Call to order the Metro like board of directors meeting for February and
As for a safety briefing by Frank Casa on our chief safety security compliance officer Frank Europe
Morning, chair, McCallum board members. So as a reminder in case we have a fire alarm activation
We're all going to exit the building
calmly and uniformly go down the stairs exit out and
Stage away from the building by Metro customer service until we get the all-clear away further orders
The event of an earthquake, I'm going to ask you to drop, take cover, wait until the shaking
stops, and we'll do an assessment if an evacuation is warranted.
The event of a first aid situation, I'm going to be your first aid provider.
I'm going to ask Ms. Peña to contact the Metro Security Front Desk where the AED is
located and contact EMS.
And as always, in the event of an active attacker situation, even though we bring our trusted
friends, the LA sheriffs here, our board meetings, always remind you to run, hide,
fight. And in conclusion, I just want to say today on the yellow tie and blue shirt
day, I wish you a happy Friday and go team, and serve whatever team that is.
Thank you very much, Frank. I'd like to ask Director Engler if he would lead us
in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. Roll call please. Director Wabner. Director
Dutray. Here. Director Marquez. Vice Chair Chaffee. Director Nguyen. Director Murphy.
Here. Director Dumitrou. Second Vice Chair Bergson. Here. Director Spiegel.
Director Middleton. Director Vargas. Here. Director Tremblay. Director Engler.
Director Barger. Director Curquarian. Director Najarian. Director Solis. Director
Hughes-Leslie. Director O'Connor. Director Allen. Director Preciado.
Chair McCallin. We do have a quorum present. Thank you very much. This is a
public comment period and just want to remind everyone that we're streaming
this live, so if you make a motion or second, please announce your name. Madam
Clerk, do we have any public comment? We do. I received a written public comment
regarding the proposed optimized Metrolink schedule that will be emailed
to the board after this meeting. We have two requests to speak, so I will call up
Paul Dyson. Welcome back, Paul. Good evening. Good evening. Those seats are
getting lower with every meeting. Good morning Mr. Chairman and board members.
My name is Paul Dyson. I'm the Vice President of the Rail Passengers Association of California
and a resident of Burbank. And I'm here to talk about organization.
CRRA has been in being for over 30 years, likewise Losan. And yet they've been unable
to successfully deliver an integrated regional passenger rail service that provides useful
mobility for the 20 million or so residents that they should be serving.
Wellpack's been around for 46 years and many of the minimal improvements that we have asked
for such as connections between trains right here at Union Station have never been delivered.
Worse than that, fully funded projects such as Raymer Burnson, Double Track in the San
Fernando Valley have been vetoed or delayed indefinitely by a board member of one of the
agencies represented here.
We think it's time for a change, radical change.
The impetus behind the creation of these agencies was a desire for local control.
Unfortunately, railroads need central planning and prioritization, not based on the desire
for regional equity and expenditure, but in developing a logical system.
Not every city can have a station if the result is that the overall service is not attractive
to the majority of passengers.
RailPAC and a group of like-minded organizations, all volunteers, have put together a document
that put together a group of like-minded organizations
and put together a document calling for reform
and reorganization to bring all passenger operations
in Southern California under a single umbrella
to rationalize the ownership and maintenance of the tracks
and to provide a separate funding mechanism.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been an electric shock
to the system for passenger rail.
Shocks can energize and lead to action
or they can leave people staring like deer in the headlights.
Which is it to be?
Do we struggle on each agency struggling over the next,
waiting for someone else to take a lead?
Or do we concentrate our efforts into a single organization
with the real hope and expectation
that we can have a 21st century rail service
that we can be proud of?
Senator Blakesby has initiated the process
by publishing a bill, and if her bill is passed,
you will no doubt be called upon at minimum
to express an opinion on how we organize passenger rail
in the future.
The ball will be in your court.
I have copies of our documents here.
I can email those that don't want a written copy,
but if you could pass them around.
Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you, Paul.
Next.
Brian Yannity.
Good morning, Chair and board members.
Thank you so much for this opportunity
to speak this morning.
My name is Brian Yannity.
I'm Vice President South of the Rail Passenger Association
California or rail pack and I live in downtown Fullerton a block from the
train station and I took MetroLink to get to Los Angeles so thank you for
providing this service. First of all I want to say congratulations on getting
$59 million in funding from the Carl Moyer program for two zero-emission rail
vehicles. However I do want to say please do not spend that money our tax money on
hydrogen. Enough of our tax money has been wasted on hydrogen already in
California. It's bad for the environment. It all comes from fossil fuels. The
greenhouse gas emissions are worse than running diesel when you make it out of
natural gas and that's where it's coming from for the foreseeable future. The
track record of hydrogen trains in Europe has been pretty bad. Extreme cost
overruns, very poor reliability. And I know the oil and gas lobby in the state
are pushing hard for a hydrogen as a clean fuel, but please don't be fooled.
Electrification with 25 kV overhead wire is the world standard. Us at Railpack have been pushing
that for years. Back in 2014, my colleague Paul here submitted a proposal to Metrolink about
regional electrification called Electrolink. It was dismissed by Metrolink at that time.
But all around the world you see, you know, all sizes and shapes of rail operations from heavy freight, to fast, you know, inner-city rail, to high-speed rail, to regional rail.
Electrification is used with the overhead wire because it's more economical than diesel for frequent service.
It's not too expensive for so many countries around the world that do it on all their main lines.
And there's this tired old excuse out there that class 1 railroad owned tracks or tracks used by the class 1s.
It's impossible to electrify because they'll never allow it, but that's been disproven right here in the Metrolink system between LA and Fullerton on the BNSF Railway.
They have agreed to overhead wire on two tracks that they own in their right-of-way, and this is their main money maker, the LA to Chicago Southern Transcon.
and they're allowing overhead wire on that tall enough
for double stack container trains, by the way.
That's another excuse that is commonly given
that's disproven by this.
So Metrolink stands to take advantage of that
and not just on the San Bernardino subdivision,
the Orange County line and the 91 line,
but also on the San Bernardino line
and the Antelope Valley line,
which is recently was a study.
Please look at overhead wire electrification, thank you.
Thank you for your comments.
That's all of the public comments.
We'll close that period and go on to our consent calendar.
Is there a motion on consent?
We have a motion and a second.
Is there any objection?
Any abstention?
Seeing none, it's passed unanimously.
Next is our board member recognition
for years of service.
Unfortunately, most of them that are being recognized
But we do have a five-year service recognition award for Ray Marquez who has been here since
April of 2018.
So, we'll give that to him at the appropriate time.
We also have a five-year service recognition award for Pamela Connor who has been here
since October of 2018.
And then we have a 10-year service recognition award for Paul Kirkorian, who has been a member
here since August of 2013.
And last but not least, we have a 15-year service recognition award for Arun Najarian.
He's been here since December of 2006, with a one-year layoff.
Yeah, there was a little glitch in that attendance record.
Right, all right, well, thank you.
Well, come and get it and we'll take a picture.
Yeah.
So we'll go on to our regular calendar now.
First item is item 8A, a ratification
of the emergency procurement
for the San Clemente number three project.
This will be presented by Beshoy Bistara Rose,
Senior Contracts and Compliance Administrator
and Maria Leibel, senior railroad civil engineer.
Oh yeah, I was gonna say, Justin, you've morphed.
Maria's been, she's out in the field right now,
so I had to, she's dealing with the situation in the field,
so I figured I'd step in for her.
Very good.
Go ahead.
Good morning, Chair and members.
Next slide, please.
The Stankalmenting coastline has a history
of earth movement along the corridor.
The most recent landslide occurred on January 24th
in San Clemente, causing a significant slope movement
resulting in a pushing section
of the pedestrian bridge support.
Next slide please.
Also causing the breeze to cover the tracks.
Next slide please.
Track protection measures needed to resume
and maintain operation of the Orange Subdivision.
Next slide please.
The state declared transportation emergency
for the landslide on February 1st, 2024,
and on February 12th, 2024,
the CEO authorized a single source procurement
to negotiate a contract with Conden Johnson and Associates.
On February 16th, 2024,
staff executed contract number C3156-24
with Conden Johnson
in the amount of $2,270,000
to design and build a barrier wall
with a period of performance of 25 days
from the notice to proceed.
Staff's also requesting approval
of 40% contingency to the contract.
Next slide, please.
OCTA is to provide funding allocation
and has received confirmation of emergency fund allocation
from California Transportation Commission
in the amount of $9,200,000 to cover the costs.
Budgeting will require an amendment
to the fiscal year 24 budget
in the amount of $8,900,000
for non-recurring item denoted as San Clemente number three.
Next slide, please.
It is recommended that the board verify CEO's action
to award the following procurement
entered under CEO's Emergency Authorization Authority.
Contract number C3156-24 for the design instruction
of the temporary barrier wall on the Orange Subdivision
at mile post 204.2 with Content Johnson and Associates,
and the not exceed amount of $2,270,000,
plus 40% contingency in the amount of $908,000
for a total not exceed amount of $3,178,000.
Contract tax order number E746.8-20-007
issued to HDR engineering in the amount of $527,223.79.
Work directive number 158 under contract number MS289-22
issued to Herzog Construction
in the amount of $793,933.78.
Work order to be NSF in amount of two hundred thousand dollars
It's also requested that the board approved an amendment to the fiscal year 24 budget to recognize budget
in amount of eight million nine hundred thousand dollars
For a non-recurring item denoted as San Clemente number three
Next slide, please
This concludes my presentation happy to answer any questions. You may have
Before we ask questions Justin, could you explain to us what we're doing under this contract?
Yes, so the what we're doing with all of these allocations is essentially covering
The first phase in the second phase the first phase was the immediate response to the slide
That's where's with the cleanup of the material that came down on the tracks
Over time that slide as you saw from the photos it dislodged the pedestrian bridge from its vents and pushed it out into the
operating right of way, so we had to use our contractors with the help of some
BNSF contractors to actually remove that pedestrian bridge from the right
of way and haul it off-site, then we also did additional grading and covering of
the slope. What we've determined through our geotechnical engineers with HDR is
that this slide is going to continue to move, and I think an even more concern is
an upper section that has the potential for an even larger slide, and so that's
really what moved us towards the direction of building a barrier wall
similar to what we constructed at Casa Romantica further south in San
Clemente. And so that's what the contract with Conant Johnson is for is the
construction of round of a 160 foot long barrier wall. It's going to be about 12
feet high with steel piles and wood lagging in between those steel piles
basically to hold any material coming down from that hillside and catching
that so that it doesn't impede train movement
through the area.
I do want to mention that as of Tuesday this week,
because of that continued hillside movement,
the slide is now on top of the rail itself.
We had been up to this point,
being able to kind of excavate that material,
clear it out and allow four freight trains to pass through.
At this point, we're not able to run
any trains through the area.
And so really, the moving forward with this wall
is key for us to opening up rail service through St. Clemente.
Very good, thank you.
Comments or questions?
Question, thank you, Mr. Chair.
What role is the Coastal Commission playing in all this?
Are they overseeing this?
Are they giving us free reign?
I know they can be very difficult at times.
More than difficult for the most obvious and logical sort
of improvements.
But can you address that?
Sure, working with OCTA, we are seeking some emergency permits with the Coastal Commission.
They by no way are giving us free reign out there, although we've explained to them that
because of the constrained site that we're out there, really the only way to get out
and address this is on the tracks themselves.
There's very limited of what we can do out there, and so we are working with the Coastal
Commission.
There's almost daily conversations back and forth with them, and we are processing an
emergency permit to complete this walk. Other comments, questions? Yeah so can
you give us a time frame if I was correct in understanding the contractors
a 25 day period of construction does that mean after on the 26th day we'll be
able to open up for rail or or not is can you just give us that time frame?
Sure. Yeah. So right now the immediate push for us is to get freight rail open back up.
You know, BNSF has a lot of freight in San Diego that is backing up in addition to areas from around the country trying to get into San Diego.
So the approach right now, we have actually mobilized the contractor.
They've started setting up their equipment yesterday.
And the approach is to start drilling the piles on Tuesday.
With those piles a couple of the piles installed in some of the more saturated area of the slope
The idea is that those piles will provide some structural rigidity to that slope so we can excavate the toe and allow freight trains to start
Passing through once that occurs
The the contractor
Will continue with the wall construction. I should say we are the contractor is going to be
Again the access to get out there. We have to walk the equipment onto the tracks
to build this wall.
And so the original contract required the contractor
to remove their equipment each day
to allow freight trains to pass at night
and the opportunity for low sand trains
to operate in the early morning or in the evening.
So with that said, I think that the wall construction
we're estimating right now to be completed in mid-March,
I think the 14th or 15th,
we will have to do some track repairs out there
after the wall is constructed.
we're anticipating that those will probably take
another week and a half to two weeks to complete.
So really for full train operations
to resume all the services,
we're looking towards the end of the month,
but we're thinking that we will be able
to run some train service by Thursday, Friday of next week.
That would be freight in the evening,
and then again, the low sand, limited low sand service,
early morning and in the evening.
Perfect, thank you, appreciate that answer.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We've had several slides.
This is not the first.
And when I know that area, there'd likely be other spots that are at risk.
Is there any study going on to identify some of those other potential slides so we can
have a proactive approach?
Yes.
OCTA had actually kicked off a study as a result of the Casa Romantica slide last year
and had just delivered the initial assessment
of what were terming hotspots along the corridor,
and this identified not only slope failures above the track,
but also issues with the beach erosion,
and so I think there were several locations
that were identified, and not surprisingly,
this Mariposa Point location was one of the key hotspots
that was identified, so we are continuing to work
with OCTA to advance those projects.
We're looking at if there's an opportunity
to place additional riprap along the coast
to protect the railroad as part of this service outage
when we're doing this wall.
There is some coordination we have to do
with the Coastal Commission to do that,
so there's some things that need to fall in line.
The state, it sounds like there is potential
for funding of this, but we're looking at all
of the different parameters in this.
And so there has been an executive team with OCTA,
ourselves, Losan CalSTA that has been convened to kind of talk through the
best approaches to address these other hotspot locations. Thank you for that
update on a proactive approach that we're taking. Also like staff from here
and OCTA and all and the World League to Northern for working together so
promptly. It's amazing as a major effort to even get down to the tracks there. So
I'd like to say thank you to everyone involved in this effort.
Thank you. Director Brown. Just a comment. The one slice I said committee has a
history of earth movement. 81 years ago, in the early 1940s, they put down 30,000
cubic yards of riprap along the San Clemente area because of erosion of the
ocean erosion. I remember when I was on the OCTA board we're constantly putting riprap
down the coastal erosion this is not a new problem it's gonna have to have a
permanent solution which unfortunately I don't believe is going to be long to
serve anymore we do have a public comment on this item I will read the
written public comment first okay from Lucas Chang dear Metrolink board with
the sheer importance of the low sand corridor for passenger and freight
travel between LA and San Diego the San Clemente section must be repaired with
the utmost urgency and a permanent solution quickly found to prevent this
situation from happening again. However I am disappointed that the current
response just demonstrates the continued preference of private cars to public
transportation. When interstate 10 in downtown LA was shut down on November
11th 2023 due to the fire a rapid response allowed the freeway to reopen
within just eight days. There's no reason why we cannot do the same with San
and Clemente, what if this happens during the Olympics?
Will we just shut down the trains as we did this time?
Unlike the 10 freeway, the only alternative to Losan
is interstate five or air travel.
Until this reopens, not only will the five continue
to be jammed, but also will the flights between LA
and San Diego as passengers navigate around the closure.
This issue also emphasizes the need for the implementation
of the optimized schedule by July 1st, 2024,
with the suspension of several Pacific surf liner routes
due to the closure, there are currently very few options
between Downtown LA and Orange County
on public transportation.
I was affected by the closure last July
and had to drive to Downtown LA for Anime Expo.
Please treat the San Clemente closure
with the same urgency as the Interstate 10 fire.
There's absolutely no reason for any delays on the repairs,
especially with the speed that the 10 in Downtown LA
was able to reopen.
Sincerely, Lucas Chang.
Thank you.
This is an action item.
We do have a request to speak as well.
Also?
from Paul Dyson.
Paul, you're up again.
Mr. Chair and board, time and tide wait for no man, it seems.
I would like to thank on behalf of Railpack, Mr. Cattle,
and Mr. Fornelli for their efforts
in getting the line reopened as quickly as possible.
And I can't help but think that any of the comments
that I've made previously have nothing
to do with the individuals concerned,
but the institutions within which
They are struggling to function.
But my comment actually may seem like a nitpick,
but it actually speaks to a much larger issue.
And that goes back to my first comments in public comment.
If you'd kindly look at item 8A and go to the third paragraph
from the bottom, it reads adopt an amendment to the FY24 budget
to add $8.9 million, blah, blah, blah.
Further down, it says that California Transportation
Commission and under the STIP program
has awarded $9.2 million to OCTA for this project.
Where's the $300,000?
And this is just one instance.
This is just one transaction where one agency is basically
acting just to pass through dollars and apply for a grant
and then pass the dollars through to this organization.
But how many times has that happened over the 30-odd years
of the lifetime of this agency?
Surely this is just one indication of the inefficiency
and the money wasted by having so many different organizations
chasing after the management of a couple of hundred trains.
It really is not good enough.
It's not good use of taxpayers' resources
to have people applying for grants,
shuffling the money, passing them on to other agencies
to do the work.
We need to streamline the organization,
and there's enough people here, I hope,
with business background and with intelligence
and common sense to understand this
and to call for a restructuring
so that we get these jobs done more quickly
and more efficiently, and the money goes to running trains
and not to OCTA pension plans.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comments.
This is an action item, is there a motion?
We have a motion, and a second.
Any objection to the motion?
Any abstentions?
Seeing none, it's unanimous, thank you.
Thank you very much for your presentation.
Next is Low Carbon Transit Operations Program Resolution,
and will be presented by Jennifer Farrenas,
our Manager of Grants.
Jennifer.
Good morning, Chair McCallion and members of the board.
This action item requests that the board approve
Resolution 24-143, authorizing the transfer of 3.5 million
from the Mobility for All program
to the Student Adventure Pass program.
Next slide, please.
Oh, okay.
The Mobility for All program was launched in September 2022
and received a total of 5.7 million
in low carbon transit operations program or LC top funds.
The program offers a 50% discount to eligible EBT card holders, and to date approximately
875,000 in funding has been utilized.
Next slide, please.
In October 2023, the Student Adventure Pass pilot program was launched using 4 million
in LC Top Funds.
The program provides free passes to students riding anywhere, anytime.
In the first three months of the program, 2.5 million has been utilized.
Next slide please.
Given the popularity of the Student Adventure Pass,
LC top funds would have been depleted early this year.
Therefore, staff requested the transfer of 3.5 million
from the Mobility for All program
to the Student Adventure Pass program in December, 2023.
Next slide please.
Excuse me.
Staff anticipates that the transfer of funds
will allow the Student Adventure Pass program
to continue until the end of the school year.
The mobility for all program is anticipated
to have enough funds to continue until June 30th, 2025.
This transfer will allow LC top funds
to be utilized promptly before funding expires.
Next slide please.
The resolution is a procedural action
acknowledging the transfer of funds
between the two programs.
We're requesting that the board approve this resolution.
Next slide please.
This concludes my report
and I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you for your presentation.
The student pass has been a very successful program
and hopefully we can continue it.
I'm glad to see that we have funds
that we can transfer over,
but hopefully when those funds run out,
our member agencies will be able to provide some more
and see top funds to continue this program
since it's been such a successful one.
Comments, questions?
Mr. Ryan.
I have a comment.
The importance of this to me is really, really high up there.
What the description doesn't tell was in combination
to this other things that we went over
at the last meeting or last set of meetings,
I had to do with ridership and the numbers
and if I remember correctly,
we had over 10,000 student adventure riders
of the 40 something thousand for the latest month.
To me, that's huge.
20% of the ridership are people
that potentially may never have ridden.
They're all getting a free ride.
These are the youth and college students
of today will be tomorrow's future riders.
So for us to be successful in attracting new ridership,
this program to me is taken off like wildfire.
So moving, shifting the money over is great,
but we've also, I would love to see
how we can make this continue beyond this fiscal year.
So I think this is a huge positive investment
for Metrolink and one in which I absolutely fully support
and hope that we can move this forward
and continue with this program.
So that was my comment, thank you.
Thank you, Director.
Yeah, love the program.
Love the success on it.
In conversations about its long-term life, I'm curious.
The current grant, it pays 100% of it,
even regardless of the institution?
Yes.
And so then that's where I wanted to continue.
And maybe we should look into what are the highest writers
of which school, which are generating the ridership.
In a different board that I sit on,
We did student passes for free for the students,
but I believe that the institution, the school,
for example, LA, USD, Pomona Unified School District,
and even there was a charter school that helped out,
they had to automatically pay $3 per student.
And so, those $3 cover the entire population
of their students, and it wasn't the full coverage
of their cost, but it met us halfway
in a way to be able to continue that program
and help stretch out those dollars a little bit more.
So I don't know if that's, if maybe like,
cause I believe they have to sign up
with their student email.
And if we see a certain institution
have a large portion of it,
maybe we should start reaching to the top five
and talking about those long-term agreements.
I don't, I agree with you.
I've said on boards where we've also done the same thing
and reached out to the universities or schools involved
and got them to contribute a part of the funding
that was needed.
So that's something we ought to probably look into
if it's possible.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair and Director Pressiato.
I, you know, we have already teed this up
with the five member agencies.
There's a lot of support for the program.
We have so many institutions that are involved.
We do have data.
We have a decent amount of information about what schools,
where students are participating and what schools they are,
you know, it gets to a point where how we work
with all the different districts in Southern California could be
an administrative, a real administrative challenge
if we go there, but I think I'm optimistic
that for the next fiscal year, 24, 25, we're going to figure
out a way to get this, continue this program with,
within the family, so to speak,
and how we play this out longer term.
I think we may have, we may have to entertain those ideas
about getting support from the education community.
And then just one last thing.
Out of the state legislature on a number of occasions,
there have been bills introduced to fund
this kind of program at the state level.
So people see the, you know,
leaders see the benefit of this type of program.
It's just a matter of, you know,
how do we put all those pieces together?
But I think we're, I'm really optimistic
that we'll be able to include this program
in our budget for 24-25.
Any other comments or questions?
This is an action item.
Is there a motion?
I'll second.
No.
We have a motion and a second.
Any objection to the motion?
Any abstention?
Seeing none, that's unanimous.
Thank you very much for your presentation.
On to item Hc, it's financial results
for the six months ending December 31st,
presented by Christine Wilson,
our senior manager of finance.
Christine good morning. Good morning. Chair McAllen and members of the board
I'm presenting item number 8C
Which is the revenue ridership and financial results for the six months ended December 31st
2023 next slide, please
This slide is a visual depiction of our progress in regaining ridership and adhering to forecast in the past year
The green columns are actuals, while the blue line is the forecast.
The ridership includes the student adventure pass.
Our recovery in the month of December, as compared to December of 2018, was 41 percent.
This recovery decline from prior months was primarily the result of holidays and our system-wide
shutdown at the end of December.
Next slide, please.
You see here a chart depiction of our revenue thus far in 24.
Once again, the green columns are the actual revenue, while the blue line is the budget.
As I mentioned earlier, the December decline is primarily the result of holidays and our
system-wide shutdown.
Next slide.
These are the actual fare box revenue amounts for the fiscal year shown by month.
Year to date, through December, the total fare box revenue was budgeted at $17.0 million
or a 44% recovery, while the actual fare box revenue is $18.5 million or a 48% recovery
over budget by $1.5 million.
In the month of December, the student activity pass contributed $408,000.
Year to date, the student adventure pass contributed 2.2 million.
Next slide.
As you see here, the ridership follows the same trend as the revenue with December down
as a result of our shutdown.
Next slide, please.
The ridership numbers are shown here.
The year to date forecast through December is 2.6 million riders or a 43% recovery.
The actual ridership through December was 2.9 million or a 49% recovery, putting ridership
over forecast by 333,000.
The ridership does include student adventure pass riders which totaled 67.5,000 in December
and 328,000 year-to-date.
Now the operating statement, next slide please, thank you.
Now the operating statement.
Through the first six months of December, operating revenue is 30.8 million or 4.5
percent over plan, 4.5 million over plan.
Expenses are 136.6 million or 15.3 million below plan.
We show here some of the large items currently under budget.
I would like to strongly caution that these amounts are based on accruals, not actuals,
and that many items may not be expended until near year-end.
Next slide, please.
These slides show the operating statement in detail.
First is revenue.
Significantly, the student adventure pass
reflects 13% of the pro forma farebox revenue,
although it began only in October of this year.
The large amount you see in other revenues
is generated by improved interest earnings.
Next slide please.
The train portion of the expense
is under-planned by 7.1 million.
Next slide.
Maintenance away is under 1.1 million,
administration and services under by 5.8 million,
insurance under by 1.2 million.
Next slide.
We have revised the operating statement
to more closely track the results
of various unbudgeted special trains.
The holiday train is currently showing a profit of $28,000.
Because these trains were run in December,
not all the information is in yet.
The Insomniac trains are showing a positive number.
At the bottom, you see that we are currently showing
$19,000 surplus, actually 16,
I mean, at the bottom of the operating statement,
you will see that we are currently showing
a $19 million surplus,
actually 16 million after the settlement expense.
Once again, remember these are our accruals.
Next slide.
Here we show our AR pass due as of 12-31-23.
As Vivian has said in earlier comments,
some amounts have been received since that time.
Next slide.
This is the scribe cash position.
As you can see, we are now over our $50 million threshold
by $2 million, but note that just two months ago,
we were at a cash of 12 million while our monthly operating
expenses averaged 25 million.
Next slide, please.
Arrow service, next slide.
Fairbox revenue year to date for Arrow is 115,000
with 14,000 contributed by the Student Adventure Pass.
Ridership is 49,000 with 10,000
coming from the Student Adventure Pass.
Next slide, please.
Arrow Operating Statement shows 121,000
in operating revenue and six million in expense,
which is 3.3 million below the continuing resolution
adopted for this.
The amount SBCTA has presented to the board
for ARRO is a total of $15 million for the entire year.
This is more than sufficient, so they have made the decision
that they will stay on the resolution and concentrate
on producing a full budget for FY25.
Next slide.
The FY25 budget status, which at the high level development,
you will see that we have already produced a first draft
of the proposed budget for internal review,
and which has now been also reviewed by the CFO
and the CEO of our organization.
We have already begun the meetings that we have
with the CFOs of individual member agencies
and any staff they care to invite to go over the details
of the FY25 budget, both operating and capital.
Next slide, please.
I might also mention that we will continue these meetings responding to any questions
that the CFOs or their staff have concerning the FY25 budget.
So these are the FY25 budget assumptions.
The first part was the service level to be either current or optimized.
And we have also added a hybrid version, which consists of having the current service beginning
July 1st through September and then on October 1st moving to the optimized
schedule. Revenue is based on the updated Sperry Capital KPMG forecast, no fair
increases, some new fair promotions, the mobility for all program. The student
adventure pass is not included because it is unknown as far as the grant
funding goes. So we have not included student adventure pass numbers in our
revenue. Expenses, department expenses are we do not want them to increase more
than four percent. Excluding the mini bundle mobilization over over one time
expense and excluding the optimized service. Contractor increases only as
mandated by agreements, no new FTE headcount, 3% merit, 3% COLA, and I want to note that
the Arrow service is a separate budget. Next slide. Thank you. That concludes my report.
Can I answer any questions? Thank you, Krista. Any questions? Seeing none, this is a receiving
file. Thank you very much for the detail of the presentation. I appreciate it. Thank you.
It said this is your receiving file and without objection,
that's what will be the board's order.
Next we have a February legislative update
presented by Julia Neto, a management analyst, too.
Good morning, everyone.
Quick correction.
I'm Anna Denaky, senior manager of government relations
here on behalf of Julie, who is not feeling well.
Thank you for having me.
It's a pleasure to be here.
First of all, next slide.
It will cover our local efforts over the past month.
So our community relations team is preparing
to conduct outreach on the recent service changes
along the AV line.
These efforts are part of a Title VI requirement
that encompasses a public outreach plan
to collect comments and results.
We will present these to you all at a future meeting.
The virtual meetings will be held on April 18th
and they will take place in both Spanish and English.
We are also conducting safety education to local schools.
On February 2nd, we sent out a new school safety email
to 4,700 institutions.
We emphasized the dangers of crossing the railroad tracks
as well as some other best practices.
We also took this opportunity to advertise
the availability of the student adventure pass
and ask campuses to place banners on school property
to advertise the availability of this program.
We received 15 responses and one banner request.
This should bring even more riders,
the future riders for our system,
and we have been since doing follow-up.
Next slide, please.
On the state side, Jeff Dunn presented to you all
last month on Governor Newsom's January budget.
As a reminder, last fiscal year,
the legislature committed 5.1 billion
for transit and rail operations
to systems across the state.
Just this week, we are all aware
that there will be a budget deficit.
Just this week, the LAO released an updated outlook,
and by their estimates, the fiscal year 24-25 budget deficit
is projected to have increased
from the previously estimated 50 billion to 73 billion
based on updated revenue forecasts.
To help offset costs,
Newsom has suggested the state delay 1 billion
in TIRCP funding by one fiscal year.
Our CEO, Darren Kettle, was recently in Sacramento
as part of the Mobility 21 Coalition,
advocating for the importance
of preserving transportation funding,
as well as the funding schedules enacted
in last year's budget and SB 125.
We will continue to advocate and educate lawmakers
on the value of that additional money in the coming months
and will play defense against any proposed transit cuts.
The governor's revise is expected in May.
And then finally, on the federal side,
we are in the process of requesting earmarks
for the fiscal year 25 federal appropriations process.
Typically, these requests are due in mid-March.
We've identified approximately 15 priority projects
across the system.
We may be reaching out to you all for letters of support
as we begin submitting those requests.
And then finally, it's been a year
since the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio,
which prompted the introduction of the Rail Safety Act
in both the House and the Senate.
The Senate bill is stalled.
They are waiting for the NTSB
to release final recommendations,
which are expected June 25th.
We will continue to monitor the bill
and keep the board apprised of any updates in future reports.
Thank you for having me.
I'm happy to take any questions.
Thank you very much, Anna.
Any questions, comments?
Very good, thanks.
This is a receiving file and without objection.
That's what the order of the board will be.
Next, we'll go on to our Chief Executive Officer's report.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning, everybody.
So let's go ahead to the slide deck, next slide please.
Just a really big thank you.
We had customer appreciation day
on February 14th, Valentine's Day.
We had a number of our board members get up at O'Dark 30
to join our staff at various stations.
You can see here, we actually had a surprise visitor
in Riverside and second vice chair Brian Bergson showed up.
I think just there to greet our riders, so thank you, Brian, for doing that.
We had Tony Tremblay join us in Simi Valley, so thank you for that.
Lauren Hughes Leslie joined us in Newhall, and of course we had Pamela Conner join the
big gang we had at LA Union Station.
This event is always something special.
I hope we please next year if you're able to join us.
The level of enthusiasm we see from our riders
when they come off trains or getting on trains
with what we're providing, just being there to greet
with a happy Valentine's Day and thank you
for riding Metrolink is really a huge positive.
You also saw we had Tam Nguyen from OCTA
at Fullerton joining our group.
And we had a number of Metrolink staffers
that participated and it was just,
it really is a very positive experience
and our riders, we appreciate our riders
and our riders really appreciate us
and it really comes out, it's really shown
on the day of this event.
So thanks to everybody, thanks to our
customer experience team for making this happen.
We got some really positive media coverage
including live interviews at LA Union Station that morning.
I was, I got a text message from a former
Metrolink board member talking about,
hey, the CEO's on TV this morning.
And we had a large group of folks there just showing.
It was a very positive, KTLA Channel 5
did the live, LA Live event.
So for us, it was really, really a great experience.
At the committee meetings a couple weeks ago,
I mentioned that we had a crew on our Arrow service
that identified someone on the tracks
between San Bernardino and Redlands.
These are the two individuals, Conductor and Engineer,
that spotted this individual who was on the tracks
just outside of the San Bernardino Transit Center.
And so, I just, we had mentioned it was relatively new.
We didn't have information.
Unfortunately, the two gentlemen
were not able to join us today.
But these are the two, Engineer Bachman and Conductor Guernsey,
who spotted this 16-year-old young lady
who we were able to stop the trainings,
called the law enforcement and were able to come out
and have her, she was removed from the tracks
and admitted into Loma Linda University Hospital.
So this is, you know, safety is foundational here
at Metrolink, next week is safety week.
So we continue to preach it, we preach it, we preach it,
and it'll continue to be preached.
And I just, my thanks again for the actions
of these two crew members to make sure
that we saved a young lady's life.
So thank you for that.
Next slide.
This is the last one.
This is just a reminder.
The March board meeting has been moved.
We will, normally we land on a fourth Friday,
but this room is not available on the fourth Friday.
So we have moved our board meeting
to the fifth Friday, March 29th.
So please make note of that.
The board secretary will probably make sure you get multiple emails
into your email inbox reminding you of that time chain or date change, but so thank you
for that, and Mr. Chair, that concludes my CEO remarks.
Thank you very much.
I'm disappointed I wasn't able to attend the appreciation day this year.
I enjoyed doing it last year.
Got a lot of chocolate to eat
But it was it was great to experience meeting all of our writers and
Appreciating them and at the same time they were appreciating us and I'd look forward to hopefully being able to do it again next year
Other comments of our questions of our CEO
Seeing none. We'll move on to our board members comments any board members have comments
Seeing that yes, I'm just wanted to bring up really enjoyed our session that we had in Ontario
From staff and everybody that was there
I've have already been touting. I know I within staff
City of Pomona, but even just friends and family and just looking at how much more efficient
We're gonna be how much things to look forward to. I don't think I've ever talked about Covina as much as I
I've ever had, but seeing that they might potentially have 30-minute service, you know,
and then the city, you know, in partnership, everything's in partnership, right?
We're all here representing our agencies.
I just wanted to say thank you to everyone.
I can't wait for the goal line to expand and hopefully continue
that 30-minute service even on a heading out further west, north, south,
everything that we're doing, and just saying that this board has been really,
really fun to be with I look forward to an entire year and everybody from staff
and all of our writers thank you all very much. Thank you very much for those
comments. I thought our retreat went very well and we had a good discussion there.
Any other comments? Seeing none, go on the chairs comments. I just thank staff for
all the hard work they've been doing and keep up the good work and especially
Especially all the hard work that's been done along the course there and trying to get our trains back in service.
It's been difficult and I appreciate all the effort by all the team members.
Next we'll go into closed session.
Mr. Attorney, would you read us into closed session?
Yes, thank you, Chair.
The board will now go into closed session on items 12A through 12E as described in today's agenda.
Thank you.
We're adjourned into closed session and we'll be back.
Call the board back into open session and ask for the attorney to give us a read out.
Nothing to report, very good, with that we're adjourned.