 Okay, if council members can turn on their cameras. Is the city clerk ready? Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to our 2.30 p.m. session of the September 27th, 2022 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council member is Calentary Johnson. Present. Holder. Here. Cummings. Here. Brown. Here. Myers. Here. Vice Mayor Watkins. Here. And Mayor Burner. Present. Before we begin with our agenda and our presentations, I would like to take a moment of silence regarding the Iranian protests and deaths this last week, 57 deaths since Sunday. And supporting Iranian women and condemning the acts of the Iranian government. Okay, thank you. I would also like to thank council member Calentary Johnson. And I would like to just offer you a space to say anything to that. Thank you. Thank you for the moment of silence and the acknowledgement. I want to announce that the students at UCSC are organizing, have organized a vigil tonight on campus at the Quarry Plaza at 7 p.m. It's student-led, but all are invited. And I'd like to propose to the mayor and the council that we, at the next agenda, vote on a statement. And I'd like to read the draft of the statement today, right now. That's okay. Okay. The Santa Cruz City Council releases the following statement on the death of Masa Amini and then suing protests and Iranian security forces' response. The Santa Cruz City Council stands in solidarity with the people of Iran as they rise up in protest against the brutal and needless death of Masa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who died after sustaining injuries while in police custody for alleged violations of Iran's oppressive dress code. These dress codes impose on women strict requirements not applied to men and expose even conservatively dressed women to the arbitrary whims and notorious brutality of Iran's security services. In killing Masa, the Iranian government is implying that dress code is more valuable than the life of a woman. We're shocked and saddened by the violent and overly aggressive response of Iran's security services to the protest against Masa Amini's death, which at last report on Sunday, September 25th, has resulted in a minimum of 57 deaths and countless injuries and arrests. It's important to note that my body, my choice goes both ways. Baudelaie autonomy is a human right. Whether a woman chooses to wear the hijab or not, it should be her personal decision. Let it be known that the regime is not a reflection of Islam, but a reflection of abusive power. The women in Iran deserve better. We, the Santa Cruz City Council, stand in solidarity with the courageous people in Iran protesting. Thank you, Council Member Calantari-Johnson. Okay. We will continue on with our agenda. Thank you. Yeah. We need to take any action about putting that on our agenda. Thank you so much. I don't think we need to. I can set it on the, yeah. Thank you, Council Member Brown. Okay. Welcome. We will now begin with our first presentation item, Agenda 6, Downtown Library and Affordable Housing Project, our quarterly update of where we're at with that, presenting by Director of Economic Development, Bonnie Lipscomb. Welcome. Thank you, Mayor and good afternoon, Council Members. It's good to be in front of you again for another quarterly update. Brian Berguno, who is our project manager for the Downtown Library and Affordable Housing Project, will actually be leading the majority of the presentation. I'll come in briefly just to give an update on the farmers market and the housing funding. The last time we came before you was in May, and this is roughly just an update from that time. A lot has happened. There is a lot of detail, but I just want to let you know that this will update will be available on our website under our project page, as well as all the accompanying documents. We're going to go through this rather quickly, recognizing this as a presentation update, but happy to follow up with any questions that you have, either within the context of the presentation or later. With that, I will turn it over to Brian Berguno, who is our project manager. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Bonnie. I just want to make sure I've got good audio and that you all can hear me right now. We can hear you. Thank you. And that you can now see my presentation screen, and they're able to view the main page slide. Correct. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for the opportunity today to give you an update on all the progress that we've made on the downtown library and affordable housing project. So I'm going to go through our agenda, and we've got, like as Bonnie indicated, pretty heavy content because there's been a lot of moving parts since the last time we were before you, but we're going to try to touch on some of the major milestones and information that we think is most relevant. So the agenda today is going to be a highlight of our recent efforts to date, the update on the design and community feedback that we received at a recent community meeting, update on the farmer's market, budget update, project schedule update, and next step. So jumping right into the recent efforts. So as of now, we have submitted a formal application for the planning department through our affordable housing developer for the future housing that was submitted earlier in September. We had a community presentation on that application design that was held on the 21st, and we've been completing a number of benchmark reports. So our phase one cultural resources inventory draft report is under review. We just received our phase one flash two environmental site work that was completed in draft report. We've undertaken a traffic impact analysis that is underway and near completion. We're expecting a final report here in the coming weeks. We received a finalized arborist report and report addendum. And the design team for the library, which is a separate architecture affirmed for the tenant improvements has completed their 100% design development set has submitted that to the city for review. And unfortunately, we received notice that we did not receive round one funding for the state library grant opportunity, but we are looking to apply for the second round funding. They have awarded about 50% of the available budget for those grant opportunities. So a brief overview of some of the highlights from the arborist report because I know there's been a lot of interest in this. Nine of the 12 trees on the site are classified as heritage trees, meaning that at the specified diameter of 14 inches at a certain height in measurement that those trees would be considered heritage tree by classification. All 12 of those trees are non native and exhibit a very various components of detrimental conditions and are in conflict with the current construction footprint. So some of those conditions that were called out by the arborist are, you know, restricted growing areas, severe pruning, structural weakness, evidence of past failures, limb and stem decay, and unfortunately, you know, buried roof collars that may disguise additional root disease as well as additional decay. Of the 12, two trees were identified as viable for transplant. And only one of those is designated heritage, but relocation was not recommended for a couple of reasons, one of which the health conditions of the root structure is unknown and they may not survive transplanting. And secondly, after our city arborist had reviewed some of the information, she felt that we could get healthier trees at a lower cost option than transplanting the unhealthy trees on site. So part of the application process for the planning department, we will be required to submit a separate heritage tree removal permit application. And so that is going to be submitted in the near future and have a separate track process for requesting removal of those trees. The arborist report along with the addendum will be posted to the project website if people want to dive into the additional details which will be made available. So an update on the design. So some of these images at the beginning are just going to be kind of a refresher so that we can kind of walk you through the progress that we've made. So back in December of last year, we brought the conceptual design as it evolved through community engagement and feedback. And we landed on a conceptual design that kind of changed the programmatic footprint elements of the design of which you approved in December. And then we moved from this onto schematic design, which we brought some of these images to you back at our last update of the downtown library facade and the building as it's starting to evolve from concept to schematic. And now we've further progressed those designs and some of these updated renderings which include different architectural elements, more of a landscaping plan, color, and different features that are starting to become more predominant as we continue to evolve the design as a whole. This is just another image from a different advantage point along Cedar Street focusing on the library facade, but you can start to see that the elements of the housing are starting to become more apparent. So the update on the design as a whole, you know, right now the library gross area stands at 38,000 square feet with the rooftop patio adding an additional 3200 square feet of programmable space. So the library total square footage at this point is 41,309 square feet. The project contains bicycle parking of 258 bike locker locations or stands with a combination of enclosed lockers as well as racks, parking cell count of 243 spaces, a housing unit count of 124 units, a daycare slash play area that combined equals about 1,900 square feet and commercial space on the corner of 9,598. So this is a view of the landscaping elements that are starting to become more apparent. Currently we have 13 street trees identified on the perimeter of the building and a number of plantable areas and those continue on to the upper level that is kind of the entryway on the third floor to the residential unit as well as our, you know, nearly 9,000 square foot green roof over top of the library. There's another vantage point that kind of shows you that we have other plantable areas that can include smaller species of trees and shrubs as well as kind of a view of what the green roof might look like from the bird's eye view. And just a reminder, as it stands now, we have, you know, three levels of parking, five levels of housing on top in the adjacent library and commercial use space. The information is currently, you know, being updated on an ongoing basis to our project webpage and for those that aren't familiar with that, the short URL is CityofSantaCruise.com slash makes use library. We continue to update all of our information on the design set and anything that we are going to be posting there relative to the planning application is going to also be posted on that webpage. We gave a presentation to the community on September 21st and that slide deck is available now. We're expecting to compile some of the feedback as well as the video in questions and answers and just kind of post all of that feedback available to the public by the end of this week. And the planning application documentation will also be posted there for public review and input. A general overview of the community feedback received at our community meeting. The meeting consisted of planning staff, project staff, our affordable housing partner, and their architect team. We had approximately 65 participants. It was a webinar format with a Q&A. We had 46 plus responses to eight survey questions. A majority of those responses were positive. And then we facilitated question and answer for about 45 minutes, which was about half the time we allotted for this meeting. And unfortunately had to, you know, stop it towards the end, but we plan on posting any questions we didn't answer. We'll respond to and make sure that they're available for those that didn't have their questions answered. Those questions ranged out a variety of topics. A lot of people were interested in the housing components and specific things around rent, childcare, the library, parking count, bicycle parking. It was definitely a spectrum of questions that we answered. These were the survey questions that we asked. I'm not going to read them verbatim just for the sake of making sure that we have enough time today to get to your questions and answers, but to give you kind of an idea of some of the topics that we covered. And there's a quick overview of, you know, some of the feedback that we received. So when we asked what aspect of the project are you most excited about, you know, a majority of the responses focused on housing and library. And there was a few highlights of some of the direct feedback that we received from the participants that attended. When we kind of summed it up in yes or no, like does the design meet your expectations? We had 34 that said yes and or exceeded 13 that said no, that we were not meeting their expectations in one person that was unsure. And now I'm going to turn it over to Bonnie Lipscomb to kind of talk about the farmer's market and lead off the budget update. Hey, thanks, Brian. So next slide. So just to update you from May, we have been working regularly with the executive team from the farmer's market, Nate Dillon, as well as with his board over the summer to really bring a lot of the designs from 27, 2018 that we've been working with on lot seven, bring it up to 2022 and where the farmer's market is currently, what their goals are for permanence long term. And we have been working throughout, you know, late spring, early summer on designs. We're at the point where we're close to a final design for lot seven. And at the same time, we've been working on a farmer's market memorandum of understanding and some of the main objectives for the MOU with the farmer's market is for permanence for the farmer's market. So a permanent location and structure improves site and enhance community space over what they have currently. They also are really looking at year round off operation. So not to be impacted by rainy weather, implement weather, as well as an expansion of what they currently offer. And so they're looking at special food trucks, special community events, potentially even increasing the farmer's market to twice a week. So really looking at how can we truly make this a community gathering space more than just one afternoon, one Wednesday afternoon each week. So we have this outlined in an MOU. We currently also have City Council, you have approved 1.775 million, 1.2 from a previous budget year, an additional 500,000 this year that is budgeted for farmer's market for permanent, some phase one improvements. And we're specifically looking at lot seven based on our current communications with the farmer's market board. So the proposal next slide is the MOU has been reviewed by the farmer's market board. We have had a presentation on the design and layout. You can see just some excerpts here of some of the recent work that we've done with the farmer's market and with the board that was presented to them in August, this August. We've received feedback on both the design and working on the finalized design right now, as well as have the final comments on the MOU. We are anticipating hopefully it'll be next week, if not next week the week after that the farmer's market will be voting on the MOU with the feedback that we've received. So we really have made a lot of progress and we'll bring that forward to you after it goes to the farmer's market board. We'll come back to the City Council for your consideration of that memorandum of understanding. Also want to give you just some brief budget updates since May. And so we're not going to go into it. May we went, we did a pretty big deep dive into the library budget breakdown of the various elements, the design, tenant improvements over the overall budget comparison to the renovation budget. What we're going to do today is just update you on some of the recent updates both per the project elements. So specifically on, thank you, on housing and then I'll turn it back to Brian to talk a little bit about parking and the library itself. So updates since May, specifically what we have secured to date. And when I say we, this is specifically our overall team, but this is largely public city secured funding. The local housing trust fund, we have 3.6 million secured specifically for this project for affordable housing. We also have a permanent local housing allocation of 1.55 secured for this project. Specifically at this location, we have 2 million secured a congressional earmark, thanks to Congressman Panetta. And that's both for the housing and the library components of the project. And then additionally through Eden, one of the developer teams, we do have a grant from Central Coast Community Energy for the net zero elements of the project for 240,000. So secured to date is over 7 million, seven, basically 7.4 million specifically for the housing, a little overlap between the housing and the library on the earmark to be secured. And I just wanted to just take a second to pause on where we are with the fact that we have over 7 million secured, secured for housing at this point in the project. And when I say this point in the project, we have just submitted, you know, this month, the formal application for the project. So to already have 7 million secured in funding sources for housing is pretty unusual. It's very early for that. For what you see under to be secured, the developer, once they have entitlements, so once City Council, when you get this project, hopefully in December before you, once you grant and approve the overall project, the developer is then able to apply for the majority of funding that you really pulled together for the various funding sources for affordable housing development. And so we've been working really closely with Eden and for the future and sure that we're lining up to apply in January, February next year for the supernova application. Following that, we'll be able to apply for tax credits. We're anticipating approximate and conventional perm loan for another 78 million and then affordable housing program funds will really round out the whole picture for the affordable housing funding that will be secured for this project. And next slide. And when we look at the housing, in order to apply for a lot of those, we had to early on and Eden really put this together is look at that the unit count, the unit mix and the affordability mix. And some of our goals as the city and our affordable housing team is to make sure that we as a city and as a public entity are providing the greatest need and the hardest hardest to build in the community. That's really where you want to focus the majority of your dollars and you're leveraging for affordable housing. So we are really focusing on 30 to 50 percent for the majority of our focus of area median income and a few units at 60 percent AMI, but we're not focusing at what's considered low income, which is 80 percent of area median income. We're going lower because those are the most expensive units to build. Therefore, we really want to leverage our affordable dollars in that area. So that 7 million 7.4 that I went on the previous slide is really being leveraged to create these units in the project. And the breakdown is just before you 31 three bedroom units, 31 two bedroom, 48 one bedroom, 13 studios and one two bedroom managers unit. And we've had a lot of just questions and follow up recently about, well, what does that mean? It's pretty complicated when you start talking about 30 percent to 60 percent of AMI. So I just put in there what that range is. And this does does change each year based on the state level from housing and community development. They print out and we can go through forward and really go take a deeper dive of this at a future meeting. I think we're going to focus on a housing topic and we can go into the formula of how these are determined each year, what these ranges are and what you need to qualify. But basically, in order to be eligible to come into our 27 of these units that are reserved for those making 30 percent of area median income, it ranges between a sort of a studio or one person income of earning roughly 32,000 a year up to a three bedroom unit, which assumes, you know, to two, you know, sort of wage earners potentially up to 46,000 a year. So that's what you would need to be eligible for one of the 30 percent AMI units. So that's an update on the housing. And I will turn it over to Brian to give you an update on the budgets as far as parking in the library. Thank you. So this slide might look familiar to those that were involved with some of the previous meetings. But basically, the parking budget has been shuffling as the design changes. And so right now this parking financing kind of overview is based on the current design that is in the application. And so that consists of 243 parking spaces. Some previous discussions we have presented design concepts that had higher parking count. But at this point, we have three levels of parking in 243 parking spaces as we began to shuffle things around to accommodate needs for fire in the alley. And as we carved out mechanical components and other elements related to infrastructure that was needed. And so at this point, we've estimated that that service would be about 1.1 million annually. And the amount of financing that we would need for the parking component would be about 14.5 million, which is reduced based on the space count. We still have to determine the best financing options as we get closer to having to secure this financing, which we won't do until we're further along and have entitlements and are starting to look at a realistic construction schedule. We don't want to have funding secured too early and have to start paying debt service on money that we have in still the facility that helps support that debt service. And so the timing of that is still kind of down the road at this point. There are a couple of different options. You know, the parking district has the ability to do district bonds, but there's also some direct loan lenders that have worked with government entities that we've been in discussions with. The funding will be secured at a later date, but these are the updated estimates of what we would expect. When it comes to the debt service, it's important to remind I think everyone that there's still been some confusion about like, how does this funding evolve? And it's a combination of the facility itself will produce revenues as well as the parking district as a whole has always supported debt service for the parking district. And so those two revenue streams combined will give us the ability to meet the annual debt service. And we're updating all of our financial modeling that we used to prove this concept back in 2018 with an outside firm because we've had impacts related to COVID. We've done things to impact revenues by providing temporary release to businesses and waiving fees. A number of different things have factored in since that last revisit of the financial model. And so those inputs are being updated now to be vetted by a third party to help, you know, bring any decision making that might need to happen on project design back to the back to the council for consideration. And so we're expecting to have that work done over the next several weeks with that happening prior to having action on the entitlement process in December. On the libraries, the library design has moved a little bit further ahead than the overall building envelope. And so at this point, we already have 100% design development TI sets for the design because that process has a longer lead time to get through the community input on collections and, you know, working with the library staff and all the elements that affect the library footprint. So like the overall building envelope is dialed in, but there was a lot of moving parts that affected the timing that we needed to keep working ahead on the library design. So at each interval that we receive any designs that we get a new cost estimate. And so now we've received in the last couple weeks, a new base estimate that has brought the cost down at $625,000 from the base estimate that we had at the previous schematic design set. And when we add the alternatives, there's an additional savings. So we're down to base and alternatives being just over $24 million and reduced $830,000 from the last estimate that received. A number of the design changes that are affecting this change in cost is related to us bringing the building height down to meet the 50 foot maximum on the Cedar Street side. And so there's been some movement on the floor height that has had cost savings on material use as the cost estimate has been produced. So that's one of the things that's helping drive down, you know, as we further design and more known as known, we'll continue to fine tune and look for ways for cost savings on material use. So the next update is on project schedule. So right now we're still in design development phase because we just received that 100% design set to review as the city will provide feedback to the architect team working on the PIs for the library. And then we've started the entitlement process for the overall project of building envelope to move forward. And so those are the two phases that we're predominantly focused on. Post entitlement will be additional design work on the overall building envelope and they'll be transitioning from design development into construction documents across the board so that we can meet our construction schedule. And so this is kind of an extended view of kind of, we're still in this year end phase of design and engineering and we won't be pivoting to construction until 2024. The next steps. So the project design application planning process is starting to materialize as we have the formal applications submitted this month. We're targeting a December council meeting for those entitlements to be approved. And then we would begin the next design phases as we hit different benchmarks in the entitlement process. The finalizing of the farmers market MOU which we're expecting to happen next month. And the finalizing of the farmers market design at lot seven. We anticipate having a second project community meeting as part of the entitlement process and we're targeting from time in November prior to it going to the planning commission and before it comes back to council for action. And then of course, the reason we're targeting that December meeting is we're hoping to apply for housing funding in January of 2023. And with that, we will take any questions that you might have that we might have answers for. Thank you for that update. Let's see. I'll take it out for any council members who have questions on that quarterly update. Council member, council member Brown and then council member Myers. Thanks. So thank you for the update. Lots of lots to chew on there. I wanted to ask if I could follow up on the parking piece of this because I feel like I'm hearing some different information about the financial position of the parking district and what that means for the potential to either bond or take the alternative file. Sorry. So are we is the city in a position right now to finance the parking portion? I, you know, I clear colloquially did talk about this at our meeting last Thursday, but I'm still trying to understand where we're at in terms of the potential to finance the parking piece. So if we were to, for example, be ready to move forward now or sometime in the very near future, could we, you're confident that the city could finance in that, in that fashion, in that manner? And why are we confident of that, given that we don't have updated financial model? Yes. So I think like the purpose of the financial model is just to prove our assumptions and have them third party vetted and also take into consideration the unknowns that we might experience like interest rate changes, you know, how do we approach finance, the financial structure in a way that is most beneficial and most efficient for a project. So at this time, yes, we still believe we have the resources and the district is the one that has the ability to bond for its projects and supply projects. It's historically been able to do that in a specific existence. And so we believe because we're kind of coming out of COVID that the revenues have rebounded in such a way where we're getting rid of some of our temporary reductions and fees, we're unwinding some of our temporary measures, and we've eaten up some of our cash, our flexible cash reserves to do that. But as a whole, we do believe that we're on solid ground when it comes to the parking district. And we have that for a consistent period of time. But as we go out to get competitive interest rates and bond rates and make a determined nation on how we want the structure of the financing, because there is different path forward, that we will have not only a project that's viable, but one that is competitive with getting secured lower interest rates. Thank you. I have a couple of other questions if I could just get through those. So one of the reasons that I wanted to ask specifically about parking, because I'm curious about the, there's a lot of pieces to this and there's a lot of different funding sources and the timing and sequencing of how and when we get money matters for these different components. And so just trying to think about what we need to have in place in order to demonstrate what I believe is commonly called shovel readiness to be able to go after some of those additional funding sources. And I'm thinking now about the housing piece. And so I appreciate how you've laid out what we have and what the possibilities for additional funding are in collaboration with our partners. But I'm wondering if, I did hear and you noted in the presentation today that we did not, we were not successful in the last round of funding on the, I remember what the pot of money is called, but the library. And so I'm wondering if you received comments or if you're, we're applying again and there's a suggestion or it's been stated that we are going to do, we're going to go for the next round. Did you get comments where there are ways that this or what are we doing to make that more competitive, I guess, try to get that funding? And did you get comments about why we weren't funded in this round? Were there big areas that or anything like that? I'm just curious because I want to make sure we're going after money that we're competitive for. Yeah, I think I can start on a couple components and maybe have Bonnie answer some of the housing components. But from a, from an overall project schedule, we, we will really start to shore up the financing post entitlement in part because that's when the housing funding becomes available for us to apply and we have an approved project. And the same is true. We don't want to be too far ahead of when we're starting construction or have too much flexibility in trying to borrow more than we need for construction of the parking garage. And so like in some ways that that really is our next big benchmark to get passed that will help us start dialing in securing the financing and applying for the funding for the housing, you know, starting the process of determining which the financial tool that's best fit for the parking component, as well as, you know, just shoring up, you know, where do we have potential gaps that need to be identified? And what other grant opportunities are there that we could be competitive for now that we have an approved project? I think that's the next big hurdle for us to get through from a project standpoint of giving more certainty around the financial models. And in the meantime, we're doing all our due diligence to make sure that we are trying to be ahead of that by working out, you know, those inputs and having them that is through, you know, our economic firm that we've worked with in the past that has proven, you know, to help us determine that we can afford, you know, the parking component and that we have a viable plan. And so I think that unless Bonnie has additional things to add, I think that's our big benchmark that will really open up the door for us to be more competitive in applying for the financial component. Thanks, Brian. I would just add to that that we do have a million dollars set aside for this project specifically related to parking elements from previous development. So to development, developer contributions of 500,000 a piece for future parking related to this project and future parking capacity. So we have ample funding to continue, you know, for the next, you know, I'd say year plus or more with that funding set aside for this project related to parking to make sure the parking is paying its fair share. And, you know, as Brian mentioned, you know, we're looking to come before you hopefully in the December timeframe regarding entitlements for the project. But the anticipated need to actually start having secured bonds is not until, you know, much later in 2023, if even in 2023, it could even go into 2024. So based on the parking fund now, and the fact that we're really looking to secure parking revenue bonds, so they're based on, you know, our future revenue. So users that come and park in the parking structure, you know, will be basically providing the future revenue to pay the parking fund. So from that perspective, and looking at the city's bond rating, the health of the fund over time, we don't believe in and feedback that we've received from our financial consultants is that we're not going to have any trouble securing the financing we need on the parking side for the project. So I want to say that now we'll come back to you with updated models when we have that, but we don't have any indication that the feedback from the pandemic is going to ultimately impact our ability to secure financing for the parking. So I think that's something we'll continue to, in our quarterly updates or sooner as needed, we'll come to council and provide more information to you on that front. Thank you. Thank you. One last question. So in terms of the, I think about cost escalation, I know we all do, and, you know, we talked about that a lot and being on the library committee, we did get some really detailed financial information about the specific components to get us a cost estimate for, you know, and it was fascinating and, you know, it was really helpful to be able to see that information. It was the financial work that Mac Five did as part of that study with Jason Architects. And we don't really have, I mean, I'm trying to get a sense of what something comparable would be to try to think through the costs for this, you know, we have a big number and we have some designs and just thinking about what the actual costs are going to be and then also trying to factor in cost escalation. I know you do that in planning, but we obviously have had some pretty significant inflationary years here. And so I'm wondering if we're going to get any additional more detailed cost information and if we can get, I'd love to have a better understanding of what you're seeing in terms of the costs that we're estimating now versus when building actually begins. And I guess I would respond first with the cost estimations that we're bringing doing consider cost inflation and cost escalation. And so those numbers that we're bringing you do factor that in as a future based on our construction timeline so that a future start date. And that has been one of the drivers of some of the numbers changing that we've been bringing back to you is that it has impacted those base costs. As the design furthers, we're offsetting that by, you know, with material changes and space count changes and things that are also bringing the cost down. So the numbers that we are bringing to you are what we're expecting to have to spend at the time of construction and not excluding those numbers at this point. And I would just add to that just to further, you know, sort of clarify your questions about, will we get more updates? You know, as Brian really went over earlier, you know, taking it from 50, 50% DD to 100% actually ultimately resulted in a reduction over all of our TI costs. So we are getting updated at real information as we move forward on each, each element, each step in the project and we'll continue to do that and revise the numbers. As we get to each subsequent phase in the project, we will have a new cost estimate, you know, for the various elements. And then ultimately, when we get to, you know, construction drawings, and then, you know, if we move forward in the project, we'll be able to go out to bid and then we'll have an actual, you know, construction edge, you know, estimate and bid for the overall project. So we'll continue to come forward at key milestones with financial information about the project and the project elements. Thank you. And I was very pleased to see the decrease there. It's very unusual. So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Meyer and then Council Member Cummings. Council Member Brown asked some of my questions. So I think I'm just down to one or two. So yeah, I guess I had a couple real quick questions. One question remaining about the parking, the parking district and the sort of financial solvency. So, you know, some of that, obviously that revenue loss was related to the city actually pretty much stopping parking fees during COVID. So folks, you know, wouldn't be hit with those. So I think it's important for the public to understand that, you know, when you see that drop in the revenues on our parking district, you know, a lot of that had to do with the fact that we just, we just didn't require people to pay to park anymore for during COVID a lot. So, but it, you know, again, seeing that we're just building replacement parking, we're not building new parking in that parking garage, but we are consolidating it into that structure. I mean, I'm pleasantly surprised to see that, you know, our payback, you know, annual cost is only a million dollars. That's really not much or 1.1 million. So I'm glad to see these numbers. I'm shocked by the numbers that you've presented today. And I know that there's, it's always hard to estimate on construction, but I think there's, you know, a lot, kind of a little bit of misinformation about our possible success on this project and the numbers you're showing me today are really encouraging. So, Brian, I understood that you did, what was the percent escalation figure you used for the cost? Was it 10%, 20% percent? I haven't fully, but we just got the 100% design development cost estimation, like the end of last week. So I haven't gone over that in full detail, but we could provide that answer to you, like the exact numbers that they're using for their cost escalation. I know we have that available. That would be good to know just because, you know, if they're using like a 20% escalation, that, you know, I feel like that gives us some pretty solid coverage. But if they're using like a 10 or 15, it's pretty standard, I think nowadays to 20. But I'd be just curious to know what that is, because I know construction costs are all over the map right now. So, yeah, but I could follow up with you on an email on that, but really encouraging numbers. And so thank you for the presentation. Thank you. Councilmember Cummings. Thanks for that presentation. I'll try to keep my question short. The one question that I've been hearing people bring up is, you know, we've talked about funding for library, parking, the housing, but the commercial space and the childcare. I'm just wondering, is that funding coming out of the funding for the library or where the funding is coming from to incorporate those pieces into this project? So the commercial actually project, so what one of the things we're doing is we are, as part of the overall building envelope, is looking at what the cost or value of the existing commercial building is. And creating a condo within the project is one option for that value. And then any subsequent value for the space will be made up by the business owner if he's interested in securing that space. So that's something that will bring forward to you. We've been actively sort of working with the business owner about it really is right now an expansion, almost double the size of space that he has now. So there's real value created through the project. It's not a component of the library or any of the library share at all. It's a portion on the housing project footprint. And so looking at as part of what you can as far as land acquisition, it's part of that piece for the affordable housing. And it's actually underneath the affordable housing component of the project. On the childcare, that's something that is critically needed in all housing projects for housing, and particularly for affordable housing. So that's another element that actually helps in some of our funding applications for affordable housing, being able to secure some of that. So that's something that we've been working very closely with the developer on as we go forward. Great. That's helpful. The next question I had was on lot seven and the potential for the farmers market to move there. And that's obviously dependent upon the outcome of the measure O campaign. But I'm just curious because I was just looking at the timeline. And let's say, for example, this project continues to move through after November, when would we anticipate the construction on lot seven to take place to create those structures that were kind of outlined for shading, because it would seem to be that we'd want to have all that completed before any construction began on lot four. Because if it wasn't complete, then the farmers market really doesn't have anywhere to go. So I'm just wondering if you could speak to that in terms of the timeline, depending on the outcome of the November election. Thanks for asking that question. One of the options we're talking about with the farmers market, they're really interested in pursuing lot seven as a potential permanent home, but also potentially as an interim home. They want to really keep that option open if measure O does fail. And they can look forward to the current library site. So right now they want to keep both options open, which would mean that for lot four and the interim, we would resurface do some utilities grading, initial phase upgrades to make that parking lot a really great site for the farmers market, but we would stop short of doing the structure in that scenario and in that option. If farmers market moves after we resurface, repave, which could happen well within the next year because that scope is a much as a first phase is a much shorter, much smaller scope and very achievable, particularly within the budget funding that we have. They can decide, hey, we actually really like it here. I mean, that option is going to be theirs, whether they want to stay on lot seven or ultimately whether they want to focus on the current library site should that opportunity come forward in the future. Got it. So I guess with keeping that option open, then it's going to be a little bit of a challenge if they decide they want to stay on lot seven and then what happens while these structures get constructed. And specifically just to follow up on your question, do you mean the surrounding private development? No, on lot seven, if the the schematics of the city is kind of laid out, if that's not done prior to them moving to create that permanent space, if they decide they want lot seven as a permanent space, I guess the question would be like, where would they go in the interim while that construction takes place? Yeah, what we're looking at is potentially for the preliminary first phase is to go ahead and put some of the pilings of foundations that would support the permanent structure. It's just a matter of putting in those concrete footings initially when we're repaving a lot. And then the type of structure we've been looking at is more like a butler building. It's almost like a pre-babby put down. It's minimal disruption time because the concept for the farmers market is this great open air, tall ceilings with a community really gathering space as it adjoins Cathcart, so big open area. So I think it's achievable within the timeframe. And I think that what is that period? Can the farmers market locate depending on how big that building is on another portion of the lot expand into a couple of the streets while this structure is being put in place? I think probably so. But I think that the period for putting that down is certainly nowhere comparable to a ground up construction project like we're contemplating in some of the other areas. Great. And then last question. So when we were on the subcommittee and we met with folks from Public Works, there was initially like a real urge to try to keep the 600 parking spaces as part of the project. That was then reduced to 400. It's now reduced to 243, I think it was. And I think earlier on, the hope was that we could reduce it as great as possible. And there's a lot of pushback from city staff. And so I'm just kind of wondering why now is it coming down even further when back and when we were having these initial discussions, there's a lot of pushback for us to not reduce it past 600, let alone 400. Yeah, I think the concern is still there that we're not providing enough supply with this supply project. But I think the hope is that we can supply it in a financially sound way with the project that we have before us. Some of the changes are being steered by things like fire access for the alleyway and ensuring that we can maintain the footprint that we have for the commercial, the childcare and the library. I think if we could build a 600 space parking facility, it would be warranted from a supply and demand, but it may not be wanted from a project feasibility or from an aesthetic standpoint of like what we're trying to attempt to accomplish here. So I think the concern will continue to come up. We continue to fund transportation demand management programs. And we know that we need to get really aggressive with that regardless. And to this replacement parking is going to be meaningful for some of the existing projects that are going up adjacent to it that aren't supplying parking on site. And we're going to have to consider some other long term investments in other supply areas. And that might mean being creative with doing things like automated systems within our existing facilities to expand capacity. You know, those are the options that we're looking at as we continue to look at that parking count. And we're trying to hold it as best as possible. We also initially looked at the pre-application and included an underground component to expand parking capacity, just so that we could flush out if there is any challenges from the planning department on that. And that is something that we might be able to consider as we do our financial modeling and bring back to you for direction if we want to try to expand capacity beyond the 248 spaces. Thank you. That's helpful. But just because I'm trying to understand, you know, how there was like this urgency of like, don't reduce it past 600. And now, you know, we're down. We're able to make it work with less. I think, you know, a lot of people appreciate, but it was just really trying to get an understanding of kind of why there was that shift. So thank you. And just to, just to add to that, I mean, as we get further into design, I mean, I think the realities of the project on our overall objectives for the project really come into play. And so when you're balancing, oh, we can get, you know, a whole other floor of housing units here, that that's a priority that overweighs at least I'm going to say from my perspective, you know, overall on the on the project, that doesn't mean as a city that we don't have a real need for parking. We do. But when you're looking at this envelope, I think there's decision points. And so Brian is sort of alluding to, we wanted to just technically see, you know, are there any building challenges? Are there any, you know, just we all know the water table is really high in the downtown. Could you even consider going underground? You know, right now, we're not proposing that. But that is something after you look at the updated parking numbers. I know that, you know, Claire and public works and Brian, they've all been sort of, you know, meeting regularly to sort of look at the as development goes forward in the downtown and new projects and more housing units are built, you know, that parking number and that deficit overall is increasing. So I think it's, you know, it's going to be a really important decision point, I think for you as a council to really look at and provide some direction to staff, ultimately, what you want in this project, you know, what you want overall in the whole parking district downtown, because with the development, you know, that's proposed and in many cases already underway as you're seeing that really does change the future of parking and what we're providing downtown. So as it relates to this project, you know, we're making our best recommendations on the overall objectives and goals of what, you know, we really feel like we've been directed to include, but also feel like it's the best for the project as we move forward, but there will definitely be decision points for you coming up. Great. Thank you. And I would add, I would add one more thing with Claire, the lovely just presented a supply and demand update on the pipeline projects of the downtown commission this month. And we can share that to the council members that presentation because it highlights, you know, the position of public works and the need. We still believe it's there. And I don't know that we're going to achieve, you know, satisfying all the replacement parking that's required with with the new pipeline numbers being updated. And so I think that would be beneficial to pass along to the council members as well. Thank you. Do any other council members have questions on this presentation? Council member Myers. Thank you for all the detail, detail answers. Bonnie, I just want to make sure I understood just a little bit more on the sort of where the farmers market is. So my understanding is that lot seven potentially could be temporary, but it could be several years. I would assume mostly because, you know, when we build a library over on lot four, that then gives us a planning period to work to look at what we could do over here on the existing library site. And I know at one point, I think that that the farmers market did did sort of indicate that, you know, this is a one, this would be a wonderful place for them to be because of that concept of being able to tie it into city hall and the civic and some of the other uses around here, as well as again, additional housing on this site. So when you say they may they're kind of temporarily interested, but they may want the option. So during that period of that planning process that we would do for the existing library site basically is where the farmers market would re engage at that period. Is that correct? I mean, you know, if things go forward and that opportunity site of the existing library is available, you know, the study that we did, oh gosh, I want to say the summer before last, you know, identified and ultimately council approved, you know, a affordable housing, civic sort of commons potential farmers market for and other civic uses for the existing library site. So we would move forward on that process, but we could start some of that planning earlier than when the library is relocated to their new home, but we can't get too far ahead of that. Ultimately, the farmers market on lot seven would be there at a minimum, I would say for five years, you know, because you have to both do the planning and then you have to build the new project and create the new home for them. So yeah, as a temporary area, I would guess more appropriately an interim site would be lot seven with the option to either stay on let seven or five, five to six years down the road, move to a new sort of civic center, you know, opportunity that would be built in and planned in the, you know, in the, you know, forthcoming next few years. And I don't want to obligate the city into the future too much, but I mean, with the number of housing units that are going to go up right around lot seven, you know, on other projects, you know, there's a, there's a built in built in a buyer base right, right next door, literally. So people aren't going to need to drive to downtown, they're going to be living downtown and they can walk right next door to the farmers market. So I would imagine that gives them some really nice long-term, you know, opportunities to become a major, a major part of downtown, which is pretty exciting. That's right. And I, and, you know, I think also when you look at two of those, they're both private projects across the street from lot seven, you know, there's close, I think, 400 units between those two projects that includes largely market rate, but they included some inclusionary housing as well. You know, the one, the Southern project or the more Southern project of the two has a 60-foot public Paseo that connects up to the Riverwalk that also aligns with Cathcart Street. So there's some real synergy there with what you can do in sort of public spaces and community gathering spaces that I think are going to be really exciting, really being able to maximize and work with some of the public elements and even some of our grant funding that we have for the public infrastructures that connects to the Riverwalk. So I think there's some real opportunities ahead for creating some very vibrant public and community spaces that can really tie into the farmer's market. Thanks again for the update. Very exciting. Thank you. All right. It looks like that concludes questions from council. We will now move on to our next presentation. Thank you so much, Brian Borgino and Bonnie Lipscomb. We will now move on to agenda item 7, Unified Animal Model Ordinance Update. And I'd like to welcome Erica Smart, Interim General Manager Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter. Welcome. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us today. My name is Erica Smart and as was just stated, I am the Interim General Manager of the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter. And with me today is Field Services Manager Officer Todd Stosie. We're going to present to you the new Animal Services Unified Ordinance for your consideration along with our agency's recommendation for it to be ultimately adopted by the City of Santa Cruz. While I have not been a part of this process, as I've only been in this interim role since July, I know that for many years leading up to this moment, our prior Shelter Director Melanie Sobel, as well as Officer Stosie, have been working tirelessly on the information that you're going to learn today. And I know that Officer Stosie has put a ton of work into this, so I'm really excited for him to get to share this with you. His work on this project ultimately did get this ordinance passed with our Animal Services GPA Board, which consists of representatives from every jurisdiction in our county, as well as the county Board of Supervisors. Ultimately, this ordinance is important for our community as it does create a uniform and consistent regulatory enforcement and appeal process throughout the entire county. And this is going to result in less confusion and inefficiencies for both our animal control officers, shelter staff, and then, of course, the general public. Currently, each jurisdiction does have its own separate code provisions for regulating animals and all these different ordinances for animal services. And similarly, situated jurisdictions just causes confusion. And ultimately, we're looking for consistency and uniformity throughout the county. So with that being said, thank you so much for your consideration on this matter. I'm going to turn it over to Officer Stosie, who's going to share a presentation with you. Thank you very much. I apologize that we couldn't be there in person today. It was our intention. I definitely like to meet people in person and not do things over Zoom, but I ended up going to work today and getting very sick. And so I'm at home right now. So we ended up having to do it this way. Because I am at home, I don't have my normal county equipment that I have. So I am unable to bring up the presentation on my iPad. So I'm hoping, Bonnie, that you were able to bring it up so that we can move it forward. Yes, one moment. Thank you. Here we go. Thank you. So as Erica had mentioned, and I should backtrack a little bit, I've been employed with the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter for the past 19 years, serving all the beautiful cities in our jurisdiction as well as the county. It's unfortunate that I haven't met any of you before today, but I have worked in your city for the past 19 years, regulating animal ordinances, everything from bite investigations to cruelty and neglect to just basic leash law. As Erica mentioned, the current ordinances throughout the county are very dramatically. What happens in one jurisdiction is different in another jurisdiction. Some jurisdictions have, the animals have more rights, and some jurisdictions that humans have more rights. And it's just very confusing for those officers and for the public to have an understanding of where they stand and what we can actually do to help protect the community, as well as help protect the needs of animals in our community. So if you can advance the slide. So as Erica did mention, we do have our member jurisdictions. We are JPA. This model ordinance that we did put together over the past four or five years was ultimately approved by the county board of supervisors in approximately January this year, I believe. We are now enforcing the model ordinance within the county of Santa Cruz, and it has proven to be very effective, particularly in our dangerous and potentially dangerous animal situations. It's much more streamlined, provides our officers in the county much more streamlined requirements for animal owners to keep those animals, as well as to keep the community safe. Our other jurisdictions are the city of Capitola, city of Santa Cruz, city of Scotts Valley, and city of Watsonville. And currently the ordinances in each one of those jurisdictions do vary very, very widely from each other. In particular, the city of Watsonville is missing probably about 10 to 15 ordinances that all the other jurisdictions have. So if a dog kills a cat in the city of Watsonville, there actually is no crime against that under their current city of Watsonville law, which is why we're hopefully going to be presenting them in the near future. Next, please. Again, and as mentioned, it does create a uniform and consistent regulatory enforcement and appeal process throughout the county. Currently right now, if prior to the ordinance passing in the county, if someone did appeal a dangerous or vicious dog case, it was heard in front of what was called the nuisance abatement commission. As part of creating this new model ordinance, we did dissolve the nuisance abatement commission. And anyone who appeals a vicious or dangerous dog case now or vicious dangerous animal case is heard by an independent hearing officer. And it's made it much easier to schedule those. It's made it much less, the previous nuisance abatement commission had 45 days to hold a hearing to get the five or six panel members together, sometimes resulting in dogs sitting in cages at the shelter for up to 45 days, which was not in the best interest of that animal. So now we can get these hearings held pretty quickly, usually within four or five days of the appeal process. Within the city of Santa Cruz right now, the appeal process is heard through the city manager's office who does hire a independent hearing officer as well. If we were able to pass this process within the city of Santa Cruz, we would be looking at basically using the same hearing officers. In the city of Capitola, those hearings are heard by the Capitola city council, which is very confusing. And then in Scotts Valley and city of Watsonville, those hearings are heard by the chief of police. So it's very, very different in each community. And this would really help streamline that throughout the county. Most importantly, again, I've been here 19 years and I still get confused by the inefficiencies within the various ordinances. I still get confused when I'm standing at Watsonville, what I can do, when I'm standing in the city of Santa Cruz, what I can do, and this ordinance would really make it so that myself, other officers and new hires had a true understanding of what we could enforce and the public would have that knowledge as well. Next. So for getting this passed within the county, obviously the county has a very different demographic than the city of Santa Cruz. We did a lot of outreach with a lot of farm folks. We met with the director of the board of the California Rodeo several times. We met with the Watsonville fairgrounds CEO and board on a number of occasions. We also did meet with Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, both individually and then as a group. And then we also met, you know, we did a lot of public outreach. You folks on the city of Santa Cruz board probably don't know me very well, but I'm very community oriented. I'm very big into community policing. I'm very big into understanding what the community wants so that I know how to serve them. And so in drafting this ordinance within the county and working with a lot of livestock, a lot of cows, horses, I live in Live Oak. I don't, you know, I'm not a farm boy. And so I really wanted to understand what these laws I was creating did to affect folks who had these animals. And so we met on a number of times with the Farm Bureau, the Horsens Association, the Livestock Association, 4-H Club as well as FFA, and as well as a group called the Santa Cruz County Coalition of Family Farms and Homestips. And through those community meetings and meeting with various people, we were able to change quite a few things we had in there, getting an understanding of what it was the community wanted from us. And one of our goals within the city of Santa Cruz is to do the same, same with the other member jurisdictions is to meet with the various demographics of each of the jurisdictions and find out what it is the community wants from us and how we can serve them and making sure that our ordinances don't misalign with some basic, you know, things that people want in that community. Next. So some of the main general provisions that we did change within the county is under Chapter 6.04, which is the general provisions. One of the big things we wanted to add was interference with an animal control officer and their performance of their duties. Animal control officers are kind of a weird hybrid of law enforcement. Under California Code, we do have all the rights of a peace officer while we are working. We do have the power of arrest and we do have the power to write and serve search warrants. However, under Penal Code 148, which is resisting arrest, we have found that sometimes a DA will prosecute that. Sometimes a DA will not because of our weird hybrid status that we have. So we felt it important to add this provision in there so that our officers are safe. Our officers do on a daily basis interact with a lot of the community and our officers are not armed. Again, we do have the power of arrest and the power of writing citations, but we don't have the full protections of most peace officers. We wanted to make sure that we were protected if we did come into some situation which does happen out there. We added in staking out or tying out an animal. Under California state law, there is a provision in regards to tethering animals, making it illegal. That particular law was written into state law because of a health and safety issue in regards to animals, particularly male intact animals who are tied up or more prone to bite. The particular code was written after a young boy was killed down in Southern California by a family dog that was tethered and intact. So the law really focuses more on the safety of humans, which is great, but we wanted to make sure that the safety of the animals was also tied into our ordinance. So we added general provisions in there that if you are going to use a trolley system or a runner system, which is legal under California law, that that animal be put on a harness as opposed to a collar. In my career doing this, I've seen many animals that have choked themselves out, died, have not been able to get water appropriately. So we added quite a few provisions in the county code that just strengthen the state health and safety code to protect animals. We did add a provision about keeping animals with communicable diseases. Particularly now, we are definitely seeing a very high uptick of even influenza, particularly in the Bay Area. Santa Cruz has just been added to that list. The waterfowl population, geese, and I don't know if you're aware of this, but the lake, and I'm forgetting the name of the lake, but it's up off of high streets. City of Santa Cruz on the Upper West Side. We did work closely with Fish and Wildlife recently regarding a goose with avian influenza. And now that that is in our community, we want to make sure that if that particular disease or other diseases start infecting the animal population, that we can regulate it so that those animals don't continue to infect other animals. And with avian influenza, it is very communicable to chickens, which raises an alarming red flag with a number of backyard chickens that are particularly in the city of Santa Cruz, making sure that we don't spread a disease if we don't have to. We also added a section about maintenance of foul goats, rabbits, and guinea pigs. Currently, under all the city and county ordinances, there really is no regulation on how to maintain those animals. And so we wanted to put something together that people who decided to have a backyard flock of chickens or wanted to get a goat, wanted to have a rabbit or guinea pig knew exactly what they needed to do to care for that animal, knew what those, understand what those animals' needs are so that the animals do get the proper care when they are put in people's backyards or in people's homes. And then we did also add spare neutering of adopted animals to ensure that any animal that's adopted out by any organization within the county does have to spare neuter them to keep down the companion animal over population crisis. As you may or may not be aware, we are the county's only open door admission shelter, which means we take in any animal day or night, no questions asked, which doesn't unfortunately mean we do have to euthanize some animals for sickness, for aggression, and by making sure that any organization out there is adopting out animals, that their spare neutering them is going to help us alleviate that problem. Next. As far as licensing goes, we did currently in all jurisdictions, dogs are required to be licensed through our agency. But we decided to really look at expanding that. And a big one for me, I've been involved in a number of cock fighting cases in my career, taking down a lot of folks. I currently know where a lot of people are breeding fighting roosters for cock fighting. But the cock fighters have gotten very smart over the years, and they've learned not to keep their paraphernalia with their fighting cock. So if we get a search warrant now, a lot of these large facilities, we're not going to find anything but roosters, which is not a crime in the state of California. So to try and help us with that, we decided to add a licensing section for folks who have a certain number of roosters per acre. If I'm not mistaken, you can have two roosters on a half an acre property, four roosters on a acre property, and then it kind of moves up and allows a maximum of 10 roosters. When we originally started this particular section, it was called the rooster facility license. And in speaking with all the community groups we met with, they really wanted to understand why we were targeting roosters and then talking to them about cock fighting, we got the understanding that just banning roosters wasn't the way to go. That a lot of people who do have roosters in their flocks are not fighting those birds, that they're there to fertilize the eggs. And so we added the facility license and changed it to male old English game, male game bird, or male game cock facility. That way we would target the specific breeds that were being utilized in cock fighting. And within the city of Santa Cruz, there are definitely cock fighting happening. I don't think a lot of people are aware of it. Most people think it's in different sections of the county, but it does occur within the city as well. We also added under licensing non-commercial rabbits to the microchip section. Currently under all the member jurisdictions besides the city of Scotts Valley, all dogs and cats are required to be microchipped. And the advantage of this is really getting animals home quicker. All of our officers carry microchip scanners in their vehicles. When they scan an animal and has a microchip, we run that microchip and if we have an owner attached to it, we drive that animal home. The animal number never comes to the shelter. And we felt that getting rabbits microchipped, because rabbits are actually a very highly owned pet within the county of Santa Cruz and our member jurisdictions, and we do pick up rabbits straight quite frequently. Getting the microchip would get them home a lot quicker as well. The reason you see the word non-commercial rabbits there is in speaking with a lot of farm groups, there's a rabbit breeder down in the Watsonville area, the county section of Watsonville, who does breed rabbits for consumption. And he felt that he did not want to have to microchip all of his rabbits if he was breeding for consumption. And so we brewed with that and said, you know, this truly is an ordinance that we're creating to get pet rabbits home. And so we'll add that term non-commercial to it. In addition to the county code chapter 6.10, we did amend mandatory spay neutering for non-commercial rabbits. Again, the same thing there, which is adding non-commercial to make sure that pet rabbits are spayed and neutered. And then we did, what we found to be very important is adding a requirement on the care for all cats. There is a big movement within the state of California right now that a lot of animal shelters are one no longer accepting cats. Because state law does not require them to take in cats, they're just turning cats away. We as an open-door admission shelter, leaving the philosophy that all animals are equal, and so we still take in cats. In addition, what's happening in a lot of places in California is agencies are doing what they're calling feral freedom, where they're taking an animal, taking cats, feral cats, domestic cats, any cat they can get their hands on, spaying and neutering them and then just putting them back where they found them. And we don't feel that's right. We feel that that is abandonment under state law. We feel that cats should have the same protections as dogs. And so if someone wants to start a feral cat colony, we are not opposed to that. We actually would encourage people to have a feral cat colony. But with that, there are some responsibilities that come with it. If that cat does get sick or injured, the person should be required to take that animal to get vet care. You know, if that animal gets feline leukemia, it's probably the best interest that that animal then be moved indoors for the rest of its life and or be euthanized due to the severity of the spread of that disease to other animals in the community. So we found it very important to add that clause. In my career here in Santa Cruz, I've seen a lot of people who do TNR that don't have any requirements and they call us say there's a sick or injured cat in their backyard. When we get there, they say, oh, yeah, I've been feeding that cat for five years, but now it's your problem. And then the county or the city is responsible for paying for the care of that cat or the euthanasia of that cat as opposed to the person who's been caring for them. So we just found that very important to put that one in. Next. We strengthened our animal control, what what our officers can do. Again, this is that tethering dog section I mentioned earlier. The safety requirements for animals in park motor vehicles. Currently under state law, it's an infraction. It's also an infraction in all the member jurisdictions. But we wanted to strengthen that up a little bit about what is legal, what is illegal for an animal to park a motor vehicle. The unfortunate thing is a lot of people think just having an animal in a vehicle is illegal. We're lucky in the city of Santa Cruz that it normally doesn't get too extremely, the weather doesn't get too extreme here. And so oftentimes if an animal isn't a vehicle and it's parked in shade and windows are somewhat rolled down that animal is safe. However, we do have some of these these heat waves that are happening and we do have people who don't park in the shade. And in my career, I've definitely had to break a few animals out of vehicles, particularly at the boardwalk down in their parking area. We definitely have to break a lot of animals out of there during the summer. So we wanted to make sure that that there was more requirements in there that that we could enforce. Dead animals in public places might sound like a silly one, but there's precedent for it. There's definitely been people who have kept dead animals longer than they should have definitely kept them in public places longer than they should have. And we wanted to make sure that, you know, if someone's animal was deceased, that it was moved fairly quickly to either burial, cremation or what they were going to do at that body. As far as animal patrol officers present at rodeos and similar events, that currently is in the county code. We did not touch that particular code. In speaking with the attorney for the California Rodeo Association, he actually liked the code the way it stood and liked having animal patrol officers there. Like the transparency of us being there and didn't want that change. So we kept that in there based on his feedback. I don't believe the city of Santa Cruz has rodeos, but if they do in the future, we would like to be present at them just to make sure that if animals do get injured, they do get the vet care as required. Currently, there really is no law about poisoning animals. We get a lot of neighbor disputes where people will poison meat, throw it over the fence to the neighbor's animal, usually based on barking complaints. So we wanted to strengthen that, that it is, you know, poisoning an animal is illegal. As well as on that, there actually is no law that giving any sort of drug, whether it be marijuana, methamphetamine, alcohol to an animal is illegal. So in the county ordinance, we did add that as well, that you cannot intentionally provide cannabis, alcohol, methamphetamine, what have you to an animal. We do see some unintentional people, people's animals ingesting edibles, marijuana edibles, but that would not be subject to this particular ordinance. Non-intentional, it is not illegal. We definitely speak with those people when that happens and ask them to store their edibles in different locations so that their animals can't get to it. But mainly that part of the law really is more intent. I don't know if you're familiar, but about a year ago, we did have a houseless person living down in the Benchlands that did possibly feed methamphetamine to a wild hawk. And we weren't able to prove it at the time that it was intentional, but this would, you know, further strengthen us in being able to enforce it if we could have. Additionally, we did add injuring wildlife in here into the ordinance in the county. And again, this was, we met with a hunting group in regards to this. And we did put the caveat that anything that's illegal under Fish and Wildlife Codes in the state of California, it's not illegal. It's not illegal to hunt. It's not illegal to fish. As long as you have the proper licensing for that, we just don't want people going out there and injuring raccoons or possums because they see them as a nuisance, which does happen, and so we want to prevent that from happening. As mentioned, we do have that new restriction on the old English game mill, game burger, and game cocks. And then as far as the more enforceable excessive animal noise section, currently the way the law reads is really is open to interpretation. What would challenge the reasonable sensibilities of a person regarding animal noise? And so we strengthened it up a little bit. We no longer allow for anonymous noise complaints. We definitely found that a lot of times our agency was used in neighbor disputes. Even though the animal wasn't being noisy, we were called in to to deal with it. So now we do have a section where people want to make a noisy animal complaint, they do need to sign something. And affidavit on a penalty perjury that the noise is occurring. And when they do that, we will then go in person and meet with the animal owner. What I've found in my career is about 90% of animal noise violations are because the animal's board, which in my mind is a is a is a low level form of animal neglect, not an illegal form of animal neglect, but something that we can quickly change by providing resources and information. All of our officers carry cons and other dog enrichment tools within their vehicles. And so when we do these noisy animal complaints now, and we meet with someone whose dog has separation anxiety or is barking in the backyard because it's bored, we provide them with enrichment activities and that dog now has a much better life. Previously, we would a lot of times just under the old ordinance would just mail postcards for their first two complaints and wouldn't visit until the third complaints. So this is really helping cut down on neighborhood or neighbor disputes, as well as helping out those animals much quicker as well as resolving actual noise complaints. And from what I've seen since this ordinance has been in effect for about nine months, that the community is much happier with it, the community is much happier with an actual presence of an officer response, the fact that we're actually solving the problem much quicker by providing that enrichment activity. So it's a win-win for both the community as well as for the animals involved. Next, as far as wild and dangerous animals, we did want to add a section about feeding, sale and release of waterfowl and pigeons. There is, it's not an epidemic to say the least, but there are people who do release pigeons and waterfowl and do feed them and that really can mess with the natural ecosystem and the natural animals that are out there living in the wild. So we wanted to make sure that that wasn't happening so that our wild creatures didn't have their natural environments overtaken by domestic animals being released. The wild rodents in vermin, we definitely wanted to make sure that people were prohibited from feeding wild rodents in vermin just for the safety aspect of it, just for the health and safety aspect of it. I'm sure you're aware. I've been down to the Benchlands many times over the past few years and the wild rodent population down there is out of control and it's because people are allowed to feed rodents, people are allowed to leave things out that they can eat. This would help combat that, would help combat that in neighborhoods, in areas where the houseless are living and it would really help cut down on any sort of communicable diseases that could come from the wild rodent population. Honto virus is real. We've definitely had a few staff members catch it, so we want to make sure that that zoonotic disease is not affecting the members of our community. And then chapter 6.19 is definitely the ordinance that all of our jurisdictions need at the most, the regulation of dangerous animals. We were able to mirror state law quite well in changing it from in the past and currently the way it reads in the city of Santa Cruz is a vicious animal is any animal that barks, yelps, howls, chases, threatens to chase or harasses a human. So my little dog who's a rat terrier who occasionally will chase someone who comes into my office, she could be de-ambitious under the city of Santa Cruz code as well as all the other codes besides the county now. And that discrepancy led to a lot of animals being de-ambitious who truly weren't vicious. You know, I take liability very seriously and the way the law is written very seriously and there wasn't a lot of, you know, it was a very broad ordinance. So there was a lot of animals that were de-ambitious who truly weren't vicious, but I wanted to make sure our agency and our members jurisdictions weren't held liable if that animal did something in the future. So the new regulation of dangerous animals does have a couple tiered system. We now have potentially dangerous animal or vicious animal. And it's not specifically just dogs. I've deemed a few cats vicious in my career. I've also deemed a donkey vicious in my career. So there are other animals out there besides dogs that are attacking people. So by providing the potentially dangerous and vicious, we truly are going after animals that do pose a public safety risk. And in addition to defining more, much less open to interpretation and more black and white in regards to potentially dangerous and vicious, we also added a very long section of what animals or what owners who own those animals are required to do in regard, you know, one of those is they have to have the animal wearing a basket muzzle. If it's a dog wearing a basket muzzle while off property at any time, this will prevent any future bites that occur because the basket muzzle is on. Well, at the same time, the basket muzzle does allow the animal to eat, drink and breathe normally. So while a dog wearing a basket muzzle may look a little bit like Hannibal Lecter, it's actually safer for the community to have that dog like that. So if it does break free from its human, they can't buy it again. We also added the liability section to that. So people who do keep a potentially dangerous or vicious dog do have to have a certain liability amount on their home or renters insurance to ensure that, you know, if the dog does do something again, that the victim is compensated. There are other additions to that, including fence inspections that our officers go do, sometimes having to pour concrete around fences so dogs can't dig out or building, you know, 10 foot fences so they can't jump out. But it really makes it much more streamlined for animal owners and the community to know what those folks are responsible for. And this does include the house of spokes as well. There are a few dogs that have been deemed dangerous or potentially dangerous within the city of Santa Cruz. Actually, I should back that up and say vicious within the city of Santa Cruz that currently do live in the benchlands and do live in the Pogonab area. And on the ordinance when they're being vicious, there's really not much we can do except say, hey, your dog's vicious, it violates again, we may have to destroy it. This new code, if adopted in the city of Santa Cruz, would also ensure that the house's community was safe so that they're not being exposed to animals that could attack them wherever they're living. Next, the administrative appeal section. This was a big one for us because the nuisance abatement commission, while I enjoyed my time working with them, was very difficult to have all the members come forward. As mentioned, sometimes animals would sit in cages for 45 days while we tried to convene. So the new administrative appeal section really makes it so that we know exactly what it is we're doing. If someone appeals a mandatory spay neuter, we know how it appeals. If someone appeals impound fee, we know how it's appealed. If someone appeals a dangerous dog or a vicious dog case, we know how it's appealed. It's very just straightforward. And it also does address the cost for administrative appeals. Previously, if we have to hire an outside attorney and some of the jurisdictions were responsible for paying that fee, this now puts the onus on the person who's appealing it to be responsible for those fees. If they do win the appeal, then they do get refunded the money so that everything is fair for everyone. Next, so I know you haven't seen the county ordinance as approved. I'm happy to send that out. Also happy to meet with any groups that you may feel necessary that we meet with within the city of Santa Cruz to understand what it is the community is looking for. But we really hope that the Santa Cruz City Council will consider what we're talking about. And ultimately, and I know it takes time, approve the unified, I'm sorry, united animal ordinance so that we have that uniform, a consistent regulatory enforcement and appeal process throughout the entire county. Next, I think that's it. Are there any questions? First, thank you so much, officers to see. Thank you, Erica. That was really informative and thank you for the presentation. And before I go to questions, I think Laura Schmidt here also would like to add. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank Erica and Todd as well for the details around the content of the potential model animal ordinance that we would adopt. As far as next steps for the city of Santa Cruz, as a member of the JPA, what would now happen is we would work, the city manager's office would work with the city attorney's office to reconcile our ordinances with the model and try to figure out how we could fall into the model and then bring back to the community any issues that we thought we would need to have community conversations around and then eventually back to council for adoption of the changes. So those would be the next steps. So just wanted to put that forth that you will have more detailed opportunities to talk about various aspects of the ordinance so we don't necessarily need to do that today for this presentation item because you can't obviously take action on it at this point. But it is a project for the city manager's office to move forward with the animal shelter and the city attorney's office. Thank you for clarifying that. That was definitely one of my questions. Do you have a projected or estimated timeline for that process? We do not. I know the animal shelter board would like us to move forward as quickly as possible, but we also have the other agencies that need to move this forward as well. So it is not an easy task. I already had somebody in the city attorney's office a little bit ago do a reconciliation and it is quite significant than changes to our existing ordinances. So it will take some time. Okay. Thank you. Are there any other questions from council members at this time on this presentation? This is agenda item seven unified animal model ordinance update. Council member Cummings. I'll just say a quick comment. Just thank you for the presentation and for the work that you all are doing to try to bring alignment around all these policies at the at the county level, but you know incorporating the cities into that. And so just want to express my appreciation about that. Thanks. Thank you, sir. Okay. Thank you very much. And we have council member Myers. Yeah, I just also wanted to say thank you, especially around the details around some of the dangerous animal items and some of the things you put in place. I recently had some experience with that in our neighborhood and it was it was a great process. It was very clear. And you know, it really helps people really understand, you know, how to keep how to keep certain animals, you know, safe, but, you know, away from animals that they may harm. So thank you for your work and on improving everything. Thank you so much. That concludes our questions. And thank you again. I will move on now to agenda item number eight. This is a presentation of fire prevention week. And we have our fire chief Rob Odie present. Welcome. Hi, Mayor Brunner, council. Thank you for the opportunity. It's nice to be in front of all of you in person today. Obviously for an important issue as well as wanted to just bring up some upcoming events that will be critical for the community as well. And believe Bonnet has our presentation. So this week, or I'm sorry, this year, fire prevention week falls on the week of October 9th through the 15th. Next slide. I want to discuss with you sort of the important theme that they have identified for this year, as well as remind everybody about some fire prevention practices and overall emergency preparedness. Next slide. Like I mentioned, fire prevention week runs from Sunday October 9th through Saturday the 15th. And as I get into the history of fire, fire prevention week will discuss why October 9th is so important. Go ahead. So the history of fire prevention week again marks the great Chicago fire that occurred in 1871 started October 8th. And actually most of it occurred on October 9th and actually was fully extinguished on October 10. Since 1922, the National Fire Protection Agency, otherwise known as the NFPA has sponsored this public observance. And it was actually instituted, formalized in 1925 by President Calvin Coolidge, which actually turns out to be one of the longest running public health observances in the U.S. The goal obviously is to remind and educate the public, adults, children and teachers alike on how to stay safe in case of a fire. Again, observed every single year during the week of October 9th, income commemoration of the great Chicago fire. I think it's important to note this particular fire burned 3.3 square miles of the city of Chicago, destroyed 17,000 structures, 300 people died, and it left 100,000 people homeless. So a lot of lessons learned again, which is why we have fire prevention week. And it's so important to remind the public of what the themes are and how they can stay safe in case of a fire. So again, 100 years as of this year for fire prevention week. Next slide. This year's theme is no coincidence. It revolves around planning your escape and particularly in your homes, where you reside and spend the majority of your time with your family. The theme is fire won't wait, so plan your escape. Obviously, the NFPA has a bunch of different materials on their website for teachers and community members to help send this message and have it both English and Spanish. Next slide. Some of the big takeaways from this fire won't wait. Planning your escape is quite simple. It's draw a map of your home. Visit every room and have two ways out. For those that have second story bedrooms, it's important to have some sort of ladder for children or other members of your family to get out. It's important to walk outside, walk inside your home, and plan for your abilities for every family member in your home. You want to decide on a meeting place and you also want to have a communication plan for that family. You want to practice this two times a year. So again, protect your loved ones. Have a plan. I think it's important. I'll admit this in public. Last night, I set off my fire alarm in my home while cooking and my daughter obviously not knowing exactly what the fire alarm was being a two-year-old. I used it as an opportunity to educate. So it was get down, get low, get out. And we actually practiced in our home as recent as last night. So again, very critical and they're never too young to start practicing these safety measures. Let's see. Next slide. Again, two ways out of your room. Clear paths so we don't want to be hoarders. We want to make sure we can get out in the dark. Have that common meeting place and of course practice twice a year. Next slide. And of course on the NFPA.org website, they have this little checklist that is very user-friendly for everyone in the public. We can also print these out and people can come pick them up at Fire Admin. Next slide. And as again, sort of a coincidence but something I think is very appropriate given the time of year we find ourselves in with fire season. We'd like to also draw attention to our own emergency preparedness flyer that the fire department prepared a few years ago. Next slide. It's a four-page flyer. It's actually sort of interactive. Acting fire marshal Tim Shields. It's sort of modeling it here. But again, this is something we want everyone to have on the refrigerator in every vehicle in their go bag. And again, it's sort of an interactive tool for people to check boxes and make sure they're prepared. And it's not just for fires, not just for wildland fires but earthquakes, tsunamis, floods. So we have a variety of different sections if you want to go to the next slide. That sort of highlights in the case of flood, tsunami, fire. So again, there's some nuances to each emergency and we just want to make sure everyone's educated and prepared for each one of those emergencies. And most recently, next slide, we were able to successfully translate our flyer into Spanish for that part of our community. And we're hoping to, we just had them all printed out and hoping to set some outreach events in the near future to work with the community on making sure that they are too prepared for an emergency. Next slide. This is just the fourth page of the Spanish version. And again, there's a map on there that highlights the various routes in and out of the city. And also some radio stations, TV outlets that also will potentially have emergency communication for the public. Next slide. Some other things for emergency preparedness, we want to make sure people become familiar and connected in their respective communities. So you can join a community emergency response team, otherwise known as CERT. Join a Firewise group. There's a number of them developed or currently being developed in the city. The two of the most well-established are in Prospect Heights and in Highland Neighborhood on the Upper West Side. You can sign up. You can go to our website or you can go to Netcom, our Dispatch Center's website, and sign up for Code Red, which is basically your reverse 911 service that would advise you if there was an evacuation and what instructions you would need to follow. Again, develop an evacuation plan. Develop a family communication plan. So single point of contact. The recommendation is to always have someone identified outside of the city of Santa Cruz potentially out of state where everyone could sort of that they would be independent of whatever emergency was occurring here that you could communicate with and make sure everybody reports that they are safe. Evaluate your home and property for hazards. And also a big importance is making sure you know where your utilities are. Your water shut off, your gas, your electrical meter. So if you do have an issue, you can promptly shut those off and remain safe. And last but not least, create a go bag for your home, your office. Have it in each car that you have. Make sure you have all those critical items like medications, documents, food, water for at least three days. Some clothing, an AMFM radio. One thing that we point out in our flyer is the six P's. So personal computers or phones, plastic, meaning credit cards. People, pets, and all the associated needs for those people and pets. Important phone numbers, prescriptions, and of course any important photos. So have all those things in one common place so you're ready to go and have them with your go bag. Next slide. Here is a link and again just a sort of advertisement if you will for the Code Red Mobile Alert app. That's okay. And this next slide and that again is the current provider that we are using for the Reverse 911. And again that is conducted through our dispatch center up at Netcom. Next slide. And the last thing I want to draw the attention to is again through partnerships with other various community groups. The Firewise groups within the city of Santa Cruz are planning a National Fire Awareness Day. It's going to be an event on the Upper West Side on Sunday, October 9th at 12 o'clock until 4 30 p.m. It's going to be at the High Street Community Church 850 High Street. Again a joint effort between the Prospect Height and Highland Firewise groups for more information. It's hard to read on this flyer but you can go to HighlandFirewise.org and again it's just an effort to get the community together to get them prepared and they want to enhance emergency communication and wildfire preparedness in their respective communities. And we'll be there as well with the fire engine and handing out some various information and of course interacting and answering any questions that the community may have. I think that was the last slide. And then of course one other important thing I want to draw your attention to is October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and so you'll be seeing your local firefighters wearing these shirts in lieu of their Class B uniform shirts and again just to raise awareness about breast cancer and all other cancers. And we also are selling those at our fire stations and at admin $20 and the proceeds go to Breast Cancer Research. So again just wanted to make everybody aware of that as we approach the beginning of October. And that concludes my presentation. Of course I answer any questions that you may have. Thank you so much and also thank you so much to Tim Shields for providing the demonstrations. I do have a question on the emergency preparedness flyers. I think like I have a stack of those that I keep and provide to businesses downtown. So even though it's it talks about and you mentioned evacuation plans for your home and your family I really try to encourage businesses. We spend a lot of time at work and a lot of times people at work don't know where gas shut off or who's in charge of that, who to call, what to do, where to go and creating a plan that you can keep posted and that sheet is so handy. I've given it out so many times and people really appreciate that because everything is there for someone to fill in. So it's a really helpful tool and I encourage anybody in the public if they want to pick one up. I think they're also available at the library and at your fire station one and online. Yep, there's many ways to get that sheet. Do you have anything to add anything else to add for workplaces and evacuation plans, emergency preparedness, things like that? No, I wanted to say that I appreciate you bringing that up because as you know we spend a lot of our time at work and of course during the 89 earthquake there were a tremendous amount of people during those hours of the day that were down here at work and were affected some negatively because of that natural disaster and so having this awareness and having this document there and again we encourage everybody to take a stack because they're working documents that change. We change email addresses, our personal and business addresses, phone numbers and so forth and contact information for our loved ones and so we encourage people to come by our fire admin. They can go to the website and print them out as well but again the more the merrier and we always want to get that message out so that people the other motto is don't be scared get prepared and so that's both in the home and in the workplace. So thank you for bringing that up. Thank you. Yeah, we great. Thank you so much. Other questions? Are there any other questions? Yes. Okay, we have Vice Mayor Watkins, Council Member Myers. I don't have a question but I just want to say thank you and I was up in De La Viega Park and you can really see it and then most recently there's the Firewise sign that's up there and I just really appreciate you being so receptive to working with the neighbors, being kind of cc'd on some of the communication. It's just really builds the relationship we need to have with our neighborhoods for our mutual safety. So thank you for the presentation and I will stop by to get a start. Thank you. Council Member Myers. I just want to give a shout out to Tim, the Fire Marshal, not just for your modeling of the merchandise but you met with the Firewise Group from Pogonip a couple of months ago and I see a lot of those folks when I walk in Pogonip in the mornings and anyways they're just thrilled and very very thankful also for the department's really the efforts to get additional funding for these these community efforts so they're just thrilled with what the department is doing and they feel a lot of partnership and so thank you for doing that work. It's well appreciated. Absolutely. We were most successful when we had those partnerships with the community so we look forward to continuing those efforts in the future. I think you should make a model like a big dollar sign next time. Exactly. All right. Are there any other questions? Okay. Comments or questions? Council Member Cummings and then Council Member Calantari Johnson. Thanks and thanks for the presentation. I do have one question. I've heard this come up a number of times in the community but just you know given the fires that we experienced back in 2020 some folks are concerned with like you know what if there's another major catastrophic fire like what is our plan in terms of how people should you know get out and like escape you know evacuation routes things like that and like what's the kind the city's plan you know if that were to occur and so I'm wondering is there any kind of centralized location on the city's website fire where people can get information on like what those plans would be? That's a great question. Council Member Nipers, I appreciate you bringing it up because we are currently working on finalizing a finished product or platform if you will it's called Zone Haven. We sort of beta tested it during CZU, ironed out a lot of the different kinks that we have particularly locally and a lot of it we we learned especially being that the valley was had a lot of remote locations and kind of one way in one way out and so we have since worked on finalizing our maps and we've uploaded them to this server in this platform it's called Zone Haven. There's two portals there's the first responder portal which is Zone Haven evac and then there's the the public side which is Zone Haven aware and so as we work on uploading and finalizing those maps and then actually I think it's tomorrow or Thursday we're doing some training with PD to make sure that all of our command staff respectively are prepared on how to use and execute this platform and then once we get there we'll do a sort of a PR campaign to get this out to the public so they're aware of the product and of course that will be located on our site and then we'll do some other measures to make sure that everybody's well informed and that includes some community outreach events as well. Thank you for the question. Council Member Colin Terry Johnson. Thank you for the presentation. I was jotting down all the websites so that we can get that information out. I've reached out to you Chief Odie been meeting with some Firewise leaders throughout the city and thank you for offering to join the meeting that we have this week. There is a real big interest in understanding what the evacuation plans and communication plans are and partnering with the county to do beyond the Fire Prevention Week at Town Hall meeting where there's an opportunity for folks to do some Q&A so thank you for your work. Thank you for your partnership and I'm looking forward to working with you on this. Absolutely thank you for the opportunity and again many of those websites on our department website and again we just look forward we can always do better when serving the community and so we look forward to having those meetings having those events so that we can just make sure that we're meeting the expectations and the needs of the community. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay so I will now move on with our agenda today. I have a few announcements. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on Community Television Channel 25 and streaming on the city's website cityofsantacruz.com. Our rules of decorum are here in person on the window ledge to my left. It's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption and we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you are inside or outside of chambers. For the consideration of our community please stay home if you have any symptoms of a cold or flu or a feeling unwell in any way. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today and are attending virtually call in at the beginning of the item you are wishing to comment on using the instructions on the screen. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please remember there may be a delay in streaming so that if you continue to speak on your television or streaming device you may miss your opportunity to speak. When it's your time for public comment please raise your hand by either dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand in the webinar controls of your computer. Please note public comment is only heard on items council is taking action on and not on regular updates and reports. The items that will be open for public comment during today's meeting are numbers 11 through 22 on our agenda. I'd like to ask the council members if there are any statements of disqualification today. Seeing none I'd like to ask the city clerk to announce any additions and deletions. Okay thank you. At this time I'd like to ask the city attorney to report on our closed session this morning. Yes good afternoon Mayor Brunner members of the city council. Council met in closed session commencing at noon today to discuss the following items. Item one was a conference with labor negotiators. Council met with its negotiators involving the SEIU temporary employees SEIU service employees and supervisors OE3. Item two was a public employee performance evaluation involving the city manager and the city attorney. Item three was a conference with legal council involving liability claims the claims of Jose A. Talamantes Harrow and Seraphine G. Ruiz. Those items are also listed as number 12 on your consent agenda this afternoon. Item four was a conference with legal council involving anticipated litigation significant exposure to litigation. Council received a report from the city attorney's office and gave direction on that item. Item five was a conference with legal council involving existing litigation ace entitled city of Santa Cruz versus the Regents of the University of California at all currently pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court. Council received a report from and gave direction from to the city attorney's office on that matter and there was no reportable action. Thank you. At this time in the agenda item nine I'll call on the clerk to provide any updates to the calendar. There are no updates. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to agenda item 10 this is the time for council members to report out on actions at external boards committees and joint powers authority meetings that we've attended. For future meetings please come prepared and provide an update on any meetings or actions that occurred since last council meeting so that the council and the public can be informed and I will start to my right with council member Golder. Yesterday council member Cummings and vice mayor Watkins and I met for a public safety meeting and we discussed the is it the independent auditor knows that it was the use of force thank you the use of force report and we also decided to have an additional meeting in before the end of the year in November I believe the 30th and we at that time want to set a schedule for next year's meetings and kind of talk about what the scope of that committee will look like moving forward because previously it would only meet annually to discuss the independent police auditor's report and we feel like there's a lot of public safety issues that need to be addressed and it's a good way to maybe bring things to council through that conduit so that was pretty much all we discussed and it was a pretty brief meeting thank you thank you does that conclude your report thank you I council member Myers thank you mayor um yeah I'll report out on um central coast community energy policy board first um the the board did hold um actually a joint operations and policy board meeting last week in Monterey City of Monterey at the conference center and we basically heard a panel presentation of really where community uh choice aggregate um CCAs as they're known in the state are heading um 3CE was recognized as one of the first um uh CCAs that's really gotten into actually the purchase and and procurement of clean energy sources been a focus of the agency for the last year um including um some major construction projects underway that are associated with providing um wind energy geothermal and other and solar as well as other clean energies so it was uh it's a great presentation I'm sure you can find it on the um on the agency's website it was a really good panel discussion they also had um the many of the folks the directors of state agent of the state agencies including the california energy commission there um really providing uh presentations on kind of the governor's roadmap to get california to zero emissions and reviewing some of the current um legislation that was passed this past year so that meeting was held last week on wednesday and I'm sure that the presentation will be posted on the website hopefully um in the next uh you know next week or so um so that would be would have been on the 20 21st and 22nd of um september that those meetings occurred the agency did adopt a budget um as well uh in the in the next day's meeting on the 22nd policy board took action on that as well as um outlined a new approach to member agency and public grants um and I believe there will be some you know just additional work to look at how those grant resources are being put out into the community um there was a lot quite a lot of discussion in terms of you know how to really make the grants most effective especially with some of the investments coming from the feds on that so um but a good meeting and lots of information and I'm sure people would be very interested in looking up on the website they get a chance um in terms of the metro board we did meet just last friday um we had a pretty brief meeting but some highlights um that were pointed out by the new um the new ceo is really branding and looking at um if you've looked around town or been driving around the county or riding buses preferably around the county um they've redone most of the bus stops um and sort of rebranded the look on those so it's looking really good our um electric buses are up and running um and you can really see them out and about um they're beautifully sort of um tagged with you know um a lot of really neat um graphics to make them stand out but I believe we have four in operation right now so those are fully electric buses um and the agency continues to look at that greening of the fleet um and we'll be working on that in the upcoming really in the upcoming year there's also going to be a planning session of the board I believe it's on october 14th that right shipper shipper um which will be a in-depth planning session it will be broadcast um and it will be a strategic planning session with the board and so that would be another thing for folks to look and look keep your eyes out I believe it starts at nine a.m correct so I'll announce that um and I believe that is it for me thank you mayor thank you council member Myers council member Cummings thank you um so council member golder reported out on the public safety committee um so I'm not going to speak to that and I guess the only other item the only other meeting I was able to attend um was the climate action task force and last at the last city council meeting the council took action on the 2030 climate action plan and that was pretty much uh what we had discussed was that coming to council at the last meeting so um that's pretty much it's all I have to report thank you council member Cummings council member Brown thank you mayor um I I did attend multiple meetings but for the sake of time I'm not going to report out on all of them there was pretty much standard business for the most part um I did want to um highlight a couple of opportunities for public engagement though um two in well one with the city one with the RTC and one with ambag so first I'll just say that the and you all know this but I want to just repeat it here uh for members of the public that the draft environmental impact reports for coastal rail trail segments eight and nine are out now and the comment period is open um that this that's the uh segments that run from beach street to approximately 17th avenue um so for people who are interested in that you can find out more information um either at the city of santa cruise dot com website um go to city of santa cruise slash coastal rail trail uh there you can also find information about how to make a public comment and the city is hosting a meeting about the draft EIR on wednesday october 19th from five to seven thirty p.m. again you can go to that website for information on how to access the meeting and another piece another item I wanted to highlight is that the regional transportation commission has entered into a partnership with uh other coastal counties um the kind of central coast and uh we are working on a um getting input public input on uh the future of electric vehicle charging uh placement of stations and kind of the overall framework for EV charging on the central coast and um there's a really cool interactive mapping tool that public can participate and offer really valuable and really critical input on um as as we move through this planning process uh for more information on that you can go to the RTCs the santa cruise uh sccrtc.org website there's information right on the front page or visit central coast evstrategy.com and just go straight to the fun part uh with the mapping tool uh those and then ambag I um I did attend ambag as the alternate this past meeting and I wanted to uh just put out there that the um Monterey Bay areas coordinated public transit human services transportation plan uh the draft plan has also been published and there is a comment period for that as well so folks who are interested in uh weighing in or being involved in uh the conversation about how form funding is uh distributed to assist nonprofits and um transit operators in meeting the transportation needs of elderly uh and disabled people um this is an opportunity to weigh in on how to how to move forward without planning and uh that information is available at ambag.org leave it there thanks thank you for those highlights um let's see vice mayor Watkins well let's see so public safety was covered health and all policies met yesterday and we had an overview on um some of the work that's been going on in regards to really assessing and how to increase diversity within our commissions and that will be forthcoming to the full council which is really informative and um will hopefully lead to some action for improvement to increase more access and opportunity for all different types of people to participate in civic service in this way so we um had a presentation by community ventures that was really helpful and informative um and i think that might be the only additional um committee i have to add to report on other than that the um the revenue measure committee continues to meet and discuss um the current measure but also other opportunities as we move forward looking at future revenue sources and had a presentation on parks on which was really interesting so um that's all i have to thank you mayor thank you council member calentary johnson most of what i was going to report has been reported but i'll just add to council member mayer's report on the metro board um there's a huge huge push to recruit new bus drivers so um you can follow the metro on your social media and they have a lot of advertising not advertisement but posts on there that that would be great if you could all share with your networks um we have nine in training right now that will hopefully become new bus drivers but we are 20 to 25 operators down so there's a big big need for recruitment of bus drivers and then the fair free project that we had a couple weeks ago was really successful they saw an up uptick in ridership both from students and the general public that was i think a a week or two span and um because i reported on this last time i'll i'll report back the unfortunately a b 19 which is the free rides for students it passed through the legislation but the governor vetoed it due to the impacts on the budget so those were my additions thank you council member calentary johnson i guess the only thing that i will add um i also sit on the health and all policies committee and um uh that was already uh highlighted by vice mayor Watkins the community ventures survey data results um and looking kind of at those structural gaps uh we will continue that work and when we receive a draft report in october to come back in november we'll be able to make comments on that draft um our two by two meeting was canceled last minute and i do have a visit santa cruz meeting tomorrow at three o'clock on that agenda there is a president's report a state of the industry and covet 19 report a lodging task force update report and then the ceo's report includes a fall campaign presentation analytics symphony and performance metrics and key data and i think that concludes my additional updates thank you everyone okay moving on to our consent agenda first up on the consent agenda our items 11 through 21 now is the time to call in if you are a member of the public streaming this meeting and you wish to comment on consent agenda items 11 through 21 instructions will be on your screen please remember to mute your streaming device when you speak raise your hand by dialing star nine or select raise hand in the webinar controls on your computer all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion if you are here joining us in person and wish to speak on a consent agenda item you can line up to your right my left and i will call on you as well are there any council members who wish to comment on or pull any items council member brown just a quick comment on 15 okay comment on 15 okay looks like that's it so i will go straight to item 15 is executive employees compensation and benefits plan and council member brown i just wanted to say that i'm i'm gonna have to register a no vote on this item on our consent agenda i can't today in good conscience support uh the raises that are being proposed for executive management when we have not settled all of our contracts and my back at the envelope uh assessment on the cost of this for um the for executives is you know at least 300 000 so um i just can't in good conscience support that today we don't have money for uh settling our contracts we need to be fiscally responsible um so just wanted to say that and hopefully bonnie you can just record that when the time comes thank you thank you council member brown is there any other items before we move on to a consent agenda vote okay so i will go to public comment first i will look to our virtual attendees and participants to see if any hands are raised i'm not seeing any hands raised press star nine to raise your hand if you're joining us virtually and i don't see anyone in person lined up to speak okay i will pull it back to uh council is there anybody who'd like to make a motion on the consent agenda items 11 through 21 i'll move consent okay we have a motion by council member comings in a second a second a second by vice mayor walkins can i make one comment go ahead yeah just um i totally hear what council member brown is saying with regards to the is that executive pay and i think that with the outstanding um labor negotiations i'm just hoping that we can make sure that we're gonna provide a fair contract for our workers and um look forward to seeing how those negotiations pan out thank you okay are there any other comments before we go to a roll call vote okay may we have a roll call vote council member calentary johnson aye boulder aye coming hi brown hi hi what can i vice mayor what can and mayor brunner hi that motion passes unanimously with the exception of item number 15 uh with a one no council member brown six yeses okay next step on our agenda is item number 22 single-use tobacco waste for members of the public who are joining us virtually and streaming this meeting if this is an item you wish to comment on now is the time to call in using instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from council we will then take public comment and return to council for deliberation and action and i'd like to welcome emeline and if you could just state your name and who you are thank you absolutely thank you mayor brunner so good afternoon mayor and council members it's a pleasure to be here today as mayor brunner stated i'm emeline or m i'm the new principal management analyst for the city manager's office so as you may recall from the march meeting council directed staff to bring this item back for discussion in august but due to some scheduling conflicts it was postponed to september so here with me we have tara lennard and she is the health educator for the county of santa cruz and we'll be presenting an update on the tobacco product waste today so i will hand this over to tara for the presentation thank you welcome tara thank you for joining us today thank you mayor brunner and council members i guess i'll just jump right into it so um as emeline just mentioned and as you all know in april of 2021 this council unanimously passed can you speak to the microphone thank you or lift it up a little so it's closer to your mouth there we go how's that great thank you thank you this council oh there it is unanimously passed a resolution recognizing tobacco waste as a public health and environmental threat and as you can see on the next slide so am i doing the slides or do i ask the person great okay are you bonnie yes that's bonnie nice to meet you as you can see highlighted on the slide one of the things that was in that resolution is that the council resolved to advance policy approaches to reduce or eliminate this toxic waste in our community i'm not going to reiterate and you can go to the next slide thank you i'm not going to reiterate all of the content in that resolution or spend most of this presentation talking about the wise because we covered this in april of 2021 and all of you signed that resolution and there's also going to be a number of resources that i'm providing that'll cover that information but a few highlights tobacco butts are the most littered item on santa cruz streets and beaches we know that they leach dangerous chemicals such as lead arsenic and nicotine into our soils into our parks into our riverways they're toxic to wildlife marine life children and pets they break down into micro plastics cigarette butts are not made of paper or cardboard they are made of cellulose acetate and we're learning more and more about micro plastics in our community every day and moving beyond cigarettes to e-cig devices these things are a triple threat to our environment they contain plastic they contain toxic e-juice and they contain electronic waste and i want everyone to remember that nicotine including the nicotine salt in e-cigarettes has been listed by the environmental protection agency as an acute hazardous waste i believe that there are a number of members of our community either here in person or remote who will be adding to this list of wise so i'm going to move on more specifically to the house because i was asked to come here today to give an update on what the county has been doing since april of 2021 so if we can go to the next slide i'm going to launch right into that so on the one year anniversary of signing the resolution in april of 2022 a number of individuals and people representing environmental groups spoke during oral communications to urge this council to take action we appreciate their support and i think it's really important to keep this issue in the forefront of council's attention at the same time it's important that any action that the council take is both effective and enforceable so as part of that process in giving this update i'm going to provide you with a number of the tools and the resources that you need to move forward in an efficient and effective manner tobacco staff have been working with our tobacco education coalition with the california tobacco control program with the public health law center and with a number of other state and local organizations to gather data to review research to draft model policies and provide all the tools necessary as i said to move forward next slide so what are some of those tools in february of 2022 just a little light reading the california tobacco control program published this comprehensive overview of the environmental health and social impacts of tpw this document compiles the latest research on the proven toxicity of tpw the social and community impacts of tpw including health equity and environmental justice implications and it also talks about the tobacco industry's response which has been to externalize the cost of their toxic waste onto local governments nonprofits and voluntary organizations probably the most important thing in this document is this final statement that's on the slide there that cigarette filters quote have no benefit in preventing the adverse health effects of smoking this is really important because as you know there have been some efforts at the state level to pass tpw related bills and a concern about doing additional harm to smokers was one of the biggest barriers to those those not moving forward and now we know thanks to this document and other research that that barrier has been removed next slide please in march of 2022 there was the first meeting of what's called the tpw economic model advisory committee and i sit on that committee we know that banning the sale of tobacco products will cost the city in terms of tobacco taxes however we also know that tobacco product waste already costs the city of santa cruz a lot of money this statewide tpw economic model advisory committee is trying to put together a framework to quantify those costs the advocacy group includes california environmental scientists economists public health professionals statisticians and tobacco subject experts including local tobacco staff and in may several members of this council along with several members of the santa cruz public works department attended our first stakeholders meeting where we try to identify local cost centers and you can see some of them up on the slide everything from anti litter education to mechanical and manual cleanup to stormwater management and many many others this work is ongoing and one of the things that the council could consider is allocating staff time and resources to respond to requests from data from this committee so that we can put together a financial understanding of the costs and the benefits of banning the sale of some of these products next slide in april the public health law center in collaboration with the american lung association published this tobacco product waste a public health and environmental toolkit this toolkit includes a menu of recommended tobacco product waste policies along with backward information legal justification and model policy language this is in your agenda packet one of the things that's important about this is that if council chooses to pursue a tobacco waste policy public health law center can work with us to customize language based on the city's current tobacco retail licensing and tobacco control ordinances next slide please in may of 2022 we learned that the statewide tpw bill sponsored by assembly member lou's revas and referenced in the tpw resolution will not be moving forward and that's not a big surprise because that's what's been the case with all previous tpw efforts at the state level what does this tell us it reminds us that tpw is likely to follow the same bottom-up model that we have seen with flavored tobacco products where local jurisdictions show the public support and create momentum for action at the state level if we recall we were all here in the fall of 2018 and the city of santa cruz showed great leadership in passing the first ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products in this county four years later here we are all five jurisdictions in the county have a ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products and we have a statewide referendum on the issue coming in front of the voters in november this is a common model of how tobacco waste policy or tobacco in general policy works and tobacco waste is likely to be the same next slide and in terms of other updates throughout the year and of course throughout the last six years my staff our partners have an out in the community educating the public about tpw at presentations tabling events cleanup events with paid and earned media on our website on our facebook page producing fact sheets and other forms of outreach next slide in terms of additional tools you'll also find in your agenda packet a list of local tobacco retailers there are currently 50 tobacco retailers in the city of santa cruz however it's important to know the different tpw policy approaches would impact retailers differently based on what percentage of their products are tobacco related and whether they are primarily cigarettes or e-sig devices or cigars or glassware or something else so when you look at that list you should know that 41 of them are gas stations grocery stores convenience stores liquor stores for whom the majority of their income is not derived from tobacco products there are nine stores however where at least 50 percent of their annual gross receipts do come from tobacco related products but not of those stores are the same so you need to take a good look at that list and understand how the different policy approaches will impact different retailers in different ways next slide and i'd just like to mention the bigger context here the tobacco retailer landscape shall we say is changing it's changing at the federal level and it's changing at the state level at the federal level we know that the fda is looking at a number of items around menthol around e-sigs around flavors and as mentioned earlier we have a statewide flavored tobacco sales ban on the november ballot it's probably a good time for tobacco retailers to assess the sustainability of their current business model and one of the ways that we can help them do that is to put together a tobacco retailer work group the county is willing to facilitate that group to help these retailers transition away from tobacco products diversify their product line and foster economic development through other means and again because i was asked to provide ideas of what council could do to support those activities one thing that council could do would be to provide staff to sit on that sort of meeting or that sort of group that sort of work group next slide and then the final tool that i provided and it is in your agenda packet today is a three page chart of tpw policy options that lay out different approaches to this issue and pros and cons of each approach this is by no means an exhaustive list but what it does is it provides the criteria you might consider when evaluating different policy options i'm not going to go through this entire chart right now but i'm going to take a look at the first one so you can get an idea of the type of criteria that my staff considered when putting this list together and that you all should consider next slide so the first option is a ban on the sale of single use filters or butts and so what you'll see as you go through the options chart is we've looked at the same criteria for each of these policies the first how high an impact does it have on the issue and in this case it would have a very high impact in terms of source reduction because this is the most littered item on santa cruz streets parks and beaches and this is what's considered in public health an upstream solution in other words it takes care of the litter before it even gets to our retailers let alone by the time it already gets onto our streets and beaches and needs to be picked up it would use existing enforcement protocols in this case you're existing trl enforcement protocols it places responsibility on the industry whereas other policy approaches put responsibility on local governments local taxpayers voluntary organizations retailers or users this policy helps to meet california's clean water act trash amendment requirements i won't go into a lot of detail on that but i can certainly provide more information to you if you're interested and your public works department would be more than happy to talk to you about what that means it has a potential for positive public relations and tourism in terms of people assuming that santa cruz is family friendly and pro environment there are fiscal savings for city services such as storm and drain water litter collection some of the things we talked about on the emacs slide they're potential fiscal savings for healthcare related services if in fact the policy reduces tobacco related death and disease and it would be a model for the state and the county there is no current policy precedent specific to tobacco products like this in the country even though we do know there are similar ones related to things like plastic bags plastic straws on the con side you want to think about how much a policy might invite industry pushback including legal challenges this policy in particular is probably quite likely to invite that kind of pushback there is indeed a loss of tobacco sales tax revenue there would be a high impact on tobacco retailers who have a high percentage of cigarette sales again that's going to affect retailers differently depending on which policy you pick and yeah there's a potential for negative public relation and tourism there's going to be people aren't happy they would say that this is anti-business maybe you'll have visitors who really want to purchase filtered cigarettes in the city of santa cruz and this does not stop smokers from using or improperly discarding filtered cigarettes that they purchased outside the jurisdiction this again is a similar situation that came up with the flavors ban people said well it's not fair they can't buy these products here they'll just buy them in capitola they'll just buy them in watsonville again someone has to be first and now you can't buy those products in all five jurisdictions so that argument it it can definitely hold water for a while until everyone else gets on board and again maybe it's a con that there's no policy precedent maybe that's a plus it depends on how you view it so i'm not going to go through all of these next slides because we don't have time and they're in your packet i will just read the title so you know some of the other types of policy options banning the sale of e-sig devices or single-use e-sig devices it's worth mentioning that 30 or more california jurisdictions have already done this including our neighbors to the south in the city of watsonville banning the sale of other tobacco products that create plastic waste like lighters or packaging or cigar tips requiring hazardous waste regulation on tobacco products this means that you would impose tracking and handling and signage and things like that on nicotine and electronic waste at the point of sale as we do for other hazardous waste products there are environmental justice approaches in terms of retailer location and density because we know that this is an environmental justice and health equity issue so in this approach you would look at the demographics of a certain neighborhood and you would say no we're not going to allow additional retailers in that environment the thing to keep in mind on this one is there's no impact to the current tobacco retailer density or improper disposal but it would limit those for the future and then there's things that we've tried before like tpw cleanup taxes there's deposit and return programs i've included these in your packet even though they actually are not recommended approaches by the public health law center um and i can answer questions about any of these approaches now or we can have further conversations with i guess it might be the health and all policies committee i'm going to stop there i know it's a lot to absorb and i'm happy to take any questions now is that what we should do is that how this works yes uh thank you so much and um maybe you could start before i open it up for questions uh just briefly explaining the last two items why they're not recommended sure well again in public health we have this concept of upstream solutions and when it comes to cigarettes and and big tobacco what we discovered is not once in the history of the big tobacco industry have they done the right thing unless forced to do so by law so when we're looking at solutions with tobacco waste we like to focus on upstream high level policy approaches that hold the industry responsible versus individuals so if you're talking about a tpw cleanup tax that means it's a downstream solution the waste already exists the waste is already on our streets and beaches and playgrounds and parks and so even though you're going to have a little bit more money to clean it up the responsibility still lies with us it still lies with the local taxpayers it still lies with your voluntary organizations and your environmental groups so it's not an approach that is particularly effective the deposit return programs epr we explored this quite a bit in previous in previous work plans and there's a number of things about it that make it an ineffective approach it relies extremely on the cooperation of tobacco retailers and users so epr for those of you who aren't familiar means extended producer responsibility it frequently looks like a take back program we know without a doubt that people are not going to take their cigarette butts back to where they bought them so it's right off the table in terms of our biggest pollution problem it may it may be effective for your more expensive e-sig devices but again it relies very heavily on retailer and consumer cooperation and then even when that happens now you've got all of these hazardous waste at the point of sale and so you might also need to develop hazardous waste protocols for the proper storage transportation and disposal of those used devices because remember now they're open they're leaking they're not stored properly so if you were going to look at something like this i think it would take a lot of staff oversight in terms of enforcement thank you do any council members have any questions at this time council member calentari johnson hi thank you for that presentation very very informative in the packet as well just going back to the loss of tax revenue how does this impact our local first five and i'm not totally clear is there revenue just from the local tobacco tax or is it the statewide and and does it impact i'm afraid i do not know the answer that question but i can certainly find out for you okay thank you yeah that was my one question to follow up on that then do you know how much the annual tax revenue is at the city or county level no it looks like that might though i also don't have to answer that question council member golder i thought you might ask it and we're happy to look that up and come back with some some numbers as to what that generates each year to follow up on that do you do is it earmarked for anything just like you know other taxes are uh no not to my understanding it comes through as part of our general sales tax proceeds any other questions council member mayers you mentioned that there was a bill that that was um didn't make it onto the floor um and you said that this is you know this is an example of the kinds of things that we say see just not making it moving forward what kind of what so i know you spoke briefly about it but is there um is there a specific reason why these why these types of bills are just failing to move forward or is it just that you know industry is gonna there there are many reasons but in fact the largest reason in my opinion is that there's a lot of special interest money at the state level in legislature and in fact the american long association has a document that they publish everything every single year called tobacco money in california politics and you can literally see how much money each legislator took from the tobacco industry and then they compare that to their votes on tobacco related issues so it's one of the reasons that many of these tobacco issues have more success at the local level than they do at the state and federal level okay councilmember brown just just really quickly thank you for that is where can we find uh that information the report i'd be happy to send that to you it's published every year by the american long association in california so it'll probably be on their website it should be on their website but thank you i can provide it as well any other questions at this time before we go to public comment okay thank you thank you in addition to public comment that we will be hearing today we did receive two emails sent to city council at city of santa cruise dot com if you are now interested in commenting on agenda item 22 single-use tobacco waste you can line up to to your right my left if you are joining us in person if you are joining us virtually now is the time to raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand in the webinar controls of your computer the timer will then be set to two minutes if you do speak in person please uh sign up on the clipboard there uh so that we can ensure correct spelling of your name in the meeting minutes however it's not required and at this time it looks like we have a few folks in person and one uh hand raised virtually so i'll start with in person hi there welcome hey there my name is taylor lane i'm the founder of the secrets are for a long time uh santa cruise resident here and um when we brought this agenda item about it was really about the single-use item facet and uh we're not really trying to really take a focus on tobacco so much as the single-use issue um the reason is is that we're proposing still selling tobacco loose tobacco and selling cigarettes separately but not allowing for those products be sold uh together when you guys pass this resolution what was really great was looking at the fact that syria butts are the most littered item here in santa cruise in our riverways and beaches and in that resolution you explicitly stated that the city council would resolve to advance policy approaches to reduce or eliminate this toxic waste that's why we think going with the single-issue approach approach is really effective because it's less pushback and and really helps lead the way for other important tobacco policies to follow suit um like terra had had put out um you know there is current policy in place that you can use to begin to build um this piece of policy pro bono services will come to your aid uh organizations national and internationally will will be here to help you and we're here to guide you on that path along the way where we're not going to leave you high and dry um you know the fear games and tactics that big tobacco plays is nothing new and we need to be very certain to not play into these um changes only ever happen from the ground up not from the top down and that's why we think that uh as one jurisdiction follows others will lead and that's really important that we can do that because we have that privilege here in santa cruise to do that to protect this marine bay this moderate bay sanctuary and you know on top of that really looking at a piece of opportunity for you as leaders to go forth with this uh ultimately our community volunteers environment pay the real price of this including our youth and in radical times we need radical change um we have an international responsibility this place um and we would like to also have some attachments here in some distribution to council that we would like to give you for review so thank you was that the timer buzzer okay that's a new sound so i wasn't sure i also informed that i had three minutes and not two so there must have been a miscommunication there thank you alley webster here was sir frider foundation i brought my jar of butts today um off from a fresh walk this is a new jar of butts i am fully aware that i will become known as the woman who shows up with a jar of cigarette butts um i haven't counted them yet but last time it ended up being over 400 cigarette butts in this jar and i did this in about an hour in my neighborhood um i assume you've all done the homework that i gave last time around it's pretty hard not to looking for cigarette butts everywhere uh shoved up along curbs sitting in the debris about to fall into storm drains on the sidewalks outside this building we're here again to express our support in developing policy to ban the single use plastic cigarette filter i've seen at least three of you at recent beach cleanups so you know firsthand that cigarette butts are by far the most common item that we find at our cleanups the pervasive problem of cigarette litter is absolutely undeniable the plastic filters and cigarette butts leech thousands of toxic chemicals into our environment anyone would be horrified at the idea of me dumping this jar right into the ocean and yet we walk by hundreds of butts on the ground every day with the same destination sitting on the beach or heading towards storm drains leading to our waterways we highly encourage you to focus on this single issue of single use plastic cigarette filters as a start on this local path against tobacco waste focusing on one issue makes the endeavor far more achievable and far less divisive we also hope that you'll keep the issues momentum by convening a subcommittee staff and stakeholder groups by mid november as taylor lane um suggested i just want to reiterate that we're super grateful that the council has taken this issue so seriously and is working so quickly to move forward with it we've always been able to rely on the city of santa cruz to take unprecedented action in the face of pervasive plastic pollution rest assured that the entirety of the surfrider foundation nationwide would take notice of an active and very actively support this remarkable policy work uh thank you thank you uh thank you for your comment um we are working through a more audible timer ring so um thank you for your patience as we work through that hi there welcome afternoon um thank you for your service and thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak my name is erica donnie green and i'm the current ed at save our shores i'm a renecologist and i've lived in the community of santa cruz since 2004 um save our shores has been inspiring and participating in community driven environmental action in the monterey bay for over 43 years we've got quite the the decades there cigarette butts and plastics continue to be our top littered item that we collect amongst our 250 more cleanups that we hold and annually so we all know this is an issue in 2022 alone we've already collected over 11 000 uh cigarette filter butts and this does not include the recent annual coastal cleanup data that just occurred in 64 locations in santa cruz and monterey counties so it's important we acknowledge the intersection between human health ecosystem health this litter is more than a nine sightly nuisance which you all understand at this point it is truly toxic so save our shores is used to tackling big issues we were founded on ensuring that coastal drilling oil drilling would not occur in our marine national sanctuary thus taking on big oil we've been successful in local and statewide plastic bag bands and continue to fight against big oil which is also the plastic industry and one in the same and with other organizations on numerous powerfully measures to make sure money and corporate interest does not take precedence over human and ecosystem health the fight against big tobacco is similar i believe it will be a big fight and it will take persistence but please know that you won't be alone in this huge undertaking and many environmental entities will be joining together to support santa cruz in this endeavor save our shores we'll not back down to big oil and we won't back down to big tobacco as well we know they will come to stop the progress that we seek to make in santa cruz but i think we can take it on together and so i urge that it's time to put action words and actions together and take a big step forward to make a possible positive in santa cruz thank you thank you so much i think that was the winner the bell is much nicer than a siren i think are there any other members of the public here in person okay i will move to we have some more hands that have gone up the first name with hand raised is i am watching you go ahead and press star six to hello yeah i don't get the reduction in speaking time to two minutes either but anyway i know it's fact switching from cigarettes to pure nicotine products for those addicted will result in a vast health improvement to them i sure hope this sort of single use concept doesn't include pure nicotine products including smoking cessation aids even though yes they could possibly end up as litter smokers health matters also health and health policies is a deceptive globalist leftist template policy requiring that every action must be modified when forced through it which can and has been used to faux legitimize leftist dogma compliance for any agenda that makes the false assumption no action can be reasonably justified or otherwise implemented without a formatting to agree with hyaps principles which can hijack agendas the noun health has always meant a condition of freedom from disease or abnormality but hyap has bastardized it as well as the word equity hyaps perversion of the proven just concept of equal opportunity is replaced with a totalitarian forced equal life outcome dogma which cannot be achieved anyway with this new equity word differences are differences and cannot be considered injustice just because there are differences blind forest policy attempts to promote equal life outcomes can easily contain elements important to american principles such as group identity discrimination selective loss of individual rights assignment of unearned privilege to the undeserving promotes the false sense of inequality equals victimhood and removes individual responsibility for one's life outcome even consideration of sustainability can be abused as who decides what needs sustaining or how is debatable and manipulative not an absolute automatic no brainer basically my opinion is any policy that lacks full establishment of sufficient on balance logical standalone justifications without high up mandates should not be pushed over the finish line or needs any preemptive and predominantly leftist high up consideration prior to full rational factual reason consideration because it can be our next speaker is Madison Hickey and you can go ahead and unmute yourself and we'll hear from you and you'll have two minutes can you hear me yes we can okay hello my name is Madison Hickey and i'm a senior at the university of sanikers being a 23 year old college student who was ending high school and starting college around the same time single use vaping devices became popular i have witnessed my peers become subjected to the influence of tobacco marketing as a result of this persistent and targeted marketing most people start vaping and smoking in their teens without fully understanding how addictive nicotine is or the toll it takes on the environment tobacco industry produces about six trillion cigarettes each year as a result cigarette filters are the number one most littered item on earth number one here in sanikers too each cigarette filter contains thousands of micro plastic fibers micro plastics contaminate our food soil water and air and ultimately destroy our environment and because they are made of plastic they can take years to decompose filters are also packed with toxic chemicals like arsenic and lead that seep into our environment and threaten our oceans and wildlife traditional cigarette filters were a big part of the waste room for decades and single use e cigarettes are even more complicated because each single use vape contains a lithium battery the toxins in the battery can seep into water nearby as it deteriorates these products harm the environment long before and long after anyone puffs a cigarette or hits a vape the tobacco industry is a top global plastic litter whose production and manufacturing directly contribute to climate change and deforestation and the toxic chemicals in their products make them nearly impossible to dispose of safely these cigarettes and nicotine e liquid are hazardous waste that should not be disposed of in the regular trash tobacco waste is an equity issue low income communities and communities of color bear the highest burden from this toxic waste i asked the city council if you could provide a specific date or feedback for the community thank you for your time thank you so much for your comment our next member of the public is Trent Hodges go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hey there can you hear me yes welcome great thank you for the opportunity to make public comment um city council i appreciate the time my name is Trent Hodges and the conservation programs manager for save the waves coalition we are a global nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting surf ecosystems around the globe and we're based here in Santa Cruz and we also coordinate and lead the um Santa Cruz world surfing reserve here at home which is one of 12 world surfing reserves across the entire world and we would just like to support the coalition of groups that have come here to work on this incredibly important issue we find cigarette butts on all of our beach cleanups all across the Santa Cruz world surfing reserve and as we all know this is the most littered classic item that we find on our coastline not even just here in Santa Cruz but across the world so we really encourage the city council to take this issue seriously and support these recommendations specifically establishing a product waste task force in the health and all policy subcommittee would be a great start and many of the groups here would be more than happy and willing to lend our expertise and data to help support that group as they explore solutions to this this issue we'd also support bringing this item back to the council by no later than the second meeting in February to discuss possible solutions to this issue as you all know in the state of California there's been legislation to ban the single use filter there's been different policy solutions offered in different municipalities and cities so it really encouraged the city council to take a look at what policies we can really be done here in Santa Cruz so we can lead this issue across the entire state of California and thank you very much for your time thank you for your comments next I'd like to welcome Rachel Kippen press star six to unmute yourself hi can you hear me yes hi thank you so much for taking this issue on and for giving me the opportunity to speak today my name is Rachel Kippen proud to co-chair of the Santa Cruz county tobacco education coalition first and foremost I'd like to thank council members who have worked with our commission tirelessly particularly councilmember Watkins I encourage anyone and everyone who's interested in continuing to move forward on this kind of strategy to join us for our public meetings our next one is on November 16th it's from 9 30 to 11 and it's virtual and that information can be found on the county public health website also just want to reiterate understanding that this policy I know is very challenging the tobacco industry is a formidable enemy there's so much to consider going into this kind of really strong kind of goliath challenge that we have ahead of us and it's also so very worthwhile as you all know and as we've talked about you know mark stone brought legislation forward several times and the tobacco lobby killed it before it even made it out of committee so there's so much that I think we could accomplish here at the local level but do recognize that that it's not an easy haul so thank you so much again for creating this opportunity for us to be heard and also for creating that health and all policies committee to hear this that's what I want to share thanks thank you for your comment our next member of the public has a phone number ending in 1045 go ahead and press star six to unmute hi there it looks like you're unmuted but I'm not hearing anything I'll give it one more second try pressing star six again maybe and unmuting and unmuting yourself again okay it looks like can everyone hear me yes wonderful okay uh dear mayor runner and Santa Cruz city council members my name is Alina and I'm probably home and a member of Friday night live also known as FNL the youth leadership program I am here to speak on behalf of our youth council on the topic of tobacco waste starting last school year FNL dedicated our time to understanding the impact of tobacco waste we designed a project to educate our peers and community on this issue we are passionate about reducing tobacco waste in the city of Santa Cruz through our research we have learned that tobacco waste is a serious public health and environmental justice issue to learn even more about how tobacco waste affected us locally we hosted small cleanup events around Santa Cruz despite smoking being illegal at these locations we found over a thousand littered cigarette butts in the downtown Santa Cruz area we were shocked by this because we know that cigarette butts leak hundreds of toxic chemicals and called water and soil which is a big deal for our wetlands and beaches as part of our project we also developed a signature for love support for a petition for asking community members to support regulation to reduce the impact of single-use cigarette bulkheads in the San Diego Santa Cruz we collected 87 signatures from residents of the city we thank you for your leadership so far and we look forward to that adoption of a policy as best practice solution because we know that this can make a positive impact on the health and well-being of youth our community and our environment please continue prioritizing protecting youth and our natural environment from the toxic waste by establishing a specific timeline from the cell committee we'll bring back these important policy recommendations and exactly what and when next steps will be thank you for your time and leadership and addressing this important issue thank you appreciate your public comment are there any other members of the public that would like to speak I don't see any other hands raised okay so I will bring it back to council and um let me go back to my agenda okay I'm going to bring it back to council for any motions or comments questions okay vice mayor Watkins council member coming okay well I just want to say thank you for first and foremost for being here and for the presentation I want to thank Tara for taking the time to really create a really thoughtful presentation of all the pros and cons associated with the various policy options but more so I'd like to thank everybody for all the work that they do tirelessly on this issue day in and day out really informative really helpful information for us to consider I want to thank M for creating this recommendation I have questions that as a member of the health and all policy subcommittee I'd like to dive into so I look forward to really addressing that at that time one of which is really asking our law enforcement their capacity for enforcement if there was such a ban I know that's been an issue in other areas in terms of some of the existing policy we have on the books with the flavors ban so just really getting into it what's possible what do we need to do what does this mean for our community that's the work that we did when we had our flavors ban come before us it took about a year we met with all kinds of retailers other stakeholders really looked at the nuances of the ordinance and just did the work and I know that public outreach and community outreach and due diligence is a priority for me and it's also a priority for I believe a number of my colleagues here so with that I am prepared to move the recommendation I did want to also add that you know we look at staff about having some of the additional suggestions that Tara brought up in terms of having our staff sit on the state work group I don't have that specific work group's name I don't know Tara if you want to come back up and share that or if that would be forthcoming either way you're welcome to come if that's okay yeah I didn't catch the exact name sorry I thought you were done if you could repeat that when you're done sure sure sure I just I know that you mentioned having support from the city staff on the existing work group that's happening at the state right so there's two work groups there's the economic model advisory committee which is run by Dr. Tom Novotny out of San Diego State University and then I sit on and that is statewide to look at the financial issues related to the ban okay and then the other one we talked about a little bit was having some sort of retailer committee transition for small businesses so that would be sort of a separate idea okay so I'll go ahead and add the first one which is to work with the state um if they allow us or welcome us that I'll direct staff as a part of this to join that so that we're understanding sorry I don't think you're here okay okay I'd like to have it so that we move the recommendation and include a direction for staff to join the state work work group with further clarification on the possibility of that through Tara okay well let's let's take a minute and um oh I can email it okay I'll go ahead take a minute and you can email it it's really hard to hear um and we do also have a 530 or communication start time okay then we okay okay yeah I'll email it it's just to join the state work group to have our city join the state work group the state work group and the economic modeling on the economic modeling work that's happening did you get it okay I can I'll email it to you I'd like to ask the city attorney if I can what I can do with the noise disruption so that we can continue conducting business I think it's worth requesting that the members of the community that are protesting outside that keep the boys down so that the so that the council business can continue short of that I would recommend that you uh you adjourn the meeting and because this is obviously designed to disrupt what's going on here um if people want to speak at oral communications that's one thing but I can't hear anything so disrupting the meeting so that you can't have oral communications is sort of contrary to the whole purpose of the meeting so that's an option so I can ask the the protesters to um politely keep it down or we adjourn the meeting right and um technically disruption of a public meeting is a misdemeanor but um it's outside of the meeting typically that's not been a typical recourse that the council has taken for or disruptions outside of the meeting okay so um councilmember brown I was just gonna say I think they're probably gonna stop pretty soon because the intention is to come in for oral communication so um take a crack at it please well there is a low so we might be able to get through this item yeah let's just take a two minutes I'll go out there and just see if we can just get through this item before oral communications thank you thank you okay so we have a motion from vice mayor Watkins but I'm not clear what it is it sounded like you added something and the text it is fine Bonnie's got it okay I'm going to call a two minute recess so um sorry for the disruption but we cannot conduct city business yeah but if I cannot hear or anybody can hear so just give us two minutes please okay I will um ask the city clerk we will try to resume through this item I will ask the city clerk to please post um I think there was a uh motion made by vice mayor Watkins I did not hear the full motion so in in order to really understand the motion if we could have it maybe up on the screen if that's possible okay so it looks like you from the agenda added the third sentence direct staff to join the state work group addressing the economic model associated with tobacco waste we will work through this motion as best we can I just added that but I to return in the spring with the update okay there was a recommendation in February I'm just curious how you came with spring I just I um I'm just concerned about the timeline associated with that personally I think the health and all policies committee is wrapping up our work with the equity issues and um recommendations associated with our commissions and then they have the holidays I'm actually going to be um out of town for part of February personally and so I thought in terms of our ability to really dive into it having a little bit more of a runway and uh within the spring sometime being a good kind of middle ground for an update potentially and or recommendations if that's appropriate so the health and all policies committee has been we meeting every other month and so October December February and April so that would mean April by the April with April if we want to put April April okay so as everyone had a chance to read read this um and so we had a second by council member Myers is that correct our comments council member Cummings I have a number of questions and comments the first of which is um from what council or vice mayor Watkins just said and also um I called Tiffany wise west about this because um she's the staff person in charge of health and all policies and so I was just curious because it sounds like there's a lot of work happening with health and all policies right now and I'm just wondering how this would fit into that work plan because it sounds like you know if we embark on this endeavor it's going to be a pretty big lift it's going to require um a substantial amount of staff time and given that Tiffany's also has the climate action task force and this you know would it be appropriate I just want to understand how this fits within that work plan because it might be that if we go down this route rather than it being health and all policies it can be another subcommittee that's specifically focused on tobacco product waste and so I'm just wondering if you if someone can speak to what her workload is looking like so we're not just dumping another big project on a staff member thank you council member Cummings um I I will give it over to our city manager Matt has a care thanks Mary thanks for the question council member Cummings Tiffany does have a full plate as the council knows including the tremendous work that she's moving forward on our climate action and resilient resiliency front having said that we thought the health and all policies had some strong alignment with the spirit behind this request and I think the additional runway we have as council member Watkins described will give us time to work through how best to resource it but again I would defer to the council if there's interest in wanting to form a standalone subcommittee specific to this topic that's that's certainly an approach we could take as well that was my first question I have some comments that I want to make on this item first of all I want to thank the folks from the secret surfboard and all the other environmental nonprofits who've reached out to us and also the county for reaching out as well I know that this is a big issue for a lot of people and I just want to highlight a few things related to this topic the first of which is that in 2019 there was a study that came out that highlighted how microplastics are being found in Monterey Bay from the surface all the way to the seafloor so this is extremely major environmental health concern and environmental justice issue for our community given that we're the stewards of this very sacred place that we call Monterey Bay and a lot of it and I would imagine that a big contribution of the plastic waste that's in Monterey Bay is coming from cigarette butts with the resolution that was passed this is an opportunity for us to take the first step in terms of taking action on that resolution the presentation and I think a lot of our conversation has highlighted how our leadership on flavored tobacco ban has caused a ripple effect in the county and this is an opportunity for us to lead once again on cigarette butt waste I agree with the people who brought this forward and the presentation that we received today that we need to take small steps and that that first step is to start with single use filter tobacco cigarettes I'm supportive of this direction I'm supportive of the recommendations brought forward today by members of our community and I just want to point out too that a couple of things that may have been overlooked in 2019 Beverly Hills actually moved forward with a ban on all tobacco which went into effect in 2021 and we haven't heard about big tobacco going after the city of Beverly Hills my understanding from what the community wants right now is not for us to go again go after tobacco it's to go after the single use plastic filters that go on cigarettes and so I want to be supportive of this direction I would actually ask if we could maybe consider as friendly amendments much of the language that was provided to us by community members which really states that we would establish a tobacco product waste task force consisting of the health and all policy subcommittee or an ad hoc subcommittee if the current workload for the health and all policies is too great and interested community stakeholders which may include but is not limited to representatives of the cigarette surfboard save the waves save our shores surfwriter foundation oceana santa Cruz county tobacco education and prevention and other interested stakeholders to work on banning the sale of single use filtered tobacco cigarettes convene the subcommittee health and all policies or the assigned ad hoc committee staff and stakeholder groups by no later than mid november to begin discussions and establish a timeline for future meetings and then bring back an item to counsel no later than the second meeting in february 2023 outlining a process and timeline for community outreach stakeholder engagement and ordinance development and and then also include the and so I'll just leave that there that if those could be accepted as friendly amendments and maybe some of the timeline could be adjusted but I think that well I can remember personally that save our shores had a beach cleanup for national or global beach cleanup day last year and the cigarette surfboard folks were out there for that event I remember picking up cigarette or doing the beach cleanup with the mayor and this conversation came up at that time so seeing is how that was summer of 2021 here we are in summer of 2022 and I think that there's some interest in bringing this forward and trying to see what this timeline can look like for implementation and so I know that members of this group have also been reaching out to council members since early well last year and early this year and it's taken us up till now to even get this on the agenda and so I think that what they're recommending is appropriate to be able to kind of begin these discussions start laying out that timeline and what the process could look like so that we can begin taking action on this and so I'll leave my comments there but that's the friendly amendment I would like to make is is to incorporate the community recommendations on this item thank you council member Cummings um for clarification it sounds like your amendment would in addition to health and all policies subcommittee have a moment the city currently has labor negotiations happening as we we had in our closed session this morning and so that's what that is about I will return to council member Cummings I'm just trying to get clarity your amendment is adding not just the health and all policies subcommittee but additional stakeholders so you're enlarging the group of folks to meet um is the first part the second part um is convening by mid november to begin discussions so health and all policies meets next in december every other month so I think that for many of our subcommittees in our groups we kind of dictate the timeline for when we meet and given that this and also as part of this if this doesn't go to health and all sub to health and all policies subcommittee another subcommittee can be formed that could establish a timeline for when they want to meet and can address this item and I know I when I spoke with Tiffany I thought they're supposed to be meeting in november because this is september they're not meeting in october they're gonna meet again in november um so that was my understanding that's why I also suggested november yeah I'm sorry we're not in october we're in september so it is every other month and so we are meeting then in november so um mayor and council forgive me I'm losing track a little bit in terms of uh the friendly amendment and the timing around when the work would start um so perhaps perhaps we can get clarification on that what I would ask is that we have enough runway to work with Tiffany and the health and all policies committee to get us all the process in place um so the the original motion I think was to start that in spring of next year was there um was there a suggestion to to change that so if I can speak to this um what I was bringing up is to have an initial convening of that group so one of the things that I found that has been effective in my time on the council is not just having council members and staff work on these issues but work on these issues with members of the community who are being impacted who are stakeholders this isn't just the you know nonprofits and and the people who are um you know from the environmental groups who are supporting this we also the reason why that it's left open I imagine is because um you know there's this says other interested stakeholders which would likely mean some of the business owners in the community as well and the idea is if we can all work together on these things you know we can be more effective and and reduce the amount of pushback and so just having initial meetings it seems like makes sense and then bringing it being able to start thinking about what the process looks like so thanks for that clarification council member Cummings that's certainly the intent of this approach in developing an implementation plan that would have our stakeholders around the table as part of that discussion that in and of itself will take some time and work to put a thoughtful process together our hope would be to launch that within the timeframe originally recommended but it all defer to the council and I'll just I'll just say that you know we're putting this out here so that we can discuss and you know provide if there's a need for flexibility we can provide that but I think that as I mentioned before you know this came up in 2022 summer of 2021 they the these individuals have been writing us since you know fall of last year they wrote us a bunch in the winter of this year they've been trying to give us to take action on this it's been kicked down the road and we finally you know they came to us during oral communications and that was the only way we could actually get this on the agenda so um understanding that it's going to take some time I think that you know what we're trying to do today is be responsive to people who have been waiting a long time to have their voices heard understood councilmember Cummings and I'm sensitive to that as well wanting to ensure that the the magnitude of the of the regulations we're contemplating here will require some significant outreach and conversation and I and I know you and the council understand and appreciate that and just wanted wanting to ensure we've got staff bandwidth to do justice and I just want to point out in the third point that the meeting in February is really to bring back outlining a process in timeline for community outreach stakeholder engagement and ordinance development so the idea being that I think everybody in this room knows that this isn't going to be something quick but being able to get have some response of what that timeline is going to look like kind of sooner than later since people have been waiting for over a year and a half makes sense okay I'm going to ask the maker of the motion if it's clear what the friendly amendment is and in terms of enlarging the group in the February bringing back I I think it's a little bit inconsistent with the original motion in terms of the timeline but one thing that could be a potential compromise or suggestion is that the meeting to the first meeting of the ag hoc committee to focus on some of these recommendations and then to really think about how that could be kind of implemented certainly these are some of these stakeholders and there is an extensive list of probably a number of other stakeholders that aren't included here so I think I personally feel like happy to consider these but want to take a step back and start with that first committee meeting to really look at who are the stakeholders how do we want to do the outreach what are the various policy options I have questions about a specific ban and implementation and frankly enforcement feasibility of that because I don't think we have we heard yesterday in our public safety committee meeting we have a serious staffing shortage and usually that falls at our law enforcement and if we're going to have differentiated products being kind of banned then I think we need to have a way to enforce that so anyways I just have a number of questions nonetheless I'm happy to take these considerations as a member of the public health I mean excuse me the health and policies committee and really factor them in in terms of the outreach plan but don't necessarily feel as comfortable with some of them because there's a little bit of limitedness that I would like to expand upon as well as the dates but knowing that we're at time I think if that could just be incorporated as not necessarily a friendly amendment to really adhere to the timeline but as the first sort of step for the committee to look at these recommendations would that be acceptable um I mean it'd be direction to the committee to look at these recommendations the recommendations on the cigarette surfboard flyer that we received and this and so councilmember brown I'm just um hoping that we can try to work through that because I do understand the timeline and I'm sensitive to the workload and so I'm but I'm also very sensitive to the fact that there are many community members who have been speaking up about this for a long time now and you know wanting to get something going seems like it would be a good idea for us to at least take even if it's not the full process of some steps to engage with community members before next spring because if we just send back to staff and the committee to do that work it's all happening behind the scenes and there are a lot of people in the community who won't necessarily know how to plug in to be involved and so I'm just wondering if if what I think I hear councilmember coming saying is um you know some way of getting the process going even if it's somewhat informal and it's information gathering and having conversations and we don't need to have a fully formed program before we do that so um so maybe like if there's some way to think about how we could take some steps now in anticipation of having moving forward in the long lines you're talking about if I may mayor and thanks for that suggestion councilmember brown that's a helpful way to frame it I don't think there would be any challenge with us having an initial discussion with the health and all policies at the next meeting acknowledging that we're not going to have an outreach implementation engagement plan fully flushed out yet but talking about the initial council direction we've received and the plan to move forward with it and earnest for the next several months if that helps to throw the needle there I think because we are in meeting in November and that could be the opportunity to really start at first dive at this I'd like to look at these recommendations I'd also like to look at the full list of pros and cons that Tara from public health presented us as well as the model policies that were in the packet and exist and some of the questions and in consideration that were brought up in terms of the funding circumstances so for me I think it's sort of all-inclusive if the direction could not be as specific but more or less to have a friendly amendment to really look at the recommendations from the cigarette surfboard to look at the recommendations within the agenda packet to look at the pros and cons list and then to to have sort of the timeline as set out in that we would meet in November and really engage our stakeholders but also have a meaningful process you know set up to ensue beyond beyond beyond the first meeting as well council member Cummings thank you I don't think that there's anything stopping the health and all policies committee from exploring those other options but I think what is important is that the people who brought this item to our attention the members of the community and the people who we've heard from today are really wanting us to focus on moving forward with this ban on single use filtered tobacco cigarettes and you know I think as council members being responsive to that seeing as how it's taken so long that's why that specific language is being called out because that is something that it seems the community really wants us to take action on right now and you know just understanding that we're going after big tobacco trying to go after all these different things these different items would be really challenging and would drag this process out even longer when this group is really trying to focus on one single issue and the more we take on the more divisive it's going to be so I think that's why calling out this language specifically right now at this point is important and you know we can we have this information now council members different subcommittees can bring back any of those recommend those other recommendations at any point in time but really you know calling it out and saying that we're going to take action on this one specific step is something that I think would be important for our community especially because of the amount of waste it generates on our beaches and the amount of threat it has to our environment thank you council member Cummings uh council member Myers just I guess I just have a question so I understand in 2017 2018 so we did we were the first city in the county to ban the flavored tobaccos correct and so that was a single in a sense focused you know effort and do we how have we how have we done on the enforcement of that I mean it's good to have a law on the books but I'm just curious about if there's ever sort of been a look because that's another thing I think the committee could do in that just making sure that the policy that we do pass is effective and I've heard a couple different things today I've heard let's do this focused thing and I've also heard you know look across the suite of of of basically the uses of single use you know materials to to basically smoke with so we're sort of talking slightly about two different things you know tobacco obviously I can see the public health and especially the children's peace in trying to get kids to not start using flavored tobacco but I'm just curious how our enforcement efforts have gone I'd like to make a recommendation if perhaps we have a motion on on here and I think you know the November health and all policies meeting that will be the wrap-up of our equity work that we the health and all policies committee has been working on and I think that would be a good time to start with this and come perhaps a friendly amendment could be in February with an outline and community engagement of all the stakeholders to start on this next for the year yeah 2023 so however that's worded if someone wants to make that I'll go ahead and make that friendly amendment but we already have a friendly amendment on on the floor here so I'm not sure I think what if I could I'll just I think that the friendly amendment on the floor isn't consistent with the motion so I won't accept the friendly amendment but I will say that this is as suggested in the original maybe what could be changed is that within the original motion to have the health and all policies committee review the secret surfboard and other policy suggestions at their first meeting in November so it incorporates the review and then accept your friendly amendment to have that timeline more associated specifically with having that committee report out in February which will encompass some of the assessment of that those recommendations as well as working with all the stakeholders which is your community group right which is I would be part of council member Cummings friendly amendment I think is key I would even I don't know if I could work on her friendly amendment before you but I think it would be important that the health and policy health and all policies actually you know do what is in in the suggestions here from the community which is to convene a potential stakeholder stakeholder committee so I mean again you know how you want to do that and when that takes place but I think you know making sure that there is heavy stakeholder input would be super important it's all over the place so it kind of sounds like it's the motion and then the friendly amendment or bullet one and two with three going to the or the other way around one and two going to the high up and the third one that's part of the motion can we um I I'd also like to consider maybe going to oral communications you want to finish it okay all right we're going to finish this and then we'll move on to oral communications I think if I think if in the interest of time because I know we're trying to move on to oral communications if we just incorporate these suggestions without breaking down some of the specifics into the first meeting of the health and all policies committee which is rooted in naturally and necessarily rooted in collaboration with a number of these organizations amongst others to have a report back I think in February with an update is is appropriate but not necessarily inclusive of a full established work plan I'm comfortable with that I think if we needed to go through these I would feel like I would need to go through these a little bit more but I don't think in the interest of time I'm I'm sorry if I could have you read what you wanted to say because you're kind of paraphrasing and I can't understand the difference between yours and just their council member comings okay just so I get it right so my recommendation is the original motion there on the screen and to incorporate so direct stuff and then to another bullet so just to backtrack you are not accepting the friendly amendment and you're amending your original motion yes because I feel like if I accept the friendly amendment it's inconsistent with the actual main motion so what I'm suggesting is that the health and all policies subcommittee at their November meeting yes review these recommendations in addition to the other recommendations presented in the agenda packet and then does that work for you and does the second year of the motion I'm fine with that and then do you want to and then I had a friendly amendment to bring back in February an outline and a stakeholder group that can work all together on moving forward with with this topic and I'm not going to spell out all of the organizations there but I think that's included in some of the motion recommendations and there's probably more that we can identify in that November meeting I'll accept the friendly amendment I will too okay council member comings so I guess for the interest of time I think what I'm going to do for the record is I'm just going to make a substitute motion which would be the recommendation that was brought forward by the cigarette surfboard group and I think part of that is because you know really focusing on the ban of the sale of the single use filtered tobacco cigarettes was the whole purpose of this and I just want to make sure that you know and I don't think that that's while it might be taken into consideration I think what's before us is really trying to focus on that topic and there's other opportunities in the future to address the other issues but this group has reached out extensively to council members to try to you know have us work on this and I know oftentimes they felt ignored because they weren't people weren't responding to their emails and so I'm trying to be responsive to them and what they've been trying to move forward for a long time so I'm going to make the cigarette surfboard recommendation as a substitute motion thank you council member Cummings second second okay I have a substitute motion by council member Cummings seconded by council member Brown if I could just say I'm I'm seconding this because I am concerned about the way that the the recommendations are being incorporated I mean I would just like to see some a little bit more of an affirmation that this this particular issue is going to be considered with it and I'm I'm not opposed to looking at a broader range I mean I think it's very important that we look holistically at this the set of challenges we have but I do want to see this proposal being taken seriously though and I'm just worried that it's going to get lost if we don't make it more explicit vice mayor Watkins I just have a brief comment I'm not going to be able to support the substitute motion I do appreciate the advocacy and work and I just want to acknowledge the work that happens on a regular basis with tech and with the county public health efforts that are happening around environmental waste policy I think that you know we as a council want to do our due diligence and certainly I appreciate the sense of urgency naturally this is a critical issue for our environmental stewardship and at the same time I think we want to be really thoughtful particularly if we're going to be the first in the nation and it could actually lend itself this work could lend itself to bringing forward a ban on single-use filtered tobacco cigarettes but it could not be enforceable potentially and we want to ask those questions what might be enforceable as a full ban on all tobacco products I don't know but I want to look at what the options are and so as much as I really appreciate and frankly will as a member of the committee will look at some of these recommendations I want to do my full diligence on what's best in terms of the various policy options and limiting that for me does not feel appropriate this time given that we could actually achieve a lot of impact with a different policy option potentially and so for me I think certainly this will be something to be explored within the committee it is part of the recommendations within the actual agenda packet certainly this is the work that's happening with tech I recommend that anybody who's interested in working on tobacco policy join tech and the meetings happen on a regular basis so if that's something that's an open meeting um councilmember Cummings if that's something you'd like to be connected to I'm happy to share that information with you in terms of the regular the work that's happening on a regular basis within our community in terms of the county work but at this time given the direction I feel comfortable with the original motion and therefore will not be supporting the substitute motion thank you so are there any other comments before we vote on the substitute motion um yeah I just I guess I just like to to state it's kind of an awkward situation that you know be working you know working in this field for so long and sort of be made to to make a choice tonight um it's uh you know policy development is is a long and arduous path and um you know I think we've seen proof you know just with some of the recent failures in in the policy that even at the state level has been um not working um and very few cities doing this work I just think the due diligence to just start with a full list rather than just one item makes a lot of sense um and um it may feel like we're not um receptive or or acknowledging people's concerns on the specifics with the single use tobacco single use filtered tobacco cigarettes basically um but I just think that as we work our way through the policy development it's it is worth starting with a broader discussion and then narrowing it's not to say that the process as as currently proposed in the existing motion in the in the initial motion would um not end up with a recommendation to move forward in single use filtered tobacco cigarettes so um it's a little awkward to have um sort of what I think is a little bit of a dual right now but I don't think that the process proposed in the original motion will ever does not negate that we may not end up with single use um cigarettes as a focus so I just want to make that clarity and unfortunately I'm not going to support the substitute motion just because of the the way it's kind of rolling out thanks thank you council member Myers um I also would just like to say that uh the original motion does uh definitely from my understanding prioritize all the recommendations that have been brought before us today um and sets a clear path for us to begin working on that and um I appreciate all of the organizations and as well as the county presenter who is here who also offered all the resources that could help us as we look at this it is a priority and um so I think the original motion encompasses all of that and we do need to um really look at that so I also will not be supporting the substitute motion all right are there any other comments we'll go to a roll call vote please for the substitute motion council member Calentary Johnson no no coming all right Brown aye Myers no thanks mayor Watkin no and mayor Bernard no that motion does not pass five no two yeses um okay so we have an original motion that is still on the floor council member coming can we just have that language posted the what the language for the motion one thing that's missing is the direction to have staff join the state that was the other bullet let me reread that yeah council member Cummings when yeah when it's appropriate if now's the time um I think are you thinking of no that some of the language wasn't there before so that's why yeah we're getting that added back in let me reread that uh Bonnie this part right here yeah that was just added back that's that's what was added but also to direct staff to join the state work group addressing the economic model associated with tobacco waste that was the edited I do think it's important that we stay connected to a lot of these bigger issues and naturally we'll have a bigger impact and I guess in my friendly amendment it would just the word identified stakeholder group mayor Brunner in February an outline and identified stakeholder group that can work together on moving forward with this topic I that's not a complete sentence I know I type it as they talk so I I fix it afterwards maybe identified to return in February with an outline and identified stakeholder groups that can work together on moving forward with this topic I say that again requested to return in February with an outline and identified IED there we go I did for clarification um identified stakeholder groups that can work together is I'm wondering if for clarification should that be with staff the subcommittee staff and the subcommittee on moving forward with this topic I'm just it's just not clear with what when you when we say identified stakeholder groups that can work together is that those groups working with each other or is that I mean trying to really spell out that they're working with the subcommittee and city staff I see what you're saying with an outline and identified stakeholder groups who would be working with staff and the subcommittee to well that's implied I mean it's just spelled out are you okay with that amendment on my friendly amendment thank you council member Cummings mayor Brunner requested to return in February with an outline and identified stakeholder groups who would be working with staff and the sub sub the high up subcommittee that can work together on moving forward yes thank you okay comment yeah so just final comments um I think that although the language that wasn't that the community brought forward wasn't accepted my hope is that the direction that we're going to take will really allow for review of these topics and that the banning of single single banning of the sale of single-use filtered tobacco cigarettes is the top priority I think that's one of the things that came out in our presentation today that you know we really started going into detail on that and we really didn't go into the other items because it's clear that this is one of the top priorities given that it's one of the biggest litter items that we find in our community and in our environment and so I just want to emphasize that as this moves forward my hope is that that is taken as a priority and and if other items come with it so be it but my hope is that this process will be transparent and will also be done in a timely way that really you know provides opportunities for community to engage on this item and so although the other the other motion didn't pass I'll be supporting this because I do feel that we need to continue moving forward on this topic and on this item thank you council member Cummings um and just for clarity I would like to just quickly comment the language uh from the community was accepted in the motion and incorporated into the motion to begin starting in November so I really want to emphasize a big appreciation for uh cigarette surfboard and all of the community groups that called in and are doing the work every day persistently consistently thank you uh we can only do this together and we will keep moving forward and um your recommendations as well as the county recommendations have been incorporated into the motion thank you and just thank you Tara and and the work of the county for for bringing this presentation to us as well okay are there any other I will move on to a roll call vote council member Callentary Johnson aye holder aye Cummings aye Brown aye Myers aye vice mayor Watkins aye mayor Brunner aye that motion passes unanimously thank you I will now move on into our agenda for all communications thank you for hanging with us for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if you wish to comment during oral communications now is the time to call in instructions will be on your screen oral communication is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda if you are interested in addressing the council raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand in the webinar controls on your computer you will have two minutes to speak members of the public who are joining us in person and wish to speak please line up to the right of the dais my left you will have two minutes to speak they request that you sign in to ensure correct spelling of your name in the meeting minutes at the clipboard at the front however it's not required please remember this is a time for council to hear from the public we are not able to engage in dialogue with each member of the public but when we are able we will address the questions raised after oral communications has completed we do have a couple of attendees virtually as well as in person so I'm going to alternate I will now call the first person in person thank you for waiting please step forward to the dais and make sure the microphone is at your mouth level perfect sounds like it's on good afternoon everyone my name is Greta Mitchell and I'm a senior at Santa Cruz high school and I'm also our associated student body president this year and I'm here today representing a much larger group of students that could not make it due to prior commitments and things they had to do instead um have be here with us even though they wanted to but I've come to address the parking situation at Santa Cruz high school and the effect it has on our learning engagement and success at school and I would first like to highlight the fact that we are not here to complain but rather to shed a light on the situation that really does have a large impact on us as students and I would also like to share my gratitude for the increase of street parking from two hours to four hours so thank you all for that um and to move on as you all know Santa Cruz highs in the middle of our community which makes it difficult to construct a large parking lot like many other schools nearby do have which in turn makes parking a ongoing problem for students and even staff at Santa Cruz high so when we run out of parking spots we are left with the only option of parking on streets where our permits do not allow us to park all day which results in many tickets that happen weekly in distress regarding the financial ability to pay them as they continue to add up every month and for students who need to cars to get campus get to campus it is disheartening to get fined just for trying to attend school as other students at high schools nearby do not have to deal with this issue and having our parking increased to four hours does help but for students who have obligations during lunch like tests and office hours or clubs moving their cars means that they have to push aside activities which are beneficial to succeeding in school and passing their classes and I do have some more but I'll leave it at that so thank you guys thank you for your comment our next member of the public in person hi there welcome hi my name is Milan I'm a junior at Santa Cruz high and our goal is to change our two-hour parking to air parking because right now we're expected if we don't want to get a ticket to move our car three times a day which doesn't really make sense and recently you guys came up with idea to change the four-hour parking which I'm grateful about but I'm at school for longer than four hours so I actually brought my ticket here to show you that four-hour parking didn't really make a difference for me um we should not be worrying about parking tickets in class and um lots of times I'm in class waiting for a whole pass to come back so I can go run and move my car so I don't get another ticket because as of right now this is a hundred twenty dollars um and firstly it also doesn't make a difference to when we move our car because there's not enough spots to move them to so we're just like literally just trading spots with our friends and it doesn't work on the same street which makes no sense um most of our spots are taken up by construction as well so like right now if I was gonna like put in perspective within all of you like if you all paid for parking like probably two of you would actually get a parking spot and you'd have to fight for you have to get here early and fight for parking spot um the other day I got out of class and I saw a parking ticket I'm pretty much every car I walked past which seemed crazy to me um also I right now I'm currently working two minimum wage jobs and I'm gonna have to pay myself so I don't see how this is like acceptable for high school students to have to pay $60 per ticket and um Santa Cruz High has been there since 1897 so people have been saying that the reason that we're getting tickets is because the neighbors are complaining but they know that they're moving by a school and they know I understand that the consequences they're getting by the next to school so I think that that's important and that's why I think it should be eight hour parking instead thank you I'm going to um alternate to our one of our virtual attendees uh the first name is I am watching you go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself okay thanks okay since someone did finally take down the overstayed queer pride flag on the civic auditorium I'll skip a full continuation of my comments of last meeting but did want to mention you were in violation of the May 2020 resolution authorizing such a display as it only sanctioned display throughout the month of June isn't violating your own resolutions a no no I will mention that all people are entitled to their own personal moral or any opinions about anything whatever they are such as mine that the far left elements of government including their public school teacher queer crusading and doctorators and trans right activists have gone too far and are starting to produce harm to children and others I wish I had time here to go into more of that as to measure Ellen K I'll vote no on Ellen K and hope it's brought back without the communist teacher subsidy housing angle the proponents say the 228 million and 2016 bonds only made half the needed school improvements that these measures are holding the public up for a much more 371 million partly because of building government employee add-on subsidized housing and a self-serving benefit that ignores the lost land cost of permanently using up public land in a giveaway benefit that does nothing for children but pad teachers pocketbooks at local public not state expense plus interest that we'll be paying on for 25 to 40 years I have no desire to see a prop 13 end around bond measure cause property taxes to grow up 360 bucks for the rest of my life even a partly to line the pockets of teachers who if they have a problem with pay should take it up with their employer I wonder what the rent will be and who and for what that money goes to I'll bet it doesn't go back to the taxpayers we play penny pay plenty in taxes and if it isn't getting to teachers it's not because we aren't paying enough taxes I suppose somehow the real problem with uneven teacher pay is corruption and an uneven distribution of taxes since the California average teacher salaries reportedly 97,000 a year almost unbelievably some teachers in California make an unconscionable 3 to 400,000 in pay and benefits thanks thank you for your comment we have another person attending us virtually Michelle Lee my name is Michelle Lee good evening um I've just come and called here today because um I'd like to express my strong support of the installation of a community historical marker that would be placed on water street bridge to memorialize honor and remember the stories of Francisco Arias and Jose Chimales I think that it's time for Santa Cruz to begin and have a conversation on the historical wrongs that are embedded in the history of the city unlike many others that have gathered here will also like to express thank you so much thank you for your public comment our next member attending virtually is Bodie Shargo go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself all right can you hear me yes wonderful it didn't pop up um thank you council for listening to oral communications I want to take this as an opportunity to talk about you know intersectionality and the writing of historical wrongs because we're at an interesting day in our history I grew up in Felton where there used to be a very strong KKK presence um in in our past and it showed me that our town has a much uglier history than we talk about very often uh and one of the darkest parts of that history was the the lynching of two Latino men in 1877 and in 2018 the council voted to approve the installation of a historical marker on water street bridge to memorialize that tragedy a marker which still hasn't been installed so I'm I'm giving this comment today to to urge the council to move forward to install that marker to address our our past of a bigotry and and hate and Santa Cruz um acknowledge it but then I believe that we have to go further than just acknowledging it because while we don't see this same uh violence quite as often anymore we we see different types of bigotry and and and hate that that harms our Latinx community and other oppressed communities in the same way uh and and people were outside the council protesting against that today uh urging for city workers and union workers to get a fair contract so I hope that the council can move to address our past of ugliness and bigotry by installing a historical marker on the water street bridge and can do the active work to right those wrongs today by addressing the needs of SCIU city workers and giving them a fair contract thank you very much thank you for your comment the last person virtually is Sabina Holber and then I'll continue within person go ahead and unmute yourself sorry Sabina hi can you hear me yes hi welcome you hi um so right now we're in about the waning hour or so left at Freshershawna and I'd like to wish everyone a happy new year in Shawna Tova but I wanted to call in today because at previous council meetings and today earlier there's been a caller that's called in and uses an anti-semitic slur um I've heard other callers in the past before be cut off or kicked off their comments because they were using foul or offensive language um and as a member of the Jewish community I would like to ask that if somebody calls in and talks about the globalist elite it is not um it's not a dog whistle we all know what they're talking about and so please support the Jewish community and don't allow this in council chambers going forward thank you thank you for your comment next I have in person hi there welcome hi um my name is Corinne Steven I'm a senior at Santa Cruz High School and Greta and Milan already covered most of it but I just wanted to add on a few more facts and issues that I've experienced um with the parking at Santa Cruz High first of all I have noticed that it is a safety issue because many people drive around crazy trying to find spots and to not be late to class and personally I have noticed that I have gotten the most tardies I've ever gotten in this one chunk of the school year so far than I ever have because I can never find a spot and I always have to move my car so um also I have seen many times people are just racing around and because they're trying to find a spot and people almost get hit um also a lot of people can't get rides to school because their parents are working or um it also just waste money and gas so driving around trying to find a spot and also break time usually when we run around and try to find a spot it is supposed to be time for us to eat go to the bathroom and also just not stress and have a break that is why it is called break and um instead we are racing around in our cars trying to find a spot and it just adds on a whole bunch of more stress and I've noticed I'm always really hungry because I never have time to eat because I'm jumping in my car running around trying to get a spot and there's no spots and then I'm late so that's another thing um basically there's also one spot that's very confusing I have gotten a ticket before there's like a spot at the front of the school where it's two hour and then a little section right next to it where you can't park and that was confusing for me but if we could just at least put the time up a little bit that would be better maybe eight hours that would be best thank you thank you for your comment next in person hi there welcome hi my name is Lucy clow I'm the ASB vice president at Santa Cruz high school and I will also want to add on to the parking situation uh Santa Cruz high um every day many of my friends and peers at Santa Cruz high school make the difficult decision on whether they should move their car and be late to class or risk getting a $60 ticket and I think that this is a very unfair um position to put high school students through um because tickets are very expensive and a lot of people do not have jobs to afford them and yeah um also like Corinne was saying the problem where safety issues and how people are rushing around looking for spots puts a lot of risk on students and I don't think it's fair for people to be rushing around during time when they should be eating and getting ready for their next class where they should be focusing on school and their education rather than spending money on tickets so yes um thank you thank you for your comment we have one person virtually I'll I'll go to phone number ending in 4844 go ahead and press star 6 to unmute yourself so members of the community this is Robert Norris I'm with health homeless united for friendship and freedom I watched the chapter three phase three of the destruction dozens of survival tents in the city main where matt huffaker's crunch compress and uh I pretty much covers it the tents and the living space of bench land residents today the false narrative the city is providing accessible shelter accessible indoor shelter is misleading the community and I think misleading the council itself there is no accessible alternate shelter either for the folks in the benchlands or for the folks more broadly in the community you adding up the pallets the tents and the overlook and armory and the few vacancies as they happen at 12 20 river street there's nowhere near enough space to offer shelter for the hundreds in the benchlands much less the hundreds everywhere else instead the city is operating what is ultimately a de facto vice shoving the fleeing residents like sardines into smaller and smaller space city is creating a true health hazard which it will again take the courts to unravel many of us are are dazed confused bewildered I'm a little sick myself by this robotic defamation of the benchlands it's happening at the same time at footbridge services is closing that's the services in spite of all their good work that provide an emergency shelter that the city would not warming shelter which the city would not storage space which the city would not so many are angry and desperate as they see their homes of two years bulldoze with a broader community and I don't know tolerate this this latest chapter or the next cruel chapter of this benchlands demolition I can only hope it's a long struggle if you didn't show today keep alert show up to the next time that folks need your presence and feel the members of community thank you for your comment our next member of the public here in person hi there welcome awesome when I started this first off I want to show solidarity with our workers who have been here today my name is Ray Diaz I'm a student at UC Santa Cruz and I serve as the labor commissioner for the worker student solidarity coalition in the black student union so I would urge this council to meet the demands of the workers that are here today and meet the demands of workers who are going to come in the future and we're going to be here striking on Monday but in other terms I do serve in a number of roles at UCSC but most importantly I am a proud Chicano my barrio is Santana and here in the city of Santa Cruz Francisco Arias and José Chamales were lynched in the city of Santa Cruz in the year of 1877 on August 27 2019 the Santa Cruz City Council passed the motion to approve the recommendation from the historical preservation commission to create a subcommittee of individuals with demonstrated historical expertise to develop a recommendation for an interpretive plaque acknowledging this incident 140 year 145 years later there's still no marker the students who spoke today and who are going to speak after myself is an example of Chicano power and solidarity so I urge this council to finish what it started and begin to heal from this historical wrong and I encourage you to finish the marker include Chicano Latina and indigenous voices in this process and immediately install install a historical community marker gracias and this to remind you folks is the history of Santa Cruz and I don't want you all to forget that gracias gracias thank you you next we have the next member of the public hello council my name is oh god my name is Zenon Elliott Crowe and I'm here to show solidarity and support with Radia as and many others with the installation of the community historical marker on the water street bridge we need to honor remember and reckon with our past as a city and I really really support the efforts to go ahead and create that memorial for Francisco Arias and Jose Hamalas thank you thank you our next member of the public welcome I'm Alon Wilkerson I'm also UC Santa Cruz student and I'm also here in strong support of the installation of the community historical marker to be placed on water street bridge to memorize honor and remember the stories of Francisco Arias and Jose Hamalas I would just like to recognize that it's not an excuse of COVID anymore this hasn't been installed in years and it's pushing back the history that Santa Cruz is afraid to actually confront this has happened in Santa Cruz recognize it and learn from it and I strongly hope that you guys do it as fast as possible because students here who actually have work to do have things to study for are coming here and telling you guys to help out and do this for us thank you thank you for your comment are there any other members of the public who would like to speak for oral communications any items not on the agenda okay I would like to just quickly address a couple of the points that were brought up during oral communications and then I will go out to council one is the water street bridge plaque which we did receive looks like five uh collars uh I did receive a voicemail from Radia's thank you and as well as some community emails I was unaware of this previous council direction since it happened before I was on council but I am currently as the mayor reviving that committee to continue this work and look at that with the historical preservation commission as well as other stakeholders and I'm happy to outreach with with everybody who commented on this item to keep everyone updated as we move forward with what I've learned is a very tragic devastating incident so thank you everyone for that I would also like to Santa Cruz High School parking I see that our parking public works director Mark Dettel is here and I'm wondering I have a couple questions if you would be able to kind of clarify so that we can help direct some support for for that it sounds like recently I guess my first question is what has changed where students it seems like this is a new dilemma of getting parking tickets it sounds like it was recently increased from two to four hours is it that more students are driving or there's construction or both do you have any data on that that's a very good question Mark Dettel director of public works um that parking program has been in place for many many years what has changed is the school is doing some construction on site and so they've taken away some of the onsite areas for parking as well as impacted some of the services they provided onsite and then the contractors that are working onsite are taking up some of the spaces that historically were used for parking Bonnie can you put that map up let me just give you some context of where the parking is around the school and if you see Santa Cruz High in the green area in the center um it's the the yellow portion on your on the left is Mission Street and then it's bordered by Walnut Street that goes down to Lincoln as well as Laurel Street and then goes all the way down to Chestnuts kind of boxes that area in all the areas in red are parking areas that that students are able to park at but with a two used to be a two hour limit I think the other thing that and then when this came to my attention a few weeks ago I reached out to the campus manager Steve Arnold and just to get understanding of what was going on as well as our traffic enforcement to find out how it was being enforced and he he said he requested if we could change that from two to four hours per permit period he figured that would cover most of the issues and so we agreed to do that and so you can see on this map it is instructing the two hour to be we're given a four hour parking on the on the streets that are indicated on red so there's quite a bit of parking available it sounds like some of the students the information didn't go out to the students directly and they weren't all informed about that Mr. Arnold is working on that this is one program where it's actually managed by the school the school issues the permits we do not issue them and so they can determine how they're issued if they want to give priority to carpools if they want to give it priority to people that live in Davenport or outside the area that's really up to them how they issue those permits this city doesn't do so we do the enforcement just like we do the enforcement or in the west side where the if the university students impact neighborhoods or by the beach where the visitors impact neighbors as well as around major users as far as the the center health um we have parking permits there there is a parking process that the residents can regress request a parking permit we survey the neighborhood takes a vote of 75 percent of the residents and so this that's how this was put in place so um I requested that we do a four hour as in lieu of two hour um enforcement for the remainder of the school year and then if we during that time period there's time to relook at the program and if they want to go out and reevaluate or redesign the program so it works for everybody that that gives us time to work that out do you have a an idea or have you been informed of the construction timeline is this I I have not by mr. Carl didn't really tell me that um okay and then council member Cummings thank you mayor and um well many of the members of the public who were here present are gone so um I just had a couple comments related to um what was discussed at um in oral communications the first of which is um obviously this parking issue is having significant impacts on Santa Cruz high students and since this is not on our agenda I don't think that we probably can go into great detail so I'd actually like to to make a motion that we put this item put an item on the agenda prior to the last meeting in December to address weekday parking issues around Santa Cruz high second okay we have a motion on the table to direct this item to a future agenda before December December our December 13th before our December 13th meeting may I get a roll call vote council member Calentaria Johnson uh Golder hi Cummings hi brown hi hi hi nice mayor Watkins hi and mayor Brunner hi that motion passes unanimously with council member Calentaria Johnson absent and then I have a few comments and questions on the other item um so as some members of the public brought up the water street bridge plaque went through the historic preservation commission and they made some recommendations to council back in 2019 and then direction was given to continue working on this I actually had been in touch with because I think Jeff Dunn was one of the people who had been reached out to on this item and so I just want to suggest maybe touching base with him to see kind of who the other people were that were working on this because it was a um it was more of a community group that was working on this not so much an ad hoc subcommittee with council members and so I was maybe thinking that at the next meeting if the city manager during the city manager report can just give an update on kind of where this process is at and provide some feedback to the community on their concerns with this maybe can help us get a sense of where this is at how it's moving forward and then we can kind of take any action from there that's necessary oh we can certainly do that council member Cummings the mayor and I have been in discussions about how best to proceed from here to get the process restarted so we can plan on bringing an update back as part of the next city manager update at that time thank you and that concludes my comments I did have one more um question if we can have some type of if you can if staff can speak maybe the homelessness response team can speak to the next homelessness update regarding footbridge services closing and some of those services and updates um and impacts thank you if I could just say I have um I somehow became the holder of the documentation from the water street so I can't be happy to share this so you can take it and do whatever would be helpful with it thank you yeah yeah I know I pulled it out because I was talking with my students about 5 000 lynchings of Mexican citizens and anyway it so I have it and hopefully it'll help the history not talked about uh thank you so much I will now this meeting is now adjourned thank you so much have a wonderful evening