 everyone please assemble like to call to order the capital city council regular meeting this July the 25th and city clerk please repeat the roll call yes councilmember story here councilmember Peterson here councilmember Brooks here councilmember botto here mayor Bertrand thank you and let's rise for pledge allegiance you don't mind that brief interruption at the start of the meeting take a picture to help second harvest in their food drive this year so I'd like to read a brief announcement this meeting is cable cast live on charter communication channel 8 and is being recorded to be rebroadcast on the following Wednesday at 8 a.m. on Saturday following the first rebroadcast at 1 p.m. and also on charter channel 71 and Comcast channel 25 meetings can also be viewed live from the city's website and our technician tonight is Kingston Rivera as a reminder please turn off your cell phones during the meeting and if you'd like to have your name recorded when you come up to speak please sign the sheet at the podium thank you so at this point I'd like to ask is there a report on closed session thank you mayor Bertrand city council met at 8 30 to 4 o'clock this morning on the first item the public employee appointment took a recess from 4 30 to 6 p.m. and then discussed two closed session litigation items no reportable action was taken thank you any additional materials city clerk yes we received six items for item 9a two of which were received today and there are copies at the dais we also received one public comment and one additional material which is actually the copy of the pertinent code which were distributed afterward for item 9d all of the additional materials are available for the public at the back and recent items are at the dais thank you any deletions and additions to the agenda staff has no changes okay at this point I'd like to open the public any comments that like to be made on items not on the agenda please come forward thank you I'm Sheree McCoy capitol a homeowner and resident for 25 years and I'm here to talk about safety to address traffic issues on 41st Avenue a study was conducted between 2001 and 2016 by safe streets LA the executive director of safe streets and an expert it automated red light enforcement J Bieber provided the analysis of the findings he admits that the study is incomplete because it only focuses on rolling right turns data was first collected from 2001 2005 and statistics show there was no collision incidents at the intersection of 41st Avenue capitol main mall entrance yet the red light runner cameras were installed there in October 2005 because the cameras seem pointless I inquired with the city of capital as to why these cameras were placed in that location instead of where the traffic problems were up the street at the intersection of 41st and Claire's the official told me that these lights were being tested and once they were would all dialed in they would move them down to 41st and Claire's flash forward 2007 the red light runner cameras were installed at 41st and Claire's they seem to move a lot and we wondered what was going on and why are they always focused on Claire's towards Burger King 41st right I again communicated my concerns with the city that the red light runner cameras need to be focused where the multitude of daily traffic law violations occur and just think of how much revenue capital it can make by enforcing basic traffic laws the lady on the phone thanked me for my input over a decade later I was surprised to receive a phone call from someone saying with the there with the capital of police department and they're following up on my inquiry about Claire's and 41st I explained that there's a problem and I told him he told me that it's all because people come off highway one when south is backed up and they cut through Claire's as a back way and I said there's a multitude of reasons that are going on and that was about it I went into a lot of detail of each one a few months after that strange phone call there was a woman killed Cynthia Kerry of Mount Herman at that very intersection of Claire's and 41st according to the news reports she was stationary in the middle of the road when she was hit by a van and slammed into a bus on a happier note I'm also talking about the Capitola mall overhaul I think it's a great idea but I think 630 living units with 1100 new cars in this intersection is a problem thank you if anybody like a copy of my detailed notes I'd be happy to email them to you thank you thank you very much for your comments and you're well-prepared so any other people would like to speak seeing none let's go back to city council for city council comments and staff comments I have nothing I just wanted to bring two things up tonight one is that I'd be interested in looking at the possibility of updating our water fountain at the by the stands the bandstand over there the Santa Cruz Warf recently put in the water fountain that where you can do use water use their bottles to refill there so I'd be interested in looking at that and then I currently sit on the children's network board and was asked to appoint an alternate at this point I'd like to go out reach out to the community to see if anyone would be interested in sitting in as my alternate on that commission thank you sorry for making weight sorry for skipping over council member yes I just wanted to announce that tomorrow from 430 to 730 correct yes from 430 to 730 tomorrow at Monterey Park will be the first food truck Friday event I've been to some of these events in scott's valley and there are lots of fun and I'm excited to see one coming here as for our first time so I hope to see you all there and I am looking forward to some some good food and some good times in the park Sam no comments okay I have no comments onto boards excuse me city staff just one brief bit of clarification on councilwoman Brooks's request for the water fountain I believe my staff actually I think great minds think alike I believe my staff has already been working on that would are you asking for a council hearing on this or is there something that we could if we're already making progress report off agenda I would appreciate that yeah thank you that's great to hear okay item seven board commissions and committee reports we have a few appointments excuse me historic museum appointment are we going to have a presentation from the city council on scene clerk just the announcement that following recruitment the museum board interviewed Dean Walker and has recommended that he be appointed to what is a basically a three-year term minus one month so it is recommended that by the board that he joined them okay that's an appointment action on our part motion move to approve the appointment to the museum board second okay all those in favor hi anyone opposed no seeing that it carries and item B youths appointment I believe you worked with this young man I did we have Bryce Ibrahimian who has interested in serving as a youth member on two of our commissions both the finance advisory committee and the Commission on the environment these are one-year school year terms and he is eligible for both positions so the recommendation is the appointment of him as a youth member I see price in the audience would he like to come forward you do not want to come forward okay we had Bryce at our finance advisory committee meeting last week and it was really exciting to have that that new energy there and as our finance director had mentioned to him during that meeting was a lot of the things that are being done now are going to be the future that that his generation controls later so it's really exciting to have that youth voice there so I'm excited to to have you join those boards Bryce and I'd like to point out it was Christian one of her first moves was to include the reach out to youth members so thank you very much and Bryce is a neighbor of mine and thank you for volunteering so this is an actual item is your motion I'll make the motion I just want to add that or ask staff to make sure that these new commissioners participate in some sort of onboarding process we have a new social media ordinance and I know that there's a booklet being updated I just want to make sure that that that takes place it's a great comment quick hey Bryce I just want to encourage you to get some of your friends involved in public service to okay thank you for your service I did notice our finance director had already taken him on his wing so I think there's some interaction right there so that's great second still second yes second okay all those in favor hi any opposed no cares thank you very much let's move on to consent calendar I understand there's something like say Sam oh yes mayor thank you I just wanted to point out on item 7e on the consent calendar I have a conflict and I will be recusing myself from that particular item so you may want to maybe take that as a separate vote okay let's take that as a separate item would someone like to make a motion on all items except for e motion to adopt consent consul under excluding item e second yeah just and maybe as a point of order if you want to if any members of the public want to remove an item from the consent calendar okay so we have a first and a second any items in the public would like to speak on these items on the consent calendar except for item e seeing none back to city council for a vote all those and you have a comment yeah I have a comment on item 8f the resolution for approving recreation job classifications I'd be interested in I well I just don't know I I would ask that we could include a more specific detail on the classification itself on the age group that these folks will be working with it so if it would say from I think it's generally just as a middle school but I think it would be best if we can add ages I don't even know yeah or what is that I don't even know what middle school ages but we can we could amend the job description to add the age range because it does say activities for middle school youth so we can certainly add an age range to the job descriptions okay and then the second piece is there the lodges past regarding the minimum wage to $15 an hour and our after-school leader position starts at 1459 I would ask that we look at beginning that classification at $15 an hour I don't know what the process would be for doing that at this time so so our entire hourly wage structure we review every year in January we've been moving it up each year to keep in sync with the minimum wage increases so that increase as those increases phase in those positions would be increased along with the whole hourly wage structure those increases in average I believe about four to five percent a year so that would take place we wouldn't be paying someone under the minimum wage alternatively you could propose to amend the the schedule as adopted this evening I would propose that we begin the salary at 15 effective immediately instead of waiting I don't know if that I think that that may need to be pulled if we're gonna take that I don't know I'd be happy to know we need discussion of it so this is separate items so in terms of that's recommendation or question would you like me to pull the item what do we pull the item and we can discuss it later this evening okay so I'll make them do would you like me to make the motion to approve items a bc d and g and and not f and we pull that to discuss at a later time we should do it tonight I think we need to get these job descriptions out so we can get the positions higher but we can do it later this evening we already have a motion in second on the floor do we need to drop those I can just amend it to delete f and so we'd be deleting e and f okay so everything except for e and f there's a motion on the floor all those in favor say hi any opposed no okay so let's go on to item e Sam you're recrused you don't need to leave the dice I believe is there a motion on item e motion to adopt item e second okay is there anyone from the city those attending right now would like to comment on item e seeing none bring it back to city council all those in favor hi any opposed no can't it passes so we'll do item f at the end of the meeting right okay moving on to nine a report on the jewel box traffic calming project results and I see Steve at the dais and even now here we report from director Steve I'm before you as a close project report on the traffic calming it measures we installed around the jewel box a little bit of history here following I think it's been over two years of hearings and public surveys and workshops the council approved a set of traffic calming measures for the jewel box neighborhood based on results we had gotten at a workshop that was held in June 2010 as the table which summarizes the traffic calming measures that were discussed at the workshop the items highlighted in red there the speed tables and turn restrictions both received a significant participant support at this workshop the speed tables got 90% support and the turn restrictions received 80% so based on this kind of public input the council did approve a project that project scope included the construction of speed tables two of them on jade street and one on 42nd Avenue and the implementation of turn restrictions during commute hours on tow past street and 47th Avenue the construction of the speed tables and the signs were installed in April 2019 and we did conduct traffic monitoring before and after the construction a little bit more on the traffic monitoring the pre-project monitoring was conducted on a single day single 24-hour period on Thursday March 14th this was one week before the construction began on the speed tables the data included speed and volume counts at 21 different locations throughout the greater jewel box area the second set of data was collected on May 1st this approximately three weeks following the implementation of the traffic calming measures we use the same blocks that we measured on the first time during the first phase 21 sites and two days of data we ended up with quite a bit of 576 pages of data to analyze so we kind of focused our analysis on the most nicely impacted routes during the commute hours because that's really what we were targeting with these improvements so here's a quick map of the area the red dots on this map so this is jade street 45th Avenue 42nd Avenue and Capitol Road and then this is the formal jewel box neighborhood the red dots indicate where the traffic monitoring was taken before and after so like I said we did our analysis looking at the the three to six p.m. traffic and we also looked at only in the eastbound and northbound directions as those are the primary traffic heavy traffic that we get through the neighborhood at those times so eastbound on coming in off of a bromar on to jade eastbound on Capitol Road and northbound on 47th Avenue so looking at the local traffic impacts it's really involved with the turn restrictions that we placed at topaz where we restricted entrance on to topaz whether it was a left turn going straight off of gray off of jade street or coming out of the parking lot and diverted that traffic ended up diverting as we could have predicted to the next streets up on the jewel box so as you can see here the chart topaz street pre-project had a volume of 203 cars and post-project volume was 129 so they went down by 74 cars in the monitoring opal street jewel street and garnet also increases I think a total 77 or 76 very close in numbers to the amount of traffic that was diverted off of topaz interesting emerald actually went down by 19 that's the next street up before you get to crystal which is one way you know that's just a traffic variation I can't explain why they went down but you know we're looking at two snapshot periods here so but that's the bit what the data provided on the regional impacts we I'm looking at the impacts we we encouraged at 47th Avenue where we restricted turning on to 47th from Portola Drive that is a you know people coming going west to east through the county will travel on to Portola it is a lot of cars turn up 47th to get to Soquel and Soquel Drive Soquel town of Soquel the traffic indicates that we had 524 plus pre-project and 417 so we saw a reduction of 117 107 cars where these cars went is a little harder for me to determine a lot of them probably went up got off earlier and went up 41st Avenue other ones may have continued on Portola Drive and gone into the village but because of the volumes it's hard to tell where they went quick notice about enforcement so the police department began enforcing soon after the construction was completed during the first week the officers issued warnings rather than citations and then began issuing citations and as a policy traffic officers randomly select days that they do enforcement at various sites throughout the city to avoid any established pattern so that's the extent of my report I'd be happy to have any questions the recommendations are to accept this report and provide any direction the council may have I do have copies of the maps that are included if there's any specifics you want to talk about that thank you any questions of yes quick question if you go back to that first slide when you were showing the pre the numbers for the pre-impact and post-impact the only thing that's missing there is you didn't do a total and I just trying to eyeball it but it looks to me like there's approximately about a 15% reduction if you look at the volume before and the volume after you did the volume on the next slide but I was just trying to add up the numbers here and it just appears it's about 350 to 300 just from my quick calculation so you had mentioned that on the other slide there was a reduction you just say you didn't know where they went but it would indicate that there is some kind of reduction here I'm looking at volume of cars pre the volume before the left column and the middle column right it looks like left column is about 350 and this middle column is about 300 which means less cars so even though you it looks like it might be impact in other areas there was some reduction I just wanted to you didn't have a number there so I couldn't cumulatively total it so okay so at this point we're going to open it to comments from the audience and city clerk would you talk about the card structure here yes we are using the colored cards the first group is the green cards and they have one minute to speak so anyone with a green card can start working their way up they will be followed by the yellow cards which are given a maximum of two minutes to speak and finally the orange cards get the full three minutes and it is entirely your choice right in front of the little light there's a box you can just drop your card in okay everyone with the green card weeks come forward and welcome good evening my name is Neil Savage I'm on opal street in the jewel box so first I want to thank the council and Steve and the staff for working over the last year and over the prior years we've come a long way since the infamous option four it's nice to see the lowest speeds on the west end of jade and it's nice to see the shift of eastbound at the during the peak hours off of topaz it's just a little disappointing that the sign this is no turning on onto 47th we only had a 20 reduction if people followed the sign would would have had a hundred percent reduction so again thank you for all your work and thank you Neil for you and your wife for participating and getting the neighbors organized appreciate that um any other questions excuse me people on green cards okay moving on to yellow cards for two minutes I see one person coming up thank you took me two minutes to get here that's okay my name shelly thomas and um we live at 48 70 opal street we have noticed the increase in traffic but what's scarier to us is the speed of that traffic and we're right on the corner well two houses back from the corner of 49th and and opal and depending on how fast the people take the current the turn to head towards capitol a road it's very very dangerous especially with so many people that walk down to the beach because we've got the stairs to walk away and we've seen some near misses as well as trying to back out of your driveway at the same time that they're speeding through so I don't know what the options are to look at but I mean speed reduction is a huge concern a safety concern of course for any neighborhood and so I hope you would consider that thank you thank you very much any others with yellow cards oh I see someone no uh you're coming out okay so seeing none on yellow now we're on orange cards three minutes so my name is alan kable and I live in topaz street and I want to reiterate thanks to steve and the mayor and the council for for putting these restrictions in place I think it's made a great improvement to the speed on jade and when it's enforced I think it's had quite a good effect on the overall traffic through the jewel box and and if we wind ourselves back four years to when we first started this remember the the reason for doing this was to improve the safety in the jewel box but there was a lot of traffic a lot of high-speed traffic on the residential streets we wanted to get that traffic off the residential streets and onto the arterials and the collectors so that was the objective and I think the issue we have right now is simply one of enforcement people are not complying with the with the restrictions I did an informal survey last Thursday I just sat for an hour just watching the end of topaz and the end of 47th we had 90 cars in one hour turn up onto 47th from portola that's not from the other direction I didn't even realize there was a restriction there and we had about 40 cars come through topaz so we clearly have a restriction problem or a compliance problem with the with the restrictions so we have some suggestions for how we might improve this first of all is the obvious one which is let's improve enforcement I know it's not a fun thing to do for the police to sit at the end of the street there but if we don't enforce the restrictions the people will not comply with them and there's no reason to spend all that money if you're not going to enforce your restrictions you know we can we can come up with some inventive things we can use some ghost cars maybe put some old cruises there to maybe allow people to see that there is something going on so that's number one secondly let's make the signs more visible right now they're nice little square white signs great reading material but I think if we added a red a red no entry sign there with the time restriction underneath I think it would improve the compliance I think people would take a look at that and and be more interested in obeying those restrictions the third thing we can do I think is to consider rolling the restrictions up on the east end of the jewels on 40 on 45th because and that's what the last speaker was talking about because all a lot of the cars are just coming and popping up one street so if we can roll it up to the rest of the jewels I think it would make a big difference and and achieve the goal of getting the cars onto the arterials or the collectors so in summary I think we've made a really good start I think we really need to step up the restrict step up the enforcement and I think if we do that the jewel box will be a much safer place the village will be a safer place to live in thank you thank you good evening good evening I'm a jewel box resident and I live on opal street and I've been coming to the city council meetings for this issue and I also went to the community meeting I think one thing that isn't in the report is at the community meeting we did go through and brainstorm ideas but one thing the topaz residents residents seem to agree with is they didn't want to simply just push this problem off onto other streets and when reviewing the report if you look at the numbers to answer your question there's only an increase or a decrease of 15 cars total if you look at those numbers I just I don't know it's five percent not 15 and so I mean that goes to just show the minus 19 we don't know where those cars went or if it was because of the no-turn signs but if you look at the numbers also further in the report on opal street they're just the one block between 45th and 47th there was a 224 percent increase which is the 81 if you look at the further eastern block which my neighbor was talking about that's a 96 percent increase in traffic and on garnet there was an 84 increase in traffic I've seen enforcement for the no-turns people are still turning down topaz so these numbers are showing people still going down the street what happens through enforcement when people finally realize that they need to stop turning down that street they start going down the other streets and we end up in the situation that the topaz residents said they didn't want to put on their neighbors which was just simply push this problem off so what i'm asking is what are we going to do about the problem as a whole let's not think about what are we going to do just today but let's be forward thinking no-turn signs seem to be a quick fix that's simply bumping it down the street then fine put a no turn on opal put a no-turn down and down but then it's just pushing it further down and then there's no access to the neighborhood for anyone so what i'm asking from the people who are educated in this area what do we do to fix this problem i don't know this isn't my area we're making steps in the right direction but a 224 percent increase and 84 percent increase i don't think those are the fixes for the long term it seems like it's a fix right now for topaz but eventually once people stop going down topaz they're going to start going down the other streets and i've seen it myself where people are just driving too fast and i don't know how to fix the problem but i think we need to think not just about today but what's going to happen next thank you thank you melinda vento i live on topaz street been here before want to say first thank you for really all the measures that the city has taken so far to help us it's very much appreciated i actually came to ask and i know i won't get an answer tonight but i'd love to understand how many citations were issued as enforcement for this and the reason i say this is we uh we we've seen a decrease in the traffic on topaz during the rush hour but quite frankly i still battle to get in my driveway there's that many cars coming through when i pull in going the wrong way so i would love to understand i i do believe that enforcement um whatever measures we take it needs to be enforced or this all this investment will it it won't do any good right so and people follow other people the gentleman that just spoke i would completely agree with i i live on topaz i would i would like to not see this traffic pushed to our neighbor streets i don't want to see them have the issues we have a huge volume even with the increase on these other streets the volume is so high on our streets that unfortunately you know we do need some relief but would love to see whatever solution is implemented long term that is enforced i just i think we need help and i i have been told that some of the concern as well it's the residents that live in the jewel box it's my neighbors that would be getting the tickets but i would say that most of my neighbors that live in the jewel box actually would love to see the traffic decrease and most of them i think do actually obey the law so anyway i want to thank the city council and and and everybody to support it all this thank you thank you good evening uh my name is jim hobbs and my wife jan and i uh live on topaz street between 45th and 47th and uh we have we walk our dogs a couple of times a day we have a couple of old dogs and so it's nice to we have definitely noticed decrease in the amount of traffic um during particularly during the evening commute and we're very appreciative of the council's actions that uh got that implemented um so that i just want to reaffirm what everyone is saying is that we are very appreciative of that um that being said the only thing that i've heard from other people is they say well i didn't really see the sign down there which is a little mystifying to me because it's not really a small sign it's a large sign but as alan said some people have not they aren't very observant i suppose and so maybe a little color around that or something would make it more visible so people would pay more attention to it and of course um enforcement is the key to the whole thing of uh people complying with it anyway so i just wanted to put that in thank you very much thank you name's linda smith i live on the other end of the jewel box and i'm not going to take three minutes but i didn't want to be repeating a bunch since i am far away from the problem um the last time i spoke on this subject we were looking at pop potentially barricading off the jewel box and because there are so many of us that live on the other side of 49th avenue the barricades would have cut us off from from accessing 41st or put us on to cliff and then back up the hill or capitol road which is already extremely congested i think what you've done is a good step in the right direction i'm one of the people i was out of town when the signs all got implemented and when i came back i couldn't remember where they had been put so i went looking for them the white sign is sort of hard to see um the enforcement that we did i've heard that enough people got tickets that it got people's attention and i know a lot of my neighbors that live over on prospect avenue and on that other side of the jewel box we don't drive down topaz anymore because of our awareness of the issue um i personally picked different streets to drive down but when i'm going to jade and 41st which right now my husband's having physical therapy there barricading off would make it really difficult for us to do our normal you know routine stuff so the speed tables are excellent um i think they're a lot better than the speed bumps because it's been my observation that people actually do slow down and they don't just hop over them um and the red sign idea i think is a great idea thank you linda hi my name is cherry mcdonald we live on the corner of jewel and 47th i want to tell you we've lived there for over 22 years and we've seen a marked increase in traffic and it's even with this study um there's been hours where it didn't change at all we've done informal studies and a friend who lives on opal has done informal studies and we've found that there's been very little change especially on the weekends even though the signs are basically for what i would call rush hour traffic the weekend traffic coming up out of the village turning on 47th roaring through most of them i want to say are at the end of a day of partying and they're screeching their tires and the motorcycles are so loud and it's just it's impossible i need some of you to come and spend an evening on our deck listening to the traffic from five to nine and you'll have an idea of what we put up with we honestly can't even listen to the television with the doors open we have to lock the house up on that side where the street is in order to enjoy an evening at home and that's really pathetic it's not the number of cars as much as the attitude of the drivers so i want to thank you for what you're doing and i really appreciate steven all the people we've attended all these meetings we've been in all of the you know studies and things i just don't think we're addressing it boldly enough we need to do more so maybe they enforce it during the week not on weekends i don't know but if you live on 47th that's a very narrow street 40 feet wide and people are going over 60 miles an hour sometimes you can take my grandson's little laser gun that they use for baseball and you can check how fast the cars are going and it's appalling it's a 25 mile an hour zone according to the signs and it's that's not at all what happens in fact we put locks on the gates we don't let our grandkids out the doors they have to stay on the deck to play not even ride their scooters or anything unless we take them down some place to ride them so i think we need to reconsider what we're doing what we're doing is a step in the right direction and it is appreciated but i don't want to leave the misconception that we're finished thank you thank you good evening good evening uh my name is daveron i live at 49 80 garnet street and wanted to thank the council and the department for their sort of thoughtful uh solutions to sort of a joint set of problems that me and the neighborhood have i just wanted to make a couple observations and one sort of request the first of which is the captured data before and after shows everywhere in the jewel box except on the east side of 49th you know we too are in the neighborhood and would like to see if these changes affected us positively or negatively i know that every time that we want to go to our homes from uh sort of um well every time we try to get to our homes from 47 there's a no left turn sign so we get to drive through the village which between three and six is not always enjoyable so we feel like we're being affected by the decisions are made um without any benefit ourselves or at least understanding what those benefits might be secondly i was a little confused as to the the way the signage got implemented originally said that there's no left turn at a number of places but no monday through friday designation there's a no left turn sign eastbound cliff that was approved by the city council now there's a sign that also prevents uh westbound turns on cliff down to 47th that's the street that we take regularly and again we sort of end up in the in the stew down there in the village and we didn't quite understand why that second sign got put in you know my my proposal or my idea was that sort of the uh no left turn on eastbound 47 onto 47th makes sense because that's where many sort of interlopers are going as they're trying to cut through and get to the village the fastest but people who live in the neighborhood um would have benefit by knowing they could go down opal cliffs turn left onto uh onto cliff and then right onto 47th to get to their homes so it wouldn't necessarily be sort of the interloper type who's just coming trying to get to the village fast people who actually live in the neighborhood would get the benefit of a second route in that might not be as well known to people yet it would provide easier access to the people who actually live in the neighborhood thank you thank you hi ron my name is ron berke i've been working on this issue for about 20 years since establishing this paytimes back with the committee of seven back in 1999 uh definitely the traffic has gotten worse and it's not just the counts it's the behavior of the drivers being the fact that jewel box neighborhood is used as a cut through in fact my wife and i were at dinner last friday night and we had a couple right behind us and they were you from a jewel box oh we drive through there all the time and that's typically what we encounter if i give him my sister-in-law said that just a few days ago she said oh we just wanted to pass through it's very typical it is a problem it's getting worse i want to definitely thank steve and thank you who are involved for what you've done you've taken some strides to get us in the right direction it's very much appreciated uh there are a couple things i want to say as far as the actual improvements the speed tables on jade street they've been wonderfully effective i believe talking to neighbors in trade windsmill ball home park it used to be in the old days about 20 years ago that there were um there's a crosswalk there so people can get across and eventually make it all the way over to uh i think it was it was albertson's or ralsea if you remember right this whole foods now and that gets in that direction safely those you've been around long enough you remember these things um so that's been very helpful one of the things about the speed tables is unlike humps you it forces you to slow down some drivers and driver over the humps we've experienced for the last x years 47th 45th 49th if you go to a certain speed you know having a ground clearance you can just go over those humps really fast they're outliers we have a few but that creates the biggest danger pulling out of your driveway in a narrow state would have you so one recommendation i would make for 47th 45th 49th the center speed hump of the three between topaz and capitol a road replace the hump with a table that's number one um it's a moderate cost i know they cost a lot more than they did we had these put in 20 years ago but it's a consideration the reason why is because portola to capitol a road on 47th is a lower quarter mile it is a drag strip and the old days have been around long enough you probably remember even with stop signs at topaz people used to fly right through there and they would gun it they don't do it as often but they still do that will help stop the speed in the middle basically um and the one thing is mentioned before i definitely want to um ring with is the fact that um enforcement is a big deal speed table speed humps would have you they're self-enforcing they're always there they don't go away stop signs or no left turn signs will no right turn signs are there for a good reason but they're willing they're people have to willing to make a decision while i violate the law or not we're finding a lot of people and just run right through i could show you pictures of my phone recently of course coming through on a line eight ten cars in a row at four or five p.m weekdays they just don't care what is really funny kind of is i have an office looks over 47th and i see them that go by people are looking back and forth sometimes they're close together the psychology i figure is if one person goes you could get caught if eight ten people go it's only one is going to get caught let's all go together it's kind of a funny philosophy but this way it works um so that was another suggestion or something else i was thinking about what i've never forgot but um yeah it's been very effective as a near-term solution so thank you for your consideration we hope for the best thank you run thank you my name is joanne kissling i live just outside the jewel box and since there's i wasn't even going to speak tonight but there's so many people from within the jewel box and i and i this whole issue has actually made me more aware of the issue and i've tried to be more considerate um i did used to use topaz all the time to get home because it's my obvious route but i have changed my patterns i would like to say that while you know it's put me at some inconvenience i'm okay with the changes that that have been implemented and i'm trying to be sympathetic to the suffering of the jewel box people but we live in a beach town and this is you know we all live on streets we even outside the jewel box it's hard to get out of your driveway there's drunk people going by at night you know i had to keep my kids inside of fences their whole lives growing up and i don't think it impaired them at all they're great kids so i guess my point is just that what i didn't see in the data is the impact to around the jewel box because i've noticed a lot more traffic on my street i've noticed a lot more traffic going down portola into the village and in that i don't like that from an environmental standpoint let alone the fact that it's inconvenienced other people so you know we keep saying i keep hearing that you know we've got to fix the jewel box but it's like you're just gonna you're gonna move the problem down the road so i think load balancing from within these streets and this is a fairly limited data set as well but load balancing within the streets i agree with linda is a good answer and you know we all have to kind of i feel like you know my streets definitely taken up a lot of the slack and you know but to go further and just say we live on a certain type of street and other people live on a different type of street and they have to take the problem that i don't like that so i just wanted to give a little bit of a countervailing point of view okay thank you thank you johan with that are there any others that would like to speak okay seeing none bring it back to city council for comments and direction and by the way thank you for everyone who participated and came up to speak we appreciate your comments i think that sam or christy i'm happy to start sam okay first of all thank you everyone for coming out and you know given us your perspective your experiences about the changes that were made by the council there and i think it's important to follow up on the things that we do and to really try to evaluate them i know this is not a perfect data set but it is a reasonable attempt to see the impacts of the measures that we implemented now with and with that said i my overall view is that this has been certainly effective on reducing the amount of traffic on topaz and i think that's a good thing i think that as much awareness as we can create among one another about our driving habits and how they may impact the neighborhoods and the residents will to some extent help alleviate this problem and so i want to i view this as a place where we've started but we need to keep working at it we need to keep and the discussions with the residents and try to implement other corrective measures i'm concerned about how we've shifted some of this to opal and are the things that we can do to help alleviate that impact that we've created there i did want to also want to address the one question that came up about the overall how do you globally resolve this issue and unfortunately capitol and the city council here does not have the authority and power to to globally resolve this issue we can't block off the streets we can't build a wall around the city and that is under the purview of the regional transportation commission i think we all know the reason that people cut through capitol because highway one is blocked up that's the global solution and that's what we need to continue to work with our regional transportation electives and have them focused upon highway one and i think that that would do a great deal toward alleviating some of the issues that we experience i do specifically about some corrective measures the recommendations i agree that the signage needs to be better done more impactful more visible and then after that's done or even not even waiting for that but of course enforcement i think that we should have our police department focus on enforcement so that people become let's say trained about what the consequences of their actions are going to be and i think that people will stop will tend to stop doing that yet because i am a little disappointed about how the numbers on 47th really didn't go down as much as we had hoped and i think that ultimately at this point that is going to take better enforcement and i also heard and i think those are good suggestions about maybe replicating some of those turn restrictions but i would want to be cautious and make sure that we're communicating with all the neighbors there because it does have an impact on you if we put up turn restrictions then you're going to have to be driving around just to get home so we should keep those in mind but we should do that in good communication with the residents about other measures that we we may be able to implement and and then you know and overall i mean because jewelbox is not the only neighborhood in capitol and i think the council needs to be mindful of people who live on capitol road who live on 45th avenue who live on warf road and doing what we can to try to mitigate some of the impacts when we do some of these restrictions because it just sometimes it's just going to push the problem someplace else so i think those are my thoughts let's let's do better signage let's follow up with good enforcement and let's continue the dialogue about what are some other measures that the residents there think would be appropriate to alleviate the increased traffic and particularly i do want to focus upon on opal street and seeing what we can do thank you yeah thank you everyone for coming out this evening and for everyone who's participated for years in addressing this issue and looking for solutions i am glad to see that overall there is a decrease in cars in the jewelbox and there's a decrease in cars on topaz it is disheartening to see the increase on opal street i remember when we discussed this previously we had this conversation about we didn't want to move all the traffic onto another street we also had the conversation about how there would not be a way to do this for any street without it somehow being divided up amongst the other street so i think it was to be expected to a certain degree but it is disheartening to see nonetheless as sam said and i will echo unfortunately there's just there is no way to equalize cars on on every street to make sure there's the same number of cars or to ensure that cars aren't coming into the jewelbox i think there's a lot we can do as already mentioned through enforcement potentially taking a bigger look at the signs i know that we had a budget for this whole project of 82 thousand or 80 thousand and we've expended 72 of it already so we are limited at this point at what more we can do at least at this time in this this fiscal year the the comments about the attitudes of the drivers i a hundred percent sympathize with in recent years capitol has become more and more popular as a tourist destination because we live in a beautiful place and people want to be here and we can't blame them for that because we all live here because it's a beautiful place but i live on cherry street right behind capitol avenue here in the village and i have also seen people going 60 miles an hour down what is essentially a one lane street it's a two way but it's a one lane street going 60 miles an hour screaming at each other when i work at the in the shop in the village i hear people screaming at each other for parking i've seen people screaming at our police officers for receiving police citations and it's incredibly disheartening it's incredibly frustrating and quite honest it's appalling behavior not only as a neighbor or a visitor but just as a decent human being and so i sympathize and i i hear you and i wish that there was something we could do about that but i'm not sure that there's anything we can do to change the attitudes of individuals but if there was i'd be happy to look at that because it certainly is it is frustrating um overall i i think that the staff report you know asks for us to consider you know giving direction taking no further action declaring the project complete modifying existing traffic control devices or three other actions i think from what we've heard the existing traffic control devices are effective with the exception perhaps of a sign needing to be bigger or more visible and so i would definitely support maintaining the modifications we've already created and just continuing a conversation overall continuing contact with your council members contact between council members and staff between council members and or staff and and the community because as i mentioned our budget is low on this we have seen some effectiveness but again this that doesn't mean that this is the end all be all of traffic solutions in the jewel box or anywhere so for now and and and of course there may be other changes or modifications as the comments continue but for now i would like to make a motion that we maintain the existing traffic control devices and that's all i'll put on my motion right now that we maintain the existing traffic control devices friendly amendment to that and possibly come back and do some numbers that you're from now and and and evaluate how how we're progressing that sounds great yes a second okay there's a motion a second and i just had a follow-up question when staff is ready yeah no problem my question is has so has ways or map quest companies have been updated regarding these new limitations is there a way so we have we have emailed with google maps who runs ways and google map app i believe their response was thank you for the information you didn't think they're rather difficult and and non-communicative so we have reached out to them i can't tell you how effective it's been i checked once or twice and i didn't get routed through there but i they haven't confirmed that they have implemented those changes on the and map quest is that a different forum is that through i still use map quest i'm just gonna be honest i know we can do that okay okay we focused on google and and wait i'm fully embarrassed now thank you i i would just add i appreciate everyone coming out tonight i understand that there was a lot of work that was done um before i arrived up here um and so i agree that there needs to just be a more regular enforcement i too have thought about whether i should go down the street when it said not and um and agree that there should be better signage because i was surprised when i came across it myself um and i yeah that that's all i had and well and that again i would just echo what what councilman story councilmember story was saying is that there this is a regional issue and it is really hard to alleviate traffic not just in one area but i too live in a heavily impacted area um so that if this were to come forward in another neighborhood that we be neutral and thoughtful um and just as strategic as we were in this particular process with with other neighbors in our in our community great i don't have much left i think councilmember story and peterson covered all the highlights of what's been done i think i want to acknowledge the fact that the speed tables are working they're they're slowing people down and they are a deterrent of some sort um i think we tried to convey to everybody if there was no miracle solution and there's really not a lot left in our bag of tricks here i i'm not sure about the color of the signs i don't know if we're restricted i know there has something to do with stop signs and yellow and red and steve shaking his head so the signs whiteness it for a reason um i have seen in in some cities that that are trying something new with no right turn on red signs it's a illuminated light that will uh flash you know and light up at certain times and it could be on a timer where it lights up from three to six so there might be an improved sign that's available that might be a light i know that the lights that we have in front of the police station that was a stop sign that we had significant hollywood stops or blow-throughs and by adding the red flashing lights around it i think i want to believe that it's reduced it somewhat i have a stop sign in front of the house where i live and i would say that uh one out of ten cars may stop at that stop sign so it's an attitude it's a it's a convenience it's a comfortableness that we all become familiar with in our neighborhoods where we just you know blow through signs um i'm not really advocating you know the enforcement is a tough issue because when i put a police officer there writing a ticket uh trying to stop traffic i feel like i'm taking away from something that might be a bigger priority i know that we have the availability of ghost cars and maybe we could use something like that to have a car with nobody in it and i've sat in that conga line uh on portola trying to get back into town and it's pretty much people obey it until one person breaks the the the sign and goes and then all of a sudden everybody believes well if he can go i can go so i mean this is more about human nature attitudes things like that and everybody's shaking their head because we know it but i think it's what was said here you know that's why i put the uh agreed with the motion is is that i think we've done some good i think that you yourself should be commended as neighbors for realizing the burden and uh trying to use different streets it was nobody's intention to move traffic from one street to another it's kind of a byproduct so i think we just need to keep this on the radar it's why we i added the inclusion to monitor this a year from now do some numbers i'm encouraged by the fact that there's any even a little bit of reduction because what we need to do is frustrate people to the point that they look for another way to go so that's my comments so i have a few comments first of all i really appreciate uh like i said earlier people coming out participating in this someone said it's been a number of years so it's quite a bit of time to work on something with city staff and we're definitely city councilor supportive of your involvement um also like the comments where some people say they've actually changed their habits in terms of driving in and out of the jewel box and even someone from outside the area said that and they also appreciate the fact that this is a global problem as sam mentioned now i have a question for the police chief if you would come forward and then i have a another question for you steve after the police chief gives us a little testimony here um just while he's coming forward traffic has gotten so bad on my street that when i back out of the driveway i get honks and it's like you know i i think that you're probably have the same experience you know it's like you can't even back out of your driveway now and uh like you feel you're taking your life in your hands and you know i can't see 360 degrees behind me so my question is um chief and i know your guys are spread all around the city just like ed mentioned have you seen any decrease um you know the you know coming by in random times any decrease in citations or is it still pretty constant i'm trying to get an idea of your response sure and thank you for the question mayor bertrand council members um the numbers that steve put together pretty reflective that and i'm glad we're talking about driving behavior because that's what we need to change right driving behavior regardless of the signage has not changed to the extent that we would like it to as a police department or or a community in city but to answer your question as an example the month of april we had 45 site written citations for a violation of technically it's a violation of signs that's the vehicle collection we had a a good number of traffic stops that resulted in a warning as i spoken about in the past uh at council and other meetings i like to allow my officers to have the discretion to decide if if a ticket is the the best means of changing this driver's behavior or if a warning is appropriate and so we're doing both of them um just as a comment and it's been mentioned by the speakers and by council in discussion this evening uh enforcement is one piece of the puzzle here enforcement alone is not going to change the driving behavior people are willing to run the risk of being stopped by a police officer and receive in a citation if they can get home 10 minutes before the car in front of them and that's what we're dealing with and so the conversation about signage is an opportunity uh we will continue to do enforcement as we are able to given the competing priorities in the city uh and we'll continue to try and change driving behavior i think we have an opportunity for a little bit more outreach uh and i would like to ask the public to do some of that outreach on our behalf i don't want to put ourselves and myself or my officers in a position where we're making threats that we're going to have a zero tolerance policy here in the city i'm not in favor of that as a police chief but the outreach i think would have a positive effect to try and continually reduce these numbers and i hope that answers your question it does and i hope that your enforcement and activities help and also i really appreciate you asking the public to be part of that outreach because in fact when the public start talking about something i think it has a fairly effective i agree yes thank you very much thank you um steve so i know we're doing a lot of road work in the jewel box right now you know a lot of digging i mean a lot of people know this this county of sanikers is doing a lot of road work right um it's the collective we in this case now you you told me something very interesting steve i i really think it was a great idea of yours to let all this work happen and then actually do some surfacing of the roads afterwards is that correct so yeah the county will be slurry sealing the roads they're working on and we're trying to work with them to do make sure all the streets in the jewel box gets slurry sealed at the end of the sewer project which will be next year just some people know it's not going to happen this year it won't happen this year so i'm glad that you're coordinating with the county on this i i think that's great foresight so the mayor of jewel box excuse me ron birk said that maybe another speed table might work or so as we do this review that ed changed the motion on and it was accepted so maybe we could take advantage of some of the suggestions and as we get a better idea of how traffic has changed we could dovetail that into your project because i know you don't want to be having people launched just for one or two z things does that seem reasonable yeah as we come through and and do another analysis we can include that and look at the data again and try and see what we can add great thank you very much so i think what steve is letting us know and ed's motion sort of recognizes that it takes a while for us to figure out what the actual effect of any kind of change is the public slowly changes their habits the people live in the jewel box change their habits much faster but the ones that come through here that are actually the cause of the problem that takes them a while to change their habits so in a year time we'll be coming back to this in a year time this dovetails with steve's foresight and trying to work with the county and doing a slurry seal that maybe we could have some extra additions to like speed tables or something like that to help even improve the effect of our actions so that's the end of my comments we have a motion we have a second sam you have some more comments before we have the vote i wanted to ask for clarification on the motion um the motion was to maintain the current current restrictions and that's at the exclusion of any other considerations changes additional signage additional enforcement or additional um outreach is that do i understand that correctly in one sense you do but i heard the chief coming up that this is an ongoing thing in terms of enforcement and he also mentioned that he was appealing to the public to neighbors talking to neighbors and such like that and i think that's going to be uh continuing and it will take a while for its full impact to be felt so i'm still a little unclear about the intent of the motion um i didn't hear emphasized enforcement i didn't hear what i understand is that it's going to be status quo for another year and then we're going to evaluate it again would christin like to address maybe increased enforcement or continuing enforcement yeah um as for outreach i think that that is something that the chief did address and i also asked that the the community continue to be in touch with us and with staff and and if necessary with our our police as well um so that kind of outreach i think should continue um as for enforcement i did hear the chief say that that's ongoing i'm not sure if that's um something we can discuss i mean the the agenda staff report did indicate that there was warnings for a while and citations for a while can we get an indication is there still patrol in that area is there still enforcement or was that kind of just at the beginning to make sure it was happening and now we're kind of back to business as usual thank you for the question additional questions member trown council members to answer the question about on guys they're still ongoing enforcement yes every day in this neighborhood and many neighborhoods throughout the the city as their needs to be um i want to guard against a motion or discussion related to a potential um amendment to this emotion that might a motion that might suggest to the public that we have some form of a quota that is expected as a means of managing this problem because that wouldn't be proper um one of the things that is discussed ghost cars and i've spoken on this topic more than a few times over the last couple of years they have an effect sometimes a positive effect they don't have the significant effect of deterring traffic violations that most might assume that they do you might be surprised to learn that this afternoon in preparation for this meeting we put a ghost car out there at 47th in portola visible to everybody in a one-hour period right around 80 plus vehicles made that violation anyway and so that's an indication of the effect of ghost cars issuing traffic citations high visibility patrol high visibility traffic stops when it's appropriate and the necessary enforcement by way of a citation or a warning will continue to have a positive effect in reducing the numbers but i want to make it clear enforcement alone is not going to fix this problem it's just not going to do it thank you um so i i guess my motion is uh continues to maintain the traffic um measures that we are i don't remember what my phrasing was the traffic calming measures that are already in place um to follow up in a year i guess if it if you would prefer sam i could say to encourage our officers to continue enforcement um because i i think that from discussion from what we've heard that there's not really much more enforcement that could be done unless you have a suggested amendment to the motion no i i don't think it's necessary to tell our chief and our officers because they are going to do their job to the best of their abilities um and enforcement is only one of the three components i'm more focused to look at engineering and education and it seems like that there's maybe a little bit more we could do now uh to improve the situation for and again i want to focus on the people who live on opal and um and it seems like that we could do that signage is not an expensive item um and drawing people's attention to it it would maybe improve the enforcement efforts that we're currently doing um and but i also think that as the chief mentioned about outreach that's the education component there may be um things that we could do on our scrolls and our newsletters to draw attention uh so that more people are become will become aware um we may find that a lot of people who are driving through your the jewel box are a capital of residence i imagine the vast majority may be and if they become aware they may um you know rethink that i know i have um so that's all i'm suggesting maybe doing a little bit more proactive instead of just you know saying oh we did what we did let's sit back um and just study it again in a year that's a long time all a lot of these folks you know they have to live with that situation and it gets to be i think a little bit um i think more difficult if you live in that environment instead of us and maybe just on the outside looking in so i think that that's what i i mean what i would like to propose um and if it's accepted as a friendly amendment but i think as the way the motion is stated um i don't think i can support it i would like to maybe see a little bit more effort for the city to make and i don't think that they need to be um expensive or um are a very um you know hard uh enforcement efforts to solve this issue and so that that's my position thank you ed i i think part of what christin's uh uh motion said as i heard it was she asked about the budget and there was eight thousand dollars remaining in the budget and i think we made some suggestions to the public work director about increased signage so i see that as part of this and i think for the public made comments about the science could be more visible so i'm i'm seeing that as something that was included in this motion that we're least going to look into that and see if there is you know a better mouse traffic and work out there um i'm i'm still as the chief said i'm reluctant to give direction or make specific recommendations regarding enforcement i think that um i had complete confidence in the police department and what they where they choose to post traffic regulation restrictions so i'm still comfortable with the motion as as i was allowed to a friendly amendment so that's my position yeah can i just seek some clarity can i have a read back of what the motion is please it is maintain the current traffic calming efforts and return to study the traffic in one year and just to be clear do we need to state that within this year within this budget we will do something about the signs if there if there's enough money to do so and um what one of the folks who presented regarding an additional center street bump speed table speed table you know if in the budget if the budget allows could we you know so those are the two things that i just want to make sure that we touch on in addition to what councilman's story is saying is that we need to do continuous community outreach on this i don't know what that means necessarily but that something needs to be done so maybe we can get some feedback from staff on what that could potentially look like as well as is it necessary to include in our motion those those things i mentioned okay first christin and then steve i think you have a comment if it if it would um kind of clear things up here i would be willing to amend my motion to say maintain the current traffic measures follow up in one year and direct staff to include notice of these changes in the jewel box and our next capital occurrence newton's letter and to direct staff to look at the potential for a bigger sign and changing that one speed bump to a speed hump just to provide that information to us but not necessarily to take any action on it until approved by council would that would that does that work i like it yeah does that work ed would you still second absolutely okay can i comment on just the on the sign issue um there are state standards um that allow enforcement to occur so we have to make sure that we stay within those state standards um otherwise it's gonna make a challenge a ticket and not properly signed so i will work with the police department and and make sure the new signage goes in just to look into it right no answer then we least explored it clearly don't bring us options we can't use to be clear are we asking for council to approve the signs are you asking for us to evaluate opportunities to clarify them and implement i think vice mayor peterson adjusted her motion the way i yeah to ask you to get information on it and bring it back to us um and then you know i imagine at that point we'll have to look at the budget and decide if we're going to consider it in after the year if we have the money to do it then but for for tonight the action is to maintain the measures follow up in one year put the changes in our capital occurrence newsletter and direct staff to look into the options for the signs and the speed bump to speed hump alteration for information purposes okay and that's been motioned in second by ed and are there any more comments on the city council okay seeing none um call for a road call vote on this please councilmember story hi councilmember peterson hi councilmember brooks councilmember bachorf hi mayor bach hi okay moving on to item b resolution for the levy of capital village and work business improvement area assessments for fiscal year 2019 and 2020 thank you for everyone coming i really appreciate your response thank you yes i'll i'll wait till the mayor of jillbox leaves and um mayor if i may yes while this transition is happening i i want to announce that i have a conflict on this item i am a member of the bia okay and it does impact my personal finances and so that does create a situation where i should recuse myself so i will step out for this item okay uh note the city clerk that sam story is recusing himself and um carne you've been waiting a long time so this is i think something you're going to speak to good okay okay you're here okay i'd like to request a report from director melbert our city finance director thank you mayor burton and city council so as you mentioned this is the capitol village and warf business improvement area or bia assessments for fiscal year 1920 by way of background in 2005 the city council adopted an ordinance that established the bia and the bia is a business-based self-imposed assessment district meaning that they impose the assessments upon themselves and the the revenue received from those assessments is then used for improvements and activities that support those businesses assessment amounts are determined by the business classification and number of full-time equivalent employees at each location and each business may make in lieu payments in the form of gift certificates that the bia can use in promotional activities and the amount of in lieu payments are fixed per business category per business in each category as far as this process on june 13th the council set up public hearing originally for june 27th there was an error in the public notice that went out for that so we continue that public hearing till to this evening this evening's public hearing the notice was published in the sentinel and delivered to affected business owners the state law as well as our muni code require that the council conduct a public hearing each year prior to approving the assessments and those assessments are derived from the the annual plan in the budget that submitted by the bia and as a reminder there's no fiscal impact to the city the work that city staff does for the bia is reimbursed and i have those amounts up there 3 000 for public works and 4200 for finance and this year the bia as always includes assessment revenues but this year it also includes restricted tot revenues are trying to occupancy tax as a result of measure j that was approved by voters in 2018 in february of this year the council directed that the tot revenues restricted for local businesses would be split evenly between the bia and the capitol a so-called chamber of commerce so you will see in this year's bia budget a 29 000 of restricted tot revenue which is the first time that will show up a couple of change or a change to the assessments for this year proposed by the bia is to convert the two food service categories on the left restaurant bar and takeout and restaurant limited into the four categories on the right which are restaurant with a full bar restaurant that serves beer and wine restaurants with no alcohol and wine tasting and sales the reason for these changes is this better reflects the businesses that are currently operating in the bia as opposed to what was there 14 years ago impact of those changes would reduce the assessments to these four businesses of their in total by 300 i would like to point out that what i'm showing up there for the capitol a wine bar and merchants is what was assessed they've negotiated last year i believe the last two years they've negotiated that assessment down to the restaurant limited category so we had received additional materials at the previous public hearing the original public hearing that was scheduled from the owners of the capitol wine bar expressing their opposition to an increased assessment so i wanted to explain why i'm showing a decrease and while they're talking about an increase those changes will also increase the assessments for the 16 businesses listed up there and again that's really just kind of realigning the businesses as they've changed and grown over time to get them into the right categories most of the changes are fairly small there's a couple that are up there but it's mostly mostly due to the growth in those individual businesses and i would also like to point out we hear a lot about businesses that close in the village but we did have i think we had 20 last year but we did have 14 new businesses open during fiscal year 18 19 so i just wanted to at least take a moment and list those up there so folks that weren't aware that they're open now in the village can can go check them out and that oh sorry so recommended action is to conduct the public hearing and adopt the proposed resolution levying the fiscal year 2019 20 capitol village worth business improvement area assessments and accepting the bia annual plan and budget and that's that concludes my presentation i would be happy to take questions and karen hanna from the bia is also here as well okay first any questions from city council no okay i'd like to invite karen come up please we welcome your comments karen hanna from the craft gallery and this is daniel castagnola from castagnolas deli he's the vice chair of the bia this year so good evening to everybody one thing i wanted to say on great minds thinking alike one of our discussion items at our last board meeting and at our marketing meeting is to put more hydration stations in the village i think it's a real priority and because of the success we've been having with our sip and strolls which are fundraisers and we have another christmas fundraiser that we're planning a cookie walk where people can buy a tin that is a commemorative tin for the village and then take it around to all the businesses and get free cookies 100 of the proceeds will go to a non-profit so all the the the sip and strolls and the cookie walk are all producing actually a fair amount of money and then part of the t o t is to go to infrastructure improvement so recycling cans maintenance of the recycling and trash education about recycling and trash and the rehydration stations are you know that's it that's what we want to talk about you know we're slow moving because we're almost all volunteers we just have a very few consultants that we pay so it takes us a long time to get stuff done but it's unanimous um those items have an unanimous support within the bia so i just wanted to to touch on that since it came up today and daniel and i are here to ask answer any questions no no questions but i'm glad all the activities you do in the village are great and so i'm supporting our city council recommendation here hydration stations definitely welcome good idea yeah we hope we can help you know financially with some of that and you know i'll be talking to public works and everything on how exactly that works and what kind of space and the infrastructure that goes into it okay right well thanks for your congratulations to the new vice yep very good okay thanks for your continuing support we appreciate it thank you okay um anyone else from the public would like to speak to this item seeing none bring it back to city council for action i had a couple comments i i think it's great i i like the partnership between the city and the bia i think the the new tot tax and that infusion of money into the bia is money well spent by the city uh i'm encouraged by the fact that they're taking the money and and doing things that are going to improve the village because that's the one thing we're all on the same page is just to improve the vibrancy of the village i think the new rate structure is probably appropriate it's long overdue i think it's uh it benefits the businesses in the village to support themselves so any increased money that can go into promoting the village i think is a good thing so with that i'm going to approve uh uh a staff recommendation for the budget second okay it's been approved in second um any more discussion okay um all those in favor all right any opposed no one opposed please let sam know thank you larry they come back in so i'd like to move on to sidewalk vending and compliance with senate bill 946 and uh thank you finance director so director hurley i believe you have a presentation thank you mayor rachan and good evening council uh before you tonight we have a discussion on sidewalk vending ordinances um this past year um the safe sidewalk vending act was passed under sb 946 and it became effective in january of 2019 within the state regulations uh there's new sidewalk vending regulations that permit sidewalk vending throughout the cities and counties of the state of california and they apply to um citywide within our residential areas and our commercial areas and um sidewalk vending is allowed within sidewalks pathways and parks so big changes in terms of what's been allowed at the state level um how can we protect ourselves from sidewalk vending and not have sidewalk vendors um just roaming through our residential areas and commercial areas um there are ways in which to prevent or to protect our city first any new standards have to be based on public health safety and welfare that we establish we are allowed to put together time place and manner standards um there's specific protections for parks within a park we can set up standards to protect the public use and enjoyment of natural resources and recreational opportunities we can also protect our parks so that there's not an um uh just a highly concentrated area that of vendors that interferes with the park's scenic and natural resources so when we start thinking about what our parks are we have parks and open space within capitol and so when we go when we start drafting this regulation and defining what a park is we're going to want to bring in our open space areas such as our beaches and make sure that you know when we talk about uh capitol and what's so special it's much of the natural resource areas those recreational opportunities those views of the Monterey Bay and starting to think about how how we can protect those areas from our sidewalks our pathways and our parks so um as we get into the new regulations tonight i just wanted to provide you with an overview of uh what's to come and hear from you um how you'd like us to set this up if you'd like the regulations to be more limited to to limit vendors to an extent or be more protective in that we can create greater standards so some examples are within sidewalks the under a limited regulation the sidewalks could just maintain the ADA width of four feet if we wanted to be a little more protective we could set a standard of 10 feet for areas with high pedestrian activity and again it has to be tied back to safety and health and welfare so we'd have to make those findings in establishing the greater the greater widths another is within the state regulations you're allowed to establish separation from farmers markets and swap meets and special events so within a limited criteria you could create a space actually within your farmers market so your swap meets for street vendors and allow them to be there just within a defined area to be more protective we could have a setback from the actual farmers market special event areas such as i've seen i think it's in the city of carmel a 200 foot setback from those areas so for art and wine festival having a setback from that or just our sunday art in the park can you can you paint that picture for me i don't i don't know what you mean by setback oh a separation a buffer so the vendor would have to be 10 feet from oh so sorry let's take a step back okay so within the sidewalk we could have a regulation for health and safety that actually we have to have a regulation for ADA so you have to have a clearance on all sidewalks of four feet so if sidewalk is only four feet wide a vendor could not set up on a four foot wide set sidewalk because they would be in the way of your ADA requirement but if you wanted to take it to the next step so today walking through the village around noon our sidewalks are packed and last night at the concert the sidewalks are packed so high pedestrian areas we could increase that that width based on the fact for health and safety reasons if there were street vendors all along the esplanade last night as people are coming to and from the concert it creates a health and safety issue because there's just simply not enough width on that sidewalk so setting the standard larger in areas where there's high pedestrian activity so within the second one for farmers markets we're allowed to protect for farmers market swap meets in special events so there you could either permit it you could allow a special area within each of those events or you can create a buffer so to say if there's a farmers market the sidewalk vendors have to be a hundred feet away from the farmers market another portion of this is with time regulations within the commercial areas you're not allowed to limit the times they have to beyond what's allowed for a business in a commercial area but within residential areas you are allowed to limit those times so they can be more restrictive so in a in a limited ordinance we could limit those times from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. but if we wanted to be more restrictive it could be from 8 to 6 so it's really what's right for capitol and limiting those hours and knowing what it would be good for the welfare of our people in capitol and then roaming versus stationary vendors so within parks there's also an allowance that if if the city has an exclusive concession stand within a park such as we do in Esplanade park with the beach rentals then the city can prohibit additional stationary vendors within that park and but we do have to allow roaming vendors within parks to an extent so some places have put in standards within park of a number of vendor license per acre so a way to limit it so that we're still protecting as i had shown in the previous slide you know our natural resources and recreational opportunities so there's a way in which to limit those numbers even further beyond just health and safety standards so this evening what i was hoping to receive from the city council was direction on how do we want to approach this standard the standards in larger cities it seems to be they're you know they're not placing maximum number of licenses they're a little less restrictive in areas that are similar to us like carmel there because of the how their city has been built out with narrower sidewalks and less opportunities for vendors to be selling on their sidewalks i would say they have a more protective ordinance in place so what i was hoping to do is kind of get a gauge from you of where we should be establishing these regulations in terms of limited or protective and then in september i plan to come back with an ordinance and then we can start fine tuning it at that point and you know if we have an eight-foot wide sidewalk and we'll bring data on our sidewalk widths and you think it should be bumped up to 10 we can fine-tune it during that next meeting but this is really to gauge whether or not we should have many street vendors um and you don't think it would be a health and safety issue throughout capitol or if it should be more limited more restricted so that concludes my presentation okay open for discussion no more questions excuse me i'm sorry no questions no questions okay sam no i thought you know sam sorry thank you mayor um thank you for the report i have a couple of questions um one um no restaurants are subject to the county health um um department and county health codes and inspections are these street vendors subject to the same requirements they are so they're subject to business licenses and any state regulations and also they'd be subject to the health requirements right and which i guess that goes in my second question so we would be able to require that they'd be licensed and inspected if we were going to permit them anywhere yes okay thank you i have a question um so is there any anticipation that the new town center formerly the mall would be wanting vendors of any sort so would these regulations be done in conjunction with them have we reached out to them i don't even know if this is an issue so that's private property that would be treated differently so that would be um outdoor display of goods or a special event permit but but that'd be private property that's all they could build it in within a conditional use permit okay and how about um our wharf the wharf would not fall under a street or sidewalk so it's because i know i've been to cities where the wharves have vendors and actually have all sorts of things going on in the wharf from entertainment to food sales and such so i was just wondering what that fall under this the public facility well maybe we could find facility so i mean i think the easiest answer would be the new state law i don't believe i could be corrected but i don't believe that the new state law would require us to have vending on the wharf but that does that would be an item that if the council wanted to adopt an ordinance and include in the sidewalk vending ordinance allowances or specific restrictions to the wharf it would be within your discretion to do so okay but i don't think you're mandated under this new state law to consider okay and this is perhaps a stupid question about gotta ask it so there's public right away like river walk i mean that's private property correct so it's not a new sheet there i think i think it is those public paths are identified as as um oh so it could be there too on river walk so the river walk could be um up on depot hill the pathway looking right along the bluffs yeah those are public pathways that could be subject to vendors okay i stand corrected okay um so what what i was trying to get at with the definition of parks we're probably going to want to pull in some of our open space and trail areas into our definition in order to protect those areas so i thought on the bluff that was private property that the city maintains but it's owned by citizens in that area it's actually um a street right of way that's no longer a functioning street right of way grand avenue okay thank you very much it is public okay um i think just for city council's edification in the new magazine western was it western western city yeah they have a great article on this so if you look at the new western city so at this point um like to open it to a public comment i never would have guessed you would have come up so convenient that both these items were on the same agenda um we discussed this at our uh we sent the notice out to um all the businesses in the village and thank you have quite a few businesses represented today that responded to that and we discussed it at our last meeting and um we did take like a straw vote we didn't have a motion or anything like that but um it was a unanimous vote that we would we would recommend the more restrictive plan i think that's you know it's pretty much in keeping with the way it's been it's been working really well um very few people have even attempted to be selling on the sidewalk people ask me about it all the time can i come down and start selling my jewelry that i make and i set up on the seawall and you know it's it that's been kept at bay and i think that that most of us really appreciate that so the feeling was um the more restrictive would be better i got a few emails um and cierra from lumen gallery asked me to state that she definitely feels that the more restrictive the better that sidewalk vending um would go against what uh most of the businesses have been trying to create um in the village so uh and then there's some other businesses here that might have it but our our our vote in the bia was unanimous to go for the more more restrictive plan okay thank you anyone else that's come that carn is mentioned from the bia okay um any more comments from city those who've come in here no okay bring it back to city council for action will be happy to make a motion okay um i motion to have staff move forward with creating an ordinance that is highly restrictive in time placing manner standards second so it's been motioned in second any more discussion just a quick comment i just hope that that what that implies is that we can adopt the most protective restrictions that are allowed by the state is that what that how you interpret that okay i think that is okay so with that in mind um all those in favor hi any opposed seeing none okay it passes so moving on to consider an appeal of embark side md capital the section of c committed decision to issue mr mayor what call just what i think you lost one of your peers you may want to call a three minute break here oh i didn't oh she just disappeared okay uh a little recess thank you pause for the cause pause yes pause okay i'm gonna get some water a lot of time right yeah but there's only this this could be a lot more how everyone left well you started a lot of time i asked like no one did it to me so i was like i'm gonna wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute i was gonna that's right sam ate all this what you have to my dad covered amount you want which one you have okay you can have the m&m you can't have the almond it's good to go for the almond i know i was gonna steal yours but i remembered you love them okay i'm gonna hide you ever anyone could have my milky land that's up christin doesn't want to perform his back again so for item d i'd like to request a process overview by chief mcmanus thank you chief good evening mayor burtrane members of the council the next item before you this evening is an appeal of the city of capitol is chief um just have a moment here i'm awfully sorry sir are there any comments from members of the city council on this particular item i think we wanted to um provide an opportunity to express any ex parte communications at this time and so i think it would just be appropriate um that i announced that during the application process before the decision was made um we received requests from several applicants to meet and i did meet briefly um with the applicants from embark capital and i would like to share that as an ex parte communication and i too have met with um embark on two occasions yeah and i met with representatives from embark before the decision was made on one occasion um i was reached out to also i did not meet with any of them and um so i did not talk to any of the applicants and i think it i'd say i was reached out to i'd not talked to any applicants okay so um sorry to interrupt you chief mayor burtrane members of council the item before you this evening is uh an appeal of the city of capitol is retail cannabis licensing process and i'm happy to provide a presentation by way of background you'll recall that in november of 2018 uh measure i passed locally the cannabis business tax um in essence the the passage of that that measure introduced the city's retail calendar cannabis license ordinance which became effective uh shortly after the passage in the following month the ordinance 5.36 our local ordinance allows up to two retail cannabis license permits here in the city uh and with the passage of that that measure staff began the process of coordinating the application process here locally that application period opened on january one of this year um immediately upon the passage of the measure uh staff got together uh and and wanted to consider the the means of creating the most comprehensive application form itself um and so relied upon uh given our feedback locally from the three cities in the county county of santa cruz city of santa cruz in watsonville who have viable and rather robust programs currently and wanted to um gain some knowledge from them to hopefully rely upon some best practices locally as well as best practices from many of the cities throughout the state as you're probably aware i've been a uh a member of the california police chief's cannabis committee since june of 27 so i was able to reach out to quite a few of my colleagues as we were entered staff was entering into the process of creating the actual application for this program we also consulted with our cannabis consultant from hdl uh as well as the local expert in the county who works for the santa cruz can county cannabis licensing office one of the things that we decided early on uh was to not require the identification of a site as part of our application and the reason we did that and i think it's pretty self-explanatory i want to go over a couple of the points as you're well aware within the uh regional commercial uh zone in the city it's a very small restricted area and in fact capitol erode north to the freeway and then both sides of of 44 sets that rest that's the restricted area and so the as the police chief the crime potential or the actual crime in this restricted area is is very much the same from one end of the the regional's commercial zone and to the other end and so it wasn't a significant consideration at all as it relates to the requirement as some other municipalities have asked for uh in the submission of the application itself the other thing we didn't want to do is limit potential applications and we wanted to expand it so that we could as a city and staff um interviews those those applicants that were representative of the type of partners that we were in the community would like to work with in the cannabis program and also we have the c up process to rely upon uh as part of the application and selection process where upon if there were some site specific considerations either on the law enforcement side or the city side to the cc up process we could consider or introduce some conditions that might mitigate some of those concerns so uh repeat myself that we went forward without the need for applicants to identify a site the application submittal period was from january 1st through april 2nd there were 14 applications submitted those applications were submitted to the police department and i thought it was really important that we identify as a staff a single person who would be the contact person for all of the applicants so that they had face-to-face contact we had consistency in message messaging as we're introducing this new program and answering several questions as a matter of fact and so i identified one of my administrative uh analysts downstairs in the police department to be the contact person for all of the applicants she was tasked with receiving the applications 14 of them confirming the the completeness of the submission signatures very important proof of live scan for those uh those partners within each of the organizations and in fact and this is good news all fortune of the applications passed that initial review and moved into phase one of the process which was the application technical review process that technical review timeline initially was april 17th through may 2nd it needed to be extended because we were still in the process of identifying best practices locally and ideally beyond the local area as well as identifying the three non-conflicted panelists who we were going to ask to participate in this application review process as you read there in our ordinance 536 no fewer than three non-conflicted individuals selected by the city manager we're going to represent that panel now this was not a face-to-face interview this was a technical review of all 14 of the applications reflective of our competitive merit-based license review that is described in 536 and some of the things that that panel was considering they may consider as part of their review we can ignore potential crime at the proposed location that is in 536 but i think i've explained that we did not require a site as part of the application the criminal potential civil criminal background of applicants and other parties experience in cannabis other retail sales problems and issues with other cannabis retail outlets if there were any local enterprise understandably within the region and then information specific to the actual site when i talk about site i'm talking about the we've learned in the state of california the site security plans are fairly consistent because it's mandated by the state of california and there are some local mandates as well so when i say site i'm not talking about an address i'm talking about a proposed operation and we'll get into a little bit further in a minute one of the things that was really important we spent a lot of time trying to develop and in fact we did develop an actual scoring sheet this is attachment number one in your packet and this is the first page of that attachment it's about a five page attachment but i thought it was important to present this as part of this hearing to demonstrate our very meticulous competitive merit-based process that we introduced and their reliance upon best practices again locally and beyond and so when you look at this there were five actual areas of review that we determined as a staff and rely upon experts including especially our consultant cannabis consultant from hdl and one of those five for instance in this slide is a statement of purpose this was a hundred 100 point scoring system for the application technical application review you're looking at the statement of purpose and then if you look to the right there the factors to consider there are several of them what we wanted to do if we listed a factor and we decided upon this these factors as a staff when we listed a factor we wanted to identify a source that was specific to that factor for instance providing medical cannabis we know that that's a community benefit providing cannabis for select individuals cost reduction opportunities that's also a community benefit if you go now a little bit further for instance green business certified that's captured in our local climate action plan so when we identified anchors if you will or factors we thought it was important as best we could to identify the source that they came from and so this is an example of the five page scoring tool that the three panelists used to individually score each of the 14 applications that technical review process there was a two-day process it took place on may 8th and 9th of this year and as i mentioned a three-person technical review panel our cannabis consultant from hdl hdl was on the panel the expert from santa cruz county's cannabis licensing office he was on the panel as was a representative from the city in fact captain dally from my police department was on the panel that three-person panel on those two days the 8th and 9th did a full review of all 14 applications and each of those applications individually scored on a 100 point system based upon the factors that are included in attachment one the scoring sheet what you're looking at here is the result of the technical review of the 14 applications and all of the scores from a high score of 93.67 to a low score of 64.17 the three parties to this appeal are listed appropriately on this slide embark apothecary and treehouse the others were not listed i'm going to switch to the next slide here well you can see which is typically and often the case in my experience where we were able to identify the top six of the group of 14 and we're able to do that based upon score alone when you look there in this in my 33 years in law enforcement and having been part of many technical reviews and face-to-face interviews more often than not you're able to separate the top group from from the bulk of the applicants or the interviewees and in this case that's exactly what happened with the top six there a range of scores from 93.6 to 86.8 so those were the finalists that move forward from phase one the technical review into phase two which was the actual presentation the six applicants moved on to phase two the eight non-selects were notified by way of us mail of their failure to move from phase one into phase two i made a personal call uh to Dave McPherson our consultant with HDL i was curious he was a panelist i was curious as to his thoughts of our finalist group and so we had a short conversation he shared with me that based upon his expert opinion all six met the minimum qualification to proceed and were all in his opinion considered relatively equal and so going forward to phase two the interview process all six of the finalists were relatively equal going into that process again we had a single point of contact within the police department who notified each of the finalists and scheduled a 25-minute presentation on may 20th followed by a 15-minute Q&A the finalists who inquired about the interview and the process of phase two were provided this information that you see in front of you and nothing more than that you'll see there that it's not all inclusive this is a list of some of the factors that we had discussed as a staff from the very beginning shortly after the passage of measure i in november up until this point of areas that we would certainly be interested in learning about with each of the now six finalists and even previously with the 14 applications i did not want to provide a roadmap to all the six finalists and provide them every piece of information that we as a panel interview panel were going to be evaluating but i wanted to provide them some information as a guide so that they felt comfortable going into the next process and in fact our point of contact with the police department was the individual who provided that information to each of the finalists who asked for it and you can look at some of the items there as we're talking projected taxable revenues that's important vertical integration the local seven percent tax law here what were their thoughts on that and several of the others that you see up there on the on the slide to include demonstration of their ownership structure financial position etc the interview panel participants again rely upon our ordinance 5.36 and that no fewer than three non-conflicted individuals were going to make up the panel as selected by the city manager those individuals were in fact the finance director jim malberg myself as the police chief captain andy dally and our city manager those interviews or presentations took place as i mentioned on may 20th and six finalists we used a forced ranking system to rate each of the presentations and this is contained in two slides because i couldn't contain all of it on one slide and i would assume that the majority of council of night all are familiar with the forced ranking system but i think it's important that i touched on how it works a little bit if you look at the top there under reviewer one and there were four reviewers on the far left simply stated the first interview is in this instance is firm a they're the first one to interview on the 20th and so they finish first as you move to the right the second interview in this case apothecary was a second presenter they finished above firm a and so that's the ranking after two interviews and if you move all the way to the right to the sixth interview which happened to be treehouse that is the ranking order from reviewer number one for all of the finalists all six of the presentations you're looking at reviewer two down below and as i switched the slide here these are the results from reviewer number three and reviewer number four that highlighted area i just highlighted that and and i need to mention that in the package the attachment there's a typo it says firm f in your attachment it's actually firm e it's a simple typo we know that firm f the last presenter is treehouse and on this slide they are at the top on both reviewer three and reviewer four i really important i think to mention the amount of consistency uh using this forced ranking system each of the panelists ranked the the presenters the finalists individually uh and then it was captured uh at the conclusion of the interviews which each with each panelist providing their forced ranking results all four of the panelists ranked treehouse and apothecarium and either the first or the second position and three of the four ranked embark in position number four with one reviewer number four as you can see ranking embark in position number three so we were really comfortable after the two-phase process in the conclusion of the presentations on the 20th of may um to identify the apothecarium capitol and treehouse treehouse capitol as our potential licensees but we still had an obligation uh by way of due process to do some fall up uh and some background work on those two potential licensees captain dally took the lead on that uh the apothecarium capitol uh their their base for lack of a better word they have uh retail businesses in the city of san francisco and so captain dally contacted the uh san francisco police department as well as their community development department asking questions about how is the operation with apothecarium in your city they've been there for a good amount of time uh they were were very complementary of uh apothecarium and their operations they decided that they were great partners with the city and so that we were we were comfortable in our conversations with san francisco uh with apothecarium as one of our potential licensees here in our city uh they or andy captain dally also visited locally the santa cruz veterans alliance their operation in wassenville santa cruz as you're probably aware santa cruz veterans alliance is a partner with apothecarium and so we contacted the city of wassenville the same type of process captain dally did he visited the business location in wassenville uh and each each pieces were very complementary of that operation in wassenville we did the same thing with treehouse that's a local uh capitol a retail outlet in the county on soquel and so we visited that um retail business uh did some fallout with the with sam laforti from the county uh he's the lead person with their cannabis unit within the county and asked him about uh treehouse and their operation any concerns uh their uh willingness to work with the community uh and very sam and others very complementary of that operation as well and so we were comfortable going forward with after this part of the due process with announcing that the apothecarium capitol and treehouse capitol were in fact the two potential licensees selected as part of the application process on may 28th we notified formally uh those two uh potential licensees by way of a letter delivered from the city manager uh to apothecarium and treehouse themselves while at the same time notifying uh by way of letter to the remaining four applicants who did not do who did not move forward in the process on june 13th we received the notice of appeal uh pursuant to our ordinance 5.36 uh from mbark uh appealing our um uh capitol as a retail cannabis process um i think it's important that i jump down towards the bottom there under capitol municipal code 2.52 uh and mentioned to council although i'm assuming that you're well aware of this issues considered on appeal are limited to those raised in the notice of appeal and i wanted to start there because i think it's important for this part of the process that i actually read the four issues that were revealed or introduced in the notice of appeal for council and for the public number one the city did not proceed in a manner required by law number two because the statute does not mandate consistent application of its review standards it violated due process number three the selection panel's decision was based on information of which the appellant was not apprised and had no opportunity to controvert or argue and appellant was denied a meaningful hearing and finally number four the panel's selection process was tainted by the consideration of false fraudulent or misleading information uh i'm very comfortable i'm speaking for staff in in in the city that we're real comfortable in our process i think that we demonstrated a very competitive merit-based process as we committed to with the introduction of our code in 5.36 and i believe the appeal is based upon inaccurate assumptions and or assertions and i look forward to the opportunity of speaking further on that after the appellant presents their case thank you any questions of the chief for clarification sam thank you mayor chief one follow-up question when you notice the applicants of phase two and you had the screen that laid out the information communicated to finalists did the appellant did they um inquire with you about those areas of interest that would be asked at the interview not all of them but several of them did i think four of the six did did the appellant in park i'm sorry embark in fact did communicate with my analyst asking for that information okay great and you gave them that i did yes on may 15th great thank you yeah just curious did the technical score had any weight on the final interview whatsoever all finalists entered phase two relatively equal it had no weight on the there was no if you place first on that list that had no bearing or no impact on what your final score would be that's correct thank you and that decision to do it that way was based in part of the consultation that the chief alluded to in his presentation with htl our sales tax cannabis tax consultant who advised on that very issue about whether or not we should treat them equally and the either recommendation was that they were relatively equal at this stage okay um i think we should move on the next part of the presentation thank you chief so at this point um we have a presentation from embark for its case of 10 minutes city clerk please you have thank you very much may we ask a couple housekeeping measures first yeah please reset the clock thank you i did not see our materials are replied to the staff report in the packet in back so we sent it electronically i tried to reach out to the city manager earlier but i want to make sure that you have these materials may i reach the bench no no please hand it to the city clerk thank you when were those sent to the city uh they were provided electronically i don't i don't know the exact time i did not receive anything yeah i didn't receive it myself i want to make sure that you have them now okay also here's some letters from other applicants i assume they're in the record but they're not in your packet um city clerk can you pass those to us and i just need a copy thanks oh was the senate 455 today i wouldn't know the answer i was uh headed over this way that that does appear to be the case it appears that we received something at 455 this evening okay um then um like honorable hold on just a second i have a question of our of our legal counsel um legal counsel i have a question should we take some time to review this material before it continues this presentation i've actually taken an opportunity during the extended jewel box discussion to look at those materials i'd be happy to answer any questions you have at the conclusion of the city staff's rebuttal the council does have the discretion to ask additional follow-up questions i'd be happy to address the reply reply memorandum that was delivered at the 11th hour and 59th minute by uh mr massara and the law firm that represents the appellants and i have only one copy it appears at each okay um i guess we'll just represent it embark um our legal counsel will give a summary okay i i just want um can you give us a some point discussion about his sure okay sure because i want to see that a pretty typical tactic you'll see where an individual will come at the last second to deliver a bunch of material to a decision-making body in the effort to get the decision-making body to continue the hearing they've already requested it there's no need to disparage the okay so the city council will will receive your comments and will consider your comments correct i think at the end would be an appropriate time because it's their final reply brief and if you have questions about i just want to hear everything okay so ed just for clarification i just had a question the city clerk to your knowledge you had not received these prior to this meeting i had not thank you okay uh to your uh we do not have time to read this but we're going to accept these comments we respectfully request 15 minutes your honor uh and then five minutes for rebuttal there's obviously been a lot of material and explanation associated with the staff report in to reply to the city attorney part of the reason that it's been difficult to get these materials to you earlier is we're just still receiving the tail end of the public records request okay uh so you were given opportunity earlier to ask for extended time i believe the city manager did approach you so um you did not take the city manager actually okay but i didn't get a response hold on a second would the members of the city council like to give this representative more time so that we go to 15 minutes i would give two more minutes two more minutes okay i'll bump it up to 12 12 okay so we'll give you 12 minutes thank you very much thank you good evening honorable mayor and members of the council on mark massara and i have the privilege tonight of representing embark on their appeal we're grateful for this opportunity for the appeal and to be able to discuss with you capitol is dispensary permit process and municipal code section 5.36 essentially we have just two issues for your consideration the legal issues and then the ethical problems associated with this process the legal problem is obvious enough the process as prescribed by the municipal code has been irretrievably broken and tainted by explicit deviations from the required process and by demonstrable affirmative misrepresentations by certain applicants in violation of their executed business affidavits as part of the process that in turn led city staff to play contortionist with the rules of engagement by adding phases and substituting new panel members and even selectively conducting field trips site visits and unfair ex parte rendezvous with the winner all in flagrant disregard of the original published rules pertaining to the dispensary permit process the legal issues are definitely set forth in our powerpoint presentation well larry can you give him a hand please thank you our it he's not our system will be taking care of that hold on we could stop the clock briefly first your staff did not proceed according to the clearly prescribed code section 5.36 after all embark one the application process per the code two but then staff invented phase two with a new criteria and a new panel with new members without publication or public notice three there was no notice to applicants regarding the new criteria which is especially disconcerting given your staff's contention now in the staff report in the city attorney's analysis that that the city doesn't need to abide by any criteria either way the process clearly violated embarks and the other applicants do process rights worst of all the new phase two panel members relied on and made decisions and choices based on misleading affirmative misrepresentations regarding fraudulent materials provided by Jason sweat and apothecarium deliberately designed to imply their right to use a facility that had been under the exclusive lease right of embark and while staff tonight has attempted to discount the notion of having a site it was in fact a critical component in every aspect of this process and how could it not be so the legal issues are prominent enough yet despite the obvious legal issues it's the practical political and moral problem that should give you your staff the city and capitol of residents the most heartburn in fact if this process had concluded in an orderly manner legal problems associated with it could probably have been overlooked but because of how the process ended your political problem is massastatized the issue is this your rules required honesty and prohibited misrepresentations this is the business affidavit that was required for all applicants it requires honesty it prohibits falsifications it's not optional it's mandatory it's executed under penalty of perjury it requires truth it prohibits misrepresentations following the written application process however it became clear that one of the principles was not honest at all but had instead engaged in a deliberate knowing fraud and a scam and perversely he won following the phase two interviews and the opaque field trips both of which fell outside the prescribed municipal code process so now we know following the public records act information disclosure and you know that local embark principal jason sweat was fraudulently playing both sides of the fence pretending to be an exclusive representative for embark while in fact secretly partnering with athropocarium and worse jason misappropriated embark's exclusive site location to represent that site on behalf of apothecarium here you see it plain as day in case you or your phase two interview panel are confused note even the physical street address is exactly the same as the exclusive embark site this is what apothecarium provided to you as what they intended to provide you with with a dispensary slide six now slide seven is the landlord's letter now it say you're still confused say you know like your staff you claim there's no prejudice there's no unfairness say you believe you had no duty to question jason about the scam or you didn't realize that despite being in back-to-back interviews in this phase two process no one asked how is it possible you know let's look at the letter from the landlord of 1850 41st avenue hopefully that's clear enough okay this this is bad enough right embark is ashamed and embarrassed not to have uncovered this scam sooner not to have notified you in the city sooner or that you neglected to inform us sooner etc but all of this would likely not mean anything significant as had his uh had this secret alliance not become the winner in your contorted application sweepstakes process but it did jason and apothecarium actually did win as a result of their fraud that makes this bigger than simply embark's problem it makes it your problem and that's why this matters and that's why that you must uphold this appeal there are only two conclusions that can be drawn either jason won because you like us were duped in this scam in which case we're all in this together or something more sinister occurred where your staff either knew or should have known and didn't say anything didn't alert you or embark to jason's fraud either during the phase two interviews or thereafter and you might wonder how can i say that because as part of this strange post hoc phase two appendage to the original authorized application process jason and apothecarium interviewed prior to embark and jason interviewing and despite that not a single word was said not a single question was asked like for example jason how do you intend to manage both partnerships if you win jason if both parties win who will actually use the site at 1850 40 first avenue jason how can you represent that apocatarium will use 1850 41st avenue when embark and the landlord for the property both represent that embark it has exclusive right to that property jason if you're a partner in embark how could you allow apothecarium to use a visual simulation for a site you know is not available that plainly violates the business affidavit instead crickets despite the fact that the pra request and interview notes for apothecarium demonstrate that they misappropriated and used embark's exclusive site for their visual rendering and that the site and that visual visual rendering was discussed in the interview not a single interviewer asked a question about embark using the same site in its interview how could this have occurred it defies belief in other words it's inescapable that the process is tainted and legally defective and violates both the municipal code itself and the explicit terms of the application process and the business affidavit wherein applicants were required to be honest under any scrutiny or analysis jason was not honest apothecarium was not honest thus the inevitable conclusion is that this is that this process which was required by the city code has been irretrievably tainted both legally and morally both in letter and in spirit these affirmative misreferences and tations and fraudulent misconduct are in direct violation and contravention contravention of the city's published rules it is therefore legally mandated that you in the city reset this process and hand this process over to an independent third party for correction and fortunately enough hdl is already assisting the city with their experience and expertise we're confident that they can get the job done in compliance with the ordinance and avoid the legal and political train wreck caused by one bad actor who single-handedly caused havoc on the entire dispensary application process thank you thank you very much so at this point we're going to city staff response we'll give the same amount of time 12 minute thank you for the opportunity mr. mayor members of the council i'm going to start off our rebuttal we'll talk about a couple of very clear factual inaccuracies in assumption and in fact no other applicant asserted that they had at least our site control for 1850 41st street while other applicants provided as mentioned conceptual designs and renderings of potential designs for specific sites they clearly articulated during the interview that they did not have a lease currently for any site the Santa Cruz veterans alliance although it suggested that their participation at least in the appeal was detrimental to the appellants interview in fact Santa Cruz veterans alliance participation was a benefit was an asset to the presenters if you look at the final scores embark and apothecarium finished one in four out of 14 total applications so the suggestion or the presentation that that the participation was a detriment to embark in fact is not true embark was not ranked as highly as other applicants in the interview process due to two primary factors based upon the interview ceo had no prior experience in cannabis cannabis dispensaries or operations based upon the presentation in the interview and embark was unable to articulate their actual or proposed ownership structure on two occasions two panelists asked specifically direct questions related to the ownership of the organization none of the presenters were either able or willing to answer questions about that ownership during the presentation one of the real important reasons for I believe having the ability to have face-to-face interaction and a face-to-face interview by way of a presentation with the finalists questions like this are important and when those questions were asked twice to the embark team they were simply not able to answer the question related to the ownership structure or weren't willing I'm not sure which one I'm going to turn to our attorney now who's going to provide more information with regard to the rebuttal to the appellant's presentation thank you thank you chief I would note just on that tail end of this slide I recall correctly ownership structure was one of the criteria that was sent out to the finalists who asked for information about what would be considered that was a specific item that was listed in the non-exclusive list so it does beg a question if they knew that that topic was going to be inquired on and they're unable to answer it it does beg you know consideration by the council moving to the legal aspects of the appeal as opposed to some of the factual assumptions and as you note in the actual appeal they do say on information and belief we assert the following and aside from a single document that they have that you've been shown as well which has a rendering of the address on it there's no I don't hear any factual testimony or any other source that suggested that these false representations were made so an absence of facts if you will just to observe on that but going through their four points on appeal you know as the chief has talked about the records demonstrate a diligent effort this is a summary slide I'm going to get into a more detailed slide next but I'll jump ahead right now in fact I wanted to start with the first topic it had four subheadings the first one was failure to proceed in a manner required by law now you saw in the city attorney analysis that I address each one of these points in turn they first argue that it's an abusive discretion which is a pretty difficult standard you have to act arbitrarily capriciously an entirely lacking and evidentiary support for the decision you made as described by the chief I don't believe that what has been articulated as what the city staff did constitutes a arbitrary and capricious decision in fact it seems to be a reasoned considered decision based on some you know application of criteria by and numerous individuals who all came to similar conclusions that's not a arbitrary and capricious decision just based on their assertion that it is that burden of proof I should note here is on the appellants to embark LLC is embark capital LLC is the one who has to prove the points that they're making to you today they can suppose and suggest and hypothesize but they have to prove it and I didn't hear anything suggesting that there was proof behind a lot of the allegations but the first subheading was a consistency with the the code itself the capital and municipal code and one of the issues that they've identified and they've also identified this in their reply brief which I'll talk about later is that the city acted outside of the factors that were listed in the statute and based on a very interesting argument that the word may is a restrictive word and that it means may only consider the following that's just simply not the appropriate statutory construction as you all know I've dealt with a number of cases and and defended statutory interpretations in the past that's not a harmonious reading of the statute it's not a logical reading of the statute and it ignores express language in the statute that says the city may consider all of the following including what's in the community's best interests nowhere in their presentation and their materials do they acknowledge that there's another factor they try to refuse any other interpretation other than the mandatory six that's just not a reasonable interpretation of the code I should also note in their original appeal the very last sentence here they they assert that our code references to a subsection five point b but it doesn't I think that underscores that the appellants here don't have a full grasp of the code their appeal document itself didn't accurately quote the ordinance I think that may have driven some of the misunderstandings that were associated with that subsection b is ignoring quote seemingly important criteria again this is just a tangent of that prior argument which is you know you have to consider all these things well those things may be considered but it's a legal axiom here weight versus admissibility how much weight they give to any factor is entirely within the panel's discretion and as long as they exercise that reasonably they are acting lawfully in this case the city did not ignore seemingly important criteria which also begs the question important to whom now maybe embellent appellant embark thinks it's particularly important because they had a lease locked down and they intended to use that to their advantage but the city had determined that although that was a factor it wasn't going to be one given a significant amount of weight because it would essentially result in a race to the bottom where the person who got the lease first would be the only person who could get the application license or get the license rather and that's not the intent of the statute it's the intent of the statute to get the best possible fit for the city not the person who first got a lease in place uh the final subheader here was use of uh didn't I mean this is again as I said they're all kind of tied into each other but use of unenumerated unenumerated criteria for assessment this is based on their assertion that when it says you may consider the following factors it means you may only consider these factors and none other again that's not the right reading of the statute that's not uh reading the statute that a court would necessarily come to agencies are given a discretion with how they interpret their regulations if they're reasonable and they're they're presumed to duly act in the course of law and if somebody wants to allege that they acted arbitrarily they need to prove it in this case making the argument that the city's utilization of additional factors which is permitted by the statute's permissive language and by its reference to evaluation of community needs it's just not a harmonious reading the statute to be rejected by a court in my opinion subheading D deviation from a published schedule and process again this is based on a very narrow reading of the statute that if the city did not act exactly in the manner that the appellants expected it to that it would have violated the the rules essentially of the ordinance that's not true the city's interview is not an abuse of discretion the city conducting a panel of interviews three of whom sorry a panel of interviewers three panelists did a written review four panelists did an in-person review that's a pretty reasonable and not arbitrary way to go about evaluating potential applicants and licensees the city followed the requirements of the law and i don't see any identification of a specific deviation in the voluminous material that was submitted to us and the second main allegation here is just due process was violated there's multiple elements to do process process and substance but again here notice and hearing was provided there were neutral decision makers and the city applied objective criteria now would all of the applicants all of them love to have been given every single question and every single road map for how to get through that process so they could get the best possible chance at winning of course but they weren't given everything they were all given a fair opportunity and the city used criteria to apply it lack of a fair hearing again this comes to embark not knowing about its own business partners ventures and and an allegation that the city should have informed embark there's no legal requirement for this it does sort of ask a better question which i think that uh their council a very persuasive speaker articulated which is we should have caught that sooner you probably should have you probably should have known your business partners associations and affiliations and the fact that he kept multiple irons in the fire or didn't put all his eggs in one basket means he was a little bit more savvy in that respect and he was ultimately part of a successful application team i just don't see legal grounds for the argument that if this person's part of the team that you know the city has to notify everybody that's not true there's no factual basis for that there's no legal basis for that so i appreciate that they're upset and there might be some sour feelings left after the partnership and a business venture kind of broke down but ultimately that's not a grounds to turn over the decision that's not a legal basis to contest the decision the last and final one is the false fraudulent misleading information i heard a lot of well-spoken advocacy about how the process was derailed by an individual who decided to play some subversive games as the chief testified here or i guess he didn't take an oath but he's generally an honest guy has explained to you that during that process nobody made an assertion that they owned the property right that they had an exclusive right to use it in fact they went to some lengths to disclaim that they didn't have the rights to the property it was a model rendering presented for illustrative purposes not as a representation of the actual business plan site or model so with that mistaken factual assumption i don't hear or see evidence of abusive discretion especially one lacking in any evidentiary support for it in fact i've seen the opposite i've seen a really reasonable presentation by the city staff of a two-phase interview where part of a panel conducted a written review the other part of the panel conducted an in-person interview and they applied criteria as they were permitted to in an enabling statute that allows them some latitude to make the appropriate decisions as long as they do so in a fair and even-handed manner and i think you saw from the scoring sheets and the force ranking that it was remarkably fair and even-handed these were conducted blind they didn't consult as they did them so with that i would say that would conclude our initial rebuttal of course i'll remain available to answer questions after the appellant gives their final rebuttal so to speak as part of council deliberation there was a reply brief delivered as you know and i can speak to all the elements of okay at this time though we're going to open to public comments so those in the audience who would like to make public comments at this time you're limited to three minutes please come for it i see someone starting to stand up thank you very much thank you mr. mayor and city health minister my name is scott hawkins i am on the apothecarium team and this one too and a former resident of santa cruz county for 18 years and i appreciate very much the effort that's that the city staff and chief mcmanus and the entire team has taken to ensure good process we submitted a response actually ryan hudson our co submitted a response that can be found on page 177 of the packet that addresses some of the issues or allegations really that that were raised in in the appeal and also this evening importantly mr swed and formed us as a managing member of scba had already negotiated a non-exclusive and a relationship with vnm o u with another party we didn't even know who that party was and we didn't ask mr. sweat had no involvement little involvement in our application except for looking at a revised or reformatted resume of his and we did not provide him with access to any materials nor did we of course receive any materials from him and according to mr sweat he did not he had minimal if any involvement with the with the other party's application he served merely as in our case as another another stakeholder in the capital community one that's been dedicated to the the interests of veterans throughout the county and could could help further efforts run upon receipt of a license if we were so awarded one also the just to follow up on the issue of the of the property we never assumed we had any connection to it except it was potentially available because as we learned from and we never spoke with the with the owner however we did speak with his his representative who stated that the lease that was signed i believe a week prior to the application a submittal deadline was contingent upon the other parties again didn't know the the party's corporate name contingent upon them winning a license and we and we used it only because it was a familiar property to the community and also i believe other applicants did the same again only for illustrative purposes and to demonstrate the how the apothecary brand would fit in the beautiful town or city of capitol so thank you very much thank you any others from the public would like to speak okay seeing none at this point i'd like to bring it back to embarks read bottle for five minutes thank you honorable mayor and members of the council if we could go back to so with respect to the last speaker and the innocent use of 1850 41st avenue i'll just refer again to the landlord's letter there shouldn't be any confusion or misguided motivations regarding who was able to use and who has secured the use of that site a considerable effort went into that process of which jason knew full well if i understand the city attorney's argument correctly he says that we're being unreasonable because we want to rely on the code itself and that it's too narrow because the city has in essence and in the city attorney's opinion the discretion to come up with any criteria make any right hand turn or left hand turn in the process and so there really is no reliable criteria and we should be faulted for trying to hold the city accountable on the code reasonable arbitrary and capricious is it reasonable to invent a phase two is it reasonable to give the criteria for phase two only to people that ask for it is it reasonable to take field trips and have x party rendezvous with only the winners is it reasonable to ignore the scores associated with the prescribed phase one and then not utilize them at all for phase two and if i understand the law enforcement official correctly the way phase two came about is he called somebody and they suggested it would be a good idea and and so then they just went with it and if i could show you one more slide here these are some of the notes from the phase two interviews now i know tonight we saw these really nice little score cards made it look like everybody agreed well what we have and this is a result of the public records request are things that are unintelligible there is no rhyme or reason except that what you notice is that the site was really important throughout this whole process as it should be i mean it would it's illogical to to say go open a cannabis dispensary if you don't even know where it's going to be how can you answer all the other questions associated with this process like security and community character and the other really important aspects and that that's why the site was critical to this discussion and and what i what i really like here is this notion that we should be uh faulted for having been the victims of a fraud in this process well okay let's let's say that staff's correct in that regard what you cannot do then as a result of that is award the uh the license and the permit to the bad actor that would be the worst possible result of this entire process and so all we're trying to do is give you some uh mechanisms whereby this process can be corrected and and you don't necessarily have to start over but you do need to correct the defects you can't simply say oh gosh embark really got taken advantage of boy those guys they just fell off the back of the truck but you know fair and square that other guy got away with it and here you go here you're the victor that makes no sense whatsoever regarding the uh the claim that the ownership structure of embark caused the interviewees uh to not understand or appreciate uh the ownership structure uh all that really needs to be said here is that 100 percent of the ownership of embark participated in that interview so it was all there those those participants in the interview represented 100 percent of the ownership of embark and so what you don't have is a publicly traded canadian conglomerate representing that they're going to serve the community of capitola which is what occurred in the end of this process you had 100 percent of the ownership structure in that interview so it doesn't wash that that was a valid reason uh to conclude that those notes somehow result in a fair uh process that's not arbitrary and capricious thank you thank you so at this point we open to city council's questions of staff and the appellant uh who would like to start these are questions of staff and appellant no questions at this point um I do have a question though um in terms of structure did um did everyone understand that question when that came out and did everyone answer that question and have no issue with it except for one thank you mr maron i'm assuming you're talking about questions related to the ownership structure of a s i am i believe with great confidence that they understood the question yes and how about the response of all the various applicants in the final phase yeah i'm not it i hesitate to say that i recall all of the questions of all of the interviews for this for the six panelists but the questions were direct and again i'm confident that the question okay as one of the panelists my recollection is is that i definitely remember the top two panelists on giving that were six weeks out from those interviews answered that question very directly um i know that most of the other applicants i couldn't say if one of the other bottom ranked applicants had trouble with that question like embarked in okay mr murray if i might have misunderstood your question i thought you were referring to did all of the participants of all six finalists understood if when we ask that question in fact i think you're asking about did all the participants from embark understand that question um well that's another question that was going to follow up on but my my main issue here is that did the panelists action excuse me was the question phased accurately enough so that the finalists the six understood what it was and then my concern also is did they respond i'm trying to get an idea of how they responded to that accurately phased uh phrase question see if i can answer this i didn't ask the question yet i recall one of the gentleman's answer to that direct question about the ownership structure is that we haven't sat down as an ownership team to discuss that yet but we'll have that figured out before the if we're rewarded the the license this is for embark that's for embark correct okay okay does that correspond with your recollection yes i believe that was either the first or second response to that question i would recall that other other firms responded with answers like 75 25 75 percent this individual 25 so there was no hesitation it was just embarked that you bated that question or did not answer it completely again the the bottom two applicants had some trouble with other questions as well so i i just don't remember what their specific challenges were but certainly the top four which was embarked the two that were issued and then applicant c the other three the other three of the top four had no trouble answering that question okay um any other questions here no okay i'd like to go on to a console deliberation and emotion did you want to discuss the reply brief that was yes i'm awfully sorry thanks for reminding me that yes i the information that was provided by embark in that and you did have a chance to review it so i appreciate yes jewel box went longer than expected okay you took a bench i'll be brief on this because we weren't given a substantive amount of time to review it but thankfully there's not a whole lot of new information for the council to consider contained in this document i just want to consider it since it absolutely i i think that's an appropriate response i apologize as we encounter can you read from your notes if you can't push it up to the screen give them in what give them in okay sorry it's toggling between this and that it's just not a short screen i could use that jump drive switch to this to you know this is that no we got it over there we got it all right so this is the letter that the reply styled pardon me for scrolling too quickly the reply to the city's memorandum which didn't come until after this council meeting had already begun this morning as you can see again they're just parroting some of the prior messages they had written and you know i would also note that the letters that accompanied this the two letters one from one plant and one from garland two other failed applicants are copy paste letters that were written very clearly in a you know at the request of what i believe to be embark because they recite and parrot these exact same points manner required by law etc i'll show those to you in a moment but the selection panel did not proceed as required by law they just repeat the uh the prior citations that they made that i did not find very compelling under the context of this case again arguing inconsistency with the capitola municipal code again they reiterate this issue here which is may consider these six factors this is an argument that says a statute does not say the city may consider these six factors and also any other factors if the city council intended it to say so it would read differently the city wants it to say it has to say may also consider but you know that's just an argument we're having about statutory analysis because it does not say may only consider which if it did would very clearly restrict the city to those six criteria but may consider the following is viewed and interpreted permissively so it's kind of a re a recycle of the prior argument um again we get down to the next paragraph here panel shall review the applications considering factors importance to the community and then they bold including those listed within subsection a five and again the next sentence says um determined to meet the best meet the requirements of this section bolded and they unbold the community's needs so you can see there's they're picking and choosing here they only want the six criteria evaluated they don't want community need they don't want factors of importance to the community be added in and considered and i think that's because they only want one result which is they want the license right but it's not a reasonable construction um i thought this was an interesting citation here uh they know it's not a novel legal issue a court facing a similar question concluded that you know they applied the wrong criteria i've looked at this case it's a public works contract in case where the agency a district awarded a contract somebody and they tried to create criteria for minority owned business good faith efforts that is strictly governed by the public contract code and state law so they were trying to override a state law with local regulation which you can't do so not exactly on point for the the point that they're trying to make going even further down here into page now three uh again the first paragraph here talks about the creation of an entirely new phase and how that was totally inappropriate an entirely new panel which is semantics there was a panel some of the members did a written interview some of the members did an in-person interview you could call those two panels but it's really just a matter of semantics the city manager can uh you know put together a panel constitutive no less than more than three non-conflicted individuals who applied neutral criteria so i don't see any validity to that again the second paragraph sort of parrots the first this is a new argument here and it's in addition the section of the cmc limits the uh code for one person one license i would note for you that this is a new argument raised on appeal basic rules of court and fundamental fairness don't let people sandbag their arguments till the very end and introduce new arguments for the first time especially as an 11th hour submittal but i would note that what this actually says is that a person can only hold one license right it doesn't say that you can't apply for multiple licenses they're arguing that because it says you can only end up having one license per owner or operator that mr. sweats participation was a violation of the ordinance it would be a violation of the ordinance if he held or if a proprietor or an owner held multiple possibly but that didn't result here and so it's not a violation of the ordinance it would be convenient for the appellant if that were the case but it does not say you can only apply for one it says that you may only hold one meaning that if you win maybe you have to make a choice about which application or which group you proceed with again this final section here about the statute man mandating a selection process by a panel that's again that's semantics about panel panels you know no less than three no more than three it doesn't make a whole lot of difference the publication of rules regulations and standards enacted by the chief this is their argument that the city needed to promulgate much much more than it did and the section of the code that they're talking about a 12 allows the the it's called a the council by creating that ordinance in that way which allows the chief of police the city manager or designee to promulgate binding rules and regulations is done so you don't have to come back and amend your ordinance every time it's appropriate for the city to do that so that doesn't have to constantly amend its ordinance and what it talks about is the chief of police's ability to you know if he wants to make a regulation because we have a new problem we can address it and specifically subsection a 12d talks about promulgating advertising regulation and the city is now the being shifted that we had a duty to disclose that to embark on the information about the site um as it was brought out um both on the website it says that no site plan is necessary at this stage on the application it states that no site plan is necessary and we've heard the evidence saying that actually there was no misleading information presented at any of the interviews and since the site plan is not necessary for that stage of the application process if at you know at the most it was just harmless error if there was any error at all that occurred in that situation because it wasn't a relevant factor and I just wanted to set for the record those are my reasons why I'm going to support the motion thank you just for the record that capital does often for my experience and my 12 years of being on this bench one way or the other follows a similar process of winnowing down the large field of applicants in many cases and trying to come up with a representative sample of what we think are the best embark was part of that group and then we go to a final more detailed or more involved process and just as Ed said we did that recently in another hire and there's many other hiring processes I haven't been involved with but this reason one we spent quite a bit of time trying to narrow down a wide excuse me a wide application pool to those we thought would be reasonable for us to consider and then we focused on those that we felt were very reasonable applicants and ones we would like to have potentially working for the city of capitol this is not an uncommon practice it's one that's well accepted on private and in public uses of public and private time to try to figure out who is the best and I think we did that I think the process was a good one terms of not answering questions that are given to applicants and being evasive or indicating that in some way or another they're going to evade that question is concerning to me and I could see why that was a problem for the panelists and definitely affected the outcome of the final phase so those are two reasons that I'd like to put out there why I'm going to vote for this um so can we have a roll call vote on this please and it is a motion to uphold the staff recommendation correct councilmember story and to deny the appeal that's what I councilmember Peterson I councilmember Brooks I councilmember Botworth our member trend so unanimously we're going to take a brief break here this evening at this point 8f yeah 8 oh right I'm sorry Nikki yeah again and Larry yes okay so um do you remind me on section e um item e it's item e 8 8f f f we have a brief staff report prepared for it yeah okay item that's right good evening Mr. Mayor council members I just want to give a quick overview of what the leader in coordinator positions for the after school program came out how it came about the leader and coordinator positions are were structured five percent above both the camp capital leaders and coordinators the proposed leaders starts at 14 59 an hour currently the minimum wage in california is $12 an hour it'll go up on the first of January to $13 an hour and by 2022 January 1st it'll be a $15 an hour every year we do do adjustments to include those changes to minimum wage but we also include changes to the other positions to make sure there's not compaction so we have we raise the the entry level position by a dollar we also go out with the other positions to make sure that they're not too close so that's kind of I just want to give you kind of the background on how we handle the part-time seasonal positions so with that clarification do you have any more questions so we currently are within state guidelines with our with our salaries oh yes yes sir okay okay I would just like to add some points of reference of where this came from so I can give if this is appropriate time yeah go for it um so we are in pilot mode for this after school program and as I've seen and I saw in the child care planning council I've received numerous reports on providing quality education and sustainability is so important for students and one of the things we need to do is always think about it at the ground level of how much we pay staff it's a huge issue a new report will actually be released next week about the insufficient pay scale on how we pay folks be it this is a new program and a pilot program I think it's important that we create the foundation correctly from the get-go not to revisit it in 2020 when we finally get there because the state has realized you know minimum wage should be $15 an hour I think this is a great opportunity for us to set the bar where it should be from at the forefront by doing so I really do believe that we will get quality staff hired and staff who will stick around and that's really important when we when we work with with kiddos is that we that they have somebody there every day that they are there and familiar with them not a big turnaround on like a seasonal person where these part-time seasonal positions where we see on the beach they're part-time they're student workers or they're high school students who come and go this afterschool leader and coordinator will be in these kids lives for multiple years all day Monday through Friday several hours a day so I think that's the big difference when we're looking at this pay scale on top of it since we already know that in 2020 it's going to happen my whole point is why not do it now it's a 40 cents difference to start out it's not huge but it's go ahead do you want to say something that I recognize that in January it'll change a little bit but again it's starting now at 15 and then sure in January they get another bump or whatever but I really just want to advocate for the people who are not even hired yet so that we create a program that is is well-rounded sustainable that is identifying and recognizing all the issues we see in all sorts of other programs preschool programs afterschool programs this is really setting the bar and since we're breaking ground already with one of the very new afterschool pilot programs in the state we should do it right I'm confused here because I thought you said that it's $13 and 20 $14 and 21 and $15 and 22 is that what the state's mandating did I do that that's correct okay so they're not going to give give $15 an hour till 22 and we're right now at 14.15 now we're going to go to this by 2022 we're going to be above what the state's going to be mandating am I reading that right so sure let me try to frame the context here so this is our hourly schedule so you'll see the bottom of the hourly schedule for these hourly employees is the junior guard the assistant junior guard instructors so that's the one that over time next year for example when minimum wage goes up to $13 an hour that'll have to go up and when that one position that I have highlighted there goes up there's this cascading domino effect and all the other positions move up along with it so and we do that every year as the minimum wage has been stepping up and so I think councilwoman Brooks is suggesting let's start this one at 15 because we know that that's where the minimum wage is going to ultimately be and rather than setting it 14.59 today set it started at 15 well that's not a question are we into discussion or are we out of questions I just want to clarify the scheme to this yeah yeah I mean I see the point I and I don't know how else to finagle the fact that that we should be paying after school leaders from the get-go what a minimum wage starting salary would be in 2020 we should start it now since we're not in the discussion I was asking a question and I don't know if we're going to go through the process and ask the public then come back and have a discussion I'd rather go through that process no more questions okay there's no one from the public here to comment but I'll give that opportunity okay seeing none I would like to ask Nikki if you would come forward and give us an idea of what you feel the absolute leader would be doing and in your concept of what an appropriate wage is to start and I also know there's some steps here so the zero step is that sort of like an inexperienced person you want to get them on board you want to train them and then you jump them up to the next step up to they qualified and now they're at 15 so just give me an idea of how you would imagine dealing with this new staff person okay so first of all the I when we were talking about deciding on the salary of these individuals I I did intentionally want the salary to be higher than the summer seasonal workers in order to address that exact issue that they are having a much more longer term contact with the youth and to have that stability I agree is very important in the in these kind of staff because they provide that out-of-school time impact in a pretty positive way and then with the starting at zero so if a staff member that has that the interview well and they are able to I mean that they have like all of the basics right so that they would start at zero and then the city practice policy is that after a six-month probationary period they would be considered for an additional step increased based on based on their performance in that probationary period so after six months it's already built in that they would potentially be moving up a step additionally in this structure the six months would be hitting about the same time that the minimum wage would be increasing and the automatic increase that is built in would happen at that same time this is built into the system and this step is at your discretion being the manager that's true yeah I if there was an individual that for example came in and they had a master's degree but they were really passionate about after-school programs and that's kind of what they wanted to do then I would consider perhaps a higher step because of their higher level of experience okay so you're recognizing Yvette's comments that we want qualified staff and you're telling me that you want to have them paid accordingly to their qualifications and if they're new or young and have no experience you start them off and then do the evaluation period okay any other questions of Nikki the director does this sort of go in the direction you're thinking it actually makes more sense to me now seeing this that after six months they would be receiving actually even more than the minimum wage that would take effect in 2020 and granted the pilot program will be happening in the 1920 fiscal year it all makes perfect sense with that if anyone else was entertained as excited as I am to offer more money for these folks and continue on I mean like we can still call the vote but I appreciate that information thank you thank you um I appreciate that Nikki you've thought through this and um I do I there's it's well structured from my perspective at this point any other questions of Nikki and thank you for bringing that question up I appreciate it got us focused on something that's important and the reason why it's important is she wants this program to be successful and I know she's worked with you on this so I think it was a well-placed question so um is there a motion I have a comment oh sorry you know here's the thing you know I think it's a great program I supported this program that came online when it comes to arbitrarily giving someone an increase that puts me at a disposition because I value every one of our employees everybody that does anything and to do something that so it goes out of a sink for a reason I can't justify that I have a problem with that so that's the reason why I hesitated on this I think this is fair I think it's great it's going to correct itself I don't want anybody else to feel like we just all of a sudden pick on somebody and say they're entitled to a bonus for some reason so I'm happy with make a motion to adopt the schedule as is second second okay I'll make one last comment the reason why I asked Nikki to talk was because I did not think this was arbitrary I wanted to know what the rationale was behind it and I've noticed that in her planning and so I wanted to hear her her voice on that so all those in favor aye any opposed no it passes thank you so let's go on to item e public banking legislation Mr. Mayor members of the council this item is on the agenda the quest of council member story it's to customer story asked for a briefing about public banking options that were being considered in the state legislature I did a bit of research and there's two bills that are out there right now assembly bill 857 and senate bill 528 and the item today would be to consider sending a letter of support to the bill's authors and our legislative delegation in support of either one of these pieces of legislation just very quickly a bit about public banking public banking is essentially exactly what it sounds like it is a institution that functions like a private bank but is a public entity a common example that cited by advocates of public banks is the North Bank of North Dakota which has been operating I believe for almost a hundred years maybe more than a hundred years and it's allowed the state of North Dakota to save money on banking fees that would otherwise be going to large financial institutions and I think according to the bank of North Dakota's most recent statements they've returned more than a billion dollars to the state I guess over the over the hundred year history so it is substantial amounts of money they can add up now the two bits of legislation that are out there assembly bill 857 I believe you got a letter suggesting that we should support it the city of Santa Cruz and the county is supported along with a few other jurisdictions around the state I will be honest with you I think assembly bill 857 it would empower cities to start their own public bank or joint powers authorities or partnerships between counties and cities usually I'm all for more opportunities more tools and the toolkits for cities I'll be honest with you though it makes me a little bit nervous just for my professional experience that I don't know that we would really want to have a whole bunch of public banks I don't know that that necessarily falls in the wheelhouse of every city and that every city would necessarily do it really well and if they didn't the backlash on cities that really weren't involved would probably be harsh we've seen that before when cities kind of fall off the bus sometimes the ensuing legislation constrains everyone else that was doing things well alternatively Senate bill 8528 seems to me pretty logical it would empower the state's eye bank which is an institution that we've worked with in the past state agency that borrows a whole bunch of money at really low rates and then we'll dole it out to cities for smaller loans would empower them to be a depository institution so you could take your money and deposit it with them and they could serve as your bank so kind of replicating the bank of North Dakota but not letting every city set it up sort of keeping the expertise housed maybe more within the state of California that bill that Senate bill has been tabled so it's not going to come up again this legislative session but intuitively to me I think that that may be ultimately a better potential direction alternatively we could simply monitor this and provide other reports down the road if there's any changes in public banking legislation so I think your options tonight are to direct the mayor we would provide a letter for him to either write a letter in support of either one of these bills alternatively we could just continue to monitor this and provide updates as they're available thank you for your attention any comments from city council members comments questions sorry I have no question at all brain okay any questions of city staff on this okay any questions or comments from public seeing none bringing it back to city council for comments and motion yeah let me just try to make a motion that we authorize the mayor to send a letter in support of assembly bill 857 and senate bill 528 I think it's good for liquidity and making more funds available in the community for businesses and nonprofits and also under the senate bill for local governments so I don't and I don't think that necessarily means that we would do that it may not be appropriate for the city capitol but I think it overall helps the economy in our state and for that reason I would encourage us to if nothing else send a letter in support thank you I'll second that motion okay the other comments okay um all those in favor aye opposed nope thank you very much hey we put in a long day we did it's only been 12 hours 14 hours no overtime how about another meal