house it's december we think everybody's out shopping but you're here and so we are grateful um i just want to go ahead and get us started um i think we have public comments so we can just go ahead and transition into hearing from our residents do we know who's who's up miss wimberly can come to the podium yeah public comment speaker okay thank you so much great morning um thank you all again for allowing us to come and have a conversation or discussion about paratransit experiences in broward county i want to thank you for your attention and influence that helped us elevate concerns shared by disabled community members and their families who will rely on the broward county penny surtax funded paratransit programs including tops and riders choice we are happy to share that our engagement with this board in october paved the way for significant collaborative discussions with broward county transit's leadership team thank you outcomes directly credited to this board's interest in real solutions include bct and county administration staff finally responding to our request to connect and talk about the unique challenges and opportunities to improve customer care for disabled neighbors especially visually impaired paratransit customers this board helped open communication flows with bct representatives as well as transportation america regarding serious safety risk related to contracted driver's job performance we have commitments from bct and the for for the formation of a community work group that could more effectively capture facts safety events diverse hazards expectations and opportunities to create tools for community continuous process improvement and potential new program offerings that could uplift customer confidence and satisfaction and broward county's commitment towards disabled persons using public transportation services now although the contractor responsible for the dispatch services and ride scheduling has not reached out to any of our community partners we are working with broward county transit to assess how paratransit dispatchers handling of riders reports of customer care complaints safety events and incidents related to non-compliant vehicles and riders environments on the on the vehicles from the time of pickup to um they reach their destination and another significant outcome is that we are thankful for the confirmation from the chief auditor that the long-anticipated paratransit audit has finally commenced am i out of time okay i thought i was you have one more minute okay one more minute okay one more minute and 10 seconds right okay we learned that the paratransit audit started two weeks ago in response to our team's advocacy at broward count i'm sorry during our team's advocacy at the broward county commission meeting this past tuesday thank you for inspiring the opportunity to enhance the integrity of the complaints and investigation processes as well as reinforcing safety for all riders relying on bct paratransit services thank you thank you thank you for helping us highlight to bct and the contractors the importance of respecting the rights of disabled persons to expect pleasant safe and appropriately accommodating public transportation experiences that all people deserve thank you for helping us demonstrate that this board believes that disabled vulnerable community members matter and that the public transportation programs are accountable to sustainable reliability dependability compliance with the contract terms enforcement of disincentive disincentives and verifiable measurable quality assistance systems in the best interest of bct paratransit customers we can again say thank you enough for allowing us to speak back in october it has encouraged our group as well as the persons who are using bct paratransit service and their families that somewhere in the near future they will be able to have an adequate system to report their complaints follow up with those complaints as well as see significant improvements in the overall experience for our vulnerable neighbors in brower county so again thank you thank you thank you and happy holidays all right all right thank you for your advocacy and i'm happy that we were able to respond accordingly and things are moving in the right direction so good job we have two more all right can we just invite our next public speakers yeah mr new brown thank you good morning everyone my name is teneal brown the name of my organization is ruben stacy studio for innovation and education um i'd first like to thank you all can you speak absolutely my name is teneal brown the name of my organization is ruben stacy studio for innovation and education um i would like to thank everyone for allowing us to come before you today and speak um this originally started with us working on food security projects so we're grateful that we're able to even bring these sort of issues to your attention so thank you so much um what i would like to do is highlight a few things uh before you today i'm here to address critical mobility issues that affect some of the most vulnerable members of the community the visually impaired riot the visually impaired riders seniors and individuals who rely every single day on broward county transit and paratransit services across our county we are seeing ongoing safety challenges that must be addressed with urgency writers are experiencing inconsistent driver protocol unsafe or incorrect drop-off locations and a lack of proper guidance from the vehicle to safe point of entry for visually impaired and mobility challenged riders these are not small inconveniences they are serious safety risks that threaten independence dignity and well-being when a rider is dropped off in an unfamiliar or unsafe location when a driver fails to follow protocol or when there is no one ensuring proper guidance and support it creates fear and confusion and sometimes real physical danger these are preventable preventable issues and they must be treated as such and we are thankful that broward county is willing to listen to us the gaps in in accessibility within our transportation system is a major issue across the board and we're just asking that you please hear us and please just act on these issues urgently thank you thank you so i'm one one quick question i'm i are you connected to the speaker before i am okay so you're just reinforcing i'm just i'm pretty much reinforcing what we are doing is we are we work collectively we started working on these projects we started working together on food security um within different churches within different organizations and what started to happen with this group was when they were talking about food security safety came up the first issue was we're not able to participate and drive through um food uh pickups because they do it quarterly at the park um what they said they're not able to participate so from that point we started to listen to some of the other issues that they were having in terms of safety and the thing that came up the most was riders um the way that they're being dropped off and uh some of them would arrive to the meetings late and if they were not arriving late then they were having issues with drivers so over the last i want to say nine months probably ten at this point we just were working with them to come up with options that uh better options for them um whether it's family whether it's us getting involved just any issue that they may be having whether it's food whether it's safety whether it's security um anything that they feel like they need help with we have different community partners that we work with so my organization reuben stacy's studio i work with them on providing a voice how to be a bit more independent how to address daily life issues even though they're visually impaired they're safe broward that um works with them on different types of contracts and just understanding what's being brought before them there's south florida hunger coalition that provides uh the fresh produce for them as well as talking to them about stability and then we have rose of sharon that would provide the lunch for every single meeting okay all right thank you thank you for the great work you're doing i have a background doing exactly similar things working at feeding cell florida and carpool supportive housing so i have a lot of respect for the work that you're doing um and and as you see we we feel just as passionate about making sure that we're keeping all of the residents of brow county safe thank you thank you it means a lot to us it means a lot to them as uh well they're not here today um but every chance that we get we're constantly advocating for them in every single way that we can okay great thank you thank you next who do we have uh do we have jennifer wilson if you're here you can come up to the morning she could miss miss jennifer is a visually impaired rider and she did was able to attend the commission meeting with us on tuesday and wanted to be here this morning um we're unsure if it was work or transportation that has delayed her this morning so she's not here but we do thank you all for just having the opportunity for her to speak thank you right all right so we hear you loud and clear and you know you have our support and we know you have the county support so we're all surrounding you and it's good that you brought it to our attention um go ahead yeah so miss kimberly i assume you're very satisfied at this point we're not very satisfied we're happy but we're not okay all right that's good corey had sent us a memo i didn't know if she wanted to say anything uh this morning good morning everybody it's good to see you all um i i think i'm up next on the agenda anyway so it's perfect uh timing um what i want to say is that the three um ladies that we have been working with on this are incredibly committed people and their passion is genuine for the communities that they're representing and it is an honor to actually hear some of the the feedback while i would say that i love the feedback that would be disingenuous but i think we are on the right track now to get some meaningful changes done and i think that's what is most important is that we move forward in a better direction than where we are previously um i do believe that there's room for improvement um and i have some other things that i'll talk about as part of my presentation um for this morning but thank you for an opportunity to speak well as i understand the timing is probably good because this contract's up for renewal and this will provide a great opportunity for you to address these concerns with all of the bidders whoever they are yes so that's a good point and um one of the things that and i'll just you know get cut to the chase here um it was part of my presentation today but i want to make you aware that um we are reimagining what that contract's going to look like um we had a um what we call a market sounding day um and a industry day where we invited people who would be interested in firms uh in providing this service going forward to come in and actually sit down um hear what the the plan is right to get some input from them on what they think would make the rfp process better for them so we want to hear from the market it's always good it's a best practice to kind of listen to the people who are bidding on your projects to make sure that your contract um makes sense but at the same time we're not going to compromise the integrity of our process in favor of the market but whatever makes sense for forward momentum we'll pursue one of the things we did is we invited um our colleagues in the in the room here miss teniel she did come to the meeting um and we're encouraging our potential bidders to reach out to our advocates to find out personally um what they are saying and what their concerns are so that they can be responsive when they put their proposals together the next contract this contract ends in december of uh at the end of the year in 2026 and we are in the middle of the rfp process now do we have only one company that's providing this right now we we initially in my understanding is we initially started off with two um and now we're down to one we're looking at a similar framework from the perspective of a multi-award so we have multi-a vendors um one of the other things that we are looking to add to this contract potentially is microtransit services so the riders choice program might be folded into this um proposal as well um but we're still you know working with the market to kind of get a feel for what makes sense what doesn't make sense one of the things that we did here which was a major concern was our insurance provisions um it seems to be a barrier for some firms to respond to um the proposal another barrier that we have quite frankly is that the um proposer has to have a a physical presence here in broward county to accommodate the vehicles and the maintenance of the vehicles they can't be you know somewhere in south miami uh they can't be up in palm beach county because as you can imagine the wear and tear on our vehicles would be extraordinarily high with dead heads when you're not actually moving our our passengers so um that is another a challenge that we have how is how is that impacting our 30 goal so we are looking at so right now um the last contract was 30 for the um for the selection criteria and so we're looking at something probably closer to 10. now i believe that contract was let in 2018 2013 right 2015 my okay 20 this is about 10 years old 2015 um and at that time um 2015 guess what didn't happen hadn't happened yet exactly so i think that a lot of emphasis was placed on the cost um and our emphasis now is going to be placed on the quality of the service um in this next contract and that's what you'll see in the bid so it'll be a shift okay it sounds like to me if i recall you gave some special sensitivity training to your bus drivers the general bus drivers it sounds to me these transit bus drivers i think there's 30 plus or minus of them needs some sensitivity training too so i would encourage you to put that in your in the requirement that they're going to go through in their next contract thank you okay thank you so before we let me sit down we need to do roll call that's it okay we have roll calls so but thank you all for your for your comments um can we go ahead good morning everybody raymond makeover here anthea pennant wallace here alan hooper here douglas coleman yeah i'm here twice phil allen here ardal damas is online online uh joining by um zoom good morning good morning ronald frazier is uh running late uh debbie madden and shay smith will be absent today sure thank you we have a quorum who's uh debbie madden and shay smith okay very good i understand all right but we have a quorum so we are good to move forward and so we want to just go ahead and invite you back up it's you again uh again good morning good morning i'm uh really excited to uh share with you and hopeful you know how this room treats me sometimes that everything goes as according to plan with our uh our electronics here so having said that today we're going to talk a little bit about what has happened since we last met i'm going to bring you up to speed on where we are with the primo program i'm going to talk a little bit about our bus stop improvement efforts and then um talk a little bit about the uh coa the comprehensive operational analysis um we have uh dubbed it uh transit forward 2024 so we've rebranded it so when you hear that that is what we're referencing since we last met so a couple things have happened some good things so first of all we just received a 20 million dollar grant wow from the fta for our low emissions program for our buses we are super excited to be able to accept that grant we are able to work on low emission procurements for our buses and what's even better is that we're appreciative of this board because there's a 40 percent match that we will be using the surtax to pay for so what that looks like is we'll have about 24 new buses that we'll be able to purchase with this grant plus the match we'll also be able to offer new training on those buses for our mechanics and we'll also be able to have spare parts for those buses so this is uh quite an accomplishment so overall right now in the last two years we've gotten more grant money than we have from a discretionary perspective ever and our total grant um take at this point is about 40 uh 45 million dollars um from the fta for low emission congratulations thank you thank you very proud of that our grant team will i'll pass that feedback on to our grant team also um one of the things that um is really exciting is that um our route 48 it's a service that runs um along uh 441 hillsborough us 1 uh and lions road it connects um into deer deerfield beach uh by popular demand our our um passengers were asking us to add the sunday service back and uh we did so we've been able to bring that service back so we're excited and at no additional cost for that um we also hosted uh industry days for our bus rapid transit program and so what we're doing is we're putting out a general engineering contract multi-award contract that will focus on our bus rapid transit service and we had the industry day similar to what we just talked about this is a way for us to engage with the market let them know what's coming and well in advance of when the rfps are due or even when the procurement comes out with the intent of always following up with one-on-ones which we did with the paratransit service recently um we also hosted the paratransit service and one of the things that we're super excited that we were able to do was to host um or support um the um career source broward uh their 13th annual paychecks for patriots job fair so this was a an amazing event that they hosted and doing this for about 13 years and they host this job fair um to uh try to connect people who are obviously in needs of work with um potential employers and um one of the things is is that we provided bus service to support that and we were able to transport about 70 people who needed jobs to those locations so that they could be a part of the job fair um so we are really excited to be part of paychecks for for um patriots not only did we help with the transportation we also were there as a vendor and uh taking in uh and having conversations with people who were looking for work um now so far you know the county is kind of on we're somewhat in a little bit of a hiring freeze right now so i don't know what the outcome is going to be for those applicants but what we do is we'll keep those um applicants on file and when opportunities become available we'll we'll reach back out to them um and uh the the one other thing that's exciting too is that we have been um working as you know with bso to improve the security on our fixed route service and um one of the things that happened in october uh that is incredibly uh happy to have occurred is that we were able to uh negotiate a deal and sign and execute a deal with bso for their real-time crime center to actually be able to look at our within our buses and see real-time what's going on in our buses so um we're doing that on the interior of our buses as well as our the exterior of our buses so we are truly a partner with law enforcement it's to their advantage to be able to have that access if they're uh looking at a crime it's not even related to us but it's also to our advantage to have that service available in case something happens on our system the the police can um look right in and assess the situation and and support it so real time it's real time yes sir now we are working through some you know it's always the technology sometimes it's not always compatible but we are really close to being able to have those systems talk to each other appropriately and i hope by the next time i come back i can tell you that it's turned on and working okay so the other thing is you know we are where are we right now it's kind of december and lots of fun things happen in december and one of the fun things that we are super excited to share is that we're doing a holiday promotion on our system and i'm gonna let you see a little bit about it we have this promotion that we're offering if you're have you ever heard of the uh show where people get in um a cab and they get asked questions and they can kind of answer the questions and they get money right you've heard about that tv show okay i see some nods it's a fun show to watch right well imagine that on a bus but however now we're not giving out money we don't have any to give but we do have passes and so we are doing the a pass a holiday pass cab uh bus is similar to that um where we will be um having an opportunity to ask people engage with our riders and ask questions and have them win um passes so it's one of those promotions for the holiday season that we're super excited to be able to bring to our passengers i want to spend a little bit of time talking about our ridership for 20 uh fiscal year 2025 um overall we had a ridership of about 26 million system wide that breaks down into multiple categories um we had about 23 uh a ridership of about 23 million on our fixed route service about 1.15 in our um paratransit service and uh a hundred thousand rides on our uh riders choice program and our community shuttle program uh captured about a ridership of 1.4 million and our late shift connect program captured about 12 000 trips what i want to say is that the um overall ridership was down about 0.13 0.13 percent however what we did see was a 282 percent increase over year over year from fiscal year 2024 to today with our late shift connect that is a program that the surtax has been very interested in uh and has supported very um vigorously and i'm pleased to share that we saw that significant increase why and how did we get there because we had a very aggressive advertising campaign that helped us raise awareness about the late shift connect just to remind everybody about what that is that is the service that's available for people who work that third shift who um aren't able to uh ride our system because it shuts down at a certain hour either before they go to work or after they leave work and so um that's a a concern we also saw a 68 percent increase i'm sorry so because i do have thoughts on that but uh how does it work exactly okay so what we do is we have a subsidy that we give to the passenger and so they have about thirty dollars that they can use to go i think about 15 miles or so right within the county um and so what they do is they register so they have to be residents of broward county to be able to take advantage of the service we actually have uh quite a few county employees that use it and and too um but what it does is it takes them from door to door so and it operates you know the hours that we don't but we don't just um because we shut down on average around 12 to 1 o'clock in the morning um but we offer this service for somebody that's starting at 9 if they're if we don't have any fixed-route service to support them um and then we allow them and an additional change that we made is we used to say that you have to go from your original destination to work and then from work back to your original to your home what we found is that our riders actually some of them that are working this third ship work two jobs so what we do now is we allow them to to go to a third location another employment location if they need to rather than going home and then that second that the last leg of that trip would be done on a fixed-route service and is it basically uber or something like that so right now we're using yellow cab taxi for that service um we are piloting it now with uber um and one of the things with the new paratransit contract we'll be looking at is pulling that all together into that contract and then tnc will likely pick that up and and then on the the writer's choice i'm i'm only picking the two that are the lowest although the one growing is good because that was kind of something we started right we were trying to grow it and so tell me about the writer's choice what is that the writer's choice program is uh very similar to lake shift connect however the population that is served through writer's choice is our paratransit passengers so you have to be in the paratransit program to be eligible to take advantage of writer's choice that service is also provided through yellow cab um the uh the um whoever needs to use that um this is this is for some of our um the the paratransit population that are more independent um they can use that service if they want to to go to work or go to trips or doctor's appointments whatever they need to to use it for um and it's a it's a great service and a lot of people do take advantage of it however this number is low but our intent is to see it grow so it's in lieu of the paratransit shuttle yep okay and and do we get that word out as well as we've gotten the late shift connect i say we do get it out we we have done kind of um promotions within the paratransit community so when people call into our call center we've made a you know made them aware of the services available we haven't done a um a mass media campaign right because it's just a different audience because it is a very contained and select group but we have done some marketing are we have we gotten the the numbers the ideal number of numbers no we would rather have a lot more people take advantage of it but um we are we are growing it and we will continue to promote it uh within the within the group sure yeah corey great chart great chart so if you're moving 26 million people a year you're moving 72 000 a day which probably is somewhere that's one way right and one way back could be the same person she could be the same person so as little as 36 000 people a day we're moving yep do we have any idea what we're spending to move 72 000 trips or 36 or 40 000 i mean people always ask me how much are we spending on buses well you know there's there's buses there's maintenance there's some are fared some aren't what percentage of the you probably don't have to answer this today but i'm just curious if we know what the cost is we know how many people now we're moving what percentage of it are we getting recovering and i guess the rest is being paid for out of our surtax or taxes right yeah so it's a combination of factors right so part of it is coming from our formula funding grant that we get from the fta which is available to all of the transit agencies in south florida the other part of it and significant part of at least the salary side of it is coming from the surtax um and then we also have um grants from fdot that help in particular support our express service um to uh so and then we have our farebox revenues as well and and we get a little bit of money from the local gas tax and then we get a little bit from concurrency too really a great great chart and hopefully we'll get more information as time goes on sure thank you thank you oh wait oh sorry do you want to go back yeah a little bit so go ahead so the 1.3 percent decrease in ridership do we know which routes this was on were there any route changes um what do you think we can do to get those riders back and because 1.3 of fixed ridership is 340 000 roughly so so it's 0.13 percent 0.13 so we basically stayed so we're we're pretty close to where we were um we did take a hit on our um breeze service a little bit but you know the numbers are statistically not you know significant however lost riders are lost rider we don't want to lose any of them um you know some of the the the issues uh sometimes when you see these kind of incremental decreases in ridership it could be because of employment factors um you know people's situation changes or you know they're able to buy a car and then they choose to do that rather than than ride the system and then our revenue hours uh were they increased or decreased are they the same revenue hours are the same except for we added that route 42 service okay do you think um going forward when you present this chart you can put it like in a line chart that shows the year over year compared to the previous year so there's context of these numbers and then we could easily see the shifts up and down in the ridership sure thank you so i'm i'm curious about um the demographics of the folks are we capturing that kind of information i just remember that there was a time where we were really trying to ensure that the next generation becomes more become more familiar with riding bus and we're starting to cultivate um that kind of behavior especially our college students wanting to make sure they're taking advantage of you know our our transit system and so i wasn't sure whether or not we had started down that road because i know the push has been just to get us back to pre-covid numbers um but i i still want to keep that in mind because we're building something that we hope um as our population increase over time that we have another generation of folks that can appreciate riding the bus we know in south florida people tend not to take the bus you know if you live in new york people are taking the buses all the time but i just want to make sure that we kind of keep tabs on that and i don't know if there's a mechanism to do that that was one thing and then the other thing as far as outreach have we looked into the faith base faith-based strategy to get our our churches and synagogues and whoever it is to to start advertising some of what we're doing so i don't know that we tapped into the faith-based market um let me take that away as an action item i'm going to look into it and see if there's something that we've ever done in the past and i just i don't know that we've done it but i know that we're not doing it now um but i'll i'll i'll find out and get back to you if i can ma'am right and then on the demographics we're not really tracking so the demographics we did have through the uh transit forward uh 2024 uh 20 40 sorry uh program we did capture the the comprehensive operational analysis we did capture some demographic information through that um i off the top of my head i can't remember the the breakdown but i can certainly get it to you um one of the things though that was was illuminating at best is that you know about 30 percent of our riders uh make under eleven thousand dollars a year okay okay so that was that income very important very much an imprint in my brain um you know and in terms of the college market um we do have a lot of students that that use us we do have a special pass for students um but the the other thing is is that we have been um reaching out to the elementary schools and some of the schools and doing programs with the schools to a to raise awareness about um transit and that as an option and we actually got an award for that i shared with you the last time i was here um so that is also part of the strategy to to get after the um the up and coming market to um convince them that transit's the best way absolutely athena i just want to i just want to share this too so the board has context we're looking and we talk about pre-covid ridership numbers but we have to remember there was a point in time that bct did 40 million rides a year so this number of 24 million rides shows us that there's a huge latent demand of riders that have ridden the bus historically this was back pre-covid um pre-uber which took a lot of our riders off because they had the choice of convenience of calling a ride sharing app but as the prices go up i see it as that's that's a core market that we should be hoping to recapture because those are people that don't need to be converted from driving to that they already have experience with the bus ridership and and that's the number i would like to always measure against is our all-time high because i would like to get back there eventually what year was that ray that you're referencing it's tough it's but it correlates almost exactly with um maybe 2007 there was two things that simultaneously affected it was covid not covid uh uber lyft and the 08 recession so i don't know exactly but i know if the old historical data and this is not a unique situation to bct this is not a thing this is across the country massive ridership just changes happened but that is a core group of people i think we can get back and i think we should constantly keep that in our mind is like those are the riders we want because that's 20 million riders off our roads and beneficial to the system sure i want to i want to chase that number ray can i talk to you offline because i hadn't heard that 40 million but i i want to i want to talk to you about that and i agree with you that if there if it was that much of a disparity that's certainly a warm market well if i can just chime in i think we have to balance that with the lift and all of what has happened since then yeah right because that's that's going to be there so you don't want to totally kill the opportunities that these individuals have making a living doing that as well so it's a delicate balance something to think about uh also um when i sat on the tma board for fort lauderdale which is transit transportation management authority um the the 2008 recession increased our ridership incredibly it was a big thing and the thing is there's choice riders and there's people that ride because they have to and an uber rider is is essentially a choice rider at the end of the day and and and then also some people you know when they can afford to have a car they won't have a car so when the economy is doing very well it it it takes away some of our riders who choose to drive a car but that's not to say that the the effort of getting 26 million riders for people who need the system is is is bad i think it's it's it's a cyclical thing and i don't think you can uh point to that because the 2008 recession was horrible it it really did drive a lot of people to uh become uh non-choice riders yeah yeah remember there's actually a spike in the way of ridership across systems well i appreciate the historical reference thank you okay is this thing going here okay so um we're going to talk about primo now which is another topic and i am well aware that the hook is coming so i'm going to try to go through this very quickly i'm happy to come back if you need me to to go through things in a little more detail um and i'm just going to like let you know where things are with primo i do want to point out that this beautiful bus right here is a wrapped bus that is out on the system promoting primo and i know that mr hooper this is something that you've been wanting us to do um and we have uh got it done holiday bus also a wrap it's wrapped yes the holiday one yeah but i can't tell you where it is right now it's out there somewhere it's like it's on the streets hey right no just just kidding just kidding okay um strategy so just a reminder i'm just in these next couple slides are just to bring you back to you know this conversation we've already had a lot but strategy is you know county-wide uh transit service um the goals are to improve mobility for all um implement equitable transit solutions so that we're we're making sure that we tap into the full market here in brower county to enhance economic development and financial stability to improve safety security and environmental stewardship and to integrate and serve communities um the other goal is to uh take care of mr allen your favorite places right so the economic engines of the county the airport seaport and convention center uh that's one of the uh connections that is very important to us overall remember we gained 200 miles of new transit service we're looking at a ridership of about 23 million on that new service about a hundred percent low or no emission buses and vehicles now the electric market is still where it is and we're struggling a little bit because of it but the reality is is that we're not ready to be in that space the market's not ready for us to be in that space so we're in the low emission space but with the light rail that is electric and so that will be 100 electric we'll have new intelligent transportation systems and lastly you know as a reminder we want to blend in and to the community and be an asset and not an eyesore excuse me before you i'm sorry the um low emission versus electric didn't the board the county commission did take a policy of electric only in the past there was a that led us to the yeah yeah there was originally um a compact that was signed with a bunch of cities around uh the country uh to try to go all electric um i think it was more of an aspiration than an actual you know hard fast goal i know that we were trying to get there by uh 20 30 35 that was the target time frame um but yeah i believe the board did take that action right yeah well how does that now interface with a growing demand or you get you talked about the grant that you had received for 20 million dollars or whatever so low emission versus electric only good good question thank you for it um you may recall we had this big signing ceremony um with the fta for 25 million dollars for our electric bus fleet um what happened as you know we we got the patera buses and unfortunately they didn't work for us or anyone else in the country as my colleague here um who helped us navigate that um bankruptcy process our colleagues in the county attorney's office and so um at the end of the day the fta because it's a discretionary grant the requirement is if you apply for low emission or no or no emission you have to stay with no emission um and so we we petition the fta to give us the opportunity to change that from no to low low just means hybrid it could be propane it's uh clean gas it's all those things right and um fuel cells etc and uh they initially were not big fans of giving us the opportunity to switch over from low to no and they were kind of asking us to give money back and we you know um held out and uh when the new administration came in we we took another bite at it and um the the policy shift was to allow certain communities to change from low to no from no to low sorry so no from electric to low emission this is this is kind of random but the connecting activity centers maybe i never actually understood this but is the county's land use plan for lrt is to connect the regional activity centers is that kind of how it works well this it's a good question and thank you raymond um the uh the these economic engines that we're talking about are county owned and they're the airport seaport and convention center okay you'll see the map and when i get to that well it eventually goes all the way out to sawgrass mills ball which is another major economic uh engine here in south florida my understanding is it's like the second largest tourist attraction in the state so you know it's right behind mickey i guess um but uh at any rate um those initial connections are really important to um make it very seamless to connect between the airport seaport and the convention center so is there any i this is kind of out of context because i remember we did have that update from the land use plan is there any other land use conversations or conversation tracks happening between the county's planning department and yourself or no right so the i the corridors that were selected from primo my understanding is that there's tod plans that are land use plans that are yes okay that's kind of remember yep yep weren't you at that meeting where we talked about it i remember someone came and gave a presentation to us yeah about the broward county next or something like that and that has some land use that's incorporated with primo so it's yes it's connected no i was thinking about the planning meeting i thought i saw you there maybe okay okay i'm moving on because i'm getting the hook how much time do i have six oh no okay real quick this is the primo network you've seen this before this is the broward county commuter rail south remember that's the air that connects um with the northeast corridor in miami we have three stations uh the airport hollywood and um south fort lauderdale i'm pleased to share that we did get our grant application in on time um we're trying to get about just north of 300 million dollars from the federal government to help pay for this project it's about 46 percent of the cost um fingers crossed that we're successful um and if we are um that'll be a great thing so just stay tuned for that and we'll keep you posted we put in about the the overall submission was about 5 000 pages and it took about a year for us to pull it together it included financial models ridership models it was quite a lift we were fortunate to be able to work with some of our consultants and staff uh to bring that home next slide i know we said six minutes but this is um do you mind if i keep asking a few questions all right go ahead so um would you mind i i know i asked this to gretchen and she related to you but it was too late but would you be able to provide us slides in the future of each plan and just a very general itemized bucket of costs so we can kind of better understand the estimated investment of 712 million so because from it looks like at this point if you add up all the rail it's pushing two billion and that's without the bridge or the tunnel which would add another 500 to another billion so in total this project's looking like three billion and i'm kind of wondering where a lot of those costs are going um because to my understanding we're still programmed and i know there's a lot of variables in the air between the fvcr and group of mexico and brightline depending on track rights but if we're going to be spending of upwards of two already two billion and upwards of maybe three billion i would just want to make sure that we're doing better than the one hour frequency that was originally proposed for this route because if we need to spend another 500 million to quad track certain segments and create bypasses then i think we should do that additional investment if we can get the frequency down to 15 minutes but to put three billion dollars into a real corridor which trust me i want this corridor i mean i try all the time it's more convenient for me i just think we should be as we're doing these numbers get the best bang for our buck go ahead phil all right the last time that this board considered the issue of the coordinate the mega project of being primo and what was projected cost that number was like two billion dollars over the next five ten years now if you look at the projects i'm understanding that there is a estimate of five billion dollars in that corridor now and it goes back to the concern of how do we ensure that these projects that we are i don't know what when we look at this project as a board we're looking at it and in a totality for i'm sorry in individual projects that the uh commuter rail the other issues and there's no focus on how these projects interface to each other it goes back to the concern that that this board had taken a position in the past being to the to the county administration is the need to have some kind of a monitor that that looks at the issues of what what what if you get this piece of the project but the next piece of the project which is integrated here doesn't proceed on schedule or that one part of the project starts to impact the the hardware that is used for the rail what whether those are the same projects or how you interface those projects whether it be the uh airport hub uh the whatever intermodal center the donut and yeah the intermodal center interface and how do you get from leg to leg from a for the potential passenger perspective but also how that drives the overall project so that is an ongoing concern that i don't see at this time being addressed yeah and and mr allen you have definitely raised this issue before um and i know kevin has come up and addressed the county administration's overall um coordination of the projects in the in particular between the airport seaport and the convention center because there's a lot going on there right we just opened up the 17th street uh bypass the hotel which is absolutely stunning beautiful and just amazing uh we'll be opening up uh soon too we have the um the uh convention center expansion we have parking garage that we're building in that area with about 50 4800 spaces we're looking at adding additional parking at the the seaport i can promise you just this past monday all of directors and a staff were in a room together doing that coordination and so um i i i'm gonna have kevin come back here and explain that i know we have ismi here too and she can talk to that as well because she's now in charge of the public works department but there is that coordination uh is happening uh at the county uh with with all of us because we are so codependent and if we don't do it right to your point if there's not that coordination we're going to be wasting a lot of money and in each other's way well we as i pointed out in the past we have not us but as a nation we have had these kinds of project mega projects which great looked great on paper until you started to interface all these elements whether that was the uh the boston fiasco the big dig right uh the alaska bridge to nowhere california high speed rail heavy rail or a speed fast rail or whatever they want to call it high speed rail yeah where you they've gone ahead and built all of the overpasses to allow the project to proceed but the big project which is the high speed rail is dead because of the cost so why did we build all those bridges there's overpasses in california to support a project that's never going to proceed for the canadian or the uh alaska issued with the uh bridges to nowhere so that's the kind of focus that we need to to continue to monitor that right to see that we're not going out and buying something with the intent that it's going to interface with another project but they don't match or that it starts to drive the the people mover whatever the current talk is that that influences the project for south county so that's an ongoing concern um if i my take on on the uh convention center seaport airport those are again you're taking people that that hotel is going to have an 80 occupancy maybe 85 occupancy on 800 rooms and a lot of people are double occupants so they're that you're taking like a thousand to 1200 cars off the road that are going to be going from 17th street to the airport or they're going to want to go to sawgrass mills because that's what tourists like to do uh so that i think is super important uh and then connecting to the seaport uh again you've got cruise cruise riders that uh are typically either trying to find a way back to the airport i think it's a seamless i think those are good moves okay and then i i believe that if you do that first and then you start working that uh south commuter rail and then you start working towards getting to sawgrass you're gonna find i think you're right you're gonna find some bumps in the road but i also think that if you do it the way you're sequencing it now it's probably the correct way to go um just being a native from fort lauderdale living here my whole life and then the other thing is the sawgrass don't underestimate the demand to want to go to sawgrass so that's an anchor out west and then you've got downtown and the airport and the seaport here i think it's you have to connect big anchors like that and then my other thought is why are we here why are we here my opinion there's a there's uh two words let's go okay let's just go let's do it let's get it done and and at some point we've got to kind of throw a little bit of fear away and and and go with the wind and move forward and let progress happen the big dig to me cost a ton of money biggest success i've ever seen in the long run okay and that's the same thing with this uh writer's choice in the connect late night connect right now it's costing us money but in the long run over time stuff is going to pay off and it's going to work and and and i think your sequencing is good so i in my opinion i'm like let's go let's knock it out thank you if i i again just give me the eye so i just want to show you i'm just going to fast forward very quickly um i'd like to show you this is the airport seaport connector begin our flyover facing north approaching the interchange we reach the proposed intermodal center the western hub for the airport seaport convention center connector project extending east the orange alignment illustrates a potential route first developed by a previous study this path curves north near northeast 7th avenue runs to i5 95 and eller drive then turns east toward the seaport along the way we spot nearby development including the fpl power plant and overhead transmission lines mackintosh road appears below linking to southport while eisenhower boulevard stretches toward northport the port administration building comes into view with the first potential station site marked in blue an alternate alignment and station location are shown as well as we move deeper into the port cruise terminal 19 appears to the north followed by terminal 29 to the east and terminal 26 to the northeast with the palm garage nearby panning westward cruise terminals 18 and 21 emerge with terminal 25 just south the alignment then turns west toward eisenhower boulevard passing fuel farms and port energy facilities before continuing north at northport we see cruise terminal 4 and the heron garage then terminal 2 with the convention center garage and another possible station location the existing convention center and its new expansion rise to the east followed by the omni convention center hotel near southeast 17th street finally the flyover concludes at the potential north terminus's station site along eisenhower boulevard just south of southeast 17th street broward county transit powered by primo okay so i'm going to just kind of not do that again sorry um can i just ask was there a consultant that is currently doing that environmental study that this is part of that project yes because i did see that they commented about the previous environmental study that was aborted because of the change in federal yeah that data i mean that project that 10 year or that project was last studied 10 years ago and i think while a lot of the suggestions are still valid uh it still shows the need for the interface back to the airport project and how that works okay yep yep yes sir i just wanted to say one thing about the lrt to the lrt to the board too the reason i was asking for a bucket list of breakdown costs hard costs soft cost and contingencies is there was a report that came out from new york university called as a transit cost study and they put all these researchers and phd people in a room and basically gave them data to analyze and figured out why it's so expensive to build in america nowadays and one of the big outcomes was that politically projects don't want to go over budget so what we see happen is that contingencies constantly get built in and so that we can stay within budget but the contractors and consultants are really good at consuming those contingencies so they'll make it match that new price even though we could have taken a little bit of political heat and got it for less so i would just want to make sure to understand the percentage of contingency right so we follow the fta guidelines for contingencies so they have stipulated a schedule based on the risk and the point you are in the project so the planning stage has a certain contingency and then it goes up and you have more um less of a contingency obviously when you get to the engineering phase when you have your hard uh engineering done um and so so that we follow the fta the study that you're referencing there's also a study by eno which is a think tank organization that did a phenomenal study on what it costs to build in america versus to build abroad um and part of what our challenge is is regulation um it is a fear of risk uh that's driving some of the the costs um and then the failure to innovate so i encourage you to kind of look at that one too because that's just another data point for for consideration i'm going to stop but before i stop i have to leave you wait i feel like this is super important is there a reason why we're so okay i didn't know there was another engagement i just i mean okay i mean okay i i i mean i personally take time off of work and my work my my income is tied to when i work so i came here today so i i'm feeling a little rough we kind of have to stick to the schedule because we we do have other presenters but i didn't know that there was a time limit and these are huge projects with probably the most amount of money we're spending and i feel like we're just not having a very fruitful conversation i feel like it's kind of being shut down all right so this is what i would suggest um we may need to table this portion i don't know whatever the question is i just wish i was uh told beforehand that we're going to have limited time to talk on these projects well we have an agenda but it's not time it's not made it's not stuck to time it is did you did you go through the um the session the prep sessions that we have yeah it's an agenda but it doesn't say how much time you go through the prep session okay i go through the prep session and then i meet with my group individually and we have our own call with 20 people on it and then we go through it as a group and we talk about points that we would like to discuss all right so this is about whatever the question is let's move it i mean now this is a more uncomfortable situation for me because now i feel like the pressure's on me but well the thing is we have an agenda so we have to kind of stick to the agenda we have other presentations that need to be made so you know we've we've been asking a lot of questions and if she has another obligation we don't want to deter that that's why we have an agenda we want to stick to the timeline as much as we can i just i just didn't know there was a time portion tied to the agenda yeah there is but we can't be here until midnight it's only 10 40. well i took the day off i'm not trying to be here till midnight i just my questions aren't going to hold us to midnight okay i don't think it's fair i feel like i'm being silenced honestly no you're not you've been allowed to speak as much as you wanted i'm not as much as i wanted okay go ahead and ask the question the question is important is that i was i was going to ask about the type what level what position we're at with the lrt and the transit mode share is it elevated that grade because i see these renderings it's accurate and i wanted to bring and i wanted to bring this point to the board there was a project that just finished in toronto this week and i it was an instagram post i shared it with uh roy and gretchen last night and they just finished this project and it was 500 million a mile and it was a streetcar and it's a lesson that we could take because this project just opened this streetcar this light rail system goes eight miles an hour there's videos of it in toronto brand new 500 million a mile sitting in traffic endlessly so the mode we pick and the vehicle type we pick is going to be hypercritical it was it got such a big it turned into such a big explosion in toronto that the mayor actually went on reddit and started taking suggestions of how to improve it so i would never want to get to that point and that's why i want to spend a little bit of time now to have these conversations okay what's your question my question is when are we going to be seeing a study in terms of the the mode and is it going to be elevated or accurate sure so i i can tell you we're in study now so we're in the pd and e phase for the first segment which has independent utility which is between the airport seaport and convention center that's elevated and that's that's that's we've already committed to that as we snake our way through downtown fort lauderdale and and make our way to the fec corridor we're going to have to either go under or over that because you can't be at green you can't have you can't co-mingle um two different types of light rail and heavy rail you just can't or commuter um heavy rail freight rail can't do that and so then as we go west the thought was is that we would be at grade and then all the way out to uh for uh out to sawgrass mills would be at grade and so i know there's been some discussion about should we be elevated shouldn't should we be at grade we can do whatever but whatever at grade i mean it's already 1.3 billion dollars and some change to go 3.5 miles elevated on property that we actually own when we start going into the roads along broward boulevard and etc and if we want to be elevated which you know it's like we're agnostic about which way we go but we just have to have the funding and i got to tell you that i am super hopeful that we're successful working with this with the feds on the broward commute around south project and we get that 300 million dollars but the reality is we have a financial plan that assumes that 50 percent of every investment is coming from the feds the reality of us getting that is not happening so if in fact we want to spend more and go bigger we can absolutely i i am fine with that it's just that if we do that ray seriously we just need to understand that how we pay for it right which i know you and i've already talked about which is fair but the construction cost of the valued engineer segment that fdot just completed for the 27th ave potential expansion of metro rail is showing similar cost to ours and that's a county south that's pulling from the same labor and construction and pool i'm sorry metro rail the this is a recent study that was just done for metro rail expansion and the cost per mile is equivalent of our accurate lrt system so miami metro rail is hyper successful because it can move a lot of people very fast and it can move them far distances i would love for it to be grade separated the price is the same cost well i would i'd be happy to look at that study i am not aware of it ray i haven't seen it um and i i'd really truly be more than happy to look at it and have my team look at it and see is there an opportunity what are they doing that we might be able to learn from i feel like we should be seriously having that conversation there's a very successful rail system in miami-dade we should almost be working to use the exact same train cars sets track gauge and everything that's the closest source of knowledge and it's a well-used system and that's 75 78 000 riders a day so i what we want to do is we want to do best practice and wherever that is in the world is the model that we should be we should be following granted that local information is helpful to know but we've got consultants that in fact the consultant we just hired has worked in dubai and other major rail investment projects and we have that talent on our team now and so we're the reason we want that talent on our team is so that we can look globally at solutions in addition to miami and i'm not saying that miami clearly they they have some success stories and it is a it's a good additional data point but i don't think that that's the only data point we should consider right no of course but for cost relevancy i think it's important that if what it's saying it cost to miami no they have some costs ray we talked about this previously so miami is a fully developed system so when javier came and presented to you all um the my kind of counterpart in miami he was explaining the reason that they have differentials in their cost assumptions is because they have a 20 year like well-developed system with a variety of different modes and that they have all of the sunk costs associated with maintenance and you know it's just a different level of assumption and they also thankfully for them like the cost that they're not going to have to worry about likely and again i haven't seen the study so i'm just guessing ray is that they've already built out their maintenance facilities they already have certain to and when you're talking about sunk costs they've already made those investments so their overall cost factors are lower compared to us as a new start right because we're going to have to make all those investments first time now as we build on right those costs incrementally will come down because we will have already made those investments so um if i could ask are we studying it is the question hold on a second here i want to be respectful of your time and i think that as board members we need to be cognizant of of that we need to be respectful of our presenters when they come and they have a specified time to deliver their presentation we need to be respectful of that we also need to keep the agenda moving if there are questions additional questions that need to be asked that requires an extensive explanation you can make an appointment to meet with whoever the presenter is and get more information because one some of us are at a disadvantage to some of the information because we don't know some of what your the questions and uh that you're you're raising we may not be aware and you're asking questions and forcing them to present on something that they were not prepared to present on it is not there and i want to be respectful to uh the county i said this the last meeting that we know for sure that we were established because the county wanted to hold its own establishment and leadership accountable so there's no need to keep pushing or uh administrators to provide information that they're not doing their jobs i want us to be respectful of that and i want to go ahead and move on corey i know you have another yeah can i just show you how excited our business partner is and ray you know what i'll do can you and i please meet again with with gretchen and we'll go through some of your concerns i'd rather keep the meetings on record we can invite you back in february on february 6th if you're available corey yeah also to be fair my ideas are not my these are not relationship-based conflicts that i have i'm not attacking any administrator these are ideas and thought conflicts that i'm having right but and that's okay and this the the language of the ballot was an independent cert tax oversight board to represent the taxpayers not to represent the county but some of the questions that you're asking requires some time and due diligence for the presenters to properly respond to you and you're putting them at an unfair disadvantage if you this is not a question that you raised during our prep meetings and you then then you're putting them at a disadvantage it was raised during our prep meetings inappropriately and they may not have all the information to respond so i'm just saying ask your question and if you're able to answer answer it but we we have to put some time limits on some of these presentations because all of us cannot be here all day if i can just leave you with uh with this thought this is one of the brand managers for the new um uh hotel the omni hotel and this is what she says about the airport seaport connector hi my name is jody doyle i'm sales manager for the brand new omni it's going to be a changer for the morning travel in 2030 31 and they're very excited to be able to get their guests from the port to the airport to the hotel very easily thank you and that's it thank you for your time thank you for are we are we not going to talk about are we not going to talk about the coa the coa is over a year delayed like how how are we just ignoring this can we just go ahead and table that conversation it's been tabled for a year there's writers right now that are waiting on it this prompt was promised to us and the end of last year december and i followed up with it at every single level i had friends that go to county meetings and now it was supposed to come in december and it's still not presented i'm sorry i don't i don't get how we're just ignoring this so the the coa is um we are finished the uh initial phases of it we are having conversations with the county commissioners uh as we speak uh we've had uh four meetings with them because of sunshine we have to meet with them one-on-one once we have fully briefed the commissioners we will come and talk to the public as well as the uh surtax board but i just don't understand the delay it was supposed to be done december it was on everyone's homework it was due last year like what is the delay is it the county administrators is it the commissioners not having time in their agenda are we delaying it because we just want to delay it because as these as these bus improvements are delayed we can't create the correct bus shelter network to protect our vulnerable providers because without the coa we don't know what the routing is going to look like so our we can't even move our bus shelter program but in the meantime what i do see is hundreds of millions of dollars we just signed off this year going to public's works and roads that really what know how to use the money and they have a well-oiled machine so i just don't understand why our bus riders aren't getting the same priority honestly i'm not sure i'm just gonna say this referencing here go ahead no no go ahead corey i was just gonna say that you know personally um you know our riders are the most important people to us and we want to see them get all the improvements that they deserve and i just want that to be on the record thank you you're welcome but i i'm i'm just gonna keep because if we're going to do this last word thing if our riders are the most important then prioritizing the coa to finish it and having it published would be a priority i we could ask our riders if we take a survey when they when we did this survey for the original coa and they went on board and surveyed people everyone said the same exact thing i would like to see more frequent buses i would like to have an actual bench to sit on and i would like shelter we're pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars a year from this program and we can't even respond to what our survey takers on our buses took this is ridiculous i'm sorry so ray i i believe we have had presenters here that have demonstrated that shelters are being directed i'm not sure what not because athena i understand this may be a antia i understand this maybe at a um a more technical level because i'm very like interested involved in this stuff we cannot build our bus shelter network out until this coa is published because the coa might change the routing and so when we understand the routing and the recommended bus stop spacing is when we're going to have a more definitive list of where we can build shelters corey do you want to add to to and then that's it okay explain the coa thing please i'm sorry coa explain the whole process like not the whole process but just in a reader's digest version of so the coa is a comprehensive operational analysis it's a best practice that transit agencies do roughly every 10 years to look at their transit system to see if there's any changes that would be warranted based on new origin and destination population growth etc things that would warrant some kind of action to change your network um so that's the coa and um for us what uh we've done is we've looked at broward we've we've made certain um assumptions that we don't want to leave any uh transit deserts out there that we're leveraging um both fixed route service primo as well as micro transit to cover the county and improve our coverage we also recognize that our riders are looking for more frequent bus service better connections and they are looking for shelter i will tell you that what's driving our bus shelter investment is not the coa but more the fact that we are looking at um the the existing ridership numbers at certain locations and working our way down to provide we started off at like 24 riders for dust bus stop working our way down to get to as many bus stops as we can based on the ridership and i think we're at 10 riders per bus stop um our county administrator has made a requirement for us to which which i talked about the last time i was here to reach out to um the communities or the cities and share in the responsibility for the long-term maintenance of these investments so some of those activities are driving where we're making the investment in terms of bus shelters because the county um is that's that's the preference in that that cost sharing model for um the maintenance of the bus shelters um but i appreciate you allowing me to the opportunity to come here today to talk to you all and i hope you all have a happy holiday thank you thank you all right um maribel i know you have some exciting updates for us yes we do good morning everyone maribel ferriciano rower county office of economic and small business development first i would like to start highlighting how we're working together with the previous department you just heard from we work work closely with corey and her team to make sure we're part of the outreach that industry day we're there to make sure that the business community is aware of the projects that are coming up and our small businesses or certified small businesses are also aware of those opportunities at the airport we recently have the forloaded hollywood international airport industry day at the convention center in addition to that we participate on those projects as well to make sure our small businesses are aware of the opportunities and the convention center as well the next event i wanted to highlight is on november 5th we had a very successful surtax oversight board map opportunities event where we highlighted the projects that are coming up in fy26 map projects that are coming up from brower county and then we partnered with two of the municipalities that also have a lot of projects coming up next year to explain to our business community what are the projects that are coming up next year what are the processes and the procedures you need to follow to successfully bid on those projects and we had great attendance here it was here in this room we had over 80 participants that included both large companies certified businesses small companies and community partners that are very interested in participating in surtax projects or that they're already participating and that they want to continue to be part of the program the two cities we work with was for lauderdale and miramar and we're going to continue to do these workshops we have been doing them for the last few years and we continue to rotate and invite additional cities because we want to collaborate with the cities to tell the story of all the surtax projects that are coming up that are both funded and as part of brower county projects but also as part of the municipal projects you're all familiar with this information we want to update you on a quarterly basis on how we're doing reviewing surtax projects for both the county and our municipalities uh to date over one hundred and one hundred and seventy set one hundred and seventeen projects that are county projects we have reviewed totaling one billion dollars and the average cb goal on those is 29 percent and then on the municipal projects 151 projects reviewed to date and this is as of the close of fy25 that's september again 33 percent average on those projects totaling approximately over 416 million going to our local certified small businesses and this is all the projects that have been reviewed then we go into the projects awarded and here you can see for county projects these are the projects that have been awarded we're talking about 69 projects on the county side uh on the municipal side uh 56 here you can see the average goals for the projects that have been awarded for county we're at 38 percent average certified small business goals on the municipal side we're averaging 40 percent uh cbe goal and then total average 39 percent so we're doing really well not only assessing those goals but next you're going to see how my primes are exceeding these goals i have a few slides where i'm going to share with you projects that where the primes are not only meeting the goal that has been established for these projects but they're exceeding the goal and sometimes it's twofold it's not just a few percentages it's twofold here you can see the list we can get started and it's a very diverse projects right we are constantly doing outreach to try to recruit additional companies to get certified with us on all the different industries that we need small businesses uh to participate so we're talking about sideways sidewalk improvements we're talking about um improvements streets improvements we're talking about alleyway improvements drainage um if we go to the next slide we're talking about bridge repairs uh so again very diverse scopes as part of these surtax projects where we have cbe's successfully participating and primes successfully using and exceeding the small business participation goal which we know is a priority for this board as well the next slide we have additional projects that have exceeded uh our goals and here you can see on the second one it was 35 percent goal they they met a hundred percent that means my small local certified small business was the prime for this project so again that's a celebration for our office we are constantly celebrating those opportunities where our local certified small businesses work work as primes and we're sharing that on social media we're sharing that on our newsletters on a weekly basis because we want to tell the story we are hiring local businesses that are creating local jobs to uh support our infrastructure projects what why do you think that is is is it because now over time a lot of these companies have gotten stronger in their business model and now they're able to take on more responsibility it's a combination of factors um i think it's a lot of awareness right that this is a dedicated source of funding for the next 25 years originally 30 years so we have a lot of companies that are now we have been very very successful recruiting more companies that have transportation and infrastructure related uh skills in addition to that some projects have at the right size for my small businesses to serve as primes as well right so because we have projects that are smaller mid-sized projects but we also have multi-million dollar projects like the ones uh corey spoke about so i think also the fact that the small businesses are also able to serve as primes on those projects that are just the perfect size for them to serve as primes and some of them are also able to join ventures with other cbes so they can work together uh and that's what happened on the bypass project as well that the prime uh for the design part was a cbe and then the subcontractors were also cbes so on the paratransit um bid that's coming up are we are we lowering the percentage from 30 to 10 percent or is the plan to maintain the 30 which project are we talking about power transit that corey just spoke about i i will have to go and see what the goal is for that project and i'll definitely come back to the board and let you know yeah just i'm just curious but it's great all great news but go ahead i'm sorry yeah and uh and again paratransit um the way we assign the goals is we look at our directory to look how many certified small businesses we have on that specific scope to be able to assign the goal based on the availability of cbes in my directory so we are whenever the goals are under 30 or on under 25 i work with our outreach team to start doing targeted recruitment to recruit additional cbes under those scopes because i know that i need additional to be able to meet at least my 30 okay and based on their capacity i imagine the companies need to have the capacity to be able to deliver on the projects and and then again as part of the procurement process then is when you look at experience capacity performance on previous projects and all of those things okay and and this is just just a few of the projects when i have to share with you some of the photos uh this is the highlight for the college avenue phase two project uh the commitment was 40 percent and the attainment was 54 and this was you can see the different scopes for the cbes uh as compared to the primes uh next it was the coral coral springs city of coral springs project and this was alleyway improvements the prime and cbes was self-performing and this was uh 61 percent uh cbe attainment and the next one we want to share with you is this roadway drainage system repairs uh where also primes and cbes were uh part of the project 85 percent commitment 89 percent attainment and the economic impact analysis is also really important for us because we want to show you how are we doing uh on these projections where we are using our implant model to basically tell you what is the economic impact of these projects that have been reviewed to date so you know in this case you can see uh direct impact based on the 125 awarded projects and this is only awarded projects we're talking about 643.5 million to be paid to awarded vendors jobs created over 3 000 jobs created here in the county and that's direct jobs 258 million paid to wages for employees for these awarded projects 271 million spent by awarded vendor on materials services equipment etc and then on the indirect and induced impacts we're talking about 336 million generated uh due to all other expanding and materials and providers and then an additional 1700 jobs created so if you look at the total impact of these awarded projects we're talking about 980 million total over 5 000 jobs and this is what our commitment is about this is what your commitment and your direction is about using our local small businesses being intentional as we're reviewing all these projects continuing to do outreach to in to make sure that our business community understand what the opportunities are not just now but for the next 25 years to be successful supporting our local economy creating our local jobs awesome and next is the economic impact definitions we've shared with you uh on our previous uh meetings and that's basically uh again the direct impacts is i want the contract i pay my employees and i pay the businesses supplies etc the indirect impact is basically my employees and my bit and the businesses are paid supplies and then they pay uh their subcontractors etc and then they induce impact is all the money that is circulating within our local economy um so also the added benefits added value as part of the work that we're doing and now i can take any questions that's exciting exciting stuff i really am excited about just hearing how much we're spending with our our small businesses and then the jobs that's that are being created from that board members any anyone great job thank you so much thank you and i i especially appreciate that we keep the dollars local when we're investing like this rather than it being used by much larger contractors that are non-local that then ship the money somewhere else so it helps the induced impact is amazing thank you thank you thank you everyone very good thank you so much all right i think next we have public works i think is it public works office of pardon me yes so good morning and thank you for having me here my name is sis me ajala i was basically invited to say hi i introduced myself nothing else so this might be the shortest presentation you get today which is good um being a little bit more serious i joined brower county about four months ago i am an assistant county administrator working with administrator saparo i am really happy to be here to give you a little bit of my background i just came from palm beach county after serving six years with them i've been dealing in what i'm gonna call capital improvements in public works for the vast majority of my career before being with palm beach county i was with montgomery county in maryland and then i made it to florida and here i am my current portfolio includes uh i'm gonna say all things capital works related right so i get the pleasure of working with lenny b alpando who is the director of public works and environmental services and that department includes everything related to construction to highways to capital improvements to water utilities environmental permitting and all those exciting departments as you can imagine every time we talk about built environment so with that said it is my pleasure to be here i look forward working with you all and interacting with you all and i heard you loud and clear when you said that you will like county administration to come back and provide that broader overview of how the projects come together so i made a note and i will certainly take it back to the county administrator with that said has been a pleasure very good very nice to meet you hello sir tax oversight board i'm leonard valpando i'm the director of public works and environmental services it's been a long time since i've presented to you um i'm kind of presenting to you and one of my other titles that's not up there is a chief innovation officer for broward county and if you recall when i started speaking with you uh in the beginning of the surtax it was about data and you know innovative technologies and finding ways to get information to people so that they can hopefully make better decisions about how they you know choose to get around the county and i'm happy to say we're in the middle of a pilot for a project that you funded that i'm very excited about and it really kind of came about because of you know that very very serious flood that we had in um april of uh 2023 i believe it was and the estimates were that up to 5 000 vehicles were lost as a result of that and um i got a lot of calls people saying gosh you know i you know one of the chairs of one of the political parties called me and said you know i lost my mini cooper and you know the road i started going down and i was stuck and our own uh chief resilience officer for broward county lost her minivan uh thousands of people found themselves stranded in the middle of traffic and couldn't turn around they couldn't get anywhere and um you know there's the water took their vehicle from them and so we started looking at well how could we help people get access to information that might prevent that from happening in the future other than doing what i did which is by the most jacked up pickup truck i could so that hopefully i could still get around as well as um try to memorize the roads that i had driven down that were full of water but i still found myself driving down broward boulevard in three plus feet of water and actually had to get my truck repaired after that but nevertheless hopefully this is the beginning of preventing those kinds of things in the future or at least minimizing them significantly and we call it the rapid alert and information network and essentially uh it's modeled after things that you might see in bar county which is in texas they essentially have a lot of uh flood ways which we're not familiar with here we have a lot of flood plains and in general in a flood plain the water rises fairly slowly and evenly and so that's why until these really really large events happened we hadn't noticed these sort of very rapid incidences of just flooding occurring very quickly in in giving you no time to respond they're in fact very familiar with that out west because in what's called a flood way you know you essentially have a low-lying area that's dry it's like a dry creek bed and when it when it rains very heavily water comes from all over and that thing turns back into a river and the road goes through it and you go from one minute being a dry road and the next minute it's under 12 feet of water and they're they're used to that kind of thing and so they already had some pretty good technologies and they provide this type of service to the public where they show you the sensors and right now they would be green which means there's no flooding in those areas but the public has access to that information they could put out public alerts give it to first responders you know give it to the mass transit facilities give it to you know ways and you know google earth and google maps and all those so that we can hopefully get it to you as well but essentially they would they would change color when there's a lot of flooding and so you kind of use the you know the traffic signal uh methodology here where you basically are saying if it's red you know that's not a good idea you probably want to stay away from that road and so essentially we uh would be able to get that data to you by installing a pole and putting on that pole a camera but it's not a full-time camera it doesn't record anything it's literally only there for validation purposes and you physically have to turn it on it doesn't record you see it for a moment yep it's actually flooding the sensor is not lying to me i see that there's flooding on the road it has a rain gauge like essentially a tipping bucket that would measure the amount of rain how quickly it's falling and then there's telemetry there's um soil moisture sensors and there's a pressure transducer which would measure the depth of flooding at that intersection and so we would be able to provide that information to our system that we would then share with the public so that they can see which roads might be flooded and then eventually we want to pair it with ai so that you could maybe before you leave work for the day if you know it's raining say hey you know are any of the uh roads flooded on my way to my daycare or to my you know home or my work in the morning or what have you and the way we do that is by installing these pressure transducers in the existing uh drainage infrastructure at intersections that are identified as being a flood prone or a problem places where we've identified this in the past and this is essentially what it looks like that's a completed installation that that we currently have running and um one of the ways i remember from the very beginning that you guys definitely want to leverage surtax revenues we don't want to just pay for this ourselves if we can get other people to pitch in and and cooperate and so we actually are in the process of doing interlocal agreements with um the cities listed on this map the large coastal cities which are the ones that you know sort of are the you know experience it most frequently and uh as part of our interlocal agreements what's going to happen is those partner cities would be provided the uh equipment by us and then they would pay for the installation and put it in the right of way and so they would pick up that cost as well as i believe it's a thousand a year that they would send us for maintenance because obviously once we do this it's not just one and done because you know these equipment uh you know these sensors might need to be updated upgraded maintained you know there's going to be a number of instances where we might have to over time cycle out the technology go and clean them out and make sure that they're still functioning well and so essentially we're in that phase right now and we're going to begin uh giving the polls to the cities and having them install them um bringing the ilas uh you know back to the board so that they can approve everything and then really it's it's infinitely scalable right a lot of people ask me like well how big is the network the network is basically as big as we need it to be right so initially it's in the most uh critical areas and as time progresses it could move and expand into thousands of sensors just depending on funding availability on you know need essentially and ultimately we would take all of this information like we had the national weather service reach out to us and say hey we would love to get this data to use it for forecasting and for you know some of the bulletins we put out about you know what's happening during a you know hurricane or something like that and we can use that and combine it with all of those pieces of information and as the sensors are there and they start to learn when it rains this much for this long and the water rises this quickly and this you know spatially and you know this high then we would start to train ai to hopefully be able to predict in the future so rather than tell you hey don't go that way it's flooded in which case it might be too late for you we'd like to start giving you a warning that in the past when it's raining this much this quickly or it's predicted to rain this much this quickly we have seen these types of water elevations and so we would give you sort of like a you know an advisory saying you may not want to go this way because if everything holds true we predict that there will be flooding on these streets and you might want to find an alternate route and so that will be built out through these various ai integrations that we would be putting in place i don't know if this video is going to play but yeah so it kind of basically shows you a little bit about how the software would work and basically forecast the um the changes in flood elevation and predict where we think the sensors would go underwater and you can see there the red is where those sensors predicted that they would be underwater and then you could see how that would work and then of course it goes back to normal and this is just more of the same just to kind of show you you know what happened during helene and how some of these areas became adundated that were you know obviously dry in the existing and so uh we would be able to predict you know not only road flooding but you know structure flooding flood impact depths that kind of stuff which is why national weather service wants access to the information so the more robust our network and the more sensors we have it can start to help people you know make better decisions about how to get where they need to go whether or not you know they want to ride their bicycle that day or you know what what sort of mass transit might be a better option and so ultimately the system would have a dashboard at some point you'd have all this extra information and um it'll get as big as i guess we can afford to make it so yes and that was one of the questions uh i'm not sure if you saw that yeah i did and that's what i was kind of alluding to which is that so we we are coming up with several budget proposals for you for the for the next year for the next phase but it essentially doesn't have like a fixed size because ultimately we would ask you for a certain amount of money that would be our ideal sort of growth pattern um if that money wasn't available we would do less sensors if there was more money available we could do more sensors essentially uh some of our partners some of the cities um have decided they need more sensors than we're able to provide so they're going to be actually putting in some of their own sensors just of their their own volition and they've agreed that even if we don't provide them the material they would share the data with us and and potentially even let us manage the data so that we don't end up with a bunch of disjointed technologies that don't communicate with one another which is unfortunately how a lot of these things tend to happen so we're trying to make sure that that we can manage it and then i don't know if you know off the top of your head roughly what we're going to be asking for for next year have you have you gotten that far yet right we would we would ultimately at some point need enough people that could go around on a regular basis and make sure the sensors are repaired and maintained and as well as managing the the software that you just saw we would we would procure software and then of course we'd have to maintain it and make it available and you know provide that information to for example google maps and other entities and so the staffing would be related to technology mapping and ultimately maintenance in the field the expectation is that that will be primarily surtax funding correct that would be the expectation yeah that we would provide that backbone to the system as a service for everyone who's trying to get around broward county as part of map which is kind of one of the things again it brings it full circle to me that when we talked about the surtax in the beginning it was it had a lot of different pieces but one of them was trying to leverage technology and bring you know sort of the future to people and them being able to experience you know getting around broward county you know in sort of like the way that they you know use the internet versus the very sort of manual way that it currently is so all right you have any questions that's it for me yeah i've got a couple then if you can answer them yeah this is initially is a test right so right now we on our initial funding got enough money to partner with those four cities and provide a sort of a seed right a test of validating the technology yes what what is the cost of this test number one number two if it's successful what's the cost to implement the program and number three how much surtax money are you looking for because i'm having a disconnect between this information and using surtax dollars right so the the reason why this information is surtax related is that we're under the surtax trying to help people get around broward right they're basically trying to get to their jobs or to their schools or to pick up their children and they're trying to get there quicker right and be able to not be stuck in traffic and hopefully if we avoid like i don't know if you remember that that big storm but essentially there was gridlock and many people became stranded in their cars and spent the night in their cars and if you had a system like this you could potentially prevent that because they would know in advance that that road is flooded and choose a different way to go and not that's a whole nother bailey but but that's exactly what the system is intended to that's answer three i'm sorry that answers my third question let's go to one and two yes yeah and and so the the first answer is we'd be looking for about 600 000 next year for the next phase and then i believe the first phase that we we did was about 400 was it five 500 yeah so it's about 500 000 that you know in the beginning which was to do the pilot to buy the pool and what percentage are we hoping to get out from surtax all of it so that's all surtax funded at the moment but in the in the next year's budget when we get 600 which would buy the equipment if the cities pay for labor and installation then we would be be able to do more sensors and then i could compute for you how many the city's installed i'm just curious am i the only one who's having a little heartburn over this thing probably probably because um i'm gonna ask during the end of this i've got a question for information and maybe answers to that will help me understand this because i don't know what category to put this under connectivity right it's under mobility it's just like signalization honestly it's connectivity and signalization it's essentially when you're installing uh fiber and and upgrading uh signals so that they're interconnected you're essentially helping people save minutes as they as they go down the road taken right see this one yeah and and if and if you have this flood sensor network and we can give people information in real time or even better predictive predict what the flooding is then you will hopefully avoid the huge pileups that you might have in flooded intersections i mean i i think one of the um presentations that i was watching earlier this morning at the water advisory board was hollywood for example you know they regularly have no you know just sunny well i i understand this is much better information but if anyone took a an inventory of the thousand year flood you have where all the problems are now we know what's flooded most people don't know that i mean i'll tell you i've been i'm a stormwater engineer by trade i've been working for broad county for 27 years i can't tell you off the top of my head even on my own commute oops i forget not to go down that road when it's raining very very badly i've taken enough your time on that one yeah but i'll just let you know it's to give them that information in real time so that they can make that decision that's okay go ahead yeah i think it would be helpful um it's also safety um just the drive from downtown andrews and broward to uh say commercial boulevard in bayview which is near where i live it was uh i was in a pickup truck so i had no problem uh i was creating wakes onto cars that were completely submerged with people either standing on the side of the road or in the car that's right and i must have seen 10 severe flooding areas in that drive which is a short drive um so i think it's a great thing i think it's safety i more so than probably uh mobility because at that moment in time you probably need to stay at the office and wait for it to end uh it also it it the private properties that are being redeveloped or new developments have what's called deep injection wells and those eventually flooded because the wells couldn't hold the capacity but then they also quickly went down once the rain event stopped and i think the next step for the county and and the downtown development authority in the city are working on a pilot project i think the next step after you figure out how to help manage people in these events is creating deep injection wells in pro problem areas at intersections maybe on four points that can quickly reduce the water uh and and the and the rate of wind in which it floods i think that may be the next step but i think this is a good program one board member and i think that it answers a lot of questions safety and mobility right and and to your point you know when you do install those retrofits right if fort lauderdale were to upgrade the stormwater management system to reduce the flooding at the intersection the uh the sensors would show that that actually did make a difference and the ai would be able to predict those changes and then to your point yes we should stay at home i'll just tell you personally from my perspective one of the other reasons why we thought about the need for this is broward boulevard is just so prone to get very very very flooded um and a lot of times it happens you know two o'clock four o'clock and if we could start to predict that and have these sensors in place people maybe could let their employees go early and that way they don't get stranded at work i mean i'll tell you during that flooding event uh the employees that i have in animal care which there's about 80 employees that work out of that building the road in front of them flooded and they couldn't leave right and we literally had to use high clearance vehicles to pull them out one at a time throughout the entire night that night otherwise they would have to sleep there and they wouldn't have been able to go home to their families so those kinds of things are you know mobility related and they're happening more and more frequently unfortunately for extended period it's not like you know our hurricane season to begin with is very extensive yeah but then you're having these incidents that were outside of the general hurricane season right and in and in my role as you know sort of in charge of environmental permitting and i'm a stormwater engineer and i'll just tell you doug the areas that you're going to continue to experience in this center are going to grow and they're going to surprise you because they are getting more frequent and more intense and uh you know with sea level rise and other you know changes we're starting to see new areas crop up and that's why we're raising the sea walls and things like that as well my issue isn't that it wouldn't be helpful my issue is return on investment well it's relatively modest i mean if you think about we have 5 000 vehicles we have a lot of things to spend the money on and i'm just not convinced that this is the right thing to be spending surtax certainly not a hundred percent i i understand where you're coming from but i would argue if it's just a few hundred thousand dollars and it saves even a hundred cars or a thousand cars or in the case of that 5 000 cars that's a huge economic impact and you've got a lot of people that you have to remember in borough county they probably don't even have comprehensive insurance or collision and they their car is their lifeline and if they lose their vehicle they can't they can't go to work well it's the safety thing again you know going back to the safety people just being on the road they may not have to be in a car they could just be walking well and that's equally bad i mean people were swimming you know they were you know but yeah and it is a commission priority as well my issue isn't that the information that you're gathering may have great value but if the information doesn't get to the person and they don't stay home it doesn't matter how good your system is that's where i'm just that's where the technology comes in right because we're going to have to have a good way of dispersing that information to you know the cell phone providers the you know 911 services the text messaging services the cities you know uh google maps ways you know yes all of the above agreed with you a hundred percent and that's why part of our budget is for staff and for technology yes all right thank you thank you very very good good information all right next on the agenda um we have uh the 2026 formula-based funding updates gretchen i think i'll go through this very quickly madam chair just because this has been an area that you all have asked for information in the past we wanted to provide you with some updates about how the implementation of the third amendment is going we've received 21 applications from and just for your edification each application represents a single municipality so a municipality no longer has to submit multiple applications so 21 applications means 21 of our 30 participating municipalities have provided us with input about how they would like to use their formula-based dollars there's 30 million dollars that was made available and as you can see in the pie the 21 municipalities that have responded so far are asking for the vast majority of that funding in the category of rehabilitation and maintenance they have a few of them have asked if they can defer all or a portion of their formula allocation and then we have it looks like six micro transit programs so far that have been requested for a total of three million dollars this next slide just gives you a sense of the breadth of the variety of different rehabilitation and maintenance projects that have been requested and we are in the process right now uh internally of reviewing all of these projects uh for eligibility and potential conflicts and about to be in a position i would say early in the new year to be able to get some of its projects under an agreement so thank you so much to the things team for uh their hard work on getting the new surtax funding agreement forms uh to the point that they are now all right okay okay and with that i will move to a very brief overview of our internal dashboards this is something that you all asked for at the very beginning of the surtax program and one of the things that we've looked at in 2019 in 2020 in 2021 in 22 or how are we tracking what the oversight board is seeing the actions that they're taking how are we tracking programmatically the amount of uh and the type of projects that the oversight board is reviewing and approving each year how are we tracking what the county commission is is putting in their adopted budget so when we met for your retreat in 2022 one of the things i heard very very loud and clear at that time was you wanted more financial data so after that we came back and internally tried to find ways of collecting information using our existing financial system and pulling that information out using power business intelligence tools it was very uh very very challenging and so i just want to give a huge shout out to my team uh that has basically rebuilt the entire system using a different tool different databases we continue to work very closely with our partners in the office of management and budget and accounting to create um resources for you to do your oversight role and so there are a couple of different things that you're looking at here we have a public dashboard that you've looked at the published public dashboard many times it's our most popular feature on our website by a long shot and so what you're looking at here is project related and it's very um you know programmatic so it it shows you all of the projects that have come before you at a very high level so it's rolled up in you know a higher level category not at the project by project basis but what's beautiful about this tool is that you can drill down if you really wanted to get granular you could and it shows you the various categories from transit to public works to municipalities uh to the airport and then it's summarizing what's available on the public dashboard now the public dashboard is at a budget level and i know um for most people that are looking at our public dashboard it's a point in time it's a planning document and it's based on what the expected costs are going to be and we all agreed that that was fine but for the purposes of your role you also need to know actuals and the reality of expenditures so we have another we have a variety of other charts that show you the revenues that were expected the revenues that we actually received and then audited revenues for each year and you see the trend line along the bottom that shows you especially during the pandemic that there was definitely some variance there between what we were expecting and what we received but we're as a result of some of the legislation that went into effect july 1st of this year um we we're already i'm sorry it was last year we're already starting to see some um some reductions in our in our projected revenue then with respect to actually projects themselves if you could go to that tab for me guys um oh leverage report one of the things that you've been asking for from the very outset is how are those local dedicated uh revenues bringing down non-surtex funding how are we accessing other people's money so this gives you a sense of how much surtex funding has been invested and i just want to be very clear this is a universe of projects that actually have other people's money associated with them so it's not the full compendium it's not the whole portfolio of the surtex so it's under a billion dollars there as you can see on the top left that's because this is only surtex projects that have other people's money in them this is real money this is not expected money or assumed money so there's leverage that is expected in some of these projects that hasn't been received yet we've got a lot of outstanding grants as you heard from corey um i just you know i don't want to spend too much time on this and we can certainly look at it again at a at a future date this is municipal projects this gives you a sense of the amount of leverage that we have in the municipal surtex program and it's a lot um i know these are very hard to see these charts are small we're working on making this uh more accessible for you all but this is yours this is this was created for you this is what we use these types of dashboards for internal use only these are not published externally uh there's some unaudited financial data associated with these but we wanted you to at least give us some feedback about is this beating your needs is this kind of what you were looking for is this the type of of data that you're interested in seeing and if you have specific questions uh neil and my are sitting over there kind of navigating for me while i'm talking and they can take you to specific areas that you might be interested in right gretchen i have a question sure how i can't the first time seen it really can't even read it it's that small but i had broken down uh surtax into seven categories roads new and maintained drainage signalization sidewalks or trails bridges buses costs and rail not by count not by city or by project by dollars i was curious as to what percentage of the funds are being spent on whether it's seven or eight or nine these areas and and could you use this program to gather that data yes because that was going to be my question was and it doesn't and you might break it down between city and county projects or municipal i don't really care but we were in our starting our seventh year and we should have six years of data now it would be great if you could say here's what we spent today here's what we're projected i don't know if you can do that but it would be nice to see it by percentage because it i'm curious i mean rail is going to probably be some big numbers but we haven't spent much on it now and in getting back to your concerns about buses buses the cost to build them the cost to maintain them the driver you know what's what are we spending on bus transit what are we spending on bridges what are we spending on sidewalks signalization and maybe we put the rain thing in there uh but drainage and roads new and maintenance maintenance to me that's simple if this is working like i think it can that would be great information now just by percentages this um i can see that they're working on it right now but um yes that would be good information we we don't have it by percentage right now we have it by dollar value but we can absolutely make that happen and show it to you at the next meeting for sure it'd be great thank you i think at the end of it though it's it's not just about how much is being spent per project it's how it's enhancing our goals and objectives in terms of mobility and uh you know creating connectivity and so on and so forth so i i think it's it's it's balancing our deliverables to the community in the end at the end because some things are going to cost more but um it doesn't mean it's not adding value to the quality of life of people and of course there's a chart in you know in here that shows how we're spending money per side cities which is really important to me because i want to make sure that there's not that there's balance in terms of where our dollars are being spent because some communities have higher needs than others and i want to make sure that we're not spending in some of the wealthier communities that have the ability to take care of their own infrastructure on some level where the other communities that are not as wealthy um that we are there there there is there is some balance in terms of our investment and so this chart is pretty good i want to point something out about that chart that's the money spent in the cities is that the county money spent in the cities or just the city's money spent in the cities no it shows the non-surtax and surtax no i'm not talking about that i'm talking about municipal a lot of money is being spent in fort lauderdale but not a lot of so this is municipal surtax projects only only city municipal only city so it doesn't have the surtax county projects in the cities no i think if you're going to show that chart you got to make another one for the others because uh to me the city of fort lauderdale seems to get the least amount of money when in reality they're getting more surtax dollars because they're getting county surtax dollars that's how are these category codes on the on a project i guess you would give each one a category code are you then going in and breaking it down so that's one of the reasons why we're showing this to you because we really want your feedback this is yours and so it has to work for you but the way that we build this is based on how it comes to you so during the budget process projects come to you uh at the project level and then they roll up into categories so if you go back and you look at the workshops for each budget cycle you'll notice that our agencies categorize their projects for instance adaptive signal control is a project category drainage is a project category intersection improvements transit infrastructure transit capital transit operations bus and bus stop and shelter improvements vehicles so those categories are actually created and identified by the stakeholders in the surtax program and so when they come to you they're in a category that also corresponds to the way they take it to the to the county commission which is important because our when we do these types of dashboards we have to identify the source of the data and be able to take you there and show you the source data and so the categories have to correspond to your presentations and to the budget book that's the way that we do it right now but if there's other types of information that you want we can add it there just has to be a data source it can't just be me coming up with it subject subjectively sorry subjectively so these are the categories we have now so like road improvements would sidewalks have its own thing or would sidewalks spending the inside road improvements for safety improvements so these are categories that are on our public dashboard that is not the same so these are categories that made sense to people so prior to you joining the oversight board we did a very robust public survey focus groups charrettes in a variety of different languages and the feedback that we got from people on our public dashboard was that the categories weren't very meaningful to the average person so what the way that we communicate on the public dashboard ray is very different than the way that we communicate to you the way that the agencies come to the oversight board and to the county commission with their requests so the categories are not aligned we had to roll a series of categories up underneath things that made sense to people so in answer to your question sidewalks and school safety zones and things like that might all roll up into a road improvement but it's not to say that we don't still have all of that data on sidewalk improvements but what you're looking at in this chart is a summary of what's projected to the public on the dashboard if they go into the types of things like oversight board if you wouldn't mind going into the area for oversight board approvals so they can see that and if you can get into the detail where they can see it at the project level please i'd appreciate it so you can see that when agencies come to you we're tracking every single approval every action that you take and at that level you can see the exact type of project its location its id number it's the amount of money the phase everything so these dashboards are intended to to provide you with different levels of oversight and different levels of information um i hope that that answered your question maybe too much it does maybe yeah maybe too much so are we able to see sidewalks absolutely when public works comes to you with a sidewalk project it actually has a specific id that starts with an s if they come to you with a bike lane project it has a b and they generally use some type of terminology in the project description uh that lets you know that this is going to be sidewalks sidewalk improvements could you guys lighting would you guys be able to show me it absolutely can you show them a sidewalk project like how much we're spending in that category okay so how much we're spending by category is something that i think um doug just asked for as well and the way the way that we currently have it structured is not the amount of sidewalk projects because when public works comes to you they come to you at the project level but then it rolls up into these bigger categories so we'll have to we'll have to play around with it to tell you exactly how much we've spent on sidewalks or bike lanes or that's what i was kind of thinking that each project would have to be broken down and reallocated yeah yeah seems like a lot of work but hi this is this is neil the mobility uh supervisor um i work under gretchen yeah so we we can categorize it break it down by sidewalks and the various categories but we don't have that to show today but we can do that in-depth now so we can provide you that that the the results of that but you'll have to parse through the historic data right yeah we have to really parse through that a manual process yeah it's a process yeah because some because depending on how the project's description we have to look at the scope of work it's you know sometimes in the title it may say intersection improvement but with an intersection improvement you may have a sidewalk you may have a bike lane you may have different other features so it's we really have to get into the weeds huh so then going forward to make your life easier when these projects are getting submitted can we ask the submitters to to divide the allocation so the data you're working with from the get-go is good that would help this yeah this was something that again before you got here we talked about and there's two different things that happen in public works when they come to you what they believe that the cost is going to be and what they believe the scope is going to be and if there's a multi scope there there are you know various elements um they do try to decide which one is the most prominent element but when they complete the project it's a little bit easier for them to try to tell us what my team is capable of doing is utilizing the data that's provided to us and trying to categorize projects based on their value and we can do that and we can bring it to you um at a planning level and then once a project is completed we can do a little bit more analysis um with the help of our partners and public works and the cities so there is a plan to ask the cities will it have to go through a whole local agreement no no no we could just ask them when you submit to break it down we we do we do have it it's just a matter of us adding it to this and what i'm saying is that we have it at the front end and then we also have to look at it again at the back end because sometimes as a project moves through its phases and through construction it'll change its scope yeah i'm just asking overall so we could see it so when do you think we could see something like that let me talk to them and see if we can how much we can do by february 6th it doesn't even have to be that soon i just imagine this is important i know it's a lot of data but yeah i think what we would really like to do is during one of your workshops spend more time with this maybe let you all use some of our some laptops so that you can play around with it a little bit because i do think it's it's valuable to us to hear your feedback again if it's a tool that's been built for you not having your feedback is not very helpful to us so we'll continue to bring it to you on a regular basis um and until we get it to a point where where everybody is satisfied with it all right um thank you uh gretchen i know this was a response to raise requests for us to have well this this what i wanted to do is at least show you all what we have now from a programmatic and financial standpoint so that you can have that context when you discuss uh the performance metrics so you all can move back to the presentation now please okay all right so we we wanted to go ahead and um have a little bit of a discussion regarding um metrics and data tracking measures because that was one of your proposal so i want to open the floor to our members to see what else are we hoping um to see in these um what are the metrics what else are you hoping um for us to start tracking what else would you like to see us include in these uh dashboards this is from the list i submitted um last meeting because this is a transportation surtax i believe the buck doesn't stop with us i think the buck stops with someone else but i think we're an important source to shine light and add clarity to different metric categories so when i present these metric categories that i want to talk about that doesn't mean we're solely responsible for them but it shows a picture of the directors and managers as they submit their budgets and pursue their projects what's moving the needle what's not moving the needle so and that's why i think these metrics are important the first one i would like to see consistently reported on is pedestrian fatalities um this is the list of the what the list he has we took the um information that was provided by mr mcelroy and then we just put it into a spreadsheet for you we by roy thank you roy yeah i appreciate it i mean ultimately all these are all the metrics that i would like to see these are going to be really important metrics when this program is asked by the public what they did and what it accomplished this is our go-to this is this is who we are this is what we did and we're either going to succeed at the end of it or we're not and i think these are fair metrics if anyone thinks any of these metrics shouldn't be tracked i'll be open to discussion or more metrics i mean there's a lot of metrics in here but um some of it seem repetitive i'm not sure the bicycle fatalities listed like four or five times where's that no so the the first four are different types of bike lanes so this is showing the public that we're building quality bike lanes and not just using like the painted um just the paint on the roads which is would be deemed a lesser quality investment but they're somewhat related kind of bicycle fatalities related that's the overarching safety piece that you're seeking and then there are several on sidewalk pedestrian fatalities and other traffic yeah traffic fatalities is important um maybe our maybe our highway and engineering department is not looking at traffic circles adequately enough if we consistently see a year over year traffic fatalities not decreasing it probably would be a good question and a good metric to say why and say hey let's try to put some of this map money to decreasing these traffic fatalities um sidewalks installed replaced kind of in the same category yeah so these yeah i separated them because these also get very granular installed would be new feet of missing segments and then you of course have replacement of sidewalks so i would want to make sure that we're not double counting them um because we do have a very large missing sidewalk network throughout uh the county particularly sit the more like historic cities east of 95. did you make this i made the list roy actually made put it together in this amazing format it's pretty comprehensive yeah this is this is amazing like this is i think if we do this you guys would never have to hear another question for me again so so so just looking at the first page okay um i think that it's important to understand for instance traffic fatalities i think the location of those fatalities matter more like if there's repetitive fatalities at an intersection versus an increase in traffic fatalities that are just coincidental like if you have 100 fatalities in one year and then the following year you have 120 but it's just spread all over it's going to be hard to figure it out but if you have 10 in the same spot or close by there could be a reason for that so those kinds of things i mean a bicycle fatality you should look at where it's happening that's that's what i'm saying um but i like i like the i like separating the reason i like that he separated the bicycle miles installed is because some of them are their own trail and then others are shared with the street and i tend to agree that the ones that you're sharing with other vehicles on the street are they're not safe uh in some cases in some cases depends on the street um but uh it's good i like this so some of these are just status updates you know i just wanted to make clear that there were requests for just kind of periodic status updates which is not really a metric it's just an update on various aspects of the surtax program i also on behalf of we've seen some data on some of this before on behalf of the stakeholders of the program with whom i have communicated about performance metrics over the last seven years i just like to share with the group again on the record that when it comes to the surtax program itself um you know the concerns of the stakeholders have has been that surtax is a funding source surtax does not fund highways it does not fund state roads many of the um areas not not very many some some adaptive signal controls for sure but some of these performance metrics that are being proposed are outside of the scope of the program and you know we are happy to measure things over which we have some modicum of control but we have not traditionally maintained this type of data for the surtax program a lot of this data is being maintained by transit and reported to fta or fdot public works maintains this data because they have other funding sources gas tax fhwa so if this is something that you all want we just need to get consensus so that i can communicate with the other agencies that are currently collecting this data for other reasons and then try to figure out how to make it meaningful with respect to specific surtax investments because you know injury high injury networks and you know deaths on roads that we have nothing to do with and we have not done any surtax investment on will have limited benefit to you and in in our opinion as your support team right but could you also indicate some because some of this i know that we've gotten information on in the past so if we're going to go forward with this then i would want to note to show what we've gotten information on because i know we've done not all of it but some of it i would say you can you can parse out the ones that don't apply but i do think that having it on one sheet or two or three sheets and then looking at it basically on a year over year or a month over month or a quarter over quarter whatever you guys decide i won't be here to look at it but but it but i think it's useful because yeah i'll tell you the public part but like for instance just even like bus shelters installed i mean if you look at last year we installed 10 and now we've got 25 that's a positive thing and it's nice to see that that you're making progress in that regard i think you just have to figure out which ones like you said maybe don't apply but other than that i think the idea of doing it and keeping it on a dashboard of some sort even if it's just several pages is probably not a bad idea yeah and maybe categorize it like if it's the bicycle you know riders then that's in one category if it's pedestrian then it's one category if it's car fatalities one category and so on and so forth so you kind of get a sense even if there are some categories to it but you kind of understand which population of uh and you might find that as you add more let's just call it bike lanes if you add more bike lanes and all of a sudden you're seeing fewer fatalities there might be a connection there you know so it's kind of interesting to to look at it it's gonna it's really not going to show its face for several years but yeah but you do see the progress you will see it'll highlight the surtax progress on installations of things sidewalks where in and like you said there's neighborhoods that don't have stuff well this will show that you're putting it in so i think it's not that and how it's enhancing safety yeah yeah i appreciate it yeah i think that's what it is i think it's a legacy product that if we instill and install and do correctly it'll outlive us in the sense of our like time on this board and it'll continue being a guidance it's going to take years though for the data to accumulate to see directional changes but um but yeah i know there's a good amount of data on here some of these wouldn't probably be things so what would be the next steps to moving this forward so with consensus from the board what i will do is share with bct and the um public works department who's here so he's hearing this in real time tony huey is here with us um we have that information for municipal projects in some instances uh we'll just start to gather this again communicate with our stakeholders about cadence you know are we going to do this quarterly are we going to do this annually um what's the best way uh did you want to say anything tony regarding any of the aspects of this could you turn your mic on for me got it is it is it on right now yes okay good thank you um the data certainly is you know valuable data i think that we can be collecting them um i have to say i missed a little bit of the conversation in uh couldn't hear too well in the back but but we can certainly gather this information i think this is information that's going to help in terms of continuing to improve the safety you know in you know in our entire service area i think that um the surtax is actually doing a lot of very good stuff i think that we have done you know in terms of the projects that we have implemented you know we've talked about sidewalks you mentioned sidewalks we have made a big investments in all of our bsmd uh areas to install missing sidewalks and this is in neighborhoods that have needs and you know that's one of the things that we've been uh continuing to do and i think that you know this board and also our board can you know take very good credit for that in terms of doing some of those things to improve safety and and and we we keep track of it and um certainly you know my department keeps track of not just improvements in the surtax projects but we keep track of improvements that are made by the gas tax projects you know i think i think our emphasis obviously is for the county roads that you know that that we manage we handle so we probably you know right off the top of the uh the bat we have a very good handle on that information i think we need to continue working with the cities and so forth because they they also keep their own information i'm sure they also keep good track of it it's just a matter of compiling them together and gathering them together in a concise format that you guys can see and and so you know information is doable we already do it for other reasons and then we've been certainly you know want to be able to collect it because i think i think this board can take you know credit for a lot of good things that we're doing as part of this program all right thanks so it sounds like what we'll do is um try to bring something back to you once we've had an opportunity to talk internally and um just see what data we have and in what formats and we'll have to clean the data check the data so maybe not the next meeting but the following meeting we'll try to have something for you does that work yeah i appreciate it thanks sounds good all right i think um next up is our regular agenda we have one item just uh i'd like to request a motion to approve our last um minutes approve can i have a second second all in favor aye this point which is a fun part of the meeting fun but sad all right we have a special presentation so first year good morning my name is alan hooper i want to thank randall and your appointing authority for giving me the uh honor and opportunity to participate with you guys it's great i'm a native from fort lauderdale broward county i live on the same street i was born on started a construction company so i'm self-taught and i became a what i would call a redeveloper and uplift the community by redeveloping areas that were blighted we have just started a journey that had we not passed the penny sales tax had we waited 10 more years we'd be 10 more years behind all the things that we do are going to make our city our county so much better you're killing me okay all right because because now you've just taken half my morning and now i'm sitting around waiting for doug to get done with his meeting but that's okay that's okay and the reason these are getting pulled is because it's either vague or you're putting stuff in the application that doesn't meet the eligibility the cities should come up with at least the conceptual plan and then come to us for design money there's 110 projects in this totaling 72 million dollars we're going to go through them quickly i know we're supposed to be talking about surtax but this whole thing is is a 30-year deal right and through the cbe we're trying to benefit small businesses and other folks are we going into the high schools i think if we get the message out that there's a bunch of business in drywall or something it you know maybe it helps uh inspire people to follow a certain vocation all those things are things that everyday folks kind of deal with uh going home or or if there was a hurricane and knock down the the lights or you know a jam up on the left turn with only one left turn rather than two let's keep the flow of dough getting into the city's hands that have projects that are ready to one be drawn up on a plan which is on the design and planning side and two construction to me as an oversight board member i'm almost inclined to vote yes when a city comes forward because i feel like i'm responsible to what the voter voted for and what they thought they were getting this is called the allen hooper award join us in honoring the first chair of the independent transportation service tax board mr allen hooper i admire you so much as a leader you are brilliant at doing this job considering our beginning trying to figure out what's happening at home you did an excellent job i love the fact that you're so compassionate don't you guys want to go home yet no people in our community and that you're thoughtful every step of the way you've been very thoughtful in how you've executed our mission and more than anything else i love the fact that you are so extraordinarily courageous thank you so much i'm very proud to sit on this board with you guys because you guys are all really committed people so thank you very much thank you it goes on the dashboard right but seriously alan i mean you have been such an extraordinary leader um when we think about the early days of the surtax and just trying to figure it all out um i mean we're all tough cookies just making sure that we are delivering on the promise promises made to our citizens and you were really a great advocate and helped to really guide the evolution of this this board and i'm personally grateful for you nominating me for vice chair and now chair and now i'm sitting where you are so i will still be tapping you occasionally for some guidance i'm happy to give it any other board members i want to say anything to alan i hate that you're leaving alan i was serious that you saw miss kimberly here today i expect to see you coming in here at least once a year to straighten us out so thank you guys thank thank you gretchen and staff you know see karen walford out there i sat on the tma and we worked together um and then you know nathaniel and then my board colleagues um it you know you guys we're all so committed to our community you ray you're very passionate and committed to everything and all all of us that we've put our time into this and that we started at the very beginning when it was like we didn't even know what the hell we were doing right and we figured it out and but it was it was because of you gretchen and because of the people that supported this board and then we just kind of are like cheerleaders that are trying to help push it along and and we care about our community it's just it's been it's been an honor and i'm sorry i'm leaving but uh it part of it is time and personal reasons but uh it's been a pleasure to work with you guys and the relationships that i've built with so many people has been amazing so thank you so much as board members we we don't we can't generally talk about a whole lot we don't talk but now you have to stay in touch with me yeah now i can talk to you yes you can really talk to me all right so the last um segment is our non-agenda item um are there any other members who want to say anything nathaniel gretchen no um first of all after today's meeting uh you since you do live on the street that you grew up on you are now permitted to uh specifically and formally request to have any potholes or broken sidewalks on that street uh promptly and efficiently repaired to the extent necessary without there being any ethical conflict too bad it's a city street well then you should be complaining to the city to be putting in their r&m money for that that's exactly right it's the purpose of the formula is to fix the potholes in front of your house and other than that i just want to thank the entire board for another great year uh wishing everybody very happy holidays and uh by the time we come back in february hopefully we will have had our first hearing at the board of county commissioners on your new ordinance and admin code which is specifically drafted because of all the things that alan specifically told me he was complaining about they're all included every single one of those items and i'll be able to go through them in great detail at the next meeting awesome phil do you have anything i would just know what's scheduled for our february meeting give me just one second okay so we will have a tentatively an update on the sheridan street capacity expansion project that you all did receive some public comment on that's a public works project the broward next land use plan update i'm hoping that i will be able to provide you with at least some bicycle and pedestrian facility data visualizations i've heard from you and i you know have been talking to my team about various tools that we might be able to use to show you the types of bicycle facilities that we have paid for with the surtax and completed and how they connect to other facilities on either end of the project limits so that you can visually see that we're going to have an update on the low stress multimodal master plan design manual our typical quarterly oesbd goal attainment i'm going to be providing you with updates on the state financial reporting that is required for the surtax that will have been submitted on january 15th i will have provided you all with that report but then we'll have a opportunity to discuss it at your february 6 meeting and any updates with respect to the municipal surtax program whether we've gotten projects under an agreement at that point if we have a surtax funding agreement done um that's what we have at the moment as far as updates is there anything else that you all would like us to add it sounds like we've got a pretty busy meeting i am concerned about the the disclosure that we had with the abbreviated report on the the mega projects around the airport seaport i'm still not satisfied that there is an organizational structure that allows these things to be proceeding on a parallel basis with just ongoing activity and i think we need a session just talking about organizationally and how the various consultants the various departments are in fact in facing the accomplishment of the project so i don't know if that's something that we can put into that february meeting i would like to see if we can get i hate to go back to this but if we get the coa on the february meeting i hopefully it's passed by then um i would also like to see tri-rail be invited in sometime next year um it's very likely that county money is going to have to supplement them at some point the way the state conversations are happening and they operate already in our county and they do a really good job at a very low price and i would like to know kind of maybe hear them out what they would like to see if they had access to our funding what they would like maybe some capital improvements or something i don't know i will work with the chair on setting that agenda and also talk to bct and county administration about that because while we are in the middle of session in february because it's an early session this year i'm not sure if it'll be appropriate for us to have that conversation in february but perhaps after the session has concluded i think after would probably make more sense as we get more light with the financing and gretchen can we see one of these for the counties spent by city and then a combination so we really have a true ranking of where the dollars are spent i think the sooner the better so if we can have that by next meeting it'd be great thank you could i ask for clarification on that madam chair go ahead okay um would you also want to see spend within the broward municipal services district within the unincorporated area or only county spend that's inside of a municipality so you're saying so you're saying the unincorporated areas are there's being money spent by the county in those if you want to put that in that's fine too if you have it i don't want to ask you to do too much and i'm just curious about the i don't know i don't know whether or not this is possible but on the sheet that you provided and it's pretty comprehensive um it would be good to see the investments being made by the municipalities on some of these projects i see where we have the non-surtax expenses and the expenses but these are expenses it's not really the investment dollars the funding i guess i'm interested in seeing the source of of funding from the cities on some of these projects do you understand what i'm saying yeah do you understand and we do have that information most of the municipal non-surtax investment is city general fund or gas taxes okay but we in the instances where the city has a state grant or something like that it's very rare but we do have that information and we can provide that to you right and i also wanted to just say to doug that because alan is leaving doesn't mean you can leave just so you know anything else yeah i just want to you know uh take this opportunity wish everybody happy holidays and i it's been an incredible you know you're very productive and it could always be better but that's what that's what we're here for and also i just want to take this opportunity and say how much we appreciate it alan's you know leadership and his time and his experience and knowledge and also being a really nice guy and uh look forward to having him be part of you know our future you know meetings maybe as a special guest and uh and alan you know we thank you for everything you've done and look forward to you know many more uh opportunities thank you gretchen anything well my final word before i ask for adjournment is just to wish everybody a happy holiday and to thank you again for just supporting our our efforts throughout the year we cannot do this without your team uh as well um and we just always want to be respectful of your efforts i do have one legal question for council so now i can talk to alan about any of this stuff without a problem do i have to be there pardon mr coleman yes absolutely after this after this meeting is adjourned you you guys can talk about whatever you'd like whatever we want whenever you want i'm expecting long walks in fort lauderdale together on sidewalks exactly a lot of trail madam chair i would like to just thank my team for their incredible diligence their hard work their creativity their resiliency thank you for always stepping up and doing an incredible job i'd like to provide a special thank you to katya who put together that video for you uh alan so great job and um i hope you all have a wonderful holiday and a happy new year we need a motion to adjourn please can i have a motion to adjourn second second all in favor yes hi