 Great, it looks like people are settled on time. Welcome, thank you. 6 p.m. here on our regularly scheduled Thursday, March 23rd, 2023 city council meeting. May we please have a roll call? Here. Council member Clark. Here. Here. Here. Here, would you all join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. To the Republic for which it stands, one nation, one country, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, do we have any additions or deletions to the agenda? Staff has no changes to the agenda this evening. Thank you. We do have a presentation tonight. It's 3A, we have the annual update from 3CE. I think she's muted. It looks like she's talking, but Sophia, we can't hear you if you're speaking. I think we can hear, but the volume's really low. Can we turn it up on our end? No. I don't think it's a problem on our end. Still quite muffled. Rob's is? Rob, can we try your mic, see how that goes? How about now testing? There we go, much better. Wonderful, sorry about that. Thank you for your patience. Can you see my screen okay? Yes. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, mayor and council members. My name is Sophia Schwartzke and I am a customer accounts manager with Central Coast Community Energy or 3CE. I am excited to be here with you this evening to speak with you about the agency's recent accomplishments along with our plans for 2023 and beyond. So let me start with a brief overview of community choice aggregation for those tuning in tonight who may be less familiar with the concept. 3CE is a community choice aggregator or CCA. Once a community joins a CCA, the CCA will take over the responsibility for electricity procurement from the existing investor owned utility. The investor owned utility will continue to provide energy transmission, delivery, metering and billing services. CCAs are public agencies that return revenue to the communities they serve through programs, incentives and rebates. CCAs can also assist with local job creation and prioritize clean and renewable energy in their procurement efforts. 3CE was formed in 2017 and since then the agency has seen tremendous expansion. We've gone from serving the Monterey Bay to the entire Central Coast and the city of Capitola joined 3CE in 2018. Today 3CE is made up of 34 member agencies in five counties. The agency serves nearly 450,000 customers and has secured over $1 billion in renewable energy and storage agreements while returning $26 million to the communities we serve. 94% of eligible customers are enrolled with 3CE and last year alone, the agency delivered over 5,000 gigawatt hours of electricity to our customers. In the last year and a half, we enrolled Buolton, completed the enrollment of unincorporated regions of Santa Barbara County and welcomed the city of Atascadero to 3CE. And I'm excited to say that on Tuesday, the County of San Luis Obispo voted to join 3CE. So there's a lot of news to report, but for tonight I'd like to focus on the four major benefits promised to our communities when we formed in 2017. I'm going to start with local control. Community choice aggregation allows local governments to have greater control over the type and cost of electricity provided to their communities to ensure energy sources and rates reflect the community's values and goals. With 3CE decisions about where your power come from and how much it costs are made by local elected officials, we're making progress on climate goals together as a region and 3CE is far ahead of both state and federal targets to decarbonize our energy supply. Here in Capitola, you share board seats with the city of Scots Valley and you're currently represented by council member Brooks and city manager Goldstein. So let me talk about rates. In March of 2022, we decoupled our rates from PG&E's and established our own rates setting procedures based on cost of service, resulting in an average of 18% in savings for our residential customers. Small and medium commercial customers saved between two and 19% after we made this change and we expect our competitiveness with the incumbent investor owned utility to continue. Now I'd like to shift focus to our efforts to procure clean and renewable power. Today, 3CE procures 50% of our electricity from clean and renewable sources and we are on track to procure 60% of our energy from clean and renewable sources by 2025, which is five years ahead of the same goal set by the state of California. 3CE is committed to meet 100% of our demand with clean and renewable sources by 2030, which is an entire 15 years ahead of the same goal set by the state of California. So 3CE prioritizes long-term contracts that bring new clean and renewable resources online as quickly as possible. 3CE has executed 19 long-term power purchase agreements and energy storage agreements. 3CE is also pursuing offshore wind generation and emerging technology in California. Five of those projects I mentioned on the last slide came online in 2022. These five projects are serving about 22% of 3CE's annual load. And finally on the topic of clean and renewable energy is electrification. The biggest impact we can make as individuals to cut greenhouse gases and improve air quality is to replace our fossil fuel vehicles with electric vehicles and to replace the gas appliances in our home with electric versions. So as 3CE works to clean the grid, electric vehicles and appliances will be emissions free in their operation and the electricity that powers them will be 100% clean and renewable. Finally, I'd like to speak with you about 3CE's continued investment in Capitola and into all the communities we serve. Over the past three years, 3CE has helped put more than 1,000 electric vehicles on central coast roads by distributing more than $2 million in cash rebates paid directly to our customers. These EVs have spared more than 6,000 metric tons of regional CO2 emissions. And in collaboration with funding partners like the California Energy Commission, 3CE has delivered rebates that will help build more than 1,000 new electric vehicle charging stations for our region. 3CE has also funded more than 2,000 all electric affordable housing units. 3CE's residential customers are eligible for rebates towards electric vehicles, EV charging stations and readiness, electric appliances and the construction of new all electric accessory dwelling units. 3CE has programs aimed at helping our member agency partners advance fleet electrification, fleet charging infrastructure and staying up to date with building codes that advance electrification. 3CE also has business friendly programs, designed to upgrade AG equipment, electrified farm worker housing and to install DCFC level three chargers. With an understanding that some of these programs may be inaccessible for our underserved community members, 3CE also provides additional electrifier ride and electrifier home rebates for income qualified customers. And in partnership with the state, 3CE has garnered $1,193,000 for your community. So if you were interested in any of the programs featured on the previous slides, please head to our website, 3cenergy.org. And if you were interested in learning more about any of the member agency programs I spoke about, I'd love to get you in touch with your account manager, Judy Young. With the continued support of the Capital City Council, City staff and community members, 3CE will continue to deliver impactful programs, exemplary service and clean and renewable energy. Thank you so much for your time tonight. And I would love to answer any questions you may have. Great, thank you so much. Council, do we have any questions? All right, any questions from the public? Great, thank you so much Sophia. Thank you, have a great night everyone. You too. All right. And that'll bring us down to additional materials. And CEP, we have a report from London. I think that's related to the project. And then CEP, all the copies available for your review and for copy of the report. Great, thank you. So we'll move on to oral communications by members of the public. This is on anything that is not on tonight's agenda. Anybody from the public is welcome to speak. You'll have three minutes. Good evening. My name is John Hakin and I live at Cabrillo Mobile Home Park on Rosedale Avenue. As the council is aware, our landlord Viera of Enterprises will be raising our rent by $358 a month, a rise of 58%. Assembly Bill AB 1035 is to place a cap on rent increases for mobile home parks. And I and several others consider it's very important that the city of Capitola support this bill, AB 1035, to prevent such outrageous rent increases for mobile home park, mobile home owners. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Jerry Jensen. Tonight I come in front of you to talk about we have an ad hoc committee that we have pulled together with community members and we're gonna form a group and we're gonna be called the Capitola Wharf Enhancement Team. So we'll be C-Wet as we're gonna be referring to ourselves as an acronym. And with these, we'll be raising funds to enhance and to provide enhancements as Wharf is getting rebuilt. Our community members that we have brought together are Kerry Arnone, Christine McRoom, Gail Ortiz, Aaron Hanna, I.D. Kelsen, Scott McConville, Joe Paul Adrani, Laurie Hill, Rich Novak, Vicky Gwyn and myself. With our group that we are working with, we have started working with city staff and we are just now starting to get ready to have a public information release and news where gets in and out about what we plan to do and help enhance the Wharf. Some of our ideas are around lighting, some historical signage, seating enhancement. Like I said, we were gonna make sure we reach out to the community and we're gonna have community workshop and work with Jamie and Jessica with that. With that, we'll be doing a fundraiser program and we'll be raising funds for this to help make the Wharf, I guess, a more enhanced, more of a place that when the community feel like they all had a little bit more of a buy-in to a final design of enhancements with that. There will be some communication releases that are going out to the community real soon. One of our members of our board was Scott McConville and he's with the Wharf to Wharf. It's great that they have decided to join with us in helping do community outreach and so they're gonna be sending out some information next week when they are notifying everybody about race registration after the registration's over, they're gonna be working with us in doing fundraising and not just up until the time of the race, they agreed to kind of stay on with us through our whole entire campaign. So they've really become a great member of our team and I plan to come back at multiple different times and bring back updates about what our group is doing. So appreciate your time and thank you. Thank you, we look forward to the updates. Any other members? Hi. Yes, hi, thank you. I'm Douglas Castle and I'm also a resident of the Mobile Home, Cabrillo Mobile Home Estates as well as my neighbor, John and some of any of my other neighbors who have joined us here today. And I just wanna back up what John said and why that Assembly Bill 1035 is so important as well as any ideas or support we might ask of the council in the future. We have some ideas that we're working on and we might ask for certain help. Mobile homes have a really special place in the housing market. They are more accessible and they offer a pathway of ownership to many people who are otherwise placed out of the homes, even with vouchers. There often there's restrictions on those so people aren't, it's not always a pathway for everyone whereas mobile homes are a pathway for everyone at that housing level. So I think it's really important because they are very diverse by that nature because so many people can go in there. I know there's often a thought of mobile homes or trailer parks and popular culture and they might bring up numerous stereotypes that you can think about that can be humorous at times. So really in the California mobile homes and the parks, you get many, many people, many families with a lot of diversity. If you ever go up there to our park, to our neighborhood, walk around, you will see for yourself that there's a great deal of diversity at many levels. So I think it's really important if Capitola as a city and the council of Capitola really do consider things such as diversity, equity and inclusion as principles to work on supporting our mobile home park and the stability of our residents, I would hope would be something you would strongly consider as we move forward, thank you. I'm Kathleen Bear, I live on Capitola Avenue and I don't know if this is the place to bring it up but I've noticed the motorized bicycles coming down the street at high speeds with small children in boxes in the front, two days ago, since there's no bike lanes there, there's not, I don't know if they're supposed to ride with the cars or over to the side but there was one riding near the middle of the lane where cars would be. Well, he almost came extremely close. The guy ran off onto the sidewalk to get away from the car and almost hit a person. So I was like, I've just seen high speeds and when I saw this father with a little girl about two years old in a box on the front and then the trail by the creek, there is a sign by the trestle that says walk your bicycles. I was walking my dog there and I was under the trestle down by the creek and two big motorized bicycles came like teenagers and they came riding down and almost cleaned me off the path with my dog. This took a blind turn to the right and I noticed that there's not a sign at the end nor the high part of the creek. There's no sign there that says walk your bicycles and there's no sign by the bridge only in the middle I think it is. Maybe I don't, I know there's only one but I think there should be one everywhere because just me alone I've seen, I've almost been crashed into also skateboards. They are allowed up to the trestle and there's not enough room like there's a telephone pole in the sidewalk where I live and a skateboard came and almost crashed into me. Then regular bicycles, there's another telephone pole with this much room and two kids on a bicycle were on the sidewalk and I had to jump inside like the alcove for a storefront. So that was just regular but it just seems like a lot is going on with those motorized bicycles. On the back, the street, right river, side riverview avenue, there were two motorized bicycles, a guy with a huge box with two big dogs and I don't know a girlfriend or wife on another one and I had to jump to the side because they were coming over towards, I was on the very edge because there's not a sidewalk back there. So I just think it's extremely dangerous and I didn't know if I should call the police and tell them what I've seen and no signage either, they need more of that. Thank you very much. We have other in-person members. Okay, seeing none, we can go out to Zoom. Okay, thank you. Well, this will take us to city council comments. Do we have any from our members? Let me just have a quick comment. Based on the comment that we've just received, I'd like to ask NAP to bring back an agenda item with information for the council to consider about sending a letter of support for AB 1035. It's a assembly member, Merit Suji. It's still in the first house, it was referred to the assembly committee on housing and community development recently, like a couple of weeks ago, on the second of March. So we still have plenty of time if it could come back to us fairly soon, just for us to consider as an entire body sending a letter of support for that. Thank you. I wanted to make a quick update about Operation Surf. It was in town a couple of weeks ago, here in Capitola, it was another great event. Fortunately, it was one of the rare days where we had some sun and some clean water and waves. It was great that Capitola's still in part of it. They had some great things to say about the city and it was really fun to be out there with all those veterans in Operation Surf. Any comments to your staff comments? One quick update is we've secured the device to lower the lighting for the new baller lighting. Pretty. Next to noble people's park. So after the meeting this evening, council members are encouraged to go by. There are some other settings lower, so it can go lower than it is right now. So curious about people's feedback. And then I think Nikki Bryant has a short update as well. Great. Hi, Nikki. Good evening, mayor, council members. As many of you are aware, this past Tuesday, we had to cancel the planned UA playground community meeting due to the storm. That the meeting has been rescheduled and will take place on March 29th, which is next Tuesday at the same time, 7 to 9 p.m. at the Jade Street Capitola Community Center. Thank you. Thanks for that update for Nikki. Oh, sorry, Nikki. I think we have a follow-up. I know, sorry. Get your steps in. Sorry, Nikki. Okay, I'll learn to stay here longer next time. Do you want to give us an update on the summer programs that we just, summer? True. Oh, yeah, whatever. On registration? Yeah, on campus. Yeah, I'd be happy to. So we opened junior guard registration this past week, Tuesday and Wednesday. And all of session one for junior guards is full with long wait lists. Session two does have some p.m. session availability if anybody is still looking to register. Camp Capitola also opened registration the week prior. And just about all sessions have one or two spaces left, but wait lists will be forming very soon for Camp Capitola. So if anybody is interested, I encourage them to register soon. Are there scholarships still available? Yes, there is scholarships available. An individual would go ahead and do the registration process. And then on our website, as well as the Capitola Public Safety and Community Foundation, the application is available through them. They would fill out the application and then submit it to the Community Foundation. And then we would communicate with them about any scholarships that would be awarded to their account directly. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So we'll go on to item seven, which is our consent items. They'll be enacted by one motion in the form listed below. Do I have a motion? Move approval of consent. Seconded. Hey, we have a motion and a second. May I have a roll call, please? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Passes unanimously. We'll take us on to general government. We have item 8A. This is the temporary village parking committee recommendations. The recommended action here tonight is to direct staff to prepare the necessary documentation to approve the temporary village parking committee recommendations. And Jim's here to present. Thank you. Our city clerk is getting a presentation. Yeah. Okay. Good evening, mayor and council. As the mayor just mentioned, this is for the temporary village parking committee. As some of you may recall, the committee was formed last April and consisted of three city residents, three village business representatives, one member from our finance advisory committee and two members of the city council. Support was provided by the police department, public works department, community development and finance departments. The committee met seven times during the summer and fall of last year. I'm reviewing everything from parking meter rates to permits, parking signage and potentially renaming the upper and lower beach and village lots here behind city hall. Some of the things that the goals of the committee were to examine the parking meter rates, look at the equity between permit costs and the utility of village parking, examine changes to the parking program rules to encourage folks to use these lots that are behind city hall and evaluate other opportunities to reduce parking in the neighborhoods and get more folks out of the neighborhoods and into the lots behind city hall. Just as a reminder, the parking committee did not review meter zone areas, parking permit program boundaries or consider any new parking meter areas or permit areas. Doesn't like that one. Some of the information that was reviewed was we looked at parking rates from other cities on California coast. We reviewed the rules and boundaries of the existing parking permit program both in the village as well as in the surrounding neighborhoods. We reviewed the parking meter and permit revenue basically since 2009, which was the last time that the parking rates were increased. We looked at inflation since that last update. We considered potential zoning and policy changes. Also to see if there was any CEQA compliance and then located, we talked a lot about different locations for signage throughout the city and then also the Postal Commission opinion whether they supported the direction that we were going in and then what the permitting process would be. The committee discuss also discuss various parking rate structures. So we talked about doing variable rates for peak season and non-peak seasons. We also talked about creating some free parking areas in the back of the lower beach and village parking lot trying to get folks encouraged over there. Ultimately, the consensus was to keep the program as simple as possible just a consistent rate and consistent areas all throughout. Another observation in the committee is that a lot of visitors encounter difficulties with the pay stations that we currently have and that we should look into potentially ease of use should be a consideration as we replace those as they kind of hit the end of their life. Did you say they were being replaced? I'm sorry, can I? As they need to be replaced, not ahead of time, although some will be replaced from the storm. A couple of other things that we looked at was or observations was the committee felt that parking permit program is working as intended with the exception of possibly some equity for the transferable permits that we'll get into a little bit. Another observation was to utilize consistent signage and increasing that signage. And I'll talk about that a little bit, but it was the new sign that we have at the end of Stockton and CapApp with the surfboard and the all day parking to try to get a consistent sign in that style throughout the city. And then another observation was some of the recommendations could potentially increase revenues for the city and some of those revenues could be utilized towards enhancing the parking program, maybe doing the signage and upgrading some of the parking stations. That worked actually. So as far as the committee's recommendations, as far as parking meter rates, the recommendation is to increase the rates from a dollar 15 hour to $2 an hour and maintain the three hour maximum. Increased parking rates from $1 to $2 per hour on Cliff Drive and maintain the 12 hour maximum up there. Increased parking rates from 50 cents an hour to $1 an hour in the upper and lower beach and village parking lots and also maintain the 12 hour maximum there. All three of those combined based on kind of what our parking revenue history would generate about $400,000 of additional parking revenue. Parking permits, on the permit side, the first recommendation was to add holidays as a parking permit requirement on Fan Mar Terrace as well as the 300 block of San Jose. Currently that's only, excuse me, restricted on weekends and it gets pretty jammed up on holidays up there as well. The surf and copy permits increase from $50 to $55 per year and also increase the number of permits from 75 to 100. We recently, a couple of years ago, increased from 50 to 75 and I think those go out the door probably the first week that they're available. As far as the transferable permits, I've broken those into kind of two categories. There's commercial hotels. I think in the staff report, I erroneously listed Capitola Hotel, it should be commercial in hotels. Increased that from $50 to $365 annually. I'm gonna come back to those in a second on the transferable permits for residential. No change to those, leave those at the $50 an annual. And as far as the commercial in hotels to also reevaluate some of the restrictions that we currently put on those permits, I think the biggest one is they can't park along the seawall and there's a couple of other areas. But to just reevaluate that, if the price of the permit is going up, maybe they can expand that area. So the hotels, there was a lot of discussion on the commercial hotel. Basically, we issue, I thought it was 10, I found out it's 13, 10 of them to Capitola Hotel, three of them to beach suite ends behind the Venetian. They have 10 rooms with only seven spaces, so they buy three of them. And I believe the Capitola Hotel has 10 rooms and they purchase 10. We had anywhere from leaving it at $50 and taking it all the way up to $3,400, which is what restaurants pay for the same space for outdoor dining. But the difference is outdoor dining, those are blocked off and exclusively used for the outdoor dining program. The permits that the hotels get aren't locked down. It's a great permit if there's available parking. The problem is in the peak season, the summer, a lot of times they give out the permits and there's no place for them to park anyways. So the committee thought a dollar a day was reasonable. It's a big increase percentage-wise, but a reasonable cost for those hotel permits. The owners of the Capitola Hotel came in and obviously would have some concerns about that increase, but could support it, but their issue, and it was really outside of the parking permit committee, parking committee was getting a space similar to what the outdoor dining does, which paid $3,400 and have that space in front of their hotel. What I don't know is if Coastal Commission pushes back on that. I think we got some pushback on outdoor dining and they finally kind of let that up, but we could look into that for sure. So that was parking permits. As far as signage, again, replace the existing signs with the surfboard design to be consistent throughout the whole village. Install, I have parking sites banners basically on CapAb as you come down CapAb from Bay, right before you get to the entrance here, and then put banners over Bay Avenue by the lower lot entrance and up by Monterey and Park over the entrance to the upper lot, just to kind of make it more visible for people coming in and visiting where the parking is. Also they suggested that we work with the county and the US Postal Service to change the address. Right now the address to those parking lots is 426 CapAb, which is down at the bottom of the hill and there's no signage there. So as people drive by, they hit yellow house, I don't know, that's probably a 500 minutes. We're in the 420s and they've gone past and now they're down on the village and back to traffic. So the process is to work with the assessor and the Postal Service. I've talked a little bit to our building official about that and that's definitely doable. If we did that change, then we could reach out to all of the mapping apps because right now they pin to where the address is. So if we can change the address, it changes their pin and it would, we hope, help people see that there's a better way to get to those parking lots rather than coming down CapAb and then missing the entrance there. Couple other items, thank you, was renaming the upper and lower beach and village parking lots to Capitola Beach and Village lot one and lot two. And I think more importantly was to make sure that the signage going in there indicated that that is all-day parking. And then another recommendation was for city staff to explore options to notify motorists when parking is full. We talked about similar to what they do in airport parking lots where when the lot's full they kind of direct you to another one. I think we've looked into that in the past back in 2009 and it's incredibly expensive but we haven't looked into if there's other alternatives recently. So we could explore to see if there's anything available to where once it's filled up is there any way to kind of redirect people so they don't get jammed up down there basically in a parking lot for half hour. Get out of there. So as far as the recommended action is to direct staff to prepare the necessary documentation to approve the temporary village committee recommendations. I'd like to add I have a couple of members from the committee here in the audience that may or may not want to speak and I believe the owner of the Capitola would tell us if they're still here. I mean, with that, I'm happy to take any questions. Yeah, it's kind of, did you look into the reverb? Sorry, thank you for looking into it. Do we have any council questions? Can he use the mic for now, Jamie? Well, and turn whatever he was using off. I can't. Thanks, thanks. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, so the first question I have is about the signage. Was there any conversation about starting the signage as far back as the entry off the freeway? I know that Arts and Cultural talked about it a long time ago about making some sort of signage there. Was there any? Yeah, there was a question about adding some signage along the way. Straight down part. We talked about there's a sign, it's a small sign that in a standard blue with the white key, Bay and Capab that it's really small and it points both directions, just getting rid of that and possibly putting the surfboard style sign just directing people and getting straight up Bay Avenue rather than down. Okay, but that wasn't part of the recommendation to... We didn't have specific sites. We did a lot of looking at maps and stuff and which is kind of, I think we would probably need that part of the course. I think there's some challenges on different locations. Just trying to put as many as we can along the Bay more or less likely. Okay, maybe that'd be something fun for Art and Cultural to look at just the Bay Porter exit onto exit and then some signage there. You talked about letting folks know that the parking lots are full. Does our sign ordinance, I'm thinking of like A-frames like that are just simple like parking lots full. Does that prohibit us from using that kind of method which seems pretty straightforward that we have to use upward? Yeah, like the A-frames sandwich forward signs that says parking lot full. So we can, we can and we actually do deploy that sort of signage for our summer shuttle program. I think the trick with it is, is that we would need somebody monitoring the lot on weekends, which we don't right now. Do we have people who are monitoring the Esplanade, right? Is that... We're talking about putting the sign up at the Esplanade saying... Is that what you're referring to? I was thinking just the parking lot, the new, what is it the new name? Parking lot one and two. If it's full, having public works deploy their A-frame that just says parking lot full. I thought the point of the full sign was to show that Esplanade was full and to direct people to the beach and village parking lots. But that requires like sensors, right? In the parking spaces. Correct. Or somebody physically standing down monitoring. Okay. Camera. Or you have a camera and somebody in an office update a digital sign. Chair is true. So we did actually several years ago, we priced out a system that would include sensors that would count cars going in and out of the lots and then also sensors potentially on each parking space with digital signs. It is feasible, but it's expensive. So there is an option to do something like that, but it's, if I remember right, when we looked at it probably 10 years ago, it was a $300,000 project. So it might be a half million today. Maybe it's gone down, you know, with technology sometimes those prices don't elevate. Same way other reflationary items do. So just for the general lot full, what's our process there for parking lot one and two? Do we have A-frames that go out? We can, we're not limited by our ordinance to put A-frames out. I'm not sure pragmatically how we would staff that. Do we have public works working on weekends? We do, but they're not hanging out in the lot. You know, they're down picking up trash. They're moving or they're mobile around the village rather than the city, rather than stationed up at the lot. So the meters, something's happening on my computer. So the meters though, there is a process in which we could be notified that all meters are occupied, right? So in parking lot one and two, it's meter run. And I'm sure they're, instead of spending $300,000 on something, we could get, it's got to be some way to know that all of them are full. I think I need to talk a little bit more with our parking staff to find out kind of exactly what sort of data they have access to and exactly what the implications. I think one of the challenges with what you're suggesting is, is that... We got a notification, I don't know that we know it's challenging. My point is like, is there an opportunity there to get notified that they're full? And if they're full, we notify staff that's working to walk out and put an A-frame down. That's part of the problem. Yeah, I can contact our staff and see if that's a feasible option. Okay. The meters themselves are beloved meters. So we're gonna be replacing some of them that are not working, but we're using the same type. I just know we've gone back and forth about the meters not being the best. The paystations that were damaged during the storm are probably gonna have to be replaced, like they call it a light change. It has to be replaced with basically exactly the same thing. So those few that were damaged during the storm, and I don't know if it was the whole paystation of just some of the electronic components inside, but I imagine those will be replaced, like kind of exchanges. As they kind of hit the end of their useful life and we have to replace them just because they're just time to be replaced. I think that's the time when we would start re-evaluating if that's the best one, I think the cheap is there, but it's a small world at the parking meter and all of that stuff is a very small world and there's not a ton of options out there on shore. Okay, so we're happy with them for what they are and then we'll replace them as needed. Do we have a, sorry, I have two more questions. The percentage increase to the meters are to the rates from the one to, let me pull it up so I don't misspeak, the one to $2 or the one to- 150 to two. 150 to two, thanks. There it is, 150 to two. What was the thought behind like the percentage increase? Where did that come from? So we looked at inflation over the period from 2009 up until when we were meeting last week. And if we had just followed inflation with the $1.50 an hour, it would have been somewhere in like the 225 range. So we settled in at two. At one point when we were talking about variable rates, we had talked about $4 in the summer and $2 in the winter or some combination like that, but that one seemed a little confusing. So we were just kind of following what inflation would be. And then I think that's the plan going forward when we submit to the coastal commissioners to be able to just stay with inflation going forward rather than have to- Is that in alignment with all the other cities in our county? So everyone has a $2 price? They're a little bit higher in Santa Cruz than we are. I think they're at 225 right now. Different cities have different rates and different programs and there's a lot of different reasons why they do it. Carnell doesn't charge for parking, but they write a ton of parking tickets. There's Santa Barbara has a thing where it's free for 75 minutes and then they start charging, but they have parking garages. So it was easier. But $2 is pretty, what kind of right in the middle of where everybody is. Okay. And then did they talk about coming back within future increase to get to the 225 in like two years? Like what's the plan? Hopefully what we want to do is have the ability to adjust by inflation each year. So the council would have, we would present to the council and say, it's $2 inflation would take it to $2 and five cents. Probably doesn't make sense. So we sit on it for two per few years, follow that out and then when it's make sense to go to the next change, we would do that. But it would be a council discretion rather than having to go through the Coastal Commission. Annually. Is that what you said? It would come back to annually. I would suggest annually just looking at it as part of the fee schedule. Okay. And then the last question is the pretty large increase to the hotel from 50 to 365. Have they been notified? So you mentioned they were notified or one of them was notified. Capital hotel was notified. And so were there any other options? As you said, the 3400 for the space option, was that discussed with both of them and before being? Beach suites. I just learned about beach suites yesterday. So I need to reach out to them with capital hotel. I think their challenge, there's multiple challenges depending on whether we're talking about the fencing up right now, get back to having all open spaces and back to normal outdoor dining. But the loading zone doesn't line up with their hotel. And it gets used by the restaurants and the businesses there for their deliveries. So a lot of times the loading zone isn't available when their customers are coming in at times. A lot of times deliveries are being made. And it's not right in front of the hotel. It's down the street. The permits that they get right now are limited to certain areas where we'd lifted that during the pandemic. And I think those restrictions went back in place. I wanna say last year. And I don't know, I apologize off the top of my head. I think it's along the seawall primarily that they're not allowed to park. So even if they have the permit and there's an open spot, they can't use it. So if they were purchasing like an entire space, would that be just for loading or would it just be unlimited all day parking? It would be for hotel parking only and they would be able to use that for their deliveries. They would be able to use it for their guests to unload their bags or load their bags into their car. They would have to manage it. Ideally, you wouldn't get a guest parking right in front of their hotel for a day weekend and not ever moving. I think that defeats the purpose of it. So they would have to actively manage that to be able to accommodate their guests is what they would like to do. Okay, thank you for clarifying. Do you have any more questions? Okay. I have a couple of questions. Yeah, go for it. You mentioned the beach suites and Capitola Hotel, what about the Venetians? They don't have any of the. They have a lot. They have their own parking or they don't buy transferable permits. So they must have enough. Are they the lot that's shared with the beach suite? No, they're down, I believe when you turn off of work kind of down into that little parking lot down below beach suites has the seven underneath their structure. And then I think they use some of those that are up above the Venetian parking lot. I want to say there's like five there. Okay, and you mentioned, I noticed in the recommendations that the transferable permits for the hotels they could purchase up to 10. And it says that you mentioned that the beach suites only have three, but they could purchase up to 10 if they wanted to, or they can only purchase three because they have seven spots. And the reason I ask is because I think Capitola Hotel has 10 rooms. But if I understand correctly, they have two spaces in the mercantile. So wouldn't that mean if there's a limit on how many permits you can get based on how many rooms you have and spaces available, would it make sense to bring that down to eight or should we bring it up to 10 or beach suites? Does that make sense? It makes sense. And I would say that you would limit it to the number of rooms because it's intended for the guests, not the employees or anybody else. So I would limit it to the number of rooms that they have. The number of rooms period or the number of rooms that they don't already have parking spaces for. The number of rooms that they don't have parking space. So with beach suites, I would say three because they have seven. Capitola Hotel technically doesn't have any if they get some from the mercantile, and two then they can get eight. Okay. Okay, so we could put it in the wording like up to 10 based on the amount of parking you do or don't have available. Something more eloquent than that, but okay. Cool. And then my last comment is about the sensors in the mercantile. I would be really interested in hearing just in the future how much it might cost. I mean, with smart cities being something that is a thing now. I don't know, again, less eloquent way to say that, but perhaps there's grants or something to help us cover the cost of those sensors if it means that it would lower tailpipe emissions from people driving around in circles if they know that there's not going to be any spaces for them or something that increases efficiency for us as a city. I would just be interested in finding out how much that would cost even if we can't do it right now just for future knowledge. That's okay. Thank you. That's one of my questions. I had one, this might be a frivolous question, but I was wondering if we are to request an address change, would we do one for the side of the opening that's on the Bay side and then one for Capitola? So it kind of maybe spreads out the traffic a little bit? I think that the address is on that side. Regardless. Okay. You can get rid of the 426 Capable. Okay. It's confusing for people, they can't find it. Gotcha. Yeah, no, that makes sense. I would do the lower lot on Bay Avenue. Okay. Yeah, no, that really makes sense. And then just, this is, sorry, this is more of a comment. However, putting a sign out on the Esplanade to deter people from coming down there is not going to do anything. Most people are not looking for parking when they're driving through there. They're using their cell phones to take video, just my two cents on that. So I can put this out to the public for any comment. Good evening. I'm Bob Neppetel. I am one of the owners of Capitola Hotel. I think my husband is on Zoom and he wants to speak first. And then I have some of your comments. Great. You do in person comment? Don't mean to wait. No, you say yeah. Is your call? He would prefer to speak first, so that's fine. I'll speak if you could send me a call. Bob is waiting. Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Good evening, council members and mayor. I wanted to briefly just go over and just clarify kind of Capitola Hotel's position and our parking issues as we have. I think it was presented pretty well as to some of the issues we're having, but just to kind of dig into that a little bit. Again, if we're going to have a significant increase in our permit costs, we want to at least have permits that can be utilized by the guests in some proximity to the hotel. During the pandemic, we did open that up along the Seawall and Capitola Avenue. That has now reverted back just recently. And given the fact that we almost have very little parking, if any, in front of our hotel right now because of the construction, fencing and everything else, I think it'd be fair to at least increase the spots that the guests could try to utilize with these significantly increased permit, with the permit pricing. So that's one issue. The other issue is the loading and unloading. And that, again, not for parking for overnight guests, but for deliveries, for loading and unloading guests and luggage and all that stuff. Because as it stands right now, even if a guest were to pull up and the loading zone up the street is available, they would be ticketed if, let's say it's a single guest who isn't sitting in their car while they're checking in and getting their permit so that they can park somewhere else in the village. They would be ticketed having a dedicated hotel loading white zone in front of the hotel makes a lot of sense and it's very consistent with a lot of other beach villages similar to Carmel. Carmel, if you look at the hotels that are there that don't have their own on-site parking, have a white zone in front for hotel purpose only. And you'll see that in a lot of metro cities and other places too. So I think it's very consistent and it alleviates a lot of issues and other traffic headaches while people are trying to get to their hotel, get their luggage out and get checked in. So, and then I quickly want to touch on the matter of I think somebody mentioned something about the spots and possibly reducing down from the 10, we don't own. So unlike the Capital of Suites or whatever, they own those spots, those are theirs and it's... Hey, that was your three minutes. Your wife is here in person so I'll turn it over to her, thank you. Sure, I'll continue on. Like I said, my name is Bob Napetel. So the parking spots, we have zero parking spots as a part of our hotel. The Capital of Beach Suites has seven spots that are underneath their hotel. We actually have the Mercantile Parking is something that we lease month, like every six months we sign a renewed lease, the fees go up and continuous. That's an option that we offer to our guests as a reserved parking because there's no guarantee that they're gonna have a spot in the village. They might have to use the parking permit that we have from the city in the beach lot. Well, some customers are not okay with that. So it's just an added option benefit to ensure the guests feel safe about their car being in a good spot. We basically, you know, whatever we charge the guests for the fee based on what we're paying for them and that's an added spot. So like for the 10 spots, we have 10 hotel rooms. If we have a day where a guest does not want any reserved parking because they don't wanna pay for it, we have to have 10 parking permits to allow them to park in the village. It is like, as we had mentioned, it is a huge increase and we were honestly really shocked about that but we're willing to work with the city and work with that, assuming that our permits will allow guests to park along the seawall and on Capitola Avenue. We all know it's super complicated. Who wants to go somewhere to a city and stay in a hotel in a village where they're having to go around in circles and try to look for parking spots. And but again, these are the same guests that come spend the money in the city with our businesses and our restaurants and stay a few nights. So we're trying to make the process as convenient for them as available. I don't think there was anything else that we wanted to add. Great, thank you so much. Any other public comments for those in person? Good evening, Karen Hannah. Lucky enough to be on this committee and it was a good committee. We had lots of great discussions. Jim's done a great job and I think his presentation was pretty comprehensive. So I just have four quick points. On the signage, we really want it to be consistent. I'd rather not drag the Arts Commission into it because they'll just want to change the look and what would be the point? This is clear, it's crisp. People have commented really positively on it. It speaks to who Capitola is. It can be used vertically or horizontally. It can be big or small. So I know, like I know Vicki and I have gone around looking at places where the science can go, we'd be more than happy to work with Public Works or any committee that's looking at increasing where the signage goes. I think the signage is hugely important. They come down there, they see that great sign, they turn, they go up Capitol Avenue next thing. You know, they're in Soquel. They haven't seen another parking sign. They don't know where to go. So the banners are really important and I think the consistency of the look is really important. On the one thing about the lot full issue, the only other thing that I think would really help is if the one way street that's out here that goes to the upper lot was reversed because the biggest problem is if you come into that upper lot and somebody's in one of the aisles waiting for their parking space, you can be trapped in there for five, eight, 10 minutes while somebody waits for a parking place because there's no way out. So it's not because of the size of it, it's very, well, you can't get out. There's only one way out. So if you make this one an exit instead of an entrance, first of all, people won't be pulling into there and then immediately finding out that it's full and they're trapped. So reversing it would really go a long way to taking care of that problem. As long as you can go in and out of a parking lot if it's full, it's not so frustrating. And what we really wanted to do was try and not keep people circling. So that's why the signage is really important. The parking bank replacement, Santa Cruz parking banks, super easy, very user-friendly. Our parking banks, you will never see one person standing at the parking bank. They're always two people. And then they just throw up their hands and leave. And I mean, I have seen people go to the parking bank, get back in their car and drive out of town because they can't figure it out. So hopefully we don't have to wait too long, nobody has to go around or somewhere substance into them to make them all fail on the same day so that we can have new ones. I don't recommend that. And then my last thing is just really, we really, a lot of us on the committee, a hundred percent support the hotel in them having a dedicated parking space. I know that people have gotten tickets in the loading zone while they've been in there and that the parking lots are a little bit scary at night. So I wouldn't, if I were staying here and went out to eat and came back at night and had to go to that parking lot for my hotel room, I probably wouldn't come back. So a hundred percent, that should be looked at really, really carefully. Great, thank you. Any other, you know, in the public, okay. Good evening, honorable members of the Capitol City Council. First of all, this committee had a unanimous vote on the final recommendations that are going to you. And we spent some good time, Jim, did a great job at managing a lot of diverse opinions and what we do with this. And this is a small band-aid to a major problem. And the problems that aren't going to go away. You're going to continue to have this kind of issues. And Morgan, I think your comment about mining some way to determine how many cars are vacant spots and it's an expensive venture that we talked about it. But that would be a start. Our biggest problem is right now is the Esplanade and the backing up on the thing. We have no solutions to that right now. The second biggest problem that the city is going to have to deal with in the next 10 years is with global warming, we're going to lose East Cliff Drive, I guarantee it. It's starting to happen now. If you go down and look at it from there, you can't stand on the pier and look at it. But you look at that section now where we're getting the rebound off there that took the middle of the pier off. That's at the edge of the road and it's undercutting right now. If that goes, the only way to get across town would be to go along the Union Pacific Corridor. You'd be stuck without a road going through down into the village. It will not be there. It's just a matter of time. There was a lot of really interesting discussion about fee structure. We went up and down a few times and we didn't want to blow anybody out of the park. At the same time that with inflation, we're pretty par to what we see is pretty par to what the other jurisdictions are doing. And so we felt that the fee base that we're giving you is pretty fair. There's a strong sentiment in opinion in Capitola that the Esplanade should be cut down to traffic completely in the summertime. You may be faced with that someday. It's being done in a lot of different cities. It wasn't any discussion of that in the committee and we had enough issues to carry through there. What's interesting, if you look around this room, look at the three major pictures. None of them have a car in it. Maybe their interpretation of how this community should be. So yes, if it ever came to that, what you'd be required to do is put your second story above Pacific Hope and that's been discussed. And that would put you right at the level with the Union Pacific Corridor. But anyone who came into town would be directed directly to those parking spots there. You have a shuttle system that brings you in the village which, believe me, honestly, I'm sorry, there are a few cars up here. They're parked though, they're not moving. Okay, that's really all I have to say but it was a decision of this committee and I think our recommendations are good for a small step and a big, huge problem we have now. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I see one more. Quickly. Yeah, one concept that we started to discuss into but we didn't get very deeply that maybe consideration would be. And this ties into actually another agenda item that you have tonight and how we resolve parking issues that are allocated and with the hotel tonight. There's no restaurants in the village that have their own parking. The community pays for the parking, they get reimbursed through tactics. But my point is that if you can do an allocation system that works where, let's say the hotel can buy into 10 spaces in the Pacifico parking lot that you have tenants that work from there that work up to there. And what it does is it makes it more equitable for any new business. Right now, if you can talk to planning about this, we can't allow new businesses to come to this town because you can't provide the parking. And so this town is gonna, maybe that's important to people to say exactly that they're not gonna have room. Yes, okay, I'll have you wrap it up. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you. Anybody else in the public? Anybody there online? Great, Mr. Maury, you've been enabled to speak. Please unmute yourself. Hey guys, hope you're having a good night. So the solution to our problems is robust public transit, but that's obviously a long ways off. I definitely echo the gentleman who just spoke. Closing off the Esplanade is an obvious thing to do during the summer. When we closed it for the concert for that short period of time, the charity concert, it was wonderful. There were thousands of more people in town as a result. But my real comment tonight is about semiotics. I love the Sir Ford sign, it's amazing. It's like very well designed, but it's not what you look for when you're looking for parking. You wouldn't change a stop sign to a Sir Ford sign because universal symbology is real. Just using the standard blue parking sign is what's actually going to solve the problem of people not knowing where to go. That's the only real solution to that. And it's also a very inexpensive sign to buy. So I would recommend changing all of the parking signage to just the standard parking sign you see in every other beach town and city and really every jurisdiction in the United States of America, just the blue with the P on it. It's a universal symbol. So thank you and have a great night. Thank you. Oh, okay. So I can take this back to a council deliberation. Do we have any council comments? I have a couple more questions. Sure. I know when we did the outdoor dining program, we needed to send that to the coastal commission because we were taking away parking spaces and they considered that coastal access, et cetera, et cetera. What would the process look like if we were to consider securing a space for loading and unloading for Capitola Hotel, saying as though that's not an outdoor dining space, but we would be securing it or essentially taking away from public use, would we need to create a whole plan and send that to the coastal commission to get them to approve? What does that look like? Because I know we can't just give them a space and say this is yours now. So what does that look like? So I don't know exactly. I'll preface my answer with that. I do recall that years ago, we set up an allowance from the coastal commission to have a valet parking program. And in it actually written into our LCP allows us to dedicate up to two spaces for valet parking. That basically let people park down there and then folks to move the cars up the upper or lower lot. So I do suspect there would be a process, but we would have to work it out with coastal commission on exactly how we would do that. So what would that look like here then? Would we need that to come back to us as a new agenda item where we agree that we wanna do that or would we agree to do that tonight? And then you would go talk to coastal commission. My recommendation is that tonight, you take action on the recommendations from the subcommittee, which is basically, the changes in the rates, tell us what you wanna do with the signs, tell us what you wanna do with the permits. You could also tell us to research this issue about loading in front of the hotel as well. And then what we would do is come back with natural ordinance and then the documents that we would need to submit to coastal commission to make it happen. So there's no real final action we could take tonight, but if you guys signal that that's the direction you wanna go, we'll come back with the actual path to get there. Okay, okay, for the sake of just discussion amongst council members, I would be in favor of moving forward with the recommendations of the committee, but asking that staff research that issue about the loading and unloading space for the coastal commission. I like the idea of the surfboard signs. We're not every other coastal town, I think gives us some character to have that sign out there. And I'd like to see that consistently if we're gonna have it down in the village and other lots like the committee recommended. I like the idea of changing the address to the entrance of the parking lots, working with the mapping apps, moving the pen for it. A lot changes, the notice that says all day parking and the banners over the entrance, all that. I think this all looks good. Yeah, I think I thought I had more notes, but I think that's all I have to say for now. But for again, for the sake of discussion with my fellow council members, I would personally like to see staff look into what it would take for us to, oh yeah, for us to get that dedicated spot for loading and unloading. But then also I would hope that we would expect that they would be paying the same space rent as any of the outdoor dining folks are since that space is now no longer going to be available to the public. Those are my comments, Raina. I agree with that. And added to that, I would like to see them have the opportunity to park anywhere because we all know can't have just certain areas for them to park because most of the time you just get lucky and find a place to park. So if we could add that to it, if we're going to increase their price to over $300, it would be nice if they could just find a place to park. I would push back on that a little bit, at least for the parking that's right in front of the ocean, those 15, what is it, spots from the left of Zelda's to where the sea lion is, only because the folks that are going to be parking there will probably park and then leave for several days. And with Coastal Commission, at least, we know that they want to have accessibility for visitors and for folks coming from our community. And so parking there and leaving their car for three days takes that away. Think of our surfers who come and want to score an early spot. So I wouldn't, I don't think it's a good idea to have it against that seawall. The owner said maybe Capitola Ave, those other areas, I don't know what the limitations are. I didn't see it in the, so when we got the staff report, I would just add to know where the limitations were. We could really take it one more step where people coming to the hotel, if they decide they're going to come up, park their car for three days, parking the other lots, pay less money. But if somebody's coming to the hotel and they're visiting Capitola, they should have the same opportunity to park oceanfront. But I do agree with you, you don't want them to come there and be there for three days or two days. But something maybe the hotel could work out with their customers. From a lot of oversight, I'm not sure. Or would it be more of a seasonal thing where? I don't know that Coastal Commission would allow us to. What about for right now though, while the construction fencing is up? Because we did allow them to park on an oceanfront during the pandemic and then that lapsed. But to their point, now that there's construction fencing up, they've lost a lot of spaces. So I mean, I would be in favor of allowing it at least while the construction fencing is up. And then when that comes down, putting that limitation back. But yes, I think it would, I think I don't know how we would enforce it, but I agree that we don't want someone who is gonna stay four nights at the hotel to go park in front of the beach and not move their car for four days. Well, being someone to come into a beautiful hotel and a beautiful beach and not be able to park somewhere and spend all that money is like the best thing. Yeah, I agree. We don't want them to park. But if it's only limited to what 15 spots that they are unable to park in, if we can increase it to the capital avenue spots, at least give a little bit more to them that might be a little bit more wiggle room for the guests. So I'll continue on with comments and then hear from the rest of council. I agree. I think the thank you to the committee for spending all the time talking about rates and all of that sort of stuff. I did have a follow up question. When I was on FAC, we talked about a program for locals during like off season, similar to what the Santa Cruz War does. So I'd be interested in you just coming back when we get the next report about if that was it could, I don't wanna go on and on about that, but that would have been something that I think when it was actually Kristin was the mayor and I was vice mayor, we talked about that really cool program, especially for our locals. So that with the revenue that we're increased we're estimated to see about $161,000 according to your staff report. And so we know that the meters are no good, but no, they're not beloved. So if we can get some information, maybe not at this next report, but how much that revenue increase would allow us, how much would it be to get newer meters as a whole package and how much that would take us to solving that problem? Cause our speaker Karen was correct. People do come and go and eat the $50 ticket. The, in regards to the hotel, I mean, that's a huge increase. That's pretty significant. And I'm happy to hear that there's support from the one hotel. I'm curious to know what the other owner has to say about that before moving on. It sounds like there's a lot of options for our two business owners to explore. And I'd like to hear more about what they would be willing to settle on. If we do the unloading, unloading, that would be unloading, loading, not close to the capitol hotel, it sounds like there's no space it'd be a little bit further down and whether that would work for them or not, even in reality. And with that cost plus another 3,400 a year for 10 parking spots, that seems like a $7,000 a year. I think the spot would be right in front of their door. That would be one right in front of their door. But it wouldn't be specific to them. So is that really something? It would be. It's the point. It would be their specific spot. Like our, okay. So I'd like to know if that's something they would choose rather than the 10 parking spots. I feel like it needs to be one or the other or if they're willing to pay for it all, just getting their input on that would be really helpful in making my decision one way or another. So I'd like just to see more information come back and then in regards to the other hotel. I have a couple of comments as well. I think moving forward, if what we've talked about is possibly replacing some of our pay stations. I know there are some that sort of have some weather proofing, some sort of overhang, some resistance to the elements. I think that is something that we really need to consider. Also, I know that our parking enforcement has a really tough job, but if we could maybe be in a little bit more of a team-based attitude when it comes to the loading and unloading and not ticketing people that are coming to stay at the hotels. I don't know if that takes an extra step into the lobby of Capitol Hotel and just saying, hey, is this car with you guys? Okay, they've got like 10, 15 more minutes before I got to come back around, whatever that may be, just get a little bit more communication going between both sides. I think that that would be really helpful in moving forward. So I think what I'm hearing is we need a little bit more information on the hotel parking. Yeah, I like that idea. I like the temporary tag idea too of just like, can they park there without getting a ticket when they unload? That's another option, maybe like a 10 minute don't ticket me thing. I'm sorry, I did have one more about the signs. I'm pushing, I'm pushing when you exit Bay and Porter, right off, like you're gonna see Nob Hill on the right, there's no signs. So if we can extend the signs all the way over there, not just Monterey and part, like that freeway exit, that would be really neat. Because I think about what Santa Cruz does for like the boardwalk, they partnered with the private owners of the businesses over there that they allowed signage to go up on their property. And so during summer when they get off Highway 17, all the way right from that first light, they're able to see signage for parking. And I think that'd be great to kick it all the way back like that for us. So, sorry, I'm excited about the signs. Yeah, and they're cute. Signs are good, yeah. Okay. I have something. Yes, all right. Yeah, first of all, I think parking committee did a really good job, a lot of really good ideas there. I was curious when you say, allow additional accommodations for availability of parking spaces, referring to a capital hotel. Did the parking committee look into, have any recommendations on specific spaces? They just, the committee's recommended just to be valuated. And potentially modify those. And modify those. So, and it was, it was the Seawall and Caphab, but they didn't say specifically allow Caphab and not the Seawall. Okay, so that's, you're basically asking us to give you a direction to explore. Yeah, and I would suggest we incorporate the parking enforcement officers into that conversation because they're the ones out there actually having to enforce the rules. And it doesn't, it's not helpful if we make up rules that are, that are presented, yeah. That's all. Okay, so do we want to, I'll try. Yeah, with your sort of enhancements that we have. So, do we have a slide? Do you want to dare try to pull up the slide with staff recommendation or I can just pull it up here. Then in the summary, thank you. I have the summary in front of me and that's pretty extensive. But realistically, the direction we need is, is to go back and prepare documentation necessary to adopt in a coming meeting. And I think we've gotten the feedback we need. It sounds like there's still some unsettled question about the hotel, but we'll bring back information about the hotel and what some options might look like to deal with that when we do this. We don't necessarily need a motion. If the council's comfortable with what's been said, sort of the gist of the conversation, I think we're good if somebody wants to kind of encapsulate into a single motion. But I think we- I think it's all on the table as far as what we're comfortable with. What we're hearing is that the recommendations on rates in the parking and traffic commission are good. The sign recommendations are good, but we really should look at going all the way to Bay Porter and then come back with some conversations about costs for new paystations and what does the hotel might want? That exactly look like. And then we'll bring back some options about maybe making some additional changes around their parking. Mark City and then- And reaching out to the Postal Commission, right? Yeah. Yes, the smart lot sensors. And both hotels. Both hotels may be part of. Okay. No biggie, right? Okay. Yeah, let's hold on. No more. Thank you. That's enough, right? You got it all. Okay, awesome. Thank you very much, Jim. And to the parking committee, we really appreciate it. And we'll go on to item 8B. This is the Coastal Rail Trail segments 10 and 11. The recommended option tonight is to receive the report on the Coastal Rail Trail segments 10 and 11. This is the project through the city of Capitola. And I have Ms. Conn here. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. It is my pleasure this evening to introduce you to County and RTZ staff that are working on segments 10 and 11 of the rail trail through the city of Capitola. On Zoom, we have the project manager from the County of Santa Cruz, Roger Kiblor. And in the chambers today, we have senior planner Grace Flakesley, and executive director guide Preston from the SECRTC. And I will let them take lead on the presentation this evening. Thank you. And good evening. We did have a presentation. I'm very able to pull that up for us. Well, thank you so much. I'm Grace Flakesley. Thank you, Jessica, for the nice introduction. I'm a transportation planner with the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. We have Rob Tidmore online with us, who is the project manager for this segments 10 and 11 and guide Preston, our executive director. And we really appreciate your time tonight to receive information about the Coastal Rail Trail project developments. It was nice to follow the three CEs. They are helping us with development of electric vehicle charging stations as part of our Davenport parking lot, which is being developed as part of our North Coast Rail Trail. It was great to hear a report from them. I'll provide a really brief overview of the Coastal Rail Trail development, then hand it over to Rob to talk about the Coastal Rail Trail segment eight and nine in detail, and then over to guide Preston to make a few comments about RTC's work on rail transit and to talk a little bit about the Capitola trestle. It was great to see Dennis Norton here earlier today. He was essentially a really pivotal part of developing the Coastal Rail Trail project some time ago. So thanks, Dennis, if you're still here for your support. The Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Rail Network, go ahead and next slide, is a two-county pedestrian and bicycle project designed to foster appreciation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Development of the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail in Santa Cruz County specifically is a directed effort by the Santa Cruz County Transportation Commission. In November 2013, 10 years ago, almost, the RTC adopted the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail master plan. The master plan identifies activities, identifies an active transportation corridor along the Santa Cruz branch rail line referred to as the Coastal Rail Trail. And this Coastal Rail Trail serves as the spine of the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail. The Coastal Rail Trail connects to many, many spur trails along our coasts to make up a network of coastal access. The master plan for the trail was developed over a three-year period with extensive public input and culminated in its adoption in 2013 by RTC and then by adoption by all local jurisdictions through which it travels, including the city of Capitola in 2014. Next slide. Thank you. The Coastal Rail Trail's development is supported in part by the passage of 2016 Measure D half-sense sales tax, of which 17% of the revenues go to development of the Coastal Rail Trail. This funding has been critical in advancing the pre-construction activities associated with the Coastal Rail Trail, which makes the project more competitive for state and local funds and also serve as a grant match to leverage state and local funds. Next slide. As you can see in this slide, segments of the Coastal Rail Trail are in various stages of development and some stages are completed and open to the public. I'll briefly review the status of the trail development. Segment five is in the northern portion of the county and extends from Davenport to Wilder Ranch State Park. It's nearing final design and is fully funded for construction. Segment seven phase one, shown in green, is extends from Natural Bridges Drive to Bay and California intersection in the city of Santa Cruz and is completed and open to the public. Segment seven phase two, which extends from the end of segment seven phase one at Bay and California intersection, extends to the roundabout in front of the city of Santa Cruz Wharf and that is under construction. The small green dot that you'll see kind of near the center of this slide is the portion of the Coastal Rail Trail that's cantilevered to the San Lorenzo River Bridge and provides access across the San Lorenzo River between the boardwalk and the east side of the city of Santa Cruz. Segment eight and nine just southeast of there begin in the city of Santa Cruz near the city of Santa Cruz Wharf and extend to 17th Avenue in the county of Santa Cruz. The segment just finished its environmental faves and is moving into file design and is also fully funded for construction. You'll hear more about segment 10 and 11 later so I'll go ahead and skip over that but just southeast of segment 11 is segment 12 which is currently in the environmental phase was recently awarded federal funding and is seeking additional funding, state funding for construction. Heading down to the southern part of our county segment 18 phase one from Walker to Lee Road in the city of Capitola is completed. The remaining segments shown in the lighter pink southeast of segment 12 down to Pajaro we call those segments 13 through 20 with the exception of that section in segment 18 these remaining sections are being advanced as part of our zero emission rail transit project which Guy Preston will speak to towards the end of our presentation and with that I'll hand it over to Rob. Thank you so much. Thank you, Grace. Can everyone hear me okay? Yes, thank you. Great, meeting mayor and council members. As Grace mentioned, my name is Rob Timor. I work for the county of Santa Cruz and I'm the project manager for coastal rail trail segments 10-11. I'm very happy to be here tonight to share an update on the design of this project through the Capitola city limits. The county of Santa Cruz is the lead agency for segments 10-11 and I'm really excited to share as you probably know that the county received a competitive ATP grant of $67.6 million from the state's active transportation program which fully funds the project. So we are the 18th mile of the fully funded or completed portion of the coastal rail trail that Grace mentioned starting up in Davenport. So it's a very exciting time to be working on these various rail trail projects. As far as 10-11 is concerned, the project team has been working very closely with RTC and your staff over the past 18 months to develop the design and the environmental documents. Preliminary design for this portion of the project is almost complete we're roughly 20% designed and we're about to start the technical studies that won't form the project EIR. So this is a map showing segment 10 in green which starts at 17th Avenue and goes to 47th Avenue. The Capitola city limits are overlaid on the map for your reference. Those are shown in dark gray. Segment 11 shown in purple starts at 47th Avenue continues through the village. Next slide. And then passes, it goes along Park Avenue and then passes through New Brighton State Beach before ending at State Park Drive. All told, these two segments of the coastal rail trail are 4.7 miles long. Next slide please. So the project is pursuing a phased approach to trail development and when I say phased approach I mean basically there are two different ways in which the rail corridor could be developed with the trail. The first is what you see on the screen in front of you is to build the trail next to the rail line which we're calling the ultimate trail configuration. This is consistent with the MBSST master plan that Grace mentioned previously and is the proposed project for the purposes of the EIR for this project. This will also be the focus of my design presentation tonight since the aforementioned grant funding that the county received was for the ultimate trail configuration. So with this configuration the existing rail line is preserved. The trail is built next to the tracks maintaining the required offset distance from center line of tracks. The trail is generally 12 feet wide but is reduced in some areas due to constraints and widened in other areas where there's room. Fencing is required on the side of the trail next to the rail line and also on the far side of the trail on the right side of your screen where grade changes such as retaining walls or drop offs make it necessary for safety like you can see on the image in front of you. Next slide please. So for the ultimate trail configuration is 4.2 miles long. It's a multi-use bicycle and pedestrian trail. As I mentioned 12 feet wide there are a new bicycle and pedestrian bridges proposed as a part of the project and the half mile section across Soquel Creek is part of a later project phase and I'll get into more detail about that. And I already mentioned the fence between the trail and the tracks. Next slide please. So the second way in which the corridor could be developed is to implement an optional first phase where the existing railroad tracks are removed and an interim trail is built on the rail line. This approach would require rail banking of the corridor in order to be able to remove the railroad tracks. And under in this scenario the trail is generally 16 feet wide but has reduced to 12 feet in several areas due to constraints. Fencing is not required with this option except where grade changes make it necessary for safety. If the rail line were rail banked, oh sorry, yes continue on this slide please and then later reactivated. The optional first phase would be followed by a second future phase where the interim trail was removed. Railroad tracks are rebuilt and a new trail is built next to the rail line in the ultimate trail configuration. I will not be going into detail on the interim trail design during this presentation but I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have at the end. Next slide please. So again, because this piece includes the Capitola Tressel, this section is 4.7 miles long. The trail is constructed in place of the existing railroad tracks, 16 feet wide as I mentioned and rather than building new bicycle pedestrian bridges in the interim trail scenario, we'll be converting the existing rail bridges to bicycle pedestrian bridges. Next slide please. So these are the major project milestones some of these have already occurred. I'll start with the notice of preparation of an EIR which occurred in October of 2021. We went through a series of draft schematic plan reviews in 2022 both with the public and with other agencies and I'll get into that on the next slide. And the draft environmental impact report for the project is expected to be released to the public in October of 2023. And we expect to have the final environmental impact report certified in February or March of next year. Final design is scheduled to start in 2024 and will be complete by 2026. And then we're targeting a construction start date of 2026 and we expect construction to last roughly two years. Next slide please. So we had a wide array of public input and public meetings over the last almost two years. These are some of the key meetings that we've held. I mentioned the environmental impact report scoping meeting in November of 21. We held some neighborhood presentations in late 2021 presented to the RTC transportation policy workshop in February 22. And then we held a series of virtual in-person open house schematic design reviews in spring 2022. We also had an online project survey around that same time. And we presented to a series of RTC citizen advisory committees, the bicycle committee, the elderly and disabled transportation advisory committee, the interagency technical advisory committee and that all happened in the spring of 2022. Presented to the county parks and recreation committee commission in the summer of 2022. And then we had some recent neighborhood presentations this past spring. So very important project. Also a lot of public outreach occurring to date. And of course we're here in front of you tonight for more of that. Next slide please. So now I'm gonna get into more of the design. I'll start with segments 10. And speaking of when we refer to segment 10, the trail is on the inland side of the tracks from basically 17th Avenue to 47th Avenue. And then switches to the coastal side at 47th Avenue Avenue at the end of segment 10. Because of the narrow right of way and the location of the tracks roughly in the middle of the right of way, we are relocating the railroad tracks from 17th to just past 47th Avenue to make a sufficient space to build a trail next to them. And there are some retaining walls in this portion of segment 10 to hold up existing slopes. The trail in this portion is 11 to 14 feet wide and does narrow to 10 feet wide at intersections and at bridges. And I'm gonna focus on three key areas tonight, the 41st Avenue intersection, what happens at Jade Street Park and then the Cliff Drive parking lot in Plaza. So next slide please. These are two views of the 41st Avenue railroad crossing looking east along the tracks. The image on the left is existing and the image on the right is with the proposed trail and relocated track. As you can see on the screen in front of you, bulb outs, also known as expanded sidewalks have been added on both sides of 41st Avenue to essentially widen the sidewalk which shortens the crossing distance and improves the visibility of trail users because this is such a high volume street. We want it to be extra mindful of safety here. You'll also notice that the trail jogs on the west side of 41st Avenue and crosses at a slight angle. That is to clear the railroad crossing arms which are set at the minimum distance from the rail line. As with all the crossings on this project, green cross bike pavement markings and LED lit pedestrian crossing signs will be added to improve safety and inform drivers of pedestrians crossing. Next slide please. And this is just a slide from the latest design drawings showing the same intersection. And there you can see the bulb outs and expanded sidewalks on either side of 41st Avenue. Next slide please. Here we are at the Jade Street Park area. Again, existing on the left, proposed on the right, we are now looking west towards an incorporated part of the county. In this area, there's no fencing on the park side of the trail. And the reason for that is to improve, provide maximum permeability between the trail and the park. All the existing redwood trees that you see on the screen will be retained. Those are all outside of the RTC right of way. And then as you can see on the very bottom of the screen, the trail switches from the inland side to the coastal side there. And on the southeast corner of 47th and Portola, we've added a bulb out to that corner, which is basically a way to reduce the radius for cars turning so they can't make as high speed of turns. So that will improve trail user safety as well as improve just general pedestrian safety in that area. And just as a note, this image incorrectly omits the green cross bike pavement markers. Those will be part of the improvements as well. Next slide, please. So there you can see those green cross bike markings that are part of the trail. So trail users basically will cross 47th Avenue north of the tracks, then cross the tracks using the sidewalk and continue on the trail on the coastal side of the tracks from 47th Avenue, moving east. Next slide, please. So moving slightly farther east, these are two views of the Cliff Drive parking lot looking west. The view on the right is proposed. The trail is now on the coastal side of the tracks, which takes advantage of the wider RTC right of way in this area, and which also serves to maximize ocean views. The existing on street diagonal parking lot, which you can see on the left screen, which is partially on RTC property has been reconfigured to parallel parking in the image on your right. And that is needed in order to fit the trail next to the tracks and retain the existing on street bicycle lane, which is important, especially due to the uphill nature of this area where bicyclists will be traveling slowly going uphill. The original parking lot design for this area, what you see on the screen in front of you included 23 spaces, which is a reduction of 23 spaces from the existing 46. Next slide, please. But the latest design expands that parking area southwest along Cliff Drive, and there are now 34 spaces proposed. And that was in conjunction with your staff trying to maximize parking in this area. So also, you can see on the screen in front of you at the end of the parking lot, so that would be the sort of towards Capitola village, a trail plaza is proposed within the RTC right of way that will have seating, bike racks, and potentially space for public art. The project also includes a formalized rail crossing at the right side of the screen, and an improved and widened concrete staircase up the hill that leads to Prospect Avenue Street. We can't see what he's talking about. So if you can zoom up. The pictures of the speakers, can you move that box? All right, Rob, I just- Oh, no problem. Definitely want you to be able to see what I'm talking about. Yeah, there we go. Oh, my gosh. Sorry. That's better, thank you. All right, go ahead, Rob. Okay, all right, great. Okay. So that staircase that I mentioned connects to Prospect Avenue and Opal Street, and the new formal crossing is subject to CPUC approval. That's the California Public Utilities Commission. They help regulate railroads, but we think this formal crossing has a good chance of being approved due to the well-documented historic use. As you all know, a lot of people are coming up and down that staircase every day and going to the beach. So we're hopeful that that formal crossing will be approved by the CPUC. And as part of the application, we would propose closing the other existing crossing that you see just to the left of the new staircase there. It's sort of a dog leg hillside trail connection that goes from Prospect Ave down to the parking lot as well. And that would be done to help our case to allow for this new formal rail crossing. And then finally, the drawing also shows where the trail ends, again on the right side of the screen and connects to the existing crosswalk across Cliff Drive. So next slide, please. So this is an aerial showing the Capitola Village area. So from the trail end at Cliff Drive, trail users will be directed to use existing surface streets, bike lanes and sidewalks through Capitola Village and then up to Monterey and Park Avenue intersection where the trail restarts. And as part of this project, we're proposing to install coastal rail trail branded weight-finding signage through the village to help trail users navigate this section. Next slide, please. So as I mentioned previously, the ultimate trail configuration ends on either side of the Capitola Trestle and the Trestle is excluded from the ultimate trail configuration. Due to the timber-trestle design of a portion of the structure and the limited right-of-way, the RTC determined that it is not feasible to cantilever a trail bridge from the Trestle like was done at the San Lorenzo River Mouth nor to build a standalone trail bridge. So conversely, the Trestle is included in the interim trail configuration as a conversion of the train bridge to a bicycle pedestrian bridge. This would require additional structural repairs on the Trestle and a new rail and trail bridges included in the RTC's zero-emission rail transit project and Guy will talk about both of these things in more detail after my presentation. Next slide, please. Okay, moving on to the continuation of segment 11. So we're starting here at Monterey and Park Avenue and the trail in this section is on the coastal side of the tracks from here until Mar Vista and then switches from the coastal to the inland side from Mar Vista to State Park Drive. Throughout this portion of segment 11, the trail is 12 feet wide but then narrows to 10 feet wide at intersections and at trail bridges. Several viaducts and a new trail bridge at the new Brighton Access Road over crossing are proposed. There are also retaining walls throughout this portion of the project to deal with the steep slopes. And today I'm gonna focus on three key areas, the portion from Monterey to Grove, several viaducts at Escalona Gulch and then at Park Avenue and then a new proposed Coronado Street ramp. So next slide, please. So the trail starts again here at Monterey Avenue, Park Avenue, again on the coastal side of the tracks and the city of Capitola's parking lot trail project will improve the intersection going across Monterey Avenue. So there'll be a new cross bike added as part of that project, which is why it's not shown here. And that project will also provide an additional connection to the rail trail. So trail users in this portion of the project who are heading west or towards downtown or to Capitola Village will get to the end of the trail here cross the tracks on the east side of Monterey and then cross Monterey at the crosswalk and then continue down Monterey Avenue to the village so that of a funky maneuver here but that's what's required to get around the tracks and cross safely at this intersection with the intersection being so close to the existing tracks. Next slide, please. So from Monterey Avenue to Grove Lane, this is one of the more challenging portions of the project due to the steep topography and the abundant trees through this portion of the rail line. And because of this, we explored three different options in conjunction with the city of Capitola staff to determine which alignment had the least environmental impacts. We looked at the trail on the inland side of the tracks, the trail on the coastal side of the tracks and we also looked at what would happen if you put a trail along Park Avenue. And based on our design analysis, it just so happens that the trail on the coastal side of the tracks requires the least number of tree removals and has the least impacts. However, as you can see on the screen in front of you with the steep topography, still necessitates the use of retaining walls to hold up the slope. So the original design shown on the left utilized a single tall retaining wall and the latest designs shown conceptually on the right utilize two smaller walls to raise the trail above railroad grade which reduces costs and avoids the need for underground anchors below adjacent private properties and just generally makes the walls less imposing to trail users. And next slide, please. So here's the latest, again, latest design drawings showing on the bottom of the screen two representative cross sections of those existing slopes and the retaining walls that would be used to hold up those slopes. Next slide, please. So moving east along Park Avenue, the trail crosses the Repair and Area known as Escalona Gulch. Here the rail line is on a steep embankment as depicted on the image on the left. And because of the steep embankment, it is very challenging to build retaining walls against the embankment to hold up the trail. So instead we're proposing a viaduct which is essentially a lightweight deck system supported by drilled concrete piers spaced roughly 30 feet apart. Conceptual images of the viaduct system are shown on both sides of the screen where you can see those piers drilled down into the embankment and then the lightweight deck floating on top. The image on the right is from segment nine in the city of Santa Cruz's jurisdiction and that shows one of the proposed viaducts for that portion of the project. And then just as a note, this same system will be needed farther east along Park Avenue due to the steep topography above the new Brighton State Beach parking lot. Next slide, please. This is one of the parts of the projects that I'm more excited about just because of the high use of this area and the ability of this project to improve the existing conditions here. So at the Park Avenue and Coronado Street intersection, the project is proposing to add an ADA accessible trail connection across the tracks which will take place of the existing dirt goat trail that leads down from Park Avenue down to New Brighton State Beach. And this will entail utilizing a viaduct system to ramp down from the existing Park Avenue crosswalk which brings people down to trail grade. From there, they can access the rail trail in either direction. And again, like the Cliff Drive portion of the project, this new rail crossing will be subject to CPUC approval but like the other one, there's a very strong history of documented use in this area. And we think CPUC is likely to approve this crossing. And we're also working with state parks in this area to improve the highly popular and very eroded informal trail that runs down all the way to the New Brighton parking lot and we'll be replacing that with a concrete staircase so that people can get more easily from the trail and the neighborhood down to the beach. So this is my last slide and concludes my presentation and I'll hand the microphone off to Guy to discuss the RTC Zero Mission Rail project and I'll be available to answer any questions after the presentation. Thank you. Robin, thank you. Mayor Brooks and... Mayor Kaiser. Oh, that's right, we've changed now. Mayor Kaiser and fellow city council members. I'm Guy Preston, I'm RTC's executive director and I would be remiss to not talk about the rail line at all. We focused tonight's presentation primarily on the trail. So I'll keep it relatively brief. We are proceeding with a project for Zero Mission passenger rail on the rail line. The rail line extends from a Harrow Junction all the way up to Davenport but the passenger rail section would only extend from a Harrow Junction to natural bridges in Santa Cruz. Zero Mission passenger rail was identified in our previous study, our transit quarter alternatives analysis as the locally preferred alternative and the best use of the rail line for moving people via transit. Next slide, please. So the passenger rail project is a significant project to convert a old single track freight railroad to passenger rail. To do so, we're going to need passing sightings because the existing rail line is a single track. We anticipate approximately three sightings would be needed on the 22 mile branch line. We would also need stations and operations and maintenance facility, storage facilities. We'd have to consider replacement and rehabilitation of major infrastructure such as bridges. There's dozens of bridges in this 22 mile section. We have over a hundred rail crossings on the entire line. So there's I think about 80 in this section. We'd have to consider signaling on this section and how to make sure that the railroad would be safe. To meet our formance measures, we'd have to consider the alignment of the rail line. The rail line was designed for slow speed freight rail. So we'd have to consider curve corrections and how we can make our travel times for a modern rail system. And then ultimately we would want to connect at Pajaro station to the state rail system. And there's significant development to bring more passenger rail down all the way to Salinas including a new passenger rail station at Pajaro junction. Next slide. So when Grace gave her presentation she showed a big section in light pink that was currently not advanced in depth. And that includes from Rio del Mar to Pajaro junction segments 13 through 20 and also the Capitola trestle. So we wanted to figure out how we could make sure we could address those sections as well as coordination with the existing trail projects. Because if we're going to be adjusting the alignment of the rail line we don't want to impact what's going on with the projects like Rob just explained. And those would be segments seven through 12. So next slide. So the Capitola trestle and the crossing over Soquel Creek is fairly significant and I know it's important to the city of Capitola. It's important to the Regional Transportation Commission as well. A few things that we've learned about the trestle is that the existing structure cannot accommodate both rail and trail. There's no way to cantilever off and attach a trail to the existing bridge. There's also not enough room the way it was constructed in the center of our right away with a kind of tapered structure, the timber trestle to actually build an independent structure adjacent to the existing trestle. So the only alternative to actually have rail and trail would be to replace the existing Capitola trestle with a combined trestle bridge that rail and trail could traverse across. Next slide, please. So that's what we're moving forward with. We've secured a consultant to prepare a concept report and an environmental impact report for rail and trail. This would be passenger rail from Harrow Junction to natural bridges and the remaining sections of the trail. The concept report is expected to start this summer and take about two years. And then it would take about another two years to complete the environmental impact report. And then during this, these first two years there'll be plenty of opportunities for public input, including input from the Capitola City Council for helping us develop the project purpose and need, service based assumptions where the stations are gonna go, what speeds are going to be expected, what travel times we would anticipate between Watsonville and Santa Cruz. All those things affect the locations of your passing sightings, how many stations you can have and how many riders would actually use the system. We will work on the refined alignment, what major infrastructure is going to need to be replaced. And of course, I mentioned earlier the station concepts. And once we're done with that, we'll have a draft concept report and another opportunity for the public to comment before we start an issue of notice of preparation for the environmental impact report. And that two year period will have another opportunity for public input. So that concludes our presentation today. That is our contact information and I'm sure you probably have some great questions that we're here to answer. Thank you so much. A couple more staff slides. Oh, yeah, so you wanna go ahead? In my name. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Oh, your slide. No, I added stuff for you. So to speak a bit to the information included in the staff report, City staff has been coordinating with both County and RTC staff about Village Circulations Enhancements in the Village as a separate project from the Coastal Rail Trail segments 10 and 11. The Segments 10 and 11 project, as Rob mentioned, does have signage to connect users from one end of the trail to the other. But this would be improvements potentially to pedestrian and bicycles throughout our Village. It's not eligible for funding through the current segment 10 and 11 project with the County, but it is eligible for Measure D funding and most utilizes matching funds. So I will say that this has not been scoped out that would be through a public planning process that would be rather extensive considering the amount of users in the Village and interested parties. Potential enhancements include additional and expanded sidewalks, enhanced bike facilities, and new striping and signage. With RTC staff, City staff has devised or a proposed funding and schedule to do these types of enhancements throughout the Village, which consists of applying for grant funding for both planning and construction, a timeline, this is the same timeline that was provided in your staff report and it consists of applying for design grants with CalTrans doing the ATP or active transportation plan and then applying again for state funds to do construction, assuming that we can use HPG for a match. So with that, that is the end end of all of the slides and myself, Camp Newstaff and RTC staff are all available for questions. Thank you so much. I'll take it to Council for questions. What? Okay. Okay, I don't have any either. Or is there any public comment on this item from those in attendance? I have a question. Oh, oh. I was gathering my notes. I was scared when I was gathering my notes. We're going to press pause real quick on public comment. Oh, would it be better if I go after? No, go ahead and stick to your question. I was curious about the potential environmental impact for wildlife crossing in the New Brighton area that was looked into with the retaining walls and the viaducts. Yes, if I understand the question directly, I think you're asking about would the project be installing some sort of wildlife crossing to help them navigate the viaducts of the walls? Yeah, great question. Thank you. So as with any environmental impact report, the project will be looking extensively at what the impacts will be to wildlife movement, among many other things, sensitive plants, tree loss and all that. And if the EIR determines that there is a barrier to wildlife movement that needs to be mitigated, then the project will propose various mitigation solutions to help you that. And one of those things might be some sort of wildlife crossing. It hasn't come up on other rail trail segments, like the 890ER that was just certified by the city of Santa Cruz also has tall retaining walls. And the trail functioning as a barrier from sort of North South or inland to coastal wildlife movement wasn't really mentioned as an impact, probably because there's significant development on either side of 899. I think in this case, to your point, the new Brighton area is more of a more natural area. So that could mean additional impact that comes up 410 and 11. So I think at this point it's too early to know if that will be an impact. But I will say that the EIR and the project mitigation monitoring report will be identifying mitigation is necessary to mitigate some of these environmental impacts. So I'll note that. And we have a team of biologists and environmental specialists will be looking into this. I'll just note that as something for them to look into it. So I appreciate that comment. Thank you. And I have another question for the potential trestle replacement 2027 and completion date. Do we have an estimate on when construction might begin if that were to move forward? So 2027 was the completion of the environmental impact report. After the environmental impact report is complete, we would have to go through final design and secure funding for construction. So final design usually takes about two years. So if we were to obtain funding right away, the earliest that we would anticipate being able to do construction would be 2029. But like I said, that would be dependent upon funding. And kind of a follow up to that. Has there been any looking into potentially creating a temporary bike path along the trestle? Because potentially replacing the trestle, if that is the direction we're moving, would take many years. Would it make sense to have some sort of a temporary bike path instead of going through the village? So if you're referring to converting the existing trestle to a temporary bike and pedestrian facility, that is the interim trail that Rob mentioned. And that would require cooperation from the railroad to rail bank the line. We looked extensively into the possibility of rail banking. And we received a lot of resistance to it, especially from the railroad to the north of us. That goes up through Felton. Also, we have an existing freight rail operator that was also resistant to rail banking. So can I interrupt you? I mean, specifically just the trestle, which would be replaced no matter what, right? That is correct. But the rail facility is regulated by the Surface Transportation Board that would like us to be using the rail facility for freight railroads. And without the rail banking, they won't allow us to temporarily use portions of the rail line for our roads. Is it possible to use the trestle for rail without replacing it at all? Is that ever a possibility? So we could rehabilitate the trestle and then use it for a bike and a stream facility. So if that's something that the city council would like further information on, we can certainly do so. You are a commissioner on the RTC. And I'd be more than happy to talk to you more about that and the possibilities there. Thank you. And that's all my questions. Great. Thank you so much. We can jump back to public comment. Try to keep my blood pressure under control with this issue because clearly it's a circus. The whole, anyway, the whole trail issue is just has so many weird parts about it. But I'll just skip to a couple of points. Most of you know I ride my bicycle through Capitola Village every single day unless it's pouring rain. And I think Capitola is one of the most dangerous places to ride. And you had somebody earlier talking about is getting more dangerous because of primarily kids on the e-bikes, no helmets, no respect for any kind of laws of the road. So it's pretty terrifying out there now. And some of the things that they want to create with this ultimate trail are just ridiculous with constantly having to cross lanes of traffic on your bicycle to get off the trail to get into the village. Coming out of the village, one of the scariest parts, and I write it every single day, is coming up, crossing the Stockton Bridge and having to go up the hill on cliff. The people coming down Warf Road, they don't really understand that those cyclists are having to go start from that stop sign up a hill. Most of the time, you can't make eye contact with them because either the plants have grown up or they have their windows tinted. And you really don't know if they're going to stop or if they're going to be pissed off because you're a horrible bicyclist and you're riding in front of them. And it's just a nightmare. And I know so people in Capitola love our trestle the way it looks now. None of them want to see a cement monstrosity going across there. So I hope our representatives on the RTC will fight tooth and nail to try and find a way to get the interim trail and make that trestle available. People want their kids to be able to ride to school safely through Capitola. And there's just so many things wrong with the way the plan is. Let's build this thing. Let's cut down all the trees and put all that cement up. Oh, and then in 2027 or 2029, maybe we're going to find out that we can't have a train. Anyway, and I would like the RTC to strike sidewalks. Any mention of using sidewalks for bicycles in Capitola Village is a complete joke. It's terrifying now. People have been hurt by bicyclists on the sidewalks. We're down there every day trying to get the kids off the sidewalks. So I would like to see that stricken from every piece of communication from the RTC about Capitola Village. It just can't. It's never going to happen. Plus losing parking to put in a bike path when there's so many other parts of it that are going to be dangerous is great. Thank you. Realized why I don't see cars in any of these pictures. Everybody came here by train. The train was still active in those days. What a trade-off, a trade-off. People coming from out of the area coming here by train. People particularly in the tourist business being able to come in without bringing their automobiles. The message has been sent. Three quarters of the people of this county voted to preserve rail. I'm expecting the council to support that. The voice has been done, even the majority of Capitola voted to preserve rail. So the message is out there. And that's what we have to do. Yes, it's not a short process. And it's pretty ironic that where the rail line goes, it goes in the middle of the highest population areas in the whole county. And there's a good reason for there to stay public transportation, I think. And certainly your grandmother and your kids are going to be the major enjoyers of it. Yes, probably most won't be around when it happens. But leave it there so it happens. In the meantime, put the trailer. It's OK. And just plan for the whole thing. But don't take our public transportation away for the sake of a bicycle. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to ask, nobody did state, are the e-bicycles going to be allowed on the same trail as the peddling bicycles? Because that'd be, to me, very dangerous. Because I know on West Cliff, when they didn't have e-bikes, you always went, I'm coming, but you can't hear the e-bikes. And I've had that experience, too, in Capitola. So I wanted to ask whoever was designing that, are they all going to be together? Peddle bikes and e-bikes. We can have a response. Thank you. Thank you for that question. Grace Blakesley with the Transportation Commission. The trail is being designed to accommodate and allow e-bikes up to 20 miles an hour. And that would be for the entire length of the trail under development so far. Thank you. If you go about 35, I think, then, who's going to monitor? You wanted to come to the podium? Come on up to the mic so everyone can hear you. I would just like to say, when I see them going down Capitola Avenue, I was told by people that have them, they do go up to 35 miles an hour. Who's going to monitor that they're only going to be going 20? I could see a lot of accidents happening with other real pedal bikes. And the other thing is I thought the tressel was a historic thing. I mean, I see people taking pictures all the time from out of town. And the historic whatever that little building is there, they told me that it was going to be rebuilt with the redwood. And then I don't know what happened. They just said there's going to be a lot of noise around here because we're restoring the whole tressel. And now I never even heard of them supposedly proposing to make it into some something way different. Thank you. Do you have another member in the public? Good evening. Mayor Kaiser and members of the city council and staff. My name is Paula Bradley. I'm a resident of Capitola and I'm a cyclist. I would like to ask the city council to accept staff's report and support the ultimate rail trail design. I also support the city moving forward with the active transportation plan. The rail trail is a key component to developing an integrated transportation system in the county accessible to all. An electric passenger train has been determined to be the most efficient lowest emission transportation option. Trains move the most people at the lowest cost. The rail trail is within a quarter of a mile of 92 parks, 44 schools, and half of the county population. The rail trail will bring employees and customers to Capitola businesses without their cars and allow more visitors to attend popular festivals and events. It will also contribute to safe routes to schools and activities like junior guards. I also share the viewpoint of there's a lot of problems with the throttle bikes and the e-bikes and kids riding through Capitola with no helmets that high rates of speed. That's a separate issue that needs to be addressed. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any other attendees? Seeing none, do we have any online? Great. John Moore, you can unmute yourself. Hello again. So robust public transit is the solution to so many of our problems, health problems, traffic problems, congestion problems, even housing problems that solve so many issues. So you need to move forward on this at this point. As far as the trestle being historic, we bought the trestle used. It's a secondhand trestle, just information for people who are interested in that. My question tonight, and obviously you might not answer it, but are the easements, many of the properties, particularly on Depot Hill, where looks like segment 10, I guess goes through, they're built into the RTC easements or the railroad easements. Are those easements going to be taken back from those properties, because the trail looks like it's built directly on those easements, as far as I can tell from the pictures. So that's my question. Thank you. Great, thank you. Is there anybody else online? Okay. Well, I want to thank you for your presentation. I didn't know if council had any other comments. Moving forward. I have one comment. Is it like, I just want to say that I appreciate the vision for the new Brighton crossover, the way he presented Rob of the secret passage way through. I think everyone knows what that is. And I really appreciate that. So great job thinking of things being creative with that part of the design. Thank you. Great. I think I did just want to touch on something that was brought up multiple times before the presentation and after, but would be bike safety. I hope that moving forward as we progress in these plans, if there's a way to partner or figure out a program to really make sure that people utilizing the trail for doing so in a safe and appropriate manner. So thank you so much. And looking forward to updates. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Okay. So we have item eight C. This is the 401 capitol Avenue appeal. So the recommended action is to adopt the resolution of firming the planning commission's decision to deny the application number 22-0282 seeking a conditional use permit parking variance and coastal development permit for a restaurant slash cafe at 401 capitol Avenue, which is known as the capitol taphouse. I'm going to turn this over to our attorney to give us a little description of the framework for this. Good evening. Way back. Okay. Good evening mayor and council members and community members. I am going to briefly go over the procedure that we'll be using for the appeal just so everyone knows and the standard of review. The procedure is written on the sheet, which I believe each council member has. It was just me. Okay. So I'll pass it along to my friend. So you can pass it on. It's pretty similar to any other item. The mayor has already introduced the item. I am describing the framework now. The council can ask questions about the framework after I describe it. Then the staff presentation, then questions from the council to the staff, and then the mayor will open the public hearing. Appellant will give a presentation up to eight minutes. Council will then ask questions of the appellant. The mayor will invite the public to speak on the item. Public comment will be limited to three minutes per comment unless the mayor determines otherwise. Staff will at the mayor's direction respond to comments or questions from the public. The appellant will have then additional speaking time of up to four minutes. The council may then ask questions of the appellant and the appellant may respond. And then the mayor will close the public hearing and return the item to the council for deliberation and decision. The standard of review is de novo, meaning it's all before the council. The council reviews the entire project with fresh eyes and can take action on any portion of the project. Are there any questions for me? Great. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we can turn it over for the presentation. I really want this for you. Let's test. Good. I think so. Yeah. Okay. Well, good evening, mayor and council members. Thank you. And thank you for that introduction. I'll be giving the staff presentation for this item. This is an appeal item for 401 Capitola Avenue, the Capitola Taphouse. There was a proposal to convert the existing business to a restaurant, also serving beer and wine and a parking variance that was reviewed by the planning commission and denied. And the appellant has brought it for the council this evening. My opening slide here is just an aerial photo. I have the convenience that this is a pretty prominent site. It's right at the other side of the street across from city hall, Capitola Taphouse, just the other side of the trestle. You have a number of topics to cover in my presentation. So I just wanted to give you a bit of a roadmap. So we'll look a little bit at property permitting history. There's a code clarification, the word take out establishment or take out businesses layered throughout the staff report and it's likely to be a topic of discussion this evening. So I want to offer a clarification there. The proposal that was reviewed by the planning commission and denied, I will cover the summary of that. And then I will touch on the applicant's basis for appeal and as mentioned, the DeNovo appeal allows you to consider modifications. We communicated that to the applicant and so they have some alternatives that they would like considered this evening. And then there is a big picture view of all ABC licenses in all the mixed use zones within the city that I will go over and then close up with the community input that we received on this item. So again, at the other side of the street, Capitola Avenue, this is a one and a half story building with a loft. It was completed in 2015 as operated either as retail or a take out establishment since that time. As far as just the permit, brief permit timeline in 2014, 2015, the planning commission approved the demolition of an existing duplex that had unpassed its useful lifetime. The planning commission approved the new building that's there today with the setback variance and a parking variance for four spaces for the retail use, which was Charlie and Co. The four space and one of the findings that was made at that meeting was that the existing duplex called for four spaces and the proposed with retail also the parking requirement of four spaces. So there was not an intensification of use. One of the findings for the variance for that approval. 2019, the current owner acquired the property and brought forward a proposal to the planning commission for a change of use from retail to a takeout restaurant with a limitation of six seats. With the zoning ordinance at that time, six seats takeout restaurant and retail had the same parking environment. So that was also not an intensification of use. And to bring us current during the 2019 building permit review, the applicant made a slight change to their business model, shifting more into a beverage service, which is what the Camuchin copy is. At planning commission, the business model was more focused on a food model. And just serving non-alcoholic beverages from the existing tap system is also compatible with the takeout business and non-intensification. So here's where I wanted to just take a moment and be real clear about what takeout food and beverage means in the zoning ordinance. It means an establishment where food and beverages may be consumed on prep uses. They'll taken out or delivered where their customer area is limited no more than hundreds. This is 2023's version of takeout food and beverage. I mentioned a 60 limitation which was the case in this specific code section has been amended. I mean, 2019 when the project was approved, retail uses and takeout food and beverage establishments with six or fewer seats had the same parking ratio of one space to 240 square feet. This allowed for a bit of flexibility with tenant changeover in the village how establishments could come in where retail was poor and not fire and any upgrades to parking. So just to be clear, the existing business has a six-seat limit and they're legal non-conforming under the old code. So getting into just the proposed project. So this verbal description, this is what we shared planning commission was introduced. It was a restaurant converting from a takeout restaurant to serve beer and wine at a new kitchen prep area to expand customer seating from six to 26 seats and for a parking variance for all required onsite parking. Verification here is that the gross proposal for parking demand was 11 spaces but going back to that variance that was approved in 2015, that is applicable here. And so there's a net requirement of seven parking spaces for properties that are proposing an intensification if they already have either an existing variance or a legal non-conformity. So the proposed variance that the planning commission denied was for seven parking spaces. Getting into just the existing floor plan. So this is just to give you some history of what is there now, 575 square feet of customer area. They have six seats as mentioned and kitchen equipment is focused on the average service. There's a line of sinks and the 32 taps. And this is the proposed floor plan that the planning commission saw. And this was for 485 square feet of customer area, 26 seats and prep table and under counter refrigerator. That's this green area. So this area was to be modified internally to accommodate these commercial toaster ice storage and an under counter refrigerator and prep table. Okay, just getting into, this is just a zoning map really for reference. So the star is the subject property. As mentioned, it's in the mixed use neighborhood. Jason to the trestle, it's basically the nearest mixed use neighborhood property to college purple. And then just behind is the R1 that lines river view. So this is really detailed in your staff report, the basis for appeal. The applicant wrote three primary points that was the reason for their appeal. So the staff report noted that the use was allowable but the focus of the denial was based on parking. So staff doesn't really have an issue with this statement. There was a statement in the planning commission staff report that talked about mixed use neighborhood could have a restaurant use permit if parking was provided. So basis of denial and variance findings for the parking were not able to be changed. Second one is two of the three commissioners had based their decision on part of the application was not before them. The elaboration here is there was some concern that commissioners based their decision on the kitchen facilities being inadequate. There was some discussion about the plans not being complete and fully defined but ultimately when the commission made their motion they were pretty clear that the concern was that they were not able to make positive findings for approval. And then the last point is that findings for variants can be made. So the thought here is that because there was already a variance approved in 2015 that the property does have some reasons in general variance staff response to this is just that a variance is really tied to the specifics of a project it's proposed for and a variance approved in 2015 was specifically for that project and not for the project. As mentioned, this is DeNovo review so you can consider anything that was presented or any alternatives. And so the applicant did provide along with their original appeal, three other considerations. So I actually printed out these tables because this is a lot of information that's gonna be a little tight on the screen. Once the follow along and I'm gonna bring one to the applicant as well. I won't get into the original application I'll get into immediately to their option number one. So the concept here was to remove the parking variance maintain the takeout business, move forward with 16 taps for beer and wine service and limit the number of seats to six seats. And the staff concern here is really that this is better defined as a bar or lounge or maybe a restaurant, but just removing 20 seats doesn't really isn't consistent with the takeout business. And the option number two, there was a proposal to change the way that the beverages would be delivered to customers and limiting course, actually to two per customers and billing two containers to go. There really isn't an ABC license that corresponds with limiting number of floors or size of floors. So we really kind of view option number two to the same in terms of the concern here as option number one. And option number three is somewhat similar operational leave an employee with bill a container, put a lid on it, put it in an refrigerator for sale to a customer could then selected and consume it on site. The concern here is that this act could potentially just be performative it could be done over the course of a few seconds and the property would be operating effectively as a bar. So those are our concerns with the proposed alternatives. Here, I'm getting into just the big picture list. You've got 27 total ABC license which you've been all mixed used to on the state. And this is really kind of just for reference. This is the entire project. Getting into what is we looked at it through the lens of what's in the mixed use. We found five businesses to a retail. So they're really not comparable but there are three restaurants. They'll talk to Rhea Gales. They both have parking and then there's the avenue that there's not out parking businesses have that system. And the avenue we were able to find records dating back into the mid-80s. So their parking standing is legal non-cons. We look at it through the lens of what's an ABC license issued with a takeout business. They're all mixed on the phone. None of these businesses have parking and none of them have a tap system. All right, and then we looked at businesses with taps. And this is a list of 11. All of them are either bars or restaurants. All of them are in the village. They all have longstanding either variances or legal non-cons, parking. The most recent one that I could find in city archives is Trestles which established in 1998 under a different name of a with a parking variance. There's another one on this list that is a bit of an outlier which is English Ales Brewery. There's two of that list of 27 that are outlets. So these are production-related. These ABC has a specialty licensing for wineries or breweries to have a retail presence. These two are that, are made of wineries often and the English Ales is a micro brewery licensed 23 and based in Marina. And so this is one of their retail outlets. So just kind of summarizing all of that information. The staff had recommended denial to not make findings of planning commission into the same conclusion. I'm able to make findings in looking at the information that I just presented in the series of tables, the recommendation that we are making is consistent with code. It's also consistent with how code has been implemented over the past as far back as we could find records. They're just, there is not a restaurant or there's not a takeout business with taps in the mixed use neighborhood zone. And they all have some standing or long standing with parking in terms of either legal non-conforming or variances. One other thing I'll offer here is just amongst the planning department, we do get inquiries often about vacancies and tenant turnover in the village and the mixed use village. And this conversation happens a lot. So when the conversation turns to, I want to have a bar or when I have a restaurant with alcohol, the conversation usually quickly turns to parking. And so we're consistent. And that's when these properties become available. And that was my summary, just kind of a little footnote here. We did get some letters of both support and opposition and the owner also provided a list of signatures that were collected. So with that, I'm going to include and remind that we are recommending that the council from the planning commission's denial and attached a resolution for your consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Council, questions? I have a couple. In your, there's two slides. You're in your report, you said that the original application was a verbal. You used the term verbal, with their proposal, they didn't submit something for that. You said it was a verbal. Was that just, were you just saying verbally they said it? Or I was just making sure there was a formal proposal for their original plan with the taps and so forth. Or maybe I misheard you. I'm not following the context. I'm sorry. Your presentation, when you go to the slide and yeah, there is, it says proposal and you said that they, it was a verbal proposal. Did you mean that they just called you up and said, this is what we want to do or we want to do these other things or was that the only project they brought forward to planning commission? For the planning commission, there was only one. Okay. Got it. And then in the other slide, you had the property highlighted in yellow like it's residential and just for clarification, it's R1 not MU commercial in the slide. I'm just trying. It was further down. Colorful slide. There you go. Is it highlighted in yellow with the star because it's R1 or is it an MU commercial? The property with the star is the subject property and that's MU. It is. That's my question. Okay. It was matching the others. And I thought that's what the screen colors. Okay. No, no, I just want to make sure it's, it is yellow. Okay. That's why I was just confused about what we were talking about and what that about that corridor on capital app. And then my last question is in regards to this document here in the options where it specifies number of seats. It goes from 26 to six. And are these options one, two and three suggesting six because it doesn't require any parking variance? Is that why the number is so low? The effort here is, I think the applicant is trying to make out restaurant and maintain those six seats with these three options. Okay. And that was my last question. Thank you. Do we know fire marshal occupancy for this building? I ran that calculation actually at one point during the plan review. And I think it was in the thirties. I have a question. Is there anything in the Dunning code that explicitly prohibits a takeout restaurant from having taps? There's nothing that specifically prohibits it, but in the So based on historical context, but there's no actual rules in our code that prohibits that. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I don't have any questions at this time, but let's go out to the opponents. Yes. So you guys can come up, we'll have eight minutes. Hi, good evening, city council members and my supporters here and also on zoom. So, yeah, this been a four years of battle for my business. First this, I had quite a struggle with the pandemic and also the shutdown and I won't be able to fully start my business in a full capacity. And I hit by just so many directions. So I, this business almost on the brink of closing a store, but I refuse to give up. And I know as a small business owner, it's really difficult to make it through tough times. And I believe if I could just find the right investment, I could make it through to the other side. The new cell port system is really very smart. Just like anything else, we have changed from phone to computer technologies. Giving this business be able to use will be a much need of infusion life for my business. The cell core draft based system has been a hit with customer as it offers a very useful investment. It offers a very unique interactive experience. I took a chance investing in this system and I now I'm asking the city council members to take a chance on my business and support my venture with the cell draft beer system. This will add a great addition to the city and will be a safe, fun way for people to enjoy beer. With your hand in hand support, I will be able to keep my business afloat and thrive, maybe even expand in the future. And thank you for your support. Good evening mayor, vice mayor and council members. Thank you for hearing this appeal and the de novo review of alternatives. And thank you to the staff. And thank you to the city council members. I know that they've worked very hard with us over the months. I'm a Amy's representative. My name is Lynn. I'm going to talk quickly. So I apologize. Amy's shy, but one of your more enthusiastic small business owners, she loves Capitola. She wants her business to be a draw for the community. And she's lucky to be in an environment that's a year around weatherproof business and can be a 12 month of the year draw in her first application for a restaurant cafe. The denial recommendation really focused on parking. I would submit to you because we did want a review from you for that. And the, your land use policy one dash one and your Munich, 17, 7, 6, 0, 5, 0, both are our ordinances and regulations that favor onsite parking alternatives. And so, and this is a business with a topographical hardship in providing its own onsite parking. So we, it is within the realm of your purview to grant variance. If you want to, if you do not want to, we ask and thank you for considering the alternatives. We are interested in knowing what you would support. And Amy wants to make the tweaks that make you comfortable. Right now the staff recommendation for denial, we removed the 26 seats and went back to six to remove the parking problem. We were told you can't have parking, so you can't have this business. Okay, we'll take away the need for the parking. Oh, then we got, yeah, you still can't have this business because now a tap system is incompatible with a takeout establishment. And it's really what you want as a bar. And we don't want to bar there. Well, that's a subjective opinion that you're right. There is no law ordinance, rule regulation that states a tap system automatically translates to a bar. If so, we would say please look at the totality of the circumstances. If you've been to Amy's business or even look through the windows, you see a light bright sterile environment more akin to a yogurt shop than a bar. It closes at 8pm. It's miners welcome. It's family friendly. We all know what a bar is and this isn't a bar. The open container concerns. Castagnola has a takeout establishment with sales of alcohol and there's not that didn't prevent them from getting that permit. Open container can be fixed by signage and enforcement. The link the time someone can stay. Well, there's no limit to that now. But the concern really we all know what it is, right? Hours of drunken consumption and the impacts to the neighborhood. That can be solved for definitively with the technology system that Amy proposes. RFID technology that cuts off the amount of pores or the size of pores. That's going to limit the amount of time someone's going to sit there and imbibe. We have the three alternatives. I won't go into them here because I'm running out of time. A couple of regular pores. Some sample flights. I won't go into them. I like that one. Can I get a pre-filled bottle of that to sit here with my salad or my rice bowl and enjoy here. The concern that if alcohol is flowing through the traps, the city will not allow there to be any on-site consumption of anything. Even a cup of coffee because it's too akin to a bar. That on-site flowing through the taps can be those bottles that we wish to sell if we're not allowed for self-pore or self-consumption on-premises. Those bottles can be pre-filled and pre-sealed outside of the presence of the customers early before it closes. Some of these taps go into the kitchen and are not accessible to the customers that could come from there. You can do the RFID technology that makes those taps that dispense alcohol only open to the staff, people who work there. You can pre-fill pre-sealed bottles and it's no different than selling a can of Budweiser, which is allowed at Castagnola, which is proposed to be allowed by staff here. You want to sell some pre-filled buds and wines and things like that. Fine with your food. You don't want to sell a can of Budweiser. You don't want to sell a can of Budweiser from pre-filled pre-sealed from Amy's taps. She's simply trying to take advantage of this novel, cool draw. English Ales has a retail CUP. That's much more of a bar and look and feel than Amy's establishment will ever be. You don't have another kombucha shop in town. This is a really cool concept. This is a really cool concept. This is a really cool kind of thing. There are three takeout establishments right now that have alcohol. The daily grind bottle shop, the Castagnola's and little co's. And I am out of time, but we are here for questions. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much. Council, do you have questions for the panel? I do. I am just curious as to you just referenced possibly having the taps that would contain alcoholic beverage be just in a portion of the restaurant that wouldn't be accessible by it would just be for the employees, right? So how many taps is that right now? So first of all, they can all be inaccessible to customers with the RFID technology. Right? Because you have to have a card or a bracelet or something to make them work. But the ones that are specifically in the kitchen, which if you've seen this is a large commercial kitchen space, how many are like around that corner? Yes, eight. Eight. Okay. And so is that what you would be proposing overall is those eight just be used for alcohol and the rest would be kombucha, right? Yes. If the council does not want to allow a self poor consumption on site model. So if you want to allow somebody to come up and say, I want to try that one and pull it themselves, whether it's a 16 ounce cup or a four ounce flight. If that, you know, then they'd have to have a card key, RFID technology that limits them to whatever is the rule. And, um, if you want to make sure that you have a safe space, a safe space, a safe space, an alcohol tap, then it can be achieved either by the alcohol taps being wired as you were to only staff or use of the ones that are even out of outreach. Okay. And as the, um, I know there was a proposed plan to, was it to redesign the kitchen to make it more, um, use of food? Yes. Thank you. Yeah. So the revised full plan is, uh, to giving a, a more service food area. Okay. Yeah. And that also approved by Santa Cruz health department. Okay. Great. Thank you. I follow up on a with that. So in the options that are for modifications here are the alternative options, um, for option, the others, not with the original application, is it to be assumed that the kitchen is part of those options automatically? Cause I don't see it mentioned in the, the breakdown here. Food service is contemplated for all the options. Okay. So that's, and to be, to be more clear on that. For the particular takeouts rather than restaurant, you would need that those modifications to the kitchen still for the takeout options. Uh, it's my, I'm not an ABC lawyer, but it's my understanding that, um, as a takeout establishment with the type 41 on sale beer and wine license, you have to offer food. And so it's not just like a bar with incidental food is what you might think, like you're sitting at the big dark bar and there's a bowl of pretzels. Okay. Um, that's incidental food to alcohol consumption, right? Little bowl of nuts, little bowl of pretzels. Um, this is, this isn't full restaurant meal, but it's like sandwiches, salads. So the, the piece of the puzzle we're missing here, if it were to go to the other options. One, two or three that specified proposed uses takeout are the possible changes needed for the kitchen. And so I'm not seeing that in this. Because I don't think that that issue, just like at planning, I don't think it's before you. I think actually that that's an issue for the ABC and the count, the board of help. Okay. I'm going to look over to staff if that's true, if that needs to be how that would work. So yeah, ABC does have a requirement for a bonafide kitchen for a type 41 license. And the definition that goes along with that says that it's got to be more than just salads and sandwiches. So it's got to serve substantial meals. But that is an ABC determination. I've talked to the ABC rep that is managing this case. And he has. So ABC with their process, they don't, they won't get ahead of the local review. I don't have anything in writing from them. So I only have phone call with him and an understanding that the kitchen as it stands is not meeting that standard. Okay. So how do we not get the carts before a horse or a horse before a cart in, in any decisions brought made. From the council on this proposal, you mentioned that you did have a conversation with this representative and they were in agreement. Did I hear that correctly? I didn't. Amy has, has met and spoken. I think that the point is that if you give the CUP or you. Or you, and you allow the use, then she jumps to the next level of hurdles, which is with ABC proving sufficient kitchen, sufficient food, all that kind of stuff. Okay. I fail there. Gotcha. I'm, I got you down. Yeah. So there is no active liquor license at this point in time. Correct. Okay. Okay. So now I do have a question. Go for it. Okay. So, and I'm not sure who this is for. It's just so everyone just ears open, I guess. Okay. So if we were to approve the taps, and then it goes to ABC to approve the liquor license. So nothing would happen with the taps changing until ABC gives a liquor license. And that would be dependent on whether or not the kitchen is up to code. But if they say it's not, then nothing changes on the taps because at that point, we can't allow it, right? Like it's, it can't come back to us for another appeal at that point. We don't decide what ABC allows. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Most of this would happen probably during the building permit. So internal. Modification to the building. And fit out with kitchen equipment. City would get involved with the building. I need an answer. Yeah. That doesn't answer my question. Yeah. I don't know if this answers your question either, but I think that the council would. Uh, If the council wishes to grant the appeal. Any for a project. That project. Permit. That requires the business. As consistent with the approval. If. The. Not. Sure. Business. And we can't change that. Correct. We can't. We couldn't come back to that. And we can't change that. Correct. We can't. We can't. It couldn't come back to us. Saying ABC said we couldn't get our liquor license. Can you guys tell us we can have the liquor license anyway? Right. Like we can't do anything about that once. If ABC decides this can't happen. We can't change that. Okay. The applicant. Don't know that there's anything stopping me. With another proposal. That might require a different. To you. I said, Would that start back at planning commission or would that come straight to us? That would start the whole process over. Brian and Katie. That's how the voice started. And. The conditions. Yeah. Because I. That would only apply with a denial. Okay. So. That would only apply with a denial. Okay. Brian and Katie. That's how the voice started. I'm sorry. The conditions. Yeah. Because I. That limits. The project. That would only apply with a denial. Okay. So can I jump off of that? Yeah. A little bit. So regarding the kitchen, because that was part of the original application and there were some questions about the kitchen. Does that piece of the puzzle have to go all the way back to planning commission. So if they got feedback from ABC and then. CDB, whatever the other group is that. And they say, these are the provisions that need to be part of this kitchen outline for, for you to build. What then happens. They come back with a design to planning commission. Planning commission can approve or not approve. What are those steps? Okay. And is that a, is that a guarantee so that the applicant doesn't need to jump through a million steps. And it's just, it's not to get a building. Right, right, right. And depending on what you issue now, be clear, and I think it's going to benefit us from being in this right here, is if ABC came back and said, you don't have a kitchen, and you can't have a kitchen, you don't have a reason, because the structure of this building and you can only get our time liquor license, then I think you go back to the question. Yeah, I think it would be to resubmit and say I want to have an ID card, not which but our new process. Right, rather than their takeout thing, or at this particular variant. I think I'm looking at our appellant just to make sure it's clear what what those steps are, because it could possibly we don't know what ABC would say. Yeah, we don't know what comes after us. Yeah, yeah, that's a lot. So to clarify, ABC inspector came to my business site. So he has no objections with the kitchen at all. And the license is to serve a bonafide meal, not a bonafide kitchen. So the kitchen is there, as long as if I have enough even counter appliances, just like any other takeout restaurant to serve a meal during my business hours. And that's sufficient. Was that when the. Sorry, Mary, go for it. Is that when you presented it as a restaurant or when you presented to ABC as a continuation of takeout? As current CUP as a takeout restaurant. OK, OK, OK. OK, thank you. No, OK, let's see. Do we have any public comment on this item? Well, good evening, Madam Mayor and council people. Thanks for coming tonight and hearing us on behalf of Amy. Probably like you at our time, processing the whole concept of what a tap room is. Maybe some of you have gone wine tasting and. Observed how you taste wine and spit some out. This is very similar. No one's going to be there in a lounging around. It's not a bar. No one's going to be chugging down big, you know, half pint or pictures of beer. It's not about that. I saw people coming into the taphouse and they were asking about, well, are you going to be carrying this type of beer or that type of beer? And I'm going, I'm not a beer drinker, so it doesn't mean anything to me. But apparently out there are some very serious beer drinkers who have a special palate they could taste things. I couldn't tell, you know, a Budweiser from a Modelo. So I think a lot of it is swirling around a misunderstanding of what the concept is about. But I can tell you one thing, Amy has an incredible positive attitude. And I hope that spills into the rest of the village because, you know, they could right now, everyone kind of needs a boost. And what else are you going to say? Oh, but what is Capitola about anyway? Capitola is about change. How many changes have you seen just in the last two years, three or four years? You know, we have a new mall owner who comes and says, we can't make money and I'm all anymore. We can't do anything. Well, things are changing. Yeah, OK, what can we do? We write the zoning, take residential, not a problem. That's a big change. You know, we have other situations that arose like COVID and let's put parklets out. Yeah, if you would have mentioned that before COVID, I think it would have been thrown out the door. But it's a change. And the city has been willing to accommodate changes because Amy's establishment is 50 feet or so away from the village line. OK, what can you say? I'm going to borrow a term that I heard about several years ago when people that lived out of this area wanted to be on committees and probably even the council. And that is sphere of influence. And I would say Amy's building is within the sphere of influence of the village. I mean, you pass it, you're immediately in the village. So that's all I've got to say. Thank you so much. Hi, my name is Kathleen Byrne. And I'm speaking in support of Amy's permit application for her restaurant to serve beer and wine. The self-serve alcohol and beverage dispense technology is currently legal in 45 states, including California. I've personally spoken with the ABC representative in Salinas and was told self poor taps are legal in California and cities which do not restrict their use. And I did thoroughly read the capitol codes and there are no restrictions in that code that would apply to her application or a restaurant that serves beer and wine. And patrons over 21 are limited to two drinks per person monitored by issuing a card in this limitation of alcoholic drinks promotes drinking and moderation, thus not encouraging a long stay at the restaurant. With this limitation, this system is different from a restaurant or bar in which patrons can easily order alcoholic drinks without the monitoring of the number of drinks consumed. Now Amy, in the last hearing, she gave up her idea of 20 seats or more, is down to six seats, which I don't see any reason why she couldn't got the variance because it does mention if there are other properties in the same vicinity and the same or the same zone which there are the same vicinity there are the cork and fork and the trestle. And she's not allowed to have the same privileges as they are with the parking. But she moved on and went, OK, only six. So she, and I find it ironic that the planning department staff does not support the self-serve draft system for the reason it would make patrons stay too long when in reality the self-pour system automatically limits patrons to have two drinks. With only six seats, the two drink limit would help open up seating for customers waiting to be seated. Amy has let me know that she invited the planning department to come and see how self-pour works. And not one person came or took the time to come in and experience how the self-pour system works and especially how it limits drinks rather than encouraging customers to drink more and stay longer by the planning department not supporting the self-port. Can't do any more. It's only a couple of more sentences. OK. Yeah, quickly wrap it up if you don't. OK. We'll just wrap it up down here. Instead of the planning department taking direction from the state and city codes, it seems the restrictions are being placed on Amy's business. And she does not have the same privilege enjoyed by other businesses in the same vicinity in the same zone as not being supported, even though she is in alignment with the state laws and city codes. And she's worked passionately honoring the state codes and city codes. And there is not a logical reason why she should be denied her efforts to provide locals and visitors with an innovative restaurant with a great menu to stop by and enjoy. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Christie, and I live off of 26 Ave. I met Amy right before the COVID shut down. That was three years ago, and I usually concentrate my walks on the other side of Capitola. And it was just by accident I walked this way. I was so surprised to see that Capitola tap room and got to meet Amy. Amy was super friendly and eager. She definitely made an impression on me. I mean, literally in like 20 minutes, she talked about her vision of the shop. And I was so impressed with her bravery to open up a business on her own. Then a few months later, when COVID hit and everything stopped, I was really actually worried about her because it was such bad timing to open up a new business. And then just last weekend, I was here checking out the museum, and I saw that she was open. And so I was so happy to see her again, and I tried one of her kombuchas. I asked her about hard kombuchas because I know that's such a popular thing these days. And she got to talking to me about this application that's going on. And so I thought I would come and just share my experience with her. I barely know her. I've only talked to her a few times, a couple times, but I feel like that she's super eager and willing to help out with to work with the committee to get something going. I do know that Capitola Taphouse will fill the void. Downtown Santa Cruz has got the Roxa, which is that that sells like Alexurs and then MeloMelo that offers Kava. What I do know is that I do like kombuchas and having that closer to home rather than having to go to downtown Santa Cruz would be amazing. So thank you. Thank you. Great. Hello. My name is Mario Beltramo, and I'm here in support of the appellant. I do that, and I do this not because I like the appellant, although I very much do like the appellant. I'm doing this because I love Capitola. I live in Capitola. I walk Capitola every day. I want Capitola to survive, and I want Capitola to thrive, and I want the businesses in Capitola to thrive and represent this town as it should be represented. And I think that entails bringing in good people to run those businesses, number one. And secondly, to have a good business to run. The reason the business is good were amplified and spoken very eloquently by Amy's representative, and I'm not going to repeat that. With regard to the parking issue, I think people come to Capitola and they park, and then they walk around Capitola's village. They don't come just to go to the tap room. They don't come just to go to any particular restaurant or any particular establishment. They come to the town. They find parking. If any of you walk around town, and I know you all do, we don't have a lack of parking in this town. We have adequate parking in this town. 99% of the time, you can find parking very close by. Right behind the police department, there are two large parking lots. Most of the time, those parking lots are substantially empty. People can find parking. Amy's business application should not be denied because of the lack of parking. The way I look at it, it's like a stool, a three-legged stool. The first leg of that stool is the business owner. And Amy is the type of business owner that we want to have. She's a good representative for this community. She's diligent, she works hard. Those are the kind of people we want to entice to open businesses. The second leg of the stool is you, the city council. You've got the opportunity to help somebody succeed in business, in a business in this community that's going to bring people in, that's going to bring money in, and you can do it. You've got the power to do it. It may not necessarily have been done along these exact same terms, but that doesn't mean that you can't do it. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here. You can do it. You're the second leg. The third leg is the ABC. The ABC will look at this and say whether yes, her establishment meets the state's requirements for the serving of this alcohol. If they do, then there should be no reason why this application should not be fully approved. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any other in-house members of the public? Good evening, council members. My name is Ed Newman. I've lived and or worked in Capitola for one half century. And I'm here to represent seven businesses that are located at 331 Capitola Avenue, which is right across the Trestle from 401 Capitola. We support the staff recommendation. The concern is parking. And that has been our concern from the beginning, the first application by Amy. And the reason is that we have very limited parking at 331 Capitola Avenue. Most of it is under the railroad Trestle right next to where her business is. And we have a long-term lease on that area. And we are concerned that if we were concerned with the original variants and we're concerned with any expansion of the business in the direction of restaurant bar and so forth because of the pressure that that would put on the seven businesses that utilize the limited parking at 331 Capitola Avenue, we don't want to be in a ongoing wrestling match with people who want to park there short-term, mid-term, whatever, because it's convenient for them to do that when they go to her place. I mean, we really do wish the applicant well in terms of finding a viable business plan for her property, but think that this is not it. One other concern, which I hesitate to raise, but I will raise because there's been some public comment about the, I don't want to be personal, but you should be aware that there has been some history here of disregard of the rules so that what you hear tonight, you may not be able to rely on down the road 100%. When the first approval this applicant was made, there was some building plans that were approved and then she proceeded to disregard the plans and a notice of violation was issued and work had to be torn out and went back to square one and then she went and did some more work that was not within the approved plans and a second notice of violation had to be issued and that work had to be removed also. And so that's kind of a side concern in that but we don't want to see one thing being presented and something else actually happening that affects our parking situation. Thank you. Thank you. Dennis Norton. I'm not here to speak for against alcohol at this place. I'm here to speak about consistency and giving to the zoning ordinance avenues for people to have this kind of situation and avenue to be able to keep their business going. If you walk across the street right now all the way from the corner of Riverview, all the way down to the trestle, there's two residential structures, all the commercial has gone out of there, separate her building there. With a city that's encouraging people to park on a remote lot, that becomes a major passageway into the village and that's some of the places the places to pass the trestle have done well and the ones up on this end have not done so well. Hopefully they'll fill back in but we can't afford to have vacancies. We got a mall that's vacant here in the city. We need businesses in here and that's what people come here for. There should be a way, an avenue or a business like this to buy into Pacifico. And at one time the city before we actually put the meters in, and I imagine it's 50 years one. Right here. Before he remembers no meters there too. Before we talked about the idea of doing a parking district, that still can be done. A parking district would actually be set up as the mechanism is the parking lots that we have now and the possibility of someday being able to build another story on the one, the upper level there and making it a real thorough type of traffic circulation system where people come to town and park up there. My point is that businesses like this and believe me, the city has not been consistent with this and you won't walk through the buildings. I can name three to four businesses that were offered without parking and came in here and are selling alcohol right now. But given an avenue such as a parking district, we're given an avenue for a business like this to say, okay, I'm willing to pay for four or five, six whatever their parking thing is in exchange or getting a viable business done or a business. And I think this is the beginning. You're going to be facing this quite a bit through the next coming years, but businesses that want to expand, the only businesses that can make it here now are the ones that have been here long enough where they've had established and they're tied in parking that's out there. Which the public pays for, by the way, that's public land. This is public land. And so you as a council have a direction as to can give direction as to how we use our land and do it. I really don't want more parking. I can't even imagine people pulling into the lot next to the trestle there to park there. I really can't, because you'd never be able to back on the road. But I can see giving them parking up here that they hate it a lot. And start a parking district in a parking bank where businesses can expand on themselves. Businesses can prosper in this community without shooting them away. Because we can't afford to shoot people like Amy away from here. We need her in our town. And this is in particularly the village right now. And so I'm hoping that you find an avenue for this business to be able to make itself successful. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else in house? Seeing none, we can go online. And Diane. Diane, you can unmute yourself. Hello, Diane. Good morning, Anne. We can offer a lot of speak and then we'll come back to Diane. And we will come back to you. Tanya, if you could unmute yourself. Sure. Thank you. So I didn't see on today, and I'm not. I don't have all the history with Capitola with a lot of the speakers. But I just wanted to talk for a second because I happened to be in Capitola and I've been to the chap house and I was really captivated by it. I mean, it's a pretty amazing system. And I was very impressed by the technology and the cleanliness. And I got to talking to Amy and her whole vision. And that was months and months and months ago. And me and Santa Jose, of course, lots of people I know pop over the hill for all sorts of reasons. And every single person I hear who's going to Santa Cruz or some place over there, I'm always telling them they've got to go to Capitola. They've got to go to the chap house. I mean, I think it's a real attraction for the town and the gentleman who spoke earlier about people, coming to Capitola, parking and walking around. I mean, I know that's what I do. I know that's what the people I know do. And we are local visitors, but we visit a lot. You have a nice town over there. So I just wanted to say that I think it's a real gem. And I think it's a real attraction for the town. That's all I really have to say. Great, thank you. Okay, Diane, if you can unmute yourself. Okay, I think we're having issues hearing you. So I think we will close public comment here. And we're going to take it back to council if we have any follow-up questions for staff. Okay. Let's see, I don't have any questions either. So then we can invite the appellants back up if you'd like to touch on any other topics that were brought up. Thank you, mayor and vice mayor and council. I was going to say in response to the staff report that said there was an objection where I didn't see any, I didn't see any in the packet. I don't know if I miss it, but then I understand Mr. Newman spoke. Thank you, Mr. Newman, for your perspective. But a large part of his complaint was parking. And that's not fair. We've removed the increase in seats and the intensification of use and the need for parking variants. So it looks to me to be a pretty well-supported proposal. The kitchen critiques that came back in the fall were when this was being proposed as a restaurant cafe and they weren't rulings because it wasn't really ripe yet. It was just like a warning. Like, I don't know if I see this kitchen happening, right? But the fact of the matter is, as a takeout establishment, the kitchen is sufficient. Look at Castagnola, it is a takeout deli, sandwiches with beer and wine permit. It doesn't have to be a five course meal. So why not Amy's, can she have the same thing? And does it have to be a refrigerator of what we were calling the Budweiser example and not to throw shade on Budweiser, but it'd be much more unique and much more novel and much more fun to be able to utilize for cool tap system for a variety of unique beverages that you don't get just anywhere in this town. The hard kombucha's, craft beers, local wines, that kind of thing. In five years, I did a PRA request. In five years, I asked for any businesses, takeout, restaurant, retail in MUN or MUV, who had requested CUPs to serve alcohol, retail, takeout, bar, lounge, restaurant, whatever, that had been denied. How many in five years have requested it and been denied? Only Amy's, she is the only denial. Why? Everything else is getting approved. Staff is willing to allow Amy to sell these outside cans, Budweiser, that kind of thing. But, or to be retail only and not allow any consumption on the premises, just for sale outside. Why? English sales is retail, CUP, retail CUP. You've ever gone in there? It's like an English pub open till midnight on the weekends, belling up to the bar, no menu in sight. Amy is not trying to be a bar. This is not going to be a bar, but we do hope that the council looks at all the alternatives because the idea of someone coming up and doing the self sample or the self pour is such a cool draw, such a novel concept and a way for people to really interact and test what do I like and what do I wanna buy and this is great. And it can be limited, it can be controlled, you can police with this technology all the undesirable impacts away. But if you do not see your way to improving a model like that, then to go sale or sales from the fridge, sales from the fridge, but either to go or sealed to go, or consumption on premises with your salad, your rice bowl, your wrap, your whatever, just like you could have cracked open a Budweiser cat's signality with your sandwich, crack open one of these pre-sealed, pre-filled bottles to eat with your bimba bowl. It's a distinction without an appreciable difference if you're gonna allow outside commercial versus from the taps and from the taps is what's gonna distinguish this and make this a destination for people to come to. So we thank you for your consideration. Please do look at this page 14 that the staff gave you it's an interesting example of all the CPs in the area. Let's see, did I leave my letter? I did. All right, thank you very much. And of course, if you have any questions, please look at that. Thank you. So have any follow-up questions? No questions, no. I think maybe I'm looking for some clarification. So originally they came to request 26 seats which would require more parking. Now we're back to, I understand the concept and I agree with the concept. I'm on board with the concept. But now that we're going back to six seats, we're not required more parking, right? Okay. So the six seats is for grandfather and is a legal nonconforming, six seat to go restaurant. So if they're not changing that, frankly, if they just had a cooler, there'd be no need for this hearing at all. If they just have a beer fridge. The question I think just comes down to whether or not the tap system is compatible with the to-go less problem. I mean, I think that that's, if that's the direction you wanna go. Right, okay. Help me out, Katie, I should. Yeah, I just wanna add one thing. What is before you tonight is the original application on appeal that's 26 seats, but they're willing to decrease it. So I think their request is for the column A of the original application, but then they're willing to cut it back to six seats. Okay, thank you. Make a clarifying question for that then. So then we would need to, if we were to say that we were okay with the taps, but not the original application of the 26 seats, we would have to make essentially two votes, one denying the appeal and then another to allow taps or would we just make one? Cause I mean, how does it work if we're kind of splitting, if the whole appeal is for the 26 seats application and we want to say we're okay with one part of this, but not the other, how would we vote on that? If it's not just denying the appeal or accepting the appeal. I wanna look to Sam. Sure, so it's de novo review. So you can craft whatever you're willing to approve and then that would just be the motion and the vote. We would want to bring you back. What we would request is that you give direction to staff as to what you believe is approvable. And then we would return to you at a subsequent meeting with a resolution and findings to support that direction. Okay. And then to make sure I've really answered your question, at that meeting you would vote on the resolution, which would include your direction, reflect your direction is a better way to say it. Okay. Okay. Any other clarifying meeting? Are we on comments now? We're still doing questions. Is it possible to get an address again in time? Sure. It's my understanding that like your first round of analysis do we approve the planning commission denial of the application back in December or do we overturn their denial? Okay. Number one. If you approve their denial, yep, that's denied. You don't get a restaurant and cafe with 26 seats. Then you as council said, you go de novo review of the other alternatives. What do you like? What do you support? What do you rule? It is not my understanding that that's a recommendation to staff. You are the final arbiters. You can decide right now what you want to approve. When you get council. Yeah, that's just not accurate. So the, as the code says, and as any permit requires your, the permit needs to be supported by findings. The resolution that staff brought tonight is consistent with staff's recommendation. And so it has findings that support a denial of the appeal. If the council would like to grant the appeal or if the council would like to exercise its authority to do a de novo review and craft a different approval, that will need to be supported by findings. Those findings are not available tonight. So we would need you to give us direction and then staff could bring you findings that would support that direction as a subsequent meeting. All right. We are closing the public hearing. Thank you for everybody's input. So this is a time that we can deliberate and choose our course of action. Where do you want to start? Who wants to start? I'm happy to start. Okay, great. So first of all, I don't think this is a bar at all. I've been in there, I've seen it. It does not look like a bar. So if that's part of the reason for denial, I don't think that makes any sense personally. There are multiple other businesses selling alcohol in mixed use neighborhood zones. There are no laws prohibiting taps from being used in takeout restaurants. I believe that we need to support our small business community. I would be interested in seeing if we could work out more seats using city parking. And in general, I would support definitely option one and maybe even some sort of a hybrid with more seats. That's all. Thank you. Yeah, I have concerns with the parking. And I hear the concerns of the neighbors about the potential for adding the 26, or going up to 26 seats. I don't necessarily have a problem with the tap system. I would prefer, it mentions in there up to, or excuse me, it says, I think no more than 50% of the taps being alcoholic. And I would personally prefer the language to be something long lines to say 50% or less. Or 49% or less, right? So essentially the majority of what you're doing would need to be non-alcoholic and then the rest is alcohol, that's fine with me. But I feel like in the same way that, the threshold for a vote is always 50 plus one for something to pass, the threshold for something to not be a majority alcoholic business should be 50 minus one. So that's just a preference of me personally, but I don't have the problem with the tap system necessarily, but I do have a problem with the additional seating. And honestly, I think, if we were to move forward with the approval of the tap system after that, it's out of our hands anyway, it's up to ABC to decide if the rest of the permitting is to their liking. So that's where I'm at right now. I'm interested in hearing what the rest of the council thinks as well. Yeah, well, so let me just start with, I wanna thank staff for really doing your, this is your job to follow our code, to implement our code. And I definitely appreciate all the time I was put into this and it's reflected here. But with that being said, we're here to also review some things that may be old standards or things that we've never thought about, such as Capitola Avenue becoming such a hot kind of area. We have several businesses that are thriving on Capitola Ave right now. And now we have somebody who wants kind of in on that opportunity. And as we, I mean, we just had almost the entire Espanade go under water. And so when we're seeing businesses trying to push back and be successful just out of that corridor, I'd like to see that kind of growth take place so that essentially we can thrive as a city and continue to support our businesses in that matter. So I respect staff. I respect what our planning commission did because that's their job to follow those rules and to follow the codes essentially. So they just did their job. So someone had mentioned that they could have done it something, no, they were just simply following the rules as is. I just wanna be mindful of that. So I'm trying to find a middle ground here. I think that with the times we're mentioned that we're coming out of COVID, you're trying to respond, you're trying to find the niche of a business that's gonna be successful because that's what we all want in our community is a business to be successful. And so I don't think that as the original application as presented makes the best sense with 26 seats because we don't know if the model essentially is gonna work. And we don't want, I'd rather not have the business go into that full throttle without really knowing how effective and how great of a success you would be. So I'm looking at the option when it's presented. I like the self poor option with the 16 taps. I think that we would, with the minimum of the six seats or excuse me, yeah, the six seats with council member Brown's percentage of 49% or less as non-alcoholic taps as they wrap around and visualizing, obviously this would be what I'd like to see come back is really clear picture on the system. So what does the tasting look like? What does the sit and drink aspect look like? What is the to go? We haven't seen any of that presented today, obviously because you're waiting on some sort of response from us, but to have that visually in front of us or to hear about that on a report that comes back from staff, that would be really helpful. And again, this would be on the condition of whether ABC passes this as a takeout as an addition to the takeout. What is this called? Yeah, the C, there's type four C license. That's what it's called. So as long as that's an alignment, and then it'll be interesting to what they say with the kitchen. I use a lot of different examples of Palin brought up a lot of different examples of how this is successful with other businesses in the general area. Again, I would like to see what ABC and with the kitchen would look like. So overall, that's how I would like staff to bring it back for us to determine at a later date. So again, it's the option one with the self-core of 16 taps, six seats, 49% or less be really clear on what the system is for tasting, sit down and drinking to go, that sort of stuff. And that is all I have for now. Can I clarify something in that really quickly? I think the 16 taps is listed here are the ones that would be beer and wine. So if we wanted it to be less than 50, it would need to be 15 taps. Okay. Because 16 is half of the total taps in there, yeah. So it would be 15 taps total for beer and wine consumption which would leave 17. I think I heard the Palin say they purchased it already. Like it's already the, all of the taps are in the bag already. And so it would just be 15 of them would be alcohol and then the others would not be. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah. Okay, got it. Because it already exists as an automatic system. I see, I see. Okay. And I think that's a good start. I would feel comfortable with that. Trying that out, we're in support of businesses here. We wanna see businesses thrive. I mean, and I think additionally what we'd need to think about as a council is that corridor, Capitol Avenue corridor, we've built code that doesn't allow for this kind of businesses because that's how it was, you know, before but now we're seeing from the Cork and Fork to Avenue cafe of businesses really being successful there. And I think we just need to acknowledge that and look at our code at a different time when staff has time to support that. So after the four other things we've directed to you tonight, yeah. Shouldn't we vote and then try to make recommendations or should we try to amend? Well, we're gonna need to speak on what we would like to vote on specifically, I think. Yeah, do you have any points? No, I think it, I thought we were just to vote on either the recommendation for or against. Maybe then they can come up with staff and ideas of how to rework another application. Well, I think we need to put forth what we're gonna be comfortable approving. I just have a couple of things to touch on that. Again, I'm interested to see how this can work and how we can move forward. I think I just need to touch on a couple of things. A big word that's coming to mind is consistency. I am down in this village pretty much every day and I often don't see you open. So I just wanna make sure that you're going to be utilizing this space to the fullest extent provided you have these greater things that you're able to do. The regulation, I've worked in food and beverage service for an immense amount of time and it is something that you really have to be on top of. So staffing, I'm excited to see that you would probably be able to staff this with a few people looking at how this proposal is set up. You're gonna need people to be monitoring folks that are in there consuming the alcohol or taking them off premise. I would like to see going in line with what other places do you have available with their takeout options? Is these outdoor seats? So we're talking about six indoor. I don't know what that would look like if you're having tables outside but I also don't want to throw too much in there right away. So I don't know how council feels about that as well. You're looking at the 26 seat one. Yeah, I think so, yeah. Any other questions are the six seats including the outside seating? Right, yeah. Right now they haven't set up where the six seats are the four at the bar and two at the other outside but if the fire marshal occupancy is like 30 for that building that doesn't mean you can only have six people in there. Yeah, she could put six seats inside and have people stand at the bar outside. Okay, okay. Right, or however she chooses to put it. Yeah, okay. So I understand that and then to please be mindful of the neighbors and any work that you're doing that is not being permitted. I would just frown upon that obviously. So let's do this as by the book as we can to avoid any issues that may come from that. So how do we want to move this? Can we do two motions? Okay. We have pushed up. Actually I just want to, I'm hearing a few things about possibly the applicant coming back with a modifications. If that is what the council is looking for I think that's a continuation. But if you want to make a motion on this project tonight if you want to take action on it you do have a set of plans in front of you that you can approve and limit in additional ways if you'd like. But I just want to be clear that if you're, if you want another, I'm hearing you'd like to see more information and study it further it would be more appropriate to look at. So let me be clear with what then I'm asking for because I'm not trying to modify anything. Actually I think we're reducing what the original application was essentially, right? So it's pretty much staying status quo with the implementation of the TAP system. And so we could have staff bring back that written up with the TAP system implementation with the language of the 49% or less and really clear language on what the system entails for the TAP system. I don't know that I need a study. I just would like that to be written in when we receive the report for approval. So that's what I meant. Not like tell me where you're sitting and what kind of beer you're serving. I was thinking you wanted an amended floor plan. So I apologize. Yeah, no. Oh, no. Sorry. Yeah. And I felt like the appayment was a really specific interested in knowing our take on the self for. And so that's why I included that language that it should be self for as an option for them. So that essentially is what you're asking. That's clear. I just wanted to clarify at this site there was an outdoor proposal and back in 2019 on the side of the lot that was denied because of impacts to the neighbors behind them. I would suggest in when we bring back conditions that we think about that space and ensuring that that's not an area that the public could utilize. And then I also think that the applicant's proposal to limit the hours should probably be built into the conditions where this is in a neighborhood mixed use rather than the village if you're up there. There's an eight o'clock closing time. So I think we can include that as well. And then with the number of seats, which is six. I mean, that's six seats inside with no chairs outside is what? Cause there's like a standing area, nothing on the side. I'm looking at. Or they could put the six seats outside of the standing area but then there's standing room only inside. Do you need that? I mean, that feels a little... So we've moved away from counting seats, right? The six seats is tied to the old permit. We now have allowances for up to 160 square feet within a to-go restaurant today to kind of move away from those six seats. But you're welcome to keep the condition of six seats but what I'm saying is before you is a restaurant application with up to 26. So if you want to increase that number it would just be classified as a restaurant and that's why we're not adding more than six so that they don't require more parking variances. So that's why we're sticking with six where they put them doesn't matter. But they're now permanent as a restaurant. Is that what I'm understanding? No, it'll still be considered as a restaurant. Okay, sorry, got confused, my bad. So we're sticking with six in order for them not to be a restaurant which does not require a variance. So it would be the allowance to be continued to be a takeout with type four license to have tap or system that they can sell for with 49% or less. I think that's really all they need. There's no other additional variants they need because what I'm proposing is that we don't add more than six seats so that we don't need to require more parking. Yeah. So do we need to make a motion or? I think I'm looking to Director Hurley and Brian to my right to see if you have what you need to make the required findings. And if so, I think we'll bring back a resolution at a subsequent meeting. And I think that might be all we need. I'm looking to see if you need additional direction. I think it's clear. So Brian, do you need any additional direction? And may I, just one more thing with those findings that you need to find, you brought up good points about eight o'clock closing. Are we missing anything else? I'm gonna look to, is there, you know, in order we, so we don't have to do this back. So the eight o'clock closing also limitations to not allow the side yard to be utilized. Also in the original permit, the planning commission, when they allowed this to change from retail to a restaurant, they asked that the vending system be towards the front of the, go out towards the street rather than to the residents in the back. So we would want to continue to have that out of, for courtesy of the neighbor. Yeah. And I think I did read somewhere about signage, but I just would like to reiterate that the signage will have to be super clear as far as open container laws and restricted area. And then possibly some good neighbor signage about, you know, no parking in the Trussell parking lot and things like that, but that might just be extra. And for clarification for the appellant, it is once permit is in hand that these changes can be made. And she can then go to ABC until that time, no changes. Okay. One more thought, you know, the appellant did bring up the parking and that we also look at alternatives to parking. And so if you wanted more bicycle parking on the site or something like that, we could make sure that's incorporated into the, I mean, there's definitely space. Now you've just, right? I'm buying. I don't know. I don't know about the park. Who's in for another hour? I know. I don't know. Alex actually loves his bikes. He's in. I know a couple of comments actually. Yeah. Not about the parking. I am interested in seeing if we can work with businesses to utilize our city parking lots, but I think that's a conversation for a different day. What I wanted to talk about this though, I think changing it from 16 taps to 15 taps, alcohol like seems kind of arbitrary, but would definitely err on the side of giving the business more freedom to pursue, you know, what they think they need to thrive as a small business. And I also wouldn't limit necessarily 100% of guests utilizing the outdoor space. I think that's also unnecessarily restrictive. I don't think we're not preventing the guests from using the outdoor space. I think that was something Katie was suggesting that we. The side. Oh, the side patio. Yeah. That's that's facing the residential. Yeah. I would, because this has gone through such a process with the community already, and we've received so much feedback, I think as a middle ground that it would make sense to be respectful of the residents that live there on the side. I mean, I can only envision someone drinking a growler out there having a chit chat in front of someone's window. But I mean, there's a residential spot right there. And I don't know how to pull that. I thought the area was between the Tap House and the Trestle. It was like a big open area, right? And then there's some house. There's another house. There's a house like right here. Yeah, I thought it was just directly to the left was the area in question. Not behind. That's a refuse area. The garbage area. Well, but regardless, that was denied previously. That was denied, right? Yeah. It wasn't part of this application. And it's not part of this application. I just, my suggestion is within the conditions, we should prevent spillover from happening into that area, possibly by like requiring established landscaping in that area that people would- Or like a bike. Yeah, a bike parking. Okay, I see very well. One other item that the appellant and I would like clarified is are they allowed to use their system or is somebody, do they have to pour the alcohol? It seems like what I'm hearing is she can utilize the system that they have in place with the cards and you're not saying- Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, okay. That's what I meant. Cell for, yeah. Yeah, cell for. With the regulations that it's right. Oh, I guess you didn't have- Sorry, nevermind. Nevermind. I don't know about it. Yeah. Okay, yeah, nevermind. Sorry. Like a big open area. And there's no limit on the amount of- That's what you're talking about. Not an option one. I think that ABC- I mean, you can go to the campus. Yeah, following the ABC. Okay. Katie, I'm sorry, I know you're walking away. It's your fault. You've mentioned bikes. And so if we wanted to keep folks out of that area, but maybe utilize that side space for some bike parking or something like that, I think that would be really neat to look at. So. Are you suggesting we require- Oh, I don't want to make it required though. I just think it's a great idea. Did we have specific complaints about using that area or drinking? We did. Okay, okay. You can require it if you'd like as part of the parking variance. Yeah. But there's no parking variance. So it sounds like what council is expressing is some concern about the impacts of the project on the neighborhood. And so, and certainly the council has given direction in how to mitigate those. And so those will be captured. That direction will be captured in the conditions and the concern will be captured in the findings. Great. Okay. So are we making a motion? Or this is the direction. I think staff has sufficient direction. I'm looking to the staff that will be writing. And making sure they have sufficient direction next meeting. Yeah, I was thinking that too. Can we just vote now? I mean, do we really need more information on this? I mean, yeah, it does have to come back to us because we don't have findings in the ordinance resolution. In the resolution that was brought to us in the packet. So typically when we do something like this, they'll write up a resolution assuming this is staff recommendation. If you go with it, we're going to vote on this resolution. Well, that's not what we just told them. So they have to write a new resolution. But for tonight, if it makes everyone feel better, I would be willing to make a motion to say we will uphold the original planning commission denial of the original application and provide an allowance for option one, as listed by staff with the allowance of up to 15 taps serving onsite beer and wine consumption through a self-port system. Does that, if I were to have just made that motion, would that satisfy the legal requirements? I think there's a lot more, but that's certainly not wrong. I think that's fine. I think that's fine if the council doesn't need to vote on a motion, but if you would like to, that would be a good one. Would the council prefer that there be a vote? You want to vote on it? Okay, I just made that motion. That's for fun. I just made that. I'll second that. Okay. Is this coming back to us at all then? Yes. Yes. There will be a resolution and you'll vote. The resolution will be on consent and you'll vote on it again then. This is just a pre-vote. Yeah. We're going to practice our voting skills tonight. Okay. I'm ready to vote on something. Okay, let's vote. First and second, roll call please. Aye. Aye. No, based on staff and other things. No. Okay. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That is a four to one. We will move on to our... I have to take a... I know. Yeah, let's do it. Let's go to our lines real quick. Everybody else get set up. Okay. Five minute break. Yeah. Dick O'Potty. There's only two stalls though. The long one. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's running for their stalls. I know. Now we're going to be like 10 minutes before we get back. Oh yeah. Thank you. Is this thing on? Yeah, when they open... I'm done by best. I'm done by best. I'm done by best. It's not happening, but... Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There's our primary vote. Thank you. That was a good one. Yeah. Go for it here. I have no idea. I have no idea. I'm just talking loud enough. I'm just talking loud enough. But it kind of picked it up because it wasn't. That was a good one. That was a good one. That was a good one. That was a good one. That was a good one. It was a good one. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anyway. We're going to get to where we're telling us, where and how we are. You're fine. It's pretty cool. Much better now. I know. You're in the chair now. Four hours. We have a four hour council meeting in a long time. Yeah. And can you imagine though? Can you imagine though, when the meeting started at seven, it would be 11 o'clock right now. That's what I think about every time. I'm kind of glad we moved it to six now. No kidding. I've been glad since day one. Thank you, Katie. Almost. Good. Oh. We've got a majority of us. I know. We've got a majority of us. We've got a majority of us. We've got a majority of us. We've got a majority of us. We've got a majority of us. We've got a majority of us. We've got a majority of us. We've got a majority of us. We've got a majority of us. I know. The mayor's here. We can get started. All right. I'd like to welcome everybody back for our last item. Before I start adding items. Just for fun. So item eight D. Kennedy drive sidewalk project. About to quiet on the set. All right. Okay. Our action here. The recommended action is to approve the plans, specifications and construct. Yeah. Sorry guys. Let's get through it. All right. All right. Good evening and get married council. We're going to make this really great. All right. All right. All right. So this project is a sidewalk infill project on Kennedy drive. It was a project that was identified during the public scoping session from a Gregor perk and was awarded an RTC grant and the regional transportation program funding in 2021. The goal of this particular project is to eliminate conflicts between bicycles, vehicles and pedestrians on this portion. So this is the current condition here on Kennedy drive. This is looking downhill. Right now it's just a two lane road with an asphalt shoulder. And there's parking lot on both sides. So it is not typically fully utilized. This here is the new proposed configuration going from left to right. It is a bike lane, a two drive aisles, a buffer parking alongside of the street. And a sidewalk. You know what? That was the same thing, but in a drawing. This next item is the striping plan. So you can see the beginning of that uphill. Bike lane on that side of the road. There's no parking on that side of the road to avoid conflicts with opening doors. And then on the down still side, there is a share. Oh, you're going faster. On a bike when you're going downhill. So that's why you chose the share over that side of the street with the sidewalk. The striping there. You can kind of see in the grayed out where the existing striping is, I'd be taken out to provide striping to all improved walkways. So they're across from. On Park Avenue. There is a bus stop and an access to the beach. And then there's a sidewalk going up Park Avenue. Going uphill. We have the share a transition, the bike lane transitions to a share. To avoid conflicts with the driveways there. And then there is a connection to the existing sidewalk on the side street. Putting in this. Sidewalk does necessitate the removal of 15 parking spaces. Again, since this project was proposed about a year ago, staff has been actively monitoring the parking on this stretch of roadway. It is very rarely halfway utilized and even rarer, fully utilized. There was also parking on both sides of the street in the adjacent neighborhood. Again, the funding is partially coming from the RTC, the council allocated $25,000 in funding and fiscal year 21, 22, some of which was spent on the design work. And there are 17 parking spaces. And then there's the construction of the project. And then there's the funding and fiscal year 21, 22, some of which was spent on the design work. And there are 17,000 available left for construction. The schedule for this project. There is a CDP application involved, which was part of the. Staff report. There's an appeal period on that where we couldn't construct prior to that. This project, since it is being funded by the RTC needs to go through their projects. And then there's the funding and fiscal year 21, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, in order to get this, basically this project done with the other projects with FEMA and the other projects the council has in their goals and priorities. We chose not to do a public meeting for this one. This project is not adjacent to any frontages of any property. So it seemed like a rather safe one, not to, but yes, the staff has the ability to go back and do a public meeting. I will say that kind of closes the window for getting this constructed in the early summer. I also want to add this requires a coastal development permit. So we did send out notice to all residents within 300 feet, letting them know of this meeting tonight and the public hearing to and posted on along the street. So just, we did try to get the word out there in order for people to participate this evening. Even for the neighborhood. It doesn't even work. Guys get adequate. I would say, if you want me to respond to council member, he asked if I received any. I'm so sorry. Public, do you want me to respond? Of course. So yeah, when we actually had a lot of staff out there looking at it and a lot of the neighbors came out and actually supported and we're really thrilled to see it. We did receive one correspondence of concern, but they just misunderstood the project. And I believe staff followed up with that particular person and cleared it up. So I think we're good to hear. Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions? We can take this to public comment. Where'd everybody go? Anybody online? Great. We do have a public. Oh my God. Still awake. Great. Feel free to. Hey guys, me again. This is a great idea. So the more sidewalks, the better the more bike lanes, the better. You should approve this and get it done. And we're not even paying for it. It's like a win. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else online? Okay. Let's go back to council for deliberation or motion. I'll move approval of the recommended action. I'll second that. Great. We have a motion and a second. So maybe we have a roll call, please. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Passes unanimously. That'll take us to item nine. Adjournment. Thanks to everybody for hanging out with us for four hours. Woo. I think that was, are they cut?