Well good morning everyone. Welcome to the Performance Administration and Finance Committee
meeting on February 12th. I'll call us to order now and we'll go ahead and get started.
To start the meeting at Taylor Seawee, our deputy clerk, we'll call the roll.
Committee chair Sonella. Here.
Committee member Bhatpatel. Here.
Committee member Edson. Committee member Contreras.
Present.
This completes the role, committee member Edson absent.
Thank you, Taylor.
And could you give us our safety brief at this time, please.
In case of an emergency, I will dial 911.
In case of an evacuation, please take the stairs, do not use the elevators.
Once cleared of the building, do not reenter unless cleared to do so by emergency personnel.
There are fire extinguishers and first aid kits on each floor of the building.
There is a portable defibrillator on the first floor
and staff on hand trained on CPR procedures if needed.
This concludes my safety brief.
Thank you, Taylor.
Do we have any public comments at this time, Taylor?
No, we do not.
Thank you.
Okay, our first item on the agenda today
is the election of the PATH committee vice chair
for calendar year 2026.
Sue Hill Rodriguez, director of administration
will present this item.
you have our attention.
Good morning committee members.
So as we do each year, this is time to elect the vice chair
for this PAF committee for calendar year 2026.
According to board policy three,
the first meeting of the year, which is today,
we will elect the PAF vice chair
and that vice chair that is elected today
will also serve on the executive committee.
So at this time, I will turn to you committee members
to either make recommendations or nominations
for PAF vice chair.
Thank you so Taylor do we have any public speakers on this item no we do not
okay great should we just nominate Jules that she can't you know yeah I mean I'm
happy with any of the three I mean I'm comfortable with Jules serving in that
capacity and would love to hear comes member Contreras yeah I'm assuming that
we're able to nominate someone who's not here and vote on it, right? Or do they
have to... there's not a rule against it, okay? Until there is, I guess we can just
move forward. So I'm okay. She may object though when she gets here. That's true.
We're putting that in the motion that she is not able to object to this
nomination but I'll yeah so moved I'll second okay we have a motion by Contreras
and a second by about Patel and we'll go ahead and Taylor and do a call vote
please okay committee chair Sinella yes committee member Pat Patel yes
committee member Contreras aye on the motion of committee member Contreras
seconded by committee member Bob Patel to elect committee member Edson as the
path vice chair. Motion passes.
Moving on to item number two. The next item is on the agenda is the review of
the 20 2026 proposed path committee work plan. Ewan Park Lynch, chief financial
officer, will present this item. Ewan, it's all yours. Good morning. Good morning
Any more members for our first meeting for the PAF,
we are going to be presenting our work plan
for the next two meetings that will take place in 2026.
The first one is, our first meeting, which is today,
has already taken place, but the next two meetings
are scheduled for May 21st and December 17th.
For the May 21st meeting, we'll be presenting
the proposed operating and capital budget updates
for fiscal year 2027, and also we'll be presenting
the proposed fee schedule that will be effective
in the next fiscal year.
For our December meeting, we'll be presenting
the unaudited results for the financial statements
for June 30, 2026.
We'll also be presenting the status
of our pension liability.
And also the update on the proposed cap improvement program
that will go from FY 28 to 2032.
And then finally, we'll be presenting the updates
to the internal audit program charters.
If the committee wishes to add any items
to the future meetings, we can do that as well.
But this is our current proposed plan.
That concludes my presentation.
And then I also wanted to give an update
to a couple of questions that were presented
by committee chair on the, not a committee chair,
but a committee member on the update
on the service changes, six months service changes
that is scheduled to be presented to the board
March meeting and the second item is related
to the first study update and that will be presented
to both the excited committee and the board in April.
Perfect, thank you.
Taylor, do we have any public comments on this?
No, we do not.
Okay, great.
Do any of my colleagues have any questions or comments?
Yes.
Yes, thank you so much, Ian.
Just for clarification, so you're talking about
what I had requested in the past regarding a fair study
or looking rate, which is that component
of our budget overall.
So that won't be coming to PATH,
but it will go to the executive committee
and the board in April.
Correct.
Okay.
And when do we anticipate that
that report would be available for the board members
to start consuming it because it's,
I'm assuming that if I just only have seven days to do that,
it could be a little bit difficult.
So, is there an anticipated finish date
where we would be able to receive that information
ahead of time to thoroughly review that?
So, I'll allow Mary.
I would say it's the fair, regional fair study as a whole
is occurring right now.
As soon as we have any information available to that,
we'll send it out to the board.
We won't wait till seven days before.
Okay.
Because we want people to be able to review
that pretty thoroughly, it really depends on when we.
This is a SAND AG timeline, right?
SAND AG is leading the charge of the regional fair study.
We have had some internal meetings already
about coaster zoning and a few other things
would apply to the regional fair structure,
but SAND AG is managing the regional fair piece.
Yeah, so we presented to the PAF committee
the overview of the initial round of public outreach
that we received.
Now we've taken that feedback
and it's informing particular scenarios
that we're going to go out and talk to the public with.
SANDAG was able to complete the model for MTS
a little bit before they completed it for NCTD,
so we're just about a couple weeks behind.
But we are looking at what the model is telling us
in terms of the fair revenue that will be increased
by various changes, also what we can expect
to be in a change in ridership for each of the scenarios.
Then we'll go back to the public,
have that conversation about particular scenarios
that could be implemented.
then we'll come to the executive committee,
give them an overview of what we've heard
from the public and the scenarios,
and then it'll ultimately be the board's decision
to recommend either package,
right now it's looking like it's two,
either one of the two packages
for the Sandeck Transportation Committee for approval.
Your second comment about
the kind of like six month service change review,
we're working on that right now.
We'll hit the six month mark in March.
So right now it's looking like
we'll bring it to the March board for review,
but we can certainly make sure that it's available
to the board ahead of posting
so that you have the opportunity to review
and ask any questions.
Okay, and I just have a follow up question
because we're really talking about having a balanced budget
and having enough funding to be able to,
one, continue the service that we have now.
And always we're looking at expansion.
We also have the youth opportunity pass.
think that's only has funding up to this year. So there's a lot of different
pieces so I'm wondering if like I still think that there's a piece of this that
fits under the PATH committee to look in a little bit deeper because one of the
things I would like to see is that with these different scenarios that we also
have a projection of the the dollars coming in right so we could see our
budget and is that something that's that we anticipate we'll see because I
didn't I know that this is like a large project I didn't necessarily hear that
component in the description of it but is that something that we can recommend
here or is it already going to come to the board with that type of information
because I think being able to project financially what those different
scenarios look like is a critical component of the stability of this
agency and for our board to be able to have make the best comment you know best
direction to staff or digest the information more comprehensively so yeah
yeah absolutely so as a region we're targeting either July or August to
implement the fair change so our board and MTS's board has to review it before
it gets sent to San Angeles Transportation Committee for ultimate
adoption that's kind of why we've targeted the April executive committee
in the April board meeting however in those discussions we will certainly talk
about the estimated revenues that we can expect to bring in from whatever fair
increase the board ultimately decides to recommend so the board will have that
picture the board will also hear what we've heard from the public about one
way fair increases monthly fair increases particular passes kind of the
whole picture of what we've talked to the public about so that the board has
that when they're making their decision and we'll also talk about potential
changes in ridership. We know like anything if you increase a price on
something you might see a decrease in adoption of that. We do expect that to be
short-term but the board will definitely have that information to make their
decision. Okay so it's still not none of this is gonna come back to PATH. For the
timing it won't. We can certainly make the PATH committee aware ahead of time.
Okay and the other component of this is something that I brought up as a
discussion point. I think it was at our last board meeting or maybe the one
prior I can't remember, but the fact that we don't have, and this is something I
think that would be driven by SANDAG if I remember correctly from our
conversation, but we don't have a low-income fair subsidy. And you know
whenever we're talking about increasing fares we have seen in the data and in
the surveying that we've done that if you're making 15,000 or less, I mean
and that's a substantial percentage increase, right,
to someone's cost of living.
And so where does that piece fit in to all this?
Yeah, so at the last PATH committee,
we talked about some of the challenges
with adopting a low-income fare,
mainly how we would manage the eligibility,
what that would look like.
So right now, that is not part of either of the packages.
However, we are intending to talk to the public
about different types of fare changes.
So in one scenario, and this is very preliminary,
so the board will actually receive the official package
once we discuss it internally and determine
what's the best for the agency in our view.
There is an option for one way fares to increase
while monthly passes don't face as steep of an increase.
So we want to make sure that we're looking at
different types of packages.
There is fare capping that's still part of the
regional, the regional fair, so the 250 as it is now for the Sprinter and Breeze
service, MTS, Bas and Trolley, that is still going to be subject to fair
cupping. So if somebody can't shoulder that big ticket monthly pass price at
the beginning of the month, they still have the opportunity to work up to that
and get that monthly pass and receive those benefits. So we are looking at
various types of ways that aren't necessarily low income pass that we can
try to manage the cost. Sure, no, and I appreciate that. But I think, you know,
And we're running up against a situation where folks that are low income are struggling for
everyday necessities, transportation being a huge social determinant of health.
So I want to know what we can do here to flag it for SANDAG, and, you know, one of the things
that I recommended was, is it possible?
And I don't know if that gets housed in this committee or it gets housed at the board,
But I really would want to have a discussion about potentially writing a letter from NCTD
to SANDAG regarding looking at a low income fair subsidy or structure and understanding
that it is a huge obstacle for folks to get verified.
We've seen that even with the youth opportunity pass.
But potentially there's a way that we can start having that conversation as a region
because I think it's absolutely critical at this point.
We have a growing, our growing population is seniors,
and that also happens to be the growing,
fastest growing population of folks
experiencing homelessness.
So, you know, I think we really have to be intentional
about how we're gonna build affordability
into this conversation.
And, you know, whatever it is that we need to do
to flag it for Sandag as this is really important
to our region here in NCTD, to our service territory.
I think that we should pursue that.
And again, I don't know if that's housed here.
It doesn't look like, you know,
there might be some room on this agenda,
maybe on May 21st to have that discussion.
But I would wanna hear, you know, from you all
where that could happen and if it's gonna happen here
or at the actual board meeting.
We have a meeting next week with Sandag
to discuss a myriad of things.
But future funding is one of the topics
that is going to be in that meeting.
It'll be SANDAG MTS and NCTD,
and I am 100% certain that these conversations
will make their way into that future funding conversation.
I'm not totally sure where MTS's board is at
on some of these things.
The last that I had heard was that they were
somewhat reluctant to look at a fair increase
for a lot of different reasons.
But I think would be open to having discussions
about some of these other items
if a fair increase were to occur.
So we'll know a little more after next Thursday
when we have that meeting with them.
Yeah, I mean, definitely if there,
if it looks like we're gonna move towards a fair increase,
I think it's an absolute conversation that needs to happen.
And as much as I wanna believe
that these things will be on the docket for a conversation,
I don't have access to an agenda of that type of conversation, and so I just want to make
sure from my position and my authority that I'm able to and that we are all on the board
able to push this as this is an emergency conversation that needs to happen, you know,
if we do, if there is a movement forward to increasing fares.
So anyways, thank you.
That's all I have.
Yeah.
something that we should add to the main agenda for PAP or would that fall under the scheduled discussion that we're going to have?
Yeah, I think in terms of keeping the timeline that we have right now for the implementation of the fair change,
we'll likely probably have this conversation at the April board meeting or the April executive committee meeting.
If the board has a consensus that they would like to talk about any particular changes to the fair or it's at the board's discretion to make
the recommendation to SANDX Transportation Committee. That's the
opportunity for the board to tell them ultimately they they are the deciders
and they do adopt the fair change but our board does provide the
recommendation we think it should be this scenario we think it should have x
number of passes this percentage of increase and things like that so I think
it would be if the board does not reach a consensus or if SANDX Transportation
Committee does not adopt our recommendation and we can certainly add
at it at any point with the approval of the chair
to the path work plan for May.
Thank you, any other comments or discussion?
Thanks for the presentation.
Just kind of going off of what committee member Contreras
was talking about, just questions around,
and Missy, please let me know if I'm going too off base,
you can stop me if I am.
But I just wanted to ask,
do we happen to have data, and I'm sure I have a feeling we do,
data around how many folks this would affect,
and then from there, just being able to,
if we are going to have this type of discussion,
I feel like having a recommendation coming
from the experts would be beneficial,
because we can obviously make policy calls,
but I think it would be really helpful to know,
OK, what would that, if we were to even consider something
like that, what would that look like?
Operationalized would be helpful.
Just because otherwise we're just going to be going back
and forth saying should we, should we not.
But it would be really beneficial for us to see
if there were a possibility.
Here's an example of what this could potentially look like.
Because otherwise we're just gonna be kicking the can
further down the road for the discussion to happen.
Yeah, there's a formula that exists
that when we look at any type of a fair structure change
or some type of addition to a fair structure,
There's a baseline that we may lose up to X percentage of ridership,
but we would gain X percentage of revenue.
Those are important because it sort of aligns us with what we think is an acceptable number,
even though ridership loss is not acceptable at all, if we can try to solve that problem.
But especially when you deal with, like, youth opportunity pass or an adjusted income pass,
those numbers really matter, especially in the sense of an increase to a fare.
If you increase a fare and then implement a way for a group to be able
to maybe stabilize a little bit, does it equalize the numbers without really
impacting what we're trying to do with a fair increase? So we do have those
numbers. Some are internal, some are driven by SANDAG, but we can definitely
bring those to the team. Yeah, great. And I was going to say it would be helpful to
hear you know how are we making up for if we did implement something and it
sounds like we already are coming up with ways to do that but also looking at
external funding as to how to bridge that gap because obviously like we don't
want to keep shifting things here internally we'd love to be able to
utilize that for other maintenance and operations costs after we can advocate
for that too so but yeah cool all right that sounds great thank you thank you
sorry apologies for late arrival I cannot control traffic on i5. I appreciate
the comments by my colleagues and and hearing the comment about seniors being
the largest low-income group and also the largest homelessness group. Can you
Do you remind me of what our senior pass is?
Yeah, so we offer senior day passes,
senior one-way and round trip fares
and senior monthly passes.
The one-way and the round trip are typically 50%
of the average cost of the one-way fare or the round trip.
Our monthly passes and day passes, however,
do have a steeper decrease.
So it's about, I believe, 66% of the total pass
for our monthly passes.
Our monthly coaster pass,
I'll get you the official numbers,
but I think it's around $58 for the senior.
And then our Sprinter Rees pass is 19.
And what's the age for seniors?
65, okay, thanks.
Wait, discussion, anything else?
Okay, thank you, and thank you all.
There's no vote on this item, so we'll move on to the next.
Committee chair Sannala, just let the record show
that committee member Edson arrived at 1113.
Vice Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Okay we'll move on to item our last item which
is item three. On the agenda is the consideration of adoption of the
2026 proposed internal audit plan. Karen Tohoski will present this item. Karen you
have our attention. My bad, sorry. Just as a brief refresher, NCTD's internal
audit program is a critical component of our overall compliance program. The IAP
helps ensure compliance with our policies and procedures and also help us
ensure that we are operating efficiently and effectively within our key business
functions. In accordance with the IAP charter that we had reviewed at the
meeting back in December, this committee is responsible for approving the
internal audit work plan on an annual basis. For calendar year 2026, NCTD is
proposing internal audits in two areas, the first of which is a contract
compliance review for the intercon security services agreement. As you may
recall, in July of 2024, intercon commenced providing services on an
on-call basis. Their deployments are primarily focused on transit centers and
onboard assignments. I know we all agree that security of our passengers and
employees is a tremendously important priority for NCTD and we absolutely want
to you know continue utilizing the services of intercon in this very
important area. As a new provider in a major operational function we are
proposing this audit to ensure that intercon is in compliance with
requirements regarding personnel, training, performance, and reporting. The
second proposed internal audit relates to human resources benefits. So with all
of our NCTD employees now directly employed by us, super great, super
exciting, we have a total headcount of well over 800 employees. So what we want
to do is take the opportunity to do this employee benefit audit, encompassing both
both our human resources and our payroll departments.
The audit would focus on compliance
with our policies and procedures
regarding employee contributions for elected benefits
to ensure that they're being correctly and timely entered
by human resources and then accordingly processed
via payroll.
So this include items such as accurate deductions
based on the type and the level of the elected benefit
as well as timely updates for any changes,
additions deletions or such that the employee may make to their respective elections.
It also covers an examination of the benefit invoice payments to the respective vendors for both
accuracy and timeliness.
So in conclusion, we have identified the foregoing areas as priorities for the internal audits and we recommend that the committee adopt the proposed calendar year
2026 internal audit work plan.
That concludes my presentation. Great. Thank you.
Appreciate that. Taylor, do we have any public speakers on this item?
No, we do not.
Okay, great. Any questions or comments from my colleagues?
Thank you so much. Okay, so this looks great. I mean, I think it's, you know, always important when it comes to security to do an audit.
I'm curious on the HR Benefits Audit, you know, we went through, we have 800 and how many did you say employees?
850.
850 okay um and that's an increase prior to insourcing we were at how many 370 something
okay maybe maybe close to 400 yeah so i mean it's just it's a lot more folks that are under
our budget right now um so i'm curious if we're going to be auditing or if this has happened and
and I just don't recall the document,
but the projected budget that we had set aside
for insourcing versus the actual cost of insourcing.
Have we, do we have a document that shows that?
We don't yet, but we had committed,
and I think it was a little over a year ago,
maybe a little longer,
we had committed to come back to the board
and kind of show where we were in conjunction
to what we essentially projected
to kind of give you an idea in the email
that I had sent to the board previously.
We had projected that we would probably be somewhere
in the neighborhood of 58 to 60 million,
just based on this being a contract year
for employees and MV, some of the increases we've seen
over the years with the contractor.
We consistently averaged more than what we budgeted for
in operations over the past five years.
I think the only year we were under budget was I think 2021.
The benefits are related to that.
When we did the budget for what we thought folks
would come over for when we gave the presentation board,
we talked about the part that wasn't cost neutral to us
would essentially be entry into the state retirement plan.
Benefits are under CalPERS and we have our HR team
reviewing whether or not we can get another quote for that,
but I can tell you that just based on the current temperature
of how people feel about benefits in the current setting,
we're having a real difficult time getting someone
to give us a quote for benefits.
We were hit with a pretty significant increase last year
from CalPERS, and we were told we will probably see
another one again this year.
So, you know, all those things factor in.
I think it's difficult any time you have an organization
that's kind of in the mid-range like we are,
that's searching for a good benefits plan
because they're, you know, if you have 10,000 employees,
is one thing, if you have 500 employees,
it's a whole different kind of risk pool.
But yeah, we'll definitely bring that back.
Yeah, just because I think we're fully done
with our insourcing, or is there?
No, we are, we were fully done in July.
Right.
So I would just, I think it's, you know,
I think it's a really good time
to bring this information as seeing
as it was like promised to the board.
So the sooner, the better, just because,
I am really worried about the sustainability
of this agency in the face of a lot of fiscal challenges
here domestically and abroad.
So I think it's really important sooner rather than later
for the board or for PATH, the committee,
or both to be able to really dive into those numbers
just to ensure that we are on a sustainable path
with our insourcing.
I mean everything is in source so I yeah, you know from here on out. It's just management of the organization at large. I would say
You know, we've been pretty open and honest about the fact that we had a hundred eighty five million dollar budget a couple years ago
We did about 172
174 this past year we're gonna continue to look at those numbers
Bus operations is probably not necessarily the the key source of our concern right now
I'm more concerned about a transcendent funding related to coaster operations. We have a
legislative
We have someone from our legislature who is trying to
Invoke legislation that would require us to run some runs further north that really don't make a lot of sense for this agency and
And would take away potentially from other rail services we have in the region
My focus would probably primarily be on seeing how we could increase ridership on Sprinter through continual management of that
And then sort of figure out what we want the bus network to look like if we had a robust Sprinter line
But yeah, yeah, okay. Awesome. Yeah, I look forward to seeing that and having that discussion
I just think the sooner the better because we are
Every day in a tougher situation. So thank you so much. Thank you
those questions.
Yes, thank you.
Thanks for the presentation.
And looking forward to seeing it,
I might have a different viewpoint
than Committee Member Contreras.
I do think that you all are clearly trying to make,
and I know you weren't saying that.
Just like I think it's more making sure that we can be,
I think, obviously, we need to, as policymakers,
continue to see that information.
I know that our staff, which I know you also feel,
is doing everything we can to make sure
that the agency is sustainable.
And I think the hard parts I would say that,
I think that would be really helpful for us to see
are all of the external factors that are going on.
And I think that's the part that would be really helpful
for us to see is how can we make sure that as an agency
we're continuing to adapt.
I think all of our agencies are going to see that, right?
Like with regards to funding,
whether it's federal, state, maybe even county-wide
in terms of what that looks like
with the other planning agencies.
So I think that's where being able to understand
how we can continue to adapt and be nimble
in that particular sense is going to be important.
I have full faith in the staff
to make sure that we can continue to be financially stable.
I think that we've been able to see that in the past decade
that we've been able to weather the storm
with all these different things.
And then, of course, in the last couple of years,
especially with our change in leadership,
I do think that, yes,
we're having some different things that we're doing,
but at the same time,
I think we'll continue to see an upward trend.
It's just a matter of how do we weather the storm
with all the things happening
with all the different variables in the equation.
So, yeah.
I appreciate that.
And I would tell you Lori and I just got finished
with some of our team members negotiating
the fifth of the six contracts we need to negotiate.
The past six months has been a little bit of a whirlwind
with our ops team bringing folks on
and kind of figuring out what that means for us
and then really doing five contracts which is unheard of.
I don't, you know, I've never done five contracts in a year.
We have 13 bargaining unit contracts,
in case anybody kind of cares about that.
One of the things that we talked about
and Yoon and I had a little bit of a six month review
a couple of weeks ago,
So just the one thing we've started doing is at the six month mark we're reviewing where
we're under budget, why we're under budget, where we're over budget, why we're over budget,
making course corrections.
One of the things we're also looking at is where is money tied up that could be going
to operations?
And one thing that we did as an agency, which I don't think was an incorrect assumption,
but when we got our SB 125 money we tied a lot of that money up in capital projects because
I think there was an assumption that the operating dollars were going to last for an extended
period of time, that money was really designated for securing operations for a number of years
until we got to a place where we could find an additional funding source.
And so we really had to re-look at why certain projects are even happening in the first place.
Do they even make sense to do them now?
Should we redirect those capital dollars into Sandag's bank for operating expense that we
can draw down when we reach the cap on TransNet, which we have not yet.
This year in particular, Sandag advised us that pretty late in the game that they felt
like there was going to be a dip in TransNet dollars.
So there's about $5 million that we should receive at the end of, I think later this
month, it'll go to the Sandag board.
Once it's approved, we'll draw it down as needed, but we're not going to necessarily
add that back into the budget other than a revenue generator.
But I think that's the big piece when we look at the, when we look at the money itself,
like at the time it was a good idea for us to, to local match capital projects
with the SB 125 money, now what we really need it for is additional security
and police enforcement, we need it to have as a safeguard for operations
if we have years where transnet funding is low.
And so over the, since, not really since we've been sourced, but over the past couple
I've just been kind of keeping notes on a almost like a CLA of sorts like a comprehensive operational analysis and the goal for Lori and I
Once we got past the December mark when we got done with those contracts was to kind of meet up with all the board members
And kind of give them a rundown of where we are
Really in each department where we're at on capital projects where we're at on funding where we're at on bus operations
We're at on Sprinter. We're out on coaster
you know, there's just a lot of information that I think we either need to
shift or course correct
Or figure out you know what we're going to do with some of the money that was designated for operational funding
So it's all there and you know we're more than happy to get out and talk to everybody about that
Thank you, and thank you for the presentation. I
Would like to kind of piggyback on what my colleague our chair of the agency
Was was alluding to and pointing out. I really appreciate staff's diligence and transparency
I'm always excited that I can reach out and ask questions if I have any and that
The information is always really out there. I
Share your concerns. I think we all do as board members
Because we want the best for this agency we want it to succeed. We want to be able to serve our our
writership public
and
It's difficult because there are hoops that are on fire sometimes
but
staff has been pretty nimble about trying to address these things and
Really?
Reactive when they need to be
I think the board is somber and but ready to support things and to do whatever we can to for the betterment of the agency and for the betterment of public transportation in the region.
Right.
I shared some news with Sean over the weekend.
I received email from SANDAG that since the approval
at the January 23rd board meeting,
SANDAG successfully refinanced 376.31 million
in trans net sales tax revenue bonds,
resulting in approximately 61.6 million in savings
over the next 22 years,
or nearly 45 million in today's dollars.
So, I'm hoping that that may benefit this agency
by providing a little more operations dollars,
coaster related especially,
but anywhere within our system, so.
Yeah, Coaster is an interesting one
because it's funded from two pots essentially,
and one of the main contributors
to the expansion of coaster service was Transient 8.1,
which does have sunset.
and not only does it have a sunset,
in the event that SANDAC shows a negative return
in a year that would significantly impact them,
they can claw back some of the,
and claw back's a strong word,
they can essentially tell us they don't have the funding
for certain expansions
and we'll have to manage that accordingly.
I think in the grand scheme of things,
as we think of COASTR specifically,
that is a little bit of concern for us.
How do we manage what transit 8.1 looks like post 2030?
a little time to discuss that. That's another one of those items that's on the agenda for
next week that we want to talk about. We've got, you know, I got to give Sandag a little
credit because they're doing a lot of internal moving, too. They're getting away from like
big picture pie in the sky stuff, and they're really getting back to how can we manage road
services, how can we manage transit services, and I really appreciate that because now we're
really talking about projects that are critical to the region versus things that may be a
a little boutique and getting right back down to how we can salvage operational dollars.
Sean, can you clarify, when I think of CalPERS, I think of retirement benefits, pensions,
earlier you were talking about, did you say that the agency gets like their health benefits
through CalPERS, too?
Yes.
I haven't heard that before.
Yes.
So our health insurance is through CalPERS also.
I – admittedly, I get a little frustrated when I see the message from their CEO about
on how great they're doing on their returns,
and she got a $600,000 bonus,
but my insurance went up 14%.
And I have to send that letter out to the workforce, right?
And like last year, on the administrative side,
I mean, I can only speak from the benefits that I picked.
My benefits went up $400 a month.
But when I was, and I was already paying,
I think, $2.95 or something like that.
So like, they have a lot of options.
I like their options, but it's,
but for us, do we really need to shift off of that
and move to something else?
because benefits are becoming a huge portion
of the organization.
Interestingly enough, I don't think that the,
I think the benefits may have more of an impact
on the organization than the state retirement will,
long-term, because it's been pretty consistent.
And I'm a little worried about that,
that a couple of things that I see other states doing,
when I was in Washington,
we actually put together a plan to ask the state
at some point in time if it was okay
for employees to choose whether or not they wanted
to be on the state retirement plan.
And they're like, you can't do that because
much like Social Security, whoever's contributing now
is paying for people that are on retirement now.
So if we draw that money back, it's gonna be a real problem.
I'm not sure that the insurance pool is the same thing.
The problem with the insurance pool is that
there's not a lot of organizations that want to give out
benefits, give out insurance benefits.
they're going to be super high deductible really of no benefit to the employee unless they have
some type of a serious medical condition. You know the CalPERS benefit plans are pretty robust
I mean people can get good health care and I think we need to keep looking at that but
yeah they they provide a lot of different things but state retirement and health benefits in our
case. Thanks I didn't I didn't know that. So do the employees have options for health care like
Can they choose Kaiser or Charv?
Yeah, they do.
Actually, we have seven or eight different ones.
At least eight.
At least eight.
And there's options.
And they range from fairly low, almost kind
of a high deductible plan, to fairly expensive Kaiser.
I think kind of fits right in the middle of that plan
somewhere.
Yeah, and I certainly understand the increases in insurance
recently.
And it's not unique to NCTD.
A wife's principal in San Marcos Unified School District.
then they have the same challenges and of course,
the cities as well, we all represent, so.
Hopefully, there'll be some improvements in that area.
Yeah.
Any other comments?
Yeah, I just want to say thank you so much.
And I think, you know, I mean,
because we are grappling again
with so many different factors
that really, unfortunately accumulate,
I just, and I don't even know
how to be able to address this to the larger board, right?
But being able to just have our pulse on it
and continue to see maybe where some unanticipated costs are
or whatever the case might be just so that we could be
well ahead of a point in time where we may be struggling,
right, if we could save that off more,
I think it's just gonna be important.
And also because we've talked about, you know,
at different board meetings,
how we really haven't looked at our routes enough, right?
And so like, I'm thinking just of all these
different components and the fact that we don't have
any additional operational dollars, but hopefully we might.
And that's like such a large part of our budget
that we would need to get some more funding
to be able to, you know, just get to our customers
and get our customers to where they need to go.
So I really appreciate the dynamic discussion by this committee and I look forward to seeing
a lot of different reports and trying to digest that myself and for us to continue to have
really thorough discussions about the financial future of our agency.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I was going to mention it in my February email, but we're getting super close to having statistics
available live on the website, all the way to, you know, you can look at it essentially
from a broad perspective of here's the ridership and service hours and things
that for the whole system coaster spinner and flex breeze then you can
dive into that you can go by route you can look into sort of revenue generated
off of those routes I think our goal has always been and we've been talking about
it internally like we really need to get back to basics our goal should have
always been core services and I think because we were in a space where we got
a lot of money from the state during COVID we got a lot of money from the
Fed's during COVID, we thought, well, we've really got to get into showing up some of
these capital projects. And that long term is not a good solution for us. Like we need
to figure out what our core is, make sure the core is covered first, and then work on
these other projects. And I give our finance team a lot of credit. I mean, you know, we
were able to essentially create a budget where we negotiated four or five of our contracts
in this fiscal year without amending the budget and we're still on course right now to be
somewhere I mean year to date I think we're somewhere around 4 million dollars under budget
and so you know for us what we're what we're really finding is the departments are getting
a lot better about where does that money need to be where does it not need to be how can
we redirect that money to do certain things how can we make sure that it's focused on
breeze and add a little service here and there how can we manage coaster schedules effectively
with some of our partners, and this budget cycle, I think,
is going to be tough for some of our departments,
because we've already started that conversation a couple
weeks ago.
And we hit that process early so that departments really
know, you need to write down what exactly it is you're
trying to accomplish, and then we'll figure out
whether or not it should be done.
When we bring the CIP list to the group,
and this is one thing I really appreciate the staff for.
Tracy's not here today, but Tracy's group's
done a good job of this, is we've always
come with all these projects and what we find throughout the course of the year is
we're only able to do 20 of them based on available funds or based on
available resources and we've really dialed that down to things that we just
need to get done and so things are moving a lot quicker a lot faster in
that realm and you know it's just it's good to see that so shout out to the
team on that. Well thanks again Karen. I'll make a motion to approve item 3
and is there a second? Second. Okay. Item number three has been moved by chair
Sinella and committee member Bot Patel. Taylor can we get a roll call vote please?
Committee chair Sinella. Yes. Vice chair Edson. Yes. Committee member Bot Patel.
Aye. Committee member Contreras. Aye. On the motion of committee chair Sinella
seconded by committee member Bot Patel to adopt proposed calendar year 2026
internal audit plan motion passes. Thank you. On to board member reports and
comments anything else to add? I will be serving on SANDAG for my city of Vista
and so I look forward to being there on Friday. I thought I was gonna have maybe
some additional time but they're like no you can come join us on Friday so I'll
be there just let you just let you know I'll be writing a little choo-choo down
there so the color of the day is red okay our next scheduled meetings we have
the marketing service planning and business development committee meeting
on Thursday March 19th at 11 a.m. and we have our regular board meeting scheduled
for Thursday, March 19th as well, at 2 p.m.