Call to order our study session for what is today, Tuesday, May twenty-eighth, twenty twenty-four.

If we can take our seats in the back, wrap up conversations.

And with that, I would go to introduce our mic on.

There we go.

Good evening, everybody.

Mr.

Green threw me off.

I um I should have known better of working with Tom for a long time.

A great guy, though, and I'm glad he's a member of your city council.

So Troy Whitmore, I'm your RTD board member for District K, which includes Brighton, Thornton, much of Thornton, I should say, Hall of Commerce City, Henderson area, and a teeny bit of Weld County that happens to be in the district near Loch Bowie.

So we have our CEO Deborah here with us, uh, Deborah Johnson, uh, who you most of you met the last time we were here, and Michael Davies, who are VP of governmental affairs.

Uh, and uh both of them are pleased to be here, and I will turn the floor over to them and uh shut my mic off to the pleasure of all.

So, good evening, uh Mr.

Mayor, members of the council, staff, and all those that are virtually assembled as introduced.

I'm Deborah Johnson.

I serve as the general manager and chief executive officer of the regional transportation district.

It's my pleasure to join you this evening.

Thank you to Director Whitmore for the introduction and as introduced Michael Davies, my government relations officer is also here.

Um going to make a quick logistical inquiry.

Is that the uh device to forward the slides?

All right, thank you very kindly.

So uh without much delay, I will provide a quick update relative to some pertinent issues that are happening at the regional transportation district.

And at the conclusion it said presentation, it would be my pleasure to field any questions or have any dialogue as this body sees fit.

Yeah, we're I tried that as well.

Thank you.

Acting IT Director Martinez.

I appreciate that help.

Thank you very much.

So, what I plan to do this evening is quickly provide an orientation to our strategic initiatives, which are part of our five-year strategic plan.

Um, then talk about our financial outlook and what that means for the regional transportation district, especially as relates to TABER, and then walk through our partnership program.

So, first and foremost, I want to start out by saying the RTD board of directors in August of 2021 approved a five-year strategic plan.

In said strategic plan, there are four strategic priorities that consist of community value, customer excellence, financial um financial stability, and then employee ownership.

Recognizing it's a five-year strategic plan, what we do each year is ensure we're taking a pulse on the environment in which we are operating.

And in doing so, there are a couple of elements that spawned when we got community feedback, customer feedback, as well as feedback from our employees.

And what that pertains to are back to basics, more or less, what we need to do here at our agency is focus on what we qualify as a state of good repair.

RTD basically has a relatively new transportation network as relates to rail, unlike most other agencies across the country, um, like on the Eastern Seaboard, we're on the precipice of change, recognizing we have to invest in our infrastructure to ensure that we can have it for 30 more years going forward.

Quite naturally, as we look at any transit agency, but more specifically this one.

Um, for all intents and purposes, 70% of our budget is generally geared toward people power.

We are a labor-intensive organization and cannot deliver transit services without the power of people.

And most notably, people are quick to ask a question relative to you need more bus operators.

It's much more than that.

When we look at where we're positioned in the state of Colorado, RTD is the only intermodal transit agency in the state.

It's difficult for us to find maintenance of way personnel, uh, individuals that have familiarity with overhead catenary systems, electromechanics, and things of the like.

And so while oftentimes the forward-facing public sees our operators, be they light rail operators, be they bus operators or commuter commuter rail engineers, there's also other entities behind the scenes that ensure that we have our vehicles readily available to deploy service.

And then last but not least is the welcoming transit environment.

We have a laser-like focus on recognizing um that the operative board and what we do is public, and we engage with a myriad of different uh individuals and cross sections of our communities.

Um as of late, the operating environment has been less than stellar due to adverse circumstances.

And in doing so, what we've heard from our employees getting back to the people power and back to basics, there's a clear cut nexus with all of that.

It's difficult to retain employees in these conditions nowadays that I think have been really brought closer to the forefront with the adverse impacts of COVID and things of the like.

So, really quickly, as I talk about back to basics, um, succinctly here with the three bullets on the slide.

We talk about redoubling our efforts to maintain our assets in a state of gut repair.

And that's critically important because we have been in this mode for the past, I say 15 years where we're trying to build out systems, but now uh we have to ensure that we are maintaining the investments that we're making and we're seeing the age relative to the infrastructure, and that includes our bus facilities.

Some of our newest bus facilities are like 40 years old.

And when there's talk about emerging technologies like zero emission vehicles that could have a multitude of different propulsion systems, our facilities aren't adept at uh taking on those technologies just due to the fact that we have not invested in the infrastructure.

More importantly, if we talk about leveraging sound asset management principles, really utilizing transit asset management to ensure that we are capitalizing on our asset um maturity information and then enhance the reach and impact of our internal communications to let people know what we're doing to support our workforce.

And so one thing that's notable, uh, this has been in the media as of late.

Um, we are commencing on our rail reconstruction project in the downtown core.

Our inaugural light rail line opened on October 7th, 1994, but recognizing all the work that took place prior to that revenue service date that rail was laid nearly 30 years ago.

And so we're at a point where we have to invest in that rail.

Also, it's notable that our alignment is not one that is exposed in reference to our track, it's paved, so we don't necessarily know what lies beneath.