 Morning everybody, like to call to order the November 14th meeting of the Board of Supervisors. Supervisor Hernandez, it appears as though you are appearing remotely. If you wouldn't mind explaining why you're appearing remotely to begin. Hello, yes, sorry about that technical difficulties here. I'm at the CISAC conference and I just also happened to be got sick too as well to help. But yeah, I'm at the CISAC conference right now. All right, thank you. So, Madam Clerk, if we could promote Supervisor Hernandez to the Board meeting and if we could begin then with a roll call. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Cummings. Here. Hernandez. Here. McPherson. Here. And Friend. Here. And we're going to begin with a moment of silence. I believe Supervisor Koenig, you had requested for a moment of silence. I did, thank you. I'd like to dedicate this moment of silence to Glenn Schaller, who died unexpectedly on October 30th, just shy of his 67th birthday. Glenn was a longtime community organizer, labor leader and local progressive trailblazer. He was the political coordinator at the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council for almost 15 years and a longtime member of the Santa Cruz County Democratic Central Committee. I think it's important to remember in these divisive times that the number one rule of public discourse is to debate positions, not personalities. And so no matter what you agree with Glenn's political positions or not, I think we should celebrate that he was a personality whose passion and intelligence strengthened our local democracy. Thank you, Glenn, for everything you did for Santa Cruz County. Thank you, Supervisor Koenig. Are there any additional Supervisor Cummings? Please. Yeah, I also like to dedicate this moment of silence to Michael Middleton. Michael Middleton was the father of Madison Middleton, who was the eight-year-old girl that was murdered and found in the dumpster outside the tannery in 2015. He's a beloved friend of many in this community who will miss him dearly and we hope he's catching up on lost time with Maddie somewhere. Also would like to dedicate this moment of silence to Rebecca Jane O'Rourke, who was also known as Bex. Bex spent most of her time as a carpenter, but after following on hard times, found herself homeless here in Santa Cruz and unable to afford to live off Social Security. She did the best she could, but was oftentimes living on the streets. It was in 2020 at the age of 71 that Bex had a few surgeries that rendered her in a wheelchair. When many of us found out that she was living outside and the rains were approaching, but that the homeless programs had began to open up that the county had provided during COVID, some friends were able to help Bex access those homeless hotel program that was offered by the county. She was then able to stay in that program, eventually got access to housing, but as her health slowly declined, she ended up passing away last week and today or Friday would have been her 75th birthday. And so I just want to in particular thank the county and the county workers for all the support they were able to give Bex so that she could get off the streets during an incredibly difficult time and live her last years of life in dignity. And especially want to thank one of the county workers, Jesse Williams. Jesse was working in the homeless hotel program and that's how he came to work in the county. He now works with the animal shelter, but he continued to check up on Bex and work with her and provide her with medication and make sure that her needs were getting met up until she passed away. And so really wanted to thank all the county workers who provided support for homeless people during the COVID periods and who have continued to help homeless individuals get in housing. Thank you. Thank you, Sir President MacPherson. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. This morning, Joe Hammer died in the center runs of Valley. He is the husband of Mary Hammer, who is well known for the Valley Women's Club and its effectiveness in getting things done up in the center runs of Valley. But as we all know, when you're a public servant or you're engaged in public activity, there might be one person out in front in that family, but the support system that you provide for that other person is just you have to have it. So Joe Hammer was a really very supportive and a loving man and I wanted us to remember him today. Thank you, Sir President MacPherson. We have a number of people holding our hearts. If we could have a moment of silence before the Pledge of Allegiance, please. We stand for the Pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic which it stands for the nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Mr. Plasio. Sir, are there any changes to today's agenda, please? Yes, we have some additional materials and corrections to Item 8 on the regular agenda. There's a revised agenda packet, Page 5, which is replaced. The formal title should read, Consider the Selection of Joey Rose DBA, Joey Rose Studio as the Public Artist for the Children's Crisis Center Public Art Project, adopt the resolution accepting unanticipated revenue in the amount of $91,000, approve an agreement with Joey Rose Studio for not to exceed amount of $91,000, and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Director Parks and Open Space and Cultural Services. Also on this item, packet Page 23 is replaced. New recommended action added, which adds adopt a resolution accepting unanticipated revenue in the amount of $91,000, and there's also a new attachment, odd 60 resolution, which was inserted after packet Page 25. That concludes the corrections to the agenda. Thank you. Are there any board members that would like to pull an item from the regular agenda to the consent, or excuse me, from the consent agenda to the regular agenda? Yeah. Yeah, I'd like to pull items 26 and 28. Are we going to pull items 26 and 28 and we'll make them items, do you want to hear them immediately or after the housing element? No, no preference. We'll do them right away. We'll make them items 6.1 and 6.2. Is that acceptable? Okay. All right. We'll move on to public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the community to address those items that are either not on today's agenda, but are within the purview of the Board of Supervisors, or items that are on the consent agenda, or the regular agenda if you're unable to stay for that morning. Good morning. My name is James Shearing Whitman most of the time. It is November 14th, 2023. Where to actually begin? You know, why would anybody pledge allegiance to a corporate pirate flag? You know, when you stand outside this building, there's a California flag and a U.S. flag that do not have that gold fringe around it under maritime law. And that's what the other side of this banister is. It's a corporate pirate flag. All of you are getting copies, including you, Carlos Palacio and you, Jason Heath, and particularly the clerks, because the clerks have the most important job in the room. They are the historians. On page four, it describes how a juror has more power than the Supreme Court and the President, because you can actually decide law and overrule things. On page 26 is our Declaration of Independence. You know, our Declaration of Independence clearly describes what a constitutional republic could be. This is a document on democracy versus liberty, because democracy is mob rule, and that's what we have in this room. You know, there are many charter cities and counties, and the city and county managers control all you guys like puppets or kites on a string. If the elected officials act, if the people that voted for you were aware of that, that your hands are tied, you know, what can you actually do? I'd like to see some changes. So the last time I was here was October 17th, and I wrote something in regards to the clerks in the city of Santa Cruz, who I'm repeating have the most important job. They are the actual historians. They could be seen as people like those who held up the US flag when it was being tanned by the British colonies. So that's enough for now. Thank you all. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. Yeah, good morning. My name is Ludmila Boyka, and I sent email again, and I'm sending urgent emails during class three years, and I never heard back from Board of Supervisors. This is very upsetting because on my email, I put word urgent, and I never got a call back. But on this Sunday, I spoke again with Mr. Koenig, and he promised me to call and talk with Randy Morris, and it's about food stamps for my daughter that does not get food stamps for three years. Three years, her food stamps get stolen, and when I got involved trying to help her to get it back, I get obstacle after obstacle after obstacle, and she still didn't get it. This is just outrageous. I don't have even words to describe how could it be, because my daughter was conserved by public guardian, and it happened without her out of my wish. She was kidnapped from me after the traumatic serious traumatic brain injury and bodily injury. It was done in secret and silent court hearing, and it was done three times like that. Even my daughter requested me to be her conservator. This is outrageous thing that going on in a county, crime after crime after crime, and it is no way to find help against crimes. The sheriff's department does not take my reports. I'm trying to file a report about the neglect of my daughter because she gets assigned mental health workers whose salary range from 100,000. It's the first one, do you know, minimum, and up to 200. None of them have even California state license. How could it be that people get hired for the county, work with the people, take care of people, and don't have a license? Please look in. Good morning. Welcome. Good morning, Gary Richard Arnold, Chairman, Supervisors. In the moment for silence, we have probably ought to include the 100,000 Americans that are dying each year from welcoming a city from Fentanyl and coming from the Red Chinese and distributed by the drug cartels. Perhaps there might be a room available in one of the hotels for the minister or the person Mr. Cummings was talking about. We work under, unfortunately, a Panetta machine, a Democratic state legislature later, both in the Washington state report and the California report under the Democrats said he delays he was a communist and he was putting pressure on a lady that wanted to quit the Communist Party or that was a member of the Democratic Party. And in both of those reports, it mentions Hugh DeLacy said we made you and we can break you. You still have the plaques for that communist SOV that served Red China and the Soviet Union. It was Leon Panetta's campaign manager that gave the city to a Lenin Peace Prize winner Angela Davis. I could go on with each one of you and the various people that are involved in globalism and setting up a parallel government both Leon Panetta's California forward Lenin Mandanka, American Committee for Economic Development. They want to get rid of counties like this and cities in this county. And you're part of it by not putting the parallel government, the COG, the Council of Governments. You don't show it on community TV. You don't report it. You're lying to the American people and all they do every time I go there is they sell global money. I'm giving you a magazine with a couple of charts in it showing the damage and people with the shots are dying so much faster than the people without. And I understand you're putting in a new mask conditions. Good morning. Welcome. Thank you for waiting. Hi, I'm Julia Blanton. I actually am here because I have requested a stop sign in my neighborhood for a four-way intersection with no signage. And I've been working on trying to reach someone about this for a number of years. And I just want to thank John Lumico for moving it forward. I don't know when this is going to come up on the agenda, but I have to leave it 10. So I just wanted to say I'm here. I support it. I have a bunch of signatures collected and it would just be really nice to see action on that. So yeah, for the safety of the Brooklynal neighborhood or Rolling Woods neighborhood with Brooklynal school. Thank you. Is it La Cognata and Meyer? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's just the people in the neighborhood are aware of it, but there are so many more people coming through the neighborhood that are like delivery trucks and food delivery and all these other people that just don't know the neighborhood and they just blast through it. And so there have been a lot of close calls and that's it. Thank you. Hope that we can get that done. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thanks for your advocacy and for coming in on that item. Good morning and welcome. Yes. Get right here. Good morning. Zach, first I would like to address you item 37 on the consent agenda you've written for a violence against women act grant for the ineffective district attorney last month was the 251 million dollar wasteful spending campaign for violence against women where the Santa Cruz police department was wearing the passing these bumper stickers out. Here's my abuser, David Murdoch, who has not been held accountable for severe domestic abuse to me. Here's your friend, Zach, Ruben Bedejo, George Floyding, the child who reported domestic abuse. I'm told you hired Ruben Bedejo when you work that or recruited him at the Santa Cruz police department. I require you men to do your job and use this funding to support me. I have not received one dime of the billions of dollars that is wasteful taxpayer money that is not factually helping women experiencing domestic violence. And Bruce McPherson, your legacy newspaper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel that you sold off to a propaganda machine is not reporting on this very important issue here to the community in Santa Cruz. So I see a board of supervisors who's absolutely ineffective to keep children and women from domestic abuse safe. Perhaps you need to fire the city manager. He runs operations here. This is unacceptable. I'm not tolerating this anymore. I have my requirements for you that I just asked Sakura Luna to pass out who actually headed my complaint on the civil rights violations I experienced in the county jail. Are you men embarrassed yet? You have political futures and I promise you I will oppose any campaign you launch unless you do right by me and my daughter. You have 10 days. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. Thank you for waiting. Hi, thank you. My name is Rachel Sodos and I'm here again to make a request that you consider the possibility of establishing something like truth commissions that are citizen led that are ongoing to investigate and discuss all of the essential issues in the COVID era, legal issues, health issues. And I realize that it's important that they be citizen led. There wouldn't be a need for an expensive consulting firm to organize it. I think the county perhaps could provide spaces, safe spaces and guidance regarding civil discourse. I realize it might seem not under your purview to establish, you know, revolutionary teachings or something, but I think it's pretty clear to everyone that something's wrong with our regulatory agencies like the CDC and the FDA. There was a congressional hearing yesterday at the subcommittee level discussing many of these issues and there are calls around the world for Nuremberg trials for there's just many, many legal things. And I don't claim to be an expert on these issues, but I've been following it and it's clear that there are there's not consensus in the scientific community. And I don't think the county of Santa Cruz should be manufacturing consent when we need to be openly discussing what's really going on and learning how to protect ourselves. I have bought a copy of this book, The Courage to Face COVID-19 Preventing Hospitalization and Death while battling the biopharmaceutical complex. It's by Peter McCullough, a very esteemed doctor and I've had a copy delivered to each one of the supervisor's office. I know you're very busy, but please consider having your staff, yourselves look at this and step up. Thank you. Good morning and thank you for waiting. Good morning. My name is David Schwartz. I'm a candidate for Supervisor District 2. I want to thank all of you for your service and dedication to the county we all call home. I can see from the sheer size of today's agenda that your job is difficult and complicated. I look forward to applying my skills to task at hand. In reviewing today's agenda, I found a couple of items that I would ask the board to reconsider. I'm not against these items, but I think the board needs to start looking for ways to make their core spending for services of greater need. I think we can all agree that tax revenues are not likely to be realized soon. The only way that we're be able to get things done is to find ways to make the money that we have more efficient and effective. The way to do that is to consider all spending with the understanding that we need to provide the core services needed by all our constituents. For example, item 7 appears to be an expansion of an existing program. I'm sure there's been a lot of money spent on studying this, but the money takes away from our core services. The second agenda item I found was item 8. Now that's been changed, but that item was looking to spend $90,000 for public artwork, where we have a vast number of artists and maybe even find volunteers or students of the arts who could provide this at a much lower cost. Many of the agenda items are funded by outside sources, and I think that's a great way to do it. Thank you. Thank you. Morning. Welcome. Hello. My name is Richard Gallo. I am a resident of the LIVO community, and I have a concern about care court that the county is going to be dealing with next year, because one of the problems is there is no affordable housing to place them. There isn't. You're going to have a crisis. The department is dealing with this. It's going to have a crisis. You have to deal with it now. Not later. I'm aware that the county would get additional funding next year. I mean, budgeted $290 million for care court. What an expensive way that the state is mismanaging a political power grab of the mental health services at funding at the state level. And the county is going to have a major impact on members of the mental health community with mental health services dollars being taken away under proposition one with the housing bond in March 24. We need to vote that bond down. The second thing is I'm really disappointing with the county behavioral health, not taking responsibility and acknowledging and apologizing for not providing adequate sign language interpreter. I'm a person with disability. How do you expect me to be included if I'm not going to be provided what I need to fully participate? I just ask her nicely. I need closed captioning on the TV for me to be able to read for certain individuals that I can't understand. I read it. Here we are 30 something years later with the American with Disabilities Act. You guys need ADA training. Staff needs ADA training. All departments need ADA training. Like I told the mental health services advisory board, you have a liability issue. Is that what you want for your county? Do I have to hit you with your pocket books? Get you to learn your lesson. Am I supervisor in Live Oak District? I'm really disappointed with you with no contact follow up with me. Communication is a two way street. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for waiting. Hi, my name is Jolie Wittin-Hanna. I'm also a neighbor in the Rolling Woods neighborhood and I'm requesting you guys to add those stop signs and hear that. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for advocacy. Anybody else in chambers before we go online? All right. Seeing none, we'll move online. Call on user one. Your microphone is now available. Mayor Lanker, I'd like to see the supervisors represent the well-being of the community and not the military industrial complex. Item 41 is just another item on, let's see how it's wording, replace the SWAT team's ear communication system and procure a mechanical breaching tool and find, say, a tactical communication headsets. Additionally, the bomb squad unit will secure x-ray generation devices to identify potential improvised explosive devices. This is dangerous technology. It's part of the militarization of the police all over against citizens who have legitimate complaints of policies of their representatives. There are a couple of books I'd like to recommend on this topic because the county, this is integral to what the county is doing. One's called Profits of War, Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military Industrial Complex. We have Lockheed Martin here in Santa Cruz County. Another one is the Palestine Laboratory, how Israel exports the technology of occupation around the world to 130 countries with drone technologies by wear, facial recognition, etc. We should be investing in the well-being of people providing food, not bombs. This item should have been on the regular agenda for wider discussion, opt out of item 41 in this grant to engage. There are no further speakers here. All right. Ms. Steinbrunner. Thank you. Graphic is amazing, isn't it? My name is Becky Steinbrunner. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak during public comment. I want to congratulate the Board on participating in Operation Greenlight, eliminating the face of the county building with green light during the week, the days around Veterans Day. I would like to personally donate a banner for next year's Operation Greenlight that will explain to the public what the green light is all about, supporting struggling veterans in their repatriation into the civilian life. Thank you for doing that. I also want to comment on Consent Agenda Item Number 16, revising the county's commissions. I've had a little bit more time to read through that, and I really support involving youth in our commissions. I am concerned about giving a full-blown commissioner spot to a 14-year-old. I would much rather have a youth commission separate from all commissions that these youth would then have their own body to be an advisory commission to your board. But within those commissioners, youth commissioners, they would have the opportunity to sit as youth advisors at large on any and all commissions that they so choose and meet with you to relay their feelings and comments regarding all issues on the county's commissions. Number 48 on the Consent Agenda, the Buprenofrine pilot project. I'm happy to see that the county is looking into alternatives for opioid addiction. I would like you to consider Ibogaine as a pilot project as well. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we'll close public comment and bring it to the board for comments specifically on the Consent Agenda, recognizing that two items were pulled. Supervisor Hernandez, we can begin with you since you're remote. Do you have any comments on the Consent Agenda? No comment. All right, thank you. Supervisor McPherson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. On item number 30, regarding the Big Basin Water Receiver loan request, I want to thank the board for considering this item. And I thank you and the county administrative officer and staff for taking a hard look at how we can assist and further help the court-appointed receiver in this on the operational shortfall of Big Basin. I felt it was important to bring this to the board to bring it to your light. There's about 550 water customers and over 1500 residents. We have a very tight budget situation going on in the county. I realize that, but in taking on this very difficult task of stabilizing the water system, the receiver has asked the county for a loan to help operations and water supply for the 500 plus connections in the 1100 residents there. The county has committed one-time funding that was budgeted this year to prevent an emergency and our staff has secured the state grant to address additional supply needs. Although we know it's a tough time for the county budget, as I mentioned, I'm confident our team will do their best to see how we might be of additional assistance and we appreciate the good working relationship with our state office holders and the agencies on this issue. Related but not the same is the Boulder Creek, item number 38, the Boulder Creek Water Quality Recovery Project. Thank you. Our staff again in the county departments who have worked on this critical project for the last couple of years to support fire survivors with rebuilding while also improving environmental and economic conditions related to the San Lorenzo Valley watershed and downtown Boulder Creek in particular. We're fortunate to receive a federal grant, which could help with the next steps on planning. I look forward to coming back to the board to discuss this further in the spring. On item number 50, the third party plan check, I want to express my appreciation to my colleague Supervisor Koenig for partnering with me on this, the planning staff for researching and designing a program that I hope will be effective tool in building more housing in Santa Cruz County. I especially want to thank the planning department for including all project plan submittals into the program and just not remodels that were originally proposed. I think this might help some folks in the rebuilding process and I look forward to implementing it as soon as we can. Thank you. Thank you, Survisor Koenig. Thank you, Chair. On item number 27, I just want to thank Emily Burton for volunteering to serve on the Historic Resources Commission for District 1. It's been mentioned numerous times at this board. Commissioners and our commissions are a vital part of our democracy. On item 50, the third party plan check program, I also want to thank the Community Development and Infrastructure Department for their comprehensive report and proposal on how to implement this program. Every time I'm out in the public, I hear about the challenges of getting anything built in our community. And nine time out of 10, these are residential projects. And so I think that this program which focuses on new residential projects and residential remodels will bring a lot of benefit. The planning department faces many of the same hiring challenges that all of our businesses and other county departments face. In fact, we're currently hiring for a new chief building official. So this really has created a catch-22 where we don't have enough housing, so we can't hire new planners and are limited in our ability to approve more housing. So the hope for this program is that it will enable property owners to bring additional plan check resources to the table to break through this trap. The fee study component of this item, as originally, I think everyone can agree that if you are paying for a third party plan check services and bringing some amount of resources to the table yourself, that there should be some fee reduction component. The program is valuable enough, though, to move forward. There'll be so much time-saving potential here that I have talked to plenty of people who will move forward without the fee reduction component. So by allowing a little bit of additional time for the planning division to research exactly how much each portion of our process costs, it will enable them to create a clear reduced fee component to this program. I look forward to seeing that implemented later next year. One final note. I also want to thank the Community Development and Infrastructure Department on item 55, the update on container-based sanitation. I want to thank them for developing this lease agreement with GiveLove to develop container-based, a container-based sanitation pilot project. This pilot product will provide important data on the safety and efficacy of composting toilets. It will also create a potential alternative that could be scaled up in the face of a large-scale disaster that takes out our sanitation infrastructure. So thanks to the department for that. Thank you, Supervisor Connick. Supervisor Connick. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I'd like to start by thanking Staffer Item Number 22, which is the annexation to Davenport Sanitation District. This item is going to really help us move forward as we're making improvements to our infrastructure on the North Coast. We're going to be wanting to install some bathrooms as we improve our parking lots. And so this is going to help us as we move forward with that. In addition to that, I just had one comment on the third-party plan check. I would just like to see if we could add the board receive report on the program in a year just to see how well that is helping folks move along with more efficient plan checks and approvals. Thank you. I just have one brief comment on Item 52, which is in regards to the vacation rental update. It was kind of a disappointing update for the lack of information that I had. I understand that we just hired some staff in regards to the enforcement side, but it's been over a year since the initial enforcement letters gone out. It would have been useful to have some information about what were those enforcement letters for. What's the status of them? What's the timeline we expect on them? This was something the board had prioritized to the point where we're using some of our TOT money to fund one of those positions. So I'm sure I share the board's greater interest that the March report when it comes back be significantly more robust in this report that came to us in this time because this really didn't provide much of the information for something that's a board priority. That is all my comments on the consent agenda. Is there a motion for consent with the additional direction? Second. So there's a motion from Supervisor Koenig and a second from Supervisor Cummings with the additional direction on Item 50. 50. All right, we need to do a roll call, please. So if we can have a roll call vote. Supervisor Koenig. Hi. Cummings. Hernandez. Hi. McPherson. Hi. And Friend. Hi, and that passes unanimously with the additional direction. We'll move on to the items, the first two items that were pulled from the consent agenda. Supervisor Cummings, you had pulled Item 26 first, which is, I'll read it into the records and stouts in a regular agenda item to direct the cannabis licensing office to draft an ordinance amending county code provisions concerning canopy limits for commercial cannabis cultivation, to direct the cannabis licensing office to recommend amendments to the county code related to canopy bonuses, increased square footage of established greenhouses for cultivation, retail sales and consumption at the point of cultivation, and establishment of on-site consumption lounges at cannabis retail locations and take related actions is recommended by Supervisor Koenig and Fernandez. We have the board memo and the first quarter report from last year. Supervisor Cummings. Yeah. Thank you, Chair. So I just want to start by saying that I'm supportive in concept of what's being proposed here. As a city council member back before the pandemic started, I'd actually started working on on-site consumption of these issues related to cannabis in the city. I think one of the things that I found concerned with was just the fact as a new supervisor, there's a lot of changes to code, and it didn't seem I had a hard time really trying to understand what was happening and kind of why, for example, with the increase in the 2% canopy bonus, how do we get there? Was there outreach? Because one of the things that we was really concerning when we were working in the city as it related to on-site consumption was how is the community going to respond? We make this major change to cannabis policy and really the need to do sufficient outreach. And so after reading the board letter, I reached out to the sheriff to see if there had been any consultation. And he said that he had just kind of found out about it. And I spoke with some retailers who expressed some concern. And so for me, I'm supportive of this. I think what will be good is that if we had the county staff working in conjunction with some community stakeholders who might have some concern with this and have something come back to us later in the year, and I've drafted some language, but really wanted to make sure that as we're moving forward with some very significant changes to cannabis policy, that there's a lot of community engagement so that the community is on board when these changes start becoming implemented. If I may, I was going to pull the item, but you pulled the item. This is the largest proposed change to our cultivation and dispensing ordinance since it's inception. And it was a consent item, which seems wildly inappropriate. So I agree, considering the history of this item, the hundreds upon hundreds of hours of discussion we had created our own commission that had both cultivators and community members in order to try and land on a place. So I was trying to figure out what community issue we were trying to solve versus what specific sub-industry issue we were trying to resolve. They're not always the same thing. And I think that we need to look more broadly on community-related impacts than just in industry-related impact. I was just simply going to vote no on this item originally. It depends upon what you're proposing to do because as we saw that the majority of the impacts actually on the cultivation side are within my district and supervisor Hernandez's district. I was going to ask, I will ask supervisor Hernandez what outreach you did to the community in regards to this since there was a lot of outreach from the fourth district and the second district on cultivation immediately preceding you coming to the board. Did you have an opportunity to meet neighborhood groups or neighborhood associations or anybody in associated with this in an advanced day item? In terms of neighborhood groups, we didn't have any folks that we had reached out to. They had concerns, but we did reach out to the industry of course to talk about some of their concerns as well. But within the city limits is we've previously had concerns within city limits but outside city limits. I haven't had any outreach. Anyone reach out to me or with concerns actually? I mean, it would have required proactive because the rest we all learned about this on Thursday afternoon, right? So I mean, I think that's very difficult for the community to expect to have engagement with 72 hours of a massive policy change. So I think it's incumbent upon those that are bringing forward sort of widespread line to use changes and historically contentious issues to actually do that community outreach. I mean, so I'd be, I'd like to also hear from supervisor Conan because I mean, it was your item, the two your item that I'm interested to hear with the proposed language modification is the supervisor Conan. Thank you, Chair. First of all, I'd like to point out that no ordinance changes are being proposed today. Simply a suggestion that we look at some ordinance changes in the future and we've separated those out into short term changes and and more long term changes. The short term changes which consider eliminating the sort of co-location scheme that had been created and that's really where we allow a slightly higher density of cultivation where more than one licensee was located. And what we saw was that businesses sort of created or or entrepreneurs created multiple businesses and to meet those co-location requirements or there was collaboration. And so those there are many existing sites where there's multiple licensees currently cultivating cannabis today. However, ultimately that creates a relatively complex licensing framework in order to reach really quite modest canopy limits. And so this is just one way, a very small way that we can help folks who have been cultivating who are in good standing with law enforcement, with our cannabis licensing office paying all their fees to just reduce the burden a very small amount on them. And so the goal would be to do that before the next growing season. The other changes proposed in terms of on the cultivation side allowing bonuses for cultivators in good standing. Here again, the goal is actually to promote sites, growing sites where there are not conflict neighbors. This actually incentivizes the good actors in our community and therefore makes it more challenging for folks who are with their neighbors who are in conflict with county regulations. So it's really incentivizing good behavior. And then as far as encouraging or allowing a little bit smaller sites to use the entire greenhouse space for cultivation. So I've done a number of field trips to understand exactly how these cultivation sites can or could impact their neighboring residents. I have to say greenhouses, we regulate them highly. You can whether it's putting in some kind of air filtration system to remove smell. Greenhouses are really have some of the least impact on neighbors possible because they're completely controlled environment. And so here again, this is really just a small change that would allow for a little bit more flexibility in how this crop is cultivated. And then to the other two points, and again, all of these are simply we're asking for a proposed ordinance through the work of the cannabis licensing office, county council, and other relevant staff, including the sheriff's office would basically, well, first of all that we're proposing some farm a farm tour program. Our twin engines of Santa Cruz County's economy are tourism and agriculture. In fact, in our sustainability update, which we passed around this time last year, we made a number of changes to our general plan in order to further encourage agritourism, whether that's allowing weddings on rural sites or more flexibility around farm stands. We recognize with every other crop that this is a vital part of Santa Cruz's economy, a way that we can have a competitive advantage. And allowing farm tours of cannabis sites will also play to our strengths there. I also have to say I've heard some really compelling stories from cultivators about the way that they are approaching cultivation, whether it's the regenerative agricultural techniques being used without pesticides and without without tilling the soil of some sites in South County or in the San Lorenzo Valley, efforts to preserve heritage varietals of cannabis that have a number of different medicinal properties. I really think that allowing just a little bit more flexibility here will actually help our industry become more Santa Cruz-y in a way, more value-based and ultimately more vibrant. And in many ways, the same thing is true of allowing consumption loungers or onsite consumption at points of retail. This would really allow educational opportunities and more cultural engagement around retail instead of sort of the gas station drive-through high THC content kind of industry that we see today. So again, I think that ultimately these changes are ways to support the industry in a way that will better embody the values of our community. Thank you. I'll just say it's a bit of a distinction without a difference when you're directing an office to draft an ordinance and you literally tell them the language and the goals of what it'll be in it versus saying we're not adopting something today. I recognize we're not because we can't. I have an item that was also pulled that does the same thing, but the intention is to draft an ordinance under a very specific framework. And I mean, I just feel like there's a lot of folks in Corralitos, there's a lot of folks in La Selva that would take umbrage to this item and the significant shifts that would propose it. I mean, this is, you're, maybe we have a difference of how we define minor when it's literally doubling cultivation canopy limits in certain areas. I mean, that's pretty significant to me. And we had pretty extensive discussions in this board and in the community over years, um, over trying to land on a place that met everybody's needs. And I know that that it was imperfect and it'll continue to be imperfect, but this is a pretty, this is a pretty major change in my opinion. And so that's why I can't, I mean, I don't know what's going to be counter proposed, but I can't support it in its current structure. Supervisor McPherson, do you have anything to add on this item? Yeah, although it's possible that I could support some of the language land use changes that are proposed. And if we're given more detailed information on the impacts, I do want to take issue with the consumption of cannabis at the actual farms. I have voted for dozens of policies and programs that support the cannabis and tourism industry related over the years, but I really can't support this one. It's being represented here as similar to wine tasting, but it's not the same in my mind. Really, we have legal thresholds and standards that govern how much alcohol a person can consume and safely drive. Those standards can be a force if you drink too much, but we really don't have the enforceable impairment standards regarding the consumption of cannabis. And that bothers me. Consuming cannabis at a farm inevitably results in some impaired driving. And no matter how we try to restrict it, and I'm concerned about it as a public safety issue. All right. Thank you. Supervisor Cummings, do you want to perhaps read your language and we need to open it up for the community for commentary on it, but they should know what's also being counterproposed? Thank you, Chair. I just want to thank everyone for their comments and feedback on this item. So I think the language that I'm going to propose might help to bring us to a place where we can consider some of what's been proposed today, but within the context of the fact that there needs to be more outreach done and if we're going to move in this kind of direction, there needs to be more details on what's being changed. So the language I'm proposing would direct the Canvas licensing office working in conjunction with stakeholders to propose the recommendations for updates to policies related to the sale, consumption and cultivation of cannabis to the Board of Supervisors. Honorable for the second meeting in June 2024 that would include but are not limited to changes to canopy limits, increases to cannabis cultivation area and greenhouses, limited retail sales of Canvas goods grown and produced by cultivation licensees at the point of cultivation, medicinal, educational and recreational options for on-site consumption lounges, on-site consumption pilot program, changes to co-location options for non-retail commercial cannabis. And a lot of this was pulled from what was written in the agenda report and then what was outlined in the attachment. And hopefully this is a way that we can have more community outreach and engagement to see where the community is at. So that when we're moving forward, we're moving forward as a community and not just representing one specific interest group within the community. Okay. We'll open it up for the community for comments on this pulled item. Please feel free to step forward. Yes, David Schwartz again. I'm listening to you talking about something that you want to make changes to but it sounds to me like you haven't done the work necessary to know what people think about this and you really need to get into the communities and find out the fact that people have not been speaking about this doesn't mean that they don't have opinions. We live quite a ways away from a marijuana producing farm yet there are times when we can smell it and it's not easy to avoid. It's in the air, it's everywhere. And so I really think that we need to get out there with much more community involvement and find out where these farms are and see the people around them and go out from just what you expect it to be an impact to where it really is impacting further into the neighborhoods and what have you. And I think you guys need to do more work on this. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for waiting. Morning. Jeff Nordahl licensed cultivator and brand operator here in Santa Cruz. Our brand is Jade Nectar. We actually still do cannabis wellness products just for the community. We only work with about 20 shops locally. But yeah, thank you for bringing up these items for consideration. Really appreciate that. And I want to just address a few of these concepts as far as how to be mindful, respectful neighbors and do this responsibly. But I'm most a fan of the onsite consumption, education, farm tours, and as far as promoting tourism and the experience here in Santa Cruz. I own a decommissioned summer camp in San Lorenzo Valley that is already set up with the entire infrastructure for this kind of thing for hosting folks. And I just want to say as far as the driving, but we're already contemplating for bringing in tourism. And we've already reached out to folks like Brookdale Lodge where they could stay at the lodge and we'd actually have a tour bus or van actually drive them to the property to avoid the driving situation. I also want to make known that all of these properties, we got our use permits and without any conflict from any neighbors. And we've had no complaints from any neighbors. And then another point as far as growing hemp, so CBD hemp, it's the exact same plant as the cannabis plant. I'm now almost 10 years into it for 10,000 square feet of canopy in my Soquel property. It took me 48 hours through the Ag department to get an acre of hemp approved, the exact same plant with absolutely no complaint or any other impacts. So as far as just the THC molecule, I can grow, I could grow five acres of hemp at the same property without any complaints. Thank you. Good morning. Morning. Thank you for your service. Really appreciate it. And thank you for bringing this to the community. My name is Jacob Farrar. I'm a CPA locally and entrepreneur. I really feel strongly about the cannabis tourism component of this. It could really help shed some light on the burgeoning industry and provide a multitude of benefits both for travelers and the local economies. Cannabis tourism is not just about recreational use. It is a catalyst of economic growth and cultural exchange and wellness. Cannabis tourism fosters cultural exchange as people from various backgrounds visit these destinations and they bring with them a rich tapestry of perspectives. The cultural exchange not only broadens the horizons of locals, but also promotes tolerance and understanding among different communities. Furthermore, the wellness aspect of cannabis tourism is noteworthy. Many travelers seek destinations that offer alternative therapies and relaxation. Cannabis-friendly locations often provide a unique avenue for achieving this. Cannabis tourism has the potential to reshape outdated perceptions surrounding marijuana and cannabis by providing a controlled and regulated environment for cannabis use. These destinations promote responsible consumption and this in turn contributes to the ongoing destigmatization of cannabis, fostering a more informed and progressive society. Furthermore, I think that I've worked with the cannabis community for years now as a CPA and it hasn't been easy. I've seen their struggles and so I think rewarding the good actors with an expansion of cannabis is in the best interest of the community as well. Thank you. Good morning and thank you for waiting. Good morning. This is the first meeting I've been to. I didn't realize how difficult your job is. Anyway, my husband and I own a small farm. We're certified organic. We have a small vineyard. And do you know the story of Percy Smythe and Monsanto? Are you familiar? If you don't, I won't go into it. It is about a cross-pollination. And I realize that many of the greenhouses that are growing marijuana whatever are enclosed now. But I don't know if there's been maybe some of these professionals here could let me know. But I don't know if there's been enough research done on cross-pollination between let's say vineyards and pot. So that could be a real disaster without, as you were saying, Mr. McPherson. A little more research done on not the sale of it, not the money that it brings to the community, not the wonderful medicinal benefits, but the possible byproduct to other growers that are growing something different. So that's all I have to say. Good morning and thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome back. Pat Malo, I've had the pleasure of working with all of you on this issue for thousands of volunteer hours at this point. And I think we know each other good enough to just be frank about it. And if there is a risk from cannabis, it was 10 years ago, not now. You guys have done an amazing job of driving out not just the bad actors, but literally everyone else who's involved in this that didn't have the financial resources and really the guts to go into this thing, knowing that as the ordinances were written, they weren't going to work. I've heard all of you say over and over that this is an ongoing process. We're going to have to come back to the table and readjust these things as the emerging cannabis industry develops in the state and the rest of the country. And what we've seen now is that those rules that didn't work back then definitely don't work now. And that when we talk about, oh, well, what sorts of public input and different processes, like we had these exact proposals up with the last board. And the last board said, let's wait till the new electeds come in and then they can decide this. And so again, being frank, should we just wait for the other new electeds to come in here and then they can decide this? Because that's what it seems like is going on is that there is ample opportunity to talk about these issues. Even now we're just talking about coming back with something. And so you can reach out to your constituents if you think that these are major community issues. And the ones of us that are left, we used to have thousands and thousands and thousands of normal people making a living off this plant that helps people. And all of us were willing to do whatever it took to get to the point that we're at where we can make this work. And there's very few of us left. And we're here saying begging you for just small adjustments to make this work. And you mentioned conventional ag and tourism. Cannabis was as big as both of those before you guys stomped it out. So thank you for your time. And I think that we're going places. Good morning and welcome. Morning. Thank you guys for everything. Thanks for bringing this to everybody's attention so that everybody can continue to dialogue about it. I think the proposal as it stands is beneficial for both the cannabis industry and the community around it. It encourages good actors. It encourages us to talk to our neighbors and hear from fine folks like these who at the end of the day have important things to say. And if you bring all of us together, I'm sure there's a way we can work it out and come up with something that works for everybody. But I think just blanket stomping this out is not a good idea. And I think it'll only hurt the industry. Thank you. Thank you. Morning. Welcome back. Thank you. Becky Steinbruner. I live in the rural area. And I have a former cyclist and have a lot of friends who also bicycle now on the rural roads. And I share supervisor McPherson's concern about the agritourism. While I also worry about the wine tasting tours and the safety of the cyclists and the motorists out on the road, I think adding this to another component is concerning because there is no legal way to really enforce, to my knowledge, levels of the product in one system and being out on the road. I support and am glad that the one man who spoke said that he would have a bus. That's responsible. The winery should be doing the same. But I want to thank Supervisor Cummings for pulling this from the consent agenda. I am surprised, as you said, Supervisor Friend, that something so significant would be on the consent agenda. So I support the goals of this. But I also am concerned for public safety and I also think that there should be a greater level of public involvement in it. So I suggest there be a task force at task force formed and I encourage you to speak directly with those in your districts whom you know would want to know more about this and be involved. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. Good morning. I support this. Two main points. One is the increase in canopy limits for operators that are in good standing. As you all know, those canopy limits are based on the parcel size. A lot of those increases would be on CA land. When you have 5% with co-location for a parcel that's over 20 acres, that's really not a huge amount of canopy for the industry standard. I also think that the consumption on site is good, but more importantly, the ability for operators to sell their product that comes from their farm on their site. We have enough road blocks and problems that we run into with distributors and pricing and everything like that to be able to actually sell the product that we grow on our farms is an important part of this as well. Thank you. Thank you. Morning. Good morning again. My name is still James Ewing Whitman. I want to thank you, Mr. Cummins, for pulling the item off and I actually want to thank you, Bruce, for the cautions. Hem cannabis is just not what it used to be. I remember it was a 2016 or 17 when this legislation was passed. There were 13 reasons why it shouldn't be passed, but it is passed and it's just kind of more government regulation. The people who were growing cannabis, some personal friends, they gave up because they were making one third or one quarter. But my real concern is how it's been altered and how strong it is now. I mean, there are people all over the world that talk about they got out of the industry because the cannabis is not what it used to be. It's addictive and it creates violent tendencies. That was not my experience and hasn't been my experience with violent tendencies, but it is actually quite strong. So having some kind of regulation to control, I think that's up to each other to control each other and people should really be paying attention with their alcohol consumption or any other drugs. Now, I gave you guys a public service announcement. Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution was written on hemp paper. Many people don't realize that that can be made into a product that is superior to linen. During the Civil War, it was required for farmers to grow hemp. The only replacement as far as oil that hemp doesn't work for is as a high temperature lubricant. The war profiteer Henry Ford, before William Han Randolph Hearst made hemp illegal in the United States in 1937. There are films where he has hemp plastic body parts and they are bouncing off fire axes. So there's a lot of other things that can be going on. And by some people think it's the most nutritious seed on the planet. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. Thanks for waiting. Good morning, Supervisor Friend, Cummings, Cohen, McPherson, and Felipe out there. Appreciate all of your service to the community over the years of addressing this contentious issue. I'd like to take a moment of silence to recognize the hundreds, maybe it's 99% of the cannabis community that was once a part of this conversation that has been ran out of town. It's been an incredible journey being a part of this community over the last 15 years as we've marched forward trying to develop sensible cannabis policy. And I recommend we move forward with conversation about continuing to develop the ways in which this community and the cannabis industry relate with one another. I think that there are many valid concerns that were brought to your attention today. And primarily around the canopy cultivation and the allotment of canopy. Santa Cruz has one of the most restrictive cannabis cultivation allowances in the state of California and a fraction of what other communities are able to do. And so as an industry, it's been very difficult for us to be able to compete in this bearish landscape with declining profits and availability of workforce, the massive exodus of cannabis personnel and skilled people, community members, good friends of ours that had to just give up on the dream because it wasn't viable based on the economic conditions that had been prescribed. So as you contemplate the path forward, I urge you to take the bold approach to developing and continuing with sensitive cannabis policy and allow us to expand our canopies on commercial agricultural lands. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else in chambers? Madam Clerk, is there anybody online? Yes, we have speakers. Colin, user one, your microphone is now available. Marilyn Garas, yes, this should have been on the regular agenda from the beginning as other items as well are in the consent agenda. And on your agenda here I have in front of me, it states consent items include routine business that does not call for discussion. Obviously, many of the items do call for discussion and each Board of Supervisors meeting you supervisors on the consent agenda, but the public is excluded from commenting. That's anti-democratic. And I pointed out today that item 41 about more militarization of the sheriff with assault weapons that also should have been on the regular agenda. Regarding cannabis, I am glad this item was pulled. There are many problems with it, including water usage, some places use toxins, the smell. I have a neighbor who has it. The smell is like a skunk to me. Regulation is questionable. And the fact that small growers were driven out by the ordinance is, I think, not a good thing. I think this should be a no vote. The safety issue with driving, I think, is very legitimate. I had an experience where I had a cookie I didn't know was laced with, you know, and I was driving home and I thought, what's the matter? My vision is like tunnel vision. Am I nearest to power? Because I have horrible symptoms around. Thank you, Ms. Curran. Is there anybody else online? Yes, Chair. Antoinette, your microphone is now available. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Antoinette and I'm from Whitmore Park. I just want to provide an update on how the post change is one of its components. The interventions are as a vision, so there's a potential to create environment in the past. I'm going to interrupt you for a second. The audio is pretty poor. Are you using computer-based audios or a way that you can try? Yes. One second when we try. Now you sound perfectly clear, of course. Okay. But it does, but there is an audio issue with you that we weren't having with previous online speakers. How about now? Can you hear me now? Yes, you sound perfectly clear, so we'll restart your time so we can understand what you're saying. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, so I just want to provide a comment on the fact that the proposed changes to the cannabis ordinance, like the canopy expansions, are major, like everyone has mentioned. There's a high potential to create environmental impacts like odors, greenhouse gas emissions, and increased water usage, as a lot of people have also been mentioning. So due to these impacts, the cannabis cultivation ordinance is subject to Environment Review pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, so that these potential impacts can be mitigated and the community can be involved in the process. Thank you. Thank you. Darren Story, your microphone is now available. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for having me. Darren Story, born and raised in South County, Watsonville. We own a cannabis farm, and I think it's important to understand that the proposal doesn't actually increase the canopy cap. The goal is to make it more administratively simpler rather than wasting a bunch of resources on the county and our behalf. We're already growing the size of canopy that you guys are all so scared of. No one even noticed, and we have to go through a lot of hoops to get there. But because we have so much neighbor support, the neighbors have gone in on it with us, and granted us their portion of their property that they would otherwise be using. So really the proposal is just to make this more simpler, to help streamline the operations of existing operators that no one even knew. So that's how minimal the impact is. You guys don't even know it exists. So we can just continue creating jobs and being an asset to the community. No one likes seeing all the homeless people running around shooting up fentanyl, and that's just going to continue if there's not viable businesses to offer these youth jobs and get them off the streets. And that's part of the community benefit we provide. It's just jobs, great jobs, well-paying jobs. I really appreciate everybody's support. I know a lot of people commented that there's not been enough research, but actually it's a well-published fact that since Colorado legalized cannabis over 10 years ago, there has never been a reported death from marijuana, but there's over 10,000 DUI deaths per year. So that's just something to think about when you're talking about there's not been enough research. That's all I have to say today. Thank you. Thank you. Matt, your microphone is now available. Hi. I was just calling in to voice support for these measures. I think that through dialogue with the community, we can come up with ways to help the industry, you all, so taking into account the community needs as well. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for waiting. We have no further speakers. Okay. Well, close public comment. Bring it back to the board. Survisor Koenig, I suppose you have a choice here. You could introduce your motion, and then we'd have an alternate motion, or we could consider the alternate motion. I'll leave it to you about what you would prefer. Sure. I will move the recommended actions. I'll point out a couple. Well, first of all, I'll move the recommended actions and wait for a second. Supervisor Hernandez, are you still present on the meeting? Second. Okay. If I can just add a whole explanation. So I'm totally sympathetic to many points that Supervisor Cummings brought up. I think that the timeline is relatively the same, at least in what I heard of your suggested amendments, who is pretty much moving forward with all of the general concept proposals for these various ordinance changes. And I think it was either a May 30 timeline or an early June timeline for most of these. So I think it's a distinction without a significant difference. Of course that time, basically six months will provide plenty of opportunity for additional community engagement on this topic. That was always the intent of this. And then I think the one thing I did not note in your suggestions was anything about the just eliminating the co-location language and increasing the canopy limits to that amount. I would point out that this was mentioned by a number of the speakers. These are very modest amounts today. So even for parcels 20 acres or larger, at most with the co-location kind of maximums that would be increasing to in general, we're talking about 5% for cultivation of mature plants, not to exceed two acres total and two and a half percent of the parcel for nursery operations or immature plant growth, not to exceed one acre. So even on a 100 acre parcel, you're limited to three acres of cultivation. I think that is pretty modest ultimately. And really, as has been said, that kind of first part is just that would come back sooner is just looking at ways to eliminate some of the administrative burden that the current regulatory scheme creates. And this was one part that because effectively were not considering greater impacts than our existing laws already provide for under a certain scheme. My understanding is that that particular portion is not required to be reviewed under CEQA, whereas of course the other stuff that would come back later would be correct, County Council? Any action that the Board takes regarding of discretionary nature, this type is going to have to be reviewed under CEQA. The question is, once it goes to environmental assessment, whether or not there's an actual environmental impact. So we do have to do an initial review to determine whether or not CEQA would apply, and depending on whether or not there was either an EIR, a negative declaration, or mitigated negative declaration would apply. Okay, got it. So that's sort of the logic. If you're interested to hear any concerns or suggestions you have, Supervisor Cummings? Supervisor Cummings, is there an alternate motion or comments on the motion? Yeah, just to make a few comments and want to thank everyone today who came out and spoke on this. Again, I'm somebody who's always been very supportive of Canvas and the Canvas industry, but my big concern is, how can we align it with the values of our community? How can we make people feel comfortable with the industry as it continues to roll out in a legal way throughout the state of California? I think that one of the things that we heard from some of the cultivators, and we've heard from some folks who are here today who live near sites, is that for some of the people who live near these sites, this is the first time they're hearing about this. And for some of the cultivators, they're like, we have good relationships with our neighbors. And so I see this as a great opportunity for cultivators, maybe Supervisor Koenig, you and Supervisor Hernandez to have some community meetings with those people who have been in good standing with their neighbors to get input from them to see how they would feel about these changes, because it could be that they are very supportive of this. However, if we make, if we move in this direction today, I feel like a lot of people are going to feel like they're caught off guard and that we haven't been transparent in how we brought this forward. And that's why with the recommendations I'm proposing, and I would even see if you all be interested in being on as it was brought up a task force, but rather a subcommittee so you can work in tandem with staff and stakeholders so that everybody feels like they've been brought to the table with all the proposals that are being made. That's part of why I'm proposing these other recommendations, because having worked on this, I know that a lot of folks, if they feel like they're getting caught off guard and they weren't brought into the conversation before these things have been proposed, they're going to feel like they can't trust our local government. And so I want to make sure that as we're kind of moving, proposing some of these major changes that we're doing so in such a way that people feel confident in our local government. Are you introducing an alternate motion? Yes. So I'll introduce an alternate motion, direct the cannabis licensing office, working with stakeholders to explore updates to policies related to the sale, consumption, and cultivation of cannabis, and return to the Board of Supervisors. Honor before the second meeting in June 2024 to report back on topics that include but are not limited to changes to canopy limits, increases to cannabis cultivation area in greenhouses, limited retail sale of cannabis goods grown and produced by cultivation licensees at the point of cultivation, medicinal, educational, and recreational options for on-site consumption, on-site consumption pilot program and changes to co-location options for non-retail commercial cannabis. We have an alternate motion. Is there a second to that? I'll second it, actually. And this is in part why I'm not supportive of the entire proposal. They're used language explorer. And I want to make clear that the intent of the Board, if this is your intent, is that this doesn't mean that these are necessarily going to come back as recommendations. I think this has been a point of contention that we've had historically where something is viewed as direction that actually isn't. So if something comes back and maybe that they don't recommend on-site consumption or concern to supervisors and persons, they don't actually recommend this is an exploration process. If we're in the exploration process, I can vote for it. If the Board's intention is that we're still directing as it was the initial thing, I'm not comfortable with it. Is that the intent of the motion? Yes, I do want to make sure that they're clarifying. When I'm mentioning explore, that means that we're anticipating that there's going to be community outreach done to gain, to understand where the community sits on these issues. And when this comes back to us, if there's community support or if there's not community opposition to some of what's being proposed, then we can move forward with that. It's not to bring back ordinances at this time. It's really for the interested board members to do community outreach, to engage with the community, to engage with the industry, and to figure out are these things that we're comfortable with moving forward? I saw, for example, the 2% canopy bonus. I don't know how 2% was selected as a number, but it could be that the community would be comfortable with something greater than that, or that it depends on how those cultivators have acted in the past, whether they can get the maximum 2%, or maybe they can get 1%. I think to supervise the McPherson's point, if people are talking about on-site consumption, does that mean, as was mentioned in the audience, that a van could be used to transport people? And maybe the Sheriff's Department would be okay with that. Maybe the community would be okay. So I think that's when I say exploration and explore, I really want to see if staff can dive into these topics, engage with the community, and tell us what they've been hearing, and if there's an opportunity for us to move forward with ordinances, we can move forward after we get that update. Thank you. Any additional discussion on the item? Yeah, first of all, I want to say to the cannabis industry at Santa Cruz County, thank you for your patience over the years, and it was years for what you've done and to try to work something out here. I will go along with this motion, but I think my concerns, I don't know how they can be legitimately addressed, but we'll see when this comes back, and I look forward to having that part of the discussion, as you mentioned. Okay, we have an alternate motion, so we'll vote on the alternate motion. If we've got a roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig. Hi. Cummings. Hi. Hernandez. Hi. McPherson. And Friend. Hi. That passes unanimously. Thank you for helping work through it. Appreciate it. We get clarification. So is committee going to re-enact the 3C committee, or is that what we're talking about? I would say that if that's an additional motion that you want to make, we could do that. I'm just saying, it's going to be staff directed, but your motion, right? Okay. All right. So these committees, these meetings and stuff, it's going to be staff directed. Yes. I would encourage, however, board members to attend, or the board members who, you know, brought this forward to attend those meetings as well, so they can understand where the community is at and partake in those meetings. All right. Thank you. We'll move on to item 20. Excuse me. Well, the polled item 28, which I'll read now is item 6.2, which is direct to community development, department infrastructure, department of draft low impact, camping ordinance and take related actions as recommended by myself. We have the board member on the draft language. This was polled by supervisor Cummings, supervisor Cummings. Yes. Thank you, chair. And I just want to express my support for increasing and creating more low impact and low cost camping options within our community. The one, as I was reading through it and I was diving deeper into it, I did start seeing some concerns as it related to going through the appendix and, you know, what areas would be considered under this ordinance and some of the issues related to like the number of tents and types of vehicles that could be there. As some may know, but our district's been working with getting a transfer of Greyhound Rock from California Department of Fish and Wildlife to the county for the purposes of creating a low barrier, low cost accommodation that would accommodate school groups and, you know, other types of groups in the community. And as I was reading through the language in this, based on the density and the number of tents per acre, that project would likely not be very feasible because it would restrict the number of sites that are the number of camping options and structures that could be on that property. And so that came up for me as a concern and then just really wanted to understand more about, you know, residential properties, like how we're going to manage TOT. I know you mentioned earlier that we've been having some problems with Airbnb's. And so just really trying to understand how, you know, what potential unintended consequences there might be. Thank you. Two excellent questions. So the ordinance, the proposal to, as drafted, does not contemplate public lands, specifically county land. But that was something that has been brought up that I think that we could discuss about whether we want to extend it. The Senate bill that we actually voted in favor of is specific for public lands. And as we could provide additional direction to, in this motion, if you'd like, to contemplate something different to come back specifically for county owned parks or lands or whatever it may be, this is for private lands in essence, outside of the urban or rural services. It's definitely not here to preclude what you're trying to do up in the North Coast. In regards to the TOT side, it requires similar to, and it references the vacation rental ordinance that one would require, be required to get a vacation rental certificate or a TOT certificate and or use an operator that already makes the collection, which is the ideal situation. We don't really have any problems with those that are on Airbnb as a platform because they're collecting the tax force. This is something that required litigate or a threat of litigation early on in order to do we were one of the first communities in the country that actually established them collecting the money. So I think that unless concerned about that, these ordinance, there are some, as we saw on a couple of letters that are already existing under our current camping ordinance. I think that that the current camping ordinance, which is 744, isn't really is vague enough to allow it, but not clear enough to, in my opinion, be as formal as what we're proposing here. So if you have an additional recommendation, I'm completely, I mean, completely open to it as far as ensuring that there doesn't preclude any kind of public land restrictions, whatever language you want to provide is direction on that. And I don't have the concerns because you're required to get the TOT certificate off the other. So if you have any suggestions before we Yeah, so I guess if we could add language around precluding public lands, I think that would work. I also think it would be good to add language around rather than just directing community development and infrastructure department, also including the parks department and other potential stakeholders, because I think that, you know, there's some provisions and save the redwoods. And I don't know if they're doing anything on their properties that might be similar to this, but that's why they're supported. I mean, you probably noticed in the letter, we have a sort of extensive support from all those organizations for this reason. I think adding the parks firm makes a lot of sense because they may come back as part of the ordinance with specific language around public lands, it would be really useful. I was just trying to make it narrow to start. But I hadn't thought about your specific situation to Greyhounds. I appreciate you bringing that forward. And so I think that we can add additional language to also include the parks department and the creation of the ordinance, if you're comfortable with that. Are there any other comments from board members, please, Supervisor Koenig? One question. I mean, first of all, I do want to appreciate the chair for bringing this forward. I've utilized a number of hip camps. I think that's basically what we're talking about here. And they are really a fabulous option when traveling. I think it'll be a great benefit to expand use of them within our community, of course, with sensible regulation. The big question is sanitation, I think. I couldn't quite tell if there was any complaint suggestion within this initial direction, how to address sanitation. Obviously, we have some pretty restrictive requirements as far as advanced septic systems within our community. I'm not sure if county council can provide any information on this. Would a campsite by definition fall under similar requirements of state law for some of these septic systems and advanced treatment systems? On the short answer, I don't know the answer. We'll be looking into that and a number of other issues. If assuming the board provides staff direction, this is also going to involve some level of environmental review as well. Our environmental assessment is going to be done by the coordinator, and so it's all part of that process. Okay, great. I mean, I hope that they don't, because that would definitely be a surefire way to kill off this program entirely. In our contemplation and other communities throughout the state, it hasn't required it. I mean, it would require you to have some sort of facility, be it that a portable restroom or using an existing facility on site, but not the creation or construction of any new facility. By definition, it's a de minimis activity. This is very low impact by definition in this regard. Surveys are coming. I had one other question related to kind of the number of tents per area. I mean, it has two tents per acre. And I'm just saying that as being very, I mean, I guess, I understand like a low intensity, but that seems like it might be a little too low. It follows the state definition of what low impact camping is, which is no more than nine per a location. And so under the state law, well, I should say under the proposed state law that Mike is Senator McGuire is proposing, it would maximize, it would have a maximum of nine. But I also think by the way, I agree it's low, but I also think that it's important that if this is low impact camping that we're, that's what the definition is. We're not, this is not supposed to have any sort of environmental impact. This is not supposed to have any kind of community based impact. You have, this is just an opportunity and across the country as Supervisor Koenig noted, because apparently you've stated some of these, it's often used by farms or vineyards as a way to reinvest money back into stewardship or land trust to reinvest the money back into it. So they use it as an educational, it was interesting to talk about agritourism in the sense of cannabis. I think this is a little, maybe less controversial on that regard as far as people doing it in this space. And I think that this, from a low impact camp point, that's what the nine, where the nine came from. And it's a nine maximum. I mean, you still have to have a five acre minimum. Most of these campsites is significantly, actually less than nine. If I could just follow up, I think it's nine sites, I think. The nine total campsites per property, the density of one campsite per acre. Right, and two tents per site. So two tents per acre then is how low streets. And that's what I'm just saying. I mean, we have an opportunity to not necessarily restrict it to two. So I mean, if it's, if there's a way that we can staff if they want to explore whether or not two, four, I mean, I'm just thinking of, you know, it's listening here around having families come out and having two tents might not accommodate the low income families size. You know, and so just thinking about whether or not the tents per acre could be further explored. Chair, could I help with this? Maybe Stephanie Hansen, assistant director, CDI. Thank you to the chair and his staff for providing such a already developed ordinance. That's very helpful. This is not our only option for visitor accommodations and camping. This is just adding to the menu that's already allowed in the code. So I just wanted to offer that there's already code for different kinds of visitor accommodations, depending on what zoning district you are, that allow a, you know, a much kind of a bigger facility. So I thought that might be helpful that this is not the only option out there. Thank you. I appreciate that. I just, I'm really touching on this because as someone who cares about low income people having access and this is a low income option, just trying to see how we can kind of maximize those options for low income people and low income families. And so just putting it out there, you know, in terms of how this is, you know, when staff brings something back to us, really trying to see if we don't have to be restricted to that too. And they can bring back options for us to consider. Well, I suppose since we're in the exploratory phase, anything is possible. I mean, I just want to ensure that we don't trigger anything that makes this problematic. I mean, we just had an extensive conversation about neighborhood-based impacts. This is supposed to be the exact opposite of that. This is supposed to be a place where people can explore our natural lands that don't normally have access to it or people who have local farms or land trusts that are struggling to make a go of it can also make a small amount of money. And also so the county can have additional TOT possibilities on it. In essence, you would never know they're there, right? By definition of a low impact would be. So I hear you. I mean, we're actually on the same page. I just don't want to trigger any sort of concern from anybody associated with it. If you would like that as part of the exploration about what that would mean and that may very well make him back that nine, that's fine. We can say I actually don't even know what the language would be, but something to maintain the low impact component of this. I mean, the whole point for me here is to create a structure that allows the facilities that supervisor Koenig's state out to exist formally within our community doesn't currently exist. And by the way, there aren't very many communities in the state of California that currently have this. And I think we can create a framework that other communities can also use, which is pretty common for Santa Cruz County, create that model and help inform the state debate on the state level at that point. So if you have a suggestion on that language, I'm not married to what I propose. That's why it comes to the whole board. So this is me telling you it's time for language. If you've got it. So return with density options that would maintain low impact. That sounds good. Can I ask one more question? I mean, I think that there's actually, you could read the current language in multiple ways, which is that a site that will allow one camping site per acre, but there's no real clarity around whether or not those sites could all be clustered on one acre or have to be literally one per acre, right? So if I have a five acre site, I'm allowed five campsites. But I don't didn't see anything here that said, and each one of those sites has to be on, you know, their own individual acre. So I mean, in a way, if we either define that they can be anywhere, then it would allow for clustering of sites and more opportunities around family camping opportunities that supervisor Cummings is expressed concern about. I think you would still have, you know, overall that lower impact that we're looking for. Excellent discussion. Excellent suggestions. Since the two departments are here, does that make sense as far as part of the review? The goal of the draft ordinance was to be just a starting point for people to work with and also to be as transparent as possible to my colleagues about what the goal of this item was. It wasn't to be the only language that was used. We'd open it up now to the community. This is this item was supposed to remember the community like to address this on this item. Welcome back. My wife and I own eight acres out in the country. And I've actually been approached by some organizations which do RV camping. These are completely, you know, self-contained units that they want to pull onto the property somewhere. And it sounds like that that would work with something like this as well. But my concern about this is we also have a 200 foot setback. So are we going to take into consideration the setback requirements of the normal housing and these kind of tent opportunities and things like that? I think there's a number of issues here that have to be looked at a little bit critically. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Ms. Schwartz. The setbacks are part of the proposal. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you for this good discussion and also thank you for pulling it off the consent agenda. Becky Steinbruner, I would also ask that the fire marshal be brought in for these discussions in terms of fire safety for the areas that could be proposed for tent camping. Thank you. Thank you. That is also part of the current proposal to do so. I just have a good question. It seems to me, particularly with you, Manu, that you're looking down, ringing a screen that someone I can't see is consulting you and putting stuff for you to read. And I'm wondering if this is a Brown Act violation. Can you explain who's consulting you on the computer screens? Because it looks like you're reading someone else's dialogue and I don't know who that is. All right. Thank you. Is there anybody else here that would like to comment on this board item? Madam Clerk, is there anybody online? Yes, we have speakers. Colin, user one, your microphone is now available. When I first read this and I did not have the opportunity to read the staff report, I was thinking, oh, is this at all for the huge problem we have with people who are unhoused and need to camp somewhere? It sounds like this is like for tourists or private lands, as you say. And I'm looking at this large, large problem we have. A previous speaker brought up about having a camper place where people could stay with their campers. I've been very upset to hear of the draconian treatment of people who are unhoused where they can't park their vehicle, certain places they're towed, they can't afford to have mouth, there's nowhere to go. They have no jobs because jobs aren't available. It seems like there needs to be in addition to this proposal here that parking lots are somewhere where there could be low impact parking with maybe port of bodies for providing for this huge and growing problem in our country of people who are unhoused and unemployed and hungry. Food not bombs is doing a great job of feeding people. I like that group. Anyway, and what does TOT stand for? You referred to TOT. I don't know what that means. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. Anybody else online? Orchard House, your microphone is now available. Hello, I want to echo some of the other concerns and questions. Over the time, housing has become such an issue that those of us who have emergencies and we need to host our neighbors when their houses burn down or get flooded or we have family that goes to transition and all of a sudden they need a housing, is there a way that we can implement this to help some of them as well? So it's not just people looking for a camping Airbnb experience as well. They're helping me actually help people in need. If we can provide housing, even if it's a temporary issue that people can afford, I would be very interested in that. And over the rest of my time, if anyone has a response to that. Thank you. No further speakers, Chair. All right. So I appreciate all the positive community feedback. They're great feedback from my colleagues. I think we're making the proposal stronger for a new option for in particular low income, both local community members who don't need to get out in nature as well, as well as those who are visiting to have an opportunity. Surveys or Cummings, if you're comfortable with it, I'm going to move it to you to craft a motion with some of the additional modifications you're proposing. And then I did have one more question related to this. I'm just wondering if we could have staff also bring back kind of what would be an affordable fee schedule for these types of camping activities? I think it's based in trying to have this be an affordable program. But if we just get people permits to move forward with camping, how are we ensuring that they're actually going to be renting out their campsites at affordable rates? And I think that that would be fine on the public land component of it. I would be less comfortable with that on a land trust land or somebody on a non-profit's land because I think that people would be using established services basically in Airbnb type service for this. And I don't know that it would really be within our purview to dictate what the specific costs on our private land would be. I think that camping in general is significantly less expensive, which was the point that I was trying to make than a vacation around our hotel. But I do believe, and I think that this would be one of the goals of opening up public land, we should price cap public component access because I'll say that even in my district where Seacliffe was destroyed, which was one of the largest campgrounds RV campgrounds in the county, prices, I mean, first off, you have 365 day sign up and they would sell out 365 days in advance and people at a horse trade or it's just nearly impossible to access it. But second, it's expensive and yet it's significantly less expensive than other options. And that's on public land. But I think for the county properties, we should as part of this direction say that as we if we're considering opening up public plans, I'm just saying I wouldn't be as comfortable with that on the private side. Well, I just want to again thank Supervisor Friend for bringing this forward and just want to thank everybody for their input in this discussion. And so try to bring a motion together. So we're going to direct community development and infrastructure department along with the parks department and stakeholders to draft a low impact camping ordinance based on the language and principles discussed below. Present the draft ordinance to the Planning Commission for its consideration and recommendation. Return of the Board of Supervisors on February 27, 2024 with the draft ordinance for further consideration and potential adoption by the Board of Supervisors. As part of the ordinance, it should preclude public lands. Should not preclude. Should not preclude, sorry. Yeah, that we can have because you want to include the ability for them to have something separate for public lands. Am I correct enough? Okay. Return with density options that maintain low impact. And I think that's those are only two additional price elements on public lands on price elements on for public lands. Second, is that are you okay? All right. Is there any additional discussion board members? Supervisor Hernandez, did you have anything additional on this item? Okay, if we could have roll call please. Sorry, if I could get the mover. It was Supervisor Cummings with a second from Supervisor Koenig. Great. Supervisor Koenig. Hi. Cummings. Hi. Hernandez. Hi. McPherson. Hi. And DOT is transit occupancy tax. Oh, yes. Thank you. Sorry. And friend. Hi. And that passes unanimously. I appreciate my colleagues making this better. So thank you for that input. We have a 1045 scheduled item. It'll be very brief, but it's the Zone 7 item. So if we could just move to that. I know that we is there anybody online that we need to promote Madam Clerk for this item? I'll just call it to order. Just so folks are aware, this is the flood control and water conservation district Zone 7 board of directors meeting that is a special meeting for November 14th. And we will begin with a roll call please. Supervisor Co, or Director Koenig. Here. Cummings. Here. Hernandez. Here. McPherson. Here. Friend. Here. Here is Carter and Colbertson. Okay. We have a quorum. Are there any changes to today's agenda, Ms. Redler? I know there's not. All right. We'll begin with oral communications or public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the community to address us items that are not on today's agenda. We're within the purview of the Zone 7 board. In advance, I'd received a request from former director Billusich. So I think she's on Zoom. My people wanting to make a, I believe she's in Zoom because I don't see her in chambers that wanted to make a comment during oral communications. We'll start with the chambers actually. So Ms. Steinbrenner, if you'd like to make a public comment. Thank you, Becky Steinbrenner. I live in the rural area. And I just want to impress upon the staff the importance of in advance of what could be another strong winter that any pumps for relocation or movement of storm water are tested and make sure that they are in operational orders and all the safeguards are in place. And that culverts in this area are checked and made sure that they have good integrity. Thank you for your work. Thank you. Anybody else in chambers on Zone 7? All right. Going online. Call in user 1. Your microphone is now available. Marilyn Garrett. And I'd like to recommend geoengineeringwatch.org with Dane Wiggington, a source of information of the severe weather. Why don't you see? I'm looking at the neighbor's cat. Sorry. Chaos we're experiencing with drought and floods and how the hydrologic cycle is very much disturbed by the weather, intervention, geoengineering operations and patents held by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin creating all this havoc. Those of us who are older can think that we've had, of course, storms throughout the years, but what is going on is so orchestrated, unnatural, not with nature. So I want to recommend that source and urge you to call for a halt to geoengineering operations that affect us all. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to address us on the agenda or we only have a consent agenda today? Is there anybody else online? We have no further speakers. Okay, we'll move on to the approval of the minutes and just moving forward, the minutes can be placed on the consent agenda moving forward so we don't have to take a separate action on these moving forward, but it's listed separately. So is there any comments on the minutes here? Seeing none, as I remember the community of elect to address us on the minutes. Anybody online? Nancy, Dr. Nancy Bilecek, your microphone is now available. Thank you. I didn't, I just want to speak on the consent agenda. Can I speak now? That's fine, Dr. Bilecek, please. Okay, item six, I just wanted to say I greatly appreciate that you have both Granite Rock and Granite Construction involved in the new work that's going to be done. And I think it's great to have local companies there. And the other thing was on item seven, I see that there's no September meeting. It looks like it's a long gap from May to December. Those are my only comments. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Bilecek and for your work on this. Anybody else online? All right, so I think that she was attempting to try to come on during oral communications was unable. So no additional comments on the minutes. Is there a motion by the board for the minutes? Move approval of the minutes. We have a motion from Director Koenig and a second from Director McPherson. If we get a roll call, please, for item four. Director Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson. And Friend. All right, that passes unanimously and move on to the consent agenda. Does any board member have a comment on consent? Seeing none, although I just want to make sure it's very clear as any member of the community want to address this on the consent agenda. Okay, anybody online? Okay, we'll bring back to the board for a motion for consent. Move approval of the consent agenda. Second. All right, we have a motion from Supervisor Koenig. Good job there, Supervisor Hernandez. We got a second from Supervisor Hernandez remotely. If we could have a roll call, please. Director Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Friend. Aye, and that passes unanimously and ends our special zone seven meeting. We'll move back and I appreciate the patience of those that have been waiting to the regular agenda for item seven, which is to consider a presentation on the Thrive by Five initiative and accept and file the fiscal year 2022-23 annual Thrive by Five implementation and evaluation report has outlined in the memo the director of human services via the agenda board memo. We have the report of the evaluation and implementation cover sheet and the report evaluation and implementation from 2022-2023. Assistant Director Peterson, are you leading this off? Good morning and welcome. Thanks for waiting. Can you hear me now? Okay, thank you. Good morning, Chair Friend and members of the board. I am Kimberly Peterson, Deputy Director with the County Human Services Department and I'm here today with Jen Herrera, Assistant Director from the Health Services Agency and David Brody, Executive Director for First Five. And we'll be providing an update on the Thrive by Five initiative. HSA and First Five are critical partners in this work and so they'll be presenting with me. Thanks. So the last time we were in front of you was May 24, 2022, at which time we're providing our first report back on Thrive by Three since the pandemic. Thrive by Three served kids prenatal to three and at that meeting the board directed us to expand the scope to kids under five and also explore leveraging and data collection related to that expansion. For grounding today, we'll provide a brief overview of the history of what is now Thrive by Five, what expansion means, and then we'll touch on the ongoing data collection work, leveraging of resources and what we see as next steps and opportunities. So first just a brief overview of the history of Thrive by Five. Next slide, please. So Thrive by Five started first as Thrive by Three in an early childhood fund developed by, established by the Board of Supervisors in January of 2017. The purpose of Thrive by Three was to invest in the earliest years of childhood by focusing on the prenatal to three system of care and investing in evidence-based two-generation approaches to achieve breakthrough outcomes. Next slide, please. At the time, this multi-stakeholder initiative facilitated by first five was, had these goals. Babies are born healthy, families have what's needed for child optimal development, young children live in safe nurturing families, and children are happy, healthy, and thriving by age three. Next slide, please. And last year, as Assistant Director Kimberly mentioned, your board expanded this initiative to Thrive by Five. This expansion aligned better with our system of care for early childhood development. Next slide. And with this evolution of Thrive by Three to Thrive by Five, it gave us an opportunity to revisit the strategy and develop this new theory of change. We have a shared vision with this initiative that thriving children and families will be in a resilient, just community. This vision requires a foundation of connected, equitable, and accountable systems and supports to support healthy and supported individuals and families. We also took this opportunity to align this initiative with the core conditions of health and well-being. And we expanded our advisory board to include the voices of parents and families who have been part of these, of our programs. Next slide, please. And these are strategic goals for Thrive by Five. Children and families are healthy, children and families are ready for kindergarten, children live in safe nurturing families, and families have resources to support children's optimal development. Each strategic goal has a community level impacted indicator and has an alignment with the core conditions for health and well-being. Next slide, please. And this is our programming for Thrive by Five. We support a network of home visiting programs, the implementation of healthy steps in our safety net clinics, and the distribution of early learning scholarships. And I will turn it over to Director Brody for the next slide. Good morning. Thank you. Data has been an integral part of the Thrive by Five initiative from its inception. From identifying and shining a light on community level indicators of child well-being, like those Assistant Director Herrera just reviewed a moment ago, to monitoring data specific to Thrive by Five investments. We have the clicker. Next slide, please. One meta-level community indicator that we pay attention to is called the Strong Start Index. The index aggregates assets experienced at birth across family, health, financial and access indicators into a single Strong Start score. That Strong Start score standardizes and summarizes the conditions into which children are born. Shining a light on systemic inequities and unequal opportunity and providing a guide to our policymakers like all of us can and should steer resources. Here you see that babies born in Watsonville in 2020 have had on average 8.5 of the 12 assets tracked by the index compared to 9.2 statewide and 9.6 in the county as a whole. Again, painting a picture of unequal opportunity. Next slide, please. One area where resources have been heavily invested in South County is our Elder Early Learning Scholarship Program for Infant and Toddler Care Providers. Thrive by Five has distributed over half a million dollars in Early Learning Scholarships to Infant and Toddler Care Providers since the inception of the initiative. And as you can see on this table, excuse me, in FY22-23, over 91% of L's funding went primarily to family child care homes in South County consistent with prior year distributions. The scholarships go directly to child care providers who helped reduce the gap to help reduce the gap between the true cost of providing high quality infant and toddler care and the available state subsidies. And here is a great example of how we've leveraged Thrive by Five. As part of our COVID-19 emergency response, we distributed over $180,000 in emergency funding from other sources in FY21-22, leveraging both First Five's administrative capacity, but also the procedures we had developed for L's distribution through Thrive by Five. Next slide, please. Excuse me. We've also supported the adoption of Healthy Steps in two safety net clinics, Salud Paolajente and Santa Cruz Community Health. Healthy Steps is an evidence-based interdisciplinary pediatric primary care program that promotes positive parenting and healthy development for babies and toddlers with an emphasis on reaching low-income families. The model centers around team-based, well-child visits where child development, social, emotional, and behavioral screening are conducted routinely. Families with young children are also connected to early learning resources, parenting support, and other resources such as economic supports and housing. Similar to home visiting programs, Healthy Steps links families to a coordinated system of care that addresses the core conditions of health and well-being and is exactly the type of two-generation approaches that was envisioned by this board when the initiative was launched. The table here shows data on the children's serves by Healthy Steps at the two clinics in FY22-23. Next slide, please. Thrive by Five has served as a catalyst for sustaining home visiting capacity in our county and enhancing collaboration between home visiting programs and other programs that serve young children and families. One way we accomplished that is through the home visiting learning collaborative. In FY22-23, the collaborative provided training to all four home visiting programs in trauma-informed practice, the training that was conducted actually jointly with home visitors and early care and education teachers, motivational interviewing and evidence-based practice currently included in the Federal Families First Prevention Services Act, and the Healthy Steps program itself to increase home visitors' knowledge and understanding of the program. Another example of the type of two-generation approaches envisioned at the outset of this initiative, home visiting programs like Early Head Start, Home Visiting Families Together, Field Nursing, and of course, Nurse Family Partnership, are shown to have positive impacts on a child's educational, health, and socioeconomic outcomes into adulthood. This network of home visiting programs provides parents with information, support, and referrals to community resources and services in multiple core conditions and promotes greater health and well-being ultimately for families. You can see in this chart that the number of participants in home visiting programs is still rebounding following the pandemic when participation drops significantly. To help increase utilization, outreach by your HSD to CalWorks families is helping increase participation by some of the lowest-income families in our county, and that work along with other outreach efforts you'll see in a moment are designed to help ensure that families are collectively taking advantage of these amazing resources in our community. Next slide please. I now want to focus on the work we have done to leverage the county's investments in Thrive by 5. First, I want to highlight that we are currently engaged in a comprehensive fiscal analysis of early childhood systems in our county, focused first on home visiting programs, and then in alignment with the current rate reform process at the state level, our child care system. This comprehensive analysis involves fiscal mapping, examining existing and potential funding streams for services, fiscal modeling that helps confirm the true cost of providing services in an equitable framework, and models potential costs of increasing services, and finally an overall system analysis and recommendations. All of this work is being financed by sources outside of the county's direct Thrive by 5 investments, but is leveraging the infrastructure of our initiative, in particular our advisory committee and leadership team to guide the process. We look forward to bringing the results of that analysis back to this board next year. Next slide please. Since the start of the initiative, the annual $350,000 investment in its intentional focus and strengthening prenatal to 3 and now prenatal to 5 system of care has helped prepare our county to receive additional investments, with total funding at approximately $1.9 million in FY22-23 from various sources, including CalWorks Home Visiting Program, the California Home Visiting Program via Public Health, and First 5 California's Home Visiting Coordination Grant, as well as grants from private sources. In addition, multiple private nonprofit agencies have donated significant in-kind staff time, supporting our systems work and collaboration through the advisory committee, leadership team, Home Visiting Learning Collaborative, and other efforts tied directly to Thrive by 5. The impact and importance of the Thrive by 5 initiative goes beyond the services we have been able to directly support as important as they are, and is anchored in our growing capacity to leverage external resources and develop an equitable system of care for young children and families in the county. With that, I now turn it over to Deputy Director Kimberly, who is going to review next steps and opportunities as well as some recent outreach work. Thank you. Next slide, please. So in the nearly seven years to what is now Thrive by 5, we have succeeded in strengthening and growing the system of care, and as with all policies and programs, there are opportunities for growth and improvement. Next slide, please. So continuing to leverage the county's investment will continue to be an essential component of the work ahead. The board's investment Thrive by 5 allows for further alignment with other initiatives and further leveraging of funding as it creates a pathway to serve more families with a wider lens towards the system of care. We will delve into the financial analysis work that's being completed to identify where additional opportunities exist to leverage funding and expand services. Data collection and the ability to share and coordinate information for the benefit of the people being served as well as outcome analysis will continue to be a focus. Specifically, HSA and HSD will continue taking steps to utilize UNITUS, which is a secure referral data sharing platform. And also as a collective, we will intentionally try to address demographic data gaps for a clear picture of the family's receiving services. So we can be sure we are reaching the families we intend to reach and strategize to bridge the gaps if we're not. Taking what we have learned from experience, our research and partnerships, community engagement with and family voices will continue to be important components as we move forward as well. We will also be mindful of other initiatives with complimentary aligned goals, such as the comprehensive prevention plan and county health assessment. Lastly, we'll continue taking a multi-generational strategy to early childhood development and the system of care with continued supportive home visiting programs, expanded access and support for quality child care from birth to five, and to preschool and transitional kindergarten. Next slide, please. We wanted to close with a demonstration of the work being done to ensure families know about the services available and are interested in exploring and participating in them. A pocket guide for families has been created, which will be provided to you. And we have videos regarding the benefit of home visiting programs in English and Spanish. And in recognition of the time and the amount of the agenda you have remaining, we'll just play one video. If you could please play the Spanish. Thank you. And I apologize that did not have the English translation included in it, but just to summarize, that wasn't the voice of an actual parent who had received home visiting program services. And she was speaking about then how sometimes hard to ask for help or to worry about making a mistake when you're a new parent and that she really recommends that people take advantage of the services has been very helpful. Rough summary there. Next slide, please. So thank you very much for your time today and your continued support of Thrive by Five. And we're happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you for the presentation. Are there questions from board members? No questions, but just comments. Thank you for the status update on this program. It's a phenomenal program. It's exciting to see its expansion. I would like to acknowledge former supervisor Ryan Coonerty too for and his staff for working diligently to bring this to us in the first place. And I want to thank all of the human services department staff who have helped provide structure around this expansion, especially in the targeted areas where it's needed most. Thank you very much for a very successful story. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. I'll just add my appreciation for this program as well. As a new parent of a six month old, I'm not experiencing firsthand just how challenging it is, not only to find but also to pay for child care in our community. Many of my outreach events I hear from other new parents who remark the same. Wow, it is expensive to pay for child care. And I appreciate that we're providing an option here to really help address that critical need in our community and raise the next generation. Thank you all. Thank you, Supervisor Cummings. Yeah, first, just want to appreciate all the work that this program does to help support low income families. I do have a little bit of a concern that I just want to see if I can get some feedback on which is now that we're expanding this program like there's initial $350,000 investment, the program's expanding. I'm just wondering if there's a need for more financial resources to help support this program as it grows. And is it something we might want to consider with our upcoming budget? Because I mean we want to see this program continue to be successful and it's reaching more people. But if we don't provide more resources to help that growth, then I'm just concerned that we might see some shortfalls if it's not well resourced. Well, definitely as we did expand, that's a challenge that we've been talking about. How do we use the same amount of funding? And that's why we've been looking at leveraging. If the board did choose to provide additional funding, that would increase our ability to do more. But I'll defer to David if you want to add any more specifics. Well, I really appreciate the just the gratitude expressed by all the board members and your questions specifically. I think as we responded to a similar question when the change occurred with the board to Thrive by Five is, you know, I think everybody who's dying knows that we need more resources for young children and families. I think given the scale of the need, the scarcity of resources, I think something effective my answer last time was we need to it's our it's our responsibility to do due diligence and figure out how we can best apply additional resources. And so that was why we engaged in a number of the things we've done, including the leveraging that Deputy Director Peterson mentioned, but also that comprehensive fiscal analysis. So I would say I very much appreciate the door being open to the possibility of additional requests for additional funding. And I would like us to collectively bring back the results of that comprehensive fiscal analysis, as well as recent recommendations that have come from various bodies in this county around childcare in particular to construct a reasonable recommendation about any additional funding in this context. And I think it would be great to know how additional funding can also be used to leverage even bringing in more funds because you'll have demonstrated that you were great at taking $350,000 and increasing that to $1.5 million. And so if there's ways that we can, you know, continue to leverage funds, I think it'd be really helpful for our community. Thank you. To Vice-Renanda, did you have something you wanted to add? Yeah, I just wanted to thank all the department and the Thrive by Five staff as well. I think that this program is a tremendous asset to District Four and all our community there. So thank you so much. Thank you. I just want to add specific for you, Mr. Brody, that you've impacted so many lives in our community. You do it in a really quiet way. You don't ever seek praise, and I just want to compliment how good you are at your role. This is, we're very fortunate. In Santa Cruz County, we actually bad outside of our leagues, often with the talent in particular, I'd say at the county level, and you in particular, just the way that you influence the data discussion, the way that you influence the policy discussion, the other committees that you and I serve on that you never, you take your own volunteer time to do to make sure that kids have a voice from the healthcare space and the dental space. So just we're very fortunate to have you. I just wanted to make sure that you get acknowledged for all of your amazing work for kids and families in our community. Is there any money for the community that would like to address us on this item? Yes, good afternoon. First of all, I'd like to say there are many people, I'm sure, who are well-meaning who work for Health and Human Services, but as an impacted parent, I represent millions of family members who have found the Department of Health and Human Services to be untrustworthy. And once again, I'm seeing a program couched as a benefit, but that is intruding on our first and 14th Amendment rights, which are parental rights to the care, custody, and control of one's own children. And how I've experienced this is through tyrannical behavior from my school, who was pressuring to make medical decisions for my child against my own personal wishes. I know that 58,000 children a year are being removed from their families. So your presentation negates any of that. The children aren't safe, as we've seen in this community, by the two high-profile kidnappings under the family court auspices. I'm seeing medical intrusion into our decision-making, and I oppose it. I oppose more funding for government control of our children. That is a parental right. I'm invoking my first and my 14th Amendment right. And I don't want this because I see it as a movie like The Giver that my daughter was forced to watch in school. And it's where people were taking injections every single day. They were under complete surveillance. Everything was run by the government. And I just see this pattern of practice emerging before my eyes. I've looked at the United Nations Agenda 2030. That's not a conspiracy theory. It's posted on their website. So to the people who are well-meaning, I feel sorry for you that you work for an agency that is factually harming families. Again, I'm representative of millions of families negatively impacted by this intrusion into the care custody and control of our own children. Thank you. Anybody else like to address us on this item? It's a non-action item. Well, thanks for the report. The only thing I have a request that a report needs to include metadata of how many of those of individual children's and infant are individuals with disabilities. Because by the problem in our county is families are struggling for help, especially those with intellectual disability and mental health. The regional center system only deals with programs and services that is intellectual disability only. They do not deal with the mental health piece. So here are families struggling for help, for support, for parenting education. And this needs to be included in the report to make sure there's adequate both because it's about the needs of the parents. It's about reducing trauma with these infant and children if they don't get adequate support. The earlier, the better. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. Good morning. My name is Najib Kamil. I'm a senior analyst with Santa Cruz County Public Health in the Children and Family Health Unit. And I have the great opportunity to work with the Thrive by Five initiative. And I just want to take a quick opportunity to just thank the board for the support that this program has had. When you look at the numbers, it looks like 350,000, leveraging 1.5 million. But the impact to families is really unmeasurable. And, you know, our programs work with nurse family partnership as well as field nursing. And we've just had the opportunity to create really creative programs to improve access to these really important services to communities that don't usually get them. So thinking about our South County communities, thinking about our indigenous speaking communities, like the mistaken speaking community. So I just wanted to kind of point that out and just thank the board once again and really appreciate all the support that you've given for the Thrive by Five initiative. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your work. Morning. Good morning again. Yeah, this is important for children to get services as they needed at the beginning. And my daughter missed the chance and we as parents missed the chance because neglect. And now she's adult and I cannot get referral from mental health department to refer my daughter to San Andreas services, which is more appropriate for my daughter depending on her diagnosis. So what is going on? 10 years I asked behavioral health division to transfer my daughter to San Andreas to give a referral and, you know, release that creep that they keep on us because they just hypnotized her, they manipulate her because it's very easy to manipulate with developmentally disabled. And now she even added schizoaffective disorder that she never had before. But welcome to behavioral health division. You will get much worse diagnosis inherited through them. So please keep it in mind and stop that raising of their salaries. They get enough to damage people. They need first to start doing their duty because they don't do it. They just ignore people brutally ignore and it's just should be unacceptable. Thank you. Thank you. Reminder, this is a presentation on the Thrive by Five initiatives. Anybody else here like to address us on that specific item? Seeing nobody in chambers. Is there anybody online? Yes, we have speakers. Sage, Kate and your microphone is now available. Hi there. Thanks for having us today. I'm here on behalf of cradle to career Santa Cruz County. And I just wanted to thank the board for the time for this presentation and to our partners at first five Santa Cruz County and the Thrive by Five initiative for their great work on uplifting children and families in our county. We've had the opportunity to partner with them on some pro projects and training opportunities for parents and families. And we just really appreciate everything they're doing for our community and just want to continue to uplift their work and the great accomplishments that they've been doing for the health of our community. Thank you. Thank you. Colin user one, your microphone is now available. Part of this program is vaccinations. The Supreme Court states that vaccines are unavoidably unsafe. That's when they set up this vaccine injury compensation fund. This is not really compensate people. I'd like to refer people to some documents learn the risk.org a publication called vaccines for health or profit. One of the papers they put out states vaccines and sudden infant death syndrome. Is there a link? The US has the most vaccines given in the first year of a child's life 35. The US leads the developed world in infant mortality. The US is number one in first day death rates. Children in Mississippi receive the most vaccinations in the US and the state has the highest infant death rate. More than 23,000 healthy babies die everywhere in the US. Healthy babies do not just die, learn the risk. And the reason I would suggest anyone with young children to investigate, educate before you vaccinate from the freedom of information act. Naomi Wolf examining the Pfizer documents about the COVID shots. Pfizer states the vaccine is military prototype exempt from liability and World Health Organization rules. Another recent book on vaccines is called the unfortunate truth about vaccines exposing the vaccine orthodoxy by Leon Canterot. Another harm to children nowadays is wireless radiation very deadly if you want to help. Thank you Ms. Garrett. Is there anybody else online? No further speakers. I'll bring it back to the board for action. I had mistakenly said it was a non-action item, but there is an acceptance files or a motion for the recommended actions from Supervisor McPherson, a second from Supervisor Koenig for the recommended actions. Do we get a roll call please? Supervisor Koenig. Hi. Cummings. Hi. Hernandez. Hi. McPherson. Hi. And friend. Hi, and that passes unanimously and thank you all for your presentation and your work and for waiting. I apologize about the delay this morning. Thank you. We move on to item eight, which is to consider the selection of Joey Rose as the public artist for the Children's Crisis Center Public Art Project to adopt resolution accepting unanticipated revenue in the amount of $91,000. Approve agreement with Joey Rose Studio for not to exceed amount of $91,000. It takes good actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of Parks, Open Space and Cultural Services. We have the agenda board memo and the contracts and we have Director Gaffney, our Parks Director here. Thank you for waiting. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Friend, fellow board members. First of all, there was a speaker earlier that referenced the inclusion of children in our art projects and also the efforts to make inroads to the arts community throughout our county. I wanted to let you know that when we do our call for artists, we have done that. We do a thorough and robust effort to get out to all artists and we have in public art in the past used children. Good suggestions and I just wanted to highlight that we do that. And without any further ado, I wanted to introduce our Arts Commissioner and Chair, Margaret Niven, who's going to move along with the presentation. Welcome. Thank you for waiting and welcome. It's been an interesting morning. My name is Margaret Niven. I am the current Chair of the Santa Cruz County Arts Commission and I'm from your district, Mr. McPherson. The Arts Commission is pleased to recommend for your approval today a public art proposal for the Children's Crisis Center. The art selection panel comprised of community members, professional artists, county arts commissioners, and a representative of the involved department met in July of this year to review the artists' proposals. Three artists were invited to interview with the selection panel on September 5th. The artists were asked to prepare detailed drawings or a maquette to further define their project proposals. After much deliberation, the panel chose Joey Rose to continue in the selection process. At the September 25th meeting of the Arts Commission, the commission reviewed our panel's decision and voted to recommend that you approve the selection of Mr. Rose as a public artist for the Children's Crisis Center. The artwork selected by the panel and recommended by the Arts Commission features murals with imagery that is immersive, nurturing, and welcoming. With a color palette that aligns with the center's color story and themes, in addition, the artist plans to address the exterior as well as the interior of the building for a cohesive connected plan. I'd now like to introduce you to the artist, Joey Rose, who will give you a brief presentation of his proposal and answer any questions you might have. Thank you. Thank you for waiting. Yep. Hi, board. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Margaret, for that introduction. And I also want to say thank you to the selection committee for selecting me for this proposal. So I'm Joey Rose. I'm very excited to be considered for this project. I'm a Bay Area based muralist, artist, and painter. And since 2017, when I graduated from California College of the Arts with an illustration degree, I've been painting murals ever since. I've also obtained my C-33 painters, contractors license in 2017 as well. I've done many public and private commissions since then, most notably for the city of Emeryville, for the city of Dublin, California, for artworks downtown in San Rafael. I'm currently working on a project for Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. And I recently completed a project similar in scope to this one for user testing in San Francisco, a private company. It was three stories of an office building where I painted 15 murals in total for that project. Without further ado, let's go on to the presentation. So I propose 11 murals in total for this project. Three of those murals will be located on the exterior of the building to welcome kids and parents and families and staff members alike into the Children's Crisis Center. All three will be on the front-facing side of the building. This first one is on the main entryway and really encapsulates the whole vision for the rest of the murals incorporated in the project. You'll notice this kind of abstract shape pattern going through all of the compositions. Next, this piece will be located on the exterior of the two conference rooms. Also facing the front of the building. All three of these exterior murals are referenced from photographs that I took while visiting the Redwoods here in Santa Cruz. Next, and this one will be located inside the covered patio on the exterior. I thought this would be a great opportunity to kind of provide some green space for family members and kids to kind of just take a breather. Next, so inside each floor there'll be four murals total on each floor. These are the locations of the murals. Next, so on the first floor lobby you'll be greeted by some Monarch butterflies. All of the murals inside the building fall within three categories, very specific to Santa Cruz County, and those categories are all focused on the environments here. So category one is the Redwood Forest, category two is the shorelines of Santa Cruz, and category three is the ocean off the coastline of California. So obviously this one falls under the Redwoods. Next, here we have a family of Garibaldes for the first family room. They have these amazing blue spots when they're adolescents, so that's going to be really fun to paint with some kelp because we're famous for the kelp forests here. Next, and then another iconic species for Santa Cruz. You can't go to the shoreline without seeing these brown pelicans, so a family of brown pelicans. Next, and then also included in the first floor is a quiet room where the children can kind of have a space to unwind and relax and have a quiet moment, and the architects have this incredible idea of having these architectural elements embedded and extruding from the wall to allow the kids to lounge inside the wall, which I thought was perfect for some kind of artwork to be there. So we have kind of a sunset motif where the kids could literally lounge inside of a sunset. I thought that was a really beautiful idea. Next, moving on to the second floor. This would be the lobby of the second floor, personally my favorite bird in the area, a great blue heron surrounded by snowy plowers, which are also a native species. Native species, they're endemic to the California coastline surrounded by some white sage, which is known for its medicinal purposes. Next, and here are some locations for the second floor murals as well as some themes that explain. Next, and then the multi-purpose day room on the second floor is one of the largest walls included in the proposal. So I decided to paint maybe one of the largest mammals on the planet, the humpback whale, and with a little offspring as well. Next, here we have a California newt that can be found in the redwoods here. And next, and then the final image is of some native hermit crabs with some kelp forests behind. So yeah, I just wanted to make sure it was really fun and inviting for kids and maybe distracting a little bit for the reasons why they're in the center in the first place, but also just to make it welcoming for families and make it a positive experience when they're at these centers. And I'm here if you have any questions as well. Thank you for that presentation. Actually, I got to say that I was really digging what you were proposing here. Because the building, I mean, let's be honest, the building itself isn't the most attractive building in Santa Cruz County, right? As we sit in clearly the most attractive building in Santa Cruz County. But we don't normally have some of the integrates, the outside and the inside in this way when we get these public art projects and the way that you are able to integrate the two so that you're visually welcome to buy it. And then to have all the family elements and the soothing elements and the native elements I think are really just the thought you brought into it, Joey, was really, really strong. And I just appreciated the amount of time and thought you've put into this. I think this is going to be a special space. Are there any comments or questions from my colleague, Supervisor Koenig? Thank you, Joey. I have a great proposal. I really look forward to seeing you realize it. I work at the, my district office is at the Sheriff's office. So I'm in this complex quite a bit. And I think that your artwork is really going to help set off this building and sort of de-institutionalize it, if you will, and make it a lot more approachable. So I look forward to enjoying this art on a regular basis. Thanks. Thank you, Supervisor Koenig. What a fantastic envelope that you've really provided here for so many aspects of our community. It can be a learning experience for some of those who are going to be here too, who are going to be visiting this. It's, what does this mean or who is this? And it's here at Santa Cruz County. So great job of incorporating all of that in your great artwork. Thank you. Supervisor Cummings. Yeah, I'd share the same comment as my colleagues do and just really am grateful for this artwork that you're going to bring. We've been seeing so much art popping up, and every time I see a new mural pop up on the building, I'm just like, guess and wore white balls. And I think another thing that's really great about public art is that we get complaints of people who, they may get gang graffiti that happens, but in the art world, if there's a mural, you know, you don't touch it. And so this is just going to help bring more vibrancy and beauty to our community and really kind of showcase all the great native species in our area. So thank you. Supervisor Hernandez, did you have something as well? No, just it's absolutely beautiful. I love the marine kind of theme that we have here with our marine based sanctuary here. It's a perfect theme. Thank you. Does remember the community like to address us on this item? Thank you. Becky Steinbrunner. Thank you for this beautiful art. Really, it's beautiful. I have occasioned to go to the Sixth District Court of Appeals from time to time. And in the entrance lobby of that building is a floor to ceiling living wall of live plants. And there are water features there. And I cannot tell you how calming that is to have plant material floor to ceiling and sound and effective water. So if there is any way to incorporate living walls in this building and on this water or the sound of water to calm these kids and their families, I think that is worth the money spent. I would also like to see on some of these beautiful murals, the interior ones, some textural things that could be incorporated at kid level. For example, bumps on the hermit crab or whatever it is, something that could really pull them in and give them a textural piece of interest to help connect them personally with the subject matter. And I hope that there can be some aquariums throughout the building. Because that has been found that when people watch fish swim back and forth, it is a known method of calming the nervous system. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else like to address this on the public art? Morning. Hello, Richard Gala from Live Oak. I think the art is beautiful and it's needed, especially inside the building, because it's about being making it welcoming. One of the problems I have is I don't feel welcome when I go to the sheriff's department. They are not welcoming at all whatsoever. So let's hope that this painting will make it enlightening, more friendly, more open to the community, because the sheriff's department is not welcoming. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else on the chamber seeing none? Is there anybody online? No speakers online. All right, we'll bring it back to the board for actions supervisor Koenig. I'll move the recommended actions. We have a motion from supervisor Koenig and a second from supervisor Cummings. If we could have a roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And friend. Aye. Congratulations, Joey. That passes unanimously. We'll move on to item nine to consider resolution exercising the option of opting out of Assembly Bill 1416 election requirements resulting in not listing supporters and opponents of local measures on county ballots and take related actions as outlined in the memo of the county clerk and county administrative officer. We have the resolution and the agenda item. And Ms. Benson, welcome. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Elyse Benson with the CAO's office. I'm here with Tricia Weber, our county clerk elections director to present the recommendation regarding opting out of Assembly Bill 1416 related to adding additional information on ballot cards. Tricia is going to present the background on AB 1416, and then I will be presenting the CAO's recommendation for your consideration as well as the associated analysis. So with that, I'm going to pass it to Director Weber. Well, good morning, Chair, friends and members of the office. I don't want to be heard. I want to project for my diaphragm. Hi, I'm Tricia Weber. I'm the Santa Cruz County Clerk Registrar of Voters, and today I'm here to talk to you about Assembly Bill 1416, which was passed and signed last year and took effect on January 1st, 2023. AB 1416 adds a new requirement for statewide propositions and local measures appearing on future ballots. That requirement, which was codified as the California elections Code 9170, is that directly following the proposition or measure question, but before the yes-no ovals on the official ballot, we are now required to print onto that ballot a list of individuals, businesses, and or organizations who are supporters or opponents of the issue that is before the voters. While there's nothing that we can do locally about the law for the state propositions, the law does allow for county boards of supervisors to opt out of printing that information for county, city, special district, and school district measures on upcoming and future ballots. AB 1416's aim is to enhance transparency of who supports a measure or opposes a measure as well as a list of who may be funding that measure. This list may be the same as who assigned arguments that are found in the county information voter guide, but it also may differ. What will this look like administratively? The people who file an argument in favor or against a measure will also file a list of supporters or opponents along with documentation from those people on the list. This list can only be 125 characters in length. That's character, so it includes also spaces and punctuation marks. So it will most likely involve abbreviations. The county clerk's office will review the character count, the documentation that is signed by the people who are listed, and determine if the abbreviations that are submitted are logical, easy to understand, and not misleading. What will it look like for voters? Well, at minimum, listing the supporters and opponents will add two lines of text to each measure, and at most will add four lines. On our translated or facsimile ballots, that could be more. The law allows for the supporter or opponent list to be reduced in font size if needed to make it fit on the ballot card. Additional lines and or smaller font size will add to the complexity of an already really complex ballot, and it will definitely affect the readability of that ballot. AB 1416 is actually the third iteration of this concept, and it contained many compromises to be in the form that was passed and signed in 2022. Although I understand the goal of the sponsors behind this bill, adding the supporter opponents to the ballot has not been tested for readability, understandability, or voter effectiveness. Many counties have opted out of printing supporter opponents on the local measures, and I want to remind you that if you choose to opt out today, you can always change that decision in the future and ask my office to print the supporters and opponents. Our office has reached out to the cities and some of the schools and special districts, and there was no concern with at their level with the provisions of opting out of this. And I'd like to now pass it back to Alisa for more on the recommendations, but I'm here to answer questions. Thank you, Trisha. So as stated in the memo, the recommendation of the CAO's office is to opt out of the legislation for the March and November elections in 2024 with a report back in early 2025 on the impacts, potential costs, and benefits of how this piece of legislation plays out in other counties. I want to remind everyone we will have the experience of printing the supporters and opponents for statewide measures both for March and for November. So we will have some limited experience of how that plays out in terms of the questions that Trisha has outlined. What we know right now is this increases the complexity of an election administration, getting the information from our supporters and the supporters and opponents of a piece of legislation. And there are some significant paperwork that those folks need to do to demonstrate that they meet the standard set forth in the law. And that is an impact then on our elections staff. As Trisha mentioned, the summarizing and getting it to 125 characters will be an interesting exercise in itself. And this may create some additional challenges for translation. The other thing is, as many of the analyses around implementation, this information is already provided in our printed and online voter guides. There's some concern that it potentially could be confusing or out of sequence between the two bodies of information that are generated for these different implications. There's definitely a possibility of an increase in election costs as the real estate of the ballot has to grow. And we have to add an additional card for each and every election. I did learn from Trisha that we've only had one two card election so far. And generally, when we moved to two cards, that adds about $167,000 per election. What we don't know is, as Trisha said, how does this affect ballot readability, understandability? There has not been user testing. So March and November will be the first massive user testing of this concept. And we do know it increases direct and indirect costs. So with that, our recommendation is for you to pass the resolution to opt out of this for 2024. And we would bring forward additional information for your consideration in 2025. With that, I'm happy to answer any other questions. As is Director Weber. Thank you to you both. It seems pretty cut and dry to me. Are there any questions from the Secretary of State? I strongly agree with the staff recommendation on this item. And we need to have an opt out option for 2024 March and November elections. I'll be prepared to make a motion to that effect. This is just not feasible at this time. And I think we're going to learn more from how it's implemented when other jurisdictions implement it in 2024. But I think it's time for us to wait and not do it, but see how it works or doesn't work. Other questions or comments for we open it up to the community? Say none. Anybody from the community like to address this on this item? Thank you. Elections Director Weber for taking this good action and the good clear report. Thank you. I support this and I wish we could also opt out of the state because I think when you when a voter sees a long list of supporters and opponents, they're going to look at that more than the content of the actual issue itself and maybe not do a level of research that we would hope every voter would do to determine their own opinion on the matter. But I'm happy that we're going to do it at the county level. I read election code 91170 and saw that in part D2 it states that if there is a district or school measure that encompasses other neighboring counties and they do not also do this action, they cannot do, they cannot include the information because our county has made this action. So I want to ask if, for the example, Cabrillo Community College District and perhaps the impending hospital district vote coming up, how will this affect it and have you reached out to those other neighboring counties? Thank you. Thank you. Is there any member of the community still here in chambers seeing none? Is there anybody online? We have no speakers online. All right, we'll close public comment and bring it back. Ms. Weber, do you want to briefly address the question from the community on that? Sure, I'd be happy to. So the reading is exactly correct. If one of the counties in a multi-jurisdictional or a multi-county jurisdiction is not doing AB 1416 provisions at the local level, then none of them can. So many of our neighbors have already opted out of 1416. And so we've talked amongst ourselves and the neighboring counties knew that we were coming here today to ask for this as well. And they're okay with that. Thank you. All right. Is there a motion for the recommended actions? Also moved. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor McPherson in a second from Supervisor Cummings. We got a roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Friend. Aye. And that passes unanimously. We'll move on to item 10, which is to thank you both to consider approval and concept of an ordinance amending Chapter 9.28 of the Santa Cruz County Code relating to stop intersections. Designating the intersection of La Coneada and Mayer Way as a, excuse me, drive as a two-way stop intersection schedule and ordinance for final adoption on December 5, 2023. And take-rooted actions is outlined in the memo of the Deputy CAO. We've got the map. We've got the ordinance and the strikeout underlined version. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome back. Good morning, Chair Friend and members of the board. My name is Russell Chen. I'm a senior civil engineer in charge of the- Thank you. Is your microphone on? Does conference on maybe just need to be a little bit closer to- Oh, okay. Sorry about that. Thank you. My name is Russell Chen. I'm a senior civil engineer in charge of the traffic engineering section of the community of the, sorry about that, community development and infrastructure. I'm here to present item 10 for the board to consider approval of the ordinance amending the county code to designate the intersection of La Coneada Way at Mayer Drive as a two-way stop intersection. The residents of rolling woods neighborhood have reported safety issues because drivers aren't following the vehicle right of way at this intersection. That does not have regulatory traffic signage. It is common in this county and other jurisdictions to not have regulatory traffic signage at intersections on local roads. However, after evaluation of this intersection and based on engineering judgment, we have determined that a two-way stop sign at La Coneada Way will control vehicle conflicts and make it safer. I also wanted to acknowledge that two representatives from the neighborhood spoke during the public comment period in favor of the stop signs, but they weren't able to stay here for this agenda item. Since this action requires an ordinance, we request the board's approval and concept ordinance amending Chapter 9.28 of the Santa Cruz County Code relating to stop intersections, designating the intersection of La Coneada Way at Mayer Drive as a two-way stop intersection. If approved, schedule the ordinance for final adoption on December 5, 2023, and direct Department of Community Development and Infrastructure to install all necessary signage and striping to create a two-way stop intersection 31 days after final adoption of the ordinance. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you for the community bringing the issue forward and in particular for your team for doing the professional analysis. And it sounds like everybody's in alignment. Are there any? Yeah, this is my district. I'm strongly ready to move the recommended action. This is close to Brooklynal School too. So it's really critical that this has been an identified need for public safety and I would move the recommended action at the appropriate time. Thank you. Is there any member of the community who would like to address this on this item? Thank you. I also support this safety measure. I only ask that for the first 30 days after the sign, the new signage has been implemented, that there's some sort of a solar powered flashing red beacon around the new stop direction, such as what the city of Capitola has near City Hall, or as what they do in the city of Napa, they install bright orange flags on a dowel on the new sign to really draw people's attention to this new stop sign, new traffic safety measure, just for the first 30 days until people get used to it, to eliminate anybody blowing through because they weren't here testifying today. Thank you very much for your good work. Thank you. It's seen nobody else in chambers. Is there anybody online that would like to address this on this stop sign? We have no speakers online. All right, we'll close the item. Supervisor McPherson. I move the recommended action. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor McPherson, a second from Supervisor Koenig. We got roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig. I. Cummings. I. Hernandez. I think he stepped away for a second. McPherson. I. In front. I. And that passes unanimously. It's just one member absent and appreciate your work on that. We'll move on to the final item today's open session agenda, which is a public hearing to consider the 2023 housing element to adopt a resolution considering the addendum of the sustainability update environmental impact report amending the County of Santa Cruz County, the County of Santa Cruz General Plan and directing staff and send the adopted housing element to the State Department of Housing and Community Development for certification and take related actions of that line of the memo that FDCAO Director of Community Development and Infrastructure. We have the memo, the housing element and a number of appendices associated with it. I know we've received a few presentations on this previously and welcome back with hands and thank you for this. Thank you, Chair, members of the board. We're here today to present the Planning Commission's recommendation on the 2023 housing element. The board has had several study sessions on this item already. With me today is Mark Connolly, who is the principal planner in our policy section and policy policy section and the housing sections have been working on the housing element all year long. We've had a robust public engagement process to inform the actual document. We've provided quite a few attachments including the environmental impact report addendum that goes along with. So with that, I would just say there's a lot of information in the packet and what we really don't get to address like head on is the fact that we're in a housing crisis and this is how we, one of the steps that we can take to go about solving that and doing our part for the housing element. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mark to start our presentation today and thank you. Thank you, Stephanie. Good morning, Chair and Board of Supervisors. Great to see you all this morning. So as Stephanie said, Mark Connolly, principal planner with CDI and what we have for you today, this is our adoption hearing for the sixth cycle housing element. We've had two prior study sessions, as Chair Friend pointed out. With you one back on June 14th and the other on September 12th, we've also had three planning commission meetings that culminated at their October 25th meeting where they voted unanimously to recommend adoption by the board. We also have had three meetings with this year with the Housing Advisory Commission that culminated in a recommendation to the board to adopt the housing element on November 1st. We have also received comments from our first formal submittal to HCD which have been addressed and we intend to resubmit to HCD tomorrow, November 15th, which will hopefully result in the certification by HCD on January 15th. So to give you a little background and why we're here and how we got here, the housing element is just one chapter of the general plan of the county and has to be updated every eight years. This year it's due to the State Department of Housing and Community Development, HCD, before December 31st. So the housing element is a policy document that must include actionable items. The implementation programs that the county will report progress on every year in the annual progress report. The element must also be accompanied by a housing sites inventory which shows that we can accommodate the assigned number of housing units specified in the regional housing needs allocation. This is our arena. The arena is handed down to us to all local governments by the state and the association of Monterey Barrier Governments. So there was a robust community engagement process that staff went through and this is following board direction. Staff implemented this engagement plan beginning in early 2023. Staff engaged a consultant who specifies or specializes in community engagement and who created two focus groups. One was the stakeholder group and it was comprised of representatives of businesses and community organizations that are involved in housing. The other was a citizens panel. This was comprised of residents who represented the county's demographics and those affected by this housing crisis. The full results of the stakeholder group and the community panel, they're included in Appendix C of the housing element. In addition, county staff, we also sought input from the community through three public meetings that were held this spring to solicit public input at large. These results were three community meetings and those results are also found in Appendix C of the housing element and reflect pretty similar themes that we came in, came up against. So what were some of the solutions that were identified through this engagement process? This is a list of some of the top needs and solutions that were identified through the public engagement process. We found a lot of support for more multiple family housing at higher densities and heights. Also housing to address needs of workforce housing and teachers and housing to accommodate people with disabilities. What was really interesting here we found was encouraging as well was in general the priorities of both groups were the same and you can see here on this slide some of these priorities and solutions that were brought to our attention. Next, something new to the sixth cycle. Housing elements are now required to include an assessment of fair housing practices which incorporate analysis of relationships between available housing sites and areas of high or low resources and concrete actions in the form of programs to affirmatively further fair housing. Providing these housing opportunities in higher resourced areas in the unincorporated area to accommodate higher density is really the key to meeting the AFFH requirements. Appendix A in the housing element contains the fair housing report and all the data and analysis. So just to give you an idea of some of the new programs and policies that we put together, many ongoing policies and programs that the county had in the previous cycle which is called the fifth cycle are still retained in the new housing element. However, we wanted to highlight some of the newer programs. So this list here shows some of the new programs across all six of the goals in the element, many of which we got and were suggested by the participants of the community engagement process. One such example is H1F here which considers various updates to the development standards including studying four to six-story development in appropriate areas such as major activity centers. Other programs address rezoning as necessary, some code enforcement on vacation rentals, nexus study on inclusionary housing and fees, housing for people with disabilities as well as all electric housing. In 2022, the county adopted the sustainability policy and regulatory updates. So this was a major overhaul of the county's general plan zoning and development standards. So one of the main goals of the sustainability update was to allow more housing units and more housing options, especially along these county major transportation corridors. Project included key changes in development standards that really go along with the housing elements such as increasing number of housing units that can be developed on each acre of land in zones that allow housing and adjusting codes to allow more units. Grading a new zone called the residential flex zone, this is the RF zone that allows between 22 and 45 units per acre and is at the high end of the county's density allowance and range. Allowing units in single-family zones called that missing middle housing, rezoning some properties along the transportation corridors and allowing for more housing and mixed use projects in commercial areas. So at this point I'd like to turn it over to Suzanne Isay to talk about a little bit of our arena and the site selection process. Thank you Mark. Good morning chair and supervisors. Next slide please. So this table on your screen shows the analysis of the county's regional housing needs allocation. Again, as Mark mentioned, these numbers come to us from the state. So if you look at the column furthest to the left on this table, that is the county's assigned arena. The arena needs to be backed up by what the state refers to as a site inventory. So the site's inventory is essentially a list of properties, parcels in the county where additional housing units can be built or added with key parcel data and estimates of how many units could likely be fit on each property. Sometimes we refer to that as like the estimated unit yield of that property. It's not a definitive determination of a maximum or a minimum. It's just an estimate of what is a likely feasible number of units that could be fit on that property. The first column in this table, like I said, shows the arena that the county needs to meet. The state guidance suggests that communities include a buffer because in a lot of cases some of the properties will not be developed during the upcoming eight-year cycle. And so if you include a buffer, then you have some wiggle room in case some of the properties don't wind up being developed. So they suggest a buffer of at least 10% to provide that flexibility. So we've included that 10% buffer here in the second column where if you add the 10% then you wind up with a total goal of slightly over 5,000 units. And as you can see on the table, the units are broken out into four different income levels from very low income to above moderate income. And we have to address the targets in each of those income levels. So we analyzed the existing zoning and general plan designations and came up with an estimated capacity under existing zoning, which is shown in the third column from the left here, which allows development of approximately 4167 units across the four categories. So you just do the math between the buffer total and that number and it shows that we had a shortfall of slightly over 900 units to meet the RENA plus the buffer. Next slide, please. To give you a little understanding of the different factors that we had to use to create the site's inventory to meet the state guidance for these sites, the guidance provides certain standards for what we can consider a vacant property or an underutilized property, the size of properties that are considered to be conducive or likely to develop with new housing, ideally the lack of any obvious environmental hazards or constraints, the availability of utilities. And in the case of the county, we have an established urban services line, which pretty clearly indicates where utilities are available. So we're primarily looking at sites within that boundary. And in order to consider sites as being potentially feasible for development of housing for lower income households, the density, the minimum density of those sites has to be at least 20 units an acre. So putting all that together, we additionally have to look at and analyze these sites in the context of the things that Mark mentioned on the prior slide relating to fair housing and access to resources or opportunities. The state publishes a map called the TCAP opportunity map or sometimes referred to as the resource map, which we are encouraged to use for some of this analysis. We also, as Mark mentioned, engaged in an extensive community engagement process to get feedback from the community about which sites make sense or don't make sense for housing of different types. We also built into our analysis all the application data that we have from our permitting system on pending projects, projects that have been proposed in our system for some of these sites. Property and owner intent is another area that we look at as well as I mentioned the existing zoning and general plan designations. Next slide please. So when we put all that together, we have the shortfall that we're trying to address. We then looked at if we adjusted zoning for certain parcels, how many more units could we generate? So we found that by rezoning approximately 75 parcels in the county's urbanized areas, we could meet the shortfall including the buffer amount. And particularly we have to pay a lot of attention to the very low and low income arena because that's the area where the state is particularly focused. So those were the numbers where we really had to make up that shortfall. So based on rezoning about 30 larger parcels within the urban area to designations called urban high or residential flex and also from rezoning several commercial properties from something called service commercial to a commercial zone that allows mixed use. By doing that, we could generate sites that could accommodate another approximately 1900 units and that's shown in the second column from the left on this table. In addition to that, there's a new state law called SB10 which allows communities to zone for what they call missing middle housing which is infill on existing single family-zoned parcels to allow up to 10 units per parcel which can accommodate project types such as duplexes, triplexes, quads in existing lower density neighborhoods. And we've identified about 40 parcels that met the criteria in that law that would be feasible for SB10 rezoning. So when we add that all together, we were able to address the shortfall particularly in the lower income categories and come up with an estimated new capacity of about slightly under 2,300 units. Multifamily and missing middle housing are badly needed in the county to provide housing options for all people including many local workers of various income levels who need housing they can afford near their workplace. Accommodating the arena for the lower income units as I mentioned is key to achieving a compliant housing element. So this map shows you visually where these sites in the sites inventory are located. So to give you a little sense, you can see the cities, the incorporated cities in the county are shaded out in gray because the county doesn't have any jurisdiction over their development. You can see on the blue line on the map in the sort of mid-county area and also shown in the little curve out here in the top right corner that is the urban services line. So within that line is where the utilities are available and most urban services and development is located. You can see on the map the sites that are shaded in blue and sort of a fuchsia purple tone are the existing sites which already can accommodate housing under their existing zoning and general plan designations and the sites that are shaded in yellow are those that are proposed for the rezoning that I just described in the prior slide. Consistent with the sustainability update and the factors noted earlier, most housing units are best accommodated near transportation corridors and other services in existing neighborhoods and business districts which is essentially infill in areas without major environmental constraints and in areas that help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions and plan for climate change by reducing the need to travel long distances by solo vehicle. Because we are focusing on infill opportunities in the unincorporated areas within the urban services line, the proposed rezonings are all in districts 1, 2 and 4 and that is just because there's not a lot of urban services line areas that are unincorporated within districts 3 and 5. Next slide please. So just to give you sort of a quick visual of these other factors that we have to consider, this slide shows you an overview of where those rezoning sites are in the mid-county area with the opportunity map in the background. So this is that map created by the state to show which areas of the entire state have higher or lower resources according to the certain index that they've created. Now this map is created for the purposes of scoring applications for funding for tax credits for affordable housing projects. So it's not created for the purpose of seeking development potential or anything like that, but it is just one other layer we have to analyze. So as you can see, as I mentioned, we are focusing the rezoning sites within the urban services line. So even though there are some areas that are zoned as a higher resource area, which is shown in the darker blue on the map, we're not proposing to put sites in those areas because they don't have access to utilities, their rural and so forth. But to the extent that we have the ability to place sites within the urban services line, it is a good thing in the context of this exercise that the sites that are proposed for rezoning are all going into the high and highest resource areas within this limited geographic area. This slide shows the same map, but for the southern portion of the county, so for South County, here you can see the shading on the opportunity map is actually in the low category, the low resource category. Now a lot of that has to do with the fact that this is an agricultural area and a rural area, and there's just not a lot of urban and suburban type resources out there like transit and so forth. But it also indicates other factors that play into this index that is created by TCAC, which have to do with household income levels, educational attainment and employment levels. So it's a combination of all of those factors. Now here we do have six parcels within this area that are proposed for rezoning, but they are within the urban services line, which you can see on the map here in orange. And although we try to place most of the housing sites within the higher resource areas, we know that there is a need for farm worker housing, for example, in South County particularly, that's where the farms are. And at least one of these sites is actively being considered for an affordable farm worker housing project. And some of the other sites might be conducive for that type of housing as well. I also want to mention that as Azure Board is aware, the county has actively invested a lot of time and effort and resources into improving access to county facilities and services in South County, such as the recent Whiting Road Park acquisition, the West Marine facility in South County for county services and so forth. So this resource map index may evolve over time as some of those projects and transportation improvements and park improvements are completed. Next slide, please. So the next two slides I'm going to show you show the same data overall, but the background layer is changed. So instead of showing that resource map, we're showing you demographic data from the most recent five-year census window, which shows race and Hispanic origin variables. And you can see on this map of Mid County, the brown shading on the map indicates that the predominant racial or ethnic group in that area is folks who responded to the census as white alone, not Hispanic or Latino, and the darker the shading, the more predominant that group is in that census tract. If we go to the next slide, please, you can see in this map we have two general shades on the map, which is the same one as on the prior slide. And also this green shading indicates that the predominant group was those who responded as Hispanic or Latino to the census tickers. And again, the darker the shading, the more predominant that group is. So this is part of the fair housing analysis that we're required to do. And again, I think we're doing the best we can, given that the circumstances we have to try to provide most of the sites for new housing in areas that would counteract those historic sort of forces that have led to more of this segregation pattern that you see in the map here. And that is what the guidance calls for us to do. And with that, I'll hand it back over to Mark. Thank you, Suzanne. We wanted to take a brief opportunity here to talk about one of the major opportunity sites that we have in our inventory. And that's one at 2,600 Mar Vista. It's formally known as the Aptos Part 3 golf course site. It's an approximate 14 acre site that we're estimating to obtain 430 units on. And we recognize some constraints and options in site design that would have to be taken into consideration. Some of these, as you can see here on your slide, the yellow line that runs parallel to Highway 1, that's Highway 1 there in your slide, obviously. That is an existing right-of-way. It's a 50-foot right-of-way that exists on the site. So that's an approximate 2.5 acre amount of easement that exists on the site. There's also another easement you see to the top corner of the site. And that's another easement for access in a right-of-way. The site is also encumbered by other easements. General easements, there's a pink one, as you see, sort of slide north here to the top border. There's a pink easement that goes along the residential communities there and filters down into another easement that's a drainage infrastructure easement that exists on the site. So in general, also ponding and drainage, runoff, inadequate stormwater infrastructure, and these adjacent sites and roadways create quite a lot of constraint on the site for the purposes of development. So given these constraints and the required circulation improvements, staff estimates that obtaining 430 units on the site, about 2 to 4 acres of open space is a reasonable estimate to accommodate those units and still provide for adequate open space, especially given the code requirement minimum of 15%. There's a resolution in your packet that staff is prepared. It has specific provisions for this site, including master planning the site and the 2 to 4 acres of open development space that would allow flexibility for future development on the site given these complexities and constraints on the site. So staff is also included in your packet, just a quick overview of the HCD comments that were received on October 23, 2023, and they were pretty light. So I'll just tell you, just go right through these real quick. It just comes down to additional data that was requested on fair housing and special needs analysis programs and policies. HCD wanted to see some clarification on our capacity analysis and methodology used for capacity and some minor program modifications. So nothing significant, no substantial changes there. So staff has incorporated these revisions into the version that's presented before you today. And we did that on November 14th. So to give you just a quick idea of the depth and breadth of these revisions and where we've landed on them, in your packet, there's a draft update of these that went to HCD on July 25th. And that started the 90-day review of the housing element. We subsequently responded to these comments and added new text and various edits to the housing sections in one, three, and five. Those did not require any modifications. So only two and four in the inventory, as well as some of the dependencies required amendments. So this slide here shows you some of those revisions and that were really key to the document in sections two and four. So continuing on with the inventory, we had some key revisions that really came down to one parcel that was removed from the rezoning list and placed in the pending active project list. There was two new pending projects that were added based on recent development activity. One parcel was added to the inventory based on sustainability update reasons. Two parcels were removed from the inventory based on development completed in the fifth cycle. And then an inventory of emergency shelter beds that was added to Appendix E based on HCD requirements. Sites, I correct, not shelter beds, but sites. Regarding the appendices, staff and our consultant made extensive corrections and changes to Appendix A per HED's request. These were to expand a discussion of lower income housing households overpaying by tenure, expanding analysis of the existing housing conditions, and additional discussions on the subject of special needs populations to include persons with disabilities, persons with developmental disabilities, elderly large households, farm worker housing, seasonal and permanent, female headed households, and the homeless. So we think that all of this, as you can see, is pretty light comments that came back in our responses. So I think it really demonstrates how staff came to really hit the mark of the state requirements. So our recommended actions today. One, conduct this public hearing and on the proposed 2023 housing element and consider any public testimony you may receive. Adopt a resolution considering the addendum to the sustainability update environmental impact report amending the County of Santa Clara Santa Cruz general plan and directing staff to send the adopted housing element to the State Department of Housing and Community Development for certification and authorizing the Director of Community Development and Infrastructure, CDI to make minor changes to the housing element in response to potential future comments from the State Department of Housing and Community Development or certification by HCD. So that that concludes our presentation and we can answer any questions you may ask. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Are there any questions or comments from board members before we open up the public hearing? I know that we've considered this a few times, but please supervisor Connick. Sure. Just a general question about one of the changes for permanent room housing, single room occupancy. So if I understand correctly, the only time that we basically allow single room occupancy units for someone owns or lives in just a single room and then would share kitchen facilities or bathroom facilities is in the conversion of old visitor serving accommodations. Is there a reason why we haven't looked at expanding that as an affordable housing option to more sites? No, except to say that we did initial reasons to accommodate approximately 65 units of permanent room housing. We haven't had one application since then. So even though the concept being that old motel rooms and convalescent facilities might legalize any conversion, we still haven't had any applications. So you know, at this point, I don't think we'd recommend an expansion of that program. I guess my question is this, are we precluding the ability of new developments that take like a Walnut Commons type approach where they're shared facilities between rooms? There are building code requirements for units, including some kitchen facilities. So we probably would be looking at a different type of use than some sort of group facility or institutional use. Okay. Thanks for the clarification. I see Survisor Hernandez and I'll come back to you, Survisor McPherson. Survisor Hernandez, please. Yes, it's a quick question. I know this is all preliminary, but do any of the identified sites fall under any of the state's streamlining legislation? Yeah, Suzanne, can you help with that one? Sure. Yes, there's a handful of different state bills that offer significant streamlining options and each one of those has its own criteria for what types of sites can qualify. But I would say generally there's a lot of properties within the county, particularly within the urban services line that have the ability to pursue development under one or more of those streamlining options. Reading the site's inventory doesn't really change whether that option exists for a site or not. So they may have the option now, they may have it after we adopt the inventory. But yes, there's quite a lot of property, I would say, within the USL that can utilize some of those options. Thank you, Survisor Hernandez. Survisor McPherson. Yeah, first of all, thank you to the planning staff. Stephanie and Mark and Suzanne for this. I know we have a gun to our head to get this done by the end of the year and I think I can share again my concern or the troublesome perspective that the state's going to take over our land use planning. And we do need housing. There's no question about it. But at least I'm grateful that we had my suggestion. We have greater opportunities for housing density along the rail corridor that have been identified. And housing along the rail corridor, I think, as it's been seen, is the best way to position our community for federal and state money to eventually pursue passenger rail, which I don't think is a guaranteed scenario for that issue. I think that is that why we put additional housing close to the rail line because of the transportation needs as well? Yes, as you know, the sustainability update calls for a strong connection between our transportation facilities and our housing in order to reduce vehicle miles traveled and otherwise create communities that have more options than just getting on the freeway to go to work or home or shopping, right? And so while it may be a while before the rail line is fully developed one way or another, having those rooftops near there will help that facility along in whatever form it takes. Okay. Thank you. A couple of questions. Now that we have identified places to put three and a half times the amount of housing that we had in our last eight-year arena cycle, many community members wonder if our water researchers are going to be adequate. I know we have, I'm a member of the Santa Margarita Water Management Agency. We have one that's so kill. How is that? I'm just trying to get a, has that been adequately addressed? We have water, we don't get state or federal water. We're dependent on rainfall and I just, that's a big concern as well as the power grid too that we've had plenty of outages here too. Yes, those are definitely concerns in terms of the power grid. This is part of the reason why we're really looking at infill housing in our urban services area that's better, better served and not subject to outage and other potential hazards as much. And water is definitely a concern. It's analyzed in the environmental impact report or in a very robust fashion. It finds, you know, we coordinate very closely with the service providers, particularly in this case the city of Santa Cruz and Soquel, Creek Water District. Every five years they need to look at population growth and update the urban water management plans. And so there's a constant kind of what are you planning, what do you got thing going on? And the EIR looks at all of the upcoming improvements that they are contemplating and planning for. I will say that in terms of water impacting groundwater impact, it's funny, but urban development is not the main driver of our water supply. It's really the agricultural uses that really impact water. So that's a multifaceted response, but yeah, we did take a very close look at it. And also as a reminder, any development in the future will be required to have a certificate of availability from the water provider and the sewer provider. So we're not precluding any development regulations or that requirement that they be served by those utilities. Good. Thank you for that answer. And one other question on page 78 of our board deck, the staff writes that we need to work on the barriers creating housing in the coastal zone, but specifics aren't offered there. What are your ideas about addressing barriers of building housing in the coastal zone? Because I'm sure they're going to have a final say on some of this. We intend to work with coastal staff to continue to find those infill development opportunities. And we recognize there's some policies in the general plan that tend to limit heights, for instance. And we would like to address those in a fashion that kind of will work for our needs and for coastal as well. So there are a few things like that that we really want to look at closely. There's been some restrictions on density bonus that we're addressing with this housing element as well. So we have to address both the coastal act and our housing needs, and they don't always match up. And when you add in our environmental constraints, it's really can be challenging, but we are committed to kind of trying to address those things that may be slowing housing down within urban areas. So your thoughts are coming? First, I just want to thank the staff for their work on this and all the community engagement. It was a very, you know, I'm consuming process that required a lot of outreach and a very quick amount of time. And so just want to thank you all for helping us get to where we are today. I do hope that, you know, as elected, we can continue for the state to refine this process. I think to some of the points that Supervisor McPherson just brought up, you know, we need to build for what our community needs, not just be required to build as much housing as possible. And we need to be able to build to what our infrastructure can support because we are going to be faced with, you know, impacts from climate change, whether it's sea level rise and having saltwater intrusion in some of our wells and preparing for that. Or if it's just long term drought and how that will intersect with the increased amount of building and our community growth and how we can make sure that it's sustainable over time. So I just hope that we can, you know, provide some input to the state as this process unfolds and as we continue to develop. I do hope that we can continue to push forward with the increasing our inclusionary requirements. I did see the next study mentioned and I just wanted to put out there that I'm really hoping that we can reference in that study the ordinances that Santa Cruz and Watsonville have adopted. It's very different from just simply increasing the inclusionary to 20% because in those ordinances, they utilize Section 8 that would provide, you know, offset the cost of that increase in affordable housing. And it's a cost effective way to increase the inclusionary ordinance. In the absence of somebody who has Section 8 would also revert those units to moderate rate income households. So it's a cost effective way of trying to make sure pencils out for developers. And so they get fair market return that increased 5% of inclusionary units. And so I hope we can have that exploration in that next study. I also think that, you know, we should make sure that we're not counting replacement units as inclusionary, which is allowed by state law. If we have affordable units that are going to be demolished and we're going to have new units going in, they should be replacing those units in addition to the inclusionary. And so I hope we can continue to explore policies around that. And one of the things that my office had found out during this whole process with that we don't actually have an inclusionary requirement for rental housing. The measure ordinance only has inclusionary for housing that's for sale. And apparently there was a law, the state law at one point in time that prevented counties from having inclusionary requirements for rental housing. But that law apparently has been stricken down and so counties can require on site construction of inclusionary units. And so we're going to bring back an item at the next agenda to have further discussion on that and see if there's an opportunity for us to incorporate that into the county policy. And then, and yeah, I think it would just be to be good for us to understand as the state has removed parking requirements for certain developments that are near transit corridors. The one thing that wasn't required is that those savings for development are reflected in the rents, the whole idea is that it's supposed to make housing cheaper to build and making units more affordable. But if those units are getting, you know, if we're removing those parking requirements and those costs for developers, it'd be good for us to see that reflected in lower cost housing for rent, rather than those units just being subject to whatever the market can bear. And then as a result, it's just a benefit for developers and not for our community. And so I'll leave my comments there, but just wanted to share that. Thank you, Supervisor Cummings. And I'll just briefly address two things. As you continue the conversation in regards to the coastal zone, I'd just like to request that that CDI staff make sure that you kind of receive more direction on priorities in regards to that, as opposed to just going and kind of creating your own construct associated with it to make sure that you're not ahead of whatever it is we might be comfortable with in regards to coastal zone work. In regards to the Mar Vista slash R3 property, I listened to the planning, the extensive planning commission discussion on it. There clearly was a preference on the four acre side. I see that the resolution gives an accommodation of two to four. But I think that we should specify the higher end. It still maintains over 70% of the parcel for housing. It's a removal of almost 14 acres of park space for the community. And so I think that with density bonuses, which was something that wasn't discussed, I mean, the units that are provided don't include that of the 339 that are mentioned in there. You can still get back up to the original number. It just would specify the type of property that would go in there, which is the preference anyway, I think of the board that it be a more affordable project that would qualify for all the same. So when it comes back, I'm not able to make a motion, but I'll just ask that there's a slight amendment to the resolution that specifies that when it comes back to the board. All right, we're going to open up the public hearing. This is an opportunity for members of the community to address us on this item. We appreciate all of you that have been waiting so long to an opportunity to speak on this item. We recognize it's been a long morning. Good morning or good afternoon. Welcome back. Hello. I just wanted the planners to recognize that they need to build more accessible housing. Let's do all housing be more accessible. Keep in mind, we have an aging population coming. They're going to need accessible housing to be able to live in their communities. Also, we have individuals with intellectual disabilities who are in supported housing programs where they get 24-hour support and care to live in the communities that they choose from. They are being excluded from accessible housing. Fighters are struggling to find placements for them to live in a community that they choose to live in, make it more accessible. I do not find acceptable of the housing elements of the lower income and low income not being fulfilled. This is why we have a housing crisis. This is why we have homelessness because of the lack of affordable housing. It needs to stop. County planners can do better. They can do better. Look at the city of Fremont when it comes to accessible housing. I cannot think of the term that it's used because I haven't had lunch yet. He needs to go to the bathroom. You can do better. People with disabilities seniors need to be included. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Good afternoon. Thank you for waiting. Yes, thank you. Lynn Ganey. I want to say how much I appreciate recommendation that when it comes back, it has the higher amount of open space and park. Clarification when we're talking about Soquel Creek Water District and the aquifers, we don't have agriculture that drains our water. However, we only get five to seven percent of every rainfall that goes into our aquifers. That's a point of clarification. The highest agriculture is maybe two or three potted plants I have sitting outside my residential area on Mar Vista. So that's it. Thank you very much. I appreciate. Thank you. Thank you for waiting on this item. Good afternoon and welcome back. Good afternoon. Elaine Johnson, Executive Director of Housing Santa Cruz County. Good to be here this afternoon. Again, I want to acknowledge the county and all the work that they have put into getting to this point today. The invitation to allow the community to work on this housing element for the last 10 to 12 months. You know, I stand before you and I hear the concerns and the suggestions that were offered here from the from you members. And I also would like to encourage us to, you know, adopt the recommendations that was put before you and that we can continue to work together so we can be able to move forward and begin to start building homes here so people have a safe stable place to actually be rooted and grounded in a community. Thank you. Thank you and you do great work. Thank you for your work on that. Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome back. Hello, Becky Steinbrunner. I did write something in the comment for this item, so I hope you will read it. I attended as many of the meetings regarding this as I could, including one of the public meetings and they were pretty difficult members of the public were limited to one question and it was very noisy and you really couldn't it didn't really work well for a lot of people in the community. But I am realistic and know that nothing anyone here says today is going to make a difference because it's heading off to Sacramento tomorrow regardless. I am puzzled, however, that there has been no discussion of Planning Commissioner Schifrin's adamant insistence that your board receive their recommendation to increase the percentage of affordable housing. It was a big piece and it hasn't been mentioned here today. I support doing that and I also point out that in attending past Housing Advisory Commission meetings, it was a Julie Conway that suggested that we eliminate having affordable requirements for rental units because it just wouldn't pencil out for developers and she wouldn't get any applications if that were left in place. So I'm happy to hear that that's going to come back. That's important because the bulk of the people here are renters. I want to ask your board to really consider including a staking and flagging ordinance as this move was along. People need to know what's coming in their neighborhood. The Marvista community did not and showed up in force at the Housing Advisory Commission meeting and really have a lot of concerns about that dense housing on a very narrow street with no sidewalks and no alternative access out. I want to know why your board allowed Seventh and Bromer, a large parcel county owned, to be sold as excess property when it could be used? Thank you, Ms. Steinbrunner. I see nobody else in chambers. Madam Clerk, is there anybody online for the public hearing? Yes, we have speakers. Orchard House, your microphone is now available. The vast majority of housing in this county is not built by large corporate builders. It's built by small mom and pops. More importantly, our current housing inventory is not maintained by large builders. It's built and maintained by the same small pop builders who have faced a policy that has basically been financially infeasible for them. So they have simply moved away. We are now facing the unfortunate consequences of this. Not only can we not maintain the housing that we already have, but homeowners insurance costs for residents and voters in this county has doubled in the last 12 months. Unfortunately, the policy in this housing element does very little to help mom and pops. For example, big developer who would build a flood zone housing will laugh in my face if I ask him to repair my roof from a fire or my driveway from the rains. We've seen examples of this San Jose-style housing get built here in the county. They take a long time to build and are extremely expensive. Do we really expect that large developers will choose to build in our community rather than their own? And if when they do, they do so at a premium. If you authorize this Bay Area type of housing, the people who can afford to live in them are going to be people with Bay Area jobs. If you're going to allow 40 units per acre for big developers, then why on earth would the county continue its entrenched policy of only allowing one or two guest house for lots? Please allow the current citizens of Santa Cruz County to build our own housing. At this point, you've all been made aware that the state allows for additional ADUs and guest houses. And yet our policy is still only allowed the state mandate a minimum. It's foolish to require housing be built around transportation that is decades away. Why not focus our housing near existing infrastructure schools? We expect our representatives to support us. And I'm looking forward to helping elect two new supervisors who will help allow our local builders and homeowners to contribute. Thank you. Thank you. Antoinette, your microphone is now available. All right. Hello again. Antoinette ran it, turned into the Whitmore Park Inn. Our law firm has been retained by the Aptos Council and we submitted a letter yesterday afternoon on behalf of the group opposing the 2023 housing element as it pertains to Par 3. To be clear, the Aptos Council supports affordable housing through increased densities in appropriate locations. However, to do so properly requires adequate environmental review. The county cannot move forward with the general plan amendments and rezonings by merely preparing an addendum to the EIR for the sustainability policy and regulatory update for several reasons. First, simply requiring a future master plan and preparing an addendum to review the impacts of proposed general plan amendments and rezoning of Par 3 is legally. As evidenced by the comments attached to our letter, the history of Par 3 shows that the community has long rejected the site as an area for housing so that it could remain an important recreational and open space resource. Former owners of the Par 3 parcel also shared the sentiment. Additionally, the Par 3 parcels would have access and aesthetic issues if dense housing units are permitted for development. In 2008, the county ultimately rejected building housing on these properties due to community outcry that still resonates today. In addition, the county is also engaging in piecemeal environmental review by merely preparing an addendum. Legal precedent has long established that the environmental impacts of a project cannot be submerged by chopping a larger project into smaller pieces. So, denim isn't proper here. The county needs to prepare a separate EIR for the housing element as it was indeed proceeding with both programs separately. Lastly, assuming for the sake of the argument that the EIR for the sustainability policy can be used for the housing element update, subsequent environmental review is the only proper way to comply with CEQA. As such, once again, an addendum is not appropriate here. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Joanne Karman, your microphone is now available. Yes, hi. Good afternoon. My name is Joanne Karman. I'm the director of housing for Mid-Pen Housing's Watsonville office. Mid-Pen housing is a non-profit affordable housing developer with over 50 years of experience, building over 130 communities and 8,600 apartment homes for low-income families, seniors, and those with supportive housing needs throughout 14 counties of Northern California. Here in Santa Cruz County, we own and manage approximately 750 apartment homes in 13 communities with a development pipeline of an additional nine communities. We echo our partners such as Housing Santa Cruz County, Monterey Bay Economic Partnership and Santa Cruz DMV, and their support of the 2023 housing element as presented by staff. I would like to thank the board of supervisors and county staff for all the hard work and the deep community engagement process, as well as your leadership in exploring ways to create more affordable housing in the county. We at Mid-Pen are acutely aware of the affordable housing need. Here in Santa Cruz County, our weightless exceed over 6,000 households for our existing 750 apartment homes. In order to meet the RENA goals, the county needs to utilize all the tool that is disposal to increase multi-family housing development and ensure that production benefits everyone across all income levels. We support including all of the sites as proposed by staff in the 2023 housing element. Our perspective is that the inventory should include feasible yet wide-ranging sites to ensure maximal flexibility in the system. And the more specific site planning occurs downstream and can occur downstream when developers refine the scope during the entitlement process. So thank you very much for your time today and for your continued leadership in combating the affordable housing crisis. Thank you. Thank you. We have no further speakers here. All right. Thank you. We'll close the public hearing and bring it back to the board. So just as my colleagues are amenable just so I can be clear on what I was asking for on the resolution, there's an item that says that the master plan accommodate from two to four acres and just saying a minimum of four acres of publicly accessible space. No other language change in anything but all other recommended actions. Is there any other comments or a motion from any of the board members? Both comments and a question. So first off, to your proposed amendments or, I mean, the amendments you'd like to see to the resolution, it was mentioned there's several easements on the parcel. I think one, the largest being the one fronting the highways 2.6 acres. So would the open space be requirement, requirement be in addition to those easements or could the open space theoretically be in within those easements? Go ahead. So it's a right away easement in favor of public works roads, basically for presumably it looks like when that map was recorded, was to allow for connection of the end of Marvis to drive, drag it through the lower side of the property and connect up to the right away easement that's on the hotel property and connect to old. We did get some initial thoughts from our director that perhaps not all of that easement would be necessary for road right away. But then we also talked to the fire chief for central fire to see if he thought it would be necessary for what's called an emergency vehicle access, which generally that's a big factor in site planning for multifamily higher density projects because the fire trucks need to be able to get through a property to fight fire if necessary. And the fire chief checked with his development review team and came back and said yes he thinks that it would be necessary. So even if we didn't need it for a public road necessarily you would probably need it for an EVA at minimum. Now it doesn't necessarily have to be in the location where it is, but it would probably take up the same amount of property even if you moved it for example to the middle of the site. So the short answer to your question is basically it's more than likely that the open space would have to be fit on the site outside of that roadway easement. But again I think as one of the commenters mentioned we're not in the site planning stage right now we're just adopting a general plan element and so not enough is known about the site to be able to definitively answer some of these questions about what could fit or what couldn't fit. So that's why our proposed language in the resolution was built around the idea of preserving some level of flexibility so that site planning can happen in the future when an actual project proposal comes forward and they would do more due diligence on the field conditions and existing easements and so forth. Right and then the second question is when we considered an actual development proposal for that site under the sustainability update we now consider gross developer acreage. So what does that mean that effectively the same number of units could be built regardless of how many acres are dedicated to open space? Well so we're looking at this question for different policy purposes at different points in time. Right now the objective before us is to get a compliant housing element certified by the state. So regardless of where we might land on that answer in the future in a development review context with a project application the way our understanding is based on the HCD guidance we can't build in potential density bonus units into our yield estimate. So they kind of require us to look at the yield estimate just based on plain old zoning right what the density range is and that's what we've done and basically you know we won't necessarily know unless they until they review our package and comment on whatever we send them but what we are conservatively estimating that they might do is say well if you're only going to allow development on x number of acres then you need to reduce your yield estimate accordingly and that was what we presented on the slide so in other words if three of the acres need to be open space then you have a net 10 acres left for residential development the way they look at it and so it would be reduced by about 31 units for each acre that we require to be open space that's not to say we would analyze it the same way in the context of an actual development application where a developer would obviously have you know various options such as density bonus and they could cluster units and all of that but we can't guarantee necessarily that a developer would take advantage of all those options and that's why their methodology for projecting yield at this stage in the game where we're adopting a policy document it's a little more high level and a little bit more you know conservative methodology okay so does that mean that if we were to change the language in the resolution to say that it needs to be four acres instead of two with a desire for four that we could see some pushback from hcd and saying that our housing element needs to be revised and just then that impact to the deadline uh yeah we we haven't we don't know what their response will be but susanne indicated it's very possible that they would say look you you decreased your capacity here and so you need to figure out where you're going to provide the units especially that mix of very low and low right where a big site like that is really key to helping us meet that income segment so it's possible okay um i have a hard time wanting to then reduce the developer acreage on this site because of i mean what has been just said um and furthermore i'd point out that the vast majority of the sites that are being considered for rezoning a new housing are happening in the first district and so it's a little frustrating that really one large site in second district that is being considered would be you know reduced and reduced and reduced as far as how many homes we actually want to see built there a few more comments here you know i think the two things people hate the most are change and the way things are and we are stuck in this situation right now we're actually keeping things the way things are we're changing our community faster than ever because we're seeing the hollowing out of the people who can afford to live and work here and actually that's having a bigger impact on our infrastructure than i think even the housing that we intend to build will because if we can't if we don't have housing here to house the sanitation workers water workers um and everyone else who keeps our community working um then our infrastructure itself will fail you know i think when when we i think of a word to describe Santa Cruz it's dynamic and if we're going to keep that then we absolutely need to build this housing in order to support a thriving community a diverse community and ensure that you know all the people who make Santa Cruz special can continue to afford to live here so you know as it's been said you know the actual rezonings and the projects will also all be subject to their own public process in the future i think that you know in regards to the part three site we've expressed some pretty clear desire we've set a reasonable minimum with a desire for more um we've been doing outreach on this issue the housing element all year i know i've mentioned it in numerous newsletters had numerous town halls about it i think it's really at the best place it can be right now or we can all agree to move forward obviously there's more we can do in the future i think absolutely when you look at additional incentives for affordable housing opportunities to increase the number of ad use per parcel so that small property owners can also help alleviate our housing crisis but for the time being i think this is a huge and important step forward in our efforts to address the housing crisis and maintain a diverse and dynamic community all right i just want to i mean i think it's important to comment that the two acres is a is already the minimum on required into the residential flex so what we're talking about i mean we're putting it into resolution as though two acres is like a gift but it's actually going to be incorporated in irrespective of the commentary you just made so what i'm saying is that we'd still maintain over 70% of the developer area at the end of the day developer could come in as we're talking about as a planning document and say they want to put four units there and they could buy it and do whatever they want i mean they could say that they want to put 450 units there based on the on the density bonus my point being that this is the planning document this does not preclude let me say this it shouldn't be included in the resolution if there's a concern about it ever being approved from hcd or precludes development at the site i mean the site the resolution says two to four acres i'm saying then we'll take the four as the recommendation from the board the staff is saying that that's something that could be accommodated also recognizing that we have this 10% buffer which this doesn't completely eliminate right on the 10% overage so i still am requesting that we maintain and also there's a history here of extensive conversations about what would be on the site like we talked about last time with senior housing of course that can't be required but i don't think that reserving four acres for a publicly accessible open space for 400 units is a really unreasonable ask i think it incorporates well especially with the type of housing that will go in there with all likelihood that people should have access to parks i mean they should i mean we're making these investments in south county with a large park and what we're basically saying is that what we think is acceptable for low-income housing is the the least minimum required by code for open space and parks and i think that that's a bad policy decision so i go back to the resolution already says from two to four and let me say that and you could have i'm sure you probably did speak to your planning commissioner it was very clear that the planning commission wanted four i mean that wasn't this wasn't like up to there wasn't a debate in that situation was it was very strongly asked to maximize the amount and they were repeatedly asking questions about what it would mean if it were more than that and these units were not actually provided to the planning commission that were provided us today even though they were repeatedly being asked and you listened to sort of an interesting discussion but with that said that's how it came down to why they refused to actually say a specific number but they recommended in the planning commission recommendation that they recommend to us for acres even though the resolution says two to four the board the board letter actually does state that there was a preference or it states that but the resolution is two to four so i'm still just requesting that we accommodate the four but it would require a motion of one of my colleagues in order to do so but i appreciate what you said are there any other comments from board members and or and or a motion and i'll jump on a motion at once we need a motion to adopt no matter what so is there least emotion or i'll move the recommended actions all right we have a motion in a second with no change to the resolution language is that correct correct is there any additional do i have the ability to introduce a counter motion as a chair or is that something i can't do yes you have the ability to do that okay um then i'd just like to introduce a substitute motion that is for all the recommended actions with one change to the resolution line b that it just stayed four acres of publicly accessible open space all right there's a second to the substitute motion from supervisor McPherson so we have to vote on the substitute motion first yes all right or alternate motion all right yes for the vote yeah oh please roll call please oh sorry is that a question regarding um some of what supervisor Koenig brought up earlier i'm just wondering how this affects um you know how this would be adopted and any kind of pushback we get from hcd i mean i also have some concerns around pieces around affordable housing and having those incorporated so if there's this is the time to you know incorporate other things around affordable housing i mean i think that it would make sense if we're going to be making these changes to the housing element and what's being proposed in these resolutions so i'm just wondering you know how could this if there's if this would slow things down and if not if this is the time because i actually thought that this was kind of it that we were going to adopt the housing element and send it off to the state and that wouldn't be coming back to us is that correct that's what the staff recommendation is that um we you you adopt the housing element and then we send it off to the state um we anticipate the state could have some more minor changes they've um they've required an exacting analysis of all different kinds of fair housing issues and um and so we keep adding to the document but it's not really substantively changing policy or or or pieces of property that are included in the inventory so there could be a further adjustment based on their further comments um builders remedy looms out there for us we are trying our best to reduce the window wherein a developer could come in and build whatever they please with some limitations um so the the more we can support the inventory without the addition of constraints um the more likely we are to get hcd to certify in a timely fashion um the policies in the housing element but do a huge amount to support affordable housing and we did not miss the boat on affordable housing um and we've discussed the nexus study to address our inclusionary um and the board if you recall during a study session talked about that and didn't want to make any changes at that time so that language has been fairly um intact except maybe with some hcd changes um uh so we we strongly recommend that the board move forward uh with the adoption of of the housing elements so that we can get to a compliant situation that doesn't um also have the potential for reducing our ability to get funding for uh projects it's very important that we get to compliance as soon as possible but nobody's questioning whether we're adopting the housing element today right i mean it's a i think that that was kind of a confusing answer for what was being asked i'm just saying that what we're doing is adopting the housing element this is language and then a resolution specific to one parcel which is by the way the recommended language from staff as part of the adoption of the housing element that adds in this range and so i'm just specifying where in the range and i appreciate those comments i do also think that you know this is since this is a slight deviation from what staff is proposing i mean i would feel comfortable supporting this if we're going to have some extra support for some of the issues around affordable housing that i've been bringing up um in particular incorporating in um that replacement affordable units would not be counted towards inclusionary units um which again is a lot by state law so if a new project came in and they were going to be demolishing affordable units they would have to in addition to their inclusionary requirement um rebuild those affordable units i think that's really important for us to maintain that stock and it sounded like at the last meeting that that was something that um that board members were supportive of um in addition to that as i mentioned before um you know we don't have inclusionary requirements for rental housing around um requiring them to build um inclusionary affordable housing on site i think that's something that um we should incorporate into this as well it would just further demonstrate our commitment to um wanting to make sure that affordable housing gets built in the community and um and so that would be something that i want to see included as well and and i'll even step away from i mean i'd love to see the inclusionary be increased and have that incorporated i mean hcd wants to see us building towards affordable housing i'd like to see that as well i'd be amenable to you know have us continue moving forward with the nexus study if we can get some um sense of when that's going to come in forward but you know if this is our opportunity to provide our final recommendations that are going to go to hcd i mean those are at least two if not three of the things i think would be really important and i'd be willing to support supervisor friend your um motion if we could incorporate that into the housing element and i thought that at our previous discussion we had said that that would be outside of there wasn't a disagreement of the need to review it but that that was outside of the housing element discussion and that some of this was reviewed by the planning commission camera what part of it and it was not supported i'm trying to recollect exactly what that was let's see say maybe yeah i can clarify perhaps a couple of points here uh one i would just like to reiterate that the state density bonus law already requires replacement of any existing units that are per the definition in that law uh affordable i'm saying that as a catch-all term it it reflects whether or not the units are occupied by lower-income households whether or not it's a restricted unit so it is extremely likely that any future multifamily rental projects that come forward are going to utilize the density bonus process which would subject them to that requirement so we feel like as staff that's already covered um we haven't we have only had one market rate rental development of more than five units since the year 2000 and it was 13 units it is that lack of any market rate activity on the rental side that had led to the county we do have a rental housing impact fee for rental projects market rate rental projects but we haven't had anyone exercise that because the only applications that have come in since 2018 have utilized the density bonus law where they do have to provide affordable units and they do have to provide them on site there's no option to opt out and pay a fee and if there's any need to replace units they are subject to that requirement so essentially in a way the state state density bonus law is creating that uh bmr framework that measure j used to create but if it differs significantly from our requirements we still have to give that applicant the density bonus that the state law requires us to give them in any event i just say that so that you understand that some of those requirements are in place in terms of what's in the document the program that we have included all along as Stephanie mentioned to study this issue of our local inclusionary requirements remains in the document um if we were to change it now and add some additional uh requirements um based on our conversations with the hcd reviewers to date we feel concerned that that may delay certification um so that's what i want to add and i appreciate that um those comments and that you know as it relates to density bonus law but i think you know from what i've heard consistently throughout the community is wanting that to be a county policy not necessarily relying on density bonus law to um have us you know have those like either replacement units built or the affordable units built because not every project that comes to us although there's i get it there's a lot of interest in these density bonus project but there's no guarantee that there's going to be that all the projects that come before us will be density bonus projects and in the absence of having a county policy we we wouldn't be able to require replacement of affordable housing and we wouldn't you know be able to require that the inclusionary be provided on site so those are just the concerns i'm raising and it sounds like you know if we're gonna if the potential for the proposals that supervisor friends are making could have some could have some um concerns and issues with hcd it's if this is the last opportunity we have to make any recommendations i think that that's what the right that i'm trying to exercise right now because outside of that it sounds like we shouldn't be making any changes we should be supporting the staff recommendation that's it and that's the direction we want to go because we're concerned we have some concerns so be it but if we're going to make some subtle changes which i think that these are subtle changes that we've expressed that we want to make then i'd like to take that opportunity to make those right now any additional comments from board members to just a point order um i guess how would i be able to incorporate that into the motion well there's a motion and a second on the floor right now um you could ask the maker of the motion whether the maker of the motion would be willing to um do a friendly amendment or not and how does it yeah we have a substitute motion and so just so i have an understanding how does this can this be incorporated into a policy document there what's being asked for in the housing helmet side or is this a separate board item i'm not i'm not opposing concept to what's being proposed i'm just this is a mechanism for how it's being done yeah i certainly do it as a separate board item that's always an option for you um but if if the goal is to have a change i recommend we make a change to the policy language do you anybody remember which policy that is i believe it was one of the programs it's in section two it's the the program that commits us to doing the nexus study and considering changes to the bmr program yeah so um looks like we don't have the document up right now but we'd recommend a language change to the nexus study program and we'll figure it out that doesn't seem to be a major hindrance then of the housing helmet based on what you're saying correct i mean if it's a modification of policy of a part of the nexus study which is built on the policy language uh yeah i mean we're it sounds like we're continuing to study the issue it's still a nexus study and we would look at these additional items as a part of that study i don't know i'm going to chair uh real quick it's paul as the h3h they're referring to i'm just wondering if it can be these can be considered to stand alone it's not so much in the nexus study but programs that we will intend to work on and move towards within our housing element that would be another option of adding an additional program so i guess i would like to add the additional programs of um not counting replacement units as inclusionary housing affordable housing and um yeah and that the um there's a requirement for inclusionary affordable housing in rental units at 15 which is the same as measure j again this this doesn't i mean from policy perspective i'm this is fine but i just want to make sure that this is if adding policy lines are not of concern i mean it strikes me that hcd have an issue with something that theoretically could increase or would they have a concern with something that lays down a 15 percent you know we we don't have a crystal ball in terms of exactly where they're going to land i think what they've told us in in meetings so far in discussions about this topic as well as others is that um you know there's a lot of practitioners in the housing policy world that have studied this issue and often conclude that um mandatory requirements particularly if they exceed 15 percent i think there's not as much of a concern if it's below that level but they can serve as a disincentive and essentially scare away market rate developers and i think that's what um much of the commentary from some of our housing advisory commissioners was trying to relay as well that they have witnessed that happen during the implementation of measure j over many decades in in this community and so it's definitely a possibility that hcd will raise similar concerns that adding additional requirements without the benefit of having the nexus study to you know send off against allegations that it would disincentivize market rate development would be something that they would be concerned about it may take longer to get our housing element certified would it be preferred um to have the first element the supervisor Cummings mentioned about that they're not counted um as a standalone and then the second part be part of the nexus study is that a greater likelihood of of securing certification possibly again you know we just don't have a crystal ball on exactly how they're going to react to different variations on a theme so and how do they do we receive the comments back 60 days is their deadline 60 days and based on their 90 day review they took 89 days and three quarter of one but they okay but they've already reviewed everything and so the the only I mean there isn't a whole lot to change here right I mean so I mean in essence it could be called out what the modifications of the board made are correct it could be yes I mean I'd be comfortable with adding that onto my motion are you comfortable to rise my first and this substitute motion yes okay no they're required under state law to deal with us within 60 days and we're submitting tomorrow that's our goal yes the plan so yeah if it's clear with them yeah we wouldn't count replacement units as inclusionary and then we'd add the inclusionary requirement for rental housing there would be 15 percent of the units would be affordable inclusionary and I'd say that that should be consistent with our measure j which I think it's any project greater than four units is when that would kick in and let me add one one element that may that may smooth this over if you're comfortable with it and actually if you're comfortable with it which is that one element of the recommended actions is to allow I think it's director machado right to make the minor changes but it'll really be you I would submit because of the concern of the builders remedy that if we receive specific comments back that they have an issue with the four and they're comfortable with the two to four I would consider that to be an okay thing for staff to make the modification and I would request then that you make the same that you have the same willingness if they say that they'd rather see that as part of the nexus study so that we don't have something it's out of compliance because what we're here is we're trying to get these goals across and we're also trying to get the certified right no I think that what I'm what I'm saying is that that would be board direction that we would consider those minor changes that would be within the purview of the director of cdi that if you receive comments backs I understand the timing of when our last board meeting is and if we get these afterwards in the new year issue of the time the certification that we would give staff that authority to incorporate those modifications in in order to get those certified documents that make sense could you clarify please if you if we receive feedback from hcd that they're uncomfortable with the four acres let's say um then you're okay if director machado makes a change back to the two to four acre but let me say and I mean this and all I mean please don't take this wrong way don't solicit that feedback you're right man I'm saying that that board is still has a recommendation but there's a way to color things I mean I get it but and so I'm just saying that this is the board's recommend be yes that that that we had moved back to the two to four acre language and that's similar to the language we're talking about here the one issue that could be of concern would be the 15% and that that then be folded in as part of the next study works thank you total enough I'm sorry to just a technical matter the language that we're discussing here would be in the board adopted brezzo as far as the acreage and we wouldn't be able to just make a minor change at the staff level to the adopted rezzo language all right well I'll take counsel's advice on on on how that would play out where is it represented programmatically it's not in the document anywhere it's only in the rezzo because we don't want hcd to see it and you know yes okay then then um well what the what I'm understanding the board is providing direction that if hcd has a problem and wants it to move back to two to four that the board is providing staff with the ability to do that but what I really think it should be is that staff would come would come back to the board with that resolution and it should not it it should not impact the certification of our of our housing element um and staff what do you think about that Stephanie I I think we'd agree that we'd have to return to the board to make that change we won't we won't get comments back from them yeah but the agreement with hcd upon certification would be that it's being certified based on that based on the representation that we're going to be coming back to the board to modify that the resolution to to bring it back down to two to four acres rather than four acres right we would have to return to to the board I don't know that that would affect certification or not okay because they're because they're certifying they're certifying these um these elements um based on representations that that we're that we're going to do what it is that we said that we're going to do so I I you would know more from a practical perspective but it seems like something that can be worked out but yes if given that it's just part of the resolution it would have to come back okay I agree with your assessment that it's outside of the actual housing element so to speak and so it shouldn't but it gives you that flexibility and we're giving the flexibility on the policy component as well yeah I guess the only comment I would make is if there if hcd does have an issue given staff this authority I would just want to see those comments come back to us so we can see what issue hcd had and then what support the staff took the the point of number three in the recommended motion is to try to handle hcd comments at a staff level if possible I mean if we had to make big changes in the inventory if they took out the part three site let's say we're you know didn't want several of our sites we probably would return but returning to the board with additional policy language will set us back once that's not that's not what I'm asking I'm asking that we get sent whether it's a memo or an email just an update on what those comments were what actions the staff took to make the necessary changes for it to comply so that we understand what the final action was that was taken by between hcd and staff and where they had differences in opinion and how staff resolved those concerns all right could we have a roll call then vote on this please oh sorry I'm sorry I'm just asked for one clarification on the motion so it is in regards to the addition of my supervisor Cummings which is going to be that we will not count replacement units as a portion of the affordability percentage but this is something that's already essentially covered in state law okay and then that we will have added additional taxes being added to the next study that we'll look at requiring 15 percent of rental units to be or this is an additional program additional program initial program set 15 percent of rental units will be required to be affordable there's a percentage that is actively already being used every time someone it utilizes the density bonus ordinance that we have locally which is most of the time okay I got a question too uh it wasn't clear from staff if we're going to meet the timeline if we do all these changes they seem skeptical um we just don't know exactly what hcd is going to do even with the housing element as we've brought it to you today it's possible they'll have some um more extensive extensive analysis that we'll have to kind of put in there a lot of their comments have been very um analysis driven you know not they're not proposing to change programs when they haven't um but all of that analysis will inform how they look at our inventory and so we are hoping that they're going to be good with the analysis and then good with the inventory and as I mentioned we're trying to close the gap in between certification we as if we submit it tomorrow they have to return to us within 60 days with our with a either certification or another comment letter and if it's another comment letter we'll have to address them and it'll go back and forth a little bit so we're just trying to close the gap as fast as we can so that builder for a midi and um threats to our funding um don't go on for a long time all right thank you and I think it's unlikely because we've had a positive relationship with them we've been going back and forth this isn't like some of the other communities across the state that aren't in that position so we should also be realistic about the likelihood of that scenario if we could have a roll call please supervisor conic hi nothing's hi conandis hi mcpherson and friend hi and thank you all for your work out there um councils are anything expected to be reportable out of closed session we're going to move into closed session no all right thank you all