Director of Aviation - Regular Meeting

Welcome to TI and O. This will be probably one of the longer meetings of the year with one ordinance on the agenda. My name is Kevin O'Neill. I'm the chair, first district at large, my colleagues.

Melissa Robinson, third district, vice chair.

Jonathan Duncan, sixth district.

Lindsey French, second district at large.

And Gary French just walked in. I'm gonna wait for him to introduce himself.

Eric Bunch, fourth district. Apologies.

Thank you. Alright. First ordinance. What? Oh, yeah. We're in a hurry. Got a big agenda.

Martha Ross, city clerk's office.

Jeff Martin, city clerk's office. Andrew Bonkowski, law department. Michael Shockburn.

And councilman.

Daryl Carroll's 5th District At Large.

Sir? Alright. We would have our first ordinance.

Committee sub two six zero two six three, expressing the city council support for the grant application for the Mid America Regional Council 2026 sub allocated call for projects and directing the city manager and director of public works to submit grant application to Mark.

morning, chairman o'neill and members of the transportation and construction operations committee. My name is Jason Waldron. I'm the transportation director in public works. With me this morning is Selena Zapadabur in public works and Todd Latarella in public works. Going be the the And first

we're

next These are we're not advocating for any one project over another. These are recommendations of two projects in each district that we believe will be most competitive in the process. There will be probably three to four projects selected. I of of Directors

of

to reallocate to a different project. So with that, Selena?

Good morning. My name is Selena, planning manager in the public works department. Thanks for having us here this morning. Selena, planning manager in the Public Works Department. Thanks for having us here this morning.

We thought we'd start with, an overview of the funding process, for the marks of allocated, Culver projects, and then we'll follow with what the funding opportunities are for fiscal year 'twenty nine to 2030, which is what this cycle focuses on. We'll then pivot to the KCMO list of projects currently under consideration and then end with timeline and immediate next steps for the city. So the funding process for the mark sub allocated call for projects is divided into two different phases. Phase one is a preapplication type of process in which mark will assess each project's general alignment with regional policies and priorities as identified in the metropolitan transportation plan connected KC 2050 that was recently updated over the last few months. After these preapplications are submitted, mark will evaluate the alignment with the MTP, and then those assessments will be reviewed by Mark's technical advisory committee within which we have representation.

And then phase two will include a more technical application with details about each project, more quantitative type specific questions are on that part of the application. And that will be scored by mark and then reviewed by the Missouri programming committee afterwards. And so both phases in the process are mandatory in order to apply for funding. We wouldn't be able to skip phase one and then submit a project for phase two. So we are we're requesting the 14 projects for phase one at this time.

The second slide here talks about the different funding pots available in the mark sub allocated call for projects. There are four different funding sources. The biggest one is the surface transportation block grant program, STBG. By and large, most of the projects that we are considering right now would fall under that funding pot. There are a couple that would fall under the transportation alternatives program, which focuses on bikeped type infrastructure.

These funding amounts are anticipated by mark at this time, could be subject to change, but we are following that closely. Next two slides will focus on the list of projects under consideration. We have about two projects for each district. We also have a citywide project, the vision zero high injury network road safety audit improvement, so that would benefit all districts by focusing on the injury network corridors. I will note that one of the projects, MLK Boulevard Complete Streets, spans two districts, District 3 and District 5.

Then District 4 and District 6 also have each a project that would fall under the transportation alternatives pot of funds. Here is a timeline. The phase one pre application opened on February 25. And on March 20, the pre applications are due. That's next Friday.

So we're working hard to get those preapplications ready to submit on time. The staff will be Mark's staff will be assessing those preapplications in the AprilMay time period, and the technical advisory committee will be reviewing those recommendations likely in May, June. And June 16, that will go to the TTPC, which is the highest transportation committee at mark. And that TTPC committee will take into account the recommendations from the technical advisory committee. On June 18, phase two technical application will open.

We will have until July 24 to submit those phase two technical applications through the portal, and then the MARC staff will assess in mid September. The programming recommendations will go to the Missouri programming committee in OctoberNovember time frame with those recommendations complete in mid December. So our key next steps is really focusing on passing this resolution and also getting our pre applications ready to submit next Friday in time for the deadline and then following that, the phase two applications in the summer. So with that, we'll take your questions and comments.

I do have a question. I would like to see on the six district breakout you have of each project, what would be the estimated cost of each of those projects? Just estimated. And that's all I had. You could give that information to all of us just to move on.

The other my issue, mister chair, if I may, the 20% do these require a 20% match if they're funded? Yes. I'm sorry.

Where does

the 20% match come from?

So that was one of the I I meant to mention most of these projects, they are they're all they have their own characteristics, but there's three main criteria that we looked at when they're that they already have that local match available. Some most of them do. And then what the projected estimated scoring would be and then readiness because there is a time line. You just can't you have David

been the been on working working government. B. On

Well, let's go down. And this is the this is the issue. We have three this body has three readings. We don't have two readings. We don't have one reading. We have three readings. And so when you put things on the docket, they need to be able to follow the three readings in terms of instead of coming to us saying, we have to get this application done by the twentieth, then it can't go through the three readings process. Right?

That is correct.

And so we are not able to fully evaluate this proposal, has other financial implications

Sure.

With the CIP. We need to see the scoring for these as you score all the other projects. There's a lot of work that needs to be done, and I just don't enjoy feeling like we have a gun to our head in making these really critical

able to to that. Do

mark accelerated this process, so we ended up with less time than we thought we would. So that did contribute to some of this abbreviated process. So apologies there.

Apologies. We do have three point five weeks from when the call opened. We usually have five weeks or over that time.

SPEAKER But if these projects have already have a match, you know what our priorities are. You know that they how long how many years have we been putting in applications for to mark for these projects? How how many years?

How many years have this

process how long have

I I don't have an answer. Way before my time.

It's way before your time. So, therefore, we know what the process is. We know what our our priorities are. Correct? And so we don't have to wait even until this process we don't have to wait until the last minute to start to have these discussions with the council. So can you go down and tell me which ones have matches and which ones don't? We'll start with what's on the slides here with the citywide vision zero high injury network. Does that have a match?

Anticipating that the proposed budget would pass, that I believe right now, if I'm not mistaken, Vision Zero has $4,000,000 line item, we could use that for a local match for this grant process.

Okay. And then the next

Can I ask for a clarification just real quick on that note? This project this application is for projects years in the future. Yes, correct. This is not for this year. So there's no way that we have any match allocated or appropriate or budgeted for this next fiscal year for any of these projects. I just want to make sure that, that is clear because we're talking about a $4,000,000 line item for Vision Zero that would be applied to a Vision Zero needs assessment or or whatever it's called in here. That would not be available for a match for

That's good point.

Because this would require future

So what you're saying is he's lying because

I asked him saying that.

You are

saying that.

Lying. This is what he said. I said Okay. Said that I asked him where the 20% is coming from. He said that several of these already have matched. Did you say that they had matched? Did we but we No. I'm not.

Appropriate money for for years in the

fact to to

We're We're not going

But

provision zero would be programmed, we would have that match.

So where but my my initial question was, where will the match come from if these things are funded? If the answer is I don't know, the answer is I don't know because it's too far in the future. But your response was some of these already have a match. That's what your response was.

And some of them do

Okay. Well, let's talk about the ones in here.

Program. If the CIP program, which I can't predict that future, that's the this body, the projected CIP future would be used for those matches when they come due. Projected CIP

fund would be

The five year program.

The five year program, which hasn't been decided on yet. So we don't these matches are not available. They would have to they would essentially be put in the first category because we have federal funding. Typically, when we approve the CIP, we look at the projects that have federal funding. They get top priority. That's how it's been how I understand the process. Am I understanding it wrong?

I believe, if if I followed correctly, yes, we'd love to leverage our local funding to any grant, including the federal matches.

Yeah. No. It's not ridiculous because what we're doing is it's not ridiculous because what we're doing is is we are essentially picking winners or losers of who gets the money in the future. That's why this process is so important. This process is important, the projects that we choose on the front end because they will get ahead of the line. To me, that's not ridiculous. That is planning, and that's making sure that our priorities are correct, and that's making sure that every district has an opportunity, not two days, an opportunity to weigh in on what these priorities will be in the future.

No. If again, fair, we we had just again, we just wanna assure you we're not advocating or or or supporting one over the other. We tried this is just our recommendation. Two projects, fair competition. Which two projects in your district would be most competitive in this process?

And we don't have two projects. We have a half of a project. We share in a project with another district.

MLK is actually in our system, they are two different projects. We're combining them because we believe that will be more competitive for both districts. We could separate them.

Okay. So going down, so what you're saying is you're backtracking on the we don't need there's no necessity to go down each of these projects to talk about a local match because the local match won't be determined until after they're awarded in future years. Is that what you're saying?

I think that's fair.

Yeah. Okay. Which negates what you said earlier, just for

the Sure. Understood. My apologies. And and and also keep in mind that this process well, we're just selecting our priorities, so when it it will be scored by Mark. Right? And they will determine how each project is scored, and so this will help us determine which our priorities are and things like that.

Yeah. And this isn't equity. When we talk people talk about equity. People talk about the importance of using equity. But when we look at the this list, it's a divide by six.

Every every district gets two projects. And so when we think about the fourth district, and perhaps that's why the fourth district council person maybe is is somewhat bothered by my questions. But when we think about the 4th when we think about the 4th District, the 4th District continues to be a green line, whereas the 3rd and the 5th District continues to be a red line in terms of our investments that we're making. And we can go down the list of all of the investments, but this process is important to me because I wanna make sure that we are using an equitable approach when we're selecting these projects in the future. And an equitable approach would be that the 3rd District and the 5th District have more projects on the list because they have been disinvested by this body for decades upon decades upon decades.

And the only way we're going to reverse that is to make sure there's an equitable approach when we're applying for these dollars. Stop me when I'm wrong. Anybody? Is that I'm yeah. Okay. So, yeah, I'm done. Thanks.

Certainly, our intent to be equitable, councilwoman. So we're happy to have future conversations about what you're

I don't need future conversations. I need you to give me the list that's equitable. This your intent is is it might be that it's equitable, but the impact, this is not an equitable list. Are you you can you defend that? Can you say that this list is equitable?

No. We are we that you know, that's a decision

I'm getting in. For the council. Follow-up questions. That was a follow-up

question, but I think we're getting into a debate that we can't end. So I think, councilman, you had some questions.

Yeah. I first, I wanna apologize for having a snarky comment, but my issue with this conversation is that on one hand, there's it's a difficult process because you're applying for projects that are, in some cases, six years in the future, and so we can't possibly identify match for those. And I think it's important to clarify that from important for staff to clarify that. Then also it's a competitive process. So none of these we should not be allocating match for any project that we don't have funding for.

That would be getting putting the cart before the horse. We also don't know what year it's going to be programmed in through the mark committee process. Process. So there are a lot of unknowns here that result in this sort of frustrating conversation. Then on the other hand, despite what your feeling might be, I don't particularly care for the Fourth District projects.

They're not they wouldn't be my priorities. However, they're the priorities that have come up with it from this process. The problem is that there's a lack of a planning process, and it's something that I've been talking about for twelve years in the city, is that our transportation planning process is nearly nonexistent, and that's no one's fault. But what is what I'm excited about is that we are about to embark on a transportation master plan for the city, something that is long overdue, something that has resulted in this type of frustration of why are these projects being added? Why are we adding projects like a week before the applications are due?

I understand that the goalpost move for Mark. However, the issue remains that we shouldn't be having surprises at projects. Like on a presentation on Tuesday morning, I wouldn't go as far as to say with a gun to our head, but that's definitely the sentiment is there. But this is just we should have a plan that identifies all of the needs and an explanation as to why those needs exist and how we intend to address those needs. As of now, it's still just sort of a, well, this fits this category over here.

This project fits this project this funding category over here. So we're just going to throw it out there. This is again, this is not necessarily a criticism of staff. It's not a criticism of us. It's a criticism of us letting this get so far down the road without having a tangible plan. So that being said, I'm supportive of moving forward with this, but I share many of the same concerns as Councilman Robinson. But I'll just leave it at that. Thanks.

I

mean, concur. I think I appreciate that staff is trying to select projects that put us on the best footing to get funding. I remember last year, the Mid America Regional Council overlooked a bunch of our projects. And so I think it's important that we put forward projects that are competitive with the region, but completely understand what you're saying and look forward to this transportation master plan.

I'll just have to concur and agree with my colleagues. Again, no fault to the staff. We know that Mark kind of expedited this process, but it would be nice to have be able to have longer conversations and a transportation plan that we look towards. I know we are picking projects, as Councilman Duncan said, that would put our best foot forward, and that's what based off staff's recommendations and projects that we have in the pipeline. And we want to put our best foot forward and be successful in these projects.

It would just be nice to have an overall plan that we are looking towards with actual reasons why we are picking these projects other than just being reactive. We want to be proactive versus reactive. And I feel even last year, kind of the timeline gets put up towards the end and we're just kind of reactive and we put certain projects on the list and then we haven't had an opportunity to really vet those projects.

Any other comments from my colleagues? Any public testimony?

No public testimony.

I would entertain a motion.

And this comes with my motion I'm going to make the motion. It comes with a very, very strong request to really lean into the transportation plan. I move that committee substitute for Ordinance of of of

We Directors will go to a presentation from ATA. I also wanted to mention that we are going to we were originally supposed to have a presentation from public works on the on the, street resurfacing. We're gonna hold that until 03:24. So here you go.

Bilal, are you taking notes? I think

you're rocking side.

The studio spectator.

Oh, I do wanna Yeah. Could you introduce him for us?

Yeah. Yes. And it's Bilal Moser. Can you come up to the microphone and My introduce

name is Balal Mirza. I go to Rockhurst High School, and I'm a senior. And as part of our honors US government class, we have been assigned to go out and perform some sort of civic engagement. And today, I've chosen to come to this meeting.

Excellent. Well, we're grateful you're here.

Thank you. All

right, gentlemen.

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and committee members. Thank you for having us. I'm Chuck Ferguson. I'm the Chief Operations Officer for the Key CATA, currently Interim CEO. With me today is Tyler Means, our Chief Mobility and Strategy Officer and AJ Ferris, our Director of Planning and Scheduling. So we've had the pleasure of meeting with a few of you one on one to talk a little bit about what we're bringing forward today. So what we're here to do is to let you know what we believe is our best recommendation coming forth Board

Directors

Board of progress details we've to provide on able progress some And would, please.

Yes. Good morning. Thank you, Chuck. So on this first slide, I just want to point out that inside the city budget, there are two line items that are listed to go to the KCATA. One is the iris service, a separate budget line item.

It is budgeted at 1,800,000 That funds right there the amount to cover the Northland, which is the current service area of IRIS. The rest of this presentation looks at the other budget line item, which is listed at 77,800,000.0 in the public budget, and that is the kind of conversation we have with you today. NAPP funding is more associated with your fixed route and paratransit services to serve the Kansas City area. So first off, I kind of want to kind of get you broken down into what our current service cost levels are in 'twenty six, 'twenty seven forecasted dollars. So our current level of fixed route service is forecasted to be $99,800,000 Our cost of paratransit to service, the full service area, is $16,700,000 You add in the Full Employment Council contribution of 160,000 that means the total cost of service in the Kansas City for Kansas City is $116,700,000 KCATA under this model has the ability to put in $16,300,000 is what we forecast and the ability to put into the services of contribution, bringing the cost that it would be for Kansas City to maintain service levels as it is today in Kansas City at $100,300,000 On this next slide, what I do is I kind of take it a little bit further and show how we break it down to get inside that budget line item.

And I'll talk a little bit of the changes that occurred between that last slide and this slide. So the current fixed route service level, again, 99,800,000.0 The cost of paratransit conservatives estimated to be about $1,000,000 less because the service area is less. And there's less service out there and less service hours, meaning there's less opportunity for full employment council contribution of $160,000 is again listed, bringing the total cost of service level to 115,700,000.0 When we look at our opportunities of making service changes and finding other efficiencies within ourselves at the ATA, how we get down to $77,800,000 is Scenario 10 has a cost saving estimate of 13,700,000 in service cuts, less nonoperator wages, benefits and other efficiencies. So these are positions that would either be RIFT or not filled, dollars 1,100,000.0. And then our less kCaTA contribution goes up because there's further admin positions that are not filled.

There's more efficiency found in the fact of retiring 75 pretty old buses, and so less need for parts, etcetera, and raises that contribution to $22,900,000,000 I mean million, not billion. That would be great, right? But that brings the net cost of KCMo. What would be expected of KCMo to cover is $77,800,000 which is the listed budget, public budget line item. Next, I want A. J. To take an opportunity to walk you through some of service changes we made in February, what we would expect to make in May or later in the summer. But A. J, please explain what we've done to make such service sure that

we're to to amount that is in the KCATA in Kansas City, Missouri twenty twenty five-twenty twenty six contract. This had the elimination of two routes, Route 19 and Route 29 due to low ridership and very duplicative services and a small limiting of service hours for routes eleven, twelve, eighteen, twenty one, 23, 25, 27, 28, 35, fifty, fifty seven, 71, and 75, and two thirty eight. These were all routes that were essentially shortened in their operating hours, and now operate essentially between 6AM and 11PM because that's where the majority of the ridership was, and we found there was very low ridership before six and after eleven. Councilman O'Neill, did you have a question?

I was just gonna ask. It'd be nice to know, we're not privy to Eric might be, but we're not privy to where these routes are. So I think it would be important for us to Yep. An idea of what where you're canceling

this. Yeah. So as I go further in this, I will actually be reading the districts associated with these route changes. So that can be provided to you. And as we go forward, I will start listing out the districts of each

routes. Thank you.

Is the map to someone?

It's right there, but I can't read it. Sorry.

No, absolutely. Thank you. Feel free to interrupt me with any questions. So scenario 10, we wanted to start off with the idea that we weren't just looking at data, that these are real people, and that just because we have things on a screen that say some routes may not be efficient or the cost of service might be too high, that these are real people making real trips for real needs for their family and occupations. And so we kind of started this planning process with three pillars.

The first pillar being that we wanted to impact the fewest amount of people in our service area as possible. The second was looking for any opportunity where services were duplicative to where someone might not be make sure sure to that we're we're that make indicators and different metrics that we use to really understand the health of a route and the efficiency of the route. So this scenario 10, we start with the elimination of essentially eight routes, and I'll go through and I'll read those and what the council districts associated with them. Route 9 9th Street operates in Council Districts 3 And 4. Route 21 Cleveland Antioch operates in Districts 234, And 5.

Route 23 23rd Street operates in Districts 3 And 4. Route 25 Truce Local operates in Districts 345, And 6. Route 27 27th Street operates in Districts 3 And 4. Route 57 Warnell operates in Districts 6. Route 71, Prospect Local operates in Districts 34, And 5. And Route 75, 75th Street operates in Districts 5 And 6. So that's kind of the first half of this slide.

You're shutting down the 27th Street bus?

The 27th Street is a route that is proposed for elimination.

You're shutting down the 27th Street?

So we're we are proposing these as eliminations. Again, these are things

that we alternate route that people would take if they if they for the 27th Street. What what bus would they take?

So without having the maps in front of me, I can get out the trip planner and talk with you after this and figure that out.

But No. No.

No. No.

It depends where they're getting on the 27th route and where they're trying to go.

Well, you said that these routes are duplicative and there's other routes that they could take. Is that did I

miss that was the second pillar that we tried to focus on, and but there were once we got into that third pillar, that is where we started looking at data and basically the metrics and key performance indicators. You can see that that route has an average daily ridership of four twenty two four hundred and twenty two people on the weekend. And with it operating at a sixty minute headway, the riders per hour is extremely low on that route. And so I did not I apologize if there was confusion. Not all of these routes are duplicative. We started by looking at which routes were duplicative. And then in order to get the service to match the 77.8, we had to go further.

Okay. So can I ask one other question, mister chair? Do you know which routes East West routes that are being cut that would connect to the streetcar? Because that's my real heartburn around 27th Street is connecting people from the East Side to the streetcar.

Yeah. So I would the the 18 would connect to it in Councils 3 And 4. The the 24 would connect to it. The 31st Street connect to it, the 39th Street, the 35

We're cutting all those.

No. No. No.

I'm saying the ones that would connect which ones are we cutting? Like, 7th Street, we're cut we're proposing to cut those because the city decides to use your $26,000,000 from the local use tax. We decide to use that for the general fund instead of taking it from and you all don't get that money. So we now have to cut routes for people who own the 27th on on 27th Street to get to the streetcar. So what do do you know? And you can provide this later. Okay. Which routes that you're cutting that would connect East West routes that would connect to the streetcar?

Absolutely. Can provide that to you, councilwoman. Thank you.

Can I ask just one quick Tammy, could I could I get you up here for just a quick second? I just need some basic I'd like to know exactly we have two transportation taxes. First one brings in about, what, 27,000,000, I think.

PMT and SATM. SATM. I mean, just give them that 26,000,000 from the local use tax from all my sales.

What the what is the amount we generate from the two transportation taxes?

It's a little more than this $77,800,000 but not that much more. Brenton probably has the final number. Oh, he's looking it up right now.

Of those two, how much do we give to the ATA?

The what's allocated in the 27 submitted budget is 77,800,000.0. That's not It's the total of the KCATA tax and a portion, majority majority of of the the PMT PMT tax.

And when you say majority, 60%?

55?

It's more than that. He's looking.

The total number in both taxes is about 78,000,000, 79,000,000.

The total number of boat taxes is probably more on the order of like $90,000,000 and then 77,800,000.0 is allocated to this particular purpose in the budget.

We allocated the entire tax taxes from both, they would be almost covered.

Almost, but it wouldn't be enough to cover the whole thing. Right. Then we'd have to figure out yeah. Where do we fund the particular things that we fund out of PMT? Where do where else in the budget would we fund those?

Those opposed to were about, what, 35,000,000 short from the 116 fully funded bus service?

22.4.

'22. Yeah.

22. We're we're short 22,000,000?

22.4.

And if we added in the online sales tax, then we would this would probably be covered. Correct? If we if the sales tax that were collected online for those two taxes, we would be able to afford a 100,000,000.

If that was allocated to bus service, yes. But then we'd have to find

Yes.

$27,000,000 in the general fund to cut

to make it for it. Yes, ma'am.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to money.

Decisions choices. Decisions and how

we spend that money. Councilman?

The one, one, one, tier, third tier? Which ones are less impactful? Which ones are duplicative? And which ones did you

Yeah. So we we could provide that to you going through this list right now. We could actually break them down into the tiers and how they fell across. But looking at these right now, the two main ones that were duplicative were the the twenty five, the truce local, which basically runs the exact same alignment as the truce max. Those stops are a little bit spaced further apart for the truce max.

And then the 71 local operates on the very similar and in most areas the exact same alignment as the Prospect MAX. And then as we go through these tiers, the 9th Street had duplication as it runs in a lot of areas that are downtown. The twenty one also has duplication as as well, specifically with Route 18. And as I'm going through and trying to think off the top of my head, I believe the rest of them fall into the routes that we basically have the that have the lowest metrics in order for us to match the last And going

two

be we're And less impact possible

tier Well, that was the when I guess I should say that that was the overarching thing that we went into this trying to impact the fewest amount of people possible. These service chains outlined here would result in 86.8 of current riders today not having to make any change in how they use public transportation. Something that when we look at these cuts, I know they're hard and they're difficult.

But

being able on weekdays to maintain or to have 86.8% of peoples making their first trip, their first choice, that was the main goal, is to impact as few people as possible. And that's even including people that use I'm sorry, that number does not include people that use the twenty five and seventy one because I'm assuming that that is their first choice, and now they're gonna have to make their secondary choice of the Truce Max or the Prospect Max. And so they are included as being impacted. So still even with those really high ridership routes, we're impacting, less than 13%. But again, I want to say I know that those 13% are still riders and it's going to be tough.

Okay. Like in our conversations before, you use this data to help make your decisions.

Correct. To

tell to, you know

Correct.

To present to us. Sorry, I looking for the word. You use this data to make your decisions to present to us, but then we don't get to see that data that you use. So it'd be helpful when we're making our decisions to know why each route was chosen, whether it was less impactful, duplicative, low ridership, and then what alternate route, if it is duplicative, what alternate route then would be used. So that would be helpful when we make our decisions as well.

That's great feedback. Thank you.

Okay. And that goes for the weekend service as well, which I know we're getting into that and that I had a lot of reservations about the Northland in particular.

So we'll get back to you with that. We'll put a packet ir to sure

able able

make do make make that. That

not going

First and foremost, I want to thank you all for that. This information. Since I've been on this council, it feels like I've been looking trying to when it comes to transit and the breakdown, it feels like I've been looking at a black box. This is very illustrative of exactly what how we got here, right? What it takes to fund transit, which exact routes and the terminology. And, A. J, thank you for your yeoman's work on this. So thank you. Thank you. Secondly, I want for everyone watching at home to know that the 77,800,000.0 that's that has been budgeted in this budget was not done by this body.

It was done by the city manager and the mayor. And I do not know and have not been told of why they allocated the exact same amount from last year when last year was not enough to cover transit. Thirdly, we have to make decisions, and they're going to be painful decisions. But at the end of the day, when we think about a return on investment, for every single route that is cut, and A. J.

Said this, this is not numbers, these are people, people will lose their jobs. People will lose access to health care. People will lose access to groceries. People will lose access to school. We have to think about what's the best return on investment. I'm a firm believer that robust public transit is public safety. Robust public transit is economic development. Robust public transit is access. And when we think about our budget and how much we spend on public safety, we need to be broadening how we think about public safety.

As a kids say, we got a young person from Rockhurst. Clock that team. But, yeah, I would agree wholeheartedly with my colleague, councilman Duncan. And I do wanna say I've been on this local use sales tax and I am more insistent I am more Insistent. Incessant about it now because when we closed the budget chapter last year, I went to the finance committee and asked them to start let's pass something, a resolution, so that we can start to do right by the local use sales tax.

When people buy something online, they intend for those dollars still to go to where they voted on them to go. So $26,000,000 that we're using because of online sales for the general fund, that's not going to the public mass transit tax. It's not going to the other tax that we pass for public transit. And I will also say that the fire the fire service, they went to Jeff City and Jeff City preempted us from using their local use tax for general fund revenue. So they get to then get their local use taxes whereas which is great because that's the right thing to do.

But we shouldn't require we talk about preemption. We should not require the state to make us do the right thing. And that's what we're doing with the fire department, and we need to do this with every other tax and making sure that you all get the money to do the things that the voters voted on to do. So shame on us for for not doing that. But I would like to ask you about overlaying you mentioned the the ways that you came to this decision in terms of cuts.

I would also like to see information about individuals who have the most dependence on public transit and making sure that we put that in the formula. Because when you talk about 27th Street, yeah, there's not a lot of people that are on the 27th Street bus because there's not a lot of houses there. But the people that are there, they matter. They're trying to get somewhere, and I know it's not you all. You all are just trying to make it all fit based off of what we gave, and I echo what he's saying.

This is the, like, first time where it's clear. We appreciate you. We understand what it costs to do the service because of your work. And so but as you looked at those numbers, I would also like information about transit dependency and these routes of how that impacts the choices that we make.

Yep. We can put together a map with an equity lens that we put on the back end so you can see how it overlays those

differences. Yes.

Just any of those who know me know that I'm not a particularly religious person. But Councilman Duncan, when you were saying all those things, I was saying amen. I

thought

there might be a praise Jesus coming out. And so just absolutely correct that and these are decisions that we are making. These are decisions that yes, we're not making the decision on what to cut, but we are the ones making the decision to cut. And I'll just leave it at that.

So I know we have twenty nine minutes before we have to kick off, but we haven't touched on functional free fare implementation of that. And I want to make sure that we get into that because I know there's a lot of questions. We went over it yesterday, and I think although it's not in this presentation, it'd be helpful if we talked about phase one, phase two, what that looks like. Yes.

So

I go through this briefly, though. We all know this is not a

brief

conversation.

We can move to this weekend, and then we can

Yeah.

Well, so this yeah. This is weekend. It's the same slide. Weekend service cuts are much more impactful. In the memo that you have, and if you don't have, I brought extra that I can leave behind.

It goes through all of the routes that are expected or that are proposed to be eliminated, and this would impact essentially 47% of average daily riders. 53% of the average daily weekend riders would not be impacted, but 47 is a very large percentage impacted. Essentially, we went through this, it was maintaining regional connection, understanding that if we look at the map that I believe is in your memo, the routes are really just there to connect into the North or it's really just the spines of the service left at that point on the weekend. Thank you. These are the service change impacts that essentially 97 union operators' positions could be eliminated.

Steps are being explored to find efficiencies and reduce this. These are the numbers that I already have mentioned throughout this conversation. And then we want to make sure it's known that these service eliminations will lead to essentially a more stressful service with longer wait times and more crowded buses. And more crowded buses and longer wait times could potentially lead to passengers being passed by.

So before I guess I'll get to this real quick and let's backtrack and let's make sure we talk about the fares thing, A. J. When we talk about potentials of what we might be able to do to what I call create a soft landing or potentially even take these service cuts that we have outlined and say, let's push these back until August 1. We are exploring our own internal efficiencies, use of reserves, etcetera. This will have to be decisions made by our commission.

But ideally, as you can see, it's $3,400,000 to continue service time we a a have the driver is not going to distinguish between a Kansas City and a person from The Netherlands. So I worry about the number of people who will not be able to access their service to get to work, get their kids to childcare, etcetera. Those will be real challenges that will be felt and will be heard. And so we're looking at ways in which we can soften that effect, and these are two of the matters: extend all services till August or highlight key routes areas that we can extend services to August at a lower cost. We're continuing to evaluate this.

We'll have more information this week as we get prepared for finance, so we'll have a bigger understanding of what those financial opportunities look like in the interim.

Councilman Curles.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Could you go back to the slide with the map on it? Yes, that one. So that one red line on the on my right, I guess I guess it's on everybody's right, down by the lake. Yes. That one. What number is

that? I believe that is Route 28.

Route 28. And that's a proposed cut. Correct?

Sorry. That is Route 75.

75.

Route 75. And that's a proposed cut. Right? Correct. So I have a real concern about that because that's the only bus route that goes to Hickman Mills.

Now we are disenfranchising a whole community of people if we cut that route. I don't know what the ridership is on that. I don't really care what the ridership is on that. But we are now cutting people off of having access to getting to work, to doctor's appointments, jobs, wherever, school, and that community already feels disenfranchised. I made my statements the other day about finding money for certain things that we find money for on this council.

We better find money so that we can continue to have a bus route to Hickman Mills, whatever that takes, however that looks. If that's through special use tax, then we need to look at that. But that cutting that route to that part of the city is totally unacceptable. I don't know if you got another plan in place for that in in regards to maybe looking at another route. But but that's the only route that's going to South Kansas City. And that's we're just cutting off a total community if you cut that route. And I I I couldn't live with that one.

Yeah.

Absolutely. And and I I understand your concern, sir. What you see in front of is an a la carte pricing for every route and the weekend service included that would be positioned to be either eliminated or reduced. And what this is, is unfortunately a zero sum game. So if there is a route like the 75 that would be wished to be continued without additional funds being found, we could go down the route list and say, well, the Route 28 is about the same price as the 75. We could eliminate the 28 and continue the 75. But the unfortunate truth is it is at a zero sum basis.

Any other questions from my colleagues? If not, I want to thank you all for your presentation. Would you

like to talk a

little bit about fares?

Fairs real quick.

Oh, I

thought I was You are just trying

to get out of

here. I thought everybody On time, aren't you? It's supposed to

be thirty minutes.

I've got 17 other things to say.

Got other I got, like, twenty.

So, yeah, never mind me.

What what

we just wanna outline to you is is a couple of things, and then AJ can really kinda elaborate on phase one versus phase two in terms of how we're bringing back fares. We are rekindled the conversations with the health department around the fountain card and utilizing that as a means of accessibility to the fixed route. We had been waiting to get our tech vendor on. Last summer, our conversations came to a halt because we said, well, we don't know the technology. We don't know how to work.

But we're at a space now where we're working on that and evaluating what opportunities there are and what steps would need to be taken to either upgrade a chip to the card or how we could do visual validation, etcetera. But there's just some back and forth we're gonna have to work through, but we've begun those conversations. The next part is really kinda talk through what a phase one and phase two rollout looks like so you can understand the difference between a full fare, reduced fare, etcetera. And please note that we're not excited about the phase one either. We're just kinda stuck why we kinda set up a system that's outside our control.

A So lot of people probably aren't aware of this, but when you start to build into reloadable cash cards that are an opportunity to allow folks to digitize cash and to utilize that as their fare media, we position it through as many retail locations as possible. You can only do it in the spring and in the fall. Those are the only two times they allow you to do it. So we are aiming the fall to roll out that reloadable cash card system. But you can elaborate on what a Phase one versus Phase two is, A. J. Thank you.

Yes. So Phase one is planned to roll out June 1 in order to try to capture revenue from the World Cup. The phase one will have three different ways for a person to make their fair payment. One is a traditional tap to pay that people would be familiar with at a grocery store with a contactless payment credit card, debit card, their mobile wallet through their phone or their their watch. So that's gonna be the first one.

The second one is gonna be a mobile app will be rolled out in June 1 where a person can store value on their account as well as send value on that account to family members or other people that that account is connected to. That will have the ability to have reduced fare programs that are set up in time for phase one to be ready to go and attributed to a person's account upon verification of eligibility. And the third way is we have procured these limited use preprogrammed day passes that a person will be able to come to the KCATA headquarters or East Village. We're exploring other areas that we can set these up with our regional partners. A person could come and purchase these day passes or they we will have blank ones as well.

So if a person would rather have a weekly pass or a monthly pass, they'll be able to program those as well. And we can also verify low income or reduced fare eligibility at those locations. So that's phase one. Phase two is going to be the retail network rollout that Tyler mentioned with a reloadable smart card that people can purchase, and then the full rollout of PaaS programs. So that's when we'll be able to have more of our old opportunity passes with those frontline social service providers, university passes, employer passes, and things of that nature.

So that's kind of a quick rundown. I'd be happy to come back and present in more detail with a more full presentation at another meeting. And we also have materials that we are presenting to our board this week that could be made available. They will be public after that presentation to them.

Mister chair? You said April and May will be testing. Can you talk about what the testing will look like? What community engagement will look like?

Yep.

Information shared with bus riders and beyond and this body of of what what that rollout will look like so people can be prepared and ready?

Great question. So April is when we're basically having all of the fare technology delivered to the KC ATA. And one of the first things that we're gonna be doing is setting up several buses with a with essentially a testing center. And so the validators will be on. They won't be connecting to any bank accounts or anything, but they'll basically be in testing mode.

And so we'll have the ability to, one, train our operators and training staff with those. But then more importantly, we'll be able to take these buses out into the community and go back to doing how to ride events. So we could go to we could go to schools, we could go to employers, we could go to any city events and partner with you all on any public engagement or community meetings that you all are having and bring a bus to it and basically have someone get on the bus, hand them a basically a play credit card that they could use to tap or a phone that has the mobile app loaded on that they could see how to do all that. And so that's one of the first things that's what we're going be doing in the community. We're going to be starting doing onboard visual and audio announcements on all of our buses that are letting people know this is coming and directing them to a website that's being set up that will have frequently asked questions documents.

We're in the process of once we get those validators, we're going to be filming a how to video and making sure that's pushed out and basically going to any community events that you guys want us to come to.

Two questions, personal. We have an estimated 97 positions could be eliminated. Kansas City has probably several 100 positions we are short. Has there been any direct contact with our HR to create some kind of job fair or some ability to move these people. It's much easier for us to look at your probably employees as filling some of the holes we have over here. And I hate to not I hate to just eliminate jobs. If we

can That's a great opportunity. We absolutely will make that connection and put job fair or something together when that time is correct, yes.

Okay. Okay. I want to see that. And I guess my only other thought would be, as we go forward, I would like to see how I I think Councilman French brought up the good that's think that's a able that we're make those to decisions ourselves for our districts. And so I think we just need more information, and just please follow through with that.

Absolutely. We will put that together and give it to the council as soon as we can.

Okay.

I think Eric had his hand

up in the My

question was just on and you may have said this, so apologies if I miss it. But let's say if you are have an employer provided pass,

will

there isn't going to be a hard copy of hard copy, a card that you get like in the past, it's going to be via an app, or can that be tied to a credit card or debit card or something? Also, or is it just through the app for free?

It's mostly gonna be it's gonna be the app. A reloadable smart card would also work. So if a company wants to purchase and procure reloadable smart cards and do it that way, they could or they could just make use of the app which has a back end portal that that employer or university would have the available availability sorry, the ability to load in their their users, their clientele. As long as they have basically a contact email, they then control that. And for places that have employers that may not necessarily have that contact information, that's where we would be using past programs like either the reloadable smart card or we can program devices. To so

And able do

preloaded to media? Yeah. So with the limited use preprogrammable media, we've procured a large quantity of those. And that way, we won't be able to collect data on which social service provider or which university is using them, but we will be able to hand them out to basically try to bridge that gap between phase one and phase two. So for the writer's perspective, will work from ours to try to collect data and potentially do any sort of invoicing.

It'll be a little bit more difficult. On the phone side, if a user is if an entity is ready to go quickly and we're able to get that memorandum of understanding or contract and invoicing pipeline set up, that's really the only thing that's going to slow us down. Because once they have their back end portal set up, it's on them, their incumbent, to load in their clients, their users into that back end portal, and that immediately gets fed into our system on the mobile app.

Great. Thank you. And I just want to make one last quick comment is that we heard in at least one of the budget here public budget hearings of a nonprofit who does some social services type work and the impact that bringing back the fair is going to have on their budget because they are providing passes. Over the last six years, they haven't had to do that. That is potential tens of thousands, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars of hit to some budgets for these nonprofits who often do work for the city.

I just want to highlight that as a pretty challenge that I see coming forward. And so I think being serious about how do we get to what was promised a functionally free approach, how do we get there? And so I'm just going to throw that out there and say that I would like to continue to work on that. You. More to come. Councilwoman?

Thank you.

So I'm gonna go back to the proposed cuts and public engagement. You say that this is affecting real people and this absolutely is affecting real people and you didn't base just your decisions based off just data and based off the effect of real people. Did you host any public meetings, any public engagement, anything at all around these particular route cuts?

So I said that that sort of comes after the decision has been made.

I see. That's kind of my The proposal

has been made. I mean, it's it's difficult to get out there now

Yeah.

And tell people, hey. Your route might be cut because what that would probably result in is a bunch of people sitting back here every meeting you We guys typically I mean we want to sort of get it's a delicate dance. Mean this is one of the first steps of that dance is meeting with you all confirming sort of the budget process and where we are and giving you an opportunity to make a few changes perhaps before we start doing that, Correct. If

that makes

It does. It makes sense, and I understand that. I don't want angry mobs of people and whatnot. But, again, this is really affecting real people. And so we've had our budget hearings, and we have those people show up at our budget hearings and, you know, telling us, city council, you are cutting x, y, and z. And this is the first time that we have looked at this budget as well. So we got the budget from the mayor and the city manager. This wasn't our decision to, you know, these numbers. And so it's looking at this budget at the same time as well. And so we posted those public hearings, so we were able to hear, you know, those opinions.

Just not necessarily that you were making specific route cuts, but just the fact that you are listening to the real people that are actually being affected. And then that takes me to what I've requested for the last two plus years and then we had a conversation about it in our individual conversation about doing a long term strategic plan and looking at the future of and that goes into our transportation plan as well, this is part of that, but looking at the future of our transportation system and our transit system and having those stakeholder meetings and those community meetings, those workshops, charrettes, however we wanna to put that together, and really looking at transit dependency, looking at where people we've had these routes for years upon years upon years. Are these the right routes that we still need? Population has grown, population has shifted, where people live has shifted, needs have shifted. What do we really need for the money that we have?

And that's what I said. If we go through a long term strategic plan and it costs X, y, and z and we want the sun, moon, and stars, then we need to figure out how to fund the sun, moon, and stars. But if we don't know what that is, it's hard to figure out what

we

can fund. And I know that's on you, your guys' too. It's hard for you to give us what we important point.

Last a Wow. Last point. Very So yes. And we, from our perspective, can do a couple of things. Certainly, transit is our expertise, but we also will bring tools to that discussion regarding development. We do some economic development now. We own some property now. We also have access to funding that can help look at that plan and see how we can grow that plan forward. We will embrace that opportunity.

Okay. And like I told you in our individual meetings, I like to be highly involved in that as well. I don't know if anyone else on this committee would like to be involved in those conversations. No. No.

Just No. Not

at all. Yeah.

Involved in the front. Man.

It's good

interest in the transportation process.

No. Actually, I don't know if you knew that about me. Don't.

Good And question.

Then

to

do do

that. City, where the city wants to grow, where the city sees future economic development.

And And then like you said, maybe where an area has changed and doesn't need what it has today. It's a good point.

Okay. So I look forward to those conversations and developing that plan

in the future. Yeah. Thank

you. Councilwoman?

Thank you. So the ordinance or the resolution that we voted on before this issue today that we're talking about, these are case studies and systemic oppression. We talk about systemic oppression, the cycles of oppression. This is an example of said oppression. So when we talk about the moon, the stars, and the sun of what we wanna fund, the people voted on the moon, stars, and sun on what they wanted to fund, and we have the money to fund it.

We're deciding to redirect those dollars for this $100,000,000 in other ways that is on us. But I wonder about the manual or the administrative regulation that you are putting together for the implementation of Functionally Free Fare. If you could share that with us, if you have an administrative regulation to your staff, to your board, an operator manual implementation plan, we need to know the specifics of how that's going to work. And as you're building that draft one, draft two, draft three, if you could please share that with us so that we understand how people are going to be impacted. My colleague off off when we talked about functional free fare, we have to remember that we're going from zero fare to functionally free fare because of a public safety issue, Because people were on the bus, the the folks that didn't need to be on the bus, and we didn't have a way to address issues of people on the bus and all of that.

It's a public safety issue is why we're redirecting this. And we wanna make sure that when the former CEO of KCATA helped us to kick off Zero Fare, we had a strong conversation, and I won't mention these companies' names. One of them, they're sitting in the audience today, but we talked about these foundations and companies investing in zero fare. And so in your implementation manual, I'm hoping to see you going and making those ask of those companies so nonprofit budgets don't have to be impacted by these fares, but we're allowing the private sector to do what they said that they were gonna do when we implemented in the first place. So just make I just want you to know that I'll be looking for that as you send that information over.

I'm going I'm going to echo because that was the last comment I wanted to make is for the last seven years that we have six years that we have not had fair, One of the things we took away from the tool we took away was the businesses paying for a lot of that free fair. And I would expect in your business plan that you have a robust effort, whether it's hiring a specific person to be in charge of sales, but there is a revenue stream. And unfortunately, a lot of municipal agencies see the value of bringing in extra revenue. They're focused on just spending the revenue they have. I think it's important that the revenue streams you utilize today are increased over the years with different revenue streams.

And I think between that and the adding new municipalities to routes, those are two things that I think you need to have a very strong plan. Anyway, thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. We appreciate yourself. We really learned a lot today.

We're meeting with Jessica Pambaugh in for an hour. Oh, fantastic.