Santa Barbara County Association of Governments (SBCAG)

All right. Welcome and thank you for joining us today for today's August 20th SBCAG Board meeting. For the record, my name is David Silva. I'm the Vice Chair of the SBCAG Board. Madam Clerk, could you please facilitate roll call?

Director Lavagnino?

All

All right, we'll now move into 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. Is there any public comment at this time?

There was one written public comment submitted by Doreen White which was provided to the board and placed online as part of the agenda packet. If there are any members of the public on Zoom who wish to speak would you please use the raise hand feature and I will call upon you. And there are no responses.

All right, thank you very much. Next we'll move to the consent calendar. Is there any public comment on or if any public comment was provided in advance for this item?

There was no public comment provided in advance and if there are any members of the public on Zoom who wish to speak to public comment please use the raise hand feature and I will call upon you. And there are no attendees who wish to speak to the consent calendar.

Okay, we'll bring it back to the board now if any directors would like to pull any item at this time.

with our service area. So this presents a risk as we consider ongoing maintenance and contract renewal. I chose this photo shown on the right because it indicates that we're listening but I also want to point out a hidden irony. As you zoom in there's a phone icon sign with an arrow to the Los Olivos market a few hundred feet in the background. Irony aside, we are engaging with our region's emergency responders about the state of this program. We coordinated 9-1-1 mobile phone tests with the California Highway Patrol on our landline boxes or where they're located.

We also convened representatives from across the county for a presentation like this one with stakeholders representing the California Highway Patrol related law enforcement, fire, Office of Emergency Management and jurisdiction staff. We heard minimal concern regarding removal. I'll expand on feedback about call boxes as landmarks, the text to 911 signage, pedestrian safety.

One call center stakeholder said motorists use call boxes to identify where they are in lieu of a mile marker. CHP indicated value in a text-to-911 signage as text-to 9-1-1 becomes more widely adopted. To be honest before I coordinated this program, I didn't know you could text 9- 1-1 to get help Millennials. One stakeholder offered anecdotal evidence that the system can be used by pedestrians and SPCAG audited, for example, an AMCOM call in January about a person walking feeling sick and asking for an ambulance.

Our partners indicated expanded mobile coverage is an interesting idea to explore and stakeholders are interested in alternative concepts which we'll look at next. So what have we tried with these funds? What are our peer agencies doing or considering? Once upon a 2008, the Cold Spring Bridge on the 154 was not what we see today. SBCAG partnered with the Family Service Agency to install a special two button crisis call boxes on each end of the bridge with a 24-7 crisis hotline.

Fast forward to 2012 and SB CAG provided $100,000 in state funding for county fire to eliminate radio dead zones on the 166 and State Route 33. Now for the fun part if there's a link to congestion relief Motorist safety, there's a program for that. Agencies across the state have funded five-on-one trip planning lines, technology systems, litter removal, increased freeway service patrol service, CMS signs, wrong way alert systems for regions with millions of vehicle registrations. Funds have been used for like emergency response helicopters. We see you San Diego.

Add fantastical ideas on top of that like cell tower subsidies, Starlink partnerships, drone in the box systems and this part of the discussion likely falls outside of today's time allotment. So we've talked to you about the system use decline contract challenges. We could return to the board with options related to system status quo targeted reduction complete removal alternatives We can bring the budget back for policy development. I want to hear what are your concerns? What do you want to see in the coming months for action? What information do you need to make an informed decision regarding the future of this program? So, I'm going to hang up this presentation now for the board discussion with a 166 backdrop. Thank you.

All right. Thank you Mr. Williamson. Questions from the Board? Director Hartman.

Do we have a map showing where we do and don't have cell phone coverage along these highways?

Yeah, glad you asked. If you look in the staff report it does have a map and there's a link that you can click and you can look at the cell coverage. When I drove the system and did tests all of the boxes I had data with Verizon. The boxes run on AT&T service so the two major providers we know their service for the 44 call box locations that are using cell phone service and then the four landline locations one of them a 911 test did go through The remaining three, the text and call did not go through.

So again could you summarize what percentage of the area would not be covered by cell phone coverage?

So we have 3 boxes well I guess 4 boxes out of a system of 47 so less than 10%.

And this money comes in no matter what. I mean if we get rid of the call boxes do we lose the funding or is that kind of set so we could redirect the funding and if we can redirect it, what are the criteria?

Yeah, the allocation for the DMV $1 fee is dedicated to our county and to motorist aid safety systems. So other regions are taking those dollars as mentioned applying them to like a litter removal program or yeah so they are dedicated to our region and we can apply them how it makes sense to serve the motorists

Can I answer that? The board could decide to rescind it. So we took when we established the call box program, we took it to the major cities in the county and we needed a majority of the cities with the majority of them and the county with the majority of the population to approve it so you could rescind it and stop collecting the fee but it would be up to this board to make that happen. It wouldn't happen upon you know put upon us just to let you know

Other questions? Director

Brown. Could these be repurposed for, I see they're all solar powered it looks like most of them but can they be repurposed for construction or traffic or things of that nature for digital signage or other purposes for traffic safety?

The technology itself, the call boxes.

Yes sir.

I believe their own case emergency systems was acquired by Nightscope who I believe owns the technology we can look into that and get a

Follow up. You told me that the technology is such that there's only one or two people that have the expertise to even work on this stuff if I heard your report correctly?

That's what we're hearing from peer agencies is the person we have and other people who have that person, that's where the system has been maintained and if you're outside of that service area there's been challenges in keeping your system maintained

Okay, so what you're really telling us is it's so antiquated and it's gone by the way of the buggy whip. We just don't need it anymore as a call box? Thank you. Okay, that's fine.

And Director through the Chair Aaron Bonfilio for SPCAG. The short answer to your question about the technology is the funding is eligible for other program purposes so changeable message signs like you mentioned digital displays are ineligible use and have been done in other counties.

Thank you All right, other questions among Directors? Director Zillow.

I just wanted to know and you showed that we're kind of an, we're becoming an island or we are an island with having this was did San Luis Obispo County or Ventura County report back of any unforeseen consequences from having their call boxes removed today? You know, we have the luxury if someone else did this already. Was there any feedback from them about how that transition went?

Yeah, I think for VCTC there was some interest in like keeping a call box if we're like a museum purpose situation. And I don't know beyond that. I haven't heard any feedback of this. Yeah, that's so no negative implications. SLOCUC just made this action as of August. So their system theoretically is removed in the next 12 months. We don't know. OK, thank you.

Questions of Santa Maria?

Go ahead, Alice.

Okay I think I heard you say was $2500 for maintenance on one call box. Was that accurate?

That's an estimated cost per call if you remove the maintenance or incidental calls. Total program costs.

And I know I travel 166 and there are a lot of dead zones on 166. I would hate to see people get stranded there, and I don't know how we do that but if a car goes over the side and the cell phone is in the car and maybe the person can crawl out or something, I still think that we need to maintain some of them on 166 but I don' know where or how we would do that.

Thank you.

Other questions in Santa Maria?

Yeah, I've got one. So does the South County, do we still have the safety tow program where we pay tow truck drivers to just kind of hang out during high traffic time down there? Is that part of the same program?

Okay. The match specifically for the funding source we're talking about, the match goes to us so the state does allocate money for freeway service patrol in the area where we have freeway service patrol it's based on vehicle volumes and so our match is from the DMV fund to get those state funds.

Okay and then question now with Santa Maria growing as it has have we done a study of of what our car volume and traffic is. I mean, how would we ever get to the level that we would be able to get that freeway service patrol up in the north end?

Yeah, I think the answer to that question is it's totally possible whether you use this funding source or the Freeway Service Patrol funding source. The vehicle volumes on the South Coast are close to 80,000 and it's about half that for the Santa Maria area but I'll let Aaron add to this.

In addition, Director, there is a research group at the UC Institute of Transportation Studies that does an annual analysis of vehicle volumes and a cost-benefit analysis. Historically Santa Barbara has ranked very low in our cost benefit relative to the amount of assists that we have on the South Coast. However, we have considered the North County it's just that it would further decrease our quote unquote cost benefit.

Yeah, I assume that but then when we're looking at what the return on this one is at $2500 a call. I mean if we got to spend the money on something yeah, I just like see what other options we've got it where to spend the money. I agree with probably this might be like the you know phone booth. It's gone and the telephone book and everything else.

Any further questions in Santa Maria before I go back up north or back down south? Sorry. All right, Director Hartman.

Yeah could you talk more about the texting 911 how that works?

Yeah so emergency responders at call centers they can receive texts to 9-1-1 and so if you have little service the idea would be that you might be able to get an SMS through where you couldn't get a phone call through actually I had success getting the phone call through at the call box near the Tepiscate Canyon And the 166, the call went through. The text did not at that location.

So I think that would be an interesting thing to do further testing on. But yes, the answer is you can text 911 in any sort of emergency situation and it's good knowledge that probably a lot of people don't know.

Yeah. So I mean, I think an education program about that might be one. I think I mean basically I think what you're telling us is we have a hundred thousand dollars that we can keep in this program but it's pretty much defunct or we can invest it elsewhere and I think we agree that it you know call box isn't a good investment I gather we don't even have to do it in terms of public safety the $100,000 but I'm listening to Director Patino and you know I'm concerned. I think it should be something about public safety and education and how we can...

But I think maybe we need options to come back to us

All right, I'll just jump in here for a moment. Here we're talking about $100,000 but what is generated from these accounts? That seems like there's way more than 100,000 vehicles in San Barbara County.

Yeah that's correct that's the budget slide it's closer to four hundred thousand dollars on an annual basis

So it might be a bigger pool that we can spend the more than $100,000 that we're spending currently on existing call boxes as we move forward to leverage those funds to something else. I'm really interested in potentially incentivizing cell phone companies on addressing dead spots. I think that obviously some of the spots are not profitable enough I know there's a couple spots on the 101. I know some spots South of Buellton. I think there's quite a few on the 166 and so maybe diving in deeper there that might give us some opportunities to solve some problems that are going to help way more people than those that might be using the call boxes. So just want to throw that out All right. Is there any public comment on this item?

There are any members of the public on Zoom who wish to speak, would you please use the raise hand feature and I will call upon you. And that there are no hands raised on Zoom.

OK so back to the board. I believe this is a receive and file but also discussion and we've had some comments here. Do we need a motion at all?

No we got it. We're going to bring this item back with options of how you can use the funds One point I would like to make too is every few years we have to upgrade these call boxes to the new technology. So, we had to do that from I think 2G to 3G and now it's 5G. So there is going to be a time where we have to replace them all and that's a huge expense so I really would you know I just want to point that out that that is also a consideration that technology changes in the technology would need to be upgraded. So I just another factor for removing them.

I think as we move forward, I'm hearing nobody saying that we need to keep them maybe a couple just in case and there's certain areas if there's not other solutions.

Yeah so we'll bring those options back to the board. I think October November time frame. So we'll bring those back. So thank you for the discussion and we appreciate the talk.

Yeah, let me jump back over to Director Brown here for a

moment. I'd like to see the recommendations include decommissioning and which ones and or reallocation of funds for Starlink or whatever brings service to those

blank spots.

Okay we'll do

yeah. And again my other piece is I have to see us look at the whole. The whole funding pot got it that we're spending on this so absolutely when we look at our options All right, so Director Hartman you still have your light on are you good? Okay. Alright, so we're going to just receive and file no motion necessary to proceed and

Item 5B vehicle miles traveled VMT mitigation programs.

Mr. Becker

Yeah, thank you. Good morning Chair Nelson and Directors Mike Becker of staff and today I'm going to provide an overview of vehicle miles traveled or VMT mitigation programs like the last item we're not looking for any action today. The item is purely to provide an overview of what these programs do and to gauge interest to see if it's worthwhile to explore further within the Santa Barbara County region.

Let me first start off by saying earlier this month we took a very similar item to the Joint Technical Advisory Committee, which is SPCAG's advisory committee including both the planning and public works staffs. There was general interest and there were no hard nos as part of that discussion. But to this point only the county has expressed full support. I don't take that as a negative, it's rather more information is necessary before full support could potentially be offered.

So a little bit of the background in 2013 the state passed Senate Bill 743 and that changed California's Environmental Quality Act or CEQA By changing how transportation impact is assessed through the CEQA process. Prior to Senate Bill 743, transportation impact was assessed by delay or congestion We're going to look at congestion at any intersection or on any piece of road.

And that's where VMT comes in, because VMT is the sum of driving. And as since Senate Bill 743 has been implemented jurisdictions through the CEQA process assess transportation impact by comparing how much driving a project will create and comparing that against some type of average whether it's a regional average For say residential or a city average, sub-regional different jurisdictions do have different methods. For instance in the county when a project comes they assess it against the unincorporated counties average VMT and then compare that to what a project is expected to produce.

VMT mitigation typically involves projects or programs that result in people driving less. This may be transportation demand management programs, transit passes or transit improvements, bicycle or pedestrian infrastructure etc. On the way into the building this morning Aaron questioned whether potentially would cow vans fit into that as a mitigation and likely I don't want to be The challenge with mitigating VMT is there's often not projects or programs that are ready to implement When that mitigation is necessary, and that's where some type of VMT mitigation program comes in.

It ensures that there are opportunities to mitigate VMT. It is important to note that VMT mitigation doesn't necessarily happen at the site of the project. If a housing development is coming in, for instance just using the example that Supervisor Hartman had provided with Los Alamos housing development, the VMT mitigation doesn't necessarily have to be in Los Alamos.

The goal is to reduce driving over a larger geography where you may get more driving in Los Alamos, but we're trying to offset it with reducing driving somewhere else. There are several different forms that these come in. Two of these are more focused on individual jurisdictions while one of them, VMT Mitigation Exchange can function with multiple jurisdictions participating in it. So the first is a Vehicle Miles Traveled Impact Fee Program single jurisdiction program this is where A study is conducted to determine what is the incremental cost of VMT reduction. That single jurisdiction then collects fees and once those fees build up, they can apply those to vehicle miles travel reducing projects.

The second one is the VMT mitigation exchange and if one was stood up in our region, that exchange is what makes sense if it's multi-jurisdictional But an exchange is administered by a central organization, which could be SPCAG. It could be somebody else but that central organization essentially acts as a middleman by collecting the inventory of VMT reducing projects and then when somebody needs to mitigate VMT they can draw from that menu and while the funding would flow from say a developer to a jurisdiction to implement a project, it would just be merely SBCAG facilitating that and not actually implementing the project.

One interesting thing about a mitigation exchange is the cost per VMT mitigation is not equal, where you may have some projects on the menu where it is say cow vans where it's relatively inexpensive to mitigate a certain level of VMT compared to building an affordable housing development is going to be very expensive. So the cost to mitigate is not equal. And finally, another single-jurisdiction program would be Vehicle Mass Travel.

Mitigation bank functions a lot like an exchange, the difference is it's a single jurisdiction. So if in our region it turns out that really only the county is interested in this type of program, it would make sense then for the county to move alone with a mitigation bank. If there's more than one jurisdiction that's interested, it would make more sense for a mitigation exchange.

In 2025 in the state's budget trailer bill AB 130. The state. The bill directed the state to stand up a VMT mitigation exchange focused on affordable housing this is this will be administered by the Department of Housing Community Development or HCD use of that statewide exchanges voluntary And the one potential downside with a state participating in statewide exchange is your VMT mitigation may be very distant from the project site outside the region where we're having a developer or potentially a jurisdiction trying to mitigate VMT for a road project paying to perhaps build affordable housing 300 miles away in a different part of the state. Rather, if we had a regional one at a bare minimum, we can ensure that the VMT mitigation was occurring within Santa Barbara County.

So there is an example out there. The Western Riverside Council of Governments developed and implemented a VMT mitigation exchange, it's first of its kind in California. It's the model that we were looking at for this and it's also the model that several other regions are looking at. To get their program up and running, it cost them about $300,000. And they keep it running by collecting a 4% fee on the transactions that come through the credit purchases for VMT mitigation projects.

I did attach their program manual if you're more interested to the staff report. And at this point, some type of mitigation program is an idea that was brought to us by Director Hartman. And if the board would like us to pursue a program, it would make sense to continue to build support and bring it into the next overall work program as a work task. However, at this point we currently do not know where the funding would come from. We'd have to potentially apply for a grant or figure out how we would pay for it.

I'm happy to answer any questions and while we're not looking for any action. I would encourage each of you to talk with your community development directors to gauge some support to see if it makes sense for your city or county. And if there is support, then I would suggest that when we come here seeking input on the fiscal year 2728 overall work program

Thank you Mr. Becker, questions from directors? Director Hartman.

Could you describe more about the state program? You said it's voluntary but is mitigation going to be required in one way or another and the money would either go to the state or stay locally?

Good question director Hartman so I think going back to the Los Alamos example, there's a certain level of what are the projects that kind of make sense to mitigate VMT and you ask the developer to build those as part of their project. However, you don't have the ability to mitigate fully so what the county has done then is provide a statement of overriding considerations. So then you're not fully mitigating the VMT.

To the extent that the use of statements of overriding considerations are used, then VMT would not need to be fully mitigated. But if it is a goal to mitigate to the maximum extent practical, then a jurisdiction could use a statewide exchange or have some type of VMT mitigation either locally or regionally.

All right, Director Prodi. I'll get up there just a second. Director Prodi and then I'll go to Director Lavagnino

Thank you chair. I think you kind of answered my question. I'm a little need education when it comes to your if your general plan like ours and Galita refer always first level service and that's how we base are some of our assumptions for intersections and so now we're but you're saying SB 743 is voluntary. So how does that work? How does that work for a city?

Good question Director Prodi. So SB 743 is not voluntary, it's part of CEQA now. When 743 was implemented it pulled the congestion level service out of CEQUA and if a jurisdiction such as the City of Goleta still wanted to recognize that as an impact it's through the general plan policies it's not through CEQUA prior to 743 it was through CEQua

Okay, got it. Thank you.

All right, let's go to Director Lavignino and then we'll come back here for Director Silva.

Okay so my question is so who pays? So this is just paid by I the way I'm looking at it looks like there's just going to be paid by the developer um so it's an increase to development costs

uh Director Lavagnino, essentially yes it's to mitigate a project's impacts. It's a cost on development and I would say that not every project is going to be a housing developer or commercial developers but also transportation projects if you widen the road analysis would probably find that it's gonna increase VMT therefore it'd be the local agency Regional agency Caltrans that needs to mitigate the VMT.

So in the vast majority of cases, yes it would be a private developer but sometimes it would not be

and how does it differ from like a transportation impact fee?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank transportation impact fee is focused more on the congestion alleviation to ensure that new development does not reduce the mobility where this is just So I'm just trying to figure out the practical application would be so someone's proposing a project comes forward and it's determined that is going to increase VMT.

They then pay into a fund and then that supposedly funds other projects that reduce VMT but it doesn't have to be in that area? Correct.

Yes, so when a development comes as some type of analysis will be conducted to determine the level of additional driving that occurs and then that would result in some level VMT that needs to be mitigated. There'll be a menu of projects that have a cost and the level of VMT is mitigated from and the developer would then select off that menu to mitigate the VMT

Okay last question, if we don't do anything what happens?

Would be just where we are today. So that would be potentially using statements override consideration when we don' t have the ability to fully mitigate.

Okay thanks. All right thank you Director Silva and then Director Rouse.

I apologize, it might be a bit more basic of getting pulled back here but um. I guess my question starts with is the idea that the state is already asking jurisdictions to decrease VMTs in general? Is that part of this motivation because I kind of start with like why would we do this and my understanding is that we're getting a directive that agencies need to start looking at VMT reduction in general correct?

Yes, I think that started in 2006 when then Governor Schwarzenegger signed AB 32.

Perfect and we already have had a meeting prior where we know that the VMT reductions are becoming contingent on long-term funding applications for us so we know that we are being given mandates that need to have VMT reduction in general correct?

Yes, there is a lot of overlap with this. So we deal a lot with Senate Bill 375 which is focused directly on SB CAG in terms of reducing VMT and one of the issues that we identified with Senate Bill 375 is you have all these competing laws and regulations such as Senate Bill 743 that's trying to do the exact same thing

Okay. And so then kind of what's being brought up here, not exactly there's not a cap necessary but you're kind of recreating a cap and invest situation here or like an option could be where you're saying we're all going to try and limit our VMTs or mitigate the VMTs and by doing that we're going to invest into a pot of money that then is used to maybe you can't figure out how to make the Los Alamos project reduce the VMTs for various reasons, but that funding source could then get a bike path or transportation somewhere else. So you're trying to create kind of a no cap but slightly friction-based invest program? Right correct. Or as an option for us and then I guess just when trying to do this from practical applications so i think it again we said three projects go in Builton so what this would be looking like in concrete examples would say that project that came into Builton for housing There'd be a study attached to it that says it's going to have this much workforce housing.

We know the implications for built-in transportation between work and housing. Here's your VMT, add an additional fund to it or you know fee to it from the developer that developing fee then says like hey actually a bike path in Santa Maria would reduce VMTs I'm just making this up but that's kind of what you're in very simple terms is suggesting here right?

Yes and you did a very good job explaining

it. Okay

perfect. Just want to

make sure I understand this because there's a lot of acronyms happening.

And I would say they That's something that if we were to stand up one of these programs, there would certainly be discussions. Do we have a North County pot and the South County pot so that a project in Santa Barbara is not the mitigations in Santa Maria or vice versa which might not be ideal? So essentially we could define it where I think it's important to recognize that.

Yes, you could. The mitigation may be well distant to the actual project and some level of fairness would have to be considered.

And the state's doing a voluntary program right now that says hey you could opt into this and the money to Director Hartman's point could be the money that's going into the impact would be offset in an area outside of Santa Barbara County in

general? Right it could be yeah if we wanted to voluntarily join into that yes okay. You could be contributing to housing in Fresno or something. Okay thank you.

All right thank you Director Silva. Director Rouse

Thank you so yeah it's interesting Mister Becker we just had our housing affordable housing meeting followed by our climate action plan and found A lot of complications and not just a few conflicts between the two. And it's the conflict between mitigations and incentives because we're trying to satisfy obviously arena numbers, which is kind of all part of this but at the same time trying to build affordable housing when we get mitigation fees and impact fees is kind of antithetical to that effort can be in the VMT world. Is it strictly just proximity to a transit line or as a proximity to a destination center?