Santa Barbara County Association of Governments (SBCAG)

All

right, welcome. Good morning, welcome and thank you for joining us for today's April 16th SBCAG board meeting. For the record my name is Bob Nelson I am the chair of SBCAG Board. Madam Clerk can you please facilitate the roll call?

Director Rouse. Here.

Please

There's nothing like the Pledge of

Allegiance

in stereo. All right, welcome everybody

announcements

this is the

This is the public comment period for items not on today's agenda. Speakers have up to three minutes each with a total of 15 minutes allotted for public comment. Madam Clerk, do we have any public commenters today?

There is one request to speak for and receive down south from Scott Wentz and if there are any attendees on Zoom who wish to speak would you please use the raise hand feature and I will call upon you.

Yes sir. All right yes. Yeah well good. For our South County location, after we're done with public comment would you mute because we're getting some feedback back and forth but we can do the public comment first. Mr. Wentz?

Good morning Scott Wentz representing Cars for Basic. Our comment has to do with MTD and the failure of that program over two years ago we brought before this organization a option that would eliminate MTD create enough of a That all people that needed help could have it. This organization, Director Kern. Sorry to

interrupt the audio in here is going into the room in there. All our secrets are open. Can you

hear us? Yeah, hey Scott can you hear me? Hey Laura. Okay hang on give us one

second. Let's pause public comment for a moment let me get this meeting back under control real quick. Okay. Mr. Wentz, I apologize for the interruption. Give me one second. I want to make sure I got this all. I know what we're doing. Thanks

for bringing to our attention. Wade, you're good

now?

We should be good yeah I obviously not being the tech expert here.

Okay thank you Mr. Wentz I apologize we're gonna go ahead and start your time over So that you have ample amount of time to make public comment. I apologize for the interruption and the technical difficulties. Mr. Wentz, please proceed.

Scott Wentz representing Cars Are Basic. Our comment is about MTD and the failure of MTD as an operating entity for at least 20 years. The Independent published an article well over 15 years ago stating that MTD had lost 1.2 million ridership And this was at a time when MTD was stating that they were robust and they're providing all the needs. Well, they haven't it was not in TV's board. It wasn't the SB CAG board. It was cars are basic that uncovered the felonious and ill-begotten electric bus scheme that caused the resignation of 50% of the Board of MTV cause the record resignation of the NTD paid director.

just basically took them apart. We gave you an option, that option was two years ago how to eliminate NTD and make it a more robust public transportation system no one from this organization bothered contact us let me put it to you this way NTD took a section of what we proposed to SBK and said, we're going to create the wave. And this is how it's going to work. It's not going to work. And the reason it's not going to work is because it's a government agency that's not going to be able to run it as a capitalist organization would you don't have the freedom? You don't have the flexibility do it.

And I'll tell you point blank MTD is in the process of reducing the number of routes because they can't make their routes work. They spent millions on electric buses. It's not working folks, it's time to get rid of that organization and I invite anybody from this board to contact us about how we would privatize public transportation. Thank you.

Thank You Mr. Wentz

There is an additional speaker on zoom Angelina Dedamati if you can please unmute yourself

All right, and this time I'm going to go ahead and close public comment after Ms. Dedamoni. Ms. Dedamoni?

Thank you Mr. Nelson. Good morning Director Kern and board members. My name is Angelina Dedamonis, a long-time resident, multi-generational resident of Santa Barbara County. I express my concerns regarding the effectiveness of the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments known as SBCAG in fulfilling its mission While SBCAG is committed to enhancing regional mobility and infrastructure, the current state of transportation within this Santa Barbara County suggests the goals are not being met.

I believe an independent audit is necessary to evaluate the organization's effectiveness in maintaining our roads bridges and freeways as well as infrastructure and deferred maintenance to ensure accountability for a regional infrastructure. As you have a fiduciary duty, Director Kern, your responsibility to your board and to the public to ensure tax revenue is spent transparently.

I request that you contact Congressman Salud Carbajal to seek assistance with a federal audit and or assignment of a special auditor that's truly independent. This measure would be This measure would ensure full compliance with all state and federal regulations, and would avoid the appearance of impropriety while providing transparency accountability to all and for the public and your board. Thank you for your time and consideration have a great day and a wonderful weekend.

All right thanks Ms. Denamonte. All right that concludes general public comment at this time we'll move on to our consent calendar Are there any items that board members would like to pull? Not seeing anything here in Santa Maria. Is there anything in Santa Barbara that anybody would like to pull?

No,

no okay and just for other board members you guys can text me as well if you guys need something if you're not getting through but I so nothing pulled from the Board Madam Clerk is everything pulled from the public? Mr. Brown do you want to make a motion?

If we can call for public comment and there is an announcement to make on the consent calendar as well.

Okay, let's go ahead and make that announcement on the consent calendar. I apologize for skipping that step.

Prior to the Board acting on Item 4G in accordance with Government Code Section 54953 Subdivision D3, the Executive Director's salary shall be verbally summarized upon a compensation change. The recommended action includes a 3% merit increase effective July 1st which would result in a change to the annual salary from $291,497.08 to $300,242 plus benefits

All right, thank you. And do we have any public comment on the consent calendar?

If there are any members on Zoom who wish to speak would you please use the raise hand feature and I will call upon you. There is one request to speak received from Angelina Denamati if you can please unmute yourself.

Before she speaks which item is she

pulling? That is on Zoom I would need to

get

that information. Yeah could ask

Angelina real quick which items she'd like to speak to.

Miss you are unmuted if you can please speak.

Yes, thank you I would like to speak to the agenda item that you're speaking to now in respect to Director Kearns pay and pay

raise. That's for 4G so no no that's not your great you're on the right track I just want to so actually what I want to get a motion to do the balance and then I'm going to come back to you miss and then we'll take a motion to adopt Whatever motion we get from the board after your public comments. So I understand that 4G is the only one that there's a public commenter for, if I can get a motion for the balance of the consent calendar so that would be A through K with the exception of G? I'll make that motion. Motion from Director Brown. I'll second. And a second from Director Silva. Madam Clerk can we do a roll call vote?

All in favor and motion passes.

Okay, thank you. Alright so we're going to go ahead to item G and I think have you already you made the announcement but you probably need to read that into the record before public comment.

Item 4G and that is final SP CAG fiscal year 2026-27 overall work program and budget.

Alright thank you Madam Clerk. Ms. Dedamani please proceed with your public comment on this item.

Yes, thank you so much here. I want to also thank you for allowing me time to speak and I just wanted to make sure that got it on the record just because I'm not there. It's a little easier in person anyways. I would like to just point out before any pay increases are given given out and taxpayer money is spent. I think that an audit, an independent audit of the agencies should be conducted to make sure it's in accord with what the mission statement or introduction Board pursuant to their website states because it appears there's a lot of projects and a lot of.

Additional things that have gone on throughout this county that are of no interest or not for the best interest of the taxpayers, the county. There's a lot of deferred maintenance with the roads and infrastructure in respect to the city, county and state roads that are all within the County of Santa Barbara that I believe that money is supposed to be spent wisely for it. And it seems like there's a lot of additional projects that have been passed by this board And again, it goes back to my previous comment that a truly independent audit should be done and we should have checks and balances to make sure that the director and staff are doing what is accord with what really the money is supposed to be used for and allocated for. It's easy to just give money out but it's a lot harder to call it back so I would encourage this board to pause and do diligence and not just rubber stamp something and hurry up and pass something through And give more of taxpayer money out without making sure and ensuring that the roads are up to par.

That should be the first priority as it's a public safety issue, and we also have a lot of county vehicles and state vehicles that travel those roads as well as just regular citizens and taxpayers in the county. So I think they need to be put at a priority instead of additional projects that seem to be a little bit beyond should occur. And if there is extra money, then maybe we can look into or the board should look into additional projects down the road but I think that the first primary focus should be on making sure that the roads are safe and at the public safety issue is handled. Thank you for your time and have a great weekend all.

All right, thanks Mr. Money just to maybe an angle for you we do have the measure a oversight board that's a body of individuals throughout the county that look over what we're spending especially Measure A that's our largest pot of funds that is allocated from SB CAG to the various jurisdictions to do that so I would maybe Your comments are well taken but also that might be an area to spend some time with at that oversight board as well.

With that, is there any further comment from the board on 4G? Seeing none I'll take a motion on 4G.

I move staff recommendation. Second.

Okay motion from Hartman and second from Patino. Any further discussion? Madam Clerk will you please do a roll call and when we're done with the roll call on this, we're going to do a little sound check with Santa Barbara again. So would you please call the roll?

and motion passes. Okay

we're going to take a three minute break while we deal with some of the technical difficulties I apologize for the inconvenience and then we'll get on with our discussion items in item 5a when we return All right welcome back to the April 16th meeting of the Santa Barbara County Associations of Government, SPCAG. After a short break we're back and we're going into our discussion calendar and we'll start off with 5A.

Madam Clerk will you please read item 5A into the record?

Item 5A Central Coast Freight Study Recommended Action receive a presentation from the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments on the 2024 Central Coast Freight Plan.

All right circus. Thank you chair, good morning director Sarkis Kotchik with SP CAG today we're joined with Paul yearling with the Association of Monterey Bay Area governments are and bag as PCAG is a member of the Central Coast Coalition which is a 5 County coalition from Santa Cruz in San Benito down to Santa Barbara County and we work together I'm here to represent as one voice for the Central Coast advocating at the state and federal level and then we also partner together on various activities like the Central Coast freight plan.

So today Paul will be giving an overview of the plan and then we can receive any direction from

Hi, good morning Chair Nelson and board members. I'm here today to give a presentation on the key findings of the California Central Coast Sustainable Freight Study which was completed in late 2004. I think at this point our presentation from 2004 only about four board members are still...

2024. 2024 not 2004

2024. Only a few of you are left from that presentation, so this will be some new information for a lot of folks and we'll get into some details about what our findings in Santa Barbara. Next slide please A little background on the five-county freight study. Every eight years or so, AMBAG coordinates with Caltrans District 5 to do an update on the Central Coast Freight Study to identify freight challenges and provide initial data to allow cities, counties, and Caltrans to address freight issues. The study is a broad overview at the mega regional level. It also provides limited county level data some of which we'll go over today.

And you can follow along on page 413 of your agenda if there's any figures you want to take a closer look at as we proceed. Next slide please. Here are some findings from the study in 2022, 117 million tons of goods worth 146 billion were transported to from and within the mega region, the Central Coast mega region By 2050, freight will reach 161 million tons valued at $239 billion, an increase of 38% by weight and 64% by value over that 28-year period. Santa Barbara County, approximately 4,700 businesses and 93,000 employees are employed by freight dependent industries.

These include industries generated These industries generate an estimated $8.5 billion in gross regional product within the county. The definition of freight-dependent industries is pretty broad, and we use federal government NAICS data for that. It includes sectors such as retail, construction, manufacturing, and agriculture. When we think of freight, it's all the retail for all the Walmarts and Costco's. A lot of construction including aggregate material building material and manufacturing products next slide.

These are the top commodities in the region. By tonnage, you'll see prepared foodstuffs on the left side by volume and agricultural second. They're essentially the same thing so we'll see the first other prepared foodstuffs and ag once produce like lettuce broccoli and berries or bag they can be considered prepared food stuffs. So really the first two top categories represent agriculture on the by tonnage side In general, outbound trucks are carrying agricultural products or processed foodstuffs which are more bulky and high volume. One of our big exports from the Central Coast region on the right side you'll see free by value with electronics as the top item that includes not only all electronic shipped into the region but all military electronics in most defense related production from the Santa Barbara region so That a lot of that value comes from the Santa Barbara area in terms of freight by value.

The 2nd category mixed freight on the right side, that's how retail operations like grocery stores, Costco home depots and other retail organizations classify their freight. Next slide please. A couple other things of interest at the national level, there's an FHWA designated critical urban freight corridor here in the east of Santa Barbara. Most freight from Sloan and Santa Barbara County goes through Santa Barbara to get to and from major markets in the greater Los Angeles area as I'm sure you all have seen.

Also Santa Maria area hosts the majority of truck parking in the Santa Barbara area. You can see on the figure on the right With over 40 parking spaces, but in general that's not enough freight parking for the 20,000 truck trips per day to go through the region and in general. No one really has enough free parking in California so this is not out of the ordinary for any region or subregion.

Next slide please. This graphic shows annual truck delay hours per mile, which is a fancy way of measuring traffic congestion. In the red areas there are 4,000 or more hours of congested related traffic delay per mile. Keep in mind this is for trucks only if we added the delay and traffic volume from non-truck traffic That would look much worse. Either way, it shows what you already know traffic is bad in these red and orange segments about 65% of inbound and outbound truck traffic is from the LA metro area especially counties such as LA San Bernardino Ventura and Riverside.

And really this figure is sort of a measure of lost productivity so delay basically time lost that could be used for productivity purposes next slide please So agricultural truck traffic is seasonal. The first harvest peak is in February for broccoli, spinach and some lettuces. You'll see these figures really show sort of the same types of peaks but you'll see February that's the broccoli, spinach, lettuce agricultural harvest season. It normally hits opposite of tourist seasons so traffic isn't as bad it's not as noticeable to the impacts Second harvest peak is between August, September and October for primarily berries, spinach, lettuces, artichokes and wine grapes. Second peak is when harvest season really overlaps with tourist season and it creates a kind of compound traffic effect so you see that peaking in September but really you're seeing it all summer.

This data is for the entire mega region, but the general trends hold true for this part of the region too. We see the same thing here in Monterey County. Next slide please This slide shows the top four major freight bottlenecks near the Santa Maria area. Here you'll see one in North Santa Maria, and two other segments in the Pomo area of San Luis Obispo County. We separated these segments for the purpose of analysis but congestion between these areas is really just one large stretch of road with high freight congestion The stretch runs between counties, which is common with freight since they're often interjurisdictional.

Freight just kind of cuts through everything and then can create issues on borders between jurisdictions. Another freight bottleneck area is in eastern Santa Barbara, which is coincident with regular traffic, which you'll see at the bottom of the left-hand graphic. We sort of talked about that in the previous traffic delay slide. Next slide please. Some safety data, 4259 truck involved collisions between 2017 and 2021 in the mega region.

850 to 900 truck involved collisions per year throughout the mega region and on average 13 people killed in the mega regions Central Coast Mega Region and truck involved collisions. And that's every year. So here's some data at the bottom, this is region wide data but just gives you some sense of what we're looking at. The vast majority is trucks versus commuter vehicles.

It's the vast majority of collisions and so looking for those safety issues is important when you're looking at mediating truck safety hotspots. Next slide. Here we're looking at what the data says is the worst area for head-on or hit object truck involved collisions in Santa Barbara County. There's a high collision intersection in the county area, but you'll also see a high collision segment of SR 135 that overlaps between Santa Maria and Santa Barbara County.

Again shows the interjurisdictional nature freight issues. The county and Santa Maria would probably need to get together with Caltrans to address this issue appropriately. Next slide. This shows the worst truck-involved broadside collision area at an unsignalized intersection in Santa Barbara County. Here we can see this is a major agricultural harvest area, these collisions likely involve smaller sized trucks used for harvest or delivery and these trucks take products to packaging and processing facilities before being loaded onto larger long haul trucks that jump onto the highway so this type of area you would see kind of like half size freight trucks Picking up agricultural harvest and then a lot of agricultural workers. There's a lot of agricultural worker traffic in this area too, so some of these collisions may be harvest trucks versus those commuter vehicles.

Next slide. So Santa Maria Valley Railroad, Santa Barbara is lucky to have Santa Maria Valley Railroad. It's one of the only major intermodal truck-to-rail facilities in the Central Coast. Intermodal facility is probably the most significant resource in the region for reducing truck traffic The rest of the mega region has nothing like this, no feasible way to reduce truck traffic on roads and highways. So this is really something good that you guys have here. Rails are great for shipping durable fruits and vegetables, quarry materials and durable packaged products but not well suited for fragile crops such as lettuce and berries which don't handle turbulence well. The rail system is really shaky so it's kind of like Putting your product in, you know the dryer and letting it bounce around.

So if your product can handle that That product is a good product that could be shifted from a truck to a rail There are a number of unfunded rail yard improvements and upgrade projects in the Sustainable Freight Study recommended. Much of those focus on rail yard upgrades, under-crossing expansions, additional sidings and upgrades and repairs to existing tracks to better accommodate freight. For example, Santa Maria, there's a lot of under crossings that are like tunnels with roads above them Santa Maria Valley Railroad needs to double stack.

free boxes right they need to take those long haul freight like port containers and they need to be able to double stack them fill them up double stack them. To achieve economic efficiency, and a lot of our under crossings don't have space for that right so that's a big need to expand that to basically double the economic efficiency of the use of rail or private industry So they can draw and attract more truck shipments and shift that onto rail.

So it's a really good resource, it's really impressive, and I've worked with Rapamoto on these studies for 15 years now. Here's an illustration of the modal split between truck and rail freight movement for the entire mega region. The top two circles show the mode of freight movement by dollar value, and the bottom shows freight movement by weight. This isn't broken out specifically for Santa Barbara but it shows a general trend that holds true for most of our areas.

So the purple is truck traffic in the great Israel traffic. This has been to show the potential for shifting freight to rail. So basically this purple, some portion of this purple could shift to the gray category which would be rail and that would help pull trucks off the road. We're in a transportation situation where Caltrans doesn't want to see a lot of roadway expansion or capacity increases so we have very limited ways to get trucks and vehicles off Yeah, and you can take a closer look at some of this but in general it's just meant to show kind of the proportion shift. Next slide.

The study also looked at equity focus areas and uses multiple sources of data to identify disadvantaged communities impacted by the freight network. This graphic shows disadvantaged communities in purple and areas in yellow with a high proportion of sensitive populations. In this case, lower left-hand corner is Las Cruces. There's an elementary school right by the highway which is highlighted as the traffic exposure area for this particular dataset.

Some relatively new legislation in AB 98 and SB 415 require mandatory setbacks for sensitive receptors such as school populations, residences health care and recreational facilities. And these setbacks must be included in each city and county's general plan by 2030 so just a heads up that something your jurisdictions need to keep in mind. Next slide. Some other needs the study identified are shown here. Commuter and truck traffic congestion is high, road quality could use some work, east-west connectivity limits freight movement to the Central Valley, various safety issues we've discussed and a need for more truck parking in impacts on disadvantaged communities I want to point out one issue with resiliency, as you probably know the highway and roads in Santa Barbara are often affected by flooding and sea level rise is increasing risk.

San Maria Valley Railroad also faces these issues they had a rail bridge collapse. On one of the Union Pacific routes along the coast during the last major flooding event, where also the Santa Barbara roads were flooded out and their rail line faces a lot of climate impact risks. Their rail bridges are in worse condition than highway bridges. Some of them are like over 100 years old.

Many are made of wood and when they start to shift during climate impacts, they often reinforce them with wood. So they're pretty patched up so these are some opportunities for you know long-term improvement next slide please Here are some general high level strategies recommended by the study, but really the studies designed to provide only higher level data and let cities counties and regional agencies decide what their priorities are.

The study also provides a list of recommended projects. For each MPO in the region, but really those are high level prototypical examples. Like a type of project that you could do the details aren't flushed out they're not implementation ready, but we just use the setting to provide some. Some regions with just some general ideas on types of projects that can be done.

Next slide please. Again cities, counties and MPOs Caltrans can continue to build off this work to address local freight issues. And that concludes my presentation I'd like to open it up to any questions or comments at the pleasure of the chair and then next slide has my contact info if you'd like to discuss more offline.

All right thank you Mr. Herling. Actually i'll start down in Santa Barbara any questions? I do. In Santa Barbara? Yes. Director Lee

Yes, thank you Director Nielsen. So I want to highlight bottlenecks at Zone 3 in your presentation. My question is does that have to do with the Ortega Siding project or is it different?

Sorry I didn't hear the question

can you repeat it? So in the bottleneck that you have in your presentation in zone three There's a ball neck in the area. Is that related to the Otego siting project? That's proposed because there's a project to relieve congestion. I just want to know if that's related to your presentation. I'm not familiar with that

particular siding. Um, I know you guys

have Mr. Paul, I can answer that question. The bottleneck is actually on the Highway 101 whereas the Ortega Siding project is actually on the rail line so the idea is to add more capacity to the rail line so more truck or excuse me more freight could use the rail line but because there'll be more capacity with the passing light. So the bottleneck is actually on the highway

Correct, yes and if sorry if that wasn't clear. So the first sort of half of the presentation talking about freight was primarily trucks right? And then when we got to the Santa Maria Valley Railroad that's sort of when we started talking a little more about about rail.

Okay thank you thanks for clarifying. Yes thank you Director Lee any other questions in Santa Barbara before I come up here to Santa Maria? Any Santa Maria questions? I'm seeing none Madam Clerk, is there any public comment on this item? If

there are any members on the Zoom webinar who wish to speak would you please use the raise hand feature and I will call upon you. And there are no requests to speak.

Okay I'm going to go back here to Santa Maria and I have a supervisor sorry I demoted you there Mayor Director Mosby

Just it's something a little off-the-cuff so to say it's You know money is a motivator and not all this product is time sensitive. And it might sound a little different but maybe offering a potential economic incentive of maybe through reduction of DMV rates for these trucks or something if they would operate off hours as a lot of these things that one or two in the morning You know, it's a freeway again.

It's not a parking lot so maybe there's an opportunity for something like that I know it's a little out of the box and thinking that but it's probably a heck of a lot cheaper to incentivize somebody to go on an off hour than to go and build 1 3rd or 4th or 5th lane or increase in overpass or something like that and I know that's a little different we don't but maybe a reduction of because these freight rates are very expensive for the vehicles Maybe there might be something there if you could reduce by 10%. You seem to be able to work with a APCD with slowing shifts in the channel with a small economic incentive. There might be something there and he might be 10% would be significant and you probably could do it never know people work 24 7 now pretty much for the most part anyways

I'll actually jump in on that we when the quarters they talked about here was that better avia Just going east, and we just approved a very large cooler out there. And one of the conditions of approval was their shift change when that would take place to try to take those cars off during the typical peak time. So I think that's something that Caltrans should look at. But I think all of us in our jurisdictions too if we can build those into conditions of approval on some of these larger projects that might continue to help there because I think we have some mechanisms as well has these bigger projects come into our community.

Director Brown.

Thank you. I like the way you're thinking outside the box there at seven and a half dollars a gallon for diesel fuel it makes a big difference but my question to Paul was what is the height requirement for those bridges for double stack that you were referring to through Santa Maria?

It typically requires overhead clearances. Of about 20 feet, you really want to have those clearances? Closer to 23 or more feet in case there's some variance and shipping container size. So it's pretty significant but that's one of the few at the point is that's just 1 of a few areas where. Caltrans may have some sway. Caltrans maybe when they're rebuilding a bridge at some point in the future to expand those clearances, right? So that's just something to keep an eye out for if you we ever see bridges coming up for reconstruction or rehab there's some opportunity to look at expanding that rights as government agencies. We only have so much control over so many pieces of infrastructure the private industry is by large the biggest driver of freight.

And the problem with government agencies is we have very few tools to help them, right? We can't go out and build a private industry intermodal station. We can't build a refrigeration facility at the truck-to-rail facility to allow them to store more agricultural products for shipping cross country. That's up to the private industry. But what we can control are some of these more infrastructural issues that will help facilitate That private industry, we have a little bit of control over that and clearances is one of those things that we can work on.

Thank you. Thank you Director Brown any other questions here from Santa Maria? And we're good in Santa Barbara all right thank you sir thank you Paul for joining us keep up the good work up there at Monterey. All right, so there's no action needed on this item. So we're going to go ahead and move on to Item 5B. Madam Clerk will you please read that into the record?

Item 5B Active Transportation Program Cycle 8 Large Metropolitan Planning Organization Funding and Draft Guidelines Recommended Action Review Draft of the Active Transportation Program Large Metropolitan Planning Organization Guidelines and provide feedback on draft funding options

Alright Sarkis, round two.

Yes thank you chair directors so today staff is presenting options to your board on how to program state funding for bike and bicycle and pedestrian projects next slide please So in California there's a program called the Active Tram Station Program that's administered by the California Tram Station Commission. This is a program that provides funding for projects that increase biking and walking, and so statewide there's about $600 million available and this is a competitive program.

So what happens is there are three pots in the program. One is a statewide pot, which is 50%. So anyone throughout California can apply directly to the CTC for that. There's a second pot called the Small Urban Enroll Program, which is 10% of the funding. That is for counties that have populations less than 200,000. We used to be eligible for that category but then During the 2020 census, Santa Barbara County became a large metropolitan planning organization. So now we are in the third pot which is called the Large MPO Pot which is 40% statewide so each of the large MPOs get a percent of that 40%. So that's where we are now.

So just in summary, in Santa Barbara County any of our agencies can apply for the 50% statewide pot and then we also have our share of the 40% pot. Next slide please. So the statewide pot we just want to give you a quick update, the California Transportation Commission did approved the statewide guidelines earlier this year. So applications are going to be due to the CTC in June, there's $310 million available and those projects will be selected by the CTC.

The staff recommendations will be available in November and then the CTC will adopt the program in December. Next slide please. And then as I mentioned, the large MPO or Large Metropolitan Planning Organization. So we as Santa Barbara County receive a share of that pot your board has the authority to develop and approve the guidelines and do the call for projects and then our local partners submit the projects. We have a scoring committee that evaluates them and then provides recommendations to your board And then finally it will go to the CTC for a final approval. So think of our process as a nomination process to CTC sort of making sure that our projects are eligible with the statewide program. Next slide, please.

This just gives you an overview so last cycle 2 years ago cycle 7 was the first time that we had a large MPO call for projects. So there are 4 projects approved what happened was your board approved a bifurcation of the funding, so 52% went to North County projects and then 48% went to South Coast projects and those are the projects that were approved. Next slide please So the last cycle, due to state budget cuts there wasn't a lot of funding available.

And so what we did was we borrowed funding from two other counties Tahoe and Kern to make sure that we had enough funding to do a substantial call for projects. So we had $2.8 million program last cycle This time around we are going to have to pay back our loan so the CDC is going to help us with that. So this cycle through the formula, we have $3 million available. We're paying back the 1.9 million dollars that will leave $1.1 million available this cycle.

The next cycle will go back to normal so about $3 million cycle. So this cycle we have less funding available for projects. Next cycle next slide please. So at a SPCAG staff level, we work closely with our local partners through the Technical Transportation Advisory Committee or TTAC. What we did was once we had the draft guidelines available from the state, we convened an ad hoc committee which included both North County and South Coast partners.

They looked at the amount available and so they provided a suggestion which I'll go over in a second. And then that suggestion is then presented to TTAC which will go over the recommendation as well. Next slide please. So what TTAC or what the ad hoc committee recommended was looking at how we can use that $1.1 million for more regional level efforts, one of them being an update to the Regional Active Transportation Plan which SPCAG led and developed a few years ago And then after that they recommended looking at funding for improvements on the bike and pedestrian network, including signage lighting and cameras. So those are the recommendations from the ad hoc committee and so then next slide please.

The update to the Regional Active Transportation Plan since SPCAG did it last time and due to its regional nature, it would be something that SPCAG would develop the application and then if funded would lead the effort in partnership with local partners. And then the the application for the signage and cameras would be developed by us because again in partnership with local partners. And then if funded we would work with local partners on getting the funding out to projects.

Next slide please actually it's over there sorry we never left okay so T-TAC did receive the ad hoc committee recommendations and so but we want to give a couple more options for the board. So today what you see is the first two A and B were vetted with T-TAC and then to T-tac recommendation is item B, but we also wanted to provide your board with a couple more options option C Is a countywide call for projects, so taking the $1.1 million not bifurcating it just making it available county wide.

And then option D is replicating what we did in the last cycle. So it's taking doing a geographic split 52 percent for North County projects, 48 percent for South and then we're open to hearing any additional ideas from the board as well so today is an opportunity to provide that input I did want to stress that each cycle is a new opportunity So when we present guidelines and work with TTAC, it's up to the board for what your discretion is on how to conduct a call for projects.

Next slide please. So this is just a high-level overview of the schedule. So we'll, we do need to adopt the guidelines soon to submit to the CTC for approval and then after that we'd conduct a call for projects on a regional level. Applications would come in, we would score them and so we would provide recommendations to your board in December of this year.

Next slide please That concludes staff's recommendation and be happy to take any questions and input from the board. All right, thank you Sarkis.

And this is just so this is a presentation no action. There

is action we're looking for recommendation from the board on an option okay Sorry, provide feedback on the draft funding options.

Okay so feedback. So you guys asking for a vote today on that? Yes.

It would be clearer if there was a strong recommendation of any of these options and then we would incorporate that direction into the guidelines that will be on your board agenda for next month

All right, thank you. So I'll open up to directors for comments. I have some opinions but I'll defer. Director Silva?