Board of Directors Meeting   6/26/2025

I'm about to let Thelma Drake in.

I'm not as worried about it, that one, but I don't want to go too long.

Good morning, Thelma.

Morning.

Where are you guys?

Many of us are in Richmond.

Yeah, cause, oh, so I'm looking at two different offices on there.

I see it.

I was looking at one and I'm like, where are they sitting around that table?

Okay.

Got it.

Good morning.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

I can confirm that we conducted our safety briefing in the Shenandoah conference room in Alexandria already.

Oh, very good.

Thank you.

While they are on mute and conducting their safety briefing, I would remind everyone else who's dialing in virtually, please be aware of your surroundings, have an evacuation strategy should you need one, and make sure that you take into consideration your environment, looking out for the people that you are with.

I have an evacuation strategy.

As I mentioned, we do have protocol in our office for active shooters, flea hide fight.

And then the only other thing that I will take a moment to mention, it's not short on anyone that it has been very hot for a very long time and hydration and being mindful of that is super important.

So, especially if you have to spend any time outside, please be very careful with that.

The heat is a real thing.

We are complete.

Awesome.

Thanks, Joan.

This should be a fairly short meeting today, but we do have some exciting updates to share with the board and of course some closed session negotiations to discuss.

And then towards the end of the meeting, we will

approve our, what are we approving?

The budget and the management reserve.

Thank you.

Ms. Bushue?

Mr. Cardwell?

Mr. Crawford?

Mr. Dalton?

Mr. Delandro?

Ms. Doersch?

Here.

Ms. Drake?

Ms. Drake, are you still with us?

Mr.

Flowers?

Here.

Mr. Maestri, Ms. Moses-Nedd.

She will be joining us just a few minutes late.

Ms. Rhinehart.

Present.

Mr. Watkins.

So I don't have a quorum if Mrs. Drake isn't available.

So Mary Stell, I have seven board members on camera.

Yeah, she's non-voting except in the case of a tie, but she absolutely counts toward a quorum.

Yes, sir.

And I'll watch for Ms. Drake to come back on.

Perfect.

Thank you.

So I did send a message to Ms. Drake, so we'll hope that she's able to rejoin.

I know she was planning to attend today.

But as we have a quorum, we will go ahead and move forward with approval.

Actually, I'm gonna first take a minute to see if we have any public comment.

Do we have any members of the public who have joined that would like to make any comment?

We do not, Ms. Robinson.

Thank you.

So hearing none, and it looks like Ms. Drake was able to rejoin, so glad to have you.

Thank you.

So with that, we will move to item number six on our agenda and for approval of the meeting minutes from our May 22nd meeting.

Everyone received these ahead and assuming everyone has had time to review, I would ask for someone to make a motion to approve the meeting minutes from May 22nd.

Thank you very much.

Did Ms. Rhinehart, did you make the motion?

Yes, I did.

Thank you.

Who seconded it?

Thank you, Mr.

Thank you.

It is, as we're virtual on screen, we hear voices, but sometimes it's hard to pinpoint who was speaking.

As we make motions, maybe it's easy to let everybody know who's calling out.

That would be really helpful.

We have a motion and a second.

I believe we can vote the same way that we do in person.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ms. Doersch?

Aye.

Ms. Drake?

Aye.

Mr.

Flowers?

Aye.

Mr. Payne?

Aye.

Ms. Rhinehart?

Aye.

Okay, and Ms. Robinson, I will note that what I was getting ready to say, I just confirmed

We'll vote the same way, if it pleases you, we'll vote the same way that we do in person.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

We'll note that for going forward.

But the motion passes and the meeting minutes for May 22nd are approved.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning directors.

I appreciate you all coming together for this virtual meeting.

I am going to give a condensed executive director's report on Monday, the last day of the month, as I always do, I will send out a more fulsome report, but I felt like since we were going into significant detail on some of the bigger projects that we have finalized negotiations on,

I thought, given the time constraints, a condensed report would be more appropriate.

That said, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

So, first slide, we just have a brief slide on public outreach.

Over the last few months, we have been working very hard, our communication team, on getting out in the community.

You see the bullets there.

We've been to public meetings, bike to work days, we've been out at VRE stations.

We're letting folks know specifically on our major projects, and these are from Long Bridge,

what's going to be happening from a construction point of view in the upcoming months.

This is pretty important because we're going to be having changes to people's commutes starting July 11th, I believe we're going to have some roads that are shut down as we continue to work on Long Bridge and we've been very proactive in getting out in the community and letting them know here's what you're going to see, here's where the roads are going to be shut down so there are no surprises.

These meetings have been very well attended.

In fact, there was one meeting in DC that was attended surprisingly by

member of Virginia politics, and he was very impressed with our message.

It's not always good news.

People don't get thrilled that their commutes are going to change, but we've been open, we've been transparent, and as you've heard from me before, no surprises.

So this outreach has continued and will continue as we move forward and continue in construction.

But just a great job by the communications team.

Next slide, we've got May ridership.

It's eight and a half percent higher than May of last year.

May of 2025 was actually our fourth highest month ever.

We continue to show that folks are riding the train and folks are anxious to have additional options.

It continues to solidify and validate why what we're doing is so important to the community and to the Commonwealth.

The slide after this just shows the region-by-region basis.

Roanoke this month at least led the pack-in increase being up 11%, but Norfolk and Newport News were just below that at 9.5% and 7%.

People look at the Richmond train and say, wow, it's only a 2.6% increase.

A couple comments there.

Number one, a 2.6% increase is still very, very good.

And number two, a lot of folks have left the Richmond train and instead taken the Norfolk or the Newport News train because the timing is better for them.

Just because we've got the lower increase in Richmond, there are plenty of folks on the Newport News route or on the Norfolk route that only take the train from D.C. let's say to Fredericksburg or D.C. to Richmond.

But because they're on the train that continues to Norfolk, they count as Norfolk ridership, not Richmond ridership.

So across the board, good news.

Next slide, I just want to go into detail on some of the capital projects we won't be talking about today in detail.

The first is Allie Junior Fourth Track.

We actually just yesterday, CSX released the imitation bid.

You see there that it's anticipated by July of 2025.

It went out a little bit early because we are making good progress with a lot of the right-of-way acquisition, which I'll talk about in a second.

But that project remains on schedule.

We got the bid out just a little bit early.

A lot of the land, as we've talked about, there are just slivers of land that we need to acquire, some of it permanent easements, some of them just temporary construction easements.

We have worked with the communities, Alexandra, Arlington, WMATA, and there are a couple JBG private owners that we've worked with.

No problems going forward.

As you see on this slide, we'll be attending the Alexandria City Council meeting on July 1st to get approval for some of those temporary construction easements.

We've briefed the city ahead of time.

They are fully supportive.

They actually love what we're doing to get folks off the roads and also on the King and Commonwealth bridges.

So we don't foresee that being a problem.

The next slide shows just where we are.

We've got 46 lots of land that we need to acquire in various aspects, again, either temporary or permanent easements.

You can see the status of where we are.

We're really comfortable with the status of what's being done.

Appraisals are done and negotiations continue.

Even where negotiations are ongoing, there are only a couple that haven't gone incredibly smoothly.

We've got two private folks that just haven't responded.

They're small pieces of land that really have no impact on the folks that are there.

We just haven't had a response from them yet, but no red flags to date, knock on wood.

Any questions about Alexandria Fourth Track?

All right, the next project is Franconia-Lorton Third Track, just continued good news.

We got the 100% design package just last week from CSX, and we expect to get that in the bids process for early works sometime, and we'll get the bids the first week of July.

So this continues on track, no issues to report at all.

And then the final project that I'm going to talk about is the New River Valley project.

This is slightly ahead of schedule, don't tell NS, I told you that, but we continue with construction.

If you actually go down there, you'll see a lot of dirt moving.

The next slide will show you a couple pictures both at the Radford Layer Facility, where they're putting up a sheet pile wall.

A sheet pile wall is, you've seen them on the highways, they're hard to explain, but they put

Metal, basically, and they're used quite frequently around bridges to keep landscaping back.

The NSCR tracks, which will still be a working yard.

So that way when crew is there cleaning the train as it lays over or the crews are signing up, they have a clear safe separation from the yard tracks that are placed.

That wall is actually under construction.

You can see it under construction now.

And then at the actual station site, they're doing a lot of excavation, starting the grading, making good progress there.

The weather has been great.

We haven't had any weather issues.

That continues to be a positive movement with train service starting no later than 2027 and hopefully early 2027 if not earlier.

So those are the projects, just quick updates that we are not going to be talking about in detail.

I want to just run through them.

Again, Monday I'll send out to all of you the fulsome executive director's report with all of the numbers and all of the additional detail on the other projects.

We'll post it on the website the first of the month, again as normal, but just wanted to give these updates and offer the opportunity for anybody to ask any questions on these.

Okay, I've counted to seven.

I yield my time.

Thank you, DJ.

And obviously, we'll have more time throughout the meeting to ask questions.

But now we will move to item number eight.

Sure.

Yes, I'm also here with some of our project managers.

I'm going to have them introduce themselves.

I'm going to start with the Long Bridge folks.

Good morning.

I'm Ian Langan.

I'm Project Manager for Long Bridge.

So I do want to state that what we're doing here is setting up Shannon and Steve for item number 10.

So we're going to talk to you about some of the

Cost estimates and what's going to go into the budget, the amended FY26 budget in item number 10.

At the same time, they're going to give some updates on the project.

Okay, let's go to the next slide.

So just to give you an update on where we stand with the progress on the north package of Long Bridge, we do have an amended budget of $1.65 billion.

We will get into the details of that once we go into closed session.

But we did want to show you some of the progress that we've been making.

You can see in the picture there on the right-hand side a drill, a machine that will drill shafts that we're going to test or we have tested to determine the capacity of those that can then inform the design for the retaining walls in the project.

So we finished those test shafts.

Next, right now we are doing micropiles.

We're doing a similar activity to doing those test micropiles, seeing what their capacity is, and then that will be used to inform the design, particularly in Main Avenue.

That's what we'll be doing, a lot of those micropiles.

And another area for early works package one is under the Maryland Avenue overbuild where we are reinforcing the existing crash walls there, making them higher and stronger.

So we've started that work and we will start concrete pours early next week.

Additionally, DJ had talked about how we would start a work zone in Maiden Lane that's right off of Main Avenue near where the Salamander Hotel is and that whole portals complex.

The plan is that that will be implemented starting July 11th.

So looking forward to getting an NTP for this phase two of this contract, but we'll talk more about that once we get into closed session.

Okay, so any questions about this, about the progress on this project?

Okay, with that, let's go to the south package.

So you can see in this picture here that they are out in the river doing geotechnical borings that also will be used to determine the capacity of the soil to inform the design of the piles in the river.

The budget for this remains unchanged in the amended FY2026 budget, which is $1.013 billion.

So, yeah, we are doing the borings in the river, but we're also doing borings on land as well.

And we are working towards an occupancy for mobilization staging in September.

Any questions on South Package?

All right, I'll hand it over to Jeff Pelletier.

Sorry, I'll hand it over to Ian.

Thank you, Charlene.

So the next two slides, we're going to go through 4D animations, and this will explain Long Bridge Rail Partners approach to the construction of the substructure and the superstructure units across the Potomac River.

So what you're seeing here at the top, you've got time.

And then on the right hand bottom corner, that's

The southern end of the project close to the Long Bridge Aquatic Center.

The left top corner is the northern approach of the Potomac and East Potomac Park.

And we can go ahead and play here.

Longbridge Rail Partners has developed a marine approach.

That is, they will be in the water for the majority of the construction of the rail bridge and the bike pedestrian bridge across the river.

But they're going to start with land access across GWNP.

You can see in the bottom right, they've established two spans across the parkway, and that's really to feed smaller materials.

They'll start in the river from each approach

and work their way across the river.

There'll be two pile driving cranes along with barge units that will help support the building, the piers.

From there, the spans, the structural steel that you see there and brown

Those will actually float upriver from a marine access point that is actually adjacent at the base of the Harry Nice Bridge, Route 301 over the Potomac.

So those spans will be assembled down there at that location, and then they will float up river.

This is a little different method than had been envisioned during PE.

They had envisioned that they would build a trestle across the river in order to build both bridges.

But instead, this marine approach actually saves time, but also is more environmentally friendly.

There are several hundred piles that would support that trestle that are no longer

So in this way, a lot less impact to the actual river and the river bottom, but also it has its schedule benefits as well.

From here, they've got the bridge across the Potomac for the rail bridge, and then they will use that as a construction trestle for the pedestrian bridge, which we can roll to the next slide, please.

It looks like it just started over.

There we go.

Yep.

And then we can play.

And this is the pedestrian bridge.

Again, they're building across GWNP through the park.

And then they'll have, again, barges that will have the pile driving frames on them, as well as the substructure.

Construction, and then from there, they will utilize the rail bridge in order to be their construction trestle that will hang the spans for the new pedestrian, bike pedestrian bridge across the river.

They're only working from the Virginia shore to the shore in East Potomac Park.

That's due in part to the constraints between the Wamata Bridge that you see in gray in the foreground

and the new rail bridge.

There's just not enough area to really navigate the barges, so they'll only be able to work in one direction and they always want to be themselves emergency egress off the water in the event of a flood or anything like that.

So from there, you do see the timeline in the top shows they've got the pedestrian bridge done sometime in 2029.

There is still a considerable amount of work to be accomplished on the rail bridge.

They've got to get the waterproofing done.

They've got to build the track across the bridge, both tracks across the bridge.

But they also got to work on those tie-in locations, both with Long Bridge North and East Potomac Park, as well as the tie-in at RO.

So we are currently tracking to be done with this contract in March of 2030.

All right.

With that, we're going to hand it over to Jeff.

And similarly, you're going to see some budget numbers that are new.

And it's going to tee up, tee us up for item number 10.

Good morning board members, I'm Jeff Pelletier, Senior Director of Projects for Northern Virginia.

The bypass project, the Franconia-Springfield bypass project, I really reached a number of critical milestones in the last month since the last board meeting and I'm pleased to report.

First, we've executed our construction management contract and provided NTP to HNTB on June 3rd.

This is a procurement we started back in October, so we're really excited to have them on board to support the project in the construction phase.

We also received approval of our NEPA reevaluation from FHWA and then we got adoption from the FRA a few weeks later.

This is huge for us because it really clears us at the federal level to start construction and to start right-of-way acquisition.

Most critically, we completed negotiation on the Phase II Amendment and the guaranteed maximum price with the Flatiron Herzog Joint Venture, which culminated in the execution of the Phase II Amendment on June 13th.

The GMP that we reached is reflected in the proposed amended budget that you see here, $532 million.

And then finally, following the execution of the Phase II amendment, we issued a limited notice to the proceeds in the joint venture on the 16th to start construction on the Shoe Fly package.

And so you know, the Shoe Fly is a separate design package that we have for the bypass that reroutes the mainline tracks away from the construction areas.

and really improves our work windows and our track availability.

It really improves our schedule, which is a key piece of the development of the project using the CMGC approach.

So with that NTP, the joint venture is now mobilizing, they're finalizing their subcontracts, ordering materials, and we should see them in the field very soon.

Is there any questions on that?

Okay, we're going to move on to

Rob, similarly, these are some new numbers.

We have briefed you in closed session on some of these, but these are some new budget numbers that also will be teed up.

We're teeing this up for item number 10.

So this is a reminder, so Rob's going to give a quick review of this.

Yeah, thank you, Mike.

Good morning, all.

Rob Pinckney, Senior Director of Projects down here in Richmond, overseeing the southern half and the western half of the state for projects.

Quick summary on the changes and realignment on the sidings we've talked about a couple of times.

Just to give folks an idea of where we're looking at here, on the left is the north side to the right south, beginning on the left, Spotsylvania Station, and on the right, Richmond Staples Mill.

So the siding is located between those two points.

We've done a little bit of realignment here.

So the middle orange Siding B project has now been deferred out to Phase 3.

That was due to some constructability and permitting issues as well as its proximity to Siding F, as you can see they're very close.

So that kind of led to a little bit of less efficient use of that siding.

So in negotiations with CSX over the last six to eight months, we've been talking about where the best use of these funds would be.

So with that Siding F, the crossroads, the purple one, will accelerate into Phase 1.

So that's an extension of a third track right near the Spotsylvania station there.

Additionally, during discussions with CSX, there was a proposal to add some crossovers to improve fluidity as trains moved north and south.

Now we can slot trains into that longer third track.

So then moving towards the south, the green siding originally was the Hanover siding,

That included a VDOT bridge over the CSX tracks, the US-1 Washington Highway.

That was costing about $75 million on the low end, and it could have gone anywhere up above $100 million depending on where we landed with VDOT around the dime speeds.

So in negotiations and discussions, we said, maybe we can find a new location.

And we did.

We moved a little bit north here.

We're just south of the Doswell Diamond in the Buckingham Branch intersection.

And we'll be locating a two-mile siding in that location.

Additionally, again, some additional crossovers just to the south or north of Ashland.

So as trains move to and from Ashland, we have some fluidity to move them across different tracks.

With that, we've made some budget adjustments.

The Citing F budget went from $112 million up to $142 million due to costs of dollars today and as we move closer to construction and design.

The old siding was $140 million.

That included the Washington Bridge.

Now that Taylorville siding, you can see it shows that it's $86 million.

Any questions?

I do want to point out that we're doing that, we're saving $86 million, and we're still running all the Phase 2

Thank you.

Hey, this is Darien.

I would agree just all around, right?

Is that, you know, well done to Mike and team on a net decrease while maintaining service is, you know, I think, you know, a testament to the, to the hard work of the staff here, especially then while adding more ridership as we saw in DJ's update.

So just well done.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, with that, and a lot of team effort went in all this.

It's not just those who are here in the room.

It's many other people, the planning team.

I don't want to start naming names.

I'll probably leave someone out, but a lot of folks, internal and external, working with CSX and Amtrak and others.

It's been a good team effort.

FRA as well.

We've had good feedback from them, the value engineering of that.

Thank you, Mike.

And thank you for mentioning FRA as our federal partner.

I know when there's an administration change, we talked earlier in meetings about how we were gonna be working together moving forward and what changes would come.

And from the VPRA side and also from my role as the DRPT director, we have things making very swift progress and that's a good thing all around.

So with that, we're going to come back in item 10 and approve these budget numbers that you just saw, entertain a vote on these new numbers in the management reserve.

But we've come to item nine, which will be a closed session to give the board members some project negotiation updates.

I'm happy to do so.

I move that the Board convene in a closed session pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A29 for the discussion of public contracts relating to VPRAs, Transforming Rail in Virginia projects involving the expenditure of public funds, including discussion of the terms or scope of such contracts.

Thank you, Ms. Doersch.

Sorry, I wasn't looking at the screen.

Thank you, Mr. Delandro.

Any opposed?

Seeing none, we will now move into closed session with only the members of the board and we will discuss only those matters directly related to the motion.

Nothing else will be discussed at this time.

Great, thank you.

So we do need, now coming back into open session, we need to take a roll call vote.

So I will ask every member to indicate their agreement with the following.

To the best of my knowledge, during the closed meeting, the only matters heard, discussed, or considered were those matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, and only those public business matters as were identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened.

So Mary Estelle, would you please take a roll call vote for me?

Yes, ma'am.

Ms. Doersch?

Aye.

Ms. Drake?

Aye.

Mr.

Flowers?

Aye.

Mr. Jordan?

Aye.

Ms. Moses-Nedd?

Agreed.

And Ms. Rhinehart.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

With everyone's unanimous agreement with that statement, we will move to agenda item 10, which is our FY 26 budget amendment and management reserve balance.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yes, Shannon Perry.

I'm Senior Director in the Finance Group.

I will be walking you all through the FY26 budget amendment and the management reserve balance.

So we're going to jump in like we usually do, talking about that high level financial plan through FY31, the end of our project scope.

So here across the top, what we're going to be showing is a course what you all just approved in May.

So this is the FY26 budget, and we are going to compare that to the amendment that we're bringing to you all today was in your packet.

So from that high bird's eye view in the financial plan, we have an increase of sources of $167 million, so new sources we're bringing in through this iteration.

Additionally, we have an increase of uses.

What we just talked about, those critical capital projects in the I-95 corridor, we've got an increase of $576 million.

And what that is going to do is going to eat into the management reserve balance, dropping that $409 million to what we're going to be recommending is a $52 million management reserve balance as of June.

So like we always do, we're going to dive into the details to explain what's driving these numbers, starting of course with our amendment changes.

And I want to note in the document, you'll note that all the changes pertain to the I-95 corridor.

That is truly what's being amended as far as the budget changes go.

We do have an operational change, which we'll get into, but let's start with the I-95 corridor budget changes.

We will not go into the details.

You guys got a great presentation on from the operations team on what's driving these changes.

So let's just talk through the numbers.

So Long Bridge North, we are recommending a budget increase of $567 million.

On the Franconia Springfield Bypass, we're recommending a budget increase of $127 million.

And this next section here that we now have highlighted in blue, so all of these are those siding realignment projects.

So some were being removed from the plan, some increasing slightly, and then a new addition.

All of this is gonna drive down the uses number by $86 million.

So for total changes for this corridor budget, you've got $608 million.

Now, offsetting that is some changes in our operations plan.

I just want to take a minute to note that you all are well aware that we approve a one-year operations budget.

So you will not see this change in the document that you receive, but it is impacting the financial plan.

So we need to tell you what is going on with this.

So in out years, we are reducing the amount of a charge for the Northeast Corridor.

There is a rather complicated formula that is in the PREO-209 methodology where states that have passengers that border a light in Virginia but can continue on to Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, there is a revenue sharing formula.

Two years ago, there was talk that this formula was going to be amended, and what VPRA had as an assumption was that this margin of 25% that we have historically earned from this revenue would start to erode over time.

As conversations have progressed with Amtrak, it is clear that as their new proposals come out, their goal is to retain that margin for all of the affected states.

We have further confirmed that with our strong relationships with Amtrak.

So we are confident that that is going to be still within our plan.

So how that results is that we're actually reducing the amount of expense related to this interplay of our Northeast Corridor passenger charge.

So this is offsetting, again, the I-95 corridor changes of that $576 million and the changes in uses.

So we're gonna go ahead and jump over now to the sources side.

Positive news here.

I think everyone's aware that we signed an agreement with VRE for a contribution for the Manassas Line purchase where they will be providing $155 million of funding.

That was signed in April just after our Q3 cutoff.

So we're bringing that into our plan now.

Additionally, the CTB just approved for VPRA to get FY26 PAYGO.

So now that that's been approved, we are bringing that into our plan.

Of course, that's going to be bringing us to that increase of $167 million.

Across the bottom, you can see the iteration that is now bringing our total sources to just above $8 billion.

You can see that ebb and flow in our management reserve where it peaked in Q3.

And now we're going to be recommending that we bring that balance to $52 million.

And we're going to talk through that now.

I'm going to start by showing the exact same slide that we presented in May.

As you'll recall, we approved a very high management reserve balance in Q3.

We discussed this in the terms that there is 67% of the program that required final construction pricing.

Because of this ambiguity, we wanted to ensure that there was sufficient funding in the financial plan to cover the unknowns in our program.

When we fast forward to today,

We now only have 26% of the program that requires final construction pricing.

We have a lot more assurances that we have a good concept of what it's going to cost to deliver the program.

As you can see on the right hand side, you can see that decrease of the balance.

Now that we have more assurance also on the uses side, it's important to note the management reserve is a risk mitigation tool, not just for the uses, our capital projects and our operations, but it's also for the sources side.

We have two really big financings that are critical components within our financial plan that are currently undergoing differing studies to determine the debt financing capacity.

This $52 million is critical to not only ensure that we can fund the projects, but that the sources will also be sufficient to cover those costs.

So that's why we want to end with saying $52 million is not excess.

It will still be needed to make sure that our financial plan has a sufficient funding to cover all of the costs.

It's Darien.

I think that's one way to put it, Darien.

I mean, we've done a lot of work.

I mean, you saw the siding rail line.

We have new contributions coming into the plan.

So the Manage Reserve did grow as a result of some work that VPRA had done, knowing that construction pricing was coming in.

Okay, great.

That was a great question, Darien.

Any further questions?

I so move, Patricia Doersch.

Thank you, Ms. Doersch and Mr.

Flowers.

Do I have, let's see, we have a motion and we have a second.

All in favor of approving this motion, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Motion passes.

So with that, we have

completed the business for this board meeting.

Thank you for putting on the screen our upcoming board meeting dates.

Just before we close out, I also wanted to mention that last week I sent an email strictly to board members, and I am going to refresh that email today, right after this meeting, to bring it to the top of your inbox.

So for any Board of Directors who has not responded or maybe might have missed that email, if you could please take a look and send me a quick response at your convenience, that would be much appreciated.

Any further comments or questions or anything you'd like to discuss before we close out this meeting today?

Hearing none, this meeting is adjourned.