Okay, we're going to call this meeting to order of the Sacramento Transportation Authority

and Sacramento Abandoned Vehicle Service Authority to order at 1.33 p.m. November 14, 2024.

If the clerk could please call the roll so we can establish a quorum.

Mr. Desmond. Here.

Director Frost. Here.

Director Thao. Here.

Director Hume. Here.

Director Maple. Here.

Director Rodriguez. Here.

Director Sandu. Here.

Director Telemontes. Here.

Director Valenzuela. Here.

Chair Gada. Present.

Director Kennedy. Here.

Director Henry Dubovic Quorum with those members present for the record.

Director Jana Carpensky-Costa. Director Swin. Director Speese.

And Director Terry R. Absent.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Now that we have established the quorum, can folks join me in the Pledge

of Allegiance?

Salute. Pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for

which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you everyone. Madam Clerk, could you please read our announcements?

This meeting of the Sacramento Transportation Authority is live and recorded with closed

captioning. It is cable cast on Metro Cable 14, the local government affairs channel.

On the Comcast and Direct TV, you've heard cable systems. It is also live streamed at

Metro 14 live at satcounty.gov. Today's meeting replays Sunday, November 17th at 2

p.m. on Metro Cable Channel 14. Once posted, the recording of this meeting can be viewed

on demand at youtube.com at Metro Cable 14. To make in person public comments, please

complete a speaker request form and hand it to the clerk. The chairperson will call your

name when it is your turn to make a comment. You may also send written comments by email

to board clerk at satcounty.gov and your comment will be routed to the board and filed

in the record. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Okay, let's

move on to our first item on the agenda here. Madam Clerk.

First item on the agenda is comments from the public regarding matters not on the agenda

and I do not have any comments. Very good. Thank you, Madam Clerk. We're

on the consent item. Oh wait, no, that was matters not on the agenda. Okay, we're going

to go on item number two. Madam Clerk. Item number two is a recognition and appreciation

of departing members of the governing board for service to the Sacramento Transportation

Authority. Great, thank you, Madam Clerk. It's my pleasure

to take a quick brief moment to thank folks for on this board for their service. You know,

we normally have the executive director's report, but this is a time after the election

where we thank folks who have given their time to look at transportation issues and

our future planning of our county. And first, you know, I'd like to start off by thanking

Sue Frost here. And Sue Frost was appointed to the STA board in 2016. In fact, she was

council members who frost that time and I think mayor of Folsom at the same time in

the rotation. She was approved. She was a provide. She provided eight years of continued

service to the STA throughout her tenure. She was involved in a number of our measures,

both proposition. I think it was forget the B first and then A after that and a different

commission of a she's had a reputation of being our fiscal steward and a leader on that

and working with folks like the I talk to make sure that our transportation dollars are spent

wisely and really appreciated her time through her tenure here at the STA. Let's give her

a big round of applause for her time. Thanks to Sue. I don't know if you have any thoughts

you'd like to say, you know, this I think is our your last STA board meeting with us.

Yes, thank you. Thank you, chair. I want to say thank you to STA and to all the staff. I think

we've had three different iterations of staff over the years and I I've learned a lot at the STA

board and I know I've always been the tax fighter on the board and so that was really nice of you

to say it that way, Eric, this fiscal steward, but it's it's been an honor and a privilege to

serve with all of you and I want to thank you for the years and wish all of you the best going

forward as I'm floating down the river fishing for walleye in Arkansas. I'll be thinking of you

sitting through meetings so thank you, Eric. Thank you, supervisor. Appreciate that. Also,

he's not he couldn't join us today, but I do want to thank board member and council member,

Donald Terry, who also served as mayor for the city of Rancho Cordova and council member.

He was an alternate and would come in to pitch hit, but many times when he was appointed as a

full-time member, he was our representative from Rancho Cordova, particularly on the on the subcommittee

to assess the feasibility of additional transportation funding. You know, I do want to thank him

for a lot of his work on air quality and on think on the relationship between transportation

and how our cities grow and also making sure that as we grow that we're addressing those air

quality challenges. So he's not here today, but I do want to thank him for his service and we do

have a little parting gift for him as well. Our next board member who's also leaving us, who served

through the entire term of his elected position or position here is council member, Sean Tao. So,

you know, Sean Tao was appointed to the STA governing board in earlier this year in 2024,

but during his time on STA and government board, he jumped right in and helped address a lot of

community concerns and needs, particularly on active transportation and on bike trails. And the

in district two, you know, the the issue of of, you know, some of the challenges of public access

to transportation. The bike trail was the only real way for folks to get to work and to get to school,

and council member Sean Tao jumped right in and said we need to figure out how to make that a safe

place and look at infrastructure improvements to allow bicycling as a form of transportation. So,

let's give him a big round of applause. This is the last STA meeting. Council member Tao, any

closing comments here? Yeah, thank you, Tergera. In my short nine months on the board, you know, I

was honored to serve among my colleagues and also vote on, you know, the mobility hubs in North

Sacramento, you know, looking at mobility hubs on the Loeb Station as well as Marconi and Swanson

Station as well. So, looking for that development there with EV targings and more transportation.

And as I retired from politics, I'm not retired yet, but then I was still being a community with

my nonprofit among youth and parents United and looking forward to working with everyone. And so,

thank you so much. Well, thank you. Thank you, board member Tao. And, you know, he never missed

a meeting in all of his term of ask council members. So, let's give him another big round of

applause. Thank you, board members. That was from the north end of our city, but it's north end of

our county, but from the south end of our county, we are saying thank you and goodbye to our good

friend Paul Sandu, who was appointed to the STA governing board in 2020, right in the middle

of the pandemic. And he served five years of continuous service here from the city of Galt

and helped advocate and helped us resolve with our other friends in the South County,

the shared governance with Eilton. And because of that, now we have a path forward between

our city of Eilton and the city of Galt to better communicate and find a way to represent the South

County area. I do want to thank for his, you know, commitment for recognizing the challenges that

our rural communities have to making sure that even though, you know, a lot of attention sometimes

paid into the central area of our county, the communities of the South County, Eilton and Galt

and the farming communities sometimes have the worst roads. And those folks, whether they're

working there or commuting to Sacramento, need to also have safe transportation. So

wanted to thank Council Member Paul Sandu and let's give him a big round of applause for his

usual service. Council Member, any comments here? Thank you, Chair Ergarero. Give me the

opportunity to speak a few words. First of all, I would like to thank you, everyone, from the

governing board of STA Board, my colleagues, staff member and the Chair. I was first elected on the

Galt of City Council back in 2018. And the second time I was elected City of Galt in 2022. I joined

the STA Board back in 2020, almost five years. I joined it. And I get a lot of knowledge and

experience from this group. So this group have a lot of knowledge, a lot of experience on the STA

and some other work. And I really appreciate to recognize me this afternoon. And I really

appreciate to. And I hope we keep in touch with all of you guys. Well, thank you. And the last thing

I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate Board of Supervisors who for us,

she's going to retire on her term. Thank you for her long time service to this community

or Sacramento. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Sandu. Another big round of applause for

the years of service here. And finally on this board, I want to thank my colleague on the Sacramento

City Council and who has served here on the board since 2021, also served as Vice Chair in 2021,

served on our number of our committees in selection of our past Executive Directors. And most importantly,

you know, since the sound wall issue was one of the reasons I ran for Council, she helped,

she shepherded through with Caltrans funding for the Alhambra Triangle Soundwall on Highway 50 here.

And a tireless advocate for multimodal transportation, for air quality in our environment.

Let's thank and for her years of service, Council Member Katie Valenzuela.

Thank you. It's truly been a pleasure to work on this board and with your incredible team. Kevin,

you're the second Executive Director in my short four years, but I'm really excited to see the work

that folks have been able to get done. You have tough things in front of you, and so I'm not

entirely sad. I'm going to miss some of that, but I wish you all the best of luck, and I hope that

you'll never forget to keep the Central City in mind where we're sitting today. Thank you.

Well, thank you very much. We've got some certificates from the STA staff here and some

challenge coins for you. And if you could join me down below for a quick photo with the board,

and we would appreciate that. And thank you for your service.

Yeah, I just wanted to say, so we went through a lot of challenges with Freeway Service Patrol

and trying to get that program budgeted. So we have Freeway Service Patrol Challenge Coins,

because we were able to solve that budgetary issue we've had in the past. So thanks, everyone.

Thank you.

There we go. And your challenge coin. Good. Yeah, you guys are usually giving these out,

but now we have it. So we'll come out here.

And those challenge coins have a nice little tow truck on there, you know.

That's right. An electric tow truck. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, everyone, very much. Mr. Chair.

Yes, sir. I'm just curious. How long will the cake and soda reception in the lobby be?

With our fiscal steward here, I think it would be if we spent it on cake and soda.

I was told there would be cake. Yeah, that'll be on the next item for the transportation measure.

Okay. But very good. Thank you very much. Okay, Madam Clerk, we'll move on to our next item here.

The next item is consent items numbers 335.

Very good. Do we have any members signed up to speak? I have no cards here myself. Madam Clerk.

There are no public comments. Second. It's been properly moved by Board Member Desmond and seconded

by Board Member Maple. Any further discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor, please signify by

saying aye. Aye. Okay. All those opposed? Measure passes. Okay, Madam Clerk, we'll move on to the next item.

Item number 6 is to receive a presentation from the Independent Taxpayer Oversight Committee

and approve the annual Comprehensive Financial Report, Agreed-upon-Procedures Report, and Governance

Letter. All right. Dustin and Robert here. Thank you, sir. Am I on? There you go. So I'm here before

you to present the fiscal year 2023-24 financial audits. And I have Robert Holderness to join me.

He's the ITOC Chair, our Independent Tax Holder, Taxpayer Oversight Committee

Chair, and he's going to open up the presentation and continue after him.

Good afternoon. Excuse me. Wow. Good afternoon, Chair and members. Robert G. Holderness appearing

this afternoon on behalf of the ITOC. As Dustin mentioned, I am the Chair of the ITOC for this year,

and I'm very proud to assist him in making the presentation of both the, thank you, Patrick,

both the financial or fiscal report for the budget year 2023-24, but also to mention a little bit,

just to remind you, who is the ITOC? The ITOC is an Independent Taxpayers Oversight Committee that was

ratified by the voters in 2004 when they renewed the Measure A Tax Measure for another 30 years at

half-cent sales tax. The ITOC has three slots for voting members. Two were filled for this year.

Jose Luis Caceras and I are the two members. Jose is a Transportation Planner, and I'm the big

project manager on the team, and we're going to have, God willing, an accountant,

experienced public sector accountant soon to fill the third slot. But in addition to that,

we have three ex-officio members, and I'm here to tell you they're very important because they

participate in a very active deliberations of your ITOC. They don't just sit by and watch us,

and those three are, of course, your Executive Director Kevin Ducey. Ducey, he's the main one,

but in addition, we have David Tate, who is appointed by your chair. David is a Civil

Engineer, former Caltrans employee, and a very knowledgeable engineer, and he keeps us on the

street and narrow when we wander too far from good engineering practice. And then last but not

least, we've got a representative from the Controller and Auditor's Office, Mark Espesi.

I don't know if you know him or not, but Mark, of course, helps Dustin keep us on track for our

financial matters. So today, we're going to give you the report on the fiscal year 23-24,

and in the first quarter of next year, we're going to give you a report on the performance audit

that we've undertaken during this year, and what recommendations, if any, we can come up with

for your consideration. So with that, I will reintroduce Dustin to give you the fiscal report.

Thank you, Bob. All right. I have a couple of slides here. So just to set the stage,

the fiscal year 2023-24 ended in June of 23 or 24, I'm sorry. We had a financial statement

audit prepared with the help of Lancelot and Lunghart, and that's what we're presenting today.

As Bob mentioned, the ITOC is involved in this entire process. They helped us

hire Lancelot and Lunghart, and they oversee the audits as they occur.

So just to talk about a couple of key financial attributes that STA holds near and dear,

that's how I'll say it. Transparency is number one. We need to have useful,

timely, and accurate information so that the constituents yourselves and the public can

have useful information. If it's too slow, it doesn't mean that much, and we have to be proper

stewards of our financial holdings. And that comes with accountability and oversight,

and the ITOC helps us with that. We also need to have a stable platform,

and that comes with efficiency in our operations and innovation to keep moving forward with new

things in the sector. So moving on to the audit overview. So we received an unqualified opinion.

That is the cleanest, best audit opinion that you can receive. We had no material weaknesses,

and as I mentioned, Lancelot and Lunghart is our auditors this year. They are new to the authority.

They have not audited the authority in the past. We have a three-year mandatory firm rotation

with the ordinance. So that is why we have new auditors this year. So with that, we have two

minor findings with the audit, the first of which is on page 80 of the accounting report,

and has to do with our manual journal entry control process. We are a small staff. We have three

individuals on staff, and this is a really common finding with small agencies, because we don't have

the coverage to spread out approvals and preparation as larger entities do. I look back on my

City of Sacramento days with six people approving my transactions, and you have no problem with

control there. We have worked with the auditors to implement corrective action, and that is going

to be on a go-forward basis. We are still working with them to get that totally fine too, but

that is coming. We have an agreed-upon procedure finding that the per capita personal income

factor was slightly lower than it should have been. So that set our appropriations limit by

it is set at lower by .36%. It is a very small amount. Corrective action was taken to fix this

in the September meeting. We brought that before you when it was approved. And moving on,

this is a separate audit that I am talking about. We have the financial statement audit which we

are approving today, and then we have the performance audit which was approved on consent in May of

this year. Bob mentioned that a little bit. We are working with the auditors to finalize it.

The field work is still being finished up, and the reports being formed collaboratively between

the auditors and ourselves in the high talk. The high talk is very involved in this because a lot

of these procedures will become policy and practice implemented at a later date. We are

anticipating bringing that to you for your approval in the first quarter of 2025.

With that, that concludes my presentation, and the recommendations with this action are

approving the annual comprehensive financial report, approving the agreed-upon procedures for

the appropriations limit, and the audit communication letter. With that, Bob, myself, and Lancel,

Lunghart are available for any questions you have. Thank you, Dustin. Very appreciate that.

Madam Clerk, I don't have any comments. Cards, is there anybody signed up to speak?

There is not. Thank you. Let me bring this back to the board. Any questions from the board or

comments? Yes, board member Maple. I want to go back to the internal control deficiency. So I think

I heard you answer this, but do we know what led to it? It's just that there weren't enough people

to catch that there were manual entries that weren't happening, or can you explain that one more?

Well, to define it a little bit more, it's considered a significant deficiency in audit terms.

It has to do with preparation of journal entries that weren't reviewed by anyone else directly.

So they didn't find any concerns, but there was an internal control gap there where

we didn't have an approver looking at all the journal entries as they occurred.

That makes sense. All right, that's it for me. Thank you. Great presentation.

All right. Let me bring this back to the board. Any further questions or an action?

I'll move the item. Okay, thank you. It's been properly moved. It's been properly moved by

board member Maple and seconded by board member Rodriguez. Seeing no other comments.

All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Measure passes.

Okay. Madam Clerk, let's move on to our next item.

Item number seven is the appointment of independent taxpayer oversight committee member.

Very good. It was very simple here. Is there, let me actually ask if there's,

Dustin, do you have anything else to add on this one?

Not for the audit report, no. The next item's mine too.

Okay, go ahead then. Yeah.

All right. Thanks, Chair. So I'm before you today to present the recommended appointment

of a new member to the independent taxpayer oversight committee.

As Mr. Holderness emphasized in the earlier presentation,

the italk plays a pretty critical role in the oversight and guidance of STA.

We rely on them. I consider them our sounding wall for anything STA related.

So the position that we are seeking approval for was last held by Joan Baruchy,

for those of you that remember, she retired in the winter of 2022 from an eight year term on

the italk, the longest tenure you can have. Since her departure from the seat, it's been vacant,

and the seat in particular is for a person with experience in municipal audits, finance,

and budgeting. So our recommended candidate is Geraldine Krzyowski or Jerry, and she brings over

20 years of experience in the accounting field, including the last decade with our friends over

at the Sacramento area council of governments or Seychog.

And this highlights her understanding of the sector and makes her an ideal fit for the italk

committee. So at this point, I'd like to turn it over to Jerry, who will share a little bit more

about her background and the interest in joining the committee. Well, good afternoon, Jerry.

Thanks for making it out here. Thank you. So good afternoon. My name is Geraldine Krzyowski.

Most of the people here in the United States do pronounce it Krzyowski or Krzyuski,

and in Poland, it's Krzyuski. And I was named after my dad, so I've always been known as my

name Jerry because his name was Geraldine Krzyowski. First off, I want to thank Dustin for the kind

introduction. And I realize I have some large shoes to fill with Joan's departure two years ago

in her eight year term. My accounting career spans closer to 40 years. That's why the kind

introduction of only 20. It was really nice of him to only say 20 when I've been here for,

not here, but I've been practicing accounting for over 40 years. My first bachelor's degree was in

math. And while I was pursuing my master's degree, I took some business classes and a couple of those

were in accounting. And I realized I really enjoyed it. And I truly enjoyed the field accounting

and the story that numbers told the reader of the financial statements. I first worked in the public

accounting, doing small-hood audits, tax returns, and assisting small businesses with their accounting

needs. Following public accounting, I began a career of over 20 years working for universities in the

states of Arizona, Oklahoma, and California. I continued to do various general accounting,

writing policies and procedures, and coordinating audits as well as working on financial statements

and footnote disclosures. Ten years ago, I was lucky enough to land a position in accounting at

Sacramento Area Council of Governments. There, I was exposed to the overall work plan, better known

as the OWP. Other responsibilities included various billings for various state, federal,

and local agencies. And additionally, I coordinated all the financial audits with external

auditors covering the STA, the LTF, federal, and state funds. The highlight of each year's work

was the issuance of the ACFER, the annual Comprehensive Financial Report. I love to read those

things. I know they're long and boring, but there I learned the MD&A had a lot of words in it,

and it wasn't just numbers, and I really enjoyed my time with those. During my 10 years at CACOG,

I had the privilege to work along with dedicated colleagues, and I'm truly grateful for the

experiences and opportunities I was afforded there. In summary, I want to thank the Sacramento

Transportation Authority for accepting my application for the Independent Taxpayer Oversight

Committee, and I'd like to thank the board for your consideration of my appointment to I-Talk,

where I will have the chance to pay it forward with my contributions to the community I have

called home for the last 20 years, Sacramento County. Thank you. Do you have any questions for me?

Well, thank you, Jerry. Let me ask CFN if there are any questions from the board. I just have to

say anybody who enjoys reading the ACFER is going to serve our county well. I love to read the ACFER.

I love putting it together. Supervisor Kennedy. Thank you, Chair. I just want to say that we're

extremely lucky to have somebody with your unique qualifications as far as your expertise in

transportation and also in accounting and all that, and so welcome aboard. The I-Talk is incredibly

important, and we have the history of I-Talk members who take themselves very seriously,

and we appreciate that because we need you as much as the community needs you. I also was remiss in

not thanking Mayor Haldenus for being here today, who's been a steadfast supporter of the I-Talk,

worked on the I-Talk for years. One of the proudest moments I had as board chair was to

appoint you, I think not once but twice, and but it's really an organization that flies under the

radar, but the importance of it cannot be diminished, so thank you for agreeing to serve.

I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you very much, and to those comments,

you know, when we have pulled our old measure A, there's been extreme public support for it,

and a lot of it comes because of the work that the I-Talk has done to make sure that

every penny is accounted for with strong results. With that, Madam Clerk, I don't see any

comment cards on this item. I do not have any comments. I'll go ahead and move that we add Jerry

Koyosky to the taxpayer oversight committee as a member. Okay, it's been probably moved by

board member Rodriguez and seconded by board member Talimantes, signaled for the discussion,

all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed? Measure passes. Congratulations.

Thank you very much. Welcome to the I-Talk. Okay, Madam Clerk, we'll move on to the next item.

I have an umbrella to receive a presentation on Sacramento Transportation Authority debt program.

All right. I think I'm right before Anthony Adams, and there's no way I'm going to make this more

exciting than he can. So this is, I'm presenting the annual debt program status update. I'm waiting

for the slides to pop up there. But this update is because of the 2023 series

refinancing, we changed the debt policy at that time to add this to the debt policy. So now we

have an annual update of the debt program. We're waiting to get a sense on where everything is at.

So first slide here. SCA has a 100% fixed rate debt portfolio with about 312 million in principle

as of today. We have two series outstanding right now, the series 22 bonds, and those are going to

be fully repaid in October of 2027. And we have the series 2023 bonds, which are going to be repaid,

well, repaid in 2039. We have the option to refund them in October of 2033. That was the plan from

the outset when we refunded this debt that we were going to refund it again for more potential

savings in the back end. So this slide here represents our entire debt service. It is a

little bit overwhelming. It's really to show the changes in the debt service payments over time.

So right now we are only repaying the principle on the 2022 series, and that's highlighted in red

here. Our annual debt service coverage is 8.76% right now, which is a very healthy percentage.

That percentage is revenue divided by total debt service, just to explain where that comes from.

And as we start to pay back the 2023 principle, it changes to approximately five times,

and it significantly increases our debt service during that time. All of this is coming out of our

capital improvements program budget, so this will not impact ongoing amounts.

This next slide here is our additional bonds tax tests and our covenants. So as we talked about

earlier, the 8.76 and the five times, that is covered in the chart down to the bottom left there.

Our additional bonds test, which is part of our debt policy, is two times. So we cannot exceed

two times maximum annual debt service. That's a ceiling that we will never reach with the way

that the program is set up, because we only bond on capital improvement program amounts.

And we also have covenants that are associated with our master indenture. All of those are down to

the bottom right, and we're in compliance with all of those. So this slide represents our future

bond refunding and the potential savings with that refunding. This is all associated with our 2023 series.

As of September, if we were to refund at that rate, we would have a net present value savings of 5.3 million.

So all to say that we are on track to refund with the current market conditions, but we do have nine years

before that becomes possible. So with that, that concludes my presentation. I tried to keep it short and sweet.

Thank you, Dustin. And this is just a receive and file for us here. Obviously, I think the biggest question was when we took this action,

would it cost us money in the future, and we're already seeing the potential savings?

Any other questions from the board? Seeing none. Thank you, Dustin.

Madam Clerk, we'll move on to our next item.

Item number nine is to receive information and consider authorizing the Executive Director

to execute a grant agreement amendment for the neighborhood shuttle cycle two with Sacramento

Regional Transit District. Let me introduce this item. So good afternoon, Chair, Vice Chair,

Board members. So we have an existing grant agreement with SACRT, and they are asking for an

amendment. That grant agreement is specific to SmartRide. And Anthony Adams with SACRT is going

to present on their sort of updated proposal to kind of tweak SmartRide, we'll say. And then

ultimately we'll be asking for the Board to approve an amendment to our current agreement.

This project is funded under our neighborhood shuttle program. It's a grant that we provided

SACRT. And with that, I'm going to ask Anthony to come present on the proposal.

Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Dustin, also for the kind words. Chair Guerra and members of the

STA Board of Representatives, Anthony Adams, Director of Planning for Sacramento Regional

Transit here to discuss some revisions to our famous SmartRide program. So SmartRide started

in 2018. It was a big deal. It's actually the largest and most successful micro transit program

in the nation. This has really started as one-time funds coming from STA, from your

neighborhood shuttle program. So really you guys are the main partner in this program.

I want you guys to take a look at the map on the right. These are the zones that we use right

now. And these zones were selected because there are areas that have limited transit coverage.

So within these limited transit coverage areas, we've provided over one and a half million rides

to places like shopping, medical facilities, and civic needs. When people got to go somewhere,

we were there for them. The deal is since 2022, the one-time funding has run out and that 800,000

that we've been receiving from STA did not cover the cost of this program. In fact, 90% of the cost

was being covered by Sacramento Regional Transit. And I know a few of the people in this room have

had this issue as well. Funding has reduced in the past couple of years with the federal funds

kind of lapsing. And at least in the transit industry, we call this a transit fiscal cliff.

So this chart on the right side is actually Bay Area Transit operators and they are reaching

hundreds of millions of dollars in shortfall over the next year. So just to say we're not in

the boat by ourselves here. So much so that the legislature passed SB 125. It's really a relief

package for transit agencies to make sure they get the fiscal house in order. And that's what

we're doing here. So we need by 26 and 27 to make realistic and reasonable reductions in our budget.

And we looked at smart ride as a way to maybe achieve that. Right now we're spending 8.4 million

dollars a year. That's just to operate it. We also have a fleet of 44 shuttles that are reaching

their useful life. If you did amortize it over five years, it's 10 million dollars a year that

we're spending on this program. So we did want to learn some lessons from smart ride. We have

been doing it for the past six years. It really does fill a mobility need. And it's often used by

transit dependent riders. Folks who don't have any other option, we're getting them to the places

they need to go. It's also very attractive for only $250. If you guys have ever taken Uber or Lyft,

I'm sure you know those costs. And what that resulted in was an oversubscription. Sometimes I

think we had a 25% rejection rate. Sometimes weights were over 30 minutes for this service.

And finally, this service was expensive to operate. Not only do we have to have our own

staff to operate this, we have to have our own shuttle fleet, 45. And the average cost per

rider was $47. So after they paid that $250, Sakartee was paying $47 per rider. This resulted

in a fare box ratio of 2%. The state wants a fare box ratio of 20%. So we went out to the public

and we asked them what they wanted to see. How do we transition smart ride? So we presented to

our mobility advisory committee. We helped them open houses. We did some online town halls and

also the Sakartee board. All of these meetings were well attended. Over 50 attendees at all of these

meetings. We heard some main themes. We need affordable mobility solutions for these equity

populations. The most vulnerable people who don't have any other options. And also we heard that

wheelchair accessibility was very important and also folks with service animals. I'm sure you guys

have seen this little picture on the bottom left here. The difference between equality and equity.

We're not necessarily looking for equality here. We want equity. We want to make sure that the people

who need the most get the most resources to get to go where they need. So James Drake here behind

me and staff did hundreds of hours of research. We called a dozen different places and we did

some research to find out how other people were doing it. In fact all we really needed to do was

just go over the bridge over the river to West Sacramento. What we'd like to do is do a similar

program to West Sacramento. We are going to rebrand smart ride into Sakartee Flex and focus on the

most vulnerable populations, low income persons with disability and seniors. In order to do this to

make sure that we're serving the right population, riders are going to have to sign up. We're going

to make this rather easy. It's going to be existing things. If you're part of SNAP, if you're part of

Social Security, you just put that in to your registration and you're automatically approved.

This will save money. We're going to serve half of the riders for one sixth of the cost. For one

sixth of the cost we're going to do one half of the riders if you guys can do some fractions.

That's a two-thirds operational efficiency improvement. The average cost is going to be $16

per rider, fair box ratio at 16% much closer to what the state is looking for. All vehicles

have wheelchair accessibility. These are a few details about the service model. Very similar to

what West Sacramento is doing. We're actually going to use the same provider as West Sacramento via.

They provide the vans, they provide the drivers, they provide the booking service. It's basically a

turnkey service. We're going to allow rides to be booked in advance now. If you do this ride and you

go somewhere, you're going to have a guaranteed ride back. That's one of the things we're having

with SmartRide now. Folks are going somewhere on it and they don't necessarily have a guaranteed ride

back. It is very similar to SmartRide in the fact that we're going to be using the same zones,

operating during the same operating hours. Very little change on the customer side for this.

This is a premium service that will take you door to door. We are asking $250 for this ride. No more

passes are accepted. It used to be that if you were a college student, you had a monthly pass,

you could take this as many times as you wanted. That obviously was a way to make sure that this

program was oversubscribed. We're going to make sure that the passes are no longer accepted. You're

paying for each ride that you're taking. This is the implementation timeline. We're open to award

the contract after this meeting and after the Sacrity Board meeting next week. We're open to

award the contract just this month. We're going to continue our outreach. We're going to do some

ride-alongs on SmartRide and make sure everybody knows that the change is coming. We're actually

going to do registration for Sacrity Flex early to make sure everybody signed up before we make

the transition, which will be in January 2nd, 2025. My name is Anthony Adams. I'm the director.

If you have any questions, you can ask me. If you have any complaints, we have James Drake,

who developed the program right behind me. Well, thank you, Anthony. Appreciate that. Let me

let's go to public comment first here. We'll bring up, I have only one comment card, Mr. Allison.

And as he comes up, I just want to recognize also Board Member Frost, because one of the first

SmartRides was up in her neck of the woods and filling a gap where folks didn't have transportation.

Mr. Allison. Good afternoon, Board Members. For this agenda item, I'm representing

Sacramento Transit Advocates and Riders. Star, the next item I won't be, so I just want to be clear

about that. Sacrity was responsive to criticism of the initial voucher program that they had proposed

and came back with what Star feels is an outstanding approach to it, serving the people who really

need the service, which includes people with disabilities that don't need the full service

of paratransit, low-income people, seniors, and potentially students with some sort of

low-income qualification. We think the program will be effective. We know that as a two-year pilot,

it will be modified and enhanced over the period of time, but we support the program and we support

the Transportation Authority funding this program out of the neighborhood shuttle programs.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Allen. Appreciate your comments of support here. I have three members

assigned to speak. Board Member Desmond, Hume, and Maple. Board Member Desmond. Thank you.

So I have a few comments and a couple questions. I know having these kinds of programs in the

suburban areas, it's a tough nut to crack to get people to use them. I guess it's pretty remarkable

to me, so we are subsidizing this to the tune of about 98% per rider, the smart ride. I guess I'm

not entirely surprised because even though it was a great service, I used it a couple times myself,

I would see the vehicles parked and empty for long periods of time, even in my own neighborhood.

So we're replacing that with this, but you mentioned that it'll serve half the riders. What

options are going to be available to the other half that are currently being served by smart ride

and now lose that opportunity? So that would be basically the general population, which is going

to be the ones that we're kind of excluding from this. It'll be low-income seniors and people with

disability. So the general population that don't fit that, those 350, we're hoping that they have

alternatives, that they're not the transit dependents, that they can walk somewhere to our

transit lines or they could take a bike, walk, get a ride from their friend. Lots of folks do

have an alternative, but they were taking smart ride as a convenience with budgetary issues as

it were. We need to make sure the people that need it get it, not the people that want it.

And I understand that. That's certainly going to be a concern to a lot of people.

And we are going to be looking at like a first-last-mile program very soon. We're seeking

some other funding. So that would be another way that folks who don't fit those vulnerable

populations could do a first-last mile, like from your home to a light rail station or to a bus stop.

So we are looking at different ways to expand our offerings. So it's not just one arrow in our

quiver. We have many different programs for the folks that need it. And in terms of the West

Sacramento program that you mentioned here and you had this slide about it, what is their cost

per rider? Do you have a sense of that? I don't know the answer to be honest. I know that it's

very popular. It's so much so that they're using their general fund to help supplement. And the

eligibility criteria is the same as what we're proposing. So West Sacramento is general population.

But they, I think I found that 30 or 40 percent of them are seniors that are riding it because it

tends to be the people that need it that take that. So that is a general population service,

but their budget is more than ours for just a small city. So they have the resources to do so.

And the last question that the gentleman from ECOS mentioned that there was a

proposal or something being considered about a voucher. Can you explain what was that? I'm just

curious. Yeah, that was the concept. Like if we were trying to serve the most people possible with

a neighborhood shuttle program, we looked at maybe offering a voucher program for an Uber or a lift

where we would pay the first $5 and then the customer would pay the remaining. So what was

happening is those average rides were $12 or so. So we were going to say we're going to pay the first

five. The remaining is like seven for the rider. So that became an equity issue. So it might be

okay for the general population, but some of the folks that absolutely needed it that are on a fixed

income, it really hit them hard and they made sure that they were vocal about that. So we are

interested in some sort of voucher program if we can do that as an aside and we have other funding.

But as it stands now, yeah, it's just going to be the vulnerable populations. I just I appreciate

the focus on equity and the people who need it more. I just I struggle a little bit about

with a program that now cuts out. Everybody else, you know, excludes others. So okay, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Board Member Desmond, Board Member Hume, Maple, then Kennedy. Mr. Hume.

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate the presentation and you know this is the risk and also the purpose

when you run a pilot program, right? It can be wildly successful, but it can show that it's

unsustainable. But it's data that you can use then to tweak and move forward. And so my colleagues

up on this dais who also serve on the RT board with me know that on the spectrum of transit

priorities, I am much further to the frequency end of the spectrum than the coverage end of the

spectrum because as this program shows coverage while certainly necessary for certain people

is very expensive way to run a transit agency. And to the extent that those limited resources

could be used on frequency, that builds a backbone system that is so much more convenient for the

majority of the people who want to use it, assuming they can either afford the first mile, last

mile, they have a bike, a scooter or legs to get them where they need to go. And so I think this is

a good sort of solution to take care of the folks who need it. Obviously having the, as you said,

the most successful program of its kind in the nation showed the pilot worked, but it just,

it was such an expensive way to reach folks and then to folks who probably have other ways of

utilizing the system. So hopefully someday we can get to that point where we have a system

that you don't have to think about using to just go and use it. And one of the reasons we can label

this SACRT Flex is because we are able to expand it as needed. If there is higher demand in one

area than we're able to meet, we can get another van. We can get another, we could expand the

coverage as needed if there's more funds available. So we're going to flex this program to the needs

of the populace and if more funds appear, we would love to open up the eligibility as well.

Thank you very much. But to Board Member Hume's point, I think time of austerity is trying to

figure out how to maximize our efficiency. Board Member Maple.

All right, thank you, Chair. And Anthony James, I just really wanted to say thank you so much for

all your work on this. I know it's been a bit of a challenge, right? You had a big issue in front

of you and you thought really creatively. I really want to appreciate you working with the community,

working with advocates and organizations in this space and finding creative solutions to those

things. I'm on the SACRT board, so I'm pretty familiar with some of the changes. I just want

to appreciate you for that. And I just have one kind of question is, I know that we're working on

kind of consolidating all of the apps together. How does this play into that?

We will need a separate app for this particular program.

Well, right now you have a smart right app. That's what it is, right? Yeah. We are developing an

app right now that will, whenever you choose a particular destination that you want, it will

say that you can do light rail or fixed route or this program. It will bring you over to this app,

though. This app is the only way to schedule the individual rides. So the universal app that we

have will point to this as a solution, but it will not be integrated at the moment. And my,

thank you for that answer. And is that because, is VIA going to be managing the app? Is that why?

Yes, ma'am. Oh, that makes sense. Okay. I understand that. I mean, of course, you know,

my heart wants us to have one unified place for everything. But I do appreciate that, you know,

you need to work with the company as well. So thank you so much. Appreciate the answers and

all your work on this. Thank you. Thank you, Board Member Maple. Board Member Kennedy. Thank you,

Chair. And to address a little bit of Supervisor Desmond's concerns and the board at RT thoroughly

discussed this. And I will give RT staff huge credit for listening to not only the boards

input, but the public's input more importantly, and coming back relatively quickly with a solution

that had to weigh those that want to those who need. And we wish we could be everything to

everybody. We can't be. When this was initially envisioned and it was a pilot program that

probably self, we admit, went a little too long as a pilot program, but it was funded by, you know,

grant funding and we could afford it. It was also envisioned as a last mile, first mile

alternative. It didn't become that. It became a program of convenience where I don't want to pay

for Lyft and Uber anymore when I can do this for $2.50 or in some cases for free. And I don't think

that that's serving the general public. What we did was we made sure that we protected those that

need our system and their service first. And so some people who are going to be a little inconvenienced,

that's just the nature of our budgetary constraints. Thank you.

Thank you, Board Member Cain. Board Member Frost.

Oh, I just want to thank you for all of thank RT and all of your hard work in finding these

efficiencies. I want to say when this smart ride began, it was as a result of RT listening and Henry

Lee listening to the communities in the outlying areas that where there were gaps in service because

it was too expensive to pay for someone to drive a bus all day for one rider at 4 p.m. in the afternoon.

And so it was an ingenious way to solve a problem. And I'm really glad that you can continue even if

it's, you know, I have people who come to my community meetings with smart ride. So they use it

in my district. And so I just want to say I appreciate that you were able to find those

efficiencies that keep it going. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Board Member Frost. Thank you very

much. I appreciate again those comments. Again, you know, this is our best approach at being able

to make sure that we service the people who really need it. You know, I know at the end of his life,

my father couldn't see anymore, couldn't drive and also had difficult time, you know, even walking

before he fully lost his eyesight. So there's a number of folks there. And my understanding is

also, you know, with paratransit, we're working with them on this issue to make sure that we're

filling the gaps. So between this program, we have paratransit, our current RT system,

there's still a big gap of need as we saw. And I hope that in our future conversations of what

our transportation mobility needs and how we fund those that we keep this in mind. So to move this

forward, we need an action to approve the amendment to the grant, to the agreement. So I'll take an

action from the board here. Move approval. Second. I'll see. I heard a second from you, but a

motion from Kennedy. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, measure passes.

Thank you very much for your work. And we'll go on to our final item here. All right, Mr. Busey.

Item number 10 is to receive a presentation on potential legislative changes related to

Sacramento Transportation Authority and then consider authorizing staff to pursue state legislation.

All right. Good afternoon, Chair and Board Members. So I'm here to present on that legislation.

I also have crew strategies here who is able to answer questions related to the legislative process.

So I appreciate them coming. So a little bit about the schedule. So in October, we kind of came to

the board with this concept of some legislation that would improve SDA's authority. And then we

were asked to come back to really provide some actual text to that and to kind of expand on that

presentation. So we've come back the text of the bill itself. I've worked with our legal counsel on it.

It's now attached to the staff report. So we have that. And then essentially, assuming we get direction

to move forward, we'll start trying to find a bill sponsor in December. And then we'll work with the

legislative counsel to update that bill text that we've drafted. And then we plan to

likely introduce that legislation in February with going to some of the policy committees or the

committees on the assembly and the Senate side, probably in the April timeframe.

So essentially, we're looking at four main categories for updating SDA's authority. I'm

going to kind of walk you through those four categories. So the first one is modernizing the

existing language and powers. Something has to do with this being the current authorities come from

the late 80s. It's kind of an outdated version. So we're asking for specific changes. We're asking

for is the ability to do some planning work, specifically contract out for planning. And

planning is really important when you do identify the regional needs as well as regional projects,

especially those that might be included in a future measure. In addition, a lot of the grant funding

that we're trying to leverage with measure A requires planning in advance. So we have to do

this planning effort to say, okay, we've done the planning effort now ready to apply for grant

funds. So it's really important that we're able to do that. The other one is contracting out for

revenues, right? So SDA was created to bring additional revenue to the cities in the county for

transportation. And so we do that through our sales tax. However, there are other revenues,

such as, I'm going to say, VMT funding that we could access, that I think if we can

leverage those VMT funding to fund bike and pet projects, I know that's a very much interest

in the cities and counties. I think there's a benefit to that. And the last one is we have

some implied powers related to property acquisition. We're trying to clarify as well as we're looking

for some tolling authority. Really, that's just to give us the ability to join CARTA as more of a

on a more of an equal footing, which is the capillary regional tolling authority. But also,

as those toll revenues come in and there's excess toll revenues, we would like to,

we would like to obviously direct those revenues towards ideally biking and walking projects

as well. And then we do have one or two projects that in the future, where we could, we could

potentially bond against toll revenue to build those, those measure projects using even using

measure funds. So that's the idea with that item. The second one is modernizing eligible

transportation expenditures. Like I said, that language from like the early 80s. So it did not

include terms like active transportation. passenger rail is not specifically stated, although

transit systems are shared mobility, which is kind of like bike share is a good example of that.

That's not included. Although it might be implied, it's not explicitly stated. So we want to clarify

that. We're also looking to fund planning work that we talked about earlier. Education is key

component to these transportation sales tax measures. And then also obviously environmental

mitigation. So, so three, this is a flexibility created new taxable area. So this is us looking at,

you know, whether or not we'd want to do a sales tax measure, not necessarily including

every single city in the county. So we've included some requirements here, must it wholly,

wholly include or wholly exclude an incorporated city. Similarly, must wholly include or wholly

exclude the incorporated area of the county. And it must at a minimum, including at least two agencies,

or not, we're not going to do a SCA is not going to lead a sales tax measure for a specific city or

as an example. And then the revenues will have to be used within, you know, within that district

itself or for the benefit of that district. So the example I have is here's an example where you

have five cities. Essentially, let's say these five cities determine they would like to move forward

the sales tax measure and not include the unincorporated portion of the county. They could,

they, this could happen, it meets all these requirements. We say it has to at least include

two agencies, it includes five, so that's fine. And then it shall be spent within those cities or

for the benefit of the residents of those cities. But the example I'd like to give is, you know,

as an example between Citrus Heights and Folsom, you have Greenback and you have Madison that connect

those two cities. So obviously those residents might see a benefit to improving Greenback and

Madison both in their cities themselves as well as the unincorporated county. So that would be a

benefit of that. There are similar roads when you look at like Stockton Boulevard, which is half in

the city of Sacramento, half in the unincorporated county, as well as you have these large, you

know, major arterials like Bradshaw, Water Avenue, Sunrise, those are other examples. So that's the

requirement. This next slide shows the kind of the process for how a county-wide measure would be

approved or at least gotten taken to the voters. And I've done it in track changes, you see the

changes specific to a district sales tax measure. So, you know, even for that example, again, with

the five cities, we're still going to require the county board supervisors, at least a majority of

them, approve the, approve moving forward with this smaller area. We also, of those five cities,

a majority of the city councils have to approve it. So we need at least three of the two city

councils saying they want to move forward with it. And then we also have another test related to

city councils representing a majority of the population. They also have to approve it. So in

that example, I think City of Sacramento has the majority, so they, they'd have to approve it as well.

So once the counties and cities have approved this ordinance and expenditure plan, then at that point,

the, we'd have to have at least a majority of the board would have to approve it in order for it to

move forward. So this is, this is the process that's laid out. The idea being we would get authority

to do this, whether we use that authority or not, you know, that's, that's a totally separate

decision, right? But this would be the process to do that. And then finally, you know, this last

change is related to vehicle miles traveled. So we talked about the contracting for revenues

related to VMT funding, which will allow us to do like VMT mitigation bank or exchange.

But that last one is, you know, we would like the ability to fund infrastructure,

whether that's transportation or wet or dry utilities, but infrastructure that supports

infill or reduce the VMT. There's a couple of different reasons that this benefits us. So

we think that, you know, having, having this authority will actually make us much more

competitive for transportation grand dollars, specifically out of SB1, because we'll be able

to do this, we'll be able to show that our transportation dollars brings infill as well as

we can support infill through this, this other method. It'll allow us to mitigate for projects

through VMT, it'll provide VMT mitigation for projects in our expenditure plan. So allow them

to move forward easier, easier. And then there's just the general, like when, with these types of

projects, if you're doing the underground work, obviously in the transportation work all at once,

it's less, it's less of an impact to the public. They're, they're only impacted one time and they're

not impacted multiple times. And so there's a benefit to the traveling public and it's much

more cost effective to do it this way. And sometimes there's challenges in, in, once you've just done

a new transportation project and you have a development coming inside, cutting up that brand

new street doesn't make a lot of sense. So there's some cost effectiveness to that. So those are the

four big topics I wanted to cover. Obviously the Texas included in the staff report. Open any questions

on this. And I also have crew strategies to help with any process questions.

Great. Thank you. Let me first bring this up to the public. And then we'll come back here to the

board. I have Mr. Allison signed up to speak. Mr. Allison.

Good afternoon again. On this agenda item, I'm speaking only for myself, not any of the organizations

that I'm associated with. I support the modernization of expenditures, including the ability to fund

infrastructure related supportive of housing. I support the VMT mitigation funding. I support

the geographic flexibility. And I think that if these changes go into effect, they might increase

the chances of passage of a tax measure in 2026. Probably the transportation advocacy

organizations and the public would be more supportive of a measure going forward if

the transportation authority has these abilities and this flexibility. Thank you.

Great. Thank you very much. I also have Anthony Adams from SacRT here on these, on this item as well.

Yeah, I'm actually very proud of Mr. Abusey for bringing these changes forward. It's actually

something that we have discussed personally over coffee for a couple of years since I moved to

Sacramento area. And it's because countywide transportation planning is essential for success.

Right now, STA, they are the administrators of Measure A, but there isn't a countywide active

transportation plan, a countywide safety plan, a prioritization list on a countywide basis.

It seems as though sometimes all the cities are competing against each other, trying to get

at the front of the line. So I appreciate STA taking this step. I think it's current, modern.

It's how nearly all the counties in the Bay Area do it. And further, I'd actually take it one step

further. This is my suggestion. I'm very familiar with transportation funding, as you can imagine.

There's something called STIP, State Transportation Improvement Funding.

As part of that, there's a subset for planning, programming, and monitoring. Sacramento County

gets over $600,000 for that. And that money all goes to SACOG. So SACOG does Sacramento's

countywide transportation planning, not STA. So I would recommend that we put an amendment into

this that suggests that we ask SACOG for some PPM funding so STA can have the resources it needs

to do the countywide transportation planning that it needs to do. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much. Before we bring this to the members, let me ask, Steve, Mr. Cruz here

or Audrey, if there's any thoughts you may have about the current conversation on opportunities

or issues that the legislature may be looking at or just thoughts on this item here. I know you've

been working on transportation for a while. And I think it might help the board at least

recognize. My biggest take on this was our ordinances from the 1980s and things have changed

quite a fair bit. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Steve Cruz on behalf of Crew Strategies. And I agree with

Kevin's comments in terms of the need and the benefit. And in response to your question,

I do, if I'm crystallizing in terms of the legislature, I think one, it's seen as a district

issue. So you always sort of have the advantage. So hopefully getting the support of a delegation

will make that much easier and obviously local stakeholder buy-in. But I do believe it does

align with state priorities in terms of active transportation and transportation and bikeways

and so forth. So I think modernizing the statute just as a policy is something that the legislature

would welcome. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Let me bring the server to the board. I have had maple. Are you

okay? Okay, good. So Board Member Hume, Frost and Desmond. Board Member Hume. Oh wait, Desmond,

Board Member Hume and then Frost and Desmond. Go ahead. Are you sure? Yep. Okay.

Thank you, Chair. First of all, I want to appreciate your comments, Anthony. I don't often look to the

Bay Area for how we ought to be doing things in Sacramento region. So I don't necessarily

know that that was the best suggestion, but the idea that we might ask for some money back from

Sacog in order to do planning within and for Sacramento County, I would support that effort.

And I just want to kind of put a finer point because last time this came up, I had expressed

some concerns. And my concerns are over this. One, opaqueness or lack of transparency for

constituencies. And so I think the more that we start to carve out and this only applies to this

jurisdiction or this only applies to this boundary and this only applies, then it becomes a little

bit harder for them to know exactly who should I talk to if I'm not getting the services that I

believe I am paying for. So that's one issue. But then the other issue is the idea of mission creep.

And so before when you had brought this forward, it was talking about using some of the sales tax

revenue from a transportation measure to go directly towards the production of housing.

And I believe that's just a very inefficient way to produce housing. I can start to wrap my mind

around the idea of that we are paying for infrastructure that supports that infill and

bridges that gap and reduces some of the redundancy that may happen where we're having to pave roads

several times because of work that's being done. And so I think we're getting closer to something

that is a little more palatable. So I support where staff is at and where we're going and I do

think that there are some good suggestions coming forward. Again of how to build this

agency to be a little more robust than simply what is kind of an accounting function at this point

into something that is a little more forward looking as far as the integration of transportation

funding and how it improves the communities that we serve.

Great. Thank you. Board Member Frost.

Kevin, I was going to ask. I just wanted to make sure I understood. When you first

briefed me on this, I thought there were some really good ideas. I felt positive about it.

The question I have and I want to make sure I understand, if we become a separate entity,

we're building this outside Measure A, we're not changing Measure A or are we changing? Is this

what we're changing? We're actually making changes to Measure A or are we beefing up

STA and STA now becomes another competitor for funding from within the region? For instance,

the county is trying to capture SB $1 and the connector is trying to capture those dollars

as well and then Secog is a six-county region. I want to make sure I understand where we're going

with it. As I understand the board and everyone on the board, my job is to be a value add and

not compete with as far as grant funding. We're not trying to do that. As far as this is a change

that's proposed, and Bill may correct me here, but the changes proposed would affect the current

authority that we have. However, the ordinance and the expansion plan were passed by the voters back

in 2004, I believe. Obviously, we can't change that. They allow for every 10 years to do a review

of the plan. That's what I was wondering. Is that what you're trying to do here?

No, not necessarily. The next review is in 2029. Maybe in 2029, potentially that could be a

consideration, but I think if you look at what happened in 2019, it's a little bit of a zero-sum

game where everybody's used to the certain funds that they're getting, and so no one really wanted

to change anything because they're all consistently getting the funds. 80% of those funds are

being provided directly to the cities in the county, as well as ZACRT. Everybody is pretty

much happy with the status quo, so I don't anticipate this. Even in 2029, I don't anticipate that

changing. Obviously, the ordinance was written as a transportation measure, and so I don't know if

you could then, some of this other stuff we're talking about was related to infrastructure,

I don't anticipate. I think it would be very hard to fund infrastructure with the current measure.

You're saying this is outside the ordinance, and it just changes the function and the mission of

STA. I'm saying this is for a future measure. This is really what the intent here is. If we do a new

measure and we want to look at some additional options, we have the flexibility to do that.

Whether if this bill passes, we can do that, and whether we do it or not, obviously,

it's a separate discussion in the future, but it gives us the ability to do it.

Thank you. Bill, any comments?

Well, my take would be that it wouldn't substantially change

new measure A, current measure A, but there is a possibility that some of the things

in this legislation could affect or enhance what we're doing with measure A. It would also

clarify some things that we already do, some assumptions we've made about implied powers.

Make them express, but no significant or substantial radical changes to what's already in the current

expenditure plan. Well, clarifying what we've already been doing is probably a good legal

thing to do. Yeah. Board member Desmond. Good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Kevin.

Good discussion, and I'm glad you brought that up, Director Frost, because that was a

concern I had as well, or a question I had anyway. I had a question for Steve. Are there

any other transportation measure administering authorities like STA throughout the state that

you would anticipate might want to join us in this effort in modernizing and updating the

authority that we have? I may look to Kevin for some help here, but I don't know offhand,

but I do think that this one would be considered a standalone bill specifically for STA.

Having seen these bills come through before, they typically done for a single entity, so while

there may be others, they would still be treated as a separate standalone bill. Okay. But I would

hope I would imagine you would check with some other... Correct. Yes. Yeah, we could check.

I agree with Director Hume that I think it's important to give STA a little more flexibility

and to potentially move beyond just being essentially the accountant for our sales tax

measure. You look at Placer County, you look at El Dorado County, they actually have a little more

authority in what they do, and I'd like to see STA be the same way. I'm a huge supporter of

Seacog as well, but I think we have to have a little more control and influence over our own

destiny here. And I also agree with Anthony's point about having a little more control over

those planning funds, and I don't know if that's something we can incorporate into a motion

to add that as a potential legislative priority or how we would approach that. Sure. Yeah,

this is kind of a workshop. Okay, great. Great. Good. Well, thank you. And I wanted to also thank

Board Member Rodriguez because the idea of having the flexibility, not that it's predetermined,

but about split zoning came about understanding the challenges in our different priorities that

our voters have throughout the county. And so, but again, I think the point here about being more

nimble, looking at how we can tackle, get as many, be eligible as many pots of money that the

state has, I think there's probably a pretty good feeling that little money is going to be coming

from the federal government anytime soon. So we need to be as competitive with the state dollars as

possible here. So, and I know just talking to all the residents who are near or have to drive down

14th Avenue, they are just livid the fact that every time we have to, whether it's PG&E or the

county or the city, because it's one of those streets that has multi-jurisdictions that we're

digging out and repaving, you know, it's like the, it's like you don't even need speed bumps there

because it's already built in that way with all the construction that's been done. So, figuring

out how to better do that as we're building housing and figuring out the public works, I think, would

be a good aspect for STA to have that authority. Oh, I see. Board Member Mabel punched up. Board

Member Mabel. So, sounds like this will be like a district bill. So, I'm assuming are we already

having conversations with Senator Ashby or I guess incoming Assemblymember Maggie Crow?

And hi. Yeah, and hi everyone. I'm Audrey Ritichak. I work with Steve at Crew Strategies.

We have just had initial feeler conversations, but obviously wanted this to come back all before you,

but that would be the hope is that we'd have one member of our delegation be the author and we've

informally kind of talked with Senator Ashby, and then we would hopefully get the rest of our

delegation for sure to support, but hopefully they can all co-author too. So, then when we go into

committee, we have all the support there, and we have two current members that sit on one on

assembly transportation and one on Senate transportation that are from our delegation,

but committees may be changing as there's 30-something new members coming in. So, wonderful.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Well, good. Well, this, I think what we need is a motion

to authorize staff to pursue this legislation, and this is our first start of the process here.

You saw the outline there. So, seeing no further discussion, let me bring it back to the board

for a motion on this. I move approval to direct staff to so pursue that legislation, but I would

also ask them to also explore potential legislation relating to giving us the flexibility over some

of those planning dollars as well. None of the statement. Okay. It's been properly moved by

Board Member Desmond, properly seconded by Board Member Maple. All those in favor signify it by

saying aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed? No. Measure passes, and thank you for that. I think that was

our last item on the agenda. Madam Clerk? Final item on the agenda is comments of authority members.

Any comments from our board members? This is the last chance. You have Supervisor Frost?

You're getting rid of the tax fighter today. Fiscal steward. Fiscal steward. I still hold you all in

very high regard. Thank you very much. We are adjourned at 2.50 p.m.