Good morning STA Board Members, I hope this message finds you well. Week Highlights - I briefly mentioned on Tuesday our new employee engagement app, Frontline, was launched to all employees. It's a new tool that provides our entire workforce with news and updates through the convenience of their personal mobile devices. This has been a tremendous labor of love for our Senior Communications Manager, Nathan Mauger, and members of his team. This aligns with our goal to strengthen our capacity and a component of our Connect 2035 initiative to "enhance internal employee engagement and communications efforts to retain STA talent." - Thank you all for your engagement on Thursday yesterday during our special Board workshop and the subsequent regular Board meeting. We will prepare more context, including financial and strategic context to inform a future workshop, with the targeting of holding it on April 1. - This morning I was privileged to join Brandon Rapez-Betty, Mike Hill (Fixed Route Transportation Director), Vic Rapez-Betty (Communications Specialist), and one of our operators, for the return of the double-decker buses into revenue service. We departed the Boone Northwest Garage around 5:45am, followed the deadhead routing to West Plains Transit Center (WPTC), which includes making the new safety stop and dispatch call at Jefferson Street in downtown Spokane. We started revenue service at the transit center, picking up three passengers, before heading to Cheney. Our return trip through Cheney and back to WPTC and into downtown saw lots of early morning passenger activity, including many who exited the bus at WPTC to catch buses to Airway Heights, Amazon and other West Plains destinations. Probably half of passengers joined us on the top deck during the trip. Our operator was excited to be back on the double decker, a vehicle he was regularly operating during the last markup period. Props to the Operations Team for identifying and implementing additional safety measures to ensure we earn and retain the community's trust. Week Lookahead - Real Estate Forum happening downtown on Thursday. - We are meeting internally to calibrate ongoing forecasts and recruitment plans for fixed route coach operators. Happily, we have recently reached full staffing with that work group, the first time in many years. It reflects monumental work by the Human Resources and Training departments. It also reflects attrition rates in the past few months dropping lower than Post-COVID averages. The meeting will be used to update recruitment and training schedules and recalibrate service to employee ratios if necessary. Have a wonderful weekend! Karl Otterstrom Chief Executive Officer Office: (509) 325-6089 1230 W Boone Ave, Spokane WA 99201 spokanetransit.com Sign up for regular STA text and email updates We are hiring - Drive your career at STA!