 And all kinds of stuff. I guess what I really want to say on this says at the end is that, yes, we all identify the word indigenous people from this land. We've always been celebrating here. And so again, just want to remind us in terms of all the terms that they name us. A lot of those terms we didn't give ourselves. And so I just want to stick with my particular on my indigenous roots. I want to invite you also and thank you. And we're, you know, it's like, I think that the city of Santa Cruz, if it doesn't take the opportunity now, we're not going nowhere. We are growing in numbers and we need to be represented in this in these seats here. So I just want to acknowledge all of you and thank you for your support throughout the years. Blessings. So I'm going to leave a couple of things for you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And at this point, I will go back to our first proclamation declaring September as childhood cancer awareness month. Valeria Vasquez is joining us virtually with Jacob's heart. Hi, Valeria. Hi, good evening. I'm Valeria. I'm here today as a representative of Jacob's heart Children's Cancer Support Services. So I just say thank you mayor and thank you council for claiming September as childhood cancer awareness month. Thank you for supporting our families and making sure that none of them go to cancer alone. Thank you very much. Thank you. I just want to briefly go through the proclamation. Whereas the character of our community is revealed and how we treat our most vulnerable. And whereas each year 19.2 and every 100,000 children in our community will be diagnosed with cancer. And whereas cancer remains the leading cause of death. By disease among children more than asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, congenital anomalies and AIDS combined. And whereas during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, Jacob's heart Children's Cancer Support Services has been keeping medically fragile children and families and families housed fed and emotionally supported by steadfastly adhering to the following commitments. Parents of children with cancer and other serious illnesses are relieved of financial fears, enable the focus attention on their children. No child undergoing intensive treatment in our community will be homeless. And families of seriously ill children will not experience food insecurity during and after the pandemic and no seriously ill child in our community will ever miss a medical appointment because of lack of transportation. And whereas Jacob's heart Children's Cancer Support Services holds the memories and honors the legacies of hundreds of children from our local community who have been lost to cancer. Whereas the oncology department of Lucille Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford has worked closely with Jacob's heart Children's Cancer Support Services for the past 24 years. As a trusted community partner in providing family centered care that addresses the emotional practical and financial struggles of families and children with cancer. Whereas it's important for all of Santa Cruz residents to recognize the impact of pediatric cancer of families within our community and honor the children in our community whose lives have been cut short by cancer. Now, therefore, I, Sonia Brunner, Mayor of the city of Santa Cruz do hereby proclaim the month of September 2022 as childhood cancer awareness month in the city of Santa Cruz and encourage all citizens to join me in honoring Jacob's heart Children's Cancer and acknowledging its contribution to childhood cancer awareness month. Thank you very much Valeria. Thank you so much. Do you have any final words. Oh, I think I, I said a modern, but thank you mayor and thank you council so much. Thank you. We have on the agenda, mayor proclamation declaring September 17th as senderos fiesta patria stay and that was already stated it will be presented in person here at city hall during their fiesta. So, we hope that many of you will be able to also attend that. For the next presentation, I would like to call on our chair of the sister cities committee and need a word. Mayor Brunner and chair of the beer it's France subcommittee dug hole to introduce the beer it's vice mayors and share a few brief remarks about our sister city beer it's France delegation. I will then read a proclamation. Thank you so much for having us. We're welcome. Welcome our wonderful delegation be it eats and friends. And to our first in person person delegation since the plague hit a couple of years ago, and we're really happy to be able to have you as you all know sister cities as a personal person to person organization. And really those those relationships that we develop are not ephemeral. And just to illustrate that here in in Santa Cruz. In the last few years, we've continued communication and virtual exchanges with our long time sister city of a luster in the Ukraine after annexation from Russia. Under the malevolent dictatorship of a rotator. So, welcome you people. I'd like to dug hole, our, our chair, the sub of the subcommittee of the audience. Hi, thank you for having us as with great pleasure. I would like to introduce the pre vice mayors from the ice who stayed, the mayor of the ice had to leave yesterday because she had an obligation to host the entire French Republican Party today. So we have three mayors or vice mayors. Richard Todd eats, who is in charge of international relations and sister cities. Matthew Kaiser, who's in charge of the environment and most important, Geraldine who's in charge of surfing. Well, just want to thank you very much, Mayor Brunner and all the council. Thank you very much as well Douglas for all his work. It's been a lovely relationship since last year and we're able to not only appreciate Santa Cruz you know for the past four days but also work pretty hard at the different environmental meetings we had that the Seymour center in the past two days. So it's been delightful and we're looking forward to working harder in some issues about the ocean and the water quality and and all the things around that affect our cities and and Santa Cruz so thank you very much. Okay, where as Friday, September 9, 2022 marks the arrival of the sister cities mayoral delegation from our sister city of be a lit sprints to the city of Santa Cruz. And whereas mayor, mayor, major arrow city of the city of be a ritz is the guest of honor of this delegation and it is a privilege to have had her visit our city. And whereas our esteemed guests also include vice mayor, Jordan, Verge, Matthew Kaiser and Richard tardy and members of the be a ritz junior lifeguard program. And whereas the city of Santa Cruz welcomes the city of be a ritz and looks forward to an enduring and productive relationship, including numerous delegations celebrations and sharing of culture environmental protection and economic drivers. And whereas the mission of the sister cities program is to promote cross cultural understanding of one another as individuals as members of our community as citizens of our country, and as part of the family of nations of building bridges person to person to promote world peace. And whereas these delegates are esteemed goodwill ambassadors from the city of be a litz and who will build cross cross cultural understanding between the city of be a litz and the city of Santa Cruz and between the United States and France. And whereas both cities have justified interests in developing leadership promotion positions at the intersection of technology and science to address climate change adaptation. And whereas the delegates journey will foster a greater understanding of global community and prepare us all to share and celebrate with family, friends and community commonalities and diversity between our two cultures. Now therefore I Sonya Brunner, Mayor of the city of Santa Cruz, do hereby proclaim the days of September 9 through 14 2022. As made a row Seagie and delegates from the city of be a litz France days in the city of Santa Cruz, and I encourage all citizens to join me in welcoming them with all warmth and appreciation for their message of peace and goodwill. Our next presentation is, is there anyone present for that. It is a mayoral proclamation declaring August 21 as Ron in a retirement day. And, um, yeah. So, some of you may not know Ron, but I will read the proclamation and you will know, whereas on August 21 2022, Ron in a retired after 16 years of faithful and dedicated service. To the city of Santa Cruz and its citizens. And whereas Ron and it was hired by the city of Santa Cruz police department as a community service officer on January 3rd, 2006. And after graduating from Gavilan college's police academy, he was sworn in as a police officer on October 24, 2006. And whereas parking. And let me start over and whereas during Ron and he's tenure, he had many accomplishments. He was a member of the parks team from 2009 to 2013. The traffic unit from 2015 to 2018 and the downtown neighborhood policing team from 2018 to 2020. Served as a traffic investigator from 2015 to 2020 and assisted in various canine trainings. And whereas Ron and he was an outstanding example of loyalty and was a tremendous asset to the city of Santa Cruz, its community. And it's police department and will long be remembered and appreciated for both his friendship and for his 16 years of commendable service. Now, therefore, I Sonya Burner, mayor of the city of Santa Cruz, do hereby proclaim August 21st, 2022. As Ron in a retirement day in the city of Santa Cruz and encourage all of his coworkers and citizens to join me. In expressing heartfelt appreciation for his 16 years of dedicated and exemplary service and numerous contributions to the Santa Cruz police department and the city of Santa Cruz and wish him well in his retirement. This next presentation is a mayor proclamation declaring August 20 as Matthew Mulvihill retirement day. Whereas on August 20, 2022, Matthew Mulvihill retired after 20 years of faithful and dedicated service to the Santa Cruz city and its citizens. And whereas Matthew Mulvihill was hired by the Santa Cruz city police department as a police officer trainee on May 13, 2002, and within five months was sworn in as a police officer. And whereas during Matthew Mulvihill's tenure. He had many accomplishments that included receiving the California Highway Patrol Master 10851 award for meeting the criteria for vehicle thefts for the fifth time. A certificate of recognition on DUI award and the department's Meritus Service Award for his outstanding skills and life saving abilities needed to help a victim in a 2014 vehicle collision. And whereas Matthew Mulvihill was an outstanding example of loyalty and a tremendous asset to the city of Santa Cruz. Its community and its police department and will long be remembered and appreciated for both his friendship and for his 20 years of commendable service. Now, therefore I, Sonia Brunner, Mayor of the city of Santa Cruz, do hereby proclaim August 20, 2022 as Matthew Mulvihill retirement day in the city of Santa Cruz and encourage all of his coworkers and citizens. To join me in expressing heartfelt appreciation for his 20 years of dedicated and exemplary service and numerous contributions to the Santa Cruz police department and the city of Santa Cruz and we wish him well in his retirement. Thank you. And then I have our police chief Bernie Escalante present. Good afternoon, Mayor Bernie Escalante chief of police and all of council. Just wanted to take this opportunity thank you for for recognizing and acknowledging the great work that both Ron and Matt gave this community and, and the true friendships that we all created with them here in the department. They'll be missed, but we all wish them well in their next chapters and again thank you for for recognizing that they're great work. Thank you very much. Okay, our next item is a Mayor's Cup Beach cleanup award, and it's presenter Annalise Bryant building maintenance worker one. I think we also have members of our parks and recreation department here as well. Thank you so much. Just to correct you I am a war for creation coordinator, as well as a building maintenance worker. So, a couple jobs here. So this year's city council beach cleanup challenge kicked off in July and ran all the way to Labor Day weekend which if you guys saw any photos on social media you guys saw what how packed it was so thank you to those that came out and clean the beaches that weekend. Thank you to Kara of Parks and Recreation and the recreation supervisors on organizing and taking the time to learn what days and times will be most beneficial to the wharf crews have, who have been left with a bigger responsibility of not only only maintaining our beloved wharf and Cal Beach, but also the entirety of main beach. Thank you to the wharf supervisor Britt Hoburg for creating another extraordinary custom trophy constructed from driftwood off main beach. We want to recognize that these beach cleanups are extremely impactful and appreciated by the parks and recreation department, as well as the wharf crews who are doing their best to clean up and groom the beaches daily after substantial use by thousands of visitors. And every day the beaches are ready by the time those visitors return for more fun in the sun. The wharf crews and loans spend countless hours on the beaches every morning but especially in the summer months covering both Cal and main beach removing kelp trash or an objects and sand sifting. With the additional help of council members and community members combing the beaches and protecting our Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. It allows for more efficient grooming cleaner beaches for local community and summer visitors to enjoy. Thank you all to have organized prepared and participated in the city council beach cleanups challenge we look forward to help next year, and the winner is of this year's beach cleanup, Renee Golder extra credit. We are working to become an ocean guardian school and back in 2013 we became a certified green business and we've been collaborating with ecology action and some vertical programming around carbon emissions and we're hoping to become like a net zero school in a couple of years, two years is our goal. And so as part of that we really, we do a lot of beach cleanups and the kids were really excited and we do a lot of watershed education we collaboration with the city with our field trips to the landfill and our field trips up to Loch Lomond and Henry cowl. And so it just is kind of like a natural part of the education that our kids are lucky enough to get and they were so excited. So thank you very much everybody they're going to be so excited. May we join the council for a photo just to acknowledge and thank all of you can we get a group photo before we. Yeah, yeah. All of us. Come up. This is such a pretty trophy. I was when I saw it on Tony's desk I was like I need. I know. I love the app. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Impressive. You amazed me. Yeah. Just if I could really quickly this Saturday is coastal cleanup day so if you couldn't have made it to one of the other. You can come to coastal cleanup day on Saturday as well. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so now I have a few announcements and then we'll move on and continue with our regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website city of Santa Cruz dot com. Our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left. And it's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption and we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you are inside. Or outside of our chambers. For the consideration of our community, please stay home if you have any symptoms or cold or flu or feeling unwell in any way. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today and are attending virtually, please call in at the beginning of the item you wish to comment on using instructions on your screen. Please remember to mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there is a delay in streaming so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. When it is time for public comment, please raise your hand. Either by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand in the webinar controls of your computer. Please note public comment is heard only on items council is taking action on and not on regular updates and reports. I'd like to ask council members if there are any statements of disqualification today. Seeing none, I'll move on to additions and deletions. I'd like to ask the city clerk to announce any additions and deletions. Thank you. Thank you. I'd now like to call on the city attorney to provide a report on our closed session. Yes, good afternoon, Mayor Brunner, members of the city council. This afternoon's closed session began at 1230 in the courtyard conference room. Prior to adjourning to closed session, the city council added one subsequent need item involving labor negotiations with all bargaining groups. And that was discussed in closed session council received a report from and gave direction to its negotiators. On the posted agenda item one was a public employee performance evaluation concerning the city manager position. Item two was a conference with legal council concerning liability claims there was one liability claim on the closed session agenda the claim of Brandon Michael Oldham. And that was also listed this afternoon on your consent calendar. Item three was a conference with legal council concerning anticipated litigation the council received a report from the city's attorney's office on one item of significant exposure to litigation. And there was no reportable action. Thank you. I'd like to now call on the city manager to see if there are any updates. And we're all excited to see the grand reopening and I know that the surrounding neighbors are as well. Next slide. There continues to be a tremendous amount of work occurring across all of our departments with the really all hands deck approach on the San Lorenzo Park restoration and Benchlands closure effort. As I've reported in the past this is a phased closure. And it's dependent upon the availability of shelter sites staff vendors and supplies. And our homelessness response team is really working day and night to stand up additional shelter resources in tandem with the park restoration work. Next slide. Just a few updates. Zone one outreach to campers started on September 6 fencing and formal noticing went up on September 7 through the 12th. Our city outreach team is in the process of documenting which campers want shelter at the armory. That work is going on this week starting on the 12th through today. And the location of campers to the new shelter sites at the armory is starting today with a closure date for zone one also slated for today. So a significant effort underway over the last week and a half again really trying to connect the individuals in zone one with alternative shelter options. So as we look forward, zone two is also in process outreach workers have been working with campers in that zone to identify shelter needs. This week we're also starting the fencing and formal noticing of zone two with a plan closure of zone two slated for September 19. Again contingent on our ability to continue standing up additional shelter and ensuring that we have shelter availability. Next slide. Next slide. So we'll have a robust discussion at the council's last meeting around the proposed objective standards project with some significant level of community engagement and community feedback and questions and concerns that were being raised relevant to the proposal. Our team will be continuing the objective standards pro project and bringing that back to the council this November planning will compete complete one more outreach push to help the community better understand the project and its goals and to help correct misunderstandings around the proposal. Between now and November planning will share what has been done over the past two years to get to this point how the standards reflect community input and how the quality of our built environment will be improved with these standards particularly given changes in state law. So our team will also be preparing additional materials to help the community better understand these complex changes when we return in November we will be asking for council approval and will be recommending that any substantive modifications to the standards be considered at a later time. It's also important for us to get these standards in place sooner rather than later as additional development comes online in the foreseeable future so we appreciate that additional time to really be able to do some additional focused outreach particularly to a number of the neighborhoods that have raised questions and concerns. Next slide. I also wanted to call attention to the interactive district map we have on our website as we move closer to the November elections we've been receiving questions from community members as to which district they live in and which council candidate they'll have an opportunity to vote for. So I wanted to just bring the community's attention to our website we have an interactive map that folks can put their address into and it will tell you what district you live in and which council member you'll be voting for as we move into this new district structure. Next slide. We have a few upcoming community meetings that I want to encourage the community to participate in that includes the library affordable housing project on September twenty four twenty first at six p.m. that'll be a virtual meeting. We also have the housing element update kickoff scheduled for September twenty ninth six p.m. again a virtual meeting. Next slide. Had a lot of interest around the current status of Loch Lomond and our water supply as we again move through another extended drought. And as we continue to grapple with the ripple effects of climate change and the higher frequency and longer duration of drought season so I did want to just quickly report that our Loch Lomond reservoir remains at eighty one percent. The percentage of its projected level and we're projecting that that will result. We had originally predicted that that would also result in being around seventy percent at the end of October. And so based on its current levels our updated estimate means that we will likely fall around seventy six percent instead of the original seventy so continue to continue to be in a stable place. to do is we look at long-term water supply resiliency and there's some great work happening but I wanted to provide an update on where things currently stand. And that wraps up my presentation for today. Thank you. Thank you for those updates. The city council will now review our meeting calendar and I'd like to call on the city clerk to provide any updates to the calendar. Thank you Mayor. There are no updates but I just want to remind everybody about the special meeting on Thursday the 22nd. 6 to 8 p.m. special meeting Thursday September 22nd 6 to 8 p.m. Thank you. Okay next up on our agenda is the consent agenda. These are items number 13 through 24. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting now is the time to call in if you want to comment on items 13 through 24. Instructions will be on your screen. Please remember to mute your streaming device. Raise your hand either by dialing star 9 on your phone or select raise hand in the webinar controls on your computer. All items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion. Are there any council members who wish to comment on or pull any items? Okay seeing none possibly one. Is no one's gonna comment on our. I thought somebody else was gonna do this item 16. I know I will but I was just trying to get the moving one so I was trying to be polite. I'll comment I wanted to say thank you. Yeah just real quick. I'll come around and say something. Okay so item 16's a comment. Okay we have a comment on item 16. Well I just wanted to say this item is a resolution supporting measures K and L of the local Santa Cruz elementary school bond and the high school district bond and I was really pleased to bring this forward with my colleagues who I have a moment to say something about about this. I'm just really excited to support this and you know fine this is an opportunity to really invest in our schools in our schools in our kids and the great work that is happening in those spaces. I'll just leave it there. Council Member Golder. I just wanted to say I just thank my council colleagues as well and urge the community to consider supporting this measure as well. You might not realize how a California schools are funded but we actually don't get money to pay for our infrastructure that we need and we after 2008 when the economy was in decline we actually weren't even allowed to spend some of our money on some deferred maintenance and so the state of some of our classrooms and school facilities are in a terrible state of disrepair and we know the community voted and supported. I think it was measures as an AMB or T and U one of the two of the ones that in the past and we were able to complete about 50% of the bond work that was required to modernize our four elementary schools and three high schools two middle schools in our one alternative campus and just with this we'd be able to finish and complete modernizing creating some like I said getting the schools to net zero and working also to build some workforce housing on a parcel of land that Santa Cruz City Schools already owns and it would create about 80 homes for teachers and staff with Santa Cruz City Schools and I think that we all know that housing is a critical issue and we all know that great schools build great communities and so I just can't urge people enough just to consider supporting this alongside of us. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. We have one more comment on 16 from Vice Mayor Watkins. It's hard to follow Principal Golder there but I just want to echo and say how much I appreciate working with my colleagues in the City Schools District and really wanting to encourage my fellow citizens in supporting these two bond measures and as a parent I had our little one notice that there was some construction happening on her school site and she said look at what the new playground is going to be for the for the Kinder MTK kids and it means a lot to the kids and how they experience their everyday you know schooling and so from the from the from the eyes of the child I think having facilities that show the respect and appreciation for their learning really does build a strong community. So thank you for co-sponsoring this and giving us the time to speak to it. Great. Thank you. If there are no further comments from council members then I will move on to public comment. If you are attending virtually please raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand. When it is your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. And the timer will then be set to two minutes. We have no members of the public joining us here in chambers so I will go straight to our virtual attendees and let's see I'm not seeing any hands raised. Hi there are you here for public comment? No. Just wanted to make sure I couldn't see it first your turn. So no virtual attendees and no members of the public. That concludes public comment. So now I will bring it back to council for action on the consent agenda. I'll move the consent agenda. Okay we have a motion by vice mayor Watkins. I'll second. And a second by council member Brown. May we have a roll call vote please. Council member Johnston aye. Boulder aye. Brown aye. Byers. Aye. Vice mayor Watkins. Aye. And mayor Brunner. Aye. That motion passes unanimously with council member Cummings absent. Okay next step on our agenda is item number 25 parks and recreation commission appointment. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you wish to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. We will begin with public comment then I will call on city clerk Bonnie Bush to lead the council through nomination and action. Do any council members have questions before we take public comment. Okay I will look to our virtual attendees and I'm not seeing any hands raised virtually. I'm taking public comment on item number 25 parks and recreation commission appointment. Is anybody here in person wish to comment on item 25. I'll now bring it to our city clerk Bonnie Bush. Thank you mayor. Council you have three interested candidates Deborah Christie Jorge Leonardo Cruz and Samantha Rose Lee and we have one opening so we just need a nomination and then we'll take a vote on that if anybody has a nomination. Is there a nomination. Council member Callentary Johnson. Jorge Leonardo Cruz. Are there any other nominations. Okay. So then we take a consensus by consensus that's it. So Jorge Leonardo Cruz. Okay thank you very much Jorge Leonardo Cruz. Next up on our agenda is item number 26 public hearing for adoption of the climate action plan 2030. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you wish to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. For members of the public who are joining us and streaming this meeting for I'm sorry for members of the public who are streaming this meeting now is the time to call in using instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from council and then we will take public comment and return to council for deliberation and action. I would like to now welcome Tiffany Wise West sustainability and climate action manager with the city of Santa Cruz. Thank you Mayor Bruner and good afternoon council members. I am thrilled to be here today to share with you our climate action plan and present it to you for consideration for adoption. You may have seen when you came in that I shared with you our sustainability team hats. That's what the backside of them say sustainability team on them. So now you're a member of the sustainability team but really that's just meant to acknowledge your leadership and support of climate action and I love that you all just put them on. That's amazing. All right who's getting the screen shot. All right. So let me go ahead and get started. I do. I do have some slides here to share with you today. I have about a 20 minute presentation. So I'm just going to go over today some acknowledgments. A lot of folks were involved in this two year process that I need to acknowledge. Give you a background. A little grounding in the climate science. Talk about the process itself and the content of the plan. Review again the meaning of what a CEQA California Environmental Quality Act Qualified Plan means and our project review checklist that developers will be required to complete in lieu of an environmental impact or other kind of environmental review. I'm going to share briefly the public comment themes that we received and how we address them and then go over accountability implementation and very importantly community activation. Okay. So I want to acknowledge of course you all first of all and secondly we had over 50 staff participate in this process. We had the mayor's community climate action task force as well as other interested community members that met monthly over about an 18 month period really shepherding this process. We had 10 interns and other fellows involved. We had our consultant team of ring con consultants who I believe is on the call. We are hearing this item a little early though. So I'm not sure if they're on as well as the Green Lining Institute who was our equity consultant and Blue Point Planning who was our communications consultant. We also did have a tribal consultation with the Amamutzen tribal band and we had 12 equity advisors who stuck with us through the whole process really helping us in particular with our equity screening tool development and application. So really quickly I know that we all have heard this before but I think it's important to start with really we are at a critical point with climate change right now. We do know that humans are the main drivers of climate change. There was an IPCC report the third volume of the six IPCC assessment report that came out in April. That was a result of collaboration between over 270 climate scientists and more than 60 different countries and where they came to the conclusions that the world is set to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades by 2040 and that it is critical to start drastically cutting carbon emissions now to help us avoid future potential disaster. And really they point to the exact types of measures that we are calling out in this plan as the way to do that drastic decarbonization. In addition to the greenhouse gas effect the other impacts that we could experience should we continue to be on a high emissions trajectory are listed on the left hand side. I'm not going to go over all of them. These are the things that we evaluate and plan for in our climate adaptation plan process which will be starting later this year. We have however estimated are the social cost of these impacts that we're experiencing already and this is I think an important point that the city is already experiencing over 25 million dollars per year. And adverse impacts to the community due to poor health outcomes to infrastructure and so forth. So again really compelling us to address climate change in a way that we have not before. We have been progressive as a city both municipally as well as our community members really pushing forward with our first climate action plan in 2012. One of the first sequel qualified plans that was adopted. I am happy to say that although I had reported to you about a year ago that we did not meet our 2020 emissions targets because we were using 2019 as a proxy. We did not have data for 2020. We just received last week our 2020 emissions inventory and due to COVID our transportation emissions were reduced so much that we actually did meet our target. Which is great but we also have to remember that COVID you know really had a role in that. However we do also know in the past as evidence from our water reductions right that we have maintained low per capita. So perhaps we can hear with emissions as well with some of the tools that will be rolling out. So you see on the right hand side some of our local climate actions that we've taken that you know really start with this climate action plan. As well as the formation of the climate action compact between the city county and UCSC and there's a group that has really revitalized that commitment most recently and I see Kirsten Liske in the room who's one of those folks who's motivating that re-invigoration. And so all the way through to our natural gas prohibition the major completion of our rail trail and the completion of our urban tree inventory and adoption of the street tree plan significant progress. You can see on the right hand side some state climate actions as well. I do want to mention that for some reason we've got our health and all policies ordinance in our new Green New Deal resolution over in the state climate actions. But I really do consider health and all policies is being really reaffirming to what we're doing here with public health equity and sustainability. I'm going to share with you later on how that manifests in this plan. So some recent accomplishments. I'm not going to read all of this but on the right hand side were some of our milestones from our climate action plan that were really notable. But I also wanted to identify some other accomplishments that perhaps were not reflected in the plan itself. Of course the launch of Central Coast Community Energy which I would like to say is foundational to both building electrification and transportation electrification. As I've presented to you in the past the formation of Central Coast Community Energy enables us to accelerate our pace to 100% renewable energy by 2030 or earlier. So in doing so it allows us to rapidly decarbonize our electricity and our natural gas sectors. I also really want to give a big shout out to our public works energy division. I was astounded when they told me that we've invested either through grants or internal investment over $5 million to date in EV charging infrastructure and fleet electrification. I think that's a fact that's not been widely known especially with some recent grants for electric refuse trucks and heavy duty vehicles. And we also internally have a carbon fund that has been in place for six years that we've invested a quarter of a million dollars into carbon reducing projects oftentimes giving a match for a grant. So getting into the plan itself the process and the contents. So in our first engagement we had three phases of engagement. We really wanted to understand from the community what are your values. What should be the guiding principles for this plan. And we heard loud and clear equity in all policies right very aligned with health and all policies as well as accessible people centric transportation infrastructure. Efficient and low to no carbon energy and water protecting and enhancing natural resources in urban parks and eliminating food waste and supporting local food sources. Really the vision that we developed iteratively over this time and I'm just I'm not going to read all these sides but I am going to read this is to rapidly enact local climate solutions that support and enhance a thriving and equitable community with robust active and public transportation. Plentiful housing that's affordable sustainable and resilient and healthy regenerative landscapes and I believe this plan reflects that in terms of the climate action plan process which we called resilient together. We really have kind of this iterative process that starts with the emissions inventory and I'll next share with you what that looked like for 2019 establishing reduction targets. I came to the council in March with some tests on what could what we could adopt and seem to get some some buy in there developing the plan itself implementing the plan and then monitoring and evaluating progress. We had copious outreach during this project everything from frontline group focus groups to online virtual ways that folks can could participate to over two dozen internal staff meetings. So a lot of input over 3000 points of engagement on this project. So getting into the meat of the plan. This is again our 2019 emissions inventory. And again these are the sectors that are regulated via the state scoping plan. They don't account for all emissions. They only account for that set of emissions. So things like food waste or I'm sorry diet travel and other life cycle emissions are not accounted for here. However that was a theme a comment that we heard during the draft plan process is that hey you really don't have an understanding of what's called your consumption based inventory. And so we really bolstered in the plan what we do know about consumption based sectors and we know the high impact actions related to those that we need to promote. And in fact I'm really excited to say that we are actually working right now I'm working with a master's student on a consumption based inventory which was slated for some time in the next five years. But had the right master's student who wanted to do the right project and so we're working on that right now hope to have bring something forward in December January. Okay this is a slide I presented before these are community wide emissions. So again this is not just us as a municipality we only account for our operations only account for 3% of overall community emissions. This is community wide everybody every business. And you can see that we show with the dark orange line is what's called our business as usual forecast. If we did nothing at all that's where our emissions would go. The lighter orange in color is our adjusted forecast which accounts for state regulations that will draw down emissions. And as I've explained in the past you see this crazy little bump in the road at 2025. And that is due to the fact that Central Coast Community Energy change its purchasing strategy for renewable energy which was previously which was previously buying renewable renewable energy credits and which was allowing us to take credit for someone else's emissions that were reduced. Instead this time now we're actually procuring renewable electricity. And so we do show a slight increase it's simply an accounting type situation. Okay so continuing onward. So the two targets that we are bringing forward is number one the California Environmental Quality Act CEQA Qualified Target which will be our legally defensible minimum target for CEQA. The actions for this target need to be reasonable and achievable. And that is a 40% emissions reduction by 2030 from 1990 levels of which we've already achieved 9%. We also heard loud and clear from our community and from you at our study session that we really acknowledge that this minimum target is really not enough. We need to go further and so we're bringing forward an aspirational target of carbon neutrality by 2035 it is a voluntary target. However we're ready to implement so I'll show you more on how we're going to get there. Okay so this graph we're adding in now the target so you can see at the 2030 right here we've got our CEQA target. And then we have by 2035 we have our carbon neutrality target at zero. One other comment that we heard during the public review of this draft is that it kind of made it look like we were waiting until 2030 before we really did steep and drastic reductions. And that really was kind of we made a misstep in how we maybe showed that because that was not the intention. And so this gray line shows you what it looks like getting to carbon neutral by 2035. We really need to be operating closer to that 85,000, 86,000 metric tons. We need to be really working to that if we're going to make carbon neutral by 2035. Okay and this is just another way to think about that so on the top chart that I have here is what's called mass emissions. So all the emissions in the community but we're also bringing forward the target around per capita. So per person emissions which helps us to account for population growth and better allows us to achieve our target because if we have a mass influx of people we may not be able to reach that mass emissions target. And so you can see here what we need to do and on a per person level in order to reach the 2030 CEQA target we need to get to 2.74 metric tons per capita per person of carbon and then zero at 2035 for our voluntary target. So what do we have in this climate action plan? Well we have 152 actions and these actions really need to, they are designed to address as well as strike a balance across six important pillars. Of course greenhouse gas emissions is paramount but while that is the main aim of this plan we also know that we can leverage this plan to have more improvements. We have improved outcomes in public health and a number of different sectors which I will share with you in a moment. So greenhouse gas emissions reduction, structural and organizational change of course, equity, partnerships, economics and funding and financing. So where are we going to make these reductions? I also presented this at our study session in March and these are the areas where we need to make reductions. Again electric vehicles and electric buildings and renewable energy are really for the CEQA target or the CEQA sectors are really our biggest bang right now. They are the areas where we have the most opportunity to make reductions. And I want to emphasize that while through Central Coast Community Energy that's really going to help us with those two sectors, we are not abandoning rooftop solar. It is just as important and we call out at least three actions in the plan to support renewables. I know that's something that the community has been interested in as well. Of course waste reduction, water efficiency and that really does come to being energy usage. So the less water that we utilize, the less energy we need to pump and treat it. Public transportation which is another area where we received a lot of comment. We don't have a big mode share that we are able to really feasibly achieve. We only show a 1% increase in public transportation by 2030 for the CEQA qualified plan. But I'm excited to say that since the draft plan came out in June, it seems like there is a lot of coordination and conversation about really accelerating around public transportation both with Metro and the RTC. So I'm very encouraged because I think that's the opportunity for us to really draw down and get to carbon neutral. And we do have in the plan actions around supporting youth bus passes and so all kinds of things, 152 actions. We do have carbon sequestration there. It isn't part of the state scoping plan but it may be soon. So we do have actions related to that although we have not yet quantified them. So what I'm showing here is how do we get to that CEQA target? You can see these are the actions that we actually are able to quantify that have strong technical and legal basis to them. And that's very important for us to demonstrate. So you see I will point out BE2 which is existing building electrification. As you know, you adopted a natural gas prohibition two years ago which has been going very, very well. In terms of existing building electrification, we really are looking at a phased approach over time but it is important that we start in 2030. It's likely, and by the way we're working on our existing building electrification roadmap right now. And we'll be bringing to you a draft plan at the start of the year to try to kind of test where should we start with this. What we're thinking is that we'll take a parallel pass with both voluntary incentivized existing building electrification. For example, the Department of Energy Weatherization Assistance Program grant. We just received $2 million with Watsonville to electrify and make healthy homes and low income homes. So we're going to be able to take care of mold remediation in the beach flats as well as electrify at the same time. One path with incentivized voluntary and then another path with phased implementation, things like time of permit replacement. And so we'll be bringing that to you again in January. And as you can see here, we are able to reach our target with the actions that we have developed. So I think it's also important here to highlight what the high impact actions are because everything I've just shown you really only accounts for those states. Scoping plan sectors. And here's where we're really bringing in some of those other things that aren't quantified. Things like reducing air travel, eating more plant based meals and the solar installing solar. So these are the ones that we're really going to be emphasizing in our community engagement, which we're going to do very strongly over the next four months. And I have some more on that in a moment. So in terms of the cap actions with co-benefits, I already mentioned that we know that emissions reduction has other co-benefits. And I'm showing here what percentage of the 152 actions relate to or support all the different co-benefits from community health to resilience and local green jobs as well as restoration. I also want to say, and I was astounded when I saw this figure that 91% of our actions support our health and all policies community well-being outcome indicators. Who would have known, right? No, we knew, right? At any rate, you know, that again, emphasizing the need for this nexus, this work on this nexus between public health equity and sustainability. In terms of jobs, we are projecting that by 2030, just in building electrification, active transportation and EV adoption, over 2,000 jobs will be generated. That was part of our green economy analysis. Started during Council Member Meyers' mayorship. And now let's talk about the environmental review process. So we did prepare an initial study, negative declaration, Ring Kong Consultants did. And through that process, they concluded that the implementation of the cap and its checklist, which I'll share with you next would not result in potentially significant impacts on the environment. We did circulate the ISND for a month over between July and August. We only received one letter. It was from Caltrans in support of the plan. Yeah, so that's the initial study, negative. What this also allows us to do is this qualified, sequel qualified cap can be used for tiering and streamlining emissions analysis in future sequel project like development project evaluations. And so what we were able to do, so it's kind of a win-win, we're able to get really strong low carbon buildings, but at the same time offer whoever's coming forward for the permit a more streamlined environmental process. So if they meet the consistency checklist that we've developed, they wouldn't have to go through a more arduous environmental review process. So it's really a win-win. So in terms of the public review comments, so we received 542 comments on our draft plan while it was open during the month of June. We summarized them into themes and what I'm sharing with you are really the top themes. They're the themes that got maybe 10 or more comments. The emissions forecast had an error in it and so a lot of people picked that up and we obviously corrected that. We had 33 comments on that. Public transportation, I've already mentioned, folks want us to go harder. We do have limited influence on public transportation, however we have board members on the agencies. As I mentioned, however, it feels like there's some momentum there and we know that with the federal infrastructure and IRA, there's going to be tons of money. So I believe that we are getting positioned for that. In terms of EV infrastructure, folks wanted to see more EV infrastructure. Again, I got to give a shout out to our energy division who just replaced all of our EV chargers in the city. But we do have many actions in the plan regarding EV infrastructure. On parking, we had several comments on equal comments on, hey, we don't want you to reduce parking or hey, you should really reduce parking. So of course, we're going to work through those tensions when it comes to ordinance development around that. On implementation, I think folks did not know that we had a really strong implementation appendix that was associated with the plan. And we also have a funding and financing matrix that will help us for every measure to find the funding to implement the plan. Folks were concerned about composting, but I think that was just maybe a misunderstanding because we don't do composting in the city. We take our food scraps to the wastewater treatment plant and the methane that comes off is used for electricity. So I think there was just some misunderstanding. Folks really wanted to see environmental restoration. We do have a lot in our plan related to that. And then we had 11 comments on plant-based diets, which we do have three actions in the plan for the community as well as many actions internally for our municipality. And we also, as I said, really kind of restructured the plan to highlight these things that weren't in the core scoping sector that are quantified already. Okay, almost to the end here. Accountability. So we have some existing and some new accountability tools that we've put in place, everything from tools and training to regular meetings. I want to point out that we are going to be starting a brand new implementation partners roundtable to really help us with implementation because we know the city can't do it alone, right? We don't have control over everything and it's going to take everybody on this plan, as well as some annual activities related to being transparent, presenting to the community, as well as international disclosures like the Carbon Disclosure Project, of which we've had an A or an A minus rating. I think we're going to have an A again this year for several years. We also are going to be launching in the next three months a sustainability dashboard at the website. And we have a tool that our consultants have provided to us that will allow us to track both our progress on the plan, on each measure, as well as our funding that we need and the financing. So we will be working to develop what is the best way to show the information that people are interested in. And then internally we'll be training staff on utilizing this tool for their own purposes and to help track and really institutionalize this throughout the organization. Okay. As I said, everyone in the community really does have a role in the CAP 2030. As I mentioned, we are going to be starting this new community implementation partner roundtable and, you know, providing some tools for individuals or households. And I'm going to share more on that in a moment. What I'm showing here is our municipal three-year implementation plan. And there's two slides of this. I'm not going to read all of this, but there are 20 specific activities that we are, have already started or we are going to be doing over the next three years. The bolded teal ones are the high impact actions. So the ones that get us the most emissions reductions. So you can see over time when we'll be working on those. Like I said, some have already been started and which departments are responsible for those. I'll show you also the next one as well. So there's quite a bit here that we have committed to. And I'm really proud to say that I got, I think the best compliment from one of my colleagues at another city who said, I can't believe what you guys are bringing forward for your local government implementation. So kudos to our staff, our department heads, and you all for really, this is a strong municipal work plan. I think it's also important to point out we've made a lot of progress on grants in just this year. I think, you know, through center cost energy services, we're already working on our fleet electrification roadmap, bringing together a lot of pieces that we've already done into one cohesive implementable plan. We also, I mentioned already the 2 million for the green and healthy home initiative. We're getting delivered tomorrow. Our mobile solar battery EV equipment charger at the library parking lot at 8am. We also, again, this is with ecology action and my colleagues around the Monterey Bay. We've just funded a series of meetings with frontline groups, justice groups on and compensated them to understand how can we enable folks to lead on climate and make sure that their needs are addressed. And so that's almost complete. We have our last meeting tomorrow on that. We have 250,000 for e-refuse trucks and we have another 400,000 pending in grants for other heavy duty electrified equipment. We have, we've developed a regional climate project working group with other Monterey Bay jurisdictions that all brought money together and we got a grant from center cost energy services so that we could compete together for climate funding that perhaps little Santa Cruz can't compete as well on going up against LA. So we just hired two consultants for that. I have really a lot of high hopes and expectations for that working group. And then lastly, and this, I have to say this grant progress is not all encompassing. You know, I know transportation and public works has gotten a lot. This is just what I know right now. We also have the pack station north net positive resilient all electric affordable housing at 1.8 million that we got from the California Energy Commission. So as you can see, we have ramped up our efforts for funding and we will continue to do so. We just hired internally for grant writing firms to help citywide, but climate is definitely a focus there. Okay, rounding it out. Here's my call to action for all of you and for everyone in our community, everyone in our audience. We need to activate and we are launching as part of a six county effort, a platform called resilient Santa Cruz. And you can see the link at the bottom of the screen. This is a platform that will allow folks to understand what is their carbon footprint and what are the actions they can take to reduce it on a per person or per household basis. So it's really easy. You create an account or join a team. A big facet of this is joining a team, having that competitive element. We already have some great incentives lined up that we're going to launch challenges over the next few months to really get people to engage with this. We have an intern communications intern that's going to be dedicated to launching this over the next four months working with ecology action who's also providing communication support. And really is the entity that brought this together. We started talking about this three years ago that we really need more than just a fact sheet to hand people, right? So folks can discover their impact. You can see on the right hand side what that looks like for whoever took this. Their starting point was a 4.1 metric ton carbon footprint each year. We know that our goal is to get to 2.74. I showed you that in a slide to get to our secret target. But if we want to get to carbon neutral, we really need to be working towards 1.32 by 2030. Now, the thing to remember here is if you have a really high emissions output that's above the Santa Cruz average, which is about eight tons. You probably need to be reducing a bit more, right? Because that's the average per capita emissions reduction. And if you have less than 8.4, maybe you don't have to work so hard at it, right? So discover your impact, create a plan and choose your actions and track and take action. So this is what the landing page looks like. It is totally customized for us. It has all the rebates, all the incentives, all the info on everything we're doing in a one-stop shop here. This is where we're going to be issuing challenges. You do see Watsonville City staff. That's because there's someone that lives in Santa Cruz, but it's on a team in Watsonville. So that's how it works. And then here's how you assess which actions do I want to pick. What's great about this is there's something for everyone. If you're a renter, you can click the renter button. It shows you the actions that you might want to consider that are tailored. There's family-friendly ones. There's ones for if you're on a budget or if you want to do a quick boost. So it really is easy to navigate to help you to figure out what do I want to commit to. And it shows you the level of effort, how much you might save doing so, and then there's points associated with it. Okay, so my challenge to everyone today that's listening is to sign up for this platform. Please, because it's going to take people signing up and that engagement for us to really reach these targets. Okay, we're at the end here. So here's our recommendation as it's contained in the agenda report. I do want to note that we're going from a 10-year update to a five-year update of our climate action plan. And next time we do so, it will be a combined plan with our adaptation plan. As I said, we're getting ready to roll into the adaptation plan. And really, we're going to be bringing these together in the next cycle. So I'm really happy to take any questions that you might have at this time. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tiffany Weiswest. Very informative. Thank you for highlighting everything we've done so far and where we're at, especially with the grants and the funding. Such a key component to this. I will open it up to my colleagues for questions. I did want to just bring up a couple of questions received via email just regarding concern of affordability. Some of these actions may take that site to sign up for an account. I'm excited to check it out and to see how user-friendly it is. I'm glad to hear there's different components. But can you speak to the affordability of the plan? Absolutely. So this was something that was critically important for us as we were developing the plan. I mentioned, and I didn't go into a lot of detail about the equity screening tool, but one of the philosophical principles that we had going into this plan is that we would not accept any action that would cause adverse impacts on frontline underrepresented and underserved communities. And if there was an action when we went through the screening process, which was pretty extensive, if it was found to be that we had any actions that did contain adverse impacts like costs, for example, we needed to modify the action or we needed to write an action that mitigated that. There's one other thing I want to mention, however, is that with respect to building electrification, I know that cost is a concern there. We're all concerned about energy. I mean, what's going on, I think on a global scene is really highlights our need to get off fossil fuels, so that this affordability issue is not so prevalent. However, with respect to existing building electrification, any policies that we bring forward that change our municipal code must come with a cost effectiveness study. It's required by the state. So that is a key feature that the state puts in place to ensure that you're not putting something that's going to increase costs extensively. And as I said, we know that folks aren't going to be able to do it on their own. A lot of folks aren't. And that's why we're going hard on bringing in the grants so that we can cover the cost 100% in some cases and then incentivize in other cases. Thank you. I think one more question I'll bring up and then I'll open it up. In terms of the electrification, I know several members of the community are concerned with power outages and not quite understanding how that would work if everything was electrified. Can you speak to that? I certainly can. So this was something that we also discussed with the natural gas prohibition. So there are some things to realize about natural gas appliances. Newer stoves require electric ignition. So and electric. So you can't utilize a natural gas stove during a power outage unless you have an older stove or a battery. Let's say in a safe kind of way with using the ignition. The other point is that electricity is brought online faster than natural gas. We also should have put this slide in because we have several points on this. And then I also just want to point to the safety factor of having natural gas in the home. So there are the safety piece is huge. We know that indoor air quality in 40% of homes does not meet outdoor air quality standards. We don't have indoor air quality standards. But in homes that have natural gas stoves, they would not meet outdoor air quality standards. So there's some of the reasons why public safety power shut off. Of course, it may be a concern, but you know, there's there's some pros and cons with this. And is that information also on the city website? Yes, it is. I can provide a link afterwards to our natural gas prohibition that actually has a slide that discusses this. And is there information on that link website you provided to create an account? And when you choose actions, does it have a company information that would be beneficial for the user? Absolutely, it does. And it does link to our building electrification page where that information. Yes. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Do any of my colleagues have questions? Council Member Golder. I do. And it is about that because I am really concerned and I don't know about the rest of the room, but I have put solar on two houses in Santa Cruz with batteries and two houses in Santa Cruz. And while it makes me feel good to get the majority of my electricity, you know, from renewable source, the reality is I also think about the environment. The impact of those batteries and the 10-year lifespan of those Tesla power walls I just bought for $30,000. And the impact that it causes in third world countries for third world countries where they're mining the minerals and where is that going to go in 10 years? And what landfill is that battery going to go? And to the audience member's point, my gas stove does turn on and does ignite with the battery in the event of power outage. It's set to that, you know what I mean? So it is able to operate with the fan. There are certain appliances, right? And then I think about back when we had my first meeting, when we had the electrification ordinance where I was really not in favor because I do know that the majority, not a majority, but a significant amount of power that's on our grid is coming from the natural gas power plant down in Moss Landing. And so like while I'm in support of renewable energy, that is not our reality at this point. And I feel like this is, you know, a little, in my opinion, it feels like we're patting ourselves on the back in this, in, and I know that there's state laws that we're aspiring to meet and I agree that we should try to get there. But I do have serious concerns because even in our last remodel that we just did, I went through the city's green building checklist and I bought the appliances right off the list. And the most efficient way to heat the house was with a combo radiant floor gas, water heater, tankless water heater for heating the floor and heating the house. I just bought it. It's supposed to last 30 years, right? And so now you're saying like, oh, sorry, Renee, and other people that just spent tons of money on this for your house. And so I see why the community and the next door community online and people are up in arms about this because it seems kind of counterintuitive. It's great to set lofty goals, but to start, I think where the community might be scared is that they're thinking this is going to come along and start turning off the natural gas. Reading through, I read that, you know, in BE2 that you wanted 31% of homes by 2030. And so I'm imagining there'll be incentives through, you know, if I was to apply for a permit again where they say, hey, Renee, instead of buying this, maybe choose this. And that's where I'm imagining it and people can choose to have their lines shut off and then seeing the goal where it was by 2035, 53% of homes. And I'm thinking by 2035, you know, there's a natural cycle and homes getting renovated, right? And so I'm assuming, and this is where my question comes from, the long prelude, is that I'm assuming that you're not going to say, hey, Renee, sucks to you that you just did your house, we're turning it off. You're going to say, hey, whoever is the next person coming along doing their renovation throughout the years, would you prefer this? We're going to offer you these rebates, incentives, and let people selective do it between now and 2035. Am I right? Yes. That is correct. As I said, that we are going to be phasing in and time of permit is likely going to be the first, so you wouldn't be required to change out anything that you just installed right now. Time of permit would likely be one of the first things that we put in place along with, again, having voluntary uptake through incentives. There's a lot of incentive funding coming from the federal government. I don't want to be counter to what you noted, but heat pumps are the most efficient way to heat both water and space, not natural gas. And that's something that we did review during the natural gas prohibition. I also want to mention that PG&E is supportive of electrification because they cannot support their aging infrastructure. It's unsafe, and they are decommissioning natural gas power plants. Our electricity is procured through Central Coast Community Energy and is on track to be 100% renewable energy by 2030. So I just want to also mention those things as well. And so then I would respectfully request that in our city's building permit process, right now the one that they told me to buy, the only available choice was gas. That was it. I don't have familiarity exactly with what's on that list. The perfect collaboration needs to happen if we're going to implement this kind of strategy. Absolutely. I've been working with the Green Building Specialist on this building electrification roadmap. And so we will continue to do so and bring forward to you in January some recommendations to see where you all want to go with that. Absolutely. Thank you, Council Member Golder. Do any other Council Members have questions? Council Member Callantari Johnson. Thank you for the presentation and the work. I may have, I stepped out and so you may be covered this, but this is a pretty robust plan and a robust process. What kind of partnership or collaboration have we done with other cities within our county and the Board of Supervisors? Yes, well, I did mention our Regional Climate Project Working Group. That has come together, that's the county, Watsonville, Monterey County and San Benito County. We are going together for grants on mutual priorities like building and transportation electrification as well as others. Equity being a big part of it, really trying to stand up a governance structure that brings people into the decision making from frontline groups. We also have gone together with Watsonville to get that $2 million Department of Energy Weatherization Assistance Program grant. We are meeting weekly. Okay, lots of collaboration. Lots of collaboration. I did just participate the counties in their Climate Action Plan development process right now. I just went and did a two hour work session with them and a bunch of stakeholders on their plan. I think the collaboration on the jurisdictional scale in the Monterey Bay area over the last year has ramped up like never before. And it's a good thing because we all need to be doing the same things. How we do it may differ, but it also makes sense for us to go together for efficiencies of scale most certainly. Okay, great. I think I did step out when you covered that then. And then sort of a comment question with the platform. Yes. Are we engaging the school systems in particular Santa Cruz High or Harbor High that are within our school systems to like let's get the whatever the classes are in high school. I don't know I have a ninth grader or so I don't know what they are, but the environmental climate response classes in high schools. Are we engaging them and how? We're not engaging with curriculum per se, but we're engaging through the green schools committee. That we are on and so we are going to be youth and schools is one of the focal areas that we're going to hit hard over these next four months and launching this campaign. I believe the first green schools community is coming up in about a month or so. We have a standing spot on the agenda and we're going to introduce it. We also we do have the environmental clubs through the County Department of Education or Board of Education. Yeah, the Department of Education. Amity Sandage who's their environmental coordinator. We also have been working with her on reaching the schools. Kind of getting at it from two different angles. Great. And then just one last piece. There was a lot under transportation and clearly there's council members that serve on RTC and Metro. One piece that I picked up was the action around ensuring that that youth have free fare. So AB 1919 just passed and being signed, I think is signed by the governor, but it's by grants. So just for all of us in partnership with the work you're doing, I think we should be keeping our eye on that because we have to apply. Absolutely. To get those funds to allow for free fare for our students. Absolutely. We have eyes on that. Okay. Thank you. Those are my questions. Thank you, Council Member Callantari Johnson. Council Member Myers. I just want to also thank you for the all the work and just want to also just really recognize your work with the outreach to our under, you know, underserved communities and folks who a lot of times aren't really even involved in these kinds of efforts. And actually who will experience some of the first impacts from climate change as, you know, sea level rise and other issues that we know are coming. And I recognize that this plan is really around doing our actions to reduce our emissions. And I believe we finished our adaptation plan two years ago, right? Or what's the order four years ago now it's been, wow. And does the adaptation plan get updated as well or is that on a 10-year cycle? So now that we've got this part done, do we go back to that adaptation piece because that's going to be incredibly needed in this community as well? Yes. We're going to be starting the adaptation plan and local hazard mitigation plan updates later in the year. We're waiting to hear if we got a FEMA hazard mitigation grant to be able to fund that. That needs to be updated on a five-year cycle and it has been because we do it in conjunction with the local hazard mitigation plan, which we only get approval for FEMA for five years for. And it's important for us to maintain the LHMP because it makes us eligible for certain categories of FEMA grants, which we have taken advantage of. We're right now writing a notice of intent for an 11 million dollar project. Had we not had that LHMP certified, we would not be eligible for that funding. Now, as I said, and as you see right here, we are going to be combining the plans together in our subsequent update, which is kind of the standard of practice that's emerging is doing those together, recognizing the nexus between emissions mitigation and climate adaptation. So that that combination will happen in that in 2028. So until then they sort of hopscotch a little bit, but 2028 you marry them together and that's how we manage from there on. Yes, we have one more hopscotch and that's with this adaptation plan and then the next one together. And does the state require that that combination or is that really we're doing that because we see those relationships between our basic basic impacts. We have to adapt for and plan for and then obviously act as we can to reduce emissions. So that's really just the way that we're going to operate going forward. I think that's really smart and thank you for yeah, it is that it's not a requirement by the state, but it is kind of in our community of practice. The trend now is to do them together. Okay. Okay. I may have missed this and I did try to read everything. And I excellent report and very accessible. I want to compliment you on that is very, very technical and difficult thing to do, but it is accessible and the graphics are wonderful. And the way you're presenting a lot of the really a lot of the things that we're trying to achieve are just immediate accessible. I'm super excited about the program that you showed where people can get online and really figure this out how they want to take their own individual actions because that's what's going to take with all of that. How does the trend that we're seeing with regards to and you know, do you calculate into the vehicle miles traveled and the emissions. I guess VMT is kind of old school now but to into the emissions calculations the fact that we are building more housing downtown. How do you how does that come into our calculations. So I'm imagining the person who lives in Watsonville but may work here in the city of Santa Cruz and they're sitting in that traffic jam. And so how do we how do we do that here in terms of our county because that's the thing that everyone talks to me about when they think about emissions reductions. They're like how do we get people living here who are working here versus having to travel. So can you just very quickly give us how you do that. Well VMT is still the name of the game for emissions and that's vehicle miles traveled. And the city and the county actually developed together a model because Ambeg's model does not account for emissions that originate outside of the city and end in the city or start in the city and end outside the city. And it is SB 375 requires that that's what you include in your VMT. So the city and the county went together to develop their own model that models that. So theoretically say with more affordable housing dense infill transit oriented development theoretically in the future. Our model should be able to detect that right that we're having shorter within jurisdiction trips and less trips that originate outside and come in or vice versa. So the way that we will track that is when we do our next inventory which we do our inventories every three years at a minimum. We'll be able to compare to what we have for 2019. So it's conceivable that whether it's affordable or frankly market rate because there's people who live in market rate housing that also live in the county that are all now traveling from other places. The idea behind that really is being able to show those shorter distances and people actually relocating to be closer to their job center and potentially even just living in a much more walkable way of life because everything's right there. So would it be accurate to say that building housing downtown is a very, very important climate action that we should take. It is indeed and building affordable housing downtown is a specific action that's called out in the plan that's actually prioritized as a high impact near term action that we need to take is developing a plan on how to accelerate that. Okay, great. That's I think really important for folks to realize the value of, you know, what I call the housing ecosystem. You know, the housing ecosystem has to exist not not, you know, across for certain purposes, but really to probably one of our most important climate actions we could take as a county. And frankly, as a state is to really get people housed closer and closer to the economic centers that everybody depends on. So I'm glad that we're thinking that way too. What was my other question? Might I add one other point on that? We do also have another action related to looking at land use to ensure that we're able to support the sectors that people are working in to keep them here. For example, you know, do we need to perhaps retain some of our industrial zoning in case we do have industrial, you know, folks that are instead of traveling over the hill to go to, you know, their job. So that is another way that we are thinking about this as well. Great. That's great. And I think also the I support and I'm glad that you put in also the sequestration piece because there is still work that could be done around open landscapes around the, you know, the kinds of things that we're using our open spaces and things for. So I think I think that's really smart. I think that is all my questions. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Myers, Vice Mayor Watkins. Thank you, Tiffany. This was excellent and the report was excellent and the work that went to make it happen. You know, I appreciate it all from the community members that participated to all your work as well. Thank you. I think my questions were similar to Council Member Myers. I specifically wanted to ask about the sequestration, but it sounds like that's something we can still continue to work towards and expand upon. I think in terms of also the alignment with the health and all policies, you know, just really appreciating that because when you live where you work and you can access healthy foods and you can walk and you experience a higher quality of life. And so as we think about not only the quantifiable metrics of reductions, we can also think about how to overlay that with some of the proxy measurements around just establishing well being and how that makes people feel in our community. Right. And so I think the cap could be not this cap. The adaptation plan, not the adaptation plan, but the county wide community assessment project, the community assessment project. The other cap. Yes, could be a tool potentially to overlay here as we think about that. So that was just sort of one thought and suggestion. Great point. I guess my only other question is sort of more of a meta question in that, you know, I think with extreme weather events. The national understanding or international understanding of climate change is sort of risen in terms of awareness and policy action and knowing our community is working so well and having such robust plans in place. I guess if you were to foresee sort of future projections around where we could go and sort of how we can, you know, maybe accelerate some of these these strategies. Are you hopeful? I guess this might be the question because I feel I am more so than I have been in the past. I'm more hopeful than ever before. I mean, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for funding quite frankly from the federal government and the state government. And I feel like we are well poised as a jurisdiction, but also on the regional level through that regional climate project working group I told you about to really get our share because we're not going to be able to do it as a municipality. We're going to need to have multiple funding streams to be able to make this happen. So I do feel really good about that. Yes. And is there's things that we as a council need to be aware of or how we can support, you know, being in a really even better position than we already are in terms of being able to access some of these resources that seem like a once in a lifetime opportunity. Absolutely. I do think that through our legislative agenda and supporting both federal and state legislation around this can help not only bring resources but also compelled, you know, more regulation around this kind of thing so that local government doesn't necessarily need to do it all. Because it is, it's very difficult to bring forward these kinds of codes and so forth. And if we could have standardization at the state and federal level on this, it would be very helpful for us to implement. Okay, great. I guess my last question then would be, you know, in regards to extreme weather events and the impacts it has on our infrastructure and sort of knowing that our communities are the ones that bear the cost of repair, essentially. Do you foresee also funding coming down to sort of really like climate resilient? I don't know how I don't know how you would frame it to climate proof, if you will, extreme weather events for some of our infrastructure. Is that going to be a component of the funding? Almost definitely. The state the governor right now has five climate bills on his desk and a lot of it is related to resilience. There were a couple other things I wanted to mention related to that climate proofing. What was it? So we do have that new legislation on resilience. There is the potential, you know, to work with our state and federal legislators on bringing some more funding through some different avenues as well. And then, I'm sorry, there's one other thing that I was thinking, but I lost it at any rate. I can follow up with you on that. But most definitely supporting the legislative agenda that we're going to bring forward. Oh, the other piece I was going to talk about was our climate suit. So we do still have ongoing the climate suit, which are for the impacts of climate change. Now, that's not a sure thing, of course, but that's out there. And then the one other thing is our Congressman Panetta had brought forward the climate tax, right, essentially. And that is starting to gain some bipartisan support, especially from those states like Florida, who are really experiencing those impacts heavily now. We are not seeing a lot of movement on that right now, but I expect over the next 10 years we may. There's three different things that I think we can be looking out for for funding this kind of work. That's great. And I think it just then it relieves the taxpayer from having to have increases in whatever rates or whatever their contributions might be sort of during the full costs. Anyhow, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you guys. Member Brown. Thank you. Great. This is awesome. You participated in a couple of the sessions. I know that you have been so committed to really bringing together a lot of minds and a lot of energy and commitment here. And it really shows in the final product. And I just want to say thank you as I always do. You're so lucky to have you. I wanted to ask a couple of questions one related to the kind of relationship between the development of the plan, the implementation of the plan and our city advisory commissions. You know, they've been involved, they've received presentations and have made some given some input and it's not. We don't see that reflected per se in the final product because it's the amalgamation of so much input and it's not necessarily laid out. But given that some of those commissions will have a role to play in how we move forward with implementation around program ordinance, etc. I'm just wondering how you see their being involved in taking on specific pieces of this. And kind of longer term. And then another question I have, which is kind of related to just the ongoing programmatic. This is actually a very different question, but it's it's I'm putting it together in my head because this is the ongoing what happens now kind of stuff. So obviously the timelines that we have established are very aggressive or very conservative, depending on who you talk to different perspectives. And obviously, you know, just there's a desire I think in our community to see accelerated timelines and I recognize that and I would like to see that too. And I also recognize that we have the constraints of resources, you know, other other realities and we don't want to get into a situation where we can't meet those goals. But I do wonder how how you see in case, you know, maybe there are places where we can accelerate or it will become clearer as we're moving through this that we can accelerate. You know, urban urban forest master plan, you know, VMT and the that that component is I know that's a very big challenge. But just thinking about how how that would play out how like how would we with those with those kinds of potential accelerations come to us. Well, they just sort of happen, you know, can can like just trying to think about how how we can have a role ongoing in this this living document, I guess, is sort of a big question. Absolutely. So a lot in there. Let me ask a clarifying question. Are you asking about the role of commissions per se or the climate action task force? Well, yeah. Oh, yeah, climate action task force. I'm a little clearer how they'll OK, how that'll work. But just yeah, the commissions that are going to have, you know, PPW is going to obviously have a lot to do and say on this. Absolutely. So we are developing annual departmental work plans that, of course, the commissions will be involved in the implement, you know, those implementation pieces. We also when there is a significant implementation action, we do go to the commissions for feedback for recommendations to the council and so forth. So I think through those work plans will be the way that they will be able to engage. They'll know what's happening. They'll know what's coming up over the year. Perhaps they can indicate in their commission work plan what they're interested in. That's the approach I take with the task force as I share with them what our work plans are. I ask what are you interested in engaging on and following and then structure their work plan around that. Also, I do want to highlight this new implementation partners round table. It's going to be critically important because we can't do it all ourselves and we didn't really have a formal mechanism in the past to bring in folks other than our community climate action task force. So that's a new mechanism as well. I also have to say that, you know, we do have a lot in this plan around organizational change and change management, staffing, institutionalizing across our organization and so forth. And that's going to be key for us as we go forward. Oh, and then when are you all going to see it was another part of your question. So I do the annual update to council, but I also of course bring forward big things like the natural gas prohibition and so forth. And so and bring forward a work plan in January I'll be bringing forward a 2023 calendar year work plan. So I believe that there's a lot of opportunity for council to be able to weigh in and then you asked about course correction also right as new things come online as we learn new new information. We can do that in those annual departmental. We can look at it in our three year implementation work plans. We can look at it in which is the overall municipal as well as those annual visits to council bring forward the state of the practice. What's new? How does that impact us and our missions? Can we go harder somewhere else? Because we don't have all the answers of how to get to carbon neutral by 2035 right now. And so we are going to have some degree of flexibility to be able to make some changes and course correct. I will point out that we do have another climate action plan in 2028 before 2035. So that will be and it will not be as big of a process as this. It will be a course correction process really. So that's how I foresee many mechanisms for which folks can really you know the elected folks can really have eyes on what we're doing. That the our implementation partners in our community you know that we're transparent with them and that we enable them to also implement with us. Thank you. And I just have to say I love how you say we and it is a collective process and there are a lot of people involved. And also you have a lot of responsibility of major role here and you take on I mean you do a lot so I just want to say thank you. You as well. And I appreciate that it's a we and I also know you play a major role. Well thanks for all of your support. Thank you council member Brown. I think that concludes council questions. Thank you. Welcome. At this point I would like to bring it out for public comment. And if you're here in person joining us please line up to my left your right. If you are joining us virtually let me go to our virtual attendees please raise your hand by dialing star nine or choosing the raise hand feature on the Webinar controls of your computer. There should also be instructions on the screen. And it looks like our first person virtually is the name I am watching you. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. Okay thank you. Climate policy is a greater threat than climate change. If we're only as simple as just saying I 40% carbon emission reduction happens in just eight years and horrific unintended consequences don't occur. Indeed the planet is saved from ourselves and fairy tales came true. No measurable climate accomplishment will ever be proved or other alternatives compared to the cost only the fair longer assertion CO2 emission reduction justifies any tyrannical fourth mandate. Will the production of lithium cobalt manganese and nickel soon be sufficient and environmentally sound to make all the world's batteries at what price will the electrical grid ever take the strain. Will most people afford 60,000 for an EV car or make that 68,000 since car makers just raised the EV car prices to match the joke inflation reduction at rebate. Will this do provably anything for the environment by 2035 or even 2050. Do we need a bigger inflation NATO Inferno no to all. Surely you know this magnitude investment will be on an unimaginable inflation pumping credit. That's right, not your money. It's also the debt slavery shackled to the voiceless unborn climate policy already in Germany sees decommissioning of nuclear power with no idea how to replace that. But they are now burning wood and miles long lines formed to buy coal and pulling you bankruptcies are surging starvation and urgency in Sri Lanka. Farmer will vote in Holland is what a big never mind those signs of mass policy dysfunction. This climate agenda is spearheaded by airheads such as AOC, Emperor Newsom, the Hitlerist, French based child credit, powerful globalist, tyrannical power seeking elites. Issue hijackers looking to blam on and promote whatever cause and anyone who can make a name political hay or make a buck off it. After decades of subsidy and research, satisfactory reliable and plentiful fossil fuel replacements in energy, transportation, fertilizer and all the other uses for fossil fuels just don't exist yet to take their place, not even close. At best I see dangerous wishful thinking at worst a deliberate evil. California is taking the world lead here in premature action stupid if Santa Cruz aspires to an even higher stupidity with this mad rush I don't think it's going to go well. Blackouts are now choosing between food, gas or heat while being told not to use appliances is just the beginning. My worst case scenario for climate change policy agenda misfire is global energy starvation, food shortages, economic disaster, famine, political insurrection, disease, war, mass migration and plenty of death. Europe is already on its knees. As to community input, you did no random survey, only the usual voluntary surveys filled out by climate activists who must all have attended that viral wacko tree hug and think a commie grooming academy on the hill with the proposals probably plagiarized from Greta Thunberg's wet dream diary. But who cares, since conveniently with every II there will be a thousand unaccounted damages, but you'll never have to prove anything. Thank you for your comment. Our next person virtually is Grace Stutzen, and then I will go to the members hearing person. Go ahead and press star six. Welcome. Hi everyone. Great to great to hear about this plan. I have a few questions for Santa Cruz local so hopefully you can get some answers on those. One, there was a more ambitious plan to make the city carbon neutral by 2030 and now it's 2035 we're wondering why that is the case. Additionally, what money is available or so opposed to become available to complete the plan. What are some of the costs and benefits of converting the city fleet to electric, for example, are there more cheaper costs with energy conservation. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Our next person in person. Hi there. Welcome. Thank you, mayor and council. I'm here to say a big huge thank you to Tiffany. I've been a member of the climate action task force for, I think three years or more, and I represent 1700 local members of the Santa Cruz Climate Action Network. I think you all know, I don't really need to address this, that the consequences of not addressing climate change would be so much worse in cost, human suffering, etc. than doing what we can now. I thank you for the plan, the thoroughness, the interactions we had on corrections and so forth. It was all very good. And I'm really glad that a couple of people on the council brought up the need for acceleration. So, Martine and Sandy, thank you for bringing that up and we have discussed it. Of course it's difficult, but least being aware of the need is important. So, big thank you to everyone. Thank you for your comment. Hi there. Welcome. Hello, I'm Susan Cavallieri. I'm also a member of the Santa Cruz Climate Action Network. I want to thank you for allowing me to speak and a big thank you to Tiffany for all the work she's done to get this climate action plan in place. Certainly Santa Cruz by itself cannot solve the climate crisis, but every single community and every single person has to take responsibility for their emissions to think about every bit of greenhouse gas emissions that go up into our atmosphere. We are approaching a time of great difficulty. We're already experiencing drought, wildfires, there's talk of mega floods. The cost to our community will be huge and we need to think of that when we consider the cost of this program. Because I believe the cost of climate change will be far greater than the cost of trying to implement this program. And I also agree we need to accelerate it. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. All right. Our next member of the public. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. My name is James Mulherran. I'm a member of the Santa Cruz Climate Action Network, but I'm not on the committee that's been helping Tiffany. I do praise their work and I welcome your support for them, particularly in deciding which things are more important than another. We have a very complex pattern we have to deal with and some things are definitely more important than others. Tiffany knows a lot of those as well as people in the departments, but it's the council that can see that they follow up on them and make sure that the efforts are allocated to where the most bang for the buck occurs. Similarly, the nation faces a similar situation and I'd like to see the council weigh in on the national choices of where our efforts are put because we are nowhere near what needs to be done. Everybody knows that, but we have to choose carefully where our efforts go and the council through its collective process can work on that. Anyhow, thank you, council. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Tiffany. Thank you, committee for the work you've done. Thank you. Thank you. And if you can adjust the microphone to your height, there we go. Thank you. Hi, Mayor and council and staff. First of all, it's so great to be this is my first personal appearance in a while. And I'm thrilled. Although it is a lot of fun to watch from home because I get to blurt things out and I'm trying not to blurt things out here. So anyway, thank you. It's really nice to be here. I believe in climate change. I started two green career training high school programs at environmental education. I spent a lot of my career working with teenagers on environmental education. I have solar panels on my house. I have an on demand water heater. I drive by hybrid cars sparingly and try to walk wherever I can. I try to be mindful. I'm really grateful to the staff for all the work that's gone into this report. I do have a couple of worries. Number one, I really support the idea of electrification of all the new construction. That makes total sense. I worry about the retrofitting of previous construction because I think the unintended consequence may be increased housing costs and we really don't need that right now. So I think we need to be mindful about how that gets rolled out and make sure that there are, you know, extreme incentives for people so that tenants don't end up paying the costs for the retrofitting. The other thing I have to share with you, those of you who know me know that I grew up in Florida. Florida is an all electric state. Everything's electric. Heating, cooling, washing, cooking and as you probably know, Florida is subject to hurricanes, tornadoes and lots of natural disasters and every time that would happen, the power would go out. And it's not just a matter of, oh, I can't make my café latte now. There are people who rely on medical equipment, oxygen devices, power wheelchairs. We're all relying on our cell phones. Now we have electric cars we need to charge. Our electric grid system, as we recently saw with Gavin Newsom asking us to please not charge our electric vehicles. I wish I had one. It shows us that we're not anywhere near ready for prime time and that's with most of our heating and cooling and washing coming from gas right now. So if we turn into an all electric state in the current situation we have with our electric grid, we're in trouble. So that's one of my major worries is that, you know, we're talking about as I read the plan and I'll admit I didn't read all of it but I read a lot of it and I thought it was great. The thing that worried me the most was the idea of removing obsolete natural gas infrastructure. I think that at this point is irresponsible and certainly short-sighted. We cannot possibly consider doing something like that until we have adequate solar in our area, adequate battery storage, adequate free public battery storage. Anyway, thank you. That's basically it. Thank you. Our next member of the public, thank you. Hello, Elise Kasby here. I just want to start out by saying about 26 years ago when I became extremely active in the environmental movement as an environmental activist, I realized we were in deep trouble and that we had limited time to make massive changes in society. So I stopped developing my professional career and I became an activist, a grassroots activist. And I just want to let you know that the dissonance between my actual life as an activist who's trying to work with organizations that are like Climate Action Network and the Romero Institute, I recommend their program, their campaign called Let's Green California. There's just this huge gap between what we need to do and what's happening, even though the most industrious, creative, hard-working people are working to address climate change. So I want to talk about that and I want to use as an example our bus system. Since 2014 when Alex Clifford was brought in by some extremely reactionary elements on our metro board, I could name names but that's not the point here. The point is we all have to really become much more serious and we're almost, I think to a large extent we're out of time for mitigation. The anthropologists I've been listening to, the professionals I've been listening to have told me it's about resilience. We have to help our grandchildren and great-grandchildren and future generations survive, not get burned up in fires, not lose hope and property, let alone the kind of hope that you get out of bed in the morning. I really ask that the council look deeply into ourselves, I look into myself, that you look into yourselves. Are you walking? Are you taking the bus? Do you know that our bus system has been under attack since Alex Clifford was brought in in 2014? The first thing they did was to try to attack the paratransit, then they went after bus routes. The bus is an intersectionality point for workers, people who are trying to reduce climate change, people who don't have money. And you should know what I mean by that, what is intersectionality point in terms of addressing climate change? To just become an incredibly gentrified city while Cynthia Matthews puts herself on the metro board and then she's doing her best to get rid of bus lines because that's really what's happening. The 91 bus between Watsonville, my clock isn't working here, between Watsonville and Santa Cruz almost got trounced. So Tiffany's work and our climate action plan aside, we are absolutely failing as a city. And you all need to talk in bureaucraties and you need to get along with each other and you need to applaud any kind of progress because we're facing such a massive fire-ride onslaught of reactionary actions. But right here in Santa Cruz we have reactionary actions that are trying to take apart our public transit system and make it weaker such as Smith, Cynthia Matthews and others. And they need to be known by our liberal women out there who think she's very progressive. She's not, she's absolutely not. There's much more we need to do. Thank you. Our next member of the public, welcome. Good afternoon. My given name is John Golder, but I go by Yone. I've been doing that for over 20 years. I was the city's first energy inspector. And my career has been passed as sole design. If anybody doesn't know what that means, that means you don't use motors. You don't use electricity to collect the sun's heat. And the best book on that is Design with Climate by the Old Gay Brothers. Make a note of that. It's a wonderful book and it was written before computers. I've been doing that since I was about 10 years old, building a seven room underground shelter and a treehouse up in a mulberry tree with running water, okay, with iron pipe. I started experimenting solar cookers and solar water heaters back in the early 70s. I had a cooker get up to 450 degrees and break the glass and learn how to fix that. I got a patent on solar cookers in 1981. I know how to do all the math. I've been in construction again since I was about eight years old. Actually, since I called into a sandbox. And I have a lot to offer the city, okay. I lost my job at the planning department because I blew the whistle on Pete Katzelberger. That's another story. But I had a full time solar business downtown. And I've designed a lot of houses around Santa Cruz. They're all unique. Virtually everything I've done has either gotten an award or been on a tour. Everything from a 60 foot geodesic dome to a straw bale passive solar adobe mud, 3,000 square foot with a swimming pool. I worked on, I did the calcs for the water heaters at Harvey West under contract when I was working as an energy inspector. They're no longer there. There's many, many ways to do it. And I can, I would like to talk to whoever the city is working on new building design or reviewing new design. I live in Jersey street apartments. Going from 12 units to 50 units, five stories instead of two. All electric. But all the panels on the roof will negate. We won't have any outdoor space at all, which is something I need. Okay. So there's a lot more to it. I'd love to meet with any one of you who are really interested in getting something done because I've done it, I've done every part of construction you can imagine from the, well, let's see, the foundation on that 60 foot geodesic dome, 13 corners up and down. I surveyed that. I was a surveyor too. Got within less than three-eighths of an inch closure on cutting 13 corners. If you know anything about construction, you know how tough that is. So I do, and you'll look at all the work I've done and all the comments I've made, which is mostly about parks and recs and sports fields. All my research is meticulously documented. So, yeah, I'll send you, I'll send you a brief executive summary. Some of the things I can do for you. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Our next member of the public here in person, and I do see you, we have one joined us virtually. So I do see you. I will call on you shortly. Good afternoon. I wanted to thank Council Member Golder for the Best Beach Greenup Team Award. But I agree with the urge to urgently add our greenhouse gas emissions. I drive a Chevy Bolt, which is 100% battery electric car. I have a PV system. I have a solar thermal system that's solar hot water. But it's really important to look at the facts as they are, not as you wish them to be. We do not have nearly 100%, not even close 100% renewable generation. We don't even have adequate generation for our current demand. So when we convert everything to electric without having adequate generation, without having adequate renewable generation, that's wishful thinking. That's putting the cart for the horse. Could you put up my pictures, please? Even worse than that, we don't have a reliable grid. Last week, with air conditioning, we almost blew our grid. You know what a heat pump is? It's an air conditioner that works in reverse. So if everyone goes to heat pump heating and water heating, we're going to have the same problem when we have cold winters. We have public safety power shutoffs. We've got wildfires. We need to look at the facts as they are, not as we want them to be. That is the library's natural gas backup power generator. You want to rip up the gas lines? We're not going to have backup power for the library. Could you show the other picture? You know what we're going to have to do? That is City Hall Campus' diesel backup generator. So we've ripped up the gas lines. Everyone's going to have critical infrastructure. We're going to need diesel. You see those two stacks at the back? Those are vents. We're venting diesel fumes right now into the air. Dr. Weiss-West might say, well, we're going to get lithium ion battery backups. Those aren't going to work in the winter. If we have an extended blackout, those will work for a couple hours. Well, I think that everyone has good goals, but we really need to look at the facts as they are. We don't want to put the cart before the horse. I really think that there's a lot of wishful thinking going on here. Before you rip up the gas lines, what happens when we have clean hydrogen? We can pump those into the gas lines, but not if we rip them up. I recognize that you guys have done a lot of work and everyone has the best intentions. Once again, wishing something to be true doesn't make it so. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comment. Our next member of the public here in person. I didn't bring my own microphone. How's it going? I've noticed that there's a lot of construction going on. There's a down there on Laurel between the metro and the Pacific in front. That thing's a behemoth, but I think that city plans may be more of those. Honeycomb housing, hey, introduce a term. Housing where you've got overpriced, undersized, you can barely fit a family in one of these little things. And I don't have much more to say. I think it's kind of like Barry Swenson, you know what? I'm tired of that guy's profiteer. The guy's really exploiting the community. I don't want to be disruptive. I don't want to ruffle anyone's whatever little nest. I think there's far too much. Look at the tons of carbon dioxide that's going into the air with each of these units and their little parking space. After a while, you just get like, well, you know what, you've got these people in the bench lands and they don't have a place to live. Why don't you build a tower there? Some kind of low-income housing tower in the bench lands. Thank you for your public comment. I will now go to our virtual attendees. There are a couple of hands raised. And the first hand is a phone number ending in 4227. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. Hi there. Hi, good afternoon. This is Beverly Deshaun, the president of the Electric Vehicle Association. And I spent a couple of years working with the Climate Action Task Force. And I'm sorry that I was not able, very sorry that I was not able to see the presentation. I was dealing with some medical issues. But I was having a really hard time getting in. But anyway, I have a few things to say about the Climate Action Plan that I do know from the many hours that I spent reading the draft. I haven't had a chance to read the 550 pages of the actual document. I'm sorry to say. So I don't know what has gotten in from comments that were given in the draft plan. The two most important things to me that I would like to address are that the allowing building to occur, new building without parking is a huge mistake. Just trying to get through downtown over Labor Day weekend was a complete nightmare. I'm putting these very high buildings up with no parking in the city. In a study done or some studies done when we were doing rent control, it is shown that people living in market rate housing, even though it's built along transit, are not using transit. They have cars. And people who have bikes, there's a very few handful of people in the town who have bikes or who have the privilege to live near where they work and can ride their bikes across town. There are very few of those people who also don't have cars, but they have the privilege to have a place to park. It is then a burden to those who have limited ability to find housing to then have to have that be an issue that there's no parking. And if there's reduced parking, how do you decide who gets the parking? It will end up being that people will have to pay for it. And a bill that just was passed by the Senate and the house and we're waiting for the governor. We think it will be passed. SB 1482 is asking for EV readiness in parking spaces. So there needs to be parking spaces for having that. And we're looking at being able to aggregate EVs to supplement the energy. They are mobile battery storage units that can supply energy and will in the very near future be supplying energy to the grid to handle some of the conditions that were being expressed. Another thing I want to quick say is that we should have looked at and I know that it has been being looked at, but it really should be considered very strongly that we get the buildings, the city of the civic, the fire station, the library, have them solarized so that we can build a community resilience hub. That is a microgrid that can island from the grid when the grid goes down in a place safe place for people to come during these climate emergencies. We must do that. Thank you. Thank you very much for your public comment. Our next caller is phone number ending in 4965. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. Welcome. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, my name is Candice Brown. I've lived in Santa Cruz now for over 45 years and also am a member of the Transportation and Public Works Commission. And for many years I was involved in high tech in disaster recovery and business continuity resilience. And one of the things that if I'm going through this executive summary and I apologize that I haven't gone through every single page of the documents, I'm not really seeing a lot about resiliency in the case of extreme disaster. And one of the concerns that I have in regards to infrastructure is that whether or not the levy can meet a 100 year event. And we are stepping back from the Army Corps of Engineer and trying to self certify. And we really need to make sure that we meet those standards, especially in light of some of the recent news about sea rise in the next decade, which could be more than we expect. And so we really need to have additional discussion about a flood plain management plan for downtown and how you manage the infrastructure. Because in many cases with these extreme events, the infrastructure such as generators or the telephone lines as we found out when the bridges were taken out during the floods of the 80s were put in a place that were quite vulnerable. And so we really need to think about our resiliency when it comes to all of these different intersections of infrastructure, the telephone lines, people mentioned battery power or our ability to even get out of a disaster zone and evacuate. And so all of these considerations I don't see as part of the plan and which frankly I thought were going to be a part of it. So it's not just about disaster recovery too. It's also about business continuity. And what that means is that it's not what happens in the first 72 hours, but what happens in the next six months. And that's what you really need to think about. How can this community get through some of these extreme disasters, which could affect us and we certainly saw that with the fires. And it's taking us years now for the community to rebuild. The same would be true if there was a disastrous flood event. And I hope that that will be part of the plan. Thanks so much. Thank you for your comment. Our next member of the public is here in person. Are you here? Do you wish to speak? Can you lower the microphone to your height? There we go. Thank you. My name is Jenny Duchek. Thank you for listening to me. I'm a freelance science writer and a landlord in Santa Cruz. I'm also served on the climate action task force. And I'm a member of the Santa Cruz Climate Action Network and some other organizations. I'm really serious about climate change. I wanted to thank Tiffany. I wanted to thank all of the interns that worked on this plan. I wanted to thank the consultants who worked on this plan. And I wanted to also thank at least two dozen people on the task force who have been there the whole time. Some of them have come and gone. But most of all, I mean, thank Tiffany because you have held it together. And there have been like some of the people here have made some objections, you know, assuming that we haven't thought about those things. But I just want to keep it short and say we have. So I hope you vote for this. Really, thank you. Thank you for your comment. Okay, that concludes public comment here in person and looking to our virtual attendees. I don't see any other hands raised. So at this point in the agenda, I will now bring it back to council for deliberation and action. And in addition to the public comment, we will that we heard there were 11 emails as well sent to city council that city of Santa Cruz dot com. So I'll bring it back to council and I'm looking for a motion. We can have deliberation discussion. I was going to make the motion yet. I just had a couple of comments. So maybe I don't, but someone else can make the motion because I just have a couple, maybe just a couple of questions and a comment. And I'm just wondering how the, you know, I'm looking at the measure around the electrification. I do, I did get, I did talk to some folks too. There seems to be, you know, just concerned that we're not ready to move this fast on the electrification in the building sector. And so I guess my question is, I think the new building makes, you know, things are moving that way. You know, the resources hopefully will be there. People will be able to buy things. We're not quite sure about that, but again, the great issues. So I guess this is identified as a high impact action. It's one that's, you know, it's got a lot of a big percentage of what we hope to achieve is attached to this particular one. But I guess my question, Tiffany, is this one in particular, I feel like really needs that kind of a really transparent roadmap on where we're going to, how we're going to get there. Because I think, you know, some of the other actions maybe are a little bit more personal or they are a little bit more on a regional scale like transportation. But I'm just, this would be one where I would say, you know, we need to develop a roadmap and we need to develop a roadmap with the construction industry and some of those folks who, you know, are out advising their clients right now and people are investing a lot that those who are, you know, managing properties or buying properties or what have you. So I just think it is something that we want to build together with the community to get to success. And so I'm just wondering if instead of making it, putting it in part of the motion, if it could be a direction to staff to sort of come back in one of those updates with a clear roadmap of sort of how we would get there on this one in particular. Yes, as I mentioned, we are developing an existing building electrification roadmap. We've been doing so for a year. The NAACP is our equity partner on that. We did hold four listening sessions in addition to some other engagement we did with large property owners, with the construction industry folks, designers and so forth. And we will be, as I mentioned, we'll be bringing a draft roadmap to council in January. So that is our intention. We certainly need to do this together with all stakeholders that without a doubt. And I'm sorry if that didn't come across, but that is what we're working on and it will take, you know, a lot of engagement, consensus, study, a lot of technical backup for this. So that is coming forward. We have been working on it for a year already. And so I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm recalling now in the presentation, it was a lot to take in. So I was just sort of sorting through everything in my notes. Is there any other communities or sites that are taking on this in this accelerated specifically for, I'm sure some people are working on new, but just on existing conversion. Do you know of any other jurisdictions that are doing that right now? Yes, every jurisdiction that's adopting climate action plan 2.0 is building this in Watsonville, San Luis Obispo throughout the state. This is the direction that the state's going. This is the direction that most cities are going, but it does need to be deliberative. And as I mentioned, it needs to be phased. There's not going to be a requirement next year that folks need to rip out natural gas lines or convert things that they just installed. So I think that when we have that conversation in January, when we have that conversation with the community between now and then, you know, we have to put together a solid plan that we can get behind. Thank you. Yeah, so then I don't have any changes. Okay. Happy to support a motion from another. So we have a motion by Vice Mayor Watkins to sit on the, uh, sorry. I'm sorry. Um, council member Myers made a motion. No, I didn't make a motion. Oh, okay. Thank you. Okay. I'll make the motion. Okay. Make the motion. The right motion. The recommendation is to adopt the resolution. So I'll make a motion to, um, adopt, um, the resolution adopting the initial study negative declaration and approving the climate action plan 2030, including the California environmental quality quality act project. I will second that. Okay. Council member Myers made a motion seconded by Vice Mayor Watkins. And, um, now I would like to go to comments. Yeah. I won't make any more comments. Um, I thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um, but I did just want to follow up because we got, uh, one of our public commenters was from Tana Cruz local and had some questions. And, um, I don't know if now is an appropriate time to try to get them answered. Um, or if we want to follow up, but, and I, I've got, I captured two of them and I can't remember the, I have them as well. And, and, and thank you for bringing that up because my, my question and comment was to make sure that we advertise where people can find answers to their questions and how they can input. Where will that be? Uh, for what questions that they may have subsequent to this meeting. I mean, they can always email me, uh, climate action at cities, Santa Cruz.com. I'm very responsive to questions. I'm sorry. I did not get that public correspondence from, uh, that you mentioned there were four questions. Um, yeah. So, um, um, the more ambitious plan by 2030 is now 2035. The person that, yeah. And what money to complete the plan, electric feet, uh, fleet. Yeah. There never has been a plan for carbon neutral by 2030. So that I think is misinformation. It was a part of the discussion early on, but that was never anything that we have brought forward. Um, I do believe that I addressed implementation. We do have a funding and financing tool for all of our measures. Um, we have in place this regional climate project working group, internal grants, uh, team working on this right now. Um, and then the last piece about fleet electrification, we are working right now on our fleet electrification roadmap as well. Um, and we have done, as I mentioned, $5 million just in investment on EV charging infrastructure and, uh, fleet. And so we are well on our way. Um, you know, I will say that center coast community energy often asks our staff to present at their meetings because we are ahead, not to say we don't need to do a lot more because we do, but we are pushing public works is pushing on this fleet electrification. And I think that this plan that will come forward will really give us something actionable so that we can make our targets. Thank you. You're welcome. So climate action at city of Santa Cruz.com. Yes, indeed. Thank you. Are there any other comments? Okay. May we have a roll call vote? Council member is Calentary Johnson. Aye. Boulder. Aye. Um, Cummings is absent. Brown. Aye. Aye. Vice mayor Watkins. Aye. Mayor Brunner. Aye. That motion passes unanimously with council member Cummings absent. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for your support. Okay. So, um, it's 10 to five. It looks like we will have a break until oral communications at 5 30. So we will return at 5 30 p.m. for oral communications. Thank you. Okay. Is the city clerk ready? Does everyone have their cameras on? Okay. Good morning or good evening. Good evening. Welcome to our 5 30 p.m. session of the September 13, 2022 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call roll. Council member Calentary Johnson. Aye. Boulder. Aye. Cummings is absent. Brown. Aye. Vice mayor Watkins. Aye. Mayor Brunner. Present. Thank you. Next up on our agenda is oral communications. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on today's agenda. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if you wish to comment during oral communications, now is the time to call in. Instructions will be on your screen. If you are interested in addressing the council, you may raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone. Or selecting raise hand in the webinar controls of your computer. You will then have two minutes to speak. Members of the public who are joining us in person, you will have two minutes to speak. We request that you sign in to assure correct spelling of your name in the meeting minutes. However, it is not required. Okay. I am going to go out to our virtual attendees. To see if there are any hands raised. I'm seeing two hands. The first name is Sabina. Go ahead and press star six to unmute your hands. Go ahead and press star six to mute your hands. Go ahead and press star six to mute your hands. Thank you for taking my oral comment. I appreciate you making time at each meeting to do this. I was calling in about, I was looking at meetings that happened previously in the August 9th meeting at the council on the closed agenda. There was an item about 333 locus tree. And so I wanted to ask a couple questions about that. I'm not sure why it was on the closed agenda. I don't know. My understanding is that two former mayors of Santa Cruz, Cynthia Matthews and Donna Myers will likely be profiting from this sale of this property to the city. And I think there needs to be some public accountability about that. And at least transparency about that, which is why I asked that in future discussions about this sale take place in open session instead of closed. I have questions about what it's being sold for. My understanding is about the economic development part of the city. And so I'd like to know if it's going to be used for housing. Also, just like a reminder, we're really behind on our RHMA requirements for very low income housing. And so if the city is going to be buying what looks like a pretty expensive piece of property and two former mayors will be profiting off of that sale, that it should be used for very low income housing. And at the very least it should be talked about in open session and not behind closed doors. Anyways, thank you so much. I'd really love to hear more about this. Thanks. Thank you for your comment. Our next member of the public joining us virtually is the name I am watching you. Yeah, I don't know before I start, I'm not sure I understand the timer is at the three minutes, but you said two minutes and I don't get it. What's going on with that? Okay. That was two minutes. Okay. Anyway, you know, you just the public the last two meetings, you know, you made it two minutes and you ended 10 minutes early both times. I mean, you're counting people, you say you have two people want to speak. I mean, come on, you should do three minutes and do the math. It's not so hard. Anyway, since I won't be able to finish this anyway, I'll just get as far as I can. The latest queer crusader flag version overstayed. Once again, the open center May 2020 resolution to display it on public property. My question that then stated purpose was to honor and support the LGBT community as a community. I think it's important to remember that sexual behavior preference or gender change fantasy doesn't rate this unique honor. And it really is a queer crusading promotion of a moral opinion that it's not so different than if you endorse the religion and leftism is a kind of religion both in principle and constitutional endorsed by the government and beyond your authority and purpose. Your authority ends with what is illegal behavior, legal, illegal behavior, not morals. But you know, you have a sense of the legal sexuality or the world's 我們 is a lack of privacy. The溜 is a loss of knowledge. And the issue of ownership is creating bias and oppression and violence. I think that's a great question. frequently occurring biological functions are not so different than taking a coat, deserving neither order nor support, let alone by the government. You wouldn't hoist a steaming poop emoji flag on the Civic Center, would you? I talked once to a millennial about the moral issues of this movement, and he said it wasn't about morals, it's just sex. I questioned him whether he thought sex with animals with processes to your neighbor's wife was just sex. It's gonna be really good, but we'll just talk to you. Thank you for your comment. Next up, I have hand raised Laura Nadel. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. Tough act to follow. Anyway, I am because I'm the owner of the Russian downtown, and we have these wonderful patios that we have put during COVID to alleviate and create space and promote health for everyone that wants to enjoy restaurants and bars, et cetera. So I'm asking that we have the audio permits put onto the agenda in October, and I'm also hoping that we can ask for an extension that's longer than December or through March, mostly because even though I've gotten lots of help from California and the federal government, I am struggling, and I call it my most expensive hobby right now, and I've been fortunate enough to retain staff and retain customers, but I'm not financially in a place to do all the things that are probably requested to move into permanence. Additionally, I have one more point, and I'm just not a public speaker. Anyway, I just appreciate if we could get this put on the agenda and oh, I'm hoping that the city can take in with us and help us through this process because I have no idea what I'm doing. So I appreciate your time and hopefully you can add this to October. Thank you for your comment. I will now go to members of the public joining us in person. Welcome, please step forward to the microphone and make sure the microphone is at your height. That's fine, okay. Thank you, welcome. Hi, thank you for having me. I'm Ian McCrae, I own a Whose Island Grill and Tiki Room here in downtown Santa Cruz. First of all, I wanna thank you, the city for what you've done for us for the past few years during COVID, you've been an amazing partner and we probably couldn't have done it without what you were able to do for us. And I appreciate it. We've been there for 16 years now and I think we've had a pretty good relationship with the city and we believe we brought something to the community as well. We always employ about 70 people. I think our, I don't know if our tax figure generated revenues, but I'm sure they're significant in what we've done with our Mahalo Monday program over the past number of years. We've given over $200,000 to over 50 local nonprofits. We would like to see Cathcart kept as it is for another year for a number of reasons. I mean, it would be great. It's been massively, massively popular with everyone and it's certainly been a saving grace for us. I mean, right now we'll have a 40 minute wait for outside and no wait for inside because people's dining preference is so dramatically changed. So I understand the fire department has some issues and Hula's a certainly great appreciation of all our first responders. There was some talk of turning Cathcart one way, the other way, which might satisfy the fire department that I don't know if that's gone anywhere. We certainly don't want to impede anybody's access to time and the emergency services, but it seems to have worked so far in the last couple of years and we're hoping that it can continue. We could add on to our current park level, but that's gonna take time and money and resources. Is that? That's time. Okay, we've also hired a traffic engineer to help us the suggestion of the city. So appreciate your time, guys. Thank you so much for your comment. The next person in public, please step forward. Thank you. Hi, my name Curtis Rillefort and I'm here to represent Follow Your Heart Action Network of Grassroot Organization, Sense 05. I've been running around Santa Cruz doing fundraisers by promoting peace, love, kindness, and I'm doing it loudly because when I'm quietly and nobody hearing me. And now you gave me the key to the city twice. You gave me awards several times. It made me feel good about myself. It made me feel like I was doing the right thing. Now all of a sudden, I drive this truck delivering food, clothes, building material to the farm workers out there in Watsonville. I give to the homeless down on that camp. I give to the homeless all over town. Money, too. I bring joy to the streets. The majority is with me. But there's these red necks that's coming out the wood. And I know how to protect myself. I went to the DA's office. I asked them, how do I protect myself out here? Move. Man, I was there first at six o'clock to get a parking place. I went to, I reported this guy pulling my signs up, throwing them into my leg. I went through all the steps of doing that. The lawyer backed out. The DA talked to me like I was knee high. Racism is off the hook here. Yes, Santa Cruz. And I am standing strong with what I'm doing since oh five and I'm unstoppable. But I need to tell you all that when you have my funeral, will you show up? Because I am not taking no mess off of these red necks. The Mexicans invite me. The black people in their neighborhood invite me. The people downtown invite me. The white people coming up to me and calling me nigger this, go back to Africa. Dude, back up. I got a reason for doing what I'm doing. The United States even is telling me, come back. Yeah, man, I needed to tell somebody this because your counsel and I think counsel mean, come here to get some counseling on what I'm doing out there. Thanks for listening. Thank you for your comment. Our next member of the public here in person. Welcome. Hi there. My name's Nathan Van Zandt and this is my business partner, Brandon Padilla. We own Shani Shack Brewing down on 138 Fern Street in the Harvey West area. We've been in business for about six years and it's, even though it seems like it's, we're always crossing that two to three year mark because every two to three years, things change. The first time was with COVID and at first we had to renegotiate how we did business and had to sell all of our beer out to the public. And so we had to make some changes and we retooled our brewery and made it so that we could sell cans to the public. We had a drive-through service going on. And then when we were able to do outdoor dining, we immediately applied for the temporary COVID permits, got a tent outside. It almost doubled our patio and it really made it so that we could have kind of a similar table count to what we had going on between outdoor and indoor before. Since then, our indoor space is almost non-existent. We've had, like I said, retool and so we've taken up real estate inside our building in order to be able to make room for pallets and shipping and cans and different holding tanks. But we've also seen that the outdoor seating has really been a boom to the business and to the public. Everybody seems to love what we're doing. And I would go as far as to say that every single business, every single restaurant and bar that has outdoor seating is benefiting from that. And that's one thing that's benefiting all the tax dollars that runs this city as well as all the people that visit this city. So I'm urging you guys to put this item on the agenda for the next city council meeting. It's very important. We can't go backwards. We must retain these outdoor seating areas. They're vitally important to our business. Furthermore, it's holding up, last point. Furthermore, it's holding up our abilities to move forward with kind of pulling more permits for future proposed developments and things that we might be doing to be able to rectify our situation. That is time. Thank you so much for your comment. All right. Our next member of the public, welcome. Hello everyone. Max Trigliotto, I purchased the old watering hole, 2405 Mission Street. West side, we've rebranded Mission West Bar now. My partner couldn't make it, but I've met with some of you guys and I appreciate what we've done on the outdoor patios. Obviously we want to keep it going for multiple reasons, but mostly I want to offer two considerations as we do move forward. Big one first is temporary continuance. While it's greatly appreciated, I think we have to be kind of thinking about from a business point of view of little things like, my plants are dying, do I reinvest in getting more plants? Seating is in terrible shape. How much money do business owners continue to put in with another two months or six months or even a year? So I'm just hoping that we're kind of thinking about some of that stuff. And then the second part is, let's say we do find a path to permanency. From the research I've done so far, it's feeling tough to do that with some of the kind of black and white issues that planning has brought up. We've already spoke. Thank you. I'm really hoping we can kind of work together with planning to make sure that this doesn't become just a lose-lose situation. We gotta find some middle ground and that's financially on, not just the business owners, but we have to consider the landlords, right? The property owners. Are they gonna be willing to help out? Maybe, maybe not. But if we can find middle ground, it's gonna be a huge benefit for the entire city. So that's it. Appreciate it guys. Thank you for your comment. Our next member of the public. Welcome. So enough fairy tales. Where are the Benchlands folks to go? Today I saw Benchlands survival tents and property trashed for an estimated 30 residents. They faced trespass arrested noon today, phase one of the reseed grass plan for the San Lorenzo Benchlands. City mangler Matt Huffager gave us a cheery report earlier today. Phase one is one of six phases. Phase two is quickly to follow the new demolition deadline noon next Monday, September 19th. How many people were driven away today? How many actually got any real accessible in legal city shelter? I'm sure that Matt can answer that. These numbers are strangely missing from the mangler's earlier report. How many? What are the numbers? Why the silence? Why are these numbers always missing from Larry and Wally's and Lee Butler's past reports and today's non-report report? We must ask this key question and then demand a real answer. Again and again, we get, we tell, we get straight answers. Only one individual, Morgan Pax, was of those bullied away today was driven to the outlet camp, the outlook camp. One, one single person today got lodging with so many forced to flee. Do we watch the deportation of hundreds of poor unhoused people, many disabled and elderly, and do nothing? How about an honest accounting? What's really available? How much of it is the court required indoor shelter? Community members come tomorrow to the Water Street entrance to the benchlands at 5.30 PM, demand honest answers, act on them, find other roads through the courts and direct action to stop these sickening sweeps. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Our next member of the public. I, oh, there's my pen. It's always great to find your pen. My name is Elise and I am also here to speak about the people at the benchlands to you all. I'm gonna try to be inventive because I know you know my politics and so you almost know what I'm gonna say. So a very wonderful document that I think many of us are still fond of is begins with we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men, let's just modify that pronoun for now to say that all people or persons are created equal. And I just want you to know I'm as classist as anybody. I am full of classism, class prejudice, materialism. I love comforts. I have all kinds of things that I could go on about. What I'm really trying to say is this is human. This is human to have flaws such as to be classist or to only care about our own comfort or to not wanna deeply care enough about another person. And so I'm here to say that I have been investigating these camps. I've been down there a lot. I've been getting to know people, going to meetings. I've been following Food Not Bombs and eating at Food Not Bombs a lot, partly because of a very restricted budget and I have a lot of, I have a dearth of job hunting skills I'm working to address. So I'm just asking that people understand that many of the people at the benchlands are outright, elderly, outright, physically disabled people. If you go there, you will see it. The drug use I also believe is a side effect or an outcome of issues that are related to human welfare and health, such as growing up in poverty, growing up with no parents. I'm asking to please honor a constitution, honor our people, our citizens don't play whack-a-mole anymore. Find out why the armory isn't working and help us problem solve. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Our next member of the public here in person. Welcome. Hello, I'm Brandon from Shani Shack. I just wanted to come up since I'm here and take one more opportunity to just emphasize how great outdoor dining is in Santa Cruz. When I moved here about 17 years ago, there was very few places to eat outside and it was kind of cool you would go there because that was the only place to eat outside and now since then and since COVID, there's just so many places to eat outside and I think it is really a great face for our city and it brings a lot of people here and it provides a lot of good experiences and I know from our business that every seat is another way, it's more, every seat is sales. So and those are tax revenues also being generated for the city too. So we just, yeah, I just want to emphasize some kind of a decision on the parking, extending, if there's no decision that can be made at least extending it for a longer period of time would be really beneficial I think for everybody. And then just, this is a little bit different, but one fear or things that I'd be concerned about is that there's a lot of occupancy and bathroom issues that are tied to occupancy issues. So if people are being able to expand their patios, if those issues are gonna trigger building another bathroom or a whole bunch of building things, then it's gonna make it cost prohibitive for people to do it. So that's just something to put out there but yeah, any kind of decision or hopefully a permanent solution sometime soon would be great. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Are there any other members of the public who wish to comment for oral communications? And there are no other members virtually. Thank you for coming out. I would like to just address maybe some of the comments that were brought forward. And I've met and talked with many of the businesses, some of you here regarding outdoor dining and I think it's, you have no problem knowing that all of us have supported outdoor dining. We've approved outdoor dining, outdoor dining will continue, that's not the question. I think the struggle, and I'm thankful that you have come to share your individual challenges and I really hope that you will continue working with city staff who have been working with each of you because each of you has unique specifications for your business and we will continue advocating for businesses to make this as easy and supportive as possible. So I know that we have two separate outdoor dining considerations, those on private property and those in the city right of way, for example, a street, parklet and there's different processes there. And so I would like to just acknowledge all of you. I know it's really hard, really scary and there is current efforts and process underway in terms of at the city attorney's office in terms of what we're all working on and staff working on supporting you all. Outdoor dining will continue, your individual needs are continuing to be worked on, continue sharing where you're struggling, reach out to us and continue communicating with your city staff person what your needs are and I'm always available and I know everyone here but I would like to ask our city manager to comment on that, thank you. Thank you mayor and council and community members that came out to share their concerns regarding the future of the outdoor dining program. So do you want to share that staff have been working diligently on this? Rebecca unit with her economic development department has been running point and we do plan on bringing a proposal to the council the second meeting in October. That proposal will also include a recommendation to extend what's currently in place through March of next year. Just allow some time for businesses to plan and have some certainty in terms of what the requirements will be. I know that's part of what's kind of increasing anxieties we move into winter and the holidays this year. So that is part of the proposal coming forth on the 27th and if there's any other specific questions we have Rebecca here this evening as well. Oh wonderful. I will hand it over to, is this related? Yes. Okay, council member Brown. So thank you for the update. I also have talked with a number of business owners who are concerned and have a myriad set of concerns, a lot of it related to this question about investments, you know, making investments on that path to permanency and I just wanted to, I guess ask why March? It feels to me like that's a very short turnaround time given what I am hearing from business owners. And so I'm, you know, just in terms of them getting access to equipment and things to make, you know, to be able and resources to make investments it just feels like a very short period of time. And so I'm wondering if we can talk about perhaps a longer extension. And if not, why not? I don't want to get too far into the substance of this. I understand it's not agendized but I didn't want to just bring that up when it comes in October because it's a concern I think that is shared by members of the council maybe all I don't know. And certainly by me and council member Cummings also who couldn't be here today. So just wondering. That question has come up. Yeah, I appreciate the question. Council member Brown and we also are sensitive to and acknowledge that these outdoor dining moving on to a path to permanency represents some significant investments for these businesses and the need to have a clear path forward and what that timeline looks like. So I will defer to Rebecca. I see she's jumped on screen and I'm sure has some thoughts to add. Yeah, thank you. Hi, Rebecca unit. Welcome. Good evening, Rebecca unit. I'm a development manager. I've been overseeing our outdoor dining programs. So in terms of the question about the timeline, we do as Matt mentioned and Mayor mentioned there are two sort of tracks here with the parklets and the private property spaces. And so our intent with doing an extension through March is to really continue to work towards that path to permanency. And I think that for the parklets, what will we bring forward to you in October? We're really hoping to get that off the ground and up and running. And so with the private property, we're also hoping to be able to provide a recommendation to you for review. That would be something that is easier to streamline forward. So I think that the timeline for an extension for that could be another consideration and something that we can discuss when we bring it forward. We are pulling those recommendations together. So it's interesting balancing these two, the needs of the parklet operators and what that code entails is very different than the private property spaces and some of the code issues and rules that the businesses brought forward this evening as well. So I think there are some different timelines that can be impacted. And so that's something that we'll bring forward to you with a little bit more detail when we come in October. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca unit. And I would also like to just briefly address there was another comment regarding the Benchlands. And I just wanted to direct everyone to our city website cityofsantacrews.com slash homelessness. And there is a lot of information on there in terms of areas around homelessness, getting homelessness services about our action plan and any updates. And there was one that the comment referred to zone one in and also your update referred to zone one in the phased closure at the Benchlands. And I believe there was 19 people in that, but information is on the website for anybody who would like to know more. There is also contact on the website as well. Okay, go to our next item in the agenda. Let me pull that up. Item number 27, public hearing for amendments to the objective standards. The recommendation for this item is to continue to the meeting of November 15th, 2022. Are there any council members who have questions on this? Okay, I'm now looking for a motion then to continue this item council member Brown. I actually have a motion that I'd like to make that involves continuing, but because there was, my understanding is because there was a date certain that I can make an amendment to this motion. And so I did put this together and just wanted to put it out there. And so I'm gonna make this motion. I believe, I'll just very quickly say I believe that while time is clearly of the essence, asking this council to make this decision and to put it off until November till right before the council is going to be changing in terms of membership, it makes sense to me to aim for doing this with a new council since we are continuing it. My preference would be to get it done, but that's not happening. So, and then the other items here that you can read through, which I'm happy to say as well, are intended to try to capture some of the concerns that I heard about community engagement in this process and the kind and the kind of the quality of community engagement, the depth of community engagement, as well as concerns about missing an opportunity to use the objective standards to increase our affordable housing stock, which is where the crisis lies as we know. So, I've included some additions to the motion that I'm making now. And those are to direct staff to return at the time when this item is considered with draft ordinance amendments that include the following provisions. No design permit, public hearings for projects proposing no variation from objective standards, only for projects for 25 units or less. ZA hearing, a zoning administrator's hearing shall be required for projects from 26 to 50 units and no more than five variations. And a PC planning commission hearing should be required for projects with over 50 units or more than five variations. To direct staff to return at the time this item is considered with ordinance amendments to require for all zoning districts proposed for amendment approval by right for housing and mixed use projects will be allowed only for developments with three to 50 units and that a special use permit shall be required for developments of over 50 units. Direct staff to return at the time this item is considered with the draft ordinance amendments for section 24.16020, our inclusionary ordinance to say that projects with a base density of 50 or more units shall have a 25% inclusionary requirement and projects with a base density of 100 or more units shall have an inclusionary requirement of 30% and then direct staff to coordinate a series of public meetings to consider different components of the objective standards before making a final decision on the recommended ordinance amendments. I will just say with respect to the inclusionary recommendations, these were recommended by the planning commission. They did not receive full consideration and were dismissed and kind of not really included in a meaningful way in what came to us at our last meeting. And so I'd like to see that explored and discussed at the council. So that's my motion. And I believe I'll just leave it there. Since we're not talking substance, this is merely to get these items, hopefully back into consideration for a substantive discussion in the future. I'm gonna just quickly ask our city attorney. I was waiting to see if the motion got a second. Okay. If it does, I think you'll need to take public comment on the motion before you vote on it. Okay, so we have a motion by council member Brown. There's a lot in there. Has everyone had a chance to digest what's in there? There's a lot of components. Okay, so I will ask if anyone would like to second the motion and then we can have discussion and a vote. I'm happy to second the motion so we can just have a brief discussion about this. Tony? Before you vote, I would recommend that you open the meeting to public communication. Great. You can have a discussion and then if there's an interest in proceeding with the vote on the motion, then I would recommend that you accept public comment. I'm a little concerned that a person who reviewed the agenda report likely would have shown up to speak on the motion. Obviously it's not here. There's a lot of public interest in this issue, so it feels like the public has not had an opportunity to anticipate what's before you right now. Yes, and neither have we. I was feeling the exact same way. I just did not prepare, because I was not preparing for this to come before us, so I don't feel like I have the background or knowledge at this time, other than what we previously saw to make a really thoughtful vote on this. So I personally am not a community and I think there would be a lot of community members who would like to speak to this item or this proposal had it been identified. Council Member Myers and then Council Member Brown. Yeah, I would just echo that as well and I think that we got over 100 letters in our last round. We were, I think, starting into the 11 o'clock hour, 10 o'clock hour, I actually appreciated the fact that we took to heart several of the things that were brought up and I think the extra time for the staff to do the extra work in the community is really, really important and the details in this motion really put us into places that we just, we have not had those conversations and so I'm not supportive only because of the amount of civic direction here and I would really like to just see our community have the chance to really get on the ground with our staff, walk in their neighborhoods, look at what we're talking about and be able to bring that back at the November date. So thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Brown. I just wanna say, I understand that this is a lot to be putting on the table here and just to be clear, the reason I'm doing it is because if it is not part of the discussion, if it's not agendized as part of the discussion and our next meeting, there won't be any place to have that conversation with the community, it just won't be part of a recommendation. So I'm trying to put it on the table to talk about in the future. That was my intention. But I understand that that's not something that the council majority is interested in at the moment. Yeah, go ahead, Vice-Cheryl. Just because it may not be agendized and I know that our planning staff is out in the community doing the work, it doesn't necessarily mean that that precludes these potential recommendations coming forward or being proposed at a future time, is that correct? That's right and I thought I heard Council Member Brown say and it looks to me from just reading the motion that this is similar to the recommendations that were made by the Planning Commission but were not part of the staff's recommendation, although they were reflected to some extent in the Agenda Report as well as in the Planning Commission minutes from the June and July meetings that were held. So the subject matter I think is in front of the council and when it comes before you, you could adopt one or more of these provisions as part of the next council discussion. I guess my concern is, and I'm not concerned about the substance or the content of this, really the process is more what my concern is without public input here. Thank you. One moment. We're gonna just take a minute here. Thank you. Okay, so technically we have a first and a second on this motion. So at this point I will take it out to public comment. Is there anybody, let's see, in our virtual world that would like to comment on this motion? Again, I am not seeing, can someone tell me if there's any virtual attendees? Yeah, are you there? Yes, welcome. Yeah, I really thought that the public would be allowed to address all of the standards in this meeting, but as far as what is amendment, so those items three there with the 25 and 30% infusionary requirement seems a little excessive. The developer last meeting kind of said, wow, that's a lot, even at 20. So that's something to consider. May I speak to the ordinance over there for the standards in general? The objective standards in general, I have some other comments. No, this is on the motion that is before us. Does that conclude your comment? Yeah, well, I followed my hand, I thought, but okay. Okay, thank you. Okay, do any members of the public wish to comment? Well, mind putting the amendments that are being proposed up there, please, for the motion. I could see that when I talk. The first part is about, if you could put that up there, I'd really appreciate it, so I can, pardon? Okay, the first part seems to make it easier for buildings that are 25 units or less to not have to go through a more extended red tape bureaucratic process because they're not really making those kinds of changes. And I just wanna say that essentially, we do not have enough inclusionary units in Santa Cruz. We are becoming an incredibly wealthy enclave. And these moves must be met with really sincere attempts to allow people who don't have jobs that can even afford affordable housing units to live here. It's adding to our emissions and climate change problems. It's adding to all kinds of displacement by workers and we need low income units. So what I see in Ms. Brown's attempt here to include this in the next city council meeting is a way to encourage communities discussion that is really, truly about getting at the issue of actually having inclusionary units, especially in the larger development, included. And that's what we need. We need more housing and we need more housing for people who are not wealthy or land rich and so forth. And I really think this is an excellent idea to really enrich and broaden that discussion, to have topics to discuss and to reach out to the public about. And that's exactly what we need right now and not to keep it vague and kind of ambiguous and moving in the same direction where we don't get the inclusionary units that we need. And so I'm asking that the practicality of this be utilized and that you vote to include this because I think it gives us the talking points that we need and it provides actually a really good schemata to start to really problem solve and get actual affordable units built and possibly other things that, as a member of the public who would like to know more about this language, I just strictly have not had the time. I'm still working to get to understand what objective standards are and the inclusionary requirement. I'm sure there's many people in the public who know this better than I do, but I'm just really asking that you take this as a seer attempt by council member Brown to help us really change and address these problems and make sure they happen, they occur. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Another member of the public, are you speaking to this motion? That's fine. Welcome. My name is John Orion Golder. The inclusionary incentive for high density is an incentive for high density and there's only a handful of developers who can build these buildings and make money on them. And this all started, Santa Cruz started when they decided to have the green belt and refused to annex any more land in 1979. And the land prices at that time, I came to hear Santa Cruz in 78, you could buy an acre that you could develop for 125,000. Anybody know what the price of land is per acre now? Cause I do. It's 2.4 million and that's what the city paid for those properties over. On Front Street, and that didn't include demolition. How can you build an affordable building, affordable housing with land at that price? Now, if you wanna check that, and I checked that one of the best realtors in the county, his first name is Collie, he wrote a column called Bulls and Horses about the kind of offers he were getting on housing in Santa Cruz. This was single family residential, but offers 200% of the asking price for cash. COVID showed that people could work remotely. Why should they go drive over the hill? And I three of my sons work over the hill or live over the hill, when they can live in a nice house in Santa Cruz and their pay makes it affordable. So you need to check out the 125 to 2.4 million. Check out the history of high-rise projects in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, New Jersey. And say, because that's exactly what you're doing now. When people are upstairs, all the bad behavior happens in the elevators, in the stairways, in the very confined spaces around the building. It's subject to everybody's view. Read about the death of Kitty Genoves in the high projects in New York made the headlines. 72 people heard it, nobody called the police. You got 2,000 acres open space, you can't develop, you know what that cost us? 42,000 dollars an acre, but the state paid for it with a bond issue. As far as the homeless garden going in, no due diligence for 23 years. The master plan was completed for Pogon up in 1998. I read all 251 comments. They never did their due diligence. I was in front of that task force, I tried to get on it. They didn't pay any attention and they knew about the, they didn't find out about the ski range until 2018. The book came out in 2011, you can look at the photo and see it's a ski range. You could ask nobody did their due diligence and now the city's picking up the tab with some help from the state for more than a quarter of a million dollars. All right, who's managing this? You don't have any rangers anymore, nobody, this city is the worst land manager in the city. I guarantee it. And I've done the research to improve it. I'll talk about Depot Park and what you did with the ball field, what you did with the lease and the remaining little building. Thank you for your comment. Oh, I got 12, oh, I'm 13, 14 seconds. All right, well. You're over. All right. Thank you. I said my say. I will now go to members of the public joining us virtually. Phone number ending in 4965, we're taking public comment on the motion made by council member Brown. Go ahead and press star six to unmute. Am I online? Yes, you are. Okay, hi. Again, this is Candice Brown. And I just want to thank Sandy for bringing us forward because there was a very hurry discussion at the planning commission, which is worth you all listening to because you'll have time to do that with the video, but we have to push forward with more inclusionary. And it's not that it hasn't been done in the past. I believe that the Brantza 40 Commons, which some people call the breakers, I think it was 69 units. And with some variances, they got a 25% inclusionary. So it's been done in the past. I think it's been also done in Watsonville. I know it's at least done at 20%, maybe 25%. So we need to look at these examples to see what we can do to improve the inclusionary percentage. And it's not just for low and very low, but for also moderate. So it includes various income levels because even moderate income, one of my colleagues here would be considered workforce housing level and she can't even afford to find anything in Santa Cruz. So it's really important to include that also. I also wanted to thank the staff for reconsidering public hearings. I know in the past, for instance, with 708 Water Street, there was three community meetings and the success of that project was really as a result of the tremendous input that was provided by some hardworking community members that provided input on design, parking, setbacks, the courtyard and also not affecting the view shed from above and also even the roof itself with the child roof and honoring the historical context of Grand Seporty was all provided as input from the community and also the access points in and out of the property. Otherwise, it would have looked like a prison. That's how the regional design was. So, and they were gonna have half the parking and we did parking studies of our own and the manager even admitted that without that parking, they would have been short parking and it would have been dangerous for caretakers, caregivers to come into that without the parking there. So again, public hearings are critical and people have great ideas. I'm really sad to see that some of the people in planning commission, some developers and staff seem to have it in here. I just don't like a public input when we've had so many great successes because of it. Again, thank you for Sandy for bringing this forward and also I just wanted to mention there are some elements of the objective standards which will have significant impact even when it comes to heritage trees for instance, the sidewalk width. You need to go through this more carefully and without more careful input. Looking at the different components, I think you'll not realize the full impact which would even affect some of your climate action plans. So, please do consider this for folks seriously. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Our next member of the public is Brian Shields, NorCal Carpenters Union. Go ahead and press star six. Welcome. Well, my name's Brian Shields. I'm a field rep for Carpenters Local 505 located in Aftos. I wanted to take this opportunity to just talk about the need for labor standards. It's fantastic that the city is absolutely going after more inclusionary housing but you need to think about who it is that's gonna be able to afford to live there. A lot of times the jobs in Santa Cruz come down to recreation, real estate or recreation, retail or restaurants. And a lot of those jobs, unfortunately, don't pay enough. So, the inclusion of labor standards on a amendment like this would be, I think a needed benefit. It would provide jobs that where people could actually afford to live where it is that they're building. So, I don't wanna take too much of your time. Thank you very much for listening. I hope you have a good day. Thank you for your comment. And then we have Sabina. You can go ahead and press star six. Hi there. I just wanna make a quick comment that raising these inclusion standards is super important. We're in a really intense housing crisis and when at oral communications, you have multiple people coming up and asking where people in the benches are gonna go, what are we gonna do? And then it's just these giveaways to developers instead. Like there needs to be affordable housing. We have a lot of market rate housing. Please increase those inclusionary standards and thank you for your time. Thank you. And we have one member here in person. Did you want to comment on this motion? Hi there. Man, my name is James Holloman. I live in town. I wanted to support all efforts towards inclusionary housing of this kind. The major step forward of the city and it may not go far enough, but at least it's a major step forward. I'm not sure I understand procedurally. I was also here to talk about the objective standards act, not just this motion. So should I wait? Is that the way it's going? I didn't understand procedurally. Yes, right now we are taking public comment just on the motion. And then we'll get to the other act. The other item's been continued or is recommended to be continued. Okay, do we have a date yet? November 15th. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so thank you for all the public comment. Thank you, Council Member Brown. I would just quickly like to call if Lee Butler is here. Loud and clear inclusionary unit. If you can just speak to that element and how it relates for folks to understand and any future as we vote on whether to continue or not or the November 15th, what's happening in the meantime? Sure, thank you, Mayor Brunner. Leave out their director of planning and community development. And I'd be happy to speak to that. First off, I want to be clear that the recommendation that staff has related to inclusionary units and maintaining the 20% of projects being affordable to individuals at 80% of AMI our recommendation is to continue that because we wholeheartedly believe that that will produce more inclusionary housing than the higher ratio that was supported by the Planning Commission and also more market rate housing as well. So that is why we have that recommendation in place. We have detailed that in three pages in the August 23rd agenda report. We also provided a staff report to the Planning Commission that was attached to the August 23rd report that goes into detail related to that. And we will provide additional information when we come back to the city council that speaks to not only the reasoning behind that but also the fact that the number of locations throughout the state that have inclusionary rates that high, we are already at one of the highest inclusionary rates in the entire state. And so we'll have a whole series of additional information related to why we are recommending the existing 20% inclusionary. And then if you ask why it's important to move forward with it expeditiously, I do also wholeheartedly believe that it's important to move forward with this expeditiously and we regularly have projects coming in. We had one today where a applicant was reaching out to our team and was saying, they're planning on submitting a preliminary review in December. And those preliminary reviews lock developers into, if they meet the SB 330 requirements, they lock developers into the standards that are in place right now. And so really we believe that it is in the best interest of the community as a whole to have the city provide more controls through these objective standards that can help improve the design of buildings, the designs of sites and of materials that are being used. And so I wanted to provide that context and I would just also point out with respect to the motion, there were several things about the options for hearings and we're happy to bring forward different options. We had mentioned that in the agenda report to the council for this meeting that we will be coming back with options related to that. So I'm happy to answer any other questions that you may have. Thank you for, thank you for that. At this time then, if there are no further questions, we will go to a roll call vote. This is for council member Brown's motion. Okay. Council member Calentari-Johnson? No. Boulder? No. Brown? Aye. Meyers? No. Vice Mayor Watka? No. Mayor Bruder? No. That motion does not pass five against one, four and council member Cummings absent. Okay. At this time, there is a recommendation motion to continue item number 27 on today's agenda, the public hearing for amendments to the objective standards to November 15th, 2022. We have a motion by Vice Mayor Watkins and a second by council member Golder. I think we need to do, for a continue, we don't do public comment. So we just go to a roll call vote. Council member Calentari-Johnson? Aye. Boulder? Aye. Cummings is absent. Brown? No. Aye. Vice Mayor Watkin? Aye. Mayor Bruder? Aye. That motion passes with five, four, one against and council member Cummings absent. Okay. So then this meeting is now adjourned. Thank you.