##VIDEO ID:gw6e1tbno3E## I'm going to call to order and roll call chz here cope did they call me I oh I'm here Lambert here neble Stenberg here approval of the agenda I'll move to approve I'll second any discussion all in favor I I I any against motion motion approved approval of the minutes from May 9th 2024 tech meeting move to approve second discussion all in favor I I any against motion carries financial report thank you Mr chair I'll just highlight that obviously few items we get paid quarterly u based on some of our grants and then some of the expenses are typically lagging like a month behind like some of our invoicing uh so it's a little bit tough to draw too many conclusions on it but it does appear that we are on Pace based on uh what we budgeted for the year um and looking at where we might end up at the end of the year so things are looking about where we expected things to be uh All Things Considered um yeah if there's any other questions I can answer I got a question go ahead Jeff uh Jesse yes sir when it comes to cleaning washing and all that um they're they're using the City Garage to do that right the buses they have in the past uh I don't think they're using that currently but there was a bus in there today okay and it was getting clean thoroughly I I talked to Tiffany we're looking at that was we we pretty much got there at the same time what but they pay for that they pay the city for that right that isn't something we're doing without because that's part of their contract they're they are responsible for doing that they responsible for washing correct right but then so they will in turn reimburse the city for the use of that and and if they I don't think they have um it would be very difficult for us obviously to figure out what that cost would be but but but did they charge us for that in their contract because if they're charging us for that in their contract we have to get something for that service we're giving them don't we I would have to see if that's actually broken down as an exact line item I don't believe that bus washing specifically is broken out as a specific line item so I don't think that would be very easy for us to ascertain exactly what that cost would be either but I can follow up would the committee be okay with having them do that unless you disagree I Mr chair my recollection all so is that they were going to be financially responsible for the housing and care of the buses and uh I don't believe the city was going to be providing anything and if it did the city would be reimbursed and I think we need to stick with that yeah Mr chair I I do think Jesse you know they just suggested to have Jesse take a look at that for us is is you i' I'd feel better if we made a motion if you guys you want to make want want me to make a motion or do you want to make I can do it okay I I would just move that we direct staff to find out if we're uh if we're getting reimbursed for the washing of the buses and any other things that might be uh performed by the city on behalf of maintaining and and and find out if we are how much we're charging and so forth uh would you include in your motion uh that if not it the contract should be uh fulfilled as written and I I would do this uh we get the contract language to confirm what is or isn't in there regarding this but I to to once we find out I'll that's my motion I'll second it Lambert any discussion all in favor I any against motion carried any other comments for the financial report um no I don't unfinished business any new business the sale of bus 114 well wait a minute yeah excuse me you're such a a swift chairperson you're going right by me um I'd like it if uh you could tell us where we are relative to revenue and expenditure and the contract for this year for the third party contract yes or for the overall budget the overall contract so the overall budget uh as of the end of August uh we are roughly 53,000 ahead but like I mentioned there's a little bit of caveats to that because some of our state and federal grants don't come in every month they come in on a quarterly basis and not perfect quarters and then some of our invoicing from like the third party contractors is kind of lagging a month same thing with their uh Fuel and stuff like that so some of it drags a little bit uh so it's a little tough to draw too many conclusions but it it all kind of progresses the same uh like I said it's it appears that we're on Pace to be pretty darn close to roughly what we budgeted at the beginning of the year which was a $64,000 Surplus so we're we're we're at least right now budgeted about or not budgeted but uh projecting a $53,000 ahead uh as of the end of August Mr chair if I could continue yes do you have any knowledge or information relative to the states part anticipation in the coming year yes ma'am uh that's actually going to come up here a little bit later in our staff report on the approved operating Grant okay thank you yes ma'am and one more if I may um the the revenue from our writers ship is that increasing or decreasing compared to previous years it's increased obviously because of increased um Fair costs obviously decreased ridership doesn't help that but uh overall we've generated more Revenue which was obviously the intent to cover our expenses do you know how backers doing I know they had a some real issues their overall ridership has been down um but the numbers don't reflect that because the new way we've structured Our Fair structures of where where you're picked up is where the fair is accounted for uh it shows that they're running an increase oh good but the actual ridership the actual ridership is actually down in Baxter uh so there's a little bit of balancing here and that's why staff is kind of waiting trying to wait for a full 12 months so we can start comparing Apples to Apples of year over-year of the new structure just one more follow up and then I'll hopefully shut up I've kind of been thinking about this do we really need to have as many buses on the street as we do if a Riders ship is down everywhere maybe we could just kind of garage one bus and not have the expense of that one so that is something that staff is going to uh do some more analysis of after we've got like I mentioned after a full Year's worth of um numbers and ridership so that we can start comparing year-over-year Apples to Apples of how our operations are doing with the changes um to make better recommendations not only just from an operation standpoint if that's from a service standpoint if that's from fairs buses overall uh but we want to make sure that we have good information to be able to base some of those recommendations on just something that I believe as a committee we should stay on top of as much as we we can yes ma'am thank you Mr chair yes um so when we look at ridership in Brainard I think we did a good job in keeping to a very competitive a fair price um it I at $3 it's it's extremely fair when you compare it to what Baxter charges at seven but is it a drawback for Branded Riders because if they want to go to Baxter with a lot of people do they're paying a over twice the fair coming back home is you think that has affected the brainer ridership to uh in the in the sense that they avoid using the bus because if they don't go to Baxter because of that higher cost to come home or come back to Brer you were a guess even I cannot say that um but anecdotally you would think that that would have an effect yep we don't have any hard data on that okay so then the the one year is actually wasn't it from the time the county on September 11 that got delayed a little bit didn't it last year correct okay and that's sometime next month yeah uh September 11th was when the county changed their service the problem is our reporting legs a month so we haven't gotten our August numbers yet yet so that's kind of where we're waiting for thank you Mr chair could I ask one more question yes ma' do you know if in fact the county wanted to withdraw from the contract are they able to do so legally yes ma'am I don't think they're real happy there there are Provisions in all of the agreements with our Cooperative partners that any of the agencies are able to withdraw from the agreement uh with a certain amount of notice I believe it's 6 months notice um to be able to withdraw from the agreement if they did what would happen to the share of the money that they now access are you referring to the percentage yes or so we would have to figure out depending on how that falls if that's like mid year we would probably have to analyze the part of the year that they're part of the system and then part of the year that they're not part of the system and then from there come up with a new percentage for and Baxter then and then again work out a a new agreement with Baxter based on that new percentage thank you very much if I may Mr chair the one thing I'm sure you know this that that would eliminate a lot of service so we would then be the percentages wouldn't be as severe because of that cost sharing that we have it would decrease their entire end of going outside Brer Baxter so all of that travel that they do now is that expense is gone so therefore the cost of the service goes down so the share percentages would not be uh it'd have to be an adjustment obviously but it would affect it would change considerably I think I mean I just I realize everybody probably knows this but you Tak can take a not everything that would change if the county no longer had buses running into the County so just just to make sure everybody understands that so any other questions good then on to new business S Bus 114 thank you Mr chair uh so we have received our new bus from 2021 uh and it is wrapped outfitted and out on the road and and and in service uh 114 has been uh getting cleaned up and getting ready for um sale and Disposal uh Crystal has been working pretty tirelessly with mot through the extensive process to get approval to dispose of a bus um right now staff is looking for uh a recommendation from the TAC to get Council authorization to uh dispose and sale of bus 114 currently uh bus 114's a 2013 diesel uh that's got over 250,000 Mi it's considered $100,000 100,000 mil over its useful life they're typically uh expected to get 150,000 miles of useful life before they're turned over but obviously we had a significant delay in uh getting new B buses so uh we've had to kind of do our best to keep these things on the road as long as we could so uh at this point we're ready to move on from bus4 14 uh now that the new bus is on the road and uh we're hopeful that we're going to see our next new bus probably not this fall maybe early spring and hopefully that that issue is now behind us yes a question is this the we're switching over to gases one of our last diesel buses then no I believe we have one more it might be two more but yes we are still trying to phase out of the diesel okay you know Mr chair with you know with all respect I really wonder if we need an extra bus you know where I live well I think the buses kind of use that area when they're not taking calls right down there between the Eagles Club and the county lot and I see often one many times two buses just just sitting there just s now possible that that's their time off or something but I kind of wondered do we really need as many buses as we have I suppose that's a question of judgment well that's where they're going to come back and do an analysis of the right we were talking about earlier correct and that that is something that Crystal and I have been discussing too is to make sure that we are right sized Fleet for what we need cuz we obviously more Vehicles means more maintenance more upkeep um and then overall just having to have bus drivers obiously we want to make sure that we have enough should one go down that we don't lose service uh that's that's not ideal either but uh making sure that the fleet is Right sized for what we need Mr chair yes um Jesse with uh the other two buses that the old buses buses they do need to be replaced are they over their mileage to recommended lifetime I'm pretty sure they all right have to double check but um so so it would be be prudent of us to uh consider getting a new still getting a new bus on order or getting a new another bus like you're saying and we could retire one of those buses right at if the analysis showed that we didn't need all that all those buses on that Fleet does that make sense so I believe the next solicitation is coming up here shortly uh for the next bus order um and Crystal and I have been working with mot because this will be the very first solicitation where menot will be allowing the potential for uh accessible vans rather than a full-on bus uh so that is something that we are exploring because obviously as buses continue to um increase in exponentially in cost uh for Capital purchases uh we were looking for more economic alternatives for purchases especially with Vans being a little bit more uh economical with fuel as well then um doesn't have the same seating capacity as a bus but um this may be a better alternative for replacing some of the fleet as well um so they this would be the first solicitation that they would be looking at uh for allowing us to order a van so this is something that we're working with mot of what does that look like um and what would the build look like what would the estimate for the capital purchase it's still going to be a pretty significant purchase uh but working through that process with M out of what those builds look like and um it sounds like even the turnaround would might be even quicker than a bus two okay oh thank you glad to hear that do we have a motion on recommending 10 114 for sale Lambert so move you got a second second whatever tiebreaker all in favor I any against motion carries public form do have anybody in the public that's wanting to make a comment how was your chance forine my daughter Mor my driver you can get up and tell us what you think I don't have any okay uh staff report wait a minute somebody related to you that doesn't want to talk no no CH be kind that's a good point good point Sorry talk okay sta staff report any updates since to pacet I just want to highlight a few things so I I try to do about as best as I could of a recap of the last year um rather than just kind of the last few months um just so everybody can get and get an idea especially since the changes kind of went into effect um so I kind of broke down kind of the monthly writers ship reports uh since those changes were implemented um so you can see obviously a lot of decreases a lot of that would likely be because of the fair increases and obviously the county had significant changes to their service so you you can expect quite a bit of changes uh in ridership there um and then I just made sure to put that asterisk on the total is that some of those comparisons you're comparing service with Pine River versus service without Pine River so there's a little apples to oranges there as well so I wanted to try and give a little bit of a breakdown there again need a little bit more uh time to get a full year so we can start comparing itself to itself rather than comparing a service that differed to itself so I want to make sure that we're uh making good responsible recommendations that way um but I also did a a quick comparison of our operating uh and ridership just for everything from the beginning of this year year uh to the end of July which is um the latest set of um writers ship reports that we have uh and then comparing that with 2023 uh so that's included with the report uh as we as we know we've recently updated a lot of our uh some of our operating policies uh like the allowing six bags on the bus rather than the four bags uh so one of the things that we did was we updated the rider guide uh so I included the updated Rider guide that's been uh provided to folks um so that I included in the packet as well and then to uh to what was referred to Mary um the U notice of the operating Grant um this has been approved by mot now um so I included this for reference um menot uh was gracious enough to bump up our operating Grant quite a bit now um originally we were kind of projecting somewhere in the realm of about 1 Point .4 and a half or 1.5 million uh and we were going to be running really short uh similar to what we've done for the last two years um looking at it next year um they have been able to bump us up quite a bit now uh to over 1.6 million uh for a total budget um excuse me uh with that uh their Grant their grant funding is going to match us a lot higher than they would have before um so this is going to be able to provide us a lot more flexibility uh than they would have before now we have to do a little bit more analysis again once we get the the full Year's worth of writers reporting we're going to plug some of this uh this stuff into 2025 projections uh and like I said we're going to give you a lot more better recommendations uh once we have some of those numbers in there but wanted to make sure that I pointed this out is um having mot being able to bump up uh our operating Grant allowance uh will go a long ways to make sure that um their ability to grant us more funds it will be able available to us in 2025 so that's going to help us out a lot uh I know in the previous years like we've referred to uh they've previously capped us to a 2% year over-year uh I can't recall right off the top of my head what this would be uh but it is not a 2% cap uh they are allowing us to go quite a bit over that so um this is a this is a big deal for us have you heard or do you know what the state trend is as far as ridership if this if other state transit systems are are either increasing a ridership or they're in the same boat we are where we're where they're de decreased ridership that would be a question for Crystal I don't have that number on me just wondering what the state trend is okay Mr chair yes I have a question that it just because somebody asked me that question um when we have service animals do we have do they have to show that they are service animals no okay that's all I needed to know thank you that it for the I I I guess I wanted to say something I um um I I to me it's alarming the number of writers that are decreasing and uh it's there's not there's there I don't think there's a pattern in there with the exception of a couple of months in Baxter where they've actually increased writers this is comparing it to the previous year where it was a completely different service design right correct statement okay so but the bottom line is wrers ship's decreasing and it it is unless this starts to Plateau or even perhaps slightly increasing getting back to you know are we going to be able to sustain this operation do you think with you know Mary's to Mary's Point um it with stand a reason if we don't see a PL leveling off of you know writer stop decreasing and we at least Plateau at a certain level how do we justify having the number of buses the number of hours and that type of thing if we don't see some significant improvements in ridership that's what it's all about I mean I know you and Crystal are obviously looking at that right yes sir okay excuse me uh yes sir uh what we've been really focused in the last 12 months to your point the decrease in ridership um but you're trying to compare Apple tour and just because there's two different Services what we've been trying to focus our attention mostly on is growing month to month so from June to July July to August and looking at that from that perspective is are we moving from month to month and increasing obviously considering things like school and stuff like that but trying to continue to grow from month to month uh and making sure that we're doing our best not to lose writers in that perspective and paying attention to things and and little other indicators like uh new customers that come up in their reports when we see a decent amount of new customers that show up in the reports that's you know good signs for us too uh so those are things that we're really keying on right now in the last 12 months uh that help indicate how the operations are doing at least when we can't draw a lot of good conclusions from from last year if that makes sense y it does I I mean I didn't I didn't want to I I I assumed you guys are looking at that so I I mean I that's your job I so I but it it is concerning I I don't think any of us want to see the numbers going down and it has been so just um keep an eye on it and let us know and talk about it next time I guess so Mr chair I agree completely with what Jeff is saying and I do think we have to be kind of cleare eyed and hard noosed and if we have to make some decisions about fewer routes or fewer whatever we have to do it we have to do it we have to be responsible people so I I think this has been a really kind of good discussion maybe not one we like to have but we live in the real world and there are real people out there paying taxes and real people are hurting many times so what we can do to be efficient and make the very best of every dollar we should do so thanks Jeff for bringing that up again well I mean to your point we we aren't levying the brander taxpayers so that's a positive when we start getting into that discussion there's definitely going to be some uh louder alarms being heard so yes you definitely are you know we got to pay attention to that so Mr chair yes how Jesse how long you we had quite a change in our in our um policy with fees and fairs and everything how long does it usually take to show that there is a a true true set of T the of the trend is it like six months a year what are we I know we're we're doing a year to do apples to apples but this happened in um when did this happen in May um so Is it feasible by the end of this year it would be enough to show us that the trend of of drop of less ridership or would we have to wait like a year to see so I'll I'll take brard for for a very specific example obviously we had a couple different increases um in May and then further again in August of 2023 so uh it's a little bit tough again as you compare 2024 versus 2023 of you know which one are you comparing to and then again with the change of how we structured the fairs of origin based versus uh address based for instance um but like I mentioned we we're really keying into now factoring some months have different number of operating days but let's keep that out you'll see in some of the earlier months after the changes we were pushing roughly about 2,000 Riders um in the last few months we're closer to like the 23 or 2400 Riders per month so that again we're showing that growth and each month we're seeing somewhere in the Realms of 20 to 30 new customers um in the service so those are the those are those key indicators that we're looking at is are we getting better in our operations and what I'll highlight is in our operations and I'll highlight that here in a second is when our third- party contractor is doing better on the operation side you're also going to see those continue to improve as well um so that's what we've seen especially when we've gotten the new manager and started to see better operations is this summer we've seen good increases in our ridership where we're at the 2300 and in July we're over 2400 Riders just in the brainer area when um over the winter it was barely o over 2,000 right after those changes last fall so again those are positive things that we can take out of this and then hopefully that Trend continues and when we get into looking at September again we're comparing that against 2000 and hopefully those Trends continue and we're looking at pretty significant increases year over-year versus decreases because of the fair increase but again operations are a big part of that i' I'd want to eventually look at seeing how we can lower that backer rate somehow CU I think I think that has something to do with the lack downtrend in ridership so if if the extra Revenue we getting next year or rerouting things or or whatever to try to get that backer what seven bucks or something a trip try to get that down a little bit I think you might I'm thinking I'm thinking that might help increase some ridership get more people over there something to look at Mr chair I have a few other items that are not in the report um so route match our software for dispatch um has been having issues essentially from July uh so I don't know if you're familiar with the crowd strike or outage that kind of U pretty much did a gr ground halt with all the uh flights uh back in July uh at the same time uh that pretty much started causing issues with our dispatch software so every day we have had disconnection issues with that software every day uh with that software um all the way up until now so that's you we're pushing over eight weeks now um and we've been in constant contact with uh trip spark who owns rout route match um and trying to work through these issues and we still have not gotten resolution on that um vot has been involved in that uh and and doing our best to try and get something resolved with that but we continue to try and work through those uh issues uh although it's just we really aren't getting any real solutions to be quite honest with you and it's it's quite frustrating uh to the point where uh my intent is to review our contract and see uh what our options are with that contract because it is it is very concerning uh the issue on those things disconnect was we have to essentially dispatch routes by hand um and we lose the routes that were previously scheduled because we can't get into them so that becomes a big problem when we can't get access to that software so the longer this continues the the bigger the problem is and then having to go back and manually enter those into the system after the fact that can cause problems as well so again because this has continued every day since July this has become a very very big problem for us as a staff as well as the the contractor trying to manage that problem so we are continuing to work through that process but uh keep note that we're even reviewing our contract at this point of what our options are going to be if they just I'm going to say choose not to solve it because we really haven't no matter what we've basically told them they haven't provided us any guidance to to uh to help solve this um that said uh the contractor has made some really great improvements since um since the new contract has been put in place since they've gotten a a full-time manager in uh inhouse downstairs uh Sean is doing a fantastic job their call volumes have been uh mid to Upper 90s uh as a percentage um on a daily basis it's been fantastic that way uh he's been on top of getting our planned and preventative maintenance done on the buses on a regular basis uh they're ENT I'm going to say essentially caught up at this point uh there might be a couple that are outstanding but for the most part they're in really great shape uh in regards to plan and preventative maintenance there's some outstanding just repair items that need to get taken care of but uh we are in uh weekly Communications with them on those items and continue to keep track of those things um even driver behaviors when we get complaints um they have been a lot more Swift about addressing those behaviors and we've moved on from drivers uh several drivers actually in the last uh couple months uh just to address that so even from a customer service standpoint U we've really um nipped a lot of the uh customer service issues in the in the butt with that too uh so they've really turned things around operationally uh across the board even from not only customer service but as well as operations uh there's still some issues with data entry again the software issues does not help um but there were some other issues uh some of that is relation to training so we are following up with them on uh making sure that they get the necessary training to their folks that they need to get um so and we've made and we've put them on notice that they need to get that done um and we will continue to track that and uh if we need to we'll dock them on their contract if need be um but that is something that we are tracking uh on them to make sure that that gets addressed with the data entry and Reporting um but overall they they're Far and Beyond where where they were months ago uh so they're doing fantastic in that way uh other goals that staff is kind of working on uh not only shortly but kind of as we move forward in the next handful of months uh crystal is has some money in our um advertising budget uh so she is finalizing details on a radio ad uh so that is something that we're going to try and push out of trying to drw drum up more support especially as we get closer to the holiday season uh maybe that is going to help continue to push up our ridership as we get closer to that season um the software um Crystal has also been going through a pretty extensive process much like the sale of the bus uh you have to go through a ton of training a ton of interviews and a ton of different different demos uh in regards to softwares for dispatching uh CU we are now exploring potential other options for softwares uh because they're no longer supporting route match at this point um and it's only a matter of time before they completely shut it off um and the fact that we're now essentially two months removed from having a a software without issues uh it may be sooner rather than later that we have to move on from it um so Crystal has been working on getting at least through that process so that way we can start vetting other software packages um obviously we'll have to also vet the uh cost proposals and they're probably not going to be as cost advantageous as route match but we also need it to work so that's part of the challenge with it uh and then the last thing that we've been exploring a little bit is the potential for a facility uh a new facility uh if you know um the third party contractor has been renting the garage out of the Northern Pacific Center um for the last couple years um it's a pretty expensive expense for us U because they essentially roll that into the contract it's an $80,000 expense every year uh so it's it's quite an expense for us I mean obviously the grant covers Us a chunk of that um but that will not as far as I understand be available to us forever um there's future plans for that and uh we will have to find alternative means um there might be a different place but uh there's no guarantees for that either so that is something that we're also exploring there now mindat does have different grants for potentially building a new facility um but that is something that we have to explore some more details on before we can present options like that um but even at paying $80,000 a year um building a new facility at a 90 10% match uh would pay itself off pretty quick uh if we have our own owned facility for buses that we could potentially have its own bus wash type of thing um but those are things that we're just starting to explore the very early stages of it uh but knowing that obviously we're investing $80,000 a year year into the current rental facility and that it won't be available to us long term uh so we're having to find alternative means but those are things that staff is working on at least right now and then probably over the next few months and then that's all I have for now okay Committee Member reports or comments anything Mr chair all I want to say is um Jesse if you could complement the U our third party contractor that for the improvements that they have done from me anyway I would appreciate it it's nice to know that it's working better any other comments I would say um I would I I am saying that uh it's always enjoyable to have a driver that is upbeat positive welcoming friendly and when he talked about they changed some structure on Personnel I think there's a that that makes for better uh people better service and uh you'll find people perhaps uh turning away from a Transit operation for their rides when um when the uh Personnel is not exactly uh some of the things I just identified so saw that today with the driver I had so it was very appreciative you know okay anybody else nothing else and we can adjourn if we get a motion motion to make second all right we're Jed thank you thank you nobody ever votes against that somebody got a time with after so have you been well man I I ended up having have thank you Jessie you did with my knee yeah I think you told me how it turn out