Point at everybody, in the event of an emergency, there's two names to be addressed for this room. If you need to exit to your left or right over here or either over there, we will basically congregate in the parking lot. Myself or either Donna will basically take the head count and show that everybody is safely evacuated from the room. In the event of a medical emergency, I am first day certified. I'll be the first one to contact EMS should that be needed. Thank you. That concludes my safety content. Thank you. Okay, I'd like to ask Donna to please follow up. Director Brown will be absent today. Director Downey. Okay. Director Newtruck. Director Cullin-Terry Johnson. Present. Director Coney. Here. Director Lynn. Here. Director McPherson. Here. Director Newsom. Director Paper. Here. Director Keros Carter. Here. And Director Rockman will be absent today. Ex-Opicio Director Henderson. Here. And Ex-Opicio Director Narcaz. And we do have one. Okay, great. Thank you. Just a couple of announcements that today's meeting is being broadcast by community television of Santa Cruz County. And we have Spanish interpretation available through Maria Avila from the language line services. At this time. You see her for me. My name is Maria. I'm here for any interpretation services in Spanish. Thank you so much. And realize you were here in person. Perfect. Okay, with that, we'll go to agenda item number five, board of director comments. Any comments from directors? Seeing none, we'll move to agenda item six, oral and written communication to the board. Is there anyone? Okay. Is there anyone here who'd like to make oral communication? You want online? Moving on to item seven, labor organization communication. There are none. Okay. Moving along to item eight, additional documentation to support existing agenda items. There are none. Moving to consent. That is items 9.1 through 9.11. Are there any questions or any items that you have comments or need to be pulled from the board? Is there anyone in the public who's just to make a comment on consent item 9.1 to 9.11? I'm assuming no one online. Done. All right. We'll move to the consent agenda. All right. All right. We'll move on to page one and seconded by COVID. And we'll do a roll call vote. Director Downey. Aye. Director Nutra. Aye. Director Cohn, Harry Johnson. Aye. Director Coney. Aye. Director Lin. Aye. Director Witt-Fierce. Aye. Director Newsom. Aye. Director Pagler. Aye. And Director Keros-Kartner. Aye. And we end the motion after. Thank you. Okay. We're moving on to our regular agenda. Item 10 is presentation longevity awards. And I believe there are some of our employees here. So let me just read the names and ask you to stand up if you are here so that I know you're here. Efren Adayano. I'm, excuse my, if I'm mispronouncing. Okay. Josephina Cruz. Jose Escobar. David Horvath. Okay. Wonderful. And I ask you to come up, David Horvath. Thank you for serving the Metro. Oh, there you go. Yeah, there you go. Thank you for your 10 years of service. Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate it. Would you like to see it? Well, I was hoping that my Metro siblings, Joe, Manny, Jose and Efren would be able to make it today, but I guess they're out doing what we do. I remember when we finished training in August of 2013, seems like yesterday, we went to the board meeting at Scotts Valley City Hall to be introduced to the board and the riding public. And just like that, 10 years went on by. So I wanted to say thanks to Metro and our wonderful riding public for 10 great years and looking forward to 10 more. Thank you so much for all your work. See if anyone else is here. Bonneville Pérez. No, okay. And Mitchell Dupas. All right. I'll go back to my seat. I do have a bio, Mitch. Mitch is a dispatcher schedule. Scheduler, he was just 27 years old when he started to work at Metro Paracruz. Back then he was just trying to make monthly payment on his Toyota trip and have a little left over for food. 15 years later, he's now happily married to his wife, Mada, and has two wonderful children, Maddie, six years old, and Marissa, nine years old. The Metro has provided me and my family the ability to live comfortably, have great benefits, and eventually a great retirement.  So thank you to Mitch and thank you to everyone who has received a longevity award today, just a round of applause for it. I am going to move on to item 11, which is the retiree resolution of appreciation or delete from it. Are you here? Okay. She's not online. She's not online. I'm gonna take a moment and read parts of this resolution to acknowledge. Not gonna read the whole thing. So we'll skip down to, whereas Billy Bruebert provided Metro with dedicated service and government during the time of her employment. And whereas Daily Bruebert served Metro with distinction. And whereas the service provided to the residents of Santa Cruz County to Daily Bruebert resulted in reliable quality public transportation being available in the most difficult of times. And whereas during the time of this group service Metro-improved existing and built new operating facilities, converted the fleet to a CNG propulsion systems, developed accessible bus stops, improved ridership, responded to adverse economic conditions, assumed direct operational responsibility for Highway 17 express service and the Amtrak connector service and assumed direct operational responsibility for the Paracruz service. And whereas the quality of life in Santa Cruz County was improved dramatically as a result of the exemplary service provided by Billy Bruebert. Now therefore be it resolved that upon her retirement as administrative assistant, the board of directors of Metro does hereby commend her efforts in advancing public transit service in Santa Cruz County and express the sincere appreciation on behalf of itself, the Metro staff and all the residents of Santa Cruz County. And therefore further resolved that a copy of this resolution be entered in the official records of the Santa Cruz Metro Transit District. So thank you for this Bruebert and let's do a round of applause. It does. Okay. So I will move adoption approval. Yes, sir. That was all I was gonna say. Okay. And then the third. Who was the second? I think it was Dr. Oh, okay. McPherson. Thank you. All right. Director Downey. Director Dutra. Hi. Director. Very good. Hi. Director Cummings. Hi. Director Lynn. Hi. Director McPherson. Hi. Director Newsom. Hi. Director Pagler. Hi. Director Kuehers-Carter. Hi. And the motion passes. Thank you. Okay. Item 12 is consideration of Santa Cruz Metro staff and FY24 and FY25 operating budget and capital budget and resolutions setting the public hearing on June 23rd. Mr. Farmer. Hello, everyone. I'm gonna go through the budget. I went through this with the committee and a little bit more in detail. So I'm gonna stay a little bit on the high level and stop me if you have any questions. Like I said, it's for the reason why we're having this board meeting today. A week from now is the fact that we have to set up this early day period before we can go to the public hearing and get approval. So to move on, I'm gonna skip some of the slides, but kind of give you an idea of the budget itself. Primarily back in March, I presented the budget in draft mode for approval with RTC. And what I'm gonna do is just gonna give you a couple items that have changed since then. So that's why I'm gonna stay at kind of a high level. So since then, we've actually had some slight increases in some of the revenue as well as some of the costs. One of the big things is we actually brought down our CNG fuel. So it's a saving for about almost $900,000. But that's misleading because we are still up over 50% over FY23, this fuel costs are still pretty high. Bottom line is we're making total changes of about $685,000. So our bottom line went from $6.8 million before transfers to 7.5 million. So that's the changes that we've made. I said, I'm just gonna flip through these unless you want me to stop. One item I want to point out on the P&L, an FY24, if you go down to the non-operating revenue on the budget, there's a, Brian says, federal state grants. We have a one-time $4 million TDASTA earnings coming in. It's only in for FY24, and then it goes away. So just beware that number is including that four million. On the proposed FTE changes, since the March board meetings, we, the mechanic one and two that we defunded, we initially had two of them. Now we're only defunding one. We're defunding customer service assistance. On the flip side, we are adding one mechanic three, not two mechanic three. We're adding the assistant parent crews and customer service manager and a parts and materials service manager. So those are the changes on the FTEs. And that's 24. And then in 25, you made a few more changes. Like I said, we've adjust a little bit on our revenue changes, which is our contracts and our passenger fares. Big change right now on the expense side is the fact that we have no raises in here yet. Our coals cost a living adjustments. Right now it's just steps and benefit changes. And that's driving about $1.4 million dollars worse. At the very bottom, we are about $4.1 million dollars lower than FY24. So we're coming in at about 3.4. There's some clips and tapes between federal grants and COVID because we run out of our COVID money. So that's the $9 million negative. But on the flip side, on our federal grants, that's our 5307 and that's slightly offset by that $4 million of STA, TDA funds that go up. And that's where we get to 6.0. And then moving on to this slide, as you can see at the very bottom, we've got from 7.5 million operating service plus and deficit before transfers. Sorry, I don't have something I can point to to show you this near the bottom. The 3.4 and that's about a 54% decrease. So if we stay on this trend, by the time we get to 26, we're zero and then we start falling in. So some of the operating budget and risk, like I said, you baked in what we know, but there's always stuff above and beyond. So unsure about ridership is always, it could be a change that could flush right up and down. Again, we also have contracts with the colleges and so forth, that could also be changed. So that's a risk, sales tax, TDA, uncertain inflation is creating a lot of issues and we're keeping our eye on, especially with sales tax. Things are starting to flat out and if we start coming down, that's not baked into our budget. So that have a bottom line dramatic impact. And of course, with the FTA means the federal government who knows where they're gonna go, especially passing the budget and so on. And this could actually impact our 5307 and 53 lenses of money coming to us. Economic downturn, floods, fires, and if we move on to the expense side, set the cost of, you know, engine failures, we have that fuel cost of volatility like we had in January, February, or a fuel cost, shut up out of the room, but the graduate coming out, but there are no way near where they were in December of last year. Workers' comp insurance, medical, they have settling costs, if you have any type of settlement cost, and then of course any type of other type of costs that come up, under each one. On the capital side, on the capital side, like I said, we have now included all the TURSA funding now that we know we have it. So as part of it, we're gonna receive 27 hydrogen buses. So this is now in our numbers. We're receiving 10 of the CNG Arctic buses, seven parent transit vans, five electric buses, and right now the three hopefully new fly releases go away at the end of the life. So right now we're looking about 34 million dollars just in buses alone over the next few years, not just in the next year. And then on the construction related process, we're really looking at the Paracruz facility we're still holding money aside for that, if that gets off the ground. We've added another 500K for Pacific Station redevelopment. We have four million, now four and a half because we added the bytes as part of the TURSA grant. Hydrogen fueling station, that's $12 million. So we've added that in, eight million of that is the TURSA, or eight and a half is the, or eight million is the TURSA grant, three million is our funding to get it off and going. SoCal Drive with the rapid bus enhancements, whether nine and a half, that's coming from SOCA. That's coming from the TURSA grant. And then at the very bottom, Watsonville Station redevelopment, that's eight and a half million cents for the TURSA grant too. So, the TURSA grant is great for us. That's a $38 million construction projects. And then moving to the next side, I'm not gonna go through each one of these, but ultimately we're looking at a portfolio that is funded either by TURSA grants or other grants at this point, $78.7 million dollars. And in that, I'll break it down here, almost 50% of that money has come just from this TURSA grant we just won. So, which is great news. The rest of it is coming from our capital reserves right now, 15.8 of that, and then transfers from our operating budget of another 11.7. And then we have some federal grants, which is not a lot, FTA, it's only 6.7 million for 9% of this. So we're gonna cover the money, the TURSA's coming up with it. And then we have some discounts where we're getting some, the lawsuit with DW, we're getting some money back, which is 3.2 million, which is actually good news. And that's really kind of where our funds are. Now that's the budget. And then the one thing that Director Rocken asked us, if I could present the buckets. So, I'm gonna present the buckets right now. So here's where we stand on the buckets. This is our projection as the end of June of this year. At the end of June of 24, 25, after we've been spending money, but as of a month and a half from now. Yeah, a month and a half. So I'm just gonna walk through, especially I know some new people here. So our workers' cop fund is 2.3 million. We hold that money. It's fully funded aside, and it's to cover all the work in cops issues. We don't touch that money. They're just very little out here. Our liability insurance reserve fund. So this is our liability insurance. So this is matching money that we have to use as part of our liability funds. Very little money, but still it's 3 million between those two buckets. Our operations, actually I'm gonna go to this bar, right one at the very top. Our cash flow reserve fund, this is $3 million. So think of this as our working cash fund. So think of this as we have to pay a lot of our stuff up front, but we won't receive the money from the governments until later on, two, three weeks, maybe a month later. So we have to float that cash. And that's the money that we need in order to kind of keep money in our bank. So we pay our bills too, while we're waiting for that money to come in. So that's $3 million. And then our operations sustainability reserve fund, which is our 16.3, that is our three months worth of operating spending. Should something happen, like if the federal government shuts down, they stop spending money, the state government shuts down, and we don't have money to come in, we can sustain operations for three straight months and pay our bills. So that's really what you're looking at there. Moving down to the bottom line, where we don't have kind of minimum balances or a defined balance. The first one is our bus replacement fund. So the bus replacement fund of $10.8 million, that is the 3 million that we set aside, which is a major D sales tax, as well as our STA state of good repair funds. It's approximately 3 million every year. And this is the pay for our buses and matching grants that we have for our buses. And right now it's currently 10.8 million, and that's already all reserved for the capital I just showed, because we have those 27 buses. So that's already been spent or going to be spent. On our operating capital reserve fund, we have 13.2 million dollars. These are funding that we use above and beyond the bus. So for example, we have 3 million that's going with the TURSA grant to pay for this hydrogen fuel tank across the street. We have another, I'm sorry, that was 3 million dollars. We have another 4.4 million matching funds for the SoCal corridor upgrade that's going in. So that's 7.4 million dollars. And there's a whole bunch of others that are in this funding, but this covers a lot of other projects that are not kind of restricted to just buses. And that right now it's 13.2 and that's all reserved in our budget that I just showed you on fire slides. The last one all the way to the right, I'll cover that. So the UAO and OPEC, we've agreed that we're going to put 2 million set aside for our underfunding, should our pension though not return the amount of money that we need and we have to make up the difference as well as if we had some kind of catastrophic OPEC or basically this health insurance for retirees if it ends up going too deep that we need to cover it. So this is our reserve fund for this and it's 2 million set aside and the bucket right now is 6 million. I can tell you that CalPERS has returned 6.1% name negative funds and FY22 when they're supposed to return 6.8 or 6.8% positive as part of it. So you're talking about 12, the 13% lower return. So we will have not this year in 25 a gap that we will have to make up because the returns were negative not positive. So I'm just gonna forewarn you but it's not in here because I don't have the results locked in yet to figure out what that will mean but that's gonna be millions of dollars. And then on our COVID recovery fund, 13.5 million. So we're using that as we move through time and the funding, this is to help us recover from COVID I'd say not go to COVID but I can opt downturns, whatever the case may be to keep us afloat as we're going and currently right now the 31.5 that puts us approximately into like FY, end of FY29 before we actually run out of money and get that cliff. And this does not contemplate any type of like say cost of living adjustments or anything of that nature. So we have to be very cautious on what we're doing not just that but just in general moving forward so we can extend this 31.5 or any other funding that you see farther in the future. I know it's still far out. It's just right around the corner. So gotta keep our eye on the future so we don't run out of money. That's it, I think that would be it on. So I've got some few more things. I'm not gonna go through, this is the explanation if you have any questions on the different buckets and then some additional information that we always present for the budget. So this is supporting activities that we're gonna be doing and then here's a listing of all the different memberships on here. Should you have any questions on it? I'm not gonna go through each one, these are two pages of this. Actually, I'm sorry, three pages. There's about 100,000, it's built to about 107,000 next year. And then here's a couple of the board member possible budget of different conferences to go to possibly. Big ones at the meetings and then the next one is CTA, could be more. And then some employee incentive programs, I think the big thing that Michael might talk about is the Agency of Rodeo, some awards, employee appreciation and so on. And then lastly is the timeline and we are in May which is the bottom left. And by presenting this to like I said it's gonna be going out to everybody to review. We're gonna come back on the 23rd for a public hearing at nine o'clock in the morning. And so yes or no, and if we say yes that finishes up our budget timeline and we're good to go. Any questions? Thank you. It's good to see who we funded across the top because back in 2012, it's nothing like that. It was Tuesday every single day. So we're at the point where I thought even Metro's probably shut down because there was just no money. I have a few questions for you. One is how much does it cost to run a bus every single day? Like what's it used to feel that we're gonna be taking off on the streets? What does it cost usually? Or what about a month or a year? How much do you think each bus costs? In actual fuel itself? Yes, fuel itself. Is there different buses? Fuel itself and how much the cost of the running that bus would be because we are switching over. So you're talking about between the difference between a hydrogen bus versus a CNG bus and cost of running a different two. I'd like to know what the savings is gonna be now that we're moving over, we're moving over the kind of buses that we're using out on the streets. Initially it's gonna be a lot more expensive. I could tell you, I don't have any answer to the dollar figure yet, but I can tell you because hydrogen fuel is more expensive and the hydrogen buses are more expensive.  But as what's out in the market is saying that hydrogen fuel is gonna start dropping and dropping as they start getting these plants to deliver it, it should flip so that the hydrogen fuel is actually cheaper than CNG. And then therefore you're just gonna start seeing the benefit of the hydrogen buses actually becoming cheaper. Oh, I thought, I mean, well, I guess going greener is not always cheaper, right? So what was I thinking? I thought there was gonna be some sort of savings because of the transition that we're making from our buses, but it sounds like it's gonna be more expensive. So just to kind of give you an idea, just the buses alone, the gross price, not what we pay, but the gross price about hydrogen buses, about $1.4 million for CNGs 800. Well, we're getting rebates against the $1.4 million and that's gonna get us down to roughly a $1 million maybe, but it's still gonna be a little bit more expensive than the 800. And you're right, we're still ways away before they kind of slips the other direction. Right, it's still gonna be more expensive. Okay, so that means our costs are gonna go up then.  So does that play into what you were saying how it seems like the budget's gonna be, it's beautiful today, but it's maybe in a few years not looking so good. They have to be very cautious going forward because this is just 24 and 25. We're gonna start delivering these hydrogen buses kind of end of 25, end of 26. We don't know the fuel price yet, but we're gonna start delivering these buses. And at that point, we're gonna then really take a hard look at how much does our costs go up or do they stay the same or do they go down? And it's really around the fueling price at that point. So we don't wanna kind of overspend ourselves now to get ourselves in a hole in the future, so. So that dump hole is not a set hole, but it could be a hole. Could be a hole.  Well, we are, this is just in general running. So if we stay, let's assume that hydrogen and CNG remain the same and hydrogen, by the way, does get better gas mileage than CNG. So let's assume everything's equal. Then yes, we have a hole and we know exactly where it's at, but we know the price is gonna be different. We just don't know where the pricing is at that point in time. And we said it's, if it comes way down, it's great, but it stays up in that hole of shrinks and it goes years to FY28 or so. And so the bucket that said COVID recovery, I think it had 30, a little over 31 million in it, that's gonna be depleted, right? Or is that gonna be depleted by the end of FY29 at this point right now with those holes? So that bucket will be gone. So we're gonna have to actually find some of the funding that we're using that money, I'm sure, for other reasons. So that money is gonna be that we're using it. We're gonna have to figure out how we're gonna replace it. Have we been thinking about that? Oh yeah, yeah. Trust me, we're thinking about different ways. And I think, you know, micro-pike allude to it. I think some people have talked about it. But for the most part, yes, we're looking for another way that now, so that in the future we'll have some other mechanism of funding in the way to supplement that gap and take the sense of like, you know, possibly 24. Yeah, and I think that's good that we're thinking about it now because I don't wanna be putting it back in the same position where, okay, now we're a short, you know, X amount of dollars and where we're gonna get that money and everyone's kind of stressed out that we need to cut, you know, fairs and routes and service. So even further, because we weren't thinking about how to replace that funding. And then I think that was just, thank you. Okay. So I think that kind of discussion is talking about going to voters and what approach and what would be the best way in the past meeting on whether there's sales tax. Those options will be coming back to us with the research that you were talking about doing, right? Yeah, and that's why it's important is the sales tax because we're looking out in the future and making sure that we sustain our ability to go forward without running into the life of 2014 hiccups where we're cutting the world or sustaining the service. So we're trying to get out ahead of that. I have one more question, sorry. The Paris peace facility, I feel like we've been talking about this forever as well. What's going on with the funding for that? Is that what's holding it back or what's the, why are we kind of just every year just seeing that but we're not saying anything? Yeah, it's like we've got an update on the federal level. Yeah, I mean, it's a, so that it's currently under development that preliminary design and engineering with the housing. And so we've got a meeting coming up next week with the architect of the branch specter who had a good book for us. That one's perhaps a little more tricky to fund from a state and a federal level, just given its location. So long story short, I mean, it's still in designing and engineering and we're trying to figure out the game plan on how to get the gap funding piece together for it. Okay. Oh, that's a good one. We're gonna meet next week, so we can have, yeah, we chat about that as well. That'd be great, thanks. So I'd like to follow up on kind of a thread Ginny introduced in this. Do we have any knowledge across the industry yet about possible maintenance costs savings as we shift to hydrogen and other sources? I think of myself switching from the ICE car to the EV I'm spending a lot less on many things. Is there a parallel for transit? Good morning, everybody, Marco Ross. Yes, there are savings in the maintenance side. You're not dealing with engines and transmissions and things like that. We'll have to analyze the costs certainly, but know that there is a big savings. We're actually gearing up to have our facility ready for hydrogen fueling. So, you know, that's one of our goals next year, but yeah, there certainly is a cost savings. Great, thank you. Obviously, the projection of ridership get into this exactly. Are you embedded in this? Is this ridership is gonna improve 25, 6, 7, whatever? Yeah, ridership continues for every single year. And like I said, the one thing we don't have is fair increases. So, you know, really it's just ridership at the same fair prices. You know, not to say we're gonna go out there and charge people, but it also doesn't do the other thing. We do, we did make an adjustment for the free fares for continuing law for everybody under 18 and the students. But if we decide to take that a little step further and add other people into that mix of free fares, it's not included. So that could be an impact for our price. Thank you. Other questions from directors? Yeah, I'll take it out to public comment. Just one more. Sorry, Brandon Freeman, Senior Vice-Chair of Equal 23. I don't have any issues with it. I just wanted to thank publicly both Don and Chuck. I think I made Chuck go over that with me like nine times over the last month. And when we got into the FTEs, I had concerns as well, but I just wanted to let the board know that Don made sure to address those with me. Margo, Daniel, Anna-Marie, and these two met with me yesterday for about an hour. So we are comfortable with the FTE changes at this point. I just want to make sure that you guys knew that. I know that I had spoken to a couple of you that maybe we weren't, but we are, that everything's figured out, so we're good to go. Thank you. Thank you for making the time to do that. Anyone else? Do you want to online? Yes. Yeah. Tate, Bao. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Yeah. I just want to let you know that I got an email almost quite a while ago about reimagined Metro, like any plans that's going on has to do with ridership or something, and also like planning plans to reroute some of the bus routes, Santa Cruz Metro, so which I didn't know at the time, and that's when I got involved. So I just want to let you, so I want to thank you for trying to get this taken care of, and I'm hoping that this could all work out for this, whatever's going on with the rerouting of bus routes in Santa Cruz County, especially for one of the arrangements regarding Scotts Valley, which I think has to do with Scotts Valley Drive or something. So, and I'm also hoping that more bus drivers are getting more hired to prevent further cancellations of bus trips. So that is all I wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Anyone else? I don't have any more from anyone here. We'll take it back to the board for a motion. No, thank you. Thank you. Second. Thank you. That was due track. Director Downey. Aye. Director Dutra. Aye. Dr. Terry Johnson. Aye. Director Cohnett. Aye. Director Flynn. Aye. Director Newton. Aye. Director Pagler. Aye. And Director Kiehler's card. Aye. And the motion passes. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Chad. Okay. We are now on item 13 and that is a public hearing for the adoption of California Uniform Public Construction Cost Accounting Act ordinance to provide informal bidding procedures for public projects. That was a mouthful. I'm going to pass it to Julie Sherman. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to pass it to Julie Sherman. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to call it Cupca. So I don't have to. You're late next time. So this is a continuation of the process that was started last month when the board had its first reading of this ordinance and adopting a resolution to opt into the Cupca program. This program will allow the agency to use informal bidding processes for the purpose of small value in particular, small and medium value public works projects so that staff has an easier time letting those projects out to bed and getting successful. So this is all to help staff and the agency have more success getting small and mid value public projects completed. And so this first part is the public hearing to take public comments on adoption of this ordinance. And then then you'll go into the next item where you'll actually adopt the ordinance. At that time you don't have to take more public comment. You can. But this is the public comment part. I'll hand it back to you. Thank you. Is there anyone here who would like to comment on this? It's your opportunity. Anyone online? Okay. Then I'd like to close the public hearing and I think that's all we need to do for that item. Is that right? Right. Okay. So now we'll move to item 14. And that is to waive the second reading and adopt an ordinance to provide informal bidding procedures for the Cupca. So for public projects and adopt a resolution to amend title two of the administrative code procurement policy. So let me just ask if there are any questions. Sure. Is our organization worth doing this have any procedures in place to keep these purchases within the county so that they are effective? Well, that's a good question. And it's a complicated answer. There are certain, well, it depends on funding. And there's like, if you have FTA funding, you're not allowed to have a geographic preference. It's actually legal. It's a limit on competition. There are some exceptions for that for A&E contracts because at least there you might say, well, this, you know, design firm has a particular knowledge of this particular area and then you can get away with it. So out, but then outside of the funders, you know, if you have just local funds, if you have a really good business case to make for having, you know, a geographic preference, you might be able to do it. Yeah, it's complicated. But then you do have small business and disadvantaged business enterprise outreach and that they do focus on local firms doing the outreach. But this agency has never had geographic preferences. It's certainly something that you could, you know, as a board member, the agency could ask staff to look into and see, you know, if that's something the agency wanted to do outside of a federally funded context. You may or may not have success because this area, it can be difficult to get folks to be on projects locally. But legally, it's something that you could do in some circumstances. It's your complicated legal answer. Well, sometimes if you just put the checkbox there as you're making these purchases, it's just bringing it to mind so that people say, oh yeah, maybe I should check locally first just to see so that that expense, if there's any taxable things here. And I don't know if anyone is here from the contracts office, but they might be best to answer how they go about doing that. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions? Okay. I will give another opportunity to see if there's any public comment.  Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead and take your down. All right. Director Dutry. All right. Director Collins, Terry Johnson. All right. Director Tony. All right. Director Lynn. All right. Director Macriessen. All right. Director Nielsen. All right. Director Dutry. All right. Director Keros Carter. All right. Motion passes. Thank you. Item 15, the CEO or of course. What? Goodness. Well, I do have just a few items and I know you've got probably some discussion. We've got two closed sessions. So I'll keep my comments fairly brief, but I did want to let you know we continue with the operations to make headway. So let's do with getting more operators on board. Since we last met, we've released five new operators into service and I guess I should put into overall context we're about 22 operators down. So we've released five into service. We have 14 currently in the classroom. Then you have 72 applications for the subsequent class coming up on that class. So it's amazing to see what Don and Margo put together as far as just getting the applications, getting the process, getting interviews done and Margo lining up, but it's training classes. Just a lot of work behind the scenes, but it's the number one priority that we have to hopefully all get back to 100% basically of our operating positions being filled. And our goal is to do that in the fall, but also when the university starts school on the fall to have all the bus routes of the university going, all the schedules fully filled and they have the 10 art ticks. And as you saw in your consent calendar today, you've approved the purchase of the 10 articulated buses from San Diego Metro, $10,000 each, which is a pretty good buy considering they're probably about a $1.6 million bus. They've got a little bit of a life left on it certainly from a youth perspective, they're like 10 or 12 years younger than the current artists that are running on the street. So that'll be a big help at the university. I think to be running those routes with articulated buses yesterday, San Diego approved the sale of the buses to Metro at their board. So this thing's just about all in and ready to go. Hopefully we'll actually sign all the paperwork today and then it'll be done and we'll go get those during the summertime, get them wrapped, our pair of boxes put in them and so on. So I think there's good news, it's around the corner still but we're making big headway with getting there. I did want to mention yesterday, I think there's always something interesting going on at that show, I tell you when it comes to passengers and drivers and I don't know, here it is, I just want to make sure I've got the name right. We have an operator that was hired in 2012. So he's been here about 11 years. And yesterday this operator was coming on the route that serves a career college and noticed about a 20 year old young lady who was slumped over. So he pulled the bus over, tried to get her to interact, saw that she couldn't, saw that she had a really weak pulse and so he called the paramedics and they were able to revive her. And so I will make mention of that again, I think coming up and perhaps give a special award for Travis Havens but that kind of stuff just, it almost happens on a regular basis. It's why they're called essential workers. Not only are they getting people to places where they need to go providing an equitable environment for them to succeed in life but these guys also just see and react to it and respond to it including saving up the lives of folks. I remember last summer a similar situation happened with a man who was in a wheelchair on route 35 and he had slumped over and had gone into a heart attack and the driver was able to call quick with the paramedics and that was a good outcome. So anyway, we're going to Travis back at a future date that I can recognize but just, you know, it's going above and beyond, right? He's there to drive a bus but when you see somebody and, you know, something's wrong, we'll put it in part and go out and take care of it, take care of that. I had just a couple of other things. There is a program called ARCHES and I'm not sure what ARCHES stands for. I should have written it down. I had it in the back of my mind but now it's blank. But the long story short of it is there's about 20 transit agencies in the state that are partnering with other vendors and experts on hydrogen. And so to be able to go after a sizable federal pot on building hydrogen plants where you actually built the hydrogen, we've all teamed up and come in as part of a consortium and we've made a pitch to have a hydrogen plant in Northern California and then to be able to buy off of that as a consortium and there's over a thousand hydrogen buses within the consortium and add up all of the transit agencies. And there's also others that I think are either in or coming into the consortium. It would be like trash refuge trucks and other heavy duty vehicle school buses and so on. But it was just like Chuck was mentioning that projection is we want to get the price of hydrogen down to about $5 per gallon equivalent. And then you also for Chuck say there's better efficiency with hydrogen. So if you have a $5 gallon equivalent of hydrogen and a $5 gallon of diesel fuel, you'll get twice the mileage out of that gallon and equivalent of hydrogen. So that's a big deal. So there's a lot of things in motion. What was really interesting is we had submitted all this to the state. This arches packages consortium's proposal for a hydrogen plant. And Wanda Moon and I were back in Sacramento on Monday and Tuesday and without even prompting our legislatures about arches, they already knew about it. It was already circulating back there with the legislature that this was a proposal but it's likely to see some significant funding. So I just wanted to give you a heads up where we'll be an innovative trying to not just look at the market price but actually trying to influence it by coming together as an industry and proposing just good innovative projects. And that would be a hydrogen plant that has a lot of green hydrogen associated with it through solar and through wind power. Still working on the South County facility. You had authorized me to negotiate a lease agreement. We're going back and forth. I'm still feeling that that will come together. Part of the issue is a lot of people own that piece of property and have a lot to say in regard to lease price and so on. So we're working with the broker that you have here at the agency. I just want to let you know we're still working on it. I've not lost the lease by any stretch but we're just trying to get the details hammered out on that. So hopefully at the next board meeting I'll have some news about that. And then we're also still looking for that opportunity and I apologize for not having gotten that solidified since the last board meeting that's really celebrating down in Watsonville that TIRSA grant. Just a lot of funding for the Watsonville area in that grant. And you can consider they have money for the T.O.D. and the housing component for the development of the Watsonville Transit Center. There were a lot of things in motion. Without Watsonville you wouldn't have got the grant. Let me just put it that way. Just based on the fact that Watsonville has some advantages they bring into our agency that allow you to go out and be aggressive with the grants. And then I just couldn't say enough about your main or more than once you know in the phone calls that you may have put funding in and you sit down with the deputy secretary of transportation. I mean, that was just, right. So with that I'll back off and be quiet other than one other thing actually July 22nd, we'll send this info out July 22nd, we kind of locked in a date for the company picnic, the agency picnic that we have each summer. I have it over at the GAKS building and also have associated with a rodeo for the company, for the drivers to be able to come out and show off their skills while we're having the picnic. And you know, Marco would kill me to say this but I'd love to see the board members get behind the wheel of the buses we're having. I have a mini training session but to take it through a few cones I think. But with that, I'll let it stop. Thank you. Well, I'm really sad I'll be out of town for that. Are there questions or comments? CEO or rapport. I actually had a question. The story you heard about bus driver supporting the person who was left over and unresponsive us. That's really incredible that our bus drivers are doing that. I'm wondering if we have Narcan available on our buses and if not, if that's something we can work towards that probably goes beyond the scope and responsibility of a bus driver but it could save lives. Yeah, I think we've begun in having a discussion about that, whether our insurance provider will be okay with that and just what are the other liabilities that are associated. But right, it seems to be a timely remedy for a lot of issues out there. Okay, great. I'm glad we're exploring it. Okay, so if there aren't any other questions or comments, we will move on to getting into our closed section and I'd like to ask Julie Sherman to just make some comments. Sure, we have two closed sections. The first is a public employee performance evaluation for the CEO position. And then the second is conference with labor negotiators and that will involve an update on labor negotiations for all three of Metro's bargaining units. Thank you so much. So I'd like to ask members of the public and staff to please step out while we... Oh, I'm sorry, public comments. Any of those items? Thank you for reminding me. Are there any public comments online? There are none.


Okay, welcome back everybody. It is the top of the hour. We are trying something new this year. We are doing a lightning round We have five ten minute presentations in the next fifty minutes So we are going to start here with reaching new readers through writing with Amy Marshall the director of the Craig Public Library in Alaska Amy you got ten minutes off you go Okay Island as I told the book in here on Facebook. I've had copies are on ready Craig is Very remote to give you an idea how remote we're four hours from the nearest Walmart by Perry So this is a this is a place. It's very hard to get to You may have heard of us And just not known it if you know Coatesy from Axman if you have watched Alaska's Bigfoot Island on eminent planet God help us My library is well comparatively in the state huge when you look at tribal libraries, but very small I have fourteen hundred square feet, so it's not a big place. It is a place for the entire Island we have fourteen hundred people of trade On the island the very diverse population you have fish immune that come in in the summer We have a huge native population. You have to get and we have hi to we have And The island population can grow up to about 14,000 So that kind of gives you an idea of where I'm coming from as far as Doing these programs one of the most discouraging quotes ever written for writers is this guy Joseph Epstein I'm sorry, dude. I've never heard of you until I heard this quote. I know that you're a writer I know you get 14 books, but if you're going to do anything to just squash anybody's creativity You can't be a primary because I think writing at a basic level is Encouraging creativity and libraries can have a big part of that. I mean, we're not just a place where books hang out We need to be a place where people hang out with people feel like they're going to create something So I call it fables of creativity and I think that's a that's a good deal And Ray Bradbury, that's my favorite Yeah, can we have you just speak up just a little more we're getting a little sound issues. Oh, sorry, okay There you go. Thank you. Okay, national novel writing month. It's free and nano limo or they don't know if you guys are familiar with this They do something called come right in with libraries and coffee shops. They started it in 2009 75 libraries participated that number has grown exponentially in 2012 350,000 participants in over 500 volunteers ran on rhino in 90 countries So this is a huge deal and there's a lot of support. It's a free program and that It's not going to take a lot on your part to get this running To give you an idea because somebody may come in and go wow 50,000 words in a month. What are you nuts? Well, that's 1667 words today and If you look at 50,000 word books great Gatsby bravely world catcher in the ride, you know all these right here So, you know, it's something that you set yourself up for Kids program. Now, this is not an arymo. This is a different program. They'd be partnered with an arymo I use this for my elementary school kids Student publishing comm. It's free. What we did was a you're the author at your library program I had kids from kindergarten through to grade sign up for this thing. We wrote in the library They wrote at school. I went and talked to the teachers and the parents this k1 class Kerry Bennett's K1 class wrote a book together. It's called the gingerbread kid. It's set on Prince of Wales Island It's absolutely hysterical and cute and the kids did all the illustrations What you do is you can pile these things you send them in to student publishing comm they send you a book and Once again, it's free. So it's within your it's within your budget I mean it takes a little bit of time commitment and this is my absolute favorite because you don't think preschoolers and toddlers could write They can't I found this book the real champion is staying away in this story The little girl wants to stay awake so she tells each of her stuffed animals a story and this is how she stays Wait, so the kids were just in problem and I had these very weird huge book shaped things from that somebody donated from Oriental Trading Company And I've broke these out. I said you guys think you can tell a story Well, my toddlers in preschoolers are grabbing every adult in the library and sitting down with them and telling the story of the adults are writing down the young writers program 13 and above We had five in 2010 two of them reached the 50,000 Goal this kind of gives you a breakdown of what you need of what you need to do beforehand Advertise go into the schools talk to them There's a free kit that you can get from the anorimus Chris and Gotti is the young writers program director there This is a screenshot of their young writers program website It's wonderful because the kids could go in they make their own log and look at connect with writers all over the world And there are forms that they can chat with writers all over the world And what we found at the library is if we give them space and encouragement and time It's amazing what they come up with in the summer I have a young poet society and the young writers build they come in we write poetry We write and this all happens before the library opens on a Monday morning So it's a time commitment on my part, which I'm totally into it's absolutely great and They come in and we get together and you write the manual manual classic program basically 17 and above This is the screenshot for the come right in the stuff that they will if they will send you They're an incredibly approachable group and if you have any questions you can call them on the phone You can email them they get back to me really really quickly and just like the young writers program There are forms there that folks go and they register they can talk to anybody, you know all over the world talk about writing Most important part it's a writing group not a reading group And that's something that you'll find when you get this started because people are well I write a rowing and I don't want to be I don't want to be around everybody that I'm writing and People are going to be reading my stuff and that's not necessarily what happens in these groups Resources this is great Even if you don't do a writing group if you ever have writer flock, it's called writer die You can set it to different modes If you put it to electric shock and evil if you hesitate more than five seconds It will go backwards and start taking away your words So it's in your best interest to keep writing and I've used this with the young writers and it's been a lot of fun More resources story is I write like which is a lot of fun You take something that we've written when you cut and you paste it into this screen and it tells you if you write like Robert Lewis Stevenson and I do that word or Douglas Adams The end of all things even in the young writers program There's a certificate at the end and who doesn't like a certificate with the name and the title of the book So it's just kind of something fun that you get at the end of the That you get at the end of the program at the end of November Afterwards they partner with create space if you take your book and You can go through the edits until the end of June put it on create space They will send you five copies of your book and I'll tell you something with these young writers and the older writers alike There's nothing like holding your book in your hands. So this is and this is free This is free for them once they sign up for for them right now. The book doctors are two literary agents out of New Jersey who are absolutely fabulous. They wrote a book called the essential guide to About everything you wanted to know to get your book published and they do something around the country called picture to lose And what they're doing is they realize that publishing houses need new blood need offers and that's their mission other programs offer offer through the office of letters and white that's the parent Organization of them I know is kept and I know coming up in April and then again in June It's kind of like that I know right they have a different website for it It's and it's a whole lot of fun to see this is mine because this is how do you Who I am over there? You can take it further and we did in August of 2012. We did the Alaska statewide picture can be there and the week of literary Digrat from IMLS we use money from the state and the Alaska owl project Is our broadband initiative that also got video conferencing to 104 libraries in the state and We did pitch a polluza from the Craig library with the book doctors and the principles of Lannarino The Vanarino guys did writing Workshops over this thing we had libraries all over the state look up and then the book doctors did three picture Polluses we have three winners. We've had three book contracts come out of it It is a great way to get exposure for Alaska writers because it's really hard to get exposure as a writer in Alaska Just because you're so far away from everything But if you know if you want to contact me and you want me to put you in contact with the book doctors It could to believe it is a lot of fun to have at your library There's some web resources Just kind of a break down so you would have this slide so you'd be able to get a hold of These people and if you have questions just ask this is me everywhere and I email our Library website me on Twitter the library on Twitter beyond Facebook I'm happy. I have the library gene. So I'm pathologically All right All right, thanks Amy. That was absolutely wonderful and you start right to ten minutes. So congratulations for that


This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. A United Nations report predicts that world rice production will be higher this year than last year. The report is from the Food and Agriculture Organization. The FAO says the global rice harvest should be almost 2% higher this year, mainly because of increased production in Asia. Large gains are expected in Bangladesh, Burma, China, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand. Also, the FAO predicts a recovery for rice harvests in Africa. Production increases are expected to be led by Mali, Nigeria and Senegal. In other parts of the world, the report predicts that rice harvests will be lower in the European Union and the United States. Two reasons for this are unusually dry weather and falling rice prices, which have led some farmers to plant other crops. Smaller rice harvests also are expected in Latin America and the Caribbean. Concepción Calpe is an economist with the FAO. She says good harvests in Asia will lead to reduced demand in the global rice trade this year. Demand in global trade is expected to fall 900,000 tons to about 34 million metric tons. Ms. Calpe says one reason is because a lot of the major importers like Indonesia or the Philippines or even Bangladesh have harvested very good crops. Another reason is because some of them, like the Philippines, have set limits on how much they are willing to import. The FAO says prices for rice have stayed high for several reasons. These include higher costs for fuel, fertilizer and, in some areas, labor. One country where prices remain high is China. Concepción Calpe says the high prices raise questions about official Chinese reports of record harvests. In Thailand, a government price support program has led rice exports to fall by 20% to less than 8 million tons. The program keeps prices for Thai rice exports above market prices. As a result, the FAO says exporters, like Australia, India and Vietnam, have captured a larger market share. Ms. Calpe notes that Burma could become a major exporter of rice. Many Western governments have eased trade restrictions on Burma recently because of its efforts at political and economic reform. Foreign investment and increased productivity in Cambodia might also help that country export more rice. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villareal. You can read, listen and learn English with more news about agriculture at voaspecialenglish.com.


In an ideal world, there will be no poverty. So what can we do to solve the problem of poverty? It is necessary to address inequality in order to alleviate poverty. For instance, in some farming communities, women do most of the work, but own little land, leading to unfair wages. Addressing inequality can lead to greater opportunities and resource sharing. Education is also a powerful tool against poverty. Basic reading and writing skills can help thousands of people escape extreme poverty. Moreover, quality secondary education can cut global poverty by half as it reduces vulnerability and empowers individuals. Ending hunger and providing clean water are also essential for breaking the poverty cycle. Proper nutrition and clean water improve health and thereby enable people to focus on financial endeavors. Governments can help to alleviate poverty by ensuring access to clean water. This saves individuals time and energy, allowing rural communities to use time optimally and focus on financial endeavors. In addition, access to health care is vital. Governments must ensure basic services for citizens, offering affordable treatment options when needed. Furthermore, a peaceful existence plays a significant role in poverty alleviation. It redirects funds from conflicts to public services. Peace fosters stability and increases the middle class, reducing a country's poverty rate. Humanitarian aid in the form of cash or even loans can empower communities. It enables self-sufficiency and boosts local economies. So, small grants can help families launch businesses and lift themselves out of poverty sustainably. Combining these solutions can create a comprehensive approach to poverty alleviation, making a brighter future for all.


This is the most open-GMS branch, though. There are a lot of good partners in the U.S., and I'm sure they can do the GMS. So, because Skidwell says open-GMS, I can do the GMS, it's kind of the same thing. Okay, I say GMS, but there are lots of different parts. Basically, there's just a list of them. There's a lot of working drivers that you can have a very simple way of moving blocks, or you can have a different channel. There's a way to configure for your cluster, which is very simple. There's a lot of different cluster manager and mob servers. The centralized ones we wrote earlier are kind of old, and we used to have a lot of customers here, but now we've done it, sir. That's our current product that's out there now.  So, we have a cluster probably, which we're going to talk about in a minute, or maybe two. We have a cluster around them, and we have something similar that I think now that used to be, we have a cluster stream that's getting integrated, and we've made a cluster with that. So, a bit about GMS, just to get people to speak on, we're going to talk about GMS and how this differs from where we're going to be talking about. So, it has a picture of a second big NFS server, where one of this sort of differs from the other one by the server. That one server can talk to nobody else and talk to them. If you want to write something about this, do you have to go to this server? This is the great NFS server, it's a lot of AIFAs and things like that. It's a single point of error, often, if it's a phone server and it goes down, and it's disconnected, and you can't write to them. And if you want to upgrade it, you can either replace it with a bigger server, plus a lot more money, or you have another server that manages to separate the names of it. So, you have this data replication problem that you want to have, the same content on both of them, or you partition your names by some amount. And the one thing that can change that is really is long-paced interconnects. So, we have FireChannel where you can have disk drives and disk arrays out in the network. So, I'm going to say that you're running your machines in a popular bracket. So, now you're at this, they're not going by any one particular machine, they're going by a cluster of machines. So, FireChannel is the kind of leading one of those right now. Lower end you can fire wires. My strategy, which is basically this, I just want to call over, PCPAC is coming along to come to you all. And there are some others that I've talked about.  And they can talk to the standard block, they can talk to each other over IP, of course. So, basically, what you have to do is a cloud system that lets multiple machines talk to the same system. This right here is like a local cloud. One machine wants to be something the other one has just written. There's no message between them to flush the data on that. There's already data on one machine back to this, the other one created. And what GFS does is it does that blocking between the different machines so that they see a coherent view of the other data on this. And basically lets them, so two machines are writing to the same disk at the same time, in the same position. And you don't totally cover your data. You don't cover it all. So, it costs a lot of money for this. So, things like web-serving clusters.  And each one writing a version of a package that lets you all serve in the same data. And part of GFS is that the machines do part of each other. So, when one fails, the other one will do not report whatever scale data that the machine was trying to write at the time.  So, you can do GFS as well. Shared Group is an interesting way of, interesting, really interesting mid-part cluster process. You can make it so that all the machines move off the same disk, all of them, and everyone is running GFS up like this, so that when you install packages, or install a program, all those machines can see it immediately. So, it makes your configuration a lot simpler because instead of if you have a cluster of 10 machines, you don't have to install it 10 times. You can install it once, and then all the machines will see it immediately. Then, there's also scientific clusters, which is kind of where the GFS community started. It started in a big world computer university, where there were just massive data sets that needed to be returned to, like, genome, and gas, and a bunch of things that we all wanted to do with clusters. You have your big tree that needs to be built, and you run parallel media across all of the machines. They all have access to the source files, and they just assume it's your workload to do it very, very good. And then parallel databases, like Oracle and I, it's themselves, and you can replicate the Oracle on GFS, so you don't have to replicate it on GFS. So, some of the GFS spaces, so it's symmetric. There are a number of cluster fodder, samples, where there's one machine that does all the metadata work, and the other machine is just your data. And this is an easier way of going about doing it, but the problem is that you still have a single corner category, and the problem is that you can't metadata server. So what GFS does is, every machine does both metadata and data operations as it goes, and so you build one machine that's in it, put it in it, and any other. It's kernel, so each machine has its own kernel in the cloud system, and it's a kernel that goes, and I'm sure that if one machine dies, it knows what kernel, of course, wanted that machine to go, so it plays that kernel, which it goes on. So 64 bit, we started from the ground up, and we were in a big data environment, and we wanted to ensure that the scale was possible. So there's like a local cloud system. You can run GFS as a local cloud system if you want. There are plug-in modules that you can plug into while you're in GFS. And there's one that you can plug in and it says, it basically makes GFS make this possible, but it's not. So you can run GFS, and I've seen a few programs run as the root cloud system on your laptop. So some of our goals were flexibility in terms of logging, so the way of doing logging across the cloud system is your membership to GFS is a lot easier, and we were very focused on certain types of logging at the beginning and community close that was a bad idea, and they were right. So, like I said, these modules are going to plug into different columns of logging across your infrastructure. And also flexibility in terms of log transport. As long as it looks like it's a lot of device to GFS, and it doesn't mind multiple machines barring and grading to it, I don't think we can use it. So there's a big list that should go there. One of the big things about, so GFS can run, but it's not a string local cluster. Taking local clusters and trying to make it into a cluster file system is very hard because some of the assumptions that the local cluster can make don't really work well in a cluster environment. A local cluster system's all about locality, trying to pack things in as closely together. Like a good example is the Inos. As many Inos as you can in the one block. That's a big tongue for GFS because you want to be able to access the different files individually, and if it's the smallest unit, you can write it as a block and you have more than two Inos or more than one Inos in the block. You can't exploit those two. So you don't, you need to space things out to get good performance from a bunch of files. So the other thing is, locality is everywhere. So you have to worry about deadlock ordering and things like that. So that makes things more complicated. The journaling that we play is a little bit more complicated too because you have multiple journals and those journals have multiple different versions of the same block. So one machine modifies the block and the next machine modifies the block and the third machine modifies the block. Say the first machine crashes and you play that journal. You do not want to play that old data over top of the new data that your machine changed. So you don't have to worry about you're only going to play anything that happens that way. But ultimately walking is more overhead basically because you get a lock per file and when you're turning through lots of files you have basically lots of locks you need to get. And since locality I was talking about, they're not quite as pumped together anymore. Another thing is just, for example, data structures, so in order to convert a time of number to a disk address that can be centralized and built in the wrong way. So you have to do that in a way that doesn't create a lot of network. So if you're doing a DF and a local file system, just the super block has the all-BDF information in it. That's not true with GFS because every time you use an application you have to change the centralized data structure to a bottleneck that kills your performance. So things just point out from GFS. So we try to be as close to the block as possible. There are some places where you do get that one value that everybody will disagree in it that doing something needs a change. And we do a little bit of relaxing quotas. If you think about quotas they're basically the current value of how many blocks of data is allocated. It can be at a bottleneck. So we try and the lessons a little bit so quotas are as possible over in quotas but there are mechanisms to make sure that that overruns and it doesn't accept the value of the value. And things like A-time are kind of hard to do as well. So A-time is fuzzy. It's kept accurate within a certain quantity of the specified value. So the internal layout is true fast. The process is between if you have some volume down here with CLD or whatever. It also has this GLAA player that basically lets it talk to these cluster managers. So Dolm has one of those essentialized parts of it. And then there's a DLM same-hand foundation that basically does these metrics to the cluster managers. So GFS, the very interesting thing is GFS only knows how to block there. So GFS doesn't care what type of data transport happens at all. It's all transferred to it. So IP down there can kind of be an advantage if you have the right type of data or to get IP for the front-end. It's very abstract. So I have just these big lists of features that we can all kind of breeze through. So ACWIS journaling is journaling performable. We have that local journaling top-of-top. You have X-patterns and directories which means basically the directory that has it. You can have it. You can add space and journals as you go. There's a lot caching that we have by now. So you don't have to worry about PLT and GFS. There's just a couple of bits at a time and a lot of ways to block storage. You have to have multiple blocks to form a transaction so you can sort of kind of make sure you get the right order. Okay, so 42 is the branching function of GFS. So these are some of the things that we added that we've seen that are new to the database that people can see now. So asynchronous logging.  Now you can fire up a whole slew of block requests and they come back as they come back. And that's a good performance increase. So quotas are everybody expects to be there. And the monosystem is so important. There are just so many different little things that go into it. There's a lot to get out of these things. Share it with the officer. I'll give you a share. So we do direct IO and direct IO setup so that if you're doing monocating writes you can do writes in parallel. So for a database that's string-worked out as a disk and the file would be a database in parallel as you want. Lots of improvements. Journal of data and support. Plastic compressing support. So if you're doing snapshots the volume manager and the hardware you can run one command and one machine that tells the whole process in this operating and our process is clean. And then you do your hardware snapshot and you can hit another switch and it will let the cluster go on. So you can do that type of snapshots for back-ups and things like that. For improvements basically one of the things I'll share with you in a minute. So you can do a shared memory map of the file on multiple machines and then start accessing that memory and compare it across the cluster. So by doing it right to a byte on one machine the next read of that byte on a new machine will have a different value which is kind of neat. So it's basically distributed shared memory. So we also have context that's going to have names. So there are tags that you can put into your vinyl names that when the GFS sees that tag it will replace the pre-posting or the machine type. So you can have stuff in the cluster that's specific to a certain node or specific to a certain type of architecture. So if you're running a mixed cluster where you're running RPC and ECs together, you can have it so that it's transparent and equal but with different directories. So some of the a little bit more detail on some of these features. So they sync in this locking so local op modules and then geoloc there actually simply does not change basically. So there's a callback that the linemodule can send to the file system. So you send out a request in remembrance that you did your request and then request that byte and it calls back. So there are two new pre-patches. So when you're running an LS or a directory in order to run an LS it has the stats that we find. JFS pulls and has pre-patches for all those files so that you're not waiting to sync or sequentially for it to do the stats. So that's one thing. You can also do a signature request that you wait on. So standard best works that way. So each chunk of the application has its own statistics to tell how many blocks are allocated in your grid, how many your eye knows. And standard best it will have a bunch of slots and it will start firing out requests for each of those allocation accounts. So basically you do those stats of the allocation all where all of them and if you want to ask a question. Unlock is another big thing. So people are a bit of a burden to the code. So signature is unlocked. It has to have a lock. Whatever process it was the last one to question would end up having to send their way unlocked. Right now we just do a signature unlock to tell the service that you tell the block on the unlock list and you forget about it and when it gets the callback it handles the rest of the unlock and do the test. So the quotas are causing. So like I said there's this one value that the value of how many blocks a user is allocated. And if you think about the idea where one user is writing a job on 100 computers and they're all writing blocks every allocation, every time you go right you would have to check the current value of that the number of blocks the person is on here and it also doesn't change it and if that was kept in one central place every process would have to be constantly changing and looking at that value. That would be a huge problem. So what happens is we take the amount of space that's left between the limit of the user's quota and what they currently have and divided it up against the number of machines that they're going to allocate. And so each one gets a certain portion of that and you can they can independently go through that amount of space before they have to go back to the centralized quota file in the precinct. And so basically it brings it up so that you aren't constantly getting the same that same value. And the problem with that is that you can get overruns if you have uncertain situations where people allocate up to their limit and then stop and then other people allocate. But you can this next slide so you're actually seeing the quota changes to the quota file and you can also change the precinct to more often so you're closer to the limit. So you can there are a couple of options there you can limit the maximum amount of overruns as much as possible and in theory it's a twice overrun and you can make that smaller if you want to but in practice you don't see anything more than 5 or 10 percent and it's there and it works. So withdrawal isn't another option. So there are problems when you hit errors and you want one machine to be able to leave the cluster in a way that other people can see not for it and not fill a note. So if a machine has an IOW error whether it's cargo pad or if it's some sort of consistency error or whether it's a tank basically the idea is that you want to preserve the integrity of the cluster over that single node so the previous way we were doing that was panning in which of course users didn't like we added recently this way of withdrawal so GMS has its own block device that the layers would mean the regular block device and it lets whenever it gets an IOW so we can whenever we get to the situation where we have to leave the cluster we can stop any IOW and wait for any outstanding IOW to complete. Once it happens we can guarantee that Geoplasma won't have to do this again. It can then leave the cluster or leave the cluster for that process and then call the lock module ask the lock module to do something that basically is equivalent of all of the recovery steps on it and then never know except the transit part so the node that had the problem stays up so if you're running another application, a non-geoplasmic application that can stay out but you still preserve the cluster integrity and you keep your clients so that's just another improvement we've ever used okay so a good part of the lock module when we're making so like I was saying we can plug them all through the lock and if it's doing locking you can plug in any one you want there is a fair amount of context involved so it's a bit of work to do but you can do it so the lock module is very lock centered the lock module in the case is not a cluster in the case but it's because for a lot of times it's a very lock specific thing there's very simple cluster in that if you can do a bunch of operations you can now come up with that and you can do it with blocks and block value blocks and it's kind of something that's possible to be allowed to do that and it ends all the way so some of these parts that I was talking about earlier so all the time block cluster managers so you can have two handles up there if you've got a server you can have them on your own free products and it's a couple of different forms I think that's fancy and locking is very not too specific it's older one thing we're keeping it around is we haven't done that benchmarking yet to figure out when to be better to do the centralized locking when to be better to do the distributed locking you can make very good arguments for a very large cluster where you do not want to go for a standard distributed cluster transition you have a thousand nodes all working in a cluster that basically those transitions are off the scale of the number of nodes at the most of the time it takes so you can get better performance out of a a centralized membership one of the nodes all the membership potentially to get better is awesome so that's one of the things we're keeping it around where we want to be able to decide which one is better ok, so there's that and then there's this new one that we're pending out to be part of the REL4 product so the R26 version of GFS cluster infrastructure will come out with REL4 if you want and I think some kind of old stuff and so it's good to be using this GFAS so it is a cluster manager which is kind of a early start a cluster manager and a basically let's expose this to both GFS and CLBM and we'd like to be able to work together with other both applications and we've been talking about integrating the AJ stuff that Alan has been and other things like that we're trying to keep things as module as possible we've got multiple limitations but all of a sudden things are quite well and basically working together as well as possible so you can use the stuff that we have that independently we'll see if there are CLBM and GFS even to quite your own and stuff that goes to promote counter space in which ways but it's newer than that, we're still testing it and it's in QA now and it should be ready like it's a REL4 update one ok, so cluster manager is basically heavily based on X cluster so the guy who's writing it will say you long time have X cluster in any area of the interface so he can kind of model that handles membership events so you can ask it who's in the who are cluster members now you can ask it tell me when somebody shows up or when somebody goes away it also handles things like start and stop the core cluster spaces so things like when you have a cluster translation you have to stop GFS and the DLM for a while so you get the new membership setup and once you have that then you can tell the DLM to wake up and it can do a lot of recovery and once the lot of recovery has been told you you have a lot of recovery and things can go on from there so and it has led me with that level of starting and stopping services like I said earlier there's a separate user space so it's more fun to be what that cluster space does if you're starting and stopping with Archie or IP alias so you can access these commands from both the kernel and the user space so GFS was one big reason or reason in the kernel space and the user space is basically a game in the user space and the user is in there it's currently in the kernel we've gotten a lot of feedback from the community to say it is a lot of policy how do you want to do that how do you want to do cluster membership and when we first started we were going to do it on the kernel and we got good feedback so we're working on that so each cluster has a unique name and it has multiple clusters on the network and each cluster can have multiple clusters so they don't have many clusters so it's all nodes that do broadcast to Archie and when it knows the text that they came up with when they know which is a transition where all the nodes agree on cluster membership how does this form so form is very important in clusters you want to make sure that you don't have a split frame type of deal where you have a network package or something that has part of the cluster on one side and part of the cluster on the other and they can't each one doesn't know the other one so a lot so do you really have both of them so form lets you count votes so each node gets a certain number of votes and you have to make sure that the side of the split frame of your lives has at least half of the votes or at least one half of the votes where it comes from so see what happens to this form it does provide services like I was talking to other things so they need our HA part where the equation gets a node up in the data so it can do certain soft services it also gets our kind of state in the family gets these things so notice where you feel to make sure that that person doesn't come back later so again a build a general user space so part of this core cluster manager but as I was saying a GFS and BLM need kind of a layer to be covered so as soon as a cluster transition happens the whole stack kind of you might have three things running you might have a statement running you have BLM, CLVM GFS all running at the same time when one of these transitions happens GFS or the cluster manager needs to stop all and then do the figure out the lowest level figure out who's in the cluster and once that happens then you need to wake up the test statement which will then kill the nodes make sure the nodes that you think are dead are actually dead and then once it happens you can do the BLM recovery and then do the CLV recovery and you can do two cluster recovery so we have the service manager part that's part of the cluster manager that does that so all these different components register at different levels and basically it's only just layer recovery it's also symmetric so whenever you mount GFS or if you start a lot today the service manager knows what's happening and knows which nodes are participating in that so if you have a a node that was down you know it was running GFS you know it stopped that and then we see what recovery happens so like I said the CNX manager tells the service manager and I know that they also know what's happening and then the service manager manages the layer recovery so the BLM looks very similar to the BLM's cluster manager as far as many of the blocks are based on each class they're based on blocks based and you can acquire blocks from there so when you mount GFS it joins the blocks based it's joined the blocks based the BLM currently runs with kernel and we're thinking that we'll probably keep it there latency is just a I don't know GFS uses a lot of blocks there's one for a lot of the big factor you can easily have hundreds of thousands of blocks in a period of time and you're getting hundreds or every 1,000 to 15 seconds latency is very important so we're thinking that we'll probably stand there and it depends on the cluster manager so density so basically the generic the development the support elements we have quotable agents we have different types of hardware so there are different types so there's power supplies a bunch of different nodes and power supplies and you have nodes that you can tell it to that board and tell it to how the power runs and once the power is on you know it's not going to come back you're trying to really avoid is a situation where a node goes away for a while it gets stuck in an interrupt or something and sits on a model amp for an hour and then something happens and somebody comes in and it comes back to life exactly the way it was before and thinking you still had all the blocks it had before trying to find the way to the disk and you'll get to the one where you have two different machines that think they have the same block and start trying to write to the file thinking they have the same block you can very quickly drop your file system that way so fencing prevents that so to make sure that the node you think is bad can't talk to the storage I also think it's one of those ways IO fencing is another there are both the fencing and fencing there are fencing in the connection layer the private channel power basically a switch of these private channel cards you can tell the switch don't let it die top to that disk and that will prevent that situation where a node picks up and it tries to write to the disk which will tell how you can you can also do fencing in the IO device the iSCSI has well, iSCSI has a system preservation kind of built for this you can tell the disk only talk to these guys these five machines or five HPAs and then when you have a situation where a machine dies you go back to that that storage device and tell it ok, now take that kind of a list and let's talk to them you can also do a iSCSI and this block of refugee driver that we have lets you do it well so basically there are lots of different places you can do it different people have different preferences some people are nervous about that power stack connected because they don't want their machine forcibly power supplied and they can kill the processes that are running unrelated to the host and the host system some people don't want you to be messing with their switch, that their switch and they're saying it's very complicated they don't want any type of program going in and switching things so we have about 20 videos you can go on the first class for you and to reach us up most of these agents are scripts or small C programs so it's pretty easy to write another method, the reason that these are quotations is we don't have it as an argument as well as it should be so there is kind of a learning problem now but it's something we'll document sometime soon we're talking to this and it's not really connected to it so that's the kind of where it's different between the DOM and the cluster manager so DOM basically there's a centralized server that knows what the cluster positions are and it's the one that does that so it just there's this cluster configuration system that we have that cluster for each node and the DOM server that looks up that node that wants the fence and that's the CCS three years out of that it just issues the commands but that's a very centralized thing right so the cluster manager we're talking to these metrics and as distributed as possible so it works a little different than we've seen that so for each machine and the cluster manager it's transmitted it says there are a lot of listings for the web systems and so whenever the cluster manager sees a cluster transition it can go in and whoever gets to it first for it the cluster manager decides who's going to do the passing and the issues you can make that damage will have to come or be the binary there so the CCS so cluster configuration system we have these XML based configuration files that define there are a number of switches that define the biggest thing that's there the cluster name but mostly it's there defined kind of principles you can each node know what its cluster name is and you can figure out what the hard part is figuring out if you have this one node that I have and that's basically what CCS is for in our earlier products in our older products there are two devices for a product there's one there's this cluster configuration device that has this data on a centralized sharing block and then you have the cloud system with this sharing block there's something that's worked in the past that's been kind of annoying because you have to have this shared device the new thing our new local product basically that will have a reputation out there and it will protect its local files and the local cloud system you know, it won't be a shared storage but that's a different so CLVM basically so it's a user space game CLVM 2 device and basically manages block events when you do a you expand a CLV basically it will stop the whole cluster and that's the same thing you do the update on this and then let everybody read the data so basically it lets you do CLVM 2 cluster cluster we're working in clustered narrowing and scam chopped targets which is a huge thing right now javas requires shared storage which is a block device that all the world sees what some people have asked for is say you have three nodes that each have in turn which you're not using it'd be really nice if you could have them all explore the internal list of the network and then do cluster mirroring on top of that so that it's replicated across all three disks and then actually on top of that so you build a cluster with quantity hardware and then you have an extra it's an extra server node or a server failure so cluster mirroring is the same as cluster chat basically it's pretty good so a future work so a big future work time our targets small file performance has been an issue in javas something we are working on small file performance is really hard like I said earlier because you're turning through large number of blocks and you need to make sure that basically you have a lot of overhangs generally it's also hard if you're basically turning through a lot of metadata so javas has had some problems with that in the past and we're working on fixing things to better look ahead of blocks and kind of reworking our terminal it's great to see you ahead of you things working better our MBCK has been slow in the past to build for a product and do MBCK at first a lot faster they'll probably get backward and develop as well I was talking about so do you export to a local system and have them all used by the cheer group like I was talking about the files that our people have gone out and done in the field it's not nearly as pretty as it should be so getting them nicely and getting good instructions is something we're working on so basically being smarter about where you okay things metropolitan where you network where you have a data center one place and a data center the other and you mirroring so that if you have a long building catch on fire things can automatically fail over to the other being smarter about where you do the application and where you need things like that in the department back up back up becomes a huge problem and any large problem can take longer than that it takes a copy of the data on the data and it can take days so if you turn it through a day back up you have a huge problem on any problem it can take more than days to actually go out and if you have smart switcher plots to change if you close the switcher plots to change they can speed that up by just telling you if I get a macroscope which plots to go out these are more kind of the farther on future will go kind of farther out it is there each reason for the application that counts is a big thing right now there are we're pretty good about the application on good maps so that if you go to one good map you want to help get it it's crazy you put out a different one on the application the place where it has a problem is you're a DLP who wants to to DLP it a lot you have to go to the good map to change that plot to DLP what we're talking about now is making it so there's a DLP that should make it so the application that happens is pretending to create an application and then implementation and figuring out one this is getting more the other why it's making it I take questions on that it's louder it's louder so the wealthy product it's much louder it's louder it's louder