April 30th, 2013 U-PASS Advisory Board meeting Present: ASUW Erin Oefelein Evan Smith (proxying for Michael Kutz) Miles Fernandez (proxying for Steven Do) Sean Wilson GPSS Greg Behrains Transportation Services Celeste Gilman Josh Kavanagh Katie Bass Guests Bridget Rossbach KK Saha I. II. III.

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Public comment period a. No one is present to speak Call to order a. Call to order at 9:04 a.m. Approval of minutes – Fernandez a. Motion (Evan): so moved b. Second (Greg): seconded c. No objections Approval of agenda – Fernandez a. Motion (Miles): So moved b. Second (Michael by proxy): seconded c. No objections New members of the Board a. Comment (Miles): Bridget and KK are going to be joining the board to replace Sean and myself. b. Comment (KK): Hello, I am a sophomore studying political science and public health. c. Comment (Bridget): I am a freshman that is going to be studying political science. d. Brief introduction by the rest of the board members Contingency update – Kavanagh

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a. Comment (Josh): We are now in implementation mode for the ASE settlement. Numbers are back in, they are lower than we relative to historical expectations. Because we have lower than expected numbers we are able to narrow the contingency for the go forward. Checks have been cut for retroactive quarters, I don’t know where those funds are coming from yet. I will find out. Long-term impacts for the program remain to be determined, at the outside the impact appears to be pretty modest. b. Question (Miles): Questions for Josh? c. Comment (Evan): I know that from PACS and on the campus budgeting end it sounds like the Provost pushed the cost on the colleges. At least for the College of Arts of Sciences, it sounds like they are having a hard time paying it in the longer term. This is compounded with the 10% pay increase per year that was also negotiated. So it sounds like there are conversations going on about if they should cut overall TA personnel to help pay their bills, or if they should find a way to pay it long term. However, I am feeling very grateful that they didn’t take it out of our budget. d. Comment (Josh): From the beginning, it wasn’t a question of if we could bear the cost of the arbitration settlement, it was a question of whether there was a challenge to students’ right to tax themselves and have control of those dollars. I think the reality of that came home in the implementation discussions. Even if the dollars do end up hitting Transportation Services in one form or another, we are committed to ensuring that there isn’t a direct take from student U-PASS dollars. Overview of Metro services and funding - Kavanagh a. Comment (Josh): It is wild times down in Olympia to say the least. The County did an exceptional job in rallying the cities of King County to go down and lobby for a single comprehensive approach to transportation including transit. I have never seen that happen. It is pretty rare that that entire group is working together. They also have labor at their side. The coalition they have put together is impressive. Problem is that they got on the ground in Olympia late in the session. The dysfunction that we see there is not making it easy for us to move a transportation package forward. The House and Senate don’t seem to be working well together. The approach that each of them have chosen seems to be a poison pill for the other. There is a window yet because transportation appropriations will pass during special session which starts May 13th. It is still to be seen if the legislature kicks the can down the road a little bit. The CRC doesn’t expire until next June. The problem is all of the planning that needs to go into prepping for those changes. There will be tremendous waste as well as tremendous anxiety if we don’t get something by fall. ASUW and GPSS have both picked up this mantle and are organizing around it. That’s great. The advocacy community at UW is energized. Celeste any other insight?

b. Comment (Celeste): I’m not sure if you’ve all received the email to UPASS members, but the scale of cuts that are being planned at this time would mean that about half of the routes to the U-district would be cut or reduced. c. Comment (Josh): I would say that talking to any student that has family outside of King County is very important at this stage. If they are getting financial support form their parents, this is an issue that is relevant outside of King County. This is being viewed as a Seattle issue in many ways, but it goes far beyond that. Even senator Thom, political stripes aside, who is representing an area of King County is not on board and that is pretty concerning. d. Comment (Sean): I think that OGR keeps a map of where students come from. e. Comment (Miles): Yes. The two people that we have been pushing the most in the last two weeks are Senators Tom and Fain. We are going to talk about this at the OGR staff meeting today. Students are very concerned. We’ve heard more about bus service being cut in the last couple weeks than we’ve heard about tuition in the last four months. f. Comment (Josh): I left Olympia understanding that King is the swing vote in the committee right now. The other thing is that I got some time with the Speaker on this. Speaker Chopp noted that he is just not hearing about transit from constituents. He pulled out stats about how many calls he is getting about other issues. Transit was not on the radar in the way that he was expecting, and caucus members are feeling the same. My big fear is that there won’t be a public outcry until its too late. The other bit of info that I picked up down there is that there are some powers that want to see at least one more fare increase, that they want riders to do more before they do anything. I think that comes from a naïve understanding about how much riders have already done, but there is a real possibility that from this we will see a fare increase prescribed from the legislative level. i. Question (Miles): So if there were to be a fare increase it would go into effect in the fall? ii. Comment (Josh): It’s hard to tell. Their fare increases are often in January, but not always. They would still have time to have something queued for January 2014. So it would only impact about a quarter of next years’ budget and about half of the UPASS contract. I worry about a fare increase, that would hit us more directly than any other way of raising revenue. iii. Question (Sean): Do you have any idea about how much are we talking about for the fare increase? $.25 or $1.00 or something in between? iv. Comment (Josh): I don’t know. There is no specific amount yet, nothing written down. This is just talk I’ve heard in Olympia. They need to get a deal, and they know that. So they will probably take whatever they need in order to get a deal, but

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Metro certainly doesn’t want to see another fare increase. I would suspect and hope that that it is small, closer to a quarter than a dollar (which is still a 10% increase). For students this would represent roughly a million and a half dollar increase. g. Comment (Evan): Call your legislators. What should we do with our Husky Green Award? –Fernandez a. Comment (Miles): I talked to Rene about where we put our ASUW awards. Apparently there isn’t really a place that we put awards, so she suggested keeping it at Transportation Services. b. Comment (Josh): We would be more than happy to house it, but it feels a little strange for it to be in an awards shelf in an administrative office when it is recognizing student work. So, I think if there is some place in the ASUW office to put it, that you should put it there. c. Comment (Evan): We can take it for now and see if we can find a place to make it work. If we can’t, then it can join the other Transportation Services awards. Agenda setting a. Question (Miles): Is there anything anyone wants on the next agenda? b. Comment (Sean): I talked to Tim Tan, and he said that he would share UW U-PASS links from the UW student life FB page! c. Comment (Celeste): We got the information for the coupon book at the book store, so we are going to go ahead and put an add in there, based on your suggestions. d. Comment (Miles): Greg do you know what’s going on with GPSS? e. Comment (Greg): No, not really. It looks like Aaron has resigned, so I’ll start talking with people in my program to see if I can find someone to replace him. f. Comment (Katie): Aaron did resign recently due to other time obligations. g. Comment (Celeste): Should we circle around to the transition conversation next meeting? h. Comment (Miles): Yes, I think that would be great. Adjournment: 9:32 a.m.