Transportation Planning Organization Meeting - Jun 15, 2026

to this June 15th 2026 meeting of the Gainesville Alaska County Transportation Planning Alaska County Transportation Planning Organization sorry what's written here as well so I'm reading off my script great all right well let's start with our roll call here member Alfred I believe is on the line member book here number certain here member Chesnut here member Cornell here member Desmond Walker absent member Eastman here member Engel is absent member Cynthia Chesnut absent and the Prisca here member Taylor member Ward here member Wheeler here member Brown and miss Laurie Santana is here for member Brown and member Dixon we have a form the director all right first up approval of our agenda move approval second all right we have a motion Santos any discussion all those in favor say aye aye motion passes all right I don't have any announcements from the chair we do we do have something we'd like to do oh I'm sorry sorry all right I don't have any announcements but we do have something we would like to do now director Whitfield I just wanted to take this opportunity to recognize Allison and say thank you to her for all of her work for the TPO and I have a certificate year of appreciation for you Allison as well as a gift for your table what we're right we're recognizing Allison she is transitioning to back to the county thank you to the county for letting us borrow her and her expertise her knowledge and her passion during her time of transition that we really needed some inside knowledge and help I know that I know I appreciate it I'm sure all commissioners City County and otherwise appreciated having some a good insider who knows what's going on and knows a lot about the city and the county and our other communities so that the transition was not just people who have no we don't know about all we love director Whitfield but it's nice it was nice to have some local talent just ready to take a snapshot if you don't mind Allison yeah let's take a picture I think everyone should okay so are we all right we have time now for public comment if there's anybody from the public who would like to comment have three minutes about something that's on our agenda um talk to us before we get to it seeing none we will continue on next we have our action item 7.1 first item is approval resolution 2026-02 it is to um designate the dot as the recipient of the 5310 um ft funds for um rts to continue to receive federal funding through the dot so as a recipient of the i believe it's the 53 um sorry thank you the 5310 they have to designate a recipient either themselves or a dot and they have determined between rts and dot for dot to be the recipient so that they the record keeping time bookkeeping all things could be more smooth and efficient so that's what the resolution is for move uh move resolution 2026-02 to designate dot as a designated recipient of the 5310 grant program second from a motion for cornell and a second from prism any further conversation or questions about this any discussion from the public seeing none all those in favor say aye aye those opposed like signed motion passes unanimously great 7.2 okay 7.2 is the resolution um 2026-03 it is for the board to endorse and pass the fiscal year 26-27 through 30-31 transportation improvement plan um you saw it back in may may 4th as a draft um it's received 24 days of public commenting period in um the two websites that we have here let's go over i should like go through the presentation actually prepared but so it creates a new fifth year years one through four are years two through five of the previous one 26 30 which is still in effect so we're still operating on that one um the adoption is due by july 15th but because we don't have a meeting in july we're doing it in june um and it does reflect the comments that we received online and at the advisory committee meetings that we've had as well as dot's comments this is just a cover letter and the map showing the geographic boundary of the tpo so um a very quick snapshot of the projects there are 167 projects total it's all outlined and summarized in the executive summary um the two websites are the interactive eco-interactive tip website as well as the ability for the public to view it from the tpo's new website which we launched uh last week or i'm sorry may 21st um with that staff is um asking for board approval of resolution 2603 and mr chair that um the one that you sign is that you assign is in the folder so we can scan that and put that into it if the proofs mr book no i just had a comment mr chair was i'm glad this went through while we have two small committees it's good that they get the chance to review it and approve it also and take a look and so with that i move approval of item 7.2 resolution 202603 to pass our transportation improvement plan second all right we have a motion by book and a second uh by ward any further conversations i'll just say i'm glad we were able to get our someone from the member of the public oh no okay oh sorry i'm sorry now now i remember um uh i just want to say thanks for doing the 24 days of public comment i remember the minimum was 21 we wanted a little more you'd offer some more and we were excited about it so thank you for doing that all right all those in favor all those in favor say aye aye those opposed say nay motion passes unanimously now 7.3 i'm laurie santana i'm the dot district liaison for gacpo um the florida department of transportation is requesting that you approve the board approve an amendment to the transportation improvement program for fiscal years 25 26 to 29 30 this is your existing tip to add um a grant that rts has received the project number is four four seven three nine six dash four this is a capital gainesville rts large urban competitive grant and we'd like to ask for you to approve an amendment to the tip to include this project in your tip move for approval of um the budget amendment to add project four four seven three nine six can i ask a question just i just about the process um was this grant proposal brought to us did i like when you guys were preparing it okay i guess i would just ask like for future like if we're going to approve taking the money and it being part of our budget that we actually see the grant proposal before it gets delivered to just for the future i mean i was probably not even around when you started this thing you know like i'm sure it's been a long process but i it just feels like all of a sudden we have 10 million dollars of federal money to do stuff with our bus buses and our and we've been having all these conversations about bus needs and what you know what we need in terms of transit and transportation and so it would just be nice to know we were applying you know what i mean like this is two years like i said it's two years in the making i there's no criticism here i'm excited i'm happy to make the motion to approve the amendment um to accept the money i just would love second it you have to second it i have a motion of a motion by second i would just love to be able to see the proposals before they get submitted so we could you know if we have questions or if we have ideas for ways in which we could push for some of the other things that we've been talking about in terms of bus routes and things like that it'd be great to be able to have input into that if we're going to be the ones that accept the money and manage it particularly because this is literally perhaps in the county a large chunk of this is not even in the city right uh commissioner cornell i'll just go say i know it's a really competitive grant of what i what i remember at our last meeting and so i really happy for the yeah for the word park did to get it congratulations all right hey santos um just on the bringing stuff before i i hear you on that and i think that's if you can but sometimes grants like we don't have a meeting in july and then that's in august and and i want to make sure we're not putting a requirement that stuff has to come through this board for those grants because i might just miss out sometimes they have small windows of 60 days and there's no time i can come before this board to apply for it so i mean presumably they're making grants for things that this board wants not things that we don't want um well like i mean part of it is paratransit bans which is interesting because we used to have a contract for paratransit yeah but rts provided half of those to mv oh gotcha so so we've always been partners with rts and mv and they've been partners with mv so i think the need and then showing the need in a competitive grant was good 100 yeah i mean i think in general if there's big things where they need board's input or or we want to give input obviously they should bring that to us but like um mr jay santos said i don't know if it's well i'll let them say if it's practical for them to bring stuff before us before they apply for i know in county staff it isn't i mean right now it's well i mean what if it was a regional transit authority i mean that that would be i mean i guess that's my point is like i feel like it's weird because we have this bus company that is run by the city of gainesville but it's serving our whole county and now the entire tpo and like it's in the tpo's budget but it's like approved by the city of gainesville like that's the part that's just like weird to me it's hard for me to wrap my brain around that and i i guess i'm just i i think that we've been having these conversations recently at this tpo that we need more focus around how we're going to provide that regional transit right and how we're going to really think about us as providing transportation services across the whole tpo and so if we have opportunities for grants i guess i would just hope that it was thought of that way and i'm not and it's not the city of gainesville's responsibility to think about that right it's our responsibility as a whole tpo to think about that and i wouldn't expect the city of gainesville to think about how to how to deliver services across the whole tpo except for when they're here and so i guess that's what i was saying is just like if if they're applying for a grant that's going to be through the tpo it'd be nice the tpo was the one saying yes let's go for that and here's the priorities we want in the grant not necessarily the city commission that's all i was saying but i get it also i don't i also don't want to miss any opportunities and i really applaud you all doing it and i'm excited we got it this is not a why did we do this this is just sort of a process oriented thing like we're trying hard to push in the direction of a county-wide transportation system and if we're going to do that we need a county we don't have it yet like until we do i hear you not a clear we want a county-wide tpo plus transit system but right now it is run by the city and it's it's like you have but this money is coming to us well you could so mr grummas uh director grummas could you tell us a little bit about and remind us about some of the grants that you make it up where they get into our tip um because not everything we do i don't think gets into our tip but the big the big the big capital does right we usually get a 30-day notification for to apply for a grant and that's what we at the beginning of the city commission we have a big list of projects that we would like to apply so we can get a permission to do so that's also including the tdp that is also presented to the ntpo and that's part of the unfunded projects so that's what it is in there yes okay so you we've already seen the list of the projects that you're going to prioritize yes it's just that we give that short notice and we're going to miss that opportunity to get right gotcha okay thank you neither conversation question oh yeah what how how is um greater gainesville area okay so the the official title of the of the agency so for for contracts and things like that we still have to use the official metropolitan transportation planning organization for the gainesville urbanized area as the official name because it hasn't been approved by the federals yet well because we haven't legally changed the name in our dockets so it has to go to the board of county commissioners then the city of gainesville then the dlt and all seven authority all seven bodies have to sign an amended in a local agreement in order to legally change name which i want to bring to this board at some point in the near future so what i'm hearing is it is harder for us to change our name than it is to change the entire gulf of mexico so i i actually have another question because in here it says the purchase of um accessible paratransit vans for service to the greater gainesville area so is that in you know um member taylor has always seen about like the rural areas she and as well as when commissioner penny was here i'm just that's why i was asking is that considered outside unincorporated gainesville or you know or just outside the city limits of gainesville or is that gainesville proper well i'm hoping that when we continue our conversations with uh uf and rts and the county um city county tpo rts and uf is we have that conversation as to how we use any of those funds i know the facility the transfer station is already a slotted five million that that goes towards construction but if there's any wiggle room to adjust um routes or any kind of conversation um i don't think that the details of how the money is going to be spent has been finalized yet um but we hope to have those conversations as we as they proceed with the actual application for getting the grant awarded but that is one something that we will talk about is how do we get to the county-wide and tma-wide boundary for transit councilwoman taylor thank you member certain for bringing that up because that's something that just written down um and so we're going to try and push for buses in the smaller municipalities if we can try and get those out of that grant money so they can move around within the municipality and if they need to come into gainesville then we already have our our driver there so i'm still going to keep pushing for that thank you all right any other conversation or members of the public we'd like to make a comment on uh adding this to our current tip all right i have a motion in a second uh seeing no conversation all those in favor please say aye aye aye aye those opposed all right that motion passes unanimously all right next step 7.4 okay 7.4 um i've enlisted the help of the county's fiscal analyst um elizabeth in the back there because mr hutchison and mr fair were not able to join us today um so back in 2025 time period when the tpo was transitioning to leave the rpc to go to the county the county stepped forward to be the agency upon which the tpo would lean for a staff services agreement part of that staff services agreement and attachment b duties of the county was to provide an impressed account to the tpo um an amount of 150 000 for cash flow purposes um based on the project that we have going forward the anticipated close out of this current fiscal year and the um the two gpcs coming on board now there is a need for additional floating funds so that we have money in the bank to pay the county and the consultants before we can get reimbursements back from the dlt and so that money goes back into the account so basically um i i as the executive director am asking for an increase in my card allowance basically look at it as a credit card balance you spend it but you pay back um 150 as an example the next two invoices is already over 150 and there isn't even 150 currently in the so we're asking for an increase to 500. can we also have to approve that yes once the tpo board approves it then i'm going to bring it as a as a board um blcc agenda item so moved motion by hey santos and a second by ward hey santos yeah uh thank you chair um just on a broader budget i'm i apologize i missed a meeting earlier this year i don't know if it was brought before that time but we talked earlier on about like the budget for the um jack po and did that ever come back or yeah okay do you mind sending that budget back around uh your annual budget for the i was on media oh yes thank you mr brooke yeah i would actually defer to my county commission colleagues in this case i mean if they were comfortable i was thinking i was like it's not my money i could make money just because when you talk about it was like if it was 500 000 floated by the city and we would probably the fact that it's coming back before you all is a good thing so i just if you all are comfortable i support the motion and if you're not i wouldn't i think when we originally talked about this way back when i think that was a number we'd always kind of used so so i have an email from mr hutcherson explaining uh well expressing his his uh sorry for not being here to join us but um he explained in his email that the 150 000 was initially meant to be some seed money but it was with the expectation that dlt could advance funds if needed but we did have a meeting with dlt okay and her team as well as members of the dlt's accounting team and they explained that they would not be able to do that unless there was a declared emergency or something along those lines so other other smaller agencies are able to ask their state partners to advance funds and we aren't able to do that with this one seems pretty straightforward to me since this isn't an organization that really has its own cash well in advance you know well in advance because most of it is through completely reimbursement right so even when we have money budgeted it's just not sitting there okay do we have any members of the public who would like to comment on this item all right any any further conversation by this board if not all those in favor say aye aye aye those opposed it's like nine as much passes uh unanimously i guess this is the monthly report that you've been seeing uh uh in the last three meetings we though also we adjust to make some of you include some of your comments okay so for april we have uh over 400 000 passengers and you know with a broke duty of 24.4 uh almost the same procedure last year we just uh a little less hours of service that's what you see on page one and page two is uh is the monthly you know right numbers that you have that you can see pretty small in your handouts but we separated the fixed route with the with the rts plus that's something that the boys wanted to see in april we have a 6600 encryption the rts plus and about 412 on the page number three is basically the productivity report by route and you can see on you know first page on the first column passengers you see the the ride ship information the hours of service and the productivity and on the and then you can see also how we're performing uh here today on the physical information um i don't know if they have any questions of that or is uh they come on regular write your report page four is the same but it's uh just so you it's a for saturday service you have that report and also on page five you see the sunday information page six give you the information on the santa fe as they write you with santa fe uh id so you have santa fe students and santa fe staff so you have a total of 18 748 uh asking the santa fe id where are you at on page six to see you wanted to see the ride ship by type of uh fair so on page six you have the santa fe it's uh about 4.5 percent of the total ride ship there is santa fe there is a question on page six so i'm a little confused i'm looking at the color coordination from the key down below and it's saying the orange is uf but it's in the santa fe column as are you tell me how how that's related the the the ratchet is all the santa fe students uh the colors are just the funding partners so you see anything in orange is being rasta funded by the so the the by uf and the blue is funded by santa fe is that what you're saying okay i thought it was riders so the ones that have a lot of ridership by santa fe college students are funded by santa fe but the ones that have very little ridership but i would imagine it flip-flops on the next one it's uf funded next ride ship yeah by student and then faculty and staff on the on the other column so 275 000 being uf students and 5 000 faculty and staff compared to the total that's uh almost 67 percent of our uf right so this is year today we're at 67 percent i thought 26 was funded by both of us so we in santa fe we you know more than 70 percent be uf in santa fe also under 18 and over 65 program we you have uh the students the under 18 ridership almost 22 000 that's on page eight and more than 9 500 on on over 65 and over that that's um yeah it's been successful that's also something that the the board wanted to see also that problem work and then on the last page i keep i keep moving unless you have any questions so well i mean it's hard to go back and forth between the charts as fast as you're moving really quick so you're saying in april there was a total of 413 000 riders 18 sorry and 31 000 of those were three riders we're under the 18 and over 65 program at the city and county got it got it in the last page you see the the boarding bus stop and i believe you some of you asked to to expand that a little more so you can see the ranges are a little different of course the the main you can see the main locations are you know downtown uf and santa fe the big green dots it's basically the the rachi bike bike bus stop the blue dot out west by i-75 is that that santa fe up in the northwest yeah yes oh yeah and the other ones the other bluish bottom is uh oak small yeah southwest area that we have our older students any questions uh regarding buses i can't i don't see um it's not highland court manor it's past the um jailhouse and running what is that that area that's out there that trailer park is there any plans to get the bus to like run all the way out there and actually run through the neighborhood because you have a plethora of people that live out there that catch the bus but they have to walk out and up into the bus station with the stop and then on the east side of town um with some of the money that we have are we going to think about replacing um the bus stops and putting hangers or something over them so when people are sitting out there and it's stormy you don't have to run for shelter and then when the bus is coming you have to run 100 miles per hour because i've been so yeah if we could think about upgrading the benches or something out of that way and maybe think about a route running through that trailer park because again they have to walk up the highway even kids teenagers have to walk up to get to the bus stop to come into town so it stops that's the 26 that bus i thought that it says it's city funded but i thought that the county put up some of the money maybe we just pushed y'all to not cut it but i thought we actually because it only goes to i believe santa fe where it turns into the training center up in there and around the um where they train for gpd but other than that it doesn't go any further than that and they need transportation right now we have a bid out for bus stop improvement we're in the second phase and we have uh bus stops all over the city county and and you have stuff that we improve it i'm just going to make sure no many no many 100 stops right with the total with 100 100 with shelters yeah no we're not with shelter because we have a criteria for for that we need to have more than 15 boardings a day if not we we we just don't do we just will enhance the stop we may ada guidelines but not office we don't put a shelter on this one mr wheeler say that again you the criteria is if there's 15 15 borders per day to get to get at that site yeah do you have a shelter i had a lady asked me to have something put out at all these out in front of out these on 13th do we have anything there already is there a bench do you know the shoppers yeah i need to see the location that's okay i'm doing my job by saying please we need one in all these yeah so it's the airport bus the air that runs to 26th in front of the jail and the airport is that one of the places i will get a shelter we have a children already there we have a solar powered shelter out there at the airport or at the jail right if you walk up from the jail i see one that's sitting there um outside was it the work camp but i think it is they have something where the crossing is the shelter you have something there but further down i don't believe there's anything there you have to walk the rest of the way yeah yeah it stops there and we have a lot of seniors that are out in that trailer park so they really need a shelter out there and they need a bus stop because again the majority that lives in that trailer park they're they're seniors and to be sitting under something that's uncovered in this heat so i really please let's think about the east side of town all right member hey santos thank you chair um just on the on the bus stops i hope when we're when the rts is going through it is looking at the distance between bus stops as well our our bus stops are very close a lot of other um transit agencies have moved them further or apart because it helps uh every stop slows down a bus and one of the most important things is how quickly i can get from a to b that's what matters a lot if it takes you an hour and 45 that's a lot of time um so i think when looking at it i hope they're looking at that um and then secondly on the on the airport um i would have some concerns of running that through lampladder because it would slow down the bus um that's an extra amount of time that takes there and just that's i know that there's only one bus running through there and it's like just every time we extend i think one thing i think you need to look at is like how many extra riders are really getting and how much is that going to slow down that bus um and make it harder for everybody else who's on that bus as well thank you chair all right mayor ward thank you mr chair uh mr gomez if you would uh remind me if i get this wrong but uf um had to downsize what they pay into the system and it was three million dollars this fiscal year correct so the system changed it got smaller and every time there is a revenue reduction to the system the system's going to get smaller and i would love to tell you that we can address every point of need for transit in our community but we don't have the money to do that i would love to do that i love the fact that we can operate a transit system but every time we take a revenue unit it has to be reflected in the service that's offered and again it would be great to be able to to take it out everywhere where there is a need there are many places inside the urban core that aren't being served but we quite simply don't have the budget to do all those places that's another thing that i can yell about when i go to tell us when they just let your start stuff again please do yeah all right any other questions or comments thank you director gomez uh for presenting this data i have a question for um tpo director when are we what is the plan in terms of the conversation regarding regional transit we had you had said we weren't we got the message we weren't eligible to be a transit authority but we were going to have a conversation about how we were going to meet i need to come i need to reconvene the group um i'm going to look through some documents some existing or in origin and destination studies um talk to rts and and uf um the conversation last time was that this funding would be limited to have an independent transit agency or transit authority um i don't know that the state would support that but to member eastman's point we could i guess lobby for more funds directly from the state um that's outside of the purview of like our current pl dollars and and other dollars so it's not off the table yet i need to just sit down and go over all those documents and ask the questions of rts and uf so the conversation's still going okay i think that it's important that in addition to that that we like walk and chew gum and we start looking at what other creative options are for our tpo area to provide transit to our whole outlying areas every single conversation i have about social services health care housing jobs you name it every single one of them starts with i can't get where i need to go it takes me an hour and a half like the i just had a conversation with a woman she's been trying to get off of benefits get a job get her life back together she takes her an hour and 15 minutes to get to career source on the bus she gets to career source she has to fill out papers and triplicate she has to sit through 15 classes that she has to take for like three months she has to do all this stuff then she has so she has to go there constantly and then she was like oh but she needs this piece of paper that she doesn't have and that's across town at another agency then she has to get on a bus that takes her another hour because she has to transfer to a different bus station and then go across town to that place to get that piece of paper and then back it just it's like we've made things so complex for people between the bureaucracies the different agencies we don't have one-stop places for people to get their social service needs met and get organized to lift themselves up as everyone you always hear people talking about but like they really can't because they have to go to all these places and they can't even possibly do it in a day because it takes them so so long so we i feel like i just hear it constantly transportation transportation transportation transportation transportation is a major barrier and i just hope we can have a conversation about what are the what are other counties doing what are other communities doing to solve these problems like can we get a contract with uber i don't know what it looks like but there there's got to be other solutions to how we provide this transportation creatively in areas where we can't do buses or where while we're figuring out how to do buses or while we're figuring out what this regional transit authority is going to look like and how we're going to build it in the in the big way like we need some interim solutions for people because it's it's really a barrier um member hey santos uh thank you chair um maybe we could have it on the i guess our we don't have july being even august meeting just a discussion of what are the different types out there and kind of us as a board side do we want to go after authority do we want to do a partnership do we want to have a sales tax there are a lot of different ways to for us as an organized or as a community the city will want to or not but um i'm just discussing all the different kind of options and then which one we may want to move forward with or not mayor ward thank you mr chair so i have many many many thoughts on on the whole thing but a a way to approach it might be not a transportation way to approach it but a one-stop might be a more appropriate way to approach it so it's so people don't have to go four or five or six different places um that was a thing that we were able to do for some period of time regarding homeless services was was provide as much of a one-stop as possible maybe we do that for things that are not directly directly related to homeless services but broader social services to have two or three one stops around the urbanized area beyond that if it's a transportation solution there's a simple answer and it's money i mean we we could solve all the problems with enough money but we but that's not where it sounds like we're all headed and we could be well over the next year it may not be a money answer i want us to be real careful about saying oh the answer is a a a taxing district or or something like that because we don't know and in the meantime we're trying to serve people as well as we can i will tell you that i'm unlikely to support anything that that props up the ride share services because i i have concerns about those as well i i just threw that out and i it's not i don't actually it doesn't have to be like that there's jitney services there's many it's just an example of something we need something people need a service to be able to get to town and like right now right there's nothing there for them so it's also true that in in the past we have provided services through rts through fdot pilots that did work um i mean because they take an hour and a half to get there i understand but i am interested in in us having conversations whether it's us the gainesville city commission or us mtpo or however us is in in other ways that we could approach smaller transportation but we could do that through rts as well i i'm not about going and finding starting up a new service to compete with each other on stuff that doesn't that is not an efficient way to approach things i am interested in finding other ways that we can do things in-house do some of those things but we don't know what those things are right now that we need i mean yes everyone would it has a need to get where they need to go quicker absolutely 100 but we don't have any detail on that we have a lot of of uh of anecdotes all of us do about people who need to get services faster and to work faster etc but we can't base policy around those anecdotes that i've got a ton i mean we're we all have those if we try to base transit policy around spur routes i think we're going to be very disappointed uh in a few years when when we look back on it so so let's figure out what we need first and build out from that instead of saying here's the solutions and i'm not saying you're doing that i'm just putting out a it would be really easy for 15 of us to sit around a table and say well let's try this and let's try that okay what specific problem is that we're trying to solve how many people are trying to move from where to where etc um and i i would love to see us at our constituent boards or going to be at joint meetings talk about how we can provide one stops that that might solve the problem in a different way councilwoman taylor um i understand what you're saying uh mayor and thank you uh member presia for bringing it up i mentioned a while back um about jitneys and that's something i think could still be within the bus um names for regional transit that we have because if you have a jitney and you have say maybe i guess maybe two we're just using it as an example it's a straight shot to wherever it is that you're you're going and if you're still working with uh mv maybe you want to set up through them and have one bus that'll be a jitney for them that'll run straight to wherever it is that you're going to create this one-stop shop place for all of the needs and then you may have one that's with the city of gainesville but it's all still within rts so you're not creating anything new you're not doing anything that or take a survey with the ones that are at mv that's already riding the bus that really just need to make that straight shot that b-line and if you have that jitney that's running okay this is our pickup we're going boom boom boom boom boom because in south florida if you're not at that stop and it's picking you up at a bus stop if you're not there and it runs every maybe like 10 15 minutes you just miss it you wait for the next one or you get on the free bus that they provide as well and you ride that to wherever you're going but that jitney moves you faster than anything else if i have to be to something over there i know that i can hop here get over here to this one hop and i'm at my appointment and i'm done then when i'm on my way back i do the same thing now if i want to go grocery shopping or something like that then i'd either take the free bus or i take the city bus but as far as a b-line straight shot to work i'm on that jitney and i'm there i'm i'm not worrying about all the other traffic anything like that not stopping this this stop that stop or the other stop it's maybe this stop here that stop and i'm at my my destination that's it and that's all within the um regional transit system that's in broward county so you're you're not spending any money you're not looking for any money it's like the name or like the small it's like small vans or you know like a passenger van yeah yeah it's something that they derive from small vehicles um i believe it was maybe like a one or two dollar copay if you had your bus or something but it was a lot of it was ran by private individuals but other than that yeah your jitney got you where you needed to go and it's something that i presented to the city of waldo when i moved back in 2005 and um they weren't interested in it but that was a nice way to get your people moving around town and you don't have to sit and wait and it's all over the world they have that i mean when i lived in monawatu for two years that was that was the way it was it was basically private taxis you know that like charge and you hop in and you have a movie we went point to point in monawatu and i don't mind paying my two dollars for that because i it's a quick service so however much the fee is i'm paying that and again this stock this stock and i'm at work i don't have to sit and deal with all of those and it's a straight shot that's something that you guys may want to consider and again with the the new monies that were awarded um to see how you could fit that in those monies are those mines are specific to specific yeah transfer station in the bands yeah that's something that you really could think about because jitneys move really fast from one point to the next point and um again if someone is trying to find a job as you were talking about the young lady in her situation she finishes up that and then she has to be over here by 2 30 or however it is i'm done with this you know that a jitney's arriving at this spot at this time so you're there and now it's moving over here i'm done when you're done with all that you need to do you can either catch rts or either call however the new system is set up or either catch the jitney back home either way so i just want to remind people that the productivity numbers they provide us for a reason um and on the city side i hope we pay attention because the productivity numbers tell us a little bit about why why we can can't why it's good why it's easy why it's hard why and and our transportation staff will also tell you that we there's best practices that we know that like normal bus service is very hard to provide anywhere that is not 15 20 units per acre i mean it just is so i mean like there's a reason why people use single cars out in you know suburban or rural areas because that's what you can you know school buses we we manage to do in some of those areas because we we understand that we're just going to spend the money we have to they have to um and everyone's going to one location we're all headed to one location in the end and it's it's a um um it works like that um but some of this some of this data will tell you like oh oh we don't have how many people riding per hour and sometimes they'll also provide us data on the dollars spent per hour per per rider and so that some of that comes down to like and i to the mayor's point or maybe it was uh uh member hayes santos about that extension out like like like lamp lighter if you extend that it gets slower it's less reliable and you've only picked up a couple of riders your average you know per hour goes down um and uh so and uf knows well about this because that's what uf looked at largely to say oh you know we don't have that many riders on this route we want to we want to cut three million dollars of service um and then on the other end of if you look year to year we still hit very similar um ridership productivity on what we have and so that's that's to rts's testament that they are very careful and they use the data and they use their experts to figure out how to pare down routes how to extend routes and still have that really helpful information though like that analysis like getting this report with all this data and just like handed to us at this meeting and like we're supposed to you know i mean like i i read it even before the backup but like i'm not a transportation professional i don't have any idea what these numbers mean i don't know if this is a good ridership there's a bad ridership if how many people per hour this averages out to unless i do a bunch of extra math and if it's like that or if it's certain parts of the day that these light ride zones are busy or not you know what i mean like there's no analysis in this report and so it makes it really hard for me to understand i hear you but it's and i think you're right i think rts is doing the very best they can with very limited resources and they're providing the best service they can for what they have but it i think that at the end of the day like i don't know how we are supposed to make any recommendations or provide any input based on this report on a monthly basis because it's just raw numbers right it's raw numbers of like there's nothing that tells me those kinds of details that you're talking about and i'm sure you all get that because it's your city service we get a fair amount more and then when we personally meet when we've had some hard decisions to make right or when we're advocating on one specific can we add this can we add that we have a lot more of that um and that's what we need for this whole area like that kind of analysis of like how are how did the buses work not work what are the other transportation options that other counties are using what is the analysis of like even if we have nine riders an hour are you saying the county commission doesn't get this kind of analysis when they decide to fund some of some of rts's routes no i'm saying that we i'd ask for it well well we have in the past i guess maybe i think what i'm saying is that what we get is that this is the price tag of a route and it's not worth it because there's not enough riders on it that's what we get basically we get that often as well because they kind of tell us the reality and i'm like so that's that's where we're stuck we're stuck in this get we're stuck in this push and pull like we need transportation options for people in rural areas well we can't afford a bus in the rural areas because there's not enough riders and that we just keep doing that we're like going around in a circle and i'm like so we need a different solution to the problem the bus isn't necessarily the solution i guess that's what i'm saying and i would love for our tpo director to provide us with some examples of what other communities that have a similar problem to us around the country are doing to solve the rural transportation problems like that's what i want is to understand like what is broward account what are other counties doing in florida and what are people doing in other places to solve these challenges they can't be unique they can't be the only people like dealing with this challenge you know and there have to be some reasonable solutions i mean maybe there's not maybe everyone's just suffering and that's just how it goes but i i want to believe there has to be some better solutions than just sorry yeah mayor ward thank you mr chair so again there are solutions and and they're all based on on money if if we have money to work with we can help get anybody wherever they want to go but but we don't really have money to work with um i regret waiting under this but um but but the truth is when when you when anyone chooses a more affordable location that is farther out and more rural you you choose that location for one of two reasons either it is a personal choice you want to be more rural and it's a real honest to goodness choice and one that you make knowing what the costs are or you're doing it because you're looking for a lower cost place to live and a reason that it is often a lower cost place to live is that it's harder to get where you need to go and and that's the trade-off if it's the rent or the the purchase price may be significantly less expensive because you're far from services but some people don't have the luxury of that option right yes and i i i'm that was my point that sometimes people make a choice and sometimes it is that they can't afford to do better yeah and that doesn't mean that we have the flexibility to do better and i i'm not sure that there are a lot of communities that are able to solve that problem that if someone is in a very not dense area where a lot of folks have chosen to live because they're not bus riders and and that's okay for the folks who have made that choice but it's really hard then financially for local government to be able to serve folks in in that way and it's called sprawl yeah i hear you called sprawl exactly it is a product of sprawl and and it's the reason that the closer in you get to an urban core it's more expensive to live there because you don't have to pay the transportation expenses and some of the other things that come along with that and i wish that i wish there were a better solution to it but i certainly haven't seen communities that are really solving this well broward has some different issues but broward's a much more dense community and they're able to to fill a a smaller sized bus perhaps than we're likely to fill with with some of these and i'm really really interested in how we can solve it from not the transportation side but from the grouping services side well we've been doing that i mean i will say that we can move on but we have been doing that with our family resource centers all around the county and the children's trust is making that investment the county's been making that investment like we are seeing that but it's not that's not what people work you know they still have to get to work they still have to get to doctors and so if we rolled up with another 10 million dollars or so we could solve all kinds of problems for transportation but that's not where we are so i'm ever certain i was wondering when um commissioner prisoner mentioned the passengers per hour there is one report that's in here and i was wondering if mr gomez could tell us like what is like a target you know you said you guys get that information um on the routes like the passengers per hour um i'll say to some degree it's less target it's that with it with a pool of money and you have less of it or it's going it's not going as far you say what is a way to save money and you don't say you cut it from the least productive and it sounds very corporate and but that's that's that's where we typically as my understanding where our kids to some degree starts we also we have priorities we have routes that santa fe and uf funds so that we can't just go cut those but that's where the negotiations and conversations start but if uh mr krumas if you can give us a little a little insight into some of these numbers yes uh um we can consider acceptable level of service or productivity is 20 passes an hour 20 on a weekday on saturday we said 15 passes an hour and on sundays 10 passes an hour that's the kind of average nationwide that you can the threshold for for acceptable level of service if it's less than 10 passes an hour you start considering to do that uh mobility on demand other type of services what do you see people talking about around the country in solving world transportation issues a lot of switching to mobility on demand but it's because they have that activity less than 10 passes an hour because this mobility on demand is kind of door-to-door service it's uh it's more convenient for people using it or is it more expensive it's more expensive because the the cost per trip you only carry five to seven passengers an hour or less yeah but the vehicles are a lot less expensive and they're a lot less expensive you know the labor and maintenance are almost the same you just fuel that you save that you save some operating money but the major cost for you is the labor the labor labor i mean if if a computer if an you know if a robot can pick all these people up it changes everything right like if if you don't have to actually pay labor but that's probably not the route we're going down anytime soon because otherwise in this mobility on demand we should say is kind of the modern version of a jitney um to some to some degree because if you have the the computer power behind it to be able to not just have your little stops on your jitney route but just just pick up who needs to be picked up i mean that's kind of where some of this is heading um and i don't want to say replacing jitneys but filling some of those gaps um so yeah but as i understood it it's labor is always and that's why you you move to that different model but the savings are not you hope you save it's from my understanding when we talk about mobility on demand um but then that's always about what bus you got you have big buses you have small buses just be clear city of gainesville rts has we have a lot of buses aren't being used and we're in the middle of trying to rent at least out even more of them right is that right we're in that we still have some that we're trying to lease um councilwoman taylor um thank you chair have you guys ever leased out or to like a private company that would like to maybe run the jitney and i guess have a contract with the the city or the county to do that because not just out by the airport um past that area you also have to think about fairbanks as well and us that live in the rural areas we're out there and the ones that are moving to the area now for whatever reason they're moving to but us that have lived in the rural areas for a while yes we have to have a car to come into gamesville but again um something should be provided for the rural areas because we pay the biggest in taxes out in the rural areas because we have the most land so we're paying a lot in taxes so please again just try and and i don't know figure out something so that we can help the folks in the rural areas and and mainly on the east side of town and with this weather again with it at 90 95 degrees we need shelter um and not having to walk maybe two miles to a bus stop and i'm i'm trying to understand um chair haye santos could you explain to me again with the bus is a slow down you say if it runs out past the airport or or please help me understand thank you chair um so just if you have to go there's only i think that wrap 26 has one or two buses on it which one the 26 the two one just one so that possibly there's only one bus doing that so if you add an extra going into that neighborhood probably add another three to five minutes at least going up into there so that adds another 10 minutes to the total route so instead of it taking 30 minutes to go from here and here and then now you're at 40 minutes so now it's not coming every 30 minutes it's coming every 40 minutes now um to get picking people up as an example as an example yeah um so it's just a every point you if they added another bus then maybe it could make more sense but there's not the funding to add that bus on that route with because that's one of the more lower performing buses without adding another bus i like i understand what you're saying with the ministry we have to try and figure out something because again it's not fair because we're just servicing the ones that are at the airport and just go down to where the center play where they're training at and you actually have citizens that live out in that area like we we have to figure out something to be able to get them up that high i mean the unfortunate reality is that there's the funding it comes down it's a funding issue so there's not enough money to be able to provide the services that our community needs i'm going to bring back some from tallahassee don't ask me how but i'll get it done don't seriously all right commissioner cornell thank you mr chair so um i think this discussion started with existing board direction back when we were going through the uf um stuff with the city last year and the idea of a county-wide regional transit authority should be on the table let's look at some of those options um so we have board existing board direction i think um what i'm hearing my colleagues say is she just wants something presented to us with some potential options so i would move consistent with existing board direction that we refer to staff to bring back to this board in the next 90 to 120 days three to four months a formal presentation of how other counties and or communities are addressing rural transportation issues presentation should include how these transportation issues are both operated and funded and if i could just speak to it briefly um obviously a funding thing we've talked about a a ballot initiative we've talked about appropriations from the state we've talked about private pay um i think if we can just kind of cast the net other communities similar to us you know in the state and maybe outside the state what are they doing they're not solving the issue they're attempting to address the issue is i think what i'm hearing um it's not just about social services it's about getting work it's about getting to the grocery store it's about getting to uf health and campus um i really like what i heard from commissioner taylor where each city maybe has their own form of jitney where they say hawthorne needs you know this and waldo needs this and it's going to take them driving that working with perhaps rts or the tpo um to come up with some suggestions some solutions you know clay county has a clay transit authority that gets folks to uf health i think twice twice a day or maybe it's once a day and they came up with a solution there are no stops it just comes right down 26 and it drops and you kind of fit your doctor's appointments around that i think this data that we're getting is actually really good because what i i saw was of the 276 riots from uf 5 000 are faculty so it's the conversation with uf how do we make 5 000 30 000 you know i don't know but they they know they know better than us and what can we do so i think it's a bunch of conversations with some suggestions of what other communities are doing to begin to address um specifically rural transportation because every city we talk to we hear it and uh i think we can at least try okay can i that's my motion yeah i guess i have i do have a question though yes that and i but i and i also and i hope that that will also include like i know that you all are getting cuts i understand that it's about money i get that but like how many of these bus routes have one bus a bunch go yeah like that's just like not a bus system well i mean so it's going and it takes an hour to like mr gomas could tell us but like i i really recommend go go look at go go online or go on the app and see any time when it says nick's bus expected and that nick's bus is more than 30 minutes that's probably one of our routes that has um like i don't know how we can like we have to do better than that y'all like we have to like nobody can be expected to get like that's not a system that's going to work like that's not even a public transmission that's functional like when you have one bus it's taking 40 minutes or 50 minutes to get to a place like it's just like that like it's that's really really hard for people to plan their lives around well then you cut routes i mean we just went through all of this i know you did we just went through all this where we were cutting all these specific routes and everything and that's what we're talking about we're saying how are we going to run more routes out to rural areas then how are we going to make sure our headway right but it shouldn't just be you all having to have that conversation like we should be helping you have that conversation like i i mean and we should be money i'm not we we should have money in the game the tpo should have money in the game hopefully the state will have some money in the game the small municipalities should have some money in the game like this should be an all hands-on debt conversation i want to let uh mayor ward speak because this this is largely about what the city does every day every year he's been here the longest so thank you mr christian chair i at early approaches and from the outside every transit system when you peel back a layer or two seems completely insufficient the truth about transit and in the u.s and everywhere is that it is not affordable for and it is it's never going to make any kind of profit it is always sinking money into it to get people from point a to point b if you're not in a very dense system with a whole lot of people it's really hard to move those people around and i know that sounds obvious but it's clearly not to most folks just as there are people in every rural community in elantua county who really need this service there are people in every neighborhood in the city of gainesville who really need this service and there are a lot more of them yeah like a lot more of them yeah it is welcome to our frustration um there are hours and hours and hours of this same conversation uh on video from gainesville city commission i know meetings i'm glad to have you you know as part of the discussion but this is not a new discussion and our our transit folks work really hard at this and by the way this is an award-winning transit system no it's an amazing transit system but just not functioning because okay so that's where this becomes difficult it is functional it is not nearly as good as it could be not nearly as good as it could be with enough money or with a more dense community but we are a a traditional florida city greater area that is full of sprawl and that makes it real hard to do transit right it makes it far more expensive than it is in a a a more dense urban center which we don't have a lot of the florida or across the southeast it's just not how we built cities it works great on campus when it's funded on campus and i please don't take this as as any kind of slam on you if i know you there money pressure is there as well it works really well the more dense it gets the less dense it is the less to use the word functional a transit system is going to be and it gets really expensive per rider if we try to solve small numbers of riders and a lot of the i remember doing this research uh another time but but i just briefly looked uh at the some of the jetney services uh around other cities they're usually uh privately operated they're not part of the local thing but there are enough people writing that it makes sense to do it as a private business if there were money to be made for a private business doing this stuff they'd be doing it it it is traditionally left most often to local government to do this because it's not profitable because it is a money sink we would love i would absolutely love to be able to get people more efficiently where they need to go whether that's to services or to work or just because they want to go to the park whatever the reason is we want to serve as many people as we possibly can but there are a whole lot of people working at rts who are doing the very best they they can under the funding that we're willing to give them and i will always get my back up when we call it you know yeah not functional it is functional it is not as good as it could be i'd love to do better but it is all about money members certainly all right uh commissioner wheeler just recently or or not too recently we talked about a group of people up in live oak a couple of young men who've got this old bus together and set their own route up they were individuals they were private they built up their own system and and there are people out there who can make a living doing this i mean they're uber drivers we can have uber van carpools where individuals set up their own routes if we could somehow make that a thing and encourage people to step forward to actually help do that in the communities they could do maybe one day in waldo or two days in waldo or do all week in waldo to set up their own their own carpool where they charge the people that they're driving and we could do that in a van you could do that um these these young men that did it up at live oak it might be something to check out they did it and then ended up making it into a business where they took people on those buses on trips up into canada and i mean they really built it up they got the old bus they repaired it themselves got it functional and set up a route and it seems to me that you could have several people in each even if somebody had to get to work every day and i knew as an uber driver or as a van whatever that i would pick these people up every day drop them off at their certain places and then take them home if we could somehow make it a thing that we could encourage people in the outline of course they'd have to have their own insurance and have to be able to build their own business without us doing it they could go and solicit business in their each community so that that is happening that we could include as part of this you're talking about private use of buses we could have you know encourage people to use their own vehicles to set up their own routes is what i'm trying to say make it a thing i guess i just yeah i guess it what i meant by functional i want to be clear i'm not trying to offend rts i think they're doing the best they can with the amount of money they have but i guess what i'm saying is like when you have a bus that takes 40 or 50 minutes or an hour to get where it's going that's no longer an entice like nobody wants to get on that bus nobody wants to get on that the data tells us that's exactly what happens right so the only people that are getting those people who absolutely have to right and and so instead of like making the system more efficient and more effective and more enticing for people to move into our urbanized area and use public transit not to own a car or not like we're making it less attractive right because we're like shrinking the system and making it longer headways and like it's just it's it's like we're talking about we want people to move into town and they're having like their buses their bus transit options aren't much better than driving all the way from hawthorne to get to work because it's like it takes an hour either way right you drive from hawthorne into town takes you an hour you get on the bus to go to work in gainesville takes you an hour if you live in land later you have to walk two miles and it takes you an hour like i i just i i'm just frustrated by and i get it i haven't been in these conversations and i'm like welcome to the conversation you're probably so annoyed at me right now but we have i feel like that's why we have a tpo and like transit's a big part of what our tpo is supposed to be about and i feel like you all need more support like the fact that this sits just in the city of gainesville like all of those city of gainesville residents are a lot of county residents too and they deserve to have good quality transit service and our rural areas deserve to be able to get to the doctor you know and we have to figure it out so thank you for your motion i seconded it i support it we'll see if it passes yeah i'm certain when we got this informational item about the ridership report we didn't anticipate we'd probably be talking about um you know 40 minutes in data but i will say that the way that we got this data was because we requested it right here at the tpo so when you talk about getting it we first asked just for the ridership report about a year and a half ago and then we said you know what we'd like even more and so the director gave us more there's a lot of data right here i think the question you might be talking about commissioner prison is we can't analyze what we're looking at because we don't have the expertise to analyze exactly yeah so i can look at the so this is tremendous data that they're providing and it's exactly what we asked for to say what does it actually mean as it relates to what you do for trends and improvements and uh what's happening with michael moto and how people even get to places you're not going to find that in the data you're going to have to have the staff who are like sitting here and behind me going what we see when we see this is it means this that's analyzing it is that's the first one is we're getting exactly what we asked for and i think it's good data um as it relates to the motion the motion is really tell us what the trends and the improvements and what what what is other communities doing with best practice that's all we already know objectively that our transit is doing very well objectively not subjectively why because we're getting tremendous amounts of grant awards tremendous amount of funding streams and we're getting all kinds of awards like we just got the 100 best fleet in a commercial fleet so so we know we're doing well but that does not mean to your point that you can't improve it you can always improve everything and i think that's the the second point there is that's what commissioner cornell's motion is about it's are we missing are there gaps are there things that we can do more well is it privately funded publicly funded how can a a municipality with 2 000 residents still get the residents who need to get them to places where they work where they live where they play or they go to school and um so the conversation's fun i do feel like we we have we have done a tremendous amount of discussion about the rts just at the city level the tpo level and um and it's been exactly these type of questions they're pretty i mean if you watch them we're talking about hours we're analyzing routes and who's impacted and how uf and santa fe come and in doing that we're trying to really figure out how you get the most bang for the buck which is what you're talking about but also how you do the most for the communities that need the most transportation and need the most options um so i look forward to to um i'm sure the motion is going to pass there's no doubt about that um but uh seeing is there are there things that we don't know that helps us analyze precisely what we have here this this is very good data so thank you for that director but um i know i don't have the expertise to figure out what the answer is once i look just i don't know who is next but i i see uh councilman taylor okay not going in not going to get anyone's nerves but i have a question and i don't know if this would be considered the rural area out by celebration point is that considered because it's what archer road is that it that's within the urban cluster okay so what do we do about the riders once you get to right there at that store um a little past celebration point i believe it is and you have workers that are up around the bear archery area that's over by the um gfc gwc the the trash company over that way like are we going to provide something for them to get over that way as well because they need to get to work once again i can attest to that because i had to ride the bus out there when i stopped uh when i was working at bear archery so i had to get up in the morning four o'clock in the morning catch a ride into gainesville once i got into gainesville if they dropped me off to a bus stop or dropped me downtown to the bus station i get on the bus figure out which bus i'm going to catch ride that bus all the way out to archer road and once i get off at that store i had to jump off the bus listen to me have my shoes tennis shoes already on with the jets already stuff serious because if you know anything about bear archery seven o'clock not 701 not 702 so i'm off of that bus and i am running top speed from that bus stop all the way up that and if you know it's a hill and you're going up and down so you have to run from there but that bus stop all the way to your job if you work at bear archery if you work at the um the trash company there so let's think about out that way as well if are there bus routes out that way it's not down uh fair yes we need to think about them on that area as well that's it i yield uh uh member hay santos uh thank you sure i know the motion's on on rural um but i do think like having the conversation about the governance models and funding is there do we want to go after a sales tech do you want to do a millage because i think that's a broader discussion that we need to have as a as a um as a tpo and then does the city want to do it or not but i think that's something that we've talked about for a while but we still haven't had that discussion i think all this kind of ties into it i think we need to start at the top and figure out what is this what is the model we want to have and then kind of build down from there so i don't want to have that as part of that discussion or a separate discussion just really on kind of the different governance and funding models that could be there i mean i think any transportation authority should be in that presentation here's the seven transportation authorities throughout the state here's how they're funded yeah there's lots of different ways of partnership there's lots of different ways that can be done to mayor ward's point larger cities yeah mayor ward uh thank you uh mr chair so i i would prefer that we set the term to what we're trying to accomplish first um instead of just casting it out there what are different things we could do what do we try what are levels of service that that we want to that you get to uh because that's going to determine what it costs us to do it and what and then we can say all right we want to meet this level of service this is what it costs are we willing to find a way to fund that and instead of saying here's what we're willing to fund and here's what we get for it i would prefer to work backwards from from what we're trying to accomplish okay um so i would just want to give a little full insight here hey i think it's this is it's timely because when we move to county wide now this is becomes our conversation we're not just the the tighter urbanized area where we largely and where the the previous urbanized area matched a little more where rts already art was going now we have this mismatch between what rts what the city can can provide with our funding sources and revenues versus the needs of the entire tpo aka the county so i think it's appropriate i think to start talking about this and to to figure out partially because there may be other funding partners that they can't take on the project of looking at it they're not used to this um because the mayor the mayor is saying money can fix things and i think we're but we're not tying together the county does this already you want to get people to um uh from hey or from um jonesville give us money we got a bus uh uf has been interested in hail there's a basically an express bus from hail it's a it's a small it's a small vehicle and it's in there we if you look at uh route 76 it's like a half size it's like a half size but passengers per hour are still 14.2 so it is not at the the absolute lowest um but but they fix that largely through funding with with a a collaboration with rts a negotiation but they say we really want this this is the kind of level of service we want but i think it's important for us to look at this because there may be a community new mayor newberry may say hey we got two hundred thousand dollars you can run us a bus once a day you know i'm just throwing out numbers and that new mayor newberry may say it is enough it is important enough to our people to get down to a one-stop you know somewhere so you know i think the tpo is the right place to to talk about it and to even solicit some some feedback directly from the other cities in particular we like having councilwoman taylor but that's only one of the cities and she has experience kind of across the county um and um but those other cities might be out there they might have some opinions um i i will say just to get some perspective on this last year in our budget discussion the city's budget discussion me and commissioner eastman and the mayor largely we we wanted to put back some service on rts to give you all a sense we we returned just peak hour service so adding that extra the second bus or the third bus to routes 8 15 and for 43 and partial peak service to route five so we're not talking about even all day just to put those buses back on those those established routes with riders cost us about five hundred thousand dollars and last year that was for money largely that we didn't know where it was coming largely from fund balance so just to give people a reference of just some of these that's a part of the day on a route that's already established where we think we're going to get you know decent ridership but it's important enough to our our keeping our people who are who need a bus each or five hundred thousand dollars but that's that is just bringing back peak hour service on 8 15 43 and partial peak service on route five and uh mr gomez would have to remind us exactly what that but it was just a let's not make that cut let's please not and it was that's largely for non-uf or for for workers and people who need to get around and like there you go that's what it cost um now at the end of this year we'll be able to go back and look a little bit i believe and see what the impact of that that extra money was but just give people some numbers out there it is it is staff it is very expensive um to to run the buses uh we have plenty of buses but it costs money to run them but that was something where the commission made a very specific decision thank you and so large other communities or the county and the county's done this a couple like we really want something can we do this we really don't want this cut we really want to expand this and they come forward with money but i think this is a good conversation to kick out to the rural community so i know it feels a little contentious but we are county-wide the tpo and we we serve everybody so it is a valid conversation to have i don't know how much time and funding and uh is available um but you know i trust that director would be able to figure out something that that she can help produce that staff can produce to bring back to us um mayor ward so i know other folks want to put some things out there too but but let me say that first of all if you want to have in in the meantime between these meetings if you're looking for for elected and formally elected expertise um schedule get get on schedules for for sunshine meetings with uh vice chair hey santos uh chair willits and and uh commissioner eastman they know a lot about this um i i'm a very interested novice but but they have really good background on this so if you're looking for folks who can give you a little more detail but not spending staff time um sunshine meetings with these folks are a good way to go um the other thing that i would say is i'm really interested in in partnerships with potentially uh private entities there's no reason that we can't get uh sponsorships other than just bus wraps there is a way we do this basically with uh with uf on at least one route and i would love to see us provide better service at the airport it is concerning to me that you can come in on the the couple of the latest flights and it's hard to get to your hotel now we can't serve every hotel but maybe there's a way to partner with hotels to you know help fund routes that that get you from the airport at 11 o'clock at night to downtown or to archer road or however that works because uber is not super reliable at that time of night and it's crazy expensive you can pay 50 bucks to get from the airport to your hotel and that's not what uber is supposed to you don't think about that when you think about uber but that's what it ends up being so let's make sure that we think about public private partnerships and in this space i am open to all those things i'm not open to to propping up um you know kind of vulture capital businesses but but i am very much interested in in good strong public private partnerships or public public partnerships as we think through this any further conversation in general or about this just i know that we use private their private ambulances that cover and take up you know um they're out there functioning private ambulances that get people shuttled you know and and i don't know why we couldn't you know i like the idea of the private i just don't know why we have to fund it all why the county or the city has to fund it all if there are people out there who are willing to pick up some of that slack there are there are organizations that fund ubers for other reasons they want to get voters to the polls people to doctor appointments shuttles you know our our rts on the go rts go our paratransit um it you know it is taking people from where they need to go directly where they need to go but we know that on the previous version of it it costs 73 dollars per ride it's currently less than that uh we will have that data is is getting better and better um so there are all the all people get around in a lot of different ways uber bing if you've got the money and a phone you can get around right it is but it is that's just too expensive for the people we're talking about um so if there's no more conversation about this hopefully not but we can keep on having great conversations in the sunshine uh uh uh and maybe even dragon rks member staff if you want to continue to have conversations commissioner presley or anybody else um with that let's go ahead and take a vote on or is there actually any member of the public one i specifically clocked inside with a motion um and this is about getting staff to bring back some some look at uh how to provide transportation how other communities are providing um rural or non-urban uh transportation that's not currently covered by you know traditional bus systems any member of the public can i add i guess i i guess i hope that that is also about how looking at a county-wide transit system i guess that's more what i'm interested in because i already have existing direction for that i know but it's and that's how i started the motion consistent with our existing direction right because i think they need to be together because i do think like there there's chances that we could leverage some of what he's talking about those public-private partnerships if we think about these connections you know to employment centers or to other pieces of what's going on in the community and i just i would hate for us like i want to improve the bus system inside the urbanized cluster like honestly like i don't want to create more sprawl like i'm not interested in like creating amazing service out in the middle of nowhere and then you know and it's like oh great now i can build my big development out here because now it's great but what i do want is to make sure the people who need it the most can get where they need to go to get to their jobs and that we improve the services inside the urban cluster so that more people those 30 000 employees at the university of florida want to take the bus because it's convenient that's what i want to do that's the conversation i want to have not just like just how do we get people from hawthorne to uf health but how do we create a healthy regional transit system can we and what would it cost we have some dreamers on rts staff they will they can dream up great i love it i love to do councilman taylor within that motion that member cornell made um are we able to add with we're talking about the private entities that find out exactly what it is that the private entities would need to have if they were to present um it's in there it's whatever whatever other communities are doing uh uh director ruth build is the motion pretty uh yes understood very clear so i had to step out do you mind reading the motion if you have it again please or commissioner certainly do you mind seeing it consistent with existing board direction move that we refer to staff to bring back to this forward in the next 90 to 120 days a formal presentation of how other counties and or communities are addressing rural transportation issues this presentation should include how these transportation issues are both operated and funded just a little bit of clarification that does need to go into the motion but just so staff hears it we don't need to know how miami-dade does it because we're not them i mean that's just not how it's going to work um similar counties and communities right similar anyways we have a better ridership numbers in my head right right that is absolutely true but but how i would say university communities that are that include that they're centered around mid-sized cities around the southeast that's where i would look primarily because atlanta's operation doesn't have anything to do with us you know there are other communities like ours but they're not you know the bigger systems all right is the motion clear all members of the board correct all those in favor say aye aye aye those opposed thank you for a good conversation about that because it's a county-wide issue all right we are moving on to some announcements about upcoming meetings report has to learn that at the tac meeting um june 17th which is this week and that's not just about the airport master plan so it's to it's our public meeting to get feedback on the airport master plan that we're currently going through and the stormwater master plan as well oh so i'd love to hear your feedback on on that on the price of the toothbrush i had yeah there'll be free parking yes yeah if you go inside the little place are you going to go complain about your the next board meeting is august 3rd at 3 p.m and then also chair will it's brought up to the tpo staff's attention that the november 2nd meeting is precedes the election day so i wanted to entertain whether or not the board want to discuss shifting that meeting to the ninth i would second all right we have a motion and a second i think from ward and um or now commissioner book just another uh very brief uh scheduling are we scheduled to meet on september 7th also we are scheduled to meet with uh the mpo institute coming down on august 12th in our um in our schedule we had a labor day meeting at one point i don't know if we moved there got moved just want to make sure if we're dealing with scheduling might as well make perfect thank you that's what i wanted to clarify that reminder about mcpoc probably needs to remind us right now yes the mpo institute is on august 12th we've secured a location at one of the county the county training uh facility and it is generally 8 30 to 4 30. it's great i i attended it once and i think um member taylor attended it it's really good information so it's that they go they cover a lot of information so it's a really great institute it's nice that you have it here we don't have to do it correct after 34th street yes that's good yep i worked with travis to get that location for us on the books okay all right any other announcements for that if not uh then uh members of the public just the general public comment any members of the public mr jackson no three minutes good evening i'm charlie jackson uh i'm running for county commission district number two i'm running for county commission because i care about people and i care about the future for a lot of accounting i'm the only candidate that can deliver a change and uh this is what we're dealing with today i'd like to add for the conversation today uh dealing with transportation that's a very very significant area that's one of the things that i'm hearing out and i'm traveling throughout the rural areas uh archer uh newberry uh a lot through a heart on all of the citizens out there feel they're left out because they're not connected with the community i would like to build a organization that ties all of the uh rural citizens together and let's build a master plan we heard these problems with you know in one county and one city there's just too many problems school board got problems a lot of problems we got problems because we're not connected if we build a county-wide master smart plan all of these little indicators and providers will go away because we'll have the input from all of the people we'll have the input from the citizen who values the most and we'll have input from the stakeholders and together we can build a smart plan uh we will not be here at this table having these conversations in the next three to five years if we build a plan that we can deal with thank you very much are there any other members of the public who would like now we have a member comment stop transportation related but have you all seen the repurpose project here review 24 25 if you haven't seen it read it it's really really good really really good sarah and her team um are doing great work and since i have an audience with all of you i just want to do it for you feel good is it online i see you have a hard copy you know what this one uh she sent it to us in an email and i printed it up um i'm get your confidence i have some transportation ideas for my county colleagues because i have you here and our partner for literacy um peak literacy is going for a federal grant it's for adult and middle age literacy um it's a 250 000 grant they've asked for a county letter of support so i wanted to get y'all's okay to write that letter of support or get a chair letter of support for that grant so i just didn't want it yeah because she needs it before friday and so we weren't going to meet again so i just wanted to make sure that um i can get a draft to uh shannon and then she can get it sounds good um like to thank allison for her research on the you did the research on the pedestrian um for the school zone so thank you to that yes and and the city of waldo the big beautiful city of waldo border i would like to welcome you all between i guess about the next week or two our restaurant where the hardys used to be it will be opening so we have the paperback deli that's coming there so you guys please come out and enjoy what yes please please come out and enjoy and um i also have tickets for the comedy show there's a gospel comedy show that's going to be on the 20th of june so if you'd like to take your father or buy tickets for someone or something go and enjoy yourself support the city come out and enjoy yourself that's it all right is that the one that's to benefit the the the acc army i want to get two from you but i don't have my checkbook with me it's in my car across the street sorry so everyone i will be waiting at the door for you to buy your ticket i will just i want to share i went to a um conference called strong towns a couple weeks ago it's the second time i've been and a lot of what the organization talks about is is the uh the fiscal financial stability of cities and municipalities about how they spend particularly on transportation dollars that's one big piece of it about the liabilities that are created when you create a brand new road a brand new extra lane and there's amazing data about what is spent on new infrastructure like that versus maintenance and it's all different you know what the federal does what versus state municipalities it's all very interesting um but in the end they really talk a lot and you you meet with people um and see their experience about where um that transportation and zoning are in land transportation land use are so similar we just we we talk about it um but a lot of people needing to get need to get somewhere create traffic and but if they're very far spread out and if you run roads everywhere those roads are very expensive we we tend to get a lump sum of money perhaps at the beginning but then we have to maintain it there's um the city has a great system of being able to um see what every road needs every single year it doesn't not all roads need the same thing and there's lots of different ways they can fix the roads to expend their life the county has also has has been venturing on spending a lot of money against i would argue a backlog um we're not going to beat up on the county right now about 15th or 83rd um but but i just i just want to remind my colleagues that like how we do land use roads are just so expensive that if we run roads to places that don't bring in the tax revenue to pay for the roads all we've done is decided to subsidize and raise the value of some landowners i that you know it's always been in the back of my mind for years and years and years as i learned about really the cost of roads but um i just want to remind people as we go forward everything we do that um one of the most expensive things in the end is roads that that we that we do it just sometimes it doesn't look like that because it comes in the state spends a bunch of money on it we're not really spending it or the county spends it so the city doesn't feel it or we're spending it in the city the county doesn't feel it or or begin with it's developed by a private developer but the next time it needs to be replaced it is now a city or a county it's now a city or county road um and so some of this communities across the nation are discovering like oh it sounded like it was a free road 30 years ago when a developer built it it is no longer a free road um so i just it was great it was a great uh conference and if anyone ever wants to go to it i will be glad to um i'll probably go again next year um i don't know i think it's in sacramento next year so if anyone wants to go to the west coast it's a great time um and you meet people from all over i i met five pensacola um no no panama city uh city commissioners where they took their entire commission and their city manager it was that important to them how they deal with their future there about um land use and making sure their city is uh fiscally sustainable largely from what they have to spend on infrastructure um versus the people that live there and the business that is done there so it's called strong towns if anyone wants to ever go to it or hear hear more about it you know from me um i will i will i will proselytize it uh non-stop any other comments yes i would love to thank the county all of my colleagues the commissioners on the county board um for the repairs that were done out by lake alto on the road out there i haven't been out there yet i will go speeding up there and see but they said it's very beautiful so thank you all thank you uh over 100 million in the next year a lot of money all right if there's no other comments then we are adjourned