to think about it. What are the implications of this particular vote? I see where you're trying to go, you're trying to meet the requirements of the grant, I understand that. And we're trying to take off the guide to moving forward but let's think about a little bit. Come back with a staff report. I think that's a mature way to go about it. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner. Commissioner Manu. Thank you, chair. I want to offer a substitute motion to accept the portions of the business plan that meet the minimal requirements of the state grant and complete the consultant contract. Yeah, that's the motion. I'll second that. McPherson, did you second that? Yeah, I think Patrick Miller did, but yes. What do you want? Okay, commissioner, I'll turn to Patrick Miller and recognize the second. I want to bring that up to the question right now. Yeah, I have a question about what the implication of this motion is in terms of the rest of the business plan. Is that going to come back? Is it not going to come back? What does it mean about further actions by the commission on this issue? I was sort of hoping that based on the previous vote, the commission would just accept the plan and that would be it for the time being. I kind of resent the idea that it's more mature to delay after all the information that the commission has received in all the testimony that commission has received about the business plan. I'm not sure what more we can get, but what then if this motion, the substitute motion would pass, what then is the implication for further action on the rest of the business plan? Point of order. Point of order. I'd like to ask our council, I didn't think we accepted substitute motions. I thought we act on clear the motion on the floor before as another motion is put forward if it fails. You can consider a substitute motion would take precedence over the motion that's on the floor. Okay, thank you. Yeah, we went through this once already. All right, thank you. So there any comments from other commissioners on the substitute motion? I would just say that I don't support it because I'd like to have a final vote on the business plan and be able to move on. I'll just point out to commissioner Schifrin that I believe this accomplishes that because we would be meeting the minimal requirements of the state grant as explicitly stated and considering the consultant contract. So it would not be needed to review and the business plan, the other future date. With that being said, my understanding, I guess this would also not direct staff to move forward with the federal state fund competing in preliminary engineering or environmental documentation. Correct. And it also sort of leaves in limbo the entire analysis that we've just paid $100,000 to get. And that would the substitute motion would do. Okay, can we have a comment? All right, I have a comment. All right, I have a comment. Commissioner Schifrin, you know. Hello? Commissioner Schifrin. Commissioner Schifrin. Yeah, I will not be supporting this substitute motion. I think commissioner Schifrin is on the right track for, that's all my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Brown and then commissioner Ruckin. Yeah, I just wanted to ask a procedural question. Are we supposed to vote on whether or not to accept the substitute motion before we vote? That's my understanding on the procedural role. First we'll be voting on the substitutional motion. Or we're just voting on the substance of the motion, not whether or not to. Correct. Okay, thank you. We'll be voting in a second for the substitute motion so you would vote on that motion itself. Yeah, we have a second on the substitutional motion already. Commissioner Ruckin. I hope people vote no on this. Come back to Andy's motion as amended, which basically gets what every, the people who don't want us to spend any more money or staff time or anything else, we can look at the train, put it as Guy Preston put it, put it on the shelf. That's what you're going to get. I think it would be good to close this chapter if that's what people want to do. And at least we're split vote on that's what it would be. I don't think there's some scheme going on here to try and slip this back in or something. In effect, the split vote means that those that hope we would go after the 17 million and move ahead and everything else have been defeated in this motion for lack of an honest tie vote. And I think that would make a lot more sense to truly be done with this and not leave it hanging in limbo whether we, again, as Andy pointed out, people didn't object to this. The study that was done here, the business plan, the objection was that we don't want to have more staff time, do work on it, have the train just inevitably move forward. So I think it just makes sense in a clean way to close this up. So please vote no on this substitute motion. Go back to the main motion, which accomplishes what the opponents of the initial motion that tied mode on stuff that's going after. Thank you, Commissioner Rackett. I'm gonna go ahead and just call the question on this substitute motion. Can we have a roll call, please? Commissioner Bertrand. Aye. Commissioner Brown. Commissioner Brown. No. No. Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Johnson. Aye. Commissioner Montesino. Commissioner Montesino. No. Commissioner Caput. Hold on. Oh, there we go. No. Commissioner Alternate Schiffrin. No. Commissioner Alternate Mulherr. Yes. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner McPherson. Aye. Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Gonzales. No. Commissioner Rotkin. No. So it fails. I vote. Correct. I'll go back to the original motion on the table. All the question. Roll call, please. Commissioner Bertrand. No. No. Commissioner Montesino. Commissioner Montesino. Yes. Commissioner Brown. Aye. Commissioner Johnson. No. Commissioner Caput. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Schiffrin. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Mulherr. No. Commissioner Koenig. No. Commissioner McPherson. No. Commissioner Peterson. No. Commissioner Gonzales. Yes. Commissioner Rotkin. Aye. Let's go back again. Mr. Chair. Yes, commissioner. Thank you very much. My comments were based on the concept that I'd like some time to think about things. And, you know, with the impact of our vote, I think waiting to the next meeting is a reasonable way to go. It's the only choice we have at this point. Yeah, I totally agree, Mike. And, you know, and I think you and I are in agreement on this. We want to have enough time to think about the implications of this vote. I think it's imperative that we do that. And for me, it's a mature thing, at least for me. I mean, I know I need time to think about things. I thought about these, this whole meeting for the last two weeks. I mean, it's just been impossible, all the calls and stuff. I think every single one of us has been in this position. All of us are very engaged in this particular committee and the people that have talked to us and sent emails. So my motion is to bring this back with the amendments, et cetera, that we're trying to consider to the next meeting and have a staff report. I want to understand the implications, whether it's going to be paying off our 100,000, whether it's going to be allowing staff to do something more or not allowing staff to do something more. I want to see clearly what that is. And that's my motion. So your motion is to bring the entire recommendations? No, not the entire recommendation. We need to figure out what to do. Some people want to just carve out part and not carve out part. And I don't quite understand. I think what I'm understanding is the only way we can do that is to bring back the whole recommendations for our next meeting. Practical observation. When you've got a split vote, the only thing you can do is bring it back to the next meeting and bring the whole ball of wax back to the next meeting because nothing passed here. That's what tie votes do. Look at our bylaws. When you have a tie vote and Robert Schultz of order and the rules that we use, which I forget the name of now, Rosenberg's rules of order. When you have a tie vote, it comes back to the next meeting for further discussion. You have a tie vote. You can't do anything. Nothing else can happen. Yeah. I don't know. I disagree. I mean, I indicated I could go along with the initial motion by Andy, but yeah, obviously it's the message of the image that was gonna be coming out of this. If we went ahead with it, I think we can wait till next month. Let's just do it. And if we go through another four hour debate, that's our problem. I think we can do this very simply next month. I think that's the way we should go. So I don't think it takes, I don't believe it takes the motion to do that. If we do nothing, what I'm saying is it'll come back at our next meeting because we didn't finish it. That's what we do. I think as a chairman to learn something here, I think we should direct staff to bring this back onto the agenda for our next meeting. Thank you. And a clear report about, excuse me, Mr. Chair, if I may suggest a clear report about if we take out certain sections of what the motion was, as you suggested, God-Parrison, in terms of the time scale, you know, a variety of options that we could consider when we eventually make a motion. Yeah, well, right now the direction is to have staff come back to this on the agenda for next month. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The whole thing though, the whole thing will be back. Well, really, you can do that by consensus without calling for a roll call vote on this. Yeah, all right. I don't see everybody. I guess you see any of it does. Can we raise our hands? Bring it back. I just a quick question, Araleo. What was the vote on the last motion we had? Six on everything. Six on everything. Six on everything. Just so it failed, okay. Yeah, everything failed. Six. Mr. Chairman, if I may, just so that the staff is clear with what they are bringing back, I don't think that just a hand raise is sufficient to bring the entire item back because you really are talking about two different things.  No, I think we're a bit to guy, but I think we need to be clear about what you're asking staff to do. I think at this point, we need to bring the whole thing back. That allow also public to further comment and allow also commissioners to further investigate and get questions answered that they may need to be answered. So I'd like to direct staff to bring the whole agenda item back on our next commissioners meeting. I can't support that.  Wait a minute, wait a minute. You were the person that said you wanted to bring it back. This was initially just an adjunct. That's the whole thing. No, well, let's vote on that then because I don't think the commission supports that. I think it's the only fair thing for the public. The public has spoken. And so we on the whole thing, right? We're talking about what Andy Schifrin discussed and what Mike Rockins seconded and what I think Jacques Bertrand wants a staff report for the full implication. So to come back with something we just decided with a, we haven't decided anything. Everything's failed, but nothing's been decided. And I think it's fair for the public to have the opportunity again to speak. Let's vote on it. Because a commission have not been able to make a decision on that. Okay. Let me make a motion that we continue this item to the next meeting and direct staff to come back. And direct staff to come back with a response to the questions raised by the commissioners related to the business plan. Commissioner alternate. Can you repeat that? Cause you were stepped on over. I'm sorry that we continue this item to the next meeting and direct staff to return with the answers to responses to the questions that were raised. By commissioners regarding the, the business plan. Second. We have a motion in the second. I'm going to call. Commissioner Bertrand. Commissioner Bertrand. Commissioner Brown. Hi. Commissioner Johnson. No. Commissioner Montesino. Aye. Commissioner Caput. Aye. Commissioner Johnson. No. Commissioner Montesino. Aye. Commissioner Caput. Aye. Commissioner Grasen. Aye. Commissioner DeNugget. Aye. Principals. Aye. Commissioner McPherson. Aye. Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Gonzales. Aye. Commissioner Ripken. Aye. Thank you to commissioners we're not done with our meeting we have other items we get through this number of the vote please we will we will move on there and our next item on the on the agenda. I think the vote was 10 to one was it or 11 to one I've. Commissioner Tapper to ask for the vote. That is correct what you said commissioner Schifrin. What was it. 11 to 11 to one. We're going to go ahead and move on to item 22 fiscal year 2021 22 proposed budget. Staff report. Good afternoon commissioners I'm tracing your finance and budget for the RTC presented to the commission today is the fiscal year 2021 22 budget reflecting updated projections for transportation development act and measure D revenues. For the act, the county auditor provides the RTC with TDA revenue projections. In addition to the county projections hinder lighters along as provides the RTC with regional market information sales tax trends and revenue projections. The economic outlook is positive with the assumption there will be no further setbacks caused by subsequent outbreak surges marketplace for facilitator activity for online sales transactions continues to smooth the impact of the pandemic on the hardest hit business categories, which are restaurants and hotels and fuel and service stations. Other categories have failed better than expected with statewide tax dollars expected to return to fiscal year 2018 19 levels by the end of this fiscal year. However, this does not mean that all business sectors have returned to their private levels taxes from online sales resulting from the implementation of AB 147 and enhanced by the pandemic are part of that mix and make up some of the benefits from other business segments. The proposed fiscal year 21 22 budget is balanced and includes the funding to meet funding reserves and the RTC state and federally mandated responsibilities as well as continue the RTC priority transportation projects and programs. The RTC and administration personnel committee and staff recommend that the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission adopt the attached resolution, approving the proposed fiscal year 21 22 RTC budget as shown on exhibit a of attachment one, except the measure D revenue forecast for fiscal years 2021 and 21 22 provided by Kendra Lager DeLomas just attachment three, except the 30 year revenue projection which incorporates the HDL forecast for fiscal year 2021 and 21 22. I'm happy to take any questions. I did cut my staff report short because I know that we've been having very long meeting so please, if you have any questions, let me thank you. We'll take questions. Commissioner Watkin. Do I understand correctly this is basically a revenue projections for our budget it's not the complete budget which will eventually be passed later in the year do I have that correctly. Okay, well, straight me out. The fiscal year 21 22 budget that we adopt we adopted in its entirety but its main purpose is to provide the TDA allocations and revisions for the local jurisdictions to prepare their fiscal year budgets which come generally in June. I read through this carefully I don't see much on expenditures. Any other commissioners I'd like to ask a question. Or no hands up. No, no commissioners to have a motion to accept. I'd move the staff recommendation. Second. Second. Second. Second. Commissioner Rock and second it. We need to offer the public an opportunity to comment on this. Yeah, thank you. I do not see any hands up from the public. Oh, there goes one hand. Second here. Let me. We've exhausted the public. No, we have one hand. Give me one second. Mr. Barry Scott. That's right. Some of us are inexhaustible. Thank you. On this matter, I want to point out again that measure D includes funding for study as well as renovation of our rail line infrastructure and I'm, I'm grateful for all the work that has been done to wash out repaired new signals and crossings and Naptas village, et cetera, and a lot of other work. And I encourage you to follow that 30 year measure D plan and continue to keep our valuable rail line in working condition. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. I do not see any other hands up. Can we call the question. Commissioner Bertrand. Hi. Mr. Montesima. Hi. Commissioner Brown. Commissioner Johnson. Hi. Commissioner Caput. Hi. Commission alternate shifrin. Hi. Commission alternate Mulher. Hi. Commissioner Koenig. Hi. Commissioner McPherson. Hi. Commissioner Peterson. Hi. Commissioner Gonzalez. Hi. And Commissioner Rockin. Hi. Passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you commissioners. We're going to move on to item 23 review of items to discuss in closed session. Mr. Chairman, there's one item today regarding real property negotiations regarding the branch line. Given the lateness of the hour, if the commission would prefer we could add that to your next agenda. As the closed session, I think it's going to be the amount, the same amount of time for the next meeting. I don't think it's going to be any shorter. So how do you feel, how are you commissioners feel? You want to proceed on up to you. I think, I think next week, next month's going to be shorter. I mean, we're going to have to make it clear that we're voting on the. The business. But. I think we have delay until next month. Okay. So we move that we continue this item to the next, the closed section session item to our next meeting. Okay. I have a clarification purposes. We could take this up and have a TPW this month. I hope we want to get to it sooner. We may, this may be the only item on that TPW. Is there any reason why we should. We should include it on TPW. Why we should have a special meeting just on this item. It would be helpful to get guidance from the commission. It just doesn't have to happen today. It could happen in two weeks. I think guys raising, we could do it at TPW or at your next meeting. So if you're concerned that the next meeting may go long, you may want to consider putting it on the TPW agenda. I prefer to put it on next, the next meeting agenda. Okay. And then that's regular meeting myself, but. I guess I'll look for consensus on this. I'd rather not have an extra meeting to go to, you know, I'm not planning to go to the TPW meeting. So. Then just have it on the next agenda item. Next month. Thank you. Does anybody start starting with say, Jack, if not, that's what we should do. Okay. The closed session item on the next month's agenda item. Seeing none. Okay, I was growing my motion since it looks like it's happening by consensus. Yeah. Thank you. With that. And our. Good job of charity. Thank you. Thank you, Jerry. Good job. Thank you. I'm going to start with the next meeting. Our next meeting. RTC next meeting is getting this from a sixth. At 9 a.m. That'd be teleconference. And I hope to be certainly be done with teleconferencing. I'm not a zoom person. So. Let me also thank, let me also thank all of my colleagues here for the tone of our meeting, even though we strongly disagree that these issues. I think people will respect each other and I don't take that for granted these days in America. Yeah, my respect to everybody. We all have. This is how we get things done in this country. All right. Thank you guys.


Welcome to my channel, Charlie here with me Patrick Munley. Want to draw your attention to the Aussie Yen on the daily time frame? We had this last impulsive advance to the upside and we now appear to be in a correction that whilst we hold 84-24 as the potential B way of high, let's quickly draw that in. So, A, B, we have a C way of a quality objective down to 80-62. So basically I want to be short through 82-52, the weekly range sport, if we can breach there. I'm looking to be short the Aussie Yen down into this 80-62 and I think then we could see a potential for another leg higher. As always traders, plan the trade, trade the plan. Most importantly, amateur risk. Until next time, thanks very much.


I'm Alexander Hall and I'm a PhD student at the University of Manchester. My research at the University looks at the development of public weather services and how certain extreme weather events such as big storms or floods have affected how they deliver these services and how the public sort of view these services as well. I think a lot of people think they're experts on the weather which is a very British thing maybe but a lot of that aspect is really sort of what interests me of how people actually use weather forecasting in sort of their everyday life. A PhD project is a really creative thing and I think the British Library is good for finding those little bits of the jigsaw puzzle where there was a gap. I can be at the library within two and a half hours really which is convenient and easy and it's a welcoming space and I find it quite an easy space to work in. Finding something at the library, it's generally a bit of detective work on my behalf but then with the help of staff at the library if it's something hard to find. One of the newspapers and records I've used at the British Library is this coverage from the great storm of 1987. Why didn't they warn us is one of the memorable headlines and the records there of the storm through the newspapers and through regional newspapers there as well have really helped give me an insight into that event. There is an inspiring element I guess to the sort of the history of the actual documents you're looking at without the books and pamphlets and newspapers. The research and outcomes and findings of my project wouldn't have been the same. Now I've just come to the end of my PhD project. I'm hoping to continue on with my research and I think as that process goes on over the next few years the British Library is going to continue to be a central resource for me.