Morning
everyone.
Looks like we do have a quorum. I think
there might be some traffic, but we will
get started. So, good morning. The
December 12th board of directors meeting
is called to order. First, I'd like to
ask our interpreters to explain how to
access interpretation. Please go ahead.
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Spanish.
Mute original audio
audio.
Thank you.
» Thank you. I'd like to take a moment to
acknowledge the land that we call home.
The tribal nations of San Diego have
historically faced injustices. We
acknowledge the harmony that existed
between the land, nature, and its
original peoples who have since endured
displacement, persecution, and systemic
oppression. We pay our respect to the
unseated territory and homelands of the
18 tribal nations in our region, the
most in any county in the United States,
from our from four cultural groups, the
Kumaya, Deno, the Luceno, the Copeno,
and the Kawa. This land has nourished,
healed, protected, and embraced them for
many generations in a relationship of
balance and harmony. As members of the
Sanding community, we acknowledge this
legacy. We aspire to learn from
indigenous traditional knowledge and
experiences in undoing the injustices of
the past. Now, please stand and join me
in the flag salute.
Ready, begin.
To the flag of the United States of
America and to the republic for it
stands one nation under God indivisible
with liberty and justice for all.
» Whoops.
Okay, Michael, can you please double
confirm quorum?
» We do have a quorum chair with the
cities of Alcohon, Escandido, La Mesa,
National City, Oceanside, and Vista
absent.
» Okay, let's move on to non-aggenda
public comment. How many do we have?
» We have uh three in person and if you
are online please raise your hand now
» And three online. Okay.
» So first we'll have uh truth followed by
uh Perita Javier.
» Hi Rebecca. Love the jacket. Can that be
my Christmas gift please? All right. For
the long-term board members who remember
apparently there's a new mayor in town.
» The mayor of Medita. I am the mayor of
» Technically the mayor of Bonita.
» I am technically the mayor.
» If that's true, can Moa go back to the
mayor's paycheck? Remember when I said
it only take one board member to send
this board into disarray? Manuela is it?
With the scheme provided by dim chair
William Rig Kennedy once accused of
rape. Manuela tried to drag San
backwards by playing the fafo game with
500 million in federal dollars. Racist
equity means projects to the favored few
at the expense of the many. Union
grifters love to say they're for the
minority and the underserved. Yet,
they're the first to selfishly throw
projects uh for them on the sacrificial
altar of their anti-Trump games.
Republicans and independents, your yes
vote gave leverage to the progressives
political theater. How stupid can you
be? The DIE show had zero strategy and
zero values because so-called California
values should not consist of breaking
the law. I want to commend Bill and
Chris for not playing political games
with Sanag's bylaw compliance with
federal law that affects funding for
SANDAG projects because here's what
progressive union games with our transit
tax dollars already resulted in from a
2022 reader article entitled when the
Tmacula traffic hits Escanido quote.
Santa communications director Gary
Benelli says we hope to have a robust
transit system in place by 2030. You're
going to have five minute frequencies
transit competitive with the car. Calran
says, "We need alternate work hours
where we're not all on the freeway at
the same time." Two questionnaers
solicit citizens views. The first asks,
"What transportation improvements people
think will work." The second asks, "What
are they willing to do?" People will
say, "Oh, public transportation. I'm
willing to spend the money. Will you
write it?" Well, no. End quote. Same
bleep, different day. In over two
decades, Sandak has literally achieved
nothing but broken promises. So, colon
stockings and Bahham bug to that. And
you know what else bothers me is
Fitzgerald stays silent. Thank you. Next
is Pria Javier followed by Caesar
Javier.
» Good morning. I am Purita Javier, senior
with medical condition and a victim of
ceramic skill toxicity
next door.
I began residence in 1997.
Cesar, my husband came in
2012.
A divine intervention. I knew nothing
about clean air oxygen nor about air
pollution. I was merely good at knowing
shopping and sales are. It was
that made me aware of the threat of our
health and safety. He being a teacher
and a contractor. In his curiosity, I
gave him the story of the business and
about them friends
owner, a business that began 1984
and in trickles
on and off storytelling.
My late husband
words shout at only get out of there.
Stay away from there. Also I told and
showed Cesar about the permanent
fastening of windows. I told Cesar that
the owner has not gone to hire
higher education unless
his wife a nurse. I also informed Cesar
that my late husband was sailor
um in a navy guy and treated a calm uh
the couple like son and daughter
a father figure of them in short.
» Thank you. Your has expired. Next is
Caesar Javier followed by Mike Bullick
online.
Her family wishes everyone
merry Christmas.
prayerfully after our toil for four
years, kneeling,
pleading, and even shouting at our
elected
11 officials of the city of San Diego
as a calling by our constitution.
Working together.
Perfect union. Ensure justice. A system
fair for everyone including Habir
family. Domestic tranquility. Defense.
Our stance. Councelor Rivera. Sir Mario
is defense to protect our community,
to serve our community
for a totality of patrimony and
posterity for all American sons and
daughters. We be we beg of you.
Something is wrong and we are supposed
to correct it. That's the tenets of what
we call patrimony posterity. The good
thing that we will remember and honor
forever because this is the greatest
country in the world and perhaps in few
more years in the universe.
We stand here to remind our elected
officials that when you I mean when you
take office, you raise your right hand,
not your left,
not your feet,
but you raise your heart and mind and
say to the Filipino, sorry, we just
attended the Filipino meeting last
yesterday.
to all Americans.
I will protect the question.
» Thank you. Your time has expired. Next
is Mike Bullock online followed by the
original draw.
» Yes, thank you. Um I am uh Mike Bullock.
I live in Oceanside and um I when I
retired from Lockheed Martin after 36
years, my title was senior staff systems
engineer. So, uh, honorable chair and,
uh, members of the board, I'm honored
to, uh, speak with you this morning. And
my topic is, uh, climate change
literacy. And, um, I'm going to follow
along with, uh, the way that is defined
in the California Democratic Party
platform uh, in the education plank, and
you'll find it there. And it says, uh,
you have to know, um, why we have the
problem and how bad it could get. Um and
uh also you need to know u uh the
difference between climate stabilization
and uh uh climate uh destabilization.
Uh and then also uh the requirements
that the climate scientists have given
us uh so we can achieve the desired
outcome which is stabilizing the climate
and avoiding uh destabilization.
Um and then also the mitigation measures
are there. Um so I don't have a lot of
time but um it's really based on uh the
uh Noah plots u and uh the 800,000 year
uh plot. So there's a a ton of science
there. That's 800,000 years going back
in time. It shows the atmospheric CO2
and it shows the temperature anomaly
which is what the temperature of our
atmosphere is relative to what it would
should be uh without climate change. And
you know we're very close to 1.5 degrees
centigrade now. Uh and uh the plot the
other plot the Noah plot is just 1,00
years where you zero in on it and it's
very very clear that it's the um our
industrial revolution. That's where our
atmospheric uh CO2 climbed from what it
should be 280 parts per million to 420.
And the temperature anomaly that
corresponds to that is 15 degrees
centigrade. So we are in a lot of
danger.
» Thank you. Your time has expired. Next
is original draw followed by our last
public comment. Casey,
» Good morning. as you guys are here for
the last one of these meetings for the
year and before the holidays as you are
going to be going and spending your
holidays whatever holiday that is with
your families and I bet it's going to be
a really really beautiful time. Well, I
would like you to think about while
you're with your family, all of the many
children who have been ripped apart from
their families in the county by the
child trafficking organization known as
CFWB, Child Family Well-being,
um or you know, people like to call it
CPS. In fact, the county of San Diego
was in a documentary that has um gone
viral called Never in America. I suggest
that you guys watch it. Um but it talks
about this um business that is a
conveyor belt to get children through
the system after ASPA came in in 1997
through Bill and Hillary Clinton
to fasttrack adoptions with children and
it's very lucrative taking title for
funding because states used to have to
actually pay when they took kids apart
from their families and they did it only
when there was actual abuse not to
create cases because it's auc of
business. But I want you guys to think
about how do you think it would feel for
your child if when they were seeing you
and begging to go home with you, a
social worker said, "Isn't that sweet?
Isn't that sweet? Isn't it? Isn't that
horrific to have to hear when you're
begging to go home and there's no reason
for you to be separated from your family
except for money and all the while the
county is covering up sexual abuse so
you can't go home. I want you to think
about what it's like being with your
families and what it would be like if
you weren't allowed to for absolutely no
reason at all but for profit.
Happy holidays.
» Our last public comment is Casey. If you
are online, please be sure to raise your
hand at the start of an item, please.
Last public comment, Casey, go ahead.
» Hi, my name is Casey. I'm a high school
student and this morning I had to ask my
AP human geography teacher if I could
leave class early to give this comment.
He asked, "Why do you need to give
public comment during class?" And I told
him that Sandag is jeopardizing my
future. In AP human geography, one of
the first things you learn in the urban
planning unit is that widening highways
doesn't fix congestion. It creates
induced demand. You add lanes, people
drive more, and then traffic comes back
and emissions increase. So what I when I
see a plan proposing over 90 miles of
new managed lanes costing more than $2
billion, it feels like we're choosing to
ignore what decades of evidence and
frankly what we teach teenagers already
tell us. I do want to thank everyone for
extending the youth opportunity pass.
And as a student who depends on transit,
that decision genuinely matters. This
plan still centers highway expansion
even through SANDAG's own modeling
labels these projects as high VMT to
compensate the plan leaves heavily on
rapid bus routes but we already have
proof that rapid and name only rhinos
don't work. Take the Rapid 215. When it
launched in 2014 it was supposed to be
faster and more reliable than the route
it replaced. Today it takes 6 minutes
longer than when it opened. On-time
performance has dropped by about 10
points and ridership is down 33% even
though overall transit ridership has
largely recovered. It's not a demand
problem. It's a design failure. Without
dedicated lanes and strong transit
signal priority, buses are just stuck in
traffic. I'm also deeply concern
concerned with how little attention the
purple line gets for South County is
meant to be a transit lifeline and with
SB79 enabling more housing near transit
ridership potential is being
underestimated. Also, removing
references to NACO's safe bike
infrastructure guidelines sends the
wrong message to young people like me. I
want to be really clear at the end here.
I'm genuinely begging you for my future
and my generation's future. You are not
powerless. All it takes is one of you to
step up and call a weighted vote. You
have the power to pass a regional plan
that works for everyone, for students,
workers, families.
» Thank you. Your time has expired. That
concludes our our non-aggenda public
comment chair. And for the record, the
cities of National City, Oceanside, and
Powe are present.
» Very good. Thank you so much. We'll go
to non-aggenda member comments and I see
Ann Fox from CALR on the board.
» Good morning. Um, so t the season for
holiday wishes and retirements usually
around this time of year. So I just
wanted to announce that Karen Juel right
here behind me will be retiring this
month. um with over 36 years with CALR,
probably a little bit more of that cuz
she did start with us as a student
assistant. She's been our hydraulics
engineer, our traffic engineering and
analysis lead, project manager in North
County corridors, working on state
routes 7678.
then as a shared CALR SANDAG corridor
director for our central corridors
working on our routes 805 5215
and as a good partner to many of you and
your agencies um around this dis. So she
was part of my lunch crew for probably
well over a decade. Uh one of the nicest
uh level-headed active people you'll
ever know and someone we'll all miss in
retirement. So, thank you Karen for
making Calrrons and Sandad better.
» Lovely tribute. Thank you. Sounds like
you made your mark. All right, I have a
few comments. Uh, this is the final
meeting of the year. So, I want to thank
you all so much and for sta to staff for
your engagement and hard work throughout
this very, very busy year. I also want
to wish everyone a wonderful holiday
season and I do look forward to working
with you all next year together. Uh as a
quick reminder, the audit committee
chair is conducting the annual
performance evaluation of Sandag's
independence performance auditor. We
received a request to fill out that
questionnaire December 2nd which I
somehow missed. Um got the reminder the
other day and filled it out. So if you
please fill it out if you haven't
already. QR codes taped to the um desks
in front of you and also you have an
email in your email box. Um so please uh
fill that out. Your feedback is
important. Uh since our last meeting,
Vice Chair Lava and I had the
opportunity to meet with the leadership
of the Southern California Tribal
Chairman's Association. They generously
hosted and we appreciated the chance to
share um and discuss priorities,
strengthen our working relationship and
create some steps for um ongoing
discussions. I also met with Senator
Weber Pearson to discuss housing policy,
including um SB79 and thanking her for
her non support of SB79 and discussing
um a number of other issues including
border uh region resiliency and the
ongoing need for SB 375 reform. That's
it and I'll turn it over to Mario for
his update.
» Thank you, Chair and Karen.
Congratulations. since we grew together
in Calrans. So, uh I cannot envision uh
not having you as a corridor director
there. So, we really really uh a big hug
and again you know we grew three decades
together in the agency. Um we yesterday
we had um uh city managers roundt that
we are starting to host here. We really
appreciate those city managers who could
make it. Uh we had a very robust
conversation of what's coming up next
year as well as city managers provided
us some recommendations of how we should
be working with the working groups. So
we will be bringing up uh those ideas.
We will bring them forward to the
executive committee. I really encourage
all of you to encourage your city
managers to to come to this round table.
It's it's a good uh forum where we
discuss ongoing issues, upcoming grants
and we strategize uh to make uh the
discussions here as well as in the packs
uh more meaningful. So I really
appreciate that. Also this week I
participated at the California
Infrastructure Development Conference in
LA. Uh with me was Comey Ajitsu, the
SCACK executive director, and we were
together in a panel talking about what
we'd see in the future and how we
collaborate in Southern California.
Between SCAK and SANDOK, we cover um all
Southern California and the the a good
chunk of the majority of the population
of California. So between both
organizations we can impact quite a bit
as well as nationwide. Uh also earlier
this week even so it feels way back uh
we took a really fast trip a 23-hour
trip to Washington DC to meet with the
federal highway administrator Mr. Sheen
McCaster as well as with Mexican
ambassador in in the US Stean McDuma. um
with federal highways. We discussed old
time as
understanding some regulations that
federal highways has uh been directing
us on it and that could open hopefully
open the possibility of more
partnerships. um as well as with
Ambassador Mocktasuma, we discussed the
project, but we also discussed the
Tijuana River issues and how do we f
more partner on on on improving not just
the Tijuana issue, but all the
environmental issues across the border.
Uh that's why we're working on the
sustainability
uh um plan that we're working for that
for the border region. On project
updates,
we had a huge accomplishment. The first
climate action roadmap for San Diego
region was completed and submitted to
EPA. Why is it important for then your
cities can go and take that plan and be
eligible for funding? Because it's a
regional plan. So you can take it as
yours also in your cities. If you don't
have that in your cities, it's an
option. But that's pretty big because we
for those smaller cities who may not
have the bandwidth to do it, you can
adopt the ones from from from Sanduk and
that allows you to pursue funding for
EPA and other related subjects. So we
really really appreciate that. Um the
Batikitos Lagoni MP, we're restoring the
nesting habitat and we're really working
on that project. We really want to thank
uh um Santi and the mayor for uh mayor
Mento for helping us cal and and and
Sandak and Caltrans is leading this
effort on the SR52
uh operational improvements
environmental document. So thank you for
allowing us that this is the the one of
what you consider beginning of
conversations to start moving the 52
into reality those improvements. So, you
know, it's a journey and Mayor Mento is
helping Calrons and ourselves on walking
that journey. So, thank you on that. On
the audit update, um we're really
focusing on closing out the 2018 Trust
recommendations
that were submitted to IT Talk. Um it
was very concerning to me that we were a
decade behind in some recommendations,
some of them from 2015. So, we needed to
check the box out of the 2015. Now,
we're going to try to check the box of
the 2018 as we can get get closer to
just have not a not not a decade, but
hopefully months or maybe a year to get
to some recommendations. So, we really
appreciate that. Um, today you will be
hearing uh the finance audit assessment.
uh that's going to be really helpful and
I'll talk more about that. But we're
also doing going to be launching
internally in the agency an HR
department assessment and we are already
working on a toll ops organizational
assessment. The information has been
very very good uh for us that will help
us reinvent our toll operations
department
on the back office. We're really
exploring on different types of
partnerships so we can also align it
with that reorganization of of our toll
department. Also reorgan reorganize how
we manage toll. So we will have more
information on that shortly.
Construction updates. There were some
concerns about the Omar Bluffs uh big
dyke that was built there. So, we're
going to coordinate with the mayor, with
all the department, with the uh city
manager, and again, it's a journey. Uh
the mitigation for the Delmare Bluffs is
a complex mitigation that was imposed to
us by Coastal Commission. So, we're
going to work and try to balance what
Coastal wants, what the city wants, what
the transit agency wants, and we're
going to try to get, like I said, a
balance on all that. So, we're meeting
also with the coastal commission
director to try to figure that out next
month. We have begun construction on the
West Washington Street and Mission
Valley bikeways. So, hopefully that will
be moving forward. And finally, you
know, I want to mention that our offices
will be closed uh to the public on
December 25th and January 1st. Our toll
operations customer center will close at
at noon around noon on the 24th to allow
those employees to go home and then we
will be closed also on the 25th and on
the 1st and I really want to wish you uh
happy holidays to all of you and thank
you for all the support during this
calendar year.
» Thanks so much uh Mayor Gastelin.
» Yes, thank you. Um executive director,
thank you for mentioning the Delmare
Bluffs. I I wanted to invite the board
members here to come to Delmare sometime
over the next few weeks and walk the
beach along the bottom of the bluff. See
the over one mile of new seaw wall
that's in that is in between the the
beach and the bluff. And I also wanted
to remind us that the original cost of
this project was 58 million in 2020.
It's now estimated that it will wind up
totaling 88 million with 62 million
spent so far. So an extra 30 million has
gone into this project in on in June of
2022. The Coastal Commission approved
the project conditionally. One of the
conditions is actively vigorously
pursuing and accomplishing getting the
railroad tracks off the bluff into an
inland location. So that's one. And the
other was beach access.
So we're going to be asking for
transparency and access to the
construction plans that the coastal
commission reviewed. The exhibits
apparently weren't, you know, they
showed a four foot wide culvert in the
location at 11th Street and what was
built was 12 feet wide, six feet deep at
the six feet deep, six feet wide at the
bottom. Yeah, it's a very large cement
structure that stretches two blocks
along the top of the bluff in Delmare.
It was a surprise. So, let's try to be
more transparent and have no more
surprises.
» Okay, we now move on to the consent
calendar. Michael, do you have any
public comments on consent?
» Yes. If you are online, please raise
your hand. Now we have two in person.
That's truth followed by Caesar.
Item 3.1, the remnants of a dead meeting
should be amended to say that crybaby
William Murders Kennedy is the chair of
the San Diego Democratic Party for
transparency. Item 3.2 says that the
tribal transportation program is
considered as amended into the R TIP.
Does that mean the tribal projects are
automatically given to the building
construction trades council if they cost
over $5 million? Item 3.3. I'd like to
know why Loan is so concerned about form
700s. What corruption is going on there?
Item 3.4. Not to $40 million to UN
global compact partner Jacob's project
management for the lagoon double
tracking. Also, there's a misspelling on
the word qualification in the second
paragraph on the second page of this
item. Item 3.5. I do not approve of the
$2.5 million investment in nefarious
Novartis. Item 3.6. If we follow the DIE
nonsense that Lauren voted for, then I
don't think that wealthy La Mesa should
get a pass on their late financial
report. And fact needs to provide a more
detailed explanation as to why they need
an extension.
At 3.7, here's a public transit needs
story. On the trolley ride from hell, an
abusive man started arguing with a
woman. He suddenly grabbed the dog out
of her arms and threw it like it was
trash. Even worse, she didn't care.
There was zero security able to respond
to animal abuse. And that is a prime
traumatic example of what you all voted
to spend $6.5 million a year for
children to experience. For the
millionth time, make public transit
safety an immediate priority or shut up
about reducing VMT and GHGs because the
only safe mode of transportation is by
private car. Item 3.8. Not to Escanido's
unaffordable stack and pack trust fund
with no required transit and likely no
parking either. Noto bikeway for Lemon
Grow, which doesn't even have fixed
streets or sidewalks. And why did the LG
only have to put up $1,000 in matching
funds? Why did I put up zero dollars for
the stupid cap update? And for San
Excels, staff needs to more closely
triple check their mistaken work before
releasing it, especially when it deals
with who gets funding. How long is this
agency going to keep messing up is my
question.
Next is Caesar followed by Mike Bullick
online.
Advocacy for community life
processes 3.1 to 3.8.
We have to lump this because there are
a chain
and
the strength of this chains is the
weakest link in all this process.
Did we adequately
prepared for this
toilome effort? for example,
amending
rules and laws that are vintage,
not fitted
to the call of times.
I say this because
the mission of Sandag
to be specific is all about
man's survivability as far as mobility
and transportation. Without this
you know the answer.
The changing time
calls for changing rules.
The call of time state and condition
requires us to be vigilant and watchful.
This is all about all these processes
here today and we share with you.
We support this and we encourage you
thinkers including the public. Of
course, it's not your
jurisdiction alone because you never
exist without us.
Hear from us, hear from you and we learn
together.
» Your time has expired. We have four
comments online. That's Mike Bullick
followed by the original draw.
» Yeah, thank you very much uh Mike
Bullock and Oceanside. I guess I
introduced myself before and uh so
honorable chair and members uh I would
like to uh respectfully
request that you consider removing uh
3.5 uh for discussion. Um, I really
appreciated hearing the uh uh statement
by uh the director and uh I think the
director I agree with everything that
the director is is saying in 3.5.
However, I think we need to discuss what
is not going on and that is that um
Sandag is not u asking uh Sacramento,
our legislators
uh our governor to please implement the
carb scoping plan. And uh the reason
that uh scoping plan must be implemented
as soon as possible is because it is
California's official plan to stabilize
the climate and achieve SP32 which is a
state law uh and uh corresponds to uh
what the IPC is doing and corresponds to
what the climate scientists tell us we
must do by 2030. We don't have a lot of
choice about this. uh the climate
scientists are not wrong and a climate
uh destabilization
uh is something we we need to avoid and
uh so we need to ask the state of
California to implement the mitigation
measures which are in that plan and will
reduce uh VMT by 25% by 2030. They
didn't want to tell us that 25% but it's
just math. Uh I have worked this problem
myself and they're in the ballpark.
They're not uh off base at all. Uh I did
this 10 years ago and I I got 32%
reduction by 2030. Their assumptions are
are probably a little more updated than
mine. Uh electric cars are a far
superior technology and uh so they're
probably a little closer, but 25's a
lot. We have to get those mitigation
measures. Thank you.
Next is the original draw followed by
phone number ending in 1415.
» Until you guys can maintain um the
infrastructure that we already have, you
shouldn't be looking into things like
double tracking and whatnot. I mean, you
know, public transit is not beneficial
to people. It's takes longer and it's
just more of a pain in the butt. You
actually are putting children in danger
by not having security on there and
having them ride for free unaccompanied.
And when we sit here and we're talking
about, you know, reducing GHGs and all
of that and we don't even look into what
Mexico uh the cars that are coming from
there and you're, you know, penalizing
our own communities for things and, you
know, potentially road usage charges are
coming in. You should be implementing
that for people that are not having the
same regulations that we do um to ensure
that you're going to reduce those.
Otherwise, you guys are just hypocrites
because you're allowing things to happen
from people outside of our nation to
come in and then basically the people
that live here are punished for it
because we're never going to meet the
goals that you want because all of it's
BS anyway. But your smart growth
incentive program and the way that you
guys talk about projects and you know
aligning them with growth principles and
you know that are compact, transit
accessible, pedestrianfriendly
and environmentally responsible you know
reduces traffic congestion. You
basically are putting people in these
densely populated areas that are going
to be you know tra where people are
going to be tracked and traced. you're
going to have to walk and bike
everywhere. I mean, if you guys want
something to work, cuz nothing you guys
do is really beneficial to the people,
why don't you do it first, prove to us
that it works and then potentially in
ask us if we can want our money to be
spent on that and then we'll decide.
Instead, you guys just push the United
Nations agenda and you don't care what
the people in the communities have to
say. you don't look into the fact that
you're creating a huge fire hazard and
potential death for a bunch of people
the way that you're planning things out.
Thank you. Next is phone number 1415.
Follower at phone number 8813
um
on the transnet smart growth stuff. Uh
so this climate action stuff is funded
by the transnet extension.
Our money going to places other than
transnet.
Um and I was just reminded that climate
predictions often are based on one or
two
or several particular regions and are
not applicable to all. The spread of
divergent cap projects with different
goals is wasted money. It is interesting
and instructive that most of the
initiatives listed in the appendix are
not cap oriented and it is shameful that
you won't fund Escandida's affordable
housing trust when you have three
million left to give initiative such.
I also think it is unfair to deny
funding completely to the Escandido
project simply because it relies on
existing transportation
infrastructure
rather than developing new
transportation infrastructure.
This is pressed fund which means that
not all of the individual housing
projects or access routes are in
planning at this time.
uh the um
and the CM contract. Uh I'm glad to hear
that there was a robust competitive
bidding process for the construction
management. Uh doesn't look like the
constructability review bids were
competitive with two biders, one of whom
was locked out. Our reviews for Jacobs
are mixed with good work like work life.
» Thank you. Your time has expired. Our
last public comment is phone number
ending in 8813.
» Okay, Consol here. So um because
everything is connected and um
because everything we're seeing at the
local level from transportation policy
to digital systems to financial
restructuring
uh is connected to a much larger
pattern. Uh many people shrugged off uh
or didn't think twice when the penny was
taken out of production a month ago.
And uh you know nothing government
removes is ever too small to matter.
Every disappearance is a shift in our
human behavior. When you remove the
lowest denomination of money, you
normalize rising prices. You normalize
rounding up. You normalize quiet
inflation that nobody can track. It's a
psychological conditioning tool, not an
economic update. And what happens next?
Cash slowly disappears. digital payment
becomes default, tracking becomes
unavoidable and control becomes
programmable. And um it's clear in the
very frameworks that agencies like
SANDAG follow including the regional
implementation
uh for the UN 2030
um which pushes digitalized mobility,
digital identity, cashless systems and
centralized data monitoring as if they
are harmless advances.
And the truth is simple. When everything
is digital, everything is trackable.
When everything is trackable, everything
is controllable. And when everything is
controllable, human freedom becomes
optional. And you see this in uh
transportation planning, the push to
restrict car usage, increasing increase
tolling, expand surveillance based
mobility systems, tie transportation
access to digital accounts. It mirrors
the same pattern we see in the financial
system. reduce physical freedom,
increase digital dependency, shift power
upward, make human behavior manageable,
and it all has
» Thank you. Your time has expired.
» That concludes our public comment on
this item. Chair,
» Very good. Um, it's now time for the
board to comment. Perhaps give me a
motion.
» Um,
first, Vice Chair Lava.
» Uh, I'll move the consent agenda.
» Very good. Second by Mento. Um, Mayor
Sanchez, did you want to speak?
» I was just going to make the motion.
» Okay. Thank you.
» All right. So, please use your devices
to speak. I mean to vote any.
Yeah.
Okay, that passes unanimously. Uh, thank
you. Uh, we'll now move to the 2025
regional plan. This is the time and
place set for a public hearing on the
2025 regional plan and its final
environmental impact report. The staff
presentation will be heard first and
then we will take public comment. Next,
we'll hear comments from board members
and then I'll close the public hearing.
After the public hearing, we are being
asked to certify the final EIR and adopt
the 2025 regional plan. So, Antwanette,
please go ahead.
Thank you, chair. Good morning. I'm
Anwinet Meyer, the senior director of
regional planning here at Sandag. And
today is a big day. Today is the day um
when we're asking you to adopt the 2025
regional plan that we've been working on
together over the last several years and
to certify the environmental impact
report. Um developing and adopting a
regional plan every four years is one of
Sandag's most important
responsibilities. You've heard me say
this time and time again. Without a
regional plan, the region, and that's
every agency in the region, is not
eligible for state and federal funding
for transportation projects. So having a
plan that meets all of the state and
federal requirements is a very important
thing for the for the region. Um in
September I presented to you the changes
that we were proposing to make between
draft and final. They were relatively
minor changes and those changes are
reflected um in the the final plan.
There haven't been any additional um
changes since then. What you haven't
heard about yet though is the
environmental impact report. So, we're
going to spend a little bit more time on
on that today um before we open it up
for the the public hearing part of the
the plan.
So, just a few quick reminders. Um this
is really the culmination of years of
technical work, coordination,
collaboration with you um and your
agencies and a lot of public outreach.
We started this process back in 2021,
collecting current travel data, um doing
surveys, updating the modeling tools
that we use to evaluate the plan. And
then we really kicked this off with you
um in 2023 at your board retreat. When I
was doing a briefing yesterday, Mayor
Gastlin reminded me that we kicked this
off with the puzzle exercise at your
your board retreat. Um and um you all
helped us throughout the course of that
year determine what the priorities for
the plan were and to set the goals for
the plan. We also started doing outreach
really early for this plan. So getting
input from communities about what their
priorities were. Um and then we
developed an initial concept for the
plan in 2024. That was not the draft,
but that was the pre-draft. We took that
out. We got feedback from you from
communities. Um and then we we
incorporated that feedback into the
draft plan that we released for public
comment in May. Shortly after releasing
that draft plan, we released the the
draft EIR. Um and then uh the public
comment period's closed. We've been
addressing all of those comments. Um in
fact, there is uh responses to the
public comments as an appendix to um the
the the plan. Um and now we are here
with the final step uh today adopting
the plan.
This slide really summarizes all of the
in-person outreach that we did over the
course of the plan. You'll see there
were quite a few board presentations and
workshops. 20. Thank you for being
patient and active participants in the
process, but it it was very helpful for
staff because it allowed you to really
provide guidance and direction along the
way and to have a better understanding
of what it takes to put together a
regional plan and all the laws and
requirements that we have to meet and
why we make certain decisions to include
things in the plan. We also worked a lot
with your staff both one-on-one and
through our working groups and and uh we
worked with our policy advisory
committees. We did a lot of community
events um and uh we worked with our
tribes. We did consultation through our
tribal working group but also one-on-one
with the different tribes. Um and we
went out and we met with groups all
across the region and that led to a lot
of feedback. So when we were working on
the initial concept for the plan, we had
both in-person and online opportunities
to provide feedback that resulted in
over nearly 12,000 public comments. Then
when we released the draft, I shared
with you in September that we got um
over 1,300 um comments uh on the on the
plan um and we held again in person um
events all across the region um and took
feedback um through email and mail every
every mechanism and appendix J you can
see the responses to those public
comments.
This is the the network. I'm not going
to spend a lot of time on it because
we've talked so much uh about it, but
you know the feedback that we get on the
plan is about as diverse as our region
and we tried to really respond to that
with a very balanced multimodal plan. So
this plan has investments across all
modes, transit, active transportation,
roadways, safety and operation projects.
Um it's all in the plan. It also
includes improvements to existing
services. So, you don't see those lines
on the map, but all of the transit
across the region gets upgrades, um,
additional hours of service, better
frequencies. Um, there's community
shuttles. We've heard a lot from you,
um, about the desire to have more, um,
neighborhood, uh, shuttle services. Um,
and we have those in both our rural and
urban communities. And of course, safety
and operational improvements. We've
heard a lot from our our rural
communities and the tribes about the
importance of that. So, that is um,
reflected in the plan. What you don't
see is the programs and the projects.
And we've received a lot of comments um
about the youth opportunity pass
program. I want to reassure you YOP is
in the plan for the life of the plan. In
October, the board approved another
additional few years of funding um for
that and we're working with the
operators on a long-term sustainable
funding source. The other project I want
to um mention because it's been coming
up a lot and we've got a lot of
questions on it is the Purple Line. So,
the Purple Line um has not been delayed.
it is it is not removed from the plan
but we've done a lot of planning and
analysis work um since the 2021 plan and
we learned a lot about where the line
should be and how complicated and
complex and expensive it is to construct
and that's reflected in the plan. So the
new timeline for the purple line um and
the phasing for that project is is based
on reality the cost of the project and
how complex of a project it is to
construct. There was also some confusion
and public comments that came in about
the airport and transit to the airport.
There is no automated people mover in
the regional plan. We assume in the
outer years of the plan that the trolley
light rail will connect to the airport
and in the near term we have
improvements to the existing shuttle and
bus service. And then last I want to
address Senate Bill 79 because there's
been a lot of feedback and and comments
and concerns about the potential impacts
of Senate Bill 79 um based on projects
in the plan. So Senate Bill 79 applies
to projects that have operated in the
last three years. So it's backward
looking and um routes for which a
locally preferred alternative has been
selected. So projects that are already
well along in the planning environmental
um stage um and that are included in the
RTIP. So the lines on the map in the
regional plan aren't going to unless
they've been really planned and gone
through environmental trigger anything
related to SB79.
Also, we don't have the um what the
state how the state defines rapid in our
region. So, the state's definition
around rapid is dedicated infrastructure
only for exclusively used by the bus.
You need to have transit signal
priority. You need to have alldoor
boarding. Basically, all of the bells
and whistles and we don't have any
qualifying rapid in our region. Nor do
we assume that rapids in our plan uh
will require all of those things or have
all of those things. So, I just wanted
to clarify that about the plan.
The good news is is the plan achieves
the goals that you all set early on. Um
and the performance measures are
included as a attachment to um the
appendix to the the plan itself. Um so
you all set goals around convenience,
equity, health and um safety. And um at
a high level uh travel times are
decreased for all modes and that
includes commercial vehicles. So we
achieve the convenience. Um there's
increased access to basic needs and
opportunities for all populations in the
region. Um there's an increase in
transportation related physical activity
and cleaner air. Um and we have more
safe transportation projects in the plan
than we have in prior plans.
And very importantly, we meet all of our
federal and state requirements. So uh
across the top there, you see the
federal requirements. There's more than
this, but these are some of the big
ones. Um, there's a title six analysis
that's included in the plan. That's
appendix E. And that demonstrates that
the plan really does improve access to
jobs, to education, to basic needs for
our most vulnerable populations. We have
to do the air quality conformity
determination. Um, fortunately, we are
no longer in a conformity lockdown. So,
we're able to submit our air quality
conformity determination um to the
federal uh government for approval. And
that's one of the things you're being
asked to approve today. But that
demonstrates that we comply with the
Clean Air Act and that the projects in
the plan don't worsen air quality. And
then fiscal constraint. We've talked a
lot about this. The regional plan has to
be fiscally constrained. That means that
the projects in the plan um we have to
demonstrate how we could reasonably pay
for them over the life of the plan. So
it can't be a wish list. Um we do have
an unconstrained uh list of projects.
Those are projects that aren't part of
our funding strategy. They're not lines
on the map. Um but they're projects of
interest to the region or that show up
in other agencies, other entities plans.
Um, so this plan is 125 billion. That's
quite a bit less than the last uh couple
of of uh plans. That does not just
include the new projects in the plan.
And this is not just Sandax money. This
is um operations and maintenance
projects for CALR. This is the money
that we passed through to all of you for
local streets and roads projects or our
grant programs. Um it's uh uh the bike
projects that either you're building or
that we're building. Um and it um covers
really everything, even paying off our
our debt.
Um on the bottom we have the state
requirements. So for housing and land
use we have to demonstrate how future
job um and housing growth will occur in
areas where there's planned or existing
multimmoal transportation
infrastructure. We achieve this 80% of
the region's future growth um is in
areas with planned or future
transportation investments. Um it's
Senate Bill 375, the one that we talk a
lot about and the one that we're working
on improving for future plans is the um
greenhouse gas emissions reduction
target. And if you recall, we have to
meet that GHG target by reducing vehicle
miles traveled. The target that carb set
for this plan is a 19% per capita
reduction by 2035 based on 2005 levels.
This plan achieves a 19.35%
reduction. So, we exceed um our target
and that's actually higher than the
amended 2021 plan which was 18.6 um%.
So, we've met all of those laws. The
last law that I'm going to turn over to
Kirsten. Kirsten, you could tell who's
joining me today is the project manager
um for the EIR, the programmatic ER um
for the plan, and she's going to walk
you through uh the contents of the plan,
the public comments that we received,
and how we've addressed those.
» Thank you.
» My name is Kirsten
Kirsten Yucatel and I'm here to give you
an overview of the EIR and the other
documents that are related that are in
your packet. So we completed an
environmental impact report for the 2025
regional plan consistent with the
California Environmental Quality Act or
SQA which requires that we identify and
analyze the environmental impacts of
implementing the 2025 regional plan.
This is called a programmatic or program
EIR. And as it sounds, it's intended to
look at an interconnected set of
projects, a program of them over a
longer time horizon, in this case out to
2050 consistent with the regional plan.
So this EIR is not clearing individual
projects. It's not completing
environmental analysis for individual
projects, site specific impacts or
developing those related mitigation
measures. It is analyzing the
environmental impacts of the regional
plan at the same level of detail
contained in the regional plan. And the
expectation is that as projects are
further developed and have a stable
project description, they will then go
through their own individual project
level SQA analysis that will look at
their impacts and alternatives and
mitigation.
This EIR is looking at this high
programmatic level at environmental
impacts of the 2025 plan, cumulative
impacts. It contains an alternatives
analysis and it also contains
programmatic mitigation measures.
One of the elements of developing the
EIR is to put it out for public comment.
As Antonette had already mentioned, our
draft EIR went out in late August and by
the conclusion of the comment period, we
had received 217 comments on the EIR.
Consistent with SQUA, we prepared
written responses to each of these
comments and those are attached to your
packet as attachment 4 and they are
appendix N1 in the EIR.
Of the 217 comments that we received,
maybe 80 to 85% of them were actually
comments on the regional plan. Those
comments focused primarily on the purple
line, on the youth opportunity pass
program and on the desire for greater
transit amenities.
Of the comments received on the
environmental impact analysis in the
EIR, there were two primary themes the
comments emerged around. The first was
GHG and VMT impacts with most commenters
opposing roadways um opposing roadway
expansion, advocating for sooner
implementation of transit to reduce
those impacts.
VMT and GHG impacts are fully analyzed
in the EIR across three primary sections
which are air quality is section 4.3,
greenhouse gas and climate change which
is section 4.8 and transportation which
is section 4.16.
The second primary area of comment was
impacts to wildlife and habitat with
many commenters expressing concern that
there is not an identified regional
funding source to subsidize local
habitat conservation plans.
Impacts to wildlife and impacts to
habitat along with other resources are
analyzed in section 4.4 four of the EI
biological resources
and comments to all responses to all of
those comments as I said are in the
attachment to your packet.
None of the comments that we received
raised significant new information that
had not already been analyzed in the
draft EIR. Similarly, we had some
changes draft to final in the ER and
none of those changes rise to the level
of significant new information.
In addition
to the EIR, SQAR requires preparation of
some additional documents that are also
attached to your packet. The first one
of those is the findings which discusses
the alternatives analyzed in the EIR and
also discusses the environmental impacts
of the 2025 plan after mitigation.
That's attachment 1A to your packet. The
second document is a statement of
overriding considerations or SOC, which
is attachment 1B,
and that sets out the advantages and
benefits of adopting the 2025 regional
plan and weighs them against the
environmental impacts of the 2025 plan.
The third document attachment 1C is the
mitigation monitoring and reporting
program
which sets out the mitigation that has
been identified, analyzed and committed
to in the EIR at a programmatic level
for the regional plan.
And that concludes my presentation and
I'll turn it back to Anuanette for next
steps.
Okay. So, next steps um we will uh have
the public hearing right after the
presentation and then the board will be
asked to take two actions. The first
will be to certify the EIR and the
second will be to approve adopt the
regional plan. Um once that happens um
we will submit the sustainable community
strategy to the state um California air
resources board for acceptance and we
will submit the air quality conformity
determination and RTP to the US
Department of Transportation and the EPA
for approval. And with that I will pass
it back to the chair to open the public
hearing.
» Very good. I've opened the public
hearing and we'll now go to public
comments. Michael, how many do we have?
If you are online, please raise your
hand. Now we have nine in person. First
up is Chris Roberts, followed by Eric
Rer.
Hello, I'm Chris Roberts, volunteer for
San Diego 350 climate action. Thank you
Sande staff for all your hard work on
the plan. We are very happy that funding
for youth opportunity pass program has
been extended. Thank you very much.
Apart from this, we're very disappointed
in the 2025 regional plan and we don't
believe that the plan is going to
achieve the goals that were stated in
particular decreasing uh transit across
all modes. We don't believe it. Um the
plan uh will have 93 miles of new lanes
added managed lanes costing more than $2
billion by 2035.
This will result in induced demand. And
so a few years after completion, the
congestion on these highs highways will
be as bad as it is now. And we don't
think that's an effective way to spend
$2 billion over the next 10 years.
Sande's own modeling characterizes these
as high VMT increase. So there'll be
more cars on the road, more greenhouse
gas emissions. To mitigate the
greenhouse gas emissions, many new rapid
bus routes are added. But as Antuinet
said, these aren't real rapid bus
routes. they're not going to have all
the the technology needed for them to be
rapid to get the greenhouse gas
emissions. They're going to
counterbalance all of the induced demand
from the highway expansions. So, I don't
it's hard to believe we're going to meet
our SB 375 greenhouse gas emissions in
this plan.
So, um and and of course as well uh a
lot of the things that rapid bus routes
need, for example, busonly lanes are
actively opposed by many cities in the
county. So the biggest disappointment in
the plan is the purple line. It's barely
mentioned. We feel that with the passage
of SB79, the numbers of riders on the
plan are going to be much greater than
stated. And it's extremely disappointing
that NATO safe bicycle infrastructure
guidelines have been removed from the
plan. That means that bike
infrastructure will be built unsafe and
and the community will will declare
victory. So we're sorry about that and
we're disappointed in the plan. Thank
you very much.
Next is Eric Rer followed by Truth.
» Good morning. My name is Eric Rur. Good
morning members of the board and
everyone attending. I'm a resident of
San Diego and just uh speaking as a
resident, not representing anyone. I do
work as a transportation engineering
consultant in the San Diego region. So I
work for both private and uh public uh
clients. I will most likely be working
on individual projects that are part of
this plan. But I'm not speaking about
any uh individual projects today. What
my comment um is to speak in favor of
adopting the plan and certifying the
EIR. And um I followed the process um
from the beginning and want to let you
know I believe this has been a robust
process that resulted in a in a balanced
plan and I think you should adopt this
plan. I think you should certify the EIR
and thank you for allowing me to speak.
Next is truth followed by Caesar Javier.
» Total artificial input was 2517 people
divided by a 3.3 million population
equals 0.7%
input. Thumbs down. All modes of
transportation are faster. Yeah, right.
An environmental impact report means
nothing in the corrupt state of
California. SQA is waved all the time
for dangerous and toxic projects like
battery energy storage fire facilities
because whatever makes the big political
unions, big NGO profiters, big green
deal scammers and the big cartel
campaign funders rich is what gets a
fasttrack approval. And that includes
projects like border crossings which
should only be built by the federal
government, not inep Sandag. The Otame
project directly violates AQ7 because it
will result in other emissions such as
those leading to odors. by encouraging
unregulated building in Tijuana, which
violates POP 1's substantial unplanned
population growth by extending roads and
other infrastructure. expansion of a
state route by up to 25 cargo lanes and
20 passenger lanes, encouraging up to
12,000 cars and 1500 trucks a day that
are so-called fossil fuel-based and do
not meet emission standards violates
EN2's renewable energy, AQ1's, GHG1, 2,
3, 4, and TA's emissions reduction goals
and AQ6's carbon monoxide hotspots. What
is the predicted GHG and VMT inventory
of the OM project? And what highways are
being sacrificed for those extra GHGs?
I'd rather see that 1.3 billion tax
dollars go to immediate safety measures
for the 67 and 78. By not doing that,
San is violating has four impairing
implementation resulting in inadequate
emergency access. Sanax's bluff tracks
move in Delmare is also vi violating POP
1 by displacing substantial numbers of
people or housing units necessitating
the construction of replacement housing
elsewhere. The city of San Diego is
violating TR4 on lack of parking supply
that causes secondary environmental
impacts. notice socialist welfare
transit, tax road usage charges, higher
parking pricing, managed lane pricing,
and arterial and freeway speed
reductions, which all increase VMT and
emissions. And thank you for making me
skim a lot of pages. I actually did it.
Thank you.
» Next is Caesar Javier, followed by Noel
Garcia,
» Cesar Purita.
I solemnly swear to support the
constitution. So help me God.
What we are doing mam sir
thank you for your presentation
is good better best. I wonder in the
presentation
why only the air quality that is being
given focus.
This is the summation of the two uh
presentations.
Item four, why why only air quality
aspect?
Why not the geological aspect which is
all within the sphere of the element
shell as we were taught in the urban
planning course.
Why
we won the war? Because of coded
communication.
We were taught how to read but we were
not taught how to understand what we are
reading. Is this how we
swore to the constitution?
But anyway, we are doing our best.
And who prepares the EIR
regionwide,
citywide, communitywide?
We the residents in the community
suggest to you
what is the actual front line happening
as far as environment and listen to us.
Is this coded?
You didn't consider the underbed of our
foundation the land or geology aspect.
What about hydrography?
where our circulation mobility passes
through
where the airplane in the air.
» Thank you. Your time has expired. Next
is Noel Garcia followed by Carelli Sono.
» Good morning. I am here on behalf of Mid
City CAN to actually thank Sandag for
its commitment to continue funding and
give another extension to the youth
opportunity pass program. At Mid City
CAN, we do a lot of work advocating for
spreading the word about the importance
of the youth access to public transit to
the residents and the local community.
So, it's not just I who's grateful for
the continuation of this program. It is
mothers, dads, brothers, sisters,
elders, and many, many workers. That
being said, I still strongly urge that
this program eventually receive the
permanent funding that San Dieans
deserve.
» Next is Carly Srano, followed by Anna
Gman.
Good morning board members. My name is
Carly Serrano, the transportation
organizer at Mid City. I just want to
thank you all for your continued
commitment to the youth opportunity pass
program, um, including it in the
regional plan and extending it. Your
leadership in supporting free transit
for youth has made a meaningful impact
across the region. We really appreciate
your continued dedication to supporting
transit dependent communities like City
Heights to create a more equitable and
connected region through transit
services. Thank you.
» Next is Anna Gman followed by Jillian
Quint.
» Good morning. My name is Arya Gman and
I'm the policy manager at Circulate San
Diego. In 2022, Circulate published a
report analyzing Sande's 2021 draft
plan. The report ultimately found that
the 2021 plan made billions of dollars
in speculative revenue assumptions for
for example um from road uses charges um
and enacting multiple ballot measures in
a very short span of time. Circulate is
supportive of these, you know, concepts
in general, but finds that they're that
Sandex's 2021 draft for plan made very
um speculative and high estimations for
these revenues. The revenues were also
set to be dedicated to extremely
highcost capital projects that were
simply just not going to be built as
proposed. Circulate is supportive of
transit capital investments, but when we
prioritize unrealistic projects over
near-term transit service upgrades, we
end up with no improvements to transits
and implementing only highway projects.
The 2025 plan improves upon these
concerns. The revenue estimations no
longer include these unrealistic road
usage charges and scales back ballot
measures to a more realistic goal. It's
important to note that there is still
$14.7 billion in revenue estimations
that SANDAG currently doesn't have the
authority to implement as well as
federal discretionary award projections
which are based on the past 5 years
which is very unrealistic as the current
authorizations expire at the end of
2026.
Additionally, expenditures have made
progress. The large-scale capital
projects are scaled back in favor of
more near-term transit service
enhancements. Circulate supports the new
rapid routes and encourages Sande to
prioritize implementing rapid upgrades
as soon as possible, including the
supportive infrastructure necessary to
ensure that they are actually rapid. I
urge Sand to continue the trends I
outlined in future plans. Thank you.
» Next is Jillian Quint followed by Ian
Hembrey.
» Good morning. My name is Jillian Quint.
I represent the San Diego River Park
Foundation. We are very appreciative
that the San Diego River Trail and
Regional Bikeway is a featured element
in the 2025 regional plan. So many
members of the community, including
residents, regional travelers, and
recreational visitors have been waiting
for the completion of this vital bikeway
for over 20 years. I must also express
our gratitude to Sandax transportation
committee uh chair ZTO and vice chair
Ila Rivera for their strong and decisive
support of the West Valley River
crossing which is the pedestrian and
bike bridge. At last week's
transportation committee um the
leadership urged staff to utilize the
next funding cycle to ensure that this
crossing is funded. The West Valley
Crossing is the crucial missing link
that anchors the entire river trail and
bikeway network. It's a central piece of
the city's natural heritage.
With no known opposition and so many
members of our community, using the
river trail and anticipating the future
enhanced safety and connectivity that
this crossing will bring to unlock the
entire regional bikeway all the way out
to Santi. It truly is a project that
will unite the county. As this West
Valley Crossing project moves forward,
we have one small specific request. We
ask that a note be made in somewhere
that when the design moves ahead for the
West Valley Crossing, it must include
the design eastward trail extension
toward the future Riverwalk trolley
station.
The good news is that the prelim
preliminary design for this extension is
being funded through the Riverwalk
development. However, the projects are
currently split in the regional plan and
with the eastward trail extension lumped
with other projects, their union is
essential because from a design
perspective, you want the pieces to
align. Thank you very much.
» Our next public comment is Ian Henry
followed by Consuel online.
» Good morning, Sandag board. My name is
Ian Henry with the San Diego County
Bicycle Coalition. I want to begin by
thanking Sandag for building some of the
best bike projects in the county. These
projects make biking safer and more
convenient, and they also make our
communities more livable and
sustainable. Uh we're happy to see that
more bike projects are included in this
plan. Um however, there are worrying
signs that present commitment to bike
projects are under threat. In October,
Sandai gave back $3.8 million in grant
funding for the Pacific Highway project,
and the project is missing a project
delivery strategy. Pacific Highway is
one of the most dangerous roadways in
the county and the paded bike lane along
Pacific Highway has earned demerits as
one of the worst bike lanes in the
United States. It is a vital regional
connector serving as the most convenient
corridor to connect many of San Diego's
most dense populous neighborhoods. Last
week, Eric Wood Eric Woodson Jr. was
walking northbound along Pacific Highway
when he was struck by a driver and
killed. The northbound side of Pacific
Highway doesn't have a sidewalk. Only
the southbound side does.
He was killed walking in the street
because there is no sidewalk or he was
trying to cross to the other side that
does. How is Sandag's willingness to
give back grant funds for the most
dangerous roadways in the county
represented in the regional plan? There
are many assumptions about increased
grant funding in this plan, but giving
back grant funds for critical
projects runs counter to that
assumption. We need this board and this
Sandag leadership to commit to
delivering bike projects by building a
project delivery strategy for projects
funding projects that currently have a
project delivery strategy and not giving
back grants that build life-saving
infrastructure as you develop the budget
for this next year. Keep this in mind.
Thank you so much and have a happy
holiday season.
» We have five public comments online. The
first is Consuel followed by Mike
Bulock.
Okay. So, um
217 public commenters. Okay. So, um
index using as proof of public consent.
That number means nothing when the
people you're questioning don't even
understand the true power the true
purpose of this agency. So, uh, you're
gathering opinions from a public that's
been kept in the dark and totally not
informed. Um, you're asking questions,
then using the answers to pretend people
support policies they don't even realize
will restrict their daily lives. And,
um, Sadag exists solely to limit human
mobility and not protect the
environment, restrict movement. uh and
you've packaged it in the nicest words
possible to equity, safety,
sustainability. Meanwhile, younger the
younger generations,
and I say this with sadness, um have
been manipulated so deeply that they are
now cheering their own uh restrictions
and they have no idea their future uh
freedom is being quietly erased under
the language of carbon reduction. And
here's the reality. Nobody on this board
will say out loud, "We are the carbon
they're trying to reduce." That's why
mobility is being targeted, not because
of science, but because controlling
movement means controlling people. And
the forced bike lanes,
um, they're entirely inequitable. And
everywhere I go in this county, people
call them exactly what they are, those
stupid bike lanes. I you not. Like,
they're just known as those stupid bike
lanes. Every demographic calls them
those stupid bike lanes. Anyways,
um yeah. So, you didn't ask the
communities if they wanted them. You
imposed them. You removed lanes,
increase uh congestion, damaged all all
by design. Uh damaged businesses, and
made travel harder for working families.
All to force everyone into a system that
they never agreed to join.
» Thank you. Your time has expired. Next
is Mike Bulock followed by Rod.
» Yeah, thank you very much. Uh this Mike
Bulock. Uh I've introduced myself
before. Uh the FIR for the 2025 RTP does
not comply with SQA because SQA requires
that the significant impacts of the RTP
be described.
The RTP fails to comply with
California's official plan to achieve
climate stabilization. That plan is the
carb scoping plan which calls for
reducing BMT by 25% with respect to 2019
levels by 2030. The RTP with its SCS
claims to reduce driving less than 20%
by 2035, which is 5 years later than
2030. Therefore, the RTP will contribute
to destabilizing the Earth's climate, an
environmental impact that can be briefly
described as ending life forms on Earth,
except for microbiology. Um, it includes
destroying our habitat, resulting in
starvation, mass starvation, and human
extinction. Carb was tasked with
creating its scoping plan under AB32.
Now, there's no excuse for Sandag for
not understanding this. In the famous
September 11th, 2011 letter to Sandag
from the California AG, this was written
in the footnote on page eight. Executive
order S305 is the official policy of the
state of California established by
gubernatorial order in 2005 and
designated to meet the environmental
objective that is relevant under SQA
climate stabilization. SANDAG thus
cannot ignore it. The only difference
now is that S305 has been replaced by
SB32 which was established as a law of
California. Now regarding item two
regarding the second request by the SCS
achieving air conformity, there are in
effect two different carbs. One is law
abiding. That carb created the carb
scoping plan. So that's the carb that
matters. The card that went for less
than 20% by 2035
uh is ignoring SB32 and is ignoring
ignoring the common decency of
» Thank you. Your time has expired. Next
is Rod followed by Paul the Bold.
» Hi. Uh my name is Rod Strier. I am a
member of the community planning group
here in Lakeside and I'm also uh
president of Fixed Pepper Drive
Association. I'm uh really speaking on
behalf of the Fixed Pepper Drive
Association and specifically as a
bicyclist here in San Diego. Um our East
County is not really serviced very well
with bike lanes. The main thing that we
had requested in the public comments, I
was in uh I was one of the people that
commented here when the U draft plan
came by here in Elcohone was to put a
bike lane along Pepper Drive which would
connect two of the major routes uh going
north and south and east county.
Specifically, it would have uh connected
Winter Gardens Boulevard with Magnolia.
um it would be an on street bike way and
so relatively inexpensive. So what I'd
like to do is put into the public record
here that uh we are requesting a bike
lane to be included. Hopefully it'll be
included in the next master plan, but
we'd like to see if this relatively
lowcost
uh bike way could be uh included. It's
about 2 and a half miles and shouldn't
be that uh difficult to uh request. Um
that is my request. So I'd like to put
that on the public record, please.
Next is Paul the Bold followed by the
original draw.
Paul, you're muted.
Great. Um, sorry about that. I'm glad
you answered every comment on the ENIR
and did in fact attach it. One major
issue NCTD brought up on page 126 is
that Sandag overestimated VMT first 20
years because the accuracy of data used
in the EIR and the air conformity GH G
declaration.
As I said, uh I just was reminded that
climate predictions often are based on
one or several particular regions and
are not applicable to all. So the spread
of divergent cap projects with different
goals in the the PFL is wasted money.
Um the letters I know just a little
about making bike lanes safe. I would do
it on a city bycity basis. One set or
size
that are one size or set of guidelines
does not fit all. Restoring the proposed
purple line all the way to Sarrento
Valley to its original lens makes sense.
You should keep your promises and not
overpromise in the first place.
Uh the meeting summary is a bit
disturbing. The planning team had more
presentations to the board than actual
workg groupoup meetings. And I suspect
from my own experience, but the popups
community events were skewed to what
sandag wanted incomplete data and so on.
The focus seems to have been on
stakeholder groups and member agency 156
versus 66 meetings.
So again, commended input was minimized,
probably severely misinformed, too. On
the other hand, I'm glad you answered
every comment on plan,
even if you didn't attend.
» Thank you. Your time has expired. Our
last public comment is the original
draw.
» Anything anytime the government talks
about our health and safety and
protecting or providing it means that
they're going to exploit the people for
profit. That's what you guys do. And
this is all about control. And it's sad
that so many people are encouraging
their own enslavement because they don't
understand because they do buy the
propaganda that you guys give them
because on the surface it seems very
virtuous what you're doing. And so
anybody that you know would believe that
would would want to help and push that.
But if you pull back the curtain and you
see what's really going on, it is about
total control. And you guys, you know,
you take our money and, you know, you
engage with contractors who wind up
costing us more and more money and
delayed projects and things don't really
ever get completed. Yet you start more
and more things and you're hypocrites
because you sit here on one hand and say
you want to protect the health and
safety or reduce greenhouse gases, but
then you don't go to things like another
country to say that the vehicles that
don't have the same emissions as we do
here are going to be polluting in our
area. As you can see in the South Bay,
it has more pollution that you guys say,
right? So, wouldn't you think like it
you could immediately fix things if that
was really what you were doing, but it
isn't. It's about racketeering. It's
about putting people in controlled
situations where you can track and trace
their every movement and make sure you
have them under your thumb. And it's sad
because, you know, you could be doing
things that are in line with what you
speak, practice what you preach, but you
guys don't because, you know, some of
you probably do also buy into the BS
that you are spewing out to the people.
But it's very dangerous because at one
point we're going to get to a place
where we're not going to be able to
leave our own area and people are going
to see that when you're basically, you
know, we're continuing to be giving back
our own sewage. While you guys want to
mine for lithium and use our fresh
water, people need to open up their eyes
and see and they'll see clearly what
you're doing.
» That concludes our public comment on
this item. Chair,
» Very good. Um, Antonette, would you like
to make any clarifications after the
public comments?
» Sure, I can follow up on a on a couple.
Um, first, there were comments about the
scoping plan, and I want to clarify that
the EI does analyze consistency with
KRB's scoping plan. Um the scoping plan
sets statewide goals for VMT and GHG,
not regional. At the regional level, our
requirement related to the scoping plan
is Senate Bill 375. And as I stated in
the presentation, we meet the target
that Karp set for the region per Senate
Bill 375. I think there were other
comments related to transit and uh
suggestions that there's less transit in
this plan. I want to clarify that this
plan has more transit than the 2021
regional plan did. and particularly in
the the near term more cost-effective
improvements to existing transit and
more bus service um in the near term
which was based on a lot of feedback
that we got about the desire for
communities to have service now not 2530
years from now. So those were two things
I just wanted to clarify. Thank you for
that opportunity.
» Sure. Very good. We'll go to member
comments now. We'll start with Miss
Maxon.
» Good morning. Thank you.
the unincorporated area is encouraged to
see the focus on rural corridors. Um,
and that not only are you focusing on
them, but you truly understand the
importance of those rule corridors. If
you're a resident, it's vital for work
and school. Uh, if you're a visitor,
it's important um for your recreational
safety as you come out with your
trailers and all of your off-road
equipment.
the public outreach section uh of the
regional plan uh is lacking in input
from the unincorporated area. So I do
encourage you to come out to where the
people are present. Come out to each of
the 18 community planning groups. Come
out to the sponsor groups. I know you've
done a a little bit of coming out to the
physical location, but there's a lot
more to be done. And if you did, you
might find that programs such as the
youth opportunity pass are equally
embraced both in the urban and suburban
setting and in the rural setting. But
you also might find that the common um
themes under the squa uh the those
themes might be quite different when you
when you listen to the rule voice.
Uh finally, uh as a reminder and for the
record, as we move forward to develop
this advisory seat into a voting seat in
the new year, the Association of
Planning Groups is comprised of all 18
elected official community planning
groups. Those members are elected by
their community. They're on a ballot.
Their membership on the association is a
voting seat. the community sponsor
groups who we also have invited to be
part of the association because we want
to hear their voice. They are not
elected and they are appointed by county
supervisors to be on those boards. In
our association, they also have advisory
board member status. They do not vote.
Um the Association of Planning Groups
looks forward to increased equity and
representation in 2026. Thank you for
presenting the regional plan.
» Thank you, Council Member Molina. Thank
you very much, Chair Heapner. Thank you
for the presentation and um all of the
comments regarding the EIR. I appreciate
all of that. Uh, Miss Antuinette, I
wanted to ask you some clarification
about uh your comments regarding um the
designation about rapid um buses and and
I know that our or at least in the EIR
it does state expanding bus rapid
transit and um rapid bus lines, but uh
can you help me understand what you your
comment earlier regarding uh the the
actual definition of rapid and perhaps
it not quite fitting to what what we
have for buses for rapid bus lines.
Thank you.
» And my comment was specific to Senate
Bill 79 which says that a rapid bus has
dedicated infrastructure exclusive for
the bus service
uh allo boarding and transit signal um
priority all of those things. We have
some of those things in some areas in
the region. At the regional plan level
though we don't know what types of
priority measures we will have on a on a
particular route. It's really a line on
a on a map that gets refined as we get
into the more uh detailed planning
alternatives analysis and ultimately
going through the environmental stage.
But it is assumed that we will have some
measures maybe signal priority Q jumps
in some areas dedicated lanes managed
lanes are um planned through out the the
regional network and will help to
facilitate the rapid routes. But the
exact um the exact route, the exact
stops and the exact priority measures
are confirmed later in the the planning
alongside you and the transit operators.
» Good. First, vice chair Lava.
» Oh, thank you, Chair. Uh I want to thank
Mario onet Kirsten and all the staff who
have worked so very hard to bring the
regional plan the environmental document
forward and all the public who have
provided input a plan we do every four
years that was started in earnest three
years ago. Three years of relentless
outreach and analysis as was documented
in the presentation. The plan before us
today delivers key projects across our
region with more transit improvements
than any prior plan. New bus routes, 36
neighborhood shuttles, and so much more.
reflects the priorities we hear every
day in our communities. Improved
mobility, affordability, climate action,
and economic opportunity. It's also
rooted in reality, acknowledging our
funding constraints and limitations. I
appreciate the plan before us today
focuses on putting our dollars towards
projects we can really deliver. The
practical approach that will yield
better, faster results for our region.
We must continue to direct our focus on
what we can realistically develop and
deliver within this time frame. The plan
also reflects past promises made in our
commitment to keeping those promises.
And although this plan has the smallest
roadway expansion foot footprint thus
far, it does reflect past promises kept
to deliver some of those long-awaited
projects in the pipeline. I appreciate
the commitment to keeping and earning
trust through the delivery of legacy
projects. It is also important to note,
as we've heard over and over again, that
this plan is driven by the greenhouse
gas reduction target set by carb. We are
meeting this target by setting bold
goals to focus future residential and
employment growth specifically in areas
with options like faster and frequent
transit, complete corridors, flexible
fleets, bikeways, and walkable
neighborhoods. This plan aligns regional
investments with our local goals,
strengthening connections between where
people live, work, learn, and play. And
residents in our region will see
tangible improvements, better transit
reliability, safer corridors, and
cleaner air. I also want to thank not
only the staff but all the board members
uh who have helped shape this plan over
the past four years. And I'll close by
adding my support for trying to figure
out the funding solution to the West
Valley Crossing as we heard from the
public testimony. Thank you, mayor. If
it's appropriate, I'll go ahead and move
that recommendation.
» Thank you very much. Um and we'll go to
Deputy Mayor Chavez. And would you like
to second this?
» I would like to second.
» Very good.
Sorry, I'm still dealing with the
sequels of some bronchitis. Um, so I'm
I'm just going to be brief. We need more
bathrooms. I can't express that enough.
We need to include him. I know we have
taken them away in the past. We need to
find a way. Uh, we have a lot of elderly
uh youth u just parents with children.
We need to be mindful moving forward
that we need to include more bathrooms.
We need to do better. I can talk about
the 125 being a necessity for the South
Bay. You've heard me play this song like
a broken record. I'm not going to give
it up. We need this 125 to be free. And
also the Purple Line since we house
every single day, not house, but we have
daytime visitors uh around more than
100,000 people coming from south to
north to work, to study, for tourism. I
would love to see a deadline in the near
future for the purple line and when
that's happening. Thank you so much.
» Very good. Um, Council Member um, Edson
from NCTD.
» Thank you, Chair. NCTD's priorities for
the plan include Sprinter fleet
replacement, double tracking to improve
system reliability and enhance transit
rider experience, coaster double
tracking to improve system reliability
and enhance the transit rider
experience. Grade separation along
coaster and sprinter corridors to
improve safety and reduce congestion in
surrounding communities.
Breeze bus increase capacity on key
corridors. NCTD plus implementation in
strategic settings to support access to
fixed route transit service expand
transit's reach and respond to transit
writers desire for ondemand transit
service. With regard to connections, new
services in the regional plan should
promote connections at key transit hubs.
Additionally, NCTD offers the following
feedback in response to the projects
proposed in the plan. NCTD proposes
including Sprinter fleet replacement as
a transit project in the plan. And CTD
suggests including a prioritized list of
railroad grade separation projects in an
appendix to the plan. And finally, NCTD
strongly supports the following
near-term and long-term actions
identified in the plan. Identifying
sustainable funding to continue YOP.
Developing a strategy for implementing
grade separation projects that improve
safety and rail operations. Continuing
to implement low sand rail corridor
improvement projects to improve safety,
resiliency, and reliability on the
corridor.
corridor, sorry. Continue seeking
sustainable funding for transit
operations and flexible fleets in
partnership with MTS and NCTD. Thank
you.
» Thank you, Council Member Shin.
» Thank you, Chair. Thank you, staff, uh,
so much for this presentation. And I, as
I was trying my best to read the whole
thing, that must be quite a bit of, uh,
work that you guys created. our city
staff created a letter and I know we got
feedback back and I just wanted a little
bit more clarification in regards to um
the EIR is comprehensive countywide
region regionwide um but the question
was asked from our staff of subreional
analysis and I just wanted to get a
better understanding of why we aren't
able to do more sub regional analysis on
um you know on our EIR and and different
strategies. What we're required to do is
a regional analysis. That's not to say
outside of the regional plan and the EI
we couldn't work with you to or your
staff to look at subregional analysis.
» I think it I think it should be
considered um like almost across the
board. You know, when I'm listening to
everyone's concerns, I'm hearing about
the rural areas, the urban areas. I
would love to see when I hear the
comments and the stress about the 67
freeway and it's so far removed from me.
I'd love to see the metrics of not just
the fact that um the default is the
regional area, but subregionally we have
to take exceptions meaning that okay the
67 may alleviate some traffic but that
might not be the priority of why we're
doing it. It may be the public safety
reason or
um some folks live in the coastal area,
some folks live in the inland area and
those sub regions require such a
dramatically you know different sense of
permitting processes. what we can do.
Some areas aren't built up for
infrastructure. Those costs are so
different. And I it would just be great
to be able to kind of get a little bit
more granular with these opportunities
as opposed to saying what works in one
area must work in another. We kind of
deal with that in regards to the state
housing. And I would just like to see
that we're not going to be the same um
curators of that philosophy, if you
will. So, yield back.
» Thank you very much, Mayor Gastelin.
Thank you so much uh Antonette. Thank
you for your time yesterday walking
through this and thank you for all the
time for four years that have gone into
this. You know the next one's going to
start next week, right?
» Maybe six months.
» So I wanted to say a little bit about
how I approached reading the regional
transportation plan and the EIR. Um, I
first read the 471 pages of the
appendix, which is Sandag's responses to
all of the comments that came into the
EIR. I found Carl'sbad's letter about
the subregional analysis to be very
compelling. I found the Coastal
Commission's letter asking for
consistency with the North County
coastal cities LCPs, local coastal
programs, and sea level rise compelling.
And I also found the coastal
commission's making it clear, asking to
make it clear that planning for
realignment of the tracks in Delmare,
now I sound like a broken record, by
2035, be crystal clear in this plan. So
that brings me to three points which are
also questions. Um, one of the themes
that came out was habitat and funding
for habitat conservation.
It mentions table 25 in the in the RTP
um talks about habitat for $ 1.5 billion
dollars. Could you elaborate on that a
little bit?
» Um so 1.5 billion is there for programs
like the EMP, but this is above and
beyond what we currently have in the the
EMP. Um Keith or Kirsten, I don't know
if you want to talk a little bit about
the types of programming uh that are
covered by that funding.
Keith, thank you also for yesterday's
briefing.
» My pleasure. Good morning, board. So, a
question came up about the habitat
funding in the original plan. So, right
now, the regional plan looks at two
things. One is the mitigation. That's
the requirements to offset the
transportation projects and those are
embedded in the cost in the regional
plan. There's also look ahead of what
else would be needed above and beyond
that for the region. The regional plan
has a figure in there of $ 1.5 billion
as you mentioned that's in the habitat
plans for the acquisition and completion
of the regional um acquisition of lands
related to the regional plan itself and
you've heard today a desire for some
people to push that beyond and to
complete the funding for the region. So
that's above and beyond the regional
plan itself. That would be an additional
$ 1.5 billion. But there's a commitment
in the regional plan to complete an
assessment of what's needed for the
region to do the habitat conservation
plans that many jurisdictions have
approved and what it would take to
finish those plans up both cost and
actual implementation that will be
completed as part of the regional plan's
near-term implementation this fall.
» Great. Thank you. This is a really
important part of the plan and I wanted
to make sure that we all understood that
this is there. It little tiny habitat
losses can be huge. For example, the
0.28 wetlands that were lost recently
with the paving of basically a half a
mile of wetland along the toe of the
bluff up above east of the railroad
tracks. The frogs aren't there anymore.
They're gone. And I know I sound like a
broken record on that also, but they're
wonderful frogs and we don't have many
frog habitats here in San Diego County.
Um TL00003
is Oceanside to downtown San Diego and
it includes realignment in Delmare.
That's a $4.3 billion item that's only
in the north county part. Is that $4
billion mostly going to be the cost of
the actual realignment itself?
TL003.
» You can answer that question later if
you don't have the answer immediately
right now. That's okay. Yeah. So, let's
let's pin that question. And the last is
in reading through all the items for
each of the different regions. So we
have north county, east county, central
county and south county. There's some
elephants that appear multiple times. An
example is TL00004
which is 9.144 billion. And that one is
Camp Pendleton to downtown San Diego
grade separations curve straightening
myar tunnel. And that's a 2050 visionary
item, but it appears three times. So I
just want to make sure that when you add
it all up, that nine billion dollars is
counted only once and not three times.
So can you confirm that
and if you don't have that right away,
you can. Yeah, let's just make sure the
math is right. So we have so to
summarize, we have a 125 billion
strategic plan. It's all in. And I think
it's very important to note that this is
not just SANDAG's budget. This is also
Calrans. There there funds involved here
that are Calrans funds, MTS funds, NCTD
and housing projects and more.
» So the $125 billion is more than Sandag.
Sandag's at the heart of it. So I I
wanted to echo that. We talked about
that yesterday.
» Hi, Rachel Kennedy. and um one of the
planning managers here at Sandex. So we
do have some projects in appendix A
where we list them in multiple sub
regions because they're projects that
provide access and benefit to multiple
multiple sub regions but we only count
the cost one time. So yes,
» Just making sure.
» Thank you, Mayor Mento.
» Well, thanks for the opportunity to
speak. A lot of work. There's no doubt
otherwise it wouldn't have taken three
or four years. Well, unless you guys
just, you know, going that slow. I don't
think so.
» So, I just kind of want to put some
things into perspective
uh for if not at least for myself, for
me maybe many others and others who are
uh looking on. This is I think my third
maybe my fourth regional plan that I've
been involved in.
And one thing that I realize is that the
county and the cities are all
responsible for transportation and
environment and whatnot within their
jurisdictions.
Unfortunately, many many years or I
should say fortunately many many years
ago it was found that we couldn't do
that very well individually. The money
wasn't there individually at the county
level or the city level. So they created
this crazy organization here to try and
coordinate all that together. So when we
all talk about um specific regional uh
areas, that's okay because they have to
be represented. And uh you know, Kevin,
you you touched on it that uh we don't
always speak specifically about like for
instance, I don't talk about what's
going on in in your neck of the woods
and you don't really talk about what's
going on in my area, but I think uh one
thing that we realize is that we do have
to help each other to make sure that
things get accomplished.
And so uh that's one thing that um I
want to continue to encourage is
everybody keep thinking regionally. It's
not just about our individual um places.
And then when we talk about um reducing
vehicle miles traveled, one of the
things that we sometimes don't talk
about is the fact that in the last few
years we've uh been encouraging
manufacturing and businesses to uh
spread out and not to be in just one
area, whether it's Sereno Valley or
downtown, etc. So what happens is that
people don't necessarily always have to
travel as far to go from maybe the east
county to Seno Valley or downtown. And
so that helps to reduce vehicle miles
traveled. So having more um
manufacturing and business spread out is
something that we should also
continuously talked about with with our
economic development councils and our
even our um community uh com chambers of
commerce,
excuse me.
One thing I do want to also talk about
is um some of the comments that were
made about uh public safety as far as
pedestrian and bicycle lanes and um
there's every bit of work that we do to
engineer bicycle lanes, pedestrian
safety, and even motor vehicle safety.
It can only go so far. We have to take
in consideration that there are so many
people out there that do not exercise
personal safety when they're driving,
walking, or bicycling. And as tragic as
it is that there would be somebody
severely injured or even killed in these
areas, we have to also remember it's not
necessarily always the roadway or the
infrastructure that did that. Um, I have
personally bicycled over 6,000 miles on
the roads in East County and part of La
Mesa and Lemong Grove. I' I've mentioned
it many times here and I continue to see
people that are riding bicycles in an
unsafe manner. They ride on the wrong
side of the street. I see people walking
in the street and um where they
shouldn't be or you would think that
common sense would say you don't walk in
the street if there's a sidewalk. And
so, and and I don't want to say any of
this to diminish, you know, the
tragedies that occur. I just want us to
also consider that we can't spend every
dime that we have to make a street safe
when people won't act safely on those
streets and whatnot. So, um, so that was
important for me. And then and I do want
to address real quickly uh that uh the
gentleman Ryan that mentioned the pepper
grow uh pepper drive um uh bicycling
lanes u and the fact that it would be
pretty inexpensive just to you know draw
some lines down there. Well, I've been
on that road many times and I try not to
go on that road because it's unsafe. Not
just because there's not a bicycle lane,
but because the road conditions there
are terrible. Um, it's really old there,
for instance. And so there there's not
really a curb. There's not a gutter.
There's no sidewalks. So, you'd have to
do a complete infrastructure change
there. And I know that uh our supervisor
for that area would love to do that, but
you know what? The county still has
limited funds also. And um I know in my
city we got a grant and to me it was
wasted money because we put bicycle
lanes on a roadway that was just unsafe
for anybody to drive on because of the
condition of the roadway. And so then
you know 6 months a year later we come
by and we re repave that road. Now we
got to spend all that money again to put
bicycle lanes and traffic lanes. So we
also have to think about when do we put
this stuff on the roadways? Are we
spending money and then we're going to
have to respend it? So, that's a waste
of time, waste of money. And um I think
we get a lot of that at our local
levels. People talk about that thing all
the time. Uh why did you do this? You're
wasting money. Well, I think we should
at this much higher level think about
the same thing. What do we have to do
first in order to save the greatest
amount of money to make our roads as
safe as possible? considering that not
everybody appreciates the work that we
do. And that's all I have to say.
» Thank you, Mayor Jones.
» Thank you so much, Chair. Uh, first I'd
like to start by saying this um this
plan, thank you for all of the work uh
that staff put into it, but also for
leadership because I I have to say after
being on the board uh when the last plan
came forward and then now it's a totally
different experience. I actually feel
heard. Um, and I know that many of us,
you know, do feel feel the same way, you
know. Um,
the transparency that is in this and not
not having to feel like you have to look
and read things over and over to see if
you're reading it right because things
are hidden. That that to me is a is a
big deal. Um, you know, so I I do have a
couple of clarifying questions and then
I have um some other comments. But first
of all, there's no local road user
charge or tax or fee or anything in this
plan. Right.
» Correct. Okay. I want everyone to hear
that. So when we have people out there
dramatizing and acting like there
actually is one in here, there's not one
in here that's a local road user tax or
fee. Um there is however the state one
which we have no control over. It it is
in this plan. Um there's no federal one
though, but there was at our last in the
last plan it was federal, state and
local. No local uh one in this one. Um
there is however a 3/4 cent tax that
will be predicted and this so us
approving this plan does not mean that
we are approving a tax. It means that we
know that we're going to need some sort
of uh funding mechanism that's about 3/4
of a cent. You know, for me, I always
talk about OPM in my city. Everyone
knows exactly what I mean when I say
that, but it's other people's money. Um
I do know that we need to have local
funds to get matching funds. So, uh
that's kind of the u the more complex
part of this, but um I I do want to talk
specifically about Transnet.
I was thinking it ended in 2040 and then
I looked on chat GBT and then I and it
said 2048. So, it's actually 2048.
» Um and then and by the way, I never use
it. I thought, you know, everyone tells
me to use it. I'm I'm going to fact
check things. Um, so it so this plan
actually says that there will be a new
tax approved, I believe, in 2038,
starting in 20
» I think 2036.
» Is it 2039?
Sorry. So this would be only if
residents of the county
» Vote for this.
» Correct. Good morning. U Michelle Smith,
manager of financial programming. Yes.
So we assume one an additional transnet
sales tax in 2038 for the three
quarters. The other sales tax that's
closer is the MTS sales tax that is
assumed for 2036
» And that would be just for the MTS
service area.
» Correct. And the 2038 is it starts in
2038 or it's approved and it needs to be
approved in 2038.
» It would be approved in 2038. So what we
assumed is like a small like a quarter
of that would be in 2038 and the rest
would start later.
» Correct. Okay. Um, and then um, okay,
thank you on that. I just wanted to get
clarification on that. You know, and you
know, back to the whole transparency. I
know that all of North County, we've
been talking time and time again, we did
not want any current lanes and that this
was in the last plan, which everyone
knows. Um, no current lanes on the
freeways to be converted from a regular
general purpose lane into a manage lane,
toll road, anything like that. I just
want to get clarification on that
because again, you know, this is one of
the things that we were running into. I
think in the last plan that was so
frustrating because we would ask these
questions and our director at the time
would say, "Well, that's not what it
says." But it actually was what it said.
It was just named something different.
So, I just want to get clarification.
There are no lanes in um in North County
that are on that are highway lanes on
the 15, the 78, the five that are going
to be converted to um lanes that are
general purpose lanes. the HOV lanes on
the five, but not the general purpose
lanes, and we're adding managed lanes on
the 78.
» Correct. Adding not, it's a new ad, not
uh something that's current and
existing. This is a big deal because,
you know, we've talked about this time
and time again. It's been very
frustrating. And I did see in here
finally uh the um oh, let me find it
real quick. My tabs everywhere. uh the
uh TL046
on page A20 of appendix A, that's the um
new uh bus rapid transit.
So I I do want to I do want to mention
that because 2035 is when it's predicted
to happen. Um is that correct? No.
» So we don't do year-by-year phasing in
the regional plan. So that's by 2035. We
kicked off planning for that now. So,
the likelihood that it'll be much sooner
uh than 2035, but it's in that time
frame, the early years of the plan.
» Perfect. I wanted to double check on
that because, you know, we have the new
scripts hospital that's coming to San
Marco specifically and then Kaiser
Permanente just opened up. Um but that's
going to land at um and that's from
Riverside, Tmacula area to Palomar
College and then um also CSUSM. Correct.
» Yes. And we're doing the route planning
now. So if there are other stops that
you want us to consider, we'll be
working with your staff, NCTD and the
other jurisdictions to identify that.
» So I've specifically heard from Palomar
Hospital and then also uh Kaiser
Permanente. So those two um if we
haven't reached out to them, I would
definitely um like for that to happen.
And then um let's see. I think that was
it. I mean I I really I really am just
loving the um uh the NCTD plus which you
know I know Juwel's here today for them.
We we really are um finding that that is
so helpful for people in our community.
Obviously, we want to expand that, but I
I really like seeing that we're also
bringing that to Fbrook and some of the
unincorporated areas because if you
don't have it yet, and I know um
Escandido, uh Dane's over there, you're
going to love it. It's great. It's on
demand. Um our residents really find it
beneficial and they can't they just
can't say enough about it. So, anyway, I
love it when I come into my little
neighborhood and I see it. I see it
there. Um, uh, stopped and and read and
picking up people. So, it's really a
great thing. Um, and I know that our
high school students want to use it. So,
I think that's one of the things that
would be helpful. And other than that,
um, oh, one other thing, SB 375, when do
we think there might we might see some
reform on that? Because there's been a
lot of discussion about that. week we
will be coming to the executive
committee in January to bring up where
we are with the discussions and ask
guidance from the executive committee of
where we should continue going
» And might some executive committee
members uh end up going to Sacramento to
talk about this because I would love to
be part of that. I I know Cher and I
have talked about that. Um we definitely
need to hear from everyone. I think
that, you know, we need some reform on
this and some relief.
» Perfect.
» Thank you.
» Thank you. Um, Council Member Fischer,
» Thank you, Chair. I just want to echo
the sentiments from Mayor Jones. You
know, I was on the board a few years
back. All we talked about was the
mileage tax and getting out of the plan.
It really was um I felt it was laborious
just hearing about I can't imagine how
staff felt about having to go back and
create a plan and get all the approvals.
Um it's good to see a plan that doesn't
involve this um big thing of five big
moves and all the stuff that seems like
it'd be nice but probably unrealistic
and staff have to just run around and
figure out how to do it. And and to
Mayor Mayor Jones's comments, you know,
we we heard a lot from from the seat
over here um that made us think things
were okay, but um it really wasn't.
There wasn't a whole lot of
transparency. So I appreciate the
transparency. I appreciate staff
bringing something to the board um
that's very practical in nature. Um, you
know, I can't imagine what it's like
doing a plan like this. I figure it's
probably aching to having a family of
six going on vacation, having to pack
all their clothes for two seasons and
three weeks in a suitcase and hoping it
fits on the airplane um is and is okay,
but uh staff always does a great job
with this. We've heard a lot of support
for the youth opportunity pass. I'm a
big believer that it has been good for
our region. I mentioned it once in a
board meeting probably a little bit more
passively but I you know as we go
forward I really want to look at
something providing something for our
seniors um and and something that you
know be like a senior responsibility
pass youth at some point turn into young
adults into adults seniors don't really
change from being seniors and we know
that their their large population is
growing for um being h unhoused and I'm
sure the financial strains are very
difficult on them and I think that it
would be something that we should look
at. Um because at some point we will
have a lot of seniors who will be
needing transportation and probably will
be struggling unlike our youth who I've
heard we we've heard from today. I'm
grateful they're here in attendance and
to speak up. That's that's wonderful. Uh
but I think our seniors should probably
have some opportunities in in the future
to have access to transit for a reduced
or free uh cost. Thank you.
» Thank you, Supervisor Gary.
» Thank you, Chair. I I want to start by
thanking staff um for all of their work
around this plan. I I think it's really
great that it's guided by convenience,
equity, health, and safety. Uh
obviously, uh those are priorities for a
region that we've all, including the
board and staff, have been working very
very hard to prioritize. I I want to
center my remarks around equity. I think
that it's incredibly important to ensure
that um people have the same uh
opportunities in all of our regions
throughout the county. Uh I think it's
very important to uh make sure that our
uh public transit for example offers
opportunities especially for uh you know
young adults that are uh on their path
to entering the workforce uh have the
ability to uh reach uh job centers uh
that are accessible by transit. So I
think I really I really like that we're
moving in the right direction with the
purple line. I think that's incredibly
important. I think it's also important
to um look at uh the 24hour um and
express service for the blue line, the
black the backbone of our public transit
system that is um so important for so
many people who work and and come across
the border um on a daily basis. I think
that's incredibly important. Um, I think
it's really important to focus on the
flexible fleet microtransit because it
not only brings benefits uh to reducing
greenhouse gas emissions, but especially
in in unincorporated areas in more of
the rural areas or where there's more
limited public transit like in North
County, I think that first mile, last
mile traveled will be um essential and
and by implementing these types of
fleets will be very important. So, I I
appreciate that we're focusing on that.
And then as it relates to uh safety, I
think it's great that we're focusing on
complete corridors. Um I just wanted to
mention the Federal Highway
Administration evaluations show that
complete corridor treatment reduces
crashes by 19 to 47%
with strong reductions in pedestrian
safety. Raise medians and pedestrian
refuge islands reduce pedestrian crashes
by 46%.
Curb extensions uh reduce pedestrian
crashes for by up to 40%. And we know
that every 10 miles per hour that are
reduced, the likelihood of someone
surviving increases. So if you are
involved in a crash, if you're a
pedestrian that gets struck by a car
moving at 40 miles hour, your likelihood
of surviving is something close to 5%.
If it's 30 miles per hour, your chances
of surviving increase. Especially uh
when you're talking about between 20 and
25 miles per hour, your chances of
surviving exceed 85 to 90%. Now, I'm not
advocating, of course, for freeways to
be limited to 20 miles per hour. But
it's important because as we look at the
next five years, planning regionally,
these complete corridors are incredibly
important for especially families that
are walking their kids, seniors that are
um having trouble crossing a a very wide
roadway and may not be fast enough to
beat the red light. We are seeing an
unprecedented amount of uh deaths. I'm
pretty sure you've been watching it
every day on the news. there's a new uh
you know accident a fatal accident and
um I think it's important that you know
we do it planning well it may not be
right for some communities as the mayor
mental mentioned but for example in
Imperial Beach where we have it's a
bedroom comm community where we have a
lot of young families with kiddos that's
absolutely essential to to ensure that
uh families um can can walk to and from
school uh in a safe way. So, I I think
that's that's really important. And I'll
just close with um thanking uh staff
again for all of your hard work um and
um echoing my colleagues uh calls to um
um address the issue with the 125 and
continuing to uplift the youth
opportunity passes, which is incredibly
important to me, too. Thank you very
much.
» Thank you, Mayor Sanchez.
Thank you very much. Um I want to thank
staff for the presentation. Um I
actually want to thank um uh staff and
uh my colleagues. Um because it's my
first year on Sandag and of course I had
heard a few things about what had
happened in the past and so I wondered
what this year was going to be like. I
want to say that I've I've been um uh
thoroughly amazed at the level of uh
cooperation, coordination, and and just
being able to be heard. Um as the most
northern um city in San Diego County um
and certainly
having different needs than say a
metropolitan area, I' I've really
appreciated being heard. um um it's it's
uh at c certain levels at government I
you know we feel like uh there are
certain assumptions that are made that
just don't apply and so uh for me to uh
be able to see that our diverse
communities in San Diego County um the
needs are are being heard and are being
taken into consideration um by uh
regional plans and and by um I want to
say our colleagues colleagues here um is
truly refreshing and for me it's about
unity and in trying to get uh the best
for our entire um county. um in
Oceanside especially
um we have over 60 I think it's about
64% of our workforce um driving on five
talk talking about um how we need to
reduce our uh greenhouse gas um to work
every day how do and that's that's a
something that we need to figure out how
to do um for me and and what I'm seeing
it's the microtransit
has really really helped and is helping
us to um in terms of in planning
internally to meet the needs of our
community and it does sound like this
year there's even more interest in
microtransit I think I think um others
have said this is what we need this is
this is the gap this is something that
we thought we were going to get 25 years
ago um we're getting it now I feel that
this um does build trust This is kind of
like ground zero in terms of okay, this
is where we're heading. If we are going
to be be needing another tax, it is
going to get a lot more of us at the
table saying, yeah, this, you know, we
can all agree these are their needs
based on, you know, all the all the uh
needs of the of of our diverse um
geographically diverse communities. Then
we can, you know, look to
a a better future for our communities.
Um yesterday I was a little down because
I heard that six of our businesses were
closing. Uh mostly restaurants, even
longtime long-term ones. And I know that
um you know things for us um and I'm
sure in other places some of our
affordable housing is being replaced by
unattainable housing, high density, and
we don't want to see that. We want to
ensure that we can be able to survive
and thrive um as communities, each one
of us. So, we're looking to see how can
we make things better at every level.
So, thank you very much.
» Thank you. Um I see Mayor Mentos back up
again.
» Yeah, I'm sorry about having to speak a
second time, but there's something I
completely forgot.
» Hard to believe, right? Um Mario
mentioned the um CALR and the 50 highway
52 meeting we had last night in Santi
and the reason why I wanted to bring it
up because it's about hope. uh you know
in 2019 I came up with this crazy idea
about uh doing some things to increase
the flow of traffic on Highway 52
because for so long almost since the day
it was built all I ever heard was
complaints about we can't get out of
Santi people from Elcohone can't get
through the bottlenecks and so um people
coming southbound on the 15 coming home
can't get to the transition to the 52
east uh very well and so We started
talking with uh Sandag of course. Uh we
met with um all the leaders over at CALR
uh very early on. Then started just
going out you know around the
communities and talking then with the
state representatives, the federal
representatives, even the US Chamber of
Commerce saying we need help. And so um
unfortunately things were uh delayed a
little bit because of some pandemic
thing. But um but what happened in 2019,
one of the ideas was to uh take and uh
create a new transition from 15 south to
52 east. And so uh even though we were
raising the money, CALR saw that that
was an extremely important um project to
take on. And believe it or not, from the
inception of that con the concept of
doing that to uh the design the
engineering the planning design u
environmental all the stuff that
normally goes into that today that
actually is cons that portion of it is
uh completed the transition has changed
and it is actually much easier to get on
the 52 east. So for a 5-year from
conception to completion and I'm talking
about construction that means you know
pavement on the ground 5 years is
absolutely almost unheard of. So, if you
work hard enough and you have really uh
good partners and um District 11 is one
of the best partners in CALR in my
opinion uh to work with because we do
things that other places when I'm
traveling around the state talking to
other cities.
They're always asking how do you get
those things done? Today we're in the
process of uh getting some changes on
the 52 going westbound so that we can
get those uh the bottlenecks that happen
in Santi which cause actually some
environmental harm um because of all the
cars uh idling. Uh we expect now and
take that from about uh it was scheduled
to be done in 2050 and we expect that to
be completed now I think in 2034.
Uh so to you know reduce um you know
that kind of um issue by 25 years uh
we're going to have to still work on
some of the other things the 78 the 67
but uh we I think we have some good
formulas to get that work done a lot
sooner and a lot faster than we ever
thought that could be done. So I just
wanted to give that message of hope.
» That's good. Thank you. Um, Council
Member Edson.
» Thank Thank you, Chair. Um,
Mayor Jones touched uh on the mixed
rapid 483, which reminded me that I
neglected to mention that NCTD has
expressed concerns regarding the mixed
rapid 483
uh commuter express from Tmacula to
Palomar Airport College via I-15, SR78,
CSUSM.
um due to budget and operational
constraints. Um we support the concept
absolutely but requests that it come
with a sustainable source of operations
operational funding. Um also I just
wanted to take a moment to acknowledge
and thank staff for the work that went
into creating the plan and um the robust
contributions from the board and from
the public are also appreciated. Thanks.
Thank you, Council Member Lee.
» Thank you, Chair, and um thank you to
the team for your um hard work on
bringing this plan to fruition. I've of
course only been here for the tail end
of it, or at least what feels like um
that, but the efforts to really engage
the public, I think, have been critical
here. And and and what I always
recognize is that what everyone is
advocating for doesn't necessarily all
make it into the plan uh for for a
variety of reasons. Um, and we should be
willing to acknowledge that the plan's
not going to address every need that has
been expressed. Uh, but it is an
opportunity for us to really chart in in
the realistic time frame what we believe
can be accomplished. I find that same
thing at the city of San Diego. We often
struggle, I think, as agencies to think
about what we're planning in terms of
capacity and a vision and then what
actually can come to fruition as well.
and and we need both. You need to be
able to dream and have a vision that is
um long-term and bold enough that you
can be shooting for something, but you
also actually have to have projects that
can be completed. Um and I do believe
that this um RTP does accomplish a bit
of that. There there are a couple things
in it that I do want to note in
particular. Um one is the increase of
microtransit and the talk about
community shuttles. Uh for me in
particular, the Kurtie Mason convoy area
is one that has been discussed quite a
bit at least within the city of San
Diego. Um being a growing uh both
industrial, commercial, soon residential
hub. Um tied to that though is of course
the Purple Line. And I I I want to
acknowledge all those who have continued
to advocate and fight for ensuring that
the Purple Line is not just on a back
burner somewhere, but that it is part of
the long-term vision of what we need to
accomplish. just maybe not within the
the shorter time frame that we've
previously envisioned. The Purple Line I
think is going to be critical for the
the region especially again running up
through some of the most critical uh
economic corridors uh especially in that
Sono Valley Serno Mesa area moving
forward. Um and then one last thing I
just thought I would ask about since it
came from um some of the public comment
uh even today. Um but as we look at
designing bike infrastructure um in the
region um and I know there's always
going to be debate about where and what
infrastructure is wanted, needed etc. um
those debates will always happen but
when we have put into a plan um
infrastructure that we are planning on
um I I think it's important that we have
best practices that help us guide the
design of that infrastructure. And so I
I know folks have mentioned that some of
the previous language around design
standards specifically with NATO aren't
lined out in this plan and and wanted to
ask again you know the the thinking
behind that and how sand plans to move
forward so that as we guide bike
infrastructure from a sand perspective
we ensure that design guidelines are
applicable across the region.
» Thank you council members. So at the
regional plan level we don't get into
project specific design. We don't have
design guidelines for any of the
projects, our transit projects, the
roadway projects. Um, and that is why
the NACTO design guidelines were removed
between draft and final because it's
really not appropriate at the regional
plan level. We get into that when we
start designing bike projects and you
all do when you start designing B bike
projects.
» Thank you again for sharing that as
well. That concludes my comments. Thank
you.
» Thank you. Mayor Jones, did you have a
follow-up comment?
» You're on the board.
» Yes. Sorry. I just It was about the
funding. So, um I know that Riverside
used to actually fund a part of that um
uh that bus rapid from Riverside. So,
maybe we check out check with them to
see if they would be willing to um be
participating in that.
» Yeah.
» Yeah. Once we implement project specific
mitigations
uh in in the environmental document that
um hasn't yet been finalized for 1578,
but it's in the process. The draft went
out. it has on the on the mitigation
that part of the managed lane revenues
will be going to subsidize transit which
is into that line. Um, you know, I have
to say that like Canton has said it,
it's not a project specific the regional
plan. The regional plan is a snapshot of
what we can achieve by 2035 or post 2035
to 2050 to achieve those goals that the
federal government and the state
governments are asking us. Then we have
to have and we have begun the
conversation on funding priorities and
we we began that here uh just recently
and we will continue that. Um so it it
is very important that we understand
that this is kind of the big snapshot
but we do have some challenges ahead of
us how to funding specific projects and
also a big challenge that the entire San
Diego region northsoutheast west will
have to have all of us is also dealing
with the financial cliffs that our
transit agencies are dealing with. So
that's a big conversation. It's not
within the regional plan conversation,
but we are bringing it up. Uh and I
think it is something that during the
next coming calendar year,
leadership here as well as in North
County Transit and MTS boards as well as
each of your individual city councils
will have to have that hard discussion.
» Yeah. And you know, just to follow up on
that, um, so recently, well, I guess it
was last week, um, I was, uh, speaking
to leadership over at NCTD and I was
mentioning, you know, there are a lot of
beneficiaries from these specific
projects. Like for instance, in in, um,
my city with the microtransit, you have
Pelomar, you have CSU, San Marcus, you
have the school district, um, San Marcus
Unified, and then also North City, which
is our new downtown that's emerging. I I
suggested to them that we start having
um meetings to talk about what they
would be willing to participate in
because financing isn't all going to
come from one place. Again, I'm going to
say it again, OPM. Um other people's
money. I mean, when we cobble money
together, it's less than one person
paying for it and it's, you know, kind
of spread out. So, um, if we aren't
having conversations with the
transportation agency up in Riverside, I
suggest we at least start that, um, so
that we could see what their level of
interest would be and then we figure out
who benefits the most. And again, you
know, back to the participants that
actually, um, would benefit. Palomar
Hospital, CSU, San Marcos, Palomar
College, Scripps, Kaiser, I mean all of
the different um you know if you can
make it stop then but there should be
some participation level financially in
that
» And not to deviate from the conversation
of the regional plan but you brought up
uh SB 375 and um setting up some trips
uh to have those discussions in
Sacramento
um next year the the funding package for
the trans transportation bill is up for
discussion in Congress. So I think we
will organize as a region also to
advocate at the federal level all the
different funding paths for the next
transportation bill. So hopefully you
could come with us also to Washington
that advocacy.
» Yes. Thanks.
» Road trip. We'll all go. Um well, thank
you everybody. Thank you staff so very
very much. I have to say it was really
gratifying to hear all of the comments.
Um, there was a real intentional change
in the way this particular RTP was
crafted as was said. It was started
three years ago. So, if you're new to
this board, the person who was sitting
in your seat previously was in workshops
drawing lines and putting stickies on
maps and really working hard to do the
put on their regional hat as well as
their city hat and understand that this
is a required plan. we've got all these
goals and uh that we have to meet,
metrics that we have to meet. Um but
this turns out to be a really great
example of what happens when you listen
to the locals. Um it would be lovely if
other levels of government did the same
thing. But when you listen to the
locals, you can actually put together a
plan that works for us all because the
beauty of this re region is in our
diversity. And I mean that in every
every sense of that word. Each of our
cities is unique in terms of the
regional plan. Each of them is unique
and for us to homogenize um our cities
into one is just not what we want to do.
We want to maintain our attributes um
but also get around the region. Um the
transportation plan doesn't know
boundaries. So we need to work together
to um make sure that how they land in
each of our communities works. A
reminder, as Mario said, this is a
highlevel plan. It's um as he said, a
snapshot, but it's a really wide lens of
a of a snapshot. And each project that's
in here, and again, these are, you know,
visionary. They're they each have to
have their own plan. They're each going
to come, it's got its own path basically
to conclusion and to construction. It's
going to have to have a design. It's
going to have to go through
environmental.
We're going to have the discussion about
are we going to fund it or not? Is it
going to be in the RTIP which is the
five-year plan where we know you know
that's what's getting done that's get
getting funded and it will build be
built and then there's construction and
then there's ribbon cutting. So we do
this every four years. Um I think it's
uh a really great exercise to uh each of
us to understand each other cities a
little bit more too and recognize the
continuity that we want within our
region but also the um the uniqueness
that we would like to maintain. So with
that, I'm going to close the public
hearing and let's vote on this. We have
two um
uh so the action is uh today to adopt
resolution 2026-08
and 2026-9 certifying the final EIR and
adopting the 2025 regional plan.
Righty passes with one no and the rest
yeses. And we are now going to go on to
the assessment of Sandex's finance
department. The team will present items
5.1 and 5.2 followed by public comment
and then member discussion.
Courtney
So, are you ready?
» Yes, chair.
» Chair
chair Fischer, did you want to
» Oh, I'm sorry. Let me um turn this over
to council member Fischer to introduce
this item as the chair of the audit
committee.
» Thank you, chair. Uh board members, uh
last week we got the uh results from the
assessment that was done by Weaver
regarding the uh financial the finance
department. Uh we had a good robust
discussion uh lot of transparency not
only from Weaver, from uh the audit side
but also from staff. they were there,
they were present and you really could
see the collaboration and bring us
forward. You know, been through a few
audits this year. Uh assessment is a
little bit different than an audit and
some of the findings that we have were u
kind of eye openening if you will. Uh
but again that it helps us build up a
road map of where the agency needs to be
in the future. uh and it was mentioned
earlier that you know there's different
assessments going on that one will see
in the future for HR department but it
really was uh an eye openener and again
nothing that we probably was surprised
but overall you know the the key is that
this agency still operates well still is
really well regarded in the nation is
very high functioning uh we continue to
receive funds much more in excess of
what our budget is and that continues
and so some of the things that will be
discussed today may be a little bit
viable opening uh to the board members.
But I really want to stay thank uh
Courtney for getting this going, finding
a fine company with Weaver and the work
that they did and again the
collaboration between Weaver and uh
staff to to work together to get the
assessment done and uh to get to the
point where it could get presented to
the board at this point. So, thank you.
» Thank you, chair. Good morning. I'm
Courtney Ruby. I'm the independent
performance auditor, also known as the
IPA, and as such, I am the chief audit
executive at SANDAG. I'm pleased to
introduce the accounting and finance
independent assessment conducted by
Weaver LLC. Today, I'm joined by Remma
Perapilli, partner and subject matter IT
advisor, and Holly Hart, director and
project manager for this engagement. I'd
like to give a little background as to
why this report is before you today.
When I first became IPA, I was
immediately thrust into the
investigation of SR125.
The investigation found EAN's fast lane
financial reporting could not be relied
upon, and the accounting and finance
department lacked adequate internal
controls, including proper review and
supervision to ensure SR125's financial
information, was accurately recorded and
reported. The investigation recommended
an independent assessment of the
accounting and finance department's
policies, procedures, and practices. As
a result, I wrote the scope of work that
was advertised and is included in the
transmittal letter that precedes the
assessment. Weaver was a successfully
awarded the work and has done an
outstanding job. Additionally, Weaver's
assessment when needed extended into the
areas that would provide greater
operational insight and value to
Sandag's leadership.
I do want to highlight this work
evaluated the current state and the
operational areas being assessed. It is
not an audit which typically looks
backwards, but instead an assessment of
the current state of operations. Holly
will go over this as well in her
introduction as well as the chair
mentioned it in his comments. I want to
acknowledge Sandag's accounting and
finance department and senior leadership
for their patience, fortitude and
commitment to this assessment in
addition to budget management, project
management and other senior managers who
assisted in the assessment. management
provided their response to the report at
the same time that the office of the
independent performance auditor or what
we affectionately call OEPA released the
report and I'm pleased to report that
management has stated their agreement
with all the recommendations. We will
meet with management in the coming week
to hash out the details to ensure we
have actionable agreement that aligns
with the recommendations and can be
reported out during OEPA's annual and
quarterly cap reporting processes. CAPS
stands for corrective action plan. I
will now hand the presentation over to
Holly Hart from Weaver to present the
report findings and recommendations and
then management will present their
response next. Holly,
» So I'm I'm going to start but so
» My apologies.
» No worries. Um so we had a strong team
that helped supported this and one of
the team members that's not available
today is Brandon Tanos. he was the
overall engagement partner um along with
Holly that focused more on the overall
accounting and operations areas. Then
kind of my team and my role is really to
focus on the IT area and we really work
together over those two broad subject
matters. As Courtney described, we did
an assessment. So separate from an audit
where we are looking at the past and
arriving at a conclusion, we are really
doing this assessment to be able to
provide recommendations over the current
state of the environment and to be able
to look at those results and to be able
to provide kind of a state of where you
are and what those recommendations can
look like which management has started
to think about t start to work on. We
started our procedures earlier in the
spring and are really reporting it out
to you today, but management has been um
aware of the things that they need to
work on and then this kind of really
solidified it and kind of gave them some
direction on what what we looked at and
the things that they recognized also
needed some areas of improvement. And so
the focus area of what we did as part of
this assessment which you can see really
looked at the finance and accounting
department over those process areas um
accounting, finance, revenue, project
control, toll operations, accounting and
we really focus on a number of key
functions and core functions in that.
And then we also looked at the state of
the ERP system implementation that
occurred a couple years ago to really
understand how that system
implementation
um was performed and then how has that
helped support the processes that are
occurring in the uh finance and
accounting departments as well. So we
did a number of different items and one
of the other areas that we looked at was
really performing a um skills assessment
which I'll have colleague go over.
» Thanks Reema. Yes. So, uh we also
included an organizational structure and
skills assessment as part of this
project and that was really to look at
role clarity, responsibilities,
qualifications, credentials, the three
what we like to call the three pillars
of um an successful uh uh competent
team. And so we also looked at how the
teams collaborate. And I just want to be
clear as well that this was not a
staffing level assessment. We didn't
look at cycle times or uh do a heavy
analysis of the uh various
quantification of tasks that were
performed. But we al but we did identify
some general resource constraints within
the inscope process areas as a root
cause of some of the conditions that we
found at a high level. Some of the
procedures that we performed again as is
an assessment they were done in
collaboration with the management team
looking at the current state as Courtney
mentioned we looked at policies and
procedures looking at the internal
controls benchmark to globally
recognized internal control frameworks
and standards. We did lots of
stakeholder interviews and follow-ups
where needed to ensure that we had a a
good understanding of the current state,
validating that understanding, making
sure there was clarity between us in
management and to how things were
operating in its current state. We
looked at evidence, a lot of various uh
pieces of documentation
uh to validate and ensure that we had an
accurate understanding uh and of course
really dug into the technology and
systems implementation component. as you
guys are transitioning in various
systems in your current state.
So, as a result of our assessment, we
identified what we call our core themes.
We grouped these in core themes because
they generally overall as you're going
through the report, the results of the
assessment really do kind of shine
through. uh and so looking at the uh
results through the lens of these core
themes can help orient you in terms of
what to really focus on whenever we're
talking about our road map as well. We
had 18 observations associated with our
recommendations which we categorized
into various groups as they naturally
related to the process areas in which we
found them. Next slide.
All right.
So to go a little bit more into those
core themes and I'll just provide a
brief overview of these. They are not
necessarily in any particular order. The
first one is very critical and
foundational to all the others which is
why it is first regarding governance and
oversight. Really an overarching theme
for this assessment. We definitely
identified the need for uh more uh clear
oversight, governance, and
accountability particularly within the
areas of budget management, ERP, systems
implementation, and of course some of
those core key accounting controls that
we've identified throughout the the
assessment. The second area was really
policies, procedures, and internal
controls. really the backbone of your
control environment and how we ensure
that we implement our uh risk mitigation
strategy in terms of control activities
consistently. So we evaluated that uh
and found that there is definitely a
need for some standardized
standardization of key accounting
controls as well as system
implementation protocols to close some
identified gaps that we ident uh in
those controls uh especially the ones
that are fundamental to ensuring
accurate complete financial reporting as
well as uh ensuring that the information
operational information that's received
by management the board and other
stakeholders is also complete and
accurate. We uh have a list of
appendices in our report that have
additional details if you're if you want
to to dig into that. The third area uh
core theme technology and systems
integration really looking at some of
the gaps in the implementation life
cycle that have limited the ERP's
impact. Uh not that we can't move
forward and continue to work on those
things, but definitely some areas where
in our uh requirements as we're going
through the life cycle to to better
ensure that it's uh really impactful and
ensure it meets our requirements as we
configure our systems and work to reduce
manual workarounds and improve
reporting.
The fourth area, performance measurement
and accountability. Really we here we
identified some opportunities to better
define uh different various performance
metrics that would give both management
and the board insights into how
effective our processes are in these
various areas particularly in the areas
of budget management as well as IT
governance. There are some very
wellrecoognized KPIs that we think could
be used in these areas to ensure that
there's always a pulse on how effective
we are in these areas.
The fifth core seeing training and
workforce development.
Here we identified a lack of some formal
development that is consistent with
specific job responsibilities and duties
as well as a need to formalize
role-based training and uh then uh look
at how we emphasize and are intentional
about the credentials and qualifications
and experience that we expect for our
workforce.
The second uh the sixth one here is six
core theme change management and
communication. Change management is also
uh fundamental and foundational to
almost every ver uh evolving thing that
goes on at SANDAG whether it's a new
business process or a systems
implementation change management is
always going to be a part of that
journey to ensuring that it's an
effective transition. And so we did
identify that there is a need for some
consistency in our change management
processes and both the process business
process and the technology uh change um
and and adoption and transition uh to
ensure that we adopt and sustain our
technology as well as integrate
necessary updates to the business
processes as we are implementing that
technology. And then the seventh core
theme here roles, responsibilities and
collaboration. We did identify various
ad hoc practices that don't have
necessarily some well-defined
uh areas of roles uh responsibility,
accountability, who's informed, who's
consulted, you know, really that
foundational framework of ensuring that
uh those roles and responsibilities are
well defined to reduce crossep
departmental um to increase crossep
departmental coordination and ensure
clear understanding for optimal
financial management and your
operational processes.
Okay. So, as we talked about the core
themes, we did identify out of our 48
observation uh 48 recommendations uh
some priority actions that we hope can
help orient management into where to
focus on in both the short term,
medium-term, and long term.
So, we will go into those a little bit.
Those top 10 priority actions. The first
one is really on the internal controls
and compliance framework. Here we would
recommend really standing up a unified
internal controls and compliance
framework. This is really evaluating our
agencywide controls in these finance
accounting processes. As we know,
there's a lot of crossf functional
activities and processes and controls in
these areas. And so having a uh a
well-recoognized framework that defines
key controls, owners, frequency, the
various key components of internal
control and also looking at our residual
risk and how are we uh comfortable with
our mitigation strategy and that can
also be used to ensure consistency and
succession planning and just make sure
that everybody's on the same page about
our control framework. The second
priority action is establishing that
true technology and ERP governance. uh
structure centralizing our IT governance
which we uh recommend to be led by a
qualified CIO equivalent to oversee that
technology strategy decision-m and issue
escalation and ensure in alignment
between technology and the various
business processes that that technology
is is touching.
And then the third priority action here
is really raising expectations for
management competencies that are
associated with those three pillars of
qualification that I mentioned which
include experience, education and
credentials. Uh and tracking that
training centrally prioritizing
highquality technical training that is
very clearly tied to specific job
responsibilities.
The fourth one, tighten system
implementation quality gates
requirements such as traceability
testing and go live criteria. These are
the critical actions that are needed for
truly any systems implementation or
major update to a system. Anything that
has a material or significant impact
when we are transitioning our our
technology. Making sure that we map
requirements to our testing before we go
live. formal pre-go live validations,
sign offs, and documented. We document
any workarounds so that it's very clear
to everybody in the agency if for some
reason there was something that was
affected um that that's well documented
and we know our strategy and how we're
going to uh implement various uh or
alternative methods of getting what we
need from those systems.
The fifth one, institutional and key
accounting reconciliations,
policy approved templates and executive
oversight as well as the sixth one at
centralization of invoice management and
establishing riskbased approvals. These
are specific challenges and
opportunities to increase control
effectiveness in key accounting
controls. specifically uh making sure
that there are policies and expectations
around these key accounting controls and
also centralizing certain areas of our
our invoicing processes to help with
visibility. Making sure that we are uh
meeting our expectations for our
stakeholders and making those payments
and strengthening our vendor
relationships as well as ensuring
compliance.
The next four priority actions here are
also focused on improving controls for
some key financial management processes
uh including oversight of funding
sources, total revenue accounting and
reporting, budget management and great
grant payments and reimbursements.
The seventh one that centralized billing
oversight across all funding sources.
This is really focused on creating a
single mechanism with management review
for real-time visibility into billing
progress across our projects and
programs including our program
requirements and deadlines. We all know
that we have a lot of various funding
sources that are critical to uh tracking
and overseeing to ensure that we
continue to meet our mission as an
agency. Stabilizing toll revenue
accounting and reporting. reducing some
single point reliance that we identified
uh to um ensure that those workarounds
that are currently in place right now
between Fast Lane and ERP are well
documented, any necessary
reconciliations and reviews are
happening on a consistent basis and then
making sure that we have a path to
reducing that single point of reliance
as well as an integration between our
accounting systems and the backend
tolling uh accounting system.
Nine, clarifying budget ownership and
enforcing continuous budget to actual
monitoring. A ne another key area of
SANDAG that's critical to ensuring from
a project management perspective that
we're on track. That's uh publishing
agencywide budgeting roles and
responsibilities as I mentioned before
making sure that we're performing that
monthly quarterly and um you know as as
often as it's necessary even real time
if if possible uh looking at budget to
actual and what is those variances and
why do we have those variances and
implementing a mandatory midcycle review
and then finally increasing grant
reimbursement expectations payments
controls and visibility. Uh grants are
another uh critical area for the agency.
Ensuring that we align our program
guides to that to our 30-day payment
requirements, tracking receipt day
status, any delay reasons, and then
reporting that compliance upwards to
leadership as needed.
And and just for a visual for you guys,
the priority actions and recommended
roadmap um you know in something like
this execution matters to ensure that an
assessment like this is fully realized
uh to it its maximum benefit. So we did
provide you a 0 to 18month roadmap that
aligns each priority action with a
timeline for implementation focusing on
internal controls, IT governance,
training, reconciliation, all the great
priority actions that we talked about
before. and that 0 to six month timeline
uh timeline really the the internal
control framework which we would say is
definitely a high priority on those
actions. Standing up ERP governance and
initiating both the uh a a improved or
enhanced credentiing and training
program as well as quality gates for
system implementation and proper change
management. And then uh also looking at
our institutionalizing all the various
50 plus reconciliations that occur in
Sandag. Then within that six to 12 month
timeline, some of the things that might
require a little bit more effort,
especially the the things that are
crossunctional across multiple
departments, such as centralizing
invoice receipts, approval, deploying
that centralized billing oversight,
which requires project management
involved, stabilizing the toll revenue
processes that we discussed, and
embedding budget budget managering
cadences throughout the agency, and then
some ongoing areas which will continue
to evolve for Sandagen should have An
intentional focus is maturing our our
performance and KPI dashboards,
automating and automating in
integrations, completing those training
pathways and then hardening governance
routines so improvements sustained
through future system changes which is
ongoing.
That's all our prepared material and so
uh is I think we're going to go through
management response and uh we welcome
your feedback and questions. Thank you.
Once
our team is setting up, uh, they're
going to come and give their responses
here. Um, I think our I want to start
with a a couple of comments here. Um,
and probably go back a little bit in in
uh a little bit of memory lane. And what
have we done? We began um 18 months ago.
The first objective was to stabilize,
enhance trust inside and outside the
agency
and assess and implement and that's the
phase where we're at assessing
implementing and we we truly truly
appreciate this. Now also
Sandak is is I want to go back and just
high level what is SANDAC?
SANDAK is a very complex organization
that meets multiple purposes and it's
probably very unique in the state. It's
an planning organization.
If you go to LA, there's one huge
organization called SCACK, but it only
does the MO. It only does the planning.
link here. Our our our responsibility as
the no is we look at the transportation
network as well as we provide some
housing information and policy
through a consolidation act that was
passed around 20 2008
if my memory serves right. We are also a
capital delivery agency which other MPOs
are not. So we are responsible to
delivering the transit projects planning
and delivering the transit project for
San Diego County and coordinating with
the state crons and the state highway
system projects. So that's another side
another business of Sandak. We are a
toll operating agency.
which we operate the SR125,
we operate the I-15 manage lanes which
were the very first ones in the nation
with having dynamic tolling. So that
that that came that idea in the nation
came out of Sandok and we are in the
process of implementing a substantial
amount of mileage of future managed
lanes.
We are an agency that acts and houses
criminal justice information for every
single police department that your
cities has either via the county
sheriff's department or your individual
cities.
We are an information data center for
both transportation housing and in
addition that what houses are just
houses we also do criminal justice data
analysis.
That's just a snapshot of what you all
have as a responsibility.
But that's a snapshot of what each of
those leaders in front of you are
responsible to manage.
With more than a hundred different
colors of money to be managed, all of
them with different requirements
that creates a humongous amount of
stress in the organization of how we
manage all that and keep the accounting.
I truly truly appreciate this assessment
because this is that turning point. Like
I said, we came, we stabilized, we
worked on enhancing the trust inside and
outs. We still need to work on that and
we are now in assessment but also
implementation
and all that
while we're keeping an organization
moving. And you just saw an awesome
regional plan delivered. So, we're
giving a tuneup to the car, changing the
tires, and we're driving it in the
freeway.
That's no easy task. So, you you all
have an incredible setup, more than 400
employees who really are working hard.
Among them, Oipa, who's really working
hard on highlighting where we can get
better. So, I really really appreciate
this assessment. Like I said in my
opening statements, we're also
internally doing an assessment of the
organizational structure of tools. We
will be putting out a request for
proposals for an assessment of our HR
department. We have had discussions
about how we are going to go about
um our future management of our toll
systems and the business structure of
it. and we will be having more
conversations. So I just wanted to put
it out there of all what's going on, all
what the team is doing and in the in the
meantime there is a humongous amount of
opportunities.
There is a lot of places where we can
work and focus and get better. No doubt
about it. But I'll let the team tell you
a little bit what they have identified
and what they're working on because the
assessment as all as well as all the
other past uh audits let it be from OPA
or FDA or any other group I don't know
it compiles about 200 action items or
whatever I can't remember I do have a
meeting and keep track of them but
bringing that together with the
assessments is one what's going to help
us make a better organization.
And it's a journey. It's a journey. It's
not something that's going to happen
tomorrow. Team, take it over.
» Thank you. Good afternoon. I am Chennai
Pikney Forest, the director of internal
controls. Uh with me today is Kim Traml,
director of accounting and finance,
Susan Huntington, director of financial
planning, budgets, and grants, Grace
Mino, senior director of data science
and bits, and Don Vatis, our chief
financial officer. We're here to provide
an overview of our management response.
In today's presentation, we want to
acknowledge that we agree with the
recommendations from the Weaver
Assessment. We do thank Courtney and her
team as well as Weaver for their
observations.
The assessment identified seven key
areas where strengthened internal
controls can help improve and elevate
SANDAG's accounting, finance, and
budgeting functions. We'll discuss how
some of the core themes in the report
relate to some of our existing efforts.
The report provided confirmation um that
we are on the correct track with the
areas we prioritize and presented to you
in earlier months related to policies
and procedures, documentation, training,
and change management. The report also
provides us with insight regarding the
need for specific improvements within
our budgeting, accounting, and IT
departments. Our team will then provide
an overview of specific next steps
within their respective uh purview.
So as you see in this slide and as Holly
discussed earlier the report summarized
its observations into seven core themes.
We want to highlight that three of these
themes we have as an internal focus as
we continue to focus on the basics and
bolster our fundamental our foundational
practices. So for example with policies
and procedures we are in the process of
finalizing our policy framework and
guidance. This framework is providing
guidance that will standardize the
content and the structure of the various
types of guidance we have within the
organization.
We're continuing to identify, draft,
and/or revise policies as specified in
other audits, other assessments, and
through internal discussion.
The Weaver report also identified for us
specific areas um where pol specific
policy and procedure areas to enhance
within our accounting and budgeting
practices
within the training and workforce
development. Uh we are currently
identifying the needed content and
training hours for our organizationwide
training plan which has been informed by
previous audits, assessments,
regulations, and internal discussions.
We're identifying mandatory trainings,
trainings that are mandatory by
legislation and required trainings,
trainings that we are currently
identifying internally as necessary to
conduct job responsibilities.
In that plan, we've also already
identified anticipated training hours.
So, we have training hours slated for
budget budgeting and invoicing practices
already and we'll use the Reaver report
to inform the content for those two
areas. Additionally, we're currently
developing the equivalent of a
procurement training series and a
project management series as well. For
change management, we're actively
reviewing and revising our change
management protocols to be in alignment
with best practices. We also want to
note that all seven of these themes, of
course, are on our radar.
The assessment also recommended that the
director of internal controls develop an
comprehensive internal control framework
that captures accounting, budgeting and
information technology uh risk and
controls. With this, I have already
begun developing frameworks for
practices related to our policies and
procedures, trainings and inventory
management. These frameworks at a high
level are iterative documents that are
capturing risk that have been identified
by previous audits, assessments, and my
discretion. We're documenting best
practice controls in this particular
framework framework. We're assessing
whether we have those controls currently
in place. If we have them in place, um
we're documenting what we're doing. If
those controls are currently missing, it
is an indicator for us to prioritize um
putting those controls um in place,
testing them and making sure that they
are effective.
Um I will continue this effort of
developing these frameworks and will
include accounting, budgeting and IT uh
risk as well.
These frameworks will provide structure
for how Sandac manages it manages its
risk um continuously monitors its
operations and these frameworks will
also serve as secession planning tools
as how the organization conducts its
business would be documented, accessible
and easy to follow. And now I will turn
it over to Kim to discuss our next steps
related to accounting and finance
recommendations.
Good afternoon,
Kimberly Traml, the director of
accounting and finance. And um I just
want to cover the recommendations for
the accounting and finance team which
fell into three general categories. The
first one being vendor invoice
processing. Um this area of SANDAG went
through major changes with the
implementation of our ERP system uh less
than two years ago and since then we've
been re-evaluating the process um to see
what is working and what's not working.
And so we had already uh been working on
three of the five areas identified in
the report for improvement. One of those
that we've have already underway is the
implementation of the vendor module that
came in our ERP system. Um we are just
getting ready to move forward with a
pilot program and then we'll have that
available for all of our vendors at a
later date. Um, another area that we
have been working on is our establishing
a riskbased threshold for approvals of
our invoices. And this has been a little
complicated because Sandag is not a
one-sizefits-all. So, um, your toll
operations might want to review invoices
at a different rest basis than your
construction um, versus your
engineering. So, um, we have been trying
to figure out what will work best with
the organization. We're moving forward
with a dollar-based threshold and we'll
continue to evaluate whether that's
meeting our risk needs. Um so
establishing that like I said has been
uh in process and will be available
soon. Another area that we've been
looking at and working on are our
invoice payment time frames and really
making our staff aware of uh timeliness
for processing payments um and tracking
of invoice dates should the uh invoice
not meet our requirements because there
are a lot of requirements that come with
a grant-f funed invoice. Um we often
have to do a lot of back and forth with
our vendors and make sure we're getting
all of the appropriate documentation.
And so it's on Sandag and and our staff
to make sure that we're documenting that
back and forth time and there's
sufficient reason for why an invoice
might not be paid in the appropriate
time frame because it didn't have
appropriate documentation.
So, um we will be able to utilize our
EIP system to track our receive dates
and um our due dates and we have already
put out guidance and um are working with
our essentially our contract manager
staff to make sure that they're
documenting those dates and any of that
back and forth that I mentioned. The
last area for vendor invoice processing
is a centralized invoice receipt. And um
what we're proposing to do is put
together a centralized invoice receipt
within each department of Sandag. Um
that also includes additional
monitoring. We get about 150 invoices a
week here at SANDAG. And so um we think
the best way to make sure that those are
getting to the right person for
processing is to do a centralized
invoice receipt within each department.
The second area I want to talk about is
reconciliations within the accounting
department. Um we do have over 50
documented reconciliations that the
accounting group does right now and with
other priorities and and um projects
going on. Sometimes those don't get done
until you're in and that's an area we
want to improve on. Um so we will
institutionalize the existing
reconciliation tracking schedule that we
have and make sure that it is being
monitored to make sure that our
reconciliations are happening more
timely. And we'll also be going through
to look and make sure that um if that
list is comprehensive and includes all
of the reconciliations that need to be
included as an example with bringing
payroll in house in the last 6 months,
there's additional reconciliations that
need to be added to that list and bring
all of this into our policies and
procedures around these areas. Um, one
thing we also noted, but was not
necessarily a recommendation, was that
we can um, add some clarifying language
to some of our quarterly reporting to
make sure that it's clear what we're
reporting and how that information can
be used.
The third area is around systems and
manual processes and we're always
looking for ways to automate. Um, it's
been a big change for the agency to go
into the ERP system and um, so we
continue to learn it and learn ways we
can automate. Um, one of the areas
touched on in the report is our toll
revenue accounting and um, that has been
a difficult area the last couple years
with uh, the change with limitations to
the back office system. Our management
team has been very hands-on in this area
to build a reliable process for pulling
the information we need out of the back
office system and getting that into our
accounting system and making sure the
reporting is accurate. We had to
identify a way to we had to identify
what the system could do and its
limitations and design a process around
that that mitigated risk. So we've now
designed that process. It's in place.
We've been using it. It's working well
with our audits. But we need to
institutionalize that essentially and
write up the policies and procedures
that go with that and make sure we're
defining and assigning roles so that
there's not a single point of um in that
process but that the whole team is a
part of it. The staff accountants
working on the appropriate pieces and
the management is reviewing those
pieces. So that is something that we
have in place. Um, and as I said, we're
looking at other ways that we can
institutionalize automation and in our
programs, but you have first have to
kind of once you put in a new system,
you first have to kind of learn that one
and learn what it can do and then you
learn how you can augment it. So, with
that, I will turn it over to Susan
Huntington. Thank you. Good afternoon.
I'm Susan Huntington. I'm Sand Dag's
director of financial planning, budgets,
and grants. The assessment provided uh a
clear path forward and many of the
recommendations align with work already
underway in the financial planning,
budgeting, and grants department. Our
top priority actions fall into two
areas, the grant compliance and the
budget monitoring. On the grant
compliance side, we're focused on
ensuring accuracy and improving the
timeliness of reimbursements to our
grantees. So, this will be um similar to
what we've just heard from Kimberly as
she was talking about the in um the
vendor invoice processes. So, first
we're addressing the prompt payment
requirements under CFR 200 which
indicates that a recipient of federal
funding must make payment to a subreient
within 30 days after receipt of the
payment request unless the entity in
this case it's SANDAG reasonably
believes the request to be improper. So,
the assessment noted that the invoice
received dates are not consistently
tracked in the ERP and some program
managers maintain logs outside of the
system. In addition, there's been
confusion about which date should be
entered, the initial submittal date or
the date a complete and accurate invoice
is received, which may come at a later
date after issues are resolved with the
grantee. To address this, we are
evaluating updates to our contract
language and training to our program
managers to clearly define invoice
requirements and to require the use of a
standardized invoice form. Until now,
we've strongly encouraged the use of the
form, but have not required it. In the
near term, we will establish a central
location for invoice logging, tracking,
and issue documentations that all
program managers will use. This will
increase transparency and accountability
and better support timely
reimbursements.
We'll also begin regular reporting of
our timely payment performance to senior
leadership.
This connects directly to our second
priority action developing invoice and
reimbursement checklists tailored to
each program. So, the current agencywide
checklist for our invoice uh review does
not capture the programspecific
requirements we must verify across our
federal, state, and local funding
guidelines. So, documenting the full
review steps for each program will
strengthen accuracy, consistency, and
compliance.
And then our other set of priority
actions relate to the budget
development, monitoring, and reporting.
The assessment notes that SANDAG does
not yet have a single integrated budget
development and monitoring system. So
while implementing the ERP was an
important step, our budget still stand
spans several platforms. So we use um a
a tool it's called PM tools to put
together our capital budgets. We use
IMBm for our personnel resource
allocation and we use ERP for non-
capital budgets and actual expenditures.
To improve oversight, we're formalizing
required monthly and quarterly budget to
actual reviews for project managers,
department directors, and senior
leadership. We have established a group
of department analysts who serve as
budget coordinators and provide support
with annual development and ongoing
monitoring. These staff are key
collaborators with project managers,
department directors, and central
budgets and provide additional oversight
and analysis of budget utilization.
As part of documenting processes and
procedures in a budget handbook which is
currently under development, a REI
matrix will be implemented to clearly
define roles for each step of the
budgeting and monitoring process.
In addition, we're working with our
technology team to create automated
reports that pull data from all these
various spirit systems to provide
consistent real-time financial
information. This will allow us to shift
from reactive analysis to more proactive
finan financial management and
strengthen financial decision-making.
And I do want to note the timing of this
assessment is particularly helpful as
the agency is currently developing the
FY27 budget. So this work occurs in the
May in the November through May time
frame. The findings and recommendations
from this assessment will guide our work
throughout this process and will inform
our lessons learned for the upcoming
year. With that, I'll turn it over to
Grace Mino to discuss technology
implementation and change management.
» Good afternoon, chair, vice chair,
second vice chair, and board members. My
name is Grace Mino, and I am your senior
director of data science, and I oversee
our IT department as well. Again, I just
want to echo Mario's sentiment to both
Courtney Oipa and also the Weaver team
um just for presenting gaps and areas of
opportunity to help us improve and also
highlighting the systems development
life cycle and how that is a very
iterative process where we're
processing, analyzing, designing,
developing, testing, implementing and
maintaining all the things when it comes
to new software. I want to also um echo
what Chené, Kimberly, and Susan have
already highlighted that a lot of the
processes and recommendations from
Weaver are things that staff have
already been working on. And so that's
like formalizing our change management
process, formalizing our IT governance
and data governance and also moving
forward that any technology or software
that is being brought into the agency um
is going through a needs assessment, a
risk assessment, also going through
systems requirements. And we also want
to ensure that it can integrate with our
ERP system and that we can also find
ways to automate and make sure we're not
doing these manual workarounds. Um,
another thing that was highlighted and
is continuing to be highlighted is
training. We want to ensure that our
staff are being trained and are
comfortable with anything new that's
coming into the agency. And moving
forward internally in January, we'll be
doing a cross-discipline deep dive
workshop on our ERP system, taking the
systems requirements when it was
conducted as a competitive process about
3 to four years ago and aligning it to
what the business needs are within the
agency. what is it not meeting right
now? Um, we're also looking into hiring
an ERP specific systems administrator
and we'll probably be doing a uh RFP for
a consultant to help us bridge the gaps
and also help us maximize utilizing the
system and helping us implement and
develop the KPIs. We've also been
talking to our partner NPOS's across the
uh the nation that are also doing ERP
implementations and where uh we're just
sharing lessons learned. Um lastly, um
Mario had highlighted that we um along
with the financial assessment, we're
doing an assessment of our HR
department. Uh we are also looking into
doing an assessment of our IT
department. Um and then now I will also
pass it over to our CFO, Don Batist.
» Hi, thank you. Uh, I
wanted to just wrap this up today by
acknowledging all of the work that's
been going on in the agency that you've
just heard about. Um, there's a
significant amount of work going on as
you heard Mario mentioned at the top.
You know, we still have outstanding
um, uh, corrective action plan items
from previous audits. We've add added
these in, but this uh assessment, you
know, really has given us a good road
map and it took items that we knew we
needed to work on, things that you've
heard we had already started working on
and really helped us prioritize them in
a more efficient manner. Um, so we
really want to thank the independent
audit office. We really want to thank
the Weaver team. And I also want to
acknowledge all the staff here at Sande
who participated in this process, the
interviews, the documents uh that were
were provided for it. So with that, I
think the audit team will come back up
to the table and we will close this out
and be open for questions.
We're available to take questions.
» Okay, we'll go to the public first and
then we will um go to the board for
questions. Michael?
» Yes. Uh we have two in person and three
online.
First is truth followed by Caesar
Javier.
Mario, the Sandag car has racked up way
too many GHS and VMTs and has refused to
pay its tolls. Why does it take five
people for SANDA to just say they agree?
For some, the question is, what's the
difference between an audit and
assessment? But for me, the question is,
what's the point of an assessment? Seems
like a waste of tax. I don't know when
this was approved or how much it cost us
to do, but it feels like answers
everybody should already know. I had to
look up the term principle of least
privilege and I like it because it's the
equivalent of a need to know basis. It's
right next to know your role. Hassan and
the previous board did not know their
roles and that's why I showed up to
disrupt their systems, corrupt systems.
And as I said before, Senak has not had
a controls issue or a technology issue
or a systems issue more than it's had a
people issue. If someone wants to argue
that a corporate setup with 19 plus
representatives who were never elected
to be on sandag deciding what happens
for transportation and housing and who
knows what in the future is a technology
based system and control pro problem all
100% agree to that. Sandag was built
with policies that were not followed.
Sand had plenty of well-qualified
employees in the past who chose to do
the wrong thing for either greed or
fear. Proven experience and proven
character are the solutions that no
assessment or audit can make everyone at
San willing to choose. The right people
in the right places will stay here when
the transition and resolution to pass
corruption is complete and consistent.
For transparency and accountability,
sometimes all it takes is one brave
whistleblower or speaker or board member
to make permanent changes. Don't allow
SandAG to go backwards like it almost
did at the last meeting. If this is a
project-driven agency, then focus on
projects, not check checked box
politics. I'm going to repeat it again
so you really hear it. Projects, not
politics. It's very clear. Get the work
done efficiently, timely, and ethically.
And then somebody tell the county how to
operate that way. We can all live much
better. Thank you.
» Next is Caesar Javier, followed by Paul
the Bold online.
Cesar and Purita in two minutes. Thank
you. Sandag will be a repeater students
in this great university. Thank you sir
Mito. I
could switch to honorable Sito.
Thank you because it's educating us that
the city of San Diego is an independent
you know planning visioning about shell
man shelter society and the specialty of
sandag
which includes now we heard
sheltering
home
home or house for San Dieans. Thank you,
Sand. My question is, did you include in
your investigation how this
members of this elite thinkers how they
perform?
Like a question, how did the mayor
declared in his city address last year,
oh, we have 252
million deficit
when the EVA organic element says only
85 what's happening to our city sir
Lakava sirly
you know it San Dieagans
and we are fearful that our money is not
going to where we should be enjoying
life in our community.
» Thank you for the investigation. That's
a thesis writing. Thank you for that
dissitation.
We are repeater for next year and it's
free. Thank you, Sandag.
The city of San Diego.
» Thank you. Your time has expired. Next
is Paul the Bold online followed by the
original draw.
Hello. Although past audits highlighting
deficiencies in Sandag's internal
controls were bad, but this is scathing.
It is shocking that Sandag still does
not have a comprehensive framework to
consistently assess and monitor key
internal controls after years of
scandals and scathing audits. The
non-key deficiencies are basic areas
that should have been properly
controlled from the start. but instead
you devise overly complex policies and
procedures to weaken these. It is
telling that this audit gently called an
assessment
specifically recommends quote using
external qualified advisors unquote
rather than internal processes you have
relied on. So who is exactly is calling
the shots at Sandag?
It is time to include the SandAG inter
independent auditor on the board. The
continuing audit failures would be less
if there were regular finance accounting
or audit advice right here for you to
hear before this scandal.
As for the response, it it's a real
tragic comedy that management agrees
with all of the recommendations
that it has not implemented after all
the promises we've heard. We hear the
excuses, but just do it. Amazing that
there is still no centralized point for
collecting invoices and no time frame
for paying them. I wonder how many
potential contractors and workers this
is alienated because they want to get
paid.
Um, it's amazing that reconciliation.
» Thank you. Your time has expired. Next
is original draw followed by Mike
Bulock.
» Yeah. Part of the problem is that you
guys never want to look at the people
that are engaged in fraud, waste, and
abuse because you'll sit here and you
bring up these presentations and, you
know, sit there and and and try and
paint a pretty picture that you guys are
really, you know, mitigating things, but
you have your hands in way too many
buckets and you are illquipped to
provide the things that you are, you
know, professing that you're going to
provide. So when you sit here and and
virtue signal like it's so great that
you're doing so many things when there's
so many issues with all of the things
that you're doing, you know, it just
shows that these things are that you
this presentation is just to continue
the fraud, waste, and abuse because you
just want to set up all this stuff, you
know, and we pay more and more money to
to try and have accountability and all
this stuff. But I mean, you even sit
there and profess that you listen to the
local community. You don't. I mean, you
don't even reach out to the people in
the community like you should. And you
should be, you know, when you were
implementing things like tolls, be
getting a vote from the people because
if you really did get the input from the
people, you wouldn't have the support
that you do. I mean, people don't even
know who you are. And that helps you
guys so that you can say that you're
doing what the people want, you know,
and it's unfortunate because the people
should be, you know, having a voice, not
the stakeholders, not all the people
that you're going to make money from,
the people that you get your money from
that you sit here and waste because you
engage, like I've said before, with
people who, you know, cost us more and
more money are engaged in the fraud,
waste, and abuse when you contract with
them, whether it's internally or
externally. and and nothing really gets
done about it. People retire with, you
know, pensions and all of these great
things and and the fraud, waste, and
abuse continues. And the people, you
know, are sitting here, you know, buying
the propaganda if they do listen. And so
they think you're going to do what
you're going to do, but all they have to
do is look at the world around us and
see.
Our
» Next public comment is Mike Bulick,
followed by our last public comment
ending in 8813.
Yeah, thank you uh Sande. Um what what I
hear is a lot of very professional,
smart, hardworking people trying their
very best uh to address uh a very
unfortunate sequence of events. Um it
may have seemed pretty simple to just uh
have a toll road and operate a toll
road. Uh but it uh didn't turn out to be
that simple. And uh I'm wondering
listening to what is uh being described
and being predicted in terms of what
needs to be done in the future if it's
not really time to just cut the losses.
Um I hate to say that and I don't say
that disrespectfully or uh but I want to
talk about some things which are have no
future which are going to become
obsolete and the first one is the
internal combustion engine vehicle all
of them it's it's very bad technology as
it turns out uh we didn't know that you
know we thought
cathode ray 2 televisions were just
great didn't we until we got digital
televisions
Every automobile manufacturer knows that
there is no future for internal
combustion engines yet we're going
electric. So, the other thing that
there's no future for is gasoline tax.
And that is actually a tax. And um
because there's no future for that
because we're not going to be using
gasoline. Um we have to uh move to um u
a road use charge. And that road charge
has to replace the gasoline tax. We need
to actually get rid of the California ga
gasoline tax. That's the big tax. 57
cents a gallon. And it's it's odd to me
that so so many Republicans there are so
protax. Um the road use charge.
» Michael, please keep on topic. We're on
» Charge. Oh, I am this. This is on topic.
You need to cut your losses because
there's no future in toll roads. There's
no future in toll roads because we have
to have the road.
» Thank you. Your time has expired. Last
comment is phone number ending in 8813.
Consuel, go ahead.
» Oops. Okay. My my device was muted. Can
you hear me?
» Yes. Go ahead.
» Okay, great. Okay, so amen to um all the
previous concerned citizens um the
handful who chime in and pay attention
to the corruption. um and especially
Paul the Bold. Uh
uh now let's talk about this so-called
audit and assessment. First question is
Sandex seriously still using Turboax.
I remember hearing that back in the
Karata days and I thought it was a joke
but apparently not. This is an agency
handling billions of dollars in public
funds and um yeah, it it was just funny
to remember back in the day that you
guys used to use that software.
Anyways, um let's see what else. What
else? What else? And then you talk about
best practices and controls. Controls is
right, but in the way but not in the way
you pretend because nothing about this
audit looks uh like accountability.
um more rubber stamping.
Um
and uh
yeah, and then when the person mentioned
how uh what's working and not working,
uh let me translate that for you. What's
working is your roll out toward towards
the UN uh 2030 plans, your ability to
push policies the public never actually
agreed to, your ability to operate in
the shadows while telling everyone it's
for their own good. Uh what's not
working, I mean that is what was
working. What's not working is the fact
that you keep pulling the wool over the
public's eyes, especially the younger
generations who have no idea how deep
this manipulation runs. And then someone
in the presentation said, "Sandag is not
a one or is not a one-sizefits-all."
And uh really because everything you're
doing in this county looks exactly like
a one-sizefits-all
control system. Restrict mobility,
impose bike lanes. Nobody wants to push.
» Thank you. Your time has expired. That
concludes our public comment on this
item. Chair,
» Thanks. Michael Mario, did you want to
say a few things? Um probably just wrap
it up on on on making a a point of
clarification on certifications which
are extremely important for the
different positions but also putting
that much weight on all that experience
and uh that the employees have. Um it it
it's to make a a well-rounded
professional. It's a combination of
both. uh in some cases certifications
are extremely important others the the
certification as well as that experience
you know decades of experience and the
uniquenesses of the positions like I
tried to highlight uh that that is also
uh something that we put in you know a
lot a lot into it it's you can't put uh
under just one single description
uh uh for so many different specialties
that we do. Um sometimes you're required
to have a whole life of experience as
well as certifications uh sometimes. So
I I do want to highlight that because
our teams are are are very dedicated,
very professional, of you see and and
and I I want to I want to highlight that
because that's my job, highlighting the
great team that I have.
» Thank you. Now on to member comments.
We'll start with uh Deputy Mayor Chavez.
» Thank you so much. Um,
first of all to our independent auditor
team, but our staff and our leadership.
I know we've been talking about this for
over two years um since it was
discovered. And unfortunately, this is
impacting uh South County more than
anyone South County users. and um you
know Sande being uh over a billion
dollar in budget uh association that we
represent. One thing that worries me and
I can go to the spill of what I've
mentioned in many other meetings and how
Chila Vista the unfairness of the South
County people the community traffic
impact and the day visitors that we have
that are impacting the 805 and the five.
But I do want to mention that in pace
page 16
uh 8.4 Before
you mentioned um our auditor marked this
as a high risk for the agency and it's
the reliance on a single individual for
manual tracking combined with
undocumented processes and untimely
reconciliations increase the risk of
errors incomplete records non-compliance
and operational disruption.
So,
are we relying on a single individual to
process every single payment from the
tools or am I reading it incorrectly?
Because we have toll system errors to
this day
and why is it a high risk?
» So, uh, council member, we found there's
one person that is working on the
reconciliation part. So there's a point
a single point there and I know the team
is aware and working on putting the
policies and procedures and training
staff. So it's not one person
processing. It is a CPA at the toll ops
that is mainly responsible for the
reconciliation process. So that's what
we're identifying in the report.
» So when we talk about reconciliation,
can we be more specific? Do we still
have toll errors?
» I am going to leave that to Kimberly.
» I I certainly will. Let me clarify. Um
the one person is not processing
payments or individual transactions. So
we um on a monthly basis will pull the
information out of the back office
system so that we can populate it into
our accounting system. So as I said
because there are some system
limitations there's no direct
integration and we know that there have
been um issues with how the information
has pulled into the reports in the past
we have developed a process so that we
make sure the information that we're
getting is correct. So there's a couple
steps that have to happen in the back
office system and then we run the
reports that come out of that and then
the accounting entries are being booked
from there. So because this has been as
you said something we've been working
through for two years and um we really
want to make sure that it's correct and
accurate. we have had a our uh manager
in that area working on this um and as I
said we feel that we've got a good
process in place now that's reliable and
so we can have we can kind of spread
that to um the rest of the toll
accountant area so that it's not being
done by there'sn't one final person
doing it but it's done by various people
throughout the process
» I I think I want to add a little bit
again we came we stabilize device
and we we we we have done the
assessment. So the teams have set up a
process to adequately be doing the
checks and balances at the toll
operation center. Now is that perfect?
No. That's why we're going to be moving
into a new back office system. And we
have had robust discussions with this
board of where this organization is
pivoting from a new strategy of a back
office to make it more enhanced with
proven operators. So first we needed to
stabilize and manage the current
situation as we are also working this is
a on the financial department process.
I'm talking a little bit also of the
operations but they all come together
right um so we we we are working very
hard and the people are not being
mischarged I think that was your
question um but we are that is that
checks and balances that that has been
put out there it's was to evaluate that
if the system has some errors at some
point identify them as soon as possible
and reconcile them. Again, that system
is not perfect and that's why we're
pivoting to others who have done it
better than us.
» I I so appreciate these this
transparency. Um and it's it's my job,
it's our duty to represent uh who
elected us to this seat. And finally, um
what is the current estimate on that
transition to the new system?
We will be coming and providing a little
bit more information probably later
early in next year. We are evaluating
all the options that we have in front of
us. We have begun some conversations.
Um if you were to ask me right now I
foresee that a transition will be
happening within the next 12 to 18
months. It's a very sophisticated system
but the first thing that we needed to do
was shore up the existing system like I
said stabilize I think we have achieved
that is it perfect no it's not perfect
and that's why the team is doing so much
checking and and balancing um but I I'm
very confident that we are having an
appropriate operation appropriate
charging but we definitely need to pivot
to something more modern and more with
more confidence. And we're looking into
other partners, other governmental
agencies who have done this and who are
operating and seeing how we're going to
partner with them. Uh we will be coming
probably early next year with a full
assessment and more than anything a
proposal of where we're pivoting.
» Thank you so much. And before I stop my
comments, I just want to say that we
need to have a better conversation and
how we can return the services and all
the tools that have been paid to the
community eventually. That's what our
main purpose, right? To make a better
life to everyone who's using our our our
transportation, our roads, and just
living in our community. Again, thank
you.
Um, Council Member Molina.
» Thank you very much, Chair Heedner. Uh,
thank you once again to our, uh, OIPA
team, our team of directors. Excellent
presentation. Again, thank you for
covering my questions last week, last
Friday during the audit committee. Uh, I
I have one additional question that
didn't I I didn't quite ask, and it has
to do with the um the timeline. How far
back did you look in the assessment of
our financial um system? Uh I don't know
if uh that was part of the presentation
last Friday or today.
» Holly, can you go over the assessment uh
how you conducted the time period?
» Yes. So, as Courtney mentioned earlier
in our presentation, we really worked to
evaluate your processes in its most
current state, when we needed to, we
referred to periods as far back as
necessary to fully understand the
current condition. So, you know, that
might have been for certain processes 6
months back, that might have been for
others 18 months back. So, it's a little
bit dynamic, you know, in order to truly
dig into and understand the current
state.
Like Courtney mentioned, this is a
forward-looking assessment and so going
back years and years, you know, and
everything really doesn't make sense and
so everything that we evaluated should
be looked at through the lens of a
current state assessment.
» Thank you. Uh that is very helpful and I
think that is what helps me understand
the fact that this is an assessment and
we are looking at the current state
versus an audit which is you know
looking back and and um and checking
things that way. So, I I really do
appreciate all of the work and I I have
a a good understanding of the work
that's before us and again our team of
directors and our CFO um being so
willing to take this bull by the horn,
you know, and being unafraid and knowing
that this is where we're headed and this
is what we're going to do. That is the
attitude that really does give me a lot
of confidence moving forward. Um two
other things I want to point out. One is
um from our um director Pikney Forest
the um internal risk assessment um that
she previously mentioned. It was the
chart that had the three X's on the um
on the on her presentation. It
identifies of the seven core themes that
the Weaver assessment um uh discussed,
three of them were already identified by
our internal risk assessment team. Um
and so I really do appreciate that. I it
shows that we are on the same track. We
are on the right track. So that again
gives me a lot of confidence. And then
one other point that was made last
Friday during the audit committee by the
Weaver team um as part of the executive
summary in their report there was this
um beautiful one-page road map that had
um green lines across it. It was a
timeline essentially of how to get to
that what we're speaking of how to get
to that next phase of sandag um which
will inevitably be a better sandag. So,
um, sadly it didn't get presented today,
but if you do dig in, um, it's a road
map and they they they went through it,
uh, in detail last Friday, so you could
also view the recording there. But I
really did appreciate that onepage
recommended road map. And my final
comment just has to do with the um
entire attitude um of um not just our
leadership, our CEO Mario Orso um but
being able to work and and I'm taking
his words from last Friday work with
these independent arms which is our OPA
which is um the folks from Weaver. Um
and it is a huge strength. uh perhaps it
wasn't initially realized as a strength
you know from previous leadership um and
it was instead something to resist but
now to see that it is in fact embraced
by current leadership um this proverbial
car that we keep talking about I feel
not only has new tires but it also has a
new engine and um you know I anticipate
at some point it'll be driving on this
journey on a toll-free 125 five uh or a
safer 17 or 78 or or 52, you know, um or
or even taking the purple line. So, I
look forward to a lot of good things in
Sandag. I have a lot of confidence. Um
certainly, I feel good with the
leadership that's in place. There's a
lot of work to be done. That is for
sure. Now, we know what the work is and
I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you.
» Thank you, Council Member. All right,
we're going to go on to Mayor Mento.
Well, you know, it's interesting having
sat here for a long time and hearing all
about the things that uh you know, you
don't know what you don't know. And I
just need to know from the CEO, are we
uh uh have we enhanced the um medical um
you know, benefits for these folks?
because I know there's got to be some
traumatic brain injury from all the
repeatedly because every time you get
down there, tell me I'm not wrong. You
get into this thing and it just go can't
believe it one more time. And uh it the
reason why it's frustrating for me is
because I sat here for a long time and I
listened to reports on the budget and
the finance and this and that and
everything was just perfect. we're
really going along. Then we had that big
debacle with Marne Cox and found out
that not everything was being reported
correctly and then it just kind of like
a an avalanche of caving from the the
glaciers and to where we got uh you know
the last CEO who I think didn't get tell
us anything was true and um and so
I can't believe we've actually um
operated so well if you want to call it
so well over so many years uh with what
we had you know with um you know who was
the maggyver behind everything holding
it together. Um, but what I see is that,
you know, and we did talk about this
road map, the road map is only as good
as, you know, the people that are
driving the car because if you don't
follow the map, you get off the road.
And so from this time forward, we have
to make sure that every bit of it is the
most best up and best and updated. Uh,
we do this at our city all the time.
We're always looking to say, is there a
better finance program? Is there a
better tracking program? And and you
know what, the the days of using, you
know, an abacus for one thing to, you
know, figure out how much money we have
is long gone. However, it seems like
that's what we've kind of done in the
past. And I'm not trying to disparrage
anybody that's that's working here today
that has been working for us in the
past. But I think there were probably
some great frustrations about the not
ability. What I would suggest is not
having the ability to do your job the
best that you could do and just putting
things together that you were told to
put together. I don't know. I'm just
kind of it's conjecture, but based on
the fact that we're seeing all the
problems that have along, it had to be
some there somewhere. And um
I I just think that uh I think we're
heading in the right direction finally.
And um I just want to say to this board
of directors, if we if we have people
that aren't doing their job, we have to
get rid of them a lot sooner and make
sure that people are doing their job.
Not saying anything, Mario, but uh that
you're not doing your job, but that's
just things happen and we have to be
very uh cognizant of what's going on.
So, I I just wanted to vent a little bit
on what I see and how I feel about
things and where we've come from. And it
doesn't make me feel comfortable that
we've had to, you know, put these things
together, paper clips and chewing gum
all the way.
» So, I'm going to answer your question.
Who kept it together? The employees.
They really are a dedicated uh group. Um
and now the job that Courtney, myself,
the incoming general counsel and all of
us here, all of you in the board, it's
to bring them together, right? And to um
institute that change up culture,
breaking those stoke pipes so the
different groups can talk to each other
as well as externally with the cities
and then we can understand what are the
needs. We codify the needs. We call that
systems requirements for systems, but we
also call systems requirements for like
the gen the the regional plan, right?
Understanding what you need in your
city, what you need in your city, what
you don't want in your city, and what
Carolina wants for South Bay as well as
Paloma and on and on and on. So, so we
we need to bring that together and have
that communications. But definitely what
kept it moving and is keeping it moving
and it will keep it moving is our
employees. So that's where we need to
invest.
» Very good. Uh Mayor uh Jones, you're up.
» Thank you so much, Sher. Um I just want
to say thank you um for everyone uh for
this report. And then um I really I I
really want to understand when we're
planning on having all of the
infrastructure across the board. I know
that's a big um but but uh Shaunie had
talked a little bit about the
infrastructure so that we have
everything um put in place set in place
maybe you called it actually framework
the framework uh when that will be in
place um do we have any idea when that
would be
» So the goal excuse me the goal currently
is to at least have an iterative
document within the next six months um
and that document is something where
there's it's foundational And then based
on what we see when we start kind of
diving deeper into the recommendations,
we can update it accordingly. But at the
very least having some sort of uh draft
documentation or iterative document
within the next six months. So basically
summer 2026.
» Great. Okay. And then um just as a
followup on that and maybe you want to
answer this Mario, I'm not sure. Um,
when we, you know, when when we hired
our internal controls person, I was,
well, it's a little different, but kind
of the same. Uh, we are getting a
six-month check-in, um, update uh, back
to the board. Do we have that scheduled?
I think we talked about it, but I don't
recall uh, what that was going to be.
» We can current we can certainly uh,
place something on the calendar for
review. Uh currently right now the idea
is to um try to come back to the
committee um at the very earliest uh
February um probably at the very latest
March but to get you some updates in
terms of where we are uh regarding our
uh recommendation implementation
um and then the frameworks would be a
part of that uh review or update.
» Is that going to be the audit committee
or the full board or both? I'm both
» Both.
» Okay, perfect. Great. And we're also
going to be coming with multiple
assessments. Grace eventually together
with the team will come in with a data
governance assessment and where we are
with all our different systems and where
we need to do. We continue to assess.
Courtney keeps helping us. I have a lot
of a lot of conversations with her of
where how we bring everything together.
uh and we'll be reporting in as timely
as we can to let you know where we are,
but also uh tell us if we need to pivot,
right? That's part of the new roles or
the enhanced roles of the executive
committee. So, you're going to be seeing
us coming more and talking about how to
manage the agency and asking for your
your opinions and your advice and
guidance on that.
» Great. because this is really important
work because it's building the
foundation of us being trusted again. Um
so um and and again thank you uh for all
of your input um all of our staff. One
last thing when you were talking about
Mario um infrastructure as far as the
toll itself goes the the toll road and
then the infrastructure that other
agencies public agencies have in place.
I think that's a prudent step because we
don't need to reinvent the wheel if if
there's something that's actually
working because the oneoff situation
that we were in is just not um we we
know I mean I don't want to beat the
dead horse. We just we can't go down
that road again. So anyway, thank you.
» Thank you, Mayor Alers.
» Yeah, thank you. Um the I really
appreciate the Weaver analysis. This is
as broad and comprehensive of a set of
recommendations as I've seen in a long
time. I really support them. I love the
detail you went into. Uh I want to talk
a little bit about the roles. Of course,
you've got the in independent auditor
and I always think of the director of
controls as being the internal architect
of the reporting structure, but not the
operational person. The operations, the
implementation of this will all fall
upon the people to the right here. the
actual operation. I I appreciate the
fact that uh the internal uh auditor is
relatively new and the internal controls
director is relatively new. I that tells
me the uh sheriff so to speak coming
into town and the internal sheriff are
are fresh eyes and then bringing Weaver
in was a very good move. Uh, so I've
worked on a lot of uh on several ERP
implementations in my career and they're
always fun. I don't know, they're
they're difficult, right? I think
anybody that's done them, they uh they
cross over between software and IT
versus the operations side, be it uh be
it uh finance, accounting,
toll collection, all that. And so I
thought the the the one I'm going to
pick on one select recommendation that
was about a uh a status of a CIO. I
really support getting that CIO in place
and I don't know if Mario you have any
comments on where we are on that.
First of all, you know, and I I have had
a lot of discussions even with Cornney
about this and for an organization of
our size, 400 people, you know, we and
for all the roles and responsibilities
that we have our our our CIO, it's very
important, but we need somebody far
beyond just a CIO. we due to the
activity based model runs that we're
doing the data analysis. So actually
grace is fills part of that role the IT
person we we had one and we lost it to
private industry. Um we are putting that
advertising out right now but Grace is
my point person for data and
intelligence and and information
systems. We will be evaluating if that's
working and but it's very hard to have a
chief data officer, a chief
informationational officer. So
therefore, we have consolidated based on
some new models that are coming up and
seeing how that works. We are
advertising for a an an it
put out that hopefully we can keep them
longer than what we kept the prior one.
Uh industry went very hard on us. We had
some very a very good person who had
come from Radian and and and they they
poached him back. Uh so we we will be
putting that out. But definitely IT
security system is an issue um that we
take very serious and we've been
focusing on that. our cloud security
also our operations I'm seeing again
highlighting all the multiple activities
that we're doing a one size uh one model
doesn't fit all for for the toll
operations we will that's why we're
looking into what others are doing and
maybe rely more on operations with some
of our other partner agencies I know I'm
pivoting a little bit outside but but
but that also affects our IT structures,
right? So, we're looking in kind of
combining multiple things of being
strong from an IT perspective
internally, but also relying with others
that have done other things better so
they can do those specialty items and
they can also take care of that IT
security and efficiency.
» Okay. So um I think key in what you've
said is that you're putting together an
organization that will manage the ERP
implementation and and the overall IT
data science strategy and that requires
a a very strong leader in that role with
both operational experience and in IT
understanding at the same time. I I and
then I did hear earlier I thought I
heard that you're hiring a uh ERP
expert, an outside consultant.
Absolutely. I I don't think I've ever
done an ERP implementation without
having somebody who is a nuts andbolts
expert. They make all the difference in
the world. I I I guess what I'm looking
for is an update in the future. I think
along the lines of what Mayor Jones was
asking for. I would say quarterly. I
would say quarterly timed with the
internal auditor report. I would like to
see it to the full board, but I'd like
to see it go down to the level of what
Weaver is is describing at the at the
high level initiatives. I certainly
first in the first review would like to
hear about the organizational changes or
updates or additions such as and status
of hiring uh whatever expert, ERP
expert, uh IT CIO, whatever it might be.
uh because I I think it's the people as
as has been correctly identified here at
all times. It's always the people that
make things happen and that's the first
phase. Get your organization straight. I
think that there are many more areas I
could spend time going into, but I think
the IT1 and the ERP one is key. Tyler
Technologies, they've got their act
together. If we get on board with that
and can integrate our systems with
Tyler, we you will be orders of
magnitude above where you've been. The
trouble is we've done too much glue by
by people and spreadsheets and and that
is destined to failure or
potentially corruption, whatever. And I
think we've been down that path. We want
to stop and and get on a path to
solution, which we are. I think we're
headed down there. So, I'm looking
forward to quarterly updates if others
agree with me. Thank you.
» Yeah, for sure. And we're we're also
going to be bringing the updates of the
different assessments HR
um the one that Grace is planning for IT
um the the one that we're doing for
tollaps because at the end of the day
everything glues together of course the
same follow the money right we need to
keep glue it with finance interest of
time I was only picking on on it and ERP
is probably one of the biggest ones but
huge I could have gone into many other
areas. I I won't do that today because I
think others have done that.
» Okay. I should have
» A brief comment. Thank you very much.
» So I just wanted to address um two
things. So one when you talk about the
role of the IPA and the role of the
director of internal controls. So the
model is that there's three lines of
defense for governance and risk
management. That's how it comes from the
IIA. So for and you could even say
people would consider the IPA a fourth
line because of the independence. We're
not an internal internal audit function.
Typically internal audit is a third line
of defense. So you have management who
does the operations. You have the
director of internal controls depending
on how you address it is doing the
monitoring and then you have internal
audit and then you have independent or
external audit. So those are your lines
of defense when it comes to government
and risk management. And it's really
important that in order to give you all
the assurance that that is occurring. We
were clear in the recommendations for
the internal control framework that it
be done. Um we recommended because of
the bandwidth from an external party and
then monitored um by the internal the
director of internal controls because
you want that compliance you know to
ensure that before so before we come in
and spot issues that issues are being
managed internally that is the model so
I just put that out there for
information purposes for the CIO and as
Mario said we've had conversations and
the recommendation and in the report is
for executive level CIO and I know he is
working to determine um how as has he
expressed um but I just want to stay
true to the recommendations that we put
forth so thank you chair
» Great thank you and thank you to all of
you Courtney and Weaver it's it's
excellent work I mean I can't imagine
the detail and how you find out all of
these things the number of questions you
must ask and and our team for, you know,
responding and working well with them.
And thank you for looking at all of
these, I guess, corrective actions.
You're going to be really, really,
really busy, not only creating this
foundation or framework, but then doing
the work that's going to go into all of
that just to keep this agency running
and the myriad ways that it runs as as
Mario outlined. So, thank you so much
for all of this. Um, there's just
discussion on this. There's no action.
And so we will now move to the revised
position classification and salary range
table with Josh.
Good afternoon. Uh, my name is Joshua
Goldter and I serve as SANDAG's director
of human resources and I will be
presenting recommendation or recommended
revisions to the FY 2026 position
classification and salary range table. I
do want to point out this item was
updated yesterday and you can see the
current version online. And you will
find the summary of changes in
attachment one and the red line table in
attachment two.
At a high level, the recommended changes
are relocating the associate capital
project manager 2 to strengthen the
mobility within the new capital delivery
project management career ladder. The
recommendation is to relocate the
classification as the current placement
limits hiring, transfer, and promotional
pathways from related career tracks
within the agency.
Second, relocating deputy director to
establish appropriate differential from
director reports. And as part of a
strategy to consolidate director 1 and
director 2 into one classification, the
agency is recommending relocating the
position from class range 130 to 131.
Also relocating deputy general counsel
classification.
The agency reviewed the deputy general
counsel role and found the positions,
responsibilities, complexity of work and
agencywide impact are consistent with
director level work. To maintain
consistency across leadership roles,
reclassifying the position from class
range 133 to 135 is recommended.
Fourth, relocating deputy independent
performance auditor. This classification
is recommended for a salary reallocation
from class 131 to 135 to maintain
current alignment with newly proposed
salary relocations for similar
classifications.
Uh streamlining the director level
structure to simplify and modernize the
classification system. We recommend
moving the current four tier director
structure to three levels which would be
deputy director, director, and senior
director.
The agency would no longer hire or
promote into director one or director 2
classifications.
These and these classifications would be
removed from the salary range table once
uh they are vacated. Essentially no
employees in that those specific
classifications.
A consolidated director classification
is proposed for class range 135 based on
scope and appropriate promotional
differentials.
Elimination of the chief of staff
classification.
This classification is recommended to be
removed for elimination as it no longer
aligns with the operational needs or the
strategic direction of the agency. The
classification has no current incumbents
and is no longer part of the
organizational structure.
And lastly, the placement of the
independent performance auditor position
classification on the salary range table
will be evaluated and recommendations
will be presented to the audit committee
and board of directors.
These updates maintain the board
approved FY2026 salary ranges while
improving internal mobility, simplifying
our structures and supporting our
operational strategy. With that, I can
take any questions you may have.
» Thanks, Jos. We'll first take public
comments and then we'll go to the board
member for questions and discussions.
Michael?
» Yes, we have two in person. That's truth
followed by Caesar.
How many people actually want to be
here? I don't. When do you
He does because you're crazy. When do
you present an item to the public about
class ranges? You need a to include a
clear explanation about what the
differences actually are so I don't
continue to fall asleep. I don't care if
it's at the bottom of the page as an
asterk with information just needs to be
defined. I'm glad the two directors
roles costing $228,000 and the chief of
staff role costing $278,000 will be
eliminated. Uh, it's totally wasteful
for us to be paying for somebody's
coffee servers, binder deliverers,
speech writers, and parking validators
like every county supervisor does with
our money. But I'd like somebody to
explain and justify why why a CEO should
be paid almost $500,000 a year at the
maximum. How was that an appropriate
paycheck for a quasi public service
role? And I'm not referring to Mario,
but there have been a number of Santa
staffers that have made major flubs the
last few years and even this year. And
yet some are making anywhere from
$110,000 up to $338,000.
There needs to be matching pay
reductions for major mistakes. And Sand
may technically be a blatant
corporation, but if there's going to be
an appear appearance of it being a
public agency and it is funded with our
tax dollars and some of you are actually
elected by somebody or maybe not, uh
that that means every penny of our money
needs to be handled like it's gold. Take
this job seriously in the quality of
your work. earn your paycheck and you
should be treated well and be able to
have fun doing it. Uh, three great
examples I've seen, uh, Michael,
Francesca, and Ariana. All very helpful
and reliable people at the back. Uh,
even for Mario, I can say that he's able
to somewhat have fun, get answers, and
get the work done. Should have more fun.
When people leave, you can I think
you're allowed to have more fun. Uh, now
somebody tell the representatives, some
of them are not even here. That says a
lot that they need to live up to that as
well. And I don't care if you get paid
pennies on the hour. You get junk sodas
and old San XL, which isn't even chips.
So come on, start working harder. Quit
making me fall asleep. Thank you.
» Next is Caesar Javier, followed by the
original draw online.
» Oh, next is Original Draw Online,
followed by Paul the Bold.
» It's funny to see you guys shift things
around. It's like having a bunch of
clutter and then you just like move it
around to act like you cleaned it up.
Um, and you know, this could potentially
just be shifting things around to get
people more money and more of this and
more of that to not provide the things
that you guys profess to provide, you
know, because there'll always be
something that gets in the way. But it I
don't understand how you can have
positions that you're saying that you're
not going to need anymore, but you're
going to keep them until there's no
employees in there. That doesn't make
any sense. Why would you do that? And
then even the ones that you take out and
you say you no longer need, are those in
the budget that you are saying for the
salaries that you need that you'll like
pull that out as money that's needed
just in case that position was filled?
Um, and you know, if they're not and you
did um, you know, take that money out,
where does that go? Does it go back?
Does it go into somebody else's pockets?
Are you just going to reclassify
somebody to, you know, kind of put it in
their pocket? Um just you know
interesting to see the things that are
so important to you guys to do which is
definitely making sure people are paid.
I mean that is 100%. Which I mean on the
surface that looks good because you do
want to be paid but then when you don't
provide the things that you know pe that
are promised to the people and then you
mismanage all of the money that you guys
get because you do have your hands in so
many buckets. It's like how many more
positions are going to be I mean like
400 people to do all of this nonsense
and we just keep pay paying people more
money but we don't really have anything
to show for the fruits of your labor. So
it's like you know I mean once people
start to see that you're just paying
more and more for nothing. Um but total
control because that's it. That's why
you guys have to change behaviors right
through punitive actions. Good. It's
good. That's the way you treat the
people. But if you're an employee, heck,
you guys will make sure that you're paid
a pretty penny all the time.
» And our last public comment is Paul
Devolt.
Not much to say here, but um after that
scathing assessment and name only by a
truly independent outside auditor, it is
clear to me that some of the people here
do not deserve raises. In fact, I
suggest that maybe
a lot of the people here seem to want a
long holiday this year. Um,
class 120, associate capital project
manager 2 does not need a backhanded
raise by reclassifying him or her to
class 121. The only raise that I see on
the list. Um, capital projects cost us a
lot more than it should. Um, it is a
rather sneaky move. what we can I think
expect from Sandag.
I did not get to speak on non-aggenda by
the way because there was silence on the
recording while waiting for quorum. So I
went to another room to see whether the
meeting was on. So I suggest the
background noise for
um the period of silence on the call-in
systems.
Happy holidays
uh to all. Um where are you on getting
voting seats for the Native Americans in
East County? Let's end taxation without
a representation.
Whimo driverless taxis are coming here.
The MTS taxi advisory committee came out
against Whimo and I hope you do too.
These rolling minuses do not belong in
our streets.
Uh, thanks for listening.
» That concludes our public comment on
this item. Chair.
» Okay. Very good. Um, any board member
comments? If not, I'd entertain a motion
to approve the recommended changes to
the the Sandag position classification
salary range table. Moved by Mento,
second by
» Gastland.
» Gastland. Okay. Please vote.
» There you go.
But he could do that fast.
» Use hers.
» That was easy.
» Okay, that passes unanimously. Let's
move to our last item, the bond issuance
refunding overview.
Don, this is you.
» As Don is setting up, um she's going to
be talking of uh there's some bonds
coming for for
um Oh my god, I lose track of what we go
the cold date for the bonds. So, our
financial advisors evaluate if the terms
that we have are good enough to continue
or if we go and do a reissuance. This is
not to get new money or anything like
that. This is to save financing and the
team will talk about it through the
life. I think we're talking about $40
million on potential savings, but I'll
let Don take care of that.
» All right. Thank you. Um so yes, I'm
here with an overview of this proposed
bond issuance. Um we do everything that
we do related to our debt uh in
association with board policy 36. Um and
so we have an opportunity uh to achieve
some savings here. The 2016 bond series
is callable this year. They were issued
as 10-year park hall bonds. Um so I'm
just going to start out with an overview
of um the team for this transaction. We
have quite a few folks internally here
at Sande working on this. Um PFM
financial adviserss is our uh financial
advisor uh for this and on our retainer
for uh everything else that we do do.
Mudra Patel from PFM is here with me
today. Our bond council selected for
this transaction is Norton Rose
Fulbright and Stradling Yoka Carlson and
Roth is our disclosure council. Uh our
senior underwriting team is Wells Fargo.
Uh they are joined uh with co-managers
from Barkclay's uh BFA and Hilltop
Securities.
So we're just going to go over a few
things why we're issuing the bonds. Uh
some issues related to the timing,
potential size and the structure, our
estimated savings and cost of issuance.
um some issues concerning the credit
ratings and the calendar of events.
So again, board policy 36 um is what we
use it. It guides us in our refunding
considerations. We're looking for uh net
present value savings. In this case, we
have an opportunity to do some blended
um arbitrage yield um scenarios that
will actually help us uh uh earn a
little bit more in our arbitrage uh
callable and non-callable bonds both
will be involved in this transaction. Uh
typically we would never have an
opportunity on a non-callable bond. Um
but in this case the numbers are
penciling out to blend these uh
together. that we can maintain our high
credit ratings that this structure will
allow us to continue the matched
maturity um level debt service that we
uh have on our senior lean bond.
So timing the 2016s again callable uh
April 1st 2026 we have some callable
2019A bonds and some callable and
non-callables uh in the 2021A.
Again, I mentioned this positive
arbitrage opportunity. So, within 90
days prior to the call date, um we can
actually uh do this refunding issuance
and have an escro deposit that earns a
blended uh yield rate. So, it blends the
the rates together and actually pushes
up what we would be otherwise able to
earn. Uh so, we are trying to get this
transaction through in January. That'll
give us a couple months of of earnings
on this as well.
In terms of the size and structure,
we're looking at about uh 334.3
million in par that we would refund. Um,
you know, we're saying all of the 2016
AS, but the actual 2016 that are
actually um coming uh maturing uh in
April uh may not be included in the
actual refunding. we may let those just
um mature and be paid. We're looking at
right now what's penciling out about
17.4 million in the 2019 AS and 2021 AS
uh about 97.6 million, but we will have
parameters. You'll see them in in your
documents. So, we do continue to watch
this all the way from the time that we
imagine doing the refunding to when we
actually do it. We are looking at the
market uh where things are are are
lining up to achieve a minimum level of
savings for the whole transaction and
include the bonds that make the most
sense to achieve that savings.
And uh these will be issued on the
senior lean. They'll be tax exempt fixed
rate bonds and that match maturity
struct structure with uniform debt
service savings. um really uh we'll just
keep things lined up the way they are
now in terms of our our debt structure.
I I know you see in the quarterly report
the charts that show the only ascending
debt level structure we have is on our
TIFIA loan. Everything else we really
have been maintaining as a level debt
service.
So again, estimated savings and cost of
issuance. Right now, uh the 2016 AS are
looking at nearly $40 million and
another 3.4 million in net present value
savings by pulling those um maturities
that are penciling out in the 2019 AS
and 2021 AS with a cost of issuance of
about 1.1 million.
In terms of the credit rating agency
reviews, um we have our appointments
lined up with standard and pores and
fitch. Right now we're carrying AAA
ratings uh on the senior lean. We don't
expect anything to change with that. But
what you can see here is on our
subordinate lean, S&P has us at doublea
and fitch has us at double A plus. And
we think this is a very good opportunity
to request S&P to look a little closer
at this and notch us up because we feel
strongly that we should be in the double
A+ category. Um and again that final
junior subordinate lean of the tiffy
alone is an A+ rating which is pretty
all of our ratings are very solid.
Um, in terms of next steps, I wanted to
mention first, um, what you have in your
packet does include a pretty robust set
of the draft documents. We are not
planning to go over those with you today
in detail. We will be back in January
with our bond council, with our
disclosure council, and we will be
walking through the documents and what
they contain and responsibilities for
review. Um, but today we wanted to give
you the overview. uh allow you to, you
know, ask any questions about the
overall transaction that you have and
let you know uh what the process is. So,
we anticipate receiving the ratings from
the agencies the week of January 19th.
Again, we'll come back uh January 23rd
with the final bond documents. Uh we're
going to post the preliminary official
statement and do the marketing of bonds
the following week with an anticipated
pricing date uh the that first week of
February and closing the second week of
February. And with that, Mudra and I are
available to answer any questions you
might have.
» Thank you very much. All right, we're
going to go to p uh public comment.
Please, Michael.
» We have one public comment. If you are
online, please raise your hand now
versus truth.
» I thought I'd get extra laughs because
you can't have enough of that in boring
meetings. No offense. No offense,
financing, but I hate numbers. Uh, let's
see. I can say hi to somebody. There's
Bruce. Hi, Bruce. How you doing? I did
already give him a shout out. Um, oh, I
like Terry. Terry's great. Kevin, we're
thinking about it.
All right. Look how much time I wasted.
Zene egg has a peak debt service of $161
million a 2.2 billion in outstanding
debt. Thanks Assan and Andre. You know
it's uh interesting that no matter what
sandagger the media says the numbers are
showing that Trump policies seem to be
resulting in a much more stable market
than Biden policies. I just like to
throw a controversy. I'm not even a
Trump fan, but when you look at the egg
prices $8 down to $3,
what are you going to complain about?
Uh, in fact, if you're outside of crazy
California, you know, everything's
affordable. It's amazing how that works.
Um, but let's see. Let's see. Uh,
indentured debt ser slavery is what
bonds are. Santa needs to pay the debt
off that it unjustly incurred for fake
transportation solutions like toll lanes
and then never implement managed toll
lanes ever again. Uh, and it's actually
unjust to celebrate no road tax, but
then confirm two nails new two new sales
taxes, which actually I say confirm, but
that's not going to happen. I think
that's dream world. So again, finance,
you need to look at that because that's
not happening. And it says something
about uh there's a team that engaged the
financial advisor. Uh can we get names
for those people that we're paying for?
I don't even know who that is. Um
question when the 2026A bonds with Wells
Fargo were decided, was that when Santa
was located within the Wells Fargo
building? I would hope not because that
seems like a conflict of interest or
some kind of conflict.
And uh speaking of financials, uh Terry
officially joined the broken record club
today. Congratulations on that. And you
did it with numbers. That's how it's
relative. See, I put it all together. Um
how everyone can stop being a broken
record on every topic. Work as hard as
the Santi City Council members. How
about that? Merry Christmas.
» Next online is the original draw
followed by Paul the Bold. The item here
is the proposed 2026 bond issuance.
Man, talk about a perpetual state of
debt just all the time. And it's it's
interesting because it makes you wonder
how many, you know, projects have you
guys engaged in that needed this bond um
to use them to get the money to, you
know, complete or start or whatever and
that never were. And then we're just
continuing to pay on debt. And it's
like, you know, you guys just continue
to get more money of our I just there's
nothing to show for the amounts of money
that comes across any government hands.
I mean, it's astronomical amounts. All
while people sit here and they're
suffering. They don't get to sit and be
in debt like this. I mean, you'll
take their house and sell it for a
hundred bucks, which is what the county
does because you can't pay your taxes.
It's like, but you guys sit here and you
rob us of our money that could be used
to help people actually, you know, just
survive.
And instead, you go and you just create
more debt for us to have to pay off. And
then you want to come at us and be like,
we're going to need some more money
because you know what? We need to pay
our employees and make sure that we can
still provide all the things that you
guys that we're providing for you, which
is nothing. It's like you look around
and you're like taking things away. Like
I said before, trying to change people's
behaviors, which is psychotic in itself.
And it's like
it's just sad because I mean, nobody
should have even given up their money
for gold, like their gold for IUS. But
people were stupid enough to do that.
And now money is worthless. And then
we're going to go into some, you know,
fully digital kind of currency where
it's going to be even more easy to
regulate people because, you know,
you're going to bring in some kind of or
the whatever the government will will
bring in some kind of, you know, um
universal basic income and then take out
how much you need to pay for your rent,
your transportation, and everything. And
they'll be like, "Here, you have a
couple pennies left, but you know what?
Pennies are worthless, and we're going
to take those out so you don't even have
anything." It is just so sad to see how
much money goes through your hands and
we have nothing to show for it and you
virtue signal like you're perfect.
» Thank you. Our last public comment is
Paul the Bold
here. Um again, happy holidays. Uh, the
staff report cites a $55 million savings
under current market conditions.
Current,
that is the operative word. The market
is changing fast, so you might want to
proceed rather quickly on this, but I
I'm not sure if it's really practical
because there's another issue. I hope
people snap up the new bonds otherwise
uh this debt refunding won't work and um
there actually are less and less people
in the county or probably who want this
or who want the new bonds. Um, I see by
the way that the draft resolution goes
from section six to section 9.
What would we do without people to
actually check the resolution to see if
the the sequence is logical proofreading
error or is this a purposeful omission?
Um
anyway, as I say, happy holidays uh to
all um and um keeping it short. Thank
you.
» That concludes our public comment on the
item chair.
» Thank you very much. Okay, I see nobody
on the board. Uh thank you so much, Don
and Mudra. We'll see you early next year
to do the deal um and get this done.
» I I I I should be on the board.
» Oh, okay. Mayor Castelin. Okay. Thanks.
Um, Don, I I wanted to put three
questions on the table, and I doubt that
you have the answers right now, but I'd
like to get the answers. So, the first
one is how much of the future Transnet
revenues are obligated by these bonds.
You know, what portion is going to the
bond service and what portion is
available going forward?
» I don't have it off the top of my head
right now. I should have brought the
last quarterly report. didn't give you
these questions that I will for sure get
that to you.
» Great. What will the bond revenues what
did the bond revenues pay for or will be
paying for is my second question. And
what I'll request is a table of the
2016A, 2019A, and 2021A bonds. How much
each was and what they were for. I'd
like to review that so that I have an
understanding of what we have done with
this money over the years since 2016.
» Yes. So, so first let me say that the
bonds that have been issued with the
transnet revenue pledge have been uh
transnet major corridor projects. Uh the
most most of the debt was related to the
early action program of projects. So
that that group of projects that was
identified for early action when the
ordinance initially passed, things like
completion of State Route 52, 76, Mid
Coast, I5 North Coast corridor, the 8 uh
805 HO lanes. Uh just several projects
that oh I-15 I think was also in the
list. This is my capital person who who
can remind me everything that was in the
early action program. But the the debt
is related to the transnet major
corridor program predominantly the early
action program. Uh it was envisioned
that we would do debt financing um on
the projects that were prioritized at
the time the ordinance passed and then
move into a pay as you go situation. Um
the board policy uh on debt it indicates
that so of the transnet revenues that
come into the major corridor uh we are
restricted to uh assuring that we have a
onetoone ratio. So the debt on the major
corridor program can never be more than
uh that one-time coverage rate so that
we have money to go into the program.
So, every dollar we put into new capital
projects that are currently in the
program, no more than a dollar can go
into the debt. Uh, if you would like the
table to include the specifics of
projects that it went into, uh, that may
take a little bit more time to get, but
the reality is that I mean, so these
bond issuances, um, I think the 2021 was
likely, um, small amount of new money
maybe, but mostly a refunding. So, some
of these have been refundings as well
over time because we began issuing bonds
back in 2008.
Um, and so when we have the call dates
come up, we've we've done several
additional refundings. Um, so I I can
work directly with you and and figure
out what what you want that table to
encompass.
» That's great.
» Mayor, um, if my memory serves me right,
and Susan will correct me later on, we
have delivered
All the projects in the early action
item except 52 is the only one
remaining, but all the l all the ones on
the early action were delivered have
been delivered.
» So maybe a a reminder to the board of
what those early action items were
because then we'll be in a position to
speak to what was this money used for
and we're being wise and thank you for
bringing the refunding or refinancing of
this forward so that we hear about it.
So there's no motion to be made.
Correct.
Okay. Very good. This concludes our
meeting. Thanks for staying for the
whole time. The next board of directors
meeting will be January 9th, 2026 at
9:00 a.m. This meeting is adjourned.
Happy, safe, and healthy holidays.