Make sure that we get started. So everybody, if you want to come in, grab a chair, get cozy, get to know your neighbor, make some friends, that'd be great. So people are still out there.  Before we do roll call, I'd like to swear in our new directors. And oh, well, I guess I'd be swearing in myself. Or Julie's going to swear us in. So me, Mr. Leopold, and Devon, and Dan, but Dan's not here right now. So I guess the three of us, if we can maybe stand somewhere. Let's do up here in the front, maybe. Devon, I haven't met Devon yet. We're going to do it all together. All right. And she's not with you. Devon, nice to meet you. Welcome to the board. And Oscar has already been sworn in. You'll repeat after me when I say I, I'll say your name. And then we'll do the first gift that people are still familiar with. So I. I. You don't need to know. John Leopold. Jimmy Duterte, Devon Thomas. Do solemnly swear or affirm. Do solemnly swear or affirm. That I will support and defend. That I will support and defend. The Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California. The Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of California. Against all enemies born in domestic. Against all enemies born in domestic. That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution. That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution. Of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California. Of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California. I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of leaveation, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter. Thank you. Okay, I'll do that again in four years. Thank you, it's been a long break. Thank you. Okay, welcome. First of all, Davon's new to our board, so I want to say thank you and welcome. So I know that we have had a UCSC board member, or that's an ex officio that's been here for a long time. She retired and then the students came through and worked with the university to get a student representative, which we're very excited to have. We always love having student input, so thank you and welcome. I wanted to briefly just maybe read a quick letter. Can I do roll call? Oh, okay, before the announcements. Okay. Let's do roll call first. Great. Thank you. I just want to read a quick letter that the students that worked on this set me this morning. They just asked me if I would read this to you guys. Dear Chair Dutra and the Santa Cruz Metro Board of Directors, we wanted to thank you for supporting our efforts to make UCSC's ex officio seat on the Santa Cruz Board Metro Directors a student position. While we were unable to make it this morning's meeting to this morning's meeting due to academic conflicts, we wanted to wish Davon the best in his position and say that we are looking forward to a future where students are more closely integrated with the governance of the Santa Cruz Metro. We believe this new partnership between the board and UCSC students is a great step forward for both organizations and we are excited to work together to ensure that Metro remains a convenient and accessible option for everyone. Going forward, we suggest the board continue to seek out opportunities for student engagement and involvement. We are very excited to see that the board and students can accomplish together. Sincerely, Alice Malmberg, Vice President of Internal Affairs at UCSC Student Union Assembly and Noah Thorin, Representative of UCSC Advisory Committee on Campus Transportation and Parking. So that was them and welcome aboard. Thank you. Can I have your coffee now? Yes. Thank you. Okay. So announcements before we begin our meeting, Carlos would like to step up here and he's our interpreter and maybe say it and welcome you to introduce yourself. And you can do that in Spanish as well. Good morning. Buenos días, Directors. Carlos Valdavelli, your interpreter. Para las personas que prefieren español, voy a estar en la parte de atrás. Thank you. Gracias. Gracias. Okay. And this meeting is being televised with the Community Television of Santa Cruz County, Channel 26, Artinec. Technician today is Mr. Len Dunton. Thank you for coming and doing this. So announcements, are there any announcements from the board members that are not on the agenda that you would like to say? Yes. I would just like to thank our administration for yesterday's visit to the district. He brought back with me personally the years that Leon could have used to come to our high school, appearing students. And when he said that Leon did and his son, Jim, did yesterday's participation in our government was the one thing that we all hold in our society. And that goes, extends really to the only men like Devon and others who do participate. And I thank all of you who are here in attendance. Thank you. Thank you. And I don't know if this is on our agenda, but can I have a visit on here at all or no? I was just going to cover it under the CEA comments. Okay. Thank you for that announcement. We did have three of us, Mr. Leopold and Norma, myself. We met with Congressman Panetta yesterday. He came to tour our facility. And we thank him very much for coming and listening to us and hearing our needs. As many of you have heard over the past past years, we have a lot of needs. We have a lot of buses that need to be replaced. We have to replace over 60 in our fleet. We have fires on our buses and we need to definitely start upgrading them. And they cost money. And having a good person in DC to help us get some grants is important and to keep that relationship for other costs as well. So thank you for Mr. Panetta for coming to visit us. Yes, Mr. Rockett. I'm sure most people don't realize how expensive buses are. It's not just someone. Each bus costs between half a million and a million dollars. And to think about the cost of that. The government has historically paid about 80% of that cost in grants to districts. You have to come up with matching money, which is one of the reasons we have trouble. We can't go out tomorrow and get them all, even if the federal government gave us that money. But there's been problems getting that money. It's really important to connect with our partners and never about this issue. Right. Thank you. 100%. They are expensive. You're driving a million dollar vehicles when you're on them. Jimmy, I might just suggest you send a letter to the editor or someone to just take the occasion. Okay. Thanks, Jimmy, for his visit and for everything you have done. Great. Thank you. Okay, we got that. So, Jimmy, I'll just say one other thing. We each have a letter from Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, who represents the northern part of Santa Cruz County about her efforts. I want to assure everyone that Anna Eshoo, Congresswoman from San Mateo, who represents the northern part of the county, has also been a very good friend of ours in this effort as well. As has Senator Dianne Feinstein. We haven't, well, Kamala Harris hasn't been in office enough, but we go on our annual visit to Washington, D.C. It's been highly successful, comparatively. One time we got three electrical buses, which was unheard of for a small district like ours a couple of years ago. We'll keep that effort up. But we have a great team back in the U.S. House of Representatives as well as the U.S. Senate. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Item number five. So, we're going on to an exciting portion of our day. We had an art contest. As you can see, when you walked in this morning, we have art from students in different schools in the county, up along the wall. And we are excited that we have this participation from our youth. And it's always nice to see when you can see art, because a lot of times it's the first thing cut in programs. So, it's nice to see that we can have students participate, especially in Metro. So, let's start giving out the words. Maybe, would you mind holding them out? That'd be great. I'll read the names, and our vice chair will be handing it out, Mr. McPherson. So, let's start with the drawing posted at Pacific Station and inside buses. So, these are the drawings that are posted inside the Pacific Station and inside buses. And I'm hoping that these names are in order as their places. So, first place goes to Gabriella Italia. Is that correct? Yes. Not first place? Yes. Okay. So, these are just the drawings. I'm sorry. I did. So, the next drawing inside the station is Jonathan Vazquez. No, this is, these aren't, these aren't, I guess these are just drawings. I think I leave. Okay. You don't want me to do this? Yes. Okay. You mean those? Well, yeah. There's like, there's drawings. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know what might be helpful is how all the kids come up here. So, my name's Eileen Wigley. I'm actually a Paris Eligibility Coordinator, but I assisted in organizing this art contest. It's an annual event for the Metro. And we put out a poster contest, and the winners have their artwork posted inside the buses. It kicks off at the county fair during the school day. And then everyone turns in their, their entries. And we had all of our staff actually judge and we selected, the first prize is awarded the cover of the headways. And that is Ryu. I hope I said that correctly. Ryu. Ryu. Wow. Ryu. Ryu was our second place winners. Yeah. Had their, had their drawings posted on the inside of the buses as well as on the outside plackered boards that are fixed to the exterior of our buses. We put those on, I think, eight or nine. We have, I think, 90 or so buses. So you'll see those driving on various routes. And that is, second place is a nice, she's here. Is that how we say it? Olivia. Olivia is Jaden. Had third place. And Elliott. Is that the idea? I'm sorry. He's a second year entrance. Oh, right, right, right. He's a repeat, a repeat artist here. He's checking out his bag. And we had three honorable mentions. Malachi. Oh, do we have anyone else left? You should have. Jonathan? Yeah. Jonathan. I have your bag. Hang on. I have, this is, this is, who's got? Malachi. Okay. So I do have your bag. And Jonathan. And then it's Gabrielle here. Okay. So let me get yours. And that. And did you say Ricky? Ricky was. Third place. Third place. He's already, he's already. He hasn't been. He's here. I don't think he was. Okay. So, I miss Ricky. I'm sorry. He is third place.   And then maybe we can have staff take a picture of all this. Jonathan. Jonathan. No, that's what I meant. Stand together in the front. Yeah. Not in front of your painting, but just stand in the middle. Yeah. I guess I will. I'm all close together. Okay. While we're getting them all squared away, we also would like to thank the sponsors for the contest. They provided cash and also some prizes. The boardwalk bowl. Round table pizza in Watsonville. Look how these books. Deck is the winning prize. That is a new escape route from Watsonville. One, two, three. One, two, three. Play against sports. I'll make sure that. And so Cal, parts who provided a gift certificate also. And hopefully you'll all continue in your arts. You can get to all of these destinations using public transit. The 71, the 69, the 72 will take you to Watsonville. The live oak buses, the 66, the 68. And the downtown metro transit center, as well as the Watsonville transit center will get you close to all of these businesses so you don't have to park and you can support the environment and our local vendors too. So thank you very much for participating this year. Thank you. Thank you. Picture, feel free as a parent. Come on. All right. Kid smile for your parents. Good job. Congratulations all you guys and gals. Awesome. I'd also like to add we have a bus downstairs that we can take photo ops and you guys can go inside the bus and see your art. Yay. So you guys are going to go get into a bus and see your art. Awesome. All right, guys. Thank you so much. Off to school. Good morning. Back to school, everyone. Yeah. Thank you to all the parents, you know, without you guys, you know, the kids, they need direction and so thank you so much. Appreciate it. Parents are great. There's a packet under each of the kids to take with them of all the art. And they are also allowed to take their art. Okay. So you guys, you can grab your art everybody. And the packets that are underneath as well are yours as well. So all the paintings that are underneath as well. Yes. Parents, don't forget the packets as well. They're yours as well on the ground. So you may take all of the extra copies of your drawings. We thought you might want those to give to family and friends or you could draw on the back of those next year. You're welcome. Thank you for participating. We're excited to see your art on the last. It's going to be all over Santa Cruz County. Well, I hope to too. I'm sure you will. And how fun it is to be for it. How exciting is that? Definitely. Yes, definitely. Well, you're going to do a good job. Awesome. Oh, those sticks, huh? That's exciting. Thank you. They'll be able to see you at night. Yeah. And then you can get some pizza as well. Good job. Pizza. Good thing. Yeah. I got a lot of gift cards. Yeah. Let me get some pizza. Yeah. Can we both have this? I always hate to enter this. Why don't I get it with something like this? More. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Well, good luck. And go have fun on the bus downstairs and do well in school. Only when I speak. Yes. That too? No, I have one. But thank you. Bye, guys. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. Thank you so much. You're welcome. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. At this time, we'll do board of directors comments. And there are probably none. No comments. Okay. Communications to the board of directors. So this is going to be from the public. If there's anything not on the agenda that you guys would like to say, speak now or forever hold your piece. Okay. Thank you. This is looking good so far. Oh. Oh yes. Okay. I'm going to hand out here. Okay. Thanks. I am the commissioner. My name is Sophia Gomez. I am the commissioner for the senior disabled and one community and six years of experience with the I was in one community in Nili Lagoon. I represented the last few months, there were other years on that. Some projects, and they make it as, you know, in December 22nd. So we still take a few scenes from the table and from the community. As this video, I wish we can be here with my worker, but don't fit in any car and bring my kids. I fall in that way with my son and I, I will make it any subject. So we ask kids again, for the early bus is 71, one bus every day for the story going on from Cabrita College. I don't know what I do in Cabrita College, and here in Metro, in the Metro office, in the budget, one early bus, a six-series, at least, a six-four-five. One early bus every day for the senior, disabled, family, children, everybody. So we ask him also, few scenes every day in Santa Cruz County, few projects. And they say, yes, the same one, and some friends, and some other friends, also, it's Capitola Mon, 41, the city council of Capitola Mon. The same scene in Washingtonville, I think they're doing the construction right now on many streets in Pennsylvania, the sidewalk of the City of San Marque. I think they're doing the sidewalk, but it's still one-way. So the other thing that we're asking is for recognition for our, excuse me, we want a recognition as disabled for the workers, because they don't fit in any car, it doesn't fit in my friends, my family, it don't fit. So I don't bring my worker to the site, I bring down my excuse, it's not my need. But as a senior and disabled, we're thinking that we all work on that. So if you don't have it for a cruise, you don't have any way of transportation, the only way is in the back seat. So we're asking for a big recognizer of the workers, be more sensible, say for more cooperation between everybody and not with the majority of the bus driver, to have to say for the bus driver, cooperation too. Sometimes they're pretty nice. So we want to get in the early buses for the 71, but we want it so real, we want it so more. And we have a different district representation here, they know me sometimes, so I don't want to be annoying, I don't want to be the angry lady, just we want to be representing. I don't want to be political, believe me, I don't want a million dollars, we want to do. Not falling down, be safe, be safe in our three different places. So now we have it for four years more than new people or the university. All right, what is it we can go for the new three electrical buses because the senior can't be over there, just not only for the university. Or we have the money for the 91, we said we want every 91 buses too. So in Santa Cruz, we don't have it, we have it once a week. So we wanted the same thing, the same issue, for Santa Cruz. We want every bus for Santa Cruz, there's only one bus every year, so we're not asking too many. So we want a more support for the senior disabled. It doesn't matter right now the political, we want to be honest, it's a person, we're human being, we have rights, and we'll be safe, and we'll be miserable. Thank you so much. Thank you. I have a wonderful day, I don't want to be right now, I want to be here, okay, it's all fit. Thank you, I understand. I think we may have some answers on a couple of your things. I don't know, for the answer, it was so tibious. So I can get one more second, it was so tibious, because I can't wait for the car train, okay, all the same, okay, I'll go to the car train. No, no, I think some of your points you were asking today, I think we do have some point, we have some clarification on those. But it's not clear. Let's just let the staff speak, okay, and then. Not so much answers, but let me just tell you what we have done since we received the initial communication, I believe it was in Capitola. We looked at all of the items on that list, now first and foremost, I don't know if these are new items or repeated, those other items, we'll have to evaluate the letter we received today. But what we've done is we've broken those down into sort of three different categories. There were a number of issues that were presented that are city related, they're not metro related. Those have been captured and then a letter has been sent out to each of the cities involved to let them know what the observations were about particular city issues. Where there were stop issues, we have those and we're evaluating those for potential future upgrades if they weren't those. And then where there were service related concerns, we evaluated those and some of those may go on what we call the unmet needs list. And if somewhere down the road, we have money to put new service in, the board would look at all of the unmet needs and sort of try to decide on a priority basis where best to place those dollars. So those are the categories we've broken it down to and a letter has been sent to Ms. Gilmuths. Okay, great, thank you, thank you. It's still I feel like why we can have a fairly vast and across the West and we have a seven one. Well, let's have this conversation.  Let's talk afterwards. You know, I know we've been working on these. I know that you've been coming here and the staff seems to be already looking into the projects that you've been talking about. So let's continue to work with staff and hopefully we can come to resolution. I want to get people to take care of that. Okay. And to get this whole piece of our solution. It's not too much of what we're asking is temporary. I agree and we can talk about this later.  You too. Have a great day. Okay, so at this time, anybody else in the public? Then I would like to bring this to labor. Labor reports. This is hobbling to the stand. Good morning, board directors and welcome. Dave on. I just wanted to say hopefully we have a better year than last year. A lot of it has always been our issues or the mansion on communication. And hopefully we can reach, we've reached impasse lately in one of the meetings. So we're, like I said, just hopefully it's a better year for all of us. Thank you. Well, happy new year to you too. Good morning, board. I want to thank Alex and the board members, Jimmy, John and Norm yesterday for inviting us to meet with Panetta. It was a good meeting and I appreciate it. We appreciate it. I also want to thank or congratulate the board on your appointment. All right, we look forward to meeting with you. Hi, my name is Olivia Martinez. I am the staff for SEIU. And I'm not sure if this is a time to just clarify something on the agenda on 11.21, I think it's the mechanic reclassification. That's fine. Okay, so I really thank Angela and Jolene for doing all the work and we finally completed that reclassification that I think took us a year. But I just wanted to clarify is that SEIU wasn't in agreement to not deal with the compaction issue. It's just that unfortunately, we don't have a contract in our language to deal with compaction issues. But for the sake of moving forward and having this classification be done, I think we were okay with it. But we're hoping that with this selling comp study that compaction issues that are an issue or a lot of the classifications are addressed through that process. So thank you. Great, thank you. We'll take note. Anybody else? Okay, thank you, Labor. Let us move now on to our consent agenda board. Is there anything on the consent agenda you'd like to pull, talk about? Okay. Move approval to consent agenda. Move that to that. And then I'd like to go out to the public. Is there anybody that has comments on the consent agenda? I think we just heard one. Second, second. And we have a second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? I was a tie, but you can choose between Donna and Bruce. Okay. Ladies first. Both from Scotts Valley. So ladies first. Yes, ma'am. It was just the women's march, so we'll give it to Donna. It feels like home. Okay, that's perfect. Thank you now, those three passes. Thank you. Okay, so at this point, do you want to go back up to the front again? Longevity awards. So, nobody's here. Okay, so we'll just say really quick in case Juan Flores, Michael Miller, or Pete LaGuerrera are here. Okay, you guys are all being honored. Thank you. We will get your awards in the mail. And a resolution of appreciation, Rotary Arlen Colville. He's not present then. Okay. Well, I would move approval of the resolution. Thank you. And all second those. Thank you. All first and second. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Abstention, oh, you're closing? No, no, no. But my question is, is it 12 and 13 that we're doing? 12 and 13, yes. Together, yeah. Any abstentions? Okay, those clearly pass. Your pass for now. Unanimously. It was almost, I got a little nervous over here. I thought I almost heard a no. Okay, so 14, Martin, the city manager of Santa Cruz. Welcome, and we will have a presentation on the state of downtown Santa Cruz. All right. Thank you for inviting me here. And I wanted to do a presentation on the state of the downtown. And first of all, I want to thank you for the opportunity. And also thank Alex, he was at the city council meeting presenting on what the Metro's doing. And very much appreciate that. So we thought it'd be a good opportunity to also give you an update since the Metro station obviously in transit is so critical to the city as well as our downtown area. So we're gonna cover some of these areas here in the next slide with respect to some of the... Thank you. Give you an update on some of the development that's going on downtown and other efforts to improve the safety and the promise of downtown as well as some of the related issues to parking, retail, and transportation. I'll start with the downtown plan which was recently adopted by city council. The original downtown plan was approved after the earthquake. And we revised that accordingly as much of it has already been implemented. Like I said, it was originally adopted in 1991 as a downtown recovery plan. So we took out the recovery now since we've pretty much recovered. This update reflects that we have recovered and that our downtown continues to grow and thrive. Focused on areas in the southern portion of downtown including Pacific station. Key components include increasing the potential for housing to address our housing crisis, enhance connections to the river walk and continuing the success of our vibrant commercial district downtown. Past iterations of the Pacific station project informed some of the choices of height for the area south of Kathart which were increased in the plan. And we're looking forward to the plan implementation and have some upcoming developments on that on the horizon that I'll point out in a few minutes. So those are the chains except the south of Kathart area in particular and along the river had some height increases there. In this next slide, you can see some of the opportunity areas. So the orange properties represent proposed or construction mixed used housing opportunities. Sites include the 555 Pacific Avenue which is 94 market rate units by Barry Swenson and that building is set about complete. It's coming up really, really nice. And then there is the DevCon Waller 200 market rate project and that's set on Laurel, Front and Pacific. There's also the city owned parcels adjacent to the Metro Center. The proposed Doug Ross property on Front Street which is slated for 140 units. That's along between SoCal, along Front Street, between SoCal and Laurel Street right along the River Levy. And that'll be a great project because that is continuous with the River Levy. And that's at 140 units. And then the 1547 Pacific Avenue which is the last remaining coal downtown next to Luluz and that's 67 units at which is currently under construction also by Barry Swenson. The green properties represent major new or proposed commercial opportunities including the Abbott Square project which has been completed recently and has been a tremendous success in the Warriors Arena. The blue properties are opportunity sites and include the two city surface parking lots behind the University Town Center which we're looking at for a mixed use project and I'll describe that a little later. And behind it, Del Mar Theater which I'll also talk about that one in a little bit and of course the current Metro site. So these are major opportunity sites in our town. This is a conceptual rendering which represents the proposed city 60 to 100 unit affordable housing project on Pacific Avenue which is adjacent to the existing Metro Center and includes the visioning of the public Paseo that connects to Front Street and the Levy. The city recently acquired the NYAC building that was about a $6 million acquisition we just completed. That's the nonprofit and trans building and combined it with the small city parking lot facing Pacific Avenue is moving forward on next steps with respect to the project there. The opportunity to work with Metro and revision revised the entire combined footprint together is an exciting opportunity and we've been working with your staff on looking at that that could maximize the efficiency of the Metro operations with the new bus transit center oriented towards Front Street while providing commercial retail and enhanced pedestrian frontage Pacific Avenue and affordable housing above. So this is again a rendering of what it could look like to create all those opportunities because the city's already invested in acquiring the NYAC building. This is another rendering of what the Maple Street alley could look like. The one thing I should note is that we wouldn't have a farmers market on this site because we're looking at creating a permanent farmers market which I'll show you next. So I think we'll go this way around. Show you this one first. So we're working with the farmers market to create a permanent home for them. The farmers market's operating downtown for many years and it's critical but they really need a permanent home. And so this includes providing many of these features that they need and they're lacking now. It also provides the opportunity to create a new community space because this could be used for any number of events. It would also continue to function as a parking lot but it would also have a pavilion. And this is about another five to $6 million investment by the city. This is an overview of what it would look like from the top. It would include a plaza. This is all on French Street and Cathcart. So can I ask a question? Yeah. Can you say something about where in the planning this is and is it already, I mean, is this just a conceptual drawing or some architect or whatever it was? These are conceptual drawings. We've been working with the farmers market. We've identified this site. This is their preferred site. And so we're just looking for the farmers market to finalize that and then we would move towards making the change and moving it to this location. We've specced out all the various stalls and how they would all work. They're very excited about it because we create a very organized structured farmers market with the designated spaces, the aisleways, classroom facilities, the way vehicles come in and out, which vehicles are used and which ones aren't, which ones are stands and that sort of thing. And has the council approved this or is it controlled? Not yet. This is conceptual. They've approved the approach, they've approved the concept and moving forward with that. And I think everybody also likes the idea of the pavilion because it provides the opportunity for a year round market as well as the plaza and again the opportunity to prove to this to be a venue for really a community space for any number of activities. You can have a festival at any number of different things. Thank you. And we're going to create that permanency, which is what the farmers market is really looking for. Another major project that we're working on is a mixed use project. This is right behind the University Town Center where the current farmers market site is. And that's a mixed use project that would include a new 44,000 square foot library. We have 20 foot height ceilings and then it would include office and commercial as well as housing and a parking structure of about 600 parking spaces. This provides the opportunity to combine parking in the downtown and also facilitates the ability to use existing surface slots for higher and better use, which would include housing. That's a direction we received from housing. To really look at our, we have a lot of surface slots. How could those be better used and how could we combine parking to have it be more efficient and more connected to housing. And also this is very close to obviously transit and the metro center there as well. And so this is a project that the library portion that is completed we're now gonna be bringing this back to County in the next several months. As I mentioned earlier too, the viability downtown is important also from public safety and cleanliness perspective. And so the city is taking on a strategy to try to address that. As you all know homelessness is a major issue in the state of California. I recently came back from a conference in Long Beach that had officials from all over the country from New York, Colorado, Texas to talk about homelessness. And the one thing that was really striking to me about that conference and what I've learned is that California just does an incredibly horrible job of sheltering individuals. But for example, New York, the state of New York has 90,000 homeless people there, but they only have 4,500 unsheltered. The state of California has 130,000 homeless, but we only 40%, or 30%, 30% are sheltered, 70% are unsheltered in the city of Santa Cruz and the county Santa Cruz, 80% are sheltered. So a lot of our issue is that individuals are, there's really no place for them to be and we just don't provide the shelter. The shelter doesn't mean permanent housing, it means any variety of different shelters for mental illness, for substance abuse, for families. And so it's very visible in our communities and obviously it's been an issue in our downtown. So that's one of the strategies that we're working on is how could we, because again, enforcement is not effective if the police are not able to help those individuals or whether it's through accountability and the criminal justice system or a place for them to be, because otherwise what it ends up doing is moving people around. So we're trying to get away from that strategy and this is a really important program downtown that gets those individuals on the path to getting out of homelessness. That's what's critical about this program. That's really what it's about while people are out there cleaning and making a difference. They're also getting stabilized. They're also referred into programs and services and it's been incredibly successful thus far and we're hoping to expand this program. They clean the levee, they clean all throughout downtown and we really want them to do projects throughout the city and I think other communities are looking at implementing similar programs. And there are a number of other efforts downtown to in this area including the additional rangers, downtown hosts, outreach workers that we've been implementing and again we're also looking at our enforcement approach so that we want to conduct effective enforcement downtown about our strategizing and focusing on having a place for people to go so that we're not moving people around as I mentioned earlier. The other big part of the piece here is parking. So we're currently working with the consulting firm of Nelson My Guard on expanding our downtown parking district over the present 10 and 20 year horizons. This study includes an analysis of supply and demand for parking, pricing, recommendations and strategic recommendations to support downtown commercial office and residential years groups. How parking policy can support and enhance the downtown is toward the focus of the study. We're working with national retail consultant Bob Gibbs to refresh this 2011 study on recommendations for long-term retail sustainability in the downtown which has been impacted by the changing face of retail and surging internet sales. And I was talking to director Bautoff just earlier today about the impacts of retailing throughout the country and for example in the mall. So that is an impact also on our downtown. His observations and recommendations include activation of the pedestrian footbridge or frontages along Pacific Avenue and considerable beautification and landscaping that will be working on implementing his recommendations and overall downtown beautification to support our vital downtown retail corridor. Another major initiative that the city's kicked off again related to the downtown in transit in particular is this year we launched our Go Santa Cruz campaign. This brings all of our transportation alternative programs under one umbrella. Go Santa Cruz includes the city's ongoing work to expand bike and pedestrian facilities provides education and encouragement increases transportation options through programs like Zipcar and bike share and leverages partnerships with other transportation agencies. Since 2011 our transportation group has received over $21 million in grant funding to implement transportation projects that increase multimodal options reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make our city more livable. Here's some interesting statistics. One of the reasons that to do that we do this was to highlight the success that we've had in constructing infrastructure and partnering our programs that helps to reduce single vehicle travel. In the city of Santa Cruz our drive alone rate is almost 20% lower than the national average. Our bike to work rate is the second highest in the state. We've made strides in transit mode share likely in large part due to the university. Thank you. Our goal is to continue to reduce the rate of driving alone through infrastructure and partnerships leading to a more livable community and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We're really excited to be rolling out a bike share system in May. We've partnered with social bicycles to provide 215 pedal assist bikes to be located at 26 stations around town. This is great because it's electric pedal assist. These are a key component to helping close the first mile, last mile problem as well as offer a great alternative for residents, employees and visitors to use these bikes to get around without adding car trips to our road network. We're adding a bike share station at the city parking lot right next to the Pacific station and with the aim of helping people to travel that first leg or last leg of their trip making transit a feasible alternative for even more people. So I think this is a partnership. So hopefully we'll help with the use of transit and facilitate that use. And so in closing, we're excited about everything we have going on in our downtown and we're proud of the programs that we have underway. A transit I want to emphasize is a key component of the success of our downtown. We're excited about our continued partnership with Metro and we hope to realize a joint project at Pacific station. So thank you very much. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. I guess at this time, we're going back to the board. Thank you for your presentation. It's always nice even though I'm from South County that knows exactly what's going on in your county and part of the county. So anybody on the board that would like to have questions? Mr. Leopold. Thank you, chair. Just a quick question on the two slides you showed about Pacific station. There was a noticeable absence of any buses. So how do you envision that project with the transit center there? In those of us in the range of the Paseo piece, but one option that makes sense is to orient the station towards front street so that you could have continuous frontage along Pacific Avenue. So you could have commercial retail and housing section that the front specific towards the back. You could have the Metro station that or ants around Pacific with the acquisition of the night building and the city parking lot. Obviously that expands the base of the area. So you have various options in terms of expanding that you make it wider as it looks the longer and that's what we've been doing. Yeah, I'll add one piece in there. Play place, Slayer, Transportation, Planner, City, Santa Cruz. We've really been working with Metro staff with a veteran and Aaron to identify also a consultant to come in and do some further analysis on operational needs for downtown transit. So one of the questions that that's going to answer is the number of bays that are necessary, the number of labor spaces that are necessary, how transit functions through downtown and that will really inform the space needs and the orientation and facilitate how that project looks as well. So I remember we talked about this at the Metro Board several months ago. So we haven't moved forward on that same study the city is contributing $25,000 to. Correct, and we actually had a consultant interviews a week and a half ago and maybe Aaron could give an update on where that is but we did select it for a consultant. Yvonne? How do people want to take the bikes? This is one of my favorite things to talk about. The city was able to negotiate a no-cost to the city contract with our vendor Social Bicycles. So Social Bicycles takes on all of the capital and operational costs. They also get all of the financial revenues that come through user fees. So we facilitate our city contribution to it is facilitating through the encroachment permitting process, coordination, labor and businesses and residents and doing a lot of the promotion and publication of the program. But there is a no-cost to the city contract. And for account, you should get a question. Oh, okay, okay. So it's not off the televised. Oh, okay. So for accountability, how do they deal with bike theft? Oh, that's a great question. So each and every one of the bikes has a GPS on board which is monitored 24 seven through 65. So at any point in time, we can find where that bike is in real time. In order to check out a bike, you need to have a valid credit card linked to a unique user ID. So you create a user account and then you check out that bike. So that bike is tied to you from the time that you check it out until you return it. In terms of bikes that are left locked up when not in use, these bikes are made to be theft and criminal resistant in as many ways as possible. All of the components are custom. You cannot use standard tools. It's essentially one big welded together piece. All the components that you could think of that would normally be easy to remove like a seat. They have a thing in the bottom of the seat post making it unable to be removed. The pedals can't be removed. And typically when our vendor is down, this is one of the big questions they get asked. That maybe in the first week of bikes being out, a couple of people will try to steal the bikes and then they realize it's not doable. A, and B, that there's no resale value for any of the parts because they can't be swapped out for anything else besides these custom bike share bikes. So, lots of ways that we're looking at them in the end was to adjust. Wow. Pretty detailed. You are really like pro-active in the best way. That was a good question. Yeah, that was a very good question. As Boltoni mentioned beforehand, so that is how we're going to determine how many bikes are going to be there. Or do you have an idea of how many bikes are going to be there? I would assume they'll be at all the bays you would have in the city of Santa Cruz. They'll have the emotes because that is our metro station. So, how, what's the amount of bikes we have? Yeah, so we'll have 26 station locations throughout town. In the downtown, there will be five, including the one adjacent to Pacific Station. We're anticipating there be about 20 bikes near Pacific Station. One of the other things about downtown because we're investing, not for partnering, on a, could be a dockless bike share system. We are going to geofence the entirety of the downtown area, which means that you can, there'll be five official stations in downtown, but if you're going to go to, say, Keontes and there's not a bike share station in front, you can walk up to a regular bike rack and that's counted the entirety of downtown as a regular station. So there will be about 20 bikes located directly adjacent to Pacific Station, but there'll be other locations throughout the downtown that you can pick up and drop off bikes. Thank you, and I applaud you for your antithet efforts in the city of Santa Cruz. I appreciate that. Thank you. That sounds like there's a lot of effort and we're going into this and good luck with your, let me just go. Oops, I, yeah, I just wanted to ask, congratulations on an ambitious forward looking wide ranging program that you have there. It's very detailed, but with the dissolution of redevelopment agencies and so forth, how much federal states support these types of programs? I mean, the city's obviously, it's not going to be able to fund at all. What are you counting on? Are there new programs that are coming on or that you're pushing for? Right, some portion of it is from, excuse me, some of it was from, we did have some redevelopment bonds that were, we still retained, but for example, that helped with the opposition of the night purchase, as well as for some of the downtown improvements. So we still have some remaining redevelopment bond funds that have contributed to this. It's not, like you said, anything at all, like when we have redevelopment. And then the other portion really, it's just partnerships, it's grants, it's also partnerships with the private developers. Much of the housing is privately developed. And so there it's really working on how can we partner to provide opportunities for a larger amount of affordable housing? Like for example, with the DEF CON project, one of the things we're looking at there is, can we acquire some properties adjacent to them and then potentially share the parking and construct the, because we own the properties of the land, how can we maximize the amount of affordable housing? And that's what we're hoping we can, by owning the land, by partnering with the private developers and going out with a potentially not-profit housing developer create, you know, 600 units of affordable housing without a general funding pack on the city. Additionally, for local funding, we passed the library bond and a transportation measure which enabled us to have some additional funding to go towards our downtown library and many of our transportation projects. So we're really thankful to the military for that as well. Thank you. And we're just fighting for that. Yeah, I'm fighting for that. But with respect to the Nixie's project that Claire mentioned with the library, we have the parking fund too. So again, it's really just how do you leverage what you have and partner to create an opportunity so that there's the ability to get these projects moving forward. We have to be creative. Great. Thank you for your presentation. We really appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. All right, moving on to our next part of the agenda which will be quick in Angela brief. Here's the board. I'd like to take number 15 and number 16 together. And then I would also like to take number 16, just have you go to 16A1. I'm not gonna put the presentation up there today in the address of time. You go to page 16A, the most important page. 16A12. 16A12 tells you exactly where we stand year to date on our expense sign. Right now we have 53% of our personnel and savings. And we have about 47% of the non-personnel and savings. We have about a million five that we have not spent to date. And on the revenue side through October, we are on task for revenues. Our sales sector revenue is coming in above what we anticipated. And our passengers revenue is coming in about 17% below the budget on how much of our ridership is. Between those two, we're dead even on the revenue side of our saving money on the expense side. And the passenger in gas to do the last that we talked about in the earlier, is there some other community of water down in the passenger? There. There? How does the student view the routes? Good question there, quick two part answer. As we, we've now been a year since the service reduction. So unfortunately we're comparing to ridership afterwards. So we can't blame it per se of the service reduction. As you will get a presentation in February in some detail in this topic, we're dealing with the nationwide trend of driving transit ridership. Fortunately in the case of UCSC, our ridership is so strong there as masking a system-wide issue that we're coming to Gershow. So I'd like to speak to more detail of that in February. But yes, the regular local services are suffering but they're finding a pretty common pattern having to do with employment, low prices of gas, increased car ownership, et cetera, et cetera. It's a tough game right now. Thank you. Okay, Angela, that's it. We're good. Oh my God, you are, my favorite today. Thank you. I would move to a second one. Okay, John. I'll move to a second one. Okay, the first and the second, all in favor? All right. Oppose, abstentions. This unanimously passes. Okay, so welcome back. So the number 17 is accepting the financial statements for the independent audit report for the year in June 30, 2017. Again, in the interest of time, I'm gonna have our accountant Lorraine come out and talk to you about some of the specific details about our audit. Good morning. So I'm gonna keep this short and sweet also. Today we are presenting the annual audited financial statements and the auditor's report for your acceptance. Attachment A is the actual audit report and the financials. These are our financials. They're our responsibility. The auditors nearly provide their professional opinion. For fiscal year 17, they have offered us an unmodified opinion, which is a clean opinion. The financial statements are presented in all material respects. The financial position of the agency and they're not materially misdated. There are no findings for compliance for TDA or PTMSEA. There are no single audit findings for our federal awards. Attachment B is an ASAS 114 letter. It's a required communication that the auditors must relate to those who are in charge of governance or the board. They need to relate any audit adjustments that were made and any difficulties or disagreements that they had with management. And there were none this year. Attachment C is what our auditors are calling an agreed upon conditions letter. This letter is an opportunity to relay recommendations that can strengthen our internal control and our operations efficiency. Now this is not an ASAS 115 letter, which you may have seen with other audits that would identify significant deficiencies or material weaknesses. Those would be reportable conditions. These are not that. This is merely a letter to informally relate best practices recommendations for a couple of items that the auditors came to their attention. Auditors often consider this type of a letter as a value added service to the clients. So I wanna emphasize that this doesn't carry the weight or disparity of a 115 letter. The two conditions that have been identified are summarized in the AUC letter and it's attachment C. These issues have already been on our radar and it's good to know that we are on the same page as the auditors. Angela, our finance manager, is working with the customer service staff currently and with the ticketing software and hardware vendor GFI to implement these recommendations. We plan to meet in March with the finance, budget and audit committee in March to present an update about the status of our corrective actions for these two conditions. Thank you. Any questions on the board board? Second. The motion to accept the boards by a right hand seconded by Leopold. Graduate all of our staff. We'll have a clean audit report. So noted. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimously. Okay, we're going to number 19, Jaleen. The description for the assistant human resource manager position. Jaleen Church, human resource manager. Actually, that was item number 18.1, correct? That's 18, do what I say? Yeah, 19.0. All right, so. I just wanted to bring before the board, actually, 18 and 19 are revisions to a few of our existing job specifications. 18 is a revision to the job description for the assistant human resource manager, which is currently a vacant position. We made some, just minor tweaks to this job spec to make sure that the needs of the organization and the job specification would make for a good recruitment. We want to get the right person in. And so focusing on the competencies needed for the job was very important and we wanted to make sure that we got this right. So, before the board here, the revision to the job description, recommending that the board approve the revised job description. Okay, questions from the board? Mike? Can I ask if either of these jobs are affected by the compaction that the union representative discussed with us? What are our expectations of the hiring ability given where these things are coming from? That's a great question. So, the manager's comp plan, none of our existing salary structures really address compaction issues because we don't have a formalized compaction. It's not addressed in a formal methodology for setting for salaries. And so that's part of the upcoming discussion on classification and comp study. So, no. However, in reviewing the job specification, we wanna make sure first, and that's why as we speak later on the classification comp study, we wanna make sure that we have the right job description to be able to move forward and then we can actually comp out. And so in moving forward with this action, we're able to actually get the right person in and then later as we review our compensation, then we can address things like compaction and that. But I don't see an egregious challenge with getting a person in the door with the given salary structure and this revised job spec. And what's our timeline for this hiring? As soon as you approve this, hitting the streets with this one. I will move to approval. Okay, any more questions from the board, Cynthia? Can you, could you give us just a brief idea of what were the updates and changes? The updates and changes are mostly just to align with the industry and not make this so tunnel vision. Sometimes we set our job description so focused on specific tasks rather than the broad competencies that we really end up crippling ourselves in the hiring process. And so when we are painting an accurate picture of what a day in the life of the job looks like, examples of duties should be a pretty good indication of the true examples of the duties, yet they're not all inclusive. But what we should be able to glean from the knowledge, skills and abilities based in a job description, it are the competencies required. And those were the small tweaks that were made that we made sure we captured the right competencies for this particular position. We have a very, very short management, flat management structure here. And so it's really important in these e-management positions to get the right person with the right skill set so that we can accomplish a lot of work. Okay, thank you. Devon? Specifically, I keep forgetting this. For the salary, is it adjusted for the cost of living in Santa Cruz? Would you say it would adequately will support someone who lived here? So as we'll discuss with the upcoming item with the CPS study, the management conch has never been done. So these have just kind of been set and things have been kind of adjusted. The cost of living has been kind of considered as a kind of a backside factor into putting this together in the past. Now we're taking the steps to actually do it right. But that's not in the job spec. The actual compensation piece is not in this job spec. Thank you. Any other questions from the board? Okay, public, is there anybody from the public who'd like to comment on this? Well, he hobbles out. Yes. Trying. Good morning, everyone. Just for historical, a lot of the compassion issues for the union side, both of us, we dealt during negotiations. That's what I think there's an absent language in both countries. So that's what we, historically, have done. Anyone else? Okay, a second? Okay. Second. Okay, first a second. All in favor? Aye. Oppose? Staying? This unanimous passes. And a second was who, I'm sorry? Leopold. Okay, dope. So... Go recruit. Jolene. All right, I'm not again. All right, so this is the second of the job descriptions that were changed. So this is for the Safety, Security, and Risk Manager. This is a highly important position in the transit industry, as you can all imagine. And I've successfully recruited for a safety risk manager in my prior employment, very, very difficult if you don't have the job spec right. And so the revisions to this particular spec, again, thought rid of the tunnel vision nature and really focused on the organizational needs for a safety and risk officer who really understands the needs of transit. Very specific with DOT, FTA. We just wanna make sure that we get the right person in. So just some small refinements here to make sure that we can meet the needs. And our needs have changed. As industry regulations and compliance have changed over the years, our needs have changed. And so the job spec reflects the changing, the changes in the industry and regulation over the years. Awesome, thank you. A board, any questions? Okay, public? No one in the public? All right, let's rock in. There's Matthews. All in favor? All in favor. Oppose? Staying? This passes. Okay, Alex, you're on. Establishment of passenger code of conduct and services. Suspension, exclusion policies, wait. Geez, Louise, I'm doing this today. I think I wanna end this meeting. That's what I wanna do. I'm like, I'll just be over here. Jolene, you're on again. Whatever you're at. Yeah, it's every other item until this is over. I was told earlier to hurry this up. All right, this one, I'm really excited to bring you. We took before the personnel committee our findings from the CPSHR Consulting Management, Classification and Comp Study. We did phase one of the classification study which was a review of the current structures in the management unit, the job descriptions. We made revisions. We went through a very interactive process on this with a position description questionnaire. Went through all of each job with a point to come highly involved with staff and with the folks at CPS to make sure that we accurately recorded what folks in this organization are doing and may need to do in the future. So again, getting away from tunnel vision of what we've done in the past, looking at what we do today and considering what we may do in the future so that we accurately drafted some great new job descriptions. So our job descriptions have tweaked some of the titles, you'll see that actually the titles of many of our positions, many went from a manager to a director that clearly aligns with the industry and it really puts, imagine going to an industry conference and you hear a title of manager versus director and in your mind, you've actually placed that person mentally where they, their hierarchy in the organization and whether you're going to listen to them. We don't need to dilute the authority of any of our management just in title alone and that can happen. So it's very important that we have the hierarchy in place, that structure in place so that we can accurately move forward with compensation. And so when we went before the personnel committee we proposed looking at a methodology which is what we've been talking about about compaction without having any type of compensation policy we go into a classification comp study looking at comparable salaries without any fixed methodology. So this proposal to the personnel committee this presentation I should say to the personnel committee and that presentation is in your packet was to go over the components of what's in a methodology of compensation policy. And that can be anything from setting salary ranges 5% below the median, at median, above the median it also takes into consideration total compensation. What are our agencies peers paying in first contributions in fringe benefits and all of these components that go into why someone would come to work here. And oftentimes we look at the bottom line salary but we're not looking at total compensation. We wanna make sure that people see the big picture of what Metro has to offer. We have a wonderful benefits packet and we have a lot to offer someone. So we wanna make sure that that's accurately communicated and so our compensation policy moving forward we were just now with the correct job descriptions that we've proposed here in the CPS study moving into phase two which would be that market analysis phase and that would we'd need to determine what that methodology is. So going forward with the personnel committee they decided hey we can make any financial decisions how to achieve a methodology if we don't even know the financial impacts why would we wanna make a decision if we don't even know what this could mean to the organization. So let's look at that. So CPS is going to be bringing back to the personnel committee an actual analysis that shows the salaries in our approved we have 11 agencies in our in our comparable agency market basket. They're gonna be looking at the salaries of all of the positions that they would be comping against and then providing an actual spreadsheet that shows the median range of 5% above 5% below what that looks like and then we can analyze the financial impacts of making one of those decisions would make. This is key and this study has taken a bit of time because we wanna make sure we get this right and we have one shot to do it right management has never been done why not start with the unit that's never been done so that we can really start shaping this organization as compensation policy in the right direction. Thank you, Jolene. And questions from the board. I don't like, no? Oh, but not comments yet. Just questions. Cynthia? I'm curious, you talk about a salary study and then you also reference total compensation. What's the percentage of total compensation that's non-salary? It's huge. Yeah, the French is represents roughly 40% is the loaded on top. So that's my question that goes forward. There's one of the pages here that talks about the board discussion setting pay ranges but where do you talk about consideration of total compensation? So total compensation comes into the big picture of that. Setting pay ranges at wherever you're going to in market is a separate component of the total compensation piece but that's a part of the bigger conversation and the affordability comes in there and that's when you look at all of the fringe and where you've determined would be a great place to set your compensation. You have that conversation kind of as a whole. So we look at what are those peers offering in their total compensation package and if we're going to be pegged against say 5% above, median or below, is that an accurate reflection of the total compensation in our basket and how competitive does that make us? So that, I understand. So will that kind of analysis be in the next phase here? In the next, the very next thing that's coming forward is to set forth what the 5% median looks like so that the personal committee can actually assess that before we move into that but yes, there will be a spreadsheet that will include all of these components so that the personal committee can look at all of that big picture before making, yeah. Yeah, that's an absolutely huge consideration to take into account. Any more questions, Mr. Leopold? You just remind us what the timeline is for all this. So the timeline now that we're moving in to the next phase two, we have a couple months, about eight weeks time to perform this compensation analysis piece and we'll be presenting back to the personal committee with that next piece. So before the end of fiscal year, we'll be completely done with this particular classification cost study. But like I said, we don't want to rush through this. We've taken our time, we've really applied some due diligence here. The revisions, just since I joined the organization in October, have been just an enormous amount of going back and forth and making sure things are right. So anticipate the end of fiscal or the beginning of fiscal and just over the next couple of months we'll have the comp done. Yeah, I just think it's important for us to remember that over the next couple of years we're gonna be having a lot of, we're gonna be entering into negotiations with our unions as well. And so we have to make sure that we have something that is financially doable for all of our employees, not just some of our employees. Any more questions? Okay, public? Comments, questions from the public? Just come up to the podium. And the other one, Casino, just like I said that the Personnel Commission is just a concern for many, many years that district has been able to build people up. Like Aaron, April, Hannah in the back, we've built on employees here to take on these and with that minimum requirements it's gonna be really hard to build that educational something. Thank you. Next? Yeah, I just have a question about comparable, talking about comparing Santa Cruz Metro Transit District with other agencies. In making that comparison, is that including the cost of living in Santa Cruz? We compare ourselves to similar cost of living areas. Well, just the unions and the management sat together and they agreed on the comparable cities that will be used in this for this study. So I believe everything was taken into consideration. They range from when you look at the cities that are being compared. So some we are, I think at least Santa Clara was one of them and their cost of living is probably more expensive than ours, but then you have some that are lower. So I think there's a wide range and that was kept into consideration that you had a fair representation of different cities. What's that? Is that documented? That is and I think that we can find it is on the website or it's the report. So thank you. You're welcome. Next, any real questions from the public? Okay, Jaleen, any comments from the board? Mr. Rockin. John, tell me about my first point, which is you have to understand that whatever we decide in this comp study is the appropriate way to go. For example, the limited comparable agencies, the issue of whether you want to pay above, 5% above the market or 5% below. We'll also have to be applied to all of the SEIU employees maybe a little less directly to the bus drivers, but it has an impact. And so we have to understand, we say, well, we can afford that for the managers, but if you can't afford it for everybody in the agency, you can't do it. So we really need to see the implications of this before we decide where to go. I also note that the 11 comparable agencies, some of them are huge, way bigger than we are. Some of them are smaller. A lot of them are in the Bay Area, so we're not comparing ourselves to Arkansas or something like that. Seriously, this is, we are already in expensive markets and most of our comparables are in expensive markets, not all of them, most of them as well. The reality of this study is going to be different and what we'll end up with is very clear. We'll eternally have a clear sense of how people's jobs, in terms of their pay for each other, as well as what they were paying for this kind of work. And it sort of means that we should be in a good position to hire people. And you might decide, well, let's pay it, if you end up deciding to pay 5% above the median, it makes it a lot easier to hire people from outside to come in to a very expensive place to buy a house or anything else. But again, if the ending result to that is we're going to pay people, make our job easier to recruiting people, but the end result is we have to cut routes to make that happen. That's not a very wise decision. So the person on the committee decided we're not going to make that decision on the board. We might look at that and make some recommendations, but hopefully the board as a whole needs to understand that question and weigh in because it really is, it's going to be a big dollar figure if you decide you're going to go 5% above. It's not going to be trivial. It's going to make a big impact. And we don't want to do this in a way that ends up carrying routes. And I'll say this for our employees, they've always been supportive of passengers and the public. So we have to work together on this and come up with a system that works for us, but it doesn't, you know, it's fair for people, but also it allows us to pay people and not just reduce our system to pay for it. Right, thank you. Yes, Tom? Yeah, and I think that's something all of the jurisdictions are dealing with. We have a position in New and Scotts Valley. We haven't been able to attract a qualified applicant and we've left it open and using contract because we can't boost that salary and then just, you know, make one person to get one position but be unable to sustain the other salaries and things. So, you know, it's definitely, you know, the committee has and staff have a challenging situation, but I think that's what we're all looking at is it is hard to recruit in Santa Cruz County. It's hard for us, it's hard for, you know, people to afford to live in our communities, but it's also hard to recruit qualified employees and it's going to be a balancing act that's going to take a lot of discussion. I also want to add that I think we were, I speak for myself, I was very impressed with the consultant we hired. I think the rest of the committee was as well. We had a consensus that they really know what they're doing and they understand what we're facing as a district in terms of the work that they're doing. I agree, I thought the consultant was really excellent, so. I want to ask that as well. Chris, anyone else? Well, I just wanted to repeat what Mike, Supervisor Rockett said that the consultant firm is fantastic, I thought, in really trying to set a framework where we can be realistic in what we can offer without depleting the service system that we are all responsible for. So, they've done a tremendous job, the first big step and as a member of the committee, I'm very impressed and I'm looking forward to seeing how we can implement this as quickly as possible. It's about time. And I think once we see the numbers, then we'll make our decision, but we don't, we haven't seen the numbers yet, so that is TBD, right? Yes. One of the things, too, is the relationship that we have as board members to Mr. Barrow and the actual running of the routes and changing of the routes and making them feasible financially. And I think this is part of the process, that really we have to deal with constantly. Secondly, we need to fill all of the management positions. Marketing is one of them, that I think we really need to come into focus because it is a necessity to our entire system. Especially with the decline of ridership, which is, did I hear 17% this morning? So that's a big number, guys. So we gotta work on that, and I think that might be a good idea. So any other comments on this? Okay, at this time, can I get the board director's approval motion? Also move. Okay, we'll just do it right here. First and second, Cynthia and Bruce. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstained? This unanimously passes. Thank you. Okay, now I'm gonna double check this. Alex, you are next, 21. I'm 21. Okay, thank you. Mr. Chair and Director. This item is before you because we don't have a passenger code of conduct and everybody else does, need I say more? Yeah, but I will. So this is an important policy for us, as indicated, other transit properties have code of conduct policies. The behavior on a bus or a paratransit vehicle, I think most parks should be common sense, but unfortunately it isn't and people do things that we would not wanna have them do. Those things can create problems, challenges for our bus operators, our paracruise operators, and certainly inconvenience and result in our passengers feeling uncomfortable. We want our passengers to feel good and feel safe when they're on our system so that they'll keep coming back to ride our system. We do not want them to go back to their car as the current trend seems to be. So this, what you have before you is the adoption of a new policy for both of the fixed route and then you have also one for paracruise and what we'll do if you adopt this is we'll go forward with an education campaign. We'll use the car cards and the buses to try to communicate some basic principles and also to get people to go to a place to look for the more detail that you find in the code of conduct policy. And then we'll likely put a little bit of money into a brochure that we can consolidate this information into and then also reference the more detailed policy. With that introduction, I'd like to turn it over to our general council, maybe to talk a little bit about the legal aspects of having a policy. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I've been a big proponent of adopting this policy since I started to support Metro. I've met with operators and staff. I've read a lot of incident reports. I've fielded customer complaints and there are a lot of disruptive passengers on Metro and the drivers deserve to have a safe workplace and customers, as Alex said, deserve to have a safe transit experience. And the behaviors, you know, aren't always the type that law enforcement is going to help with. And they aren't always the type that you would be successful in getting a judge to tell the person you can't ride the service. But they may rise to the level that we don't want those folks to be on the buses. The punishment should fit the crime and that comes in the administration of the policy. And by the way, that's fully supported by FTA, Civil Rights Regulations and FTA Guidance. So it's an important tool for Metro to have in addition to working with law enforcement when appropriate. And in terms of the legal aspects, in terms of our duties, since we are a government agency, we do have to give folks due process when we're talking about removing a governmental service.  So folks can have the right to come and say, you know, and I think I envision an interactive process where folks would come with maybe if appropriate a caregiver and say, you know, look, I did behave badly, you know, perhaps I was, you know, not taking medicine, I should be taking and now I'm working with my caregiver, I'm gonna be doing that and give me a chance to ride the bus and I will behave and not scare people, you know, because that's important. And so that's the process, you know, it's legally, you know, justified and I think, you know, important in terms of safety for your drivers and for your passengers. Thank you. And just in closing, the process of getting to this point included the gathering of similar types of policies from a number of agencies and looking at what they had. Some had much more simplistic policies, some had way more complicated policies. Julie has just been incredible in helping us come to the final draft that we have here today for you. And then before meeting today, we've met with both the SEIU and UTU to receive their feedback and incorporated a number of changes as a result of those meetings. Thank you, any questions from the board? Mr. Leopold. Just a couple of questions. We got a letter in here from UCSC about emotional support of animals and I'm just curious, that seems to be, we see a lot more support animals out there in the world and is it generally gonna be that the driver is gonna have to make a determination whether someone is an emotional support animal? I mean, how does that work? So you don't currently allow emotional support animals? You're in compliance with DOT, ADA regulations, which allow service animals. So that letter was asking the board to consider as a matter of policy to open up your service to allow emotional support animals. And that's not anything I'm recommending. We haven't even analyzed that. So I get that, but so the question is, I've come on the bus, I wanna get on with my dog. How does someone determine whether it's a ADA compliant service dog or an emotional support animal? So I don't have your policy in front of me and I can look at that. And then operationally, I'm not exactly sure what happens in the field and Eduardo, feel free to chime in on that one. You know, almost 100% of the time they reference it's a service animal. We don't question what the services that they provide. Although the policy allows us to, but that just gets into people's disabilities and we don't want that conversation. But it's about, because we are getting, you know, people asking for comfort animal and we have denied people because of our policy. So they don't say anything, you just let them on, question it, but they say this is. Yeah, they usually, you know, like I said, almost they say it's a service animal. But if they say, oh, does the comfort animal, then you guys are, you say, you know. Yeah, we don't support the comfort animal. Is that related to size of the animals?  No, it's not related to anything because I recently dealt with a few months ago, I think with someone carrying a little bird. Oh.    So it's up to you guys. Well, I mean, do you feel like this, the way it's currently written gives you that, gives the drivers the ability to back up necessary? Yes and no, because it just, you know, like I said, philosophy, you know, I don't, I wish we wouldn't have a code of conduct because it just, to me, it's like the 10 Commanders you can't write, it's like kicking people off. That's not, as a bus operator, you know, I want more people in than out. But this is where the community is at, we do have a lot more behavior problems. And that's what, you know, what a lot of, you know, our comments for it's a behavior, not in regards to, you know, service I have, because we're pretty late on those things. So long as they say it's a service, I know. It should be a dog though. Yes, I guess. Yeah, Ms. Matthews wants to just comment, yeah. No, but like, the person that came on with a bird, she was saying, and they've come back. Yeah, but Ms. Matthews was actually the same good point here. You know, we've had experience in Santa Cruz and people can say, this boa constrictor is my service, is my emotional support snake. This rat. This, you know, this bunny, this, whatever. But under ADA, it's a very wide latitude, you can bring in a pony. Anyway. But some people are, So just as I can clarify, there's ADA regs under the Department of Justice, which that's probably what applies to the city of Santa Cruz. And there's ADA regs under the Department of Transportation, and that's what applies to Metro. And it's only dogs, you have a separate policy for service dogs. So under ADA, I'm agreeing. Yeah. So for the public, it's not broad Metro. Well, I still have a couple other questions. And I appreciate the remarks that we ask our drivers to do a lot and to try to assess animals is just one more thing that we should be aware that we're asking our drivers to do. The other question I had, I appreciate that we've talked with our labor organizations, but have we talked with our Metro riders, you know, the Mac or elderly and disabled? I mean, it seems like this is a code of conduct affecting our riders. We should also just use these advisory boards. I don't recall whether we took it to the Mac. I will tell you that the interface with the customers has been a driving force. We receive so many complaints about these kinds of things that you see in this report. Sure. And there are periods of time in which certain things are real hot button issues. Lately it's been putting other belongings on a seat and taking up more than one seat. No, I saw that. I just think we should use our rider advisory groups when we're talking about policies that affect our riders, right? I mean, I think it would be worthwhile before this came back for final approval to use the Mac and the elderly and disabled transit group just to get their reflections. We... Grace, this is a final approval. This is the actual... Well, I thought it said that they were gonna make any, look at any changes that we suggested and then come back for final approval. No, this is put before you for final approval. We can, if you have changes obviously, we would go back and make those changes to it. I think what you might be thinking of is the final bullet in which we have to go back and incorporate on the paraphrase side some changes into their paraphrase guide. Well, my suggestion, I appreciate all the work that went in and this is not to dismiss any of that. I just think we have these advisory groups. We should at least ask them and have this come back to us after we get any suggestions or recommendations. I would benefit from that as a director. Ms. Lend? My only, when we were talking about support animals, like just seeing some news coverage that the transportation, as far as the airlines, have developed policy and have dealt with it because of some of the problems they have with being abused, emotional support animals being abused. And so I would assume when you're talking about ADA regulations and transportation that some of that new research and their work will make that job easier. Norm? There are two or three components that are coming from Norm the writer. One is the people coming on with their push baskets. Sometimes they have those things so loaded they can't possibly collapse them and they will take up the other side of the handicapped places loaded for bearer. And they take up one, but three places plus the, once for wheelchairs. Two, the fact that I actually was accosted physically quite by two different men wanted to really take it up.  And this type of thing when it is seen by other passengers, I mean, I don't think we have recovered from this, my gentleman. I know when I, I can get out of my chair now and I'm gonna take a couple of steps as you know. And he wanted to, right there on my bus and I'm sitting in my chair, he wanted to debt me right then. These are the type of things that we have to deal with. And anything we can come up with, contact. I'm saying as a writer, but most of all, I'm saying not only me but the elderly and disabled men and women who are a heck of a lot worse off than I am have to put up with one or two passengers there. I've put in requests to keep a couple of these people off the buses. And after six months that came back on, that wasn't any change. Thanks, Norm. Oh, sorry, you're not done? So are there any questions? We'll get back to comments when we, after they go to the public, but a question or comment? I had a comment. Okay, let's say the comments. Any questions? I just, do you say this is a regular occurrence? I mean, are we talking about every day a couple of times or how often is it going on? I would say maybe once or twice a month. Is it, that's a lot of time. That's the physical part. But when you're talking about the baskets, it's every day and almost every week. I mean, just as an example in the last couple of weeks, we've had a problem with somebody refusing to not use their e-cigarette. And we had a problem with somebody refusing to not drink alcohol. Okay, I'm gonna take it out to the public at this time. Are there any questions or comments about this from the public on this part of the agenda? Okay, when we're bringing it back to the board, you can have questions and comments. Devon, and then I'll come back to you. I would have to kind of go back to Mr. Leopold's point on the advisory committee and making sure that they are in support of the Code of Conduct as well. Which I'm sure they would be producing but would be really important. And then also I know that UC Santa Cruz, tabs, we have our own transportation committee. And as we make up some of the highest ridership of the buses, I would hope that students' input would be important within this process of the Code of Conduct since we ride so many of these buses. I just like, I don't want to delay the process. I really don't think the Code of Conduct is actually really important. I think that's something that we do need. I've had my time, so I want to tell you to close your legs.  So please move your legs. So I've got to have that experience. However, students and just people in general in the community have to be able to look at this first before we put it out there. Which is why we agree with Mr. Leopold's point that we have to go to the committees that even have Larry and his committee on our campus look through that as well. Thank you. Ms. Matthews? I personally feel very strongly that it would be appropriate to move ahead with this at this point. I want to relate back to the experience with the library system. And we've had similar problems with the library, particularly the downtown library, but I know other branches throughout the system. And the library system did develop a pretty specific code of conduct and an appeal process of sequential consequences for problematic behaviors and an appeal process and so forth, similar to what you have laid out here. It was driven by user complaints as you've experienced here. And the impression and the experience has been a market improvement. And I think when we talk about the problem of declining ridership, this is integrally related to that. It's not just the frequency of the routes and so forth, but do you as a senior disabled person feel comfortable riding the bus? Do you feel comfortable letting your kids ride the bus? So to my mind, having an expectation of safety is really important. And so I would feel comfortable moving ahead with this at this point, but also engaging the rider committee and the students. There's still a long way to go. Obviously, code of conduct can be changed. A lot of thought has already gone into this. It's also important, I think, for the drivers to have some expectations to fall back on and refer to. So those are, it affects a lot of people. One of the things that strikes me is we haven't had any kind of reporting on the incidents, except maybe occasionally something anecdotal. On the library joint powers board, we received as part of our monthly packet the incident reports. And there was real encouragement getting the frontline staff to make a note of the incidents and how they were referred. And I realize it's a little bit different, perhaps, but the questions have been asked. What's the frequency of this? Really egregious observed cases by one rider maybe a couple times a month or whatever. But when you take cumulatively what all the drivers are observing in the course of their many routes, it can be a lot and it can be kind of serious. I mean, you put yourself in the position of a rider. Ugh, how are you gonna do? So I think it's important to move forward to refer this to the, both the students and to the ridership committee for their input as it moves forward. This is just in the beginning stages. So with all those comments, I would be prepared to move the recommendation before us, which includes referral to the other committees. Okay, well, comments are a second. So let's go, let's go. I would be ready to support as a second of the motion. My suggestion is that we adopt the policy and come back in six months for a review. And that gives us time to go to all the various organizations, agencies, and then we have a set time where we know we're gonna come back. Absolutely, that sounds good. That was actually, that was my comment is that I'd rather see us get something in place. But again, as any new policy, we will improve on or take input or follow up and have a specific date to follow up and add any changes that are found to be necessary by all of the input. So we'll bring it back in six months, does that sound in your motion? Yeah, and I think that's the students, the Mac, I would really say, you know, I think that we have six months to get that input. It also allows them to see what might be needed. Sometimes until you get it in, you don't really understand what some of the challenges may be. Yes, Mike? Just make sure that the students agree or are also included in this. Yes, yeah. And I just want to, I only had one other comment. Unfortunately, a lot of the people who have these support animals have no idea how terrifying some of their support animals are.  It's only happening to me once. I'm not afraid of dogs, I like dogs get along great, but this person thinks this dog is appropriate. The dog is snarling, it's just, and it's fine, I'm sure walking on the bus, the bus car can never be a problem, but as soon as you've got, anybody that got anywhere near the owner or the person that could guard him or this dog, the dog starts bearing its teeth and stuff. I go, what the hell's going on? Yeah, I know. I just think we want to set the general tone, Dean, that it really needs to be a service animal for a person that has, and you can typically, I mean, it's not easy to tell all the time, but I'd make the error on the side of denying people bringing them on, unless it really looks like a service animal for a person that's blind or visually impaired or there's some kind of obvious service support, because a lot of times it's really clear, I just, you know, I go everywhere with my dog and I don't cut it. Well, I think it'd be clear on what the service animal is, like that it's a dog, because I have a phobia of rats and like it would, I know they're this big, but they're awful. These service dogs are supposed to have their jacket on, which is an official designation for service. Yeah, okay. Unless they have that, they shouldn't be on the bus. Okay, that's a good point. I did not know that they had little jackets that they're supposed to wear, so that's the stuff we should be looking into. Okay, so we have a first and a second by Mr. Leopold, all in favor? All right. Oppose? Abstain? This unanimously passes. But Jimmy, one other thing. Would it be possible as this moves forward to trying to develop some kind of a regular just incidence report mechanism, or an update short of the six month? Yeah, let me look into that and bring a recommendation back. I'm not readily coming up with a way of doing it. Yeah, I understand. It may be great. Well, maybe when we don't have a policies, it may be hard to report unless they're really agreed. So it may be that once there's actually a policy on place, there'll be a way to report. Now, having said that, I just remembered that we're aggressively working on KPIs this year, key performance indicators. And we may be able to factor something into that where you can get some sort of mostly report on the various types of incidents. But let me make sure that we have the data collection in order to put the KPIs together. And you might talk with the library director also. Okay, on to our next, Mr. Barrow Emerson, the unified corridor investment study. Oh, this is an even-numbered item? Yes. So you get to talk. Sorry. Um, okay, board members, I put a color version of this document in your packets because as you know, with black and white, I have others here for the college if they'd like them. If they'd like them. And I'm not gonna go through it. I just thought it would be more helpful to have something that distinguished colors anyway. Thank you, chair, board members, staff and guests. I'm here to provide the board with an update on Metro's participation and our role in the unified corridor study being developed by RTC. First thing I wanna say is really strong and clear. Metro is not at this time advocating for any particular outcome, as far as modes and results and decisions. Rather, we strongly support the analytical process which should provide some objective data on ridership and COPS, and that's both capital and operating costs from which to make informed decisions. As everyone knows, the step one analysis is complete now and there are now four scenarios being analyzed, each of which assumes some form of bus transit in each of the three corridors under discussion. I wanna give you a quick overview of the bus concepts in each of the three corridors. I'll be very quick with the first two. In the SoCal Avenue, Drive and Freedom Boulevard corridor, the concepts for buses are called us rapid transit light. And the light infers not building a lane for buses on SoCal or Freedom. But as you will hear me and I have said to many of you individually before, bus rapid transit is not a singular product. It's a menu of features of which you pick and choose. In this case, the SoCal and Freedom ideas include things like Q-jump, sit signals, transit signal priority throughout a corridor, off-board payment to speed up boarding, so those types of things. I'll leave that for the moment. Secondly, the Highway 1 corridor has two bus transit scenarios in it. One is the bus on shoulders concept, which is meant to be a relatively low cost way of getting some transit speed in a freeway. The other option being considered is the full on high occupancy vehicle lane, which has been a topic in this county for many years. One move on to the rail corridor, where I think most of the misunderstanding, controversy, and community angst is. The bus rapid transit concept in this corridor. First, a quick definition of bus rapid transit. I kind of already said it. Bus rapid transit does not need to be a continuous and identical operating environment like rail. You gotta have rail from one end to the other. So, if I can reference this map here quickly in no detail. With bus rapid transit, the goal is to provide the transit priority where it's cost effective, while remembering you need to serve important origins and destinations, which may or may not be along the specific corridor in this case. This is the fifth city I've worked in, and that where I've been involved in BRT and like rail planning. And in most cases, the concepts for bus rapid transit have included multiple operating environments along a single corridor. In my Perth, Western Australia thing, I had six operating environments in 20 miles.  Bus rapid transit also lends itself to staged implementation over the years. You may stay in a city street for a few years until the cost of effectiveness of moving into a priority facility. The money's available and the cost effectiveness makes sense. So, the graphic overhead shows the ideas being considered for bus rapid transit in the rail corridor. Note there are a combination of two-way bus, one-way bus, and also buses operating along the public streets. So, I think I've kind of beat that topic to death. It's horses for courses, do what fits and what's viable and common sense. During step two, Metro will provide RTC with bus networks and associated station stop recommendations so that their consultant can then, through modeling, do patronage forecasting and come up with the cost assessment that I told you about. If I could finish and take the liberty of my observation from experience with these types of projects, like every other city or community, people have moved quickly to advocacy for specific modes for various reasons. This isn't or shouldn't be a debate between bikes, trains, and or buses, but rather it's an economic question about regional mobility and the decision as to what role public transit can take in any of these corridors and how it serves our greater economy as it relates to commuting and connecting people and jobs and homes. Lastly, technology advances are starting to blur the differences between public transit modes. It's important not to align oneself with steel wheels or rubber wheels. It's starting to disappear as technology evolves. So again, I'll finish with, rather than align yourself with steel wheels or rubber wheels or trains we used to ride or buses we used to ride or enjoying riding bikes, this really needs to be the debate about the economic opportunities which public transit may or may not present in these corridors. That's my presentation, happy to answer questions. I have a question before I go out to the board. Why does it stop at, why do you stop doing it at Freedom Boulevard or C-Cliff? Is that Freedom Boulevard? In Aptos, why doesn't it go all the way to Watsonville? Right, in terms of bus rapid transit south of there, the Metro staff's recommendation has been to operate in the freeway corridor because the rail corridor south of that point goes through areas that are not gonna be extensive draws of ridership, pretty expensive places to deal with, but particularly when we wanna serve Watsonville on the way up and serving Watsonville is main street and freedom and all those things. So it only seems viable from that state park point north to consider the rail facility corridor. So if you're in the city of Watsonville then you just have to get to the, you just have to figure it out how to get to the train station? Well, whatever mode, you're either at the Watsonville Transit Center or as the vehicle moves up main street or Freedom, you're kinda doing what our buses do today or whatever mode, but in terms of providing a bus option, we wanna move through the community of Watsonville in the normal bus manner. Yeah, the rail line, right outside Watsonville, it goes through marshes and fields, so you're not gonna have stops. But I'm saying like within the city, this seems like there's gonna be any bus getting to the train station itself or, you know. Oh, if there happened to be a train station and maybe I should have said that, in the train alternatives, Metro's gonna be providing for their analysis bus feeder network. Okay, that's what I wanted to hear. Thank you, I'm sorry, I misunderstood. Thank you. Any other questions from the board? I just wanted to say, yeah, this is one of the most controversial issues we have in this county now. Many of us are on the regional transportation commission and we hear it one way or the other and we have kinda like national politics. It's either or and nothing's in the middle. So I really appreciate us taking a reasonable approach of what we can do and can't do to help this situation where we have so much of the housing development taking place in the South County and the jobs and so forth. Many of them, most of them being in the North County or over in Silicon Valley. This is a tremendous, one of the biggest issues that we have in this county and I think it's, we're responsible to be part of the solution. So I appreciate your saying, this is not what we're saying you should do, but I think the Metro can be a real benefit to everybody involved in making this a reasonable solution and I hope we can get there. Mr. Drakken. It seems to me that the only position that we should take and it seems like an important one is to not short-circuit this process. There are people out there who are taking the position that we should not even do this process. It's a waste, there are many letters to the editor. It's a waste of money. We should just decide right now to make this into a hiking and bicycle path and I think that is not in our interest as a transit agency. So, the outcome could even be no rail, no whatever, but it seems to me it's critical that our position be, let's do this study and figure out what the actual transportation needs are before we come to a quick conclusion to do any of the options that are happening. I'm no longer on the RTC, so when is the study gonna be finished? I know you're on it. It's a fall. It's expected to be done by fall. August or this fall? No, it's probably September or October is when it's supposed to be done. I would just say that at the risk of ruining my college reputation, I agree with a lot of what Director McPherson said and I appreciate the staff participation in this. You know, we purchased this corridor for transportation. It's the last transportation corridor through Santa Cruz County. And so there are physical limits to how wide you can make the highway. We have to look very seriously about how to use this corridor in the best way. This unified corridor study isn't gonna come out with exact recommendation to use it this way or that way. In the end, we're gonna have to make some choices based on the information. And we, as the Metro, and then the public at Barge and the RTC in specific, is gonna have to look at really the transportation issues, not just the recreation issues. So I look forward to that discussion. It's only controversial because people just wanna take sides, but if we're really looking at transportation policy, it is incredibly exciting to be able to actually, to potentially plan for a transportation corridor. That doesn't happen often. We won't get another chance. Ms. Lennon? The RTC voted December 7th to move forward with the study, so that's not been very long. And I know we've had groups come to our council and that's been my position as well, is that I don't wanna make it, I don't want to endorse or make a decision until we have all the facts. And there's a lot of money been invested in this study and all the taxpayers are paying for that study that was promised in the campaign for Major D. So it feels like we'd be short-circuiting the process regardless as a city or as a metro representative or in any position to endorse any one. And I agree with also Director Leopold. It's an exciting time and sadly, there's a lot of emotions come in and it seems like we're, some of us are being attacked regardless for whatever side they think we've taken. So. Norm and then Cynthia, Chase. How was on the original committee in the RTC that made the purchase of this study? My statement then is what it is now. I am looking, thinking forward to 2040, 2050, our real, right-rail system can connect us in this county to other areas reasonably and quickly. Just not within our county, but with the entire state and the entire country by rail. It's a possibility and no, it's not gonna be done tomorrow. And there's an awful lot of people who need the transportation rail system and we can't use a bicycle. And that's a possibility that I thought of then and it's one that I have now. Thank you, sir. Ms. Chase. Yeah, I just wanna really appreciate the position that Metro has taken on this because I know that there has been strong pushes and pulls for Metro to take a very specific position and I really think that the approach that we've been able to outline is really an important stance to take in this process that really supports I think the comments that have been made here today. It's very thoughtful, very open to looking at different types of transportation that is not drawing a conclusion too early and thinking about I think the same way we approached when we were looking at our structural deficit. We looked at connectivity and how can we maximize ridership for those who really need to move and have transportation that is reliable, efficient, addressing climate change, all of those kinds of things. So I just really wanna acknowledge and appreciate the position that Metro is taking on this. I think it's a really important stance in this part of the process and really I think positions us well as partners in trying to solve our transportation issues regionally. Thank you. Anybody else on the board? Comments, questions? Alrighty, so this was just an informational piece so that's that. Okay, so on to our next item. I think we see Barrow again. So to initiate a fair restructuring. Mr. Chair, just in the way of a quick introduction, you might recall that since my arrival on this property I've taken this board on quite a journey dealing with your structural deficit. Dealing with- You say you take us for a buy-in. Yeah. Wouldn't quite fit. You know, we've dealt with the structural deficit. We've dealt with changes to our paracruz structure. We dealt with the comprehensive operational analysis and you had a lot of tough years through 2016. And going into 2017, even though I had queued up for you a discussion about fair restructuring, the board said, hey, could you give us a year off and just let things calm down for a little while? Which we did. We took all the 27th thing, didn't bring anything controversial. But 2018 is here and we feel we need to move on to the discussion about fair restructuring. Barrow's going to tell you a little bit about why that's important. We don't take it lightly, but there is reasons and rationale for talking about fair restructuring at this point or at least investigating it. So with that introduction, Barrow, why don't you talk a little bit more about what you did with the committee? All right, thank you. I appreciate that it's late and I will be relatively short, but I think I owe this a clear presentation to you. So let's talk about the proposal to initiate a fair restructuring analysis at this point. As part of long-term financial and service planning, Metro staff has been conducting preliminary analysis of fair restructuring and importantly, including technological upgrades to fair payment systems. Very important in this day and age. Again, as we speak to loss ridership and issues of that type. On January 5th, the Metro Finance Committee received a very similar presentation and directed the staff to bring this presentation on to you. The fair structure is a very important tool for operational efficiency, marketing of your service, and possibly most importantly, long-range budget planning. The fair restructuring analysis is necessary because we have potential risks to our five-year balanced budget, which we just finally achieved. One of the more important points of that is we now know that Metro, starting in year 2020, will be receiving a lesser share of the STA funds. We already know that. So the last three years are now a threat of being in deficit. Also, based on future budget projections, this is really important and we've touched on it with another topic here. Metro will need additional revenue to maintain our existing bus service levels over the next five years as funding sources remain relatively stable while costs are increasing. If I could have you look at attachment 1A, AA1, excuse me, and it shows the Metro annual operating budget, you can see it creeping up over the next five years while the fair revenue is currently projected to stay flat. You'll note that Metro's forecast to finally not use reserves to achieve a balanced budget starting in FY20. That's really important. Please also note that this balanced budget assumption does not account for any pay increases anywhere in the agency, which could occur starting in FY20. So we're already behind the eight ball. Attachment A2. This point is, the previous point is reimbursed by this attachment, which notes that the operating budget, if you look at the lower right in the last two or three columns title, total fair revenue and total expenses, that in the next five years, the total expenses move from 48 to $53 million while the fair revenue admittedly at this point is assumed to be flat. That's, you know, that's simple math. This budget forecast that we have already assumes our growth in revenue from Measure D and SB1, STA revenue, which as we know is potentially at risk. So on to attachment B. Another implication, and this is pretty nuanced, another implication of stagnant fair revenue relative to an increasing operating budget is a decreasing fair box recovery ratio. As attachment B shows, you starting FY18, our fair box recovery ratio is projected to decrease from 24 to 22% if we don't have a higher level of fair revenue. And this is the important part of that. One of Metro's primary revenue sources the California Transit Development Act, which provides us almost $7 million a year, has within its statutes the ability to punish financially agencies which don't achieve a 20% fair box revenue. Low fair box revenue could start costing us our basic revenue was down on. So another reason to undertake this analysis is it is standard in transit industry practice to look at your fair structure every five, six years. The last Metro fixed route, local service fair modification was in 2012. To be honest too, the 2012 fair change was not a comprehensive restructuring of the pricing of all the various passes. It was merely a revenue increase to deal with the impacts of the recession that we were just coming out of because that problem was exacerbated by the reduction in sales tax revenue we had. So lastly, on attachment C. Coming out of the recession, five of our Northern California Transit Agency peers have implemented fair restructuring increases which have taken their base fair beyond Metro's $2 base fair. Scale of revenue opportunities. In general, currently Metro has about $10 million a year in fair revenue and we all know from looking at attachment D that between UCSC and Cabrillo that's about half of our fair revenue right there. So we're talking about 10 million and a half of which are those two contracts. If directed, staff will return to the finance committee in February with detailed concepts as to how Metro could increase fair revenue. Targeted strategies. I know we're all concerned about raising prices for people. That's a reality. We're in somewhat of a social service business. However, targeted strategies. There are opportunities to implement targeted strategies that would address the various needs of our non-UCSC and Cabrillo riders who are generally transit dependent and have lower incomes. The types of things we could do is discount scenarios for various passes. Another opportunity is to incentivize non-cash payments by providing discounts for using our smart cards, our cruise cash or our cruise pass. So fair payment technology on this just slightly but we'll get a lot more detail of this later. It's very complex nuance and it's all cutting edge technology at the moment so it's changing. Basic fair restructuring such as just raising the base fare and adjusting the discount of a monthly pass could be achieved without any change in technology. The fair restructuring does provide an opportunity to consider other aspects of fair collections such as improving customer convenience, trying to reduce the inefficiencies in Metro's current fair collection process such as the long well times from cash payments, a dollar at a time watered up out of the pocket, service delays due to onboard cash payments. New fair collection technology could be implemented concurrently with the fair restructuring if required or at a later date and we'll be explaining our choices over the next few months. This determination can be made based on whether a particular technology is required to implement the desired fare structure that we want and what are the cost considerations and time frames of those technologies. More sophisticated fare restrictions would require fair technology upgrades. So I'll finish with process. It's requested that the board direct staff to initiate this fair restructuring analysis so that we can get adequate time for public consideration prior to a proposed final restructuring decision in May and the adoption of the annual budget in June specifically why we'd like to resolve this in May. So the sequence that could follow is we had the introduction today, February through March staff does analysis and has a first round of informal community engagement on the fair restructure concept and my proposed approach to this is the same as the COA. You wanna go through an informal with cycle with people before we bring recommendations to you and then those recommendations can go through the 45 day public hearing process. So again, end of March, we come to you, the board with a preliminary proposal based on February and March's public input. Then from March to May, the second round, the formal public comment period on the draft proposal and hopefully a public hearing and adoption of some form of revised fare policy in May. Once we get to that point, in general it usually takes at least six months to implement a fair change. That could be impacted by our choice of fair technology ideas that we wanna include. That's my presentation, happy to answer questions. Wow, as outgoing chair, I'm excited that this is not gonna be on my table. So just being honest. We'll get the vote on it, don't worry. Okay, so any questions from the board? Comments, okay, no questions? Is this something, are we voting on this or? Yeah, we have to. So okay, then let's go to the public first then. Any questions from the public? You know, just one consideration. I mean, even though we haven't raised our fares, going to a 225, I think you're hindrance because then you begin to, at the time allows because not everyone can use the smart card. Not everyone has been able to keep in touch with all the gadgets that we provide today. So it's critical that during this process we take into consideration to raise the fare or because the quantifying, I'll show you an example. Highway 17, we charge seven bucks and Monday, Friday, you have students going to San Jose State and workers, they got their cars, they got their eco pass, they got their stuff. Saturday, Sunday, day trips. You have long lines and everybody's paying seven bucks. Takes us five to 10 minutes to load. So the load factor is you have to also take a good consideration because it's just hard in this community, especially with the population that would be carried to move at 225. How long is that going to take? Penis and getting away from people. Penis is a competition that's quite hard for this community because that's sometimes pulling. Thank you. Anybody else from the public? Okay, comments. If I could make a quick comment there, those issues are really important. We are currently, I don't want to unveil things, but we've got some new technology things in place to address change, credit return, one way fare passes on Highway 17. So we know that one, so thanks Eduardo. Thank you to both of you guys for being on that. Mr. Larkin, I mean, Mike. Okay. I take Highway 17 bus roughly once a week up to Beirut and Station on the Caltrain and then on BART. And both on Caltrain and BART, there's no lines boarding because they keep care of it. Or they have a proof of fare thing for Caltrain where you buy your ticket and they're so often they walk down the island, five up to $200 and kick you off the train if you haven't gotten a ticket. And for the BART, you have to, like, can't get into the station except for you buy your ticket ahead of time. So one of the things, and my experience with the Highway 17 bus, first of all, I'm impressed that our machine takes as many of the dollars as they do. It's much better than your experience of going to the car washer, I don't know, wherever you try it, because they take most of the dollars. But every so often, there's a dollar that won't go there. And we sit there waiting to go, I'm trying to catch a train and the bus is very close. It's a five minute connection for me or four minutes. And I see somebody there struggling with a dollar, the bus driver says, turn it over, they turn it over, nothing happens. They don't just pay the dollars, they pay the quarters and stuff. And so they drop it on the floor. We're in the quarter of a wall. Then there's people that don't have the $7 to, you know, they got 10. Anybody had changed for a $10 bill and there's like, why are you going on in a line while you're waiting for that? This is during the week when the water system is described as relatively smooth. Most people do have a pass or they put a phone in there or whatever they do. And you watch this go on and it takes five, six minutes to load it. And I'm sitting there literally, I mean, this is my train, at this time you can't get the dollars in there. So one of the kinds of technologies that even low income people can do or that's like art structure, at least for the Highway 17 Express and we won't work on all of our routes, but you have a machine that's somewhere outside the bus and you can't get on the bus with money. You have to put your $7, take your time before the bus gets there, put your money in the machine and get out of ticket and all you have to do is put the ticket in the thing.  I would say if you start to take into account how much driving time we lose by people loading on the bus, we might find it sufficient to put a bunch of those kinds of machines, not just at the major transit centers, but in 15 places in the county because, you know, at bus stops because you can make those things secure. There's lots of change machines and stuff all around the community and Pacific Avenue and other places. So we really should be looking at these, we will have to raise our fear. I've lobbied enough in Washington and Sacramento to know that we've got a lot of grants in the past because we show that our riders are stepping up and paying a higher percentage of the cost than some other communities. So we can't afford to let this thing slip to 20% or even 21% or something. That'll cost us when it comes to going to lobby and for money. I mean, nothing to do with the actual fare itself. So I'm excited to study and looking at these, you know, trade-off options, raise the fare to give people ways to pay. Don't make them stand in a line and allow them to get somewhat of a bigger discount if they buy the ticket rather than kind of get on the money with, you probably still have to accept the cash option. Maybe not. I mean, that's another possibility. Lord, Highway 17, I bet we can get away with not having anybody try and pay as they get on the bus. Get on the bus like you'd get on the BART and have your ticket for you to get there. Director Chase. Yeah, I mean, my comments are similar to Mike's, and I appreciate that we did ask for this to be postponed and it was postponed and I think it is time for the analysis. And I want to emphasize especially that this has been brought back to us with the combination of looking at technology improvements, which I think are incredibly important, not just for the folks who will be impacted by potential raise, but also in bringing new ridership into the system. And so we've talked about that with ABL, eco passes, looking at how can we make the ease and efficiency for those who are currently riding better so that even though it might be impactful for them to have an increase, the efficiency or the ease or knowing you're going to be able to board and get to your stop on time might make it a little bit easier to deal with, but then also really thinking about what are we doing as a system to attract more ridership. Things like ABL I think are big components of that so that people know when the bus is coming, they know exactly when it's going to get there, they know when they're going to arrive. Things like that I think we have to do in conjunction with this so that we're really taking care of our current riders and looking at attracting more. Thank you. Dr. Matthews. I agree with all the previous comments. The recommendation as shown here is that we direct staff to initiate the fair restructuring analysis, but part of the summary includes the importance of the technology part of it as well. So I'd be prepared to move the recommended action adding the phrase including opportunities for improved fair payment technology. So it's very clear that that's what we're looking at. I agree. Also, I'm a cholesterol seconder. Okay, normal seconder. I agree, I think that looking at the technology is really important and when you go to other cities that's how you do it. So, and it will save time and Mike, your story. Moderate has a system. Moderate has a system where they actually give you change for your payments. So you, I've got a day yesterday that received $3.50 and they do this automatically with their machines. That's the idea I was telling you earlier that we're stealing from Monterey. Okay. We have the same fare boxes, so we're on the path to that. Okay, I'm glad you guys are really looking at all options. So thank you. So, all in favor? Aye. Oppose, abstain, this unanimously passes. Thank you. Thank you. 24. So this is from Alex, recommendation to approve revisions to the bylaws of the Santa Cruz County Metropolitan Transit District's Board of Directors. I'm gonna kick us off actually. Great, truly. So this is basically mostly a cleanup item. You have your existing board bylaws. They haven't been updated in a while. There were changes to just clean up job titles. You went to a single monthly meetings. We had to clean that up from your previous two meetings a month. And then I scoured your enabling legislation to make sure your bylaws reflected the law, which they do now. They were closed, but they weren't always exactly correct. They are now. And then Alex has put in some new language that has to do with travel policy and reimbursement process, which Alex is gonna highlight. Sure, and that new policy is found on 24-8-10 and 24-A-11. Basically, it doesn't change the way that you've traveled in the past. If you wanna continue to provide us receipts and have us reimburse you. But it adds one other option that is commonly used today, which is the GSA, using the GSA website for per diem. We're doing that now at a staff level, so we're also offering that as a change for board members. Thank you. Questions? Well, I would just say it is hard to evaluate what has changed because what you told us now is more than we got in the written in our packet. And there was no strike through version. So it was very hard to tell what was the changes here. And in the future, you gotta have that because something that you may consider inconsequential may be consequential for somebody else. And it's better for us to be able to show what we've changed. I've had a cap too, but it's on my back, so I can't see it. So to include a red line version with, that's actually a really good idea. Include red line versions with the final product. Thank you, Mr. Leopold. Any other questions? Public, does the public have anything that they wanna say on this? Move approval of the recommended changes to the bylaws. Okay. Second. At first to second, all in favor? Aye. Oppose? Abstain? This unanimously passes. Thank you. Okay, number 25, we're back to Alex. Okay, 25 is a request to do a board work session. Director Hagen asked me towards the end of last year if we could do something again similar to what we did a couple of years ago. And I thought that was quite timely because also I'm looking at for this year wanting to have a board work session as a kickoff for our first Metro Strategic Business Plan. So I think that would be a great place to create a foundation for that. And I'm proposing a similar structure that we have a facilitated structure that the board be able to identify, I hope, a full day for this facilitated work session. And then coming out of that, we would take it back into staff's hands, start working aggressively on the strategic plan, likely have several check-in points with you along that journey. Maybe even later in the year, another maybe half-day work session to try to bring it all together. And then possibly by the end of this year or early the following year have your first strategic business plan in place for this organization. So that would be the recommendation that you allow me or allow Gina to start trying to work with your calendars to find a day. Sometimes we're at early 2018 to have a work session. Great, thanks. My suggestion for the last time is that we do somewhere in Mid County because back in the hills of Scotts Valley was a little far. It was out there. It was out there. It was out there. It was out there. Beautiful. Beautiful. The prize was right. The prize was right. There you go. Yeah, so Capitola sounds good. And then is this going to include management or is this just going to be, because I know some people include their directors. We would like to get them. Okay, so it'll be directors and the council. That's not a lot. Any other questions about this? We authorize it. Okay, I think I have to go out to the public on this. Any comments on this? Okay, any comments in general? Okay, there's a first and a second. All in favor? All right. Opposed? Staying? This unanimously passes. This will be a Matthew say a second? Yes. And then, okay, so Alex again. Okay, this one involves making me aware that I communicated with CARB, the California Air Resources Board on their latest draft of their, that they published in February. You have that in your packet under Attachment A. This is their innovative clean transit regulation discussion document published December 15th. Recall that we did not have a December meeting. And CARB said a deadline, an aggressive deadline for comments on this. They extended that, but the extension was through the 22nd. So I had to file the letter in order to meet that extension. I'm asking the board to receive all from the kind of comments or to tell me that you completely disagree with the letter that I have in the packet and that I should retract it, which whatever your preference is. But absent that, I will be going down to a CARB meeting in Orange County on Monday to testify about the same kind of things that you see in this letter to CARB. All of this comes out of really what has been happening since early 2000 when CARB said, hey, it's time to start getting transit properties on board with clean vehicles. You might recall back in the era of around 2000, the big talk back in those days was particulate matter. And so in a particulate matter environmental discussion, it would, getting out of diesels was important and CARB endorsed getting into compressed natural gas, for example, because compressed natural gas is a very low particulate matter. But even then, CARB had a vision of trying to get transit properties to start moving in the direction of electric vehicles. And they had hoped by the time their regulation that they adopted in about 1998 would expire, that being 2015, that the electric industry would be aggressively developed and they could then come back and impose a 100% electric mandate. Well, 2015 to 2017, through 2017, CARB worked with transit agencies, worked with us at the CTA to try to come up with a zero emissions regulation. And there was a lot of back and forth, a lot of disagreement about where they were going. We worked through the CTA. We finally got to a place in 2017 where it appeared that CARB was going to work with each individual property on an MOU. They would do a memorandum of understanding and not do a blanket policy but treat each agency different based on what was going on in that environment that that agency was working in. Unfortunately, mid to late 2017, CARB could completely reverse all of the work and the agreements that had been put in place and said, no, we're gonna do a regulation shortly thereafter, December 15th, they promulgated this regulation. Now, the position that I've taken in this letter is not one against zero emissions buses at all. It's not one that says, we don't need a regulation. It's one that says, we agree with you, but there are things here that we have to work through. We need to be a little bit more flexible that mandating that by 2029, 100% of our purchases be zero emissions, that may be okay. But remember, you adopted a goal, not a mandate. That's what you're, that's really consistent with what you wanna do. By 2029 ish, you want us by 100% zero emissions. By 2040, you'd like our fleet to be 100% zero emissions. But you also recognized that there are things here like technology that have to continue to evolve and maybe most importantly, money. If the money doesn't flow, it'll be difficult to do this. And when you're faced with 62 buses that we need to replace and money is found, if that money is flexible money, we tend to wanna buy compressed natural gas buses because we can get more of them than we can electric buses. Electric buses are almost double the cost of compressed natural gas buses. So with that, there are other issues like in the technology, the battery technology. So buses, electric buses now, they pretty much maxed out all the nooks and the crannies that you can put a battery into, right? And so those buses can only achieve a certain range. And those ranges may not fit nicely with the ranges that we need or other properties, quite frankly. For example, we operate 17 routes that have over 200 miles a day on those buses, right? Well, one manufacturer claims, Portera claims to have a bus that'll go up to 300 and that's actually the one we're looking at for the LCTA grant that we have. But that was in perfect conditions on a nice flat test track. All the conditions were perfect for them to achieve the mileage that they got. So we don't know how