[0:17] To the smart board of directors meetings of February 21st, 2024. I'm David Rabbit. I am not the chair. I am not the vice chair, but I am the chair.

[0:26] Designate today because we are without our, yeah, emeritus, we are without our chair and vice chair. So I've been asked to run the meeting. Hopefully that's okay with my colleagues.

[0:36] Do you want to call the meeting to order? And the first item on our meeting is a roll call, please. Cassandra, thank you for stepping in today.

[0:44] Of course.

[0:46] Director Collin.

[0:47] Present.

[0:47] Director Corsi.

[0:49] Here.

[0:50] Director Farrak.

[0:52] Absent.

[0:53] Director Fudge.

[0:54] Here.

[0:55] Director Garabarino.

[0:57] Good, good.

[0:58] Yep, here.

[0:59] Director Parr.

[1:01] Director Fulton.

[1:02] Here.

[1:03] Director Rabbit.

[1:04] Here.

[1:05] Director Rogers.

[1:06] Here.

[1:06] Director Sackett.

[1:08] Here.

[1:08] Vice Chair Bagby.

[1:10] Absent.

[1:11] Chair Lucan.

[1:12] Absent.

[1:12] Thank you.

[1:15] Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Moving on to our approval of the January 7th, 17th, 2024 board meeting minutes.

[1:22] So I'll look to my colleagues for any questions, comments, or concerns. And if none, can I get a motion to approve?

[1:28] So moved.

[1:30] So we have a motion and a second.

[1:33] And we can do a, we don't have to do a roll call, but correct, Tom.

[1:39] So on the motion and the second on the board meeting minutes of January 17th, all those in favor please say aye.

[1:46] Aye.

[1:47] Anyone opposed?

[1:49] That just passed unanimously with all present.

[1:50] So thank you for that.

[1:52] Board member announcements.

[1:54] I'll look to my colleagues if there's any board member announcements.

[1:58] Seeing no hands raised we'll move on to the general managers report.

[2:02] Eddie.

[2:08] Good afternoon board of directors.

[2:12] I have six items today.

[2:13] Today I'll go over contracts and procurements over $100,000, talk a little bit about ridership.

[2:19] I wanted to take a moment today and highlight our engineering team and share with you some

[2:24] of the projects they're working on and kind of provide a little bit of an update on some

[2:27] of the projects.

[2:29] I wanted to talk about a partial system closure we'll have coming up with some

[2:33] of the work we have going on.

[2:35] I also wanted to provide an update on some of the community meetings I've been

[2:40] to over the past three or four weeks and then provide an update on our 2024

[2:45] strategic plan development and then of course the end I'll open it up for

[2:49] questions. Starting out with contracts and procurements over a hundred

[2:55] thousand dollars this first is the only one I have today and this purchase

[2:59] order is with winner Chevrolet for the purchase of three Chevrolet Silverado

[3:04] 1500 four-wheel drive trucks. We will be utilizing the state of California

[3:09] a contract and these trucks will replace three current trucks in the operations department

[3:15] and the purchase order amount is $148,057.

[3:21] Turning our attention to ridership, we finished the month of January with 65,990 riders.

[3:29] That was 43% above January 23, but 9% under January 2020.

[3:36] It's been a long time since we've finished a month under our pre-COVID ridership.

[3:44] And I think there's a couple of things happening here.

[3:46] Number one, in January 2020, Larkspur in Nevada downtown opened, and both in January

[3:52] and February of 2020, SMART had really, really high ridership.

[3:57] But there's something else going on here, too, and it's the rain.

[4:01] rain. I reported to the board several times that rain absolutely has a negative impact

[4:09] on ridership. So I went back and looked at what was going on in 2020. According to some

[4:15] things I found on the internet, there were three days of precipitation in January 2020

[4:20] and we had 10 days of precipitation in January 24. So that definitely had a negative impact

[4:25] on us. What we were seeing is on days that it was nice, we were seeing somewhere between 2,800

[4:31] and 3,000 riders a day, and on days that it rained, we were somewhere between 2,300 and 2,500,

[4:38] so a significant difference between those days.

[4:45] I think, you know, looking at, you know, we've

[4:47] all been experiencing the weather, I think the same trend is going to continue through

[4:51] February, I anticipate, based on some of the information I'm about to show you,

[4:55] I think we'll probably finish February less than where we were at in February 2020.

[5:01] But when this rain stops, what we are seeing on rainy days is I anticipate that our ridership

[5:06] is going to jump up about 2,900 to 3,000 a day on average. So I'm ready for some sunshine.

[5:17] Let's see. Okay, January average weekday ridership was 2589. That was 38% higher than January of 2023, and our February average weekday ridership to date is a little bit less at 2527, but that's still 19% higher than where we were at this time last year.

[5:38] Weekend ridership continues to be strong. This graph shows Saturday Sunday ridership compared to 2019.

[5:46] And you can see that January weekend boardings were up 10% over FY19. So weekend ridership remains strong.

[5:54] Pathway counts. In the month of January we had 46,424 users. Again, I think this is also impacted by rain.

[6:02] but this number was still 8.5% higher than it was in 2023.

[6:14] So as the board knows, we are very busy right now.

[6:17] There is a lot of stuff going on.

[6:20] Team Smart is doing great things every day,

[6:22] and I wanted to take a minute just to highlight our engineering team.

[6:26] When you consider Petaluma North, Windsor, Hildsburg,

[6:30] and pathway projects along with other day-to-day work,

[6:33] This team is doing extraordinarily well and deserves to be recognized.

[6:38] Just a little background, our engineering team consists of six engineers.

[6:44] Key functions include managing smarts capital projects, managing FRA mandated bridge management program,

[6:54] coordinating with local municipalities for projects,

[6:59] supporting operations and maintenance on some of their smaller projects,

[7:02] projects, supporting freight with infrastructure repairs and replacements, preparing capital

[7:08] plans, cost projections and supporting grant submissions.

[7:15] So here are just a few highlights and I have quite a few slides and pictures and videos

[7:20] actually that I wanted to show of just kind of what our engineering team is working

[7:25] on right now and some of the things that they're accomplishing.

[7:27] Starting with Petaluma North Station, project team has continued to mobilize this project.

[7:33] just some of the activities are they've ordered long lead materials such as

[7:38] rail switch machines and signal equipment, planning for the upcoming track

[7:43] shutdown that I'll talk about later in the presentation, setting up project

[7:47] site with job site trailer, temporary fencing and equipment, conducting

[7:53] site work to include excavation for the station platform and potholing to

[7:59] locate buried utilities and we have received 30 tons of rail for a platform

[8:05] track and for the McDowell crossing reconstruction.

[8:13] So just a few pictures

[8:14] this is excavation in soils subgrade preparation for the Petaluma North

[8:20] platform foundation. If you ever wondered how much wire and cable goes

[8:27] into the ground on these projects. This is it. So this is just a picture of all the cable that

[8:36] has been brought in that we will be putting underground. And this is the contractor excavating

[8:42] for the underground conduit at the Petaluma North Station.

[8:47] Of this, I thought the board would find this interesting in the public,

[8:52] But this is a video of our contractor welding together some of the segments of rail at Petaluma

[9:00] North.

[9:22] If you ever wondered how that happens and how they weld all the rails together, this

[9:26] is it.

[9:37] Okay.

[9:38] Moving on and talking about Windsor, progress is also continuing on our Windsor extension

[9:45] field work as everyone knows resumed in December of 2023.

[9:50] Some of the things that we're working on right now is placing concrete bridge decks for the railroad bridges, installing and completing drainage pipes, and excavation for the Windsor station platform.

[10:02] Just a few pictures on your left, you can see we're setting the bridge decks at Windsor Creek.

[10:07] And then over on the right hand side, you can see the framework and rebar install for the platform there in Windsor.

[10:17] Another video that I thought may be of interest.

[10:20] I'll skip through on this because it's a pretty long video, but this is setting the bridge decks over Windsor Creek.

[10:48] It fits.

[10:54] But think about the precision here, right? Is there dropping this right down on the bolts?

[11:08] This gets kind of boring so I'm going to advance just a little bit.

[11:12] Oh I can't do it. I guess that's on

[11:25] my computer I was able to do this. I guess I

[11:28] can't do it on here.

[11:32] Okay apologize for that. But anyway really cool. And at the

[11:39] end of the video you hear a voice say beautiful as it slips into place.

[11:53] So

[11:54] work is also continuing on the pathway. The team currently has 10 pathway segments in design

[12:00] and they are in the permitting process for three additional segments.

[12:04] The bridge inspection program, as I mentioned early, is also a top priority for us

[12:09] and this team has inspected several bridges on the smart main line over the past few months.

[12:15] So I'm very proud of what this team has been able to accomplish and when you think about

[12:20] the amount of work that's going on, the amount of oversight that's required, the amount of just

[12:26] day-to-day work that's happening. I'm extremely proud of this team and would just like to give

[12:30] them a round of applause.

[12:41] Okay, so speaking of all of this work, obviously that leads us to

[12:46] some level of disruption. Petaluma North Station construction requires a weekend service closure

[12:52] from airport to Qatadi station. Right now we're looking at March 23rd and 24th

[13:00] and SMART will operate the weekend schedule from Petaluma downtown to

[13:05] Larkspur. So from airport to Qatadi will be closed during that time. Now

[13:11] obviously you know everything's got to come in, weather's got to be right, all

[13:14] those things have to happen. So this is subject to change but for planning

[13:18] purposes right now. We're looking at March 23rd and 24th and the reason we're doing this is the

[13:25] section of track will be removed and replaced with a switch and a gauntlet track. Just to provide

[13:31] a little bit of information and background on the gauntlet tracks. SMART uses gauntlet tracks

[13:38] at stations to allow wider freight trains to pass and narrower passenger trains to pull

[13:43] into the station. All stations north of the Ignacio Y were constructed with gauntlet tracks to

[13:49] accommodate freight trains and you can see down on the bottom you can see how that kind of works

[13:55] where you can see the the red lines show the for the freight rail and then the blue lines would

[14:02] be for passengers.

[14:07] Additionally a second closure a second closure is a plan for April for the

[14:17] at McDowell Boulevard.

[14:19] April 13th and 14th is what we're planning right now.

[14:22] And during this time,

[14:23] SMART will again operate the weekend schedule

[14:26] from Petaluma downtown to Larkspur.

[14:29] To ensure we mitigate this disruption

[14:31] to the greatest extent possible,

[14:33] we will conduct extensive outreach for both closures,

[14:36] including ferry transfers at Larkspur.

[14:41] Our marketing and outreach team

[14:42] is currently working on an info card

[14:44] to help spread the word.

[14:46] This is just, I know you can't read them up there,

[14:48] but just to kind of give you an idea of what we're looking at.

[14:51] The info cards will be printed both in English and Spanish,

[14:54] and you can see the red section shows the closure

[14:57] and then what will be opened down on the bottom.

[15:02] So, I've had the opportunity to attend many community meetings over the last month. Two, I wanted to highlight here tonight.

[15:12] The first one was a few weeks ago. Heather and I went to the Sonoma Valley Community Advisory Committee.

[15:19] We presented on freight storage opportunities that were probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 50, 40 to 50, 40 to 50 attendees at that meeting.

[15:29] And the majority of those attendees and all the commissioners spoke in opposition of LPG storage.

[15:36] That's a tough one because this board knows we got a funding gap we have to figure out.

[15:41] And staff right now is currently looking at other alternatives to close that gap.

[15:45] We are working with Caltrain. We're getting very close on an agreement there to store their freight locomotives and some of their gallery cars in support of their electrification project.

[16:04] We're also working with a storage broker regarding storage of non-hazardous vegetable tanker cars.

[16:10] They reached out to us and asked us to kind of submit a proposal and a sample agreement.

[16:18] So we're working through that.

[16:20] It would be interesting to see, you know, what kind of revenue that will be able to bring in for us.

[16:25] But in conversations that we had, there is a market there in our area for both filled vegetable tankers as well as empty.

[16:34] So we'll continue to explore these alternatives.

[16:38] The

[16:43] next one was the Hillsburg City Council meeting. I was there last night with Bill

[16:47] Gamelin and Joanne Parker. We discussed Hillsburg Station location. We're looking at two options

[16:54] there. We have the original depot location and also the downtown site. I estimate that

[17:00] there were probably 25 to 30 attendees there last night. Smart advocated for downtown

[17:06] location you know from a transit perspective that is what we thought would work best. However the

[17:13] majority of the attendees that were there last night spoke in favor of the depot location

[17:18] and ultimately the council determined that they felt the depot location better met the needs

[17:23] of the community. As I said last night SMART's in the business of supporting the communities

[17:29] we serve and so you know based on last night's meeting you know we'll focus our attention

[17:36] on that depot site as we move forward.

[17:41] I also wanted to provide an update

[17:43] on our strategic plan development.

[17:46] Workshops are underway.

[17:48] We've had good attendance so far.

[17:50] We've already completed two workshops.

[17:52] We did a SWOT analysis.

[17:54] We had 61 people show up to that meeting

[17:56] on January 31st and then on February 7th.

[18:00] We had a session on ridership

[18:03] and we had 33 attendees at that one.

[18:06] On upcoming workshops, February 28th we'll be talking pathways, March 14th will be extensions

[18:12] and then on March 27th we'll be talking about freight.

[18:17] So a lot of good work has happened here and I feel like the feedback that we're getting

[18:23] from the community has been really good and I think it's going to go a long way in

[18:27] making a good 2024 strategic plan.

[18:30] We used something that was kind of interesting.

[18:32] we used Minty where people could vote on their cell phones or on their computers and so we went

[18:39] through and documented the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, had a lot of conversation

[18:45] but you can see on strengths things like clean, bike-friendly, infrastructure, staff,

[18:54] pleasant experience, all of those types of things made it into the strengths column.

[18:58] Over on weaknesses, things like frequency, understaffed, pathway gaps, headways, single

[19:05] track system, things of that nature made it into the weakness category.

[19:10] And of course there's a lot of different words up there that kind of mean the same thing.

[19:14] So in a future slide I will show you where we kind of boiled that down to determine

[19:19] really what we were hearing.

[19:21] Under opportunities, tourism was at the top of the list along with more frequency,

[19:26] a bar car, free days and extensions.

[19:31] Over on threats, you can see funding, sales tax, sales tax renewal, those are the types

[19:36] of things that come to the top of the list in regards to threats.

[19:42] One of the questions we ask is what strategies should smart use to increase our ridership

[19:48] similar to some of the strengths and the weaknesses and the opportunities identified.

[19:55] improved first and last mile, more trained service, last mile connections,

[19:59] covered bicycle parking, better connections, and target large user groups

[20:04] for just some of the things that popped up.

[20:11] So as we went through this and kind of condensed everything down and, you know,

[20:15] to really understand what we were hearing, some of the things that we heard in regards to strategy

[20:20] were greater non-peak service hours and train frequency,

[20:24] Improving first and last mile connections and connections to other transportation options

[20:29] including the pathway.

[20:30] Increased public awareness and perception through advertising and personal testimonials.

[20:36] Targeted in marketing to larger user groups and non-commute travelers.

[20:41] More onboard amenities.

[20:42] Travis service to special events and host events on the train at our stations.

[20:47] Ease trip planning and trip making.

[20:49] Improved parking.

[20:51] There's also some mention of free reduced and promotional fares and expanding the system.

[20:57] We asked the question, how should SMART prioritize these strategy areas?

[21:02] At the top of the list, first and last mile connections, followed by local transit connections,

[21:07] train schedule, system completion, marketing and outreach, service reliability, stationary

[21:13] amenities and parking, reasonable fares, system safety, and on-board amenities,

[21:19] come in at number 10. And so with that I would be happy to answer any questions

[21:24] the board may have. Thank you very much appreciate that and echo your comments

[21:30] regarding the engineering crew. Thank you Bill and everyone in engineering for

[21:34] all the work. I think it reminds us once again that not only are we a

[21:38] transit agency but we're also a construction agency as well and doing

[21:43] dual roles is very much appreciative with the amount of folks that you have.

[21:47] So thank you's and kudos to everyone. I'll look to my colleagues for any questions of the general on the general manager's report

[21:55] director Fetch. I

[21:57] Had one that goes back to the very beginning. Is it possible that we can replace some of our trucks with electric trucks?

[22:04] Yeah, I think in the future right now

[22:06] There's not a lot on the market that meets our needs right now. That's just a the f-150 lightning that's out there

[22:13] And so yeah, that's definitely on our radar

[22:15] are right now with what we need and what our requirements are that did meet our needs.

[22:21] But that is something that we are focused on for the future.

[22:25] Director Ferrer.

[22:26] Thank you very much for the presentation.

[22:28] Just curious, what was the reasoning behind the community support for the depot?

[22:37] Was there like a trend or it was just?

[22:43] Choose words wisely.

[22:47] You know, the people that showed up there last night really felt that, you know, a lot

[22:53] of things that we, I'll just tell you, some of the things that we heard, they didn't,

[22:57] they don't like the idea of the train going through the roundabout, you know, and I mentioned

[23:01] that as we continue to go to Cloverdale, we're probably going through that roundabout

[23:05] anyway, so that disruption will happen, but that was definitely on people's mind.

[23:11] As we looked at the footprint that would be needed for the station, we felt like

[23:15] we would need to take 50 to 80 parking stalls

[23:17] because right now in that downtown area

[23:19] there are several parking stalls

[23:21] that are parked in our right away, in Sparks right away.

[23:24] So we would need to take some of those out.

[23:26] So the loss of 80 parking stalls

[23:30] was really a challenge to some folks.

[23:33] There was just a historical desire

[23:37] of feeling like the depot areas

[23:39] where the train station is just supposed to be.

[23:42] And so like I said, there were a few people

[23:44] that came and spoke on behalf of downtown, but to be honest the majority were there speaking

[23:51] on behalf of the depot.

[23:55] Director Rogers.

[23:57] I don't think we need to get too far into it, but does the change of the site from downtown

[24:02] to the depot mean that the speed of the train going through the roundabout is going

[24:07] to be different?

[24:08] I don't think it's going to be much different because it will either be slowing down

[24:12] or just getting up to speed.

[24:14] So I don't think...

[24:15] So long impact stop times?

[24:18] No, I don't anticipate.

[24:20] I think that we estimated that gate arms

[24:22] would be down through the roundabout

[24:24] somewhere between 60 and 90 seconds.

[24:26] But folks did worry about the backup

[24:28] that would happen, you know, during their peak times.

[24:31] Okay, thank you.

[24:33] Director Corsi.

[24:35] Thanks.

[24:37] You know, I heard from some of the folks

[24:39] in Healdsburg yesterday they were trying to organize,

[24:41] I guess they did they did but you know there was there was discussion about how

[24:47] far the downtown station is from a lot of the new housing construction that's

[24:52] going on there but I'm wondering actually how far it is from say the new

[24:58] housing that's along Ellsburg Avenue to the depot station because you can't

[25:03] go straight across the tracks there it's it's a ways around and very much

[25:08] like Gernvill Road and Jennings and I'm guessing that it's about an equal

[25:15] distance to either the depot or the Dow Dow. I think it's relatively close. I

[25:20] mean I'll have those numbers off the top of my head as to what they are. You

[25:24] know kind of the way we were looking at it was what assuming that you know the

[25:31] majority of people would be heading into downtown Hillsburg right. So from the

[25:36] To get to the town square there was point one miles from the downtown location

[25:41] It's point four miles from the from the depot location and I'm gonna be honest

[25:47] And I said this last night, you know that it's rarely a day goes by that

[25:52] I don't get an email from somebody about Larkspur

[25:55] Right they want to ride the they want to connect to the ferry and it's just too far of a walk

[26:00] Or it's a challenge or whatever it is

[26:02] And that was my biggest concern last night is trying to express that this is a real challenge.

[26:10] First and last mile is a real challenge for people.

[26:13] And the closer you can build a station from a transit perspective, the closer you can

[26:18] build a station to where people want to go, the more it's going to be ridden.

[26:22] The other thing that didn't land well with the community last night is that I said

[26:27] I think Hillsburg is going to be a destination station.

[26:30] And I truly believe that.

[26:31] I think there's going to be more people going into Hillsburg than is going to be going out.

[26:37] We have some numbers. There's about 1,150 workers that work in the downtown area.

[26:44] The records that we have show that 85% of them commute in.

[26:48] I felt like, and I said this last night to the council and to the public,

[26:54] if just 80 of those workers ride the train in, you no longer have a parking problem.

[26:59] and I see smart as a parking solution not a parking problem so I think it would

[27:05] even if it were in the downtown area I think you would see a net gain and it

[27:08] would actually improve parking in the area rather than being a challenge. The

[27:14] 80 parking places that are in are right-of-way is that a revenue

[27:19] opportunity? I guess it potentially could be.

[27:25] Thank you.

[27:29] Anyone else have

[27:30] What do you think for the general manager?

[27:31] Director Garbruda.

[27:33] Thank you.

[27:33] I just wanted to thank Rachel

[27:34] for asking that question about Healdsburg

[27:36] and this was a great dialogue.

[27:38] I don't live near there.

[27:39] So I'm glad for the education.

[27:41] The SWAT analysis, it looks like you're really satisfied

[27:45] with that.

[27:45] I was interested, I forgot the name of it

[27:47] and I get to make a report with Barb and David tomorrow

[27:51] at the other board on this board's meeting.

[27:55] And the phone use, there's a way

[27:57] that it doesn't become Chicago politics and you get to vote more than once. Forgive me if

[28:02] anybody's from Chicago. But how do you do that?

[28:05] So it gives you spaces for somewhere between three to five things to type in. So if we were

[28:10] talking about strengths, using that as an example, you could type in five strengths.

[28:14] Once you hit submit, you're done. It takes you and it just takes you to like a blank

[28:19] screen and then when the next question pops up, it loads to your phone and you

[28:22] can do that. So you can't just vote over and over and over again.

[28:25] I see.

[28:26] Okay.

[28:26] That's a good thing.

[28:27] And the guy who came out on top here under weaknesses about reverse commute, that one

[28:33] could go to the bottom, I think.

[28:35] That was an interesting comment.

[28:37] It doesn't even make sense, but I'm glad that you're happy with it.

[28:40] Yeah.

[28:41] I think it's a good start.

[28:42] Obviously, we're going to have to sift through these things and align it with other things

[28:47] that we need to accomplish.

[28:49] But the reason I'm happy with it is because I think it's engaged in the public.

[28:53] I think it's getting their input into what we're doing and how we're doing it and how

[28:58] we move forward and I think that that's something that we're doing better than we've done in

[29:03] the past.

[29:04] And I think the public really appreciated it.

[29:07] I think they enjoyed being a part of it.

[29:09] Good.

[29:09] And what was the name of it again?

[29:11] Minty.

[29:12] Minty.

[29:13] It's minty.com.

[29:15] Wow.

[29:16] Okay.

[29:17] Thank you.

[29:19] Welcome.

[29:20] Great.

[29:20] Anyone else?

[29:22] I just can't help myself at making mention, especially on the SWAT analysis, the first

[29:28] and last mile being one of the major pieces but then listening to the Healdsburg discussion

[29:35] quite honestly and not knowing, not to say that Healdsburg doesn't know where the station

[29:42] with a town of 11,000, is it a destination or a spot or is it going to be picking up

[29:49] more passengers to extrapolate the 11,000 versus the amount of people that would be going downtown.

[29:54] I think it would be interesting to really kind of come to grips with that because we could

[29:58] be adding to that minty list.

[30:00] With another first last mile, that is a .4 miles from where perhaps the majority of people want to go.

[30:07] So I think it's something that we need to continue to follow.

[30:11] And then I thank you for facing the fire on the bad choice of words on the LPG cars.

[30:19] You know, for me personally, I do think that I understand.

[30:24] But if you really step back, to me this is an equity issue that we expect to have all these services here in our own county but not have a place to put the things that make that work, including in this case the cars that take the propane to fuel our own cars here.

[30:42] And I think we need to kind of continue to work on that as leaders in the community to really truly want to be self-sustaining. We have a little ways to go.

[30:50] So thank you for attending those meetings and listening to the community and that dialogue hopefully will continue.

[30:57] With that, we'll move on then to public comment on non-agenda items.

[31:03] And thank you everyone for being here.

[31:05] If you want to speak to this body, now is your choice on the non-agenda items.

[31:10] Seeing no one rise.

[31:12] And thank you for that.

[31:14] Mr. Chair, we do have some folks on Zoom.

[31:16] Okay. Can you lead us through that, please? Because I can't really see them.

[31:21] Absolutely. First up, we have Eris Weaver.

[31:27] Hi, Eris Weaver. It's from County Bicycle Coalition.

[31:31] I attended both of those meetings, and I was very impressed with how they were run.

[31:37] I really liked that mentee platform. I had not worked with it before,

[31:41] and I'm now investigating it to use for some of my own events and stuff.

[31:46] and that was great. But I do have to offer Mr. Cummins that there actually is a way to get around

[31:53] the only you get five answers thing because after you hit submit if you then refresh your browser

[31:59] window you could start all over again. So I discovered that little hack when I was on the

[32:04] meeting so just thought I'd let you know. So all of the bicycle mandala about Sonoma County

[32:09] I should probably take into consideration is that what I'm hearing?

[32:16] Anyway, my other comment is I do have to say that I am also a little disappointed about

[32:22] Healdsburg's decision about where to put the train station and we did sign on a letter

[32:28] from him and some other advocate groups because I agree, if the point is to be able

[32:37] get more different ways of connecting, whether it's on foot or on bike or on train or on bus,

[32:43] that the downtown location just made so much more sense to me as well. Thank you.

[32:54] Next up for public comment is Kristin Lange.

[33:00] Good afternoon. My name is Kirsten Lange.

[33:03] I'm president of the Santa Rosa Sonoma County branch of the NAACP.

[33:07] Listening into your meeting, excited that you're excited about all of your goals,

[33:11] but want to impart a couple of

[33:14] things that have come to our

[33:15] branch's attention that you all

[33:18] should consider as you're moving

[33:19] forward with your strategic

[33:20] initiatives and community

[33:21] engagement and planning moving

[33:22] forward.

[33:23] On the trains, everything is in

[33:26] English, so writers who are not

[33:28] English speakers are not able

[33:29] to fully understand and

[33:31] comprehend where they have

[33:32] landed and where they are

[33:33] going and folks have brought

[33:34] forward that they've witnessed

[33:36] folks stepping out of the train

[33:37] uncertain of when it's going

[33:39] to move again in order to

[33:40] look for surrounding scenery to understand where they are.

[33:44] Now while language access and language justice may not have caught your attention, I'm bringing

[33:48] it forward to you now as it could potentially be a huge safety issue for members of our

[33:53] community and those who are visiting from the greater Bay Area.

[33:57] Second item I'd like to bring to your attention for future consideration is SMART staff

[34:03] and agreed to help market Transit Equity Day

[34:08] for February 4th, which was the celebration of Rosa Parks

[34:12] and Black History Month, and that did not happen.

[34:15] So I want to ask for you all to review

[34:17] what your commitment to diversity, equity,

[34:20] and inclusion looks like and participating

[34:22] in community partnerships and programming

[34:24] as a movement forward, as you're considering

[34:28] that our county communities and region is so diverse

[34:31] and what a missed opportunity to model your commitment to the people who live here.

[34:35] Thank you.

[34:39] Next up for public comment is Rick Lutman.

[34:48] Go ahead, Rick.

[34:50] Thank you.

[34:52] I see that the Jennings crossing issue is on your agenda today, but it's in closed session.

[34:57] When would it be appropriate to make comments about that now or are you going to have time later?

[35:05] You're online. You can make it now.

[35:07] Be efficient.

[35:08] Well, I really hope that you'll do the right thing and build that crossing, authorize it,

[35:13] because it's been going on now for way too long.

[35:19] What you've accomplished so far is offending a lot of the people who live in Santa Rosa,

[35:23] the biggest city on your route.

[35:25] You can't afford to lose support from the voters of Santa Rosa.

[35:30] And I have never heard any argument made that the Jennings crossing is somehow more dangerous than other crossings.

[35:41] There's always a risk when trains are involved at crossing.

[35:46] You can find your trains hitting cars, they can hit people, they can even kill people.

[35:52] It's just a given with running big machines like that.

[35:58] There is no argument that I've ever seen that Jennings crossing is any different or any more dangerous than the others.

[36:03] So please, let's get it over with.

[36:09] That's all.

[36:15] At this time, there are no more hands raised for public comment.

[36:18] Great. I'll bring it back to the board and say thank you very much for those who made those comments.

[36:24] Moving on to the Consent Calendar, three items on the Consent Calendar today.

[36:27] the monthly ridership report, the financial report, and the fuel contract with Nick Barbieri,

[36:34] parking LLC, Redwood Coast fuels. And I'll look to my colleagues for any questions, comments,

[36:39] or concerns on the consent calendar.

[36:43] And I'll take a motion to approve.

[36:46] Second.

[36:47] So we have a motion in a second. Before we take that vote, I'll look and see if there's

[36:50] anyone from here in the Chamber or online who'd like to speak on this particular item.

[36:56] I do see the hand up. And if you can...

[36:58] First up for public comment is Richard Brandt.

[37:04] Yes, good afternoon, directors. Good to see everybody again.

[37:07] I actually had a comment about the general manager's

[37:10] thing because that's an agenda item. So that's why I waited.

[37:14] If I may, I'd like to make a couple of comments because I was in Healdsburg last

[37:18] night and I think it's an interesting comment. So if I may,

[37:22] first of all, you've got a wonderful advocate and spokesperson and Eddie.

[37:27] He did a lot of things and then there was a lot of excitement in the

[37:29] audience about smart arriving in Healdsburg. I have customers up there. I'm in the wine

[37:36] growing business and wineries that have tasting rooms in there are really anxious to have that

[37:42] access from the Bay Area getting up to Healdsburg. And I would say, Eddie, we talked a little

[37:50] bit last night, but your destination issue is different Larkspur than it is in Healdsburg.

[37:57] Larkspur is a single point destination getting off the train.

[38:01] People are going, 95% of them at least, are going to the ferry.

[38:05] In this case you've got a diverse location for passengers getting off the train,

[38:12] including going to the river and the summertime activities there.

[38:18] So I think you got a lot of that sense from the residents.

[38:22] I thought it was a good cost current of people living there and not so much just other items.

[38:31] So I would say that overall I would tell the board I think you've got 67% of people now to vote yes

[38:41] because Healdsburg is on board and of course Windsor will be voting I think in favor

[38:48] because they'll have the access from the train.

[38:50] The other thing I'm going to say, revenue-wise, have you looked at the fiber-optic transmission

[38:57] cable that runs along the tracks?

[39:00] Hopefully you're getting paid for that usage.

[39:03] That's a revenue source, potentially assuming it's not under a contract where you don't

[39:08] get paid.

[39:09] That can provide there's a lot of megabits going through there.

[39:13] So I just point that out as an issue.

[39:15] Thank you.

[39:17] At

[39:21] this time, there are no more hands raised for public comment.

[39:23] Okay, great.

[39:24] Back to the consent calendar.

[39:25] We do have a motion and a second.

[39:27] And we have no further public comment on the consent.

[39:29] I'll look to my colleagues.

[39:31] All those in favor of the consent calendar, please say aye.

[39:34] Aye.

[39:36] Is there anyone opposed?

[39:38] The consent calendar 6A through 6C does pass unanimously.

[39:41] Thank you all very much.

[39:43] Moving on to the regular calendar.

[39:45] We do have item 7 as an update on the Santa Feil Transit Center relocation project.

[39:50] We have Bill Gamblin here, and I just want to make mention of Ron Downing from the Golden Gate Bridge Highway Transportation District.

[39:57] Ron is our director of planning, and I think we'll spend the next three days together.

[40:00] So, Bill, thank you for being here, Ron, and Bill, please take it away.

[40:04] Good afternoon, Chair Rabbit and directors.

[40:06] Just a quick introduction.

[40:08] The guests here from Golden Gate Transit will be providing an update on the relocation of the downtown Transit Center in San Rafael.

[40:16] It's a location we worked closely with the Bridge District on both in reconstructing the tracks through the existing Transit Center when we built the Larkspur extension

[40:25] and then participating in many of their technical advisory groups as they sifted through various options for their new Transit Center.

[40:32] So, I'm going to turn it over to Ron Dowling and Ray Santiago from the Bridge District,

[40:38] and I believe they'll introduce their consultant who will give us an update.

[40:41] Thank you, Bill. Good afternoon, Chair Designee Rabbit, members of the Board,

[40:47] Chamber Manager Cummins. It's a real pleasure to be here today.

[40:50] This is another meeting in our series of taking our update to our various partner agencies

[40:57] that connect with our system in San Rafael.

[41:01] There's a lot of work been done to date.

[41:03] There's a lot of work to be done in the future.

[41:05] This project went to our board of directors in December of 2022

[41:10] to certify a CEQA analysis that identified a preferred alternative

[41:15] that would move the San Rafael Transit Center to one block north

[41:19] between 3rd and 4th streets, immediately adjacent to

[41:24] and on both sides of the current smart station. For those of you who've been down to San Rafael

[41:29] over the years, it's a very terrifying moment when the train may be a minute or two late

[41:37] and people see their bus across the block about to leave and they run or bike across the street.

[41:45] I've seen it personally. This relocation of the transit center would put all of the transit

[41:51] it on one block together. So that pedestrian safety issue will be immediately improved.

[41:59] So we're very excited about moving that part of the project forward. We're going to give

[42:04] you a little bit of context for where we are today. We have just concluded a community

[42:10] design advisory process where we have engaged members of the San Rafael community in what

[42:16] what they would like to see on the look and feel of the new transit center.

[42:20] And in particular, we did a deep dive with the riders.

[42:24] The busiest route in the entire Marine transit system links the canal district of San Rafael,

[42:31] which is immediately to the southwest with the transit center.

[42:35] And it is a community that is heavily non-English speaking, low income and minority.

[42:43] We engage that community.

[42:44] We had not only members from that community on our community design advisory group.

[42:51] We did Facebook live meetings that were hosted by the Canal Alliance.

[42:57] The community is behind us on this project.

[43:00] And so moving forward, you will see some design concepts that have been embraced that will inform our preliminary engineering phase that will come next.

[43:10] We have been engaging all of our partner agencies.

[43:13] We met with your staff three weeks ago down at the San Rafael Transit Center location to talk to the CPUC about some of these upcoming changes.

[43:21] We've met extensively with Marin Transit. We have extensive and ongoing meetings with City of San Rafael staff.

[43:29] Like I said, there's a lot of work still to be done, but we wanted to give you an update as to where we are right now.

[43:37] This same presentation in form is going to a number of different agency boards.

[43:43] We took it to Marin Transit several weeks ago.

[43:46] We will be going to Transportation Authority of Marin tomorrow night.

[43:51] And of course we will be going to the Center for City Council on March 4th with a little bit more deeper dive on our interactions to happen and to date with City of San Rafael staff.

[44:02] So Ray Santiago is my day-to-day project manager in the Planning Department.

[44:08] Giving the presentation today will be Adam Dankberg, who is our project manager from Kimley Horn Consultants,

[44:14] which is a nationally recognized firm in the areas of transportation, planning, and engineering.

[44:20] And with him today is Mara Baum, who has been our design consultant in this Community Design Advisory Group process.

[44:29] She is from an international firm that knows how to do this kind of stuff.

[44:34] And she's going to share with you our findings to date.

[44:37] And then if you'd like, we can entertain some questions and answers afterwards.

[44:41] So Adam and Mara, please proceed.

[44:53] All right. Thank you, members of the board.

[44:55] Pleasure to be here.

[44:56] My name is Adam Dankberg.

[44:57] I'm the project manager for the consultant team.

[44:59] That was

[45:00] Retained by the bridge district to advance this project.

[45:03] Today I'll be providing a quick background on the project in case you haven't been in one

[45:09] of my presentations over the past several years on this.

[45:12] And then we'll talk about some of the progress that we've made more recently.

[45:15] So the transit center in downtown San Rafael is extremely heavily used.

[45:21] We got a lot of questions over the last few years about the effects of COVID pandemic

[45:25] and transit ridership in general on the transit center.

[45:27] And one of the interesting takeaways from our investigation

[45:31] of that is that there's actually more bus transit

[45:33] trips through the transit center today

[45:35] than there was even before the pandemic.

[45:37] Marin Transit altered their service

[45:39] to better serve local riders, and that actually increased

[45:42] the number of trips.

[45:43] And so the transit center is still alive and vibrant

[45:45] and a lot of activity through there today.

[45:48] Over 9,000 daily boardings and lightings

[45:51] at the transit center.

[45:52] And the interesting sort of data point to supplement that

[45:55] is there's a rough half split between people are using the transit center to

[45:59] get from one transit service to another and people who are going to downtown

[46:03] Santa Fowler coming from downtown Santa Fowl. So it's serving both as that

[46:06] local connection point is also a critical transfer point in the overall

[46:11] transit network for the North Bay. We wanted to highlight really the role

[46:15] of the transit center in serving the commute and transportation needs of

[46:19] disadvantaged residents. You can see in the chart in lower right almost half

[46:24] of the riders.

[46:25] Using the transit center are low income and a strong majority or minority and that compared

[46:35] to the overall population for the city of Santa Fe and the county as a whole shows how important

[46:39] the transit center is in meeting the basic needs for disadvantaged residents.

[46:47] In terms of why the new transit center is needed, the current transit center is

[46:50] located across from third street from the smart station.

[46:54] Ron talked about some of the challenges regarding transfers

[46:57] between smart and existing bus bays.

[47:01] The transit center prior to the extension of smart phase two

[47:05] had additional flexibility for the site.

[47:09] The rail tracks were built right through the middle

[47:11] of the transit center, which broke some of the key linkages

[47:13] within the site and made some of the vehicle turning

[47:15] movements trickier for buses.

[47:18] In addition to some of the sort of inherent surrounding issues such as the very high traffic volumes and collision histories, including facilities at the Heatherton and Third Intersection, it's just a really challenging site.

[47:32] The current one is to access for pedestrians.

[47:35] And so there's a lot of good reasons for why a new transit center is needed and especially with the opportunity to be able to merge all the bus services with the smart services on the same block.

[47:44] In

[47:49] terms of where we are in the overall project, this phase of effort commenced a few years ago, back in 2018 or so.

[47:58] At the time, we did this kind of fresh undertaking of what are the potential site locations for the new transit center, laid out some concepts, began environmental analysis.

[48:08] We conducted that environmental analysis, and as Ron mentioned, the board approved the CEQA Environmental Impact Report in December of 2022.

[48:17] Since that time, we've been engaging with the community and advancing preliminary design, which we hope to wrap up over the course of 2024.

[48:24] That'll then launch the project into final design, construction, and completion, ideally around 2027.

[48:32] In terms of recent progress, as I mentioned, the final EIR was adopted in December 2022.

[48:37] We convened the community design advisory group and had some public meetings, which we'll talk about over the course of 2023.

[48:43] We are currently working with the Federal Transit Administration to advance NEPA, the

[48:48] Federal Environmental Clearance.

[48:49] And we are continuing to advance preliminary engineering and in particular working with

[48:55] the City of Santa Fe.

[48:56] We're in transit, smart and other stakeholders to address some of the key design questions

[49:00] and solutions as part of that effort.

[49:03] And with that, I'll hand it over to Mara.

[49:07] Thank you, everyone.

[49:08] Good afternoon.

[49:09] My name is Mara Baum.

[49:10] I'm an architect and urban designer with dialogue, the international firm that apparently knows

[49:15] what we're doing with these things. Thank you for that wonderful introduction.

[49:19] So we facilitated a number of the engagement events between June and December of this past year.

[49:27] There were two parallel streams to those, a community design advisory group that was focused

[49:34] as well as public events that were open to everyone, both public open houses that were

[49:39] bilingual English and Spanish as well as parallel events with the canal

[49:43] alliance that were entirely in Spanish. Early on in June we started from you know

[49:49] really big picture ideas strategies thinking at a very high level what

[49:54] people liked and didn't like around the existing transit center and what the

[49:58] vision was for the future and over the course of the six those six months

[50:02] we narrowed farther and farther in until we reached kind of a conceptual

[50:07] design approach, which I'll be sharing with you today.

[50:11] But first, a little bit more on the engagement.

[50:14] There were a series of two community open houses, one in

[50:19] August and then one in December in which we solicited a wide range of

[50:23] types of questions and ideas from the community members.

[50:27] We were quite pleased with attendance at both of those.

[50:29] I see some familiar faces, so thank you for those of you who

[50:32] joined us at one or both of those events.

[50:35] We got over 50 attendees at both received well over 100 individual handwritten comments from those.

[50:44] We also received survey responses separately that we issued in tandem with the first of the two meetings

[50:51] and have published a what we heard document that's available on the project's website.

[50:59] At the same time as we were doing the open houses shortly before each of the two open houses,

[51:04] We also hosted the two Facebook live events that Ron mentioned earlier.

[51:09] Our team was heavily loaded with Spanish speakers, including a number of people who are relatively recent immigrants from Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries

[51:18] who facilitated those events in Spanish with the Canal Alliance.

[51:23] We now joke that the project is Internet-famous in the Canal District because both of those two events received over a thousand views on Facebook.

[51:33] some initially live, but most of them came afterwards in the form of recordings.

[51:39] So, we were quite pleased with that.

[51:41] And then in parallel, there were also in-person promotoras who went out and walked the transit station

[51:48] and spoke with people directly, handed out palm cards around the open house and other events

[51:54] as a means of soliciting additional feedback.

[51:56] back. And then that leads to the second parallel track of engagement related to the community

[52:03] design advisory group. This was a really special group that came together to meet over four

[52:09] times throughout that six-month period that was intended to bring a diverse group of faces

[52:15] and voices that represented different perspectives and ways of thinking about the transit center

[52:21] together so that they could all hear each other and share their opinions and ideas and come

[52:28] to consensus on key directions for the project.

[52:31] From my perspective, this was one of the most meaningful activities that we undertook

[52:36] because frequently when we have these types of groups or the open house events, we often

[52:41] have the people who are already feeling entitled to hearing their voice, to sharing their

[52:48] voice and to putting forward some of their ideas, but we don't necessarily have the same

[52:53] level of direct engagement between those individuals, and in this case the users of the transit

[52:59] station themselves.

[53:00] So there was a very diverse set of voices that came together and really reached quite

[53:05] a compelling consensus on the direction for the project that we have then been taking

[53:10] forward since that time.

[53:13] So I'll share with you a little bit of an overview, not going into the weeds on

[53:17] many of the design in detail here, but first to orient those of you who aren't as intimately

[53:22] familiar with this particular site location. In this picture here, west to the Pacific

[53:30] Ocean is at the top of the slide, so you can imagine yourself standing at the very

[53:34] bottom of the slide. You'd be standing on top of Highway 101, looking out over the

[53:39] site and out beyond to the mountains in the ocean. In the lower portion of the

[53:44] site is currently a very underutilized city bank building with large parking lot.

[53:50] Straight through the middle and moving in the north-south direction on the slide left

[53:54] to right, but in real life north to south, is the Smart Tracks and the Santa Rafael

[53:59] Smart Station.

[54:01] Just north, or excuse me, just west of that, planned north, is Temelopius Avenue, which

[54:07] is a part of this project will be shifted so that it's directly adjacent to the Smart

[54:13] station itself and then past that applausa with a new customer service building. One important

[54:20] thing to note is where that sidewalk and road are shown in this plan today is the whistle

[54:27] stop building. So originally in 1929 there was the Northwestern Pacific Railroad depot building

[54:33] that was added onto quite a bit over the last 50 or so years after the railroads era that

[54:40] that will be relocated in part to that customer service building.

[54:46] So I'll show you a little bit of how that may work.

[54:50] This is the original or one of the early iterations of the whistle stop building in the image

[54:56] at the top of the slide there.

[54:58] As you can see, it looks a little bit different from that yellowish building that many

[55:02] of you know from today.

[55:04] One of the things that we consistently heard from community feedback was that there

[55:08] was an interest in never return to some of that original railroad era in that time in

[55:14] history.

[55:15] And so we have looked very closely at historical record as well as building evaluation of the

[55:20] portions of that building that are still intact today, which unfortunately isn't

[55:24] very much of it, but certainly is some.

[55:27] And as you can see from this diagram, individual portions of that 1929 through early 1950s

[55:34] railroad-era building are going to be relocated to the new site across the street where they'll

[55:42] become the new customer service building, the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation

[55:48] District.

[55:49] And so we've spent quite a bit of time speaking with community members, doing the research,

[55:54] understanding the criteria around the right approach to that reuse in a sensitive and

[56:00] historically appropriate way that aligns with the U.S. Department of Interior criteria around

[56:07] historic preservation. It's not easy because there's so little remaining of that railroad

[56:12] era work, but we are very committed to making that happen and making that a really integral

[56:19] part of the new customer service building. Creating this transportation district with

[56:25] with pieces of the building that was once the hub of, you know, the original transportation

[56:31] line in Santa Rafael is really one of the most important kind of space-making goals that

[56:38] we have as a part of the project.

[56:41] I'm going to flip through a few of the images.

[56:45] This one here is showing part of the relocated façade.

[56:49] originally, this was an arcade. It was a partially enclosed but still open-air space

[56:57] that was a part of the original railroad depot. You can see that in the shadowy parts of the

[57:03] building there. Recognizing that shadowy parts may not be as desirable in today's era, opening

[57:09] that up into a courtyard is our way of transitioning into a current use for this and

[57:15] looking out onto some of the bus stops beyond.

[57:20] Here's a preliminary view of the plaza with

[57:23] the customer service building in the background, standing at 4th Street looking south. And then

[57:29] here is standing at 4th Street looking south and southwest at the other side.

[57:36] Then at the portion of the site that is east of the smart tracks, there is a much larger

[57:43] bus canopy. We heard a lot of direction from the community engagement process around really wanting

[57:50] kind of a more substantial architectural structure that was kind of a gateway to San Rafael. This

[57:58] is often the first thing that people would see as they leave the highway. And so instead of just

[58:04] seeing a big pool of buses offering kind of an architectural element that creates a new place

[58:09] was really desirable to the community design advisory group

[58:13] and many other community members that we spoke with.

[58:17] So the sweeping design with wood was emblematic of the history of Marin County.

[58:25] A lot of the other ideas that are embedded into these images

[58:28] really came directly from that community engagement process.

[58:36] All right. I'll take it home here at the last couple of slides.

[58:39] So these just highlight a few of the key topics from the design standpoint that we're focusing on before we wrap up this phase of the preliminary engineering.

[58:48] There's a few key topics that we're working with city staff on, including the configuration of the bicycle facilities and the roadways,

[58:55] making sure that the city feels engaged through the design review process.

[59:00] As Ron mentioned earlier, we've had some initial meetings with the California Public Utilities Commission because we will need to make some minor modifications to the rail crossings of the roadways.

[59:09] Working with Marin Transit in terms of bus bay configuration.

[59:12] And as I mentioned earlier, trying to get our federal environmental clearance with a particular focus on the cultural resources analysis.

[59:20] So in terms of next steps, we're doing a little bit of a road show here in terms of presentations.

[59:25] One more tomorrow night at TAM and then Santa Fe City Council to come.

[59:30] We also will be going to the Santa Fe feedback as well to get some specific technical feedback on some of the bicycle and pedestrian solutions.

[59:38] This is supporting the ongoing preliminary engineering efforts as well as the ongoing NEPA clearance efforts.

[59:45] Right away procurement or acquisition of the property needed to build the project is still to come that would initiate after the NEPA clearance is secured.

[59:54] And then final design is to come once we have some of these interim steps completed.

[59:59] So with that...

[1:00:00] Happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you.

[1:00:03] Well, great. Thank you very much. Appreciate you all being here and appreciate the presentation.

[1:00:06] I know that many of us have dealt with this in different ways along the path,

[1:00:10] but it's great to get an update. I look to my colleagues for any questions, comments, concerns.

[1:00:18] Director Collin.

[1:00:19] Thank you. I appreciate the roadshow. I think it's important to connect with all the agencies.

[1:00:25] And I'm not going to drill down really deep because I'll get to opportunity in March.

[1:00:28] One thing I would like to hear when you do come in March, we talk a lot about getting feedback from the community and from the writers.

[1:00:36] And I heard Mara say that, too. What I will look for in March is I want specific examples.

[1:00:42] I find sometimes as agencies we say that and we show them, we're like, hey, how is this?

[1:00:45] People are like, okay, that's great. But I actually really want to hear how your original design changed from that input.

[1:00:52] So that's just for future. You don't need to answer that now.

[1:00:55] And then second, just to clarify for the board,

[1:00:58] who all is involved in the final approvals of this project?

[1:01:01] Because this is truly everybody in the kitchen sink type of thing.

[1:01:04] So if you could just speak to that.

[1:01:07] Yeah, now I'll just briefly touch on the first one,

[1:01:09] since there may be others here who won't be at City Council.

[1:01:11] One of the things that I remember from my participation in the CDAC

[1:01:15] was hearing from the riders a lot of concern about weather.

[1:01:19] Sun, it gets hot, direct sun, rain, particularly when it's windy

[1:01:23] and rainy and really thinking about how high up is the canopy. We don't want it too low because

[1:01:27] you don't want to feel claustrophobic and stuffy, but if it's too high, then it's not

[1:01:31] going to shield from the weather and the rain. So that was a lot of it was charged to Mara of

[1:01:35] like how do we, you know, in thinking about this canopy, let's make sure that really covers

[1:01:40] the rider needs. And we heard a lot from members of the CDAC, a lot of interest in trees and

[1:01:45] landscaping and, you know, that place making aspect, which we agree is very important,

[1:01:50] But we sort of heard the counterpoint from the riders of this really has to work for me to wait for the bus

[1:01:55] And this has to be a comfortable environment where I can wait for the bus

[1:01:58] So let's have trees

[1:01:59] But let's also make sure we have nice benches that are in a convenient location that we have that weather shelter

[1:02:04] And so I think we're really taking that into account and making sure we're kind of tempering some of that landscape element

[1:02:09] To also think about how it's working for the everyday rider

[1:02:13] Hopefully I channeled my architecture of it. Okay, and then you know in terms of approvals

[1:02:19] Yeah, I might defer to Ron if he has any further thoughts on that.

[1:02:29] Mayor Kate, we're all in this together.

[1:02:32] And so going to your council on March 4th is a critical step in bringing all those approvals forward.

[1:02:39] You haven't seen the last of us.

[1:02:41] There's going to be a lot more meetings as things evolve.

[1:02:44] We'll be back here to Marin Transit to the City Council with updates as we go forward.

[1:02:49] And so as that information gels and comes together, that would be the basis for endorsements of the project.

[1:02:58] We're all in this together because of the Regional Measure 3 allocation that comes to this project for funding it.

[1:03:05] And there's an MOU that was signed by all of our partner agencies as part of that.

[1:03:09] And so, again, that will be a cornerstone of moving forward together with those approvals.

[1:03:15] Thank you. And I also want to say thank you for the additional outreach into the community.

[1:03:21] So you were very responsive. The city was a little concerned just in the beginning.

[1:03:25] But boy, you really reconfigured the community outreach and went deep.

[1:03:31] And we really appreciate that.

[1:03:32] I think it really is the projects in a much better place because of your deep engagement.

[1:03:36] So thank you.

[1:03:37] Thank you, Mancayte.

[1:03:39] Great. Thank you. Anyone else?

[1:03:41] Director Garbruno.

[1:03:42] Thank you. Yes.

[1:03:42] I would like to echo that.

[1:03:44] I had the opportunity with Dennis Mulligan to attend the meeting. It was a couple of years ago

[1:03:49] now. I know maybe it was about a year and a half ago, right, when I adopted two crazy dogs.

[1:03:53] I remember thinking, I got to get home. But it was a great presentation. And I had a subsequent

[1:03:59] conversation with Omar Carreras of the Canal Alliance. And he was very appreciative to the

[1:04:06] inclusion that you brought forward. And they will be practically a new neighbor with their

[1:04:11] new location as well. So thank you for all of that.

[1:04:16] Director Paulson. Thank you. This may have been covered before,

[1:04:20] but just as a matter of efficiency, I think the depot is serving about 500 buses. Has

[1:04:26] there been any design that shows increased throughput? And then also any talk about

[1:04:32] future proofing, you know, as transportation is changing, electrification, all that.

[1:04:36] I appreciate the historical elements, but what about, you know, looking ahead 10 or 20 years?

[1:04:42] So one of the beauties of the design that's before you today is from an environmental analysis perspective,

[1:04:50] we did not increase the number of bus bays or positions within the new transit center,

[1:04:56] but they can operate much more effectively in terms of throughput.

[1:04:59] The current footprint that we have right now, the buses have to arrive and depart like clockwork.

[1:05:07] There cannot be a delay due to traffic.

[1:05:09] There cannot be a delay due to having to board or de-board a person with disabilities in a wheelchair.

[1:05:16] Everything has to happen exactly the way it's scheduled and planned.

[1:05:21] The new facility will allow buses to pull around a bus that has to be delayed for that sort of purpose.

[1:05:29] We will be able to get more buses per hour through those 17 bays if there is a need to increase service.

[1:05:37] And that is one of the beauties of this new design is we can plan for the future if there is a need for more ridership to add service.

[1:05:46] The new facility allows any size bus to board at the different positions.

[1:05:52] Right now, we have to have smaller marine transit shuttle-sized buses over on Platform D against the lower part of Tamil Pais Avenue.

[1:06:04] So right now, we're very constrained.

[1:06:07] Groom transportation, your Sonoma Airport Express operator from up here, is pretty much limited to not having more than one of their coach-sized buses on Platform D.

[1:06:19] And typically right now they are using the shuttle size vans to go to Oakland Airport.

[1:06:24] So there's another constraint that they're living under right now that will be addressed by the new facility giving them more elbow room.

[1:06:31] So again, we have been cognizant of that moving forward and the new facility will have the opportunity to accommodate increased service that reflects increased ridership in the future if that happens.

[1:06:45] Thank you.

[1:06:46] so much. So I've had the opportunity to see this and I'll see it again tomorrow which I appreciate

[1:06:52] because I learned something new each time. I appreciate your comment that we're all in this

[1:06:57] together and I think, you know, one of the discussions we had at Marin Transit were real

[1:07:02] concerns on circulation on the surface streets and an incredibly congested area that I know

[1:07:08] Eddie gets emails and phone calls about gates, you know, of signal times. We get a lot of

[1:07:15] that and just how the buses get through this area is of utmost importance and I, you know,

[1:07:22] I'm committed and I think many of colleagues on different transportation boards are committed

[1:07:27] to working all of this together to look at the bigger picture, not just the circulation

[1:07:32] from, you know, bays to bay, but how we're getting on and off the freeway and on and

[1:07:38] off the surface streets in that area.

[1:07:41] Yeah, we can't make that worse and I hope that we can make it better, so I'm glad to

[1:07:47] hear we're in it together on that.

[1:07:51] I think, you know, having been at the community meeting, one of the community meetings in

[1:07:57] August and watching some of the other ones, I think we also always need to think about

[1:08:04] future writers and I do think we have a different generation of young people who

[1:08:11] are interested in not having cars and so making sure that we're including you

[1:08:16] know not only existing transit writers which are incredibly important but

[1:08:21] also what making sure we're asking the 18 to 20 year olds what do you want to

[1:08:27] see in a transit center and really ensuring that we are creating something

[1:08:31] to attract new writers.

[1:08:33] I think that's all of our ultimate goal.

[1:08:35] And then having seen this more in transit,

[1:08:38] I am disappointed that the elevation

[1:08:40] of the smart platforms aren't in the schematics.

[1:08:44] So it really shows as though,

[1:08:46] but I think where the smart platforms are elevated

[1:08:49] for on and off really do cut up this design

[1:08:52] in a different way and it's not reflected

[1:08:54] in those schematics.

[1:08:57] I kind of understand why,

[1:08:58] but I do think it limits how we can visualize it from these designs. Thanks.

[1:09:04] That will come out more in the preliminary engineering. What you're really seeing today in

[1:09:08] these slides is a bird's eye view of just what it would look like from several hundred feet above.

[1:09:18] Director Park.

[1:09:19] Right. Good afternoon, Ron. I just have to say thank you. I like Mayor Kate.

[1:09:26] We've been involved in this for a long time and it's significantly different both in feeling and in product than what we started with.

[1:09:36] And I credit that to all of the organizations and also to the consultants.

[1:09:41] Your ears must burn sometimes with all the listening that you've done.

[1:09:45] But I think you always get a better product the more people that you involve and the more you listen.

[1:09:50] So thank you very much.

[1:09:53] I just want to echo that and say thank you very much for the great community output outreach that you've done.

[1:09:59] And I do think that we have an opportunity for an incredible piece of infrastructure for transit into the future appropriately with a nod to the past,

[1:10:09] but really a state-of-the-art facility with the efficiencies, like you mentioned, Ron, to really grow and accommodate.

[1:10:16] And to do so in a very, hopefully, an asset to the city of San Rafael, the county of Marin,

[1:10:24] but really entire North Bay as an important transit hub.

[1:10:27] So thank you for that. I appreciate that.

[1:10:29] And I think, again, unless you want to wrap it up, we just want to say thank you.

[1:10:35] There's a lot more information to come.

[1:10:37] I know there's things from an alternative fuels perspective that we'll be working on regarding bus electrification and can we charge those buses while they're waiting at the transit center between arrival and departure.

[1:10:51] There will be a lot of discussion about LED certification of the new facility.

[1:10:57] There's a lot more to come. And we just wanted to give you a heads up of where we are and sort of a nod to where we're going to be going in the future with this.

[1:11:04] So thank you all for having us here today. Really appreciate it.

[1:11:08] Great. Thank you. Thank you all.

[1:11:12] I will open it up for public comment. I want to make sure we...

[1:11:15] If there's anyone here from the public who'd like to speak on this particular item.

[1:11:20] Seeing no one rise and just checking online.

[1:11:23] At this time, first up for public comment.

[1:11:25] Oh, it looked like he lowered his hand, so I guess never mind.

[1:11:28] All right. That's okay.

[1:11:31] Moving on then to item number eight, which is to adopt a resolution amending resolution number 2023-23, the fiscal year 24 adopted budget.

[1:11:41] And you should have in front of you a revised item that has a small correction that Heather made.

[1:11:51] And for those in the public here, I think it is available outside and I know it's available online.

[1:11:57] So just that's what we're going to be actually voting on today.

[1:12:01] And I'm going to turn it over to Heather for the presentation.

[1:12:04] Heather.

[1:12:04] Thank you very much.

[1:12:06] So thank you.

[1:12:09] So on the presentation today, we're going to be talking about the sixth amendment to the budget.

[1:12:16] This is normally our time that we do the mid-year budget review, although we've been quite active in amending the budget so far.

[1:12:26] So this is number six, but this is the time where we look at where we've been through December

[1:12:31] and we look at any changes that we may need. We look at any projects status and if we need to move money around either bring it forward

[1:12:40] or push it back. So all of that has been taken into consideration and that's what we're presenting today for your consideration and adoption.

[1:12:48] Next.

[1:12:49] Next.

[1:12:50] So we have it broken into two areas, the passenger rail and pathway and the freight and we're

[1:12:55] going to talk a little bit about our fund balance where we are with both of those, our

[1:12:59] revenues and expenditures.

[1:13:01] And then we've updated the position allocation, which I'll discuss at the end.

[1:13:06] Next.

[1:13:07] I don't expect you to read this.

[1:13:09] I just want to point out that this is in your packet and it is on page 43.

[1:13:15] So you can see that more detail there.

[1:13:18] I'm going to be just walking through the changes that we're going to be presenting today.

[1:13:23] So if you want to look at that in your packet, that's probably a better place, but I just

[1:13:27] wanted to share that with the public also.

[1:13:31] And this PowerPoint will be available online after the meeting.

[1:13:36] So a little about the changes in it.

[1:13:39] We are expecting that they, or we know that they're beginning fund balance for

[1:13:43] fiscal year 24 increased by 51.5 million.

[1:13:46] We have been expecting that.

[1:13:48] We've been updating that over time.

[1:13:50] And in the monthly reports, we show that balance combined with our expected fund balance.

[1:13:56] And that is also presented, and I will point that out as we discuss where we're going to be,

[1:14:02] or where projected to be at the end of the fiscal year.

[1:14:05] I did need to make a change to the sales tax.

[1:14:08] Our sales tax forecast is down slightly than where we had estimated it to be.

[1:14:13] It's slightly higher than last

[1:14:17] year, but about a million

[1:14:18] dollars less than our

[1:14:19] projection.

[1:14:20] So we're expecting that to

[1:14:21] continue to be flat for the

[1:14:23] rest of this year and into

[1:14:24] next year, but we needed to

[1:14:27] make that a change at this

[1:14:29] point in time in the year.

[1:14:30] Federal funds, we're really

[1:14:32] just debudgeting and moving

[1:14:34] those federal funds out to

[1:14:35] next year.

[1:14:37] We have better information

[1:14:39] regarding the preliminary

[1:14:41] design work and on the

[1:14:43] Hillsburg extension and the McGinnis to Smith Ranch road project, and we'll be re-budgeting

[1:14:49] those funds next year in fiscal year 25.

[1:14:52] So it's not a savings, it's more of just a deferment based on the schedule for construction

[1:14:57] and design.

[1:15:00] On state funds, we've itemized lines 16, 20, and 29. The amount of $5.3 million will not be spent in fiscal year 24.

[1:15:09] And these, again, include funds for construction of the SOCO pathway as well as the Hilsberg extension.

[1:15:16] Not that we're not doing these projects, just the money is being re-looked at as to when we can actually spend it.

[1:15:22] So we're not carrying additional funds this year that will be spent next year.

[1:15:27] I also want to point out, not listed on here, but also in your board packet,

[1:15:32] on line 27 we'll be adding $500,000 for the shuttle service.

[1:15:39] This was a state grant that we received.

[1:15:42] We're getting $500,000 per year over a three-year period to assist us with the shuttle service at Sonoma County Airport.

[1:15:52] So we are budgeting that $500,000.

[1:15:54] The additional, the money we had budgeted in there already is going to stay in there because we're exploring additional improvements on shuttle service potentially in other parts of the region.

[1:16:07] And so we wanted to have that money available in case we decided to move forward with that between now and June 30th.

[1:16:14] Next.

[1:16:16] Again, on the expenditure side that is in your packet on page 43.

[1:16:21] Next.

[1:16:21] First, start with walking down that expenditure side.

[1:16:26] We're looking at a reduction in salaries charged to projects.

[1:16:29] As I previously mentioned, we are moving some project money out to fiscal year 25.

[1:16:35] And so when we move that project money out, we're not expecting to charge as much to

[1:16:39] those projects.

[1:16:40] Therefore, the reduction in salaries that's going to projects will be going down.

[1:16:48] We are also looking at a reduction in our administrative costs that we allocate to freight.

[1:16:54] Our overall spending has been less than projected this fiscal year, and so the allocation that goes to freight is expected to go down.

[1:17:03] And you'll also see that when I talk about it on the freight side, that allocation there, they won't incur that expense.

[1:17:10] Under services and supplies, we're increasing due to budgeting for expenditures related to the state grant for a shuttle service, as I mentioned previously, on the revenue side.

[1:17:22] IT maintenance costs and shift of maintenance of way tracks are resurfacing from projects.

[1:17:28] And on the environmental piece of it, we're deferring the riparian mediation projects to future years related to difficulty obtaining permits and planting windows.

[1:17:38] So again, that work will be done. It will just be done in fiscal year 25.

[1:17:43] Next.

[1:17:46] On this one, hold on.

[1:17:50] On this one is also in your packet on page 43.

[1:17:54] I'd like to talk about the state of good repair in the capital projects.

[1:17:59] Online 64 under DMU. We have additional funding required for our auxiliary power supply units,

[1:18:06] maintenance on those, and so we're budgeting some additional funds there.

[1:18:11] Under information technology, which is line six to seven, we're increasing expenses related

[1:18:17] to projects to aggregate switches and firewalls.

[1:18:21] And then on non-revenue vehicles, you saw earlier that we were purchasing non-revenue

[1:18:27] vehicles.

[1:18:28] We had accelerated some vehicles into fiscal year 24 from fiscal year 25 due to the long

[1:18:34] lead times.

[1:18:35] times.

[1:18:35] Well, we've discovered that those lead times are now getting shorter and shorter.

[1:18:41] And so we're going to move some of those vehicles back into fiscal year 25 because they don't

[1:18:47] need to be replaced at this point in time.

[1:18:49] So it would be premature to replace them now that we are having lead times that are

[1:18:54] closer to normal rather than the year and a half it was taking us to get vehicles

[1:18:58] before.

[1:19:00] On line 71, for track maintenance and facilities, we have costs related to the maintenance of

[1:19:06] way track resurfacing, which were transferred to the service and supplies budget, which

[1:19:11] is line 49.

[1:19:12] So this was just a reclassification of a capital item that's really going to be expensed.

[1:19:18] So it was just moved from one line to another.

[1:19:21] And then we have the network switch project, which is going to be budgeted in a future

[1:19:25] year.

[1:19:26] So, it's being deferred from this year into the future.

[1:19:31] Next.

[1:19:33] On the capital.

[1:19:35] Oh, I missed a page in there.

[1:19:39] I'm missing something.

[1:19:41] So, I will go ahead and go through it, though,

[1:19:45] before you move on to freight revenues.

[1:19:48] Let me just talk about the capital projects.

[1:19:50] On the expansion and pathways, we're shifting design,

[1:19:52] permitting and constructions cost to fiscal year 25. We're going to be moving most of

[1:19:58] the budget for the Healdsburg extension out of 24 to fiscal year 25, but we're going to

[1:20:03] leave just enough money for some design work and staff time to start initiating that project.

[1:20:10] And then on the design and permitting and we're going to continue that on the pathway line,

[1:20:14] but we're working some of the moving some of the work into fiscal year 25 for that.

[1:20:19] So those are reflected under the capital portion of that chart on page 43 of your packet.

[1:20:27] So that's on the pathway and passenger side of the budget.

[1:20:33] So now we're going to talk a little bit about freight.

[1:20:36] And I had to make some pretty major changes as it comes to revenues on the freight side.

[1:20:43] We had been anticipating that we could spend some grant money under the

[1:20:48] short-line grant, which is on line four, for some salaries and more maintenance

[1:20:54] type work. And it turned out we were not able to do that, but we found that out

[1:21:00] after the budget had already been adopted. So now we're trying to true

[1:21:04] up those costs with the actual revenues that we're expecting. So on the

[1:21:10] revenue side, next slide. On the revenue side, we're going to have to decrease the fund balance,

[1:21:19] I'm sorry, we increase the fund balance.

[1:21:23] Slides keep changing. We increased the fund balance by

[1:21:26] $400,000 and that was due to, at the end of the year, we had slightly more money than we

[1:21:32] were expecting. There we go. So that was good news that we had $400,000 more. But on the

[1:21:45] state funds, we're actually going to have to use $1.4 million of the state grant. And

[1:21:50] we weren't expecting to have to use that money this fiscal year. We were hoping to

[1:21:55] be able to save that for fiscal year 25. But we're going to have to use that. The

[1:22:00] state short-line grant, we're reducing due to the lack of private matching funds.

[1:22:05] Again, we can only use that for capital activities and we currently do not have

[1:22:10] enough matching funds to match that grant and move those capital

[1:22:16] projects forward. In this particular grant, it's required that we have a 50%

[1:22:21] match and that match cannot be other state funds. So it has to be the

[1:22:26] freight movement fees or the storage fees or the tax credit and right now we

[1:22:31] don't have sufficient funds there to be able to match that grant. On the freight

[1:22:36] movement fees we're actually decreasing that based on our observed year-to-date

[1:22:41] fees. So we're moving from the budgeted amount of a million dollars down to

[1:22:46] 800,000. 800,000 is right around where we landed last year at the end of

[1:22:52] the year, so we think that's more realistic than a million dollars.

[1:22:56] On the leases, we actually had to decrease it based on actual collections.

[1:23:03] That was actually an error that I made when I was putting the budget together.

[1:23:07] We had a one-time lease payment that I was not aware of when we were doing the projections,

[1:23:13] and that one-time payment is not going to occur again, so we had to decrease the

[1:23:18] lease budget for that.

[1:23:19] Now, one bit of bright news here is that we're actually increasing our storage fees as Eddie mentioned previously.

[1:23:30] We have budgeted for a new storage customer, which is Caltrain.

[1:23:35] They will be storing some of their vehicles with us.

[1:23:38] We assume that we'll be getting those into storage sometime in the March timeframe.

[1:23:44] And so I've calculated that we will be getting about a total of $24,000 between now and the

[1:23:52] end of the fiscal year based on their storage.

[1:23:55] And then our 45G tax credit, we did receive a higher amount for that credit this year

[1:24:02] than we were expecting.

[1:24:03] So the market provided a slightly higher amount, about $13,000.

[1:24:09] So that was good news also.

[1:24:12] Next.

[1:24:12] On the expenditure side, next slide after this, we have identified some savings opportunities

[1:24:21] under services and supplies to be able to debudget that.

[1:24:27] One of the things I mentioned previously as we allocate administrative costs from our

[1:24:33] passenger budget to, I mean our passenger expenditures to our freight for

[1:24:40] administrative activities. Those expenditures are coming in less than

[1:24:44] projected, so that's less of an impact than to the freight budget. We are

[1:24:51] deferring a phase two construction of bridges to a later date. Those were

[1:24:58] plan to be done this fiscal year. However, because of that matching issue, we're having

[1:25:04] to defer something and at this time we are deferring the bridge repairs. Now we are going

[1:25:11] to keep enough funds in there to do the design work as well as purchase the timbers. That's

[1:25:18] a total of $95,000 for those two things. So that will be prepared to be able to move

[1:25:24] forward with the construction of

[1:25:26] these bridge repairs as soon as

[1:25:29] funding is available.

[1:25:32] Next.

[1:25:33] So just a few changes that I

[1:25:36] mentioned that are in that hand

[1:25:38] out that I gave you that we

[1:25:40] came across in the last, well

[1:25:43] just on Friday after the packet

[1:25:46] was ready.

[1:25:48] On the bridge timber project,

[1:25:51] I mentioned we were buying the

[1:25:52] timbers for the bridges. We had a bid that came in slightly over that we what

[1:25:58] we had budgeted by about $20,000. So we needed to increase the state short line

[1:26:04] grant by 20,000 or by 10,000 which is half of that and the other 10,000 with

[1:26:10] the state grant line above that. So lines three and four there you can see

[1:26:14] are highlighted. I also needed then to decrease the amount of money that we

[1:26:22] we were moving out of the BRASA's Branch Phase 2 project, which is on line 22.

[1:26:28] And then that change reduced the fund balance available for next year to 258, almost 259,000.

[1:26:39] So right around 300,000 we'll be ending the year with.

[1:26:43] I wanted to point out that 300,000 because our goal was to really have at least $580,000

[1:26:51] remaining at the end of the year going into next year. That is what we estimate we will need to be able to operate all of next year.

[1:27:01] So we do have a shortfall going into next year and we'll be looking for opportunities to be decreasing expenditures as we can

[1:27:11] and still providing the maintenance and repairs that we need to do on that line so that we don't have any safety issues.

[1:27:19] And in addition, as Eddie mentioned, we are hoping that we get some state grants to continue to fund freight to get us through a period of time until we can generate enough revenue to function independently.

[1:27:36] Those are the changes on the freight budget that I'd like to have incorporated.

[1:27:40] And then on the next page,

[1:27:44] on the position authorization included in your packet under Appendix C, we have made 17 title changes to positions.

[1:27:54] As we mentioned last month in the classification and comp study, we were going to come back to you and implement the classification changes that did not result in any financial impacts.

[1:28:05] So those are presented in your packet.

[1:28:08] You can see what the current name of the position or title of the position is,

[1:28:13] and the next to it are the classification changes and the title changes.

[1:28:21] Any reclassifications and financial impacts are going to be included in the fiscal year 25 budget.

[1:28:27] So we'll be talking about those as we move through the fiscal year 25 budget process over the next couple months.

[1:28:35] And then we've added one limited term position that will be used for recruitment purposes.

[1:28:43] And then once the recruitment and the filling of the position is done, that limited term position will go away.

[1:28:49] And we'd come back to the board with a change to the position authorization.

[1:28:54] Next.

[1:28:56] So the last change we have that needs to be updated from what's in your board packet, if you look at the memo in your board packet, it said that we're asking for a reduction in spending authority of $14.1 million from $134.9 million down to $120.7.

[1:29:17] that was actually an error. The number should be reduced the spending authority by 11.3 million from 134.9 down to 123.6 or 123.5.

[1:29:33] I have included that in the packet is on the first page of the packet that was handed out to you.

[1:29:39] So with that, I'd be glad to take any questions, and I would ask for adoption of amendment number 6 with the changes that are presented in the additional information that was handed out.

[1:29:51] Great. Thank you very much, Heather. Appreciate all the work. There's lots behind it.

[1:29:55] I think just noting on the freight, obviously.

[1:30:00] That's our challenge in this next fiscal year or prior to to really figure out a way

[1:30:06] forward. It would be a shame to have the consequences of losing rate for a variety of reasons. So,

[1:30:13] General Manager, were you going to say something? No, I just, we understand that. That highlights

[1:30:18] the reasoning for doing everything we can to try to leverage our storage track and try to

[1:30:23] you know make a profit there but our challenge is a real we're working hard

[1:30:29] to fill that gap but as this board knows it's not easy yeah no and again

[1:30:35] appreciate very much the adjustments to the budget to take into account all

[1:30:38] these the realities of what we're dealing with and so on and so forth so

[1:30:42] thank you I'll look to my colleagues director Corsi yeah just a little more

[1:30:48] about freight and storage. You touched on the Caltrain storage contract. Is there more

[1:30:59] of that possible in the future and a little more about the vegetable oil?

[1:31:07] So with Caltrain, initially, they would be bringing in 36 cars and I think three locomotives,

[1:31:16] so it would be a total of 39 to start,

[1:31:18] and then there would be another 75 or 80

[1:31:21] coming in at a later time.

[1:31:23] It really depends on how quick

[1:31:26] they're able to turn those cars.

[1:31:28] They're going to be putting them up for sale.

[1:31:31] And so it really is just dependent upon

[1:31:33] how long that process takes.

[1:31:37] Like I told them, I don't care how long it takes.

[1:31:40] They can stay there.

[1:31:43] But they wanted to sign up for an agreement through June of 25, and so that would have some, you know, steady source of revenue for a period of time.

[1:31:54] But really, it's just dependent upon how quick those cars go and how many we will have there at any one time.

[1:32:00] So if they bring in the original 36 cars and they're gone in a couple of months, then, you know, more would come in behind them.

[1:32:07] But if they have, you know, some challenges getting rid of them or getting, you know,

[1:32:11] then moved out, then we could collect on them for a longer period of time.

[1:32:16] Vegetable oil, the vendor reached out to us, it's a storage broker, reached out to us

[1:32:22] to see if we had any interest in that, you know, pointing out that they were not

[1:32:25] in hazardous, you know, we looked into it, we shot them an estimate

[1:32:31] of what we would charge per day, they seemed interested in that and followed

[1:32:35] up with, okay, what about empties? And we said, well, we have some other things that we have to do here.

[1:32:41] We sent it back to them and they were open to it. So we haven't heard anything back. I don't have any

[1:32:47] additional information at this time. But John, our freight manager did reach out to them to kind

[1:32:54] of get an idea of, you know, what's possible. And they said there is relatively large market

[1:32:58] here. They would get back to us with the number of cars that they anticipated in the future.

[1:33:04] So we're just gonna have to wait and see what that number is and what we can do there, but you know, there's there's definitely opportunity there is

[1:33:14] This is a tough question particularly on a cal training one because it's you know, we don't know how long it is or actually how many

[1:33:21] But is the opportunity?

[1:33:24] Potentially equal to the $300,000 deficit. Okay. I just

[1:33:30] LPG

[1:33:32] Jay, to the deficit that we're looking at and in our budget, we've got about $300,000

[1:33:39] balance.

[1:33:40] We were hoping to have almost $600,000.

[1:33:41] No, I don't know if Heather made this clear or not.

[1:33:44] I didn't hear it, but she added in money.

[1:33:48] You did say it.

[1:33:50] She's added in some money for April, May, and June for anticipating that we will

[1:33:56] get some level of revenue from Caltrain.

[1:33:59] So I think what was it 25,000 yeah about 25,000 dollars

[1:34:06] That's not gonna fix us so yeah, it's it's it's it's something though, so it's helpful. I appreciate the effort. Yeah, thanks

[1:34:16] Director Park sure. Thank you. I assume from the conversation that different types of cars generate different income

[1:34:23] Do you have a handle on that one? Yeah?

[1:34:29] Depending on what type of car it is, if it comes to a different rate, there may be some

[1:34:34] cars that would be $6 a day, others would be $8, some would be $10, and it goes all the

[1:34:40] way up to about $15 a day.

[1:34:43] $12 to $15 a day is the LPG tankers.

[1:34:50] Director Fudge.

[1:34:51] It looks like the salary schedule as a result of the comp study has been delayed from approval

[1:34:59] today until July 1st.

[1:35:01] No, that was never delayed.

[1:35:02] That's what we reported last month is that we would do this in two phases.

[1:35:07] The first phase would be the reclassification piece, you know, change in duty titles, things

[1:35:13] of that nature.

[1:35:14] And then the funding piece of it would be done through the budget.

[1:35:18] it, the comp side of it would be done through the budgeting process.

[1:35:21] So there's still meetings and explanations going on with employees and that gives time

[1:35:26] until July for that to happen.

[1:35:28] That is correct.

[1:35:29] Thank you.

[1:35:32] Anyone else have any questions of staff on this particular item?

[1:35:37] Before we take a motion to approve, I'll look to those in the public here today if

[1:35:42] they'd like to speak on this particular item,

[1:35:46] seeing no one rise, looking online,

[1:35:48] seeing no one there.

[1:35:49] So what's in front of us today is the revised sheet that was placed at the

[1:35:55] dais and to brief resolution 24-03 amending a previous resolution for

[1:36:04] the fiscal year 24 of the Sixth Amendment to the budget overall. Thank you.

[1:36:10] In a second. Bye. So we have a motion in a second. All those in favor please say

[1:36:16] Hi.

[1:36:18] Anyone opposed?

[1:36:20] That does pass unanimously with all present.

[1:36:22] So, again, thank you for all the work, Heather.

[1:36:24] Appreciate it.

[1:36:25] And we'll continue forward figuring out what we need to do.

[1:36:31] With that, we move on to our closed session.

[1:36:33] Tom, do you want to take us into closed session or?

[1:36:35] Sure.

[1:36:37] It's item nine, closed session, conference with legal counsel regarding existing litigation.

[1:36:43] And it's a number of cases are three.

[1:36:45] Great. And I will take public comment on closed session items.

[1:36:51] Sorry, Director Rogers.

[1:36:52] Yeah, and just as has been customary on these items,

[1:36:56] I've already seen them in closed session from my council.

[1:36:59] We'll be recusing myself from the closed session discussion for the smart board.

[1:37:03] Appreciate you making that public. Thank you.

[1:37:05] So I will ask if there's any public comment on the closed session items today.

[1:37:09] Steve, please.

[1:37:18] Okay. Steve Bertelbaugh with the Transportation and Land Use Coalition. I want to commend the

[1:37:24] staff for moving this forward. There is a March 1st deadline that we need to meet in order to

[1:37:33] make sure this project moves forward. The city seems to be moving with it and it looks like

[1:37:42] things are positive, I do want to talk about one issue and that is the risk that we have

[1:37:48] if this gets delayed because every eight months or so somebody has an accident working either

[1:37:57] walking or bicycling on either Gernvill Road or College Avenue and the more that SMART

[1:38:05] doesn't proceed with this, the more risk there is that somebody is going to say this

[1:38:10] actually wouldn't have happened if we had had the Jennings bicycle boulevard in

[1:38:17] place. So moving that forward is everybody's advantage. Thank you much.

[1:38:24] Thank you. Anyone else? Anyone online on this one? No. So we will adjourn now to

[1:38:31] closed session. If you are with us just real briefly, we'll come out and

[1:38:35] report out a closed session afterwards and just if you're not here for that

[1:38:39] report out. Our next board meeting will be on March 20, 2024, 1.30, right here in

[1:38:46] this room, and with that we'll move into closed session.

Board of Directors

Agenda

Transcript