Good morning everyone. Thank you so much for your patience. Hopefully those few minutes of reflection have helped us all be more centered.
I'm going to call the order, the meeting of the Riverside County Transportation Commission today is Wednesday, August 12th, 2020, and we will begin with our roll call. We will be able to do that electronically.
So if you would please register your presence.
We do have a quorum.
Thank you so much.
All right, the next item on our agenda is the pledge of allegiance. If I could call on commissioner boss from the city of Desert Hot Springs, the lead us in the pledge.
The pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands. One way should underdog indivisible with liberty and justice for our.
Thank you very much commissioner boss.
All right, the next item on our agenda is public comments on non agenda items.
Just a reminder that each speaker is limited to three continuous minutes or less, and that the commission cannot take action on anything that is not on our agenda, but we can certainly receive comments.
Do we have any public comments?
Yes, at this time I received five requests to speak. The first speaker is material.
Welcome.
Good morning, chair and commissioners.
My name is Muriel Defrain and I'm speaking on behalf of gold narrow productions and building management services.
And I am here to bring to your attention project proposed by the Riverside County Transportation Department involving the Gilman Springs Road Bridge over Fratero Creek.
And this is a bridge on Gilman Springs Road, which is a county road.
And this portion of Gilman Springs Road divides gold and era campus, which is located between state street and Sanderson Avenue or our state route 79.
And approximately 20,000 vehicles traveled this road each day.
The bridge was originally constructed in 1926 with a 1949 widening.
The county has identified a serious scour in foundation problem, particularly at the north of button.
So we agree that the safety problem needs to be addressed.
However, the county is proposing considerably more than repairing the existing bridge.
The proposal is to demolish the existing two-lane bridge built a new two-lane bridge at a different location.
Realigned Gilman Springs Road and created a straighter roadway designed for 50 miles per hour with a proposed posted speed of 45 miles per hour.
That distinction is important.
This is not simply a bridge safety project.
It is also a permanent change to an important transportation corridor.
I want to be very clear that I understand this is Riverside County Transportation Department project, not an RCTC project.
RTCC is not the agency that's approving it.
And I am here because this project is within the regional transportation system, and I believe RCTC should be aware of what is being proposed.
There are several unresolved questions.
First, the county record does not establish why the existing bridge must be demolished rather than rehabilitated.
In 2024, a Caltrans inspection reports the deck and superstructure in good condition, the substructure in fair condition and the bridge as not structurally deficient.
The documented problem is scour at the foundation.
There should be a direct engineering comparison showing why that problem cannot be safely corrected through rehabilitation.
Second, the proposed higher speed roadway needs to be evaluated as part of the project.
A 50 mile per hour design speed and 45 mile per hour posted speed can affect traffic speeds, safety, route choice and traffic conditions, farther along Gilman Springs Road.
There are also unresolved property environmental issues, including a recorded conservation easement and questions.
I'm sorry, your time is expired. Thank you for your comments.
Our next speaker is Linda.
Welcome.
Good morning chair and members of the commission. My name is Linda Greelick and I live and work at Golden Era Productions.
I travel Gilman Springs Road every day to and from work.
So I have a personal interest in this project and more importantly in the safety of everyone who lives along the road or travels this road.
Nearly every day I see the vehicle debris along the roadway new damage to the guardrails.
Those things that are a constant reminder that this is already a road where accidents happen.
That is why I'm concerned about any project that could encourage higher speeds on Gilman Springs Road.
Just a few days ago there was another serious accident that occurred at the central location of our property.
A pickup truck lost control rolled over and came to rest upside down beneath the trees.
The truck was totaled. Fortunately the driver was able to crawl out with what appeared to be only cuts and abrasions.
It was very fortunate that the outcome was not worse.
That accident was another troubling reminder of the safety conditions that already exist on this road.
Over the years I have seen the substantial increase in both the volume of traffic and the number of types of vehicles using Gilman Springs Road including large trucks.
I understand that the county needs to address the bridge and I support making the bridge safe.
My concern is what happens beyond the bridge itself. The proposed project would straighten the roadway through the bridge area and is designed for a higher speed.
My concern is improving the roadway geometry and traffic flow.
I would encourage drivers to travel faster on the road that already has significant safety problems.
I also have questions about the traffic studies used for this project.
From the information presented I have not seen a comprehensive analysis on the number of vehicles and types of vehicles that use the road today or how the proposed changes could affect the people who live along Gilman Springs Road, work in the area and travel this road every day.
I believe those real world safety considerations deserve careful attention before changes are made that could permanently affect how people drive on this road.
Again, I support fixing the bridge.
I'm simply asking that safety not be measured only by whether the new bridge can be engineered safely but also by how the entire roadway will function for people who use it every day.
Thank you for your time and for allowing me to share my concerns.
Thank you so much for your comments.
Our next speaker is Jennifer.
Good morning.
Chair and members of the commission.
My name is Jennifer Venable.
I'm a very happy, proud native, happy Riverside County, California, practicing attorney driving all over Riverside County.
And I'd like to speak on behalf of this golden area of productions regarding this proposed Gilman Springs Road Bridge.
Replacement over pro chair of Creek, hopefully not repeating all of what was valuable just said.
If you want to say something, we all agree that safety is a number one.
None of us oppose making the bridge safe.
We just support addressing the documented scour and foundation problem.
In 2024, cow trans inspection found the bridge deck and superstructure to be in good condition two years ago.
The substructure to be in fair condition and the bridge was classified not as deep, not structurally deficient.
The significant problem identified is scour at the foundation.
So what we are asking for, particularly before a significant amount of money is committed, looking at just repairing the existing bridge.
And like I already mentioned, we know this is not your project, although you are involved heavily in the transportation and the funding roles part of this.
So we're just asking you to take a really good look at.
The fact that the county proposes to demolish the existing two lane bridge when all we had two years ago was scour at the foundation.
Construct a new lane bridge at a different location, re-aligned Gilman Springs Road and create a straight or roadway design for 50 miles per hour as discussed.
This raises some questions.
One, how was the project prioritized and what data supported selecting replacement versus re-alignment?
I mean, replacement and re-alignment versus rather than just re-hat.
We would like to be able to see the condition ratings, the sufficiency and for the funding criteria and any data used to establish the properties priority and justify this selected approach.
The next question is, is this the best use of the available transportation funding.
If the document a bridge problem can be potentially addressed.
Just a re-abelitation or stabilization.
It is our position that this commission needs to understand why the much larger replacement and roadway re-alignment is necessary.
We also asked this commission clarify the funding requirements by asking, what specific federal or other transportation funds are being considered for this project?
What are those funds permitted to pay for?
What flexibility exists to address the actual bridge deficiency versus the larger costly roadway alignment?
And last, I'm sorry, your time is expired.
Thank you so much for your comments.
Our next speaker is Michelle.
I think it's very clear we don't oppose the repair of the bridge.
It's the speed increase that we're concerned with.
And I understand that we want to increase the traffic flow between lamb Canyon, also known as 79 and or 72.
And the state street by speeding up a section at Gilman's hot springs. The problem with that is, is Gilman hot springs as a curvy road with a handful of utility roads and private entrances.
And these entryways are a bit hidden because they're not for public use. And it makes them a little dangerous for people to come in and out of with higher speeds, especially those using the roads.
For those that need to use them, it would be more dangerous with the increase of speed. Now, I personally use that road because I prefer the scenic route.
And it's a cool little road. I use my Chevy 2500 and it's a fairly good size truck.
And I drive at a comfortable speed through there out of about 40 miles an hour. But even at that speed, there are times when there will be someone that wants to go even faster than I'm going.
With the curves in the scenery, those little cars that it probably feels like a, like a video game. So I can imagine that it would be really fun to go through there, but this is real life, right?
So, and I understand that there are sometimes when people don't prefer the scenic route, I myself have a need to go from point eight to point be sometimes.
For those times, I use the Roman expressway, which pretty much runs parallel with Gilman hot springs between those two roads.
Roman expressway is more of a straight shot. It's four lanes and most of the commerce is on that end of state street between the two roads anyway.
And it's the way GPS would send you.
The people that choose to use Gilman hot springs road though are choosing it because not because it's faster because it's not.
But it doesn't need to be. We have the expressway. And the people that are currently using Gilman hot springs either need to use the road because of those private entrances that I talked about.
Or they prefer, like me, they prefer the scenic route.
Or they're like the Tesla that was behind me last night that wanted to play that real life video game.
Increasing the speeds in this section isn't going to phase those people.
They're always going to go as fast as they can referring to the Tesla's and the speed cars.
They're going to go as fast as they can when they don't have that big Chevy truck in front of them.
And it doesn't matter what your signs say, they can't read them at that speed anyway.
When I was a firefighter back in the day, we would see these sports cars and these types of accidents and traffic accidents and they were always horrific.
And I never remember saying to myself, boy, if they could just go faster, this wouldn't have happened.
I'm sorry, your time is expired. Thank you for your comments.
The final speaker card I have is from Kathy.
Thank you.
And commissioners.
My name is Katherine Fraser.
I'm the Director of Public Affairs for Golden Europe Productions.
I want to address the larger transportation problem facing the areas surrounding Ramonics,
Resway, Sanderson Avenue, State Route 79, State Street and Gilman Springs Road.
The Sanderson to Valley is growing rapidly.
The Mid County Parkway is coming.
Major residential, commercial warehouse and logistics developments are planned around the Ramona expressway and Sanderson intersection.
All of this traffic will enter a road system that is already congested and has very limited alternative routes.
Allowing any project to move forward without first establishing how the resulting traffic will be handled risk creating a transportation nightmare for everyone who lives, works or travels through this area.
The public should not be left to deal with the congestion and safety consequences after the projects have already been approved.
The proposed bridge project illustrates this problem.
It would improve traffic flow through one short section of Gilman Springs Road but it would not create another route through the valley or solve the bottlenecks beyond the bridge.
It could simply move vehicles more quickly into the next constraint section.
And I understand that our CTC is not the agency approving the county's bridge project.
However, our CTC is in the best position to look beyond one project and bring the county, CalTrans and the affected cities and developers and other agencies together.
We ask our CTC to place this immediate area on its planning agenda and initiate a coordinated transportation review.
The central question is not how to move traffic faster through one bridge.
It's how to create a safe and workable transportation system for this entire growing area.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for your comments.
You have any additional speakers?
Anyone in the audience?
Which is the speaker on an item not on the agenda?
All right.
Thank you so much.
Moving on our next item on the agenda is additions and revisions.
Are there any changes to the agenda?
Done from staff.
All right.
The next item on the agenda is our consent calendar.
I see items six A through six J on our consent calendar.
If commissioners anybody with questions or comments on the consent calendar.
Any public comments on the consent calendar?
We have not received any requests to speak.
All right.
Then we'll entertain a motion.
Please vote.
Mr. Chairman, if I can just note that I'm a yes palm springs but my screen needs a password.
Thank you.
I see.
All right.
We will send someone up.
Over your register.
Your vote as a yes.
Thank you.
The consent calendar passes.
Thank you so much.
Next item on our agenda is our state and federal legislative update.
Tyler made a good morning.
Great.
Thank you.
Good morning chair and commissioners.
Today I have for you a state and federal legislative update.
I'm going to call it a brief update but a lot has happened since we last presented
to the commission in March.
I will start with a state budget followed by some bills of interest.
The state legislature passed a $350 billion budget bill by the required June 15 deadline.
As this comes situation normal in Sacramento the budget bill reflects a framework to be further
hashed up by subsequent budget legislation.
Budget items waiting to be resolved before the legislature adjourns at the end of August.
Including weighty topics such as how to allocate cap and invest proceeds.
Of these programs funds we continue to closely track transit funding programs RCTC relies on for transit
couple projects and programs.
We also wait to see if the budget will fund the remaining SB 125 funding promised for the zero
commission transit capital program.
Notably the enacted budget package did include a one year extension of statutory relief
for transit agencies.
This includes relief for fair box recovery requirements and easing requirements for agencies to be able
to apply state transit assistance funds towards operations.
Supple continue to monitor the and engage the legislature to preserve vital funding programs as
negotiations continue.
I'll turn now to arts and it's a bill that RCTC has taken positions on.
The punch line is that hour advocacy works.
I'm pleased to share the SB 1087 by Senator Kabaldon of Yellow County was amended on June 25 to address
RCTC's concerns regarding unintended impacts to SB 1 gas tax programs and the commission's competitiveness
for these funds administered by the CTC.
SB 1087 was sponsored by the four largest MPOs in the state, including Skag, to modernized
development and approval of regional transportation plans and sustainable community strategies,
any matter that makes their statutory goals achievable.
RCTC previously submitted a support if amended letter on April 15 based on the commission adopted
state and federal legislative platform.
As currently written, SB 1087 would lengthen the SB planning cycle, established necessary
guardrails for the transparent and timely development and approval of the plans, and to
inform the alternate planning strategy process to set regions up for success.
RCTC will continue to monitor the bill for additional amendments ahead of the August 30 deadline to pass
bills and we will work with Skag to ensure that the bill accounts for regional needs and provides
for Riverside County.
Back in April, RCTC updated its position on AB 2168, Assemblymember Wix efforts to amend
active transportation program guidelines from the post to the post unless amended.
While RCTC does not directly compete for ATP grant funding from the CTC, RCTC opposed the bill for two reasons.
First, the bill would have placed a high priority on ATP applications for projects receiving
state transportation improvement program funding, which would have been a terrible
precedent for preserving the flexibility of stiff funding.
And second, the proposed guidelines changes would have impacted the competitiveness of local agencies
that compete for ATP such as the city's CVEG and the county all who regularly apply for this funding.
RCTC wants to continue to see ATP awards coming to projects in Riverside County.
RCTC updated its position on a proposal to a proposal amended after the provision to prioritize
ATP applications for projects receiving step funding was removed.
In response to RCTC's letter, the authors office reached out asking to work through RCTC's
remaining concerns. Following discussions, the author removed the remaining references to stiff in the bill.
And at our request, the author also made changes to balance the need to encourage the timely expenditure of ATP awards
with allowing the CTC to wave penalties for delays and expanding previous ATP awards outside of the control of applicants.
With these changes to protect stiff from interference and to set up ATP applicants for success,
RCTC believes that the cities, CVEG and the county will remain competitive for ATP.
As a result, RCTC was able to remove its opposition to AB 2168.
RCTC quickly engaged on another bill, AB 1740, by Assemblymember Travis Burr of Los Angeles.
Staff learned of this coastal permitting bill for the city of Santa Monica back in June.
A single line in the bill would have granted priority to the city of Santa Monica
for their ATP applications above all others in the state.
It's just so long as the city met specified goals for their coastal permitting requirements by the end of 2027.
This language seemingly established a new precedent where other ATP applications no matter how highly ranked in their scoring process could go unfunded.
RCTC acted quickly to oppose a less amended based on the Commission platform.
We also communicated our concerns with representatives of Senator Cervantes and Senator Ceyardo, both of whom sit on the Senate Local Government Committee where the bill was set to be heard.
And as a result of RCTC's concerns and average raised, AB 1740 was amended on July 2nd to remove the problematic language and RCTC was able to remove its opposition to the bill.
RCTC weighs in on legislation we do so decisively and with purpose bringing partners with us along the way.
I will note that RCTC and CVAC were the only two organizations across the state to submit some formal positions raising concerns about the ATP preference to the city.
Chipping out to the federal update, the House last month passed a clean continuing resolution to keep the government funded until December.
The Senate last week passed its own continuing resolution, which also includes an extension of the expiring infrastructure investment jobs act to December 11th.
The House and Senate will need to come to agreement before sending legislation to the President.
Staff will keep the commission a prize that of appropriations updates as well as the potential stopgap extension of the I.J.A.
All the while RCTC is advocacy for the next service transportation for the authorization continues.
RCTC's number on priority in partnership with our counterpart county transportation commissions in LA, Ventura, Orange, San Bernardino, and Imperial counties is to restore the distribution of the service transportation block grant program, STVG
and the congestion mitigation and air quality program funds, CMAC, to the commissions, as has been done for decades until 2021.
Since the release of the Bill Democrats who 50 act by the House Transportation Infrastructure Committee.
RCTC and partners have an engaging representative Julia Brownley of Oxnard, who serves on House TNI and members of the House delegation from across Southern California to introduce an amendment with this requested language.
RCTC and the county transportation commissions across the region submitted a joint letter to the House C and I leadership on July 10th, urging their support for this proposed amendment as the Bill Democrats who 50 act is considered in the House Rules Committee and on the House floor.
RCTC's engagement continues and we will keep the commission a prize of updates as the process unfolds.
This concludes my report and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you so much, Tyler, and thanks to you, your department and all RCTC staff for your analysis and quick handling and any bills that are problematic and for working with the legislators to come up with a compromise.
All right, commissioners, this is your time for any questions or comments.
I don't see anyone in the queues.
I see, I do see though, our executive director Aaron Hate would like to add a few comments.
Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the commission.
Thank you for the recognition of our team that works hard on just a pile of bills every year.
As I'd like to summarize, there are in that pile of bills.
There will be a few lines that mean the difference between funding and not funding that
The difference between more costs, more bureaucracy, and it's up to this team to weed all of that out, advocate for it.
We only speak up when we know there's something we really need to go after, but what enables us to do that is the platform that this commission adopts every year.
So in December or January, we bring to you a legislative platform and that's our guideline so that we can act as soon as we see an amendment.
When there's something going to committee and they're looking for input, we can step up.
And what I've observed this session is that when we have opposed something such as that the bill that would have given Santa Monica priority in active transportation projects, they wanted to figure out how to get rid of our opposition.
And I like us being in that position and see that credit to them came along with us.
So when we speak up at matters and it's not just to defeat bad legislation on the federal side, we are advancing that amendment to the federal reauthorization bill to bring control back of formula federal funds.
To this commission and to SPCTA and OCTA and LA Metro, we have successfully gathered a coalition of Southern California agencies to advocate for this.
It's not done yet that bill's not going to pass this year, but it's been encouraging.
We have a legislator from Ventura County that's carrying the legislation, we have to find a new one because she's not going back to Congress next year.
But we've been able to craft legislation that has buy in from our partners, so it's been an effective session, we haven't won all of them, we won't.
But I just want to bring it back to it's the platform that this commission adopts that allows staff to do all of that work.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I see Commissioner Conter from City of Rivers, I'd like you.
Yeah real quick, Director Hake, I do want to congratulate you on the staff on that.
You asked part of my question right there at the end, but I'm sure you want up to the other commissions throughout the state.
Are they anywhere nearly as active as us?
And a question was then, do we team together to form an alliance of power to smack them up there as a criminal?
Yes, and we do it a few different ways.
In Southern California, we have what's called a legislative roundtable and Tyler and Andrew and their colleagues.
And they meet once a month, they're on the phone all the time.
They're always talking circulating these bills.
We're also a member of several coalitions.
One of them is the self-help counties coalition.
So every other county that has a transportation sales tax like us.
We have our own coalition and we partner there.
We're a member of mobility 21, they also advocate.
So there are a number of other associations and groups.
And sometimes we informally, a few months ago I called up the MTC, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the Bay Area.
In a lot of ways we have nothing in common with, but we all work on manage lanes and tolls.
And I'm able to speak to their executive director and their alleged staff is able to work together.
And sometimes you need a Northern California legislator.
They need a Southern California legislator.
Yes.
I appreciate that, thank you.
Thank you very much.
All right, I see no other questions or comments.
Thanks so much Tyler Andrew and your whole team for all the work that you do.
Thank you for keeping us updated.
We'll move on to the next item.
Since that's a receive and file.
Next item is item eight advanced mitigation program overview.
And it looks like we're going to hear from Hector Casillas on this item.
Hi, good morning, Chair and commissioners.
I am Hector Casillas and I am the commissioners right away manager.
Today I am going to present a receive and file item to go over and overview for the Riverside County Transportation
Commission's Advanced Meditation Program or ramp.
And they do have a PowerPoint perfect itself.
And at a high level, ramp is intended to give the commission a more proactive way to secure
a mitigation resources before a transportation project is facing a permit deadline or a lack of available
mitigation options.
Okay, one of the main reasons for bringing this program forward is that mitigation is becoming harder to secure at the time projects needed.
Environmental mitigation is often required during the permitting to offset impacts to natural resources,
but suitable mitigation lands and credits are not always available when a project reaches that stage.
When those resources are not available, it can create uncertainty for project delivery,
including permitting delays, scheduling impacts and added cost.
Ramp is intended to reduce that risk by allowing the commission to identify, evaluate and preserve mitigation opportunities earlier.
In practical terms, this program gives a commission another tool to help key projects moving while still meeting environmental requirements.
And supporting regional conservation objectives.
Ramp was developed primarily to support RCTC's future mitigation needs and MSACP compliance.
The program were generally focused on properties within the Western Riverside County MSACP planning area.
And other resources at the Wildlife Agency's determined may provide mitigation value for future transportation projects.
The goal is not to acquire property just to hold property.
The goal is to preserve strategic mitigation resources when they become available.
So they can later be applied to the eligible transportation projects when those projects have a mitigation need.
This approach gives the commission more flexibility.
Instead of waiting until a project is already in the permitting process and completing and competing for limited mitigation credits.
RCTC can evaluate opportunities earlier and preserve them for future use.
So the framework starts with staff identifying and evaluating properties that may provide future mitigation value.
Staff then coordinates with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
And any other regulatory partners to determine whether the property may be suitable for mitigation purposes.
If the opportunity appears viable, staff will complete the necessary due diligence, which includes the biological assessments, film inspections, appraisals, evaluation reviews and preparation of an offer.
At this stage, staff is confirming that both the biological value of the property and whether the acquisition represents a reasonable investment for future mitigation needs.
The important point is that the commission would not be asked to pursue a speculative opportunity.
By the time an acquisition comes forward for consideration.
Staff will have completed a technical, biological, and valid evaluation work needed to understand the potential benefit to the program.
If the property is determined to provide strategic mitigation value, staff will return to the commission for authorization before moving forward with the acquisition or preservation.
Acquiring mitigation resources at this stage allows the commission to act before suitable habitat or mitigation opportunities become unavailable.
From a project delivery perspective, this is where the program regains creating value.
Rather than waiting to answer the transportation project, as a permit deadline approaching, the commission can secure mitigation resources, years in advance, and preserve them until they are needed.
Once acquired, the resource may be applied for future eligible transportation projects when mitigation needs arise and the appropriate regulatory approvals have been obtained.
The practical benefit is greater certainty during project development.
Future projects may have mitigation resources available when needed, reducing the risk or delays associated with locating and securing mitigation during the permitting process.
Finally, when a project utilizes mitigation resources obtained through the program, the benefiting project credits or reimburses the originating project program for its proportional share of the mitigation value.
In practical terms, the program functions as a regional mitigation reserve.
Resources can be secured into advance, preserved until needed, and then allocated to future projects while maintaining accountability for project costs and mitigation value.
This allows the commission to strategically manage mitigation resources across multiple projects, rather than addressing each mitigation need independently.
So, let's see, a similar approach is already being used on our property, on as a San Tmitale Canyon mitigation site.
The San Tmitale Canyon site contains 18.03 acres of your parent and lease those very habitat.
The Mid-County Parkway project used 11 acres to satisfy its mitigation requirements, which lasts 7.03 acres available for future transportation projects.
To date, 0.23 acres have been allocated to the commission's state rat 91 cordon improvement project, 0.39 acres to the county parks, San Tmitale River Trail project, and 0.90 acres to CalTrans I-15 to make a lip project.
In total, 1.52 acres have been applied to other eligible transportation projects, leaving approximately 5.51 acres remaining for future project needs.
This is a good example how advanced mitigation can work in practice, a resource acquired for one project, and later be available for another eligible project, subject to any agency approval.
The benefiting project can then credit or reimburse that original project or program for a proportional share of the mitigation value.
This is a state general concept that ramp is intended to formalize on a broader programmatic basis.
And in closing, ramp provides the commission with another tool that practically secures mitigation resources before they are needed.
By doing so, the program helps reduce project delivery risk, support environmental compliance, and maintain flexibility for future transportation projects.
Staff believes this framework will better position the commission to meet future mitigation needs while continuing to deliver transportation projects efficiently.
This includes our presentation. I'll be happy to answer any questions.
All right, thank you, Hector so much for your presentation. Commissioners, questions, comments.
So, I just want to say I think it's important, as you were pointing out, you're not looking at making any speculative purchases.
It would be made. It sounds like there will be possible projects identified where these could be applied.
And we're going to be very firm that they're part of the, they would, the purchase with fit in the plan parcels would fit into the multi species habitat plan.
I know you talked about speaking with the US fish and wildlife and getting and state wildlife and getting input from them.
Sometimes input changes over the years. So I don't, we would make sure that we are comfortable that we're not purchasing land that then sometimes because it may be years out that it may get to be used that somebody would change their mind and we would be in with land that can't be used for the intended purpose.
All right, thank you so much. All right, I see Commissioner Vass from the City of Desert Hot Springs. Isn't it cute?
Sir, thank you. Do you, did you reach out or make contact with the resource conservation district?
No, now with them specifically.
So I would make just a little friendly suggestion and most people don't even know they exist and I'm learning that in the Coachella Valley. They're not most people don't know they exist out there either.
So there's a governmental agency called the Resource Conservation District and they're appointed by the Board of Supervisors.
And they're very much involved in the San Temoteo dealing with the cleanup dealing with water conservation, land use conservation.
These things mitigation, these type of things that could help me.
I think they'd be really helpful for you and for us, especially as we're doing expansions in these type of things.
At least as somebody to talk to, because when I was looking at that map, that's an area that they've done a lot of work on.
Thank you for sharing this.
I'm very pleased with you.
Thank you.
Yes, thank you very much. All right, any other questions or comments?
Okay, seeing and I will move on, this is a receive and file for information.
Thank you so much again, Hector, for your presentation.
All right, the next item on our agenda is also a presentation on U.S. construction outlook.
Item 9 and Eric Galloway will introduce the item in the speaker.
Good morning, Chair.
Commissioners, my name is Eric Galloway. I'm your project delivery director.
Today I have a presentation to share with you.
There's no action being requested and is received in file and I do have a power.
There we go.
So at the April Commission meeting, representatives from CBAG shared a presentation about their project funding concerns, which discuss construction costs.
During the discussion, the number of questions were raised about driving factors resulting in the increasing construction costs.
Staff felt to be best to have a third party, provide some insight to this issue.
Staff reached out to the Associated General Contractors of America.
She was founded in 1918 and represents over 27,000 member firms across the United States in all forms of the construction industry.
Today I'm joined by Ken Simonson, the Chief Economist from the AGC and Ashley Kaiser, the Director of Governmental Affairs.
Ken will be presenting a power point that he has and at the end of it, we'll have to be here to answer any questions you may have and now I will hand it off to Ken.
Welcome Mr. Simonson. Thank you so much for coming.
Thank you chair and commissioners.
Welcome the opportunity to present information on what's going on with construction costs, labor project types that may be competing with what you're doing.
I'm afraid I'll be inundating you with a lot of graphs and other slides, but be welcome any questions that you have either during a presentation or certain.
At the end of it, as you heard, AGC is the leading national construction trade association. We actually now have over 28,000 member companies, and they belong through a network of 87 state and local chapters of which AGC of California represents contractors in the entire state of the San Diego, which has its own chapter.
I work for AGC of America, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, and I'm a company today by Ashley Kaiser, who works here in Southern California for AGC of California.
So let me start with what's been going on with construction employment. This shows the cumulative change in construction employment nationally in black, and in California, since the month before the pandemic shut down so much activity.
The February 2020 was that month before the pandemic. And in just two months, the whole national industry lost about 1.1 million workers, 15 percent.
In California, the drop was even steeper about 18 percent. Well, California did recover at the same rate as the US, that red line matched the US up to the beginning of 2022 by then.
Both had crossed over the February 2020 level of employment, but the US continued to add jobs.
While California's employment and construction basically stalled, and in the last two years has actually declined again.
So the June 2026 level of construction employment in California was down by 3.2 percent compared to February of 2020, whereas nationally employment was up by almost 10 percent.
And in the latest 12 months, that disparity continued to further decline in California.
We get data on 316 metro areas for construction employment, including quite a few in California.
I've included here the largest metros and the Riverside San Bernardino, San Bernardino, Ontario metro area covering those two counties has the second largest employment construction employment of any of the states metro areas.
But it also had one of the steepest declines. The red bars indicate the change, the decline from June of 2025 to June of this year.
Only two major metros had an increase both far from New San Jose and San Francisco metro division within the Greater Bay Area.
This map shows the change and construction employment in that latest 12-month period in every state.
And California is, again, an outlier, not the worst by any means, but nevertheless, you do have that long record of declining employment whereas your neighboring states have had increasing construction employment in the last 12 months.
The sign that workers may be moving out of California to get work in nearby states.
We get one other measure of construction employment changes, and it's called the job openings and labor turnover survey.
Like the national state and metro employment, this comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and these figures come out about a month after the national employment.
I've taken a snapshot of what happened in June of each year rather than trying to compare different months, which in construction can have quite different effects in terms of the desire for workers or even the number of workers laid off depending on whether or other factors.
So the red line shows the rate of hires that is hires as a percent of the existing workforce in June of each of the 26 years that we have this data for.
And the June 2026 level, the industry hired only 3.9 percent of its total workforce of about 8.2 million people.
If you trace back across the history of that red line, you'll see that it ties to other June periods for the lowest June hiring rate in the 26 year history of the data.
Now job openings shown by the blue line as a percent of open and filled positions that did jump up a somewhat from June of 2025.
But again, looking back across, it's still at a relatively low level, particularly compared to other June periods in the last decade.
So I take away from this is that the industry fits the broader pattern we hear about of a low higher but low fire environment.
In fact, when you look at the layoffs, that also supports this low fire picture.
Even though companies are not looking for workers right now, they're hiring at a very low rate.
They still know that they will have a hard time filling positions if workers leave and they evidently have some expectation that business will pick up enough to justify hanging on to the workers they have.
Well, what is happening with construction spending? These figures come from the Census Bureau on the first business day of each month.
So we could go Monday, we got these figures for June of this year.
And again, there are different stories depending on what segment of construction you look at.
The idea of slicing it is a private residential, private non-residential public construction, the kinds of projects, the or commission funds.
And you can see that public construction shown by the green line, again, these are year over year changes actually picked up a little bit from June of last year.
But this comes with an asterisk. These numbers are not adjusted for inflation.
We don't have a simple way of adjusting the cost of all types of projects and say very so much in terms of their inputs, the times that materials are bought and so forth.
This shows specifically what's happened to transit construction and that would largely be spending on light rail and heavy rail projects such as LA Metro, Chicago, Washington, New York, of course, Boston, Philadelphia.
And this has been one of the most depressed categories of construction spending going all the way back to 2022.
We did get a small boost from the infrastructure investment jobs act, but ever since then, spending on transit projects has been declining.
This would include rehabilitation projects such as Bart and some of the other older systems as well as new starts.
But basically a steady downward trend, not just in the last year, but going well back.
Here's some detail on the many other kinds of projects that are going on.
I call this slide my checker board because it has basically an equal number of red and black squares where the black squares indicate categories that under the census classification of project types had an increase in the last well month.
And the red squares have had a decrease.
So transit is a very small segment of total construction spending.
If you look down near the bottom of this graph, this table, it's really the last category that's broken out.
These are listed in descending order of June 2026 size, and within the categories in parentheses are the subcategories also in descending order.
So transportation is the eighth largest category, and transit is the third largest subcategory within that.
So in the grand scheme of things, there aren't that many contractors working on transit, and with this steady decline even fewer projects going on.
And so that presents two possibilities for you.
One that you'll have an easier time attracting bidders because the ones who do transit work don't have many other projects that would occupy them unlike a few years ago.
But it also suggests that contractors and their workers are leaving that for other categories of work.
And certainly the largest area of increase lately has been data centers that has been growing in a phenomenal rate.
Power projects both related to data centers and to fix legacy systems, as you've seen here in California.
And a new subcategory massive battery storage at critical facilities, including data centers, but also utilities and hospitals and other places.
How about costs? Well, we get a lot of detail from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in fact tomorrow they'll be putting out their 10,000 or so producer price indexes for the month of July.
So these figures show what's been going on with some of those indexes for June, again, well here I've provided three different perspectives.
One month change, the 12 month change, and the change since February 2020.
And fortunately for me, BLS does aggregate a lot of these figures and to one called the producer price index for inputs to new non-residential construction.
A long way of describing a weighted average of the cost of all materials and some services such as design and trucking services that are important for non-residential projects.
And like the overall consumer and producer price indexes in June, there was a decline in that one month, down half a percent from May to June.
Over the 12 months, up seven and a half percent, twice as much as the consumer price index.
And in fact, we got figures this morning on CPI was up 3.4 percent, so a little bit of calming there.
But even over the six and a half years now, since February 2020, those costs for construction have gone up twice as much, almost twice as much.
One percent, whereas the consumer price index gone up 29 percent. Why? Two major reasons. The conflicts I use the plural in the middle east have shut down the flow of oil and of refined products to the rest of the world.
And even though the US has a lot of oil production here and has sufficient diesel fuel for now, diesel being a very important input for construction, both for the trucks and off-road equipment they run.
The thousands of deliveries of equipment, materials to jobsites, the hauling away of dirt and debris and equipment at the end of a job, all of those have been subject to diesel fuel surcharges that have shot up.
The latest retail diesel figures that the energy information administration put out yesterday for specifically for California, she had to show that prices were now $1.50 higher than a year before about 34 percent higher.
The diesel has really been a pain point for construction firms at the producer level that is the terminal rack, the importer or the refinery, diesel was up even more, 66 percent.
The things that also are hitting construction harder, much harder than other industries, let alone consumers. So many tariffs that have been put on as high as 50 percent on steel and aluminum and copper products containing copper have pushed up the PPI, the producer price index for those US produced or sold items by 52 and 26 and 17 percent just in the last year.
And by triple digits for some of those over those six year periods. So unfortunately, while I don't ever collect information, ask contractors to tell me, let alone recommend what they should be charging, nevertheless you can figure that they do have to pass on a lot of those costs.
So that's a reason that you can expect the next round of bids or the last ones that you are looking at to show what may be shockingly high increases. It's not contractors gouging you, it's the cost that they've been incurring from the tariffs and from the impacts of the Middle East war.
In fact, I know that some people think, oh, the Supreme Court did away with those tariffs. Well, an important set of them, but really not these steel aluminum copper tariffs.
And in any case, the relief went to the importers of record, which seldom was a contractor. Contractors almost always are buying from an intermediary and importer, a distributor of some kind.
And at the importers discretion, whether to pass on those savings. In any case, the president has now tried two times to replace those tariffs, and so we basically are seeing similar tariffs in effect now, although they are being challenged in court.
But those 50% tariffs I mentioned, while there are a lot of modifications to some of the items, nevertheless, they're still there, they're substantial.
They do keep fluctuating in certain respects, but I think you have to expect that as long as this president is in office, you'll be seeing substantial tariffs on many of the items needed for the kinds of construction that you're contemplating.
And rather than dragging you through the nuances here, if you want more detail, we do have a tariff resource center at agc.org that my colleagues are doing a great job of keeping up to date and providing the explanations that contractors and others need.
We also get figures on pay, and these come the primary one, again, is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as part of the National Employment Report, and the figures show that from July of last year to July of this year, construction.
An average hourly earnings for production and non-supervisory employees, very long mouthful to describe
the hourly pay for most craft workers and office workers who are on supervisors, that when
up 5.2 percent, it actually accelerated from the June figure 4.8 percent. Meanwhile, for
the overall private sector, wage growth has been tapering off. It was 3.2 percent in the latest
12 months. It was 3.4 percent in year over year in June, and it was as high as 6 percent
three years ago. So again, construction is being affected more severely. Now, this does have
multiple implications. One is that it's an explanation for why the industry has been able to
attract and retain workers more than the broader economy, but again, it's a cost to contractors,
either must absorb, overcome through productivity gains or pass on. Two other measures shown here,
also show the construction labor cost, continuing to go up at 4 to 5 percent.
Certainly an important aspect of the labor supply is foreign-born workers and very much so here in
Southern California. Nationally, the construction trades, 35 percent of workers in 2024,
were foreign-born, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. That survey does not
ask about legal status or green cards or anything, just what country were you born in, what occupation
are you in? That 35 percent was double the rate of all working people. It varies a lot by craft,
and the ones that you would be seeing employed the most are generally lower percentages as shown in
the bottom right portion of this slide. But building envelope crafts, floor wall ceiling, insulation,
roof, all of those have more than 50 percent foreign-born workers. So if you are doing a building
project and the workers are detained or they stay away because of fear of that, it certainly would be very
disruptive. And in fact, California is the second most affected state in terms of having a high
percentage of foreign-born workers, where that national percentage, 18 percent for all occupations,
for construction 35 percent in California, 52 percent of construction trades workers are foreign-born.
That matches Florida. It's exceeded slightly by Texas, but again, among the top three states for
having a foreign-born percentage and within the state even more so here in Southern California.
Well, here are ways that I see the Middle East conflicts having added to uncertainty about what will
happen with construction. I've already talked about fuel costs right now, we're well supplied with
natural gas, but again, there's a chance that those costs will go up and that would affect construction
plastics as well as natural gas as a feedstock for things like cement and plate glass.
Energy costs show up in various ways, for instance, to get concrete, you need a lot of fuel to power the
dredging and quarrying and crushing equipment. You need a huge amount of energy to turn limestone
and other materials into cement, then more to blend the cement and the crushed stone and other
ingredients, more to deliver it and finally, more to pump it out on a job site. Other materials also
can be affected. Certainly, the aluminum supply is affected by the damage and shutdown of facilities
in the Emirates and Iran itself and less investment may be coming to the U.S. for private projects from
sovereign wealth funds wealthy families and individuals as they have either lost their wealth or
have to spend it to rebuild their own countries. Policies other than the war, tariffs are affecting
the decision to build projects or not. Again, that could be helpful to you if other owners decide
it's too risky to go ahead. We don't know what our costs will be, what kind of retaliation we might face if we're
trying to export or what demand from, say, foreign visitors or U.S. visitors. The immigration and deportation
policies mean that some areas that had been projecting population increase may in fact have fewer
residents, fewer users of transit or of highways and so forth. The deficits have already shown
that long-term interest rates are staying higher and just yesterday to congressional budget office projected
that the U.S. federal deficit would exceed $2 trillion this year. That was a big jump from what they had
projected six months ago and so long-term rates are likely to go higher if anything and that's
important and certainly for your municipal bond issues and private activity bonds from airports and
hospitals and universities. So let me wrap up at last with quick summary. I think that we are safely
away from a recession. The U.S. economy has been remarkably resilient over the last six and a
half years. Employment growth has slowed last month. It was actually negative for the first time in quite
a while, although construction continued to add jobs. But we certainly have an elevated risk of inflation
going even higher than it has been lately and much higher for construction than for the broader
economy. I think among construction segments, housing, both single and multi-family remains
depressed, partly by the high mortgage rates, but also the high cost of materials. In the non-residential
segments, there's been a big drop over several years now in warehouse construction. Certainly important
in this part of the state, office construction remains depressed. I think higher education is also going to
be cut back because overall the number of high school seniors keeps declining. Foreign students often
full pay no longer coming to the U.S. because they can't get visas or don't think that it will pay
off to come here. So there are segments that will continue to do quite badly. But on the public side,
lots of budgeting challenges at the state and local level, much less support coming from the federal
government. AGC is working hard to try to get Congress to renew, extend, increase funding for
highways and transit, but the current funding expires at the end of September. I think realistically,
the best we can expect is a continuation of current spending levels which have already been somewhat
depressed for transit and if Congress does agree on a bill, it's likely to be next summer, even September
30 next year before we see what that is, but I'm not optimistic that this Congress or President
will support a higher level of funding for transit. Materials cost up at least 3 to 5 percent,
the risk is it'll be even more not that we'll see reduction, particularly with diesel fuel supplies
getting ever tighter. Supply chain fortunately has been pretty limited, but as more and more data
center projects come along, I think it will be harder to get some of the materials that you use,
particularly electrical equipment, and maybe also the construction equipment itself. I heard from
a bridge builder that all the dump truck operators in his area had been going off to data centers
and the rate for getting dump truck drivers was up 100 percent. So you may also see that minor but important
element and then labor costs up at least 4 percent, perhaps 5 percent, more than you're likely
experiencing for other kinds of costs. So that's my story. I'm sticking to it till I get new data.
When I do I'll put it in the data digest. It's a weekly summary, economic news relevant to construction.
It's not for the faint-hearted, but if you love data, there's plenty of it in there each week, specifically
about construction and sometimes about specific areas of the country also, and many other resources
at AGC.org. So feel free to email me at KenDotSimonSUN, SIMO-N, SOMO-N, at AGC.org any time.
I will shoot your questions at me right now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Simon,
and for that presentation. I wish it was full of better news, but we know there are headwinds, so it's very
important to see where the headwinds are, so we thank you for sharing that with us. I see Ms. Kaiser has
come up. Did you have anything that you wish to add or are you here for questions? Just a brief
comment if I may. Sure. Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the committee, members of the
public as well. On behalf of AGC of California, we just wanted to thank Ken for coming all this way from
DC to present to you this important information. And as you mentioned, I do serve as the
government affairs director here for AGC of California, and so I'm actually proud resident of the
county of Riverside myself. But we just wanted to thank beyond today's opportunity, the ongoing commitment
with staff as we do collaborate on quarterly leads on committee meetings, and it really just brings together
the opportunity for local members of the construction community and our organization to collaborate
and share best practices. And so just wanted to thank staff for the ongoing opportunity and
partnership on the ongoing challenges around construction, and also the needs to service our community
here and Riverside. So thank you. Thank you so much. All right, commissioners, this is your opportunity
for any questions or comments. We have the experts here. It was a pretty thorough presentation with lots
of data. So you may not have too much, but if you had anything specific, you wish to ask. This would be
the time to do so. All right. I don't see anything. I think you must have, you must have hit it. Like I said,
I think you covered a lot of where the headwins are coming. I don't think there's any huge surprises for us,
but it's helpful to define those. So we do thank you for coming and doing that. Thank you for coming all this way.
Great. Thank you. And I will keep the staff updated on further information, such as the producer
price index tomorrow. All right. We really do appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right.
This is a receive and file. So we'll move on. The next item and our agenda item 10 would be any items
pulled from the consent calendar. There weren't any items pulled. So we're going to move right on to the
executive director report. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, commissioners. While this happens last
met in June, we want to run over a few priority highlights. We have received confirmation from the
registrar of voters that the measure a renewal you approved in June will appear on the November
ballot as measure A. This means the renewal has been assigned the same late letter that Riverside
County residents have associated with transportation funding since 1988. So we're grateful to the
registrar of voters and the Board of Supervisors for that. With guidance from the commission's legal counsel,
staff has developed informational materials to help you, stakeholders, and the public learn more about
the measure A renewal. Those materials are on your desk today if you would like more. Please let us know.
We'll be happy to provide them to you or wherever you would like them to go. I also want to cover a couple
of important things that happened during the summer. I can't say it enough because it's a big deal. We
received a $25 million bill grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation over the summer for the
1991 Eastbound Quarter Operations Project. The big deal is a competitive grant that we have put in
four several times and thanks to the efforts of Congress members, Kim and Calvert and Secretary Duffy
and the advocacy of this commission we were successful. So congratulations to our team.
I want to introduce our new toll operations director, Mark, Lens and Meyer. Mark, would you stand up please?
All right. Mark has 15 years of experience leading complex transportation initiatives across
Southern California. We hired him from the LA Metro Transportation Authority where he over saw all facets
of LA Metro's express lanes and freeway service patrol, including helping secure over $1.5 billion dollars
for the I-105 Express lanes project. He has had multiple leadership roles in transportation. He is also
the former Transportation Director of the City of Irvine and has also been in the private sector. He's a
certified planner. Very happy to have Mark. Welcome to the RCTC Management team. Thank you.
A few other updates. The mid-county Parkway construction is well underway. If you drive the
yes, drive the Ramona Expressway. Thank you to all those who came to the ground breaking ceremony
over the summer. But if you drive there, the work that's underway is already very impressive as is
the work at the State Route 60 Petro interchange. Lots of grading going on there. The smart freeway
project in Temecula is operational. We don't have data for you yet because we need a few months. We need
to see how the system works. We need to see how the travelers behave. So in a few more months we will
present to you an update on how the smart freeway system is working. We continue to work with
MetroLink and our partner agencies on the MetroLink budget. There are significant challenges
with the operational budget for the regional rail system. In fact, our staff, Sheldon and the
Rail are in Pomona today with all of our fellow member agencies staff to try to get to a consensus
that's proven very difficult. We will continue to keep you posted. We continue to work with the
City of Beaumont on the Pennsylvania Avenue Great Separation Project, which is a very complex
complicated project and we were at the City Council last week to discuss some of their funding options.
Number of other things going on, but those are the highlights. There was much more that went on
over the summer if there's anything that you ever need for me or from the staff. Please text email call.
We will be right there for you. Thank you for your support and leadership of our work and
turn it back over to the chair. Thank you so much. Yes. And welcome Mark. We're very...
Very glad to have you here. And sounds like it's been a very, very busy summer, and of course I want to take the opportunity to thank our representatives on MetroLink that are served here also as commissioners.
We very much appreciate that you're continued to work.
All right, the next item on our agenda is Commissioner comments, are there any comments of interest to the commission that the individual commissioners would like to make.
You see Commissioner Warren's city of Miro yet, thank you.
Thank you chair and welcome back everybody. I will admit it with a nice break.
I wanted to take a moment to thank our CTC and their diligence for reading, reviewing, all proposed bills being considered up in Sacramento.
Just that line item for Santa Monica, showed favoritism.
And if we had not caught that, that would have been a huge debacle for everybody.
So I want to say thank you, and could as to the commission or to the staffer, making sure that we are always at the forefront of everything that's being proposed.
So thank you on behalf of, I think all of us here for doing that. We do appreciate that.
On a side note, I'm sure that some of you have heard residents and south-west readers are counting your beyond frustrated with the traffic congestion on the I-15 and 2015 freeways.
Really, I know it's mind boggling. You get, I know it's new.
Which has brought forward a petition being sent around the Southwest Riverside County about transparency, about promises, about things not being done that they thought should have been done years ago.
So I would like to request on behalf of the residents on Southwest Riverside County that we, that our CTC, bringing your presentation forward on the plans for both freeways for transparency and public information purposes.
I did discuss this with our executive director and he thought it was a good idea and I thought it was a great time for me to bring it forward.
And if this is something that we would like to do, I think it would be very good for the public to hear what's going on, what our plans are, and how we are moving forward with the lack of funding that we are not getting from the state or the federal government.
Those are my comments. Thank you.
Thank you so much. I believe we've discussed a lot about projects and about the need for funding. So I bet that staff has all of that data and materials already out there.
They could maybe just put it together in a different way. That might be something that would be worthwhile to benefit that request. So thank you so much. Any other commissioner comments.
All right.
Seeing none.
We're going to move on. We do have a close session today. So I'll ask legal counsel to announce the closed session items. We will be staying at the, at the, at the days.
But the audience will need to leave, but we'll go ahead and wait until after the announcement for that.
Yes, we have two close session items. They are both property acquisitions and the property descriptions are listed on the agenda.
Thank you so much. All right. With that, we will move into closed session. We'll ask anyone not involved in the closed session. The please leave the room.
You
Thank you so much. All right. We returned from close session. We're now in open session. I will ask our attorney to report out from close session.
There's no report of action on either item in close session.
Thank you so much. This is the last item on our agenda. This meeting is adjourned.
Our next commission meeting will be Wednesday, September 9, 2026.