[05:39:23] START OF TAPE - myrts.com Transcript/… · Web viewCHAIRMAN REDMOND: I’ll call to order the quarterly board meeting of the RGRTA and its Subsidiaries, Thursday, February

02.05.2015rgrta-board

Transcription Date: 02.11.15 - Transcriber: JJ/cam

[BEGIN VIDEO]

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: I’ll call to order the quarterly board meeting of the RGRTA

and its Subsidiaries, Thursday, February 5th.

It’s about a quarter after 12 here at the headquarters at 1372 East Main Street in the

boardroom.

So the first item of business would be the Pledge of Allegiance.

(Pledge of Allegiance recited by all)

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for

which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Second item would be the adoption of the agenda.

We will need to go into executive session.

We’ll do that at the end of the consent resolutions.

Could I have a motion to adopt the agenda?

COMMISSIONER JONES: So moved.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Commissioner Jones, second by Commissioner Turner.

All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

Any opposed?

(Silence)

And that’s carried.

Second item is the approval of minutes and acceptance of reports.

We have the Audit Committee Meeting Minutes of December 4th, 2014, the regular

meeting minutes of December 4th, 2014, the Special Board Meeting Minutes of

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December 19th, 2014 and the Compensation Committee Meeting Minutes of January

23rd, 2015.

Could I have a motion to accept the minutes?

COMMISSIONER SMITH: So moved.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Commissioner Smith.

Do I have a second?

Commissioner Carl.

All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

Any opposed?

(Silence)


Next item is the Chief Executive’s Report.

Bill?

BILL CARPENTER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners.

Pleased to report today on the 3rd Quarter TOPS Score.

So for the third consecutive quarter, we talked from time to time about all the things that

we have to get done around here, but this board also gave us specific metrics to work on

through the course of the year.

The results of the third quarter are a score of 105, which, for the next slide, we’re at

105.4 in the first quarter, 106 for the second quarter and 105 for the third quarter.

A lot of numbers here, so let me drill on a couple of them.

A couple of things that dipped down a little bit more.

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First our NPS score and Joe Jablonski, our vice president of Research and Development

will talk a little bit more about what we've learned from the net promoter score and our

customer satisfaction survey, which was done just weeks after we opened the Transit

Center.

Our goal is 33.

Thirty-two, still a good score, but below what we had strived for.

Ridership for the third quarter, second quarter down 1.7%, third quarter 1.1% and I think

what we were seeing during those months is we were making a lot of changes where

people didn’t know what the experience would be.

We saw a different ridership and I’ll talk later in my report what we've seen December

and January, now that the Transit Center is open.

And employee engagement.

This survey was done just after the Transit Center opened.

I will tell you there was tremendous contributions by everyone.

Saturdays, Sundays, Monday through Friday, evenings, nights, whatever it took to get it

done and we saw the participation rate that, do I go run down and be an ambassador at

the Transit Center?

Do I complete this employee survey?

And we saw the participation rate to be the lowest, what we've seen.

Some of the highlights.

As we get closer to the end of the year we’re actually seeing some improvement in what

we expect to happen financially.

On time performance for the third quarter, 91.7%, well above goal.

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The December that we had and I’ll touch on this a little bit later in my report, was the

best December we've ever had.

And the employees that did fill out the employee survey expressed a high level of

engagement.

They were excited.

They knew we were doing something significant in the community, making a difference

and the scores that we got, those that completed the survey was the highest that we've

seen this year.

To go into a little bit more detail on our net promoter score and customer satisfaction,

please welcome Joe Jablonski.

JOE JABLONSKI: Chairman, Commissioners.

So this is information we have certainly seen before and I won’t spend a lot of time with

it, but again, we know that we promote, MPS is just simply the promoters minus the

detractors.

I think a couple of notable things here.

As Bill said, the survey was taken from the 13th through the 19th of December, basically

our third week of operation in the Transit Center.

The results, as he noted, 32, which I thought was frankly a very good score.

I had expected a lower score and anticipated a much lower score with the changes that

we had made.

And of course, the rolling MPS is still 34, very consistent and very stable and that rolling

MPS has a tendency to kind of level out the kinds of things you might see in the different

quarters.

Next slide.

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Here’s our trend, and again, as you look at this, here is the December ’12 score, last

year and this year.

Again, what I would consider to be a very stable, a very consistent process.

One of the things that we did do in the previous way, [INDISCERNIBLE] 17, is we began

to set the stage for how we might get to know how our customers felt about having a

Transit Center.

So the first in [SOUNDS LIKE] Wave 17 we asked the question, “Are you aware that

we’re having a Transit Center open in November?”

Seventy-five percent of our customers said, “We were,” and this was their expected

experience, so 43% felt that having a Transit Center would improve their customer

experience.

Eight percent said, “Not sure that it's going to add anything.”

In fact, that 8% said, “Might even be a negative,” and there were 46% that felt

[INDISCERNIBLE] about it.

Well, in Wave 18, then we asked the question, “Well, what has the experience been with

having the Transit Center?”

You can see that there was a very positive response.

Roughly 60, 59% said, “Wow, this has been a good experience,” and again, that neutral

position went from 46 to 28 and the negatives stayed about the same.

But again, I think that was a very positive response from our customers and I think what

Bill pointed out would be ambassadors and the many things that we did really enhanced

the experience that the folks had.

Next slide.

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So in every wave there’s approximately 16 different performance attributes that we

measure.

And in this wave, particular wave, even though it wasn’t necessarily improvement in

MPS, each one of the 16 attributes improved over the last quarter and over last year.

So just looking at the top eight or so, obviously the most important, or not the most

important, but the best is the ease of purchasing the fare.

Note, the buses arriving on time.

Improvement, but still certainly not the best.

Even though when you look at our on time performance, we had a record setting

October and a record setting December and January is, as well.

So we’ll look at, we’ll see how important that is in just a little bit.

But here are the questions that we've kind of asked, based on our having the new

Transit Center.

So customer service at the Transit Center, a whopping positive.

Customers were very satisfied.

These are transferring to another route.

Again, a significant improvement.

As was ease of understanding what bus to board and where it goes.

So the things that we thought were going to be impacted in a positive way actually occur.

Okay?

Now, what we’re hoping for is that we’ll see increased ridership and we’ll be looking at

that information probably in the next quarter.

Especially in the groups between zero, three to six months and six months to a year.

Next slide.

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So here again is that, “What’s most important to you?” as a customer.

You can see that on time performance, is still by far the most important.

But it is decreasing in importance.

And again, we would attribute that to the better performance we've had over this past

year and last year as well.

Safety and security, route coverage and again, things that do crop up in some of the

dissatisfaction is the interaction with the drivers, so I think I’ve certainly mentioned that

before.

Slide.

So the Takeaways, again, two-thirds of our customers rate RESIDENTS as very

satisfied, either an eight, nine or 10 on a one to 10 scale.

On time performance remains a key criterion, as I’ve said before.

This is the most important element to 43% of the customers and improving it is still one

of the most frequently mentioned topics when we look at what our customers would like

to see us work on.

We recognize that safety and security is an important element and a key concern and

we’re addressing that through a variety of different things that we’re doing at the Transit

Center with our partners.

As I showed you, the Transit Center is having a positive impact, based on what

customers have said.

And again, with all of that, we were only in the third week of operation at the Transit

Center.

Questions?

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Questions for Joe?

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Okay, thank you.

Bill.

BILL CARPENTER: I just, before you move off this slide, I do think, you know, one of

the things that our team is looking at is when you're inside the Transit Center, when

you've got a warm place to wait for your bus or in the summertime a cool place to wait,

someplace with a restroom, someplace to sit down, someplace to get schedules and

other information, whether that need for that bus to be as reliable, people still need to get

where they need to go but they know when the bus is coming.

There’s a screen right there and you're able to see that the bus will be coming.

And to see in a short period of time safety and security come up, so that now that we've

changed the customer experience, what attributes will we need to focus on?

The question was asked, I think by the chairman the last time we covered this.

At what point in time does on time performance become less of a focus?

And what we’re seeing here is if you just look at safety and security and on time

performance, the gap that was there the last time we reported on this versus this time

has gotten much narrower.

So that’s where you’ll see us changing the focus and you know, safety and security

continues to be a top focus of the entire team of, Jim Ramos is just doing a yeoman’s

effort down there to make those adjustments on a day-to-day basis.

So.

We talk about being a top transit agency in the country and the Rochester newspaper

wrote an editorial, I believe it was last March and I got a phone call just before deadline

saying, “Who says you're a top performing agency?”

I said, “We do.

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All the time.”

He said, “Well, why?”

And I said, “Because we believe we are,” and so he printed it.

So now I can quote the local paper. [LAUGHTER]

But it's not just that.

We've held off on spending a lot of time talking about the benchmarking group, that we

were a charter member, the first president, hosted the first meeting.

We had [PH] Mark Trumpet from the Imperial College present to the board back in June

of 2011, because what they told us is it's going to take a few years to get enough

information with a common definition to begin to really know that we've got good

comparisons.

And in December of this year we got the information, the benchmark information through

our fiscal year ending March 31st, 2014 and everybody’s got to get their fiscal year, but

essentially it's their, either December 31st of ’13, June 30th of ’14, for us it's as of March

31st of ’14, five years of data, comparable information and now we've already been

leaning and benchmarking and educating ourselves, but now there’s some real

information we feel we can share.

So, what I will cover here is who facilitates a process, why they were picked.

Talk about how it's being received within the industry.

How and why we benefit from it and then we want to focus on one key performance

indicator, which is our cost recovery.

So the Imperial College has a Railway and Transport Strategy Center.

These folks study this stuff.

The Imperial College is the MIT of the UK.

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They’re highly regarded, known around the world for that type of technical research.

In this group is three research things; benchmarking and performance measurement,

public transit operations and management, transportation economics and policy and as

an example, throughout the world countries live with a 12% to 15% spare ratio.

In the United States we live with a 20% spare ratio.

And they ask why.

And I’ll just say, “Well, the FTA allows for a 20% spare ratio.”

But if your world starts and the center of the universe is London, England, in the UK and

in France it's 12% and in the UK it's 12% and in Tokyo it's 15% and he said, “Why does

the US allow 20%?”

And so we've challenged our maintenance people?

“Why can’t we drop it from 20 and our goal is to get it down to 18?

And then can we lower it because it means fewer assets on campus.”

But they’re doing it elsewhere all over the world and those are the kinds of questions we

wouldn’t ask ourselves necessarily, but because of their expertise.

And where do they get this expertise?

They’ve been doing this for a long time with a variety of groups.

Community of Metros is a rail group.

Nova is a group of metro bus companies.

These are the Montreals, the Paris, the Tokyo, New York City, MTA Rail, New York City

Bus.

Los Angeles.

Hong Kong.

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These are the largest systems and in 2011 the America Bus Benchmarking Group was

formed, as I mentioned, with RGRTA being, pushing for it and the initial group, this was

a characteristics, mid-size, 100 to 600 buses.

We talk about RTS Monroe with 254 buses we have.

Not the other 200 regional and paratransit buses.

Passenger boardings of five to 50 million, we’re right in the middle of the current group at

18 million, or 17 million boardings.

We want similar service and operating characteristics, so that when we benchmark we’re

comparing apples to apples and when it's not apples to apples to identify why are the

oranges the way they are and is that orange performing better than the apple?

And that’s what we've taken several years to make sure we've got the right definitions.

We've shared this information with the industry and so we've got concise, well-

developed KPIs.

We’re working with the FTA on their safety protocols.

We’re working with them on performance protocols because we've established a critical

mass of mid-size companies.

So here’s the original nine and when we met in the fall of 2014 we’re up to 17 members.

So we’re filling out the country, trying to get different geographic areas because how it

gets done in California and how it gets done in Des Moines, Iowa and how it gets done

in the northeast, there’s different characteristics; so within the subgroup you want to

have peers amongst your peers.

And so part of the presentation, a little bit later I’m going to talk about the cost per hour

for firms in just the northeast, which would be Rhode Island, Cleveland, Buffalo and

ourselves.

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So what we've learned is we’re not easy in some attributes to compare ourselves to

others because of our fare structure, the geography; we’re in the northeast.

We have a union environment.

There’s others in the southeast and the Midwest that operate in a nonunion environment.

Our fleet mix.

We've got the second highest percentage of articulated buses, so when you say, “Okay,

what’s the fuel economy of your fleet?” ours is one of the lowest, because we've got

different equipment out on the road.

And then our business model, which generates a very different financial picture for us,

as well as trying to understand how much of our costs are based on customizing service

as opposed to providing only exclusively public transit for the community.

So cost recovery.

Just a simple definition.

This is your operating costs, drivers, fuel, maintenance, administration, how much cost

per hour do you have?

And then looking at fares, business partnerships and advertising revenue, we had a

Finance Investment Committee meeting a little bit earlier; we don’t get to count any

return on our investments as part of our revenues.

This is, these are revenues that all of us have the ability to go out and get and then the

costs are pretty comparable, in generating to run a bus system.

So first attribute is what’s everyone’s cost recovery?

So.

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You can see through here, this is the 80% that from about 20% to almost 30% is what

you would see industry average and then you've got the ends of the bell curve with a

couple numbers down at 15% and RTS at 41%.

So what you would figure is you were just in the transit world, our fares per customer

must be really high to have that much cost recovery.

Well, commissioners, you know better than that.

Our base fare, we have one other member that within their downtown area, charge is a

dollar; when they get outside the downtown area it's more, but the average is $1.75.

We could go to $1.75 in this group and still be in the bottom [INDISCERNIBLE].

At $1.50 per customer we would still be second lowest.

All the way up to $2.50 per ride.

So it kind of blows your mind.

You've got that much cost recovery and your fare is the lowest and as others compare

themselves to us, we become very difficult to compare to.

But this is one of the areas where when you can get 40% of your revenue apart from

government subsidies and when you saw the percentages that everyone else has, that’s

what allows us to perform and say we’re one of the top performing transit agencies in the

country.

Just a couple other points of comparison; our daily ride, all-day pass is $3 and you can

see up to $6.25 is the outlier and there’s one agency at $2, again, within a metro area,

$2 you can ride within the metro area; once you get outside the metro area they have a

different fare structure.

And then our monthly pass is more middle of the pack.

And as far as multiple of your per-ride pass, we've got the highest multiple.

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And so that’s one of the things we talk about, “Why is it $56 and should there be an

adjustment?”

At the same time, for the monthly rider, it's very consistent with the rest of the industry.

And now here’s cost per hour.

Top quartile amongst the entire group, we've got folks, several here at $80 per hour.

So this is, what does it cost to buy the bus, have an operator, have a maintenance

person, have a campus to service it, divide it by your hours.

And so this is where I point out the northeast group because it turns out it costs more to

maintain buses in the northeast than it does in Texas and in Florida, in Dayton, Ohio and

Des Moines, Iowa.

So amongst our area here, 105, 112 I think this is, 123 and 123.

So our cost recovery as a percentage is the highest in the group, but our cost per hour is

also one of the highest, so let’s first look at why are our costs in comparison, where is it?

And as we take a look at the group averages, it's not simple.

There’s a little bit more for maintenance.

A little bit more for driver costs.

Our fuel as a percentage is not that different than some of the others.

Administration at 20 versus a group average of 19.

So our cost per hour, but we’re spending it consistently in the buckets, it's not that our

driver costs are a lot higher and maintenance costs are a lot higher.

So we drill it down a little bit more and try to identify what are some of the learnings and I

kind of gave this a heads up on this as one of the aspects of our costs is the articulated

buses.

They cost more to operate.

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Parts on an articulate bus versus a 40-foot bus, per hour, costs more.

The driver is the same per hour.

Fuel is more per hour.

To maintain the vehicle is more per hour.

But the productivity that you get, so here we are just 12, 13% of our fleet, one of the

members has a lot of Park & Ride service with articulated buses.

Very high percentage.

And then as you can see, there’s only seven of us out of the 17 that even have

articulated buses; everyone else has the 40-foot buses, a traditional piece.

But you can probably guess who Q is; I mean, these aren’t the same, they’re just ranked

one through 17, but you can guess if they’ve had this many seats on these buses, where

they might fall.

So our productivity per bus is higher.

That’s one of the ways we get high cost recovery is we can put more people on the bus

because we have more seats out there on average per hour.

Wow. [LAUGHTER]

Just taking a commercial break.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: We don’t have to start over, do we? [LAUGHTER]

BILL CARPENTER: Let me bring Joe Jablonski back here. [LAUGHTER]

JOE JABLONSKI: Back to the bond discussion. [LAUGHTER]

BILL CARPENTER: Yeah. [LAUGHS]

That was fascinating. [LAUGHTER]

Convex, was that…?

MAN: Convexity. [LAUGHS]

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BILL CARPENTER: So just one of the areas where articulated buses, so this is one of

these areas, when you first start looking at it you say, “Jeez, RTS, maybe it's because in

the morning we have to turn the diesel buses on and let them warm up for a period of

time before they go out.”

But as our R&D group has looked at it, a group part of it is the articulated buses, the

percentage of our fleet makeup that they have, the miles that they operate get less,

fewer miles per gallon, use more fuel than a 40-foot bus and so in comparison where

you see a number of urban, similar type systems, a lot of inner-city driving, stop-and-go

driving, getting better fuel economy, but when we take a look at our 40-foot buses, yeah,

it's our fuel economy, too.

And so what pulls down the average, raises our cost per hour is having a 60-foot bus to

drive around.

We’re getting the savings.

It’s better to have two 60-foot buses than three 40-foot buses.

But if you're looking per hour, those two 60-foot buses per hour raise the cost.

Less cost to serve 120-feet worth of bus, because you only have two operators.

But you're only operating two hours instead of three hours, so the cost per hour, so

these are the kind of peeling the onion, if you will, of getting to “Where do we stand?”

So if we know that we've got the lowest base fare and the highest cost recovery, it's

either our costs are really low or there’s something else about our business model and

as I’ve said, yeah, our costs are high compared with the peer group.

So when you take a look at what do, what does everyone generate from other revenues,

this is what you would expect to see and it's striking to see just how successful we are

with over 60 partnerships and we received word yesterday another $400,000 with a

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business partner of annual revenue, the public bid, the bids were opened but wait for the

official notification, but another $400,000 annual revenue of work that will help us with

our cost recovery, allow us to provide more public transit service.

Some of these, some of our peers are smaller than us.

Some are much larger than us.

And yet when you just look at it on a per dollar basis, um, we really extend the ski slope.

So in conclusion, um, our culture become the best performing transit authority is guided

by the Bus Benchmarking Group.

We talk to our peers, when we find someone who’s doing a better job than us we go visit

them, we get on the phone, we do conference calls.

In some cases we find they’re using different definitions.

And we’ll talk about this.

What you’ll see through the course of this year is about three more presentations on the

Bus Benchmarking Group, where we’ll take different aspects and when we talk about

maintenance costs, one of the things, we are very poor compared to our peers in how

often our tow truck goes out or a mechanic goes out to fix a bus out on the road.

Per miles between doing that for us is about 2000 miles.

And we have peers that are at ten and 12,000 miles.

And so we went to visit one and said, “So how do you do this?”

And they gave us their story and we said, “What about a flat tire?”

“We don’t count flat tires.”

“What do you count when the fare box goes dead?”

“We send somebody out but we don’t count that.”

“Well, what do you count?”

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“Oh, if the transmission goes.

If they have a major breakdown.”

And then we go back and check ours and I said, “Well, if that’s all we counted we would

be at 10 or 12,000.”

So this is where it's taken some time, but then we do find, as we do those questions,

who’s got the best process, the best improvement and our comprehensive plan,

[INDISCERNIBLE] we can improve from what we’re doing.

We’re going to keep using our same definitions, but we’re going to improve.

So our comprehensive plan, the strategies, the tactics we developed are being informed

and our business model… I’m waiting for someone else to say they’re jealous or envious

of how we do it, but as I take a look at this group, what we’re doing provides more

financial stability for our community, for our customers, than anyone else out there.

And we do become an outlier in the best sense of that word, for our strong financial

performance and our ability to handle the number of customers we do with the resources

we have.

And I’ll take any questions on the benchmarking group before I continue.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Question for Bill?

Okay, thank you.

BILL CARPENTER: Just a couple comments on the Transit Center.

We’ve been open now, we’re into our 11th week here and you know, there’s been a lot

of conversation from different people, phone calls to my desk about you know, Joe

showed you, there’s 10% of our customers who the experience is not as pleasant and

we’re working on that.

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A week ago Monday we changed about 75% of the suburban buses, all of them had

been on Mortimer Street; we were able to put about 75% of the trips inside the Transit

Center and the one customer I’ve been dealing with regularly, was talking to her a week

before it went into effect and I said, “So what bus do you take?” and she said, “The 415,”

and I said, “Well, that will still be our on Mortimer Street.” [LAUGHTER]

“But if you take another bus you can be inside.” [LAUGHTER]

So there are some changes like that.

We really do need 30 bus bays and the building holds 26.

So we’re still working through that but what are the different ways that you measure it?

And one of the ways you measure it is increase in ridership.

Now in December we had “Ride the Bus for Free,” a fare holiday.

Get on the bus at the Transit Center.

We saw 106% increase, so about a 7% increase and with the through-routing, compared

with [PH] interlining, you try to adjust for, are we just counting the same people, but now

some people have to get on two rides?

And so our R&D group did a deeper dive and so the Route 24 to Market Place, that only

starts downtown and goes out to Market Places.

It's up 20… 26%.

Brockport and Spencerport, up about 40%.

Webster up over 20%.

Penfield, Fairport, flat.

So we've got routes where there is no interlining, compared with through-routing.

Those buses only went from the end to downtown, still seeing significant ridership

increases.

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Very difficult to take a look at the one leg in the 31 park compare it with the one last year

say, “Okay, ridership is up, but do people through route?”

The Route 8, West Main Street and the Route 38 East Main Street, ridership is up.

How much of it is because people have to get off at the Transit Center and get on the

next bus?

For January, final numbers came in, it's a 6% increase.

When you take a look at that weekday/per day, up 10%.

We had fewer weekdays in January this year than January a year ago, so it's not a 10%

increase.

When you look at it on a per day basis, 10%, and that exceeds the 7% that you would

have if everyone that was through-routing before now interlines, 7% would be the

baseline; we’re above that baseline.

So as many people that are calling saying, “I don’t like what you're doing,” we have a lot

of people who are just quietly getting on the bus, enjoying the experience.

Operationally, ah, the changes from through-routing to interlining has significantly

improved our reliability.

In the past the bus operator, I’ll just take the Route 8.

We’ll start downtown, go to the end of the Route 8, back and forth, back and forth, back

and forth for about three hours.

And if they got started late, there just wasn’t a way to make up time.

They spent the whole day, that whole three hours behind.

With the buses now starting at the Transit Center, they go out, maybe they’re running

late when they come back, but we allow a six-minute gap, it allows them to catch up and

they go out to do a new route.

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And so the segments that are being counted are shorter.

I’d love to say that we planned on this, but as it turns out the reliability is much higher

because what they have to do is shorter.

They come back, you've got a recovery period at the Transit Center when you go out

and start something new.

So December was our highest December.

January was the highest January.

And many of you probably know that April of 2014 was our highest level.

January of 2015 is now our second highest level on time performance.

So we’re seeing a very strong ability to be more reliable for our customers.

And through yesterday we had boarded at the Transit Center and my best estimate is

somewhere during this board meeting the two millionth person will board at the Transit

Center since we opened.

So on a weekly basis we’re having more people through the Transit Center boarding a

bus than go through the Amtrak station each year and since we’ve opened we’ve served

more customers than the Greater Rochester International Airport served in 2014.

They’re at about 1.8 million customers per year and we’re at two million customers

already, so we’re serving just under a million customers a month at the Transit Center.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: That’s an outstanding period.

That really is.

BILL CARPENTER: We’ll just, we’ll run through this.

We didn’t meet in January so we've got some pictures here.

Great thank you for the ambassadors.

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The employee quarterly meeting out at [SOUNDS LIKE] Access and the holiday lunch

there.

Holiday lunch here on December 18th.

We handed out, visited with Senator Funke here, senator-elect at that point.

And then we distributed toys to the Tom Ryan Center and also to United Church over on

Culver Road.

And I’ve got to point out, these commissioners that come out, they’ve got a lot going on

in their day life and still make it out for their, to thank the people at Livingston and we’ve

got Wayne here and where did we hide Mike Jankowski?

See him?

Oh, we did the picture at the end, I’m sorry.

We took a picture with the awards.

A lot going on.

Several meetings with the mayor’s office, with the school district, with the police chief.

Working to make sure that we’re managing safety and security at the Transit Center as

best we can.

And also a significant effort being made to maximize the state funding, the budget, the

state budget.

There’s a surplus in revenues this year.

The transit industry is making a case for us to receive an increase.

We've been flat for the last seven years.

Seven years if you count the governor’s proposal, which would leave us flat and in

Washington the federal funding ends May 31st and we went and visited Buffalo,

Rochester and Syracuse went down and met with the Western New York Delegation to

22



talk about the impact it would have if that funding is not continued in a reliable, robust

level.

And with that, Mr. Chairman, concludes my report.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Thank you.

Questions for Bill?

Tom?

COMMISSIONER ARGUST: This is a very exciting report and, [COUGH] excuse me,

ah, where are these 74,000 people come from?

I mean in terms of the increase.

Whether it was the January one, which was higher, but if you just take the last…

Are these new people?

I mean… why do we have so many, such an increase, in a month?

BILL CARPENTER: I’d say there’s three reasons.

At one level there’s an increase because of our policy change, [OVERLAPPING] to

change up the board again.

The second piece, which your question kind of led into, ran into Bill McDonald, who’s

CEO of Medical Motors and he said, “Bill, I’ve started taking the bus a couple days a

week.”

He said, “I live near Main and Winton.

Where I go it tends to be in the urban core, but the, I never, I was too intimidated on how

the buses transfer on Main Street now.”

He says, “Now I take the bus, I get into the Transit Center, I go to a gate, it's just like an

airport.

I know when the bus is going to come.

23



If I’m going to someplace new I know there’s information there for me to get there,” he

said, “It's a pleasant experience.

You've simplified my entry into it.”

And then the third piece, particularly this time of year, the standing out in the elements

on a day like today and take a look at the sidewalks and the snow between the sidewalk

and the streets to try to get onto a bus, on Main Street, waiting downtown, it just was not

pleasant.

And one of the other statistics that people, “Bill, you're too much of a numbers guy,” 100

people an hour at peak times are using our bathrooms.

Where did those people go for personal comfort? [LAUGHTER]

You think about that number; eight, 900, 1000 people a day where our system did not

allow them to even access that, that personal need.

So when you make that environment more comfortable, I think what we’re seeing is our

regular customers are saying, “I’m going to do it more often.

I can go out today because I just wait out front, the transfer downtown will be pleasant

and go on where I need to go.”

But I expect the scientific answer will come when we do our customer survey in March

and we’re able to give the same disciplined way of asking our customers and see what

else [OVERLAPPING]…

COMMISSIONER ARGUST: Well, I’d also be interested in knowing that necessarily

now but, what is the factor of, you get off a bus at the Transit Center and get on another

bus, where you're counting the same person in the same destination twice basically, so

how does that skew the numbers if it does?

So I’d just be interested at some point…

24



I also have this image now, all of the sudden, Bill, that I hope you're not doing this,

you're not down there with a counter in front of the bathrooms [LAUGHTER] counting

how many people are using them.

BILL CARPENTER: What I am counting is how many sheets of toilet paper…

[LAUGHTER]

COMMISSIONER ARGUST: The last thing is, this is such a good, positive statement

about what great work is being done; how do we get it out there?

How do we, you know, I can’t stand, I don’t know if it's the water we drink in Rochester,

but it's always, “Yes, but..”

You know, you can have the greatest story out there, you can say the greatest things,

but it's always, “Yes, but…”

So… how do we get this information out there so people get even more excited?

BILL CARPENTER: So one of the things that Maryalice Keller and her group are

working on, we tried not to put out a lot of stories ourselves during the month of January,

so that we can begin to collect this information.

We got the customer survey information just the middle of January, third week of

January.

We began the middle of January, we said, “Hey, January 2nd we had a million

customers,” I said, “Well, by our board meeting we’ll be at two million,” and then we had

snow on Monday and said, “Hey, two million yesterday, we’re going to hit at midday

today.”

And so let’s collect the facts, because the extraordinary events that the media has

picked up on are intermittent.

25



And the day-to-day, we were seeing the ridership, but let’s get enough data where we

can talk about the facts and we’ve got a strategy to get that information out there.

Thank you.

COMMISSIONER ARGUST: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Any other questions for Bill?

Well, after discussing the number of rest stops, I really miss that discussion on the bond

financing. [LAUGHTER]

So with that, can I have a motion to accept the chief executive’s report and we’ll move

onto the finance report.

COMMISSIONER ARGUST: So moved.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Motion by Commissioner Argust, second by Commissioner

Carl.

All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

Any opposed?

(Silence)


Thank you.

SCOTT ADAIR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and commissioners.

If you’d allow me to indulge for maybe 25 minutes or so we can recap the financial…

[LAUGHTER]

That was earlier today.

There are a number of people here now that weren’t here for that presentation and I

think they were sorely missed during that, so… [LAUGHTER]

26



Steve will start out by calling the meeting to order… [LAUGHTER]

I’d also like to point out one thing that Bill’s report did not highlight, that should have

been on there and Mary Alice Keller told me to make sure that I highlighted this under

the miscellaneous things, 40,000 of those passenger increase during this last period of

January was due to Bill’s birthday party in the latter part of January. [LAUGHTER]

It was held at the Transit Center because we bussed everybody over there, so…

Happy birthday [INDISCERNIBLE]. [LAUGHTER]

So, the Financial Report.

We’re now at the quarter closing December 31st, our third quarter of the fiscal year and

we've noticed a slight improvement since the last time we met when we presented to you

the October results.

At that point in time we were approximately $70,000 worse off than we are today from a

financial projection.

We are estimating right now that we will finish the fiscal year with a deficit of around

$665,000; that’s being impacted really by the mortgage recording tax that we've been

talking about all year and again, reverting back to the Finance & Investment Committee

meeting, we talked a little bit about why that was happening.

But needless to say, we are continuing to watch the finances overall to try and correct

that negative position, to bring it into a positive light.

We do see some challenges.

We've noted that the fact that we have mortgage recording tax problems, we have some

issues as far as our other liabilities look and we’re continuing to monitor those and as we

get closer to year-end we’ll have a better handle on some of those things.

27



But as the board has pointed out to us, we do have an ability to use some of our 5307

money to help close that gap at the end of this year, so we’ll continue to report back to

you as to how we determine to use that.

The improvement of the $70,000 from the last time we reported is really in three primary

areas.

Locally generated revenues.

As Bill pointed out, ridership is up.

We've finally been able to recognize some additional sales of one-day passes that we’ve

kind of been watching throughout the year.

We noticed in the beginning of the year they started to increase.

We weren’t 100% sure that that increase would maintain itself, so we’ve been holding off

and we’ve decided for this last third quarter we would actually recognize about $20,000

in additional revenue for one-day pass sales.

In addition to that we have our fringe benefits area, up about $36,000.

This is basically due to the fact that we did not have as many retirees this past year and

our retiree health insurance did not climb as much as we thought it was going to.

So we still see the cost in our normal employees’ healthcare benefit, but our retirees’

health insurance, which is a little bit more costly; we’re not seeing that increase.

And the third item here is in the services area and again, I will give my hats off to Mary

Alice Keller.

The primary reason for the better performance in our contractual services is some

money that they’ve saved regarding our rebranding efforts during this past year and

effectively having a majority of that work done right now, we’re able to recognize some of

the savings from that, so Mary Alice, thank you very much to you and your staff.

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With that, it concludes my report on the financial statement for the period ending

December 31st of 2014.

I’ll take any questions that anyone has.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Questions for Scott?

Okay, thank you.

So can I have a motion to receive the financial report?

COMMISSIONER WHITE: So moved.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Commissioner White.

Could I have a second.

Commissioner Carl, oh, Commissioner Jones.

All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

Any opposed?

(Silence)


Under the proposed resolutions, the first item, RGRTA 1 of 2015, a resolution amending

Resolution RGRTA 56 of 2014 with LeChase Construction Services for design build

services for the RTS Campus Improvement Project.

Mark Ballerstein.

MARK BALLERSTEIN: Thank you very much.

Actually we’ll cover two resolutions here.

The first two proposed resolutions, the one dealing LeChase as well as the one dealing

with [PH] Poppy Design Group, both are associated with the RTS Campus Improvement

Project.

29



And just as a brief reminder, here’s a slide showing the different GMPs, guaranteed

maximum prices, if you will, that phases that we will be progressing on the project.

GMP 1 is the demolition and construction of a new parking lot along Chamberlain Street.

The second phase is the Operations Building renovation.

And then the third is the Service Building, a new service building being constructed and

GMP 4 is the new Maintenance Warehouse.

Just to kind of refresh everybody on that, we've been through this a few times before.

So our project timeline, we got our environmental approval in August of ’13.

We completed our design builder selection process and our 30% design was also

completed in September of 2014.

Right now we’re right in the midst of our property acquisition; it looks like we’ll have that

completed by March of this year.

And then for GMP 1, which is the parking lot and the demolition of the properties, we

expect to come back to the board in May to set that and to allow us to start work shortly

after we set the price.

And GMP 2, which is the Operations Building renovation, we’ll be coming back in August

to set that price and begin construction on that phase.

So just a little more detail on our property acquisition.

We had 20 properties to acquire; we’ve actually acquired 12 of those to date.

We have four that we expect to transfer in the near future and four more properties that

will be going through the eminent domain process; it’ll take a little longer.

So now that we start owning properties, we need to make sure that they’re secured to

avoid any vandalism and disturbance of any asbestos containing materials that we might

have onsite.

30



And just to lower our liability, keeping people off of our property now, as well as

protecting the neighborhood from any negative aspects of vandalism.

So LeChase Construction Services, as part of their design build contract, we’ll secure

and manage these properties as they now become ours to maintain and own.

We have a proposed guaranteed maximum price for this work, which of $63,300, excuse

me.

We've reviewed that amount at an independent cost estimate, we find that value to be

fair and reasonable for the scope of work involved.

I should just state, the scope of the work involves boarding up old houses, dealing with

shutting off the utilities.

Securing them in additional ways if needed, as well as putting up a temporary perimeter

fence around the site as we start building, to keep trespassers out.

The other aspect of the campus improvement project is as we go through design and

construction phases, there’s other services that we need to have from our [PH] cultural

engineering firm, to help us oversee the project and permitting and other tasks,

especially overseeing the activities of our design builder; essentially acting as our

owner’s representative, getting into the nuts and bolts of making sure everything’s

progressing properly.

These services include asbestos sampling and testing, the abandonment of Hayward

Avenue, which we need to do because that’s part of where we’re going to be

constructing our parking lot.

Geotechnial engineering.

The pre-subdividing of all of our lots; we've acquired many lots over time, into one lot,

which will simplify the mapping of our parcel.

31



DBE tracking, the FTA requires that we track all payments to all subcontractors and

especially DBE subcontractors to ensure the timely payments, so that’s one of the

requirements that has to be completed.

Handling, not handling, but managing any contaminated soils that we might have to

remove from the site, making sure they’re handled properly.

They’ll also do design oversight, compare independent cost estimates and then do field

inspections for QA/QC of the work that’s prepared by our design builder.

Next slide.

So Poppy Design Group, who’s the firm that did our preliminary engineering and put

together the design build RFP, they’re the logical folks to continue in these additional

services that we need.

We actually, in our RFP, we identified them, not identified, the scope of the work

included continuing on with this initial phase to go in through final design and

construction phases.

So um, and actually I see there is a typo there.

The proposed services for the design and construction phases of it's GMP 1, 2, 3 and 4

is $192,000 and the Authority has reviewed the proposed fee and find it to be fair and

reasonable for the scope of the work that’s involved.

Next slide.

So the specific recommendation we have for these two referrals is that the CEO be

granted authority to amend the contract with LeChase Construction Services, increasing

the authorization by $63,300 to a total of 18, excuse me, 1.8, no, I’ll say the whole thing;

$1,817,532.

32



In addition the chief executive officer will be authorized to execute, justify orders on

contract in an amount not to exceed $181,700 for any additional design build services as

will be needed.

And that the CEO or his designee be granted authority to amend the agreement with

Poppy Design Group, increasing authorization by $192,000 to a total of $530,000 and

that the CEO be authorized to amend that contract in amounts not to exceed $53,000 for

additional services as may be needed to progress the project.

At this time we’d like to take any questions, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Questions for Mark?

COMMISSIONER ARGUST: [INDISCERNIBLE] One, phase one, as we get all the

property, how have we kept the neighbors on the west side of Hayward up to speed on

what’s happening across the street?

MARK BALLERSTEIN: Yep, good question.

So we have a newsletter, letter planned to go out here shortly, as we start acquiring

them and in that we’re going to mention the next phases of activity they’ll see going on,

but we’re also inviting them to a workshop session here in mid-April to talk about all the

activities, including asbestos, because that’s always a concern [INDISCERNIBLE] those

things that will be going on, to explain how they’re protected and even though you’ll see

people out there with [INDISCERNIBLE] black suits and everything else, it looks like it's

dangerous for me to explain that to them, to lower their concerns about that and just let

them be aware of it.

And we've also been reaching out to the neighborhood association regularly and we’ll

probably make another update session to their monthly meetings.

33



COMMISSIONER ARGUST: When will we be showing the neighbors and the

community associations the design for the parking lot and in particular the wall?

MARK BALLERSTEIN: Yes.

So we have been working and we've showed several of our interested community

partners here the concept that we had for the wall and the landscaping and we’re really

only fine-tuning that.

We’re not really making major changes to it.

When we met with the Beechwood Neighborhood Association, they identified a

subcommittee that we would work with on fine-tuning those adjustments.

But generally, the support of what we had proposed for the wall was well accepted.

So we plan on having that group to get together in about three or four weeks and review

what the architects are coming up with today and the landscape architects as well, for

the wall and the landscaping.

So.

COMMISSIONER ARGUST: Just one more.

On Phase 4, which is out here on Main Street, ah… you're still looking at that as out a

bit.

MARK BALLERSTEIN: It depends on the funding.

That is funding dependent, correct.

COMMISSIONER ARGUST: You don’t have the money for that yet, yeah.

I’m just wondering, just… I’ve talked with the chief operating officer about this but I’ll put

it on the record, that if it's going to be a number of years I really think we should try to do

something on Main Street.

34



Just having that fence out there and a parking lot, it just is not, doesn’t look great and I

wish that there would be something we might do, if it's going to be out there a while.

MARK BALLERSTEIN: That’s a very good idea because we do want to be nice

neighbors as well as keeping Main Street looking good.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Henry?

COMMISSIONER SMITH: You talked about acquiring some property through eminent

domain.

What’s the time frame you think that would take to make that happen?

MARK BALLERSTEIN: So we’re already on the judge’s docket for March 20th and it

could be decided in one or two sessions, I’m not sure.

He just has to hear the case, not the case, but be presented the information and make a

ruling.

No one will tell me how quickly or [LAUGHS] how long that can, that’ll go.

So I’m hoping within a month or so we would have that.

But it's only four properties at this time, that are going through that process.

We were able to negotiate everything else, which is really, like I said, [INDISCERNIBLE].

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Okay.

Any other further questions?

Any discussion?

So this would be, take both RGRTA 1 of 2015 and RGRTA 2 of 2015 which is the

resolution amending Resolution RGRTA 26 of 2013 with [PH] Popely Design Group for

architectural and engineering services for the RTS Campus Improvement Project.

We probably ought to do separate votes on each, so could, for RGRTA 1, um, the

contract involving LeChase, could I have a motion?

35



COMMISSIONER CARL: I’ll move it.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Commissioner Carl.

Could I have a second?

Commissioner Smith.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: Second.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Um…

All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

Any opposed?

(Silence)


RGRTA 2 of 2015, the resolution regarding the Popely Design Group.

Could I have a motion?

Commissioner Argust.


Commissioner Carl.

All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

Any opposed?

(Silence)


Next item up, thank you, Mark, next item up is RGRTA 3 of 2015.

This is a resolution, resolution endorsing a program of projects for the Authority’s

Federal Section 5311, Consolidated Grant Application for fiscal years 2015 and 2016.

36



Scott Adair.

SCOTT ADAIR: Thank you, Chairman.

Presented to you today, looking for a recommendation from you to adopt our

recommended program of projects for 5311 Funding.

Our 5311 Funding is federal funding for the rural subsidiaries of RGRTA, which include

all the outlying counties.

Effectively what we’ll do with this after, if it is passed here today, we will present this

publicly from the standpoint of we will advertise for a public, we will put a public notice

out there that this plan of projects exists and subsequently if any individual would like to

come forward and have a public meeting on them or public hearing on any one of the

projects that can then be scheduled.

If there is no need for any sort of a public hearing on this, the plan as recommended

here today would then be formalized into a grants document and sent onto New York

State for funding.

This will fund the 5311 Program for the state fiscal years ending March 31st, 2016 and

March 31st, 2017.

It's a little confusing because it calls for the ’15 and ’16 fiscal years and when we think of

that generally we think of the year ended March 31st, 2015 and March 31st, 2016 but it

is a subsequent two-year period.

This is a similar process that we’ll go through shortly with our RTS for Monroe, the 5307

funding that we go through as part of our annual budget adoption.

You’ll notice on here there is a plan for operating assistance being provided to the

subsidiaries.

37



All the regional properties, the approximately $3.9 million worth, that will require a local

matching 50% and then a capital component of this of approximately $17.2 million.

This covers every regional property that we have.

It includes the purchase of approximately, not approximately, 37 buses acrossed all

counties, 12 wheelchair vans, three non-revenue vehicles and virtually each of the

regional properties will see some sort of facility improvement or additional facility being

built during this two-year period.

We didn’t want Mark to go forward for very long, so we wanted to make sure we got the

facility to start moving forward. [LAUGHTER]

So at this point what we would be looking to do is get the board’s recommendation to

proceed with this program of projects and ultimately conduct a, they have the potential of

conducting a public hearing regarding them and if there is no public hearing we would

then file the grant application with New York State Department of Transportation.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Questions?

Any discussion?

Okay, could I have a motion on RGRTA 3 of 2015?

COMMISSIONER SMITH: I’ll move.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Okay, Commissioner Smith makes the motion.

Second?

COMMISSIONER JONES: Second.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Commissioner Jones.

All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

Any opposed?

38



(Silence)


Thank you.

Onto the Consent Resolutions.

People are available if anybody has questions, but if we can move through these, I know

that a number of folks have full days today.

RGRTA 4 of 2015 is a resolution amending RGRTA 61 of 2013, increasing the amount

of authorized, justified orders on contract with SimplexGrinnell LLC for the Renaissance

Square Transit Center Project.

Mark Ballerstein is available if we have questions.


COMMISSIONER ARGUST: Move it.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Commissioner Argust.




All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

Any opposed?

(Silence)


RGRTA 5 of 2015, a resolution awarding a contract for the purchase of seven type three

buses for RTS Ontario.

Scott Adair has the details.

39




COMMISSIONER CARL: I’ll move it.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Commissioner Carl.




Any discussion?

All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

Any opposed?

(Silence)


RGRTA 6, 2015 is a resolution authorizing the award of a contract for 87 octane

gasoline.

We’re not going very far without it. [LAUGHTER]





Commissioner Carl.

Any discussion.

Okay, we don’t want pedestrians. [LAUGHTER]

All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

40



Any opposed?

(Silence)


RGRTA 7 of 2015, a resolution authorizing the award of a contract for in-house medical

services.

Maryalice Keller has the details.

COMMISSIONER ARGUST: So move it.



COMMISSIONER FISCHER: Second.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Commissioner Fischer

Any discussion?

All in favor?

Oh, okay.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: What is [INDISCERNIBLE]?

Can you tell us what that is, in-house?

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Maryalice, do you want to fill in a little bit about the details for

the in-house medical services?

COMMISSIONER CARL: Came out of nowhere. [LAUGHS]

MARYALICE KELLER: Certainly.

Actually, commissioners, you did approve a similar resolution earlier in the year for a

different vendor.

Due to an illness that vendor was no longer able to deliver on the services we had

contracted for.

41



So we went through a new procurement and made the selection going forward.

BILL CARPENTER: What are the services?

MARYALICE KELLER: The services are medical, pre-employment testing.

Compliance with 19-A regulations for our employees and this is the medical review

portion of it, so the team works closely with our occupational health staff here in the

building.

COMMISSIONER: Thank you.

MARYALICE KELLER: You're welcome.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Any further questions?

Okay.

Um, I’m trying to think.

Do we need a motion?

BILL CARPENTER: Argust and Fischer.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Argust and Fischer, that’s right.

[OVERLAPPING]

COMMISSIONER: [INDISCERNIBLE] [LAUGHTER]

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

Any opposed?

(Silence)


Um, the next item is RGRTA 8 of 2015, a resolution authorizing RTS Genesee to enter

into a three-year collective bargaining agreement with the Service Employees

International Union - Local 200 United.

42



If we want to have a discussion on that we can go into Executive Session, if need be.

Otherwise, if everybody is fine with the details we can just take the vote.

So, could I have a motion?




COMMISSIONER ARGUST: I’ll second.


All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

Any opposed?

(Silence)


And the last item would be RTS 1 of 2015.

This is a resolution authorizing an amendment to Resolution RTS 3 of 2014 for the

retirement plan of general administrative and supervisory employees of the Regional

Transit Service, Inc.

Um, could I have a motion?

COMMISSIONER SMITH: I’ll move.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Okay, Commissioner Smith.


Commissioner Carl.

All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

43



Any opposed?

(Silence)

And that matter is carried.

Thank you.

Um, with everything on the agenda, the next item up would be the calendar.

Note that the Compensation Committee meeting has been changed, as well as the

Governance Committee meeting and the regular board meeting for March.

So… they are March 3rd and March 12th.

So.

Okay.

There being no further business before the board, could I have a motion to adjourn?

COMMISSIONER: So moved.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: Okay.

All in favor?

(Chorus of Ayes)

Okay.

Thank you very much.

COMMISSIONER: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN REDMOND: So.

[AUDIO SILENCED]

[END VIDEO]

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45

Documents

[05:39:23] START OF TAPE - myrts.com Transcript/… · Web viewCHAIRMAN REDMOND: I’ll call to order the quarterly board meeting of the RGRTA and its Subsidiaries, Thursday, February