 Good morning, everyone. Sorry, I'm late. My electricity went off momentarily, so I couldn't get on, or my neighbor's doing construction or something happened. We'll go ahead and get started. Good morning. Welcome to the 11.8 of the closed session of the September 28, 2021 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. If you would like to comment on a closed session item, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. In this part of the meeting, the council will receive public testimony thereafter. The public line will be closed and inaccessible. Please, if you, let me look out to the participants here. And these, I'm not seeing any attendees in our meeting this afternoon, so we will go ahead and we will move now to the roll call. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Zvotkin. We're meeting that she is going to, she's running a couple of minutes late as well. Okay. I just got a text. If someone can let me know when she does join also. Callentary Johnson. Brown. Here. Cummings. Here. Boulder. Is currently up. Vice Mayor Brunner. Present. And Mayor Meyers. Present. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to any items listed on today's closed session agenda? I am not seeing any hearing none. This meeting is adjourned and the council will go into its closed session. We are ready to roll. Good afternoon. Welcome to the 1215 session of the September 28 2021 Santa Cruz City Council meeting. I have a few announcements and then we will move on to our meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on Community Television 25 and streaming on the city's website, cityofsantaacruz.com. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today, call in at the screen of the item you are wanting to comment on using the instructions on your screen. Please 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, press star nine on your to raise your hand. When it is your time to speak during public comment, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. The timer will then be set to two minutes. You may hang up once you have commented on your item of interest. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Councilmember Watkins. Here. Calentary Johnson. Here. Brown. Here. Cummings. Here. Councilmember Golder is absent. Vice Mayor Brunner. Present. And Mayor Meyers. In present. Thank you. We'll now move on to our presentations today. And first we have our interim fire chief Rob Odie. Providing patient on fire prevention week. Welcome Rob. I see that Rob's on, but I don't have his camera on and he's muted. There he is. There he is. That's me. I'm sharing. I didn't think you were going to get there. Get to think so fast. We're on time. At least for now, right? That's right. Do we want to switch to order of the two presentations? We could. Yes. I believe Bonnie Lipscomb. I think he's on mute. I think he's on mute right now. Is he? Okay. Hello. Hi Rob. Welcome. You guys can hear me? We can hear you. Awesome. Thank you Mayor and council members. Rob, just real quick, just I'm not sure if you intend, but Bonnie, the way that we're seeing is it has, we're seeing the, yeah, the, yeah. She's not quite put it back up yet, Rob. Bonnie, are you putting it back up? I am. Is that better or no? Yeah, there you go. Awesome. Go ahead, Rob. Okay. Thank you. I wanted to thank everybody for, you know, allowing me to take part in fire prevention week. Obviously fire prevention week is in October. Next slide. A couple things. Obviously the history of fire prevention week, the theme of this year. And of course, as always, want to cover emergency preparedness. Next slide. So history of fire prevention week, obviously, the anniversary of the great Chicago fire of October 9th. In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge declared fire prevention week as a national observance and always wanted to include October 9th. Next slide. Like I said before, observed annually on the week containing the week of the anniversary of the Chicago fire, focus on fire safety awareness, and all the messages provided by the National Fire Protection Agency. Next slide. So this week, this year is the Learn the Sounds of Fire Safety. Next slide. So I wanted to educate everybody on the different sounds that smoke and carbon dioxide alarms make. Knowing what to do, when those alarm sound, and then what happens if they just pick their feet. Smoke alarms and alert devices. And then, of course, when you actually have an alert, what do you do? Next slide. The sounds of fire safety are, this one. Next slide. Can I go back to that last slide? I don't have that slide in front of me, but if... Do you want me to move it forward? Again, the sounds of fire safety, if you... Yeah. A single chirp. Next slide. Emergency preparedness is a huge factor for us. So we want to make sure that we spread the message of emergency preparedness. And if you go to our website, you will see this flyer that I prepared. Next slide. We want to say that everybody is prepared for any emergency. Next slide. So some things that you can do to make sure that you're prepared is create or join a firewise group. Create or join a response team. Sign up for Code Red. Develop an evacuation plan. And have a communication plan with your family. And create a go-back. Next slide. For more information, you guys can go to the CDCinitudes.com. And sign up for Code Red. And also get additional information for emergency preparedness. Next slide. Any questions? Any questions from the council members on fire prevention? I think we're good, Rob. Thank you so much for the presentation. Next up, we will have a mayoral proclamation declaring September 13th through the 18th as Seawall's week. And I will read the process. And then I believe, I will look for Bonnie Litscomb. I believe we may have some visuals. And are you playing to put those up as I read this? Or are we going to sort of look at that first? What's your, what's, you and I did not get a chance. Cool. Yeah. But Bonnie, Bonnie is actually putting it up for us both. So this is a mayor's proclamation. Whereas the Pangea Seed Faction. Is an international nonprofit organization based in Hawaii. Acting at the intersection of cultural and environmentalism. To further ocean conservation, whose mission is to empower individuals and communities to create meaningful. Change for the oceans through science, education and art of ism. Otherwise known as CEA. And whereas Seawall, artists for oceans, is the Pangea Seed Foundation's groundbreaking public art program that brings the oceans into the streets around the world by creating large scale artworks. That speak to locally relevant pressing marine environmental issues such as plastic pollution, ocean acidification, warm seas, local biodiversity loss, environmental justice and more. And whereas the modern, motto of the Seawall artists for oceans program is a drop of paint can create an ocean of change. In fact, the can paint for the Santa Cruz Festival was sourced from mod armor, a festival sponsor that produces unstocked, toxic, zero VOC based, water based paints infused with a mineral that attracts and neutralizes harmful air pollutants. And so, the city's arts commission unanimously and enthusiastically recommended sponsorship of the Pangea Seed Foundation's global Seawall artists for the oceans program. And whereas the public works department provided logistical support, problem solving skills and parking garage walls to the Seawall family. And so, the city's arts commission unanimously and enthusiastically recommended sponsorship of the Pangea Seed Foundation's global Seawall artists for the oceans program. And so, the city's arts commission unanimously and enthusiastically recommended sponsorship of the Seawall Santa Cruz Festival and the economic development department provided financial planning and overall programming support. And whereas over the span of a week, more than 25 artists participated in creating conservation theme murals in Santa Cruz. Many were local Santa Cruzans from within California and others were from as far away as Austria, but the Seawalls murals are located at the gateway to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary to bring attention to the global environmental issues that impact our ecosystem and to spark conservation and to unify and inspire local Santa Cruz, the local Santa Cruz community and our visitors to stand up for our coastal resources. And whereas the Pangea Seed Foundation Seawalls artists for oceans program is responsible for installing 100 murals in 17 countries. And soon Santa Cruz will take its place on the interactive seawalls.org global map where with a click, one can explore each mural's unique story. And whereas the Seawalls Santa Cruz video will document the festival for city residents and serve to attract more visitors to explore our murals and understand climate impacts on our region. Downloadable city maps showing the locations and themes that each of the murals is available online. Seawalls Santa Cruz map and locations around the city. And whereas lookouts Wallace Bay has suggested that Santa Cruz may now rank among the elite showcase cities for murals on the West Coast. And whereas Santa Cruz City residents will get to enjoy and interact with these murals for years to come. Now therefore I, Donna Myers, Mayor of the City of Santa Cruz will be hereby proclaim September 13 through the 18th, 2021 as Seawalls Santa Cruz Week in the City of Santa Cruz and encourage all citizens to join me in acknowledging the many sponsors and community supporters of the Seawalls Santa Cruz Festival. I'm particularly honoring local muralist Taylor Reinholtz, Sadie Phillips and the made fresh crew. And also a appreciation for the Tannery Arts Center for their organizing capacity as well the week prior and during the murals as they were being painted. Just want to congratulate this amazing effort in Santa Cruz and we're so lucky and pleased that this happened here in our town. So thank you everyone that made it happen. And everyone got to see the video, but it's quite a quite a feat that we watched unfold here in Santa Cruz last week and we're very excited. I'll see if any council members have any questions and then we'll move on to our next agenda item. Yeah, I just wanted to mention that Taylor Reinholtz who is our local sort of celebrity muralist and organizer through Pangea Seed for the Seawalls Festival is available and here today. So he may want to say a few words, but I just also want to just add my appreciation the timing of Seawalls Santa Cruz as we are recovering from the pandemic and what it has done in many of our areas is really been transformative. So really when you look downtown the number of murals we have look at the activation of Frazier Lewis Lane it's just had such a very positive community impact. So I just want to add my appreciation to all of you on the council for supporting Seawalls Santa Cruz Festival and to Taylor and the made fresh group for making this possible. So thank you and with that. Welcome Taylor. You're looks like you're your press star not I was a star six. There you are. Welcome Taylor and congratulations. Super excited you're here today. Thank you. Hi everyone. I'm here with Tray Packard the founder of Seawalls and Pangea Seed. We're on site in Bimini Bahamas for Seawalls Bimini just getting the world today and the artists arrived. So we'll be doing another activation here. We had to fly out the day after we finished Seawalls Santa Cruz and we couldn't be more thrilled and excited on how the project worked out and to the community buzz that we've gotten and how many sponsors and people from from the entire community came out to support us. So we're thrilled. Thank you so much. Super excited. Scott Greathouse I think is on here as well and possibly Erica Rosendale our local artists operations coordinators for made fresh crew that did so much work to make the project happen and we'll be continuing the conversation. Seawalls has never been back to the same place. There are no nonprofit but because the event went so well we're already talking about Seawalls Santa Cruz 2022 or 23. So thank you for your support. Thank you Taylor. Thank you Trey. You guys amazing work. Really really appreciate everything you did and so glad you partnered with the city on that. I'll go ahead and Vice Mayor Brunner has a couple of comments. Wanted to thank good to see you Taylor and Trey and Erica and Sadie and Joe and Griffin one all the artists that participated and really got to know Santa Cruz as they were here painting during the week and and we get to live with the beauty those murals every day. We're very fortunate and thank you for bringing that ocean awareness and the beautifying those walls and within our city. We really appreciate the project. Appreciate your hard work and totally are grateful. I'm grateful for the art that you brought. The public art is amazing. Thank you so much. I'm glad you were able to join from the Bahamas. Thank you Sonya. Thank you for the recognition. We greatly appreciate it. And Council Member Cummings. I'll be brief and I really do appreciate all the work that you all have done and the art that you were able to bring to our community. I mean empty walls are just you know large campuses that need to be filled and you know the message that you all brought is this combination of environmentalism but also inspiration for artists to see what they can do and it just really reflects on how much our community appreciates art and also how much we appreciate the oceans and our environment and trying to inspire people to protect these ecosystems. So you know again sharing my colleagues how much we very much appreciate the community has all been just overwhelmingly expressing their support and their support and I'm really proud of you all for bringing this to our community and so just thanks again and if there's any way that we can continue to support you all in the future because we know artists struggle to make these trends happen please let us know because we would love to partner in any way we can to help support you all in your mission so we can just spread this message across the world. So thank you all. Thank you so much. Thank you all for being here on this week. I did bring the sea walls all the work you guys were doing to the address France you may be getting a phone call a lot of the big bright walls there so and they're very much an ocean community so trying to spread the word so thank you again you guys and travel safe and keep up all the amazing work you're doing thanks again. Thank you. Thank you so much. I have a few announcements and then we will move on to 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. You wish to comment on an agenda item today instructions are provided on your screen. We will provide these instructions throughout the meeting whenever we move into an agenda item that went up for public comment. Please know public comment is heard only on items council is taking action on and not regular updates and reports. The items that will be open for public comment during today's meeting are numbers 9 through 17 on our agenda. I'd like to ask the council members if there are any statements of disqualification today. I'm not seeing any. We'll move on to I'd like to ask the city clerk to announce any additions or deletions to our agenda today. There and I'm going to make a quick announcement about oral communications oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on the agenda. Oral community occur immediately after item agenda item 17, which we are estimating will be around 620 tonight. If you wish to make a comment during oral communications, please call in towards the end of item number 16, which again we anticipate will be sometime around 620 this evening. I'd like to call on our city attorney to provide a report on closed session, please. Yes, thank you. Mayor Myers member city council this me this morning. The council convened in closed session via zoom to the following items item one was a conference with legal council regarding liability claims. Those are the claims of Mona, Drada, even Gil no bliss and. Zodia G. I'll just the pronunciations. Those are also listed this afternoon on your open session agenda as item number 13 council also confer with legal council on to pending litigation items. Number one was nationwide insurance company of America versus the city of Santa Cruz at all. Number two was all state Northbrook indemnity company on behalf of Alexander Acosta, the Kyle score at all. Those are two cases pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court. There was no reportable action on those items. Item three was a conference with legal council concerning initiation of potential litigation council met and conferred with the city attorney's office on that item. Can you that item to the end of the open session agenda for further discussion? So that so the council will reconvene following the oral communications this afternoon or this evening to continue that discussion. And that concludes my report. Happy to answer any council member questions coming. Any council members have any questions for Mr. Kandadi. I'm not seeing any questions. Thank you, Tony. And next the council will review the meeting calendar attached to the agenda and revise it as necessary. I'll now call on the city clerk to provide any to the calendar. We have no updates. And I will look at interim city manager Rosemary Menard. I just wanted to say that I think you might have skipped the managers report. You're right. I did. Sorry. Let's back up. We'll move on to item number six now. That is the city manager report and I'll invite the manager Rosemary Menard to make that report. Good afternoon, Mayor Myers, Vice Mayor Brunner and members of the council. I do have a few items for you today. The first one is a presentation and opportunity for you to ask a few questions on the eviction moratorium ending at the, which happens on the end of the day on Thursday. Stephanie Duck from the city attorney's office will give you that. And then we're going to have a brief by Lee Butler about the homelessness issues and followed by a quick update on by October by some folks from our public works and transportation groups and a contractor. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Stephanie on the eviction moratorium. Mayor Myers and city council members. I am here from the city attorney's office to provide just a brief update on the state's eviction moratorium, which expires this month on the 30th. I'm going to attempt to share my screen. I'm already getting error messages. So one second. I have it up to Stephanie. Do you mind Bonnie? I'm getting a screen I've never seen before. Are you able to put it up, Bonnie? Sorry, I'm not seeing it. There we go. Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much, Bonnie. Sorry. So again, briefly wanted to cover. And I give a brief overview of California's executive orders, the governor's executive orders and the city's ordinances regarding both commercial and residential evictions. The most recent state legislation regarding the eviction moratorium for residential evictions as well as discuss a little bit about California's housing is key rent relief initiative before diving in. I did just want to make clear to any members of the public who may be listening right now that this presentation is meant as an update for city council. It should not be construed as legal advice for members of the public. If you are in need of legal assistance, please contact an attorney for that assistance. Okay. Now with that fun stuff, Bonnie, we can go ahead to the next slide. As all of you are aware, in March 2020, Governor Newsom issued an executive order that essentially suspended any laws that would preempt a local government from enacting either a residential or commercial eviction moratorium as a result of nonpayment of rent resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. So in response to these executive orders, city council adopted an ordinance, essentially a residential and commercial eviction moratorium for the failure to pay rent. When that failure to pay rent was a result of economic losses related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In August 2020, Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 3088, which imposed a statewide temporary eviction moratorium for residential tenancies. So with AB 3088, the city was preempted from extending or modifying its residential eviction moratorium. Next slide, please. So while the city was extending or further adopting any residential eviction protections, Governor Newsom did issue executive order 8020, which extended a government's authority to impose restrictions on commercial evictions. This was further extended until September 30th of this year as in this week. And so through this executive order, the city adopted an emergency ordinance imposing a temporary eviction moratorium on commercial evictions. The governor has not further extended that the local government's authority to impose restrictions on commercial evictions past that September 30th date. And so the city's commercial eviction moratorium will expire this week on September 30th. Go ahead to the next slide, please. Just real briefly, in addition to those executive orders and new state legislation regarding state and commercial evictions, the governor also issued executive order number 40220, which prohibited water systems in California from discontinuing water services to residential evictions. So commercial customers or small businesses in infrastructure for nonpayment of water bills through September 30th of this year. That did not relieve water customers from paying those bills for water services. And then recently Senate bill 155 was passed, which extended that prohibition until the end of this year. So this is the 31st, 2021. Additionally, the state water resources control board has recently adopted draft guidelines to establish a process to distribute COVID-19 relief funds for people who have those debts for those water services. So side note on an additional protection out there. Next slide, please. Brief overview of the state's legislation regarding residential eviction moratorium. Again, I mentioned we had AB 3088, which extended the residential eviction moratorium to January 31st of this year. And then Senate bill 91 further extended that through June 30th of this year. And Senate bill 91, it is the state's rental assistance program, which provided rental relief to California households to landlords and tenants who may be impacted by the pandemic. And that was initially meant the state would reimburse up to 80% of rental debt. Then again, we had additional legislation in the most current legislation. So AB 832 extended the state's residential eviction moratorium through September 30th of this year. So that's this week. And we have had no further legislation extending that. So the residential eviction moratorium, the state's residential eviction moratorium, and September 30th this week. That bill expanded the state's residential, the rental assistance program to provide for 100% of reimbursement for qualifying rental debt. That legislation also expressly protects a local government from imposing any additional residential eviction protections until April 1st of next year, 2022. Next slide, please. Essentially, what AB 32 says is a tenant cannot be evicted for failing to pay rent as a result of COVID-19 on or before September 30th. As long as they pay 25%, at least 25% of the demanded rent and deliver a declaration of COVID-19 related financial distress to their landlord. Beginning October 1st, so very soon, those protections no longer apply, residential tenants may face eviction for their failure to pay rent. And beginning November, landlords may collect unpaid rent in small claims court. Next slide, please. So essentially, this is the important part for anybody listening. By September 30th of this year, any tenants who need rental assistance need to sign and return the declaration of COVID-19 related to financial distress. Within 15 days of when they receive it from their landlord, it should have been provided to them by their landlord. If not, it's available online. You can print it out there and provide it to your landlord. Apply for rental assistance. That is important by September 30th of this week and pay 25% of demanded rent. Again, I just want to make very clear to any members of the public who might be listening or any tenants or landlords out there. If you have questions on this, please reach out to an attorney for legal advice on this. Next slide, please. I've provided non-exclusive list of legal resources for anybody who would like them. You can contact the Santa Cruz County Superior Court South Health Center 831-786-7200, option 4. The California Rural Legal Assistance 831-724-2253. The Watsonville Law Center 831-722-284. And the Senior Citizens Legal Services 831-426-8824. And next slide, we will just briefly let everyone know how you can apply for rental assistance. You can apply at housingiskey.com. You can call 833-430-2122. You can text the word rent to 1211 or contact 833-687-0967, which will put you in touch with a local organization that can help you apply for rent relief. So that is the end of my slide presentation there. We can leave that up to folks to see that if they want. And I am happy to answer any questions that we might have on this. Thank you, Stephanie. Are there council members who have questions? I see council member Brown, council member Cummings. Thank you, Stephanie, for the overview. I just want to note here, which is, I imagine obvious to all those watching and listening, that this is a very short timeline before the expiration of the moratorium, the state moratorium. And so I just have a couple of questions. One is related to the rental assistance portion. And I'm not sure that this is for legal, per se, but we've also probably been hearing stories. I've certainly been contacted by people and I know other council members have and it's been in the paper. There is all this, you know, ostensibly there's rental assistance money and people aren't able to access it. And that's a very high percentage of the overall pot of funding. A very low percentage of people who have at least initiated the attempt to get rental assistance are running into trouble. So do you have any information about how the state is doing that? I mean, I just see this kind of gridlock potential here coming in. People are certainly very concerned and already receiving notices that they're going to be evicted. So just wondering about that piece. And then, and I just want to make sure that I'm clear here that what the new legislation says is that. So we basically have to allow evictions to happen before we can and just allow that to that wave to happen. And then in April, we can have 22, we can reevaluate if we want to try to put an eviction moratorium back on the books as an emergency if there is an ongoing emergency, which I fully expect there will be. Is that what's happening? The state is asking us to step out of the way or stay out of the way and allow us to continue. Okay. In not as many words, I would say, so the reason why the city was able to enact its first residential eviction moratorium was because the executive order granted the authority or essentially suspended any laws that would preempt the city from doing so. The bill is very explicit that we are the city is preempted from creating any state or residential eviction moratorium until April of 2022. I think that's something our office would need to look into further. It's always been my understanding that we preempted without that executive order giving the city the authority or suspending the laws that would preempt the city from doing that. And that's certainly something our office can look into. But that is my understanding at this time that we would essentially, we would likely be preempted and that we certainly cannot enact anything until at least April of 2022. And to take a question to you about, you know, I am not sure what the state is doing with if people are having issues applying for funding. I do know I did attend a presentation by some service providers, the Watsonville legal center or law center and community bridges. And they did say that if you do contact some of those service providers, they do have a way to, I think, contact the state to kind of give you a boost. So certainly something if there are tenants who are struggling with that, do reach out to those service providers out there. And I think that they can help navigate that a little better. Thank you. That answer I hope. Yeah, I mean, it's not satisfied. No, you're I mean, you're with the information available. Yes. I mean, it's just a it's a very dismaying set of circumstances that I think we're going to find ourselves in. And, you know, the extent to which the capacity of the local organizations to have, you know, a lot of operators on call to be able to answer all, you know, the questions that are coming in on this deadline is, you know, is limited. And so it's just, yeah, it's it's really unfortunate, but I do think, you know, I'll just comment and say that I think it really isn't incumbent upon us to find any and all avenues for supporting tenants who are in distress, because it is, you know, it we're already seeing the impact and I think it's just going to get bigger and more problematic. And we know when we keep people housed that, you know, everybody, everybody wins so for sharing with us your, your updates. Thank you, Council Member Brown, Council Member Cummings. The questions have mostly been answered. I was going to ask about that kind of preemptive portion of the executive order, because I think it's important for people to know that, you know, that really either hands and our ability to enact for the protections as much as, you know, we would like to ensure that we can keep people in their home. I think it would be good if there's some way we can receive updates on whether it's the number of people who are applying to these programs, you know, in terms of rental assistance and and also hoping that maybe we can get some information also about people who might not be receiving that assistance. I was contacted by a woman who I eventually was going to connect with the county and folks in Watsonville. And she's been issued a notice to quit, even though she'd been paying her rent. She'd been having some interactions with the landlord, but was issued a more or less eviction notice, but it's not through the status. It's what's called a notice to quit for members of the public who are watching, but it was issued during a time of eviction when people weren't actually legally able to perfect people during the pandemic. And when she tried to get assistance, one of the things they said was that there were thousands of people who are applying with their backlogs. And, you know, it takes three to six months to address some of these applications because of the sheer load of people who are applying for these for this assistance. So, you know, to the extent that we can understand how how many people are applying who are receiving and, you know, really get to know whether or not we're people are going to be receiving the help we're claiming that the state is providing versus who's getting turned away. In a way, I think it'd be really important for us to know how can not only get people assistance, but improve these systems moving forward. So, and I can provide a link to count, but I'm sorry, I didn't include it in the PowerPoint. I know the happening is key website does have it has statistics on on who is receiving. What is my understanding and I'll send that to council. I see Bonnie is on here as well as if maybe she has additional information to provide on that. Yeah, thanks, Stephanie. And for council member Brown and coming if I can just I'll just share my screen really quickly. I just wanted to show exactly the dashboard that Stephanie was referencing. And I want to make sure is it showing on the screen. Okay, great. And so for the city of Santa Cruz, you can actually go to the housing is key website and I just want to acknowledge Jessica and Tiffany that sent this link over to me. You can go and look up Santa Cruz County and see the data for the whole county, which is they have actually given in county wide, and you can then drill down on city of Santa Cruz, which is what I have shown right here and you can see that 462 applications have been received of those 461 were deemed complete 151 households were served in Santa Cruz for a total so far of 1.65 million. So that's between a quarter and a third of those that have a cost have received on average looks like just under 11,000 and assistance. I don't know and to your question. Council member Cummings, what is the status of those that are still in the queue what that timing is and the reasons why they weren't awarded. So we'll follow up on that and see if there's any further information we can share or any advocacy that we that we can do. Can I just add one thing, the allocation to the county was $15 million from the original program in funding. So I just wanted to put that out there as well. Yeah, between 15 and 16, I think. And Bonnie, I'm wondering if there's a way maybe we can get some of Stephanie's deck. Maybe our website and with Elizabeth, if you're on, maybe there's a way to make sure that it's very prominent. Since the deadline is Thursday to make sure that people kind of understand where they should go. I don't know if there's a way that we can make sure it's prominent on our website in case people are going there for help as well. And then I wouldn't follow up question is, are there any other the PPP loans that went out to help small businesses, but are there any other forms of assistance for small businesses where we can point them to they might be facing evictions as well. Councilmember comes, you're talking specific commercial. So we do have our expanded growth Santa Cruz loan program, and we have a few billion in funding available for Santa Cruz businesses through that loan program. We also have to our trust fund are considering a second round of micro loan funds with our partner Santa Cruz Community Credit Union. So we did hand out over 51 loans totaling half a million earlier in the pandemic. And so we do have funding reserved for potential second second round. If we look like we're getting close to exhausting. We have set aside for the growth Santa Cruz loan fund. Thank you. Well, thank you. It sounds like, yeah, not a good situation at all. Anybody watching, please also know that you can contact the city manager's office for referrals to our, to our housing experts as needed. Certainly, and we can provide Spanish Spanish translation and contact to through Peter, our, our, our staff person. So anyone watching, please go ahead and reach out to the city will help to the extent that we can. Okay, we will now move Rosemary, you've got a couple got Lee next. Yeah. A couple of quick other things. Thank you, Stephanie. So that's a city manager and new development planning, you know, development director leave others going to give you a quick update on homelessness. Thank you Rosemary and good afternoon, mayor and council members. I'm going to talk to you quickly about the armory, the San Lorenzo River vegetation management and a quick update on the county's rehousing wave as well. So the city and county are in conversations of operations at the armory, as well as how that would work with the city's operation of a safe sleeping program at the site. We're looking to see how we could have mutually beneficial and ideally coordinated city and county programming there and we're in conversations with the county about how that could work or information with information about that partnership in this coming month. So we'll keep you posted on that as it progresses. With respect to the San Lorenzo River vegetation management, the council will recall this is something that's done on an annual basis. Each fall we conduct significant vegetation removal activities along the San Lorenzo River to address flood control requirements. The vegetation removal work is starting this week. Phase one stretches from highway one down to Water Street. And then the next two phases will continue south from there to the river mouth. We are aware of people who are camping in that area and those in the affected areas have been provided with notices and will continue to work with those individuals over the next few weeks as the work is progressing in those next phases. And finally, some information coming out of the county's rehousing wave. We've talked with the council a number of times and the county was here and spoke to you as well with respect to their efforts with abode consultants as well as with housing matters as a consultant. And they are this is a county contract that is focusing on primarily rehousing the individuals who have been in the COVID hotel shelters. And those hotels are closing down. They're in the process of closing down as you all know. So the update that's all things that you the update that I wanted to share was that the county has been as of late placing between six and 10 people per week into housing. So that's that's certainly an improvement over what we saw as the early numbers. So we're pleased with that progress. Obviously, we'd like to see more, but I did want to share that that pace has been picking up. And we're hopeful that it continues in the right direction and the same direction as more people are able to get house coming out of those hotels. And with that, I'm available for any questions. Any questions from for Lee today. I'm not seeing any hands. Thank you, Lee. You're welcome. Okay, so rounding out the managers report today, we're going to have a little update on by October. So Claire, take it away. Good afternoon, mayor and council members. They're globally transportation planner and I'm here today with Matt Miller. This screen is coming on right now from ecology action, one of our key partners in encouraging more people to try biking and Matt is going to give you an overview of all the finance events happening in month of October, which has been deemed by October, which means contributing to in order to keep you meeting our goals and actions and goals. So, Matt, take it away. Thank you, Claire. Hi, mayor, I counsel appreciate you being here. Thanks for the time and happy almost like tober. I want to confirm that my screen is visible to everybody. We can see it Matt. Yeah. So this is basically what I'd like to do just in a few minutes is just give you an overview of what like to over is fine what it is give you kind of an FYI, as well as invite you all to participate. You may know that has been running bike to work day or 35 years. And that is one of our big community activations across Santa Cruz County, where we inspire bike ridership at all layers of society from little kids going to school to folks going to work, the people getting around further basic transportation. In that spirit. With our evolution through COVID, moving a lot of our programming virtual and trying to find new ways of reaching people. We have developed kind of a new way of rolling out bike month, which happens in May and by October, which happens in October. And like all these campaigns is designed to get more people riding their bikes more often. Like October, which starts on Friday has a few core components that I'd like to show you what we're viewing right now is our landing page, which you can find at eco act.org slash October. And we have a few things going on throughout the month. It is of course anchored by our bike challenge. Many of you participated the city of Santa Cruz has a big team. Claire, thanks for all of your championing of that. And we have a number of you who are on the call today who have taken part by challenges great because it allows people to do what they can to contribute. It's not one event on one morning, but rather if you get out for one bike ride over the course of October, that's a win. But it also enables people who ride regularly or all the time to have a place to come and support other folks getting on their bikes. Like many other challenges that we've done. Workplaces can sign up and they can have a team individuals can sign up and they can do their own goal setting and if you pursue prizes. The city of Santa Cruz already has a team in place. So anybody who's on the call that works for the city of Santa Cruz and take part in that. We have a series of prizes that are available weekly prizes that give people give cards to local bike shops with their choice to support them in their. You have $1,000 grand prize for one individual who rides sometime over the course of October. And then we also have a $1,500 workplace prize for the top workplace. So we have a lot of financial incentives baked in as well as all of the other methods that we have for supporting people. When people register they indicate if they're a new or a regular rider and then that they get customized messaging resources depending on where they're at in their journey. The support biking throughout the month. We also have a few other things happening. You'll notice here we have a couple of workshops that will be taking place via zoom. These are open to anybody. Anybody who has an internet connection. We have one in the beginning of the month focus safety and rules of the road. And we have one towards the end of the month. That's a deeper dive on bike commuting. And then throughout the month we have group rides that are happening in different parts of Santa Cruz County starting from west side to midtown. Midtown, so Cal, so Cal, the Aptos and also Watsonville. And these are designed to be beginner friendly, family friendly rides that give people access to low stress bike routes, primarily for transportation, getting around town. We found from our own survey data from all of these challenges and many years of bike to work that one of the biggest barriers that we face in Santa Cruz County to having more people ride their bikes, of course, is traffic safety and feeling like there are safe routes and safe places for them to ride. So these rides we started with in bike month. We are doing them again for bike tober and we're expanding them to invite more people. So this is the makeup of bike tober. This is the group ride page. You're also welcome any of you listening today. We still have spots available. So if you'd like to attend one of these events. They're free. You get a free gift card to get breakfast or destination. They are very fun community based rides happening throughout October. You can participate or tell your people about it. And then the challenge part happens to be a love to ride. And that's where you can log your rides, join your team, set goals. This is a great place to send people to to sign up for the challenge. That's an overview of what we have happening for bike tober. There's a lot of great stuff in here. Behavior change is difficult. I would also just contextualize this for city council and many people who are probably stretched in and have limited bandwidth. When we're trying to get people to change their behavior, it's really challenging, but bike month and bike tober offer really good focal points for people who are distracted and doing a lot of things to have quite a bit of impact. So we have government, we have local businesses, we have community based organizations and members of the public that all have eyes on bike tober. So if we're going to invest our time at all in a given year, this is a great opportunity for us to collectively focus ourselves to have a big impact. So I would leave you with try it, go for a ride, tell your coworkers, your friends, your peers, your family, your kids. This is a great opportunity and at least one of the tools in the tool kit to get more of our population riding by bike and feel supported and celebrated for doing so. So thank you for the time. Thank you for all of the really great progressive work you're doing to support biking. Claire appreciate you calling me in and I will answer any questions that might be coming up for people. Thank you so much, Matt. I will look to see if council members have any questions. I'm not seeing any hands raised. Thanks for the encouragement. Last year was a little bit of a bus, but I'm going to try this time. Yeah, just start, start small, even getting out for one ride is great. Anything more than that is awesome too. Good. Good to see you, Matt. Thank you for coming today. Appreciate it for having me. Yeah. Anything else? Okay, get back on track here just for members of the public who may have joined later. We'll go ahead and go on to item seven, which we did visit previously on this. Make sure to ask the clerk if there's any updates to our calendar. Okay. Thank you. We'll now move on to item number eight on our agenda today and this will be an opportunity for council members to report out on actions at external boards committees and joint powers authority meetings for future meetings prepared to provide an update on any meetings or actions that occurred since the last council meeting so the council and public can be informed. So I'll go ahead and work my way through council members here. I'll start with council member Cummings. Thank you, Mayor. Two, possibly three. I'll just report out on the Association of Moderate Bay Area Governments at their September meeting. We had a presentation from the California Department of Housing and Community Development on the Six Cycle Regional Housing needs assessment process and that was followed by a second presentation by Heather Anderson, Director of Planning. This was largely on the methodology options for the Six Cycle Regional Housing needs allocation. We provided input where we didn't take action at this meeting and received information. One thing that ambag staff did express was that if any city wanted to have a presentation on the regional housing needs assessment allocation process that they'd be more than willing to give a presentation and just knowing how that impacts affordability in the city in terms of arena numbers. If that's something that the council would be interested in having, we could probably coordinate something with ambag staff to have them give a presentation during our presentation portion of our city council meetings to learn more about that process. In addition to that, from LAFCO, at the last meeting we received a presentation regarding extraterritorial service agreements known as ESAs. These ESAs are meant to be immediate remedies for health and safety issues and are precursors to the annexation process where areas outside of the city's jurisdiction that received services becomes incorporated into those cities. At present there are 41 active ESAs and the board recommendation to send letters to the local agencies that are currently, they currently have extraterritorial service agreements in place and request that the affected agencies develop an annexation plan by March 31st, 2022 We'll provide a response explaining why annexation can't occur at this point in time. And then finally, just to kind of give a brief update, the UCSC city planning task force meeting and one of the big topics that we've been discussing right now is the Regents are going to make a decision this week on and approve the final EIR from UCSC associated with Long Range Development Plan. And we've been really just kind of working together to understand how we're going to respond as a group and really try to to understand where the EIR is, where there might be efficiencies and encouraging the community to speak out if they disagree with the university's approach from the EIR. Members of the council will be commenting and I think we've had our task force represent reaching out to other council members as well. And so I think tomorrow the Regents will be meeting public comments at 8. And we're a number of us are listed to comment on the EIR and it's a random selection process in terms of who gets to comment during public comment, but we're planning on being at least a number of us are going to try to be available to make comments at that time. And that's all I have to report. Thank you, Council Member. I'll move on to Vice Mayor Boehner. Thank you Mayor Myers. Let's see two by two committee. I think Director Butler touched on the last meeting that I attended really regarding city and county collaboration looking at the army and operations options and discussing the current FEMA, COVID, hotel funding, the shelters closing and the concurrent effort, the rehousing wave efforts. I was unable to attend the last meeting, so I'm not sure on that update, but that was the previous meeting. And visit Santa Cruz board meeting, we're meeting tomorrow. On the agenda, we have a rail trail presentation and also some activity reports for occupancy and ADR reports for July and August of this year. So next update and I, Council Member Watkins also sits on that. So maybe can add anything else. Thank you. Thank you Vice Mayor. I'll go ahead and call on Council Member Brown. Thank you Mayor Myers. I will report on two comments that I'm on. Council Member Cummings gave an update on the UC City County Growth Task Force and the LRDB process with the UC Regions meetings. So I will, the Area Agency on Aging, I attended the last meeting as a representative of the City of Santa Cruz. The, quite a bit of the meeting was talking about, again, the master plan on aging, the California master plan on aging, which I've mentioned a year before, but I just wanted to give while we have, there's a sense of like a little bit extra time today, maybe go a little further into this because of our agenda, you know, a little bit later. So I'll just say that the master plan for aging, along with that, the state has designed a local playbook. And so our, at the local level, we are as representatives of the various jurisdictions in the county in Santa Cruz County and also in Benito counties, which is part of our Area Agency on Aging structure, using the local playbook to help develop models, kind of build environments that promote an age friendly and a disability friendly California. We have, there's a lot of great work that's happening and so kind of inventorying that but also looking at how we can work together to use the resources that are available to us through the state and then also thinking about the funding that will come through the Aging to really be prepared for that. And so there's a set of plays and I won't go through them all, but a lot of it has to do with engagement with local leaders and we are very fortunate that we have at the county level and I want to think the county staff and Supervisor McPherson's office for working on getting some funding, some resources to help us work through the, you know, what we're going to work on with related to the local playbook. So there's a lot of things related to goals around housing, health and other and transportation equity or and certainly looking at senior isolation, a major issue that has really become even more apparent during the shutdowns around COVID. So a lot of opportunity, a lot of really exciting stuff and we're lucky to have, you know, somebody who will be looking for somebody at the consultant level to come and help facilitate that conversation. And so look forward to hearing more about how local jurisdictions can work together to support moving forward in a more integrated way around these in these issue areas. The other meeting that I'll provide some highlights from was our September Regional Transportation Commission meeting. We talked about at that meeting the RTC authorized staff to update the Measure D five year plan to allow for prioritization of some pre construction activities that are really necessary to rehabilitate the capital at restful. So five existing bridges that make up the trestle. And so findings from the conceptual repurposing site that's been done concluded that conditions of the bridges are fair to poor, which is not great news, but it's probably something that most of us were pretty well aware of. And so rehab is recommended and so the county is moving forward as the oversight agency will work with the RTC moving forward on what it's going to take to get those bridges up to par and potentially repurposed. We also talked about the kind of logistics and kind of issues around preservation of the Santa Cruz branch rail line, which is the subject of much community conversation. And so we just got a report on kind of what some of the intricacies and trying to better unpack the, you know, what might happen with the, you know, what stuff we need to take legally and then also policy wise, related to preservation of the rail line. Okay, so those are for for today. Oh, I will say that the TIGM private company that is working on doing a demonstration project here and has been looking at the Santa Cruz branch rail and is a possible place for some. They're going to be bringing a car or maybe I'm not sure exactly all of the details, but they will be doing demonstration runs in South County and North County. Beginning October 16. And I believe it's coast. It's the website. If you want to go and get the details and the schedule is coastshootura.org. And you can find out more there and hopefully take a ride. Thank you. Very cool. I will call on council member contrary Johnson now. Great. Thank you. So all report on the metro board and may first please fill in anything that I may have missed. The biggest item that we talked about this last month was the outstanding balance of $6.7 million in pensions. So the metro board approved a process to explore securing a bond. Excuse me, that could save the metro $36.9 million. So pursuing that we got an update about vaccines and vaccination requirements. So we've seen an increase in employee vaccination at the metro from 75% last month in August to 83% this month. So that's really good news that it's moving in the right direction. And the metro does still have this sort of hybrid directive very similar to the county that all unvaccinated employees must submit to weekly testing. And the metro is exploring the San Francisco model, which is requiring vaccination of all employees. We also talked about structure bill, which would significantly impact all of us but certainly the metro board. So the house is considering a $1.2 trillion traditional infrastructure bill, as well as a $3.5 trillion human infrastructure bill that would cover childcare, affordable housing, medical leave. Yeah, those are the big items. Actually, I don't think it's 3.5 trillion. I think it's 3.5 billion. Is that right, Mayor Myers? It might be trillion, okay. No, billion. Sorry. It is billion. So those were the big items in the metro board. The community programs committee did meet, but I won't really, I won't report on that since it's an agenda item. So what we discussed is what's on the agenda. And although this isn't a formal committee, myself and Mayor Myers and Vice Mayor Brunner have been working on a racial equity resolution and, and have continued to meet with members of the Asian American Pacific Islander community and members of the bullpaw community to look at specific actions we can take in the city and partnerships that we can have to fight against hate and address inequities and uplift our community. So those are my reports. Thank you, Council Member Calantari-Chunstin. Thank you. I will go now to Council Member Watkins. I was just looking at the list of, I think my colleagues have pretty much covered everything that I was going to touch on. Like we had, like Council Member Calantari-Chunstin just shared, we will have the core update this afternoon. And what Vice Mayor Brunner shared in regards to Visit Santa Cruz County, the only addition would be that they're still in the process of a search for a new executive director for that agency. And we'll share any updates as we learn more. And a number of my meetings are actually scheduled for the next couple of weeks. So I don't think I have anything additional to add at this point. Okay, thank you, Council Member. I've just got a couple of quick things. I'll just follow up on some of the Metro items. I did, I think there was some questions a few months ago in terms of complete service with regards to when UCSC comes back. I did get some information from Metro that all routes are going to be fully operational starting now. And especially routes 15 and 22, which were suspended in the spring of 2020, those will be reactivated and fully operational now, basically starting September 16 through December 8. Metro also is rolling out the first four electric buses county-wide. Two are dedicated to the Metro's new zero emission Watsonville circulator route. And then two will run on routes throughout Santa Cruz County. So this is the first of 12 buses, I believe we have program that will electric buses that will be brought out and begin running routes. And then finally, for members of the community listening today, the Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce and the Coalition for Clean Air and Metro have gone together and are going to be offering free fares county-wide on fixed route and para-cruise service for California Clean Air Day on October 6. You can get more information by visiting cleanairday.org and take the Clean Air pledge that day and get out and use transit so that your impact on the environment will be less than that day. My other report outs will be on the City Select Committee, which is a meeting of the four mayors and the county with the county every quarter. And the topic of conversation which some council members may have been contacted on recently in the last few months was the status of the senior center in Live Oak. We did get a report out that the school district is not planning to do the housing development at this point in time that was potentially going to move the senior center off of that site in Live Oak. So at this point, the school district is not pursuing that workforce housing development as far as I understand. So that is still, you know, apparently the senior center is going to be available for a while longer, which was not anticipated earlier this year. The last one I'll report out on is the 3CE, Community Choice Energy, which now, as folks know, stretches all the way to Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Tended three meetings between August and mid-September. And main takeaways from those were they did pass a temporary nine month rate structure change due to increasing costs of electricity basically because of the Texas shutdown. So we did pass a nine month rate adjustment that will expire in nine months. We adopted that and it would become operational in September. We had an annual meeting on September 15th and I would encourage anyone that's interested in the work of 3CE to look at that. There was some excellent presentations from both the CCA leadership in Sacramento in terms of lobbying information. There was also some very good presentations on how 3CE anticipates actually being able to accomplish its zero emission goals in really much more sooner, I think, than most of us had expected. And so some really good news on that was presented looking towards 2030 as a potential timeline where we could be close to zero emissions in terms of electricity provided to 3CE customers. And on September 16th, the policy board met to adopt the fiscal year 21-22 budget. And again, that was also a good meeting. There was quite a bit of request from organizations and individuals throughout the 3CE service area to increase the program's budget. And that was allocated in the budget for this year, including a lot of the information, or excuse me, a lot of the programs that help with purchasing EV vehicles, providing more charging stations, zero emission school bus electrification, new construction electrification grant program, obviously education and community grants. So a lot of programmatic investment, the board and policy board continues to press for even more investment in those types of programs and we hope to continue that conversation into next year. The one thing I will say is that Santa Cruz is often recognized, the city is often recognized as one of the first cities, if not the first city in the 3CE area that has a building electrification ordinance in place. We're often pointed to as a city that's done it and many of the jurisdictions are encouraged to follow our lead on that. So we get a bit of recommendation that way. And yeah, the annual meeting was really good and I would again encourage anyone in the public who wants to track the work of the central post community energy to take a look at that for a station in terms of outcomes from the last several years from the agency. And with that, I will finish my reports and we will move on to our next item. Mayor Myers, can I ask a quick question about 3CE? Sorry, I'm just curious, you know, because I've been hearing kind of outside of the 3CE framework and talking with people about the challenges that presented ongoing, I mean, this is an ongoing issue. The challenge is presented at the state level for 3CEs and so I'm just wondering if there's anything new related to what's happening at that level because it is very much a concern for folks involved in solar energy production, people who are looking at distributed energy and storage and how 3CEs are going to kind of navigate what's happening in Sacramento. So if you have any update on that, it would be great if not next time. Yeah, we did receive an extensive report from the, you know, basically the lobbyists that referenced the CCAs throughout the... And they, you know, we are still positioning ourselves as a player and, you know, there's frankly, you know, a lot of the big providers are seeing the CCAs, you know, as sort of a threat to their future. So many of the CCAs are getting out and getting really competitive purchase agreements done with, you know, clean energies and things that... So we're able to get, you know, what she explained is that we're getting into the game and getting into long-time contract agreements, which, again, as the larger energy providers are kind of looking at the CCAs maybe as a place where, you know, they need to back us up a little bit. There was one CCA that did have to file for bankruptcy. We're not able to, with the different types of, really with the spikes in energy costs. Council Member Brown of the last year, they were not able to basically meet, you know, their obligations and their purchasing agreements. And so they were, they did, they were their first CCA, and I'm sorry, but I can't remember offhand exactly which one it was that they were able to... They unfortunately had to basically file for bankruptcy and, you know, their rate and their customers are basically trying to kind of understand what, how that plays out. But you're right. It's not all favorable and there is a big push to try to kind of keep these... I guess what I learned is a little bit more on a cottage industry type of scale rather than, you know, making a major dent in California energy purchasing and production. So I think the next couple of years will be, and then also protecting CCAs from bankruptcy productions and rate, you know, rate changes and things like that. So a lot of focus on that in terms of legislation for next year to try to keep CCAs as viable as possible. So I think 3CE is definitely pointed to as an important CCA that's been very successful. And so again, having some really good models out there has been helpful, but it's still a legislative push to keep CCAs viable. So hopefully that helps. There was a really good, probably about a 25 minute presentation from the lobbyist, which definitely worth looking at. It was very, very well done. So not a lot of details there for you, but still fighting the fight, unfortunately. Thank you. I appreciate it. So I was like, we're hanging in there and well, more to come. Thank you. And a lot of push from our own, you know, organizations and nonprofits around in the, just in the area that, you know, the 3CE area that continue also to want to, you know, as I said earlier, really want to make sure that the investments are coming in from the programmatic side as well. So not only just from the energy generation and purchasing, but also really working, you know, with people and families, you know, individually to really get them to wrap their heads around me. The one shift that I think we will be moving to and investing in in terms of some of the local companies is really the storage aspect of what needs to be done. So that's going to be a big push and that will hopefully help with some of our local businesses being able to have, you know, that to put that energy, you know, that energy use into storage systems that can be dispersed. So, and obviously with what's going on in the summer of the Valley right now, Bruce McPherson's got his eyes on that very, very clearly in terms of maybe a potential role for 3CE. So good work on that. Okay. Next up we've got agenda, our agenda. And these are items nine through 14 on our agenda today for members of the public who are streaming this meeting. Now is the time to call in if you want to comment on items nine through 14. There will be instructions on your screen. And please remember to mute your streaming device by pressing and then press, excuse me, star nine to raise your hand. You'll listen for the queue when I call your name and you will be unmuted at that time. All items in the consent agenda and 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 want to pull comment on or pull any items on our consent agenda today. I just have a question on item. I mostly just have a question and I see Tiffany Lake is listed as a contact zone. Give a minute to see if this is the Red Cross housing reconstruction loan payment approval of funding for operation of the new wave of this community center and to assist residents of the city of San Cruz under the emergency rent program. Bonnie or Tiffany, are you here? Jessica's here. Jessica, are you here? Yeah, I just, okay, I just have a quick question. I just want to make sure for the public on this item. That it's, you know, just known kind of the intent of this item, which, and Jessica, correct me if I'm not right here, but this is authorizing $11,000 per year for three years. We're going to start with a community action board to assist renters in the beachwap area with emergency rental assistance. And that will include payment of, I believe, I think first and last, but Jessica just wanted to see maybe if you could just clarify the other part of this of this item is to support the new wave of this. With operational funding of $25,000 per year for three years, which is amazing and great. I just wanted to make sure that if anyone in beachwaps or in the community is looking for rental assistance, I just want to make sure that they understand that this is also available kind of post, you know, sort of some of the state stuff that's going on. So this sounds like this will be a secured three year program with $11,000 a year. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. And this is actually an existing contract. It's just that it expired this year, so we're renewing it for another three to four years, depending on how much money we have left over. So this money has been going annually to these programs and we're just trying to extend that further out. Okay, great. Great. That's good news. So thank you for bringing that forward. Okay, without any items being pulled today, I will go ahead and look for First, I'll see if any members of the public would like to speak to any item on our consent agenda. We have not had any items pulled today. So if you are here to speak to any items on our consent agenda, go ahead and please star nine to raise your hand. Your hand, excuse me. I have not seen any members in the public that would like to comment on the consent agenda today. So I will go ahead and look for a motion on the consent agenda, which are items number nine through 14 today. I see Council Member Calentari-Johnson. Thank you. I'd like to move to approve the items on the consent agenda. And Council Member Cummings. I'll second that. Okay. We have a motion by Council Member Calentari-Johnson, seconded by Council Member Cummings to approve items number nine through 14 on our consent agenda. I ask the clerk to please take a roll call vote. Council Member Watkins. Aye. Calentari-Johnson. Aye. Cummings. Member Golder is absent. Mayor Meyers. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. Okay. We are going to move on to item number 15, which is the core investments for members of the public core investments, stakeholder engagement and RFP framework recommendations. This is item number 15 on our agenda for members of the public who are streaming if this is an item you want to comment on. Now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council. We will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action. And I'll go ahead and turn this over to Ralph Demerica, the principal management analyst, our principal management analyst with City Manager's Office. Hi, good afternoon, Mayor Meyers and members of the City Council, Ralph Demerica, principal management analyst, as Mayor Meyers mentioned, for the City Manager's Office. And I am going to go ahead and share my screen with you all. I am here today to give you an update on questions. And I have 15 slides for you, including this one, the next one. Here is our agenda for this presentation. I'm going to provide a quick review of core funding, the process and timeline, the stakeholder engagement process and participants, staff recommendations and what the next steps are. I'm also joined by Director Morris and this item was heard at the County Board of Supervisors this morning. However, this presentation, my presentation at the back of the material was put together before this morning's Board of Supervisors meeting. So if there are any updates or anything that you'd like to chime in on Director Morris, please feel free to do so. I invite you to do so. Members may have some questions for you at the end of this presentation as well, but thank you for being here today. So a little bit of background on core. As many of you as probably all of you know, in 2015, the Board of Supervisors approved a phased-in approach to transition from the historical community program funding model to a results-based collection model. And in doing so, directed HSD Human Services Department to lead the design and implementation process. And after extensive research and in collaboration with a wide variety of stakeholders, the HSD Community Program funding process was transformed into a new model, which is the core funding model that we know now. The first RFP under this in 2017, and in that model, the County put in $4.1 million and had an additional $150,000 for set-aside awards. The city-based funding was around $1 million. It's roughly $1 million, $1 million, $35,000, and with an additional $45,000 set-aside awards annually. And it was a three-year term, and it was extended twice through the year 2021 and 2022. So fast-forwarding to today, really this timeline of how we're preparing for the next RFP to go out. What we will be discussing more thoroughly in my presentation is really this part, the summer 2021 and fall 2021 section. But as you can see in this slide, planning started at the county level with HSD and their and the coal communications. And they throughout summer work with different partners in the community to do a lot of outreach and really get community feedback on. But a member of the community liked last cycle and we can improve on and input they had with really putting together this framework that we're presenting to you today. And then we presented this sort of engagement process to the CTC group in June and for as well. And then today we're presenting this framework to you and we'll be back in November with the actual RFP. And all of window the city over the summer was invited to see the meeting that was hosted by the county HSD and homes. And we met with funders and community partners to gather input on how to apply the core framework and operate operationalized equity in this process. So funders meetings were held and there are 29 participants from 17 agency and the CPC had an initial meeting with HSD and the consultants kind of what we're going to be to talk about at these engagement meetings and all that. Further community meetings were held. And then 88 participants from 54 agencies gathered for these meetings and then a survey was put out and we have respondents from 982. We met with funders and partners as well. And the consultants presented to the Human Service Commission in the fall and we also went back to CPC in the fall to kind of get an update on where these discussion blended. The purpose of the meeting was really to provide an opportunity to build a share of the core framework and to deepen connections, communication and opportunities for alignment for collective impact among funders and community partners. And additionally, those that attended the engagement sessions were offered an option to submit comments via a survey and a summary of a stakeholder engagement process was included in your back in the chair of testing number two. And the meetings, funders and service providers were asked a lot of questions, but these were the two big questions that all of them were asked to provide feedback on. One was, how can the core framework be used for making decisions about funding allocations? And the second, how can we center equity in the core funding process in concrete and actionable ways for both funders and service providers? And as you know, as it's mentioned in attachment to the varying ideas, these are really complicated questions and there's a lot of stakeholders involved in these discussions. So, yeah, the feedback we got vary and however there was appreciation for how complex that answering these questions was and how the operationalized core framework is the procurement process. And with regard to equity, some of the key feedback included making an equity part of the scoring criteria and to recognize that equity is an ongoing process and applicants should be penalized for learning how to work on it. Some common themes regarding the application included keeping the application simple and streamlined, having a different process for small or large funding requests, and recognition that simplicity isn't always as easy as it seems and it still requires effort for both the funder and applicant. Based on review of the lessons learned from the evaluation of the last procurement, the recent stakeholder engagement meeting and discussion with HSD staff I am presenting. So following recommendations today for council to consider. And again, today we're really just a previewing high sort of high level, but we're asking for direction to for how to move forward with RFP process in November just trying to get some approval for this framework so that we can come back to in November the actual RFP. But the staff recommendations today are to approve the core investment contract term for another three years and this would align us with counties efforts as well. And the three year term was approved at this year's county board of supervisors meeting. Direct staff to return on November 9 with the core RFP and an update on the application process technical assistance for applicants review panels and scoring award funding decisions and process. And lastly, which I'll get more detail about is to consider core investment allocation methods and funding options and provide direction. So the funding options to consider and then that will go into allocation methods. The recommendation or that staff is putting forward today. First has to do the set aside funds that the last five years. Well, the first three years, we had $45,000 set aside annually and the invited organizations for apply for the set aside fun. The recommendation is to roll the set aside funds over into the base fund and to not have that annual application process moving forward, but to actually just forward into the the overall process this year. And that includes creating a shared approach for the funding awards, having all medium and large buckets that organizations could apply for. And that way you kind of you keep the spirit of those set aside. The smaller set aside grant funds into in the process with the small bucket over here. And then the small medium large for a separation of applications will tie into the allocation. And the third funding option to consider is to determine the feasibility of increasing the city's base funding to join the county efforts to fund deeper separate investment. This morning, the county board of supervisors did approve to increase their base funding by $500,000. So it's something that the council and the city may consider doing is looking at our base fund and see if there is room to increase that or not. And then the allocation method options and this is sort of the big question for today. After the feedback from the engagement meeting and all of that we staff sat back and determined there are really three ways to move forward with how to allocate this funding in this RP cycle the first option is a target approach. And that's to find in a targeted and identify specific inequities to address. In order to move the needle on targeted core conditions, the benefit of this approach in that it increases the likelihood of impact targeted conditions and recognizing if there are these fewer programs will find it with larger awards. And HSD staff at today is not recommending this approach, because we don't have sufficient data, the condition to target. And this approach would reduce funding for agencies and services not connected to the target or conditions. And that's recognized as part of the evolution of core. This could be a more viable option in the future. Option two of the broad approach is very similar to what we're doing now or what we did five years ago, and that's just fun broadly across all four conditions. And this approach mirrors how funds are currently allocated. And it acknowledges the interconnectedness of the four conditions. The benefit of the broad approach is that it recognizes that all the four conditions have been identified as key aspects of the thriving community. And it supports many programs and services being offered. Limitation is that distributing limited funding across many programs and services results in smaller awards and potentially must have been intact. Staff is not recommending this approach for this funding cycle, and it does not provide the impact and vision for core. So option three, which is a hybrid approach, which did come up at one of the CTC meetings, I think the last CTC meeting. It was brought up and that's to find out the high. It's primarily broad, but it would also include one deeper investment. And this option acknowledges both the need for a safe transition from funding safety net services broadly and the impact of deeper investments. This approach requires that a portion of the funds available for award be targeted toward one larger investment. And as a consequence, we anticipate that fewer programs may be funded. So the funds for this deeper investment would be separate from the large grant side tier described earlier. So with this approach, there's actually four tiers, three tiers described earlier, and then this one general plan. Well, in my back of material here, I have currently HSE recommending to the County Board of Supervisors. That $500,000 of County funds be directed towards this option and of that recommendation was to create this ornate with the County Board of Supervisors. And for this investment, collective impact features will be built into the funding expectations and our P criteria. And in addition, the proposals will be expected to explicitly address equity as both a process and an outcome. So option three, the hybrid approach is what staff is recommending right now. And that was the approach that was approved by the County Board of Supervisors this morning. Look at that hybrid approach when you break it down a little bit more to see where the funding goes towards the, we will, with this approach, there will be three buckets, a minimum and large that will be funded in percentages that near Berkeley how those buckets have been funded in the past. So we didn't have the specific buckets in the last round, but the percentages reflect the similar sort of distribution that occurred in the last round. But then with option three, the hybrid approach, we add this collective impact line over here where it shows the 750,000 going towards that fund. And so this, the County Fund were approved this morning and over here it shows sort of how the city's $1 million and $1 million, $35,000 will be allocated to the small minimum and large funds. So our next steps, we are planning to have another stakeholder engagement meeting in mid-October to get additional feedback on application process, technical assistance for applicants, review panels, and all that to give our partners in the community an additional option to be involved in the decision-making efforts. And then we'll be back in November and I to present the RFP to the board and Santa Cruz City Council for approval and release and recommendations to the board and Santa Cruz City Council. So one more time, these are the staff recommendations that we are presenting to you today and it's to approve core investment contract term of three years to direct the staff to return on November 9th with an update on the application process, technical assistance for applicants, review panel and scoring, and the whole thing decisions process. And then some direction that we were looking to council to today was, you know, this option three sound like a good approach. Is it to approach acceptable for council that the right way to move forward? Are you guys on board with willing to set aside funds into the funding or should we keep those separated and should we continue to have an annual process for those? And do we, does the city want to look at the feasibility of joining the calendar and increasing our base funding? Those are sort of the major questions that are up in the end that we were looking for direction for today. So that includes my presentation and I'm available for they have. And I believe director Morris is going to take for any questions for the county. Thank you, Ralph. Thank you. Thank you, Randy for being here today. Good to see you. Okay, I will look to see if there's any questions from council on this item at this time before taking that public comment. I have a couple of quick questions. I don't see any of my colleagues have any at this point. One thing I noted. First of all, it's, you know, I compliment us and the county as our partner in this. So, and the increase that the county's proposing, you know, this is, I mean, this is about $6 million we're investing back into our community into these really critical services. So I want to first off thank the county and thank you for your leadership and increasing the amount this year. And I think as we recover from COVID and all the other myriad of things that are going on. I really appreciate that investment and because what benefits folks in the county benefits are folks as well. So thank you, Randy, for your leadership on that. And it's an impressive amount of money between a small county and a small city to, you know, to provide to our community members. I was wondering during all of the different outreach that was done. During that time to you. I'm just curious more than else. Is there are you also working, for example, with private foundations at the same time and I'm thinking about the community foundation in particular. Is there a. Is there sort of a leveraging kind of plan or not or I'm just curious about how their funds and support. Do they, does that, is there any kind of match or in types of work that's done, I guess is my question with the community foundation. Ralph, do you want me to cover that one. Yes, please. Well, first, the surreal video environment is actually really nice to see you all. I'm actually being in your literal house someday and seeing in person, but and also, you know, thank you to Ralph. He got thrown into this process with no experience and almost as if we've been meeting every week for the last three months Ralph your presentations walking stuff with ours this morning. Mayor Myers. Yes, we invited both Paw Patrol Valley Trust and community foundation to all of the meetings. And I was specifically approved by Susan true the community foundation director to make a general in the board materials that were public and shared this morning and I was approved by her as long as it was very clear there's been no final decisions. Which I did verbalize that we have a meeting we county with community foundation specifically ended this week, because we see a mission alignment with what came up in our meetings from them as a funder with community providers expressing deep appreciation for their shift and how they fund mall pockets of money streamlined simplified applications and a deep focus on equity. So that was a piece of why we recommend this cheered approach in part so that we could implement what we heard was valued by the community and the community providers so what this is there's been conceptual agreement and Susan's point was please make sure if you make a public comment I have to talk to my board is just a meeting. There's a conceptual agreement that it might be worth braiding funding from the community foundation with the county and city, if your board approvals your council through this to look at those small grants and have a partnership to expand the small amount and working with and we would come back to our board and through your staff to your council with that proposal on November 9 if indeed the meetings lead to a commitment to investment and it would include in it how they would be part of the review process. So we are hopeful. But again, it is conceptual and she needs to run it through the process but that's that's where we are with that that's responsive. Thank you. No that's exactly what I was hoping to hear. I mean I think that all the work we've been doing on homelessness and raising, you know, public dollars to match. And you know that's an area I think that's right for exploration but I think also the community foundation did such an outstanding job with coven and with fire response. They're just becoming that private foundation partner I hope for the future and so I think that leveraging is really great to hear you guys are talking. It's, I think the amount of money coming up from from local government is very impressive and I think, you know, donors appreciate those partnership approaches so really excited that that that's happening and hopefully we'll see more from you guys on that. That was really my question main question on it and if there's no other questions from council members on this. I will go ahead and I just also want to recognize the community. The committee, the council committee members who worked on this. I know you guys put in a lot of time so it looks really great. But thank you for doing that work. I will go ahead and take this out to the public at this time. This is for item number 15 on our agenda today, which is the core investment stakeholder engagement and our request for proposal framework recommendations. And if you are interested in speaking to this item. If you could please press star nine. And what is your time to speak will unmute you. I'm not seeing any hands raised today in the audience regarding this. So, again, I'll bring it back to council for a motion. And again, I just want to thank Randy and Ralph and the council members who worked on this and. Just amazing amount of hopefully an investment that helps community programming throughout San Cruz County ahead of us here. I saw council member. I think you guys all raise your hands right at the right right at the same time so I'll go ahead and recognize council member brown and then council member walk. I was going to go after council member John. Remember what we can do that have the motion prepared. I just have a couple of comments. So, okay. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Thanks, council member round council member counter job. Thank you. I want to first think, Ralph and all of your work on this. I know you've worked super hard over them. I've worked on this on this program and I want to thank Randy and your team and everyone at the county as mayor Meyer said on your leadership. It's really wonderful to be on this side of it as a grant writer. I've written grant proposals for the core funding so to to help guide the decision making process and invest in our community in this way is really meaningful. I want to acknowledge our service providers. They are always there to serve those who are most in need. And certainly they've been there and then some over the last year and a half. They invest tremendously in our community and I'm so glad that our city and our community our county. Take this opportunity to invest back in them. I think those are just the comments I wanted to make this is just this is such a fun part of being a council member. I'm so thrilled that we are hopefully going to be making this investment. And with that, I did work with council members Watkins and Brown my colleagues on the community programs committee to put forward a motion. And if Bonnie, if you wouldn't mind putting that up. I wanted to approve the recommendation of the core investment term of three years pursue core investment allocation method option three, which is the hybrid approach that is primarily broad but would also include one deeper investment. I did want to add here is that we want to ensure that the deeper investment is also serving community members who reside in the city of Santa. We're going to fold the are 45,000 set aside allocations into core investment based funding and use this set aside as a means of increasing our base funding. And then fourth item here is to direct staff to return on November 9 2021 with core RFP and an update on the application. That's technical assistance for application applicants review panels and scoring and award funding decisions process. I would also like to just ask that we do explore what increasing our base funding to 10% would look like and come back and have that number nine. That doesn't need to be part of the motion language, but I would like us to explore that for the next time we come together on this. Thank you, council member council member Watkins. I'll go ahead and check in the motion and then if maybe I could just make a few comments right now mayor. Sure. Okay, great. Um, I just want to thank my colleague council member Brown and council member commentary Johnson for all the thought and effort put into this. Like Ralph and Randy at the county and then a cold to aren't here with us today. This wasn't always an easy process. I will just say it was really challenging to switch from a really known sort of in the community model to a new way of doing funding allocations and I was really encouraged to hear that. The community foundation is interested in partnering with that is truly collective impact in a way that I think we want to see it play out in regards to really moving the needle on some of these really big social issues we're trying to address. So that is really encouraging and I appreciate you sharing that with us today Randy and for being here. And just in general, I just want to acknowledge how important as council member commentary Johnson brought up having our safety net providers supported. And it's going to meet the needs of the community in ways that we cannot and really want to thank the thought that went into the evolution of this process essentially moving from sort of a one size fits all to really thinking about it as a tiered approach really embracing equity in that way. And and I feel although I know it's not perfect. It's definitely been very responsive to community needs to to program needs and provider needs and is a continuous kind of improvement process that I think we can be really proud of. So I'm happy to go in this direction and happy to second the motion and just my appreciation to everybody who is involved in getting at this point. Thank you council member council member Brown. Thank you mayor. So I'll echo all of those comments expressing my appreciation for the staff at the city and county who have been involved in this are our consultants who have been working on this kind of carrying, you know, navigating us through this over the five year period. And, you know, just just really applaud the all of that work and also thanks to my community programs committee colleagues and council member commentary Johnson and Watkins. I, you know, this is as council member Watkins suggests this has not been easy. They're continuing to be challenges. And, you know, we hear from service providers about the issues that they face kind of independently of this particular process just that. I'm just that we have so I want to send a huge thank you to them as well as council member commentary Johnson suggested and, you know, and just say that we know that there is a lot more work to do. This is I think we're making an important step here in responding to the last round and trying to figuring our way forward. Absolutely thrilled the community foundation is interested in being more actively involved in because I think that they're they're focused on, you know, really how to support resource. You know, under resourced organizations and do more of the, you know, interactive and iterative fund development, you know, going through that process rather than just, you know, fill out the application get it in and we'll, you know, or you want to on a score sheet. So there's, you know, there's like all of these really, really, you know, important programs that are getting funded that have been funded historically and there have been challenges. I mean, I just want to put it out there for the just for the council and also for people who are listening. The decision to fold the set aside funds into the general fund for for core is I think it's a it's you know I support that right now at this point and you know it in the in the previous round it was very helpful for at least for my Councilmember Watkins if you have anything you want to add, please do to be able to be nimble to address some of the gaps emerging needs and then gaps were in I think for seniors and and children's programs in particular where they didn't quite fit into the categories that had been established or there was a reduced funding and in some that, you know, kind of multiply challenge some of those organizations, particularly the ones who get matching grants. So, you know, we were able to use that funding to kind of like fix some of the things that were, you know, not didn't work out quite as we had hoped. So, given that we're kind of in this next phase now, I do hope that we will will look at and I understand we have our own resource chat and fun physical challenges, but that we can seriously consider how to make this a priority for increasing that part of funding and working, you know, making an additional contribution. I'm so glad the county is providing leadership on that. Thank you, Randy, and your team. And so, you know, so there's there's a lot more to do, but I think that moving is is is wonderful. And I'm looking forward to seeing how things play out in this next round. And, and, you know, another thing that I want to say just really quickly, because, you know, the service providers, you know, it's there. It's a nonprofit workforce in our community. These are people who, you know, have who work and many of us have been in those jobs. There are no, you know, you don't get paid a lot. It's a struggle to live in a community like this and we have we are so lucky to have a robust community of service providers and people who are willing to step up. And, you know, I really want to be involved in this conversation as we look towards ways to bolster, you know, the nonprofit workforce as well. So I'll leave it there. There's, you know, there's there's a lot of, you know, really cool stuff happening in the in the middle of all of this too. So I look forward to working with you all moving forward. Thank you, member council member Brown. Great comments. I think the only place he would make less money is on the city council. $1.43 an hour is kind of what I think it's kind of about you get to. Well, thank you again to all the council members that worked on this. We do have a motion and a second I see vice mayor Bruder. I wanted to say I really enjoyed learning and reading about the core investments and about it as a funding model for safety net services and really as a means in investing and addressing our community needs. Thank you to everyone that worked on this and I just wanted to express appreciation as well. Thank you guys there. Okay, we have a motion that's up on the screen here by council member commentary Johnson and seconded by council member walking. And that is to prove the recommendation to the core investment term of three years to pursue the hybrid approach. But also include one deeper investment. And ensure that the deeper investment is serving community members who reside in the city of Santa Cruz. Third part of the motion is to fold 45,000 of the set aside allocations into the court investment based funding. And then direct staff to return on November 9 with core RFP. And an update on the application process technical assistance for applicants review panels and scoring and awards decisions process. Bonnie could we get a roll call vote please. Remember what can I tell and hurry Johnson. Right. Brown. Right. Coming. Number gold I believe is still absent vice mayor Bruder and mayor Myers. That motion passes unanimously. Thanks again everybody get to see Randy. Okay, we will now move on to our next general business item. And this is item number 16 city cannabis tax children's fund. This is a budget adjustment. And I will turn this over to the staff in a moment for members of the public who are streaming this meeting. If this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council. We will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action. So, if you are interested in this, you'll want to press star nine on your phone. And then when I turn it out for public comment. And welcome up. I'll welcome up Lindsay Bass, the principal management analyst for Mars hearts and recreation department. Hi, Lindsay. Hi, council members. I'm going to let honey make a few comments and then I will begin a short presentation for you all. All right. Thank you, mayor and city council members. For the record Tony Elliott director of parks recreation. And yeah, Lindsay Bass our principal management analyst with parks record will give the bulk of the presentation today. So, the item before council today is our appropriation request for the children's fund. The children's fund as the council knows is 12.5% of our cannabis tax. And so we have pretty clear, I say a really clear direction in terms of how that children's fund is to be used to our appropriation today, or the request for the council today is consistent with that previous council direction. In terms of the split for those funds. And this is also consistent with the city schools committee that we meet with on a quarterly basis. I did us on the use of these funds and just wanted to provide that high level context. So with that said, I'll turn it over to Lindsay for a short presentation on our specific request for today. Fantastic. Thank you, Tony. And you should all be able to see my screen. This table summary table is included in your packet. And I thought it might be helpful just to walk you through a few of the particulars around the cannabis tax children's fund allocation that can be a little confusing. So just to review, we do receive 12.5% of the cannabis tax fund revenues that are audited each year. Audit means that we tend to program in the following fiscal year. So once those funds are audited and we know the actual amount that is there, we then seek the appropriation. So what's on the screen is how those funds have historically been utilized. You'll notice that the funds have been growing as we've moved forward in time. And starting in with the FY 19 allocation that fiscal year 19 that was programmed in FY 20 right during pretty intense critical COVID responses for families and youth. We moved forward with the 50-50 split as Tony mentioned to support early childhood education to thrive by three as well as 6% to our friends of parks and recreation nonprofit that provides scholarships for financially impacted families and vulnerable youth. So you can see here the benefits and impacts of that funding and just wanted to reinforce that the children's fund is really an investment in the future and the resources, whether they're going to early childhood development or to vulnerable youth through scholarships really do provide critical when at the backs of families when it's most needed. So we've received testimonials from our faux part group in terms of the impact of those scholarships. And you can see some of those here as well as the benefits of just that FY 20 funds utilized by these two partner groups that we work so closely with benefiting nearly 300 kids. That doesn't include you know the families that also benefit from them being engaged, having programs to go to having some consistency, being able to go to work, bring home a paycheck, as well as the early childhood centers that benefited from these resources as well. So just a lot of great results from the investment of these resources to date. And I just wanted to review with you the appropriation that we are recommending today. So again, this is for fiscal year 20. We will program the funds in fiscal year 22. Actually, so that's a little bit of an error there. But the audited amount that we have in front of us is for 176,000 272, which will yield just over 88,000 to two different areas. So early childhood development and then also to vulnerable youth in the conversations with partners and through the department's programming. We're also having some really rich conversations about, you know, how we measure impacts of these funds. So thinking about direct beneficiaries of the kids that we're supporting, understanding the composition of that population, making sure that we're tracking age, race, ethnicity, language preferences, as well as the indirect beneficiaries. So families that are supported as well and the number of sites that are receiving this kind of support. So, so it's not a massively substantial amount of funds today. Those funds are incredibly impactful. We don't want to place too many reporting requirements on our partners, but we do want to make sure that we are looking at how these funds are helping and impacting the beneficiaries of the program. And with that, I will leave it with the staff recommendation and we welcome any questions or comments that you have. Happy to clarify anything. Thank you, Lindsay. We'll go ahead and see if there are any council members with questions at this time. I'm not seeing council member coming. Thank you all for that presentation. I had a somewhat related question since the cannabis tax is in the children funds being discussed. Since this might not be for Parks and Rec staff, this might be for other staff, but since the sale tax measure didn't go on the ballot, I was just kind of curious when the tax funds were supposed to be put on the ballot if that was going to occur this year or next year. Because I know that we were one point and a half that coincided with the recall election, which is now passed and then wasn't sure if it was going to be a special election specifically for that or if it was going to be put on another general election. I was wondering if somebody could speak to that because I've heard conflicting messaging from members of the public and wanted to make sure that this was clear what direction the next cannabis tax measure is going on. Thanks for that question. Council member Cummings, I'm going to ask Bonnie Bush to respond. Thank you. Back in June, council adopted a resolution to place this on the November 2, 2021 ballot. So it's measure A. There is a website, there is a page on our website dedicated to measure A. So it is technically not considered a special election because it is a designated state. The question was always, is it consolidated because other agencies in the county might not have stuff to put on the ballot, which is where the whole cost came in because we can't split the cost with anyone. So that was the debate, but it is on November 2, 2021. Thank you. And then what are the costs associated with that just in case we get inquiries from them? I think we're getting into an area where we're talking about something that's not on the agenda, but I'll look to Tony or Tony. I'm not trying to shut down the conversation, but I just want to make sure. I can also just send you an email. I'll be right back. I mean, I think it's a judgment call, but it's, I think council is probably appropriate. I mean, a written update from the, from the city court, sorry. Okay. Thank you. Okay, I will go ahead and take this out to the public. If there's no questions from council. We're now on item number 16, which is the city cannabis tax children's fund budget adjustment. And if you are interested in commenting, I'd like you to raise your hand by pressing star nine. I see we have phone number ending in 1810. You're unmuted. Go ahead, please. Star six to unmute yourself, please. We're good. This item suffers from much the same concerns as measure a placed on the rate is far worse, however, and so far as it flushed a ton of money forever lost down the drain getting it on the ballot. This policy here automatically earmarked future funds for specific purpose by a policy here and worse by charter and measure a that forces the very highest priority specific somewhat not accountable spending possibly forever and presents obstacles for future equally elected council members to assign their own spending priorities is your wisdom permanently superior no matter what to that of future electeds. Why the three and a half trillion Biden human infrastructure for families bill will pass in some form and will make measure a and this policy look very unnecessary. What's the rush do you figure parents are spending too much time spoken the weed instead of caring for their children and you should they then pay more. Anyway, a little joke. What other services funded you don't say this kind of tax action should at least be an annual recipient performance and achievement standard reviewed allocation but should not automatically be awarded nor with an automatic fixed tax percentage benefit. This assumes that this funding follows a city's purpose which I say it does not the city should not take on an outside collective welfare role adding to the fed state county efforts. It might even attract poverty here. Many budget items suffer from the lack of oversight not a great never bigger unaccountable spending. No one argues that early childhood experiences aren't critically important is the government a better parent than parents. Well, not lately as evidenced by leftist public school curricula. This is also in great part a welfare affirmative action type assignment one where city money is not used to provide services for everyone that goes to select financial needs. I won't go into much how well for affirmative action type programs immediately devastated black American families after their introduction. Did lead black women to marry the government and black fathers deciding they didn't need to stick around to raise discipline children. There's also going to population of illiterate unsuccessful children who by the way still in poverty and the old government. Thanks. Are there any other members of the public who would want to speak on item number 16 today if you do please. I am not seeing any other members. We will go ahead and we already have a motion on the floor. Seconded by Council Member Watkins and we will go ahead and wait. We didn't get a motion. You're not going to say wait a minute you guys are guys are doing too much work. I keep seeing the same names coming up here. So I would look for a motion on the item please. Council Member Cummings and then Council Member Watkins. Yeah I'll go ahead and move this item. It's just going to say that it's really good to see that you know as this tax revenue goes up that we're seeing more revenue going towards children's programs in the community. And having served on the city school committee and that we use these funds to help you know support scholarships for children or community in the summers they can go to summer camp and some of summer programs and so see how these funds can be put to get used to help children in the community. So with that I'll make all of our support and move the staff recommendation resolution appropriating the fiscal year 2020 audited amount of the city of Canada's tax children fund allocation. The parts and rec creation department 50% of that by three early childhood development and 50% to after school care and scholarships for underserved youth education. Thank you. So I think we have a motion by Council Member Cummings. Council Member Watkins. I'll second the motion and I'll just briefly share the comments made by my colleagues. And in regards to the funding provides for our community and for our families and really extend my gratitude and thanks to our parks my department Lindsay and Tony. Thank you so much to the committee and so far as well as the thrive by three initiatives that has sort of taken on this administrative oversight allocation role without collecting any oversight kind of administrative dollars to do that. And that little bit can go such in such a good can go so far. I think that's a great thing because in families in our community and it's great to see it being used in a way that feels really nimble but what's so appropriate and and won't lose its appropriateness as we need to always continue to invest in our kids. So I will gladly second the motion and offer my appreciation and gratitude as well. Thank you Council Member. I'll go ahead and echo to I really do think that even though many people say is this is not city's job. If we don't invest in the young people that live in our city. It's going to be really hard to you know have successful community so I really want to recognize the parks and recreation programs and the childcare and the after school care that these funds provide. Safety net services really help kids kids be successful and and then to top it off with doing things with our rec programs and others such as you know it's just kind of icing on the cake to really take care of our youth which is super important. So Bonnie let's do a roll call vote. Council Member Watkins. Hi. Calentary Johnson. Hi. Brown. Hi. Come in. Council Member Golder is absent Vice Mayor Brunner. And Mayor Myers. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. I know we have a lot of people interested in our next item today. We are running ahead of schedule today so I'm going to go ahead. I think we had kind of put some start times out to the community. So I'm going to go ahead and have the council take a break. And I think Bonnie did you I don't believe we we have any. Three minute speakers Bonnie did you do any additional outreach. I think people know when start times are it looks like a lot of people are tuned in at least I'm recognizing a lot of the names from some of the communications we've gotten. Bonnie did anybody contact your office regarding kind of the timing of this particular item this is the homeless garden project item. Not our office know but we did have just a general estimate that could have been shared with people as they called in. Yeah. So why don't we Council why don't we take a 45 minute break so we will come back at 4pm. And we'll start item number 17 so those folks are in the audience right now. We'll go ahead and take a break so that people who actually we're looking at late a little bit later in the afternoon that might want to join in this particular agenda item will start back up at four o'clock. Really quick me just to confirm. You said a 45 minute. Yeah. Back at four. I'm sorry. Back at four o'clock. Okay. Well, we are adjourned the Santa Cruz City Council adjourned until four o'clock and we will take up agenda item number 17 then and that is the item on the homeless garden project. Thanks everybody. See you back then. Okay. Council members can turn on their cameras. Ready to roll. Yes. We're good. Okay. Vice mayor minute here. Okay. We will go ahead and get started at four o'clock. Good afternoon. We're re adjourning for item number 17 on our agenda. This is the request from the homeless garden project to amend the Pogonit master plan and relocate the side of the plan to farm from the lower Meadow to the upper main Meadow in the Pogonit Park open space. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. Please note public comment will be limited to one hour today and each person will have one minute to speak. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council. We will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action. I also want to confirm that I did provide three minutes to the homeless garden project today. They will have two speakers who will be using those times as well as I believe Tony. They'll also be part of your presentation correct. Okay, great. Okay, we will go ahead and get started. I will go ahead and introduce Tony Elliott, the director of parks and recreation to start us off. And I also see Kathy Calvo is here today. She's with the homeless garden project. So Tony and Kathy, please go ahead. All right. Thank you, mayor and members of the city council for the record Tony Elliott Parks and Recreation department. And with me today from Parks and Recreation staff will be Park Superintendent Travis Beck and Parks planner Noah Downing. And then from the homeless garden project, Kathy Calvo and executive director, Dary Ganshorn will be here as well. What we'll do in terms of the presentation is I will give just a bit of background and this is a background that the council is likely well aware of. There had been previous meetings, but for the purposes of just kind of setting up our agenda item here, I want to give some background. I'll share a little bit of the detail from the parks and recreation commission meeting earlier in the month of September. And then just give a brief kind of very brief status update on the contamination in the lower Meadow and then I'll hand it off to homeless garden project. To go through presentation and then I'll conclude with a few remarks as well on regarding the process looking forward and some of the potential financial impact. So I've got about 16 or 17 slide tier that includes those from the homeless garden projects. I'll try to move through these. It's just leave, but, but in a thorough way as well. So thanks for sticking with me here. All right, so I will go ahead and share my screen. Right. Are you able to see my presentation? Yeah, we can see it Tony. Thank you. All right. Okay, so, um, yeah, by way of background, so I'll just start here. So the city and the homeless garden project. I've been working together for a long time over 20 years to locate the farm, the homeless garden project farm in the lower Meadow. The project was included in the 1998 Pogonin master plan and environmental impact report, which guides the development and the use for the property. The city and homeless garden project approved a lease agreement in May of 2017 for the lower main Meadow. And a planning permit for the farm complex was approved in September of 2018. The Pogonin farm is planned to include an administrative building, a pole barn storage building to greenhouses and nine acres of cultivated land. In 2018 late 2018 parks and recreation discovered lead contamination in the lower Meadow. As a result of historic ski shooting on the property. So in light of the contamination homeless garden project is seeking an alternative location for the home of its future farm. The city council included the packet for city council today as a letter written by the homeless garden project to the city council, which came in July this summer with a proposal to amend the Pogonin master plan. In order to provide an opportunity to move their farm from the lower Meadow to the upper main Meadow and just declare. I'm just called the upper Meadow or the main Meadow. So we'll kind of use that term interchangeably the upper Meadow or upper main Meadow today. The proposal from homeless garden project includes suggested text edits to the Pogonin master plan and conceptual site maps for the farm in the upper Meadow. So at its August 24 meeting, anonymously provided direction to do four things. So to direct staff to initiate an amendment process to the Pogonin master plan for relocation only for relocation of the homeless garden project in the lower Meadow to the upper Meadow, including outreach analysis and studies and environmental review. To direct staff to place a discussion of the proposed amendment on the September 13 parks and recreation commission agenda, which we did and I'll cover that and just a little bit. And to initiate an amendment process as expeditiously as possible and report to the council added September 28 meeting on how the proposal would be incorporated into department work plans, which is why we're here today. And to report on the amendment status to the count three months. That was a direction from end of August. We're back here today as directed by the council. So we met with the parks and recreation commission on September 13. The commission reviewed the proposal and the draft master plan amendment process that we put forth. The proposed process is included with packet today and available for the public. And I'll provide an overview of the detailed contents of that process a little bit later in the presentation. The commission supported the proposed master plan amendment process by a four to two vote. Among the dissenting votes on the commission concerns were centered primarily around environmental sensitivity of the upper main Meadow impacts to habitat conflicts with the Pogon at master plan division for the upper Meadow to be preserved and concerns with the time and cost associated with the master plan amendments and related sequel analysis. In addition, the commission and staff had the opportunity to hear from community members. So among those opposed additional questions were raised regarding habitat sensitive environmental resources and also some as well. So all of that correspondence from the commission meeting as well as correspondence we received for today's meeting is included with the city council packet. So before the city council and the public. I want to briefly cover the status and I'm sorry. Okay, here we go. I want to briefly just for the status of the lower Meadow where we found contamination in 2018 and just speak a little bit to the process that we are in the midst of so in August of 2020 the State Department of Toxic Substance Control DTSC evaluated and characterized the contaminants on the property. They provided something called a preliminary endangerment assessment, a PEA to the city, and it includes the soil testing results analysis and recommendations to the city. So the endangerment assessment identified areas that are safe to farm and recommended that a soils management plan be prepared. The homeless garden project began those management plan or site management plan with its consultant Weber Hayes. The county so county environmental health has provided guidance that the plan describe how the site will be controlled to ensure that farm workers remained in areas which have been identified as safe to farm. So those controls could include fencing signage training. So currently approximately four and a half acres, 4.5 acres of the lower Meadow could be farmed without remediation and immediate term. So just wanted to flag that I'll share a map here in just a moment. So in terms of that process on the contamination and potential remediation parks and recreation staff expects a report from our consultant on October 15, which will further delineate and characterize the lead contamination, which will set us up for the next stages in the planning. Dealing with site management and plans for remediation. So we've got a process that we will go through related to the contamination in the lower Meadow. This map, I just wanted to share it may be difficult to see. I'm not sure how this comes through zoom exactly, but generally speaking, the areas that you can see in yellow or outlined in orange are the contaminated areas. For a little bit of some context, kind of at the bottom of the screen is golf club drive and you can kind of see it angling up toward the top left of the screen, which is the pugnip clubhouse. The areas that are in green. There's an area that's about two or two and a half acres at the top of the image and an area in green at the bottom of the image. About two or two and a half acres. Those are the areas that are not contaminated that combined equal about 4.5 acres. So just wanted to again to kind of grounds the conversation in what areas are contaminated and what is not at this point. But clearly we've got a complex situation that we're going through in a process to address this issue in the lower Meadow. Tony, since you have that image up, maybe I'll interject just for the public. There's all, could you tell us what is the difference between something that's in orange versus something that's in yellow? Is that a criteria of contamination? Like one's more contaminated than the other. Yeah, I would actually invite our parks planner Noah to speak to this. We have two main types of contamination. That have been flagged as concerns by county environmental health. One is lead from the shot from skeet shooting in the other are called pause PHS. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which is a type of carcinogen is my understanding from the clay pigeon. From the historic skeet shooting. So I've got Noah on here and would ask Noah to kind of describe the differences between these and Noah maybe where some of those the highest hits came from with those different contaminants. Yeah, sure. Tony, thank you. So, just to walk you through where you see that the orange levels like B11, B11S, just above West Meadow, just to the east of that would be where the firing area was. And so the orange is the skeet that was slung and shot down. And so that's in kind of an area of a few hundred. The yellow would be where the lead shots kind of carried and fell. And so the highest levels of contamination are around the four to 500 foot range so EM10, EM11, EM9, that's where you're finding the hits. I've seen, you know, the draft results from the October report we released, which has additional sampling points in the ravine area. And so just towards EM10 in the ravine, you could kind of see a line which represents the highest points of contamination. Thank you. That's helpful. Just to get the get the sense of what what the colors mean. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thanks Noah. All right, with that, I will hand it over to the homeless garden project over to Kathy and Darry. Thanks Darry. Thanks Tony. My name is Darry to Dan Swarn and I'm the executive director of the homeless garden project. On behalf of the whole homeless garden project, I would really like to extend our thanks to the council members and to the parks commission members for your continued support of the permanent home for the homeless garden project. The homeless garden project provides transition employment and job training for people experiencing homelessness over the last seven years on average 97% of our graduates have obtained jobs and about 90% by housing. And I'm really going to just now pass it on to Kathy, Kathy is our former board president, the co-chair of our successful capital campaign and the chair of the homeless garden project. Thank you Gary. Welcome Kathy. Thanks Darry. I just want to take a minute here since there's so many people tuning in. But to really agree, Dan Swarn, she's been with the project for over 20 years. I've had the opportunity to work with her closely for the last 10. And I've never seen a person with more commitment and more compassion and more effectiveness when it comes to helping people who are really trying to turn their lives around. So thank you so much Darry for everything you do and for making the project the success that it is. I just regret that I, like I said last time that I'm here at the circumstances really appreciate the council's actions, the parks commission action and the parks department staff work in helping us sort through the situation where and I went through the packet and there's a lot I could say right now. But I'm reminding myself that this is really the beginning of a process to look and to determine where the best place at Pogonet for the homeless garden project is. So like Tony, because we have an ending audience, I'm going to review a little bit of what I went over last time. I want to review the history of the homeless garden project and Pogonet share some of the challenges that we've encountered from our perspective and really urge the council to support the recommendation that the parks director is doing to you today. So next slide is the timeline that we previously shared with you in 1998, approximately 12 acres of the lower metal and that's out of 640 acres at Pogonet overall was evaluated in the environmental impact report and adopted as part of the Pogonet master plan. Since 1998 the project under Darius leadership has really developed its organization capacity is expanded the program the results that she should do I think are really unparalleled probably anywhere that you can think of. She expanded her budget build an effective staff and taken steps to prepare for the project having its first ever permanent home at Pogonet. We're eventually will be able to triple the number of people that serve. The council of Tony said approved a lease of the does. Hello for the homeless garden projects back in 2017. After doing a lot of work we obtained our design permit. A lot of work and a lot of expense for the project from the city in 2018. And in 2019 we moved towards conclusion of the capital fundraising campaign that raised $3.5 million, which I think is possibly a record in this community and really shows the deep support that the project has. We raised that money to invest in the city owned land at Pogonet to build a permanent home for the homeless garden project which Tony described a small administrative center a barn and two greenhouses. And we had hoped to have somewhere between 9 and 12 acres to farm. And the program. As we got ready to break ground in January of 2019 we were ordered to halt construction based on the identification of possible lead contamination that dates back to shooting that took place on the property in the 1930s and 40s. And it was never identified as an issue in the master plan for the eir previously. So that came as a big price. Since the discovery Tony shared with you the soil tests that have been conducted. I think I would have make a little caveat about the term not contaminated the homeless garden project really the board of directors spent a lot of time. We were looking at farm and was deemed as safe by us based on its meeting the residential standard, but there were members of the homeless garden project board who feel very strongly that no level of lead is really safe to expose people to. So that's an internal debate that we've had just as some background. When we realized that the lower meadow had the contamination we did go ahead and hire a contractor who looked at it to give us an estimate. The farmland that Tony described being potentially viable. I'll be at there being concerns about the lead the contractor looked at it with a new lens running utilities and other. Other things that we would need particularly water and electric lines would involve going through areas that are more highly contaminated. So he was concerned about the overall viability of the site in light of that. So we began to look at the direction of the homeless garden project. And again, there's 640 acres of land there. And we're coming at this with the premise that we can identify about 10 would be a suitable permanent home for the homeless garden project which was identified as a key element in the original. So if you go to the next slide and I think this is important context especially for people who haven't followed this closely. And I'll say that I was personally surprised as we began reevaluating and we're looking at sites besides that jumped out to us as the most viable at this point is the upper meadow site. And the reason we came to that conclusion is that we looked at a comparison of the lower and upper meadow. The building site in the lower mess is an area that's never been previously developed. The upper meadow site that we're looking at is near the old clubhouse and it's where the tennis court and the pool or pool was previously. We would be putting the administrative center and the ancillary buildings on a site that's already been previously developed. In the comments that you received, there were a lot of comments about the coastal terrace prairie. At the upper meadow, we'd be converting about 3.5 acres in the lower meadow. We've been approved to convert 6 acres and we'll be doing some other restoration to compensate for that as part of the conditions of the approval. In the upper meadow, there are many wetlands. There are none in the area that we're looking at at the upper meadow. There are multiple wetlands in the lower meadow. There are no slopes in the upper meadow area that we're proposing for farming. There's multiple areas that have slopes in the lower meadow. Tree removal is a big one for us. It was when we really paused that as we got our permit. And we were stopped construction. We had permits to do significant tree removal in the lower meadow, including more than 12 trees. There'll be really minor removal in the building site if we proceed in the upper meadow. We've completed soil testing in the upper meadow and had no significant findings where you've heard what we found in the lower meadow. Electricity in the upper meadow. There's infrastructure nearby. There's challenges in getting electricity to the new potential site in the lower meadow if we were to move forward due to the speed shooting impact. A fixed system is likely feasible in the upper meadow. We'd have a forest sewer main required in the lower and we'd have a continuous farm area in the upper meadow where we don't have that in the lower meadow. So this is what led us and I really want the community to absorb this to come to you and to ask for consideration of an amendment. And as I said, this is the beginning of the process. So we expect that we will hear a lot, that we'll learn a lot. And I want to say that we want what is really best for Pogonit and best for the community. One of the foundational principles of homeless garden projects program is really the healing power of the soil and nature. And we're committed to being good stewards of the land at Pogonit and of the people for it. I know it's gone on a little bit, but I do want to say a quick thing because a number of people have commented about the possibility of keeping the farm at our current site on natural bridges. So we sent a note to the owner of the property who, as most of you know, has plans to develop much needed housing on the site. And he made it clear in that as he begins construction that we can stay there. That's the good news until he's ready to begin construction, but it is a temporary site. And he's also welcomed us to help in other ways if it's viable, possibly having a garden on his site. But there's not a place there for us to have the permanent home for the homeless garden projects that we envision. So with that, I will close and thank everyone once again for your help in moving this forward. I also do want to say there's a lot of talk about, you know, visionaries in the 1970s to work to protect Pogonit. I'm kind of proud to say that I was one of those. I was a student at UC Santa Cruz at the time in 1979 when we campaigned for the past. We created Greenbelt and the city. And there are other people on the homeless garden project board who have long done part of that, including Paul Lee and Mark Prima. So we get it. We're committed. We love Pogonit. We love the homeless garden project and we really care about the community. So thank you. Thank you, Kathy. Tony, is that, is that the, you're going to keep going? Great. I'll keep going. I'll try to be brief. No, that's fine. No, you've got plenty of time. I just wasn't sure if that was, so please go ahead. Thank you. All right. Yeah. Thanks, mayor. Thanks, Kathy and Dary. So we took this item to the Parks and Recreation Commission, as I mentioned in September, September 13th. And as part of the process, one of the core questions that we had from, you know, really going into that meeting is what, what is a master plan amendment process. So forgive me if this is a bit, a bit trivial, but for the community, I thought this was helpful in the context of the Parks and Rec Commission meeting. And just wanted to share this again in this format. So some of the key ingredients that we think of as we go into a master plan amendment process. Really start with public outreach and feedback, but then move on to permits and planning, environmental review, and then reviews and approvals by public bodies like the city council and the Parks and Rec Commission. So those are just some of the key ingredients. In terms of some other examples of master plan amendment processes, the first two examples that I have on here actually aren't really relevant to what we are talking about in these plan amendments. So the Parks Master Plan and the Worf Master Plan were big, giant planning processes really starting largely from scratch and going through a really comprehensive effort. So that's not what we're talking about in terms of the plan amendment in this case. What we are talking about is much more in line with the master plan amendment process that we went through with Santa Cruz Shakespeare at De La Viga Park and the Emma McCrary trail in Pogonip around 2010. So we compared the process that we are presenting or that we presented to the commission that we're presenting here tonight to the council just to sort of have that sort of that check and balance. Are we proposing a similar process to what we've done historically? And the answer is yes. So really the process that we're recommending is almost identical to that of Shakespeare and that of Emma McCrary process a little bit over 10 years ago. I just wanted to kind of give a frame of reference on what we are proposing here. So it's not a new process. In terms of that proposed process again, these are some of those key ingredients that I mentioned. So in the early stages of our process, we're recommending that we address a lot of these key questions. So we've been in this situation in partnership with Homeless Garden Project where we've encountered this major challenge in the lower meadow. So as we go into this, we want to avoid surprises. We want to answer these questions that we've heard from the community and questions that we have among staff and even Homeless Garden Project. We want to be able to answer those questions early on in the process. And while we do that, we also want to develop some guiding principles in terms of what these plan amendments might look and how do we think about these different plan amendments. So as we go through the process, we would have draft plan amendments. We would get to a phase where we would have environmental analysis through CEQA. We would have plan review and permitting, which would be done by the planning department. And then an updated lease agreement should the farm site move into the upper meadow. So I'll just share here, I shared this in the last meeting, but again, just for the purposes of the community here. The Pogonet Master Plan provides a vision, the current plan provides a vision for the intended use of the upper meadow, which is to preserve and restore the meadow for the purposes of habitat and sensitive species and to renovate the Pogonet Clubhouse for education purposes and special events. So the parks direct department along with the planning department see the proposal from Homeless Garden Project as a potentially significant change from the current plan and the current vision for the Pogonet upper meadow. So with that in mind, we recommend that consideration of amendments to the master plan include a really open and transparent public process starting with addressing these key questions from city staff and those raised by the community as well. And then we recommend a proper analysis and studies and environmental review. So just wanted to be sure to mention that again. In the council's packet today is a process map. What I have here on the slide is that same process map, but it's in a different format so we can fit it on the slide. What I wanted to highlight here is the section in orange with the first steps over the first say 90 to 120 days or however long this this might take but it's really this due diligence phase. So we have questions again as I mentioned among staff, we've received a lot of questions already from the public and I know we'll hear more today and we want to be sure to engage the community go through public hours. Through a series of meetings, answer some of these hard questions that we're facing and begin to develop some of these guiding principles that will lead us to potential plan amendments that will be reviewed in the context of Sequa later in the process. So that due diligence I think is really critical in these first steps here highlighted in orange over the next three to four months or so. The process continues for this next slide and this is where we get into more of the planning application, the Sequa review and then some of the components related more to the planning department in terms of building permits and middles toward the end of our process. So big picture we estimate and in comparison to both the Shakespeare project and the Emma McCreary trail we expect this to be approximately a two year process. Once it's all said and done with the Sequa phase being a large bulk of that of that timeline. So, looking again at the city council direction from the end of August, part of the direction from the county was to initiate the amendment process as expeditiously as possible report to the council at this meeting today on the 28th. As to how the proposal will be incorporated into department work plans. So I want to talk just a little bit about what impact for staff would be and a request as well. So a couple aspects in terms of our workload a couple aspects of our operations that we will both deferring or delaying are up on the screen here that's completion of some of our existing capital improvement and grant funded projects that we had planned for 2022. These could be things like the San Lorenzo Park redesign effort that we plan to get into this year and possibly the Harvey West pool feasibility study of work that we plan to get into this year. So we haven't pinned down exactly what that would be but those are a couple of the projects that are carried over from previous fiscal years that are on the front burner so to speak for our capital work this year. The second item that we'll need to defer is just completion of a strategic review. Our cost implications of deferred maintenance across the department. We know we have deferred maintenance but we haven't put great analysis to that to understand what those numbers are what that true value of deferred maintenance is. And so it's a bit of a planning effort or assessment effort that we'll look to delay. We will need some additional funding for a plan and a CEQA consultant as we go through this process. The cost for this type of work varies and we have detail on this in the staff report but varies generally between about $50,000 and $150,000. And so we are requesting as part of the recommendation today for an additional appropriation of $102,500 to be able to hire a planning consultant to help us go through this process and conduct the CEQA analysis. The last thing I'll mention is that moving forward one area that would be probably most helpful for staff would be council guidance regarding the responsibility for specific costs as we go through. The staff has made an assumption that the Puget and Master Plan amendment and CEQA costs shall be borne by the city but we absolutely welcome and appreciate any guidance on costs and how to take those on moving forward. So as we move forward through the process, staff is committed to bringing forth any specific costs or operational impacts to the city council for your consideration and direction as we move forward. So finally, I'll just leave it on this slide and the mayor I'll hand it back to you but just wanted to summarize the staff recommendation which is to review and confirm the process and timeline for an amendment to the Puget and Master Plan to relocate the homeless garden project to the upper main meadow. And number two, a resolution amending the fiscal year 2022 budget, authorizing an additional appropriation to parks and recreation for consulting services related to plan amendments and CEQA analysis. So that's our recommendation. Thank you for your time and patience as I've gone through this mayor appreciate it very much and happy to send it back your way and happy to answer questions when the time is right. Thank you, Tony. I'm just working my off my mouth so I'm going to be twisting in here a little bit to use my mouth on my computer. I'll go ahead and look to council members for questions at this point. And then for the public watching will then bring it out to public comments. And I'm going to go ahead and give a couple of folks who have three minutes request three minutes. Speaking time to go first and then I'll roll it into other public comments. I'm just going to look for council to see if you have additional questions at this point for staff. Council member commentary Johnson. Thank you, Mayor and thank you, Tony and Dari and Kathy for the presentation. I had a couple of questions. One question is actually to maybe Kathy and Dari. The last time we had the presentation, I got the sense that there was a sense of urgency to move quickly as as the project has been on hold for a while. So, I'm just wondering what this looks like for you all now that we have a better understanding of what the timeline could be and that it could be up to two years. Just wondering what that how that impacts the. I'll start maybe then Dari can chime in if she wants to add. We've talked about this a little bit delays are not good, but we have raised the money we anticipate that because so much time gone by we're going to need to raise more money. So it's likely during this time, we'll do some of that. The urgency for the project is right now they're running a training program under the capacity. They're working on a farm that's beautiful, but has no running water or toilet facilities. And we don't know when the owner is going to get his permits and proceed with construction and we would have to be off the property. So that uncertainty is an issue. Our conclusion is putting some certainty to it. We won't have as we start this process, but we expect we'll gain it as we move through it will be helpful. It's not what we want, but it's really what we need at this point. Thank you. I guess sort of just to just to keep going with that around uncertainty. I just I wanted to get clarification and maybe does the question for Tony. In terms of the secret, we may go through the secret process and find that we won't be able to do the project in the upper meadow. Is that is that accurate? It's not a possibility that we go through the secret process and we find ourselves in the situation that we can't move forward with a project. I think that's a good question. See Tony. Come on. Welcome to any comments there, but I think what again what we hope to do at least in the due diligence phase up front. It start to answer a lot of these really tough questions so that we don't run in or so that we can mitigate. You know, the surprises are any issues that are going to come later in the process. We want to be able to engage the community early on and address some of those questions, but I'll send it over to Tony for any comments on that. The secret process doesn't dictate whether or not you can approve the project, but it will inform whether or not there's significant environmental impacts, whether or not they can be mitigated to a level of significance and whether or not there are alternatives that can achieve most of the objectives of the project. That would lessen environmental impacts and then the life. Lastly, there are impacts that cannot be mitigated. The council has the ability to make what's called a statement of overriding considerations, which essentially saying we think this project is worthwhile, even though we understand that it will have some environmental impacts that can be mitigated to a level of. So it's really an informant informational document more than it is, you know, something that dictates how you make a decision on the project. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. And then my last question is, have we explored or can we explore cost sharing in terms of the planning and hiring of the consultant with the homeless garden project. 102,000 is a significant amount that we weren't anticipating that I'm sure, well, where we'll pull from so maybe we don't have an answer to that question right now, but it's something to think about. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Any other council members with questions at this point. I have a couple that I'll put out there if no one else. Okay. I just had a couple of questions. Tony, the deferment of the projects that you mentioned. Are those going to be deferred of the time commitment from our staff so you won't be able to basically do the projects because of that or is it because of match costs or I'm just trying to understand kind of that deferment. Is it people power or is it the money? It's primarily people power. Yeah, Noah is our only parks planner and takes on a lot of different projects. And so with his time commitment as well as our park superintendent Travis back. We'll just have to handle projects we'll need to defer. But the two that I mentioned, the pool and the San Lorenzo Park redesign again are two that we've carried over from last year. And that are kind of on the on the top of the priority list heading into this year. But we have some flexibility with that. Some others include the Garfield Park renovations or improvements. So there are a number that really come down to staff capacity and time to manage. And are we in danger of losing any grant funds or anything like that? Tony, if those things don't move forward. On those specifically no. Okay. On those projects I mentioned no. Okay. And I've reread most of the the EIR and the program master plan. The one thing that really strikes me is, you know, especially based on kind of a lot of thought, you know, the mapping in the in the plan is, you know, frankly, kind of cartoonish. And so, you know, not unexpected 23 years ago, if you looked at any master plan, that's what most of the maps look like. Because they were done by hand, you know, when we think about due diligence ahead, at least from the upper meadow perspective or the main meadow. Can you give me, you know, let's just pick the environmental, for example, you know, concerns a lot about a lot of concerns about habitat, different habitat types that might be impacted. Do you expect, you know, having basically doing professional level survey work. So hiring a Paris prairie, you know, botanist actually getting more accurate mapping done. You know, a lot of what's in the master plan is, you know, pretty, pretty rough. And so I'm just curious about what does that due diligence look like and maybe you could just kind of help us understand that a little bit. And I'll lean on Kathy and dairy on this a bit as well. So I know, short answer is yes. So we want that to be part of the due diligence is to understand from a really kind of a biotic assessment standpoint. What, what is the nature of the upper main meadow at this point. So the Pogonet master plan talks about it from a sensitive habitat standpoint. A sensitive species up there, but I would say at this point. I don't know that we have a great sense on what is actually present. So I do think that there needs to be some some analysis certainly as part of that due diligence to understand is it sensitive. Is it not what's going on. So the Pogonet master plan project has done some initial soil test up there to understand again if the soil is contaminated up there as well and have also planned for a biotics assessment in the spring of 2022. So again, I'll lean on Kathy and dairy for any updates on on that work that they're doing. I think your report was accurate. Tony. That's exactly what I think is that we have more work to do. We've had some preliminary that we're somewhat positive that not at all conclusive. Thank you. And then my last question and I'm seeing that we may or may not have fire staff on right now, but I don't know, maybe Lee, I don't know if we is still on or not. We might be able to. You know, I was looking also I looked through the whole parks commission packet as well. And there was some maps in there and Tony, you might know this as well. But by my count, you know, not all in the main meadow kind of spread between the lower meadow and the main meadow. You know, there's some, I don't know, close to 30 to 34 fires that were basically GPS. I'm assuming a lot of those might have been associated, you know, camping fires. I'm not sure exactly what those dots represent, whether it was a fire that got started or whether it was the remnants of a fire or how those were were actually identified. I'm just curious. What, how do we respond to that? I mean, is someone says I see smoke, fire goes up there. But I mean, that seemed like a lot that just the number was pretty surprising to me, you know, surprising, but not surprising also because I think, you know, many people in the community realize that. Oh, and if it's a place where a lot of unfortunately a lot of our homeless population does end up taking residents there. Because it's out of the way. So, I'm just curious, though, about what does that response look like. Who does it, you know, what happens when that happens? Yeah, I think that's a great question. If, okay, Lee is on and I welcome Travis Beck as well. I know that a periodic kind of walkthrough in Pogonet by park staff. Police department fire department to evaluate conditions. I know there's a methodology behind what constitutes a fire. I think there may be some factors in there regarding fuel tanks and so forth. I'm already speaking out of turns. I'll send it over to Lee and Travis to speak about that frequency, that methodology, what it means and the enforcement. So, Lee, I think you jumped on first. I'll send it over you. I'll defer to Travis if he's got better information or I see that Rob Odie is on the line as well. And so I think Rob would probably be best suited if he is available. But Travis may have additional information as well beyond what Tony was. I've seen that the app and the map as you were referencing Mayor Myers as well. But Travis or Rob may have more of the specifics. Yeah, maybe I'll turn to Rob. Rob, I hadn't seen you on. So welcome Rob. I'm not sure we do have Rob on. I know he's showing here, but I'm trying not to use actually on. So maybe we can follow up on providing this additional information that works for me. That works for me unless Travis has anything to add. I've just a brief bit of information. The fire department in collaboration with Parks and Rec and PD has been doing regular surveys in Pogonip and other open spaces since the beginning of this fire season. And maps, evidence of fuel sources, campfires, propane tanks, gas grills, etc. So those are the dots that you're seeing. And then, you know, there are actual fire incidents as well stemming from some of the camps there. And, you know, at the process is pretty much as you outlined someone sees it called it in and fire department response. Okay. Thank you. Those are all my questions. Council Member Cummings and then Council Member Watkins. Thank you, Mayor. And I just just heard clarification for the public. I mean, today really what we're being asked to do is to come initiate this process, right? I mean, we're not making any decisions of moving the homeless starting project to this site today. We're really just trying to give them the opportunity to be heard and to give them an opportunity to go through this process. Is that correct on kind of where we're at today? And at Council Member Cummings, I would say short answer, yes. And just the specifics today for the council in the recommendation language are to endorse the process that we have put forth and to approve a budget adjustment for additional funding for that consulting work to help support the process. And I just wanted to make sure that really what we're discussing today is trying to initiate a process so that we can have, you know, an inclusive public community conversation about the moving of the homeless garden project to the site. And that really, you know, we want, you know, ultimately we want to try to find the best path forward that's going to benefit not only the homeless garden project, which has been a really great asset supporting homeless members in our community and getting them out of homelessness, but also that we want to respect the community and come what their desires are around seeing minimum impacts to the environment. And we're really trying to make sure we have some of this environmental and sustainable and also compatible community interest. So just wanted to make sure that that was clear with me. So thanks. Council Member Watkins. Thank you, Mayor and thank you for the communications in the work on this. I, I just have a question, maybe it's more of a clarification from Tony or the other time, but when, if we were to move forward, say, you know, fast forward a couple years from now, and the secret process lens itself to identify that. And I apologize. The right legal list. Essentially, that it isn't the best news for the, for the upper metal to environmental impact. And you mentioned that in order for an override to occur, you have to have had a set other location. Correct. Is that right? The sequo requires as part of an environmental impact report that the council analyze alternatives to the project. The project in this case would be defined as locating the almost garganty project farm up in the upper meadow. So as part of that process, you would have to identify a reasonable range of alternatives that that meet most of the primary. I would assume one of those alternatives would be to keep the almost garden project location as it is currently in the, in the existing lease. So that's, that's the decision that the council could make at a later time as well. And would that also include expansion outside of open it specifically or when it necessarily have to be, I mean, like, could there be any work? I guess is what I'm asking her has, has that been considered? Well, that hasn't been considered, but yes, the council could consider alternatives that include locations other than the coconut. I mean, I think, you know, to be fair, if, if the council is you know, if the count is amenable. Well, let me reference that. Moving forward with an environmental impact report for the upper meadow is going to be a lengthy and expensive process. So I think it indicates the council's very serious consideration of that, of that particular project. And you will analyze alternatives in the process, but as a, and, and until you've done that environmental review, you could not make a final decision on that as well. But it does indicate serious consideration of the proposal. Okay, no, I appreciate that. We know you want to factor in all the things that we don't know and could, you know, maybe anticipate wanting to have thought about early on, right? Right, but one possible outcome at the end of the, at the end of the process is the council could, you know, select a different alternatives as the environmentally superior project, which would of course entail then negotiating a, you know, a new lease assuming it's on city property or that other alternative location. Okay, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say I do have many, many questions, many of which I don't think can be answered with the information we have available to us at the moment. So, but I will have some few questions. I just think hearing from the public and sort of factoring those questions in as well would be good. So I'm going to save mine until after we hear from from. Great. Thank you, Council Member. And with that queue up, I'll go ahead and take this off to the public now. I see 123456 hands raised at this point if you are going to speak, please go ahead and put your hand up so we get a sense of how many people we have that are here to speak. And if you don't mind, if you could please keep your hand up as everybody makes their way through that way, I know kind of how many folks I've got queued up. That's helpful for me. So the first people I'm going to invite up are very understand. Did you want the three minutes for your client or are you going to take three minutes and then he will follow. There are two people. There's one organization and one client. A graduate Patricia me gum is available to speak, and also a representative from CC. Okay. And they okay. So why don't we start with Patricia if she's ready and then we'll go with CC. I'll give them both three minutes. So, you know, if they go past that they'll help, they'll hear a little bell, and I'll have them wrap up. So if Patricia sweaty, maybe we'll have her go first. I have Patricia M. I'm going to assume that that's her. So I'll allow her to talk. Great. Hi, Patricia, you press star six. There you go. You're ready to go. Hi, thank you. Yes. Hi, my name is Patricia me come. Thank you for the chance to speak on the almost garden project today. I just want to say hi to Mr. Elliott. Nice to see you again. I remember when you came earlier to the farm this year to visit and and special thanks to dairy for the opportunity at the homeless garden project. I'm a graduate of the project. This program is no joke. This is an extremely organized person, personal development program, and an opportunity of a lifetime to the right candidate. I entered this program 15 months ago while staying at a shelter. Today I live in a spacious apartment. I work a full time job in the home improvement industry volunteer extensively in my community as well. This project attracts people that are really ready for change people that stick will experience one of the best years of their entire lives transforming with compassion. We are helped to carve out a defined task to housing and employment. After losing my home of 13 years from drug addiction, I became homeless. Night after night I walked the streets and highways of Soquel, Capitola and Santa Cruz rapport with other homeless drug addicts and got my first black eye instead. After months of living this way, thank God a good friend found me and took me to treatment. I emerged from rehab, clean from drugs, but I was still homeless with a nagging awareness that more needed to be done with me. Then I learned about the homeless card and project. I went to the farm in June of 2020 was told to show up on time for two weeks consecutively if I could accomplish that much. Loud to continue training. I was so excited. I found myself literally running to keep my position secure at this farm and pass my initiation. Then I spent the next 12 months reaching milestones here. I learned how to push myself and ask for help. I started to actually focus and see the behaviors that helped me or hindered me. I was changing week after week of faithfully digging in the dirt, writing emails, building a resume, harvesting kale, reaching goals, laughing, crying, surrendering and praying. I realized I finally found the biggest help I needed to have lasting personal change at this farm. Nowhere else could I have accomplished this. And in the end it led to housing once again and to not just one, but even. I cannot emphasize enough how this farm has been such a critical factor in my recovery from homelessness and unemployment. This place is world renowned. And a local treasure. I am so honored to say I was a part of it. This thing is so much more than a garden. Imagine a crown rested with jewels sitting atop the coconut. And I'll tell you what you're seeing is the garden project. Thank you. Thank you, Patricia. Next, we will have the speaker from CCOF. And, Daria, I don't know who that is or if there is. That is Jane. And they're on the line. Yeah. Bonnie, I see Jane. My name. My name. Oh yeah. Can you move her? Great. Thanks, Bonnie. Welcome, Jane. Thank you so much. Go ahead, Jane. You've got a little bit of an echo. If you have a device near you, you might want to mute that. Like if you're maybe listening in on your phone or your iPad or something, mute one or the other. Gotcha. I think I've got you now. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Jane Sooby. I represent California certified organic farmers. You have heard of us. We're CCOF. CCOF is a USDA accredited certification agency and nonprofit organization founded in 1973 from San Cruz almost 50 years ago. Our headquarters are on the west side and we certify organic operations throughout North America. CCOF supports evaluating an amendment to the Pogo Nipmaster plan allowing the homeless garden project relocate to the upper meadow. CCOF has been certifying the homeless garden project since 2008. And what this does is we evaluate all materials, crops, and practices annually for adherence to the organic standards. And we also inspect the site annually. Certified organic means that the homeless garden projects growing practices are regulated under federal law. And that they are required to, among other things, maintain soil quality in a way that avoids contamination of natural resources, including soil and water. These practices that maintain were improved by a diversity and not grow any GMO crops. Studies have found that organic farming provides many environmental and public health benefits because it multi-quality soils and increases soil organic resources. It also improves soil water retention, which means the soil holds more water, like reducing runoff and preventing soil and nutrients from being washed away. And organic farmers don't use synthetic pesticides exposure to which can harm human and pollinator health. Transitions are strongly supporting and certifying the homeless garden project. Stewardship of land and natural resources. ECOS staff are Santa Cruz residents. First-hand, how needed homeless garden project services are for fellow community members who are experiencing homelessness. We are donors, CSA subscribers, and event attendees, and homeless garden project, and the plans for extension. We're taking the first steps of considering a moment to the faster plan. Thank you. Go ahead and open this up now to members of the public. Again, I'm just going to work my way down the line here. If you do want to call in, this is the homeless garden project item. I'm giving all members of the public a minute to speak today. And I'm going to call out the last of your phone number. You're going to want to make sure you press star six to get yourself unmuted, and then the time will start. So I'm going to start out with a phone number ending in 0793. Hi. My name is Nancy Lushkajin. I want to express my appreciation to both council and the parks commission for your action to support our project. I urge you items before you today. I spent five years as a consultant to the homeless garden project doing a capital campaign feasibility study, guiding the capital campaign, and then guiding board expansion and development. As you know, as a result, they surpass their initial goal and raised $3.5 million for the project in early December. 2019. I've been in the nonprofit world for 35 years, 26 years in Santa Cruz County, and rarely have I seen such an impactful organization. I was so impressed that I agreed to volunteer to have their board fundraising committee after serving as their consultant. Following year, I joined the board. It's essential that this model program be allowed to move to the 9-acre garden and I urge your vote in favor of moving forward as stated. Thank you. Next is phone number ending in 2406. Press star six to unmute yourself. Go ahead, please. Phone number ending in 2406. Sorry. Okay. Sorry. There you go. Hi. My name is Carrie Mazer. I walked around the upper left corner. My name is Carrie Mazer. I walked around the upper metal this morning and read the notice asking for the community to protest this move. Many of the key points use habitat destruction and loss of wildlife as their organizing principle. I live on a small organic farm in Santa Cruz mountains, not unlike the upper meadow. We are visited constantly by all manner of wildlife including owl, cocks, and bobcats in addition to bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, none of which I saw on my walk around Pogonit today. I also observed that the meadow had recently been mowed. Mowing a meadow is its havoc upon the creatures that live there. I would posit that a well-tended order may increase by a biodiversity of the site. The current HGP garden is an open and welcoming place. At Pogonit, it will be more so. Imagine visitors seeing unhoused members of our community out of their tents at work growing organic food and learning to be self-reliant. They are joined by volunteers and members of the public community to make home. All the while, hawks continue to soar overhead and are now joined by the flittering of butterflies and bees. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Delice Weir. She pressed star six to unmute yourself. We'll go ahead and let you get started. Okay. Am I unmuted? Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Wonderful. Thank you. So I am just a mere community member. I volunteered with the homeless garden before, but I'm also a master gardener and a small farmer. And I'm also sit on the board of the friends of the UCSC farm and garden. So I'm well versed in the importance of good soil for raising food and the importance of that to agriculture. I'm also the end of an unhoused young man who recently died. He lived in Vallejo. And I know that the homeless garden project is a total program and I tried to get something like that started for him in Vallejo. Unfortunately, he died without access to something like that. But it is an absolutely essential set of services that benefit the housed and the unhoused community. They deal with food insecurity for the unhoused and the housed. I urge you to approve this. And they must increase their capacity to the larger people. Thank you. Thank you. Next, I have phone number ending in 5725. Go ahead. Press star six and you can get started. Don't you hear me? We could hear you. Yes. Thank you. My name is Rebecca Suclee and I'm a longtime city of Santa Cruz residence. I do support the work of the homeless garden project, but I do implore them to stop pursuing this controversial move to relocate to the upper meadow of the coconut. I feel confident they can find another location that will have less environmental impact and that the community can support. City council members, I urge you to vote no on the motion. Placing the homeless garden project in the upper meadow cuts out the heart of the crown jewel of the green belt. This allocation of funds will be the first of many hundreds of thousands of dollars that will be required to pursue this divisive project. And this is not the way I want my tax money to be spent. Thank you for your consideration. Next up, I have phone number ending in 77767. Go ahead, please. A star six to unmute yourself. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time this afternoon. My name is Sally Shepherd. I'm a longtime supporter, volunteer, former board member, and also I helped in some small way on the capital campaign. I'm passionate about the homeless garden project. So I'm not going to try and make an argument for why this needs to happen. I'm going to say thank you for setting up a really good process for how we can get all of the questions that so many people have answered to make the right decision to help the homeless garden project find its new permanent home. I think we can all agree on that, that a permanent home for an organization that's done great things and is looking to expand their services is what we all want to support. So thank you for taking the time to set up the process. Thank you for hearing us and Godspeed to the process. Thank you. Next is phone number Indian 8 696. Press star 6 to unmute yourself and you can start. Hi, my name is Sheila Cummings. I'm a community member and a long-term volunteer at the homeless garden project. I'm not the best person to address some of the environmental concerns or the logistical concerns that some people may have. Nor am I the best person to attempt transformative effects the garden can have on many of its participants lives. What I do want to address is a concern that is sometimes unarticulated but actually underlies many of the other concerns. And that is that because the garden is a homeless population that somehow having it in coconut will create an unsavory environment. I've been returning to volunteer every Friday morning for the last three years at the garden. I wouldn't do that if it wasn't a nice place to be. That's the main point I wanted to make. And if you guys understand that it's a beautiful place to get to the community, I think we can resolve the other issues. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Patrick Williams. I have to promote him to a panelist because he has an older version. He's on a landline, Bonnie. He's just on an old version. Oh, a Zoom. Hi, Mr. Williams. You should be able to speak now. Mr. Williams, you should be able to speak. You look like you're unmuted. He actually looks like he doesn't have audio. I can't see that from my. Why don't you leave him in, Bonnie, and see if we can troubleshoot that, and I'll go on to the next person and come back to him. Does that make sense? We'll go on to caller ending in 3485. If you could unmute yourself by pressing stars and please. Good afternoon. My name is Caitlin Gaffney, and I've submitted detailed written comments to the council that I would like to thank the council and the leadership of the homeless garden project, not to pursue the idea of developing the main Meadow of Pogonip open space and instead to work together on other alternatives that can meet the needs of the homeless garden project without causing the multiple significant environmental and with converting coastal prairie habitat at the heart of the Pogonip, the agriculture, and can therefore be supported by the whole community. If you've taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. I respectfully urge that the idea of relocating the homeless garden project on the main Meadow of Pogonip open space represents a wrong turn that would end up being costly, time-consuming, and divisive. I ask not to pursue it further and instead seek a better path forward. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. My name is Patrick Williams. I worked with the homeless garden project close to 14 years, both as the horticultural director and also as the farm manager there. I was told that the project would be soon into the Pogonip. So that is now a generation. A generation has passed while the project has been waiting for this move. I definitely hope that the city council will hear this and move in a positive position. Now, one other thing I want to point out is that I now have a small project in South America, in Columbia. And I was watching television a couple of years ago on TV agro. And one of the interesting things, I came across there with a program on a homeless garden project in the city of Colley, which was basically patterned after the homeless garden project. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you very much. You can press star six and you can start. Hello, my name is Chrissy Brewer and I with Patrick was a garden director in the early 90s until 2001. I saw the project blossom. We also were ensured that it was Pogonip. One thing I would like to address and I encourage the council to approve this move to the upper meadow, but I would like to address some of the what I hear as objections to the homeless garden project being out there and that is that it would encourage more folks living homeless to then be othered in that area. I would also like to address some of the issues that we have had a policy at the homeless garden project that our trainees not live on the property that they are not allowed, I guess, to be in living there. And please, I encourage you to accept the proposal. Thank you very much. April, if you press star six, you can unmute yourself and go ahead and talk. I think you're still muted, April. If you could press star six, that should unmute you. April, I'm going to move to the next person. You're off. You can go ahead now. There she is. Okay, can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Go ahead, please. Sorry about that. My name is April Wilkins and I have been with the homeless garden project since 2016. I am a graduate and I can see, involve myself with the homeless project and I am so thank you for having me. So I just wanted to say that you know, the homelessness here in Santa Teresa is a growing issue and there's not many opportunities or programs to help those of us experiencing homelessness. However, thank you, there is this which has given me a safe, wonderful place to be where I have been able to learn a lot of new skills, work on myself and homeless garden has given me the support and confidence to build on and help me and as other training. Thank you, April. Next, I've got someone with the letter M on their phone. Press star six and you can get started. Hello, my name is Maurice and I'm a Santa Cruz native with over 15 years of residence. This year I volunteered over 80 hours with the homeless garden project doing farm work. I've personally experienced how friendly and supportive the ACP staff is. With that being said, I support the city looking into ACP moving to the upper middle opponent. Thank you, Maurice. Next, I've got phone number ending in 7496. Good afternoon. And this is Matt Farrell and I just wanted to thank the council and Parks and Rec staff and the Parks Commission for the work they've done on considering this proposal. I think it's the right step forward and I urge council to adopt it. Thanks for your time. Thank you, Matt. Next I have Sheila. Press star six, Sheila, and you should be able to speak. You know, we hear you if you could press star six, we can get you going on your phone. Sheila, I'm going to move on to the next caller. I'll come back to you to see if we can get you unmuted. Okay, I'll go ahead and call up Suzanne McLean as our next speaker. Press star six to unmute yourself. Bonnie, is there something going on where we're crossing? Go ahead, Suzanne. You're unmuted. Thanks. Do you have your iPad or computer or just mute that? There you go. Thanks. How about now? There you go. Perfect. Okay. This is Suzanne McLean. Thanks to the city council for the opportunity to speak. I've been supporter of the homeless project for a number of years, mainly because it provides tangible results in moving people out of homelessness. In addition to the training and support services, the homeless garden also provides the community supports the community by distributing large amounts of produce to nonprofits throughout the county. It's critical that we support this organization and expand their reach by establishing a permanent home for the farm. I'd like to thank the city council for their support to date and I would appreciate your home and evaluating the best place for the homeless garden to continue to do their great work. Thank you, Suzanne. Looks like Sheila. Did she... You might have left. Looks like Bonnie. I'll see if she comes back on. Okay. I'll go next to phone number ending in one six... Press star six to unmute yourself. Go ahead, please. Hi, my name is Evan Jones. I'm the program manager at the homeless garden project, and I'd like to thank everyone for this opportunity for the public forum. Also wanted to emphasize the mission statement of the homeless garden project. In the soil of our urban farm and garden, people find the tools they need to build a home in the world. And I'm here this afternoon or this evening just to amplify the voices that I've already spoken about that mission statement, whether it's Patricia or other graduates being boots on the ground or other individuals work on the farm and accomplishing their goals is really impactful on an individual basis, but I've seen it expand beyond that and affect the community in such a large, powerful way. One young man just graduated last Tuesday and the very next day he started a job that he caught through connections that he gained at the homeless garden project. So having a permanent space and an encouraging space to grow would be invaluable for the community. So I support the public process to evaluate the move to the upper meadow. Thank you. Thank you. Next I've got phone number ending in 1-810. You'll have one minute. I haven't heard any answers to the many good questions posed by public letters so far, just an organized mass phone in by the HPG supporters. Nonprofits can abuse their donated funds funding money to overhead. Looking over the IRS 990 forums raises questions for me. I question does any of the yearly half million plus of salary expenses overhead stated pay the homeless to farmers, trainees or to whom for what? And then also the selling of some of the production on the open market I assume called net inventory sales seems possibly a direct competition to for profit farmers. If so, the homeless then are on the job employee trainees at what pay. If they do compete in product sales and the government's part of it that is socialism. HCP must provide a service community that otherwise would not occur for tax avoidant purposes but this seems different. Do we have here a permanent giving of public land? How would the land be returned? What performance conditions are required? Exactly what is the cost for individual restored to complete financial independence including donations? Fair market cost of the land lost to public use over time and any other. Thank you. We have four number Indian one eight four zero sorry four three. I'm sorry zero eight. Hi, can you hear me? We can go ahead please. Oh, thank you. Yeah, my name is Michael LaFoon. I'm a trainee graduate from 12 years ago with the homeless garden project that helped turn around my life. I'm actually currently on the board of directors. I think moving the project to the upper meadow would actually be an enhancement and a great improvement to the upper meadow and not a detriment as many of the opponents say. I think that also having the homeless garden project located up there may provide enough synergistic energy to finally rehabilitate the clubhouse which has been sitting boarded up and rotting for the last few decades. I think the people who oppose this they want less community involvement and fewer people up there I think more community involvement and okay thank you very much more community involvement is better. Thank you. Thanks very much. Okay, phone number ending in 3467 now. Hello. Hello, go ahead please. Hi. Hi, my name is Nancy McClain and I reside in Hollister, California. I encourage you to appropriate for the appropriate action to enable the homeless garden project to relocate from the Pogonick site from the lower to the main. This is a project that I've supported for years including volunteering and attending fundraising events for more than six years. The homeless garden project is on the forefront of providing a pathway out of homelessness and a future for many Santa Cruz residents with strengths in community and council support it will assure a successful perpetuation that will serve as a model for other communities like mine. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Next we have Rachel O'Malley, please press star six. This is a letter separately expressing my three decades of support for the homeless garden project. I'm also a professor at San Jose State where I teach sustainable agriculture and I'm a biologist and I did my PhD on rice wetlands comparing natural agricultural systems and even the organic rice which is better than conventional rice. Even winter flooded rice fields are not nearly as good for wildlife. We know now so many impacts that farms have on natural systems. It's very dangerous to try to move land into our last coastal prairie. It is also very dangerous to try to move land into our last coastal prairie. I want to really strongly encourage you to not move forward with today's decision because I suspect as I was you were surprised at how controversial it turned out. Moving forward without considering working with the homeless garden project taking $100,000 with legal it's going to be cut more. This is phone number ending in 7163. Press star six and we can hear you. 7163 if you press star six we should be able to hear you. You're still muted. I'm going to move on and I'll come back to you. I'll need you to unmute yourself. Looks like you're unmuted maybe now I'm not sure. I'll move on to the next caller Colin Hanan and if you could please press star six to unmute yourself. We can't hear you. If you could please press star. There you go. I think I've got it. Thank you. My name is Colin Hanan. I've lived in Santa Cruz for 20 years so I live in Davenport now. I just heard about this plan a few days ago and it boggled my mind to think of developing that open space out there. I don't know that the farm program should be supported and should find a really wonderful home but that does not seem like the place to take one of this amazing open space and do that there. I don't think there's any question about danger or unsavoriness of the place or anything. I think we all want to support the homeless garden project. I don't think there's any danger. The back site is so special and undeveloped and there's so many impacts to the natural space there and our open space. There's got to be a better place. I hope you'll consider that. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Come back to caller that ended in 7163. It looks like we may have lost them. I don't see them. I'll go to phone number ending in 4469. Press star six to unmute yourself. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. We can hear you. Okay, I'm a born and raised native of Santa Cruz and I'm also a wildlife biologist. I am not in support of the proposal to move the garden project to the main meadow site. As I feel it's not consistent with the original intent of our citizens to protect the area for wildlife and outdoor recreation. This project would irrevocably change the fragile coastal prairie and alter human use that's already established that of outdoor activities. Cognitive is a wildlife corridor and it connects a network of wildlands across a larger landscape providing habitat for rare plants, nesting birds and large roaming mammals. And I'm greatly concerned by this lack of public information. And I'd like the city to review alternatives not as a garden project but maybe some restoration activities that could happen in the Pogonit. We need to understand the full cost and the environmental impacts of fragmenting the area. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is phone number ending in 6483. We are a school for students with autism. And I just wanted to expand on a subject that I haven't heard yet. And that is that the homeless garden project does an amazing job kind of broadening their scope and reaching out and being just a great place for job training for a lot of people with disabilities. And we have a relationship with them where a lot of students who wouldn't be able to be in an indoor location or a more crowded location, their first step into community involvement is at the homeless garden project. So with everything being mentioned I did want to call attention to the fact that it is an invaluable place for students with disabilities as well. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry, with the name Jacob Pollock. Press star six and you'll be unmuted. Jacob if you could press star six you'll be unmuted. We'll go ahead and move on. Jacob if you want to still hang on the line you but you'll have to unmute yourself in order for us to hear you. Next I've got phone number ending in 0983. Can you hear me? Yes we can. This is Jacob Pollock. I'll make it quick. I think you shouldn't go ahead with the project at hand. It costs too much money. We agreed to put the homeless garden in the lower half and the upper half is a big change. I know people look in space and think what can we do with it but it's already being used as open space. The other thing is I don't think this is a referendum on the quality of the homeless garden. It's a great institution absolutely. The question really at hand is what's the proper place to move it and I don't think it's the epimedic. I wrote a longer letter. Thank you so much for all. Thank you Jacob. I can hear me. You said it. I'm speaking on behalf of the group Friends of the Greenbelt also known as FOG. We support all of us. Everyone of our expanding network supports the homeless garden project but the proposed project is not appropriate for the upper meadow of the Pogonin. It's not appropriate for the Pogonin to have a legal counsel to represent our group with regard to this matter. You can find our attorney's letters in the agenda packet pages 17.233 and again 17.62. For the reason stated in our attorney's letter no action should be taken in studying this particular site any further. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Do you really want to open that conversation? We don't. We'd love for the homeless garden project to stay where it was previously dedicated. After this meeting you'll be able to speak and then we're not hearing you. I'm wondering if we have you on a phone line also. Bonnie, are some of these folks showing up as phone numbers and their names? It's possible. There you go. We can hear you now. I'm muted at this time. Thank you. My name is Enda Brennan. I'm one of your downtown commissioners one of seven that represent you on the downtown area of Santa Cruz. I want to commend all of you for your unanimous support in the last meeting that you had. You did a deliberate decision to ask for public comment through Parks and Rec and I'm sure any of us that are aware of the politics of Santa Cruz realized that there was going to be some pushback on this move. The reality is that the homeless garden project needs a home. We've needed a home for 33 years actually. This is our best opportunity. This is going to be a careful, deliberate process that you guys are engaged in. It's going to stay the course of a careful, deliberative process which involves tons of public input and community input and considering environmental concerns. Please do your unanimous support. Thank you. Next up I have phone number ending in four, five, eight, six. Good afternoon. My name is Lawrence Willett. I've lived in the county for 34 years. I'm well aware of how disconcerting that can be and how we need homeless services. However, Pogonit was purchased with the intent of being open space. We went through this decision making 20 years ago. It was quite controversial for the council to respect that prior decision and respect the will of the voters to keep Pogonit this open space and instead of having a new controversy that costs money, focus our mind on a new place for the homeless garden project so it can continue its good work. Thank you. Thank you. And then the next caller I have is ending in last four digits, six, six, seven, nine. If you could unmute yourself and then we can speak. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Hi, my name is Paul Goldberg. I'm the development director with the homeless garden project and a community member here and who lives up in Ben Lomond. And I just want to underscore one point on the file risk. As noted, there were all those fires in the Pogonit and part of this project will include HDP, a nonprofit funding a water line big enough for fire protection to the site. So there is an incredible benefit on top of everything else we do through the community in the sense of fire protection. So please do move forward with this project. Thank you. Bonnie, how long we've been going? I think I counted about 24 or 26 speakers. I did not break down exactly when we started unfortunately but I'm not seeing any additional hands but I do think we have time for additional comments if anybody has those. So I will make a last call for any other public comment on this item. If you have any questions or comments please raise your hand. Otherwise, we will bring this back to council for deliberation. Okay, I've got two more phone numbers. 0480, go ahead please. Hi, good afternoon. Hi, my name is Brendan Mealy. I'm a parent property owner and resident of the city of Santa Cruz. I'm a resident of Santa Cruz County. The mission of the homeless garden project and the Pogonet farm will directly provide solutions to many of the systemic root causes of student security in our city. I've been involved with the homeless garden project since 1995 as the UC Santa Cruz student. I have 18 years of experience managing commercial organic farming operations and have been a consultant on the project and the Pogonet farm design. I appreciate the city's commitment to the farm's original site and the opportunity to move forward with the park staff recommendation to evaluate the process of the proposed move from the lower to upper Pogonet meadow. Thank you. Next I have phone number 8701. A star six and you'll be unmuted. My name is Patrice Boyle. I am a past board member of the garden project. I am a downtown merchant and longtime resident of Santa Cruz. I just want to say that the garden project tackles and signifies a vast array of issues including the dismal state of our natural world, the dismal state of our corrupt food system, the growing and long-term and tragic issue that is homelessness, and the unequal distribution of opportunity even to members of our own community. The upper meadow next to it will be an ideal place for the garden project. It's flat, it's not toxic, and it's already been developed. That's CalSpo's excellent previous site comparison outlines additional good reasons for this. In the non-industrial hands-in-the-dirt restorative gardening of the garden project, it's really good for people, but it's also good for the soil. It will provide habitat for indigenous, poor, and fauna populations that are not currently supported. For decades, the city of Santa Cruz, the city council, after city council, including this one, have supported and encouraged the garden project to follow this plan. I urge you today to continue in that direction. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public that do want to speak on this item? Okay, I've got Sylvie Childress, please. Hi, can y'all hear me? We can hear you. I'm Sylvie Childress, and I would like to urge you to reject the proposal to move the homeless garden project to the upper main meadow. Upper main meadow is a very special habitat. It's one of our last remaining places of coastal prairie habitat. And the question at hand is not whether or not the homeless garden project is a worthy organization. And is whether this is the appropriate location for it to be permanently. And I would say that it is not. And there's already an EIR that has been location from 1998 that says that this meadow is not an acceptable location for a farm to be held. There's many sensitive habitats there and reasons that it shouldn't be there. So please reject this proposal. Thank you. Blaine, how are we doing? How are we doing on time? Did you take a note? I'd say we have about six minutes left. Right, okay, that's about what I calculated. Okay, we have a caller with the name J-H-O-N-D. Please press star six and you can go ahead. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. If you could turn off your whatever device you may be listening on. Well, I'm on the computer. Okay. So, okay. So my name is Mr. Golder and I sent you a letter by email, five page and letter detailing what I'm going to skim over real quickly here. The main thing, the main things I want to say here is that the homeless garden project has had 24 years since, from 94 to 2018 since their present site was selected. 20 years since the Pogonet master plan was approved in 98 and 11 years since the book Duel of Santa Cruz was published in 2007 a book displayed a picture of the Skeet range with a background the upper slope of the lower meta. So they have 24 to 11 years to do their homework known as due diligence and they haven't done it. So, the goal of this project is to make sure that the site is not running into hundreds or thousands of dollars. But by far the most impactful the effect of the site change if any part of the former 9.3 acre pole field was used the city will lose its last large flat underdeveloped area beside a sports field group of four full-size adult ball fields which we've needed for more than 30 years and to get a similar site in the city and the only site available would be Westside industrial land would cost $18.6 million at the present cost of land. We got this one for $44,000 in acre from the state. So I... Any other time for maybe one more comment? I'm not seeing any other hands so I'm going to bring this back to the council now and call on councilmember Brown. Thank you mayor. Thank you everybody who has shown up and spoken up today. I you know I I'm hearing really resonate for me with me and I think we're all agreed or there seems to be some one thing I'm hearing is agreement that this is going to take time it is going to take resources and costs money and you know that's something that we have at least you know in our previous action suggested that we are interested in pursuing and that we have a commitment to finding a home for the homeless garden project in the Pogo Nip. It's unfortunate that you know we didn't the plans that were made you know we're not working out that shooting and you know and contamination have kind of disrupted the process and so you know I think that what we're what the recommendation today is something that you know as people have said is really you know the beginning of this process I hear the sense of urgency and concern about making this move and again I know it's been stated but I'll just reiterate what we're talking about here is opening up a process so there that we do you know people say we haven't heard about this and that's true and I you know me I'm always strongly advocating for community engagement and I want to see that happen in this process in terms of environmental impact you know I've read through a lot of materials and as an aside I'm just going to ask because I was not able to access the original environmental impact report that some people have been referring to and I'm just wondering if I had a question for staff if it's possible to get that to make that available on our website so that people who want to take a look at it can do that my read of the Pogonet Master Plan you know relates as well with what others have said that go that at a minimum beginning to explore this and for the cost of getting a consultant on board and getting our staff you know working with a consultant and having that expertise we will learn more and we are not deciding today to move Pogonet to the formato we are deciding on whether or not we want to get that additional information to answer a lot of questions that quite frankly I don't feel that from what I've read and I have read pretty extensively I have answers to and we are kind of making assumptions about which environmental sensitivity in these spaces but I believe their environmental impacts and potentially significant ones in either of the locations so for me it just feels like moving forward with this process will help us understand and again that's what EIRs are for to see to look at the impacts to really seriously study those and to make determinations about alternatives so a lot of the things that folks are saying that we need to have will have that process at the same time we're hearing don't do it so I guess I'm leaning on the side of let's do it and I also have another in addition to supporting I'd like to make a motion if I could and I'll publish our city clerk how the copy of it I'd like to add a direction in there so that we you know we can actually get some additional information about the lower meadow and the constraints there costs of remediation we know it's good you know like the messages that I so far and what I've read is like it's gonna cost a lot of money and you know there's but there's some detail and there's some I think navigating that that can be done and so I I wanted to just put this out there is a starting place for our conversation to so this motion is essentially one and two is the staff recommendation to confirm the process and timeline for an amendment to the Pogonet master plan it's you know it this is a potential amendment so I'll just say that I don't need to know that it needs to be in the language but for a potential amendment to the Pogonet master plan to relocate the homeless garden project farm to the upper main meadow it's two to adopt a resolution amending 22 budget and authorizing an additional appropriation to parks and rec for consulting services related to amendments and sequel analysis and then my addition is to direct staff to prepare an evaluation for consideration concurrently of the process for mediating contamination in the lower meadow to residential and therefore agricultural standards and that including an estimate of costs and timeline to circulate an update to the city council for consideration in the overall process as soon as possible and I know that additional work for our staff so I've submitted this in advance and I'm hoping that folks are feel comfortable that this is a piece of the puzzle that ought to be done in order to get us the best information we can possibly get to make the best decision we can make that meets the goals and reduces any environmental impact on the Pogonet so there's the motion thank you councilmember thank you there thank you so much is there a second to that motion I see vice mayor broder councilmember Cummings I'll second the motion and just express also appreciation of the community's comments the homeless garden products has been really patient with the city it's been over 20 years that they've been working with the city in this forward and the truth is that the city initially identified the lower meadow but when it was kind of the last minute the 11th hour getting ready to break ground when it came known but the site was contaminated we had to shift and so moving it to the was never the intended location for this project but as people have said we need to look for another place to put the homeless garden project and this what we're doing tonight is creating a process to evaluate the potential for it to go at this site at the upper meadow and so I do want to thank the parks and rec department for taking this out to the commission to get into commission support I think it's gone to our parks and rec commission multiple times now and both times the commission's weighed in maybe not unanimously but they had a majority support at least taking this approach of starting a process and kind of and it's a process of evaluation to see what's the potential for this and I really want to express my appreciation to the parks and rec department like the commission for their support of this and I think that given that we have that level of community support and we've heard a lot of support from the community today that at least starting with conversation is a good step so that people can have their voices heard and ultimately is determined if this is the best outcome and option I think we owe it to the homeless garden project given the 20 years plus of patience to work with the city department at home that we owe it to them to go through this process so I'm happy to second the motion before us. Thank you councilmember I have Vice Mayor Bruner. Thank you Mayor Myers thank you to Director Elliott and to the homeless garden project Gary Genshorn and Kathy Calpho for the information thank you to each attendee that sat on the phone and called in with your input and public comment and thank you to all the emails that we've received it's been very interesting I think what's clear to me and is very apparent is that we need more data and as my colleague councilmember Brown was stating this is the beginning of the process and to determine really the argument of environmental impact and what exactly that will bring as it's stated that there are portions already developed in the area in the upper meadow and the remaining portions that would need to be farmed and garden there are many emails and a lot of input and I think even one caller that really explained the process of organic farming and how it can create increased biodiversity to create a home for the animals and the land and the everything in the area so we need to know for sure if that would be the case and that's the data that would be thought in this process so we I think that this is a exploration and I really appreciate the site comparison site I know a lot of or several of the arguments as well against this move was regarding the coastal prairie and I found it interesting that in the upper meadow acres would be used versus six acres in the lower meadow so less impacts in various ways in that site comparison chart in the upper meadow and so I'm really curious to see as we go through this process like that I know we spoke last meeting regarding some of the lower meadow remediation costs and timeline and that was a question that was unknown I think that information will be valuable so if there are any I'm glad that's added into the motion so thank you thank you Vice Mayor any other comments from other council members at this point okay we have a motion on the floor I'll just I'm sorry Mayor if I could just make one more comment so another I will say that in conversations I've been having with people outside of this meeting their concern that was raised is related to the remediation need that will exist in the lower meadow regardless of the location of the homeless garden project and concerns about were we to make a decision that does not involve does not involve a requirement to remediate up to that residential level higher standards that the city may decide to just cap it which is not that has a lot of challenges in and of itself and problems associated with it so because lead moves, contaminants move regardless of whether there's asphalt or concrete on the top of it so I just wanted to acknowledge that I heard those concerns too and I that that I'm assuming it will and I hope it will be a part of the conversation in our ultimate decision making about how we move forward because that site is still you know up for discussion about what to do there and how we move forward. Thank you. I didn't hear you call my name. I guess I just had a couple of comments and I think that one thing that everyone in the community can agree on is that nothing can be built in this community without tremendous public input and outreach and doesn't matter if it's an organic farm ball field or library with affordable housing on top somebody's going to have something to say about it and so I think I'm agreeing with my colleagues and that although it's expensive it's important for us to move forward with the public process and and I just want to say that the first speaker Patricia her comments really touched me and I think that this is you know irrelevant this meeting I would love to hear from the homeless garden how many people they have helped with job training and being housed over the years I think that's just you know something that the community would like to know but anyway thank you that's what I wanted to say. Thank you councilmember I have councilmember Watkins and then councilmember Calinter Johnson Thank you mayor I'll keep my comments short also I will expect my appreciation as my colleagues have as well in terms of just the complexity of timeline and the balance of all of the different factors and want to thank those who reached out to us and gave us their input on best next I also want to thank the homeless garden project folks for being on and sharing really their thought process which is very thorough and and rooted in a commitment to wanting to continue the great work that they are doing and I too felt really moved by the speakers and just really want to recognize their incredible program and so our job is to start this process now to figure out the best final space for them that's going to work for our parks and our community at large as well as environmentally and so I appreciate this direction I also just wanted to add my appreciation for the additional component of the recommendation because I do think we want to also maintain understanding of what's going to happen as well as the timeline associated with the lower meadow as well so those are my brief yeah, thank you very much thank you councilmember councillor calling Tara Johnson thank you all so keep my comments brief I also want to thank everyone who called in today and the presentation provided by our staff and homeless garden project I've had the privilege of working with the homeless garden project and some of the work I've done in the community around unhoused youth and so I've experienced firsthand how incredible their program is and I know that none of the callers today questioned that I heard that very loud and clear I think my colleagues have all said it but I think moving forward and exploring if this is a feasible space for the homeless garden project is a good direction I do hope that we can get creative about how we fund the consultants I think let's put our heads together let's partner with homeless garden project and see if we can find some other outside resources and I would be happy to work with our staff and with homeless garden project to look at that so thank you thank you councilmember I'll just close with a few comments so I think kind of in evaluating this I really we have made a commitment to this organization and it may sound like a long time and it is a long time for actually 23 years nonprofits are incredibly they just do the work that government and business doesn't do and their timeline is always longer and it really I think just who the city to try to honor the commitment that we made to have them be on Pogonin I just appreciate the putting the motion with regards to sort of doing in a sense some parallel due diligence you know really understanding conditions in the lower meadow and really trying to get those details together so that we can you know really continue to make a decision here I also just want to acknowledge all the comments about Pogonin about its specialness to all the people of Santa Cruz and to you know really recognize that conservation actions are you know in a sense they're really meant to be forever and I think that's always a struggle for people when they perceive that there's been something to undo that foreverness of preservation and conservation of land I think though that you know doing this due diligence is really important I've done a little bit of conservation you know land protection in my time and it's always important to really understand that land change over time we've been seeing a lot of that unfortunately in California in the last few years and I think really what we want to create is a community of stewardship around this property I visited a lot weekly used to be there almost every day and what we're really losing right now in Pogonin is an actual commitment to stewarding that property and it does need stewardship that has a lot more invasive species on it than there used to be and you know we need to commit not to just looking at Pogonin and appreciating that although that is a great value to everyone but we also have to provide some caretaking of the property so you know I think it's worth doing the due diligence with these two different sort of paths and I will echo the comments of colleagues that have mentioned you know if we can do some additional discussions with Homeless Garden to see how we might be able to fund some of this would be very helpful I'm sorry to lead to lose one of our projects which is San Lorenzo Park Master Plan which I think is a really important part to the community so you know if we can try to figure out how to do some of this work together it would be I think very helpful there's other park priorities that I think we don't want to lose track of as the city as well so those are my comments but I will be voting for the motion Director Elliott has his hand up yeah thank you mayor I appreciate really a lot of what you just said I think one thing in particular I just wanted to help provide some context on number three and I think I think that's a great a great way to say it I think on number three and just to set the end for the council and the community this the process that we're working through on the lower Meadow is really in process already related to this directive on number three as I mentioned in the presentation we'll get some feedback from our consultant that we expect that on October 15 County Environmental Health will then review that and we'll kind of get into this planning phase for the remediation plan and cost and so forth we expect that or we expect to have this information probably by the spring so for councilmember Brown I think who offered the motion here and for the council just on number three just setting that expectation that as soon as possible is likely the spring when we have this in a more concrete way the other aspect I would just mention regarding the lower Meadow is in part how the lower Meadow is remediated is based on how it is used and so part of the part of the process that we were undertaking with homeless garden project prior to the homeless garden project sending the letter to the council they were working on a site management plan for the lower Meadow to really define how it would be used and that's a real critical component for county environmental health to understand how that's going to be used and therefore what the level of remediation will need to be so we haven't spoken directly with homeless garden project about this but in that spirit of parallel due diligence I think continuing that site management plan in the lower Meadow may be a really critical step while we also go through this master plan amendment process because then what we could do is we could look at the lower Meadow in terms of both kind of a concept where where farming is not occurring but if farming is occurring in the lower Meadow as articulated by that site management plan that would really help us be able to compare and bring much more detailed information back to the county on number three here in terms of the motion so I just wanted to offer a bit of that context and recommendation for that site management plan in the lower Meadow. Thank you Director Elliott for those clarifying comments. Okay we have a motion on the floor for member Brown and a second by member Cummings the motion is up for the public to see and I will go ahead and ask for a roll call vote please. May I come to member Squadkin? Aye. Eleanor Johnson. Boulder. Mayor Brinner. Mayor Myers. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you everyone for participating tonight and we have a final item tonight. Oral communications is a time to speak to items not on our agenda for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if you want to comment during oral communications now is the time to call in. Instructions should be on your screen. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on agenda. If you are interested in addressing the council press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. You will have two minutes to speak. When it is your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. We request that you clearly and slowly state your name before making your comments so that we can accurately capture capture it in the meeting minutes however it is not required to state your name. If you are from the public we are not able to engage in dialogue with each member of the public but when we are able we will address the questions raised after oral communications has been completed. I was contacted by one individual hopefully he is on the line tonight that I do know that is planning to speak and that is I believe Taylor. Taylor you are the one hand at this evening so please press star six to unmute yourself. I also see Gray Hayes has raised his hand so I will call him next. This is for items not on the agenda. Taylor go ahead please. Hey there everyone my name is Taylor Lane I have been a resident here in Santa Cruz for about 10 years. Thanks for granting some time for me to talk on this issue. I am the creator of surf board which is several surf boards made from over 100,000 cigarette butts collected off California beaches in the last couple of years. These are the most littered items in the world there are 4.5 trillion of them littered every year. They are non biodegradable plastic which breaks into microplastics accumulating in our marine organisms and eventually in ourselves. These leach toxic chemicals such as arsenic lead nicotine into our environment and they have been known as a fire hazard and have been responsible for over 100,000 in California since 1980. Big tobacco takes no responsibility for this. They continually push this onto communities like us and it also is a health equity issue because oftentimes this disproportionately affects communities and communities of color. So every year Caltrans alone spends about 14 million dollars picking up cigarette butt on the highways and dealing with this waste. What we're looking to do is basically address this issue here in Santa Cruz. The thing is no one is out here advocating it is a bipartisan issue and City Council has an opportunity to lead the world in holding big tobacco accountable for this waste. So we're asking that City Council strongly support and ordinance to ban the sale of single filtered cigarettes and any and all of jurisdiction of Santa Cruz County. You know this we can't wait 5 to 10 years and we have an opportunity we've traveled the world we've seen this issue all over the place and we have an immense opportunity at our fingertips to be the first county to actually set a role model and example to hold these big corrupt corporations accountable for their waste. Thank you for the time. We're joining us. Great Hayes, you're up next. This is for items not on the agenda. Go ahead please. Thank you. Great Hayes, I'm a local ecologist and I just wanted to say recently looking at the Parks Master Plan I realized that there's a priority in there to do wildlife and plant surveys, restoration plans, management plans for native species. But that's super important. Santa Cruz City, you all are in charge of many endangered species. The water departments doing managing the aquatic systems of our terrestrial systems in the Greenbelt have really seen very very little attention and it's a real shame because we should set a good example with our environmental community and I know we're being pulled in different directions. For instance, the Eloni Tiger Beetle City Greenbelt lands. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked the city if they would, if the Fish and Wildlife Service could pay for restoration of the Eloni Tiger Beetle translocation to the Pogonet and the city declined. We also I worked on a grazing management plan for free with the Natural Resources Conservation Service for the city. They declined to accept it or even really implemented or think about it. I really want to ask what is the city doing with its rare habitat except trying to create places where endangered species aren't anymore so that you can develop alternate uses? It's very sad. Thanks very much. Thank you. Any other folks in the audience tonight who would like to speak regarding during this for items not on our agenda tonight? I've not seen any additional hands this evening so I'm going to go ahead and adjourn our meeting this evening. I'm sorry, phone caller 1-810. Do you want to speak to oral communications? You can press star six if you want to adjust us. Yeah, MNRA COVID vaccinations should be a personal informed choice but suffer now an awful new power and greed tyranny. Newsome Biden government mandates inciting people to treat the others badly are exactly how the worst atrocities in history began. Over 6,500 have died because of vaccinations. Tens of thousands have had quite certain side effects. The death counts attributed to COVID are inflated. The average age of a COVID death is higher than the normal life expectancy and the survival rate is 99.5% overall and is far higher for most people. mRNA vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission of COVID. Effectiveness is short lived. Virus mutations for a simple virus like COVID are rapid. The existence of COVID infected large animal populations is a virus reservoir. Eradication of COVID via these vaccines is therefore a pure fantasy or lie. COVID can be a severe blood vascular disease for some but the prohibitions on prescribing safe, cheap, timely, antiviral treatments early on when they would prevent damage, proven observationally all over the world and instead mandating problematic, expensive patented, big pharma drugs combined with the protocol treatment possible of letting COVID ravage via quarantine then prescribed malpractice death by ventilator was and is mass murder. The now less credible politicized and unbelievably culpable CDC Fauci and Walinsky who still don't prioritize treatment research for the sick await hell. I will also mention Governor Newsom wasted no time following the recall, signing a bill making the fraud plague vote by mail system, signing AB 9 dealing a death blow to single family housing allowing up to two duplexes on SFR lot and signing AB 1184 allowing children to get abortions and sex chains operations without parental knowledge. Look Ma, I got a double mastectomy followed a few years later by mom I thought this would make me happy but now I feel like part of me is missing. I hope all of those Newsom voters are enjoying more, there's more public education left as brainwashing of innocent children to hate white people make people of color feel their victims from leftist social justice wearing I'm not seeing any other hands so I'll go ahead and adjourn our meeting this evening. Thanks everyone for attending. Good night.